Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/164

 148 pis. 63, 64 ; Sabas, pi. A), of which, however, the writing has been disfigured by retracing at a later period ; the Gospels written in silver and gold on purple vellum, whose leaves are scattered in London (Cott. MS., Titus C. xv.), Rome, Vienna, and its native home, Patmos ; the frag mentary Eusebian Canons written on gilt vellum and highly ornamented, the sole remains of some sumptuous volume (Cat. Anc. MSS., i. pi. 11) ; the Coislin Octateuch (Silvestre, pi. 65) ; the Genesis of Vienna, one of the very few early illustrated MSS. which have survived (Pal. Soc., pi. 178). Tischendorf has given facsimiles of others, but too insufficiently for the critical study of palaeography. Reference may here be made to certain early bilingual Gra?co-Latin uncial MSS., written in the 6th and 7th centuries, which, however, have rather to be studied apart, or in connexion with Latin palseography ; for the Greek letters of these MSS. run more or less upon the lines of the Latin forms. The best-known of these examples are the Codex Bezas of the New Testament, at Cambridge (Pal. Soc., pis. 14, 15), and the Codex Claromontanus of the Pauline epistles, at Paris (Pal. Soc., pis. 63, 64), attributed to the 6th century; and the Laudian MS. of the Acts of the Apostles (Pal. Soc., pi. 80) of the 7th century. To these may be added the Harleian glossary (Cat. Anc. MSS., i, pi. 13), also of the 7th century. An offshoot of early Greek uncial writing on vellum is seen in the Moeso-Gothic alphabet which Ulfilas constructed for the use of his countrymen, in the 4th century, mainly from the Greek letters. Of the few extant remains of Gothic MSS. the oldest and most perfect is the Codex | Argenteus of the Gospels, at Upsala, of the 6th century (Pal. Soc., pi. 118), written in characters which com pare with purely written Greek MSS. of the same, period. Other Gothic fragments appear in the sloping uncial hand seen in Greek MSS. of the 7th and following centuries. About the year 600 Greek Uncial writing passes into a new stage. We leave the period of the round and enter on j that of the oval character. The letters , 0, O, C, instead i of being symmetrically formed on the lines of a circle, are made oval ; and other letters aTe laterally compressed into a narrow shape. In the 7th century also the writing begins to slope to the right, and accents arc introduced and afterwards systematically applied. This slanting style of uncials continued in use through the 8th and 9th- cen turies, becoming heavier as time goes on. In this class of writing there is again the same dearth of dated MSS. as in the round uncial, to serve as standards for the assign ment of dates. We have to reach the 9th century before finding a single dated MS. in this kind of writing. It is true that sloping Greek uncial writing is found in a few scattered notes and glosses in Syriac MSS. which bear actual dates in the 7th century, and they are so far useful as showing that this hand was firmly established at that time ; but they do not afford sufficient material in quan tity to be of really practical use for comparison (see the tables of alphabets in Gardthausen s Griech. Paldog.}. Of more value are a few palimpsest fragments of the Elements of Euclid and of Gospel Lectionaries which occur also in the Syriac collection in the British Museum, and are written in the 7th and 8th centuries. There is also in the Vatican a MS. (Reg. 886) of the Theodosian code, which can be assigned with fair accuracy to the close of the 7th century (Gardth., Gr. Pal., p. 158), which, however, being calligraphic%lly written, retains some of the earlier rounder forms. This MS. may be taken as an example of transitional style. In the fragment of a mathematical treatise from Bobio, forming part of a MS. rewritten in the 8th century and assignable to the previous century, the slanting writing is fully developed. The formation of the letters is good, and conveys the impression that the scribe was writing a hand quite natural to him. P f fTS t f Ay tf y,V*/&amp;gt; f C Greek Uncial (Matliemat. Treatise), 7th century. wpos TI /uereuipoj/ ffreptou ) It should be also noticed that in this MS. a secular one there are numerous abbreviations (AVattenbach, Script. Gr. Specim., 1 tab. 8). An important document of this time is also the fragment of papyrus in the Imperial Library at Vienna, which bears the signatures of bishops and others to the Acts of the council of Constantinople of 680. Some of the signatures are in slanting uncials (Wat- tenb., Script. Gr. Specim., tabb. 12, 13 ; Gardth., Gr. Pal., tab. 1). Of the 8th century is the collection of hymns (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 26113) written without breathings or accents (Cat. Anc. MSS, i pi. 14). To the same cen tury belongs the Codex Marcianus, the Venetian MS. of the Old Testament, which is marked with breathings and accents. The plate reproduced from this MS. (Wattenb., Script. Gr. Specim., tab. 9) contains in the second column a few lines written in round uncials, but in such a laboured style that nothing could more clearly prove the discontinu ance of that form of writing as an ordinary hand. In the middle of the 9th century at length we find a MS. with a date in the Psalter of Bishop Uspensky of the year 862 (Wattenb., Script. Gr. Specim., tab. 10). A little later in date is the MS. of Gregory of Nazianzus, written between 867 and 886 (Silvestre, pi. 71) ; and at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century stands a lectionary in the Harleian collection (Cat. Anc. MSS., i. pi. 17). But by this time minuscule writing was well estab lished, and the use of the more inconvenient uncial was henceforth confined to church-service books. Owing to this limitation uncial writing now underwent a further calligraphic change. As the 10th century advances the sloping characters by degrees become more upright, and with this resumption of their old position they begin in the next century to cast off the compressed formation and again become rounder. All this is simply the result of calligraphic imitation. Service-books have always been the MSS. in particular on which finely-formed writing has been lavished ; and it was but natural that, when a style of writing fell into general disuse, its continuance, where it did continue, should become more and more traditional, and a work of copying rather than of writing. In the 10th century there are a few examples bearing dates. Facsimiles from two of them, the Curzon Lectionary of 980 and the Harleian Lectionary of 995, have been printed (Pal. Soc., pis. 154, 26, 27). The Bodleian commentary on the Psalter (D. 4, 1) is likewise of great pakeographic value, being written partly in uncials and partly in minus cules of the middle of the 10th century (Gardth., Gr. Pal., p. 159, tab. 2, col. 4). This late form of uncial writing appears to have lasted to about tlie middle of the 12th century. From it was formed the Slavonic writing in use at the present day. Under the head of late uncial writing must be classed a few bilingual Graeco-Latin MSS. which have survived, written in a bastard kind of uncial in the west of Europe. This writing follows, wherever the shapes of the letters permit, the formation of corresponding Latin characters, the purely Greek forms being imitated in a clumsy fashion. Such MSS. are the Codex Augiensis of Trinity College, Cambridge, of the end of the 9th century (Pal. 1 Scriptural Grtecae Specimino., Berlin, 1883.