Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Richard Ovenden,
and I have the privilege of being Bodleian librarian and the chair of the electors to the large readership.
So therefore, my pleasure to welcome you this evening for the 2020 Lyell Lectures on behalf
both of the Bodleian libraries and of the electors to the large readership.
These lectures were, of course, originally intended to be delivered
In the beginning of Trinity Church here in Oxford, in the Bodleian library.
But due to the coronavirus, of course, we've had to make alternative arrangements.
And that's why these lectures aren't being delivered online tonight.
And in the subsequent two weeks. We wanted to continue to honour the tradition, the founder and benefactor,
James Lyell established a series of annual lectures in bibliography and related topics.
And we wanted to ensure that we continued this tradition by delivering these lectures.
This year. You can log on to the Website and follow the subsequent lectures not only this evening, but on the 1st, 6th and 8th of October.
The first of these lectures would normally include an invitation to those in the audience
to come and join us for a drink in the Bodleian library following the lecture.
It pains me very greatly indeed that I cannot offer an invitation this evening.
I can, however, postpone it until the 25th of February 2021, where we hope the public health situation, not withstanding that professor,
that this year's lecturer's final lecture will be delivered in person, in the Bodleian
library, after which there will be a drinks reception to celebrate the 2020 lectures.
Before we move to the specifics of this lecture, I thought I would give you a little background to the history of the lectures themselves.
James Pyar Lyell was a lawyer. But also a great book collector.
And he lived in Oxford and in Abingdon on his retirement.
And he collected not only books in a serious way, but also studied them closely, publishing his research on early book illustration in Spain in 1925,
over 100 of his best mediaeval manuscripts were bequeathed to the Bodleian on his death in 1948.
And the library subsequently purchased another 60 manuscripts, many early printed books from his executor's.
Tili Dollar Man, then on the staff of the Bodleian,
published a scholarly catalogue of the mediaeval manuscripts, then in Bodley in nineteen seventy one.
In addition to this great generosity to the Bodleian, JPR Lyell also left a bequest to establish a series of lectures in bibliography
to be delivered by invitation by leading scholars working in the fields.
To this end, the universe,
the university established a board of electors to review the state of scholarship and to invite the leading proponents to hold the readership.
It is this body that I've charged since 2013 that has invited the current reader to live it to deliver this year's lecture.
The Lyell lectures have more than fulfilled the expectations of their benefactor.
The lectures have made a substantial contribution to the field of bibliography.
Book history in its broadest interpretation, a high proportion of the lectures have been published.
Many of these have become heavily cited works of scholarship and not a few known internationally as groundbreaking in their field.
The lectures were first delivered in 1950 to three by Neil Care reader in bibliography at the University of Oxford
and published by Oxford University Press in 1960 as English manuscripts in the century after the Norman Conquest.
Since then, many distinguished readers have delivered lectures which have produced scholarship of enduring quality.
Walter Greg in 1954 to five published his as some aspects and problems of London publishing between 15 50 and 60 50.
Fred symbiotes soon after gave his in 1958 nine published later as bibliography and textual criticism.
David Foxon was the reader in 1975 to six deliver the lectures, which were eventually published in 1991 as pope in the early 18th century book trade.
In 1978 to nine, the reader was Howard Nixon. He did it, delivered lectures as a decorated English decorated book Bindings,
which ODP eventually published as the history of decorated bookbinding in England in 1992.
Jonathan Alexander published maybe mediaeval illuminators and their methods of work.
In 1993, from his Lyell's of a decade earlier,
and Don McKenzie gave them in 1997 to eight as bibliography and history 17th century England, though sadly they have never been published.
Most recently, Richard Shop in twenty nine, twenty nineteen twenty,
gave us a groundbreaking series of lectures on the mediaeval libraries of Great Britain.
I'm sure that all of you know.
But in case you do not, it is my sad duty to record that Professor Sharpe died this week in March this year, 2020.
What do we know? Back in April or May of twenty nineteen.
That hsi Lyell lectures would in some sense be the culmination of his outstanding scholarship in this field.
His friends are urgently completing the manuscript of his lectures for publication by the Bolian Library.
And of course, an LGB three online and the published Corpus of mediæval library catalogues will
continue to give access to his work on mediæval libraries long into the future.
And the electors of the LA readership join me in expressing our sincere sorrow at his passing.
Professor Sharp was a member of the electors for many years.
I read it this year, more than lives up to the standards of eminent set by the best of his predecessors.
He's, um, he's a scholar.
His work has been influential in more one field, and his work brings the role of script into the foreground of humanistic study.
James, I will certainly have approved of the choice of our lecturer. Professor Mark Smith.
Frances Smith has been since 2013. Professor of mediaeval Martin Kelly Oubre fee at the coldness you know, they showed.
And director of studies at the called PTC deserved a huge section of historical and philological responses.
Professor Smith was educated at the year called The Chart with a thesis entitled LaFrance is a Civil Resource.
Your view a par lazy italiana oh caesium s.E.C.
In 1988. He then worked with our chief national now from 1988 to 1994.
He then read for his doctorate.
The cold, petite, deserted dude with a thesis on lazy Italian, a convert to LaFrance OCZ, NCAA geography Voie RJ represents assume the less sparse.
Published in nineteen ninety three from 1995 to 1998 became General Secretary of the Cold.
Not seen on the chart before taking up the chair, which he now holds.
He's also taught at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Columbia University and his head to the Melanson Institute in Vernacular Pendley
over a fee at the Newberry Library and at the Getty Research Institute.
Frezza Smith serves his profession more than simply, he's an academic appointments.
He's president of the Committee Internationale de Palaeo Griffin Love Team and a member of the Committee on Heber Penny Overfeed and a
former president of the Societe Delis tried to force a member of the editorial boards of Scriptorium End of the Gazette to leave media.
