Certain literate institutions, such as royal chanceries, the papal chancery and the various specialised arms of bureaucracy and law that developed in the later middle ages, developed their own styles of scripts which changed over the centuries. They were not isolated from the general historical trends of their day, but put their own unique style on them. If you are working with the documents they produced, it helps to have a general picture of their changing individualities of style.
History of Scripts What is Paleography?If you are looking at this page without frames, there is more information about medieval writing to be found by going to the home page (framed) or the site map (no frames).
