Beneventan script
Encyclopedia
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
script
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
, so called because it originated in the Duchy of Benevento
Duchy of Benevento
The Duchy and later Principality of Benevento was the southernmost Lombard duchy in medieval Italy, centred on Benevento, a city central in the Mezzogiorno. Owing to the Ducatus Romanus of the popes, which cut it off from the rest of Lombard Italy, Benevento was from the first practically...
in southern Italy. It was also called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca (signifying its origins with the Lombards
Lombards
The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...
), or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
E. A. Lowe
Elias Avery Lowe
Elias Avery Lowe , original name Elias Avery Loew, was an American palaeographer. His wife was the noted translator H. T...
.
It is mostly associated with Italy south of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, but it was also used in Beneventan-influenced centres across the Adriatic Sea
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...
in Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
. The script was used from approximately the mid-8th century until the 13th century, although there are examples from as late as the 16th century. There were two major centres of Beneventan usage: the monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
on Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, Italy, c. to the west of the town of Cassino and altitude. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. It was the site of Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944...
, and Bari
Bari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...
. The Bari type developed in the 10th century from the Monte Cassino type; both were based on Roman cursive
Roman cursive
Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old cursive, and new cursive.- Old Roman cursive :...
as written by the Langobards. In general the script is very angular. According to Lowe the perfected form of the script was used in the 11th century, while Desiderius
Pope Victor III
Pope Blessed Victor III , born Daufer , Latinised Dauferius, was the Pope as the successor of Pope Gregory VII, yet his pontificate is far less impressive in history than his time as Desiderius, the great Abbot of Monte Cassino.-Early life and abbacy:He was born in 1026 or 1027 of a non-regnant...
was abbot of Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, Italy, c. to the west of the town of Cassino and altitude. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. It was the site of Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944...
, declining thereafter.
Beneventan features many ligatures
Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
and "connecting strokes" – the letters of a word could be joined together by a single line, with forms almost unrecognizable to a modern eye. Ligatures involving the letter t resemble Visigothic
Visigothic script
Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania...
forms; t can take many forms depending on the letter joined to it. Ligatures with the letters e and r are also common. In early forms of Beneventan, the letter a has an open top, similar to the letter u; later, it resembled "cc" or "oc", with long tails hanging to the right. In the Bari type, the letter c often has a "broken" form, resembling the Beneventan form of the letter e. E itself, however, has a very long middle arm, distinguishing it from c. The letter d can have a vertical or left-slanting ascender, the letter g resembles the uncial
Uncial
Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic.-Development:...
form, and the letter i is very tall and resembles l.
The script has some unique ways to signify abbreviations
Scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations are the abbreviations used by ancient and mediæval scribes writing in Latin and, later, in Greek and Old Norse...
and contractions – like most other Latin scripts, missing letters can be signified by a macron over the previous letter, although Beneventan often adds a dot to the macron. There is also a symbol resembling the number 3, or a sideways m, when the letter m has been omitted. In other scripts there is often little or no punctuation, but standard punctuation forms were developed for the Beneventan script, including the basis for the modern question mark
Question mark
The question mark , is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions...
.
Beneventan shares some features with Visigothic and Merovingian script, probably due to the common late Roman matrix.
Sources
- Francesco Bianchi/Antonio Magi Spinetti: BMB. Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura Beneventana, Rom 1993 ff.
- Giulio Battelli: Beneventana, scritture e miniatura, in: Enciclopedia Cattolica II, Città del Vaticano 1949, p. 1617-1618.
- Virginia Brown: A second new list of beneventan manuscripts, in: Studi medievali 40 (1978), p. 239-289
- Guglielmo CavalloGuglielmo CavalloGuglielmo Cavallo is an Italian Greek palaeographer and professor from the Sapienza University of Rome.- Life :Cavallo graduated from the University of Bari in 1961...
: Rotoli di Exultet del Italia meridionale, Bari 1973. - Guglielmo CavalloGuglielmo CavalloGuglielmo Cavallo is an Italian Greek palaeographer and professor from the Sapienza University of Rome.- Life :Cavallo graduated from the University of Bari in 1961...
: Struttura e articolazione della minuscola beneventana tra i secoli X – XII, in: Studi medievali 3. ser. 11 (1970), p. 343-368. - Alfonso Gallo: Contributo allo studio delle scritture meridionali nell'alto medio evo, in: Bulletino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano 47 (1931), S. 333-350.
- Elias Avery Lowe: The Beneventan Script. A history of the south Italian Minuscule, Oxford 1914.
- Elias Avery Lowe: Scriptura beneventana. A history of the South Italian minuscule, 2 vol., Oxford 1929.
- Elias Avery Lowe: A new list of beneventan manuscripts. In: Collectanea Vaticana in honorem A. M. card. Albareda, Città del Vaticano1962 (Studi e testi 220) , p. 211-244 = ders., Palaographical Papers II, Oxford 1972, p. 417-479.
- Elias Avery Loew [=Lowe]: The Beneventan Script, 2 Bde., 2. Aufl., Rom 1978 - 1980.
- Francis Newton: Fifty Years of Beneventan Studies, in: AfD 50 (2004), p. 327-346.
- Viktor Novak: Scriptura Beneventana, Zagreb 1920