Ladies and gentlemen, a great pleasure in inviting press Mark Smith to deliver the twenty nineteen, twenty twenty law lectures,
writing models from manuscript to print France, England and Europe circa fourteen hundred to eighteen.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and colleagues, good afternoon and thank you for tuning into this first 20 twenty all digital Lyle lecture.
The local readership in bibliography is a great honour and I am particularly grateful to the Bob Dylan Library,
its director and staff, for successfully organising the lectures despite this year's unusual circumstances.
What should be a happy occasion is also saddened by the sudden and unexpected loss of Professor Richard Sharpe,
who delivered last year's splendid lectures. He is and will be sorely missed by all those who knew him and his work.
I suspect the invitation was sent to me in the hope of lectures on some area of Latin palaeo graphy, possibly mediaeval.
But for the past few years, with generous support from the Socially Putting NIAC Foundation,
I have been working on a much needed descriptive bibliography of writing books
published in France that is printed books from the 16th to the early 19th century.
And I have also become interested in the place of French writing masters and calligraphy within a wider European context,
particularly in the repeated interaction between France and England.
I have offered to provide an overview of that field of the material and of the methodological issues rade raised sorry, by making a catalogue.
But first, I would like to take a step back into the previous century before the advent of print and to examine mediaeval writing models by looking
at the earliest writing manuals printed in Italy in the first decades of the 16th century as the matrix of all later developments.
We risk losing sight of the strong mediaeval roots of the Tsara.
The connexion is rather obvious.
I would say for German scholars, since most of the mediaeval material is German and also because of the stylistic continuity of German Gothic scripts.
But that continuity is no less true for France, where most of the non German mediaeval material originated in the history of writing,
the later Middle Ages were a time of expansion and fragmentation.
At the same time, the number of writers and the quantity of writing had increased dramatically since the 12th century,
the term dramatically being deliberately as vague as possible.
So had the social and functional scope of writing this in terms of palaeo graphy is reflected
in the great diversity of scripts that were in use during the so-called Gothic period.
Scripts varied according to place, profession or expense.
They vary between books and documents, between books or documents made for oneself or for the market,
and between multiple categories of books or documents based on their intended uses,
on the textual meaning, and on the visual impression that the writer was to convey to the reader.
The typology of scripts is not only a thorny matter of classification and expertise,
it also raises serious or at least interesting historical issues first and foremost.
The general question of learning to write, especially for professional scribes of the later Middle Ages, who could often master several scripts.
Then, within half a century of the advent of printing, scribes employed in copying books became largely eroded as a profession.
There were more and more opportunities for clerks and secretaries in private or official employment.
Private individuals could also strive to reach varying levels of adequacy,
fluency or even sophistication according to the needs of their social or professional professional life merchants.
Even those who had their own clerks needed to write too much themselves.
The nobility usually dictated their correspondence, but added the occasional postscript,
often in large crude hand and phonetic spellings, particularly in France, not unlike those of well-to-do peasants.
Where and how those skills were acquired remains largely unclear.
And despite the efforts of historians, including the 2008 London Colloquium, the Committee Internationale,
the Pentagon field team, our sources tell us less about learning to write than about learning to read.
What we do see from the early 15th century is the rise of a new profession
writing master separate from the common schoolmaster and instructing his pupils,
especially in handwriting. Often together with arithmetic,
the few documents produced by those masters as they often wandered from town to town are the main archaeological traces of their activity.
A general periodisation and geography of late mediaeval writing is now available, at least for Gothic books scripts.
Thanks to the 2003 handbook by Albelda of late.
But much remains to be done on documentary scripts.
The correlation of dates, places and scripts reveals complex developments, which again raise questions on places and modes of instruction.
Now a five minute crash course, if you will, in the history of scripts, especially in documents.
With apologies to all viewers already familiar with the topic. The 12th century, at least in England, and to a greater degree.
The 13th century witnessed remarkable creativity with the development of more or less cursive scripts,
formal and informal, in charters, in letters and books of a documentary, Nature.
And these new scripts varied in style and with the tendency to change rapidly over time.
Nevertheless, appeared in many places in similar forms,
presumably as an effect of long distance communication between chanceries, networks of writers, written material.
The writing style of the papal chancery, for one, clearly influenced those of emperors, kings and bishops in the first half of the 14th century.
The landscape changes considerably. The main chanceries of the West, Imperial and Royal tended to define their own peculiar house styles,
which in turn were imitated in their institutional environments around thirteen
hundred at the height of French political power and cultural influence.
Just decades before the Hundred Years War,
the chancery of Philip the Fair created a new documentary style stripped of fancy diplomatic ornaments, regular, fast and elegant,
based on Italian notarial scripts,
but distinctly French in style and technique that is written with a broad named Quill and angular rather than rounded by the mid 14th century.
That script had become the standard for all documentary writing in France and had spread north to the low countries.
It had also been adopted in Bohemia by the Imperial Chancery,
subsequently altering the course of writing in Germany, in Central Europe in the last quarter of the century.
It started appearing in English documents.
The imported script became known in England as the secretary hand and remained in use alongside the more traditional varieties of Anglican.
By the end of the century, as the predominant style of Western documentary writing, it had become,
this style had become what the international Gothic style was in art and architecture.
This relative uniformity began to disintegrate in the following century.
The pressure of business once again urged professionals to sacrifice clarity for speed, at least for internal documents.
Writing with ever fewer pen lifts or even totally flattening their minims changes were not only stylistic.
They tended to affect the very structure of letterforms.
By the early 16th century, the most cursive documentary scripts were becoming illegible outside their original contexts.
Painstakingly broken strokes came to be the signature of German Gothic scripts, effectively probably reining in the effects of passivity.
