Volume / Number: 3 / 403

• Naples Italy Biblioteca Nazionale IV. A. 8 (foll. 40–47) [palimpsest new]

Written presumably at Bobbio on parchment originally used for the work of Gargilius Martialis in uncial saec. VI, described in the next item. If one is correct in assuming that the list of popes, which ends Conon (†687) is original, the precise time of writing falls in the pontificate of Sergius I (687–701), a date palaeographically acceptable. Removed from Bobbio probably by Parrhasius (†1522); later passed to Antonio Seripando (†1531), and from him to his brother Girolamo, Cardinal Archbishop of Salerno (†1563), who left his library to the Augustinians of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples.

Script is a very expert, rapid, finely penned cursive minuscule of distinctly North Italian type (see Note below), with ꞅꞅ shaped like inverted μ, and z extending far below the line—two unmistakeable North Italian features; a in ligature often has the upright form; the upper loop of e is elongated; i-longa is used regularly at the beginning of a word and medially for the semi-vocal sound; t in combination with i resembles the number 7; the ti ligature is used indifferently for the hard and soft sound. Similar minuscule is found in the upper script of Naples Lat. 1 (Vindobon. 17), containing Grammatica Varia (see CLA 3.388), and in the Julius Valerius MS Turin A. II. 2, now destroyed, and to be seen in C. Cupola, Codici Bobbies, pl. viii.

☛CLA script (North Italian Pre-caroline Minuscule) changed to follow CLA 4 p. VI. ☛CLA date range changed to follow Engelbert, Rev. Béned. 78 (1968), p. 239.

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