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USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

Exodus 15:4

"currus Pharaonis et exercitum eius proiecit in mare electi principes eius submersi sunt in mari Rubro."

English Translation:
"Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea."

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currus Pharaonis et exercitum eius proiecit in mare electi principes eius submersi sunt in mari

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Introduction Currus pharaonis [...]
Introduction
By Danielle Mihram

This manuscript fragment (f. 40r-v) was originally part of a French monastic breviary used (or made) in a Benedictine abbey of nuns founded in Langres, France, in the 8th or 9th century, under the name of Saint-Pierre, so named because its cloisters were adjacent to its church, the Church of St. Pierre, where the nuns celebrated the Divine Office. Langres, a subprefecture of the Department of Haute-Marne, in the region of Grand Est (formerly Champagne-Ardenne), is at the gateway to Champagne and Burgundy.

This leaf contains text and music for Vespers for the 4th Sunday in Lent. The leaf's incipit is from the Bible's Exodus 15:4.
A Historical Note
In Louis Roussel's Le Diocèse de Langres; Histoire et Statistique, we find that this abbey was mentioned in various charters, notably in 814 and 889. Around the year 1169, the nuns of this abbey were transferred to a Cisterian abbey in Vauxbons (the Cisterian order was founded in 1098 as a stricter branch of the Benedictines). Their church (in Langres) became part of a parish. The neighboring parishes Saint-Michel and Sainte-Croix were abolished and united with Saint-Pierre (in 1231 and 1245, respectively), which then became in the Middle Ages the first parish of the diocese.

The original church was replaced with a new and larger parish church and was completed in 1245 under the collective name of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Sainte-Catherine and Sainte-Croix (referred to as Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul). The new church was enlarged several times during the period 1496-1588. It was closed on July 9, 1791 and destroyed in 1799 (Roussel).
Breviaries
Breviaries are often small portable books, usually smaller than antiphonals. The terms, Breviary, Divine Office, and Liturgy of the Hours are synonymous; a book containing prayers that are meant to be said at specific times throughout the day. Breviaries meant for use in choir can contain musical notation, but those for private recitation of the Office, which was increasingly common in the later Middle Ages, are not notated.

From the early Middle Ages on, clergy, monks, and nuns celebrated the Divine Office of prayers, hymns, psalms, and readings at eight different times throughout the day, using the texts in a breviary. The breviary, developed in the 11th century and liturgical in function, combines all the sung and spoken portions of the Divine Office into one volume. It is divided into a cycle of temporal, sanctoral, and common feasts. Breviaries are sometimes lavishly decorated with ornamented initials, or miniatures of biblical scenes or the performance of the Divine Office.