The writing of Spanish notaries and courts of Justice, on the contrary,
became more curves and loops written with ample movements abroad named Quill and French scripts were noted for extreme conservatism.
All had at least a few letterforms that were totally different from those of any other country.
Meanwhile, in Italy,
from around fourteen hundred Florentine humanists had revived Karoline miniscule book script of Carolingian and priede Gothic times and all at once
created a new cursive script that combined the same basic set of letterforms with late mediaeval techniques for producing swift connected writing.
By the mid 15th century, these were becoming widespread in Italy for books, correspondence and documents of all sorts.
In print, humanistic writing was rendered as Roman and italic type perfected respectively in 14 70 by an equal national soul and italic in 15, no.
One by Aldus Minuteness and Frenchy's Cosgriff. The subsequent spread of humanistic handwriting across Italy and then across Europe,
together with the persistence of many local aspects of the Gothic tradition, defined the geography of Western writing for centuries.
So from the 15th century, even more clearly in the 16th.
There is plenty of reason to use the term national scripts.
On the whole, the geographical distribution of such scripts matches that of the emerging nations of Europe,
whether they are defined in political, linguistic or more generally cultural terms.
Chanceries and the wider institutional framework set the standards of writing within
the boundaries of a single nation states with the rise of vernacular writing,
despite differences in chronology, and even in nations that were still a long way from political unity, namely Italy and Germany.
Forms of writing also became correlated with languages.
Vastly, styles of writing should also be seen as part of the more general stylistic trends that define the art and culture of nations.
International communication, whether diplomatic, scholarly or commercial, needed to rely on a common language or languages.
Latin first, obviously, then also Italian in the Renaissance and later French.
The dissemination of manuscripts and educational models from Italy, both in Latin and in the Italian vernacular,
ensured the international success of Italian writing the 16th century country.
Larry, you Talika was not only the national business script in Italy, but an international medium of communication.
Foreign scribes either imitated it meticulously or modified it according to their own habits and tastes,
mixing in local letterforms and elements of style, or just cutting their quills in ways that Italian scribes would not have approved of.
On the whole, I would argue the distribution of scripts and their levels of legibility reflect their potential ranges of circulation.
The most idiosyncratic forms are used when the writer coincides with the potential reader at the level of an individual,
a profession or an institution. The more commonly shared forms are meant for wider circulation.
Books are mostly destined to travel further and to reach more unpredictable audiences than documents.
The printing press fits the needs of wide circulation not only by easily making multiple copies, but also by using common letterforms.
Still, the typeface is used in used in vernacular texts, maintained distinctly national accents until they were dropped in favour of Roman type.
This is true of French Batard in the first half of the 16th century of English black letters still
going strong in the 17th and of Drub in fact were Farber types which were only abolished in 1941.
Of course, national preferences in the design and use of type is still clearly visible in the 21st century,
just as as the writing models of our primary schools also remain different.
But on a more subtle stylistic level, no longer to the point of neutral intangibility.
Scripts were an important and explicit aspect of national identity in early modern Europe.
The case of Germany illustrates the fact most obviously, fatwa was a script rooted in the chancery tradition promoted by Emperor Maximilian.
It was used for writing German and humanistic scripts. Italian scripts were applied to Latin and romance languages.
The Protestant reform certainly accentuated the tendency to contrast the Germanic and the Latin single Latin,
French or Italian words or even elements within words were thus made to stand out in German texts, both in manuscript and in print.
By a different script. The ultimate unexpected suppression of the Deutscher shift by the Nazis for
essentially practical reasons came after half a century of political controversy.
The 1941 order signed by Martin Bollman carefully avoided mentioning the name Daichi shift,
using instead the name of the father typeface and arguing based on the day that it was a Jewish invention.
In France, the adoption of Roman type for the vernacular came much sooner in the early years of the reign of Francis, the first fifteen.
Nineteen. It has been argued by oficial Madonna.
The change was prompted by the king himself, not only as the new Duke of Milan in love with everything Italian,
but also in the context of the campaign for the 15 19 imperial election as a means of contrasting a Latin concept of empire.
With the dramatic tradition embodied by the late Maximilien,
the promoter of a change in handwriting was a much longer and more complex business than change in print.
And we will return to that in the following lecture's.
Languages and cultures do not fit strictly within political divisions, of course.
Nor do scripts in border regions. One finds the national scripts influenced by neighbouring areas.
Italian traits in the southeast of France and Germany.
Flemish elements in the north and east. Some areas of Europe, geographically,
linguistically or politically or commercially at the crossroads of larger reasons were open to contrasting influences.
That is, this is true mainly of the low countries, but also Switzerland.
Britain received much from its closest neighbours, France and the low countries,
notably in matters of book production, importing continental paper typefaces and so on.
And the history of English handwriting from the 16th to the 18th century also owes much to French and Dutch influences.
Lastly, the adoption of scripts like that of languages, not to mention clothing or patterns of behaviour,
also depends on the changing balance of power, political or economic.
And on the cultural prestige that comes with wealth. And might that is true of any civilisation, period.
To be sure. But particularly of early modern Europe, because of the very fact the different languages were written using different scripts,
receiving formal instruction in foreign language also entails learning the relevant script.
All scripts French had been an international lingua franca, literary as well as practical in the 13th century,
and rose to prominence again in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
But by eighteen hundred.
The weight of British commerce and finance, together with the intellectual prestige of England, was seriously tipping the scales.
And the story of English handwriting on the continent.
From the late 18th century clearly deserves to be included amongst the many facets of that period of Anglophilia Anglo mania.
In many cases, Anglo phobia, that will be the subject of my fifth lecture to be held.
It is hoped in the lecture hall of the public library next spring.
This somewhat roundabout introduction is mainly for context, the context of the bibliographical material.
I plan to discuss later on. And first of all, the context of my research.
