Carolingian minuscule

Last updated
Carolingian minuscule alphabet Carolineminuscel.jpg
Carolingian minuscule alphabet
Example from 10th-century manuscript, Vulgate Luke 1:5-8. CarolingianMinuscule.jpg
Example from 10th-century manuscript, Vulgate Luke 1:5–8.

Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It is thought to have originated before 778 CE at the scriptorium of the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey, about 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Paris, and then developed by Alcuin of York for wide use in the Carolingian Renaissance. [1] [2] [3] Alcuin himself still wrote in a script which was a precursor to the Carolingian minuscule, which slowly developed over three centuries. [4] [5] He was most likely responsible for copying and preserving the manuscripts [6] and upkeep of the script. [7] It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, pagan [ citation needed ] and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule.

Contents

After blackletter developed out of it, the Carolingian minuscule became obsolete, until the 14th century Italian Renaissance, when the humanist minuscule script was also developed from it. By this latter line the Carolingian minuscule is a direct ancestor of most modern-day Latin letter scripts and typefaces.

Creation

Page of text (folio 160v) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (British Library, Add MS 11848), written in Carolingian minuscule. Text is Vulgate Luke 23:15-26. Minuscule caroline.jpg
Page of text (folio 160v) from a Carolingian Gospel Book (British Library, Add MS 11848), written in Carolingian minuscule. Text is Vulgate Luke 23:15–26.

The script is derived from Roman half uncial and the insular scripts that were being used in Irish and English monasteries. The strong influence of Irish literati on the script can be seen in the distinctively cló-Gaelach (Irish style) forms of the letters, especially a, e, d, g, s, and t.

Carolingian minuscule was created partly under the patronage of the Emperor Charlemagne (hence Carolingian). Charlemagne had a keen interest in learning, according to his biographer Einhard (here with apices):

Temptábat et scríbere, tabulásque et códicellós ad hoc in lectó sub cervícálibus circumferre solébat, ut, cum vacuum tempus esset, manum litterís effigiendís adsuésceret, sed parum successit labor praeposterus ac séró incohátus.

He also tried to write, and used to keep tablets and blanks in bed under his pillow, that at leisure hours he might accustom his hand to form the letters; however, as he did not begin his efforts in due season, but late in life, they met with ill success.

This new script was significantly more legible than the scripts used by Romans or that of the script earlier in the Middle Ages, and offered new features such as word spacing, more punctuation, an introduction of lower-case letters, and conventions such as usage of upper-case for titles, a mix of upper and lower case for subtitles, and lower case for the body of a text. [3] Although Charlemagne was never fully literate, he understood the value of literacy and a uniform script in running his empire. Charlemagne sent for the English scholar Alcuin of York to run his palace school and scriptorium at his capital, Aachen. Efforts to supplant Gallo-Roman and Germanic scripts had been under way before Alcuin arrived at Aachen, where he was master from 782 to 796, with a two-year break. The new minuscule was disseminated first from Aachen, of which the Ada Gospels provided classic models, and later from the influential scriptorium at Marmoutier Abbey (Tours), where Alcuin withdrew from court service as an abbot in 796 and restructured the scriptorium. [8]

Characteristics

Carolingian minuscule was uniform with rounded shapes in clearly distinguishable glyphs, disciplined and above all, legible. Clear capital letters and spaces between words became standard in Carolingian minuscule, which was one result of a campaign to achieve a culturally unifying standardization across the Carolingian Empire. [9]

Traditional charters, however, continued to be written in a Merovingian "chancery hand" long after manuscripts of Scripture and classical literature were being produced in the minuscule hand. Documents written in a local language, like Gothic or Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin, tended to be expressed in traditional local script.

Carolingian script generally has fewer ligatures than other contemporary scripts, although the et (&), æ, rt, st, and ct ligatures are common. The letter d often appears in an uncial form with an ascender slanting to the left, but the letter g is essentially the same as the modern minuscule letter, rather than the previously common uncial ᵹ. Ascenders are usually "clubbed" – they become thicker near the top. [9]

