The Art of writing

In Western Europe

The art of writing is highly cultural. It gives both a visible and a perennial form to what is essentially fugitive speech when it is oral; moreover, it transforms the result of the transcription into writing that is pleasing to the eye. In the West, writing underwent several transformations between the fifth and the fifteenth century. It remained manuscript until the invention of printing, around 1430-1450. This new technique made it possible to reproduce books serially by using mobile letter blocks.

The art of writing depends upon its users. It varies according to the kind of text it gives permanence to, the medium chosen to receive the handwriting and its eventual use. Writing a book is different from producing documentary texts (diplomatic documents, legal minutes, account ledgers, etc.). The recourse to decorative writing and to calligraphy, whether in the form of elongated letters used in preambles for charters or in the ornate letters of religious books, aimed at reinforcing the solemn character of the text or even at underlining the prestige of the person who ordered it.

In addition to the traditional media – papyrus, which was no longer used in the early Middle Ages, parchment, and, from the thirteenth century, paper – writing used stone, metal, wood, textiles, glass and even wall painting as well as any other material that, when sculpted, moulded or painted, could be written on. In a society where the majority of people were illiterate, more so at the beginning of the Middle Ages than at the end, those often large-scale texts (epitaphs, dedication inscription, identity of personalities) were placed in places where the greatest number of people could see them. Anybody in the general public who could not read could ask a clerk or a well-read man – these two terms were synonymous for a long time – for the meaning of an inscription.

With or without specific ornamentation, texts had a symbolic character expressing the power of those who mastered the art of writing. In the early Middle Ages, writing was almost entirely in the hands of clerics. It then slowly started to penetrate the highest strata of lay society (sovereigns, counts and aristocrats in the Carolingian period). The improvement in economy and the rise of trade meant that rural contracts and accountancy documents became more common. The institutions that were to become universities in the thirteenth century started taking shape. The increasing role of notaries in the southern European countries as early as the eleventh century, the development of royal and princely chanceries and, during the twelfth century, the renewal of speculative thinking born out of the rediscovery of antique works of arts, all contributed to a growth of the uses of writing and an increase in the number of people whose professional activities revolved around writing: writers, copyists, calligraphers and readers.

The evolution of hand writing shapes accompanied all those transformations. In the early Middle Ages, there was no unity of scripts. In the Frankish chanceries, writing was very convoluted. Books were written in very varied ways, often derived from the Uncial script of late antiquity. At the end of the eighth century Charlemagne initiated a reform of writing. This ushered in Carolingian script, a minuscule script which dispensed with the ligatures typical of cursive scripts. The incontrovertible success of the Carolingian script was reinforced by the adoption of a structured system of punctuation that, together with the fact that words were now separate, made for much more legible texts. The Carolingian unity of script survived the political project that had produced it. In the end, Carolingian script gave birth to our printing types, even if in certain zones like Lombardy in Italy different forms were developed. This was linked to a very clear consciousness that an identity depended on a graphic system. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, new ways of thinking and writing led to various changes. Cursive writing, which showed a greater familiarity with the text, emerged again and at the beginning of the twelfth century curves were beginning to break up, accentuating the structure of the word more than the identity of the letter itself. This movement took place alongside the development of scholastic thought and gothic architecture. Like gothic script, gothic architecture reveals the main elements of a discourse both intellectual and monumental common to all the specialists of the time. Gothic script – which has both capital upper and lower case letters – was used as much in manuscripts as in inscriptions (on tombstones, wall tapestries, silver and gold pieces) showing how much its use had spread. In the fourteenth century this new style of script diversified in its turn with the use of mixed shapes that were more or less baroque or calligraphed, for example the “Bâtarde” used in the French court.

The dynamism of the art of handwriting in the late Middle Ages was a reaction to a growing social demand that led to the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. A thirst for culture that marked the beginning of the humanist movement made the traditional use of written documents more widespread in the domains of the law, administration and the church. Princes, lay figures, mendicant orders and universities began to gather ever-expanding libraries. Traditional manuscript copying, being slow and expensive, could no longer supply the increasing demand for the written word. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, xylographic prints containing text and illustration started to circulate. Technical progress enabled the invention of the mobile type printing press by Gutenberg. The fact that for his first book Gutenberg chose to print the Bible on velum, and imitated both the script and the layout of a manuscript, shows the extent to which his discovery straddled the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

C. T.