Chapter III

The Latin Alphabet and its Development up to the Invention of Printing

In the preceding chapter we considered how type was made, the sizes of types, and the systems which have been devised for their measurement. We must now learn something about the history and design of type itself.

Whence are derived the shapes of the characters in which you read the sentence before you; and whence comes the type in which this sentence is printed? The type of this book is a font transitional between the “old style” types of the school of Caslon and the English equivalent of the pseudo-classic types made at the beginning of the nineteenth century under the influence of Didot of Paris, Bodoni of Parma, and Unger of Berlin. These pseudo-classic types were modifications of that old type style (as we should now call it) which was in use in England and throughout Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century. The English old style types of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were chiefly derived from Dutch models of the middle of the seventeenth century; and these seventeenth century types in turn were modelled on earlier roman1 types common in Europe which were introduced into Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Any one familiar with the earliest printing will note that many of the early types were black-letter characters derived from manuscripts, and at first sight it is a little perplexing to know where Roman characters come from. But the Roman characters of the Italian Renaissance were a revival, along with the revival of antique learning, of the lettering in which antique learning had been preserved at the period of Charlemagne; and this antique lettering, preserved in the calligraphic revival of the ninth century, was in part a return to the early Roman characters which go back to a period coeval with the Christian era. Thus the type of this page is tied historically to the written characters of the Romans.

In tracing the ancestry of any modern type-form, it is by no means sufficient to limit our research to the earliest types, for it cannot be too clearly understood that the first printed books (as has before been said) were nothing more than imitations of late manuscripts.

The discovery of typographic printing did not all at once produce, it is to be understood, a radical change in the general aspect of the book. The first works which left the hands of the printers were astonishingly like the manuscripts of the same period, especially up to about 1475; so exactly indeed that the first sight one cannot always say, whether one has before him a piece of early printing, or a manuscript.…The letters of the printed text present the same characters as those which were written by calligraphers.…The same abbreviations, the same ligature, and the same punctuations are found as in the manuscript. The disposition of the printer’s text is the same as the of the manuscript text.2

So it is clear that we have no knowledge of the types of to-day and their history without knowing the history of types back to the invention of printing, and that we can have no knowledge of the first types or their relative place in the scheme of things unless we know how earlier calligraphers formed the letters of their manuscript book-hands. Nor can we tell how the letter-forms themselves came to be unless we know the history of the alphabet, of the various forms of Latin writing, and its vicissitudes in different countries up to the invention of printing.

Alphabetic writing had generally five successive stages. It began with ideograms, which were pictures, representing to those who made them either:

  1. objects;
  2. thoughts.3

Then came phonograms, which were merely ideograms by which sounds had come to be signified instead of things, and of these there were three sorts:

  1. signs which stood for words;4
  2. signs which stood for syllables;
  3. alphabetic signs which stood for the elementary sounds which constitute the syllable.

This last is what our alphabet is now; its letters being “phonograms which by the process of long continued detrition have reached an extreme stage of simplicity both as regards form and value. If the history of any one of our alphabetic symbols be traced backwards, it will be found to resolve itself ultimately into the conventionalized picture of some object.”5

The next question is, Where does our alphabet come from? We derive our Latin alphabet from the Greeks and the Greeks received theirs from the Phœnicians, but from whom the Phœnicians derived their alphabet we do not know. Sixty or seventy years ago it was supposed that it could be historically connected with the Egyptian hieratic writing, but this theory is either erroneous, or at the present moment out of fashion.

The Greek alphabet had a close relation to the Phœnician, or (as perhaps it is more properly called) the Semitic alphabet. In the first place, the forms were in many cases very much alike. The word “alphabet,” which gives a clue to the connection, is derived from alpha and beta, the names of the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. “The names of the Semitic letters,” Sir Edward Maunde Thompson tells us, “are Semitic words, each describing the letter from its resemblance to some particular object, as, aleph, an ox, beth, a house. When Greeks took over their Semitic letters, they also took over their semitic names.”6 Both the names of the letters and their order in the two alphabets are the same. This alphabet was employed by the Phœnicians, by the Jews, and by the Moabites, and from early inscriptions, the primitive Phœnician alphabet, consisting of twenty-two letters, can be made up.

