Visigothic script

Article summary

The Visigothic script was a medieval script that originated in the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). Its more limiting alternative designations and associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively. The script, which exists in book-hand and cursive versions, was used from approximately the late seventh century until the thirteenth century, mostly in Visigothic Iberia but also somewhat in the Catalan kingdom in current southern France. It was perfected in the 9th–11th centuries and declined afterwards. It developed from the late Roman cursive, uncial and half-uncial scripts, and shares many features of uncial, especially the form of the letter . Other features of the script include an open-top (very similar to the letter ), similar shapes for the letters and , and a long letter resembling the modern letter . There are two forms of the letter , one with a straight vertical ascender and another with an ascender slanting towards the left. The top stroke of the letter , by itself, has a hook curving to the left; also has a number of other forms when used in ligatures, and there are two different ligatures for the two sounds of (“hard” or unassibilated and "soft" or sibilated) as spoken in Hispano-Latin during this period. The letters and also have many different forms when written in ligature.…

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