PALEOGRAPHY
406'
PALEOGRAPHY
Latin PAL.EOcUAriiY. — The Latin alphabet is do-
rived, according to the most widely accepted opinion,
from tlie Greelc alphabets of yoiitlieru Italy. Its let-
tore are composed of the following elements, the no-
menclature of which it is important to know: (1) Of
vertical lines called ascenders \vhen they extend above
the line, and tails when they arc prolonged below it;
(2) horizontal liiK-s, called bars or crosses; (3) convex
lines, designated under the name of paunches or curls.
Thus B is formed of an ascender and a double paunch,
H is formed of two ascendei's and a cross, etc.
The history of Latin writing and its derivatives is divided into five periotls: A. .\ntiquity; B. Barbarian Period; C. Carlovingian Reform; D. Gothic Period; E. Sixteenth-Century Reform and Modern Writing. On two occtisions there has been a systematic reform in Latin WTiting intended to restore it to its primitive purity: under Charlemagne, and in the sixteenth century.
A. Anliquiiy. — In the most ancient MSS. (fourth and fifth centuries) there are four kinds of writing. ( 1 ) The Capital is composed of large and regular letters written between two parallel lines, beyond which they seldom extended. It seems to have been the oldest in use among the Romans, who made use of it almost exclusively for inscriptions. The epigrapliical, or ele- gant, capital, similar to the ordinary majuscule of our printed books, was used in MSS., but there exist only rare specimens of it. Such is the Virgil of the Vatican (Lat. 3256), which may be attributed to the beginning of the fourth century; other MSS. of Virgil of the same period are in the Vatican (Lat. 3255) and at St. Gall. The only difficulty in reading these MSS. lies in the fact that the words are not separated. The letters differ but little from those of our printed books. The A ordi- a a narily appears under one of
two forms: • * and yA\. The character V desig- nates botli U and \\ m the same manner I is used for both I and J. This beautiful writing seems to have been reserved for MSS. v/c luxe and for the most revered works, such as Virgil or the Bible. The rustic capital, much used from the end of antiquity, is less graceful; its characters are more slender and less regular; their extremities are no longer flattened by the small grace- ful bar which adorns the epigraphical capital. Such is the writing of the Prudentius of Paris (Bib. Nat., Lat. 8084), in which is found the signature of the con- sul Mavortius (527). All these MSS. lack punctu- ation, and in those where it occurs it was added later.
(2) The Uncial is a transformed capital writing in which the ascenders are curved and the angles rounded. At first this expression, derived from the Latin uncia, "one-twelfth ", was applied to the capital writing itself. Examples occur in the Latin in- scriptions of Africa, but it is above all the writing used in MSS. The letters most modified are: A, D, E, G, H, M, Q, T, V, which became respectively:
An example of a MS. in uncials is fumi.shed in the collection of Acts of the Council of .'Vquileia (381), transcribed shortly after this date (Paris, Bib. Nat., Lat. 8907) ; others are the Livy of the Biblioth^que Nationale (Lat. 5720) and several MSS. of the sixth and seventh centuries.
(3) The Half-Uncial, a combination of uncial and mi- nuscule letters. The letters E, V, H retain the uncial form; the D has sometimes the uncial
form, sometimes the minuscule; the N ^ "i <Y^ is in capital. Characteri.stic letters are: 'tx? ' (respectively, a, g, r). The most ancient specimen is the Verona palimpsest, written in 486, containing the consular annals from 439 to 486.
(4) Minuscule (scriptura minuta) presents simplified
forms similar to the modern characters of ordinary or
italic print, within more restricted limits than the
capital and the uncial. It was useil from the imperial
period for accounts, business letters, etc. The best
known MSS. are not prior to the sixth century (Latin
MS. 12097, Bib. Nat., Paris); the greater number
date only from the seventh century. Even in the
Roman period ligatures were numerous. The most
characteristic forms .
arc those of a, b, «l.a^,J),cl,€,f .T,,! ,l,n),Il,r',V e, f, g, 1, 1, m, n, r, ' ' \ J ' '|
and s, respectively.
(5) The Cursive includes all rapidly traced writing. The size of the letters is smaller, their shape is siiiiiili- fied, and they are joined together. From this resulted occasional serious deformations of the alphabet. Be- fore the sixth century it was a modification of the capital; from this time forth it borrowed its characters chiefly from the minuscide. The most ancient known specimens are the papyrus fragments of Herculaneum (VV. Scott, "Fragmenta Herculanensia", Oxford, 1865), which date from A. D. 53 and A. D. 79; the wax tablets of the gold mines of Vorotspak (Transylvania), written between A. D. 131 and A. D. 167 (Corpus Inscript. Latinar., Ill, 2); the Egyptian papyri of the fourth century (Karabacek, "Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer", Vienna, 18S6); the fragments of sixth-century imperial re- scripts found in Egyjit, which are distinguished by large irregular letters, joined, without any separation of words (Thompson, "Handbook of Pateog.", 211- 13). This writing was much employed in legal docu- ments down to the seventh century, anil it is found in the papyrus charters of Ravenna (end of sixth cen- tury); on the other hand, it was but little used in the copying of MSS., and serves only for glosses and mar- ginal notes.
(6) The Tironian Notes. — The Romans were ac- Cjuainted with a still more rapid system of writing, used to take down speeches or notes. These were the Tironian notes, the invention of which is attributed to TuUius Tiro, a freedman of Cicero (Suetonius, "De Viris illust. reliq.", 135), or to the poet Ennius. Ac- cording to Plutarch (Cato Jun. 23) Cicero had formed tachygraphs for taking down his speeches. These notes were not arbitrary signs, like those of modern stenography, but mutilated letters reduced to a straight or curved line and linked together. Some- times a single letter indicated a w-hole word (e. g., P for primus). The chanceries of the Middle Agea doubtless made much use of these notes.
There is no punctuation in the most ancient MSS. But aci'cinlin.!; to the Greek grammarians, whose doc- trine is i(|iic>diiri (1 by Isidore of Seville, a single sign, the poiiil , was cniployed: placed above, it indicated a long pause {disjunctio, or periodus, whence our word period); placed below, a short pause {subdistinctio, comma); in the middle, a pause of medium length {dis- linclio media, colon). In the greater number of MSS. the point above or periodus, and the point below, or comma, were used exclusively.
B. Barbarian Period i Fifth 'to Eighth Crntury) .—After the Germanic invasions there (lev(lcii)ed in Europe a series of writings called national, which were all de- rived from the Roman cursive, but assumed distinc- tive foims in the various countries. Such was, in France, the Merovingian minuscule, characterized by lack of proportion, irregularity, and the number of ligatures. The writing is upright, slightly inclined to the left, the MSS. are not ruled, and the lines some- times encroach on one another. The phrases are sep- arated by points and begin with a majuscule letter in capital or uncial; the abbreviations are few. Accord- ing to the Corbie MS. of Gregory of Tours (Paris, Bib. N.at., Lat. 17665), the a has the form .°^ ^ rx. uA double c CC and is sometimes superscribed ^ " * when it is joined to the following letter u