The Greeks learned the art of writing in the ninth century b.c.—perhaps earlier. The primitive Greek alphabet was generally known as the Cadmean alphabet, and it had many varieties. The alphabets first in use were written from right to left; then the boustrophedon method of writing came into vogue, in which the lines ran alternately from right to left and from left to right, like the furrows of a plough; and finally writing all ran from left to right as it does to-day.

The Latin alphabet had twenty letters of the Greek western alphabet and three letters in addition, G, Y, and Z. Our English alphabet has twenty-six letters, the additions being (as we know) J, an alternate form of I; U, which is a similar from of V; and W, which is simply two ligatured V’s equivalent to a double U.

Manuscripts in the Latin alphabet go back to the first century of our era, and the history of Latin writing is divided into five periods, each distinguished by its characteristic group of handwritings. These, according to Steffens’s7 convenient divisions, are as follows:

  1. writing of the Roman period;
  2. national handwritings;
  3. the Carolingian minuscule;
  4. the Gothic minuscule;
  5. Humanistic writing and modern Gothic hands.

Under each epoch there were many subdivisions. For instance, the writing of the Roman period was of several kinds, namely:

  1. a capital letter hand (further subdivided);
  2. ancient Roman cursive handwriting;
  3. uncial letters;
  4. later Roman cursive handwriting;
  5. a half-uncial letter.

These belonged to the Roman period of writing alone. It is not necessary to describe all these variations here, except to say that there were at a very early period different kinds of handwriting intended for special purposes; just as later certain types were employed to print special classes of books. For instance, in the writing of the Roman period we find there were two forms of capital letters, which are called the square capital (or capitalis quadrata, elegans, or scriptura monumentalis),8 and the rustic capital, which is called capitalis rustica or scriptura actuaria.9 The former is a square, rigid, formal letter used for inscriptions and more stately kinds of manuscripts; the latter—the rustic—is somewhat freer, though employed for fine manuscripts as well. The works of the great poets were written in these styles—for the edition de luxe of books by celebrated authors is a very ancient institution.10 What the difference is between these two forms is plain. Rustic letters were easier to make and could be written more rapidly than the formal, square hands, but both forms of capitals were intended for manuscripts of books.

Now it is not to be supposed that letters, accounts, receipts, and scribblings were written in these hands. The Romans had, as we have, a current running handwriting which they used for commercial and ordinary purposes, and which they called scriptura cursiva, or littera epistolaris, to distinguish it from the straighter book-hand, which was called scriptura erecta, or libraria.11 This old Roman cursive, while it was cursive, was a cursive of capital letters, and in course of time these letters began to show certain ligatures as well as inequalities in their height.12 In the history of any art or craft there is constant development; and it was so in the history of writing. Letters were all the time evolving special characteristics. The capital book-hands, for instance, fell under the influence (especially in rustic forms) of cursive capital handwriting coexistent with them; and inversely the cursive capital hands, as they progressed, become modified by the influence of literary book-hands of capital letters familiar to the same scribes. So the next step in the writing of capital hands showed itself in a development of what was called the uncial letter, which we shall hear a good deal about.

The uncial was distinguished from the capital of the book-hands by the round character of certain letters; the chief characteristic “test-letters” being A, D, E, H, and M.13 In other words, the old informal, cursive capital hand had broken into the square capital, formal hand, and produced these uncial capitals, which, because they were much easier to write, followed cursive rather than square capitals in shape. This uncial hand began to show itself as nearly as the third century, but was in its heyday in the fifth and sixth centuries. By the eighth century it greatly degenerated, although there was an attempt to revive it for certain ornamental purposes.14

The later or new Roman cursive hand which succeeded the older cursive, like it was characterized by flowing ligatures between letters and by characters of unequal height; but these became much more frequent and striking. The style of the letters showed that their forms had changed through the effect of rapidity and freedom of execution. Ligatured letters became more common and more varied, and from this kind of writing the black-letter is ultimately derived. But a chief distinction was the marked difference between tall and short letters; and from this hand, thus developed, the first minuscule alphabet—the beginnings of a printer’s “lower-case” alphabet—is derived. The first square capitals were drawn as if they were between two parallel lines. The more cursive capitals and uncial capitals showed some tendency to break through those lines, and a certain number of characters actually did so. The later Roman cursive appears as if arranged between four parallel liens. The short letters are compressed between the two middle lines, the bodies of the other letters still coming between these two lines, but ascending and descending letters touch almost the first and fourth line of the four imaginary lines alluded to just as they do in type to-day.15

