On the back of this exceptionally thin volume is the usual modern red leather label, with the description: ‘Pii. ii. Sec. L. iii. T. 33.’ The usual contemporary description on the bottom edge of the volume is illegible. The first 8½ folios, which are unnumbered, consist of a list of very brief notes or memoranda arranged in three columns. They are not Rubricelle and have no relation to the text proper of the volume (ff. i.–xli.). The few of them which concern the calendar are reproduced in column above, as they appear in the Register. Of these 8½ unnumbered folios the first four, viz. [1]r. to [4]r., bear dates from the 19th to the 31st of some unmentioned month, apparently August; ff. [4]d.–[5]d. bear dates i. and ii. of a month which is apparently September, the last three items on f. [5]d. being dated ‘ii. Septembris,’ and the top margin of f. [6] r. having the date ‘4^a die Septembris.’ At the bottom of f. [5]r., in the midst of the 2 Sept. entries, is ‘xx. Augusti,’ whilst ‘xxv. Augusti’ occurs near the bottom of f. [6]r., thus confirming the supposition that the entries on ff. [1]r.–[4]r. belong to August. There is no date at all on ff. [6]d.–to the end of the list on f. [9]r., but they presumably belong to the month of September. An examination of these brief notes or memoranda shows that they belong to the year 1458. They are evidently a kind of diary kept by the Datary, who was interested from the point of view of fees, of grants signed by Pius II between the day of his election, 19 Aug., and the day of his coronation, 3 Sept., 1458, with which period the dates above mentioned, with the exception of the ‘4^{a die Septembris}’ on f. [6]r., coincide. The memoranda, which are written in a minute and difficult personal Gothic cursive hand, consist for the most part of brief records of impetrations of provisions of benefices, with a few indulgences and dispensations and such other miscellanceous matters as ‘Baptista de Zabellis suscipitur in subdiaconum,’ i.e. is appointed a papal subdeacon (f. [2]r.), ‘officium scriptoric ciusdem,’ i.e., an appointment to the office of writer of apostolic letters, apparently void by the promotion of Nicholas Capranica (f. [3]r.), ‘licencia arrendandi fructus (ibid.), altare portatile (ibid),’ etc. The name of the impetrator is in the third and last column.

These few folios of brief notes are followed by 3½ blank leaves, after which comes the text proper of the volume, viz. ff. i.–xli;, consisting of Littere secrete of the first year of Pius II, the only ones falling within the scope of the present calendar being those on ff. 22d. and 26, analysed above.