Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, is a family of scripts used in calligraphy and Typeface.
Blackletter was used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century.[ Facsimile of Bormann's Memorandum (in German)]The memorandum itself is typed in Antiqua, but the NSDAP letterhead is printed in Fraktur.
"For general attention, on behalf of the Führer, I make the following announcement:
It is wrong to regard or to describe the so-called Gothic script as a German script. In reality, the so-called Gothic script consists of Schwabach Jew letters. Just as they later took control of the newspapers, upon the introduction of printing the Jews residing in Germany took control of the printing presses and thus in Germany the Schwabach Jew letters were forcefully introduced.
Today the Führer, talking with Herr Reichsleiter Max Amann and Herr Book Publisher Adolf Müller, has decided that in the future the Antiqua script is to be described as normal script. All printed materials are to be gradually converted to this normal script. As soon as is feasible in terms of textbooks, only the normal script will be taught in village and state schools.
The use of the Schwabach Jew letters by officials will in future cease; appointment certifications for functionaries, street signs, and so forth will in future be produced only in normal script.
On behalf of the Führer, Herr Reichsleiter Amann will in future convert those newspapers and periodicals that already have foreign distribution, or whose foreign distribution is desired, to normal script".
Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major in the history of Western typography.
Origins
Carolingian minuscule was the direct ancestor of blackletter. Blackletter developed from Carolingian as an increasingly literate 12th-century Europe required new books in many different subjects. New universities were founded, each producing books for
business,
law,
grammar,
history and other pursuits, not solely religious works, for which earlier scripts typically had been used.
These books needed to be produced quickly to keep up with demand. Labor-intensive Carolingian, though legible, was unable to effectively keep up. Its large size consumed a lot of manuscript space in a time when writing materials were very costly. As early as the 11th century, different forms of Carolingian were already being used, and by the mid-12th century, a clearly distinguishable form, able to be written more quickly to meet the demand for new books, was being used in northeastern France and the Low Countries.
File:Rudolf Koch gebrochene Schriften.png|Various German language blackletter typefaces
File:Gebrochene_Schriften.png|Blackletter typefaces highlighting differences between select characters
File:Old English typeface.svg|Modern interpretation of blackletter script in the form of the font "Old English" which includes several anachronistic glyphs, such as Arabic numerals, ampersand (instead of Tironian et) and several punctuation marks, but lacks letter alternatives like long and rotunda, scribal abbreviations and ligatures, and contains several relatively modern versions of letters such as , which is confusable with the letter .
Etymology
The term
Gothic was first used to describe blackletter in 15th-century Italy, in the midst of the
Renaissance, because Renaissance humanists believed this style was barbaric, and
Gothic was a synonym for
barbaric.
Flavio Biondo, in
Italia Illustrata (1474), wrote that the Germanic
Lombards invented this script after they invaded Italy in the 6th century.
Not only were blackletter forms called Gothic script, but any other seemingly barbarian script, such as Visigothic, Beneventan, and Merovingian, were also labeled Gothic. This in contrast to Carolingian minuscule, a highly legible script which the humanists called littera antiqua ("the ancient letter"), wrongly believing that it was the script used by the ancient Rome. It was in fact invented in the reign of Charlemagne, although only used significantly after that era, and actually formed the basis for the later development of blackletter.[Berthold Louis Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script. (Rome), 1960, p. 12.]
Blackletter script should not be confused with either the ancient Gothic alphabet nor with the sans-serif typefaces that are also sometimes called Gothic.
Forms
Early Gothic
It is difficult to be specific about the time at which
Early Gothic (or
Proto Gothic) was born and later died, because it was an interim script spanning Carolingian Minuscule and the Gothic
textura scripts.
[Drogin, 1980, page 131] It can generally be said that it was used in the 11th and 12th centuries. As universities began to populate Europe, a need for a more rapid writing technology led to the development of this script. The rounded forms of Carolingian became angular flicks of the quill, and both letters and words became compressed.
Early Gothic is characterized by a number of factors. There are no capital letters for this script. Instead Rustic capitals, Roman Square or Uncial script letters were used. Initial were most often Lombardic Capitals usually painted in bright colors. Other features are split ascenders, a storied 'a', both the standard 'r' and a R rotunda 〈ꝛ〉 used after letters with bowls. The Long s 〈ſ〉 is used primarily, but there are examples of the short 's' in some manuscripts. Punctuation is limited, usually only full stops and commas, and they are usually rendered at the mid-line.
