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HANDWRITING 553
in the material used for writing, and therefore in technique.
The classical world had employed papyrus: the modern world
writes, and prints, on paper which 'came in* during the fif/
teenth century. The medieval world in all three periods used
sheepskin or parchment or vellum three names for varieties
of the same thing which lasts longer than either papyrus or
paper and gives a better surface for the pen.
The sketch given above is, however, something ofan abstrao
tion for in treating writing as a form ofart, it inevitably neglects
history. But writing is, after all, only a synonym for history and
art for art's sake a poor motto for the scribe since even the most
exquisite manuscripts were written to serve useful purposes.
There is, when all is said and done, a greater thrill in reading a
manuscript than in merely looking at it, and the historian finds
significance in the script often beautiful of manuscripts
ignored by the student ofwriting as an art. The earlier centuries
from which, relatively, so little has been preserved present little
difficulty, for historians and palaeographers are equally ins
terested in all that survives. But from the twelfth century on^
wards our third period we enter a new world. The monks
to whom we owe the finest manuscripts ofthe middle ages were,
even then, a privileged class, to whom neither time nor money
was important. Then, as now, there was also the world of
aflairs the correspondence of kings, bishops, and barons, the
writing of the law-courts, the tax rolls of the bureaucrats,
private conveyancing and the accounts of business men. Not
much is known about either the nature or volume of all this
in the largely oral society of the early middle ages: but in the
century after the Norman Conq uest therewas a rapid expansion
ofthe written document, and by the late twelfth century there
had developed a new cursive or semicursive, the 'court letter*
(Uttera curialis) or as we say court hand. This new writing smy
vives in baffling variety and ever growing quantity, but PL 1 17
will suffice to show its origin in the Caroline minuscule written
currente calama. A large and mixed body ofsecular, professional
writers sprang up, ranging from the halfilliterate scribe who
compiled the manorial courtarolls to the highlyxskilled clerks of