Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/167

 PALAEOGRAPHY 151 from a MS. of the Gospels in the British Museum (Cat. Anc. MSS., i. pi. 16), the Ambrosian Plutarch (Wattenb. Script. Gr. Specim., tab. 20), and the Ambrosian MS. of the Prophets (tab. 17), the last having, among other peculiarities, an unusual method of distinguishing the sigma at the end of a word by an added dot. These few facsimiles are all that are at present available for the purpose of studying minuscule book-writing of the first class. They are, how ever, all reproduced by photography, and serve sufficiently to show the character of writing which we are to look for in other, undated, examples of the same time. After the middle of the 10th century we enter on the period of the codices vetusti, in which it will be seen that the writing becomes gradually less compact. The letters, so to say, open their ranks ; and, from this circumstance alone, MSS. of the second half of the century may generally be distinguished from those fifty years earlier. But altera tions also take place in the shapes of the letters. Side by side with the purely minuscule forms those of the uncial begin to reappear, the cause of which innovation has already been explained. These uncial forms first show themselves at the end of the line, the point at which most changes first gained a footing, but by degrees they work back into the text, and at length become recognized members of the minuscule characters. In the llth and 12th centuries they are well established, and become more and more prominent by the large or stilted forms which they assume. The change, however, in the general character of the writing of this class of codices vetusti is very gradual, uniformity and evenness being well main tained, especially in church books. Among the latter, a trilingual Psalter of the year 1153, in the British Museum (Pal. Soc., pi. 132), may be noted as an example of the older style of writing being adhered to at a comparatively late time. On the other hand, a lighter and more cursive kind of minuscule is found contemporaneously in MSS. of a secular nature. In this hand many of the classical MSS. of the 10th or llth centuries are written, as the MS. of /Eschylus and Sophocles, the Odyssey and the Apollonius Rhodius of the Laurentian Library at Florence, the Anthologia Palatina of Heidelberg and Paris, the Hippo crates of Venice (Exempla, tabb. 32-36, 38, 40), and the Aristophanes of Ravenna (Wattenb., Script. Gr. Specim., tab. 26). In a facsimile from a Plutarch at Venice (Ex- tmpla, tab. 44), the scribe is seen to change from the formal to the more cursive hand. This style of writing is distin guishable by its light and graceful character from the current writing into which the minuscule degenerated at a later time. The gradual rounding of the rectangular breathings takes place in this period. In the llth century the smooth breathing, which would most readily lend itself to this modification, first appears in the new form. In the course of the 12th century both breathings have lost the old square shape ; and about the same time contractions become more numerous, having been at first confined to the end of the line. Facsimiles from several MSS. of the codices vctusii and the following class have been published by the Palseographical Society and by Wattenbach and Von Velsen in their Exempla. When the period of codices recentiores commences, the o yo (JLOwrao-poo-youpdL- Greek Minuscule (Odyssey), 13th century. (T) aveis on Ipov eVi /crjcras T~bv ariT-riv &s &pa &amp;lt;pci}vf]ffas ff&amp;lt;fita,s faj3fv avrap oSvffffevs a.fj.&amp;lt;piv6/j.o j irpbs yovva KaOt^eTO 5ot&amp;gt;Ai%iijos) Greek minuscule hand undergoes extensive changes. The contrast between MSS. of the 13th century and those of a hundred years earlier is very marked. In the later examples the hand is generally more straggling, there is a greater number of exaggerated forms of letters, and marks of contraction and accents are dashed on more freely. There is altogether a sense of greater activity and haste. The increasing demand for books created a larger supply. Scholars now also copied MSS. for their own use, and hence greater freedom and more variety appear in the examples of this class, together with an increasing use of ligatures and contractions. The introduction of the coarse cotton paper into Constantinople in the middle of the 13th century likewise assisted to break up the formal minuscule hand. To this rough material a rougher style of writing was suited. Through the 14th and 15th centuries the decline of the set minuscule rapidly advances. In the MSS. on cotton paper the writing becomes even more involved and intricate, marks of contraction and accents are combined with the letters in a single action of the pen, and the general result is the production of a thoroughly cursive hand. On vellum, however, the change was not so rapid. Church books were still ordinarily written on that material, which, as it became scarcer in the market (owing to the injury done to the trade by the competition of cotton paper), was supplied from ancient codices which lay ready to hand on the shelves of libraries. The result was an increasing number of palimpsests. In these vellum liturgical MSS. the more formal style of the minuscule was still maintained, and even on paper church services are found to be in the same style. In the 14th century there even appears a partial Renaissance in the writing of church MSS., modelled to some extent on the lines of the writing of the 12th century. The resemblance, however, is only superficial ; for no writer can entirely disguise the character of the writing of his own time. And lastly there was yet another check upon the absolute disintegration of the minuscule in the 15th century exercised by the professional scribes who worked in Italy. Here the rag-paper, which had never made its way in the East, was the only paper in use. Its smoother surface approximated more nearly to that of vellum; and the minuscule hand as written by the Greek scribes in Italy, whether on paper or vellum, re verted again to the older style. The influence of the Renais sance is evident in many of the productions of the Italian Greeks which were written as specimens of calligraphy and served as models for the first Greek printing types. The Greek minuscule hand had, then, by the end of the loth century, become a cursive hand, from which the modern current hand is directly derived. We last saw the ancient cursive in use in the documents prior to the forma tion of the set minuscule, and no doubt it continued in use concurrently with the book- hand. But, as the latter passed through the transformations which have been traced, and gradually assumed a more current style, it may not unreasonably be supposed that it absorbed the cursive hand of the period, and with it whatever elements of the old cursive hand may have survived. LATIN WRITING. In writing a history of Latin palaeography, it will be first necessary, as with the Greek, to follow its development in two main divisions the set book-hand and the cursive. Under the former head will be first ranged the capital, uncial, and half-uncial hands found in early MSS.; on the other side will be traced the course of Roman cursive writing in the waxen tablets and papyri. Next will be shown how this cursive hand was gradually reduced into forms of writing peculiar to different countries on the continent of Europe (reserving for separate examination