Scripts | Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this first episode, she discusses medieval scripts.

Medieval script tends to change over time but is also influenced by strong national traditions. This phenomenon helps scholars to date and localize manuscript books. Unlike books today, medieval books don’t have title pages, and quite often they also lack scribal colophons stating when and where a book was written (and by whom). This is why the study of historical scripts (palaeography) is important. Irene O’Daly shows examples of caroline script (BPL 137), pre-gothic script (SCA 16), gothic script (PER F 25) and humanistic script (BPL 9). These scripts were consecutively used in the 9th-11th centuries, 12th century, 13th-15th centuries and 15th century.