As the script continued to evolve and become ever more angular, vertical and compressed, it began its transition to the textura hands.
Textura
Textualis, also known as
textura or "Gothic bookhand", was the most
calligraphy form of blackletter, and today is the form most associated with "Gothic". Johannes Gutenberg carved a
textualis typeface—including a large number of ligatures and common abbreviations—when he printed his
Gutenberg Bible. However,
textualis was rarely used for typefaces after this.
According to Dutch scholar Gerard Lieftinck, the pinnacle of blackletter use was reached in the 14th and 15th centuries. For Lieftinck, the highest form of textualis was littera textualis formata, used for de luxe manuscripts. The usual form, simply littera textualis, was used for literary works and university texts. Lieftinck's third form, littera textualis currens, was the cursive form of blackletter, extremely difficult to read and used for textual glosses, and less important books.
Textualis was most widely used in France, the Low Countries, England, and Germany. Some characteristics of the script are:
-
Tall, narrow letters, as compared to their Carolingian counterparts.
-
Letters formed by sharp, straight, angular lines, unlike the typically round Carolingian; as a result, there is a high degree of "breaking", i.e. lines that do not necessarily connect with each other, especially in curved letters.
-
Ascenders (in letters such as , , ) are vertical and often end in sharp stroke ending.
-
When a letter with a bowl (in , , , ) is followed by another letter with a bowl (such as or ), the bowls overlap and the letters are joined by a straight line (this is known as "biting").
-
A related characteristic is the half r (also called r rotunda), the shape of when attached to other letters with bowls; only the bowl and tail were written, connected to the bowl of the previous letter. In other scripts, this only occurred in a ligature with the letter .
-
Similarly related is the form of the letter when followed by a letter with a bowl; its ascender is then curved to the left, like the uncial . Otherwise the ascender is vertical.
-
The letters , , , , , and the hook of have descenders, but no other letters are written below the line.
-
The letter has a straight back stroke, and the top loop eventually became closed, somewhat resembling the number . The letter often has a diagonal line connecting its two bowls, also somewhat resembling an , but the long s is frequently used in the middle of words.
-
Minims, especially in the later period of the script, do not connect with each other. This makes it very difficult to distinguish between , , , and . A 14th-century example of the difficulty that minims produced is: mimi numinum niuium minimi munium nimium uini muniminum imminui uiui minimum uolunt ("the smallest mimes of the gods of snow do not wish at all in their life that the great duty of the defenses of wine be diminished"). In blackletter, this would look like a series of single strokes. As a result, tittle (and briefly ) were subsequently developed.
-
The script has many more scribal abbreviations than Carolingian, adding to the speed in which it could be written.
Schwabacher
Schwabacher was a blackletter form that was much used in early German print typefaces. It continued to be used occasionally until the 20th century. Characteristics of Schwabacher are:
-
The small letter is rounded on both sides, though at the top and at the bottom, the two strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms.
-
The small letter has a horizontal stroke at its top that forms crosses with the two downward strokes.
-
The capital letter has a peculiar form somewhat reminiscent of the small letter .
Fraktur
Fraktur is a form of blackletter that became the most common German blackletter typeface by the mid-16th century. Its use was so common that often any blackletter form is called
Fraktur in Germany. Characteristics of Fraktur are:
-
The left side of the small letter is formed by an angular stroke, the right side by a rounded stroke. At the top and at the bottom, both strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms.
-
The capital letters are compound of rounded -shaped or -shaped strokes.
Here is the entire alphabet in Fraktur (minus the long s and the sharp s ), using the AMS Euler Fraktur typeface:
Cursiva
Cursiva refers to a very large variety of forms of blackletter; as with modern
cursive writing, there is no real standard form. It developed in the 14th century as a simplified form of
textualis, with influence from the form of
textualis as used for writing
.
Cursiva developed partly because of the introduction of
paper, which was smoother than
parchment. It was therefore, easier to write quickly on paper in a
cursive script.
