MONOGRAM (monos, single or only, and gramma, meaning "a single a character or cipher composed of one, two or more letters interwoven, being a sort of abbreviation of a name, used as a seal or badge, in coats of arms, etc. Monograms were much used on coins by the Greeks and the Romans. They were also used on standards, walls and tapestry, seals and documents, in which they were employed not only by princes and ecclesiastical dignitaries, but also by magistrates and notaries. At the commencement of the Christian period their use was universal. The titles and rubrics of Greek manuscripts are frequently monogrammatic, and numerous and diversified monograms are found in Latin manuscripts. Alphabets like the Roman, of an angular character, have many letters with corresponding parts; and the up right strokes, the horizontal lines and the curves are easily made by arranging them so that similar portions shall coincide, to produce numerous combinations. Monograms are gen erally combinations of more than two letters; when only two were incorporated they were gen erally designated ligatures. After, the 12th cen tury they gradually went out of use. The use of them remained longest in Germany, where it was formally abolished by the Diet of Worms in 1495. The knowledge of monograms of this
public kind is of great Importance for the illus tration of the monuments and documents of the Middle Ages, and therefore forms a par ticular branch of diplomatics; for they were much employed in the rnedimval diplomatic art. The term was subsequently applied to all sorts of ciphers and signs, with which artists, par ticularly painters and engravers, were accus tomed to designate their works. The mediaeval seal-engraver, to economize as much as possible the annular space available for the legend, favored both ligatures and monograms. Many of those seals had the initials of their own ers blended and incorporated with the de vices, called merchant-marks, corresponding somewhat to the modern trade-marks, which were the stamp, as• it were, by which the work of each artist was known. Many of the mod ern monograms are copied from medimval ex amples. Consult Brulliot, 'Dictionnaire des Monogrammes' (1832-34) • Duplesssis and Bouchot, 'Dictionnaire des 'Marques et Mono grammes de Graveurs> (1886-87) ; Bouvenne, 'Les Monogrammes Historiques' (1870) ; Fa gan. 'Collectors' Marks' (1883).