Per una storia della mercantesca attraverso i manoscritti datati

The paper focuses on the importance of the Italian series of catalogues of dated manuscripts (MDI) for the study of mercantesca script, and in particular for the transferral of mercantesca from documents into books. It is divided in four main parts. First, it discusses the terminology and illustrates the palaeographical features of mercantesca, on the basis of some historical sources (sixteenth-century writing treatises), and presenting the results of a broad survey of documents dating from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The second part offers an overview of mercantesca script as represented in the Italian catalogues of dated manuscripts, both from the point of view of chronology and typology. The third part presents some codicological features of the manuscripts written in mercantesca. Finally, an appendix lists all the manuscripts which have been considered in the study, with reference to the volume of MDI, the date and the name of the scribes