Step 3: Attala, Arbogast, Aurelia, and Florentius: (The Manuscript Comes to Strasbourg)
Four saints found in the margins of Western MS 097--Attala, Arbogast, Aurelia, and Florentius--are local to the city of Strasbourg in Eastern France. Given that all of these saints were added by Hand 1, it is possible that the manuscript came to Strasbourg much later than it was produced (that is, if it was produced somewhere other than Strasbourg). Some of the other saints added by Hand 1, such as Saint Anne, were not incorporated into the Dominican liturgy until the 15th century.
Below is a small gallery showing details of the folios containing the local Strasbourg saints. Click through the image twice to view a full-size version. Saint Attala the Virgin, who died in 741, was a daughter of the Duke of Alsace and became the first abbess of Saint Stephen's convent. Saint Arbogast lived in the seventh century and served as Bishop of Strasbourg from 670 onward. Little is known of the life Saint Aurelia of Strasbourg: one account places her in the fourth century, while another identifies her with a French princess who died in 1027. Finally, Saint Florentius, like his successor Arbogast, served as the Bishop of Strasbourg in the seventh century.
Though it is not yet known how and why Western MS 097 came to Strasbourg, and where exactly it ended up, it is likely that the manuscript belonged to a Dominican convent there. At the beginning of the 14th century there were more convents than men's religious houses in Germany; by the 15th century in Strasbourg there was only one male house to seven female ones. Thus, although no internal evidence from the contents of Western MS 097 indicates that the manuscript owned by a women's rather than a men's religious house, the historical context suggests a female community.
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Principal secondary sources consulted: Amy Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); and William R. Bonniwell, A History of the Dominican Liturgy (New York City: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1944).
