The term "chancery hand" can refer to either of two distinct styles of historical handwriting.

A chancery hand was at first a form of handwriting for business transactions that developed in the Lateran chancery (the Cancelleria Apostolica) of the 13th century, then spread to France, notably through the Avignon Papacy, and to England after 1350.^[1] This early "chancery hand" is a form of blackletter. Versions of it were adopted by royal and ducal chanceries, which were often staffed by clerics who had taken minor orders.

A later cursive "chancery hand", also developed in the Vatican but based on humanist minuscule (itself based on Carolingian minuscule), was introduced in the 1420s by Niccolò Niccoli; it was the manuscript origin of the typefaces we recognize as italic.

This section is missing information about "cancelleresca" and "cancelleresca formata". (February 2021)

The later cancelleresca corsiva ("cursive chancery hand"), often called "Chancery Cursive", developed from Humanist minuscule, itself the progeny of Carolingian minuscule, in the mid-15th century as "a cursive form of the humanistic minuscule".^[4] In England and France at the time it was known as Italic.^[4] In English it is often changed in spelling to cancellaresca corsiva.^[5] The Italian scribe Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi's 1522 influential pamphlet on handwriting called La Operina was the first book on writing the italic script known as cursive chancery hand.^[6] He was a scribe in the Papal Curia, which had refined cursive chancery hand in its infancy during the latter half of the 15th century.^[4] While considered a cursive, this "papal hand" was "strongly disciplined in form, regular in movement and slightly, if at all, inclined from the perpendicular."^[4]

In cursive chancery hand the pen was held slanted at a 45° angle for speed, but it could also produce beautiful calligraphic writing. In 15th-century Italy the cursive chancery hand was employed in correspondence, everyday business, and documents of minor formal importance.

It was adapted as the model for the italic typeface developed by Aldus Manutius in Venice, from punches cut by Francesco Griffo and first used in 1500 for the small portable series of inexpensive classics that issued from the Aldine press.

In 16th-century England it became known as the "Italian hand" to distinguish it from the angular, cramped, Blackletter-derived English chancery hand which had been developed earlier and independently.