The historiographical rift between the mediæval early modern periods is particularly clear and regrettable in the field of palaeo graphy,
as if the printing press had put an end to handwriting.
Ancient and mediaeval palaeo graphy is one hopes of fully fledged historical discipline with a long tradition of scholarship, expertise and theory.
But early modern palaeo graphy is essentially restricted to the practical skill of reading difficult documents, difficult,
difficult hands and still lacks a general outline of the typology and development of scripts from fifteen hundred to the present.
Not to say that there has been no study of post mediaeval writing as such,
but that branch of history is in large part dedicated to the social and cultural dimensions of literacy.
Early, modern handwritten sources, mostly documentary,
are approached as textual data rather than as archaeological artefacts with their own material and visual features.
The study of printed books is a different matter, of course,
and we all know the essential contribution of material bibliography to the analysis of texts as well.
To the history of the printing and publishing trades.
The only attempt I can mention at a general overview is the relevant chapter in Georgia, Jane Gytis 1954 Denia.
I mean, did you storia the Leskie Latina, a courageous effort indeed,
based on the limited visual material available at the time in the form of printed facsimiles.
It inevitably remained impressionistic and focussed on the adoption of Italian cursive scripts north of the Alps, which is at least something.
Otherwise, scholars have concentrated on national or regional Palios graphy,
showing little interest in the broader picture or in the transfer of writing styles across borders.
Similar scripts have been called different names and different national contexts, so that, for instance,
the continental expansion of the Italian French chanceries script, the 14th century passed almost unobserved.
Until recently. French pornography is no exception, I'm afraid, the desert state of scholarship on the period beyond practical handbooks,
there has been no effort to establish a general typology of the baffling variety
of hands found in our archives or to describe their evolution over time.
But where to start? One way of trying to sort out what seems at first utter chaos is to ask what the models were that
those scribes had imitated before giving in to the urge of speed and to idiosyncratic creativity.
Even today, all of us promptly relinquish the models we are taught in school.
But there remains sufficient genetic traces in our writing to tell French, English, Italian or other hands apart easily enough.
In earlier centuries, discipline in writing was not quite as lax yet for reasons ideal, ideological but also technical.
A quill was terribly responsive and never safe to misuse.
As a modern mechanical pen, formal models, especially printed models, were also the primary vector for importing and exporting scripts across Europe.
Hence my interest in writing models,
which over the years has gradually shifted or expanded from the original Panio
graphical question to issues of bibliography from the history of writing books.
As an editorial draw to the peculiar peculiarities of every single accessible copy, writing books are curious objects,
indeed, straddling the conceptual line between writing as texts and writing as image.
Eric Gill famously wrote about typography. Letters are themes, not pictures of things.
But writing models are pictures of letters. The texts used there in art accessory, often even nonsensical as we would see.
Writing books are also hybrid in a technical sense as editorial products, not books,
but sets of plates produced essentially by engravers, not typography is and marketed by print sellers, not booksellers.
We tend to think of them as books, mainly because the images they contain are images of texts.
No more for now on the technical history of printed writing books, since their production and use will be the subject of the next lecture.
I have deliberately avoided the term writing books in the title.
These lectures, not only for the conceptual reason I just mentioned, but also because of the diverse material forms in which writing models occur.
The book for being the latest development in a long history as far back as are sources extend all the way to antiquity.
Elementary writing instruction has been based on the repeated copying of letters than syllables, words, dynes and short texts often in verse.
In the 7th century B.C., the Etruscan tablet of Nasty Jeanna is an early witness to the most elementary stage,
with the full alphabet incised on the frame, quintillion recommended making toy letters to teach children their shapes.
The Greek wax tablets from Egypt offer a number of writing exercises,
often copies of lines from Homer and other poets in which the teacher's hand may appear at the top above the students efforts.
Original classroom material is far scarcer for the mediaeval period.
But we do have some traces in Carolingian monasteries. For instance,
young monks who had become sufficiently proficient would collaborate in the production of
manuscripts under the direction of a master whose hand appears now and then at the top of the page,
initially setting the style and size of the script to be used and then reiterating
the same model once the copyists had lost sight of it and gone too far astray.
The fly leaves and margins of manuscripts of all sorts also preserve many pen trials from simple alphabets to lines of verse or pan grams.
That is, sentences using all the letters of the alphabet or illegible phrases containing only minims or nonsense words such as,
you know, naughty feet kabita to Disney tarty use.
Those pen trials, as Bernard Bischof has convincing, convincingly argued, were clearly reminiscent of writing exercises from the scribes school days.
From the 14th century, the 14th century, and more frequently in the 15th.
At last we find specific materials produced by teachers of handwriting.
Essentially into different forms. On the one hand, writing models as such.
Illustrating letterforms, but for new and different uses, not only as ephemeral models for a single student.
In a number of cases, these are large format broadsides made to be nailed outside their doors by writing masters to advertise their lessons.
Others instead are booklets of several pages. On the other hand, sometimes many pages.
On the other hand, there are technical instructions in verbal form, usually called tracts, some inverse so as to be easily memorised.
And both salts, wobbles and tracts are clearly not aimed at beginners, but rather at more advanced students who wish to acquire specific scripts.
These are on the whole. Extremely rare documents.
And most have come to light in the past century. In 1896, Bill Hayden Vatan Bar was able to cite only three prae.
Fifteen hundred German items. Two sheets. One tracked a few specimens in booklet form.
Were also spotted at the time by Leopold Doolittle. Little has been added to the hand list of specimens published in 1943 by Steinberg.
A total of four tracts and 15 sheets and booklets to approximately fifteen hundred.
A couple of fragments in there have never been mentioned again and may no longer exist, or at least difficult to identify at least one,
since both Steinberg had lost his notes and photographs on the subject during the Blitz.
Carl Weimar in 1946. You have five sheets and published ones published one more.
