Note that the four minims making up the double "n" run together context tells you what these letters must be. (Keep in mind that Middle English spelling varies.) Mouse over the image to learn the correct answer. Practice reading by trying to figure out what each of these words is. The discussion of minims showed you how important it is to look at whole words. Now, try a harder one (hint: this word is Latin):Īlthough it looks at first glance like this word is composed entirely of minims, the two center characters are "ll." As you can see, scribes did not follow our practice of putting uniform spaces between characters, so sometimes minims from separate characters run together, or minims forming the same character will be separate. The leading "a" helps determine what the string of minims in the middle of the word must be. Mouse over the image to learn the correct answer. Look at the word below, and see if you can figure out what it is. It is frequently difficult to know what letter or letters a group of minims represents unless you can determine the entire word from context. In particular, minims are usually used for the following letters: Several minims can make up a single letter, or even a group of letters. Medieval scribes used minims to form letters. Older editions of Middle English texts often use these characters, but most recent editions silently transform them into their modern equivalents.
#MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS WRITING HOW TO#
You should be aware of these characters and understand how to transcribe them. Yogh which can be transcribed “gh” or “y,” and is printed ȝ These are:Įth also equivalent to “th”, and printed ð Middle English uses certain special characters in its alphabet. Frequently, context is necessary to determine what a letter is, as we shall see below. Study these letter forms, but do not be discouraged if you were unable to figure them out. Note that the same letter can have different forms, even when written by the same scribe. Mouse over each letter to learn the correct answer. Look at the letters below, and try to figure out what they are. Some letter forms used in medieval scripts look very different from those we use today. Every time you look at a new manuscript, you will need to become accustomed to the features of the scribe's (or scribes') hand(s). Remember, though, that even if he is using a particular script, each scribe has a distinctive hand.
Our discussion will focus on these two scripts. Of these, anglicana and secretary are the most frequently used to copy Middle English texts. If you wish to continue your study of paleography, consult the relevant resources.Īs you saw in the discussion of scripts, there are three different types of scripts that were used in the later Middle Ages in England. This page offers a very brief introduction to this discipline, to allow you to complete the exercises in Platform 3. The discipline of reading medieval handwriting is called paleography (also spelled palaeography). Specified.Letter Forms | Abbreviations | Punctuation Photographs and text on this site are © Dianne Tillotson unless otherwise This is a continual work in progress.ĭianne Tillotson, a freelance researcher with medieval connections. We are doing our best! The content of the site depends heavily on the display of graphic images, but nobody disables graphics anymore, do they? By request of users, the graphics are gradually being upgraded to higher resolution and less compression, so they may take longer to load, depending on your connection, but the results will be better when you get there. No, you cannot do the paleography exercises on your iPad. Currently I believe most of it works on Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Other browsers will display the basic information pages, or the Flash pages if they have the plugin, but some interactive pages may produce variable results.
At least the Flash 5 plugin is required for the interactive paleography exercises.
Site requires Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer 4 or above, with Javascript enabled.
#MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS WRITING WINDOWS#
It might be a quill pen, in the stained glass windows of All Saints, North John the Evangelist with book and palm frond, but with the eye of faith Just remember to click on the site map link at the bottom of the page once you get in, or you won't be able to find everything. If you need a no frames version, please use the tradesman's entrance here.
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