ABSTRACT
Given the history of most early medieval trope manuscripts, one would expect the results of an investigation of the high medieval ‘afterlife’ of the Caligula Troper to be both predictable and dull. Tenth- and eleventh-century tropers are usually unpretentious manuscripts containing a cycle of tropes to selected proper chants of the Mass and a section of troped ordinary chants. The Caligula Troper is one of three tropers surviving from Anglo-Saxon England. It contains tropes to the proper chants of the Mass arranged in an annual cycle, followed by a fairly extensive commune sanctorum. The manuscript is fragmentary in two respects: the text ends in medias res, and there are several lacunae within the preserved portion of the codex. The appearance of the text script (English Caroline minuscule) and of the musical notation (Anglo-Saxon neumes) leaves little doubt that the book was produced in England in the eleventh century.
