Yes that's pretty great 👍

I very much wanted to put expert in inverted commas. The claim he spent months researching the origin and significance of the neums is a bit ridiculous when he can't get the most basic facts about them right.

Yes indeed. The two columns are almost unknown for a missal in the ninth century (and it is a plenary missal, not a sacramentary as they claim, which makes a later date significantly more likely)

Congratulations! That's amazing. Do let me know if you'd like to meet up in Munich sometime (e.g. in the Staatsbibliothek), I have plenty of recommendations for day trips/hiking.

3) More unassuming but probably the oldest surviving medieval manuscript still in Greece is the Great Meteoron's cod. 591. It is a copy of John Chrysostom's commentary written in 861 or 862 by the monk Eustathius.

Thanks for your response! I just wanted to highlight that the rite is so widespread later. But exactly as you say the great Carolingian monasteries and cathedrals could easily have had four separate manuscripts to use for the rite. But the presence in the Bobbio missal remains still intriguing.

There's always the gap between text and actual practice but the ordo is strongly linked to Carolingian reforms of baptism, so I think we can imagine an effort to outfit important churches with necessary resources. But the rite so elaborate that it's likely simplified in the average parish church.

Both the Gelasian and the Bobbio missal are reflecting a continental (probably Italian in origin) ceremony here for preparation for baptism. And I'm no expert but Carolingian gospel books I've read do tend to have each gospel on a new quire.

Just speaking as a liturgist, the ceremony is assumed ubiquitously by a lot of baptismal ordines into the 9th century (in the scrutiny) and even still in the 10th century sacramentary of Fulda (See screenshot). But it's not in insular context, so the insular gospel books aren't the place to look.

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.

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.

This not so tasteful monument commemorates that the monastery held the manuscript of the Weesobrunner Gebet, an old high German hymn or poem of creation written down in the early ninth century. Today it's in Munich as Clm 22053.