The Archives départementales de l’Aube
It contains, in Series G, the complete extant archives of Troyes Cathedral.
These are the best microfilm readers in the world. You put the film in at the top (as the gentleman on the right is doing), and then the image is projected down onto the sloping screen, so that it feels as if you’re reading the actual manuscript—except that you don’t get your hands dirty with five-hundred years of accumulated dirt and dust.
A nice find in Week One: Johannes Ockeghem turns out to have been a non-resident canon at Troyes Cathedral for almost ten years. In this document from 1457, his name is written as “maistre Jehan Hoquegan.” As far as I have been able to tell, Ockeghem never went to Troyes, nor was he particularly diligent in responding to the Cathedral chapter’s queries as to his qualifications for the position.
I’ve had to wait for more than twenty years, but now at last I can trace the output of Jean le Bé, the Troyes paper manufacturer whose paper was used in 8 out of 12 gatherings of Brussels 5557, the famous choirbook from the Burgundian court.
Le Bé’s signature watermark was the crowned fleurs-de-lis shield with pendant “t” (for Troyes), here framed by his initials “JB.” I’ve now found five series of annual registers which contain extensive sequences of these paper-types.
Demonstrating that two paper-types are identical is a time-consuming exercise, involving measurements of chain lines, laid lines, and other parameters, but it is well worth the effort, for watermark evidence is a dating tool of extraordinary precision.
