208 x 134 mm, on vellum. Section cut from centre of a leaf, with remains of double column of 23 lines of a good and rounded Romanesque bookhand, without biting curves and with a strong Carolingian 'g', recovered from later reuse in a bookbinding and hence with scuffs and abrasions (making some text difficult to read, and removing almost all text on reverse), cut or torn edges (removing edges of leaf and some of edges of text columns), small holes, spots and stains
"The Passio Johannis is a fifth-century text by an unknown author who was later identified as Bishop Melito of Laodicea (BHL 4320; edited in J.A. Fabricius, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti, 1719, no. xv, and G. Heine, Bibliotheca anecdotorum: seu veterum monumentorum ecclesiasticorum, 1848, no. IV). It was composed in the region of Ephesus on the Ionian coast, where John reportedly lived for some time, establishing the Christian community there and writing his Gospel. The Passio drew on a lost Greek text which was itself based on the more well-known second-century Gnostic Acta Johannis. It was composed in Greek, but survives only in the Latin version. There is, at present, no list of manuscripts, but the earliest witnesses are Carolingian, with Stegmüller recording a single manuscript of the tenth century (Einsiedeln 256[461]: Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, 1976, VIII:221), Heine basing his edition on another in Lisbon (Ms. Alcobacensis 284), and other examples recorded in Würzburg Universitätsbibliothek, M.p.th.f. 78 (eighth century), Montpellier, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de médicine, 55 (c. 800) and BnF, lat. 5327 (tenth century), with eighth-century fragments reused in the binding of BnF. Latin 2175. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries the text had begun to be occasionally included in some Passionals, with the only other example known to us to appear on the open market in a twelfth-century Italian Passional (ex Chester Beatty, sold Sotheby's, 3 December 1968, lot 8). The text here comes from the early part of the work, corresponding to parts of p. 471 of Fabricius' edition, and was also most probably part of a Passional"
