The Festschrift volume Classica et Beneventana, presented to Virginia Brown on the occasion of her 65th birthday, brings together twenty-one insightful new essays by leading scholars devoted to the fields of classical reception and Latin palaeography. The authors investigate a wide-range of topics such as the development and application of the Beneventan script, comparative codicology, uses of early liturgical manuscripts, medieval artes and biblical texts and their readers, and the reception and dissemination of classical texts during the Italian Renaissance. Since 1970, Virginia Brown has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. She is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities in classical reception and Latin palaeography. Her numerous publications on the Beneventan script have dramatically altered our knowledge of the dissemination of this southern Italian book hand from 800 to 1600. Her editorial work for the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, as a member of the Editorial Board and since 1985 as Editor-in-Chief, has resulted in several learned volumes tracing the fortuna and study of classical authors from antiquity to the year 1600. As editor of Mediaeval Studies from 1974 to 1988, she single-handedly produced tomes noted for their scholarly rigor and acumen. This collection of essays serves as a fitting tribute to a scholar who, via her scholarly research and editorial work, has done so much to advance the fields of palaeography, codicology, and the history of classical scholarship.

Tabula gratulatoria -- Introduction -- Bibliography of Virginia Brown -- Classica: -- Sul frammento dei Getica di Giordano conservato a Losanna / Sandro Bertelli -- Proverbia Salomonis: an anonymous accretion to Peter Riga's Aurora / Greti Dinkova-Bruun -- Apluleius in Florence from Boccaccio to Lorenzo de' Medici / Julia Haig-Gaisser -- La survie de quelques auteurs classiques dans les collections de textes philosophiques du moyen age / Jacqueline Hamesse -- Notes on the composition and textual tradition of Leonardo Bruni's Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII / James Hankins -- New York Academy of Medicine MS 1 and the textual tradition of Apicius / Hope Mayo -- Presenze dimenticate (III) / Luisa Miglio and Marco Palma -- The Fortuna of Leontius Pilatus' Homer / Marianne Pade -- Early comparative codicology: late-medieval western perceptions of non-western script and book materials / Randall Rosenfeld -- A medieval rhetorical manual in the 17th century: the case of Christian Daum and the Poetria nova / Marjorie Curry Woods -- Beneventana: -- I codici donati dal vescovo Guglielmo II alla cattedrale di Troia: l'elenco del ms. VI B 12 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli / Gabriella Braga -- Nel raggio di Montecassino: il Libellus precum di S. Domenico di Sora / Mariano Dell'Omo -- From Beneventan to Gothic: continuity and change in southern Italian liturgical ceremonies / Richard F. Gyug -- The scribal record of prayer and work in the chapter room / Charles Hilken -- L'inventario Rotondo (ms. Benev. 455B) della Biblioteca capitolare di Benevento / Mario Iadanza -- A Beneventan notated breviary in Naples / Thomas Forrest Kelly -- The Mass for the Octave of the Epiphany in some Beneventan manuscripts / Luisa Nardini -- Montecassino Cod. 123 and Henry / Roger E. Reynolds -- Indices.