It is always a cause of great joy to medievalists and interested readers when a facsimile edition of a source difficult to access is published. So it is in the case of this gradual dating from 1426, shelfmark Ms. Muz. No. 1 of the Chapter Library of Spiš. The study in two languages (Slovak and English) that introduces the volume is followed by a black-and-white reproduction of the codex with transcriptions of the texts in the margins of the pages, and finally reproductions of some of the illuminated initials. Equally praiseworthy is the publisher's decision to include an accompanying CD with recordings of music from the gradual.

The foundation of the collegiate chapter of St Martin at Spiš, in the northern region of medieval Hungary, can be dated to the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the first reference to its provost dates from 1209. Legally, it fell under the Archbishopric of Esztergom, and in theory followed the Esztergom customs. This is testified by an Ordinary book for Spiš written at the end of the fifteenth century, entitled Rubrica Strigoniensis, the text of which cites the Esztergom traditions several times. However, the contents of the two sources with musical notation extant from the collegiate chapter's stock of books (one gradual and one antiphoner), the compilation of their repertory, the writing of the book and the musical notation only partially reflect the customs of the archdiocese, differing in several respects from the sources from the central regions of the country, and indicate broader, central European influences. To date no detailed and comprehensive critique has been made of these matters, and the editors of this facsimile edition have attempted to address them. The international importance of the publication lies in its mapping of the late medieval liturgical customs of a little-known region which lay on the fault lines between several cultural traditions.

This introductory contextualisation is unfortunately hampered by various unsubstantiated statements. An explanation that ‘After 1273 … the St Valentine chapel functioned as the pilgrim church where until the Reformation period liturgy was celebrated in old Slavonic language’ (p. 83) raises more questions than it answers. The evidence for the assertion is unclear, and one wonders which liturgical rite in old Slavonic is being referred to. A similar problem arises in the chapter ‘The Reconstruction of the Calendar of Saints’, where we are presented with an ‘older and younger proprium de sanctis’ (p. 99), consisting of a first unit spanning from the feast of St Lucy (13 December) to St Catherine (25 November) (fols. 99v–130r; in the facsimile edition fols. 130r and 139v have been interchanged) and a second comprising masses indicated in a list by mere incipits between the feastdays of Barbara (4 December) and Gereonis (10 October) (fols. 134v–138v). The distinction between an ‘older’ and ‘younger’ proprium cannot here refer to the age of each feast, for in that case five older and younger feasts would take place simultaneously and with the same mass rite (Thomas the Apostle and its vigil, fols. 99v, 124v; Conversion of Paul, fols. 100v, 135r; Apollinaris, fols. 116r, 136v; Septem fratrum, fols. 115v, 136v), not to mention the fact that the mass for King Ladislaus is found in the ‘older’ group (fol. 112v) while that for King Stephen and Bishop Gellért belongs to the ‘younger’ group (fol. 137v). Both parts are agreed to have been written by the same hand (pp. 98, 116), so a distinction between the dates of transcription is impossible. In practice, it is most likely that this unfortunate turn of phrase refers to the unusual procedure by which a gradual is compiled, and by way of explanation the editors provide two close but somewhat unconvincing hypotheses. In the first (p. 99), the scribe initially worked from an exemplar (representing the older proprium) then realised that many feastdays were missing and so supplemented them (in the younger proprium). The second theory (p. 116) presumes two model manuscripts of different ages, one containing the Old Roman calendar, the other, ‘younger’ exemplar representing the local traditions of neighbouring countries. Neither hypothesis is satisfactory, since an archetype containing King Ladislaus as a universally venerated saint is improbable, while the part representing more local traditions includes the apostles James, Bartholomew and Matthew, Pope Gregory and Bishop Augustine.

