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To the student of Christian archaeology the name of Filocalus is a household word. The surviving evidence of his work has been investigated by the most eminent scholars since the time of Mommsen and de Rossi, and, recently definitive studies both of his inscriptions, and of the copies of his lost manuscript have been produced. This essay is an attempt to see this achievement in a wider setting, the whole history of the art of lettering. I hope to demonstrate that Filocalian lettering is not an isolated phenomenon, a magnificent dead end, but rather an extension of the potentialities of the art in which he worked, potentialities which through the centuries have been further explored in various directions, and which to-day are being worked more than ever before.
To recapitulate briefly what is established: the fragmentary knowledge which we have of the work of Filocalus immediately establishes him as very remarkable. The names of both Roman and medieval practitioners of lettering are known, but of none do their works give us any clear impression of personality. Filocalus is comparable rather to the great printers, or to such modern artists as Rudolf Koch or Eric Gill; like them his work has the quality of originality, in his case in a very high degree, which marks it as the product of the conscious artist.
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- Research Article
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- Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 24: Studies in Italian Medieval History , November 1956 , pp. 5 - 13
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- Copyright © British School at Rome 1956
References
1 ‘Ueber den Chronographen von Jahre 354,’ Abhandlungen d. königl. säcks. Gesellsch. d. Wiss., Phil.-kist. Klasse, i, 607Google Scholar.
2 Roma sotterranea, i (1864), pp. 119, 292Google Scholar; ii (1867), p. 196.
3 A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, 1942.
4 H. Stern, Le Calendrier de 354. Étude sur son texte et ses illustrations (Institut français d'archéologie de Beyrouth. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique. Vol. iv, Paris, 1953).
5 The copies are reproduced by H. Stern, op. cit.
6 Ferrua, op. cit., Nos. 18, 182, 27.
7 ibid., Nos. 10, 11.
8 Vives, J., ‘Damasus i Filocalus,’ Analecta sacra Tarraconensia, ii, 1926, p. 483Google Scholar.
9 C. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der Altchristlichen Epigraphik, p. 27 f.
10 ‘Filocalo, L'Amante della bella Lettera,’ Civiltà Cattolica, 1939, p. 41.
11 Epig. Damas., p. 22.
12 No. 37 is reproduced in E. Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae (1912), pl. 36, and all three by Silvagni, A., Monumenta Epigraphica Christiana, i, Tab. v–ixGoogle Scholar.
13 Ferrua, Epig. Damas, No. 492. Marucchi, Bull. comm. arch., 1927, p. 264; 1928, p. 123.
14 Compare these terminations with those of the upper curve of G and C, and of S, in Vat. 3256.
15 I have the impression that Peiresc's copy, reproduced by Stern, Pl. I, is reliable. One can see how the scribe has tried to copy carefully letters made with a wide pen, held straight, by pressing on a fine pen.
16 The proportion of height, to thick stroke, to thin stroke, is 5: 1: hair line; in the Trajan column lettering it is 10: 1: 
; in capitalis quadrata it is 12: 3: 2-hair line.
17 J. Mallon, Paléographie Romaine (1952), p. 153.
18 The known examples are Vatican MS. lat. 3256, the ‘Augusteus Virgil’ of which 3 leaves are in Berlin; St. Gall MS. 1394, reproduced Chatelain, Paleographie des classiques latines, Pl. lxii; Verona palimpsest, Chatelain, pl. lxxv; Oxyrhynchus papyrus 1098, Grenfell and Hunt, viii, pl. vi; all fragmentary texts of Virgil. In the last two, details of style can scarcely be distinguished in reproduction.
19 S. Morison, Notes on the development of Latin script (1949), p. 2.
20 A connection was suggested by Zangemeister and Wattenbach, Exempla Codicum Latinorum (1876). Authorship by Filocalus or his school is assumed by A. Schenkl in Festschrift für O. Berndorf (1898), p. 29.
21 See J. Kirchner, Imagines Inscriptionum Atticarum (1935), pls. 44 and 47, A.D. 4 and 42; Kern, Inscriptiones Graecae (1913), pls. 42, 46, second century.
22 Hübner, Exampla Scripturae Epigraphicae Latinae (1885), p. 3 with a woodcut also reproduced C.I.L., i, no. 618; iii, no. 547. An indistinct photograph is reproduced in Hörmann, Die Inneren Propylaen von Eleusis (1933), Taf. 42b.
