Volume / Number: 4 / 515

• Verona Italy Biblioteca Capitolare LXXXIX (84)

Written in Spain, perhaps at Tarragona, to judge from the interest shown in St Fructuosus. The later history of the MS emerges from a study of the additions: on fol. 1 is the added cursive entry 'fl. (flavius) sergius bicidominus scē ēcl. caralitane', which suggests that the MS was once in Cagliari; on fol. 3v is the puzzling entry: 'Maurezo caneuarius fidiiosor (=fideiussor) de anfora uino de bonello in 20 anno liutprandi regis' (i.e. 731–732); Mauricius is known from a Pisa charter of the year 730 (Archiv. Arcivesc. Pisa 3). The MS travelled then from Sardinia to Pisa and must have reached Verona during the eighth century as the probationes pennae on foll. 4 and 112v go to show. The entry at the top of fol. 3 in eighth-century cursive furnishes perhaps the oldest example of Italian vernacular: 'Separeba boues alba pratalia araba et albo uersorio teneba et negro semen seminaba'.

Script is the earliest example of Visigothic minuscule to which a date can be accurately assigned; all the familiar Visigothic features are present: d has two forms; g is always uncial, the Visigothic shibboleth; i-longa is used initially (but avoided when followed by a tall letter) and medially for the semivocal sound; suprascript u is v-shaped; shafts of tall letters are club shaped; numerous ligatures with t: te is very frequent, at is characteristic; no distinction is made between the soft and hard sounds of ti. Numerous marginalia of a liturgical nature in contemporary Visigothic. 'Giso presbiter' occurs twice on fol. 9 as a probatio pennae saec. VIII. On fol. 112 is a probatio pennae in ninth-century Caroline: 'IN NAT. Scē natalie.' Many pages have what may be either Notae Tironianae or early examples of neumes in red and black. The prefixed three leaves and the recto of fol. 4, the first of the MS proper, show various Visigothic scripts; on fol. 3 is a Rose of the winds with four heads in outline and the accompanying names in uncial.

☛A. Petrucci-C. Romeo, Scrittura e Civiltà 22 (1998), pp. 13–30 (Visigothic part). ☛Gamber, CLLA 330, Suppl. 304*. ☛M. Vivancos, 'El oracional visigótico de Verona' Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos (2006), pp. 121–144. ☛Index Tironianorum.