Origin: Europe, possibly a Franciscan house, ca. 1500
Provenance: Purchased in France and donated to the d'Alzon Library by Fr. Donat Lamothe A.A. ca. 2000.
Physical description: 34 x 47 centimeters. Square notation on four-line staff with C clef. Gothic textualis (a type of script typically associated with the 13th through 16th century). At the beginning of each chant, lombards (smaller decorated initials) in alternating red and blue ink with fleuronée (leaf- or flower-like décor). From the same manuscript as 2b, but written in a different hand and probably much earlier (see 2b, context).
Context: Antiphonaries organize antiphons (short chants for the Liturgy of the Hours) by day of the liturgical year. The arrangement of the liturgical calendar in manuscripts like these can help determine the diocese from which they originated; however, without the context that the codex could have provided, it is nearly impossible to determine the geographic origin of these leaves. While the chants in 2a are for Pentecost (see "Texts"), 2b contains chants for feast days of Franciscan saints, suggesting that the codex originated in, or at least was used by, a Franciscan house. According to Fr. Donat, the leaf was dated at some point to ca. 1500; while this cannot be true of 2b, which may have been a late-17th-century interpolation to the codex (see 2b, "Context"), the script and notation of 2a support a 15th-16th century origin.
The fragment contains the following antiphons for Pentecost:
