Unique Dominican gradual from Prussian contrata? Remarks on the provenance and dating of the manuscript shelf mark 2010 from the Adam Mickiewicz University Library in Poznań

Abstract

Abstract. Purpose: The verification of former dating of the Dominican gradual shelf mark 2010 and the identification of its provenance in light of current state of research on the Dominican and Teutonic manuscripts. Methods: the study used historical and comparative methods as well as elements of codicological analysis and source criticism. Results: the conducted comparative analyses of the repertoire contained within preserved leaves of the manuscript found that it is much closer to the content of the two oldest dominican graduals from the fourteenth century preserved in Poland than to posterior sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscripts. However it could not have been written before 1423, because in that year the feast of the Apparition of St. Michael, noted in the gradual 2010, was introduced into the Dominican calendar. In turn, the lack of such important feasts like Transfiguration and St. Catherine of Siena indicates that the former dating of the codex should be shifted from the sixteenth century into the second or third quarter of the fifteenth century, which is suggested also by the style of decoration of the book and writing. The analysis of the repertoire in light of the newest studies of sources allowed also to identify that the manuscript 2010 could have come from one of the monasteries belonging to the Prussian contrata of the Polish province of the Dominican Order. It is indicated by the presence of very rare in Polish liturgical books and absent in Dominican calendar feasts of St Jodoc, popular in German countries, and most of all St Olaf, patron saint of sailors and merchants, venerated in the Dominican monastery in former Revel in Livonia and in the Teutonic Order. The list of sixteen feasts added by the scriptor at the end of the Proprium de Sanctis chants cycle, indicates the influences of the Teutonic liturgy, because some of these saints were not recorded in the Dominican liturgical manuscripts, but they are popular in Teutonic books.