Finally, there was also a half-uncial letter which differed from uncial writing in this way—that while uncial writing was composed of capitals with a few intrusions of minuscule (or as a printer would say “lower-case”) letters, the half-uncial was generally based on minuscule (or “lower-case”) forms, with occasional intrusions of capital letters. This style of handwriting was revived as part of that calligraphic freeform in which the abbey of St. Martin at Tours played so important a part in the ninth century.16 Here we have a fuller development yet of our present “lower-case” alphabet.

It has been said that Latin writing was divided into five classes, viz:

  1. writing of the Roman period;
  2. national handwritings;
  3. the Carolingian minuscule;
  4. the Gothic minuscule;
  5. Humanistic writing and modern Gothic hands.

We have so far touched solely on the handwriting of the Roman period and the five classes into which that was subdivided; i.e.

  1. the capital letter-hand,
  2. the old Roman cursive handwriting,
  3. the uncial letters,
  4. a later Roman cursive, and
  5. a half-uncial letter.

What is learned thus far? Merely from this we see whence we derive capital letters, whence we derive certain uncial forms of capital letters with which we are familiar in black-letter types, and whence we derive our lower-case alphabet. Furthermore, we learn that there were three forms of writing—a formal, less formal, and informal; and perhaps it may be said that in type, capitals answer to the formal square capital hands, lower-case letters to the less formal half-uncial letter, and italic to the informal later Roman cursive hands. The square capital, the old Roman cursive, the uncial, and especially the later Roman cursive and half-uncial hands, are the sources from which we derive our present type alphabet.

From what has been said only of the Roman period, the importance of all the different epochs of the history of Latin writing, in their effect upon letter-forms, may be guessed. But we are not considering the history of all stages and variations of Latin writing except as they have to do more directly with printing types, explain the shapes which these have taken on, and the uses to which they have been put. We need, therefore, only touch on the remaining four great groups of manuscript hands:

  1. the national hands;
  2. the Carolingian minuscule;
  3. the Gothic minuscule;
  4. Humanistic writing and modern Gothic hands;

—hands which had either an enormous influence on the letters of our present alphabet, or else actually survive in types in daily use.

During the existence of the Roman Empire different western countries continued to employ Roman cursive writing. But on its fall, while at first the handwriting of the professional scribes preserved more ore less the old traditional forms of uncial, half-uncial, etc. the cursive characters employed for literary scripts slowly took on, in various countries, changes analogous to those which the Latin tongue underwent in the Romance languages. In Italy there was an old Italian cursive, a Curiale, an old Italian manuscript hand, and the better-known Beneventan writing. These were all Italian hands, but were all derived from later Roman cursive writing. They were also all minuscule hands. In France their equivalents took on a different development into what was called the Merovingian letter, a French national hand originally derived from Roman cursive characters but with marked, though slowly developed, French peculiarities. The Visigothic writing was nothing more than the Roman hand isolated and changed by the national genius of Spain into its characteristic Spanish form. What were called the Insular hands—i.e., Anglo-Saxon and Irish—had, too, whatever their origin, a characteristic development within themselves and formed a particular style of writing entirely distinguishable from French, Italian, or Spanish. The student may see what these hands were by consulting facsimiles of Visigothic, Merovingian, Franco-Lombardic, and Pre-Carolingian writing.17 “In the Visigothic hand,” says Thompson,—and the same is true of other national book-hands,—“there is the national character inherent in the script, which, quite independently of any peculiar forms of letters, reveals the nationality of a handwriting as clearly as personal handwriting reveals the individual.” It will be seen later that this is true of the national printing types which succeeded these national manuscript-hands. Roughly speaking, all these forms of letter were what in type we call “lower-case,” though in them some capital forms were included. These national hands profoundly influenced the earliest type-forms in their respective countries; as, for instance, in certain sorts of well-known black-letter types in use to-day, which are directly derived from English and French manuscripts.

