Manuscript
The Carmina Burana (abbreviated CB) is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different scribes in an early gothic minuscule (small letters; what we would today call lower-case, as opposed to majuscule – large, capital, upper-case, used in Roman manuscripts) on 119 sheets of parchment. In the 14th century, a number of free pages, cut of a slightly different size, were attached at the end of the text. The handwritten pages were bound into a small folder, called the Codex Buranus, in the Late Middle Ages. However, in the process of binding, the text was placed partially out of order, and some pages were most likely lost as well. The manuscript contains eight miniatures: the wheel of fortune (which actually is an illustration from the songs CB 14–18, but was placed by the book binder as the cover), an imaginative forest, a pair of lovers, scenes from the story of Dido and Aeneas, a scene of drinking beer, and three scenes of playing games – dice, tables, and chess.
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