This is the earliest known manuscript of Moses of Coucy's classic
legal code and also the earliest dated codex in the Braginsky
Collection. The Sefer Mitzvot Gadol (abbreviated the SeMaG) became
a major and accepted source of halakhic rulings. It was frequently
quoted and abridged; many commentaries were composed on it. The
manuscript was copied by Hayyim ben Meir ha-Levi in 1288, possibly
in Sierre, (Switzerland). This hypothesis is based on the fact that
in the Biblothèque national in Paris there is another manuscript
(ms. hébr.370) of the same work, by the same scribe, which is
assumed to have been copied in Sierre a few years later than the
Braginsky manuscript. More than two centuries after the writing of
the manuscript, in 1528, Joseph ben Kalonymos acquired it in Posen
(Poland) and completed the few leaves that were missing by that
time.
