Calligraphy

In Byzantium

Calligraphy in Byzantium was the direct descendant of the manuscripts of antiquity, written using Greek capitals, in scriptio continua[1], the earliest surviving copies of which come from Egypt[2]. Calligraphy in the Byzantine Empire covered relatively different practices, their degree of sophistication determined by the purpose of each text. In the fourth century AD, the art of fine writing concerned literary, diplomatic, scriptural, patristic and liturgical texts. Most of the surviving documents from the Eastern Roman Empire are written in Greek, Latin being reserved mainly for administrative and legal texts.

From the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, the interest of the cultured elite in classical and theological texts favoured the transmission of ancient texts, which were copied in luxurious formats. These beautiful editions are known to us through the rare surviving manuscripts, such as the Codex Sinaiticus, or through papyrus fragments found during excavations in Egypt[3]. The Greek uncial known as Coptic uncial is an example of a refined book hand. It was used for documents dating from the mid-sixth century to the tenth century. Used by the patriarchal chancery of Alexandria, this fine writing was used by the Copts to transcribe their language.

Uncial remained in use for several centuries, evolving with changing fashions in terms of ornamentation. After the invention of minuscule script, uncial constituted a luxurious calligraphic script reserved for liturgical manuscripts. Initials, chapter titles, liturgical indications, and marginal glosses in the uncial or half-uncial known as liturgical were written in gold ink: chrysography. This use of colour and/or luxury inks was related to the sacred or precious content of the manuscript[4].

In the last third of the eighth century and in the early ninth century, a new Greek script, minuscule, developed. It is still used today both in printed books and everyday life. The birth of minuscule script marked a turning point in the history of the Byzantine book. All books had to be retranscribed using this new way of writing. This was the case with the Chludov Psalter, which dates from the ninth century; its text, originally written in uncial, was retranscribed in minuscule in the twelfth century. The scriptoria of the monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople, of the patriarchate and of the imperial palace were some of the most famous and have left behind a considerable number of manuscripts transcribed in the new script. This retranscription explains why there are so few surviving calligraphic manuscripts from the fourth to seventh centuries. They were discovered through the reading of palimpsests.

Minuscule allowed scribes to write more quickly and took up less space than capitals. The distant origins of this script may be found in the third century BC, when book hand became looser, thus distinguishing itself from inscription style. Minuscule also made clear an embryonic characteristic of chancery script[5], that is, the four-line system[6]. This looseness allowed scribes to write more quickly without affecting legibility. It was during this period that the use of diacritics (breathing, accents) began to be widespread. Invented by the Alexandrian scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (third century BC), these signs enabled readers to clearly distinguish between letters that were commonly confused. Diacritics offered further opportunities to decorate writing. Interestingly, Carolingian minuscule appeared in the West during the same period.

Parchment was an expensive writing material. Attempts at producing brachygraphy also aimed to take up less room on the page. These condensed scripts appeared in southern Italy between 960 and 1030. Difficult to write, these types of syllabaries could be decorated with strokes of the reed pen or quill just as much as texts written in minuscule. These experiments were, however, very limited in time.

The reform of writing modified the canons of calligraphy. Calligraphic exuberance was concentrated on specific parts of texts such as initials and chapter titles[7]. Within minuscule script, several styles appeared through the centuries. For example, eckige Hakenschrift, in use during the ninth and tenth centuries; minuscule bouletée used throughout the tenth century; the Perlschrift of the eleventh century; and “Hodegon monastery minuscule”, used in the second half of the fourteenth century. Perlschrift, for example, is an archaising script, referring to models from the second half of the seventh century. Elegant, refined and very legible, it was in harmony with the ornamental style that dominated under the Palaeologi, as may be seen in surviving mosaics, jewellery and ceramic decorations.

The monokondylos script was a very sophisticated form of calligraphy that illustrated a taste for entanglement and a certain type of perfection. It is a script of loops and curves characterised by a perfect continuity of line. Affecting only a few words at the end of a document or book most of the time, this style of writing seems to have appeared in the Byzantine sphere around the tenth century. This graphic phenomenon is thought to have originated in the signatures of official administrative or judicial documents. The individuality of the line guaranteed the authenticity of the signature and thus of the document. This function accounts for the main characteristics of monokondylos script. Virtually illegible and thus inimitable, it also had to be decipherable and clear. Used in the colophon, an appendix at the end of a manuscript book, the monokondylos paraph became a simple decorative phenomenon.

Humanists took a great interest in the fine writing of manuscripts, faithfully reproducing these manuscript scripts, which were chosen as models for the first typefaces. The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius (1449–1515) was the first to reject the mannered majuscules of the Byzantine scribes: while he opted for Byzantine minuscule inspired by a fifteenth-century work for the lower case, he turned to ancient inscriptions for the capitals.

E. Y.