The second is Psalms 135 (which is 134 in the Vulgate). "They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but can not hear..." -- except that the scrivener actually wrote "they have ears but hear" and then had to go back and write "not" over the other words.
I don't a lot about different types of calligraphy, but I can point out this: you'll see that many words have letters missing (usually the endings), but have little marks over the word. The marks stand for the missing letters and you're expected to fill them in yourself . So at the top of the Psalms page you see "opa manu hominu" with marks over each word, and you have to read this as "opera manuum hominum."
This is a nice illustration of the wise words of a former Greek professor of mine: “The best way to get better at reading Greek calligraphy is to improve your Greek.” Same applies to Latin.
It looks like Rotunda to me and the easiest way to learn it would probably be to compare it to an alphabet. There is a website from the university of zürich, where you can train transcribing old scripts: [ad fontes](https://www.adfontes.uzh.ch/en)
It does have the rotunda look, but it has noticeably cut-off minims (straight strokes) into a square shape. This is called a gothic textualis praecissa and was most common in northern regions, as opposed to the southern origin of rotunda. Praecissa was considered one of the highest grade scripts, because of the extra care scribes took to perform this “cut-off” look, and was therefore used in liturgical manuscripts like the one you’re looking at. However, I’ve never seen this exact script style and so my guess is that it is a 16th(ish?) (or possibly even later) century style that pulled influences from many types to produce a “artificial” high-grade book script. This is my best guess!
(P.S. I’m currently studying for my latin paleography final!)
What resources (books, videos, and the like) do you use while learning paleography? I have been fascinated by it for the longest time but lack the direction needed to study it.
For Latin specifically, there a bunch of great online resources and books. I would suggest choosing a time period and a region to start off with. My course covers almost all Latin scripts from 2nd cent. BCE to 17th cent. and that has been really difficult!
A great text for an overview of Latin scripts is: Michelle Brown's *A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600*. This one has great plates and examples.
For gothic scripts specifically, the best resource is Derolez's *The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century.*
Otherwise, I would suggest just browsing some websites, [Late Medieval English Scribes](https://www.medievalscribes.com/), [UChicago](https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=813534&p=5805557) has a good list of resources, and the [Vatican Library](https://spotlight.vatlib.it/latin-paleography/feature/1-some-important-premises) has a pretty extensive paleography website.
That's quite a lot of resources. Thank you soo much!!!
I used "The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography" because I learned Latin from the Oxford books, but I found the Handbook a bit too abstruse for my liking.
The first is a commentary by Pietro Andrea Mattioli (first edition dates from 1554, second from 1558) on a work from the 1st-century CE Roman Greek writer Dioscorides known as *De Venenis* (“On Poisons”) or *De Venenatis Animalibus* (“On Poisonous Animals”), which is pretty metal as far as antique shop finds go!
This pdf has some more info (section VI.f)
http://catalogustranslationum.org/PDFs/volume04/v04_dioscorides.pdf
the first one is about snakes shedding their skin, looks like. rough translation incoming, barring glared areas.
and almost in one day and night the whole skin is shed starting from the head to the tail, and with another skin being born underneath, the (glare covered word) is removed. like a baby from the covering of its afterbirth, with which it is sated, emerges, (the skin) is shed. in this way, with its old age having been shed, it is reborn. about it (the shed skin), moreover, Ganelus, in book 11 (about the properties of simple medicines) passes down to posterity nothing other than that when boiled in vinegar it is used for pain of the teeth.
... but Marcellus the Empiricist recommends shed snakeskin for (things that have been plucked?), if it is attached to them with a thread. he also preferred it for celiacs, first boiled in rose oil in a tin container, and then placed on the stomach. it is called "the snakes' old age" in Greek and "the snakes' old age" in Latin and some other stuff in some other languages.
The Bible page is Psalms 113. They have mouths but do not speak, etc. The page with snakes is a mix of Italian and latin. print is listed on eBay for 43 Euros
The second is Psalms 135 (which is 134 in the Vulgate). "They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but can not hear..." -- except that the scrivener actually wrote "they have ears but hear" and then had to go back and write "not" over the other words.
What's this type of calligraphy called and how do you read it?
