Volume / Number: 11 / 1635

• San Lorenzo Spain El Escorial & I.14 (foll. 20–168)

Written in Spain and probably in the same scriptorium as Madrid, Academia de la Historia 81 + London (CLA 11.**195), the leaf of Joshua in New York, Columbia University Library Plimpton 27 (CLA 11.1654), and the Vulgate Codex Toletanus (Madrid, B. N. Tol. 2.1), all manuscripts of similar large dimensions, of the same format, and with the same systems of pricking and punctuation. Belonged subsequently to a church of St Romanus (fol. 168v, 'Iste liber est de ecclesia sancti Romani', saec. XIII), probably to be identified with a church near Toledo, and to the Collegio Mayor de Alcalá de Henares (saec. XVII, cf. fol. 168v). Came to the Escorial with the library of the Conde-Duque de Olivares, probably after 1671.

Script, apparently by more than one hand, is Visigothic minuscule of the older type, to be compared with the script of the unique manuscript of 'Isidorus Pacensis' in Madrid and London (CLA 11.**195) but less broad and round: i-longa is the rule initially (even before a tall letter) and medially for the semi-vocal sound; a forked form of i-longa resembling tall Y also occurs; the soft and hard sounds of ti are not distinguished; the characteristic iT ligature occurs at line-end. A ninth-century scholarly reader, who wrote a graceful Visigothic minuscule, added interesting marginalia mentioning Jerome, Eucherius, Gregory, Isidore, and once, Albarus, i.e. the bishop of Cordova who died in 861 (seen on fol. 38v). Arabic texts of considerable length were entered in the margins of foll. 166v and 167; they, too, are said to be connected with Albarus.