Scribes & Scripts: Calligraphy in the High Middle Ages

This spectacular oversize volume offers a new way to look at the illuminated manuscripts of the High Middle Ages-through the magnificent handwriting of their scribes. In the era from 1000 to 1250, Europe underwent momentous social changes-including a growth in literacy and the emergence of the first universities-that resulted in a demand for more books.This in turn spurred new methods of book production and a critical period of development in calligraphy: through a series of incremental changes, bold leaps, and cultural exchanges, the rounded forms of the Caroline minuscule gave way to the straight strokes of Gothic blackletter, which were easier to produce-and would form the basis of the first typefaces cut by Gutenberg and his contemporaries.Scribes and Scripts traces this evolution through 56 noteworthy illuminated manuscripts-and their scribes, many of whose names and circumstances are known to us.Author Richard Gameson, an eminent historian of the book, provides a fascinating comm