Probatio pennae

Probatio pennae (also written probatio pennę; in Medieval Latin; literally "pen test") is the medieval term for breaking in a new pen, and used to refer to text written to test a newly cut pen.[1]

A tenth-century probatio pennae: one of the first known Dutch language fragments (Hebban olla vogala).

A scribe would normally test a newly cut pen to see if it wrote well by writing a few lines of text on a piece of blotting paper. Sometimes these blotting papers survived due to being used afterwards as book binding material; they often provide unique, less "serious" textual material that would otherwise have been lost. A famous example is "Hebban olla vogala", one of the first fragments of Dutch literature, which survived from a tenth-century probatio pennae.[2]

References
  1. Michelle P. Brown (1994). Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms. Getty Publications. p. 102. ISBN 0892362170.
  2. Pierre Brachin (1985). The Dutch Language: A Survey - Volume 13. p. 9. ISBN 9004075933.
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