Volume / Number: 3 / 365

• Milan Italy Biblioteca Ambrosiana S. 45 Sup. [palimpsest new]

Written over an earlier text of Ulfilas, doubtless at Bobbio in the earliest period of the abbey: at the bottom of page 2, in crude uncial characters of the Bobbio type, stands the inscription 'Lb DE ARCA DOMNO ATALANI' (a similar entry, 'DE ARCA DOM UORGUSTI ABBI' is found in the Turin Lactantius, also from Bobbio, described in the next volume). Atalanus or Atala succeeded St Columbanus as abbot of Bobbio in 615 and died in 622. The familiar fifteenth-century Bobbio ex-libris with the inventory number 87 is seen on page 3. For other Gothic texts re-used at Bobbio see CLA 3.**26 b+c, 344b, 351, **364.

Script is a peculiar compressed half-uncial verging on minuscule (found in some other Bobbio MSS), written by several hands manifestly under Merovingian and Irish influence, the general squeezed look of the letters and the particular forms of b and ꞇ recalling French models, while the trick of writing the opening words of a section in larger letters or of making several letters after a capital gradually diminish in size recalls Irish practice (the Bobbio scribes may have come from Luxeuil, the sister foundation): G has the half-uncial as well as the uncial form; n is minuscule. A marginal insertion in seventh-century cursive with q for ‘que' on page 44.

☛Engelbert, Rev. Béned. 78 (1968) argues for a date VII². ☛M. van den Hout, 'Gothic palimpsests of Bobbio' Scriptorium 6 (1952) 91-93. ☛B. Schauman, 'The Irish script of the MS Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, S. 45 sup. (ante ca. 625)' Scriptorium 32 (1978) 3–18.

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