Considerazioni paleografiche sulla mano di Tommaso d’Aquino

Thomas Aquinas’s handwriting has been called ‘illegibilis’ and is still considered personal and out of charcter with the ‘writing norm’ of the Gothic age. The gap between his handwriting and those that are seemingly clearer is due essentially to two reasons. First of all, Thomas wrote for himself, or at least for his students ; secondly he wrote very rapidly, joining the individual letters, in a way that reminds us of cursive. These are the two factors which allow us to explain the distortions which characterize Thomas’s handwriting and, consequently, to affirm that his style is not the sui generis handwriting of a man considered to be extraordinary, but the common writing style used in the Medieval Universities between the 12th and 13th century. Thomas Aquinas’s script is nothing but an extreme example of the model of writing used by University scholars and students, jurists and lawyers and exponents of the theological culture. The paleographic analysis of Thomas’s writing enables us to extend the scope of our research to a not yet well known phenomenon of the writing culture of the Middle Ages.