Funeral celebrant Roy Francis convinced Messenger that just as his wife was entitled to a civil celebrant marriage, she was similarly entitled to a civil celebrant funeral. Some 200 people attended and many urged Messenger to continue the work as "much more important than weddings." Messenger credits Dennis Perry, then brother in law of Helen Francis, of being a decisive influence. From this time on some marriage celebrants began to quietly and carefully officiate at funerals when they were asked to do so. On Tuesday 3 May 1977 a group, consisting of some authorised marriage celebrants and some other persons formed an
Humanist minuscule on the chancery hand in Venice, 1501, and was practised by designer-printers Nicolas Jenson and Francesco Griffo; roman type has helped establish the remarkable resistance to change of the modern Latin alphabet. Humanist minuscule Humanist minuscule is a handwriting or style of script that was invented in secular circles in Italy, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. "Few periods in Western history have produced writing of such great beauty", observes the art historian Millard Meiss. The new hand was based on Carolingian minuscule, which Renaissance humanists, obsessed with the revival of antiquity and their role as its inheritors, took