He was apparently not aware of Steinberg's article, articles and list.
Strangely enough, considering that both were in contact with Stanley Morris on the subject.
Single editions have been made since.
In 1978 at HOJ, Billing produced an important and detailed survey with two more sheets and a detailed discussion of script names.
The latest overview, an article by Barbara SCOP in Scriptorium 2005, is a brief catalogue of eleven sheets and five tracts,
which conveniently compiles previous literature but does miss a few previously published
items and a couple of opportunities for updating older information on shelf box and such.
The sheets, many rescued from bindings are mostly fragments.
More or less severely trimmed.
The majority are from Germany to such a degree that it may reflect the reality of 15th century production rather than chance of survival.
Their sizes seem to have been seemed to have ranged from approximately half a metre to four metre in height.
The corpus has grown not only in numbers but also in variety of form, function and origin.
Blanket terms such as writing marsters sheets or specimens height.
My subletter or Qype couldn't have somewhat obscured the fact,
just as Robert Shiller has recently shed new light on the variety of the forms and uses of model books for artists.
Mediaeval writing models should be examined as specific objects made in specific social and professional circumstances.
Their use as binding materials occasionally provides some information on that date and geographical origin.
But little is known about the authors and context of production.
More explicit evidence is to be found in the sample texts and above all, in the short paragraph,
usually at the bottom of the poster, but often lost where a master announces his lessons.
Broadsides posted on his door or in some other public place to attract customers showed
telltale signs of wear and tear and help understand why so few have been handed down to us.
In some cases, where there is no explicit advertisement, it may be difficult to prove that the sheet was made for such publicity.
It could also be a showpiece of the master's skill,
maybe a means of introducing himself to local authorities or any other potential employer or gift patron.
One major example of such a masterpiece was the monumental script specimen.
The shape and size of an altarpiece produced that in fifteen ninety one by one, your hands cuffed.
That was set up for centuries against a pillar of the cathedral.
Another possibility is a copyists sampler of scripts to show a customer when he or she walked into a workshop to order a new book.
The sheets have proved particularly useful in discussing the names of late mediaeval scripts,
Vatan Bar and others after him considered writing masters to have invented any number of scripts for showing off and giving them arbitrary names.
But as several more have emerged, it has become clear that Masters actually shared many scripts and names as HOJ building.
And he demonstrated the practical use of all those scripts in everyday practise.
Sorry for the repetition is a different question.
Beyond the question of the names uses labels, a closer examination of the writing style also leads to.
Questioning the basic data on some items, especially chronological data scripts,
can also say something of the original setting a fancy sheet with alternating book of book and documents scripts is typical of a writing master.
But book scripts or documents scripts show alone might come from a monastic scriptorium,
a commercial workshop or a chancery or a writing master catering especially to customers who wish to trade for jobs in one of those directions.
Mediaeval scholars have not looked far beyond mediaeval writing models and have said little about their continuation into the following period.
The Unfinished Sheet by one.
Your hung note of Virts book written in effort around fifteen hundred, has been mentioned more than once as the last of its kind.
Just because it's. Around fifteen hundred, especially since it was fittingly left unfinished.
Nevertheless, not only will we be looking at further items from the 16th century,
but as late as the 19th century, professors of calligraphy were still posting sample sheets,
handwritten or engraved, to advertise their lessons and producing sheets or books of handwritten models for their students or as gifts to patrons,
friends and colleagues. But evil tracts were also followed by early modern instructions for handwriting.
It made, it might seem, an important change that by the 16th century,
verbal instructions were no longer standalone texts but published together with actual writing models.
Except that in mediaeval script toria or classrooms to instructions and models would necessarily used in combination,
although apparently not often combined. As material objects.
So here is a list of writing models, excluding tracts in sheet form in approximate chronological order.
Those with an asterisks are the sheets listed in Swap 2005.
I would not read out the lists, but I will describe a few of the items.
If you are watching this video, you can you can pause on this image if you want to read the whole list.
I would love to have something new to add to the literature about the very earliest fragments those in the Bodleian.
But the 1956 article by Van [INAUDIBLE] and Daken, these fragments with musical notation is really very well done,
especially in assessing the pellow graphical and musical evidence, as one would expect of him.
The fragments recovered from mediæval from the mediaeval binding of a miscellaneous
volume on it are not only the earliest example of a writing Marsters poster,
but also the only English one yet discovered they are exceptional.
Also in that the texts and scripts are limited to the liturgy and chant.
In the absence of any explicit offer of the Masters services, which might have been might have been lost,
the poster could well have advertised the production of books rather than writing lessons.
The writer apparently specialised in liturgical manuscripts, and even so, his hand was generally mediocre.
If he was established at Oxford, as it seems,
what might also have expected his business to extend to university texts for students and the relevant scripts at the bottom of the hierarchy.
And that could have been illustrated in parts of the sheets that are now lost.
As it is, the poster illustrates a hierarchy based essentially on size and on the more or less elaborate.
Treatment of foot strokes. All right.
Similarly to the differences that we will find clearly labelled in later German examples,
although unusual by comparison with later posters, VanDyke argued convincingly that this was the poster.
Since it was written on one side only.
And even more typically, the parchment is now quite brown from weathering, which also can be observed on other posters of the same kind.
I must resist the lure of these superabundant corpus of German material and will not indulge in any detail on all those writing sheets at all.
Already well-known. Just a short look at the best preserved and most famous one, the poster of your highness from Hagen.
From the early 15th century. It seems it illustrates a common set of scripts, alternating book and documents styles.
The book scripts in hierarchical order show the largest, most solemn and expensive ones at the top, which are Texture's Quadratus.
On the left text was pesky source, very senior Pindi Boose,
no feet Semien Quadratus further down on the left and text to to the tomb doors on the right.
