Rauner 003203: A Sixteenth-Century Antiphoner

Lacunae and Other Damage to the Manuscript

Medieval books often required rebinding, and each time this occurred, the edges of the leaves might be planed off to even up the edges of the text block. This was evidently the case in our manuscript, where the folio numbers, written on the upper right corner of the folios, have often been partially or entirely cropped away, and sometimes rewritten in a different hand). (DeHamel, p. 141)




The folio numbers that remain allow us to determine that four folios (66-69) are missing after folio 65 in our codex. Examination of the codex shows that folios 65 and 70 belong to a single bifolium which was once the outside of a quire; the two bifolia which were nested within (folios 66 and 69, and folios 67 and 68) fell out or were removed. In the gutter between folios 65 and 70, the stitching which once held the quire together is visible, as is the manner in which 65 and 70, were originally single sheets of vellum, glued together to make a bifolium.
The next two quires, containing folios 71-76 and folios 77-82, are complete. The last quire in the codex, however, is damaged. There are no folio numbers visible on the extant folios in this last portion of the codex, which made it more difficult to determine the length of the lacuna. However, examination of the manuscript shows that the first four folios of the last quire, folios 83-86, have been torn out; the fifth folio, 87, remains intact. The original folio 88 is missing, but a folio of settings of the Benedicamus Domino appropriate to various ranks of feast has been glued to its stub; the quality of the parchment for this new folio 88 is lower, it is written only in black ink, and in a much less practiced hand.

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