In all books on early writing, Carolingian minuscules are mentioned: a term that is readily comprehensible if it be remembered that “minuscule” may be taken for our purposes as meaning merely a lower-case letter, and that “Carolingian” indicates the epoch of Charles the Great, otherwise Charlemagne. This ruler, in the revival of learning that marked his reign, not alone collected manuscripts preserving works of antiquity, but in copying them desired that the form of letter adhered to as a model as by scribes should be the most beautiful that could be found. This was effected by a partial return to the letter-forms of Roman manuscripts.18 As has been happily said of the revival of classical forms in ornament of Louis XVI’s time: “We can see its inspiration taken from the classic which it wished to reproduce, together with its fortunate inability to do so, and its consequently successful creation of something entirely original but yet filled with classic spirit.”

“The reign of Charlemagne,” says Thompson,

is an epoch in the history of hand-writings of Western Europe. With the revival of learning naturally came a reform of the writing in which the works of literature were to be made known. A decree of the year 789 called for the revision of church-books; and this work naturally brought with it a great activity in the writing schools of the chief monastic centres of France. And in none was there greater activity than at Tours, where, under the rule of Alcuin of York, who was abbot of St. Martin’s from 796 to 804, was specially developed the exact hand which has received the name of the Carolingian Minuscule.… The general practice followed the production of fine mss. in this school, and no doubt in other contemporary schools also, which set the fashion for the future, was to employ majuscule letters, either capitals or uncials, for titles and other ornamental parts of the volume; for the general text, minuscule script; but for special passages which it was desired to bring into prominence, such as tables of chapters, prefaces, and introductory sentences or paragraphs of sections of the work, a handsome style of writing was reserved which was adapted form the old half-uncial script of the fifth and sixth centuries.19

This last served the purpose of what a printer would to-day call “display type.”20

“The immense services rendered by the Carolingians to the Latin classics consist, therefor,” says Hall,

not in their attempts at recension which could never be a systematic, but in the accuracy with which they copied the good manuscripts which are still accessible, and in the legibility of the script in which they copied them. The last service is equally important with the first. At Tours, Fleury, Micy, and elsewhere in France, there was evolved from the ugly Merovingian script, with its numberless ligatures and contractions from other sources, the handwriting known as the “Caroline minuscule,” This clear and beautiful alphabet, in which every letter is distinctly formed, spread rapidly over the whole of Europe, and is the parent of the modern script and print which is still used by the majority of the Western nations. The difficulty of the earlier hands such as the uncial and half-uncial had often been severely felt.… If a difficult handwriting such as the Irish had been widely adopted in early times the havoc wrought in Latin texts by slovenly monkish scribes during the later period would have been much greater. Even the painstaking scholars of the Renaissance were completely at a loss when they were confronted with the Irish hand or the Lombardic (e.g. in Tacitus). The soundest texts—with the exception of the few fragments of greater antiquity that are preserved—are those which are attested by manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries. The succeeding centuries witness only an increase in corruption.21

The “Carolingian Reform” is important to us because the letter then adopted furnished a model for the types which we use in printing; for this Carolingian minuscule spread throughout France, had a profound influence in Italy, Spain, and England, became the dominant handwriting of western Europe, and superseded all these national handwritings except that of Ireland. It was introduced into England in the tenth century, but at first, apparently only for Latin texts.22 It was generally adopted in England after the Norman Conquest, and became common in Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Its characteristic was also—for Tours—to banish cursive forms, to make letters independent of each other, to avoid ligatures (or if ligatured, the ligature made slight changes in form), and to spread the letters. It is obvious that these tendencies adapted themselves to movable types when the time came to make them.23

But the time had not come.

Even with this widespread use of the reformed hand, uniformity of character could not be ensured. National idiosyncrasies show themselves as manifestly in the different scripts of different people as they do in their mental and moral qualities; and although the Carolingian minuscule hand formed the basis of all modern writing of Western Europe, which thus started with more chance of uniformity than the old national hands…yet the national character of each country soon stamped itself upon the adopted script. Thus in the later Middle Ages we have again a second series of national hands developed from the Carolingian minuscule and clearly distinguishable from each other.24

This second national development began in the twelfth century.

