Carolingian Manuscripts Research Articles

The Dagulf Psalter (Austrian National Library Cod. 1861): A Multi-Analytical Approach to Study Inks, Dyes, and Pigments of this Early Carolingian Manuscript

Abstract The Dagulf Psalter is a precious Carolingian manuscript on calf parchment, dated to 793–795. Its unique and high historical value required a non-invasive, multi-analytical approach to gain insights into the material composition of gold and silver inks, pigments, and dyes used for writing and illuminations. Elemental mapping based on X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), Fibre Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) measurements, and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) gave complementary information on colour media and their brilliant shades. Knowledge of the material composition of inks, dyes, and pigments is of crucial importance not only for art historical research, but also for the preservation of the manuscript, as it is known that among other factors, silver inks and some pigments can lead to deterioration of parchment supports. The purple dye orchil and blue indigo were used for painted backgrounds on the initial folios. Lapis lazuli was found in decorative frames on these folios. Orchil, indigo, and lapis lazuli also appear in decorations of small initials throughout the manuscript. Red lead, ochre, cinnabar, orpiment, and lead white were also found in various painted details. Gold and silver inks of high purity were identified. The proof of chlorine in the silver ink indicates the presence of corrosion products.

Between Reading and Viewing: Mapping and Experiencing Rome and Other Spaces

This article focuses on a Carolingian manuscript now kept in the Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln (Codex 326 (1076)), containing a collection of mostly Rome-centred writings, among others, a series of walking routes through the city (the Itinerarium Einsidlense). The theoretical concepts of ‘affordances’ and ‘ergodic’ reading are employed to explore the meanings and functions of the Itinerarium in its original context of use (i.e., the Carolingian monastery). After an analysis of the particular form of the written text on the parchment folio, the article contextualises the form and affordance of the Itinerarium by comparing the text with two other Carolingian artworks from roughly the same time and geographical context: the Plan of St. Gall and a diagram of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from an illustrated manuscript of Adomnán’s De locis sanctis. These sources resemble the Itinerarium through their ergodic approach to writing and reading, as well as their visual and meditational affordances. Subsequently, the Itinerarium is read in the wider context of the Einsiedeln collection, to explore how the ‘ergodic’ dimensions of the manuscript adds to the understanding of the meaning and function of the Itinerarium. Thus, the article highlights the importance to pay attention to the physical form of Latin script and the place of texts in the larger manuscript, in order to understand the meanings and functions of texts in particular contexts.

Miniature as Pictorial Interpretation of the Text in the Context of Medievil Culture Development

The purpose of the article is to consider the miniature as a pictorial interpretation of the text, as one of the elements of «entertainment» in the context of the development of medieval culture. The research methodology. An analytical method is used to collect theoretical material about the miniatures of the Mirovingian period (V–VII centuries), on the example of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum and Gellon Sacramentarium; the miniatures from the times of the Carolingian revival of the VIII-IX centuries, («Gospel of Godescalk», «Gospel of Ada», «Gospel from the monastery of St. Medard in Soissons»). A historical and cultural method is applied to analyse the role of the miniature in the socio-cultural life of Medieval Europe as one of the elements of ceremonial and ritual «entertainment». An art historical method that involves a detailed examination and description of a medieval book miniature, and a theoretical method are used to summarise the findings. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time the miniatures are considered as a pictorial interpretation of the text in the context of the development of the medieval culture, as a sensual form of knowledge of an ideal model, and one of the elements of the personification of ritualistic "entertainment" in the socio-cultural life of this historical period. Conclusions. The article examines the miniature as a visual interpretation of the text in the context of the development of the culture of the Middle Ages. It has been proven that since ancient times the miniature, on the example of the "Ambrosian Iliad", was the personification of ceremonial and ritual, and partly artistic "entertainment", which made it possible to outline the miniature as a pictorial component of this phenomenon, as well as a pictorial interpretation of the handwritten text which reflects the most current events of this historical era. The brightest examples of the miniatures in the early Christian tradition of Western Europe, which are presented in the Merovingian manuscripts of the V-VIII centuries, are considered using the example of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum and Gellon Sacramentarium. Graphic miniature decoration becomes not just a pictorial interpretation of the text, but turns into an element of worship. There are many images of birds, fish, animals, and plant ornaments, the emphasis is on red, yellow, and green. Great attention is paid to the decorative design of the capital letters of the sections, they become special symbolic signs that are even attributed with magical meaning. The miniature begins to act as a sensual form of knowledge of the ideal model, which is available to the chosen ones. This tradition continues on the example of Carolingian manuscripts, the miniatures «Source of Life» («Gospel of Godescalcus»), «Adoration of the Lamb» and «Source of Life» («Gospel from the Monastery of St. Medard in Soissons») are symbolic, personifying the theocentric worldview, that the Gospel is the source of eternal life.
 Key words: miniature, culture of the Middle Ages, «entertainment», «Ambrosian Iliad», Carolingian manuscripts, Merovingian manuscripts, ornament.

