What does paleography study? This issue will be considered in detail in this article. First of all, it is worth giving a definition briefly. What paleography studies can be defined in a few words. Her research area is historical documents. Scientists involved in this science study manuscripts, as well as printed books, in order to identify patterns in the development of fonts.
Paleography as a branch of historical science
This section of knowledge studies documents not only in order to trace the development of writing, but also to determine other characteristics of literary monuments.
What else interests scientists? Paleography studies authorship, time and place of writing a document. In this case, it acts as an auxiliary branch of history.
Thanks to the work of scientists working in this field, modern humanity has information about the date of many significant events. As already mentioned, in addition to time, researchers are also able to say with varying degrees of probability about who wrote the text, as well as identify the place where it was created.
First research
The founders of this science Mabillon and Monfocon were French monks who lived in the seventeenth century. The first of them published a monumental scientific work, consisting of reproductions of numerous manuscripts of ancient times, accompanied by the characteristics of the types of type found in these documents.
This multi-volume edition was published in a circulation of about 2,000 copies, which sold in a matter of months, which was a great achievement of the emerging science. It is worth mentioning that in those days, there were rarely cases when a book, even belonging to the genre of fiction, sold out so quickly and in such numbers. And for scientific work, this became an unprecedented success until then.
Doubt is the cause of scientific discoveries
Paleography is a special science that studies historical documents, namely the fonts that are characteristic of them, material, writing materials and so on.
The French monk Monfocon, one of the founding fathers of this branch of knowledge, was the author of numerous works devoted to the problems of this science. The reason that he became interested in these issues and began to actively develop them was his doubt about the authenticity of some documents signed by prominent historical figures.
This was the impetus for an active study of fonts.
Different types of fonts
The field of study of paleography is authorship, time, place. These characteristics can be determined by the peculiarities of writing individual letters of the text. So what are fonts, how do they differ from each other? The first studies in this area were based on material from Greek documents. The oldest of them were knocked out on stones. In this form, codes of laws, various political agreements, as well as sayings of rulers, have reached us. This information was carved on the walls of buildings and on individual boulders. The font of such texts was not particularly sophisticated and consisted of simple geometric elements: straight lines, circles, and so on.
He went down in history as the alphabet of inscriptions.
At that time, papyrus had already appeared, but only the information that was necessary for seeing business relations, trade, and also for correspondence between ordinary citizens was stored on it. Later, when the rulers realized the fact that all the numerous laws could not fit on the walls of buildings, and that it was necessary to find other material for them, which was papyrus, another type of font appeared. It had a shape similar to uppercase letters, handwritten. Such a font was used in Europe until the Middle Ages. And it was he who served as the basis for the appearance of the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet with which all ancient Russian monuments of literature were written, such as the Ipatiev Chronicle, The Word of Igor's Campaign, and so on.
The appearance of italics and lowercase letters
Speaking about what paleography studies in history, it should be mentioned that scientists involved in this science made many discoveries that may seem interesting to people interested in history and philology.
For example, until the Renaissance, elements such as uppercase, lowercase, and italics were rarely used together, but existed as separate fonts.
When the ancient Greek rulers decided to transfer the codes of laws from stone to papyrus, a new kind of letters appeared - capital letters.
Science developed rapidly, the works of philosophers became increasingly popular. Along with this, fiction and drama were also popular. All this required the replication of numerous texts. This was done by the clerks. They were supposed to copy voluminous works in a short period of time. For this reason, the calligraphic features of the manuscripts usually suffered. The letters acquired a specific slope, characteristic for their rapid writing. This font is called italics.
It, along with alphabets consisting of uppercase and lowercase letters, was used independently until the Middle Ages.
Gothic in manuscripts
In the Middle Ages, another writing material became known - parchment. The tools with which the inscriptions were made also changed. Feathers with a wide base gave way to pointed stationery, which required calligraphers to change the degree of pressure when drawing lines of different thicknesses. This affected the appearance of the letters themselves. They have become more elongated. Numerous transverse strokes and decorative elements appeared. This style is called Gothic writing.
There are various varieties of it. You can list such types of Gothic fonts as texture, fracture, and so on. It was in this style that the first ever book published by the German master Johann Guttenberg was framed.
Reform in the field of writing
Continuing the conversation about what paleography is studying, one cannot fail to mention one more important historical fact.
In the Middle Ages, as already mentioned, the Gothic style dominated in printing.
However, the figures of the Renaissance came to the conclusion that in those ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts that they studied, you can find letters that are more perfect in appearance than those that printed books by contemporary authors.
Therefore, some artists have begun to create a new font. He received the name antiqua. And it is letters of this type that became the progenitors of those fonts that are most often used today in print.
This invention belongs to Italian artists. Among its creators was the famous poet Petrarch. For a short time, almost all of European printed literature switched to the Latin alphabet of this pattern.
The only exception was Germany, in which adherence to the Gothic style remained until the middle of the 20th century.
Printed Exotica
A brief overview of what paleography is studying can be continued by mentioning another area of activity of scientists in this industry. In the XVIII century, after the publication of the first collections, which included reproductions of ancient manuscripts, many people became interested in the appearance of the letters that were used in these texts. Some industrialists began to publish literature using various rare fonts. But often the publishers did not take into account the fact that the Latin alphabet in the style of texture looks great in the words of the French language, but it does not combine with Spanish and many others.
Types of cryptography
The scope of what paleography is studying also includes various types of information transfer that use encrypted written messages.
All types of such coding have a common name - cryptography.
Another phenomenon that should be mentioned in a conversation about what paleography is studying is steganography. This term means encrypting the message in such a way that the very fact of the presence of any secret in it is not noticeable. With this method of transmitting information, the written text either looks externally as a fragment of completely different content, or the text itself is hidden.
Examples
Examples of the use of steganography include such forms as the inscriptions on the shaved heads of slaves that existed in antiquity. Moreover, when a person who wore a message on himself reached the addressee, his hair, which had grown before the time of departure, already hid the message from prying eyes. The one to whom it was intended could read it, shaving the head of the slave.
Another example of steganography may be the technique of encrypting text using a special stencil often shown in spy movies. When the addressee receives such a letter, he puts on him a device that shows him only those letters of the text that should be read.
Conclusion
In this article, the question of what paleography studies is considered. In particular, such directions were mentioned as the study of fonts, cryptography, writing materials and so on. We can say that the results of the work carried out by scientists in this field may be of interest not only to specialists, but also to a wide circle of readers.