Medieval Ductus
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Uncial was the main script of the catholic Church from the 4th to the 6th centuries. This artificial uncial developed from that script, as the original uncial became too calligraphic. This script has a pen angle of 0° to 10°, which makes it a very slow and precise script to write. Much of the Uncial and its variations survived into later times by becoming the basis of the majuscule (upper case) for other scripts. The draw back is the time that this script takes to write, which developed into embellishment, mainly by drawing the corner of the nib in flourishes. |
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This is the most important hand/script devised as it is the basis for the Italic hand (devised in the mid fifteenth century) and it is very close to many modern handwriting styles. The script was devised/found by Abbott Alcuin of York in the eighth century for the Emperor Charlemagne. This script can still be seen in many of the printing types in use today. Its drawback is that while being readable it also takes up a lot of space and the demise of the script was forced by the need to get more words on each page, hence the dense `gothic' scripts evolved. |
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This hand is a transitional script between the neat clear Carolingian and the dense packed Gothic, with many elements of both scripts. It maintains the cursive nature of Carolingian and introduces the close packed characters of the gothic script. The temporal range of this script is dependent on the country. |
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Quadrata developed as a way of maximising the amount of text on the page. It can be a very calligraphic script. The text should be written with the space between the verticles of the letter equal to the width of the strokes of the letter, this makes it a precision script. With Gothic it is the pattern of the whole picture, which is accentuated, not the individual letter. Some of the embellishments are done with the corner of the nib, such as the fine lines on the `a'. |
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The bastard script was widely used through Europe, with each area, which could be as small as a town, having its own distinctive variation. There are many more variations on this script than have been catalogued. This example comes from a Brittany manuscript of the lath 14th century. Bastarde was developed as a quick to write functional script, but soon acquired its own artistic embellishments. It was eventually replaced by the humanist and italic scripts of the renaissance. |
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The italic scripts of Humanist, Rotunda and Italic were devised in the fifteenth and sixteenth century as a revolt against the dense, and sometimes hard to read gothic. The designers of these scripts went back to the early manuscripts and designed hand based on the Carolingian of the eighth and ninth centuries. Some versions are indistinguishable from Carolingian. Credit is given to Coluccio Salutati, Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolo Niccoli for these renaissance letter forms. The script should be drawn with precise round strokes. |
All these ducti are the work of Stephen Roylance, known
as Thorfinn Hrolfsson in the SCA.
© 1998, all rights reserved. All the calligraphy
is copyright to Steve Roylance, may not be reproduced or used elsewhere
without specific written permission.
Permission is given to those subscribed to scribes@castle.org
and to thtse members of the S.C.A.Inc. to use these ducti pages within
S.C.A.Inc..