Fragments for the Resurrection

Today is Resurrection Sunday, the climax of the Easter celebration and the most important day of the Christian liturgical year. The importance of Easter had various ramifications for medieval life, for instance the early controversies concerning how Easter should be calculated. From the point of view of a manuscript research, the importance of Easter is evident in the vast manuscript material dedicated to its liturgical celebration. In this blogpost, therefore, I am sharing fragments with material for Resurrection Sunday from two separate manuscripts, belonging to the special collection at Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek (SDUB). I worked on these fragments during my stint as a research assistant at the library, and therefore I have a particular affection for them.

RARA Fragmenter pakke 1

The first example comes from a collection of loose fragments collectively referred to as RARA Fragmenter pakke 1, or parcel 1 of fragments from the RARA collection. This parcel contains four fragments from the same manuscript, a breviary of uncertain provenance and tentatively dated to the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Two of the fragments are complete, albeit cropped, folios, while the other two both belong to a third folio. All of the fragments contain liturgy for the Easter celebration, some for the Easter week itself and others for the paschal octave (celebrated eight days after Resurrection Sunday) and the later Sundays that were named in relation to Easter.

The fragment I have chosen here contains among its items one antiphon that is sung during the office for Resurrection Sunday. In the liturgical context of this particular folio, however, it is performed on a later Sunday, ostensibly in the even that May 3, the feast of the finding of the cross, falls on a Sunday. The antiphon itself, however, comes from the repertoire of the Resurrection office.

Unnumbered fragment, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

(Photo by Jakob Povl Holck)

The antiphon in question is found in the lower left-hand corner of the folio. It is identified in the CANTUS database as number 001796. In the fragment, the text of antiphon runs accordingly (my transcription):

[Christu]s resurgens ex mortuis [ia]m non moritur mors illi [ultr]a non dominabatur quod en[im ui]uit uiuit deo alleluia alleluia


This is from Romans 6:9 (here in the Douay-Rheims translation):


Knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over him

Antiphon for Vesper

Unnumbered fragment, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

(Photo by Jakob Povl Holck)

Herlufsholm 534.11

The second example of material for the feast of the Resurrection comes from the item known as Herlufsholm 534.11. This item is an edition from 1664 of a herbal by the German physician Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus, and it contains several strips of parchment cut from a German missal or sequentiary, tentatively dated to the thirteenth century.

Herlufsholm 534.11

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

Herlufsholm 534.11

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

As can be seen in the picture, the condition of the fragments have posed significant challenges for the research process, and I have written about some of these fragments here, here, and here. Four of these fragments have been cut vertically, and enough text has been preserved that it has now been possible to identify that one side of the folio of the original manuscript contains the sequence Laudes salvatori (CID g02530). This sequence was performed during the celebration of the mass for Resurrection Sunday.

Reconstruction of the text for Resurrection Sunday

Herlufsholm 534.11

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek