Volume / Number: 3 / 345

• Milan Italy Biblioteca Ambrosiana G. 82 Sup. (Studemunt) [palimpsest old]

Origin probably Italy. The MS was certainly in some centre unfamiliar with customary Italian calligraphic practices by the second half of the sixth century, when it was discarded and its leaves were taken haphazard and used for rewriting a Vulgate text of Kings. The MS had suffered greatly in antiquity so that even the upper script had become difficult to read by the seventh century, as retracing shows. Its further defacement was caused by the reagent applied by Angelo Mai early in the nineteenth century. When the MS entered the Ambrosiana is unknown, but there can be no doubt that it is of Bobbio provenance.

Script is Rustic capital, not of the oldest type: F and L rise slightly above the line; G has the uncial form, with a distinct tail; H is K-shaped, resembling h with an inverted virgula on the bow; the first stroke of M is almost upright; the second stroke of V is thin and descends slightly below the line; it begins to approximate to the uncial form (a contemporary corrector uses the V-shape). At the ends of long lines letters are often smaller. A very tiny contemporary Rustic capital is seen on page 67. The prologues are in uncial (cf. page 119), which seems contemporary. Offsets of uncial script saec V–VI, seen on pages 68, 176, are probably from scraps used to reinforce binding.

☛R. Raffaeli, Atti del convegno internazionale "il libro e il testo", 1982, p. 11; A. Tontini, Rendiconti dei Lincei IX, 19 (2008), p. 407–434.

• Text: MSS with texts available in the Bobbio library during the Lombard period (Zironi, 2004)