Codex Veronensis (b)

Reflection

Codex Veronensis — designated b in the Old Latin apparatus, catalogued as Verona Biblioteca Capitolare MS VI — is a late-fifth-century purple Gospel codex written in silver and gold uncials on purple-dyed vellum, the Western counterpart to the Greek purple codices of Rossano and Sinope. The manuscript carries the four Gospels in the older Western order — Matthew, John, Luke, Mark — that preceded the Vulgate's standardization to the now-familiar Matt-Mark-Luke-John sequence. The text is European Old Latin, the Latin translation that circulated in northern Italy and Gaul in the centuries before Jerome's Vulgate displaced it, and is grouped with Codex Vercellensis and Codex Palatinus as the chief surviving witnesses to that pre-Vulgate Western Latin tradition. The codex was produced almost certainly at a northern Italian scriptorium and entered the cathedral library at Verona in the early medieval period, where it remains today. Bonifatius Fischer used Veronensis as one of the anchors for reconstructing the European Old Latin Gospel text, working alongside the patristic citations of Ambrose of Milan and his successors. The manuscript's purple vellum and metallic ink confirm that the luxury display codex was not confined to the Greek east — Latin Christianity produced its own imperial-class books in the late antique workshops of northern Italy.

Sources: Bonifatius Fischer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der lateinischen Bibeltexte (Herder, 1986); Roger Gryson, ed., Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel (Herder, ongoing); Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977).