PALAEOGRAPHY 



705 



writing was practised at a much earlier period, 

 since we find uncial forms in some of t!*e Graffiti 

 (q.v. ) scribbled on Pompeian walls, while as early 

 as the 3d century B.C. the lapidary forms of P, R, 

 C, S show that uncial influences had already trans- 

 formed the earlier angular shapes of these'letters. 

 The uncial book-hand is distinguished from the 

 contemporary square capitals by the rounded forms 

 .00 U h instead of E, M, V," H, and by the tails 

 of P, F, Q, and R falling below the line," while the 

 head of L rises above it. 



One of the oldest uncial Latin MSS. is the Ver- 

 celli Gospels, said to have been transcribed by the 

 hand of Eusebius himself, but in any case nearly 

 as early as his time. A good example of the later 

 uncials is the copy of the Gospels now in the library 

 of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which is 

 believed to have been the actual copy brought from 

 Rome by St Augustine in 596. Also of the 6th 

 centurv is the Codex Bez<e at Cambridge, the style 

 of which is shown in the fac-simile already given. 

 The earlier and later uncial styles are well seen in 

 the famous palimpsest Cicero from the monastery 

 of Bobbio, now in the Vatican. A palimpsest is a 

 manuscript from which the writing was washed off 

 with a sponge, or sometimes scraped or rubbed, in 

 order that the vellum might be used for some other 

 work. The Codex Ephrcemi aliove mentioned is a 

 palimpsest, a 5th-century Greek text being over- 

 written in a 12th-century hand. The % atican 

 Cicero is a codex consisting of 150 leaves, contain- 

 ing in the first hand the treatise De Republica, 

 written in double columns in large uncials, 

 probably of the 4th century. Over this is written 

 across the commentary of St Augustine on the 

 Psalms, in a small uncial hand of the 7th century. 



In the fainter writing of the original manuscript 

 we may decipher the words EST Kim It IXQUIT 

 AFRICASUS RESP.[ublica]. The writing in the 

 second hand reads (line 1) HOMO EST yuiA, (2) 

 ET OMNES XPIAJJI [Christiani] MEMIIUA srxr XPI 

 [Ckrt*ti\ (3) MEMBRA XPI [Christi] Cfl'ID CAX- 

 TA.NT. A.MANT, (4)DESIDERANDO CANTA.NT. ALI- 

 QOARDO. 



Towards the close of. the 7th century the Latin 

 uncial becomes rough and careless, and it deterior- 

 ates still further in the 8th, when it is replaced as 

 a luiok hand by a new script which goes by the 

 name of seminncial or half-uncial. This name, 

 which arose out of a misconception of early paheo- 

 graplrerH, does not signify a script half the sixe of 

 tin- uncial, some seiniuncials being larger than 

 some uncials, but is used to denote an uncial script 

 with new forms of certain letters, of g and s, for 

 instance, which were derived from the cursive. 

 The earliest traces of the semiuncial style are 

 found towards the end of the 5th century, and the 

 first instance of its use as a book-hand is a Hilary, 

 written in 509 or 510, now preserved in the Chapter 

 Library of St Peter's at Rome. 



The old Roman cursive which thus began to 



influence the uncial writing in the 6th century is 



of great palteographical importance, since it became 



the source of many forms in modern scripts. Its 



351 



existence has long been suspected, T?ut actual 

 examples have only recently been discovered. In 

 a house at Pompeii a number of wax-tablets were 

 found in 1875 which proved to be the business 

 memoranda of L. Ccecilius Jucundus, a Pompeian 

 banker and agent, mostly belonging to the years 

 55 and 56 A. D. , and relating to purchases at auctions, 

 and payments of taxes on behalf of his clients. 

 Similar tablets, which are dated from 131 to 167 

 A. D. , have been discovered in abandoned gold- 

 workings in Dacia. This old Roman cursive, 

 which is very illegible, exhibits the forms out of 

 which arose ( (the long s) and also the modern 

 forms g, b, f, m, n, d, r, h, which replaced the 

 capital anil uncial forms G, B, F, M, N, D, R, H. 

 This illegible Roman cursive reappears in a more 

 set oflicial hand in rescripts addressed to Egyptian 

 functionaries in the 5th century, in official docu- 

 ments written at Ravenna in the 6th century, as 

 well as in numerous marginal notes in uncial or 

 semiuncial manuscripts. It is also employed in 

 a copy of Avitus, written in the 6th century! and a 

 JowpbtU of the 7th. These two books are" writ ten 

 on papyrus, and the absence of other examples may 

 be explained by the fact that the fragile papyrus 

 books, probably copies made by scholars for their 

 own use, have mostly perished, only vellum codices 

 as a rule having l>een preserved. 



With the establishment of the Teutonic kingdoms 

 on the ruins of the- Roman empire a number of 

 national scripts arose the Merovingian in France, 

 the Visigotbic in Spain, and the Lorn bardic in 

 Italy. These were all based on the Roman cursive, 

 and were used for civil purposes as well as for 

 charters and other diplomatic documents. The 

 Merovingian became the official hand of the 

 Prankish empire. It is 

 cramped and vermiform, 

 with exaggerated loops 

 for the heads and tails to 

 certain letters. It was 

 used as the diplomatic 

 hand in the chanceries of 

 France and Italy till the 

 9th century, and in the 

 imperial chancery till 

 1231, when its use was 

 abolished by Frederick 

 II. It has survived, 

 however, in a modified 

 form in the modern German cursive, in which many 

 of the peculiar forms of the old Roman cursive can 

 be detected. Out of the official Roman cursive 

 arose the script, which was employed in papal bulls 

 till the 12th century,' when it was replaced by the 

 French minuscule, "which was used till the 16th 

 century, when a deformed, contracted, and illegible 

 script called the littera Sancti Petri was adopted. 



Tlie old cursive derives its chief importance from 

 having been one of the sources from which was de- 

 veloped the semiuncial book-hand which superseded 

 the old uncial. Incorporating sundry uncial forms, 

 the Visigothic and Lombardic cursives developed 

 in the monasteries into calligraphic book-hands. 

 But the Irish semiuncial is the most important of 

 the national scripts, as it became the basis of the 

 ' Roman type,' Which is used in our modern printed 

 books. The history of this Irish semiuncial is 

 obscure. Its elements must have been obtained, 

 probably in the 5th century, from the semiuncial 

 book-hand of southern Gaul. The forms of some 

 of the letters are plainly those of the Roman 

 uncial ; others are calligraphic forms which must, 

 have been derived from an ecclesiastical Galilean 

 type of the Roman cursive. Just as the Greek 

 minuscule has duplicate forms of certain leiiers, 

 some derived from the uncial, others from the 

 cursive, so the double parentage of the Irish 



