![Book of Hours Bentivoglio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Book_of_Hours_Bentivoglio.jpg)
Humanist minuscule is a
handwriting
Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface
A typeface (or font family) is ...
or style of script that was invented in secular circles in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. "Few periods in Western history have produced writing of such great beauty", observes the art historian
Millard Meiss
Millard Lazare Meiss (March 25, 1904 - June 12, 1975) was an American art historian, one of whose specialties was Gothic architecture. Meiss worked as an art history professor at Columbia University from 1934 to 1953."Meiss, Millard." ''The Columb ...
. The new hand was based on
Carolingian minuscule
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...
, which
Renaissance humanist
Renaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term ''humanist'' ( it, umanista) referred to teache ...
s, obsessed with the revival of
antiquity and their role as its inheritors, took to be
ancient Roman
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
:
en they handled manuscript books copied by eleventh- and twelfth-century scribes, Quattrocento
The cultural and artistic events of Italy during the period 1400 to 1499 are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento (, , ) from the Italian word for the number 400, in turn from , which is Italian for the year 1400. The Quattrocento encom ...
literati thought they were looking at texts that came right out of the bookshops of ancient Rome".
The humanistic term ''litterae antiquae'' (the "ancient letters") applied to this hand was an inheritance from the fourteenth century, where the phrase had been opposed to ''litterae modernae'' ("modern letters"), or
Blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
.
The humanist minuscule was connected to the humanistic content of the texts for which it was the appropriate vehicle. By contrast, fifteenth-century texts of professional interest in the fields of law, medicine, and traditional
Thomistic philosophy
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed questions ...
still being taught in the universities were circulated in
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
, whereas
vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".
In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin nor Koine Greek. In this context, vernacular literature appeared ...
had its own, separate, distinctive traditions. "A humanist manuscript was intended to suggest its contents by its look," Martin Davies has noted: "old wine in new bottles, or the very latest vintage in stylish new dress". With the diffusion of humanist manuscripts produced in the highly organized
commercial scriptoria of Quattrocento Italy, the Italian humanist script reached the rest of Europe, a very important aspect which has not yet been fully explored.
Petrarchan reform
In
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...
's compact book hand, the wider leading and reduced compression and round curves are early manifestations of the reaction against the crabbed Gothic secretarial minuscule we know today as "
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
". Petrarch was one of the few medieval authors to have written at any length on the handwriting of his time; in his essay on the subject, ''La scrittura'', he criticized the current scholastic hand, with its laboured strokes (''artificiosis litterarum tractibus'') and exuberant (''luxurians'') letter-forms amusing the eye from a distance, but fatiguing on closer exposure, as if written for another purpose than to be read. For Petrarch the gothic hand violated three principles: writing, he said, should be simple (''castigata''), clear (''clara''), and orthographically correct.
Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian people, Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so we ...
was a great admirer of Petrarch; from Boccaccio's immediate circle this post-Petrarchan "semi-gothic" revised hand spread to ''literati'' in
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
,
Lombardy
Lombardy ( it, Lombardia, Lombard language, Lombard: ''Lombardia'' or ''Lumbardia' '') is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in the northern-central part of the country and has a population of about 10 ...
, and the
Veneto
Veneto (, ; vec, Vèneto ) or Venetia is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fourth in Italy. The region's capital is Venice while the biggest city is Verona.
Veneto was part of the Roman Empire unt ...
.
Poggio Bracciolini
A more thorough reform of handwriting than the Petrarchan compromise was in the offing. The generator of the new style (''illustration'') was
Poggio Bracciolini
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (11 February 1380 – 30 October 1459), usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist. He was responsible for rediscovering and recovering many classi ...
, a tireless pursuer of ancient manuscripts, who developed the new
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humani ...
script in the first decade of the 15th century. The Florentine bookseller
Vespasiano da Bisticci
Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421 – 1498) was an Italian humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious ...
recalled later in the century that Poggio had been a very fine
calligrapher
Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...
of ''lettera antica'' and had transcribed texts to support himself— presumably, as Martin Davies points out— before he went to Rome in 1403 to begin his career in the
papal curia.
