Abstract
The metropolitan cathedral of Prague stands at the centre of a large diocese, in an area which was economically extremely active in the late middle ages. By the end of the thirteenth century, for the celebration of the liturgy, the cathedral owned well illuminated books.
Before this, work was undertaken to renew and stabilise the liturgical practice of the cathedral, and to make books which would record and support that practice. This paper opens with detailed consideration of one musico-liturgical book bought for the cathedral probably by Dean Vitus in 1235 (Prague, Metropolitan Cathedral, Cim 4): this was to become an important model for later books.
Following analysis of the contents and of the script in which music is notated in this collection of offertory verses and ordinary tropes, the later history of production of musico-liturgical books in the Prague diocese is briefly outlined. Those ways in which the musical script used in Cim 4 was adopted and adapted are thus traced through a period of two hundred years.