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542 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
society rested largely on an oral and customary basis. Justice
was done verbally in large assemblies, and the transfer of land
or rights became a ceremonial act accompanied by a symbolic
livery of seisin* and witnessed by neighbours. With the com/
ing of the tenth century these primitive arrangements slowly
gave ground, as well/knit states arose governed by autocratic
rulers. Impressed by the changes of the last four centuries, we
are apt to forget that between A.D. 500 and 1200 Europe
changed at least as much as between A.D. 1200 and 1900. This
revolution, for it is no less, is reflected in the history ofmedieval
handwriting, which beginning in England as an occasional
became the basic and
accessory of the monastic life gradually
indispensable instrument both of the central government and
of ordinary business. Its finest triumphs as a art lie pure in the
earlier centuries, but its importance in the history of society in/
creases to the end of our period and, indeed, far beyond it.
Much more attention not unnaturally has been devoted by
palaeographers to the earlier centuries and therefore to Book
hand or Text than to its 'poor relation' Court hand or Cursive.
But Domesday Book and Magna Carta are also landmarks,
though of a different kind, for they are stages in the gradual
transition from oral custom to written record.
Because handwriting is at once a fine art and a daily utility,
its history is governed by the broad distinction between text and
cursive. For instance, it lies at the root of that slow and subtle
development of writing at its best over the centuries, since as
Dr. Lowe puts it, 'scripts
like populations recruit
chiefly from
below'. 1 Yet the distinction
over/simplifies the facts; for while
moment to follow a
calligraphic writing tends at any given
single, fixed pattern (though with local variations), utility
scripts of differing types and sometimes of real excellence cox
exist with it, often in great numbers. Indeed, by the fifteenth
century most of the great departments ofgovernment, like the
1
Thus, die lettoyfbrms ofdie ordinary writing of ckssical Rome (PL in &)
preserved for us on waxed/tablets and wall/inscriptions are basically those of the
square capitals (PL in a), disguised and modified by being written currente calamo.
But from these modifications over centuries fresh formal hands evolve and ultv
mately a new and smaller calligraphic, or beautiful, writing the minuscule.