A fifteenth century baker’s price-list: MS. Douce Charters a 1, no. 62

Abstract

The origin of MS. Douce Charters a 1, no. 62 is to be found in the so called "Assisa Panis", a 13th-century legal instrument that established for the first time a relationship between the cost of wheat and the price of bread to be observed throughout the land, and abolished only in 1824. The "Assisa Panis" was an informal instrument, since the text was always different from one copy to another. It detailed the different kind of breads known in the realm, the official measure of capacity for grains, and it gives now an insight into the material culture of Medieval England. The MS. Douce was written around the half of the 15th Century on a sheet of smooth parchment, and must have hung from a wall or perhaps the back of a door. The text was divided into five columns, with a drawing atop of each to represent its content and an explanation of every type of bread that was to be sold, its weight and its price. The drawings seemed to focus on the leavening of the bread, instead of the shape of the single loaf. The essay considers as well one case in which documents such as MS. Douce impinge upon literary texts.