Medieval letter tiles are one-

letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, walls, edges, or o ...

s that were employed in monasteries and churches of the

late Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the Periodization, period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Eur ...

for the creation of

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

inscriptions on floors and walls. They were created by pressing stamps bearing a reverse image into soft

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

, which was then baked hard, and they were used to form words by assembling single-letter tiles in the desired order. The decoration technique is notable for being an early form of

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

which essentially is nothing but the stringing together of identically created individual letters for the purpose of producing an image. Compared to the conventional printing technique later established by

Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...

, though, medieval tile alphabets were created in an inverse order: In a first step, the (im)printing was done, and only then the process of

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...

occurred, by spreading out the individual letter tiles onto the floor and composing them into words and lines of text. The use of such movable letter tiles is documented for the English Chertsey Abbey, from whose ruins specimens dating to the second half of the 13th century were recovered, as well as for the early 14th‑century flooring of the Dutch Aduard Abbey. In Zinna Abbey south of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, there is an extant ''

Ave Maria The Hail Mary ( la, Ave Maria) is a traditional Christian prayer addressing Mary, the mother of Jesus. The prayer is based on two biblical passages featured in the Gospel of Luke: the Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary (the Annunciation) and Mary's s ...

'' embedded in the floor before the altar. Each letter appears as a relief print on an unglazed, red-brown terracotta tile measuring 14 x 14 cm. The

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

inscription dates to the 13th or 14th century and was composed in Gothic majuscule. The

Prüfening dedicatory inscription The Prüfening dedicatory inscription (german: Prüfeninger Weiheinschrift) is a high medieval inscription impressed on clay which was created in 1119, over three hundred years before Johannes Gutenberg, by the typographic principle. The inscr ...

is a

church inscription on a single clay tablet using a different principle, apparently made by stamping out the words with individual letter stamps or types. __NOTOC__

References

Sources

* * * * {{Citation , last = Meijer , first = Frank , title = De stenen letters van Aduard , publisher = Omnia Uitgevers , edition = 2nd , year = 2004 , location = Groningen , isbn = 978-90-75354-08-9

References

Sources

Further reading