Latin Manuscripts Containing the Gospels, 300-c.800CE: A Material Approach

The manuscript copy of the Gospel of John that now bears the selfmark Paris, Bibliothéque nationale de France, Latin 103439, is written on eleven long-lines per page in a stately uncial script that E. A. Lowe dated to the fifth-sixth century and localized in Italy. The opening folios of the text, written in a later and less calligraphic hand, appear to be a replacement for the original opening with, like so many prologues of John's Gospel, may have been abstracted to serve as textual amulet or talisman. In fact, the replacement itself has suffered, and in its present state it lacks at least one folio on which the Prologue would have begun. On the recto of the first numbered folio an early possessor of perhaps scribe, one Maurinus hacse { + asci] indignus prebiter, has written a bidding for the prayers of the reader.