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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

it's nice when the #chant contents of a fragment reveal something about the likely place of origin: like this jumbled-up set of pages from Trier, which (when in order) suggest they might be Franciscan #fragmentfriday #franciscanfriday #thatisntwhatthefisforthough fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

sometimes finding the chant on a chant fragment feels like where's waldo (it's a gradual chant, on the lower left)

https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-xsui/12291/87376/90/
leaf from a missal reused as a book cover; the beginning of the gradual "Ne avertas faciem" is barely visible in the left column

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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Leaves from Aristotle's De interpretatione (translated into Latin by Boethius) and from the latter's treatise De topicis differentiis recycled as pastedowns (@jlugiessen.bsky.social, UB, 692) resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/HSP0006560D0...

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

it's been fun discovering the #chant contents of some leaves in Otto Ege's Fifty Original Leaves portfolios. like this one at Kent State with not only nice notation (on the hymn for Michael) but also an unusual hymn for Cosmas&Damian #fragmentfriday

Leaf 32 in the Fifty Original leaves portfolio at Kent State https://ege.denison.edu/img/kent%2032v.jpg

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

this little song in honour of Edmund Rich survives in two sources at Worcester Cathedral--an addition to an antiphoner, and a binding fragment. did they particularly like Edmund at Worcester? just an oddity of survival? not sure! #fragmentfriday

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

"Rather than dancing, as proposed in some earlier descriptions, the figure appears to be recoiling from something unpleasant or threatening." what a mood, little margin-person fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

not-exactly-a-fragment: #chant written into a prayerbook ca. 1750 near present-day Ogdensburg, NY #fragmentfriday

chant with the melody of "Haec dies", text in Kanien'kéha

https://collections.newberry.org/asset-management/2KXJ8ZPB5KRX?&WS=SearchResults&Flat=FP

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

leaf containing #chant for the feast of the Assumption, now at Princeton University #fragmentfriday

antiphon for Assumption, in which the S of Sicut has a bunch of little people watching Mary sigh out a tiny, younger Mary in a toga, who appears to be frowning at the gathered crowd as she gets swooped heavenward. the chant is about smelling like cinnamon and balsam, which really makes one wish scratch-n-sniff had already been invented.

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msabinus.bsky.social @msabinus.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Just entered this fragment on @archive.org. Took some work to ID text and chant due to dyed parchment but thanks to multispectral (re)imaging™ and Cantus DB (thank you @dact-fragments.bsky.social!), it's done. As @lisafdavis.bsky.social says: MSI FTW! But now my head hurts. #fragmentology

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

this letter S can fit so many little people inside it! AND a dove. #fragmentfriday

Page from a gradual (probably from Perugia) at University of Melbourne library with the introit Spiritus Dominus, for Pentecost. A large blue S on a gold background has twelve haloed people in the bottom of the S, and a dove flying straight down in the top half. There's also a little line-drawn face in the P of "Spiritus" and some little animals further down the page. In the margins there's some sort of dragon/griffon. Lots to look at if you already know the chant. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-gh81/3398/35829

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

on the one hand it's weird that fragmentation makes "pick your favourite leaf of this disassembled book" a meaningful question but also this is a good leaf though #fragmentfriday

A manuscript page showing the Introit for Ascension, from the Beauvais missal. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-5der/9932/72326

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

really love that this little bit of #chant (the Introit for Sexagesima) from a Danish manuscript is binding an Italian version of an English madrigal. #fragmentfriday

Part of the chant "Exsurge quare obdormis", with an initial E in blue on a spotty red background. It's been used as a book cover, so it looks...well-loved, we'll say. Somebody has written TENOR in the middle of the page (at 90 degrees, that is, in the new orientation as a book cover) and another TENOR is upside down in the lower margin just for good measure. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-mdfq/11938/84995

the chant cover is hiding madrigals! specifically, the tenor part of a madrigal by Thomas Morley, usually found in English as "Dainty fine sweet nymph delightful" but I guess the scribe thought it sounded better in the Italian version Morley was imitating.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

cute lil english-looking #chant for Ascension hiding in a Dutch book cover in Alkmaar. #fragmentfriday

initial V for "Viri galilei", the introit for Ascension, used as the pastedown in a 1542 publication of the collected works of Augustine of Hippo. https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-170k

