Dr Marcin Starzyński from the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University, has made a unique discovery while studying a 16th century court book kept in the National Archives in Kraków.

The scholar discovered that the book cover was made out of two parchment cards written in Caroline minuscule (a script developed in Europe at the turn of 8th and 9th century) dating back most probably to the 10th century.

It is the oldest known ancient manuscript kept in the collections of the National Archives. The cards present a passage from Gaius Marius Victorinus' commentary on Ciceron's Rhetoric. Gaius Marius Victorinus lived at the turn of the 3rd and 4th century and was a translator of Aristotle and Porphyry of Tyre as well as a commentator of Cicero and Virgil.