BOLLATICA, SCRIPT. - Also called littera s. Petri, it is the script of conventional and characteristic forms in which papal bulls were written from the end of the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century, until its abolition ordered by Leone XIII through the motu-proprio of 29 Dec. 1878 (Acta Leonis XIII, I, Roma 1881, p. 184: see an example under the entry BOLLA).
It represents a derivation from Gothic minuscule, developed in the papal chancery and carried to an extreme exaggeration of chancery stylization, so that only a few initiates were able to write it and its reading was so difficult that a copy in ordinary script was appended to the document for the recipient’s understanding. As a graphic phenomenon, its formation and persistence are explained by the tendency common to all sovereign chanceries to adopt their own type of script, which would be decorative in effect while at the same time providing a certain safeguard against easy imitations.
It is heavily shaded, upright or slightly inclined to the left, with letters made up of detached strokes, excessively thick downstrokes, and abbreviation marks that are sometimes long and conspicuous, sometimes thin and barely visible. Punctuation marks are absent. In the heading of the bulls, the Pope’s name and other initials are in large ornamental capital letters, accompanied by special floral decorations.