Beschreibung:

Fragment of a seigneurial 'Rente Boec' for Viane, East Flanders, in Flemish, two bifolia on paper and the parchment front cover of the volume, from an ornate calligraphic manuscript [East Flanders (Viane), late fifteenth century (probably dated 1473)] Four leaves (foliated in sixteenth-century as 85 & 86 and 87 & 96), each with entries in a Flemish secretarial hand, titles in angular calligraphic version of same, each bifolium opening with one large title and a fine penwork initial in split penwork bands and with ornate cadels and human faces and perhaps feet picked out in hairline penwork, watermark a simple jug, with a parchment leaf once the front cover of the parent volume with the title "Den rente boec van viane" in same calligraphic script, other later annotations there clarifying the placename ("Vianne" and "Vyanne"), adding "Livre de rentes seigneuriales Derianne 43" and the apparent date "1473", remains of one cloth tie at middle of board, leaves and board both in excellent condition and 300 by 220mm. Viane sits in the municipality of Grammont/Geraadsbergen on the modern border of Flemish Brabant and Hainaut. The castle de Blondel de Beauregard stands in the heart of the town, and while records of its occupation by the Counts of Egmont only go back until the sixteenth century, there are references to a castle on the same site which had fallen into disrepair by 1545. These leaves may well come from that earlier foundation on the site. The family of the Barons de Blondel de Beauregard left the site in 1920, and its archive may well have been dispersed soon after that.