Johannine script ( pt, letra joanina) was a historical style of handwriting used in the Portuguese Royal Chancery starting around the reign of John I (1385–1433) that was used until the reign of

Manuel I Manuel I may refer to: * Manuel I Komnenos, Byzantine emperor (1143–1180) *Manuel I of Trebizond, Emperor of Trebizond (1228–1263) *Manuel I of Portugal Manuel I (; 31 May 146913 December 1521), known as the Fortunate ( pt, O Venturoso), wa ...

(1495–1521). It is, thus, a national variation of

chancery hand The term "chancery hand" can refer to either of two distinct styles of historical handwriting. A chancery hand was at first a form of handwriting for business transactions that developed in the Lateran chancery (the ) of the 13th century, t ...

, a form of blackletter. Johannine script is essentially cursive, with a short corpus size (but with long ascenders and

descender In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...

s), letters slope slightly to the right, words are clearly separated one from the other with no ligatures,

punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...

is mostly absent, and Arabic numerals are not used (instead, numbers are given in full, or in Roman numerals). The shape of the letters ''v'' and ''b'' (and Roman numeral 5) are practically indistinguishable. Abbreviations are commonplace, mostly marked with an

overline An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a '' vinculum'', a notation for grouping symbols which is expressed in m ...

and/or superscript. The prevailing script in documents from (and from the land that would eventually become) Portugal from the 8th to the 12th centuries was

Visigothic script Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, modern Andorra, Spain and Portugal). Its more limiting alternative designations ''littera toletana'' and ''littera mo ...

; from the mid-12th century onwards, for about a century,

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 ...

and, later on, an incipient Gothic script. From 1385 onwards, that is, after John I was crowned putting an end to the Portuguese Interregnum, there is radical change in the writing style of the documents issued by the Royal Chancery: this new script (first called "Johannine script" by paleographer ) has influences of the French and Gothic scripts. Notable scribes who wrote mostly on Johannine script include (), (), and ().

References

Typography Western calligraphy {{Typography-stub