Volume / Number: 5 / 562

• Paris France Bibliothèque Nationale de France Lat. 5730

Written doubtless in Italy. Read at Avellino near Naples soon after the book was written. The MS probably belonged to the library of Corbie. A copy of it was made at Tours saec. VIII–IX which is now Vatic. Regin. Lat. 762 (CLA 1.109). The MS contained only foll. 1–469 when in the library of Dupuy; fol. 470, added in the seventeenth century, still bears part of a note in the hand of D. A. Le Michel: ‘…nobili exemplari superesse hic apud Corbiense cenobium.’ One leaf now lost was once in the possession of Fulvio Orsini. A fifteenth-sixteenth-century press-mark stands at the top of fol. 1. Belonged to Claude Dupuy: ‘Claudii Puteani’, whose son, Jacques Dupuy, left it to the Royal Library where it was numbered 5255 (see fol. 1).

Script is a superbly calligraphic uncial of the oldest type: the bow of uncial A is pointed; the upper loop of B is small; the eye of uncial E is open and the tongue high; the tail of G is short; L is just rounded at the base-line; uncial M is broad and the first stroke is straight; N is broad; the axis of O is well inclined to the left; F, P, T are narrow; the crotch of Y is above the base-line, sometimes above the head-line; at line-ends uncial AE, NT, US, UR often occur in ligature; in the UI ligature the I is formed by prolonging the second stroke of U. Marginalia in very old (saec. V) cursive are seen on foll. 23v, 91, 107, 183v, and on other pages, now erased. A contemporary cursive hand entered at the end of certain books: ‘recognobi abellini’ (foll. 22, 225v) or ‘recognobi ubiꞅ’ (= ubi supra, fol. 127), ‘recognobi uoꞅ’ (fol. 77v) or simply ‘recognobi’ (foll. 281v, 342v, 442).

☛F. W. Shipley, Certain sources of corruption in Latin manuscripts (New York 1904).

• http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8470112j

• Provenance: Corbie library—MSS from Corbie (Zechiel-Eckes)