Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Apr 12, 1990 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 291 pages
This work, by the greatest living authority on medieval palaeography, offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account in any language of the history of Latin script. It also contains a detailed account of the role of the book in cultural history from antiquity to the Renaissance, which outlines the history of book illumination. Designed as a textbook, it contains a full and updated bibliography. Because the volume sets the development of Latin script in its cultural context, it also provides an unrivalled introduction to the nature of medieval Latin culture. It will be used extensively in the teaching of latin palaeography, and is unlikely to be superseded.
 

Contents

Writing materials and writing tools
7
Wax tablets
13
The external characteristics of the written heritage
20
The layout of the page
27
Tabulae
34
Preliminary remarks
51
Capitalis
55
Older Roman cursive
61
The development of handwriting from the late ninth to the twelfth century
118
Gothic textura textualis
127
Gothic cursive and bastarda
136
ΙΟ Humanistic script
145
Supplement I Abbreviations
150
Punctuation and related matters
169
Musical notation
173
Numerals
176

Later Roman cursive
63
Uncial
66
The older eastern halfuncial
72
20
73
Later halfuncial
75
Combinations of various scripts
78
Tachygraphy
80
Latin handwriting in the Middle Ages
83
24
87
AngloSaxon script
90
Visigothic Mozarabic script and Sinai script
96
The development towards minuscule in Francia and Italy
100
Beneventan
109
The perfection and triumph of Caroline minuscule
112
Ciphers
177
THE MANUSCRIPT IN CULTURAL HISTORY
179
Roman and Christian antiquity
181
The early Middle Ages
190
The Carolingian period
202
From the tenth to the twelfth century
212
The late Middle Ages
224
The age of humanism
235
Plates between pages 238 and 239
239
Index of manuscripts cited
260
Index of names and subjects
269
Index of authors cited
286
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