Commentary on Isaiah, in Latin [single leaf]

Parchment, a substantially complete leaf, c.310×230mm, the corners and inner margin cropped to allow mitering, with the loss of a few letters at some line-ends but otherwise apparently preserving the full width of the outer and lower margins, ruled in drypoint for two columns of 37 lines written above top line, in a fine rounded Caroline bookhand, marginal notes are keyed to the appropriate places by the use of a triple dot or a crossed 7 sign, inscribed in the lower margin in modern pencil HIERONYMUS [In?] Isaiam . Recovered from use as the cover of a binding as shown by the mitering at the corners, the creases for the turn-ins, the horizontal creases marking the spine of the host volume, the comparative darkness of the outer face, and the remains of a title in 18th(?)-century script on what would have been the front cover. Here the scribe uses æ as well as ę , d is always upright, tall s and r usually descend a little below the line, round s does not occur except as a capital at the beginning of a line, the ct ligature is used but (surprisingly) not the st ligature, z is similar to the modern form, both the tironian sign and the ampersand are used for et , the tironian sign has a fairly flat top and is not crossed, there is no kissing of pp (e.g. appelatur). Because the shape of an ampersand is a stylised fusion of the letter-forms for e and t , it is not uncommon in 12th-century manuscripts for the letters et within a single word to be written with an ampersand (e.g. deb& = debet ), but very unusually, perhaps due to misreading the exemplar, the scribe here has used an ampersand to join two separate words: de Tribu is written as d&ribu