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Breviary Fragment Combining Saint Cecilia’s Passion with Bede’s Homily for All Saints’ Day

[Bede the Venerable]; [Saint Cecilia]

[Fragment of a Latin Breviary Leaf, with Texts from the Legend of Saint Cecilia and Bede’s Homilia LXXI.]

[Southern France or Northern Italy?]: [late 13th century]. Manuscript on vellum. Written space approx. 65 × 95 mm; overall leaf size ca. 90 × 125 mm. Text in two sizes of gothic textualis, written in dark brown ink, rubrics in red. Bifolium; [4] pages. Reused as binding waste, with rectangular cut-outs consistent with sewing support slots for an early modern binding. Trimmed at one side, with staining, worming, and losses to the text, yet the passages are largely legible and the text could be identified.

Unusual 13th-century breviary fragment combining the legend of Saint Cecilia with Bede’s All Saints’ Day homily.

A small-format bifolium from a Latin breviary, preserving a liturgical reading cycle that interweaves the Historia passionis sanctae Caeciliae virginis with Bede’s Homilia LXXI. In solemnitate Omnium Sanctorum. The texts are copied in a compact formal book hand, with smaller rubricated insertions and interlinear additions in a secondary notula script. The size, layout, and script suggest a portable breviary produced for monastic or private devotion.

The Cecilia text includes familiar episodes from the Latin Passio, including Angelum Dei habeo amatorem, Haec Valerianum quendam iuvenem habebat sponsum, and Cantantibus organis, along with the insertion Domine Iesu Christe, seminator casti consilii. These segments appear in the form typical of liturgical readings, not continuous narrative.

Interwoven is a significant portion of Bede’s Homilia LXXI. In eadem solemnitate Omnium Sanctorum, traditionally read on the feast of All Saints, which begins: [Laudem Domini,] qui superna caelorum regna spiritibus angelicis… While the Cecilia passages derive from the broader Passio tradition, textual features show alignment with versions known from homiliaries. This direct juxtaposition of Cecilia’s passion with Bede’s theological reflections is unusual: we could not locate another surviving breviary containing both texts in this combination, suggesting a regionally specific reading order or a customized compilation.

Saint Cecilia, one of the most venerated Roman martyrs, was revered from the early Middle Ages as the patron saint of music, virginity, and spiritual marriage. Her Passio, though apocryphal in parts, circulated widely and was integrated into liturgical use by the 9th century. The Homiliae of Bede (ca. 673–735), particularly those for major feasts, remained standard reading in monastic contexts for centuries. The presence of both in this fragment suggests a breviary or homiliary adapted to a community with a particular devotion to Cecilia and access to Bede’s homiletic corpus.

The script—a regular and angular gothic textualis with looped ascenders and clubbed minims—is consistent with manuscripts produced in southern France or northern Italy in the latter half of the 13th century. The rubricated initials and the textualis–notula script pairing support the same dating.

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Price: €3,000.00