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

🚨who wants to inventory chant fragments? 🚨 PRETTY chant fragments! cantusdatabase.org/article/712615

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

happy feast of st walburga to all who celebrate #fragmentfriday

part of a chant office for saint walburga on a binding fragment now in Stuttgart (https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-ar0c/1993/23538) poor walburga's name has gotten smudged three lines from the bottom, and her brother winnibold's is totally readable! brothers.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

easter week chant in Beneventan notation, complete with merpig(?)

The introit "Victricem manum tuam" for the Thursday in Easter week. There's a cool script and neat neumes. There's also an initial V created by a sort of piggy/doggy creature in a green and yellow leotard and bejeweled collar doing calisthenics, so that their large toes create one end of the V and their torso the other. The creature's large eyes are staring at its extended feet in a somewhat horrified manner, possibly because it is not entirely sure if it is looking at its heels or its knees and either way whether they ought to bend in that direction. It also appears to have an extra arm on the side facing us.
what this has to do with easter i do not know

https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-vlsi/3342/35625

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

odd two-tone flowering branch in this here #chant fragment. curious when/where it was added... #fragmentfriday

Antiphoner page with a chant for St Agatha, from a page now at Flagler College in Florida: https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-g2af

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

the layout of this #chant page makes it look like the scribe was just made to copy out "nunc sancte nobis" indefinitely like some medieval Bart Simpson #fragmentfriday

A page from a 13th century music manuscript (the "Wilton processional")whose pages were broken up ca. 1948 by Otto Ege; this page is now in New Zealand: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dplmedmss/8647514892/. An inventory of the leaves is here: https://cantusdatabase.org/source/620437.
The page has nine sets of red staff lines, and the same Latin text beginning "Nunc sancte nobis..." is written three times. There appear to be ghostly notes on some of the staves, but no legible musical notation.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

today is (among other things) the feast of saint Cuthbert, which seems like a good day to share a fragment of #chant for the fourth week of Lent (this week!) likely from Durham priory (Cuthbert's resting place) #fragmentfriday

Part of a fragment containing texts of chants (in smaller script) and prayers (in larger script) for masses in the fourth week of Lent. No musical notation, sadly, but it's pretty elegant.

More pictures: https://iiif.durham.ac.uk/index.html?manifest=t1mkw52j813g&canvas=t1t9c67wp29x
Description :https://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/view?docId=ark/32150_s1gh93gz57m.xml

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

so this one is very fun because 1. green staff lines are fun but also

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

some #fragmentfriday neumes, with bonus wormhole from use in a binding

https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-qwej/11836/84693/0

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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

And post 2, with neumed Visigothic goodness: bsky.app/profile/cari... [2/2]

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Call for Papers : "Scraps of the Sacred" colloquium on liturgical fragments, July 1-3, Fribourg, Switzerland Abstracts due March 6 sites.google.com/view/scraps-...

sites.google.com

Scraps of the Sacred

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

today's #chant for #fragmentfriday comes from the library at Northwestern University--a notated breviary with chants and readings for St. Agnes. question: what's with "Omel. lec. e."? "lec.ix" would be expected here.

repurposed chant folio, https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-uoj0/11235/81771

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

17th-century German jurisprudence all dressed up in 15th century chant #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

A book cover made from a chant manuscript page, with a stylized illuminated E for the Advent responsory Ecce dies venient. Chant in German-style notation (with little diamond-shaped noteheads) is partially visible.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Call for Papers : "Scraps of the Sacred" colloquium on liturgical fragments, July 1-3, Fribourg, Switzerland Abstracts due March 6 sites.google.com/view/scraps-...

