Leaf from a Lectionary, in Latin, in archaising script and perhaps that of a student-scribe copying an old exemplar, decorated manuscript on parchment, single leaf, with single column of 26 lines in an awkward and often confusing book hand (see below), red rubrics and one-line initials, three large initial in red or blue, the third with scrolling dark blue penwork, contemporary folio no. ‘CI’, recovered from reuse in a binding and hence with stains, spots, and small holes (none affecting text), overall good condition, 284 x 226mm., [Germany], [early thirteenth century].*** On initial inspection this leaf is baffling, but must be an attempt by a thirteenth-century scribe, perhaps a student-scribe, to laboriously copy outdated letterforms he found in a Romanesque exemplar (perhaps eleventh-or twelfth-century). The aspect is square and heavy, as one might expect from German script, but the initials are characteristically thirteenth century, as are the use of tiny decorative pen strokes inside some capitals. However, the use of tongued ‘e’ in capitals and at the end of words, among other forms, fits better in a Romanesque setting. The ductus throughout has a ponderous quality, and lacks the rapidity one expects with normal script (as in the awkward forms of some letters, especially ‘r’), and has errors (such as the fishtailing added in error to the first ‘i’ in “munditiis” in the last but one line of the recto, among others – correct if this was an ascender of a consonant, but not an ‘i’) that consolidate the impression that the scribe was working slowly, carefully copying letterforms that might have been strange to him. This lack of familiarity with older letterforms rules out an elderly scribe who had trained at the end of the twelfth century, and our scribe was more likely a youth in training, given an older exemplar to copy.