Codex Vercellensis

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The title Codex Vercellensis (the "Codex of Vercelli") refers to two manuscript codices preserved in the cathedral library of Vercelli, in the Province of Vercelli, Italy, in the Pianura Padana, between Milan and Turin.

One Codex Vercellensis preserved in the cathedral library is a fourth-century vellum codex, the earliest manuscript of the old Latin Gospels ("Codex a"), in the usual order of the Western Church— Matthew, John, Luke and Mark. It does not now contain the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark. Tradition has it that it was written under the direction of bishop Eusebius of Vercelli. It was published by Irico (Milan 1748) and Bianchini (Rome, 1749), and is reprinted in Migne, Patrologia Latina XII, 9-948; a new edition was brought out by Belsheim (Christiania, 1894). It was restored and stabilised in the early twentieth century. Having been used for the taking of oaths in the early Middle Ages, much of it is either difficult to read or even destroyed, so that we are frequently dependent on the earlier editors for knowledge of its text.

Another, utterly distinct Codex Vercellensis, also preserved in the cathedral library of Vercelli (as Codex CVII) is an Anglo-Saxon parchment manuscript of the end of the tenth century, containing a miscellany, or florilegium, of religious texts that were apparently selected for private inspiration. It includes besides twenty-three homilies, a number of poetic and six imaginative pieces in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse: Andreas, Address of the Soul to the Body, Falseness of Men, Dream of the Rood, two poems by Cynewulf, Elene and The Fates of the Apostles, and a prose Life of Guthlac The meticulous hand is Anglo-Saxon square minuscule. It was found in the library by Friedrich Blume, in 1822, and was first described in his Iter Italicum (Stettin, 4 vols., 1824-36). The presence of the volume was explained by a hospice catering especially to English pilgrims that was founded by Jacopo Guala Bicchieri (d. 1227), bishop of Vercelli, who had been papal legate in England 1216–1218. However, its presence in Vercelli has been ascertained before that, in the eleventh century.