This shows the text of the recto, with the end of Psalm 129, the prompt for the Gloria Patri, the rubric psalmus, indicating the beginning of a new Psalm, and the beginning of Psalm 142. Note that the text is made to sit reasonably squarely within the ruled box, so that many words run from one line to the next with no hyphenation marks, while some short words are contracted to fit them neatly in. It is as if the page aesthetic is more important than the legibility of the text. In spelling, there is some substitution of c for t, as in obsecracionem instead of obsecrationem, but this seems quite common in medieval Latin spelling.
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Book of Hours, late 15th century. From a private collection. Photographs © Dianne Tillotson.

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Medieval Writing
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This site is created and maintained by Dr Dianne Tillotson, freelance researcher and compulsive multimedia and web author. Comments are welcome. Material on this web site is copyright, but some parts more so than others. Please check here for copyright status and usage before you start making free with it. This page last modified 15/2/2006.