black letter

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A heavy typeface with very broad counters and thick ornamental serifs.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• The old English or Gothic letter, in which the Early English manuscripts were written, and the first English books were printed. It was conspicuous for its blackness. See type.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun typography A Northern European style of type, with contrasting thick-and-thin, angular strokes forming upright letterforms, and usually set with a dark typographic colour on the page.
• noun Text set in black-letter type.
• noun law The basic standard elements for a particular field of law, which are generally known and free from doubt or dispute.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a heavy typeface in use from 15th to 18th centuries