It is the period of large volumes, with writing on a large scale, and adorned with initials and borders of bold design. With the increasing diffusion of literature, mss. rapidly multiplied, and now the book-hands of the several countries of Western Europe, now all derived, as we have seen, from the Carolingian minuscule, exhibit their individual characteristics; each one developing its own national style and, in course of time, diverging more and more from the rest. The mss. of the northern countries of Western Europe are now to be distinguished from those of the south; the book-hands of England, France, and the Low Countries being modelled on one pattern, and, especially at first, bearing a family resemblance to each other; and those of Italy, Southern France, and the Peninsula being of a type which was the creation of the Italian scribes. The German script, which belongs to the northern group, rather holds a place by itself, being generally of less graceful character than the others.25

The Gothic minuscule of the Middle Ages was nothing more than an angular form of lower-case black-letter, the intermediate result of this second national development. It is distinguished by its pointed shape, by letters which are taller than they are wide, and by their closeness to each other. “This form of writing,” says Steffens, in a passage which is full of interest, “developed little by little, and insensibly, at the precise period at which, in architecture, the round arch gave place to the ogee.” He adds that “just as Gothic architecture had in each country certain special characteristics, so did Gothic writing receive everywhere a national impress. In the fifteenth century the humanists returned to the Carolingian writing, and it was they who gave a pointed writing (as they did to the Ogival style of architecture) the name of Gothic; that is to say, barbarous.”26 In these various forms of writing there are the precursors of black-letter types which we shall meet later on.27 It cannot be made too clear that there was no gap between the earliest types and the Gothic minuscule characters of manuscripts of the time immediately preceding them; and that the reason the earliest German printing types were what they were, was because German manuscripts were what they were, and that the same thing is true of the early types of other countries.28

Finally, we come to Humanistic writing and modern Gothic hands; for from the fourteenth century there were in western Europe these two schools of writing. The Humanistic writing was round, and was a revival of the old Carolingian minuscule hand as then understood. The Gothic or black-letter hand was pointed and was a survival of the Gothic minuscule of the Middle Ages.

The Humanistic hand was a logical result of the revival of learning at the Renaissance. In their demand for the works of antiquity the Humanists began to revive the Carolingian minuscule in which these works had earlier been copied, and their versions of it furnished the basis for our roman type to-day.29 It was a clear, readable hand, which grew more and more in favour, though for a long time used only for secular literature; a black-letter alone being considered proper for sacred literature. It had various names, being called in Italian “Antiqua” (the name adopted by printers), although paleographers preferred to call it “handwriting of the Renaissance” or the “Humanistic hand.” Its roundness seemed to be an Italian tendency.30 In the first half of the fifteenth century, the earliest examples of this Italian hand are found; and by 1465, Sweynheym and Pannartz, at the first printing-house set up in Italy, showed the influence of this Humanistic writing in their semi-gothic types, which they soon abandoned for a distinctly roman letter. In this they were followed by many other printers, and thus the roman types spread all over Europe. It must be remembered, however, that in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark these roman types (like Italian handwriting) have been employed only in the course of the last century. In Germany to-day the roman letter is used only for certain classes of literature—that being the only important country where a debased mediaval book-hand, translated into type, still persists.

Humanistic writing was, of course, subdivided into groups, as were all such schools of writing. There was a Humanistic writing for books which was at its best in the fifteenth century, but which, by the sixteenth century, printing type had driven out.31 It is interesting to compare examples of the Carolingian minuscule with the Humanistic hand based upon it.32 Then there was a Humanistic cursive—a flowering form of the straighter Humanistic Roman, inclined as in writing,33 and for which there seems to have been no model in the Carolingian minuscule. Spreading through Italy as a cursive letter, this later became the common handwriting of all countries which had adopted for books the Humanistic form of Roman letter. Aldus based his italic printing types on this Humanistic cursive letter, and all italic types are based on it. The handwriting which we employ to-day and the tasteless, typographical script equivalent thereto, is simply the cursive of our own time and country.

