Date of origin: 12th century

Alternative name: Aland minuscule 2

Support: Parchment

Extent: 254 ff.

Format: 19,5 x 15 cm

Foliation: Foliation in modern pencil: 1-248.

Condition: Parchment of medium quality: uneven thickness, holes (e.g. f. 72), conspicuous hair follicles (e.g. ff. 141r, 145r, 147r), uneven edges (e.g. ff. 147, 158, 238). The edges of the book block have been trimmed; f. 2 and f. 120 have been reinforced with a paper strip taken from a western medieval manuscript from which 3 triple lines drawn in brown ink (music staves?) and 2 Gothic letters written in red are still visible. Outer margin of first leaf and bottom corner of last leaf have been cut out; the beginning and ending leaves of the book block have been damaged by worm activity and present some brown stains; the outer margin and bottom margin of numerous leaves of the book block present black stains left by inky fingers, which could possibly be those of Johann Froben’s typographers (also found in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, AN IV 4 and AN III 11; suggested in Andrist 2018, 145). f. 209 is torn and partly repaired with 2 parchment strips on verso side; limited stains appear occasionally throughout the volume. Apart from those damages, the book block remains in sound condition.

Page layout: Single column. 20 lines. Text area: 14 x 10 cm. Ruling in hard point. Pattern: Leroy 33C1d. Space between the ruled text lines: 0,7 mm. Prickings sometimes visible but often lost to trimming. On page 130v, containing the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, the copyist introduced larger spaces between the words than in the rest of the volume and organised that same page in such a way that each line starts with the definite article τοῦ.

Additions: The manuscript was equipped with an apparatus commonly used in Byzantine Gospel books which was written at the time of the production of the volume in a mixed minuscule adopting a greater amount of uncial forms and abbreviations than the main text. That apparatus firstly includes a pinax, listing the kephalaia before the text of each Gospel (with the exception of John); secondly, the same kephalaia are also provided in the top margins of the text pages; thirdly, Eusebian section numbers dividing the text into sections are placed in the outer margins next to the concerned lines; fourthly, the margins also contain numerous lection notes indicating the time and subject of liturgical readings of the daily office (within the text, the marks ἀρχή and τέλος indicate where the readings should start and end).

• Later, a Byzantine hand writing in black ink in an untidy mixed minuscule, added some lection notes in the margins and, in the text, some personal corrections, which Erasmus did not reject: ff. 3v, 48v, 50v, 51v, 56r, 58r, 62r, 70r, 118v, 140v, 141r, 145r, 181v, 194v, 198v, 230v, 239r. Other Byzantine notes of later dates than the time of copy are found on ff. 97v, 121r, 122r, 146r, 169v, 193r, 193v, 211v, 229v, 230v, 242v and 243v.
• In 1515, before handing the manuscript to the Basel printer Johann Froben for his 1st edition of the Greek New Testament, Erasmus of Rotterdam prepared the text of the Gospel in making his own additions, corrections and deletions directly on the pages of the codex. He and his collaborators Johannes Oekolampad and Nikolaus Gerbel made those changes in the text and in the margins in a pale greyish brown ink (s. “Contents” and Andrist 2016b, 99). The hand of Erasmus can be recognised in most of the important modifications made to the text (listed in “Contents”), whereas Oekolampad and Gerbel are likely to have taken care of those of lower significance, which actually constitute the majority of the editorial changes of the manuscript. They mostly include corrections of accents, breathings and spelling mistakes of the vocalic sounds “i” (ι, η, υ, ει, οι), “o” (ο, ω) and “e” (ε, αι). When the collaborators provided major additions to the text, this usually happened under the supervision of Erasmus, who would write short instructions in Latin for them in the margins: f. 68v Erasmus wrote Hic desunt qua[tt]uor verba, to which a collaborator added ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον θόρυβος γίνεται (Mt. 27:24); likewise on f. 69r, Erasmus wrote Hic desunt duo verba, then a collaborator added ὀνόματι Σίμωνα (Mt. 27:32); f. 69v Erasmus wrote Hic […], then a collaborator added ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτου … ἔλαβον κλῆρον (Mt. 27:35); f. 165v Erasmus wrote Hic deesse […] videtur, then a collaborator added καὶ ὅστις οὐ βαστάζει τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ … εἶναι μαθητὴς (Lk. 14:27); f. 53r, Erasmus wrote bene […], but no note from collaborator. On f. 204r, Erasmus crossed out the note of a collaborator and rewrote it above. On f. 157v, Erasmus or a collaborator drew a hand in the margin with a finger pointing to a spelling mistake in the eighth line. On f. 193r, another hand was drawn with the forefinger pointing to the cross located on the left side of the end heading of Luke (not editorial).
• Furthermore, besides the editorial notes left by Erasmus and his collaborators, the manuscript also gives evidence of the subsequent work of the printer. During the typesetting, Froben’s typographers added on each leaf of the volume some marks in red crayon in order to indicate the folio breaks of the future edition. A page that is thus marked generally contains lines showing the exact place of the break, a folio number of the future edition and a page number indicating a place within a future quire.
• Moreover, other western hands writing in Latin annotated the volume: one added indications of modern chapters in the top margins, another left a note on f. 209r (Esaias 54 secundum lxx) and another wrote on f. 205v scrutamini s[cripturas], being the translation of ἐραυνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς (Jn. 5:39) which he underlined in the text.

