Volume 2

Universal palaeography, or, Fac-similes of writings of all nations and periods, copied from the most celebrated and authentic manuscripts in the libraries and archives of France, Italy, Germany, and England / by M.J.B. Silvestre ; accompanied by an historical and descriptive text and introduction by Champollion-Figeac and Aimé Champollion, fils ; translated from the French and edited, with corrections and notes, by Sir Frederic Maddan ... in two volumes.

Joseph-Balthazar Silvestre

Date:: 1849-1850

Credit: Universal palaeography, or, Fac-similes of writings of all nations and periods, copied from the most celebrated and authentic manuscripts in the libraries and archives of France, Italy, Germany, and England / by M.J.B. Silvestre ; accompanied by an historical and descriptive text and introduction by Champollion-Figeac and Aimé Champollion, fils ; translated from the French and edited, with corrections and notes, by Sir Frederic Maddan ... in two volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

51/458 page 409

$of the fourteenth century. This fact, therefore, must hence forth be regarded as one of the most certain rules in relation to Latin palaeography. The Plate belonging to the present article represents the first page of this manuscript of La Cava, and the lines at the head of the first column furnish its true title, Incipit p\ro\logus in Vitas Abbatii\m\ nostroru[m]. This title, like the text of the volume, exhibits the heavy, broken, round, and wide Lom- bardic minuscule, with the top-strokes triangularly clavate, and the tails generally short and truncated diagonally, with many of the letters conjoined; the i occasionally accentuated; the words separated, the phrases punctuated, and the abbrevi¬ ations rather numerous; each page being divided by lines ruled with a plummet, in double columns, with 25 lines in each. The prologue commences with the phrase, Si junta divine sentenciam veritatis, lucerna ad hoc accendit^r, ut, sup^r can¬ delabrum posita, lumen domurn intrantibws preheat, etc. The initial letter S is of large size, elegantly executed, the body of the letter being ornamented with a pattern of different colors, and the open spaces filled up with arabesques of leaves and flowers. The words which immediately follow are in capitals of a degenerated uncial character, formed with thick strokes alternately red and blue*, and surcharged with flourishes, which may be regarded as the modern Gothic, especially from the 0 and E being closed; a kind of writing rarely used in manuscripts, and which gives additional interest to the fac-simile of a manuscript unquestionably of Lombardo-Italian execution, of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. The French editors write black and white.—Ed.$

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