GFS Jackson font

GFS Jackson majuscule Greek font

Description
As it is known, the Greek alphabet was used in majuscule form for over a millennium before the minuscule letters gradually replaced it until they became the official script in the 9th century A.D. Thereafter, majuscule letters were confined to sparse use as initials or elaborate titles until the Italian Renaissance.

The new art of Typography, as well as the need of the humanists to mimic the ancient Greco-Roman period brought back the extensive use of the majuscule letter-forms in both Latin and Greek typography. Greek books of the time were printed using the contemporary Byzantine hand with which they combined capital letters modelled on the Roman antiquity, i.e. with thick and thin strokes and serifs. At the same time the Byzantine majuscule tradition, principally used on theological editions, remainned alive until the early 19th century.

GFS Jackson is an edition of the font cut, in 1788, by Joseph Jackson on commission by the Cambridge University in preparation of the edition of the Beza codex containning the New Testament from the 5th-6th century. Theodore Beza was the erudite scholar from Geneva who had given the codex as a gift to the University in 1581.

It has been designed by George D. Matthiopoulos.