Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/171

 PALAEOGRAPHY 155 alphabets or short sentences the exercises of children at school (Corp. Inscr. Lat., iii. p. 962). But unfortunately material for the study of this hand fails us for some time after the period of the Dacian tablets, and whole centuries have to be passed before we rind examples. At length some very interesting fragments of papyri, assigned to the 5th century, disclose the official cursive hand of the Roman chancery of that time, in which are seen the same characters, with certain differences and modifications, as are employed in the waxen tablets. They contain portions of two rescripts addressed to Egyptian officials, and are said to have been found at Phile and Elephantine. Both documents are in the same hand; and the fragments are divided between the libraries of Paris and Leyden. For a long time the writing remained undeciphered, and Champollion-Figeac, while publishing a facsimile (Chartes et MSS. s^^r papyrus, 1840, pi. 14), had to confess that he was unable to read it. Massmann, however, with the experience gained in his work upon the waxen tablets, succeeded without much difficulty in reading the fragment at Leyden (Libellus aurarius, p. 147), and was followed by M. de Wailly, who published the whole of the fragments (Mem. de Vlnstitut, xv., 1842, p. 399). Later, Mommsen and Jaff6 have dealt with the text of the documents (Jahrbuch des. gem. deut. Rechts^vi., 1863, p. 398), and compared in a table the forms of the letters with those of the Dacian tablets. Roman Cursive (Imperial Chancery), 5th century. (portionem ipsi debitam resarcire nee ullum precatorem ex instrumento) The characters are large, the line of writing being about three-fourths of an inch deep, and the heads and tails of the long letters are flourished ; but the even slope of the strokes imparts to the writing a certain uniform and graceful appearance. As to the actual shapes of the letters, as will be seen from the reduced facsimile here given, there may be recognized in many of them only a more current form of those which have been described above. The A and R may be distinguished by noticing the different angle at which the top strokes are applied ; the B, to suit the requirements of the more current style, is no longer the closed rf-shaped letter of the tablets, but is open at the bow and more nearly resembles a reversed b ; the tall letters/, h, I, and long s have developed loops ; O and v-shaped U r.re very small, and written high in the line. The letters which seem to differ essentially from those of the tablets are E, M, N. The first of these is probably explained correctly by Jaffe as a development of the earlier jj quickly written and looped. The M and N have been compared with the minuscule forms of the Greek tnu and nn, as though the latter had been adopted ; but they may with better reason be explained as cursive forms of the Latin capitals M and N. That this hand should have retained so much of the older formation of the Roman cursive is no doubt to be attributed to the fact of its being an official style of writ ing which would conform to tradition. To find a more independent development we turn to the documents on papyrus from Ravenna, Naples, and other places in Italy which date from the 5th century and are written in a looser and more straggling hand. Examples of this hand will be found in largest numbers in Marini s work specially treating of these documents (/ Papiri Diplomatici), and also in the publications of Mabillon (De Re Diplomatica), Champollion-Figeac (Chartes et MSS. sur papyrus), Mass mann (Urkunden in Neapel und Arezzo), Gloria (Paleo- (jrnfia), as well as in Fries, of Ancient Charters in the British Museum, part iv., 1878, Nos. 45, 46, and in the Facsimiles of the Pahcographical Society. The development that is found in these papyri of minuscule forms almost complete shows how great a change must have been at work during the three centuries which intervene between the date of the Dacian tablets and that of these documents; and the variety of shape which certain of them assume in combina tion with other letters proves that the scribes were well practised in the hand. wfiw Roman Cursive (Ravenna), 572 A.D. (huius splendedissimae urbis) The letter a has now lost all trace of the capital ; it is the open ^-shaped minuscule, developed from the looped uncial (^X A) ; the b, throwing off the loop or curve on the left which gave it the appearance of d, has developed one on the right, and appears in the form familiar in modern writing ; minuscule m, n, and are fully formed (the last never joining a following letter, and thus always dis tinguishable from ) ; p, q, and r approach to the long minuscules, and s, having acquired an incipient tag, has taken the form T which it keeps long after. This form of writing was widely used, and was not con fined to legal documents. It is found in grammatical works, as in the second hand of the palimpsest MS. of Licinianus (Cat. Anc. MSS., pt. ii., pis. 1, 2) of the 6th century, and in such volumes as the Josephus of the Ambrosian Library of the 7th century (Pal. Soc., pi. 59), and in the St Avitus of the 6th century and other MSS. written in France and referred to below under the head of Merovingian writing. It is indeed only natural to suppose that this, the most convenient, because cursive, hand, should have been employed for ordinary books which were in daily use. That so few of such books should have survived is no doubt owing to the destruction of the greater number by the wear and tear to which they were subjected. NATIONAL WRITING. Roman writing capital, uncial, half-uncial, and cursive became known to the Western nations, and in different ways played the principal part in the formation of the national styles of writing. In Ireland and England it was adopted under certain restrictions. On the Continent it had a wider range ; and from it were constructed the three kinds of writing which in many characteristics closely resembled one another, and which, practised in Italy, Spain, and Frankland, are known by the names of Lombardic, Visigothic, and Merovingian. The basis of all three was the Roman cursive, as is very evident in the national charters which have survived; and by a certain admixture of uncial and half-uncial forms with the cursive were pro duced the set book-hands of those countries. Lombardic. In Italy the cursive hand of the Ravenna documents, which have been already referred to, continued in use and became more and more intricate and difficult to read. Facsimiles have been reproduced from Milanese documents of the 8th and 9th century (Sickel, Momnnenta