Period of Original Use

[nickpelling]

There is good codicological evidence (that I presented at Frascati in 2012) that the bifolios had already been misordered / shuffled by the time that the quire numbers were added (certainly from Q13, but I think elsewhere too). This would run counter to the suggestion that the quire-adding owner was able to read (or even parse) the manuscript in any way.

The quire numbering style (abbreviated longhand Roman ordinals) is extremely unusual, and so far we have found examples (as I recall) only from circa 1470 or so in Switzerland / Lake Constance. My inference is that the manuscript had by this time probably entered some kind of Swiss monastic library: but I see no sign that anyone had the faintest idea what it was saying.