In cursiva, descenders are more frequent, especially in the letters and , and ascenders are curved and looped rather than vertical (seen especially in the letter ). The letters , and (at the end of a word) are very similar to their Carolingian forms. However, not all of these features are found in every example of cursiva, which makes it difficult to determine whether or not a script may be called cursiva at all.
Lieftinck also divided cursiva into three styles: littera cursiva formata was the most legible and calligraphic style. Littera cursiva textualis (or libraria) was the usual form, used for writing standard books, and it generally was written with a larger pen, leading to larger letters. Littera cursiva currens was used for textbooks and other unimportant books and it had very little standardization in forms.
Hybrida
Hybrida is also called
bastarda (especially in France), and as its name suggests, is a hybrid form of the script. It is a mixture of
textualis and
cursiva, developed in the early 15th century. From
textualis, it borrowed vertical ascenders, while from
cursiva, it borrowed long and
long s, single-looped , and with an open descender (similar to Carolingian forms).
Donatus-Kalender
The
Donatus-Kalender (also known as Donatus-und-Kalender or D-K) is the name for the metal type design that Gutenberg used in his earliest surviving printed works, dating from the early 1450s. The name is taken from two works: the
Ars grammatica of
Aelius Donatus, a Latin grammar, and the Kalender (calendar).
[John Man, How One Man Remade the World with Words] It is a form of textura.
Blackletter typesetting
While an
antiqua script typeface is usually a compound of
and
since the 16th-century French typographers, the blackletter typefaces never developed a similar distinction. Instead, they use letterspacing (German
Sperrung) for emphasis. When blackletter is letterspaced, ligatures like , , or remain together without additional letterspacing ( is dissolved, though).
The use of bold text for emphasis is also alien to blackletter typefaces.
Words from other languages, especially from Romance languages, including Latin, are usually typeset in antiqua instead of blackletter.
National forms
England
Textualis
English language blackletter developed from the form of Carolingian minuscule used there after the
Norman Conquest, sometimes called "Romanesque minuscule".
Textualis forms developed after 1190 and were used most often until approximately 1300, after which it became used mainly for
de luxe manuscripts. English forms of blackletter have been studied extensively and may be divided into many categories.
Textualis formata ("Old English" or "blackletter"),
textualis prescissa (or
textualis sine pedibus, as it generally lacks feet on its minims),
textualis quadrata (or
psalterialis) and
semi-quadrata, and
textualis rotunda are various forms of high-grade
formata styles of blackletter.
The University of Oxford borrowed the littera parisiensis in the 13th century and early 14th century, and the littera oxoniensis form is almost indistinguishable from its Parisian counterpart; however, there are a few differences, such as the round final forms, resembling the number , rather than the long used in the final position in the Paris script.
Printers of the late 15th and early 16th centuries commonly used blackletter typefaces, but under the influence of Renaissance tastes, grew in popularity, until by about 1590 most presses had converted to them.
Chaucer's works had been printed in blackletter in the late 15th century, but were subsequently more usually printed in Roman type. Horace Walpole wrote in 1781 that "I am too, though a Goth, so modern a Goth that I hate the black letter, and I love Chaucer better in John Dryden and Baskerville than in his own language and dress."
Cursiva
English
cursiva (Cursiva Anglicana) began to be used in the 13th century, and soon replaced
littera oxoniensis as the standard university script. The earliest cursive blackletter form is
Anglicana, a very round and looped script, which also had a squarer and angular counterpart, Anglicana formata. The
formata form was used until the 15th century and also was used to write vernacular texts. An Anglicana bastarda form developed from a mixture of
Anglicana and
textualis, but by the 16th century, the principal cursive blackletter used in England was the
Secretary script, which originated in Italy and came to England by way of France. Secretary script has a somewhat haphazard appearance and its forms of the letters , , , and are unique, unlike any forms in any other English script. The legacy of these English cursive Gothic forms survived in common use as late as the 18th century in the
court hand used for some legal records.
France
Textualis
French language textualis was tall and narrow compared to other national forms, and was most fully developed in the late 13th century in Paris. In the 13th century there also was an extremely small version of textualis used to write miniature Bibles, known as "pearl script". Another form of French textualis in this century was the script developed at the University of Paris,
littera parisiensis, which also is small in size and designed to be written quickly, not calligraphically.
