Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 12 May 2025

Initials, Ornamental. 

Source:
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
Author(s):
Robert S. NelsonRobert S. Nelson

Compared with Latin scribes, Greek copyists, always more faithful to ancient traditions, were slower to enlarge and decorate initial letters. In the 6th C., small initials were filled with miscellaneous designs or outlined with dots. In contrast, the 9th-C. ... ...

Access to the complete content on Oxford Reference requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.