The Enneads

Porphyry on the life of Plotinus and the sequence of his books, folio 1.

Certain Enneads of Plotinus, for which an index is placed at the beginning on folio 16.

Codex cotton paper, 13th century, paper. At the end, several leaves are damaged. The Latin "mutilus" suggests that the final pages of the manuscript were torn, lost, or otherwise rendered incomplete before it was cataloged.

Porphyry: A Neoplatonist philosopher and the primary student of Plotinus. He is famous for organizing his teacher's scattered essays into the collection known as the Enneads.

Enneads: The foundational text of Neoplatonism. The name comes from the Greek word for "nine," because Porphyry arranged the fifty four treatises into six groups of nine.

Bombycinus: A traditional term for paper made from cotton or silk fibers. This was often used in Byzantine manuscript production as an alternative to parchment made from animal skin.

Folio: A single leaf of paper or parchment in a manuscript. The front of the leaf is called the "recto" and the back is the "verso."

Medici-Royal: This refers to the historical origin of the manuscript, indicating it was part of the collection of the Kings of France, which included many volumes formerly owned by the Medici family of Italy.