Beneventan script

There were two major centres of Beneventan usage: the monastery on Monte Cassino, and Bari.

According to Lowe, the perfected form of the script was used in the 11th century, while Desiderius was abbot of Monte Cassino, declining thereafter.

Beneventan features many ligatures and "connecting strokes" – the letters of a word could be joined together by a single line, with forms almost unrecognizable to a modern eye.

[1] Ligatures involving the letter ⟨t⟩ resemble late New Latin Cursive as in the Merovingian and Visigothic,[1] exception made for peculiar ⟨st⟩ ligature where ⟨s⟩ is connected to ⟨t⟩ on top influencing later on the German pre-caroline script and all the script from this derived until nowadays.

Beneventan shares some features with Visigothic and Merovingian script, probably due to the common late Roman matrix.