Okay--our last manuscripts of the season!

These are both very important.  The first is maybe not the prettiest hand in the world--but I guarantee you'll be interested in the author.  From before 1536, our reading assignment:

And the second is a secretarial hand (from the last quarter of the sixteenth century).  The scribe, therefore, is anonymous, but the signature is not...

It'd be too bad to have you copy anything from the first manuscript--so your forgery, I think, should be from the second manuscript: first two lines, beginning with "Msr de Poyanne, jay sceu par vos le[ttr]es du xvii du mays passe ce qui est[oit] passé en l'entreprise" etc.

Can you copy the signature, too?

For the record, here is the verso of the same letter:

Good luck!  See you in class.

Wow.  Just: wow.  Extraordinary work, Rebecca.  And to think, you must've been working on what?, 45 minutes of sleep after the musical?  Geez.

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library, MS UCB040

First quarter of 16th century, cursive "Humanist" hand.  This may be paper? (your call--see the ductus required for certain letter forms)

Treat this as a florid and messy Bastarda and all will be well.  

Your assignments:

To read: first leaf--start wherever you like, but try to knock out the first block of text (eg the first 8 lines).  It may be helpful to know that "froment" is a kind of flour.

To forge: second leaf (likely the same scribe, but a different day and pen), ninth line from the top, "Et quatre chastellennies dessus d[ictes] pour en faire sur son estat au vray et en rendre le compte ou il appertiendra [sic].  Fait à Rodre" etc--to the end of the date. 

"Rodre" is a problem.  Simple searches beginning with "ville de Ro-" returned the town of Rodez, near Cahors.  This is a bit of a stretch, so I wanted to verify.  Thankfully there are some names that come up here: Guillaume Caissyals (juge) and Antoine Buscaylet (avocat du Roi), and I looked them up.  I was pointed to names of notable folk from the department of  Aveyron, and guess what: the town of Rodez is in Aveyron.  There was also a note that Rodez is an Occitan transliteration, and so my guess (purely a guess) is that Rodre is a latinate or early-Modern French spelling of Rodez.

For "chastellennie", see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2tellenie 

Congratulations to my expert forgers, Lauren, Tyler and Robyn (respectively!)

The incipit (opening) and explicit (closing) of Le rosier des guerres by Pierre Choinet.  Dated after 1470.  Note the opening is said to be "acephalous" (missing its head).  A "typical" bastarda hand--if, on the surface it looks messy and "difficult", you'll find instead that it is pretty standard.

Your reading assignment: incipit page/leaf, 4th line, beginning "ce monde est comparé à ung..." to the end of the leaf.

Your forgery assigniment: Second (eg last) page, lines 8-10, "L'an mil cccc" etc.  Good luck!