Humanist minusculeDescriptions of scripts are from Michelle Brown A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600. London. The British Library: 1990 The Humanistic System of Scripts, which may be said to have begun, in Florence, just before 1400, was the result of a conscious reformation of script and book design. This was primarily an aesthetic attempt to restore clarity, legibility and elegance to book production, coupled with a scholarly preoccupation with texts. It has also sometimes been interpreted as a politically philosophical movement, which aimed at the rediscovery and assertion of an 'Italian' identity, through cultural revival. This is seen as an ideological escape from the medieval or 'Gothic', associated with German Imperial ascendancy, in favour of a reassertion of the antique. However, it was to late twelfth-century examples of Carolingian minuscule, an imperial protege, that the Humanists looked for their models of the past. In so far as in both the Carolingian and Humanistic renaissances script was perceived as a primary adjunct of cultural identity and as a tangible link with the past, they were perhaps not so dissimilar.
The development of a system was intimately associated with certain scholar/author/scribes at
the forefront of the Humanistic movement, notably Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), Niccolo Niccoli
(c. 1364-1437) and Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406). A transitional phase of distillation
of purer, ultimately Caroline forms from Italian Gothic scripts, termed the Semigothic System
of Scripts (s. xiv
The spread of Humanistic production was far from uniform, depending to a considerable extent
upon the interest of individual scholars, with Humanistic centres such as Rome and Florence rapidly
adopting these features while more conservative Italian centres, such as Milan and Bologna,
continued Gothic production for longer, alongside limited Humanistic activity. Nonetheless,
Humanistic influence permeated Europe as a whole from the later fifteenth century, sometimes
supplanting, but more often mixing with indigenous scripts. Dissemination was also hastened
by the commercialization of Humanistic book production by the cartolai (stationers/booksellers)
from c. 1440. The role of Humanistic scripts as models for early typefaces (with littera
textualis inspiring the 'Roman' typeface, in its Veneto/Roman form, and cursive
script the 'Italic')) considerably facilitated this process and hastened the demise of Gothic scripts, although many lingered on
for formal administrative use or as elements of everyday handwriting well into the modern period,
with Gothic textualis also inspiring some early typefaces which continued in use in particularly
conservative areas, such as parts of Germany, until quite recently.
Characteristic Humanistic features of script (employed separately or together are: roundness
of aspect; well-separated letters; avoidance of abbreviations; straight-backed d;
tall final s; two compartment g; minuscule r; Uncial a; ampersand
et; use of diphthongs; use of Capitals in places, although Uncial and Gothic forms also occur.
Diffusion and duration: from c. 1400 (with a transitional Semigothic phase s.
xivmed-s. xvimed);
initially confined to Italian centres (initially Florence, Venice, to some extent, and Rome, soon
followed by Ferrara and Naples), with a varied rate and depth of subsequent permeation
throughout Europe.
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