Many early writers of sermons have had their attributed output augmented by the addition of the written works of other lesser known writers, and scholars have spent many happy hours trying to sort things out. Apparently St Maximus suffered the reverse, and some of his more heroic efforts were attributed for a time to better known authors such as St Augustine. While many of these early writers seem to have indulged in convoluted and theologically complex composition, the tone of Maximus is more like that of your friendly neighbourhood preacher, with lots of illustrative metaphor and quotations from scripture and legend rather than convoluted interpretation. At the beginning of the second homily on this page, he points out the correspondence of the feast of the birth of St Cyprian with the grape harvest and goes on from there; a cheerfully Italian sort of relationship. I was fascinated to discover while googling that excerpts from St Maximus can be found on many Christian websites which give readings for the day, so he is still considered relevant.

The script of this page might be considered to be in the general Merovingian minuscule family, but that is a diverse category. The term Lombardic minuscule has been reserved by some paleographers for early versions of Beneventan minuscule from southern Italy, and seems to have been more or less abandoned by others. Dr Steffens, from whose book this has been extracted, refers to it as old Italian book hand. Sounds good to me. The monastery of Bobbio, although in Italy, was of Irish foundation, and harboured scribes from many traditions.