The 300 leaves of the manuscript are of fine-quality parchment, thick and uniform in color. Margins are wide, script and illuminations, generally well preserved. Several folios are damaged by dampness or fire. The colors are remarkably well preserved and vibrant. Maius is identified as the works maker by means of a colophon on f.293 and a memento on f.233. The colophon also provides a cryptic date and references to the commissioning abbot and the monastery of St. Michael.
The collation of the original quires is difficult to determine due to the loss of some leaves. In the course of combining bifolios into quires, the medieval bookmakers needed a system by which they could keep the various quires in their proper order. Catchwords eventually became the standard tool for this purpose. The Morgan Beatus, however, does not utilize this technique. Instead, this manuscript makes use of signatures consisting of Roman numerals followed by the letter "Q" There are two miniature bearing folios signed in this fashion. Intact quires consist of eight leaves (four bifolios). Most signatures are in the corner of the lower margin of the final verso. The fact that these signatures are Roman numerals, and not arabic, suggests against the bookmakers being local or Mozarab vocations to the monastery scriptorium. At the same time it is seen as evidence dating the manuscript to the first half of the tenth century. The opening folios (f.1-9) seem to be a later addition, not only because they lack these signatures, but because they are composed of two sets of three bifolios.
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