Deciphering medieval scripts 1

Roman cursive, Unical, and Caroline Miniscule

Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. This week’s post is the first in a series of 3 about palaeography*. I’ll be discussing handwritten scripts throughout the medieval period; this time, I’ll be focusing on the legacy of antiquity and how European scripts changed as the continent turned to Christianity.

The next instalment will be on 21st March. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!

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What is *palaeography?

pā-lē-ˈä-grə-fē

the study of ancient or antiquated writings and inscriptions : the deciphering and interpretation of historical writing systems and manuscripts

Ref. Merriam-Webster

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The legacy of antiquity

I’m not going to spend much time discussing Roman scripts, but I’ve included them as a visual reference point, against which future palaeographical developments can be compared. The key thing to note is that, at this point, there was no standardisation in letter forms.

Old Roman cursive

c.1st-4thCs

British Library, P. Lond. I 229, Papyrus 229 f1 [ref]

This script may not initially appear to be cursive by our modern definitions - i.e. the letters aren’t joined up - but it is so named due to the rapidity of the writing style.

It is also a majuscule script, meaning that the letters are generally capitals, and all roughly the same size.

New Roman cursive

c.2nd-6thCs

Pap.Vat.lat.6 f1 [ref]

By contrast, later Roman cursive is a miniscule script. Its letters are lower case, with ascenders and descenders (e.g. stalk of an ‘l’ and bottom of a ‘g’) extending above and below the core line of text.

Fun fact: Roman cursive scripts were (re)discovered during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign in 1798!

Capitalis

Late Roman, reintroduced in 12thC

Vat.lat.3225 f66v [ref]

This is the most formal of ancient Roman scripts and was based on the letter forms found on architectural monuments. It is another majuscule script, and one which is comparatively easy for the modern reader to understand.

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New scripts for Christian texts

Now we get onto the formation of new scripts in early medieval period. The origin of these scripts is unclear due to the paucity of surviving Latin manuscripts prior to the 4thC, but we can infer that they developed under the influence of both Roman capital and cursive scripts.

Uncial

5th-7thCs

Uncial developed in Britain and Ireland following their conversion to Christianity, and thus their reception of the Latin language. There were some variations in how this script type presented, but it generally looked like this:

Quite different to the Roman scripts we saw above. Its main features are as follows:

• Almost no variation in letter shapes

• Greater contrast between thick / thin strokes

• Rounded, majuscule

• Distinguished by its ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘e’, and ‘m’s

This script also indicates an effort to make text more legible. There are greater spaces between both individual words and the text blocks themselves: see the wide margin between the 2 columns in the above example.

Uncial fell out of fashion after the 7thC, but it continued to be used past this point in a more limited form: namely, to highlight important segments of text and for ornamental features.

Caroline miniscule

c. late 8th-11thCs

In the latter part of the 8thC, monasteries in the Carolingian realms of France began o develop a script which was more uniform and consistent in form. This was happening under the patronage of Charlemagne, whose reform programme sought to bring about a ‘cultural revival’ in the Carolingian Empire. This was known as the Carolingian Renaissance. As a result of this, the script known as Caroline miniscule emerged.

St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 294, f4 [ref].

In this example, we can see a continuation of the spacing found in Uncial scripts, showcasing a continued desire for simplicity and legibility. In addition to this, Caroline miniscule has the following characteristics:

• Retains many features of late Roman cursive, but with fewer abbreviations

• Simplification of letter shapes

• Distinct ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘e’, ‘g’ and ‘s’s

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That’s all for this week, but in the next post on this topic I’ll be talking about the ‘National Hands’ which developed in different parts of Europe across the 7th-12thCs. As a reminder, that will be out on 21st March.

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