The defining criterion here again is the names explicitly say, is the treatment of the feet.
The documentary scripts are not thula simplex, not thula.
A couteur not to refract haraam best Stardust's and not your last conclave arter and the strange names separatists,
which other sources suggest should be corrected to separatists or say Parta.
That is Hej or fense writing.
A number of fragments come from posters that were more or less similar to other items are more unusual and some surely deserve further study.
The fragments of the University Library of Virts book, Now Lost,
were dated in 1915 by better court to around fourteen hundred based on a very unhelpful comparison,
to say the least, with this thirteen sixty eight gospels of John of Toppo in Vienna.
VEMA agreed with her on the date, but pointed out that she was mistaken,
at least in describing them as part of an artist's model book rather than of writing Marsters poster.
Both the decoration lavish, albeit awkward, and the scripts, which bear some resemblance to Hagen's larger book scripts only heavier,
more angular and quirkier, suggests shifting that date to maybe the second half of the 15th century.
One last question about the German masters on a fourteen eighty one fragment from orks bug,
which is presumably still in existence but is known in the literature based on another little old photograph.
Unless it is an undesirable effect of the reproduction process itself, the image looks strikingly like the woodcut until the original can be examined.
The question will remain just a question, but could it not be an early example?
The earliest example of a writing model in print.
This is probably just a coincidence, but as many of you know, the earliest known type specimen was produced in the same city just five years later.
On April the first 14, 86 by heart had told what is not accidental is the layout and structure of the page.
The printer did not need to look far for a familiar way of presenting samples of writing to his customers.
Even the printers. Colourful is placed in the same position used as a writing masters advertisement.
Bottom right. A last fragment of the same period seemingly German mentioned in passing by Martin Steinman in 1980,
was spotted on the website of the Free Library of Philadelphia and briefly illustrated as recently as 2015 by Peter Kidd.
Here's an enhanced picture. This one has large puzzle initials and a text containing almost exclusively minims.
You see that last line? So we still don't know what it says.
The kind of device that writing Masters would continue using for centuries as a way of working on the even spacing of strokes.
These few examples I give only to provide a sense of the variety and fall of form and function of so-called writing masters sheets,
especially by comparison with the material that we will examine shortly.
And also to suggest that as more and more catalogues and images become widely
available online and with code ecologists now increasingly interested in fragments,
as such, new specimens are bound to reappear in the near future.
And to give us further clues on their history and use.
So now about specimens in book form. The difference is not only material specimen books appear at a later date.
And further west I know of five up to fifteen hundred and all the French for Italian
books were also listed by Steinbeck as part of the Rickets collection at the time,
but contain containing large decorative alphabets rather than actual writing models.
As the French writing books, form and content point mostly to a chancellory context as,
let's say, the original matrix of the genre and to chancery or court circles as potential uses.
Accordingly, the typology of scripts is also different and focuses on document hands.
Let us begin with this remarkable manuscript in the Bodleian, which is the only dated item dated to fourteen sixty two,
which does not fall into the same categories as the others and is actually quite unique.
It consists of only four leaves, but that the these leaves are of great interest because of their context, because of the volume to which they belong.
Ash ML seven eight nine is a miscellaneous compilation containing material that could
be used for the instruction of chancery clerks as well as for later reference,
maybe in the art of diplomatic style. The district cartoonists in Latin and French, 48 sentences of sages in French,
the filt formulary of letters under the Royal Seale's of France and various
documents relating to French and English affairs in the late 14th and 15th century.
Not to mention an astronomical calendar to fourteen sixty.
Always a useful tool for correctly inscribing the dates documents.
The fall leaves at the front dated. As I've said.
Fourteen sixty two are catalogued as writing exercises, but certain certainly qualify as writing models.
They consist of examples of diplomatic texts with refined flourished initials or
cattle's reminiscent of the famous 15th century prototypes by John Flaminia,
Secretary to Duke Zonda Betty. Then comes a double page spread.
So these first documents, then this double page spread of first names, mostly names of popes, also with cuddling, as you see.
And last but not least, three alphabets.
One of magic kills, one of many skills, including double letter ligatures, an important feature of cursive writing,
and one of the abbreviations, which are another important aspect of documentary cursive.
As far as I know,
this vast page is the earliest example of such a didactic didactic presentation that we frequently find in post mediaeval writing books.
Where this compilation originated is not known. Could it have belonged to a clerk of the Royal Chancery?
All we do know is that it was given by Charles Buth, Bishop of Hereford.
Fifteen, sixteen to 15, thirty five to his dioceses and registry.
So presumably it was still supposed to have some practical value at that point.
The use of formularies of stylistic models in chanceries is well known, of course,
but finding elements of handwriting instruction in the same context is quite exceptional.
Also of interest is the fact that the English clerks who compiled that material over a period,
period of time and the example, the examples of the texts are.
In English, those clerks were looking to France for models.
The handwriting. Just as the text is a fine example of the led to diminished or Secretary Hammond,
as it became known in England, the other four manuscripts have much in common.
That layout is very similar and spectacular,
with size is all roughly 30 by 20 centimetres and pages containing only one or
two examples introduced by gigantic cuddles and framed within ample margins.
The examples in alphabetical order include both Latin and French, mostly prayers, also official documents, notably royal and texts of Courtney Love.
They also use similar nonsense words.
For instance, how many nug hobbits later used by Rabelais as the name of one of his characters and even later applied to cats in general.
The quality of execution is consistently outstanding in these books compared
to the rather uneven quality of writing masters sheets we've seen earlier.
The first two of these books were pointed out and described by Leopold Dillydally in 1899, but remain to be fully studied.
The alphabet of Mary of Burgundy, which we which we will briefly look at later on this alphabet.
