Physical Description
Description and Contents
Parchment, ii paper flyleaves + ii medieval parchment flyleaves + 280 fols. (foliated iii-xii in modern pencil, I-CCLXXIIII in contemporary red ink, contemporary foliation followed in this resource, but given in Arabic numerals for convenience) + i medieval parchment flyleaf + ii paper flyleaves, 352 x 250 mm (216 x 157 mm), two columns, 32 lines ruled in plummet (except pages including varying numbers of four-line musical staves ruled in red ink), catchwords, artists’ instructions. Fols. 10, 128 and 203 have been excised. The main text is written in iron-gall ink, the rubrics and contemporary foliation in vermilion red.
Ornamental initials and catchword
Two of the initials (both I) include the fantastic birds which also grace some of the borders throughout the volume. The catchword (fructus) in the lower border of fol. 172v (the last page in quire 19) signals the first word on the next page, fol. 173r (the first page in quire 20). It would have ensured that the quires were put in the right order before the manuscript was bound.