Merovingian Script

Merovingian script, in calligraphy, the writing of the pre-Carolingian hands of France that were derived from Latin cursive script. Luxeuil, in Burgundy, was a particularly important centre in the development of a Merovingian cursive style during the 7th and 8th centuries. The style of script that developed in northern France at the monastery of Corbie, a daughter house of Luxeuil, is especially noteworthy for the influence of half-uncial and uncial.

Merovingian writing is interesting to paleographers because of the part it had in shaping the black-letter script that was prevalent in the Middle Ages. Like Visigothic script, the Merovingian hands inherited the dominant vertical rhythm of the Latin cursive script of the ancient Romans. Angularity as a prevailing tendency and an effect of lateral crowding, especially in the first lines of a Merovingian manuscript, led to the use of the term picket- fence style by some 20th-century scholars of calligraphy.