Sanctorale volume of 13th century Esztergom Breviary reconstructed from fragments

In March of 2026, a new book was published about one of the earliest sources of medieval Hungarian liturgy. One volume of a notated breviary from Esztergom, dating from the late 13th century, has been known for some time. This volume, the temporale section of a breviary, is kept in Strahovská knihovna, the library of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov in Prague, under the shelf mark DE I 7. The codex was classified by Janka Szendrei in 1984 as a medieval Hungarian liturgical manuscript that originated from the archiepiscopal see of Esztergom (Strigonium, Gran) - it was also published by her and is also available in a digitized version. The sanctorale volume of this two-part manuscript was presumed to be lost. In 2019, Gábriel Soliva (OFM, Budapest) identified the sanctorale volume of Breviarium Notatum Strigoniense in the Metropolitanska knjižnica Zagrebačke nadbiskupije (Metropolitan Library, Zagreb) in 258 smaller or larger fragments glued onto the covers of 129 early printed books. All the fragments were glued onto the covers of printed books around 1692. Books bound with the leaves of BNS II hold two fragments: one on the front cover and another on the back. Some additional fragments were identified in other collections in Zagreb. Through painstaking work, the original manuscript was largely reconstructed from these fragments, at least in a digital version (as the books kept in Zagreb were naturally not dismantled). As a result of this reconstruction, the sanctorale part of the late 13th-century office of the archiepiscopal see of Esztergom can be studied in detail; a missing notated source of the most important liturgical tradition of medieval Hungary has been revealed. 

You can read more about the reconstructed manuscript on this page, where you can also find the digital reconstruction of the codex. The results were also published in the following book:
Breviarium notatum Strigoniense saeculi XIII. Pars sanctoralis, ed. and intr. by Gábriel Szoliva OFM. Musicalia Danubiana 27. Budapest: HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Musicology, 2025. ISBN 978 615 51

Want to hear the music? Head to the video of the presentation of the book at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and you can find parts performed by Schola Academica near the end of the video.