Nothing more need be considered except so-called modern Gothic writing. This modern Gothic writing was a cursive form of black-letter. After the invention of printing, the old formal pointed Gothic book-hands were given up by scribes and transmuted into type-forms. Such books as were written, were in a cursive Gothic hand, which, like the national book-hands, developed characteristic national traits. The French lettre batarde,34 perhaps the most characteristic of these Gothic cursives, was, however, soon rendered into type; and in England the same letter in coarser form and equivalents of the most popular current English hands were likewise adapted to typography. The close connection between English Gothic vernacular book-hands35 and the earliest English types is obvious if we compare Thompson’s reproduction of the page of a Wycliffite Bible, written before 1397,36 and the lettre de forme used by Caxton in his Boethius.37 Thompson also shows a page of a manuscript Chaucer of about 1400,38 which in writing is very like the types Caxton used in his Ars Moriendi.39 An early fifteenth century manuscript of Occleve40 also suggests early English typography. The Netherland printers’ uncouth fonts closely followed the equally uncouth writing of their locality and time. And as for Germany (as has been said), its present type is simply a survival of the early German cursive Gothic, in a debased form;41 for in other European countries this cursive Gothic letter was, fortunately, superseded by Humanistic writing. “If Humanistic writing had not been adopted, says Steffens,

to-day, according to all probability we should have a great number of different national writings, difficult to read, just as in the early mediaeval days before the Carolingian minuscule had come to supplant the national hands.42

To recapitulate: there were in use among the Romans divers forms of writing, which continued, with various developments, until the fall of the Roman Empire. Then these forms developed still further in character, in different countries, according to the national genius. Some of these forms, through their fitness, survived; others perished. The roman character that we employ to-day is the offspring of a form of letter partly revived from antique days by Charlemagne and partly the creation of its period. The splendid hand of this revival after a time again yielded at the Renaissance—a second time revived through this same devotion to classical learning—on the invention of printing, this letter was transmuted into type and became the roman letter of our modern printing.43 In ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in the period immediately before the invention of printing, we can seem, too, to trace three forms of writing: the formal, to which in type our capital letter answers; the less form, to which our lower-case type is equivalent; and the epistolary or cursive, which is now rendered into type called “italic.” Broadly speaking, all types, like all handwritings, fall into these classes. What we have now to know, therefore, is about these three great classes of types, at various periods, and in their different forms, down to our own day.

  1. In this book the words Roman and Gothic, when describing handwriting, manuscript, style, form, etc., are capitalized. But when denoting printing types, they are not.
  2. See Leo S. Olschki’s Incunables illustrés imitant les Manuscrits. Le passage du manuscrit au livere imprimé, Florence, 1914, p. 5. See also the illustrations of illuminated incunabula.

  3. The Roman numerals are supposed by some to be ideograms—I, II, III representing the fingers of the human hand, and V representing the hand open, and signifying 5. Again IV = 1 less finger than a hand, represents 4. VI = 1 more finger than a hand, gives us 6. X was a picture or ideogram of two hands = 10. In fact, we call these figures digits = fingers.

    The zodiacal and planetary signs used by astronomers are also ideograms. The symbol ☿ is the caduceus of Mercury entwined by two serpents; ♀ is the mirror of Venus, with its handle; and ♂ is the shield and spear of Mars. The symbols ♃, which denotes Jupiter, resolves itself into an arm grasping a thunderbolt; while ♄, which stands for Saturn, is a mower’s scythe. “Among other ideograms which we employ may be enumerated the crown and the broad arrow, sundry trademarks and armorial bearings, together with several printer’s signs, such as ☞ ; ! , and =.” Taylor’s The Alphabet, London 1883, Vol. I, pp. 7, 8.

