The term "chancery hand" can refer to either of two very different styles of historical handwriting.
A chancery hand was at first a form of handwriting for business transactions that developed in the Lateran chancelry (the Cancelleria Apostolica) of the thirteenth century, then spread to France, notably through the Avignon Papacy, and to England after 1350 (Fisher et al.:3). This early "chancery hand" is a Gothic hand similar to blackletter. Versions of it were adopted by royal and ducal chanceries, which were often staffed by clerics who had taken minor orders.
A later cursive "chancery hand", also developed in the Vatican but based on humanist minuscule, was introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò Niccoli; it was the manuscript origin of the typefaces we recognize as italic.
Read more about Chancery Hand: English Chancery Hand, "Italian Hand"
Famous quotes containing the words chancery and/or hand:
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)