In any case, this division of the sanctorale has far more upsetting consequences. On page 109 we are provided with a geographical explanation for the supposed absence of the feast of the Transfiguration, while on page 113 in a commentary on a table including the feast we are told that in Cologne the Transfiguration was celebrated only from the fourteenth century. It would have been of greater consequence to mention that of medieval Hungarian Office sources, fifteen from Esztergom (including five codices from Spiš), seven from Kalocsa-Zagreb,Footnote ¹ two from VáradFootnote ² and one from TransylvaniaFootnote ³ give an entire office for 6 August, while the earliest Hungarian evidence of a mass of the Transfiguration is the twelfth-century Codex Prayanus, which gives three orations in the main text and further incipits in the margin.Footnote ⁴ A comparable situation attaches to the discussions of several apostolic feasts (Matthias, James, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Judas).

As to the question of why there is no trace of the masses of Gallus, the 11,000 Virgins and Emeric (here ‘King Emeric’) in the gradual in spite of their appearance in the sequentiary (p. 100), we are obliged to give the same simple answer as in the case of All Saints: a page is missing between the feasts of Michael and Martin. This provides a simpler answer to the editors' comment on page 116, which on the basis of a comparison of the feasts ordained by the Synod of Esztergom and the sanctorale in the Spiš Gradual emphasises that the absence of the feast of St Emeric on 5 November merits special attention. Regarding the masses of Andrew the Apostle and Bishop Nicholas, it would only be correct to refer to the lacuna in the codex if the feasts were celebrated only with commune material, recorded in the Ordo with a rubric, but this (at least in the case of Andrew) is doubtful.

Beyond these ambiguous statements are a number of smaller errors. In the calendar drawn up on the basis of the proprium de sanctis and the sequences (pp. 100–4) several dates are incorrect (correct dates in brackets): Sophia, 14 May (15); Helen, 21 May (22); Translation of Martin, 3 July (4); King Stephen, 21 August (20); Marcellus and Apuleius, 8 October (7); Gallus, 16 October; Pelagia, 17 October (8); and Gereon, 10 October. The date 20 October is labelled ‘Translatio sancti [Adalberti]’, but the addition seems arbitrary, since the feast of the Translation of St Adalbert is found only in Polish sources; this feast is associated elsewhere in the text with the date of 6 November, which often occurs in Prague and Hungarian office and mass sources with material that is independent from the Polish sources (p. 98).

In the introduction to the analysis of the ‘older’ proprium (p. 107), the editors consider it a peculiarity of Kraków that the section begins with the feast of St Lucy, which encourages the reader to believe that the Spiš Gradual may have borrowed this idea from Kraków. But this suggestion is made on the basis of one single source,Footnote ⁵ and is not backed up by the other Krakovian codices: two graduals and three missals,Footnote ⁶ in line with more widespread practice, begin the sanctorale with the Vigil of St Andrew. Similarly erroneous is the assertion that the Prague codices have a standard practice of beginning the proprium de sanctis with the feast of Barbara (p. 112): of the Prague office sources only one includes this feastday after the Office of Andrew, but the source in question is not the Breviarium notatum with shelfmark XV.A.10 referred to here.Footnote ⁷ Rather, several of the mass sources start the saints' feasts from 29 November (and one from 31 December).Footnote ⁸

