How to bury nuns. Manuscript with a Jack the Ripper connection.

[Manuscript] / [Nuns]. Modus sepeliendi sorores. S.l. [Low Countries]: s.n., s.a. [late 17th or early 18th century]. 4to [20.0 x 15.1 cm], 40 ff. manuscript on thick vellum, written in black, red and gold, a few contemporary cancel slips, copious musical notations. Bound in contemporary calf, blind-ruled spine and borders to covers. Rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards, chipping to lower extremity of spine, front (paper) flyleaf detached, engraved bookplate of Cornelius Paine inside upper cover, contemporary Dutch annotations to lower flyleaf. Only the occasional minor stain internally, neatly written and perfectly legible throughout.
 
 
Late 17th- or early 18th-century liturgical manuscript on vellum devoted to the Latin rites for burying nuns. The work is headed “Modus sepeliendi sorores” (“Method of Burying Sisters”) and begins with nuns moving from the church to the graveside. This text was produced as a stand-alone volume in a handy quarto-size to liberate the priest from carrying a larger book to the tomb.
 
It would seem that this volume once belonged to Wynne Edwin Baxter (1844-1920), who was admired by bibliophiles for his Milton collection, but who is now best known to the wider world for being the coroner who conducted the inquests on most of the victims of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 to 1891, i.e., the victims of Jack the Ripper. Baxter also conducted the inquest on Joseph Merrick, i.e., the “Elephant Man.” 
 
Baxter’s name does not appear in the volume, but in the 1921 sales catalogue of his library there appeared the item “MS. Modus Sepeliendi Sorores, 20 ll. of thick vellum” (A Catalogue of the Extensive and Valuable Milton Collection Formed by the Late Wynne E. Baxter, p. 42, no 462). The term “Modus sepeliendi sorores” is a rare usage, and it appears nowhere else as a title or incipit or a manuscript. Our manuscript does carry the armorial bookplate of Cornelius Paine (“Audax et Prudens”), and Baxter owned books that had once belonged to Paine (e.g., his 1493 first edition of the German-language Nuremberg Chronicle; cat. no. 560).
 
A contemporary Dutch annotation on the rear flyleaf of the manuscript gives alternate instructions about what the lead nun (“cantatrix”) should sing at a certain point in the ceremony. This is followed by a slightly later annotation in a different hand stating that the above recommendation was no longer in effect.