Our research group visited the Library of the Reformed College in Kecskemét. With the great help of chief librarian Magdolna Bán three medieval manuscript fragments with musical notation were examined. Two of them were fairly small detached fragmentula, assumedly once fortifying the spines of host volumes, which were unusually kept amongst other strips of parchment in a plastic filing sleeve. Their identification, the assessment of their liturgical and musical content seemed to be impossible on the spot, since they preserved too little text and music to be able to be fitted in the quondam mother codex’s textual and musical context. In the case of one fragmentulum it though became possible now: the almost 8 cm long and barely 2 and a half cm high snippet having only a single line of text and music on it fortunately preserved such musical material which made possible not only the identification of the original chants, but the liturgical tradition that the mother codex once belonged to. The two identified chants were part of the December Office of St Stephen protomartyr; the first chant solely with its presence, the second with its melody testifies that the original codex was an antiphonal of Cistercian origin.

The analytical description of the fragmentulum can be found on the website of the research group.