Portuguese Handwriting

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Handwriting History

History of Portuguese Handwriting

Portuguese documents from the period 800 to 1800 can be divided into several categories or hands based on the handwriting style used:

Carolinian hand, which originated in the court of Charlemagne, was used for a short time during the ninth and tenth centuries. Most documents in this hand were written in Latin. This handwriting was in later centuries thought to be used in Classical Latin documents and was often emulated by monastic scribes and occasionally by parish priests.

Court hand was an elegant hand that predominated until the fourteenth century. Occasionally priests and scribes used this hand after 1400.

Secretary hand and its derivative Chained Secretary hand, dominated after 1400 due to the speed with which it could be written; however, this also accounts for how difficult it is to read.

Italic hand began to spread throughout Europe from Italy in the early fourteenth century as Humanist doctrine spread. Between 1500 and 1650 this more readable hand, also known in Portuguese as Itálica or Humanistica, replaced secretary hand and dominated until modern cursive handwriting came into the picture after 1800.

Scroll down to see examples of these handwriting styles.

VOCÊ CONSEGUE!

In reading an old document written in any language the first attitude to develop is one of "você consegue!" Yes, you can read these documents. This study will emphasize the fact that, with practice, anyone can learn to read any documents written in Portuguese after 1640 from anywhere in Brazil or any Portuguese-speaking country. Likewise reading parish records from 1500 to 1640 can be learned and, with patience and practice, longer narrative documents such as wills can be mastered.

Looking at the sample of Itálica writing in Figure 1 should reassure you that reading Portuguese documents in the Itálica handwriting style, especially those that are of a shorter format which regularly repeats (such as parish sacramental records) can be mastered by anyone with practice. For those with a little fluency in Portuguese, the ability to extract data from longer documents in Itálica and, even in Cortesana or Procesal for those with a short repetitive format, can be mastered with patience and study.