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Humanistic Script
12020-06-19T13:08:38-07:00Micaela Rodgers4f64ed17cdc860d24de738ffbad6fc87bc98886f354881plain2020-06-19T13:08:38-07:00Micaela Rodgers4f64ed17cdc860d24de738ffbad6fc87bc98886fThe origins of the humanistic reform of script go back to Petrarch (mid-fourteenth century) who expressed a clear desire for increased legibility in the tracing and disposition of individual letters, even if the actual letter forms remain essentially Gothic.
From around 1400 we can speak of a fully formed humanistic script: a round, upright, formal book-hand characterized by spaciousness, avoidance of abbreviation and of fusion of letters, and reformed spelling. It soon became known as litterae antiquae or lettera antica, in modern terms humanistica rotunda or formata. It looked back not directly to antiquity but to the first great revival of antiquity in Carolingian times, and specifically to Italian manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries;
See: Derolez, A. “Le livre Manuscrit de la Renaissance.” In El libro Antiguo Espanol. Actas del Segundo Coloquio Internacional, 177-192. Madrid, 1992.
Kraye, Jill, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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1media/DEO Border1.PNG2020-01-20T16:04:34-08:00Script De Officiis3plain2020-06-19T13:08:51-07:00The script of the main body of this manuscript is an example of the littera bastarda (or lettre bâtarde, or simply bâtarde) a mixed cursive and book hand of the later fourteenth and the fifteenth century, used particularly in northern France and Western Germany. The word bastarda indicates its mixed parentage of formal black letter and casual cursive script.
“There are at least two hands, much alike, used in the text itself, the first from f. 1 to f. xliv, with the second, a hand which seems bolder and less precise, beginning with on f. xlv. In addition, the marginal notes and some of the corrections have been done by at least one other scribe, in a more angular and less easily read “humanistic script.” (Merrithew, 44).