Binding: Binding of 16th century (21 x 16,5 x 8 cm), wooden boards covered with a pale yellow pig skin.

• Wooden boards: much used and wormed, partly bevelled, originally chained (4 holes and traces of reddish rust on the lower part of the back board) and equipped with 2 brass clasps, of which only the lower one is still complete (of the upper one, there remain the catch-plate fixed on the front board and the rest of a pig leather strap on the back board), blind-tooled (one vertically oriented central rectangle enclosed by 2 large frames, all filled with vegetative ornaments inhabited by birds; besides, the right and the left-hand side of the outer frame of both boards and the central rectangle of the back board also represent a hunting nude man drawing a bow and aiming upwards).
• Spine: much used; 4 raised bands; 2 endbands of white and beige threads; 4 labels containing much faded inscriptions (from top to bottom: "B VI 25 | [K] IV [3]6" in brown ink; "AN [I] V 1" in brown ink; Quattuor evangelia | [gr]ae[c]e | S. XII | [Acad.?] Bas[iliensis?] in brown ink; "AN | IV | 1" in black ink).
• Endleaves: 1 front paper paste-down with the title of the 15th-16th century "Quatuor evangelia grece", current and former classmarks in modern pencil, an ex-libris of the University of Basel, bibliographical information in modern pencil, the entry for AN IV 1 of H. Omont’s 1886 Catalogue des Manuscrits Grecs …; 3 front paper flyleaves, among which the recto side of 3rd flyleaf contains an ex-libris of the Monastery of the Dominicans, an inscription by Jakob Christoph Beck (1711-1785) Hoc codice usum esse D. Erasmum in edit. I. N. T. a. 1516. Patet ex notarum a typographis ad marginem additarum cum paginis illius editionis convenientia and lastly a pencil note referring to Tischendorf and indicating the Gregory-Aland number of the manuscript; 3 back paper flyleaves; 1 back paper paste-down.

Acquisition of the manuscript: In 1559, the manuscript was transferred, along with the rest of the collection of the Dominicans, to the University of Basel, which left on the front paste-down the ex-libris Acad[demia] Basiliensis. In 1577, the manuscript was sent as a loan by Johann Jacob Grynaeus to Martin Crusius in Tübingen. The latter consulted it there from 23 April to 1 May of that year, leaving on f. 246r the following inscription: Κρούσιος διανέγνων ͵αφοζʹ ἐν Τυβίγγῃ (Wilhelmi 1980, 29f.).