its appearance, and in the 12th it is definitely established as tlM usual form. In the 12th cent, the minuscule hand is often largt and somewhat handsome, though without the compactness ol the earlier style ; but from this point it degenerates more de- cisively. The foiTus of the letters become more irregular, accents are larger and more conspicuous, the practice of con- traction is introduced, which in later MSS increases to such on extent as to render them unintelligible except after a special .study of the various marks of abbreviation. Accents also are fretiuently formed in one stroke with the letters, and in every resi>ect the tendency to cursiveness increases. The Uenaissance, with its revival of interest in Greek in the West, and the in- creased demand for handsome specimens of Greek writing which it produced, led to some improvement in calligraphy ; but here the invention of printing stepped in, and the handiwork of the scribe was superseded by the mechanical precision of the press.
LrrERATURE. — The authorities cited in S v. : Omont, Foe- similes des ■nianuscrits grecs daUs rff la Bibliothhque NatioimU du ixe au xive si^xle, IbOt), and FacsimiUs rfej* iiianwtcrity grpct des xve et xvU siicles^ 1887 ; Wattenbach and von Velsen, I'^xempla Codicum (jh^cecorum littei'is minwiculia scriptorum^ 1873.
vii. Latin Writing. — It does not come within the scope of this article to consider all the forms of writing in which the Bible has circulated ; but the Latin version holds such a unique position, as the Bible of the West, and one of such special interest to us, that a short description of Latin writing may be useful. Of its early stages, before the general adoption of vellum, we have much less knowledge than in the case of Greek ; for the papyri found in Egypt, which are our chief source of information of the pre-vellum period, contain but very few examples of Latin writing. Even the papj-ri of Herculaneum are almost wholly Greek ; and though we know that papyrus was the main material of book production throughout the whole of the most productive period of Roman literature, and continued to be employed for liter- ary purposes as late as the 7th cent., and for certain official purposes (notably papal rescripts) down to the beginning of the 11th cent., we have no literary works of any substantial size now ex- tant on this material, with the exception of a few papyrus codices of the 6th and 7th cents., long alter the victory of vellum had been accomplished. We have nothing to show us what the lirst editions of Cicero and Cresar, of Virgil and Horace, or even of Tacitus and Pliny, were like. The history of the Latin literary hand begins, where the history of the Greek literary hand began until recently, with the rise of vellum. Of the early non-literary hand we have rather more evidence, in the shape of a few papj'ri and a considerable number of wax tablets ; and this may have been u.sed, like the Greek non-literarj- hand, for the dissemination of the Scriptures in very early times. On this point, however, there is at present no evidence.
On vellum the history of Latin writing follows substantially the same course as the Greek. It begins with an elaborately- written majuscule hand, in which all the letters are separate ; and this is ultimatelv superseded by a minuscule band, which from the 9th cent, to the 10th is the universal vehicle of litera- ture. In the majuscule type ol hand, however, distinctions are introduced which find no place in Greek. The earliest phase is that of writing in capitals, in which rounded forms of ktlersare rare, the general character being the s.ame as that of inscriptions upon stone. These, again, are subdivided into sqitarf capitals, in which the letters are even in height and square in build, and n(*-/ic, in which the horizontal strokes are very short in propor- tion to the perjiendicular. Of square capitals verj' few speci- mens now remain (notably two fragmentar>- MSS of Virgil), and it seems clear that they were used only fur MUions de luxe, and never were the form of writing exclusively in use. Tlie shapes of the letters are essentially the same as in rustic capitals, only thev arc increased in breadth. The two styles ore contempor- aneous, and of the two the rustic style is unquestionably that which was in common use. It is also the earlier in date, going back to the papyrus period (e.g. a Roman military roll of a.d. 156, Pal. Soc. ii. Ifi.'i): while the heavier square capitals can hardly have been written except on vellum. Rustic capitals are found in the great early MSS of Virgil, the Romanus and Palatinus of the 4th cent., and the Mediceus of the 6th ; also in the Btinbino Terence (4th-5th cent.), the Paris Prudcntius (0th cent), and even as late as the Psalter falsely attributed to St. Augustine, but really of the early 8th cent., and the Utrecht Psalter of the 9tli cent. Commoner, however, than the rustic hand, — at any rate from the 4th cent, onwards, — ia the other form of the
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