The Social Landscape of the Prague Sacramentary: The Prosopography of an Eighth-Century Mass-Book

Abstract

The Prague Sacramentary is the only complete example of this important early-medieval liturgical book to survive from eighth-century Bavaria. But, as the name implies, its present home is in the Czech Republic. The manuscript (Praha, Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituli, O. LXXXIII) was acquired in 1776 for the old metropolitan chapter library in Prague from a Czech private library, and nothing certain is known about its earlier location. That volume contains three works: the Sacramentary itself (fols. 1–120) together with an abridged lectionary (121–30), to which an incomplete penitential (131–45) in a different hand was added at an early date, almost certainly before autumn, 792. The page size is 247 × 165 mm (9.75 × 6.5 inches), and the gatherings of the volume vary between three and five sheets with four sheets predominating. The first 84 folios are written in a single column of 21 lines across the entire page, but folios 85–120 are written in two columns also of 21 lines each with marginal bounding lines drawn in an arrangement that is characteristic of Bavarianscriptoriain the Carolingian period. Four folios are now missing from the Sacramentary, three from the lectionary, and two from the penitential.

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