Date of origin: early 10th c. according to Bruckner.

Support: Parchment.

Extent: 562 pp. (numbered 561 pp.: p. 82 is numbered twice; see p. 82 and p. 82a).

Format: 150-1 × 202-4 mm (writing surface: 115 [103] × 143 mm).

Collation: 15IV249 + IV-1263 + 17IV535 + IV+1553 + III-2561 (with no loss of text).

Page layout: one column, 18 lines per page.

Decoration: Rubricated titles of works and chapters, as well as in the beatitudines of the Adesto hymn (pp. 419-423); rubricated initials in the first word of each item in the capitulation of Alcuin’s De fide, in each verse in the Miserere, in each stanza in the Lamentum, as well as in the first letter of each work.

Binding: Wood and leather original dark brown binding provided by 2 leather lockers. The old title written on the spine is almost illegible in some parts.

Origin of the manuscript: The codex seems to have been copied in Saint Gall, both on palaeographical grounds (Bruckner) and according to the history of some of the texts it contains. On the one hand, the exemplar(s) of the Alcuinian treatises could already have been present there. There are two 9th-century St. Gall manuscripts transmitting Alcuin’s De fide, Quaestiones and De ratione animae: Cod. Sang. 276 and 272, belonging to two different branches of the tradition (see Knibbs – Matter p. XXI-XXII). Cod. Sang. 272 transmits a brief text (Candida florigeris, see Knibbs – Matter), which is absent both from Cod. Sang. 276 and 269; however, both Cod. Sang. 272 and 269 also have Alcuin’s De uirtutitibus et uitiis, which is not contained in Cod. Sang. 276. A collation of the four works would cast light upon the model(s) used. On the other hand, the combination of Synonyma and Pseudo-Sisbert of Toledo’s corpus is typical for a family in the transmission of both texts (see Elfassi, “El corpus”). The most important witnesses of this family were copied in the ninth or tenth centuries in northern Italy, eastern France or in Saint Gall itself. It is highly likely that more than one book transmitting this combination (and maybe even the hyparchetype of the family) was found and copied in the Saint Gall area during this period (see Cancela, “¿Una edición contaminada?”). As shown by this analysis of contents, Cod. Sang. 269 is the result of joining two previous corpora: on the one hand, Isidore and Pseudo-Sisbert; on the other hand, Alcuin, to which the partial copy of Fulgentius’s De fide was added so as to create a corpus of Trinitarian doctrine.

Provenance of the manuscript: The manuscript seems to have been held and used in Saint Gall. In the twelfth century, the second codicological unit of Cod. Sang. 223 was copied from the pp. 1-228 of this manuscript; in the same century all its contents were transcribed into the manuscript Wien, ÖNB, lat. 794 (12th c.), even if the order of the texts was partially altered (Meyer, “Anfang und Ursprung” established the dependence of manuscripts for the Exhortatio and Lamentum, and Strecker accepts this observation. My study of the whole corpus arrives at the same conclusion). In the thirteenth century, the ex libris Liber S. Galli Synonima was added on the front pastedown. On p. 1 a table of contents was added; it matches that of the 1461 catalogue of St. Gall (Cod. Sang. 1399, f. 2vb), edited by Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, p. 114:
E 14 Sinonima Ysidori; item consolacio, instructio, oracio peni|tentis; Augustinus de fide ad Petrum dyaconum; Alcuinus ad Karolum imperatorem de fide libri III; Albinus de trinitate; | instructio Alchwini de uirtutibus et uiciis
On provenance see also the stamp on p. 1 and 561.