23 C.I.L., xiii, 5; catalogue of the Museum (1912), no. 258.
24 A beautiful example of this type of letter is reproduced in F. Steffens, Lateinische Paläographie (1903), p. 7.
25 Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae (1912), pl. 32–35.
26 This is shown very clearly in the illustrations to O. Beyer, Frühchristliche Sinnbilder und Inschriften.
27 M. Stern (p. 113) emphasises that the Calendar of 354, though clearly intended for a Christian recipient and incorporating Christian elements, is a product of traditional Roman pagan culture. One might note that all the known examples of capitalis quadrata are texts of Virgil.
28 M. Stern also points out that while ‘l'illustration du Calendrier est une oeuvre toute “moderne” en 354,’ part of the artistic renaissance of the second half of the fourth century, it is also an example of a civilisation ‘qui encore vivante en 354, va disparaitre à la fin du siècle.’
29 Ferrua, Epig. Damas.; see also Wilpert, ‘Inschriften aus der Werkstätte des Furius Dionysius Philokalus, Römische Quartalschrift, 1908, p. 134.
30 This is clear in the comparison of the original Filocalian fragment of the elogium of S. Eusebius in the catacomb of S. Callisto, with the sixth century copy now beside it; reproduced together by S. Morison, Fleuron (1926).
31 De Rossi, , Roma Sotterannea, i (1864), p. 121Google Scholar.
32 Ferrua, Epig. Damas., Nos. 10, 11.
33 Reproduced in Silvagni, , Mon. Chris. Epig., i, pl. x. 5Google Scholar.
34 ibid., i, pl. x. 4.
35 ibid., i, pl. xi. 7.
36 Reproduced Marucchi, Museo Pio Lateranese (1888), Tav L.
37 The long inscription of Gregory I of 604 like the lettering on the mosaic of SS. Cosma e Damiano (526–530) is wide and regular but the serifs are plain.
38 Reproduced Silvagni, op. cit., pl. ii. 7.
39 ibid., i, pl. xxxix. 6.
40 ibid., i, pl. xxxviii. 5.
41 See Gray, N., ‘The paleography of Latin inscriptions in VIII, IX and X centuries in Italy’, Papers of the British School at Rome, xvi, 1948, pp. 139, 160Google Scholar.
42 Silvagni, , Mon. Epig. Christ., iiGoogle Scholar, fasc. B, pl. ii and iv; Hubert, L'Art pré-roman, pls. xxii, xxxvii.
42a From Lowe, Cod. lat. antiq., nos. 266, 437, 298, 506, 550, 331, 197.
43 Zimmermann, Vorkarolingische Miniaturen, p. 3.
44 E. A. van Moe, Die Schöne Initiate (1943), gives examples also of the normal Carolingian majuscule.
45 Stern, op. cit., p. 35.
46 Published in de Rossi, , Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (1888), iiGoogle Scholar. See also Silvagni, A., Nuovo ordinamento delle sillogi epigrafiche, Diss. Pontif. Accad. Rom. di Arch., 1921Google Scholar.
47 In the sixteenth century five were still to be seen in churches according to De Rossi, , Roma sotterranea, i, 118Google Scholar.
48 For example the epitaph of Nicholas V.
49 Damiano da Moille (see A newly discovered treatise on classic letter design, ed. S. Morison, 1927).
50 A Dürer, Of the just shaping of letters (Grolier Club, 1917).
51 W. Weimar, Monumentalschriften vergangener Jahrhunderte (1898), pl. xxxv, 39.
52 E.g. at La Ferté Bernard (Vitry, and Brière, , Documents de sculpture française, i, pl. 63Google Scholar) and at Felbrigg (Norfolk) and Castle Ashby (Summerson, Architecture in England, 1530–1830, pl. 48 b.).
53 E.g. the inscription round the Painted Hall at Greenwich Naval College (Thornhill, 1707–1717), or that above the colonnade of Chelsea Hospital dated 1692.
54 Mr. Morison discusses this and the Filocalian tradition in decorated type faces in Fleuron (1926).
55 F. Burgess, ‘English sepulchral monuments,’ Monumental Journal, 1949.
56 N. Gray, Nineteenth century ornamental types on Title Pages (1938), p. 33, and note on Tuscan, lettering in the Architectural Review, cxvi (Oct. 1954), pp. 259–61Google Scholar.