www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o... At least I got a letter to the guardian published online about this. I suppose it won't make a difference to a sale one could describe as fraudulent, which the guardian gave free press to, but it's there.

I'm afraid there's a lot wrong with the expert assessment of this fragment, let alone the claim of supposed uniqueness of finding neums in a late ninth century manuscript that's getting press. Liturgical fragments get sold quite often so auction houses could try a bit harder

Two details of decoration and initials from the Exultet Rolls in the Museo Diocesano, Bari. Fabulous display. #MedievalSky #Manuscripts

Two Norman Romanesque fonts of Cornwall. Left in Saint Nonna's Church in Altarnun. Right in Saint Petroc's in Bodmin.

Manuscripts on display in the soaring monasteries of Meteora. Here in the Great Meteoron museum are: 1) Cod. 106. A 16th century liturgical book into which a miniature of an evangelist from the ninth century is incorporated. 2) Cod. 969. A copy of the Ladder of Divine Ascent from the 11th century

I saw a twelfth century Corfiot Gospel Book manuscript in the museum of the monastery of Panagia Theotokos in Palaiokastrista. It is one of the oldest monasteries on Corfu, though entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Perhaps this lovely manuscript dates from the founding period.

Nearby are the ruins of the Paleochristian basilica of old Palaiopolis, a magnificent structure in its day, which fell victim to successive invasions. It was first built in the fifth century, renewed in the eleventh but finally much destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

The middle Byzantine church of Saints Justin and Sosipater is the oldest church on Corfu, dating to around 1000 and dedicated to two saints named in the Pauline Epistles and Acts who came to evangelize the island in their later years.

The middle Byzantine church of Saints Justin and Sosipater is the oldest church on Corfu, dating to around 1000 and dedicated to two saints named in the Pauline Epistles and Acts who came to evangelize the island in their later years.

The secularisation of Bavaria in 1803 destroyed many great monasteries. Wessobrunn is one of the tragic cases, there's a Romanesque tower (called the Römerturm or Grauer Herzog) and some rococo corridors, all that remains of a place that claimed to be founded by Tassilo in the 8th century.

Kloster Seeon was founded at the end of the tenth century and received the special status of a Reichsabtei, directly under the Emperor, soon afterwards. The monks here produced some of the most brilliant manuscripts of Ottonian times it passed to the Bavarian state with the 1803 secularisation.

Lovely to see that the @bsbmuenchen.bsky.social have gone all out for the new exhibit on Japanese wood cuts: "Farben Japans". Here until 6th July.

bsky.app/profile/pawe... My amazing colleague and friend Pawel Figurski has joined us. Follow for learning about medieval Poland, state formation and kingship, plus there's no one who shows the importance of liturgy more clearly and lucidly. He even was in Der Spiegel recently!!!

bsky.app/profile/pawe... My amazing colleague and friend Pawel Figurski has joined us. Follow for learning about medieval Poland, state formation and kingship, plus there's no one who shows the importance of liturgy more clearly and lucidly. He even was in Der Spiegel recently!!!

For the medieval liturgy views over the age of 50 still get reproduced, because expertise to challenge them is going extinct. Eg Vogel from the '60s is still the main reference I see cited for the early middle ages, a narrow narrative which new access to manuscripts can do so much to enliven.

The fresco of Saints Gallus and Magnus in the crypt of the monastery of St Mang in Füssen shows the two peripatetic monks and monastery founders on a journey together. Dating to around 1000, it lay hidden in the Romanesque crypt under the baroque church until 1950.

This amazingly intricate glass cup was made in Syria or Egypt in the eleventh century. It was a relic for two female saints who were said to have possessed it, Hedwig of Andechs and Elisabeth of Thuringia. Later, we know it was in the hands of Martin Luther. It is now in the Veste Coburg.

Also I saw the marvellous ivory cover of the Gandersheim Evangeliar, a luxurious gospel book created in Metz under Louis the Pious. It came to England where it was noted in the possession of King Athelstan, here called Rex angulsaxorum er mercianorum. Now in the Kunstsammlung at the Veste Coburg

The ruins of the Premonstratensian Abbey, Kloster Veßra, in Thüringen. Founded in 1131 as family monastery of the Henneberg Counts. Though badly damaged by the fire only in 1939, it's still a wonderful example of the architecture of reformed monasticism.

The three living and the three dead is a common motif of gothic art, recalling the transience of earthly life. In the church of Maria Himmelfahrt in Chammünster is a fine Bavarian example, dating to the second half of the fifteenth century.

The chant for #Candlemas (a little belated) in our fabulous 15th century processional, with 500 year old splodges of beeswax! It belonged to the long-vanished church of St John the Evangelist on Fishamble Street in Dublin & may have been used in Christ Church Cathedral next door

The overwhelming baroque church of Kloster Waldsassen has the bodies of no less than 10 catacomb saints, martyrs dug up in Rome and acquired over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are honoured on the 1st August in a special "Heilige-Leiber-Fest".

Visiting Cheb in Bohemia (German Eger) and found that the city museum has this wonderful antependium, made by the Poor Clares of the city by embroidering hundred of tiny beads, coral and pearls. It dates around 1300 and I've never seen anything quite like it.

Visiting Cheb in Bohemia (German Eger) and found that the city museum has this wonderful antependium, made by the Poor Clares of the city by embroidering hundred of tiny beads, coral and pearls. It dates around 1300 and I've never seen anything quite like it.

