Abstract

Teachers and writing manuals of the later Middle Ages define ‘notula’ as a tidy script in the cursive tradition. This article rejects the expression ‘scriptura notularis’, proposed for Petrarch’s ‘scrittura di glossa’, because this definition is historically incompatible with a simplified ‘littera textualis’. The term ‘scriptura notularis’ is also to be avoided because it has been applied inconsistently to other types of script, not just Petrarch’s, and all different. Finally the article examines Petrarch’s ‘scrittura di glossa’, denying that this is a « new script », but places it in the broader context of the simplified ‘litterae textuales’ characteristic of 14th-century Italy.