Handwriting History

While language can be an obstacle while working with foreign records, another common obstacle that genealogical researchers face are the many different styles of handwriting that appear across time.

Like how languages change and evolve over time, so too do the style and form of writing down the language changes over time. These different styles of writing down a language are called scripts. This factor is why many old documents can be challenging to read even when fluent in the document language. While reading old records, it is helpful to be able to recognize what script it is written in, as it can give clues as to where, when, and why a document was written. Furthermore, each script developed from distinct traditions and therefore has unique letter forms and conventions; thus, knowing what script a record is in can help in researching and identifying more difficult sections or abbreviations.

The History of Catalan Handwriting

Catalan orthography, or the system and conventions that dictate the writing of a language, has a rich and significant history of codification and uniformity. Medieval Catalan, surprisingly, had a high level of uniformity compared to other early romance languages of the time. This was largely due to the formation of the Cancelleria Reial, or the Royal Chancery, reformed by King Jaume el Conqueridor in 1218 and further developed by the first Chancellor, Bereguer de Palou, the Bishop of Barcelona, who held the office from 1218-1241.¹ This institution was able to establish standards and was successful in enforcing these across the vast sphere of Catalan influences across the Mediterranean, to the point that Ramon Muntaner expressed in his great Crònica de Ramon Muntaner, written between 1325-1328, that "of people of the same language there are none so numerous as the Catalans."²

However, the Nueva Planta decrees brought in by the Bourbon Dynasty of Spain and implemented from 1707-1716 caused a radical shift in governance. The decrees centralized the Spanish state, which was achieved by abolishing all the complicated legal distinctions between the separate but allied medieval kingdoms that formed the Spanish State. In the kingdom of Aragon, this meant the abolishment of the Catalan Courts and various other governmental institutions and the establishment of the use of Castilian as the only official language of government. This was a major factor in the decline of Catalan, especially the decline of Catalan's written tradition.

Photo by .

Then, in the 19th century, there was a romantic revivalist movement called La Renaixença or 'the rebirth' to restore the prestige of the Catalan language from its long period of decline. Part of this was the establishment of the Jocs Florals (The Flower Games) in 1859 by Antoni de Bofarull and Víctor Balaguer.³ The Jocs Florals were an important poetry contest held in the provincial court of Tolosa de Llenguadoc in the 14th to 15th centuries, inspired by the ancient Roman festivals held for the Goddess Flora. These games helped to revitalize the language, yet they also revealed various issues of a decentralized language and were the center of many conflicts about the Catalan language and orthography.⁴ Then, in 1906, the Primer Congrés Internacional de la Llengua Catalana was held, which attempted to tackle these difficult questions of standardization and navigate medieval spellings, regional dialects, and castellanismes. In 1911, l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans was founded, which would become the authority of the Catalan language; in 1913, the Institute published the Normes ortogràfiques, which were composed and overseen by Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra.

Catalan began to recover until the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the installment of the Francoist Regime (1939-1975). During this regime, the Catalan language was banned in government and schools, and any use of Catalan, even in private, was heavily censured with harsh penalties, all in the name of creating a unified national identity.⁵ These bans were undone with the end of the regime, and in Spain, Catalan is now the official language of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, with efforts to protect and restore the linguistic heritage underway.

1. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, Jaume I: Commemoraciao de VIII Centenari del Naixement de Jaume I Volum I, (Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 2011), 47.
2. Ramon Muntaner, The chronicle of Muntaner Vol I, trans. Lady Goodenough (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1920), 73.
3. Martí de Riquer, et al. Història de la Literatura Catalana Vol VII. (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, S.A, 1986), 123-125.
4. Martí de Riquer, et al. Història de la Literatura Catalana Vol VII. (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, S.A, 1986), 141-142.
5. Betsy Reed, "Catalan: a language that has survived against the odds," The Guardian, November, 22, 2012.

• Image: Anonymous, The Scribe at Work, 1910, in Edmund G. Gress, The Art & Practice of Typography (New York: Oswald Publishing Company, 1910), frontispiece, Digital Image, Internet Archive (http://archive.org : accessed 20 July 2023). This image is in the public domain.