Black inks under examination. Part 2: a case study of Carolingian manuscripts

With this paper, we would like to contribute to the study of black writing materials by investigating the black inks used in the manuscripts from monastic production in the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom, especially in the region of Lake Constance and in Bavaria, and dated to the period between the 8th and the 10th centuries. The corpus under study contains manuscripts with formulae, i.e. model letters and charters, besides numerous other types of texts with no clear separation between them (for example by titles).Sixty-three manuscripts have been studied with the aim of reconstructing the history of both their copying and their use. To this aim, we adopted a non-invasive approach that included near-infrared imaging and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy for on-site measurements, supported by historical and palaeographic analysis. The results obtained in this project are compared with several other archaeometric studies of contemporary manuscripts with the general aim of understanding the use of black ink in medieval manuscripts.

Definitions, dialectic and Irish grammatical theory in Carolingian glosses on Priscian: a case study using a close and distant reading approach

ABSTRACT This article investigates the links between a group of early medieval (ninth century) glossed copies of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, including manuscripts from the Irish tradition as well as Carolingian manuscripts without overt Insular connections. The corpus comprises glosses on the chapter De uoce from eight manuscripts. Both Latin and Old Irish glosses are considered. The data is explored with a multi-disciplinary approach combining methodologies of network analysis, philology and intellectual history. At first, network analysis helps to establish overarching connections between the manuscripts based on their shared parallel glosses. These results are corroborated by a case-study of a pair of glosses which occurs across a number of manuscripts and whose origin can be traced back to Hiberno-Latin grammatical commentaries of the eighth and ninth centuries. Abbreviations: Ambros.: Ars Ambrosiana; Bern.: Ars Bernensis; Clem.: Clemens Scottus, Ars grammatica; DO: Donatus Ortigraphus, Ars grammatica; GL: Grammatici Latini; Laur.: Ars Laureshamensis; Mur.: Murethach, In Donati artem maiorem; Sed.: Sedulius Scottus, In Donati artem maiorem.

Two Carolingian Redactions of Isidore’s Etymologiae from St. Gallen

The Abbey of St. Gallen was the foremost centre for the study of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville in the Carolingian period. Not only can more than twenty early medieval manuscripts transmitting material from the Etymologiaebe associated with Carolingian St. Gallen, but its scriptorium also produced two scholarly redactions of Isidore’s encyclopaedia in the second half of the ninth century. The prototype codices of these two redactions survive today in Swiss libraries, one as Zofingen, Stadtbibliothek, Pa 32, the other as St. Gallen,Stiftsbibliothek, MS 231 – 232. The first redaction represents an attemptto enrich the Etymologiae by incorporating Isidore’s De natura rerum into the encyclopaedia. The second redaction is the result of a collation of four sets of manuscripts of the Etymologiae, some of which survive today and bear collationmarks and variant readings inserted into the margins. While none of the many hands that were involved in the collation and copying of the two redactions can be attributed to any of the known scholars active at St. Gallen in the ninth century, the redactions seem to have been produced over the course of several decades under the auspices of the praepositus and later abbot Hartmut. Keywords: Isidore of Seville, the Etymologiae, St. Gallen, Carolingian manuscripts, Hartmut of St. Gallen, medieval textual criticism, critical signs, Carolingian scholarship

