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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The Beneventan script was a medieval script that originated in the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. In the past it has also been called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca (signifying its origins in the territories ruled by the Lombards), or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer E. A. Lowe.
It is mostly associated with Italy south of Rome, but it was also used in Beneventan-influenced centres across the Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia. The script was used from approximately the mid-8th century until the 13th century, although there are examples from as late as the 16th century. There were two major centres of Beneventan usage: the monastery on Monte Cassino, and Bari. The Bari type developed in the 10th century from the Monte Cassino type; both were based on Roman cursive as written by the Langobards. In general the script is very angular. According to Lowe, the perfected form of the script was used in the 11th century, while Desiderius was abbot of Monte Cassino, declining thereafter.
Beneventan features many ligatures and "connecting strokes" – the letters of a word could be joined together by a single line, with forms almost unrecognizable to a modern eye.[1]
Ligatures may be obligatory as: ⟨ei⟩, ⟨gi⟩, ⟨li⟩, ⟨ri⟩ and ⟨ti⟩ (two different forms: ti-dura where t had kept the t sound and ti-assibilata where t had taken the vulgar ts sound). They may be optional: frequent as ⟨et⟩, ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨st⟩; or rare as ⟨ta⟩, ⟨to⟩ and ⟨xp⟩.[2] Ligatures involving the letter ⟨t⟩ resemble late New Latin Cursive as in the Merovingian and Visigothic,[2] exception made for peculiar ⟨st⟩ ligature where ⟨s⟩ is connected to ⟨t⟩ on top influencing later on the German pre-caroline script and all the script from this derived until nowadays.[3] In ligatures ⟨t⟩ can take many forms depending on the letter joined to it. Ligatures with the letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨r⟩ are also common. In early forms of Beneventan, the letter ⟨a⟩ has an open top, similar to the letter ⟨u⟩; later, it resembled "cc" or "oc", with long tails hanging to the right. In the Bari type, the letter ⟨c⟩ often has a "broken" form, resembling the Beneventan form of the letter ⟨e⟩. However, ⟨e⟩ itself has a very long middle arm, distinguishing it from ⟨c⟩. The letter ⟨d⟩ can have a vertical or left-slanting ascender, the letter ⟨g⟩ resembles the uncial form, and the letter ⟨i⟩ is very tall and resembles ⟨l⟩.
The script has a unique way to signify abbreviations both by omission and contraction – like most other Latin scripts, missing letters can be signified by a macron over the previous letter, although Beneventan often adds a dot to the macron. There is also a symbol resembling the digit ⟨3⟩, or a sideways ⟨m⟩, when the letter ⟨m⟩ has been omitted. In other scripts there is often little or no punctuation, but standard punctuation forms were developed for the Beneventan script, including the basis for the modern question mark.
Beneventan shares some features with Visigothic and Merovingian script, probably due to the common late Roman matrix.
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Beneventan script was a medieval script that originated in the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. In the past it has also been called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca (signifying its origins in the territories ruled by the Lombards), or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer E. A. Lowe. It is mostly associated with Italy south of Rome, but it was also used in Beneventan-influenced centres across the Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia. The script was used from approximately the mid-8th century until the 13th century, although there are examples from as late as the 16th century. There were two major centres of Beneventan usage: the monastery on Monte Cassino, and Bari. The Bari type developed in the 10th century from the Monte Cassino type; both were based on Roman cursive as written by the Langobards. In general the script is very angular. According to Lowe, the perfected form of the script was used in the 11th century, while Desiderius was abbot of Monte Cassino, declining thereafter.
The Visigothic script was a medieval script that originated in the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively. The script, which exists in book-hand and cursive versions, was used from approximately the late seventh century until the thirteenth century, mostly in Visigothic Iberia but also somewhat in the Catalan kingdom in current southern France. It was perfected in the 9th–11th centuries and declined afterwards. It developed from the late Roman cursive, uncial and half-uncial scripts, and shares many features of uncial, especially the form of the letter ⟨g⟩. Other features of the script include an open-top ⟨a⟩ (very similar to the letter ⟨u⟩), similar shapes for the letters ⟨r⟩ and ⟨s⟩, and a long letter ⟨i⟩ resembling the modern letter ⟨l⟩. There are two forms of the letter ⟨d⟩, one with a straight vertical ascender and another with an ascender slanting towards the left. The top stroke of the letter ⟨t⟩, by itself, has a hook curving to the left; ⟨t⟩ also has a number of other forms when used in ligatures, and there are two different ligatures for the two sounds of ⟨ti⟩ (“hard” or unassibilated and "soft" or sibilated) as spoken in Hispano-Latin during this period. The letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨r⟩ also have many different forms when written in ligature. Of particular interest is the special Visigothic z ⟨ꝣ⟩, which, after adoption into Carolingian handwriting, eventually transformed into the c-cedilla ⟨ç⟩. A capital-letter display script was developed from the standard script, with long slender forms. There was also a cursive form that was used for charters and non-religious writings, which had northern ("Leonese") and southern ("Mozarabic") forms. The Leonese cursive was used in the Christian north, and the Mozarabic was used by Christians living in the Muslim south. The cursive forms were probably influenced by Roman cursive, brought to Iberia from North Africa. Visigothic script has many similarities with Beneventan script and Merovingian script.
The Beneventan Rite was a Roman Catholic liturgical rite used in the "Beneventan" zone comprising continental Southern Italy and Dalmatia. It can be characterized by the usage of Benevenutan Chant and Beneventan Script, as well as the particular devotion to local Saints such as Saint Januarius. Scholars have noted that the Beneventan Rite and Ambrosian Rite of present day Lombardy share many similarities, with Beneventan style chant even being known as "Cantus Ambrosianus" in the vernacular of the time. Subsequently, it has been proposed that a common ancestor proceeds both liturgical rites. This liturgical ancestor probably originated with the Lombards as they controlled both Milan and Benevento at one time.
Landolfus Sagax or Landolfo Sagace (sagax meaning "expert" or "scholar") was a Langobard historian who wrote a Historia Romana in the Beneventan Duchy (last quarter of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh). When his Historia was first published by Pierre Pithou in Basel in 1569, due to its varied content and sources, Pithou gave it the title Historia Miscella. The manuscript from the Palatine Library at Heidelberg (Pal. lat. 909) preserved in the Vatican Library is written in Beneventan script and shows evidence of having been committed to parchment under the supervision of Landulf himself. The Historia, an expansion and extension of Paul the Deacon's eighth-century Historia Romana, contains a list of Byzantine emperors until the then-living Basil II and Constantine VIII (d. 1028) and another of empresses from Fausta to the wife of Michael IV. There are exhortations to a princeps, perhaps implying that it was written at court, but which court is disputed. Some scholars, like Traube, have favoured Naples and others, like Amedeo Crivellucci, Benevento, where a prince was then reigning. Surviving manuscripts are littered with marginal notes, many of Landulf's authorship.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
