The canon tables contain no text as such, only Roman numerals which are in a quadrilinear (minuscule) script, with the ascender of the 'L' protruding above the other m-height numbers (c, v and x) just like in the Codex B. The Earlier Latin Manuscripts database, however qualifies the script in Codex A as Anglo-Saxon majuscule while it qualifies the script in the Codex B as Anglo-Saxon minuscule.

Modern (20th-century) numbering of the folios in pencil. Fol. 1r and fol. 5r were originally verso sides and have been correctly positioned in the current binding. The evangelists' portraits (fol. 1) are currently positioned before the canon tables, but they could also have followd 

Until the most recent restauration fol. 1 and 5 were bound (and numbered) back to front. Fol. 3-4 and fol. 5-2 originally formed two bifolia of the same quire, with fol. 5-2 being the inner bifolium. The outer bifolium is now lost.

This fragment (Codex A) was bound together with Codex B whose size was smaller as suggested by the difference in the size of the written space between Codex A and Codex B. It is likely that the pages of Codex B were trimmed when the two units were combined. Until the most recent restauration the leaves were in a different order, and fol. 1 and fol. 5 were bound back to front.

The condition of the fragment and the rest of the manuscript were adversely affected by lamination which was applied to the individual leaves during treatment and rebinding in 1957 by Sievers (Düsseldorf). In order to reverse the corrosive effect of the laminate's adhesive plastic, which was penetrating the parchment, and to halt further deterioration of the parchment, the manuscript underwent extensive conservation treatment between 1988 and 1993 at the Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium / Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique (Brussels). During this restauration campaign the fragment (Codex A) and the main gospel book (Codex B) were bound separately.

Connections with other gospel books, in particular the Codex Eyckensis B, and the Trier Gospel book, indicate that like these two, the fragment was copied in Continental Europe in a centre influenced by insular practices, in particular the abbey of Echternach. 

At some point the manuscript became part of the church treasury of the Carolingian abbey of Aldeneik. In 1571 the abbey became a secular collegiate chapter and moved to nearby Maaseik.

The scholarship on the fragment (Codex A) has long assumed that it represents the remnants of a lost gospel book. More recently Derolez and Netzer have pointed out that the canon tables in Codex A are incomplete and that the original manuscript may therefore have remained unfinished. Netzer, in particular, has suggested that Codex A may represent a first attempt, deemed unsatisfactory, to create a gospel book in the abbey of Echternach from a now lost 6th-century Mediterranean exemplar. Codex B might then represented a second, and more satisfactory attempt, in which the leaves from Codex B were recycled as endleaves. The lost doubleleaf of Codex B may then have been used as the (now lost) original final endleaves of Codex A.