Berthold Ullman Berthold Louis Ullman (August 18, 1882 in Chicago, Illinois – June 26, 1965 in Vatican City) was an American Classical scholar.
Ullman was born in Chicago to Louis Ullman and Eleanora Fried. He was educated at the University of Chicago (A.B. 1903 ...
identifies the watershed moment in the development of the new humanistic hand as the youthful Poggio's transcription of
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
's ''
Epistles to Atticus''. By the time the
Medici
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...
library was catalogued in 1418, almost half the manuscripts were noted as in the ''lettera antica''. The new script was embraced and developed by the Florentine humanists and educators
Niccolò de' Niccoli
Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364 – 22 January 1437) was an Italian Renaissance humanist.
He was born and died in Florence, and was one of the chief figures in the company of learned men which gathered around the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici. Nicc ...
and
Coluccio Salutati
Coluccio Salutati (16 February 1331 – 4 May 1406) was an Italian humanist and notary, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence; as chancellor of the Republic and its most prominent voice, he was effec ...
.
Niccoli's cursive and roman typeface
The neat, sloping, humanist
cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
invented by the Florentine humanist
Niccolò de' Niccoli
Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364 – 22 January 1437) was an Italian Renaissance humanist.
He was born and died in Florence, and was one of the chief figures in the company of learned men which gathered around the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici. Nicc ...
in the 1420s and disseminated through his numerous scholars is usually characterized as essentially a rapid version of the same script. Rhiannon Daniels writes, however, that "
is was not humanistic bookhand written cursively, but a running script written with a very fine pen; a modification of contemporary gothic chancery script influenced by humanistic bookhand; hence it is sometimes known as ''cancelleresca all'antica''". In the late fifteenth century this "chancery script in the Antique manner" was further developed by humanists in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. Calligraphic forms of this "chancery italic" were popularized by the famous Roman writing master
Ludovico Arrighi
Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi (Cornedo Vicentino, 1475?–1527?) was a papal scribe and type designer in Renaissance Italy.
Very little is known of the circumstances of his life. He may have started his career as a writing master in Venice, ...
in the early sixteenth century.
In the
history of Western typography
Modern typographers view typography as a craft with a very long history tracing its origins back to the first punches and dies used to make seals and coinage currency in ancient times. The basic elements of typography are at least as old as ci ...
humanist minuscule gained prominence as a model for the typesetter's
roman typeface
In Latin script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 15th century, based on the pairing of inscriptional ...
, as it was standardized by
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius (; it, Aldo Pio Manuzio; 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preserv ...
, who introduced his revolutionary
italic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed tex ...
face based on the
chancery hand
The term "chancery hand" can refer to either of two distinct styles of historical handwriting.
A chancery hand was at first a form of handwriting for business transactions that developed in the Lateran chancery (the ) of the 13th century, th ...
in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, 1501, and was practised by designer-printers
Nicolas Jenson
Nicholas Jenson (c. 1420 – 1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the creator of on ...
and
Francesco Griffo Francesco Griffo (1450–1518), also called Francesco da Bologna, was a fifteenth-century Italian punchcutter. He worked for Aldus Manutius, designing the printer's more important humanist typefaces, including the first italic type. He cut Roman, Gr ...
; roman type has helped establish the remarkable resistance to change of the modern
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
.
[S. Morison, "Early humanistic script and the first roman type", ''The Library'' 24 (1943:1–291; Lane Wilkinson (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), "The Humanistic minuscule and the advent of Roman type"]
online text in pdf format
archived fro
the original
at the Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
2011-03-13).
See also
*
Humanist (sans serif): styles of Modernist typefaces developed in the 1920s as part of the
International Typographic Style
The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s. The Internatio ...
, using features of letter shapes in the Humanist tradition.
References
External links
'Manual of Latin Palaeography'(A comprehensive PDF file containing 82 pages profusely illustrated, June 2014).
{{Authority control
Orthography
Palaeography
Medieval scripts
Western calligraphy