Top half of a large leaf, with double column of 26 lines of a good Romanesque bookhand, written without biting curves and above topline, red rubrics and running titles, 4 large initials in green, red or yellow with foliate penwork, recovered from reuse on a later binding and hence trimmed at edges, discoloured in places (especially side once on outerside of later binding, but all text there quite legible) and a few small holes, overall in good and presentable condition, 197 by 244mm
The works of Alulphus of Tournai (d. c. 1140) are rare in manuscript. He served as librarian and precentor of the Abbey of Saint-Martin in Tournai, holding the first office for 47 years. He served under its first abbot, the bookish Odo, and may well have been one of Odo's disciples who founded the community in 1092. Under Alulphus' guidance the library and scriptorium there increased exponentially, quickly being renowned throughout Europe. Abbot Hermann of Tournai in his Restauratio sancti Martini Tornacensis remarks on the large number of scribes to be found in the monastery and the excellence of their script, and he notes that their books were frequently requested by other houses to be used as exemplars. The present manuscript is a notably early copy of this work, and may well have been copied in the Tournai scriptorium itself. The text here is from chs. V-VI and IX-X