A Dozen Lucretian Emendations

In this article, twelve new emendations are offered on the text of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. At 1.454 non tactus is proposed for the unparalleled intactus; at 2.99 et partim is suggested for the awkward pars etiam; at 2.258 quomque (late-Republican cumque) is advanced for quemque; at 2.615 the metrically problematic inuenti sint is altered to inueniantur; at 2.733 the unique use of nigrant is dispensed with by reading the expected nigra sunt; at 3.267 et tamen is made more naturally adversarial as at tamen; at 3.774 ne fessa is altered to the more Lucretian defessa (reading ne for et earlier in the line); at 4.160 the unusual feminine celer (his) is altered to (his) celeris; at 4.306 (331) the difficult gerund insinuando is changed to the gerundive insinuandis; at 4.318 (343) multisque is replaced with the more idiomatic multoque; at 5.323 the stark phrase deminui debet recreari is reordered as debet deminui et recreari; finally, at 6.266 uementes is read for the otiose uenientes. The discussion proceeds on the basis of the universally accepted stemma, namely that the three Carolingian manuscripts (O, Q, S) are the sole manuscripts with textual authority. The more than fifty surviving Renaissance manuscripts ultimately derive from O, but they remain a fertile source for conjectures.

Latin Literature

First up, a brace of major Teubner editions. Marcus Deufert's De rerum natura marks a significant moment in Lucretian studies. I suspect that most people, at least in the Anglosphere, are still using Cyril Bailey's venerable Oxford Classical Text (revised in 1922) for everyday reading, if not the equally antique Loeb (W. D. Rouse, 1924). In broadest outline, text-critical views haven't changed much since: a ‘closed’ tradition, in which two Carolingian manuscripts rejoicing in the workaday names Oblongus and Quadratus are prime witnesses, but often problematic ones; a mass of manuscripts from Renaissance Italy, which editors consult primarily for conjectures. But the last century has seen plenty of important work, and Deufert can report more precisely on the various corrections made in O and Q; affirm that all Italian manuscripts descend from O, and give them a stemma; pan many more humanist conjectures; wade in the muddy river (xxi) of modern interventions; and offer his own solutions to, or non liquet on, textual problems small and large. The result is a text with plenty of novelties (and many questions left open), and an edition with a very different look.

The Nuremberg Fragment and the Carolingian Tradition of the „Historia Augusta“

The present article provides a full description of the little known 9th century Nuremberg fragment of the “Historia Augusta” (Stadtbibliothek Fragm. lat. 7) as well as an extensive discussion of the work’s Carolingian manuscript tradition. It is demonstrated 1.) that the Nuremberg fragment most probably is a remnant of a volume from the former library of Murbach (= M) which was used by Erasmus and Froben for their edition of 1518, 2.) that M, the excerpts preserved in Vatican Pal. lat. 886 (= Π), and also Vatican Pal. lat. 899 (= P), our most important witness to the text, go back independently to a common exemplar, 3.) that Sedulius Scottus († ca. 875) culled the extracts preserved in his „Collectaneum miscellaneum“ from P, in which his typical excerption signs are still visible. Due to its close kinship to P, the Murbach copy did by no means contain a version of the “Historia Augusta” different from P or even more original than P, as has been variously claimed in recent years.

О происхождении глосс в каролингских рукописях «Эпитомы» Юстина

О происхождении глосс в каролингских рукописях «Эпитомы» Юстина

Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 296; 17 color plates and many color and black-and-white figures. $89.95. ISBN: 978-0-271-07126-8.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsEric M. Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 296; 17 color plates and many color and black-and-white figures. $89.95. ISBN: 978-0-271-07126-8.William J. DieboldWilliam J. DieboldReed College Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 94, Number 2April 2019 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702479 Views: 100Total views on this site Copyright 2019 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Multianalytical approach for the analysis of the Codices Millenarius Maior and Millenarius Minor in Kremsmuenster Abbey, Upper Austria

Two precious Carolingian manuscripts kept in the library of Kremsmuenster Abbey in Upper Austria were subject of investigation. The well-known Codices Millenarius Maior (Inv. No. CC Cim 1, Fig. 1a) and Millenarius Minor (Inv. No. CC Cim 2, Fig. 1b) were studied within the framework of the Centre of Image and Material Analysis in Cultural Heritage (CIMA) in Vienna. The manuscripts are especially famous for their precious and colorful miniatures of a very early medieval period. The aim of the work was the material identification (colors and inks) used for the make-up of the two codices in order to gain a better understanding of their evolution and their provenance. The instrumentation available in the CIMA laboratories allowed performing in situ measurements using non-destructive and non-invasive analytical methods. The investigations comprised a combination of three complementary methods: X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), Fourier transform infrared spectrometry in the reflection mode (rFTIR) and Raman spectrometry. In addition to the identification of the pigments and inks also a detailed characterization of the parchment concerning its manufacturing process was achieved by that combination. The identification of calcium carbonates on the surface of the parchment is an indicator for the liming or whitening of the animal skin, whereas the polishing process of the parchment surface with pumice stone, left traces of silicates, detected by rFTIR. The combination of XRF and Raman spectrometry enabled the characterization of black/brown inks in the text revealing the usage of iron gall inks. For the red inks applied for text and initials vermilion and red lead were applied in both codices. Furthermore, the pigment palette used for the illumination included: lead white, orpiment/realgar, red lead, vermilion and red iron oxides as well as azurite and indigo, together with the rather rare copper chloride hydroxide. Furthermore, in both gospels the application of metal leaves as well as powders made of silver–copper and gold–copper alloys could be determined by XRF on several folios.

Thomas F. X. Noble. Review of "A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts" by Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver.

Thomas F. X. Noble. Review of "A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts" by Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver.

A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts by Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver

Reviewed by: A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts by Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver Judith Collard Ramírez-Weaver, Eric M., A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017; hardback; pp. 312; 35 colour, 75 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $89.95; ISBN 9780271071268. In A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts, Eric Ramírez-Weaver has focused his study on a deluxe copy of the Handbook of 809 produced for the ninth-century Bishop Drogo of Metz, one of Charlemagne's sons. This was one of several versions of this important text and Ramírez-Weaver offers a comparative study that also highlights the text's significance for the daily celebration of the liturgy as it provides necessary charts and information used at that time for dating. The Handbook of 809 was a large astronomical encyclopedia that took the form of a compilation of astronomical and computistical material collected in seven books. It was derived from Charlemagne's synod of 809. This synod included several Frankish prelates who were interested in questions of computus, a subject of great interest throughout the Middle Ages, and the manuscript was prepared for the youthful prelate in about 820. It now resides in Madrid in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 3307. At least four artists from Metz were involved in its illustration. It brought together an array of texts including Bede's De natura rerum that made up Book vii of the collection. As well, it presented a Carolingian interpretation of astronomy, built on such works as Isidore of Seville's Etymologies and other teachings. The compilation had been guided by prelates such as Adalhard of Corbie who used their books to advance pedagogy and encourage a robust and intellectual brand of spiritual renewal through the studying of the liberal art of astronomy. The miniatures and charts found within were crucial both to this agenda and to make meaningful the contents. They highlight the link between art, religion and science. The use of illustrations that took the form both of diagrams and representations of particular constellations has been familiar to art historians through publications of Carolingian art and science. Equally familiar is the Aratus from Leiden (Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Voss. lat. Q79) from 816, that has close parallels in how such constellations were recorded and preserved forms from an older classical tradition. These manuscripts also demonstrate the importance of art to astronomy in this period. Ramírez-Weaver has had an ongoing interest in this question and from his earliest publications has explored this connection between science and art in his work on astronomical and philosophical texts from the Carolingian and late Gothic Bohemian manuscripts. He does this across two parts consisting of four chapters in total. In his discussions Ramírez-Weaver reveals a very thorough grasp of German historiography, in particular, which is fortunate, as discussions of medieval science and its diagrammatic representations have [End Page 249] received most substantial attention from German scholars. His work also provides some of the clearest writing on computus in English, a topic that eludes many writers, including myself, despite the presence of tables of concurrentes appearing in manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages. He provides this very useful account in the first chapter along with a discussion of the classical legacy of the writings on constellations that led to the development of this handbook. He also looks at the manuscript's subsequent history. Chapter 2 is a history of celestial iconography as it relates to Drogo's manuscript, while Chapter 3 provides evidence to support the idea of itinerant teams of artists that spread ideas and styles through different regions. The final chapter covers such matters as the Carolingian image debate, following the Iconoclasm crisis in Byzantium, and the ways the Carolingians conceived of the spiritual benefits that awaited those who grappled with such celestial compilations. Studying astronomy was seen as a pathway to salvation and, as the title suggests, astronomy was perceived as 'a saving science'. Ramírez-Weaver has written a difficult work that occasionally gets lost in his elaborate, sometimes obscure language. At the...

