This first manuscript codex was created around 1460 in the north of France. This item is 31 cm tall, 24 cm long, and 8 cm wide, with 350 leaves on a combination of parchment and paper. This codex is the first half of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary of Book IV of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (“On the Doctrine of Signs”). This is one of Aquinas’s earlier works, completed before his work on the Summa Theologiae. It was common for theologians of the time to write commentaries on the Sentences. This manuscript is particularly valuable, mainly because it is the oldest book we have of a work of St. Thomas Aquinas. There are a couple of visual components that make this item compelling, first being the combination of paper and parchment. Secondly, the ruling lines are still visible. Thirdly, there is a parchment leaf that might still have hair on it, but this is unconfirmed (3rd picture).

This manuscript is from 1478 and was created in Austria. It is a copy of St. Thomas Aquinas Quaestiones de duodecimi quodlibet, and it is 30 cm tall, 23 cm long, and 5 cm wide. Quaestiones is a series of questions and answers, that prominent Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper describes as a “fruit of the free discussions which Thomas was so fond of launching at the university, wherein those questions are raised which stirred his age”. The book is handwritten with black ink on paper in Gothic cursive, and it is rubricated. There are also red and yellow initials throughout. The cover is black leather. In contrast to MS 200, this manuscript has a difference in material and production technique, with this being solely written on paper, as opposed to parchment and paper, and this book being rubricated along with yellow and red initials.