History: 14th Century Humanistic Script

During the thirteenth century gothic script was getting outdated. Scribes would ask for copies written in "littera […] castigata et clara" meaning "neat and clean letters." The problem with gothic script was that it was hard to read, and readers preferred a cleaner script. It was called "barbaric" at times, and it was undesirable to the Italians. This would lead to the Italian development of the Humanistic script, leading to it's success in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. This script's origin is unknown, however it it widely believed that either Niccolò Niccoli or Poggio Bracciolini were the first to influence it's development. Afterwards, the Humanistic script developed variants all thanks to Coluccio Salutati. Coluccio was well known for creating and practicing many different types of script, and it is theorized that he influenced both Niccolò Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini before the scripts development. This would lead to the scripts variants. Another important figure was Vespasiano da Bisticci, a bookseller who sold books written in Humanistic script across the western world. espasiano da Bisticci was not the only way this script was widely spread, the Roman Catholic Church had taken a liking to this script and had their bibles written in it. I n the end, this script had influenced the creation of two modern typography fonts: Italic and Roman.

Citation:

Menna, G., & De Vos, M. (2019). Humanistic Script - The story of the writing style of the Renaissance. Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://sexycodicology.net/blog/codicology/medieval-scripts/humanistic-script/