A total of fifty-three manuscripts were digitized this week by the Vatican. It seems that the work is settling into a new pattern of diversity, with no fond contributing a majority of the manuscripts. This week Reg.gr contributed the most, with thirteen, but Both Ott.lat and Vat.lat added nine, and Barb.lat added eight. Smaller contributions came from Pal.gr with five and Borg.ar with four. The week concluded with one each from Barb.gr, Barb.or, Chigiani, Reg.lat and Ross.

It is often thought that musical notation in Latin liturgical manuscripts was inspired/initiated by the demands by Charlemagne for a standardized liturgy. He had manuscripts brought north from Rome and tried to insist that everyone within his empire followed the same texts and chants, and that later requirement is thought to have driven the invention of neumatic notation. All of this leads to the fact that Latin chant manuscripts before 1000 are extremely rare, and there are no completely notated manuscripts before San Gall 359 from circa 925. To the right is f.112v from Ott.lat.313, a 9th(850-900, depending on who is dating it) C Parisian Sacramentary. This manuscript has three folios of very early neumes, f.112r-114v, notating the somewhat peculiar Easter vigil Exultet chant. Sung only once a year by the Deacon, and using an unusual tune, this is one of the first liturgical texts found with musical notation, although it is not known if this particular notation is original to the manuscript, or added shortly after completion. The neumes themselves are enigmatic tiny brown squiggles above several of the letters, often vowels. Susan Rankin addresses this topic in depth, though only briefly mentioning this particular manuscript, in her 2022 Sounding the Word of God: Carolingian Books for Singers

At the bottom is the Explicit, that is the "the text is now over, go home" line, found on f.81r in Ott.lat.35. This part of the volume contains "Evangeliorum libri" by Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus. It is a poem in dactylic hexameters retelling the life of Christ based mostly on the Gospel of Matthew.