The manuscript is made of parchment and measures 19 × 14 centimetres. It comprises 68 pages. On the reverse of the first page is a depiction of Saint Anno with the caption Sanctus Anno episcopus coloniensis. The bishop is surrounded by five illustrations of churches and monasteries, probably those which he founded: the churches of St. Maria ad Gradus and St. Georg in Cologne, and the monasteries of Grafschaft Abbey in the Sauerland, Saalfeld Abbey on the Saale and Michaelsberg Abbey in Siegburg.
Content
The Vita Annonis Minor is the more recent of two substantial mediaeval lives of Anno (the other is the Annolied). It was intended to support the canonisation of Anno (died 1075) and to be admitted as evidence in the process. Added to the description itself was the "Bamberger Nachtrag" ("Bamberg Addendum"), in which arguments against the canonisation were refuted, as well as an account of 1381 of the translation of Anno's relics to Grafschaft Abbey in 1374.