Digital palaeography: using the digital representation of medieval script to support palaeographic analysis

Abstract

This article shows how the System for Palaeographic Inspections (SPI) software suite developed at the University of Pisa can be used to assist palaeographers in their attempts to classify and identify medieval scripts. Working with a small corpus of Tuscan manuscripts from the tenth- through twelfth-century now owned by the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati in Siena, the article shows how the software can be used to characterise the “calligraphic ideal” for each script in a given manuscript, compare letterforms in different scribes’ work, and define relationships among individual scripts and manuscripts.The article concludes with a discussion of potential improvements for the SPI system.

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