A style of medieval handwriting used in Italy, particularly at the monastery of Benevento, known for its rounded and elegant letterforms.
From Benevento, a city in southern Italy where this script style was developed and used extensively in medieval manuscripts from the 9th to 11th centuries. The term entered scholarly usage in the 19th century when paleographers began cataloging different historical writing systems.
Beneventana script is like the 'font' of the medieval world—monks in Benevento developed such a distinctive writing style that scholars can identify the origin of a 1000-year-old manuscript just by looking at how the letters curve and connect, almost like recognizing someone's handwriting today.
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