MINUSCULE, WRITING — Claudii Ptolemaei Syntaxeos mathematicae libri VI. Vatican Library, cod. Vat. gr. 1594, f. 138v (9th century).
It seems preferable, however, to recognize various scripts derived from the minuscule under the influence of different causes (school traditions, local tendencies, etc.).
The origin of the minuscule is one of the still unresolved problems of Latin palaeography and is linked to the fundamental issue of the transition from majuscule to minuscule form (see palaeography). Despite the material offered by recent papyrological discoveries and by an ever-growing number of inscriptions and graffiti (especially Christian ones), the documentation is still insufficient to follow step-by-step this development and to determine with certainty the causes that provoked the evolution.
In the earliest documents in which the minuscule already appears fully formed (typical is the Argentinense papyrus of the 4th century), it is possible to discern the general characteristics of the new script: abundance of ligatures, favoured by a pronounced cursive ductus, and unequal height of the letters, some of which, though reduced in size, retain the reciprocal proportions they had in the ancient cursive (a, m, n, t, x); others rise above the line (b, d, h, l); others still descend below it (f, g, p, q); while others vary in size in relation to the letters to which they are ligatured from time to time (c, e, i, o, r, s). The particular characteristics, however, are difficult to define, because the form—and often even the stroke—of the letters varies greatly according to the ligatures, so that the original appearance of the isolated letter is more or less radically deformed.
The richest documentation for the minuscule—which is important because it underlies all subsequent development of Latin script—is provided by the Ravenna papyri. From a chancery transformation of the minuscule alphabet there arose the imperial chancery script (see chancery script).