A leaf from Hugh of St-Victor, De sacramentis, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [France, second half of the 12th century]

A leaf from Hugh of St-Victor, De sacramentis, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment   [France, second half of the 12th century]

A substantially complete leaf, c. 220 × 150 mm, ruled in drypoint for two columns of 37 lines, written in a fine protogothic bookhand in brown ink (the use of ‘ę’ for ‘ae’ and drypoint ruling, and to a lesser extent the uncrossed tironian ‘et’, symbol suggest a mid-century date, but the absence of the ampersand, the overall angularity, and the lateral compression of letter-forms suggest a date closer to the end of the century), decorated with ornamented initials in red, two or three lines high; recovered from use as a pastedown, with consequent damage especially to the recto, and the lowermost line damaged, but most of the text remaining legible

Text

Hugh of St-Victor, De sacramentis, 2.6.11–2.7.1: ‘operibus <eius> atque omni<bus pom>pis eius […] unctionem accipere debuerunt <…> electum’, including rubrics for 6.12–15 (‘De patrinis’, ‘<D>e rebaptizatione’, ‘Quare in sola aqua celebratur baptismus’, and ‘De forma baptismatis’) and 7.1: ‘Incipit VII pars de confirmatione’. Much of the text concerns baptism, which results in frequent occurrence of the letter ‘z’ (baptizare, baptizatus, baptizata, etc.), which is usually palaeographically rather rare in Latin, and even absent from the rubrics, which instead use an ‘s’ (baptismus, etc.).