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DACT Fragments
@dact-fragments.bsky.social
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looking through some chants in this leaf of the Beauvais missal @casewestern.bsky.social and it seems so excited about SabBATO (saturday) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music in red, with square notation in black. The chant--Alleluya Surrexit dominus--is for Saturday in Easter week, and is set off with a large red "SABBATO" just above it. The O in Sabbato has a little flower in it, just for extra excitement.
November 28, 2025 at 8:12 PM
happy #fragmentfriday feast of st willibrord from this noted breviary from Frauenfeld! fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
November 7, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by DACT Fragments
carinr.bsky.social
This is the feast–in all the churches!–of Willibrord, Apostle to the Frisians, d. 739. 🕯️ First up: the Calendar of Willibrord, BNF lat 10837, an early-8c manuscript written on the Continent, probably at Echternach, mainly in Insular majuscule. #medievalsky 🧵

portail.biblissima.fr/en/ark:/4309...
BNF lat 10837, fol. 34v
November 7, 2025 at 2:39 PM
liturgical books bound in liturgical books but TEENY TINY
zannavanloon.bsky.social Zanna Van Loon @zannavanloon.bsky.social · Oct 31
Spilled my coffee travel mug in my backpack this morning - can you imagine the horror - so let’s just say some time with these wonderful #earlymodern miniature books was very much needed!

1) Gregorian Calendar (1585)

#rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

/1
Close up of a very small book bound in a fragment of a medieval liturgical manuscript on parchment Yellow-black pencil for scale next to the miniature book which is with a parchment cover of medieval manuscript fragments Close-up of the title page of the book: a Gregorian calendar printed in red and black.
October 31, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by DACT Fragments
zannavanloon.bsky.social
Spilled my coffee travel mug in my backpack this morning - can you imagine the horror - so let’s just say some time with these wonderful #earlymodern miniature books was very much needed!

1) Gregorian Calendar (1585)

#rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

/1
Close up of a very small book bound in a fragment of a medieval liturgical manuscript on parchment Yellow-black pencil for scale next to the miniature book which is with a parchment cover of medieval manuscript fragments Close-up of the title page of the book: a Gregorian calendar printed in red and black.
October 31, 2025 at 12:07 PM
spooky skeleton chant fragment #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
A leaf from a gradual (McGill MS Medieval 0064) with chants from the mass for the dead. The initial R frames a rather ghoulish skeletal figure, looking to the right and grinning. Perhaps he is a big Requiem fan.
October 31, 2025 at 9:23 PM
around 1592 somebody used an antiphoner to be a cover for their college textbook. it really must have been a pretty big antiphoner, so one wonders how many other texts it was used for... #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
the cover of a splayed book. In the upper right, what would be the cover, is part of the verse "In omnem terram" in a large script; below it is the title of the book it bound in its second life, Exercitationes ethicae Goclenii (pub. 1592)
October 17, 2025 at 3:34 PM
happy feast day of st gereon, martyr at Cologne, from this fragment in Antwerp #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
chants for the feast of st Gereon (Oct 10), in a linear sort of musical notation used in the low countries and germany around the 12th century. the fragment is now in Antwerp's 's Vleeshuis ("meat house") which feels oddly macabre for chants about martyrdom.
October 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
a happy feast of ewald and ewald this #fragmentfriday from this saint calendar, possibly from the diocese of Trier, now in Paris. bonus: weird little scorpion, fun marbled pillars fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Part of a saints calendar for the month of October. The middle of the page, which contains the names of feasts to be celebrated, is framed by pairs of colourful decorative columns with decorative patterning. The left pair has the dominical letter and part of the roman name for that date; the right column has the golden number. the column pairs are topped by a semicircular arch, and the middle by a rectangular bit, so the whole stack of calendar pages would be like looking down a basilica colonnade, if this were a pop-up book and not a fragment of medieval parchment. the roof, if you will, has some information about the number of days in the month and the zodiacal sign, in this case scorpio, that is depicted in the center. the scorpion lacks fearsome claws, but it has a human face, so it's somehow unsettling nevertheless.
October 3, 2025 at 6:41 PM
this fragment from Trier has some fun and colourful initials for pentecost #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Chants for Pentecost with unheightened neumes from a fragment preserved in Trier.The antiphon "Non vos relinquam orphanos" has a lovely N in gold on a blue background inside a square green frame. The blue paint has sort of cracked off, but you can tell it looked pretty colourful originally.
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
happy belated feast of Hildegard (Sept.17)! celebrate with this lovely fragment from the binding of the Riesencodex (the greenish circle is from the bosses on the cover) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-y...
A page of chant, somewhat the worse for wear from being used in a binding. Red lines mark the "f" line, and also divide up various sections of the litany "Aufer a nobis."
September 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM
normally dragons are more of a thing for Michaelmas (Sept 30) but this manuscript decided to have a holy cross (sept 15) dragon too. dragon-tember. #fragmentfriday
September 12, 2025 at 4:45 PM
something fun about this fragment is that the text combines parts of two different chants, but the melody is continuous across them like it was supposed to be that way all along. chant remix! #FragmentFriday
Several staves of music from a fragment now in Cluj-Napoca (https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-8cwo/11129/81427). A large capital A marks the beginning of the responsory verse "Amaverunt Christum in vita sua" (https://cantusindex.org/id/006342a), but switches up the second half with a line about walking around in white robes, which is usually part of a different chant entirely (https://cantusindex.org/id/007021). Did somebody drop it in here deliberately, or did they copy the wrong line and roll with it? Either way, the music is lined up with it, so it still works just fine.
September 5, 2025 at 9:05 PM
today is the feast of the beheading of john the baptist, which in this fragment has red neumes for the invitatory #chant fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
page from an antiphoner used in a binding, with chants for late-August feasts on it. Now in Stuttgart.
August 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM
this fragment may have its battle scars, buts it's very practical: many simple formulae to be used for saints' feasts in Paschaltide, written out on uneven staff-lines (probably in the back of some other book.) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music, on parchment with tears. The music is messily written, probably just to jog the memory of somebody who never can remember where the uppy downy bits go when you add alleluias to chant formulas after Easter. Possibly originating at a Carthusian monastery; now located in Trier.
August 23, 2025 at 1:54 AM
this #fragmentfriday item has TWO fun bits of music on it! let's take a look at this binding for the accounts of St Leonard, Zoutleeuw, 1443-1469. On the one hand, some #chant for the fifth Sunday of Lent and two preceding days. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
August 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
this #fragmentfriday is the feast of St. Peter's Chains! it's what links these four fragments together.
Antiphon for Saint Peter in Messine notation, from a fragment now in Stuttgart. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-nv2q/7528/60907 Antiphon for Saint Peter from a fragmented antiphoner from Northern France, now at the BnF. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-6dhw/3153/34525 Mass introit for Petri ad Vincula, from a page of the Beauvais missal in Albany, NY https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-jfyx/2850/32642 Another BnF fragment; this one seems to have been re-used to bind some legal proceedings in June of 1687. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-5z5i/3650/37891
August 1, 2025 at 11:58 PM
some lovely German chant notation in this noted missal now in Toronto but originally from Würzburg (aka Herbipolis aka Plant City) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music containing Alleluia chants for the Saturday after Easter. The A of Alleluia is blue on the upper line and red several lines later; between them is a decorative H, for "Haec," in black and red. The notes have distinctive shapes: descending notes have a wiggle and a straight descending line, sort of like a right-angled 7, while many ascending neumes look a bit like a backwards L. You could probably play some sort of Chant Tetris with them.
July 25, 2025 at 7:19 PM
the thing with cuttings is it's not always easy to tell what letter something is supposed to be. this one is labelled a "C", for example, but it kind of has a crossbar like an E. or a weird theta thing. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Initial from a medieval music book. Saints Clare, Francis, and Mary Magdalene are standing side by side in a blue circle, presumably part of a letter, which is in turn inside a box. Francis has his hands partly raised, as if he's about to conduct a piece of music; he's also looking off to the side with a somewhat displeased expression, and Clare looks sort of guilty about it, like maybe she made a false entrance when she wasn't supposed to. Mary Magdalene seems amused by the whole thing.
July 18, 2025 at 4:08 PM
some Italian neumes for #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
July 11, 2025 at 5:47 PM
chant manuscripts lost and found!
July 11, 2025 at 2:49 PM
chant for when you want to hide in the cover of a book #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Chants for St. Laurence hiding as spine reinforcements in a binding for a 1572 copy of Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Iesu Christi. Parts of two overlapping, fragmented pages containing chants for st Lawrence.
June 27, 2025 at 7:17 PM
i'm just saying if *I* worked in a bindery in 1499 I would bind my mass commentaries with graduals and not antiphoners. more thematically appropriate, is all. #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Part of a bifolio from an antiphoner that has been used as spine lining for a copy of Gabriel Biel, Sacri canonis missae expositio (1499). Chants for Good Friday on the left, ones for Sundays in Eastertide on the right.
June 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by DACT Fragments
fragmentarium.bsky.social
#FragmentOfTheDay: Another Frauenfeld find. Wrapping Josse Clichtove's 1523 chart-topper Opusculum on War and Peace, this Passion is sure to please your friends who dig early #mensuralNotation and #polyphony. Late, early, or just on time, it's guaranteed to please. fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-6...
Frauenfeld, Kantonsbibliothek Thurgau, CL 8438, Wrapper (https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-6vbs). A book, octavo-sized, that has been wrapped in a piece of parchment, half of which is visible here. Five sets of five staves, each with red lines and funky mensural notation, mostly what looks like maxima and breve.
June 20, 2025 at 2:44 PM
wanted: the S taken out of this Pentecost #chant. may or may not have cute little animals (see bottom of page) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Leaf of chant now at the library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, which is missing a fairly large rectangularly shaped chunk in the upper left. No music seems to be missing, so we can infer the missing part is exactly the size of a decorated initial formerly occupying this spot. beneath the Alleluia chant, a dog and rabbit gambol about. between the dog and the rabbit is either a very diminutive tree or an extremely large broccoli. perhaps it represents the fruits and vegetables of the spirit.
June 6, 2025 at 7:11 PM