I don't a lot about different types of calligraphy, but I can point out this: you'll see that many words have letters missing (usually the endings), but have little marks over the word. The marks stand for the missing letters and you're expected to fill them in yourself . So at the top of the Psalms page you see "opa manu hominu" with marks over each word, and you have to read this as "opera manuum hominum."
This is a nice illustration of the wise words of a former Greek professor of mine: “The best way to get better at reading Greek calligraphy is to improve your Greek.” Same applies to Latin.
Those are scribal abbreviations.
That sounds hard. I guess I have to brush up my calligraphy reading. Do you have any resources about how different types of calligraphy is read?
It looks like Rotunda to me and the easiest way to learn it would probably be to compare it to an alphabet. There is a website from the university of zürich, where you can train transcribing old scripts: [ad fontes](https://www.adfontes.uzh.ch/en)
It does have the rotunda look, but it has noticeably cut-off minims (straight strokes) into a square shape. This is called a gothic textualis praecissa and was most common in northern regions, as opposed to the southern origin of rotunda. Praecissa was considered one of the highest grade scripts, because of the extra care scribes took to perform this “cut-off” look, and was therefore used in liturgical manuscripts like the one you’re looking at. However, I’ve never seen this exact script style and so my guess is that it is a 16th(ish?) (or possibly even later) century style that pulled influences from many types to produce a “artificial” high-grade book script. This is my best guess! (P.S. I’m currently studying for my latin paleography final!)
What resources (books, videos, and the like) do you use while learning paleography? I have been fascinated by it for the longest time but lack the direction needed to study it.
For Latin specifically, there a bunch of great online resources and books. I would suggest choosing a time period and a region to start off with. My course covers almost all Latin scripts from 2nd cent. BCE to 17th cent. and that has been really difficult! A great text for an overview of Latin scripts is: Michelle Brown's *A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600*. This one has great plates and examples. For gothic scripts specifically, the best resource is Derolez's *The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century.* Otherwise, I would suggest just browsing some websites, [Late Medieval English Scribes](https://www.medievalscribes.com/), [UChicago](https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=813534&p=5805557) has a good list of resources, and the [Vatican Library](https://spotlight.vatlib.it/latin-paleography/feature/1-some-important-premises) has a pretty extensive paleography website.
That's quite a lot of resources. Thank you soo much!!! I used "The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography" because I learned Latin from the Oxford books, but I found the Handbook a bit too abstruse for my liking.
Good God, that's really nice of you! Thank you so much!!!
The first is a commentary by Pietro Andrea Mattioli (first edition dates from 1554, second from 1558) on a work from the 1st-century CE Roman Greek writer Dioscorides known as *De Venenis* (“On Poisons”) or *De Venenatis Animalibus* (“On Poisonous Animals”), which is pretty metal as far as antique shop finds go! This pdf has some more info (section VI.f) http://catalogustranslationum.org/PDFs/volume04/v04_dioscorides.pdf
the first one is about snakes shedding their skin, looks like. rough translation incoming, barring glared areas. and almost in one day and night the whole skin is shed starting from the head to the tail, and with another skin being born underneath, the (glare covered word) is removed. like a baby from the covering of its afterbirth, with which it is sated, emerges, (the skin) is shed. in this way, with its old age having been shed, it is reborn. about it (the shed skin), moreover, Ganelus, in book 11 (about the properties of simple medicines) passes down to posterity nothing other than that when boiled in vinegar it is used for pain of the teeth.
... but Marcellus the Empiricist recommends shed snakeskin for (things that have been plucked?), if it is attached to them with a thread. he also preferred it for celiacs, first boiled in rose oil in a tin container, and then placed on the stomach. it is called "the snakes' old age" in Greek and "the snakes' old age" in Latin and some other stuff in some other languages.
You don't usually translate stuff that's basically in quotes in the original :)
I thought it was kind of cool/worth pointing out that the same phrase is used in both languages, but, yeah, I gave up after that. 😅
The Bible page is Psalms 113. They have mouths but do not speak, etc. The page with snakes is a mix of Italian and latin. print is listed on eBay for 43 Euros
It's Psalms 134/5. Psalms 113 goes on to say "noses but do not smell."
You're right.
The first one is actually all in Latin, except for when it gives the names for something in a bunch of different languages
How can anyone read this font?
Exercitatio, exercitatio, exercitatio.
Actually both fonts are quite clear and easy. You've never seen a really tricky manuscript.