Type

Lost Manuscript

GF 01

The fragments provide two whole bifolia and four fragments of another bifolium (two pieces from each of the leaves). The text of the bifolia is consecutive, with fragment 1 providing the central opening of a quire. All come from Acts, with the glossa ordinaria. The original manuscript was therefore either a New Testament or - more likely, given the relatively small proportions - a part-volume of that. 

All the fragments were used to cover one holster book of accounts on Guernsey produced in the 1520s, and were used soon after its production.

Textual Information
Subject
Bible, glossed
Title of work
Acts
Language
Latin
Palaeography
Type of script
Protogothic
Date of production
s. xii 3/4
Material Information
Material
Parchment
Layout
Text and gloss
Decoration

Simple two-line initials in alternating red and green.

Dimensions
Page

220mm (h) x 145/155mm (w)

Number of lines
14
Height of minims
3mm
Space between lines
10mm
Height of written space
147-155
Width of written space
66-67
History and further information
Information on dismantling

All the fragments were used to cover a single holster book of accounts on Guernsey produced in the 1520s. That there were supplied at that point and not later is demonstrated by the presence of scribbles, often repeating the opening of John 1:6, in a script close in date to that of the host volume. Neither of the bifolia, however, was the outermost wrapper. That was provide by a blank sheet of parchment. We know that outer wrapper was added early as it has at its turn-in offset from one of the scribbles. We can therefore be confident that the dismantling of the volume from which it came occurred in the mid-1520s on the island. 

Number of folios represented
6 folios (two bifolia and fragments of two leaves from one bifolium)
Notes

It is not clear where this manuscript was in the decades before its dismantling: there is one fifteenth-century annotation on fragment 2 which suggests it was then being studied. 

Author: David Rundle
Last Revised by David Rundle