Johannine script

Last updated April 12, 2019

Johannine script (Portuguese : letra joanina) was a historical style of handwriting used in the Portuguese Royal Chancery starting around the reign of John I (1385–1433) that was used until the reign of Manuel I (1495–1521). It is, thus, a national variation of chancery hand, a form of blackletter.

Portuguese is a Western Romance language originating in the Iberian Peninsula. It is the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau in China. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India; in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; in the Malacca state of Malaysia; and the ABC islands in the Caribbean where Papiamento is spoken, while Cape Verdean Creole is the most widely spoken Portuguese-based Creole. Reintegrationists maintain that Galician is not a separate language, but a dialect of Portuguese. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone" (Lusófono).

Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study of ancient and historical handwriting. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria.

Chancery is a general term for a medieval writing office, responsible for the production of official documents. The title of chancellor, for the head of the office, came to be held by important ministers in a number of states, and remains the title of the heads of government in modern Germany and Austria. Chancery hand is a term for various types of handwriting associated with chanceries.

Johannine script is essentially cursive, with a short corpus size (but with long ascenders and descenders), letters slope slightly to the right, words are clearly separated one from the other with no ligatures, punctuation is mostly absent, and Arabic numerals are not used (instead, numbers are given in full, or in Roman numerals). The shape of the letters v and b (and Roman numeral 5) are practically indistinguishable. Abbreviations are commonplace, mostly marked with an overline and/or superscript.^[1]

In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lower-case letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font, as well as the v, w, and z. One of the most important dimensions of a font, x-height is used to define how high lower-case letters are compared to upper-case letters.

In typography, an ascender is the portion of a minuscule letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a font. That is, the part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font's x-height.

In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line.

The prevailing script in documents from (and from the land that would eventually become) Portugal from the 8th to the 12th centuries was Visigothic script; from the mid-12th century onwards, for about a century, Carolingian minuscule and, later on, an incipient Gothic script. From 1385 onwards, that is, after John I was crowned putting an end to the Portuguese Interregnum, there is radical change in the writing style of the documents issued by the Royal Chancery: this new script (first called "Johannine script" by paleographer Eduardo Borges Nunes)^[2] has influences of the French lettre bâtarde and Gothic scripts.

Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania. Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively.

Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in Europe so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It was developed for the first time, in about 780, by a Benedictine monk of Corbie Abbey, namely, Alcuin of York. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 AD and 1200 AD. Codices, pagan and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule throughout the Carolingian Renaissance. The script developed into blackletter and became obsolete, though its revival in the Italian Renaissance forms the basis of more recent scripts.

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Bible.

Notable scribes who wrote mostly on Johannine script include Álvaro Gonçalves (fl. 1385–1401), Gonçalo Caldeira (fl. 1386–1426), and João de Lisboa (fl. 1388–1431).^[1]

Floruit, abbreviated fl., Latin for "he/she flourished", denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the word may also be used as a noun indicating the time when someone flourished.

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Uncial script Capital letter-only writing system in Greek and Latin

Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek, Latin, and Gothic.

Beja is a city and a municipality in the Alentejo region, Portugal. The population in 2011 was 35,854, in an area of 1,146.44 km² (442.64 sq mi). The city proper had a population of 21,658 in 2001.

Blackletter Old script typeface used throughout Western Europe

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the Danish language until 1875, and for German, Estonian and Latvian until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is incorrectly referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is sometimes referred to as Old English, but it is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc.

Antiqua ) is a style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries. Letters are designed to flow and strokes connect together in a continuous fashion; in this way it is often contrasted with Fraktur-style typefaces where the individual strokes are broken apart. The two typefaces were used alongside each other in the germanophone world, with the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute often dividing along ideological or political lines. After the mid-20th century, Fraktur fell out of favor and Antiqua-based typefaces became the official standard.

Western calligraphy is the art of writing and penmanship as practiced in the Western world, especially using the Latin alphabet.

