The Filocalian Letter

Abstract

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.