Typefaces for the Constructed Languages of the Saints, and Two Drawings of Philip Neri
Constructed languages, those intentionally devised by one person or group rather than developed gradually from previously existing language, have become familiar in our culture; JRR Tolkien famously made many of them for his literary work, and other fantasy and science fiction authors have since done the same. Constructed languages intended as lingue franche, such as Volapük and Esperanto, are widely known.
The earliest surviving constructed language was made in the 12th century by St. Hildegard of Bingen, as a spiritual exercise. This lingua ignota survives in two glossaries of about 1000 nouns, and a few musical works. It has its own 23-letter alphabet, a calque of the Latin.
I have used these invented letters in several of my drawings over the years, including this one of St. Hildegard:
I recently completed an original typeface for writing these unknown letters. For this, I did not try to copy the letterforms in the surviving manuscripts directly, but rather interpreted them in the style of contemporary Lombardic display capitals, to match my typeface Lux. It is available for purchase here.
Another early constructed language was mentioned in an addendum (written by Peter Giles) to St. Thomas More’s Utopia. The addendum includes a short poem in Utopian and an original alphabet. I have also made a typeface for this, which is available for purchase here.
Here are two drawings I have made of St. Philip Neri, whose feast is celebrated today:
St. Philip Neri was a priest of the 16th century. He was a native Florentine, but was most famous for his work in Rome, where he founded the Congregation of the Oratory. He was renowned for his piety, joyfulness and good humor.
The general composition of the above drawing is influenced by illuminated choir books from Florence, although the ornament is based on plants especially associated with Rome: stone pine, blood orange and artichoke.
There is a large inital letter P that dominates the page; inside it I drew the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to St. Philip in 1594. In the P’s downstroke I drew St. Philip, holding an alabaster tablet of St. John the Baptist’s head. This refers to an earlier vision, one of St. John the Baptist that St. Philip saw in 1550. (Also, I was once told that a Nottinghamshire alabaster of St. John’s head is in the collections of the Oratory in Rome; this was one discovered in the belongings of one of the defeated Turks after the Battle of Lepanto. How or why the Turk came to own it God only knows.)
It includes also the words and chant neumes of the first verse of the hymn Pangamus Nerio.
I drew this smaller work in imitation of the white-vine style of Italian illuminated manuscripts.