Eadui — An Eleventh-Century Script Font

The Eadui font is named for a scribe who worked at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the first half of the eleventh century and signed himself “Eaduuius cognomento Basan.” This Eadui Basan was a leading practitioner of the scribal hand known to paleographers as style IV English caroline minuscule. Like caroline minuscules generally, this one is notable for its legibility; and Eadui's work, at its best, possesses a formal beauty that is matched by few scribes of his time.

Eadui is a color font, with default colors based on those of several of the scribe’s manuscripts; the font also contains an alternate palette for use against dark backgrounds. Users can override the font’s choice of text color with the OpenType feature ss06, and web designers can either select a palette or override any or all of the font’s colors with CSS.

Below you can play with the font’s colors (or try out your own) and a generous selection of its many OpenType features. The text box is editable: paste or type in your favorite text to see what it looks like in this classic script!