[Liturgies of Saints Basil and John Chrysostom, the Presanctified, and Services for the General Menaia].

Forms part of the Kenneth Willis Clark Collection of Greek Manuscripts (David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)

Format: Manuscript codex.

Title supplied by cataloger.

Layout: Written in 1 column of 23 lines; fol. 4-76 has been ruled only for the margins of the text; fol. 77-82 has been ruled with a dry point on the hair side for 25 lines, 7 mm apart.

Script: There are seven hands represented in the codex: Scribe I: fol. 2r-2v; Scribe II: fol. 4r-76v; Scribe III: fol. 77r-82v; Scribe IV: fol. 83r-86r; Scribe V: fol. 86v; Scribe VI: fol. 87v-88r; Scribe VII: fol. 87v-88r. Scribe I: with a red title and initials, Scribe I writes in a casual but legible hand with few ligatures. The hand is slightly squarish and slants to the right. There are few enlarged letters and a mixture of uncial and minuscules. It appears that the scribe used a quill of medium width. Scribe II: most of the manuscript was written by Scribe II. He writes a rather large formal open hand with abbreviations using superposition and compression primarily within the rubrics. The hand is uniformly broad and expansive, with some letters larger than others, and it is written with a reed pen with a largish soft nib. Scribe III: follows in much the same tradition of letter formation as that of Scribe II and with a slightly lighter brown ink for the text and a vivid red for the rubrics and the margin initials. However, his hand tends to be squarish and was likely written by a quill as can be seen by the variations between the thicks and thins. Scribe IV: writes a very scratchy, hasty, crabbed hand in a dark brown to black ink. It is highly abbreviated, slants to the right in the direction of the text. Scribe V: writes in a hand that has a slightly backward slant, is squarish, and the ink is purplish black. It appears to have been written by a hand that is more familiar with the roman alphabet than with the Greek, especially the uncial characters. Scribe VI: writes a hand very similar to that of Scribe IV. The hand is typical of that of an informal style and clearly comes from the early part of the sixteenth-century. Scribe VII: is very similar to that of Scribe IV, but with a strong rightward slant, in a strong black ink, hastily written. Almost certainly from the sixteenth- or early part of the seventeenth-century.

Decoration: Initials in red throughout; the larger ones have formal floral decoration or elaborate interlacing (fol. 8v, 12r, 16v, 17v, 20r, 22v, 23r, 26v, 30v, 33r, 36r, 37v--bird figure--41r, 45v, 49r, 53r--bar headpiece--54v, 64v and 76v). One includes the motifs of a bird (fol. 37v) with its neck wrapped around by a column to form the letter "K, " and on fol. 53r a bar headpiece.

Origin: Southern Italy.

Title cataloged from existing description.

Binding: Bound in dark brown blind-stamped morocco by Gozzi in Modena in 1970, sewn on four raised double cords. The binder's small identification stamp is in gild on the turn-in at the tail of the upper cover. The cover decoration is a wide frame with corner diagonals ruled in double fillets; along the inside of the lines forming the frame are a series of very small double annules. The central panel has a mascle with a rectilinear network divided into a pattern of diamons of 25 regular sections each centered with a small double outlined mascle with slightly concave sides. The doublures are of parchment and stamped on both the doublures inside the upper and lower covers in the gilt exlibris of "Torre del Palasciano, " an ovoid finely engraved leafmask with cresting elements; azured background of parallel lines.