#protogothic script

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Typography Tuesday

PROTOGOTHIC SCRIPT

We are preparing a recent gift for cataloging: a fabulous facsimile of the Great Domesday book produced in two volumes with separate volumes of maps and new translations by Alecto Editions of London between 1985 and 1992 for the 900th anniversary of this famous English/Norman manuscript originally produced in 1086. The Domesday Book was William the Conqueror‘s grand survey of his English domains in order to list his holdings and determine the taxes owed to him after his conquest of England in 1066.

Remarkably, this massive manuscript was produced in less that one year by possibly only a couple of scribes. What stands out for us is the hasty but neat, Protogothic script that offers us an example of the transition from the open, round Carolingian minuscule (that we tend to favor today) to the compressed, spiky, and attenuated Gothic scripts that would predominate the late Middle Ages and much of early Renaissance typography. We made posts about the Carolingian minuscule and the Gothic hand previously.

The historian V. H. Galbraith has suggested that Samson, an English cleric who was chaplain to both William I and William II and later the Bishop of Worcester, may have been the principle scribe. This Protogothic hand has a distinctive tendency toward roundness even when compressed. In Domesday, while the letters have become angular and have developed feet, the individual letters are well separated and there are no incomprehensible rows of minims. Letters such as h, b and l have wedged ascenders, supposedly an English characteristic, and the letter s is tall, the t is short, and the w is rather prominent.

The Alecto Edition is the most complete facsimile of the Domesday Book to date, and our copy is the “Penny Edition” produced in an edition of 250 copies and so-called because it literally has two pennies embedded in the front wooden boards of the first facsimile volume, one from 1086, the other from 1986. The facsimiles are quarter-bound in white goatskin and oak boards that were fashioned from floor boards of a Suffolk grand hall built ca. 1500 from trees that were 400 years older, making the wood in these boards roughly contemporary with the original Domesday.

The 11-century penny is a silver coin and was the only coin current in England at the time. Unlike our penny, this penny had some value during its day, and may have been worth a side of mutton. The obverse bears the king’s image with a surrounding legend that reads PILLELM REX -- the P being the form of the English letter wynn, or W. The reverse bears a cross with the surrounding inscription proclaiming the town where the mint was located.

The bronze coin of Queen Elizabeth II is an official proof specimen. The size of the British penny was reduced in 1971, its diameter deliberately based on the first silver pennies of the 8th century, which were the same size as William's pennies 300 years later, so that the 11-entury penny matches the size of its modern descendant almost exactly.

Our copy of Great Domesday is a gift of Lisa A. O'Brien in memory of her mother Ramona J. Sadlon.

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