sites.google.com

Scraps of the Sacred

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

new valentine's card idea: recycled chant fragments #fragmentfriday

Part of a gradual, now in Stuttgart, with chants for St Valentine; the chant part is from about 1100, and was reused in a binding ca. 1470. It's a bit "verschmutzt", per the description, but there's still lots of fun neumy bits. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-qi6q/2201/26311/0

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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Last Friday's Saint Dorothea: passage from her life in the Legenda aurea on the recycled leaves of a breviary (@unihalle.bsky.social, AB 47 13/a, 12) nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:g...

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

who's just a TINY LITTLE NEUME hiding away in this binding #fragmentfriday

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

in this week after Epiphany please enjoy this antiphoner fragment, particularly the zzzzzz #fragmentfriday

Epiphany chants from a fragmented antiphoner (recovered from bindings), now in Trier, https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-87fs/9904/72227

some Zs from the same antiphoner, which sort of look like a 5 tilting backwards, or maybe a weird quarter-rest, or some sort of abstract rendition of a person bowing profoundly while tipping their hat.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

it's the mOOOOOOOOOOOOst wonderful time...of O antiphons! #fragmentfriday

12 O antiphons from a breviary now in Stuttgart, https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-bb8r/7529/60909

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

A is Advent, and as you see here AAAAd te levavi opens the year #fragmentfriday

Initial for Advent Sunday introit in a fragment from 14th c French missal now at Houghton Library, https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-cgy7/8694/66091. there is shiny gold and hugely detailed penwork and four sort of camely dragon things, two of which seem to be a bit alarmed at having become intertwined.

fragment from a 14th c German missal now in Stuttgart. https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-cver . The parchment is kind of grubby from use as a binding, and besides which putting blue polka dots all over the red penwork inside the A probably didn't work out quite the way the artist had hoped. the neumes are quite tidy though.

thie 1405 Italian gradual (also at Houghton, https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-4h08) takes a more literal illustration approach, with king David lifting his hands up in the general direction of God. there's a bunch of little white-clad friars next to him who appear to be looking at the picture instead of singing, which is probably what some people gazing at the page were doing too.

fragment of a gradual, likely 13th c. German, now at Houghton LIbrary https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-ppwo. the A of Ad te levavi is shiny and gold and there are many leafy vines.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

looking through some chants in this leaf of the Beauvais missal @casewestern.bsky.social and it seems so excited about SabBATO (saturday) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Several staves of music in red, with square notation in black. The chant--Alleluya Surrexit dominus--is for Saturday in Easter week, and is set off with a large red "SABBATO" just above it. The O in Sabbato has a little flower in it, just for extra excitement.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

happy #fragmentfriday feast of st willibrord from this noted breviary from Frauenfeld! fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

This is the feast–in all the churches!–of Willibrord, Apostle to the Frisians, d. 739. 🕯️ First up: the Calendar of Willibrord, BNF lat 10837, an early-8c manuscript written on the Continent, probably at Echternach, mainly in Insular majuscule. #medievalsky 🧵 portail.biblissima.fr/en/ark:/4309...

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

liturgical books bound in liturgical books but TEENY TINY

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Zanna Van Loon @zannavanloon.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Spilled my coffee travel mug in my backpack this morning - can you imagine the horror - so let’s just say some time with these wonderful #earlymodern miniature books was very much needed! 1) Gregorian Calendar (1585) #rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜 /1

Close up of a very small book bound in a fragment of a medieval liturgical manuscript on parchment

Yellow-black pencil for scale next to the miniature book which is with a parchment cover of medieval manuscript fragments

Close-up of the title page of the book: a Gregorian calendar printed in red and black.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

spooky skeleton chant fragment #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

