Leaf from a manuscript of Bede's Homilies on the Gospels

This is the only leaf known to survive from an otherwise lost 9th-century copy of Bede's Homilies on the Gospels. The manuscript from which it comes was written in Germany, possibly Fulda, in the mid-ninth-century and is evidently descended from a Northumbrian exemplar, itself either from or close to one from Bede's own scriptorium of Wearmouth-Jarrow. A documented route for the transmission of the text in question from Northumbria to Germany at an early date is provided by the Anglo-Saxon missionary, St Boniface, the founder of Fulda. Amongst his various requests for books from his homeland he wrote both to Wearmouth-Jarrow and to Archbishop Egbert of York asking for copies of Bede's writings, in the latter case specifying the present work, which is Bede's rarest: fewer than 30 manuscripts, including fragments, are currently known, and none is older than the ninth century