Similar inaccuracies are encountered in the data and conclusions of the chapter on the ‘younger’ proprium. The editors date the dissemination of the feast of Maria Nivis to the time of Bishop Johannes Jenstein of Prague (end of the fourteenth century) and in the sources of the Polish bishoprics only find reference to its being celebrated from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From this, they conclude that there is a Czech influence for the feast found in the Spiš Gradual (p. 114). It is worth mentioning, however, that of the Hungarian codices (which are not considered here), from the fourteenth century four breviariesFootnote ⁹ and a further five ritual booksFootnote ¹⁰ include the feast. The cults of various saints are discussed rather selectively on page 115. Adalbert,Footnote ¹¹ who was venerated throughout medieval Hungary, and particularly in the archbishopric of Esztergom, is discussed solely in relation to Prague and Kraków, and the problem of the dates of the April feasts of Adalbert and George (footnote 192) is soon clarified by the Hungarian sources: Adalbert is celebrated on 23 April, and George on 24 AprilFootnote ¹² (not 22 and 23 April as we find on p. 116). The editors consider the inclusion of the feasts of Helena and the Divisio apostolorum in the Spiš Gradual as a Krakovian influence, yet the latter feast was well known in lands under German influence, and in Czech and Hungarian sources from the twelfth century, while Queen Helena is found alongside the dynastic saints (Kings Stephen and Ladislaus, Prince Emeric), King Sigismund, Elijah the Prophet, Margaret, Demetrius and Thomas à Becket as one of the typical features of Hungarian ritual books over a long period which mark them out from the European context.Footnote ¹³ The earliest Hungarian source for the celebration of Helena is the St Margaret SacramentaryFootnote ¹⁴ from the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose prayers were used unchanged, appearing in almost every book of the Hungarian rite, mostly on 22 May.

The following chapter discusses alleluia chants. The sources selected for comparison of the alleluia series are unsuitable for drawing general conclusions, and it is rash to assume from the evidence of only three sources that ‘manuscripts from medieval Hungary are not unified’ (p. 119). The gradual mentioned in footnote 204 (Clmae 172a–b) is the property not of the Eastern Slovakia Museum but of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. There are several cases where the editors erroneously suggest that chants in the Spiš Gradual are not found in Hungarian sources, and their conclusion that the book shares a south German tradition with other Polish and Czech manuscripts, ‘while it totally differs from the tradition developed in Esztergom diocese’ (p. 124) must be called into question.Footnote ¹⁵

The chapter on sequences also requires some clarification. The Tridentine Synod left not five, but only four sequences. (The Stabat mater was included in the Liturgy of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin in 1727.) The Spiš Gradual contains sixty-eight sequences, and is here presented as one of the largest and most ancient collections from the Kingdom of Hungary (p. 125). In practice, the Missale Notatum Strigoniense, which pre-dates it by nearly a century, contains seventy-eight such pieces, the Futaki Gradual of 1463 includes eighty-six, and various other missals of the fourteenth century include far more sequences than the Spiš collection.Footnote ¹⁶ The sequences for the veneration of the Hungarian saints (King Ladislaus, Novae laudis attollamus; King Stephen, Corde voce mente pura; Prince Emeric, Stirps regalis proles regis) are creations not of the fourteenth century, but of the thirteenth. The sources prescribe the sequence Omnes una celebremus not for All Saints, but for ordinary Sundays (Dominicis diebus). The sequence Gloriosus Christus Rex for the Translation of St Martin, and here considered to have originated in Spiš, appears in Hungarian sources other than just the Bakócz Gradual.Footnote ¹⁷O Maria virgo dia trinitatis is said to occur only in one Tarnow source (p. 127), but is also included with musical notation in a Brasov ritual book.Footnote ¹⁸ A German Benedictine origin for the sequence repertory of the Spiš Gradual is proposed on the grounds that Stirpe Maria regia, prescribed for the Nativity of the Virgin, occurs only in sources of German provenance (p. 128); but it is found in no fewer than twenty-six Hungarian sources, often in parallel with Nativitas Mariae virginis but generally with Stirpe Maria regia as the preferred text of the two, except in the Diocese of Zagreb. All of the five sequences listed on the same page as unique to the Spiš Gradual are also found in Hungarian sources, and of the four sequences for which it is said no musical concordances are known in Hungarian sources, only the sequence for St Gall (Dilecte Deo Galle perenni) lacks such a concordance.

This catalogue of errors leads the conclusions presented by the editors of this facsimile to lack the authority that could only properly arise from a thorough study of the sources listed in the bibliography, and of others further afield. For that, and for an accurate and objective analysis of central European sources, a comparative analysis of the melodies is necessary. It is in this respect that the facsimile edition of the Spiš Gradual can be warmly welcomed.