Type

Lost Manuscript

Babel MS 13

Two fragments are presently known from this manuscript, both found in the same binding, but with one (the back binding strip) being blank but for a few letters, enough to show that it was the outer edge of a folio from the same manuscript as the fragment at the front of the volume. The text preserved by that front fragment is an abridged version of the Life of St Kenelm, skipping from chapter 2 to chapter 5. It is in this abridgement that Kenelm is remembered in the Sarum Breviary and, while the fragment has little to confirm that was the nature of the volume, that is the most likely identification. The fragment is a thin strip providing the full height of the folio; the short breaks in the text demonstrate that what we have is a little under a column in width, and we can surmise the manuscript had a bicolumnar layout.

Textual Information
Subject
Hagiography
Liturgy
Title of work
?Breviary, Use of Sarum
Language
Latin
Palaeography
Type of script
Gothic
Script detail
Textura, semi-quadrata
Place of production
England
Date of production
s. xiv
Material Information
Material
Parchment
Layout
Bicolumnar
Dimensions
Page

301mm (h) x mm (w)

Number of lines
27
Number of columns
2
Height of minims
3mm
Space between lines
7mm
Height of written space
177
Upper margin

12

Lower margin

112

Width of text 1

?50

Reservation 1

?15

Width of text 2

?50

History and further information
Information on dismantling

If the identification of Oxford as the place of binding is correct, that would suggest a date in the last quarter of the sixteenth century for dismantling - notably late for such a hagiographical text to a minor saint.

Number of folios represented
1
Author: David Rundle_