Distinguishing Late Medieval Scripts

At Carleton we have a number of late medieval folios and manuscripts - all dating from the thirteenth-century to the sixteenth century. You goal is to identify key criteria to discern the characteristics of the script of your folio so that you can begin to understand its time and place of origin.

Your starting point should be a blog post by Yvonne Seale (follow her on Twitter) entitled, "A Beginner’s Guide to Digital Palaeography of Medieval Manuscripts". It lists loads of good resources, including Enigma, self-described as intended for "Unpuzzling difficult Latin readings in medieval manuscripts" (i.e. gives you most likely potential readings from the letters you can read).

Checklist for identifying late medieval scripts

Instead of putting together something here, I will point you to the excellent work done elsewhere online:

• Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script

• Late Medieval English Scribes

• Digital Pal(aeography): Digital Resource and Database of Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic.

• Oriflamms (but haven't figured out what to do with this yet)

General tutorials on scripts key characteristics can be accessed at these sites:

• revamped virtual palaeography school, the vHMML which provides an introduction to the Latin, Greek and Arabic traditions

• a series of transcription exercises are available on an Interactive Album of Mediaeval Palaeography. This site allows students to read and examine examples of scripts from the seventh to the seventeenth century. The site was originally developed in French, but now (for the most part) available in English.

• And this French language dossier (album of palaeographical examples) used for teaching students at the École des chartes is very useful in that it provides images, transcriptions, translations and then a palaeographical commentary (albeit all in French).

The standard for palaeographical analysis is found in the Catalogue des manuscrits datée, an international association for palaeographical analysis based on manuscripts (which can be precisely dated. Hardly interested in the modern world, their 1990s era website offers a list of current publications that would be useful to consult for various national hands. The linked Oriflamms and Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script are attempting to help move the CMD into the 21st century.

A page of helpful links compiled by Dominique Stutzman on palaeography (in French)