Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/453

 PALiEOGRAPHY

409

PAUEOGRAPHY

given a transverse bar : Cf-J^; (coram) g^ntiCCJi^V' (antecessorum ). /

(5) Abbreviations by special signs. — The sign most widely used is a small horizontal bar, sometimes waved, placed above the word, which indicates an ab- breviation by contraction or suspension: n'ra [nostra). In the thirteenth century the bar has a „ • ^ the forms: (^ /C— ,3^. The signs, J ^ ' "^, represent ° sometimes the termination

us, especially in ablative plurals in bus; sometimes the terminations que, et, and the final m of the accusative. Other signs have a more determined value :^ for r; Q  ^ i 3

Pro^,^

Obiit, obitus, v, '\T'

(6) liCtters enclosed in larger letters, found chiefly in inscriptions on titles of MSS.

(7) Monograms. — The letters of a single word com- bined in a single figure. This custom must have been borrowed from the Greek chanceries in the Carlovin- gian period. The best known are those of Charle- magne (Karolus) and Clot aire (Hlolarius): —

Dictionaries of abbreviations will be found in special works (seebibliog- raphj')- From , _ ancient times sig-

las were so numerous that .under Nero, the grammarian Valerius Probus compiled a lexicon of them, of which only the juridical section has survived (ed. Mommsen, "Grammatici latini", IV, 265). At the end of the fifteenth century lexicons of the same kind were com- piled in Italy; one of these published at Brescia in 1534 has been reproduced (Bib. de I'Ecole des Chartes, 1902, pp. 8, 9).

Numerals. — Roman numerals never ceased to be u.sed, and with two exceptions they were placed be- tween two points.

IIII. represents IV

a^ " VI— in Merovingian MSS.

<5£> " M

s " 'A

Xs ^ " lOH Numbers were indicated by the multipliers — IIII'^ = 80, V-^" = 100. Roman numerals were nearly always written in minuscules. The termi- <y»0 nation indi- cates a cardinal or ordinal adjective :Vl/, millesimo. The Arabic figures, of Hindu origin, employed as early as the tenth century byGerbert, appear in mathematical treatises in the twelfth century and are hardly found in other works before the fifteenth century. In the fif- teenth century-, » - , /■ ^ j^ ^ the forms of the \ (fl ,}-,}, t, ^ij, 6,7, g,9 nme digits are: ' *- Tironian notes and tachygraphy. — Tironian notes continued to be used in diplomas or for glosses of MSS. until the twelfth century. Latin MS. 1597 (Bib. Nat., Paris) contains some tenth-century exercises from the

Tironian manual (see Bib. Ec. des Chartes, 1906, 270). Pope Sylvester II also used for his letters a North- Italian tachygraphical system, in which each syllable is represented by a sign of its own (see J. Havet "Seances de 1' Academic des Inscriptions", 18S7). In the Middle Ages various secret codes were used for writing (cryptography). These mostly consisted in suppressing vowels and supplying their places with groups of points. Sometimes the consonants, while retaining their own value, also represent the preceding vowel in alphabetical order (b = a, f = e, k = i, p = o).

Chief Difficulties in Reading Medieval Documents. — First to be reckoned with are errors of transcription, which occur not only in authors' MSS., but even in diplomas. Examples of two words joined in one also occur, of which the most frequent cases are: the join- ing of the possessive adjective to the substantive (e. g., virisui for viri sui), the personal pronoun to the verb (e. g., lueris for lu eris), of the preposition to its com- plement (invilasua for in vita sua), of the conjunction to the following word (sitalis for si talis). Another difficulty arises from the arbitrary division of words between two fines. It is now admitted that division can only be made at the end of a syllable, and there is a custom of placing a hyphen at the end of the line to indicate that the word is divided: in the Middle Ages the same syllable was unhesitatingly divided between two lines, and the hyphen, introduced in the fifteenth century, never became universal. Finally, before beginning the study of documents it is neces- sary to have some ideas of the orthography of the languages in which the texts are written. Not only had the vulgar tongues (English, French, Cierman, Provengal, etc.) forms which have now disai)i)cared, but the orthography of Latin itself was very different from ours. Not to mention letters improperlj' added to words, and Germanic breathings (especially in the Merovingian period), it must be remembered that the termination of the genitive feminine singular is always in e {rose for rosw). During the greater part of this period, also, the diphthongal vowels ae are written separate.

Sixteenth Century Reform and Modern Writings. — One consequence of the Renaissance was a progressive abandonment of Gothic for the writing of books. The Italian typographers created the modern Latin char- acter on the model of the Carlovingian minuscule. This reform was adopted in Latin countries; in Eng- land Latin characters were introduced as early as 1467 and by degrees supiilanted the Gothic character or "black letter". On the other hand, this character persisted in German-speaking countries, which have not even yet entirely abandoned it. Books copied by hand became more and more rare. In legal docu- ments and correspondence writing assumed a more individual character; abbreviations were left to the fancy of each writer — a licence which sometimes in- creases the difficulty of deciphering. At the beginning of the eighteenth century writing tended to become more regular and by the end of that century attained great perfection. The thoroughly individual charac- ter of nineteenth-century writing renders all pateo- graphical study of it hopeless.

Oriental. — Rosny, Archucs paUof/raphiques de VOrient et de IWvierique, I (Paris, 1860-7!) (nntirrs nn Turkish, Sanskrit, Chi- nese. Japanese, Siameso, T i:'iiri-iTi <^'itTi.if'ivi,i \iiMrir:in. Ocean- ian writing); Silvestim r ' ■ '■ 1 'n.-^, 1839- 41); MOEI.LEB, OriVn/ ' / I I l.lMi. 1844); EvRBEhL. Ekinent^ of S ' ! -I 'I- I. .n. 1878); MOKITZ. .\rilh^r P:J-. ' . ' : ' • r I . } -PHir^i. (1, \N'm.. • • • ■ I •■ '1"'^. I- ■ '■ ■■'

Ore

JOR

, i.i

(1908), 175-811. <,.Ai< -. ' ' •• /■ ■ ' • I • i|:-

zig. 1879) (still theonl> r.. I. ,.. '. ..-, !■ ■ //■■■■l-

book of Greek and Lai i " /' t, : i- i ' ■ i,

Pac-simiUde Tnanuscrih ir ;. ■- ■' ;..,,' ' :u

IX' au XIV' sUde (I'u.i.-,. l^'Jlj. Iulm. /u, -.,.«,,/. ,.'.,. ;./u.i anciens manuscrit.t grecs en oncmles ti tn ininiiacule de la Bihliuth. Nat. VI'-XI' siede (Paris, 1892) ; Henbt, llixtary oj Writing (Lon- don, 1907) (portfolios); Kenyon, The Pala:ography of Greek Papyri