The history of the writing of the chancellery of the Roman Late-Empire has got an important moment in the law of the Theodosian's Code, 9.19.3, which prohibited, at the 368 a. D., the use of the litterae caelestes outside the imperial chancellery.
This law has always been considered the end of this script and, above all, it had to put an end to the use of the Roman majuscule script and to the use of each type of writing resulting from this model, even though it was not normally used since the third century.
This is the usual interpretation of this law and this is considered by historiography an unquestioned dogma.
The palaeographers, including, recently, some researchers of the University of Bologna, have dealt with the effects of this law in the papyrus writings in order to verify her enforcement. The studies showed that the use of writings, resulting from majuscule type, hadn't been completely interrupted, but it went on, after the promulgation of this law, in some particular categories of documents (as in Egypt and in Ravenna), for specific uses.
According to this perspective I have started to research the evolution of this law in another support: the epigraphs.
First of all, I have checked the writing of the epigraphs that were produced by the provincial magistrature up to 6th century and I have been making a census of the surviving evidence, in order to understand two questions in particular: if the script was changed and how. In other words, if the writing had aknowledged this law or not.
I have verified that this use didn't disappear at all, but, as in the papyri, the provincial magistrature continued to use this script (litterae caelestes) or a type of writing resulting from this model, to mark particular parts of the document.
Moving on this context, between legislation and literature, I have been trying to know the reasons of this fact, taking in account what Otto Kresten said about the Diplomatische Auszeichnungsschriften on his study: Diplomatische Auszeichnungsschriften in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter (1966).
During the lecture and the workshop we are going to deep some aspects of the research.
Especially during the workshop, we are going to revise some of the most important papyri and epigraphical sources resulting from public chancellery that have been used to verify the question.
First of all, we will focus on a particular epigraph, found in Didyma, which has been very important for this study because this is the most significant example of the problem. Finally we will look at other sources, both papyri and epigraphs, strictly connected between legislation and writing in the chancery use.
The workshop will be organized in some different blocks, to allow the scholars to work with these sources.
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