Insular script was a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of ha ...

system originating from

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

that spread to

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...

and

continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...

under the influence of Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries took the script to continental Europe, where they founded monasteries such as Bobbio. The scripts were also used in monasteries like

Fulda Fulda () (historically in English called Fuld) is a town in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (''Kreis''). In 1990, the town hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival. Histor ...

, which were influenced by English missionaries. They are associated with

Insular art Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from ''insula'', the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style dif ...

, of which most surviving examples are

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, th ...

s. It greatly influenced

Irish orthography Irish orthography is very etymological which allows the same written form to represent all dialects of Irish and remain regular. For example, ("head") may be read in Mayo and Ulster, in Galway, or in Munster. A spelling reform in the mid- ...

and modern Gaelic scripts in handwriting and

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s. Insular script comprised a diverse family of scripts used for different functions. At the top of the hierarchy was the Insular half-uncial (or "Insular

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

"), used for important documents and sacred text. The full uncial, in a version called "English uncial", was used in some English centres. Then "in descending order of formality and increased speed of writing" came "set minuscule", "cursive minuscule" and "current minuscule". These were used for non-scriptural texts, letters, accounting records, notes, and all the other types of written documents.

Origin

The scripts developed in Ireland in the 7th century and were used as late as the 19th century, though its most flourishing period fell between 600 and 850. They were closely related to the uncial and half-uncial scripts, their immediate influences; the highest grade of Insular script is the majuscule Insular half-uncial, which is closely derived from Continental half-uncial script.

Appearance

Works written in Insular scripts commonly use large initial letters surrounded by red ink dots (although this is also true of other

scripts Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...

written in Ireland and England). Letters following a large initial at the start of a paragraph or section often gradually diminish in size as they are written across a line or a page, until the normal size is reached, which is called a "diminuendo" effect, and is a distinctive Insular innovation, which later influenced Continental illumination style. Letters with ascenders (''b'', ''d'', ''h'', ''l'', etc.) are written with triangular or wedge-shaped tops. The bows of letters such as ''b'', ''d'', ''p'', and ''q'' are very wide. The script uses many ligatures and has many unique scribal abbreviations, along with many borrowings from

Tironian notes Tironian notes ( la, notae Tironianae, links=no) are a set of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Ci ...

. Insular script was spread to England by the

Hiberno-Scottish mission The Hiberno-Scottish mission was a series of expeditions in the 6th and 7th centuries by Gaelic missionaries originating from Ireland that spread Celtic Christianity in Scotland, Wales, England and Merovingian France. Celtic Christianity spr ...

; previously, uncial script had been brought to England by

Augustine of Canterbury Augustine of Canterbury (early 6th century – probably 26 May 604) was a monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founder of the English Church.Delaney ''D ...

. The influences of both scripts produced the Insular script system. Within this system, the palaeographer Julian Brown identified five grades, with decreasing formality: *Insular half-uncial, or "Irish majuscule": the most formal; became reserved for

rubric A rubric is a word or section of text that is traditionally written or printed in red ink for emphasis. The word derives from the la, rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th ...

s (highlighted directions) and other displays after the 9th century. *Insular hybrid minuscule: the most formal of the minuscules, came to be used for formal church books when use of the "Irish majuscule" diminished. *Insular set minuscule *Insular cursive minuscule *Insular current minuscule: the least formal; ''current'' here means ‘running’ (rapid). Brown has also postulated two phases of development for this script, Phase II being mainly influenced by Roman Uncial examples, developed at Wearmouth-Jarrow and typified by the

Lindisfarne Gospels The Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV) is an illuminated manuscript gospel book probably produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, which is now in the ...

Usage

Insular script was used not only for

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

religious books, but also for every other kind of book, including vernacular works. Examples include the

Book of Kells The Book of Kells ( la, Codex Cenannensis; ga, Leabhar Cheanannais; Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. 8 sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the ...

, the

Cathach of St. Columba The Cathach of St. Columba, known as the Cathach (meaning "the Battler"),O'Neill (2014), p. 12 is a late 6th century Insular psalter. It is the oldest surviving manuscript in Ireland, and the second oldest Latin psalter in the world. Its cumdach ...

, the Ambrosiana Orosius, the Durham Gospel Fragment, the

Book of Durrow The Book of Durrow is an illuminated manuscript dated to c. 700 that consists of text from the four Gospels gospel books, written in an Irish adaption of Vulgate Latin, and illustrated in the Insular script style.Moss (2014), p. 229 Its origi ...

, the Durham Gospels, the Echternach Gospels, the

, the Lichfield Gospels, the

St. Gall Gospel Book The Irish Gospels of St. Gall or Codex Sangallensis 51 is an 8th-century Insular Gospel Book, written either in Ireland or by Irish monks in the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, where it is now in the Abbey library of St. Gallen as MS 51. It ...

, and the Book of Armagh. Insular script was influential in the development of

Carolingian minuscule Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...

in the scriptoria of the Carolingian empire. In Ireland, Insular script was superseded in 850 by Late Insular script; in England, it was followed by a form of Caroline minuscule. The Tironian ''et'' — equivalent of

ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter tha ...

(&) — was in widespread use in the script (meaning ''agus'' ‘and’ in Irish and ''ond'' ‘and’ in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

) and is occasionally continued in modern Gaelic typefaces derived from Insular script.

Unicode

Unicode treats representation of letters of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

written in insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding. Only a few Insular letters have specific code-points because they are used by phonetic specialists. To render the full alphabet correctly, a suitable display font should be chosen. To display the specialist characters, there are several fonts that may be used; three free ones that support these characters are Junicode, Montagel, and Quivira.

Gentium Gentium (, from the Latin for "of the nations") is a Unicode serif typeface designed by Victor Gaultney. Gentium fonts are free and open source software, and are released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), which permits modification and red ...

and

Charis SIL Charis SIL is a transitional serif typeface developed by SIL International based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The font offers four family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Its design goal ...

support the alphabetic letters (U+A77x and U+A78x). According to Michael Everson, in the 2006 Unicode proposal for these characters:

References

Sources

* O'Neill, Timothy. ''The Irish Hand: Scribes and Their Manuscripts From the Earliest Times''. Cork: Cork University Press, 2014.

External links

An Insular minuscule as a

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

font (strictly speaking, a Carolingian minuscule with a set of Insular variants) {{list of writing systems Culture of medieval Scotland Early medieval literature Latin-script calligraphy Medieval scripts Texts of medieval Ireland