The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this first episode, she discusses medieval scripts.
Medieval script tends to change over time but is also influenced by strong national traditions. This phenomenon helps scholars to date and localize manuscript books. Unlike books today, medieval books don’t have title pages, and quite often they also lack scribal colophons stating when and where a book was written (and by whom). This is why the study of historical scripts (palaeography) is important. Irene O’Daly shows examples of caroline script (BPL 137), pre-gothic script (SCA 16), gothic script (PER F 25) and humanistic script (BPL 9). These scripts were consecutively used in the 9th-11th centuries, 12th century, 13th-15th centuries and 15th century.
Welcome to the video series Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book.
In this episode, I provide a survey of medieval scripts.
The word manuscript comes from the Latin manuscriptum,
literally meaning something which was written by hand.
All medieval manuscripts carry traces of their scribes,
and the most obvious of these is the style of script in which the scribe chose to write.
The study of script, termed paleography, is useful to us as researchers as it helps us
work out when and sometimes even where a manuscript is written.
Take this manuscript for example.
It's written in the rounded and regular script we term Caroline Minuscule,
popular in Western Europe from the 9th to the 11th centuries.
This manuscript dates from the mid-9th century and originally contained little punctuation.
Another scribe, as you can see, has supplied punctuation in a darker ink,
helping to clarify the text.
This manuscript, copied in France in the late 12th century, is very different in aspects.
The text columns are written in pre-Gothic script, a transitional script which came to
replace Caroline Minuscule in the 12th century.
The script is more compressed, with letters starting to touch.
Manuscripts of this period are also characterised by increasing use of abbreviations.
Scribes tended to compress word endings and replace common letter combinations by signs.
Take a look for example at this 7-shaped or Tyronian sign, symbolising the letters ET.
This sign is used to express the Latin et, meaning and, but also within words which
contain the letters ET, such as here in the word debit, meaning he or she owes.
Pre-Gothic script was the precursor to Gothic script, common from the 13th century onwards.
Let's take a look at this manuscript, copied in northern France in the early 15th century.
You can see that the trend towards the compression of words has continued.
Words are compressed not only horizontally but also vertically and,
as a result, the top line of the script is very defined.
This type of Gothic script, called litera textualis, is angular in aspect.
The thick and thin strokes of the letters are clearly differentiated,
while some of the letters, such as the O, almost take on a diamond shape.
Here the red rubricated lines and decorated initial
indicate the opening of a new part of the text.
Gothic script would become the inspiration for the form of letters
in the movable type used at Johannes Gutenberg's printing press.
My final example is a dated manuscript made in Italy in 1469.
So, 14 years after Gutenberg printed his first Bible.
Its script resembles the rounded form of Caroline Minuscule,
and this is a typical humanist minuscule used to evoke antiquity
and symbolise the renaissance of learning in this period.
Words are written and spaced clearly,
and, as you can see, there are few abbreviations used and the decoration is restrained.
These initials are decorated in the so-called white vine style,
typical of Italian manuscripts of this period.
As you can see, script changed over time,
reflecting conventions, fashions and experimentation.
And in these four examples, written over six centuries,
we can track these changes and so glimpse how medieval scribes were trained
in particular areas and time periods.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of exploring the medieval manuscript book.
In the next episode, we'll discuss the structure of the medieval page.
