E U R O T Y P O

Middle Ages

Uncial, Half Uncial, Carolingian minuscule and Gothics.

HOME ESP

The Origins:
The Etruscan and the Greeks colonies. The Roman Empire:
Capitalis Monumentalis
and Rustic letters. Middle Ages:
Uncial, Half Uncial, Carolingian minuscule. Renaissance:
Italian humanistic types. Roman Modern style:
Giambbattista Bodoni.

Slovakian text written in Carolingian minuscule on parchment, Bishop Abraham de Freising.

1- The Freising's maunscript. Late 10th century, the letter forms are open and legible.

The uncial letter was used by the Greeks from as early as the 3rd century BC. These letters were probably borrowed by the Romans and gave it name uncial, which many believe has been too loosely translated as meaning 'roman inch in height'. It has been suggested that uncials were developed at the time of the Emperor Constantine, as a specific Christian book hand to replace rustic and the square capitals which were used for the pagan classics.

When the term half uncial was first used it was probably thought that they had evolved from the uncials, in fact they developed from early Greek scripts, therefore the characteristic flat pen angle. An additional source may have been the New Roman Cursive which employed looped ascenders to facilitate ligatures. Half uncials were a step further towards the minuscule letter. All earlier letters could be drawn between two guide lines, but the half uncial requires four to facilitate the ascenders and descenders.

: : : : bajar middle_ages.pdf : 335 kb