English translation of: ‘L’écriture des documents anglais au douzième siècle’, Bibliothèque de L’École des chartes, 165 (2008 for 2007), 139-165 (original) (raw)

subsequently in French as 'L'écriture des documents anglais au douzième siècle', in Bibliothèque de L'École des chartes, 165 (2008 for 2007), The Handwriting of Documents in Twelfth-Century England 1 Scribes in Anglo-Saxon England had employed the same kind of handwriting and spectrum of formality of execution in both documents and books. During the twelfth century, however, the handwriting of documents produced in England became extraordinarily diverse, encompassing in various combinations differences in manner of execution, proportion, variant letter forms and features of style. By the last quarter of the twelfth century, some scribes were beginning to develop a new kind of handwriting which, in different levels of formality and size, combined the spontaneous cursive traces that they and their predecessors had employed when writing more rapidly, with letter forms and features of style borrowed from more formal writing in French and papal documents. This article presents a palaeographical analysis of the ways in which handwriting in English documents became so diverse, and of the ingredients of the handwriting that was beginning to emerge towards the end of the twelfth century. The diversity of handwriting been outlined before, 2 but detailed attention has thus far been given only to developments in handwriting at either the more cursive end of the spectrum, as practiced especially by royal scribes, 3 or to the formal handwriting found also as the usual texthand in books. 4 An analysis that covers the full spectrum of handwriting in twelfth-century documents may be valuable for two reasons. First, those scribes who were writing more cursively to meet the demands created by the increasing use of written records were not immune from a concern for the appropriate appearance of handwriting in different contexts. Such concern led some scribes to combine in their writing both elements of cursivity and features of style, an interplay which had important consequences for developments in the handwriting of documents during the twelfth century. Second, in a period when documents were as likely to be produced by scribes of (or local to) the beneficiaries as by those employed by kings and bishops, it is necessary to take into account the full panorama of scribal performance, both in order to gain an impression of the range of handwriting that may have shaped the experience and expectations of those by whom and for whom documents were made, and also to chart the wider diffusion of practices first exploited by scribes associated with royal government and the major episcopal households.