A leaf from a gradual (McGill MS Medieval 0064) with chants from the mass for the dead. The initial R frames a rather ghoulish skeletal figure, looking to the right and grinning. Perhaps he is a big Requiem fan.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

around 1592 somebody used an antiphoner to be a cover for their college textbook. it really must have been a pretty big antiphoner, so one wonders how many other texts it was used for... #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

the cover of a splayed book. In the upper right, what would be the cover, is part of the verse "In omnem terram" in a large script; below it is the title of the book it bound in its second life, Exercitationes ethicae Goclenii (pub. 1592)

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

happy feast day of st gereon, martyr at Cologne, from this fragment in Antwerp #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

chants for the feast of st Gereon (Oct 10), in a linear sort of musical notation used in the low countries and germany around the 12th century. the fragment is now in Antwerp's 's Vleeshuis ("meat house") which feels oddly macabre for chants about martyrdom.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

a happy feast of ewald and ewald this #fragmentfriday from this saint calendar, possibly from the diocese of Trier, now in Paris. bonus: weird little scorpion, fun marbled pillars fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Part of a saints calendar for the month of October. The middle of the page, which contains the names of feasts to be celebrated, is framed by pairs of colourful decorative columns with decorative patterning. The left pair has the dominical letter and part of the roman name for that date; the right column has the golden number. the column pairs are topped by a semicircular arch, and the middle by a rectangular bit, so the whole stack of calendar pages would be like looking down a basilica colonnade, if this were a pop-up book and not a fragment of medieval parchment. the roof, if you will, has some information about the number of days in the month and the zodiacal sign, in this case scorpio, that is depicted in the center. the scorpion lacks fearsome claws, but it has a human face, so it's somehow unsettling nevertheless.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

this fragment from Trier has some fun and colourful initials for pentecost #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Chants for Pentecost with unheightened neumes from a fragment preserved in Trier.The antiphon "Non vos relinquam orphanos" has a lovely N in gold on a blue background inside a square green frame. The blue paint has sort of cracked off, but you can tell it looked pretty colourful originally.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

happy belated feast of Hildegard (Sept.17)! celebrate with this lovely fragment from the binding of the Riesencodex (the greenish circle is from the bosses on the cover) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-y...

A page of chant, somewhat the worse for wear from being used in a binding. Red lines mark the "f" line, and also divide up various sections of the litany "Aufer a nobis."

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

normally dragons are more of a thing for Michaelmas (Sept 30) but this manuscript decided to have a holy cross (sept 15) dragon too. dragon-tember. #fragmentfriday

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

something fun about this fragment is that the text combines parts of two different chants, but the melody is continuous across them like it was supposed to be that way all along. chant remix! #FragmentFriday

Several staves of music from a fragment now in Cluj-Napoca (https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-8cwo/11129/81427). A large capital A marks the beginning of the responsory verse "Amaverunt Christum in vita sua" (https://cantusindex.org/id/006342a), but switches up the second half with a line about walking around in white robes, which is usually part of a different chant entirely (https://cantusindex.org/id/007021). Did somebody drop it in here deliberately, or did they copy the wrong line and roll with it? Either way, the music is lined up with it, so it still works just fine.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

today is the feast of the beheading of john the baptist, which in this fragment has red neumes for the invitatory #chant fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

page from an antiphoner used in a binding, with chants for late-August feasts on it. Now in Stuttgart.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

this fragment may have its battle scars, buts it's very practical: many simple formulae to be used for saints' feasts in Paschaltide, written out on uneven staff-lines (probably in the back of some other book.) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Several staves of music, on parchment with tears. The music is messily written, probably just to jog the memory of somebody who never can remember where the uppy downy bits go when you add alleluias to chant formulas after Easter. Possibly originating at a Carthusian monastery; now located in Trier.

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DACT Fragments @dact-fragments.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

this #fragmentfriday item has TWO fun bits of music on it! let's take a look at this binding for the accounts of St Leonard, Zoutleeuw, 1443-1469. On the one hand, some #chant for the fifth Sunday of Lent and two preceding days. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

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