An Ottonian Sacramentary in Oxford

Abstract A reconsideration of Oxford’s most important Ottonian illuminated manuscript seems appropriate in a volume dedicated to Henry Mayr-Harting, whose ground-breaking contextual study of Ottonian illuminated manuscripts reminded the scholarly world that Ottonian books were made by and for real people in particular religious and political situations, people who may even have gone so far on occasion as to talk to one another. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Liturg. 319, a sacramentary,2 was first described in detail in the early twentieth century, and was subjected to close examination in the mid-1960s by two liturgical scholars, who reached markedly different conclusions as to its origins (pls. 8-ro, 12, 14, 16, and 18). Since then considerable progress has been made by palaeographers and art historians in the study of Ottonian manuscript production, much of which has implications for our understanding of the Oxford sacramentary.