Jacob van Maerlant, Wapene Martijn Electronic version according to TEI P5.1 Fragmentarium - Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments

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 Brussel/Bruxelles KBR ms. 77-78 Jacob van Maerlant, Wapene Martijn 1351-1400 Brabant fol. *7v/*4r (strip 1) Middle Dutch Wapene Martijn Jacob van Maerlant The fragments were cut from two bifolia, although some text has been lost due to a few missing strips. Reconstruction:  Fol. *4r: Eerste Martijn, vs. 554-645. Fol. *4v: Eerste Martijn, vs. 646-737. Fol. *5r: Eerste Martijn, vs. 738-829. Fol. *5v: Eerste Martijn, vs. 830-921. Fol. *6r: Eerste Martijn, vs. 922-975, Tweede Martijn, vs. 1-37. Fol. *6v: Tweede Martijn, vs. 38-129. Fol. *7r: Tweede Martijn, vs. 130-221. Fol. *7v: Tweede Martijn, vs. 222-314. The two surviving bifolia may have once contained 737 verses. Ultimately, 607 verses have actually survived. A total of 130 verses have been lost because some strips are no longer present: one strip in the middle of fol. *5/6 is missing and the bottom of this double-leaf has been trimmed, and two strips in the double-leaf fol. *4/7 have disappeared, the top of which has also been trimmed, resulting in text loss. Of those 607 preserved verses, 15 are partially damaged (partially cut off) and 41 verses are present but have become completely illegible. Moors, Sofie, 'Love is (not) in the Bin. Over het belang van hartstrookjes voor de reconstructie van Middelnederlandse literatuur’, In Monte Artium (forthcoming 2026). *: indicates a reconstructed page. Moors (forthcoming 2026) has digitally transcribed the fragment (siglum H) and compared the verses with the critical edition of the text by Verdam and Leendertz (1918).  Parchment 2 bifolia (trimmed)16020015019020 x 350 (strip) 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 two inner bifolia of the original booklet, which also contained the Derde Martijn.

The strips left no offset in the host volume: apart from discoloration, no text was visible, with the exception of a few letters. The discoloration is quite noticeable in some places, which suggests that the strips were once glued in the host volume. 

The original height was estimated based on J.P. Gumberts’ (1980) statistical study of manuscript page dimensions. Gumbert has shown that the ratio of height to width generally ranges between 0.60 and 0.80.

 No ruling visible. There seem to be prickings.

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

 Plain initials (red) indicate the start of the stanzas; rubric (red); initial 'S' (red); colour-stroked letters (red) at the start of each verse. In 2003, the fragments were identified by Jan Deschamps and Herman Mulder in the Latin manuscript at the Royal Library of Belgium. The fragments do not appear to have been written in Maerlant's usual Flemish dialect. For the dialectological identification of the sewing guards, I consulted Evert van den Berg. Our analysis shows that the copyist eliminated forms typical of Flanders – and replaced them with forms from the Denderstreek (Dender region) and Brabant. We find the following examples: ‘soe’ > ‘si’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 73, 732-733, 735) ‘sulc’ > ‘selc’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 700, 898; Tweede Martijn: vs. 192) ‘dincken’ > ‘duncken’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 570, 901; Tweede Martijn: vs. 202) ‘bin’ > ‘ben’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 973; Tweede Martijn, vs. 15, 28, 202) ‘up’ > ‘op’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 593, 898; Tweede Martijn: vs. 11, 29, 31) ‘rene’ > ‘reine’, ‘clene’ > ‘cleine’ en ‘bede’ > ‘beide’, ‘heleghen’ > ‘heyleghen’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 582, 732, 799; Tweede Martijn: vs. 138, 166, 313) ‘vul’ > ‘vol’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 781) ‘deelt’ > ‘deilt’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 733, 853). ‘tlanghe’ > ‘dlanghe’, ‘toude’ > ‘doude’, ‘tnieuwe’ > ‘dnuwe’, ‘twater’ > ‘dwater’ (Tweede Martijn: vs. 189, 302) ‘eerst’ > ‘ierst(e)’ (Tweede Martijn: vs. 250, 275) ‘lettel’ > ‘luttel’ (Eerste Martijn: vs. 924) Description by: Sofie Moors, 2025 Deschamps, Jan, and Herman Mulder, Inventaris van de Middelnederlandse handschriften van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België. Zesde aflevering. Brussel (België): Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, 2003, p. 1. Moors, Sofie, 'Love is (not) in the Bin. Over het belang van hartstrookjes voor de reconstructie van Middelnederlandse literatuur’, In Monte Artium (forthcoming 2026). Moors, Sofie, Kestemont, Mike, and Remco Sleiderink, 'The Martijn Trilogy Manuscripts: An Open Dataset for Analyzing Scribal Variation', Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 9.1 (2024), 1-21. Verdam, J., and P. Leendertz (eds.), Jacob van Maerlant’s Strophische Gedichten. Nieuwe bewerking der uitgave van Franck en Verdam. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff’s, 1918.