Codex Heidelbergensis 921

[1] According to the inventory of Heidelberg codices after the Congress of Vienna in 1816, it contained only 110 leaves, or 220 pages[2] of variously described formats: folio,[3] quadratae maioris,[4] or large quarto.

There is only an illustration of a copy of a fragment of the text of the Romana (part of caput 215) included in Friedrich Wilken's catalog from 1817,[9] which Wilken described in the appendix to his Geschichte der Bildung, Beraubung und Vernichtung der alten Heidelbergischen Büchersammlungen from 1817,[3] and Theodor Mommsen in the introduction to the edition of Jordanes' works from 1882.

[10] Corrections to grammar were made in the codex during the Middle Ages, but not very heavily, so the original script is still visible in most places.

[10] In the codex copy of Jordanes, a few words were omitted in two places in the Getica: part of caput 200 (fide et consilio ut diximus clarus) and part of 222 (obicientes exemplo veriti regis), and there were few errors (fourteen in total) where other manuscripts of this group transmit the correct script.

[16] The first definite information about the whereabouts of the manuscript is an ownership note from the year 1479 of the cathedral library in Mainz.

[8][10] This note was entered on the first leaf and read: iste liber pertinet ad librariam sancti Martini ecclesie Maguntin.

M(acarius) Sindicus s(ub)s(cripsi)t 1479, which translates to this codex belongs to the library of the church of St. Martin in Mainz.

[18] At the beginning of the 20th century, Marius Besson discovered a fragment of one leaf of an old medieval manuscript[19] at the Musée historiographie vaudoise.

[8] Additionally, a meticulous comparative analysis of the script from the Lausanne relic by Sandra Bertelli with the fragment from Wilken's catalogue excluded the possibility of identifying the creators of both inscriptions.