Cursiva
French
cursiva was used from the 13th to the 16th century, when it became highly looped, messy, and slanted.
Bastarda, the "hybrid" mixture of
cursiva and
textualis, developed in the 15th century and was used for vernacular texts as well as Latin. A more angular form of
bastarda was used in Burgundy, the
lettre de forme or
lettre bourgouignonne, for books of hours such as the italic=no of John, Duke of Berry.
Germany
Despite the frequent association of blackletter with
German language, the script was actually very slow to develop in German-speaking areas. It developed first in those areas closest to France and then spread to the east and south in the 13th century. The German-speaking areas are, however, where blackletter remained in use the longest.
Schwabacher typefaces dominated in Germany from about 1480 to 1530, and the style continued in use occasionally until the 20th century. Most importantly, all of the works of Martin Luther, leading to the Protestant Reformation, as well as the Apocalypse of Albrecht Dürer (1498), used this typeface. Johann Bämler, a printer from Augsburg, probably first used it as early as 1472. The origins of the name remain unclear; some assume that a typeface-carver from the village of Schwabach—one who worked externally and who thus became known as the Schwabacher—designed the typeface.
Textualis
German-made
Textualis type is usually very heavy and angular, and there are few characteristic features that are common to all occurrences of the script. One common feature is the use of the letter for Latin or .
Textualis was first used in the 13th and 14th centuries and subsequently became more elaborate and decorated, and it was generally reserved for liturgical works.
Johann Gutenberg used a textualis typeface for his famous Gutenberg Bible in 1455. Schwabacher, a blackletter with more rounded letters, soon became the usual printed typeface, but it was replaced by Fraktur in the early 17th century.
Fraktur
Fraktur came into use when Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519) established a series of books and had a typeface created specifically for it. In the 19th century, the use of antiqua alongside Fraktur increased, leading to an Antiqua-Fraktur dispute which lasted until the
Nazism mandated an end to the use of Fraktur in 1941. By then, Fraktur had been the most common and well-known blackletter style in Germany for a long time, and as a result all kinds of blackletter (including Schwabacher, Textualis, and so on) tend to be called
Fraktur in German.
Cursiva
German
cursiva is similar to the cursive scripts in other areas, but forms of , and other letters are more varied; here too, the letter is often used. A
hybrida form, which was basically
cursiva with fewer looped letters and with square proportions similar to
textualis, was used in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the 18th century, the pointed quill (in contrast to the quill with a wide flat tip) was adopted for blackletter handwriting. In the early 20th century, the Sütterlin script was introduced in the schools.
Italy
Rotunda
Italian language blackletter also is known as rotunda, as it was less angular than those produced by northern printing centers. The most common form of Italian
rotunda was
littera bononiensis, used at the University of Bologna in the 13th century. Biting is a common feature in
rotunda, but breaking is not.
Italian Rotunda also is characterized by unique abbreviations, such as with a line beneath the bow signifying qui, and unusual spellings, such as for ( milex rather than miles).
Cursiva
Italian cursive developed in the 13th century from scripts used by notaries. The more calligraphic form is known as
minuscola cancelleresca italiana (or simply
cancelleresca,
chancery hand), which developed into a
book hand, a script used for writing books rather than charters, in the 14th century.
Cancelleresca influenced the development of
bastarda in France and
secretary hand in England.
The Netherlands
Textualis
A
textualis form, commonly known as
Gotisch or "Gothic script", was used for general publications from the fifteenth century on, but became restricted to official documents and religious publications during the seventeenth century. Its use persisted into the nineteenth century for editions of the
Statenvertaling of the
Bible, but otherwise became obsolete.
Unicode
Mathematical blackletter characters are separately encoded in
Unicode in the Mathematical alphanumeric symbols range at U+1D504-1D537 and U+1D56C-1D59F (bold), except for individual letters already encoded in the Letterlike Symbols range (plus
long s at U+017F).
Fonts supporting the range include Code2001, Cambria Math,
Noto fonts Math, and Quivira (textura style).
This block of characters is intended for use in setting mathematical texts, which contrast blackletter characters with other letter styles.
| + Mathematical Bold Fraktur |
| 𝖅 |
| 𝖟 |
See also
Further reading
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Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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External links
