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546
THE ALPHABET Other Continental Hands
The other continental hands had less importance. The Merovingian script (Fig. 246, 1), employed in the sixth-eighth centuries, continued for some time to be used as court-hand. There were some varieties; the cursive minuscule, the semi-cursive hand and various book-hands. The Visigothic (Fig. 247, 3), employed in the eighth and ninth centuries, may be distinguished into cursive and book-minuscule: it was employed also in Italy. The Germanic pre-Caroline (Fig. 247, 4) was the least widespread and lasted less time (eighth-ninth centuries) than any of the other varieties.
Instılar or Anglo-Irish Hands
The most beautiful and the most important of all the "national styles was the "Insular" or Anglo-Irish hand. It developed from the semiuncial book-hand of the early missionaries and not from the cursive minuscule as the continental national hands did. There are two varieties.
Irish Hand
The Irish hand (Fig. 246, 2), is considered by some scholars to have been introduced from Gaul by St. Patrick; already used in Ireland in the sixth century, it continued to be employed during the middle ages, and developed into the modern Irish script; apart from the majuscule (derived from the Roman capitals, but probably influenced by the oghamic script), used for headings, there were two varieties of this script.
(1) The semi-uncial (Fig. 248. I), used for religious books, had two sub-varieties, the elegant and the rustic; (2) the minuscule or angular script, employed for documents and codices, also had two subvarieties, the elegant and the cursive. The Irish system of abbreviations had a great influence on the development of the mediæval abbreviations of all the other scripts.
Anglo-Saxon Hand (Fig. 250)
In the seventh and eighth centuries the Roman uncial script was still employed in England in manuscripts and codices, but at the same time the Anglo-Saxon semi-uncial minuscule developed from the Irish script, and was employed for Latin until about 940, for English until after the Conquest (1066). The introduction of the Caroline minuscule was part of the reconstruction after the Danish wars.
In regard to the development of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet it may be noted that apart from the transformation of the single letters, it differed mainly from the Latin alphabet in the teen, w. which was written more
