St Dominic with kneeling Dominican, initial I with border
Fitzwilliam Mus. MS McClean 56, f. 48r
Gradual
Veneto, Venice or Padua ca, 1325 and ca1375–1400

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

A Gradual contains the texts and music for the parts sung by the choir in the Mass, the Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion antiphon. This extensively illuminated copy was made in the Veneto either at Venice or Padua ca 1325 but its borders were given extended decoration in the last quarter of the century.This page shows the Introit for the feast of St Dominic on 4 August, In medio ecclesie aperuit os eius. The standing St Dominic with a kneeling friar below praying to the saint form the large initial I. The foliage border seems to have been added later in the fourteenth century. This book contains the Sanctoral, Common of the Saints, Masses of the Virgin Mary, Ordinary of the Mass and Sequences. This implies that it was part of a two-volume set with the first volume containing the Temporal. It is possible the first volume survives but has yet to be discovered. The Sanctoral has historiated initials and borders for the main feasts of the year. Of the Dominican saints only that of Dominic is given an initial and border, and that of St Peter Martyr only an ornamental initial. The absence from the text of the feast of St Thomas Aquinas may suggest it was made before his canonisation in 1323.