Antiphonal (fragment)

Temporal, beginning abruptly on Fol. 1 with commemorations of the Nativity of Christ and St Stephen at Vespers for the feast of St John the Evangelist, and ending on Fol. 7v in the middle of antiphons for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury.

Text and music space: 295 x 255 mm. Ruled in light brown ink, one column of eight groups of four-line red staves with texts and black square musical notation.

Rubrics are in red. One-line initials in red and blue, flourished in the alternative colour; larger decorated initials with foliate infills in pink, pale blue and red, stroked with white: these  mark key antiphons. A large historiated initial ‘C’ (115 x 100 mm.) on fol. 7v, depicting Herod instructing his soldiers (upper) and their slaying of the Jewish children (lower), introduces the first responsory for the readings at matins for the feast of the Holy Innocents on 28 December. 

The folios are now unbound. The previous binding was of modern red calf with wide and narrow fillets in blind and gilt lettering ‘VELLUM LEAVES/ FROM A/ FIFTEENTH CENTURY SERVICE BOOK’ on the covers, over oak boards. There are eight major sewing stations, plus holes at the top and bottom for kettlestitching; there are also currently unused holes reflecting an earlier binding (these details are best seen between fols 5 and 6).

K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 342–3, No. 207.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, pp. 40–57, No. 7, and pl. 7.

B. Hubber, ‘“Of the Numerous Opportunities”: the Origins of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts at the State Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, Nos 51–52, October 1993, pp. 3–9.

M.M. Manion, ‘Massacre of the Innocents’, in The Book of Kells and the Art of Illumination, exh. cat., National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 25 February–7 May 2000, Canberra, p. 57, No. 29, with unnumbered illustration.

M.M. Manion, ‘Antiphonal (fragmentary)’, in The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia, and New Zealand, B. Stocks and N. Morgan (eds), exh. cat., State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 28 March to 15 June 2008, Melbourne, p. 97 and pl. 29.

The apostle and martyr saints commemorated in Christmas week are located in the temporal, rather than the sanctoral cycle of a choir book and all or some of these feasts may attract major illumination.  On Fol. 7 of this fragment an historiated initial ‘C’ introduces the first responsory for the readings at matins for the feast of the Holy Innocents on 28 December. The text of the responsory is based on Apocalypse 14:3-4 and 7:14-15, which tells of the vision of ‘one hundred and forty thousand (martyrs) who were purchased from the earth: centum quadraginta quatuor milli, qui empti sunt de terra’. The reading itself is from the prophet Jeremiah (31:15), and it expresses the sufferings of the northern kingdom of Israel in a lament attributed to Rachel, the mother of the patriarch Joseph. This text, in turn, is quoted in the Gospel of St Matthew (2:18), with reference to Herod’s slaughter of the children in Bethlehem in his vain attempt to do away  with the newborn Messiah whom he saw as a threat to his sovereignity of Judaea: ‘A voice was heard in Rama, Rachel lamenting her children because they are not: vox in Rama audita est ploratus et ululatus multus Rachel plorans filios suoset noluit  consolari quia non sunt.’

The scene of the Masssacre of the Innocents in the initial follows a traditional format which divides the composition into an upper and lower section. The image, above,  of a powerful Herod issuing commands to his soldiers floats against a luminous gold ground. It is in strong contrast to the tumultous scene, below, in which distraught mothers lament the violent killing of their offspring.

The expansive gold ground of the initial suggests that the illumination of the original set of Antiphonals was quite elaborate, probably involving the introduction of select feasts from the temporal and the saints of Christmas week by an extensive program of historiated and decorated initials. The older foliation of ‘70-76’ for these particular leaves indicates that they were originally preceded by quite a large section of the choir book which probably began with the first Sunday of Advent.

The precise origin of this Antiphonal has not yet been identified. Some aspects of the historiated initial, including its lively narrative style, suggest Bolognese influences. These, however, became widespread throughout northern and central Italy. Details such as the exaggerated hands and gestures of the women, the brightly coloured red lips of the figures and the rendering of chain mail by a pattern of dots occur also in late thirteenth-century Umbrian illumination.

Digital imaging and research on this manuscript were supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australia:Researching and Relating Australia’s Manuscript Holdings to New Technologies and New Readers. Substantial donations from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Catholic Church Insurance and the National Australia Bank are gratefully acknowledged. The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, The Network for Early European Research, and Newman College, The University of Melbourne, have also generously contributed to the project.

Chief Investigators (CIs) of the ARC project were Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson, Dr Elaine Shaw and postgraduate scholar Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner (The State Library of Victoria). The following curators, conservators, photographers and computer specialists at The State Library of Victoria also contributed their expertise: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason. Other contributors both in Australia and overseas are acknowledged in the relevant endnotes.

These detailed entries draw on the information in earlier catalogues and also update it. In particular, they are based on the following: K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. Our debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

Margaret M. Manion, on behalf of the ARC team, October, 2013