Il Poggianus deperditus di Nonio Marcello ritrovato: storia di un manoscritto carolino in età umanistica

The Carolingian manuscript Poggianus of Nonius Marcellus, which Poggio styles libellus, has been unanimously deemed lost. Here, however, by tracing its extraordinary history - Poggio’s dispatching it from Paris to Niccoli in Florence, completion by a humanistic hand, various changes of ownership - one sees how it came to be in the Laurentian Library, where it is still preserved as Plut. 48,1 (a composite ms.: books I-III Carolingian, IV-XX humanistic). A series of complex and fascinating events that centre around Florence.

The List of Notae in the Liber Glossarum

In both Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, a special class of marginal symbols, known in Latin as notae, were used to annotate the manuscript text. The shapes of these marginal symbols, their names, and functions were described in technical texts that had the form of lists of signs, the sign treatises. Many early medieval manuscripts contain sign treatises of either ancient or early medieval origin. One such treatise was incorporated into the Liber Glossarum, a large glossographic collection that survives in a number of Carolingian manuscripts. This sign list is, like many other sign treatises, a compilation of older sources. While it is difficult to analyze the other sign treatises, the direct sources of which are lost, we possess the main source of the sign list in the Liber Glossarum, namely the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville. A comparison of the sign list in the Liber Glossarum with the Etymologiae allows us to analyze the processes used by the compilers of the former rather than just their sources. This comparison shines light also on how other sign treatises preserved in early medieval manuscripts may have come into being. Moreover, the sign list in the Liber Glossarum provides evidence that the oldest core of this glossary came into being on the Iberian peninsula and includes material that had been used by Isidore of Seville for the Etymologiae, as suggested by Anne Grondeux.

Carolingian liturgical books: problems of categorization

Fragments of liturgical books made in the late eighth and ninth centuries demonstrate that individual liturgical manuscripts may not fit simple narratives or general outlines : that booktype in which prayers, readings and chants for the divine office were collected together— long considered not to have existed before the eleventh century— can be traced in several ninth-century examples. Even more prominent among Carolingian manuscript sources for the liturgy is the equivalent book for the mass. A number of French manuscripts display different ways of bringing prayers and chants together in one book, while as many as fourteen plenary missals made in Italy are represented in fragments, or, in one case, a fullypreserved plenary missal made at Bobbio circa 900.

Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture, by Felice Lifshitz

Manuscripts constitute one of our most tangible links to the medieval period. Able to see every fleck of ink and scratch on the parchment, we are given the impression of intense closeness to scribes and their cultures. Yet it is frustrating that we so rarely know much about scribes as individuals. One major risk of this situation is the default assumption that scribes, authors and artists were men. Felice Lifshitz has written a book that challenges our assumptions that female writing is lost or anonymous. It is a truly interdisciplinary project that combines Lifshitz’s detailed knowledge of Carolingian manuscripts and her belief that medieval women were empowered within their own intellectual culture. The preface provides a vital explanation of the terms that Lifshitz goes on to use throughout the book: ‘feminism’ is employed in a very broad sense to express ‘a resistance to patriarchal ideas’ (p. xix). This opening section also acknowledges the risk of anachronism facing a project that looks for feminist ideals among medieval women. Occasionally, the feminist framework drives Lifshitz’s interpretations of her material in unusual directions, as outlined below. Overall, however, she gives due space to both close analysis of manuscript sources and social interpretations.

The Provenance of a Book by Jean Calvin, bound in a Carolingian Manuscript Fragment in Amsterdam University Library (Band I E 22)

Germain Colladon (1508-94), a refugee from France and a prominent lawyer in Geneva, was the owner of a rare copy of the Ioannis Calvini in viginti prima Ezechielis prophetae capita praelectiones (1565), Jean Calvin’s last commentary, which discusses the first twenty chapters of the prophet Ezekiel. Colladon may have met Calvin, the leading reformer of Geneva, already during their years as students at the faculty of law in Orleans and Bourges. Germain, his older brother Leon, and the latter’s son Nicolas frequented the public Bible studies of the Company of Pastors on Friday mornings, as is testified by a list of witnesses for the prosecution in the case against the physician Jerome Bolsec. Germain is also featured at the beginning of the heresy trial against Michel Servet, which invites an inquiry into a rare copy of Servet’s Christianismi restitutio, once owned by a member of the Colladon family. Court cases from the Genevan archives show Germain Colladon as a strict, even severe, lawyer who stuck to the penal code of his time. A number of medieval manuscripts, the provenance of which can be traced to Colladon’s library, testify to a rich collection, in which the preciously bound copy of Calvin’s last publication was no exception.Germain Colladon (1508-94), a refugee from France and a prominent lawyer in Geneva, was the owner of a rare copy of the Ioannis Calvini in viginti prima Ezechielis prophetae capita praelectiones (1565), Jean Calvin’s last commentary, which discusses the first twenty chapters of the prophet Ezekiel. Colladon may have met Calvin, the leading reformer of Geneva, already during their years as students at the faculty of law in Orleans and Bourges. Germain, his older brother Leon, and the latter’s son Nicolas frequented the public Bible studies of the Company of Pastors on Friday mornings, as is testified by a list of witnesses for the prosecution in the case against the physician Jerome Bolsec. Germain is also featured at the beginning of the heresy trial against Michel Servet, which invites an inquiry into a rare copy of Servet’s Christianismi restitutio, once owned by a member of the Colladon family. Court cases from the Genevan archives show Germain Colladon as a strict, even severe, lawyer who stuck to the penal code of his time. A number of medieval manuscripts, the provenance of which can be traced to Colladon’s library, testify to a rich collection, in which the preciously bound copy of Calvin’s last publication was no exception.

A Carolingian Manuscript Fragment from the Ninth Century in Amsterdam University Library, used as the Binding for ‘Band 1 E 22’

AbstractBand 1 E 22 is a copy of Calvin’s In viginti prima Ezechielis Prophetae capita Praelectiones (1565) and belonged to the French lawyer and resident of Geneva, Germain Colladon. The manuscript leaves used for this binding are early medieval and unusual in being very carefully positioned on the binding. Nicholas Pickwoad’s account of the binding reconstructs and explains how the binder used the medieval manuscript leaves to display them on an otherwise very conventional French-style binding and highlights its significance in the history of bookbinding. Rosamond McKitterick identifies the text of both leaves as part of an Epistle Lectionary, or possibly a full Mass Lectionary, and demonstrates how the script, decoration, and mise-en-page enable these leaves to be recognized as the work of the scribes and artists working for Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, king of the Franks (840-77) and Emperor (875-77). It can be dated c.860.