Illuminated C with border containing flowers and birds
Fitzwilliam Mus. MS McClean 64, f.135r
Diurnal
Alsace or Upper Rhine, ca 1480–1490

Image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

This page of the Diurnal has the opening for the feast of St Peter Martyr on April 29 with the antiphon to the psalms at First Vespers, Colletetur turba fidelium triumphantis adlethe gaudio, with the scribe correcting with a red line his error in writing Colletentur. The Calendar contains the Dominican saints, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Martyr, Vincent Ferrer and Catherine of Siena who was canonised in 1461, and therefore the manuscript must have been written after that date. It also contains a number of local saints characteristic of the dioceses of Strasbourg and Basel, and this has resulted in the suggestion that the book was made in Alsace or the Upper Rhine. On this page the border has scrolls with flowers and birds. This type of border decoration is a late derivant from that used in illuminated borders of the printed Gutenberg Bibles of the period ca 1455 to ca 1470.