Three leaves of the Skeireins (III, IV, VIII) are in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, where they have been incorporated into Cod. 5750. Like the Ambrosian fragments of the Skeireins document, they have been badly damaged in the course of the last fourteen centuries, all extant leaves having been torn from the codex binding, erased with pumice, written over with Latin, and stained with tincture of nut-gall. The remaining edges of some inner margins are badly tattered, and the Gothic text is frequently obscured by heavy smudges as well as by the superscribed Latin. On the whole, however, the leaves have suffered more from bleaching than from any other single factor. The effects of bleaching are most noticeable along page margins, where a steady penetration of light has nearly obliterated some parts of the text; the torn, extremely narrow inner margins have been especially vulnerable. Some marginal additions are no longer visible under ordinary lighting, and although interlinear corrections have been less subject to bleaching, they are often hidden by smudges or by superscribed Latin characters. Outlines of letters showing through the parchment, holes, blots, and flaking along inner margins also offer some difficulty but are generally less troublesome than bleaching and smudging. In the prefecture of Msgr. Achille Ratti (later Pius XI) the Vatican leaves were coated with gelatin in order to prevent their further deterioration, but the marks of age and prior damage are of course ineradicable.