Disambiguation by Later Users

The efforts of the initial scribe and the rubricator to make the manuscript’s layout clear were not always enough for later users of the manuscript. On fol. 059r, the scribe arranged two chants, “Intellige clamorem meum,” communion for the Wednesday after Quadragesima Sunday, and the beginning of “Confessio et pulchritudo,” introit for the Thursday after Quadragesima Sunday, in a way that was confusing to a later user.

“Intellige clamorem meum” fills just over three full lines. The first three lines are written simply in a long-line format. However, instead of continuing with the final word of “Intellige clamorem meum,” “domine,” at the start of the next line, the scribe wrote the initial word of “Confessio et pulchritudo” with its notation, followed by the conclusion of “Intellige clamorem meum.” This is because, as the first chant of a feast, “Confessio et pulchritudo” was written with a large and elaborate initial letter; such large initials must always appear at the beginning of a line and not in the middle. The conclusion of “Intellige clamorem meum” was therefore pushed to the side to allow the initial of “Confessio” to appear at the start of the line. The initial scribe and rubricator gave no indication that “Confessio” and “domine” were part of separate chants, seemingly assuming that users of the manuscripts would be familiar enough with the liturgy to know that “domine” belonged to the end of “Intellige clamorem meum” and not to the start of “Confessio et pulchritudo.” A later user, however, apparently unhappy with the ambiguity of this arrangement, added a red vertical line between “Confessio” and “domine.”

The scribe of Princeton MS 245 took a different approach to the same problem on fol. 33v. In this manuscript “Intellige clamorem meum” fills two complete lines, with several words left over. The leftover words and notation appear at the start of the following line, with the remaining space in that line filled in with the rubric for “Confessio et pulchritudo.” The elaborate initial letter of “Confessio” is therefore able to appear at the start of a line, without any confusion of the two chants.