A peripheral problem in palaeography is recognising forgeries and texts that have been falsified. The forging of manuscripts of allegedly antique or medieval origin is relatively rare in comparison with the forging of charters, but comes under various guises. There are two motives predominant behind their production: to offer forged texts and promote their authenticity, or to put something on the commercial market. Some forgeries betray themselves by the poor quality of their script, others through blunders; often old parchment is used.

In the eighteenth century Chrysostom Hanthaler, a Cistercian of Lilienfeld, fabricated and penned annals of the monastery allegedly from the thirteenth century. Romantic chauvinism was the motivation around 1820 for Wenzel Hanka in forging the Königinhof and Grünberg manuscripts from which he published his Old Czech songs. The ambition to discover something called forth the forgeries by the many-sided Georg Zappert, his Old High German ‘lullaby’ (with Hebrew vocalisation) and the ‘Conversation-book’ of Maximilian, amongst others.

The alleged specimen of handwriting from a ‘lost’ work of Cornelius Nepos in an uncial palimpsest manuscript was exposed by Ludwig Traube by reference to the inexpertly used facsimile. Uncial fragments of Plautus and Catullus were also produced, the former on purple parchment allegedly of the fourth century, the latter a palimpsest under a Middle High German animal fable.