Paleography
Palaeography, literally ancient writing, is the study and interpretation of the handwriting in ancient documents, and the development of handwriting. It aims at the interpretation and decipherment of these texts, to allow modern students or researchers to read works of the past. It is also used for historical tracing and determination of the origins and forms of handwriting in old manuscripts.
Because the transcription of documents was tedious and laborious, and materials were often costly, an extensive system of abbreviations developed in the middle ages, particularly for the transcription of Greek and Latin.
History
Ancient paleography
Medieval paleography
When the Roman empire collapsed in the 4th century, Europe was taken over by mostly illiterate Goths; the Ostrogoths ruled Italy, the Visigoths took over Spain and southern France, the Franks settled in central and northern France and the Anglo-Saxons ran over the Celts in Great Britain and Ireland. The Catholic church took on the task of converting the Goths to Christianity and educating them, and over time each tribe of Goths developed its own Roman-based, but unique, system of handwriting. These developed into the National Hands of Spain, Italy, France, and the British Isles.
Prior to the time of Charlemagne several parts of Europe even had their own handwriting style. His rule over a large part of the continent provide an opportunity to unify these writing styles in the hand called Carolingian minuscule. The only script to escape this modernization was the one that continues to be used in traditional Irish handwriting, which has been in severe decline since the early 20th century and is now almost extinct. The printed form was abolished by the Irish government in the 1950s.
See also
