The MS. is written partly on white vellum and partly on vellum stained purple. On the white sheets the letters are in black, with the capitals in vermilion; but on the purple pages are in silver, and the capitals in goldleaf. The cover was repaired in the reign of Francis I., the velvet of the ninth century being overlaid with velvet of the sixteenth. At the Revolution this precious relic would have been flung into the flames that consumed the Black Virgin had it not been for the richness of the cover, with its ornaments of silver-gilt and the precious stones with which it was encrusted. The text is not divided into verses, and there is no punctuation, for the use of punctuation did not become general till the tenth century. The text is that of the Vulgate as corrected by Alcuin. Several of the passages in the Vulgate as now used differ from those in the version employed by Theodulf; and the Psalter is not that of the Vulgate. The preservation of the writing is due to pieces of fine tissue having been placed between the leaves, and of these fifty-three remain, and are interesting specimens of the textures of the time of Charles the Great. The Bible has poems composed by Theodulf prefixed to and following the sacred text. Five of the early bishops of Le Puy are accounted saints, though almost nothing is known about them. They must have monopolised the stock of sanctity allotted to that Church, for of their successors none could lay claim to much holiness, and many were a disgrace to their order. But Le Puy was one of the richest sees in France, as the bishop was count as well as prelate. The volcanic soil was extraordinarily fertile, and the Black Virgin acted as a magnet, attracting to it an inexhaustible stream of gold; and this made the see to be coveted by ambitious and appropriated by unscrupulous prelates. Add to this that the bishop was under the jurisdiction of no archbishop, and was responsible to the Pope alone, who was too far off and too busy with affairs of greater importance to trouble himself about the misdeeds of the prelate princes of Le Puy. It is open to debate which does most harm to the Church, the occasional torrential rush through the ranks of the episcopate of some wild blood, whose life is conspicuously at variance with his profession, or a continuous and unabating flood invading every see of smug, smooth, and colourless nonentities, who dilute the quality, abate the force, and lower the temperature of the Church to insipidity, lukewarmness, and inertia. Some instances will suffice to show what manner of men they were who now and then were bishops of Le Puy.