Initial 'O'(mnipotens) depicting the Presentation in the Temple at the beginning of the Collect for the Mass of the Purification of BVM aka Candlemas (2nd February) BnF MS Latin 9428; Sacramentarium of Drogo; 9th century (between 826/837 CE & 855 CE); Metz; f.38r @labnf.bsky.social

Thus, looking to the margins of manuscripts, we find evidence that places prognostication within an erudite Christian milieu, avidly discussed and collected at the heart of the Frankish Empire. They were a way people made sense of the world, an impulse that is definitely undestandable today. (fin

But they are here paired with high classical and Christian knowledge, querying assumptions I had about them. Pliny is cited to validate divination, but most interestingly, an unknown commentary quoting Macrobius and Vigil discusses how to tell true dreams from false (sadly very faint). (4

But these texts of natural science are paired with no less than nine different texts for prognostication, telling the future. They use very varied methods (the shape of the moon, the location of thunder, the day a child is born). The one below is a popular text for dreams, listed alphabetically. (3

Firstly, there are some local annals, recording disasters, deaths and donors in a clerical community that I argue were the cathedral canons of Sens. But there are also numerous citations of classical and anonymous knowledge, around calculating of time (Vatican Library, Reg. lat. 567, fol.19r). (2

I am quite proud of my article in this collection, which deals with miscellaneous texts added in the margins of early medieval manuscripts (www.serena.unina.it/index.php/sc...). My article concerns the voluminous marginalia in a little-known manuscript from early medieval Sens, . (1

I am quite proud of my article in this collection, which deals with miscellaneous texts added in the margins of early medieval manuscripts (www.serena.unina.it/index.php/sc...). My article concerns the voluminous marginalia in a little-known manuscript from early medieval Sens, . (1

#bookhistory #medievalsky

Does anyone have access to the Quaritch Catalogue, Nr. 1348 Bookhands of the Middle Ages: Medieval Manuscripts VIII (2007). I would be very grateful for the images and information on lot. 62, which is a fragment of a sacramentary in Rhaetian minuscule (s.VIII/IX).

This is wonderful news, as the Leiden MSS were pretty inaccessible. Among them are these beautiful copies of Gregory of Tours Historia Francorum (VLO 86) and of Pliny (VLF 61), both dating to the early ninth century.

In Yale Beinecke Library MS 342 are the fragments of a Merovingian liturgical book, dating to around 750, with colourful initials in the forms of fish. It shows experimentation with script, as the main text is all in traditional uncial, but a newer minuscule script is used to mark out a blessing

A fine 'Te Igitur' BnF MS Latin 12050; Sacramentarium (Sacramentary called Rodrade); 9th century (c. 853); France (Saint-Pierre de Corbie); f.23r @labnf.bsky.social

The sombre ruins of Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire speak to the austere splendour of the Cistercian Order in England, but also the ravages of Dissolution in 1589. The abbey is notable as the setting for a series of medieval ghost stories written down here in the fifteenth century.

At the @britishlibrary.bsky.social exhibit on Medieval Women, I was enchanted by this beautiful roll depicting the life of John the Baptist (Add. MS 42497) the single surviving witness of the production of the women of Hohenberg Abbey in Alsace, under Abbess Herrad of Landsberg.

Lovely walk and visit to St Botolph's in Hardham to see the twelfth century frescoes, some of the earliest surviving in England. The cycle includes the Annunciation, Adam and Eve, and the Flight into Egypt,with the pagan idols falling from their niches.

Fantastic to see this today - a set of 9c ivory book covers on display in the Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe. Isn’t it wonderful?

Nice to see the journal Scriptorium now has articles online with Brepols. If you like, you can read about my examination of a ninth century manuscript almost unknown to western European scholarship, found at the grand chateau in Kroměříž. www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Here's a Nativity scene from a mid-13th century Antiphonary of Arezzo Cathedral (Museo Diocesano di Arte Sacra). #Manuscripts #MedievalSky #museitaliani

Merry Christmas!! Here's the nativity on the wonderful roof of the church of St Martin in Zillis in Switzerland, one of the only surviving intact Romanesque church roofs, dating to the twelfth century and showing the whole Christian story in a range of panels.

As Christmas nears, here's a charming little nativity depicted on the Exultet Roll in Latin MS 2 of the John Ryland Library, Manchester. Left sits Joseph, and right the baby is washed in a little cup. We can also see the bees at work below. Interestingly, script is not upside down as in other cases.

This tiny box of Irish manufacture was found in the crypt of Bobbio monastery in Northern Italy, and is today in the Museo della Citta. The box likely housed relics, and perhaps also the consecrated Eucharist, and dates to the seventh century. It demonstrates Bobbio's strong Irish heritage.

This tiny box of Irish manufacture was found in the crypt of Bobbio monastery in Northern Italy, and is today in the Museo della Citta. The box likely housed relics, and perhaps also the consecrated Eucharist, and dates to the seventh century. It demonstrates Bobbio's strong Irish heritage.

Pen drawings of Pope Gelasius and Pope Gregory Düsseldorf, MS-D-2 - Liturgical manuscript (Sacramentarium Gregorio-Hadrianum); 2nd half of the 10th century; Essen, Canonesses' Convent; f.26v

One of my favourite things are the faces in this fragment of a Gelasian Sacramentary written in Würzburg by English scribes, today Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 29300(4. The Anglo-Saxon minuscule script is quite amazing too. All those lovely ligatures...

It is often said that the images on Exultet Rolls were reversed relative to the text so the congregation could see them dynamically unfolding. it's a charming idea, but sadly unrealistic in most Apulian cathedrals. The audience for the images was the man who paid for them, the bishop, and his clergy

As Christmas nears, here's a charming little nativity depicted on the Exultet Roll in Latin MS 2 of the John Ryland Library, Manchester. Left sits Joseph, and right the baby is washed in a little cup. We can also see the bees at work below. Interestingly, script is not upside down as in other cases.