St. Ambrose, Italy, late-eleventh century

This manuscript, the oldest piece in the collection, preserves a fine example of Italian Caroline script with its rounded character and typical Italian abbreviations. Because parchment was expensive to produce (usually requiring the use of a sheep's skin and the necessary loss of any future income from that sheep's wool), medieval monasteries were often forced to recycle old manuscripts, using their pages as flyleaves and pastedowns in bookbindings. Such was the case here; one side of the fragment was pasted to the inside cover of a book, to hold in place the turned-in leather of the cover. The side which faced out remained legible, preserving portions of two chapters of St. Ambrose's treatise on Christian mysteries.

Parchment, 1 folio, 195 x 160 (185 x 114) mm, 1 column, 31 lines, in Latin, written in Caroline script.