Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France

Medieval Francophone Literary
Culture Outside France

Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale, 860

La vroie hystoire detroye

» Full parent manuscript detail

General information

Folios	212 1 frontend papers
Folio notes:	The medieval collation begins with a bifolium with the text starting on f.2r. The first leaf was therefore a front paper. At the top of 1r there is some illegible 16th-c writing with 1 line across the page then 3 shorter lines, but in much larger (though nonetheless still illegible) writing. The bottom 2/3 of the page are then taken up with a long note in a late 17th- or early 18th-c hand that says the text is ‘Une Yliade d’homer traduite en prose gauloise.’ ‘Pour donner une idée de ce livre’ the author gives a resume of the description of Helen. There follows 10 lines of description of Helen’s beauty with paraphrases, but does reproduce the text.
Language	Language object (44)
Approx. date	?1450 to 1500
Date notes	Jung 1996, 531.
Place(s) of production	Northern France The hand is consistent with a Northern provenance.
First words of second recto folio	helaine. Or pouez sauoir et entendre que puis que
First words of last recto folio	ne de mouvoir
Incipit	Cy commence la vroie hystoire detroye. Selon ce que les acteurs en ont dit & raconte si qom il nya plus ne moins que la verite
Explicit	Mesure est que nous farons icy fin de ce livre. Car nous avons bien dit et retrait la vraye hystoire de troye selon cen que les autres ont dit et raconte. Car si ens plus ne moins ny est mis que de toute verite. Cy fenist landomacha cest aduie (?) ystoire de lui conte des troyens soutenus en listoyre des troyens Explicit.

Material

Material:	Material object (1)
Watermark:
Condition:	Some folios are in poor condition, but generally speaking the MS is well-preserved.

Structure

Collation:	1¹ 2¹⁰3-4⁹5¹⁰6⁹7⁸8-10⁹11¹¹ 12⁶13¹12¹
Quire structure:	The quire structure is irregular with larger quires ranging between 8 and 11 folia (predominantly 9), but there is also one ternion and three bifolia, one at the beginning of the text, two at the end; the penultimate bifolium, however, seems to be an afterthought, added but at the MS's inception to include the text of Heroides IX, which had been omitted.
Quire marks:	MSQuiremarkDisposition object (21)
Catchwords:	The catch words are often somewhat approximate.
Catchword disposition:	MSCatchwordDisposition object (5)

Physical description

General illustration:
General decoration:	F. 1 has an elaborate floral and foliate border all round. There is a 7-8 line decorated initial Q, with gold leaf. Otherwise there are two line simple initials in red at the beginning of each chapter, with some occasional red tinted capitals in the text.
Evidence of readership:	At 40r in the bas de page there is some 16th-c writing, including some alphabetic sequences and some notes, but the notes are illegible.
Foliations description:	The folio numbers have been written over in ink; they obviously postdate the insertion of Heroides IX at the end.

Mise en page

Description 1	The justification is irregular throughout the MS. The ruling is barely visible throughout.
Page sampled	6r
Layout	MSLayout object (3)
Page dimensions	295x220 (mm)
Justification	205x150 (mm)
Columns	2 10mm between columns
Lines	31
Rubrication	The rubrics are sloppy and have not always been filled in. Sometimes crude decorations/ line fillers have been inserted in red when a rubric is missing.
Writing above top line?	False
Sample page layout:

Hand(s)

Level of Execution:	Execution object (4)
Script	Script object (9)
Folio range	From 2 to 213
Date	?1450 to 1500
Scribe description:	A strong flowing hand with tall loops on ‘h’ and ‘b’. Long sloping ‘s’. Frequent double ‘ff’, both initial and intervocalic. The hand gets increasingly sloppy later in the MS.
Notes