Editing Palaeography (section)

=== Set minuscule writing ===
One by one, the national minuscule cursive hands were replaced by a set minuscule hand which has already been mentioned and its origins may now be traced from the beginning.

==== Half-uncial writing ====
The early cursive was the medium in which the minuscule forms were gradually evolved from the corresponding majuscule forms. Minuscule writing was therefore cursive in its inception. As the minuscule letters made their appearance in the cursive writing of documents, they were adopted and given calligraphic form by the copyists of literary texts, so that the set minuscule alphabet was constituted gradually, letter by letter, following the development of the minuscule cursive. Just as some documents written in the early cursive show a mixture of majuscule and minuscule forms, so certain literary papyri of the 3rd century,<ref>''Oxyrhynchus Papyri, cit.'', iv, pl. vi, No. 668; xi, pl. vi, No. 1,379.</ref> and inscriptions on stone of the 4th century<ref>''Pal. Soc., cit.'', pl. 127-8; ''Arch. pal. ital., cit.'', v, pl. 6.</ref> yield examples of a mixed set hand, with minuscule forms side by side with capital and uncial letters. The number of minuscule forms increases steadily in texts written in the mixed hand, and especially in marginal notes, until by the end of the 5th century the majuscule forms have almost entirely disappeared in some [[manuscript]]s. This quasi-minuscule writing, known as the "half-uncial"<ref>Cf. many examples in [[Émile Chatelain]], ''Semiuncial Script, passim''.</ref> thus derives from a long line of mixed hands which, in a synoptic chart of [[Latin script]]s, would appear close to the oldest ''librariae'', and between them and the ''epistolaris'' (cursive), from which its characteristic forms were successively derived. It had a considerable influence on the continental ''scriptura libraria'' of the 7th and 8th centuries.

==== Irish and Anglo-Saxon writing ====
The half-uncial hand was introduced in Ireland along with Latin culture in the 5th century by priests and laymen from [[Gaul]], fleeing before the barbarian invasions. It was adopted there to the exclusion of the cursive, and soon took on a distinct character. There are two well established classes of Irish writing as early as the 7th century: a large round half-uncial hand, in which certain majuscule forms frequently appear, and a pointed hand, which becomes more cursive and more genuinely minuscule. The latter developed out of the former.<ref>Cf. Wolfgang Keller, [https://books.google.com/books?id=IKA3QwAACAAJ ''Angelsächsische Palaeographie''], Mayer & Müller, 1906.</ref> One of the distinguishing marks of manuscripts of Irish origin is to be found in the initial letters, which are ornamented by interlacing, animal forms, or a frame of red dots. The most certain evidence, however, is provided by the system of abbreviations and by the combined square and cuneiform appearance of the minuscule at the height of its development.<ref>Cf. Schiapparelli in ''Arch. stor. ital., cit.'', lxxiv, ii, pp. 1–126.</ref> The two types of Irish writing were introduced in the north of Great Britain by the monks, and were soon adopted by the [[Anglo-Saxons]], being so exactly copied that it is sometimes difficult to determine the origin of an example. Gradually, however, the Anglo-Saxon writing developed a distinct style, and even local types,<ref>Cf. Keller, ''op. cit.''; W.M. Lindsay, [https://archive.org/details/earlywelshscript00lind ''Early Welsh Script''], Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1912.</ref> which were superseded after the Norman conquest by the Carolingian minuscule. Through [[St Columbanus]] and his followers, Irish writing spread to the continent, and manuscripts were written in the Irish hand in the monasteries of [[Bobbio Abbey]] and [[St Gall]] during the 7th and 8th centuries.

==== Pre-Caroline ====
James J. John points out that the disappearance of imperial authority around the end of the 5th century in most of the Latin-speaking half of the Roman Empire does not entail the disappearance of the Latin scripts, but rather introduced conditions that would allow the various provinces of the West gradually to drift apart in their writing habits, a process that began around the 7th century.<ref>{{cite book |first=James J. |last=John |chapter=Latin Paleography |editor-first=J. |editor-last=Powell |title=Medieval Studies : An Introduction |edition=2nd |location=Syracuse |publisher=[[Syracuse University Press]] |year=1992 |pages=15–16 |isbn=0-8156-2555-3 }}</ref>

[[Pope Gregory I]] (Gregory the Great, d. 604) was influential in the spread of Christianity to Britain and also sent Queens Theodelinde and Brunhilda, as well as Spanish bishops, copies of manuscripts. Furthermore, he sent the Roman monk [[Augustine of Canterbury]] to Britain on a missionary journey, on which Augustine may have brought manuscripts. Although Italy's dominance as a centre of manuscript production began to decline, especially after the [[Gothic War (535–554)]] and the invasions by the [[Lombards]], its manuscripts—and more important, the scripts in which they were written—were distributed across Europe.<ref>See {{cite book |first=Bernhard |last=Bischoff |author-link=Bernhard Bischoff |title=Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages |translator-first=Daibi O |translator-last=Croinin |translator2-first=David |translator2-last=Ganz |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1990 |pages=83–112; 190–202 |isbn=0-521-36473-6 }}</ref>

