Early Irish Minuscule Script #248853

However that may be, this minuscule passage, embedded in a majus cule ms., is of great assistance to us in dating early Irish minuscules. It dispels from our minds the prejudice that any regularly formed Irish minuscule script cannot be as old as (say) the year 700, that only such mss. As shew majuscule script can be assigned to so early a period. Few palaeographers, on getting a sight of Plate II., with the top-line of the first column and the whole of the second column concealed, would venture to assign the minuscule script to the year 713. But it is undoubtedly written by the hand of Dorbbene. The only difference between the lettering of the first and the second column is a difference of size 0. A calligraphic majuscule ms. Like this cannot be expected to give us much insight into the abbreviations current at the time. Still in its 137 pages (there are only 72 in the Bangor Antiphonary) a certain number of symbols do shew themselves (unfortunately not nostri,' etc., vestri,'