Alright, the first round is a biggie--just to get you started on the right foot! Don't be afraid--we'll be looking at just the last image; but you'll find that the more context, the better.
We'll talk about what kind of document might contain such a wide variety of hands. As far as dating such a thing is concerned, think of how you might figure out the date of, say, an antique piggy bank, full of old coins from its first owner. Now, conceivably, that piggy bank might contain Roman coins, but that doesn't mean it's a Roman-era piggy bank, does it? The earliest coin in the piggy bank is not the most important one: the first owner might have had a whole collection of Roman coins lying around that got mixed in. Instead, the most recent coin is the most helpful: the piggy bank was obviously manufactured before the most recent coin was struck.
The same goes for manuscript hands: any one of you could buy a calligraphy manual and simulate a hand from the Middle Ages, or Roman times, or the Enlightenment, right? And all that means is that you live in a period after all those hands were in use.
This book--technically a codex (ie: a manuscript book, not a printed one) contains a wide variety of hands, mostly variations of Medieval (mostly gothic) and Early-Modern hands. The most recent, stylistically, would be the "Pietist"-style hand you see in the 5th, 8th and 10th examples ("Honore le médecin", "Celuy qui" and "Fai-nous" [or something?]--proof that the most recent hand is not necessarily the most readable). This sort of hand looks pretty much exactly like an inscription I saw in a 1595 (printed) book of hours at UVa's Special Collections.
The long and short of it: based on the most recent hand we can see in this series, this collection of manuscript leaves was probably written within a generation of 1595, or later... See the next post for details from the Richeome volume.
Above: A nice (simulated) Gothic quadrata.
Above: Proof that you can deform letter forms nearly completely --even slicing out a goodly percentage of each letter--without losing much of its essential comprehensibility. This is evidence of the robustness of the reading act. We'll talk more about this as time goes on.
Above: Simulated Gothic bastarda
Above: Also a Gothic bastarda
Above: Not having a better term for this, I call it "Pietist". Late 16th/early 17th c. in France
Above: Not in French. A very beautifully controlled Gothic bastarda, with hints of Gothic fraktura (which you see commonly in Germany). Note that it is not exactly a cursive--there are virtually no ligatures connecting one letter form to the next. ("Cursiva" means "running", and describes what happens when the pen is not lifted from the leaf between letters)
Above: The verso of that same leaf. Over-inking with a caustic ink and use of paper rather than parchment. There is other evidence of this being paper based on "ductus"--how the pen is drawn across the leaf--that we will discuss at length.
Above: "Roman" hand, coming back into vogue in the second quarter of the 16th century thanks to the nascent printing industry.
Above: Dude.
Above: And this, above, will be our first reading example. I guarantee that it is in French. This is a very finely-controlled "Humanist" hand, which will, in time, begin to feel a bit like an outgrowth of Gothic bastarda cursiva. Note that the ligatures (strokes connecting one letter form to the next) are tightly controlled (if present at all); some flourished majuscules and ascenders/descenders. Evidence of over-inking and caustic burn-through. A worthy first leaf for our paleography work this semester!
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