late 12th century french style scroll

When a friend was scheduled to receive an award, I asked to create her scroll. Her persona is a late 12th, early 13th century English woman living on the continent. The text was written by another friend based on a grant of lands by Countess Adela of Blois, c. 1101. The inspiration piece I finally decided to use is a French Bible, 1185-1195, approximately 525 x 360 cm (Bibliothèque St. Geneviève ms 0010, f.77v and f.1).

I tried to keep the layout as close to the inspiration manuscript as possible, scaling down from the original size to fit on an 11" x 14" piece of pergamenata, keeping the same number of lines on the page and the same line height for the illuminated capitals. The original manuscript marks the start of new sections of the text with illuminated capital letters, often preceded by red and blue capitals that introduce the following section. The words and phrases that I wanted to emphasize in the award text were not actually the beginning of sections, but were spaced in a way that I could achieve a similar feel to the page.

I also tried to keep the same relative proportions for calligraphy as the inspiration manuscript; proportional to row height, body height = 5/11, elevated 1/11 over bottom line, ascender & descender = 3/11. Letter forms and punctuation and from the original (period, comma/colon, hyphen) and abbreviations and ligatures are inspired by both the original and a similar manuscript (British Library Arundel 490).