Palaeography

In the Byzantine period the book-hand, which in earlier times had more than once approximated to the contemporary cursive, diverged widely from it.

The change from papyrus to vellum involved no such modi fication in the forms of letters as followed that from metal to papyrus. The justification for considering the two materials separately is that after the general adoption of vellum the Egyptian evidence is first supplemented and later superseded by that of mss. from elsewhere, and that during this period the hand most used was one not previously employed for literary purposes.

The Uncial Hand.

The prevailing type of book-hand during what in papyrology is called the Byzantine period, i.e., roughly from A.D. 300 to 650, is known as the biblical hand. It went back to at least the end of the and century and had had orig inally no special connection with Christian literature. In mss., whether vellum or paper, of the 4th century found in Egypt we meet other forms of script, particularly a sloping, rather inelegant hand derived from the literary hand of the 3rd century, which persisted to at least the 5th century; but the three great early codices of the Bible are all written in uncials of the biblical type. In the Vaticanus, placed in the 4th century, the characteristics of the hand are least strongly marked; the letters have the forms characteristic of the type but without the heavy appearance of later mss., and the general impression is one of greater roundness. In the Sinaiticus, which is not much later, the letters are larger and more heavily made; and in the Alexandrinus (5th century?) a later develop ment is seen, with emphatic distinction of thick and thin strokes. By the 6th century, alike in vellum and in papyrus mss., the heaviness had become very marked, though the hand still retained, in its best examples, a handsome appearance; but after this it steadily deteriorated, becoming ever more mechan ical and artificial. The thick strokes grew heavier; the cross strokes of T and e and the base of A were furnished with droop ing spurs. The hand, which is often singularly ugly, passed through various modifications, now sloping, now upright, though it is not certain that these variations were really suc cessive rather than concurrent. A different type of uncials, derived from the Chancery hand and seen in two papyrus ex amples of the Festal letters despatched annually by the Patri archs of Alexandria, was occasionally used, the best known example being the Codex Marchalianus (6th or 7th century?). A combination of this hand with the other type is also known.

The Minuscule Hand.

The uncial hand lingered on, mainly for liturgical mss., where a large and easily legible script was serviceable, as late as the 12th century, but in ordinary use it had long been superseded by a new type of hand, the minuscule, which originated in the 8th century, as an adaptation to literary purposes of the second of the types of Byzantine cursive men tioned above. A first attempt at a calligraphic use of this hand, seen in one or two mss. of the 8th or early 9th century (e.g.,

Specimina Cod. Graec. Vatican. No. 5), in which it slopes to the right and has a narrow, angular appearance, did not find favour, but by the end of the 9th century a more ornamental type, from which modern Greek script is descended, was already established. It has been suggested (T. W. Allen, Journ. Hell. Stud. xl., I--12) that it was evolved in the monastery of the Studium at Constantinople. In its earliest examples it is up right and exact but lacks flexibility; accents are small, breathings square in formation, and in general only such ligatures are used as involve no change in the shape of letters. The single forms have a general resemblance (with considerable differences in detail) both to the minuscule cursive of late papyri, and to those used in modern Greek type; uncial forms were avoided.

In the course of the loth century the hand, without losing its beauty and exactness, gained in freedom. Its finest period was from the 9th to the 12th century, after which it rapidly declined. The development was marked by a tendency (I) to the intrusion, in growing quantity, of uncial forms, which good scribes could fit into the line without disturbing the unity of style but which, in less expert hands, had a disintegrating effect; (2) to the disproportionate enlargement of single letters, espe cially at the beginnings and ends of lines; (3) to ligatures, often very fantastic, which quite changed the forms of letters; (4) to the enlargement of accents, breathings at the same time acquir ing the modern rounded form. But from the first there were several styles, varying from the formal, regular hands charac teristic of service books to the informal style, marked by numer ous abbreviations, used in mss. intended only for a scholar's private use. The more formal hands were exceedingly conserv ative, and there are few classes of script more difficult to date than the Greek minuscule of this class. In the loth, II th and I 2th centuries a sloping hand, less dignified than the upright, formal type, but often very handsome, was specially used for mss. of the classics.

Hands of the IIth century are marked in general (though there are exceptions) by a certain grace and delicacy, exact but easy; those of the 12th by a broad, bold sweep and an increasing freedom, which readily admits uncial forms, ligatures and en larged letters but has not lost the sense of style and decorative effect. In the 13th and still more the 14th centuries there was a steady decline; the less formal hands lost their beauty and exactness, becoming ever more disorderly and chaotic in their effect, while the formal style imitated the precision of an earlier period without attaining its freedom and naturalness, and often appears singularly lifeless. In the 15th century, especially in the West, where Greek scribes were in request to produce mss. of the classical authors, there was a revival, and several mss. of this period, though markedly inferior to those of the iith and 12th centuries, are by no means without beauty.