Lesson 11: Follow-Up

A set of inventories or accounts like this one is a perfect opportunity to practice your recognition of numbers. As is apparent here, roman numerals were still regularly used for such purposes, and would continue to be so used throughout the life of the secretary hand itself. Note that a longer series of i and j can become confusing; often a good way to resolve yourself, when in doubt, is to count the dots above each difficult cluster. Note also that the last i in any sequence will be an i-longa, which you ought to transcribe as j. In many hands, as here, a scribe will become impatient with the superscript s and d, and they will tend to migrate down to the line; it is up to you how you handle this, but we have tended to respond to the intention rather than the 'reality', and have given them all as superscripts.

This set of inventories might be thought slightly unusual in that it does not follow the typical Latin form. 'Item', of course, means 'also', and thus should correctly be used only of second and subsequent items in a list. The first element of a list or account is usually introduced by 'In primis' or 'Imprimis' (in the first place, to begin with), generally abbreviated 'Imprmis'. In fact, this inventory does follow this form; for the first item of the list, see the preceding manuscript page (via the links below).

It is of course crucial to interpreting such accounts to know the relative contemporary values of liber (pound), solidus (shilling), and denarius (penny): 1 pound = 20 shillings = 240 pence; in other words, 1 shilling = 12 pence.

For further practice with this hand, see the 'index of manuscript images', item 16. Another extract from the same manuscript of about the same date appears in item 17. Either of these options can, of course, be viewed in the window above by clicking on the links below.

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