Triscriptal alchemical German
Posted: Fri May 31, 2024 1:09 am
So it used to be common in western Europe to use two different scripts to represent different languages. Usually this was blackletter for Germanic languages and roman/antiqua for Latin or Romance languages. Here's an example from a grammar of Spanish:
The modern equivalent of this is using italics to indicate foreign words, although italics is now thought of as just "slanted letters" rather than a distinct script.
Alchemists had a large collection of symbols that they used to represent elements (and various other things). Most descriptions I've seen of this just call them "symbols" in a vague way without showing how they're actually used. The reality is they're logograms, used to represent words in text, in a way very similar to how kanji are used in Japanese:
Here <♁ij> represents antimonij, <🝭m> represents retortam, and <🝋erem> represents pulverem. (You probably don't have the fonts to render those last two, and if you do the glyphs probably aren't right.)
Now here's a German alchemical manuscript that combines both of these:
German words are written in Kurrent, while Latin words are written in roman (not sure if that's the correct name), including both unassimilated Latin phrases like <Materiam primam> and loanwords like <☿rial-> (= Mercurial-). Logograms are used for both German words (<das ☉> = das Gold) and Latin words (<☿rium 🝞atum> = mercurium sublimatum, in the image below).
There are also some words that combine all three scripts. In the second-last image in this post, the word Mercurial-Wasser is written with a logogram for Mercu-, roman for -rial-, and Kurrent for -Wasser. Similarly, at the bottom of the last image, the word sublimiren is written using a logogram for subli-, roman for -mir-, and Kurrent for -en.
I've never seen this kind of writing described before.
The modern equivalent of this is using italics to indicate foreign words, although italics is now thought of as just "slanted letters" rather than a distinct script.
Alchemists had a large collection of symbols that they used to represent elements (and various other things). Most descriptions I've seen of this just call them "symbols" in a vague way without showing how they're actually used. The reality is they're logograms, used to represent words in text, in a way very similar to how kanji are used in Japanese:
Here <♁ij> represents antimonij, <🝭m> represents retortam, and <🝋erem> represents pulverem. (You probably don't have the fonts to render those last two, and if you do the glyphs probably aren't right.)
Now here's a German alchemical manuscript that combines both of these:
German words are written in Kurrent, while Latin words are written in roman (not sure if that's the correct name), including both unassimilated Latin phrases like <Materiam primam> and loanwords like <☿rial-> (= Mercurial-). Logograms are used for both German words (<das ☉> = das Gold) and Latin words (<☿rium 🝞atum> = mercurium sublimatum, in the image below).
There are also some words that combine all three scripts. In the second-last image in this post, the word Mercurial-Wasser is written with a logogram for Mercu-, roman for -rial-, and Kurrent for -Wasser. Similarly, at the bottom of the last image, the word sublimiren is written using a logogram for subli-, roman for -mir-, and Kurrent for -en.
I've never seen this kind of writing described before.