The original of which is now in the Louvre and a remarkably faithful 16th century copy at the Royal Library
in Brussels has been reproduced in facsimile and has attracted far more attention than other books.
Most recently in 2015, for the new facsimile of the Brussels manuscript.
Finally, the leaves in the library of bazaar style have barely been catalogued.
Only one item is signed. The last page of this manuscript in the BNF mentions Robeck to date.
Initial T Klarik of the dioceses of not Steinberg suggested Detropia.
But that was just a shot in the dark. VanDyke advocated detailed only.
Robert of tour, which is interesting, but just slightly more plausible.
The book was at least firmly dated by De Lille on textural criteria to the mid 15th century, and it is exceptionally interesting.
It now has 52 leaves, the first and last blank, all others written on both sides.
A 15th or 16th century folie ation which you can just about make out her top right, shows that it previously had up to 70 leaves.
So presumably one hundred and thirty six pages of writing,
far more than any other folio is two to seven are refined decorative alphabet of strap work, minuscule initials of which you see the end here.
The rest of the book is an alphabetical sequence of texts, beginning with A,
then B, etc. in four scripts labelled and ranked by sizes and levels of formality.
Bastante diminished and quat each folio has four examples, two on each side of a single script.
So the script changes on every folia. The number of examples for each letter varies.
And a change of initial does not always coincide with a new page or with a specific script.
The initial A covers the largest number of pages. Now 40 years and originally six.
The first two of which labelled QTL and bestowed respectively contain full lines of single
letters connected by EMS on the Recto and then double letters connected by ends on Diversa,
which is what you see here if you can't see it. The first site, the original structure is obscured by the missing leaves.
This is a case where one needs to understand the internal logic of a book.
How the examples are arranged and whether that arrangement might have been accidentally modified.
The earlier Folio Asian provides us with at least negative evidence about missing leaves.
Further confirmed by a number of visible parchment stubs.
So please bear with me. This is going to be a bit complex to explain in words up to the initial.
Oh, it is possible to reconstruct multiple sequences consisting of Batar.
And me, Newt, with several leaves of me, Newt having been removed especially towards the beginning of the book,
resulting in sequences that are now JAHE Albert, Donald Covey, Albert Dowd,
and so the initial A covers twice as many leaves as the following initials because it is used for two different sequences,
one consisting of real battle and a lost leaf in Newt.
All letters and EMS, as I have just said, that is preliminary exercises in the three scripts.
Then a second standard sequence of the same script, but with actual text.
In other words, what we see here is a rational pedagogical method and the missing folia of me, Newt.
I would suggest what cut out at an early date by or for someone using the book to study precisely that script.
Um. A few more of those pages.
Here's the change from initial A to initial B.
We will see later from the current Fogo 34.
Previously 47. The sequence becomes slightly less regular.
From Foleo, 36. Previously 52. We find three sequences that appear to have consisted of.
But Daoud and Quat, with the last script, quant smaller and slightly more cohesive,
decorated with elaborate S.T. ligatures, now appearing in the state of the standard chancery minute.
In fact, I suspect the original sequence of the latter pages had already been altered before the First Folio Nation was added.
This can be inferred from a further parameter. The decoration of initials.
Every new letter of the alphabet starts afresh with simple candles that become Greg gradually more elaborate.
This also has a pedagogical purpose that of guiding the student's progress in the art of candling, letter by letter.
Note also that each paragraph has both a cuddle and in the margin, in the right hand margin,
a smaller variety of the same magic skill to show students the many way of writing each letter.
Many ways of writing each letter. In the last part of the manuscript, that formal order is now disrupted, at least in part, the U.
U or V sequence is a clear case.
The Folio illustrating minute, which you have on the right here, comes before battle hard,
but has the more complex initials by inverting those two folia.
Yes, this is better. It starts with a very simple U or V.
And then on the previous leaf you have these more complex ones.
So by inverting those two Fogo, both scripts and decoration fall back into place, it only remains to cheque systematically.
And I have not done this yet on the original.
Whether this is always compatible with the physical structure of the volume, but which seems to be made of single leaves rather than quires,
if it is can if it is confirmed that further leaves had been removed before the first variation.
The bulk of the manuscript would have been even more impressive.
And it is not entirely impossible as it consisted entirely of sequences containing all four scripts.
That kind of an end of analysis is an essential part of the study of writing books, whether in manuscript or print.
Throughout the centuries, most writing books were organised according to some teaching method, and in many cases,
understanding their internal logic is the only way of reconstructing that original appearance.
The appearance of books that are now incomplete, unbound or often bound incorrectly.
The last page of our manuscript in Shuhei is immediately followed on Diversa.
Well, the last example is immediately followed on Diversa by an unusual collection of three
different advertisements covering three pages or rather templates for advertisements.
The first and last in Latin and the second one in French.
All three have blank spaces, four painted initials, as you can see whether or not the author intended to have some inserted the texts.
Lavish praise on the art of writing as usual, and invite all young and old and their children and their relatives periodontist to come
and acquire the art within a month or two with the master who is currently in town.
The phrasing is typical of itinerant masters.
The templates specifically omit the Masters address to be supplied every time he set up shop in a new locality.
As the choice of scripts, the first text only mentions various models dated RTM.
The second cites Shuhei Bataar, then Domy Newt. Presumably the most useful scripts for customers who had no Latin.
The third texts were the master's name appears is more detailed and seems to be aimed especially at clerics.
It says Dhoom clericals, 63. Etc. It specifies fees and terms of payment, but also lists a greater number of.
Scripts closely matching those of your harness from Hagen,
both for documents and scripts and offers to teach customers whichever scripts they should require.
This is an interesting point. This is the only such explicit mention in a French book of all those scripts,
not to conclave and so on, which you never actually find in French examples.
So it looks like the importation of a catalogue of names rather than the actual use of such scripts.
Catalogue of names just made to impress customers.
