Script Type : minuscule
Date : 15th century
Location : Italy
Function : Book hand, in this case of a formal grade
Distinctive letters : This exquisitely neat and tiny script is pure Caroline minuscule rebadged as humanistic script. There are no letter forms left over from Gothic script. The individual letters should all be very familiar, being the forms in use today in printed books, apart from the tall s and the short t.
There
are several ligatures
such as 
ae, 
ct and 
st. These are also found in formal versions
of Caroline minuscule, and the last two have a long history in formal
script, becoming particularly elongated and elaborate in highly formal
European diploma
scripts, such as those used in the most significant grade of papal
bulls.
As usual, i and j, as well as u and v, are identical. There are no examples of k, w or z. There is a rare example of y on the page, but not in the passage shown above. Note that it is dotted.
The word errore appears as a superscript in the second line. This is a correction of an error, but there is a bit of a trick here because the missing word is, in fact errore.
Part way along the first line is a punctuation mark which indicates the beginning of a new section. Pass the cursor slowly along a few lines from here to get the idea. For more detail, have a go at the paleography exercises.
Script
Index Paleography
exercises for this example using Flash
Requires at least the Flash 5 plugin
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