Artificial Uncial: Litterae notabiliores

Identify the scripts used for rubrics and capital letters.

The opening word of the Psalm is in Southern English display capitals loosely based on Roman Square Capitals. Note the enlarged serifs at the head of the second A, and the diagonal of the N, which has slipped almost into the horizontal. The first A is inside the C:
a cheerful eagle fills up the rest of the internal space.

The rubric and the Psalm number are in Roman Rustic.


Here we have a hierarchy of scripts. Once you have a repertoire of different scripts, you can use the difference between them to indicate different functions: e.g. titles, annotations, the beginning of important syntactical patterns, etc. Usually the most elaborate are used for the most important functions, and may be decorated with colours or designs.

Nowadays we use CAPITALS in different point-sizes for headings and titles. We no longer think of these as being different scripts: instead, each lower-case font (style of typeface) has its equivalent upper-case set of capitals:

This is Times New Roman. THESE ARE TIMES NEW ROMAN CAPITALS.
This is Arial. THESE ARE ARIAL CAPITALS.

Sometimes we use a different script, Italic for emphasis, or to mark out the use of a word as being different from the expected, for example:

Love is Germanic but passion is Romance.

Again, nowadays each font has an equivalent set of italics: we do not think of Italic as being a separate script:

This is Times New Roman. This is Times New Roman Italic.
This is Arial. This is Arial italic.

In the period of Uncials, Roman Rustic was often the equivalent of our italic.



What is the function of the capital letters in the left margin?

The capital letters indicate the beginning of each verse of the psalm. These are of a different size
and colour to the body of the text. The alternating colours (red and blue) may be mnemonic,
or have something to do with the music.


Return to Question Page.
Return to Index Page

© MEG TWYCROSS 1998