Concept in Definition ABC

Historical knowledge has many dimensions and one of them is precisely palaeography. As the term itself indicates, the objective of this discipline it is the study of what was written in the past. If we talk about writing there are two fundamental issues that must be taken into account: a system of signs or alphabet and a support or document.

The first writing system was that used by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia. and since then the different spellings have not stopped evolving. Paleographers normally resort to the following classification: pre-Roman, Roman, Visigothic, Carolina, Gothic, procedural and humanistic scriptures. In these stages, the use of letters, their stylization, the writing of numbers, the use of new orthographic signs or inscriptions, etc. are studied.

An auxiliary science directly related to diplomatics and archival science

The specialist in this discipline uses his knowledge to reveal the questions that appear in ancient documents: what writing system was used, who was the author of the

text, what technical means were used, when was a document drawn up, for what purpose, etc. Paleography is a science at the service of other disciplines, such as history itself, literature wave linguistics.

This discipline was born in the seventeenth century as an auxiliary branch of the diplomatic and later of the archival. Thus, the diplomatic focuses on the analysis of the documents, while the paleography analyzes everything related to the writing systems used in the elaboration thereof. On the other hand, archivalism deals with the ordering and classification of documents and the first treatise on this discipline was published at the end of the 19th century.

In short, paleography, diplomatic and archival are branches of history that allow us to know the remote roots of a cultural tradition, of a civilization or of a town.

Documents

The term comes from Latin, specifically from the word documentum. It is any support that allows the drafting of a text, be it a letter, a diploma or any other writing that informs about some circumstance or historical episode.

Paleography focuses its interest on textual documents, especially those that predate the invention of the printing press. The study of graphic documents is essential to accurately determine the historical period to which they belong and their geographical location.

The specialist in this matter studies very diverse aspects: the evolution calligraphic over time, the interpretation of a text in its historical context or the role of scribes in the transmission of knowledge.

Photos: Fotolia - Couperfield / katatonia

Topics in Paleography