Medieval Calligraphy

Medieval calligraphy

                This book is useful for two reasons; 1) it provides the historical background for many medieval scripts, and 2) explains and shows how those scripts would be formed. Before jumping straight to the section on Gothic Textualis Quadrata, it is worth mentioning a few of the previous developments that are still prevalent in Gothic scripts, the first being the Hierarchy of scripts. During the Carolingian period, both Charlemagne and Alcuin of York wanted to retain the best of the written past, and so had both fine examples of older scripts and the new miniscule script often recorded together capturing the original work in both old and new hands, apparently copying the Luxeuil style of a “hierarchically displayed headlining”. This hierarchy began with title and explicits in Roman Square Capitals; chapter heads, first lines, subtitles, the beginnings of paragraphs and sentences using Rustics; prefaces and second lines using Half Uncial; and finally the remainder of the text to be written in Caroline miniscule. It was the older scripts that retained the most prestigious places of a text, and this trend continued into the Gothic era.

                Several centuries after Caroline miniscule was developed, it underwent a fundamental change in the way it was penned that led to the development of a proto-gothic form which saw the beginnings of angularizing and compacting of letter forms. Other names for this stage in development are “early gothiques Primitives”, “Cistercian script”, and “Late Carolingian Miniscule”, and, interestingly enough, there is no general consensus as to whether or not proto-gothic actually deserves to be named its own distinct script. Scholars don’t even agree as to when it is first recognizable. Was it the tenth century? The eleventh? Perhaps the twelfth? While they do not agree as to when it started, there is consensus that it reached its peak during the twelfth century and was clearly recognizable as full-grown gothic by the thirteenth century. The term “gothic” for this generation of scripts between the twelfth through fifteenth centuries comes from the renaissance scholars who so disliked the scripts that they gave them the most contemptuous and derogatory name they could think of.

                One of the fundamental changes Caroline miniscule underwent was from the focus on individual letter forms to a focus on the overall form and uniformity of the word. This had the effect of shortened spaces between letters, faster writing, and more words per line. There were two ways they could have achieved these effects; 1) by shortening the height of the letters and writing with a narrower pen, or 2) have the letters maintain their present height, but narrow the width of the letters. The author states that we have no concrete reason as to why they chose the latter, but that it was most likely out of economy, the second option only requiring one change as opposed to two. At any rate, with the second option in use, it resulted in the recognizable angular forms of gothic, first out of necessity (the pen was pulled sharply to narrow letters on the curved sections), and then out of aesthetics (it came to be seen as artistic and beautiful).

                By the time we move firmly into the gothic era of writing, several distinct characteristics are notable. The “or” ligature as we have mentioned and demonstrated before; the 8 shaped s used only at the end of a word; the “st” ligature remained with the exclusion of “ct” and “et” ligatures; ii was written as ij to reduce confusion. Later, certain aesthetic features were added as it became more of a calligraphic script, notably the split ascenders. By far the most interesting feature of gothic to me is that the identifying feature of letters forms is mainly in the top half of a letter form, while the bottom half looks almost completely uniform, demonstrating the principles of word form over letter, creating a woven effect in word form (hence textualis, from textile). Other indicators of gothic quadrata are the inclusion of w, y, and z. Perfect Gothic Quadrata was considered to have been achieved when the space between the vertical strokes was exactly the same width as the vertical stroke itself, and the space between words was twice that.  By the thirteenth century, gothic became the most ornate, artifice-bedecked calligraphy ever known, but was by no means uniform throughout continental Europe.

                Spain and Italy are the most notable examples of unique regional hands, developing their characteristic rotunda forms of gothic. One particular reason for their unique development was that Spain and a majority of Italy never came under Carolingian rule, and thus developed their own hands aside from Caroline miniscule, and were only half-influenced by the development of gothic out of that Miniscule. Some of the more interesting rotunda forms include “half-gothic”, “Spanish Round-hand”, “southern Gothic”, and “semi-Quadratus”.