The verses are written in littera textualis by a single hand.

Between columns 2va and 2vb, written in a more modern hand, it reads: “Papier censier du prieuré de Marquemont comme aussy / un mémoire de son revenu”.

Based on a number of characteristics – namely the form of the letter v –, Erik Kwakkel dated the hand to the last quarter of the fourteenth century or around 1400. In the fifteenth century, the height of the two strokes is usually equal while in the fourteenth century the left stroke normally reaches slightly higher than the second. The script on the fragments reflects a transitional stage, as the first tall stroke of the v does not always appear in the fragments. 

No foliation visible.

The fragment originally formed part of a single-quire booklet of five bifolia, a quinio. A reconstruction of the original collation (by the author of this Description) is available on VisColl: 1V(10). The surviving fragments once formed the outer bifolium of the original booklet, which also included the Tweede Martijn.

The information on the original and current condition are based on Bosmans & Sleiderink (2019).

The right side of fol. 2 is trimmed, resulting in text loss. Both folia are trimmed along the upper side, without text loss.

Plain initials (red) indicate the start of the stanzas; rubric (red); initial 'W' (red); colour-stroked letters (red) at the start of each verse.

Brabant

The fragments do not appear to have been written in Maerlant's usual Flemish dialect, but rather in Brabantian, although Flemish features are still in evidence in some places. See Bosmans & Sleiderink (2019, 79) for examples.

In 2016, Isabelle Bretthauer (Archives nationales de France) recognized the potential significance of this fragment, and at her suggestion, Claudia Rabel (Institut de la recherche et d’histoire des textes, IRHT) identified the verses as remnants of the Eerste and Derde Martijn by Jacob van Maerlant. In 2019, Glenn Bosmans and Remco Sleiderink published a transcription and material description.

In addition to a vertical fold – dating from the time when the bifolium served as the outer leaf of a quire – there is also a horizontal fold roughly halfway through, which contains several binding holes. This suggests that this bifolium – folded differently – came to serve as a cover for an oblong document. More specifically, it must be a paper tax register ('cijnsregister'). Between columns 2va and 2vb, written in a more modern hand, it reads: “Papier censier du prieuré de Marquemont comme aussy / un mémoire de son revenu”.

The Marquemont Priory was demolished around 1880; it was located in what is now the French commune of Monneville (in the Oise department, about fifty kilometers northwest of Paris) and was affiliated with the nearby Abbey of Saint-Martin de Pontoise. Marquemont’s archival records are preserved in the Val-d’Oise Departmental Archives (Pontoise). Isabelle Bretthauer and Anne-Laure Alard-Bonhoure (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) went there to search for a connection to the fragment. In archive box 9H 86, they indeed found an oblong tax register for which the fragment may have served as a cover. Based on the handwriting, that tax register can be dated to around 1440–1460 (Bosmans & Sleiderink 2019, 81-82).