Gradual-Antiphonal of St. Peter's Facsimile Edition

The Gradual-Antiphonal of St. Peter's is a richly illuminated manuscript of the chants of the Christian Mass and Divine Office. Made at and for the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg around 1160, it preserves the words and the melodies of the abbey's liturgical music. It is among the earliest extensively illuminated choir books. Its illumination includes an astonishing eleven full-page and forty-seven smaller miniatures and eight splendid incipit pages.

Most of the manuscript comprises notated chants: a gradual (sung portions of the Mass—the rite focused on the Eucharist) with sequentiary and an antiphonal (chants for the Office—prayer services celebrated daily by the professional religious). The book opens with prayers for the Office and a liturgical calendar.

Honoring the Patron Saint

The dedication miniature faces the beginning of the gradual. A kneeling abbot presents the manuscript to the enthroned Saint Peter, the monastery's patron saint. The saint is flanked by two archbishops, one of whom is Saint Rupert of Salzburg, who refounded the monastery and served as the first bishop of Salzburg (p. 166).

Two Painting Techniques

The pictorial program was conceived and executed mainly by a single artist working with assistants in two distinct techniques. In the gradual, the miniatures are either painted in full color on backgrounds of gold leaf or are drawings in brown and red ink with portions of the background painted pale green and blue (pp. 167-427).

In the antiphonal, all of the miniatures are in the drawing technique (pp. 468-839). Gold makes its most spectacular appearances in this portion of the book on two incipit pages, each nearly filled with a gold initial composed of spiraling vines. The A of the first great responsory for the First Sunday in Advent is occupied by a prophet who sees Christ in heaven above, a direct illustration of the chant: "Looking from afar, I see the coming power of God" (p. 469).

A Range of Subjects

While many of the miniatures in the gradual take as their subjects the event commemorated on the day, there is a broader range of subjects in the antiphonal. Included are miniatures of the Dream of Saint Joseph and the Anointing of King Solomon (pp. 495 and 805). Three full-page miniatures that trace the Passion of Christ in six scenes from the Betrayal to the Noli Me Tangere preface Easter (pp. 629-631).

Extraordinary Use of Silver

Three scribes copied the manuscript's text in the twelfth-century Transitional Script. They mostly wrote separate sections of the book and worked simultaneously. Silver—remarkably well preserved—was used for the writing of some headings and the most important entries in the calendar (pp. 150-161). While it was usual to highlight certain holidays using ink of a different color—the customary red being the origin of the English-language expression "red-letter days"—silver is a surprising (and costly) choice.

In one instance, the only page that features both a gold-ground miniature and an incipit panel, the neumes of the melodies are in silver on a purple ground. Those silver neumes appear above the text, in gold display script, of the first words of the offertory (sung by the choir as the priest prepares the Eucharistic elements) for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (p. 379).

Centuries at St. Peter's

The manuscript remained at St. Peter's Abbey until 1937, when the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek purchased it. Its mid-fifteenth-century binding of blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards was restored in 1961.