The Verona Orational, also known as the ''Libellus Orationum'' (

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

, Cathedral, Biblioteca Capit. Cod. LXXXIX), is a late 7th or early 8th century

Visigoth The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is kn ...

ic prayer book. It is the only

liturgical book A liturgical book, or service book, is a book published by the authority of a church body that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services. Christianity Roman Rite In the Roman Rite of the Catholic C ...

that was written before the Moorish invasion and is the only surviving Visigothic manuscript containing figural decoration. The manuscript has 127 folios that measure 330 mm by 260 mm. The text was written in Visigothic minuscule. A marginal gloss indicated that the manuscript was produced in

Tarragona Tarragona (, ; Phoenician: ''Tarqon''; la, Tarraco) is a port city located in northeast Spain on the Costa Daurada by the Mediterranean Sea. Founded before the fifth century BC, it is the capital of the Province of Tarragona, and part of Tarr ...

, at the church of Saint Fructuosus. The orational contains

antiphon An antiphon ( Greek ἀντίφωνον, ἀντί "opposite" and φωνή "voice") is a short chant in Christian ritual, sung as a refrain. The texts of antiphons are the Psalms. Their form was favored by St Ambrose and they feature prominentl ...

s and responsories that are not

neume A neume (; sometimes spelled neum) is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the general shape but not nec ...

d; no music exists in the codex. On folio 3r there is a drawing of the " Rose of the Winds", a precursor of the

Compass rose A compass rose, sometimes called a wind rose, rose of the winds or compass star, is a figure on a compass, map, nautical chart, or monument used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) and thei ...

. The drawing depicts the twelve winds grouped around a central

cross A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two intersecting lines or bars, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of the Latin letter X, is termed a s ...

. The twelve winds are represented by four heads with three faces each that have trumpets coming out of the mouth of each face. Each head is contained within a circle and the four circles are arranged in a cross pattern around the central cross. The entire drawing is enclosed within a double circle. Although the drawing has been Christianized by the addition of the central cross, the drawing is based a well known formula in Classical art, the '' Vultus trifons''. This manuscript is also important because it contains the first written sample of an early Italian language different from

Late Latin Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...

. It is written in northern-Italian cursive minuscule and is known as " Veronese Riddle": "Se pareba boves, alba pratalia araba, albo versorio teneba, negro semen seminaba", which can be translated more or less as "In front of him (he) led oxen, White fields (he) plowed, A white plow (he) held , A black seed (he) sowed". This can be easily interpreted as a representation of the act of holding a pen and writing on a white sheet.

References

* Brockett, Clyde Waring Jr., ''Antiphons, Responsories and other Chants of the Mozarabic Rite'' (New York: The Institute of Medieval Music, 1968) * Williams, John, ''Early Spanish Manuscript Illumination'' (New York: 1977).{{ISBN? 8th-century manuscripts Christian illuminated manuscripts Christian prayer books 8th-century Christian texts