Una mano tante scritture

There is evidence of scribes able to write using different scripts: among them some are merely employing different degrees of the same handwriting, while others have the ability of using a wider repertoire of completely different scripts. This paper focuses on the latter type, examining the behaviour of six exemplary fourteenth- and fifteenth- century Florentine scribes: Francesco of ser Nardo of Barberino, Andrea Lancia, Coluccio Salutati, Niccolò Niccoli, Luigi of Michele Guidi and an anonymous scribe working for Salutati. A sistematic survey of their manuscripts suggests classifying changes in their scripts under two different categories, i.e. synchronic and diachronic changes. To conclude, some questions are examined from a methodological perspective: how to judge these autographs? How to assign different scripts to the same hand? According to which features can we recognise the hand of a scribe?