Volume / Number: 3 / 353

• Milan Italy Biblioteca Ambrosiana L. 99 Sup. [palimpsest new]

Written doubtless at Bobbio. The familiar fifteenth-century Bobbio ex-libris with the number 103 stands on page 1; the number is again entered at the end of the MS (page 256) along with a table of contents. The text of Isidore in this MS differs from that found in Wolfenbüttel, Weiss. 64 (CLA 9.1388) and its twin, Vatic. Lat. 5763 (CLA 1.39), which reached Bobbio in the tenth century and formed No. 104 in the inventory of 1461.

Script represents several early types of North Italian minuscule based on cursive, written by different hands of differing skill and habits, all more or less under Irish influence: the main scribe from about page 75 writes a fine, rapid, sloping, very expert hand with headings in excellent uncial; the other scribes are less expert and one is very uncalligraphic; one or two scribes show a fondness for uncial G a feature of Visigothic minuscule (pages 74–81, 185 ff.); suprascript a is frequent; i-longa is used initially passim; z descends below the line and occasionally has a form like ti ligature ending in a flourish to the right (page 183), as in Vercelli 183 and in North Italian charters; e, i, and t are often in ligature; ꞅꞅ run together resembling inverted μ, as in C. 98 inf. (CLA 3.**322) and other North Italian MSS and charters; ti ligature is used for hard and soft ti; the ui ligature resembles S resting on the line; the Irish ligatures mi, ni occur here and there.

☛Steffens, Paléographie latine, Pll. 33 and 34.

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