From the 6th through the 8th centuries, a number of so-called 'national hands' were developed throughout the Latin-speaking areas of the former Roman Empire. By the late 6th century Irish scribes had begun transforming Roman scripts into Insular minuscule and majuscule scripts. A series of transformations, for book purposes, of the cursive documentary script that had grown out of the later Roman cursive would get under way in France by the mid-7th century. In Spain half-uncial and cursive would both be transformed into a new script, the Visigothic minuscule, no later than the early 8th century.<ref>{{Harvnb|John|1992|p=16}}.</ref>

==== Carolingian minuscule ====
[[File:Charlemagne miniscule.jpg|thumb|200px|A page in [[Carolingian minuscule]] (''[[Book of Exodus]]'')]]
Beginning in the 8th century, as [[Charlemagne]] began to consolidate power over a large area of western Europe, scribes developed a minuscule script ([[Caroline minuscule]]) that effectively became the standard script for manuscripts from the 9th to the 11th centuries. The origin of this hand is much disputed. This is due to the confusion which prevailed before the Carolingian period in the ''libraria'' in France, Italy and Germany as a result of the competition between the cursive and the set hands. In addition to the calligraphic uncial and half-uncial writings, which were imitative forms, little used and consequently without much vitality, and the minuscule cursive, which was the most natural hand, there were innumerable varieties of mixed writing derived from the influence of these hands on each other. In some, the uncial or half-uncial forms were preserved with little or no modification, but the influence of the cursive is shown by the freedom of the strokes; these are known as rustic, semi-cursive or cursive uncial or half-uncial hands. Conversely, the cursive was sometimes affected, in varying degrees, by the set ''librariae''; the cursive of the ''epistolaris'' became a semi-cursive when adopted as a ''libraria''. Nor is this all. Apart from these reciprocal influences affecting the movement of the hand across the page, there were [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] influences at work, letters being borrowed from one alphabet for another. This led to compromises of all sorts and of infinite variety between the uncial and half-uncial and the cursive. It will readily be understood that the origin of the Carolingian minuscule, which must be sought in this tangle of pre-Carolingian hands, involves disagreement. The new writing is admittedly much more closely related to the ''epistolaris'' than the primitive minuscule; this is shown by certain forms, such as the open ''{{angbr|a}}'' ([[File:Hand 1.1 sample a 2.png|20px]]), which recall the cursive, by the joining of certain letters, and by the clubbing of the tall letters '''''b d h l''''', which resulted from a cursive ''[[Ductus (linguistics)|ductus]]''. Most palaeographers agree in assigning the new hand the place shown in the {{clarify span|following table|where is its content?|date=April 2025}}:<ref name="Bouar" />
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto;"
|-
! ''Epistolaris''
! colspan="5" | ''Librariæ''
|-
| Minuscule cursive
| rowspan="2" | Capitals<br />Uncials
| Half-uncial
| Rustic uncial<br />and half-uncial
| Pre-Carolingian<br />Carolingian
| Semi-cursive
|}

Controversy turns on the question whether the Carolingian minuscule is the primitive minuscule as modified by the influence of the cursive or a cursive based on the primitive minuscule. Its place of origin is also uncertain: Rome, the [[Palatine]] school, [[Tours]], [[Reims]], [[Metz]], [[Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis|Saint-Denis]] and [[Corbie]] have been suggested, but no agreement has been reached.<ref>Cf. ''int. al.'', Harald Steinacker in ''Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle'', Rome, 1924, iv, pp. 126ff; G. Cencetti, "Postilla nuova a un problema paleografico vecchio: l'origine della minuscola carolina", in ''Nova Historia'', 1955, pp. 1–24; B. Bischoff, ''Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, cit.'', pp. 108–109.</ref> In any case, the appearance of the new hand is a turning point in the history of culture. So far as Latin writing is concerned, it marks the dawn of [[Early modern period|modern times]].<ref>{{cite EB1911 |last=Thompson |first=Edward Maunde |wstitle=Palaeography |volume=20 |pages=556&ndash;579}}</ref>

==== Gothic minuscule ====
In the 12th century, Carolingian minuscule underwent a change in its appearance and adopted bold and broken [[Gothic alphabet|Gothic]] letter-forms. This style remained predominant, with some regional variants, until the 15th century, when the [[Renaissance humanism|Renaissance humanistic]] scripts revived a version of Carolingian minuscule. It then spread from the Italian [[Renaissance]] all over Europe.