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[German version] Term for Old English scripts introduced from Ireland mostly in the 7th cent. AD; often called 'insular scripts' owing to their distribution across the whole of the British Isles. Anglo-Saxon script reached Germany via Anglo-Saxon missionaries. The two main types are (1) insular half-uncial (also called majuscule) and (2) a minuscule script, each with certain variants and mutations of individual letter forms. (1) The half-uncial type (which sometimes converges with minuscule) is particularly well exemplified in the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, BL Cotton Nero…

[German version] The chief minuscule script of the Spanish peninsula from the late 7th cent. AD onwards (National scripts; Minuscule). Although its letter forms are of Roman, rather than Visigothic origin, the modern term Visigothic Script (VS) is justified: the script had already developed before the Arab conquest of the kingdom of the Visigoths; their descendants used it for a long time afterwards. From the 9th cent. onwards, VS was superseded by Carolingian minuscule in Catalonia and disappeare…

[German version] The Italian humanists of the 15th cent. developed two new Latin scripts: (1) the script now commonly known as ‘humanistic’, which is rather formal, and (2) the so-called ‘humanistic cursive’. (1) The former, known as ‘antiqua’, is basically a revived variant of the Carolingian  minuscule, which was introduced to Florence just before 1400 by Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) and Niccolò Niccoli (1364-1437). They named their model, the Carolingian minuscule, the ‘antiqua’ because they …

[German version] The Irish script is the most striking and independent development from the period between the Roman and Carolingian eras; although it originated in Ireland, it is often called ‘insular’ script because it soon became the main script for all of the British Isles. It includes two types (for the form of the letters cf.  Anglo-Saxon script): (1) the half-uncial (also called round uncial or majuscule), which probably originated in the 6th cent. AD. It died out in the 11th cent., but was…

[German version] This term for the Latin scripts which developed in western Europe between the fall of Rome in the 5th cent. AD and the appearance of Carolingian minuscule in the late 8th cent., was used for the first time by R. P. Tassin and Ch. F. Toustain in their ‘Nouveau traité de diplomatique’ (6 vols., Paris 1750-1765; here vol. 2, p. 481-482), but it goes back already to Jean Mabillon. The latter noted in his ‘De re diplomatica’ (1681; 21709, 45, 49, 343) that in addition to the old Roman script there are four types of early medieval Latin scripts: Gothic, Lombardic…

[German version] The term ‘Merovingian’ primarily designates the cursive script used in diplomas and documents of the royal Merovingian chancery (c. AD 457-751), but also specific bookhands, today denoted as ‘pre-Carolingian’, that developed under the influence of this document hand in the region that is now France. This document hand derives in a direct line from Roman cursive ( Script). It was modified, either by planned design or by gradual, unconscious transformation, into a typical form that …

I. Overview [German version] A. Definition Minuscule, in contrast to majuscule, is the name given to the form of writing where letters, often ligatured (Ligature), are organised in a(n idealised) four-line system: the two middle lines delimit the space for the bodies of the letters and the outer lines that for ascenders and descenders. Eleuteri, Paolo (Venice) [German version] B. Greek writing In the history of Greek writing minuscule developed out of late antique cursive (Writing, styles of), which was used exclusively for non-literary texts. The earliest…