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Gregory the Great delivered the forty Homiliae in Evangelia between 590 and 592. Toward the first half of 593 they were then revised, modified, and subdivided into two books of twenty homilies each. In the dedicatory letter to Secondino of Taormina, the pontiff speaks of the existence of another unauthorised copy circulated by fratres ferventes who obtained and divulged a text drawn on tachygraphic transcriptions preserved in the Lateran archive. On the basis of research conducted by Raymond Étaix, who did not however use the manuscript for the edition of the work, the Florentine codex (Fe) represents, with its eighteen original gatherings, one of the seven oldest surviving manuscripts of this first edition (a) of homilies 1-20; […]. The manuscript appears to be written by one hand whose ‘nationality’ still engenders discussion among scholars, divided between hypotheses of cisalpine and transalpine origin (though almost certainly within the Germanic area […]. The head is of particular interest: the Florentine manuscript appears to be the only one in the tradition in which homm. 21-40, defined as omeliae maiores and then homm. 1-19, indicated as omeliae minores, are presented at the beginning, […]. The manuscript was part of the library of Santa Croce in Florence, as testified by the “ex-libris” inscription on the verso of the third first guard […].
LUCIA CASTALDI and DONATELLA FRIOLI
Reproduced here: f. 95r-v with head between the maiores and minores homilies.
The complete record can be found in the exhibit catalogue Gregorio Magno e l'invenzione del Medioevo, ed. Luigi G. G. Ricci, Florence, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo 2006 (Archivum Gregorianum, 9).