  4. Such symbols as £, s, d, though alphabetic in their origin, are now used simply as convenient phonograms, standing for the words “pounds,” “shillings,” and “pence.” The Alphabet, Also such signs as $, ℔, cwt. (c = 100, wt. = weight), etc.
  5. Taylor’s The Alphabet, Vol. I, p. 8.
  6. See Sir E. Maunde Thompson’s Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912, p. 1: referred to henceforth as Thompson. It is not to be confused with the same author’s Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography, published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. in their International Scientific Series, first issued in 1893 and since republished.
  7. Steffens’s (Franz), Paléographie Latine. 125 Fac-similés phototypie acompagnés de transcriptions et d’explications, avec un exposé systématique de l’histoire de l’écriture latine. Trèves and Paris, 1910. (Edited by Remi Coulon and translated into French from the second German edition of Lateinische Paléographie.)
  8. Paléographie Latine, pl. 12; or Thompson, fac. 82.
  9. Paléographie Latine, pls. 10, 19; also Thompson, facs. 84, 85, 86.
  10. This difference appeared also in inscriptions in stone. See Votive Inscription on marble, in square and rustic capitals, reproduced in Steffens’s Paléographie Latine, pl. 7.
  11. Paléographie Latine, pl. 9.
  12. Paléographie Latine, pl. 13; also Tables of Latin Cursive Alphabets, in Thompson, pp. 335–337.
  13. Strange’s Alphabets, London, 1898, pl. 2.
  14. See Paléographie Latine, pls. 15 (showing both early and later uncials), 17, 18; or Thompson, facs. 87, 88.
  15. Paléographie Latine, pl. 22; Thompson, facs. 110, 111.
  16. Thompson, facs. 98, 99, 100; or Paléographie Latine, pl. 20.
  17. Thompson, facs. 115–131.
  18. It should be said, however, that the revival of classical literature under Charlemagne was preceded by classical studies in Ireland, where the priesthood showed an instinct for the preservation of classical literature. Their spread as missionaries all over Europe played a large part in the preservation of ancient manuscripts. The monasteries of Bobbio, near Pavia, and St. Gall, near Lake Constance, were both founded by Irish priests. Manuscripts executed at these monasteries are important in the history of paleography.
  19. Thompson, p. 367.
  20. Paléographie Latine, pl. 47.
  21. F. W. Hall’s Companion to Classical Texts, Oxford, 1913, pp. 89, 90.
  22. Differentiations were made between the kind of books for which these various hands were used. Analogously, in the beginnings of typography certain types were used for one kind of book and others for another—not merely as a matter of taste but as a matter of tradition.
  23. Paléographie Latine, pls. 47, 51, 52, 60, and Thompson, facs. 132, 133.
  24. Thompson, p. 403.
  25. Thompson, p. 436.
  26. This supports what has bene already suggested—that typography and calligraphy are closely related to the decorative and architectural feeling of their time.
  27. Paléographie Latine, pls. 101, 104, 106, 109 (Cicero), 111.
  28. To trace more fully the stages by which the mediaval minuscule book-hand, derived from the Carolingian minuscule, evolved into a black-letter hand, the student is advised to consult Thompson’s Greek and Latin Palaeography, facs. 157–201, noting specially facsimiles 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199, for their resemblance to early black-letter printing types.

  29. There were two revivals: first, that of Charlemagne in the ninth century; second, that of the Italian Humanists at the Renaissance, “which period,” says Hall,

    may conveniently be taken to extend from the age of Petrarch and Boccaccio to the sack of Rome by the troops of Charles V in 1527. It is not to be supposed that the classical literatures would have perished but for that revival. Both, however, were at a critical period of their history. Latin might have suffered irreparable losses from the continuance of mediaeval neglect, while Greek literature, which, as far as can be seen, was but little affected by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, might have been gravely impaired by that disaster, and had not the study of Greek been transplanted from Byzantium to Italy at least a century before the final victory of the Turks. (Hall’s Companion to Classical Texts, p. 97.)

    For an interesting account of the vicissitudes of Latin and Greek manuscripts from the Age of Charlemagne up to and during the Italian Renaissance, see Chapters IV and V.

  30. Even in Italian Gothic hands of the period a much greater roundness was preserved than in most other national Gothic texts (Thompson, fac. 194).
  31. Paléographie Latine, pl. 115.
  32. Paléographie Latine Compare pls. 60 and 115.
  33. Paléographie Latine, pl. 116.
  34. Thompson, fac. 196.
  35. Thompson, pp. 472–490.
  36. Thompson, fac. 209.
  37. Duff (E. Gordon), Early English Printing. A Series of Facsimiles of all the Types used in England during the XVth Century, etc. London, 1896, pl. II.
  38. Thompson, fac. 210.
  39. Gordon Duff, pl. VII, second type in lower facsimile.
  40. Thompson, fac. 212.
  41. Paléographie Latine, pl. 121.
  42. In addition to the hands employed for books, there were a certain number of Gothic hands employed for documents—such as the French Civilité, etc. (Paléographie Latine, pl. 119)—which were occasionally rendered into fonts of printing type; but they were uncommon and held much the same position in reference to type then, that modern script holds to other types now.
  43. The reader should examine throughout Steffens’s Paléographie Latine, in the French edition cited, and the less conveniently arranged, but more available volume, Thompson’s Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography. On these two works most of this chapter is based.