Fragmentology

A Fragment from a Twelfth-Century Notated Breviary in the University of North Texas Music Library

Maristella Feustle — 2024-12-20

Denton, University of North Texas Music Library, Music Library Chant Fragment Collection # 06-167 is a single parchment leaf with text and adiastematic neumes from a breviary containing part of the office and procession for Palm Sunday. A close study situates its production to Southern Germany in the twelfth century.

Recycling or Rubbishing Ockham’s Sentences?

Monica Brînzei — 2024-12-20

Two bifolia from a quire of the Prologus to the Sentences of William of Ockham were used as a pastedown and flyleaf in Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale d’étude et de conservation, 198, a manuscript of the Sentences questions of James of Eltville copied in Paris at the College of St. Bernard around 1399. The open question is why one of Ockham’s most captivating philosophical texts was reduced to its materiality and merely employed to bind a later text of the same genre.

A Fragmentary Witness of William of Ockham’s Brevis Summa Libri Physicorum

Pieter Beullens — 2024-12-20

The binding of an incunable edition printed in Leuven and formerly owned by the Franciscan convent in Cologne preserves one bifolium and the offset of another from a copy of William of Ockham’s Brevis summa libri Physicorum. This note describes the physical remains, and attempts to reconstruct the parent manuscript’s appearance and the place of its text in the textual tradition of the commentary.

Traces of Liturgy

Jennifer Bain — 2024-12-20

This paper analyzes two manuscript fragments with musical notation retrieved from the fifteenth- or sixteenth-century binding
of the twelfth-century Riesencodex (Wiesbaden, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, Hs. 2), the most substantial collection of the works of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179). We determine through close attention to various aspects of the leaves—liturgy, notation, later additions—that both these fragments originated, and remained, close to Hildegard’s Rupertsberg convent and date from during or just after Hildegard’s lifetime. This analysis not only adds to our understanding of local liturgical context for the nuns at Rupertsberg, it also reveals that Rupertsberg was operating within a broad monastic network well beyond Hildegard’s lifetime. The two fragments, from an antiphoner and a gradual, contextualize the survival of Hildegard’s own musical work in light of the apparent disposability of these contemporary liturgical items.

Iter Helveticum Numericum

Pieter Beullens — 2024-12-20

This article describes manuscript fragments of seven different texts preserved in the bindings of early printed volumes. All fragments were studied from digital images available on e-rara, the platform for digitized rare books from Swiss institutions (www.e-rara.ch). This first exploration reveals the how the increasing number of digital online images of medieval manuscripts and early printed books presents an opportunity for the identification and study of the fragments in their bindings. Such fragments offer vast opportunities for a better understanding of the transmission and reception of the texts that they contain.

Medieval Fragments Revealed with FragmEndoscopy

Thijs Porck — 2024-12-20

A wealth of historical heritage is hidden in early modern book bindings, as pieces of parchment from medieval manuscripts were often reused to reinforce the binding mechanism. There is one problem, however: this important material is inaccessible without damaging the early modern book or using time-consuming and expensive scanning techniques. This project experiments with an innovative, fast and affordable solution to this problem. It exploits the natural mechanics of the early modern book through a technology also used by doctors, plumbers and car mechanics: endoscopy. Hidden information can then be revealed without damaging the book.

Challenges in the Description of in situ Fragments

Marina Bernasconi Reusser — 2024-12-20

Since 2021, the team of the Ticinensia disiecta project has entered into the Fragmentarium platform more than 110 descriptions of in situ fragments. The fieldwork, carried out in part in a pioneering manner, has led to some reflections that we would like to share with the community of editors and projects working on the database, as well as with fragment researchers more broadly, in the hope of provoking a fruitful exchange of experiences. Specifically, working with in situ fragments has revealed challenges related to using the Fragmentarium description module for describing host volumes, assigning shelfmarks to fragments still present in a carrier, and documenting that carrier with photographs. In each of these areas, however, we envision some possible solutions.

Fragmentology 7

William Duba — 2024-12-20

Editorial for Fragmentology 7

Index of Shelfmarks

William Duba — 2024-12-20

An index of all shelfmarks and accession numbers cited in reference to manuscript or early print material in Fragmentology 7 (2024).

Fragmenta liturgica

Eleonora Celora — 2024-12-20

Report on the conference Fragmenta liturgica held in Paris on 6–7 November 2024.

Giuseppe De Gregorio, Marta Luigina Mangini, Maddalena Modesti, eds., Documenti scartati, documenti reimpiegati. Forme, linguaggi, metodi per nuove prospettive di ricerca

William Duba — 2024-12-20

Book Review of Giuseppe De Gregorio, Marta Luigina Mangini, Maddalena Modesti, eds., Documenti scartati, documenti reimpiegati. Forme, linguaggi, metodi per nuove prospettive di ricerca (Notariorum Itinera. Varia 7), Genoa 2023, ISBN 978-88-97099-84-0 (print), 978-88-97099-85-7 (digital), Open Access.