Bâtarde / Secretary

In the later middle ages, Bâtarde (also called “Secretary”) originated in the late 13th century for accurate record keeping, especially in courtrooms, and quickly established itself as a less formal but no less beautiful book hand for vernacular languages and secular topics, although we also see it in some French Missals or Books of Hours. Quasi-cursive, and faster to produce than Texturalis, Bâtarde features a greater variety of penstrokes than Texturalis, and allows for more creativity and individual expression, often through ornate flourishes that now help paleographers identify where, when, and sometimes even who composed them. The Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript is one of the most famous examples of an English variant of Bâtarde, containing one of the most famous literary works of the Middle Ages, The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in the late 14th Century, The Canterbury Tales showcases the literary potential of Middle English, born out of the collision of Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin after the Norman Conquest, and we can see the beginnings of Modern English in it. Accordingly, with a little work, we can read the language of the Canterbury Tales without special training. And although reading the manuscript presents more difficulty, because of the more idiosyncratic letterforms and flourishes, those same idiosyncrasies help us identify individual scribes. Through years of painstaking work, the great paleographer, Professor Lynne Mooney, sleuthed out the hand of Chaucer’s scribe, Adam Pinkhurst!

EL 26 C 9, f153v, Egerton family papers. The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.