UNKNOWN LITURGICAL MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE 13TH-17TH CENTURIES IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN WARSAW

The National Museum in Warsaw holds 36 plainchant sources: 6 liturgical books and 30 fragments. These manuscripts are dispersed throughout various departments of the Museum and do not constitute a cohesive collection. They come from various periods (from the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century), and differ in provenance (Poland, Silesia, Germany, Italy), contents (antiphonals, graduals, psalters) and the state of preservation (from cut out miniatures and initial letters to full books). Until now, the manuscripts have not been the subject of research, although some of them are of great scientific value. Among the most valuable ones are: fragments from the area of Malopolska from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a 'de tempore' gradual from Silesia (beginning of the sixteenth century), and in particular a breviary containing chants in staffless notation (early German notation) This last manuscript (PL-Wm Rkp. 1304) deserves detailed investigation - initial analysis shows that it was probably written in the first half of the thirteenth century, at a diocesan centre in southern Germany. Among other things, it contains an 'officium' to St Gallus 'Venerabilis Gallus diaconum'.