Fonts… 2

I found this font in Utrecht Cathedral… I have no idea how old it is, but it just stood there, magnificently and almost humbly alone.

I got to thinking about the word font, these days it’s most often used to mean a type script… and that surely must be a whole other post! The word font in the church sense comes once again from Old French, which in turn got it from Latin fons, meaning fountain… and we still talk of someone as a font of knowledge, someone who holds knowledge but can pour it forth. Font means receptacle, here in the cathedral and other churches it is a receptacle for the water used to baptise, but apparently it can be a receptacle for the oil in an oil lamp.