Essentially, the template texts, template advertisements make it clear.
I think the book was not intended for the public directly.
It was for a Masters own use and maybe for advanced students training to establish themselves as writing masters on the whole.
This is why I spent some time on this book.
Many features announced the form and contents of early modern writing books,
the alphabetical sequence, a logical organisation of scripts, sample texts of similar dimensions,
and even the smaller varieties of magic skills illustrated in the margins next
to the large initials were still common in writing books of the 17th century.
One thing that was not continued in French writing books is the use of large candles.
But that was very largely exported to Germany.
The low countries and England and is found in writing books of all those countries in the following centuries.
Now, just a few notes on some other specimen books of the period.
By comparison, the manuscript at Montpelier that I mentioned earlier has only twenty one leaves containing three separate alphabets.
Three second sequences, alphabetic sequences on sheets of slightly different sizes.
So rather than one writing book, it is, in fact three writing books bound together.
The first of which was actually left unfinished. It's to includes something of a project for a standard advertisement here, limited to a few words.
So University Galardi Boost bonus Keiter scribble as he did antibusing bravely.
Then it stops to these. We must now add a similar manuscript from business so it is catalogued as late 15th century
because it mentions a king named cartload who's supposed to be Charles the eighth.
But Cartoon's is just an obvious choice. For an example that begins with the letter K. which, as you know, is not much used in French.
The style is very similar to the previous items, even though the capitals are less beverage, less brilliant.
The scripts are not labelled reflect the same typology trivial, but Dowden, Newt and besides Carter loose.
The text also mentions one Royal Prince Bear, a fancy name used here for the sake of the initial Y,
but the titles that follow that name would fit those of Charles of France,
son of Charles the seventh between forty sixty six and 14 77 and countermoves might also refer to that prince rather than the actual king.
Whether this reveals anything about the context of production is still impossible to say.
A princely destination for such books is at least a possibility if one considers the so-called alphabet of Mary of Burgundy
written around fourteen eighty on paper and decorated with cattle's that include fine drawings attributed to a court artist.
As I have mentioned, the original is in the Louvre and the 16th century copy in Brussels.
Here's a side by side comparison to show you how similar they are and what an extraordinary facsimile
it was made in the 16th century by pricking the pages of the original in the 16th century at least,
the tradition of the broadside with a catalogue of secrets was still very much alive.
Examples are easy to find in the Germanic area. A recent Austrian find was published in 2016, but there are also several in France.
The first one is from Toulouse. It was actually published by a local canon in 1895 and mentioned by Deleted.
And in all later lists and articles that I've mentioned, but dated to the mid 15th century,
that date, I believe, should be postponed by maybe six or seven decades.
The writing is certainly archaic as well as the dramatic declaration,
but it contains a form of Y with a wavy tail, which you can't see on this reduced photograph.
That is hardly found before the time of is the first. So I would tend to date to the fifteen twenties or thereabouts.
The poster contains two advertisements, one in Latin explicitly aimed at clerics and one in French for everyone,
including paupers who are offered free instruction. The next one is still unpublished.
No, sorry. This is another one. As I said earlier, the current interest in fragments is bound to bring to light new material from the writing masters.
One such find I owe to an eminent fragments ologist to my fellow Maneer.
This shows careful, if somewhat stiff examples of late textualists formatter plus Roman and italic at the bottom from approximately,
I would say, the third quarter of the century. It's difficult to say.
This one is still unpublished and remarkably well-preserved.
Apart from the effects of weathering, as you can see, and I've made the picture slightly lighter than the original,
and the corners which have been restored but are destroyed, were destroyed by multiple postings.
The style has now changed. Lately, we are introduced by the master, which you see on the left into the classical temple of writing and arithmetic.
It call the court decree to intimate, casual be are said to Noblesville, the town being unspecified again.
All for a reasonable price. So once again, the shop sign of a wandering master.
All we know is that the sheet was in Montpellier in the 18th century.
The contents are quite up to date here. Multiple alphabets.
Latin, Greek and exotic. Ancient and modern.
And even a line of cipher texts. And all of these were lifted apart from the French hands.
All of these were listed, lifted from the latest Italian writing book.
The 15 40 Liberto of Daraban. Remember that Latino.
Our first example of a direct interaction with printed models.
And this this sheet is from fifteen fifty once. So shortly.
Shortly after the publication of Politico's book.
Another smaller and this will be the last example and other smaller but more significant poster of that time is also in the BNF.
It was described by Fox was Guss back in 1978. From the perspective of the history of education, but some essential information is still missing.
The sheet, which shows nice examples of different French and Italian styles,
is actually by a very prominent scribe who wrote a number of manuscripts for the
royal family and for other illustrious patrons in the 50s and 60s and 15 seventies.
The writing is not perfect here. It may belong to an earlier period of his career.
For over 150 years, this sheet has been attributed to Gilb.
Again, you have the greatest French master of the late 16th century whose work we will examine soon.
In recent studies, all the other manuscripts in the same hand as this have also been grouped under that name.
But the chronology is untenable.
Nothing by Luganda predates the mid 50s seventies and he was actually born in 15 54, so could hardly have been producing manuscripts by the 15th 60s.
So for now, our scribe must remain anonymous. Frustratingly anonymous.
All we can say is that his career exemplified the enduring connexion between the art of the copyists and the trade of the writing master.
How much of that tradition survived into the following centuries is difficult to say, but we do find a similar concept expressed in print.
I will give you just a single example by an English master.
This time one John Smith dated sixteen eighty three is a close up.
It was presumably not made for posting on his door because writing masters frowned on colleagues who exhibited prints rather than originals.
But the idea of a dazzling catalogue in a spectacular layout certainly lived on.
That was all for today's lecture. Thank you for listening.
And we shall meet again on Thursday.