Here is another interesting discovery from the endless treasure trove of one of my favorite websites, that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This sacramentary was made for the Benedictine abbey of Saint Winnoc, in a town called Bergues in the northernmost part of the modern state of France (less than six miles south of Dunkirk, where the famous evacuation took place in 1940.) It dates to 1078-83, the time of the fifth abbot, who had the unusual name of Manasses; unusual, because it is the Latin form of “Manasseh”, the worst among the wicked kings of Judah. The abbey was a dependency of that of St Bertin, about 19 miles to the south, which in turn drew its liturgical use from the principality of Liège; this is why the patron of Liège, St Lambert, is named in the Communicantes.
What makes this manuscript particularly noteworthy is that it is a rare example of a sacramentary with illustrations for the major liturgical feasts. Both the writing and the illustrations were done by two different hands, one of which is very much finer than the other. I have here included all the images, and a few samples of the text.At the beginning of the manuscript, after the calendar, is portrait of Christ, young and beardless, following an archaic motif which may have been copied from the sacramentary which served as the prototype for this one, or its parent.
