Fragment of Old Hispanic antiphonary (type of book that contains the chants for the Old Hispanic cathedral cursus, i.e. vespers, matutinum and mass, and on penitential days only, also the hours of tertia, sexta and nona). Before its current binding this fragment was used as the flyleaves of a miscellaneous codex which contains: the Commentary on the Apocalypse (the "Silos Apocalypse") by Beato of Liébana (ff. 5v-217v); excerpts of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (ff. 218r-219v); Jerome's Commentary on Daniel (ff. 220r-266r); and several other texts (ff. 268r-279v). Ff. 1r-v have chants for Advent offices (the end of St Roman's mass, on 18 November, and an Advent commemoration (i.e. a ferial office with vespers and a matutinum); f. 2r has a miniature of hell (added by a later hand, very likely the same twelfth-century hand that illustrated the codex to which this fragment served as flyleaves); f. 2v has an alpha and omega illustration; f.3r is in blank and, f. 3v has an Oviedo cross; f. 4r has the monogram "VPR", an abbreviation for "vespertinus" the chant that was sung to open the vespers and the liturgical day (because vespers was the very first service of each liturgical day; and 4v has an ornamented incipit "Lux" the first word of Lux orta est, the chant (a vespertinus) that opened the liturgical year because it was prescribed for the office of Saint Acisclus (17 November, beginning of the Old Hispanic rite's liturgical year). The "VPR" abbreviation is common in most Old Hispanic manuscripts with vespertini; the one in f. 4r of this fragment is the largest that has surfaced (no other occupies a whole side of a folio). The same can be said about the vespertinus incipit in f. 4v, no other extant Old Hispanic manuscript presents ornamented chant texts of this size. The content of these folios and their comparison with other Old Hispanic manuscripts containing similar material (e.g. E-L Ms 8 and E-Mah Cod. 30) suggest that its original ordering was: ff. 2, 4, 1 and 3, with f. 4v followed by several now-lost folios, namely all of the ones needed for the chants of the Old Hispanic offices (i.e. vespers, matutinum and mass) for Saint Acisclo on 17 November and Saint Roman until the end of its mass on 18 November (which in E-L Ms 8 reach six folios, i.e. three sheets of parchment on both sides).

Date: the codex to which the fragment served as flyleaves is dated 1091 (text) and 1109 (miniatures), according to its ff. 6v, 275v, 276r, 278r, 267v. Therefore, the fragment predates the production of the main codex. It is very likely that it was copied before the official suppression of the Old Hispanic rite in the Iberian Península (1080). Previous authors have dated it as: beginning of the ninth century (Pinell, 1965); later than F-Pn NAL 2199 (Brou, "Un antiphonaire", 1952, who dated NAL 2199 as ninth to tenth century); end of the tenth century (Vivancos, 2007); eleventh century (Randel, 1973; Fernández de la Cuesta, 1980; Gómez Muntané, 2001); and the same date as the main codex, i.e. late-eleventh to early-twelfth century (Riaño, 1887 - an implausible hypothesis).

Origin: the main codex is from the abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos and this is why the fragment is also ascribed to this place. However, it is impossible to prove where the fragment was produced; some authors have suggested that it never belonged to Silos (Díaz y Díaz, 1983).

Liturgical tradition: A

Randel responsorial tone tradition: unknown because it preserves no responsorial verse (it has part of a respond at the end of f. 1v - its verse was copied in a lost folio).