Script Analysis - Majuscules

Drogin says

"Gothic textura capitals varied from scribe to scribe.....The freedom in creation of capitals may be due to the fact that until now, no script had had it's own set of capitals but had either enlarged it's own script or called upon traditions of earlier scripts. So this was a "new field" and many variations were created.....

While versals served as the grandest capitals, they were invariably done in colour. A simpler but no less calligraphic capital, penned with the same point and ink used for the text, is shown in Plate 117 and it's ductus given in Figures 28 and 29."


Plate 117, page 142.

And from the only page of the Bedford Psalter I have that shows a group of Majuscules :

Well, lookee that.

In spite of mention of variations, these majuscules are very similar to plate 117! Varied in only a small way.

So that gives me the set of majuscules to use.

The majuscules appear here in what I think this is a list of headings and names, from what James Derrick told me when I was asking about Paleography.

The other time a majuscule appears is



the first letter following the illuminated letter on 2 of the 4 pages of the Bedford Psalter I have. A majuscule doesn't follow the illuminated letter on the other two pages.

This is nicely explained on page 23 of "The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination" by Christopher de Hamel.

I'm very glad that I found this - or I would have gone nuts trying to to understand the variances in sizes, and why the majuscules were only used to follow two of the illuminated letters. (because they opened Psalms)

Versals,



(used to open ordinary psalms and individual verses in the Bedford Psalter), are discussed by Drogin on pages 55 to 57 of his book.