Manuscript Va–b

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 13119[a + b]

Reg.: H. Laurent, Inventario dei codici Vaticani Latini 12848–13735 (typescript, Vatican City, 1957), p. 52.

1)Va = Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 13119[a]

Lat., 1332, parchment, 195.5 x 39.5cm, rotulus (fols. 1–4)

Contents: Examen testium

Manuscript Va is a notarial act (instrument) drafted and written down in the notary's own hand (fol. 4r: ipsarum dicta in has quatuor pergameni pecias de mandato inquisitoris predicti fideliter conscripsi, quas pecias propria manu filo combinaui, signum meum in qualibet iunctura ponendo). The notary public in question is Nicholas, son of Henry de Pencwynsdorph, most probably of the village of Panków in the Świdnica commune.1 The script is very careful and legible (small chancery Gothic cursive); the ink is dark brown, slightly faded; the parchment is slightly worn on the folds. The document takes the form of a roll (rotulus). It was drafted on four well-worked light parchment folios (fol. 1: 48.8 x 39.5cm; fol. 2: 49.1 x 39.5cm; fol. 3: 48.7 x 39.5cm; fol. 4: 48.9 x 39.5cm), on the grain side. The parchment sheets were sewn with a hemp thread. The roll was first furled from the lower part of the document; folio 1 was on the outside and bears traces of decay left as a result of wearing through and the crumbling of the parchment, and more serious staining on its right-hand edge; on the reverse side of the document, folio 1 was reinforced with a parchment strip written in a fifteenth-century book hand containing a fragment of the constitution of the Second Council of Lyons (1274).

On folio 1v a piece of nineteenth-century paper was glued, bearing the roll's number within Vat. Lat. 13118: N38; another (nineteenth-century?) hand adds 1338.

2)Vb = Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 13119[b]

Lat., 2nd half of XV cent., paper, 16 x 10.5cm

A paper insert was sewn in between fols. 3 and 4 of MS Va. The manuscript was composed of three paper bifolios without water marks. The main text is written in the cursive script typical of the second half of the fifteenth century, written with a broadly cut pen (hand 2); the ink is black.