Thread by @DactF

having a delightful #FragmentFriday with these bits of binding. Fun With Fragments up ahead...

https://twitter.com/maxhummus/status/1428053120689508356

This guy in the lower left has 1) a piece of John 15:6-7 2) a tiny bit of the chant Gloria et honore ("...tuarum") cantusindex.org/id/g01260
3) a prayer, Apostolici reverentia.

All that checks out for some sort of vigil mass for an apostle. There's a little A where you'd expect the name to be, "beati A...", but A for Apostle or A for Andrew? Either way, probably a page at the end of its book, easy pickings for binding material. 3/

The chant on these guys is not enlightening, but the reading is from Matthew 9:38, "[rogate] ergo domini...in messem [suam]" (lower) and 10:8 ("[demones] eicite" and :16 ("mitto vos sicut oves") (upper). Bit of text missing on the right, not much. 4/

Those are both from a passage often used for martyrs; there's a few lines missing in between where there was probably another strip cut out.

How about the one on the upper right of the first shot (better visible on the spine shot)? There's a bit of Ecclesiasticus 50:31 ("lux dei vestigium"), which is a reading you'd choose if this saint was also an important priest. 6/

The gradual is "Domini praevenisti" which could be for a lot of saints, really. But! this alleluia melody! 7/

this is the melody one typically sees at easter, "Pascha nostrum". What's it doing here with some saint-martyr-confessor guy? 8/

And WHO is our saint? Flipping the fragments about, it's just possible to make out what the prayers on the other side were; on the (now) upper right, there's "beato gregorio confessore atque pontifice...". 9/

The (now) upper left fragment has a slightly more generic prayer for saints, but one that comes earlier in the service (so a little higher up on the page). So, a mass for Gregory? 10/

Unfortunately, there are a LOT of saints Gregories. The most obvious one (of "Gregorian" chant) has a feast in mid-March, though, which is typically in Lent and not a great time for super Easter-y Alleluias. 11/

There's also Gregory of Tours, whose feast is November, so a bit more likely to have been at the end of the book. Or Gregory's great-grandpa, also named Gregory, who was also a bishop (of Langres.) 12/

(the elder Gregory had two sons when he was still a noble and not yet a bishop. and yes, one of the sons was ALSO named Gregory. he didn't become a saint though.) 13/

Between the two bits one can order from the reading, and the two bits you can order from the prayer, you can arrange four of the fragments in a square, like so: 14/

and lo! ALL the music snippets line up to make the Pascha nostrum melody, with ~10 notes missing in the middle. So somebody took their fave Easter song and wrote new words to it! 15/

The whole second line is missing, so it's hard to say what the whole text is. All we get is "...dus est benign..." --something like "good [Saint so-and-so] ought to be [somethinged]" . Adding in "tollen" from the spine picture isn't much help. 16/

BUT What's kind of great is that even though parts of the chant text are missing, the syllables sort of line up with those from the Easter text. So instead of
[Pas-cha nos-trum] im-mo-la-tus est Chri-stus we get
[] (ex?)-toll-en-dus est benig-nus 17/

Which suggests that "benignus" is not a word, but a name--which is lined up with none other than Christ himself (!). 18/

There is a St Benignus, as it happens. His feast is even in November (end of the book!). One can behold his enormous stone visage in Dijon, where there was an abbey dedicated in his honour. His shrine is now in the cathedral crypt. 19/

Benignus is connected to the Gregories, too--Gregory (of Langres) was very devoted to him, and even requested to be buried next to him, according to Gregory (of Tours.) 20/

Possibly the verse section of the chant gave some more details on Benignus--if it is Benignus--and/or Gregory, but all we get now is Qui polo-(?) in(?). Lines up sort of punnily with "Epulemur" in the Easter text, though. /21

None of this exactly explains why Benignus would get an Easter melody, except that 1) the people who wrote this missal (presumably in Dijon) thought he was that important and 2) it's a good song and why not? 22/

Anyway, this has been a long thread so happy #FragmentFriday! /fin