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The purpose of the article is to establish the list of chapter headings of an early recension, now lost, on the basis of the list at the beginning of the "early Vita" of St. Samson of Dol (BHL 7478-7479). It is still possible to reconstruct in part the contents of the Vita primigenia by identifying the passages of the text which do not feature in the reconstructed list as being interpolations. This distinction between two textual strata means that the controversial question of the dating of the work will have to be reexamined.

A 12th-century index (Paris, Bibl. Mazarine 1708, fol. 27) reveals the existence and arrangement of a factitious collection of Vitae containing a number of hagiographic quires copied separately in the 10th-11th centuries; in the 14th century or earlier this collection was dismembered and six of its parts were redistributed between two manuscripts (Mazarine 1708 and 1711). The criteria for recognizing such quires are discussed as well as the consequences of this editorial practice for the circulation of hagiographic works.