The small size of the manuscript suggests that it was used by the cantor, not the choir. Its precise origin is difficult to determine. It includes both the Germanic spelling “in ewangelio” and the southern spelling “in evangelio” for Canticle antiphon rubrics, and the frequent use of the soft ‘c’ rather than ‘t’ suggests southern origins (e.g., Haec es generacio querencium instead of Haec es generatio querentium).
The manuscript may be from somewhere close to Chiavenna where it has been since the twelfth century, as there is little evidence to contradict this. This provenance is consistent with the combination of Germanic and Italian spellings and use of Messine (Laon) neumes.
The manuscript is now held at the church of S. Lorenzo in Chiavenna, Italy. They acquired the antiphoner near the beginning of the twelfth century.
Folio numbers were added at a later date with Arabic numerals.
As the manuscript is written in adiastematic notation without differentiae, modes are difficult to assign and have been mostly left out of the index.
- Carter, Shannon K. "An Analytical Inventory of an Eleventh-Century Antiphoner Preserved in the Biblioteca Capitolare di S. Lorenzo in Chiavenna." M.A. thesis, The University of Western Ontario, 1995.