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HANDWRITING 55*
we may call Gothic (PL 119). This change from the 'grand
style* to one of 'general minuteness* was universal and perhaps
deplorable, for despite the beauty ofthe new it fails
script,
in the
fundamental quality oflegibility. The offis falling
all the more
serious, since with the coming of the thirteenth century the
number of surviving manuscripts increases in an almost geo/
metrical progression. This too was the great age ofthe medieval
universities, so that the whole academic learning of scholasti/
cism must be read in highly abbreviated close scripts most
trying to the eyes. Here none the less is a vast field for study and
one in which scholars today are making great discoveries.
The very finest examples of the Gothic style are, of course,
found in important religious books bibles, the works of the
great 'scholastics' like Peter Comestor, and, above all, in
service books, especially psalters, missals, and breviaries. These
were the de luxe volumes ofthe age, written without regard for
expense, by scribes of unusual skill and often superbly illum^
inated. For mere 'literary' works, like chronicles, the full vigour
of the new style was generally much mitigated, as in PL 1180,
which shows the pleasing hand of Matthew Paris, the his^
torian. Indeed, therewas now so much bookhand writing on all
levels, that collectively there are today probably more manux
scripts written in modified Gothic, like that ofMatthew Paris,
than in the script ofPL 119. Nevertheless, it was the hand ofthe
missals and breviaries that was most esteemed at the time, and
we can still admire the fantastic skill required
to write it. Per^
haps too it had a scarcity value, for it is hard to believe that the
supply ofsuch skilled scribes even then was enough to meet the
demand. It could thus be only a matter oftime until a reaction
set in and the scholars, if not the scribes, strove to recover the
splendid simplicity of the older writing. This movement in
which Italy pkyed a leading part brought about the archaistic
and artificial revival of the littera antiqua (i.e. the post'Caroline
minuscule of Italy) in the humanistic script of the fifteenth
century, a variety ofwhich, the italic, is shown in PL 1 20, With
the simultaneous discovery of printing from movable type,
further development was arrested and both the Gothic and the