In 1780, ten codices, heterogeneous in content and execution, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries and decorated with initials and miniatures, were added to the library collections (Mss. nos. 118, 372, 463, 464, 1077, 1078, 1089, 1090, 1091, 1093). These books are also attested a few years earlier at the Cistercian abbey of La Charité near Besançon, where they appear in an inventory drawn up before 1757. But in one of these manuscripts, there is also an annotation attesting to their purchase on the Paris market in 1466, their provenance from a library – whose name is not legible – and the importance of the collection.
The relevance of the entire collection to a Templar house, probably French, is suggested by a footnote to a Bible, added in the fourteenth century, which contains a few verses recalling the arrest of the Knights Templar, which occurred on the day the cross was venerated, thus linking the suffering of the knights to the Passion of Christ. Such an empathetic composition on the Knights Templar must have escaped some sort of censorship in this codex, while in some of the other volumes there are traces of abrasions or cuts in the parchment, probably made to cancel similar attestations.