Italic script, also known as chancery cursive, is a semi-cursive, slightly sloped style of handwriting and calligraphy that was developed during the Renaissance in Italy. It is one of the most popular styles used in contemporary Western calligraphy, and is often one of the first scripts learned by beginning calligraphers.

The Cathedral of Évora is a Roman Catholic church in the city of Évora, Portugal. It is one of the oldest and most important local monuments, lying on the highest spot of the city. It is part of the historical city centre, and the seat of the Archdiocese of Evora.

The Monastery of Jesus is a historical religious building in Setúbal, Portugal, which served a monastery of Poor Clare nuns. It is one of the first buildings in the Manueline style, the Portuguese version of late Gothic. The cloisters of the complex houses a museum of the monastery.

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Formularies are medieval collections of models for the execution of documents (acta), public or private; a space being left for the insertion of names, dates, and circumstances peculiar to each case. Their modern equivalent are forms.

The Latin script is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the standard script of the English language and is often referred to simply as "the alphabet" in English. It is a true alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan. The phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles ("hands") developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters. Due to classicism, modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts. There are few regional variants.

Architecture of Portugal refers to the architecture practiced in the territory of present-day Portugal since before the foundation of the country in the 12th century. The term may also refer to buildings created under Portuguese influence or by Portuguese architects in other parts of the world, particularly in the Portuguese Empire.

Papal regesta are the copies, generally entered in special registry volumes, of the papal letters and official documents that are kept in the papal archives. The name is also used to indicate subsequent publications containing such documents, in chronological order, with summaries of their essential contents, for which English diplomatics use usually the term "calendar."

Gilded woodcarving in Portugal is, along with tile, one of the country's most original and rich artistic expressions. It is usually used in the interior decoration of churches and cathedrals and of noble halls in palaces and large public buildings. An impressive collection of altarpieces are found in Portuguese churches. Originating in the Gothic era, Portuguese gilded woodcarving assumed a nationalist character during the 17th century and reached its height in the reign of King D. João V. In the 19th century it lost its originality and began to disappear with the end of the revival era.

Évora Municipality in Alentejo, Portugal

Évora is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population in 2011 was 56,596, in an area of 1307.08 km². It is the seat of the Évora District. The present Mayor is Carlos Pinto de Sá of the CDU coalition. The municipal holiday is 29 June.

Humanist minuscule is a handwriting or style of script that was invented in secular circles in Italy, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. "Few periods in Western history have produced writing of such great beauty", observes the art historian Millard Meiss. The new hand was based on Carolingian minuscule, which Renaissance humanists, obsessed with the revival of antiquity and their role as its inheritors, took to be ancient Roman:

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References

1 2 Ferreira, Ana Cristina Pereira da Silva (2011). Análise paleográfica de uma escrita de Chancelaria Régia: a letra joanina, 1370–1420 (PDF) (M.A.). University of Lisbon . Retrieved 8 August 2017.
↑ Borges Nunes, Eduardo (1969). Álbum de Paleografia Portuguesa[Album of Portuguese Paleography] (in Portuguese). vol. I. Instituto de Alta Cultura, Centro de Estudos Históricos.

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[Ferreira2011-1] 1 2 Ferreira, Ana Cristina Pereira da Silva (2011). Análise paleográfica de uma escrita de Chancelaria Régia: a letra joanina, 1370–1420 (PDF) (M.A.). University of Lisbon . Retrieved 8 August 2017.

[2] Borges Nunes, Eduardo (1969). Álbum de Paleografia Portuguesa[Album of Portuguese Paleography] (in Portuguese). vol. I. Instituto de Alta Cultura, Centro de Estudos Históricos.

v t e Types of handwritten European scripts
Ancient and medieval	Roman Rustic Uncial Visigothic Merovingian Carolingian Insular script Beneventan Blackletter Rotunda Bastarda Humanist Greek Early Cyrillic Glagolitic Court hand Gothic Lombardic
Modern	Cursive Chancery Johannine Italic Round Secretary Library D'Nealian Copperplate Spencerian Palmer Ronde Kurrent Sütterlin Grundschrift Cyrillic Shorthand Zaner-Bloser Georgian