Chronological Survey of Diane Tillotson's Script Tutorials from C8 through C16

Click here for a link to the full list of her script examples.  [NOTE: many of theses links contained the Adobe Flash Player programming language which was "discontinued" in December 2020.  Those pages will not be available.  I have recovered the links below from the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine."  It is an imperfect archive of now-dead site addresses, but it's all we've got.]  The page links below are intended to give a rapid overview of changes in types of hands during the period to aid MS dating of scripts you are most likely to encounter in 341, the Berners Hours or other Goucher manuscripts, or at the Walter Art Museum Library.  Surviving manuscripts from C4-C8 are extremely rare, their scripts most often being encountered in binding fragments.  For full reading competence, longer exposure to her examples will be required but these should get you started.

        One (unique?) piece of evidence may be used to estimate a date before which (terminus anti quem) or after which (terminus post quem) a given MS was written: look at the pages' pricking and ruling.  Determine whether its first line of text begins above the top ruled line, in which case it was written before about 1230 CE, or below the top ruled line, in which case it was written after about 1230 CE.  This rule was first suggested by N.R. [Neil Ripley] Ker who published his findings in "From 'above top line' to 'below top line': A Change in Scribal Practice," Celtica, 1960, pp. 13-16.  Rarely have four pages of scholarly writing been cited so often and to such important effect.  Michelle Brown (2008) more conservatively dates the change to 1220-1240, and Jane Roberts (2005) suggests 1220 as the rough year in which the change began.  Interestingly, the two scribes of BL Cotton MS Nero A.xiv, an early C13 religious manuscript (containing Ancrene Wisse [Rule for Anchoresses]) locate the text of some leaves above and some below the top line, suggesting they were unsure what correct practice dictated, though a later hand ruled a new top line above the first lines of text above the old top lines where they occured (Megan J. Hall, "At Work in the Anchorhold and Beyond: A Codicological Study of London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.xiv," Journal of the Early Book Society Vol. 20 (2017) Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A541439445/LitRC?u=goucher_main&sid=googleScholar&xid=23eefc13. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.

I know of no explanation for why this parchment-wasting innovation swept English and European scriptoria withing perhaps a year or two, but all extant evidence supports that it did.

C8-12 Caroline Minuscule--1) rounded forms; 2) some "crowns" and "feet" on ascenders and descenders of "e," "t," "k," and "b"; 3) "g" does not close lower loop; 4) "d" ascender usually vertical & loop does not cross; 5) balanced crossbars on "x"; 6) "t" has no ascender above the crossbar, a Greek "tau" (τ).

• Forged charter of Battle Abbey, mid 12th century. (British Library, Egerton Charter 2211).  If you right click to open it in a new window, you can come back to this one to remind yourself of the letterforms to look for.  To enlarge the image, hold down "Ctl" and scroll up to make it really big so you can easily see the details.
  

C13 Transition from Caroline Minuscule to Early Gothic--1) more vertical, less rounded; 2) "g" lower loop starts to close; 3)  angled ascender crowns and flat feet; 4) "d" loop starts to cross ascender; 5) "x" crossbars becoming unbalanced and right side of "h" starts to curve under as a descender; the "r" within a word begins to resemble a "2", especially by C14-15 Textura/Textualis script  6) "t" continues to have no or only a tiny ascender above the crossbar, a Greek "tau" (τ).

• Charter of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, early 13th century (British Library, Egerton Charter 2180).C13 Gothic Miniscule Cursive  To see a larger image, scroll down and click on the tiny "text" button.  Hold down the "Ctl" key and scroll up to enlarge further.
  
• Charter of Ralph de Cuningburgh to the Abbey of St. Byland (British Library, add. charter 70691), C13 proto-gothic To see a larger image, scroll down and click on the tiny "text" button.  Hold down the "Ctl" key and scroll up to enlarge further.

C14-15  Gothic Textura--1) angular top and bottom loops, and bows or "bowls" of "p," "o, "e," "b" or "d" next to each other fuse into one line where they touch ("biting"); 2) ascenders may be split at tops to form "crowns" and some vertical strokes have "diamond" feet and heads or "finials" (e.g., "n," "m," and "l"); 3) lower loop of "g" closed and "d" ascender curves backward to left above loop; 4)  vertical "x" form appears; 5) crossed "z"; 6) "t" ascender extends above crossbar as in modern form.

• Book of Hours (private collection, Dutch language).[C15]--Gothic Textura
• Hill Museum and Manuscript Library "Caroline to Textualis" page--describes the transition from Carolingian through Protogothic to Gothic Textualis (AKA Textura).  Scroll down to see an especially good example of "Fully Formed Textualis" in "Germany, (Convent of the Poor Clares) Before 1357 CE."  The detailed description of Textualis/Textura's peculiarly angular letter forms in the examples below demonstrate how the letters were constructed of a series of straight strokes (called "minims," i.e., the tiniest constructive unit).
  

• 15th century Brut Chronicle (British Library, add. ms. 33242, f.140-141)
• Royal warrant of 1491 (Nottinghamshire Archives DDFJ 10/9/3).
  
• Petition to the king of 1449 (London, National Archives, E.28/79/30).
  

C14-16 Cursive Scripts--these scripts are not "scribal" but personal, and therefore NOT in Drogin!  None of these survived on the Archive.net captures of Diane Tillotson's site.  The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library has a page devoted to the C15 Renaissance Florentine scholars like Petrarch and Poggio who rejected Gothic script's complexity to invent a new, faster-written script they called litera antiqua  because it imitated the old Carolignian roundness, letter separation, and simplicity of letter forms.  They encountered these "ancient scripts" when recovering manuscripts of classical Roman letters and works of literature that had survived in copies made during Charlemagne's reign.  Poggio and his friends believed they were seeing examples of the handwriting of the Romans, though we know it was not.  To compound the confusion for us, they called Gothic scripts litera moderna because of course to them it was the current, "modern" script in use.  Click here for the link to the "Latin Humanist" scripts which are the ancestors of modern "Roman" type faces.  These "Latin Humanist" scripts were followed by later C16-17 scribal hands, highly individualized, which have characteristics similar to those produced by private secretaries and their employers, not typical of scribes of the previous eras.  We see them in the C17 indentures from MS Lab 2, for which Andrew Zurcher's "English Handwriting Online 1500-1700" provides many examples of these varied hands.  Most appear to be developments of Gothic Littera Bastarda, personalized and less regular (and so, harder to read at first!).