It belongs to a corpus of manuscripts illuminated in the Cîteaux scriptorium in the 12th century, most of which is now held in the public library of the city of Dijon (ms.12-15).

It stipulates that Harding had the scriptures copied from several manuscripts in order to remain as close to Jerome's Vulgate as possible.

For the Old Testament, he also states he reached out to rabbis who supplied the Chaldean and Hebraic versions to resolve problematic passages.

The first illuminator painted the ornaments of the first tome, consisting only of initials, rinceaux (scrolls), animal figures, and a single human head (ms. 13, fol.

The second tome contains two full-page illustrations, 6 miniatures and 29 historiated initials showing a powerful Anglo-Saxon influence.