Richard and Mary Rouse attribute the manuscript to one of the four artists who produced a glossy bible commissioned by Guy de La Tour du Pin, bishop of Clermont from 1250 to 1285.

[3] Its patrons may have been John II, Duke of Brittany and Beatrice of England, Eleanor's parents.

In 1387, Pascal Hugonot, abbot of Saint-Pierre de la Couture in Le Mans, donated the gradual to the collegiate church of Saint-Junien in Haute-Vienne.

During the French Revolution and its seizure of religious property, the gradual was deposited in Limoges.

In 1993, an interpretation of parts of the gradual was recorded by Ensemble Organum in the refectory of the abbey.

[7] Many miniatures, in the form of large historiated initials, relate events of the life of Christ such as the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Resurrection.