The parchment codex MONB.VE was originally constructed as a codex of quaternions with an endpaper. The original -2 pagination scheme was preserved only up to the third quire, until an unknown error between the page numbers 42 (in the 3^rd quire) and 61 (in the 4^th quire) changed the page numbering from the end of the 4^th to the beginning of the 6^th quire to a normal pagination scheme. At the end of the 6^th quire an unknown but obviously serious error occurred, such as the omission of a long passage of text, the correction of which required the original quaternion to become a quire of 11 leaves (quaternion minus one leaf plus a new binion or two single folios). So we are only dealing with an abnormal quire in the case of the 6^th one. By repairing the 6^th quire, the pagination of the 7^th quire was continued with a +6 pagination scheme. This scheme was carried out unchanged from the 7^th to the 15^th quire, which is the last extant quire. Three bifolia in the 7^th, 9^th, and 14^th quires were turned the other way round, thus breaking the sequence of the parchment composition of the pages according to “Gregory’s Rule” within these quires. Based on the extant leaves and on the representation of the codex structure, we can now say that the MONB.VE codex had once at least 232 written pages.

 

 

Paris, BnF, Copte 129(20), f. 122r →