The early period of the script, during Charlemagne's reign in the late 8th century and early 9th, still has widely varying letter forms in different regions. The uncial form of the letter a, similar to a double c (cc), is still used in manuscripts from this period. There is also use of punctuation such as the question mark, as in Beneventan script of the same period. The script flourished during the 9th century, when regional hands developed into an international standard, with less variation of letter forms. Modern glyphs, such as s and v, began to appear (as opposed to the "long s" ſ and u), and ascenders, after thickening at the top, were finished with a three-cornered wedge. The script began to evolve slowly after the 9th century. In the 10th and 11th centuries, ligatures were rare and ascenders began to slant to the right and were finished with a fork. The letter w also began to appear. By the 12th century, Carolingian letters had become more angular and were written closer together, less legibly than in previous centuries; at the same time, the modern dotted i appeared. [ citation needed ]

A page of the Freising manuscripts, showing 10th-century Slovene text written in Carolingian minuscule. Bavarian State Library, Munich. Freising manuscript.jpg
A page of the Freising manuscripts, showing 10th-century Slovene text written in Carolingian minuscule. Bavarian State Library, Munich.

Spread

The new script spread through Western Europe most widely where Carolingian influence was strongest. In luxuriously produced lectionaries that now began to be produced for princely patronage of abbots and bishops, legibility was essential. It reached far afield: the 10th century Freising manuscripts, which contain the oldest Slovene language, the first Roman-script record of any Slavic language, are written in Carolingian minuscule. In Switzerland, Carolingian was used in the Rhaetian and Alemannic minuscule types. Manuscripts written in Rhaetian minuscule tend to have slender letters, resembling Insular script, with the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨t⟩, and ligatures such as ⟨ri⟩, showing similar to Visigothic and Beneventan. Alemannic minuscule, used for a short time in the early 9th century, is usually larger, broader, and very vertical in comparison to the slanting Rhaetian type. It was developed by the monk Wolfcoz I at the Abbey of Saint Gall. [10] In the Holy Roman Empire, Carolingian script flourished in Salzburg, Austria, as well as in Fulda, Mainz, and Würzburg, all of which were major centers of the script. German minuscule tends to be oval-shaped, very slender, and slanted to the right. It has uncial features as well, such as the ascender of the letter ⟨d⟩ slanting to the left, and vertical initial strokes of ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩.

In northern Italy, the monastery at Bobbio used Carolingian minuscule beginning in the 9th century. Outside the sphere of influence of Charlemagne and his successors, however, the new legible hand was resisted by the Roman Curia; nevertheless the Romanesca type was developed in Rome after the 10th century. The script was not taken up in England and Ireland until ecclesiastic reforms in the middle of the 10th century; in Spain a traditionalist Visigothic hand survived; and in southern Italy a 'Beneventan minuscule' survived in the lands of the Lombard duchy of Benevento through the 13th century, although Romanesca eventually also appeared in southern Italy.

Role in cultural transmission

Scholars during the Carolingian Renaissance sought out and copied in the new legible standardized hand many Roman texts that had been wholly forgotten. Most of contemporary knowledge of classical literature derives from copies made in the scriptoria of Charlemagne. Over 7000 manuscripts written in Carolingian script survive from the 8th and 9th centuries alone.

Though the Carolingian minuscule was superseded by Gothic blackletter hands, in retrospect, it seemed so thoroughly 'classic' to the humanists of the early Renaissance that they took these old Carolingian manuscripts to be ancient Roman originals, and used them as bases for their Renaissance hand, the "humanist minuscule". [11] From there the script passed to the 15th- and 16th-century printers of books, such as Aldus Manutius of Venice. In this way it forms the basis of our modern lowercase typefaces. Indeed, 'Carolingian minuscule' is a style of typeface, which approximates this historical hand, eliminating the nuances of size of capitals, long descenders, and so on.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alcuin</span> 8th-century Northumbrian scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher

Alcuin of York – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. Before that, he was also a court chancellor in Aachen. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palaeography</span> Study of handwriting and manuscripts

Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study and academic discipline of the analysis of historical writing systems, the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic penmanship, handwriting script, signification and printed media. It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in a text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and printing of texts, manuscripts, books, codices and tomes, tracts and monographs, etcetera, were produced, and the history of scriptoria. This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, in the absence of additional evidence, it cannot be used to pinpoint exact dates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calligraphy</span> Visual art related to writing

Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penmanship</span> Technique of writing with the hand

Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uncial script</span> Capital letter-only writing system in Greek and Latin

In a Western context, Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for Coptic and Nobiin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carolingian Renaissance</span> 8th-9th century renaissance within the Carolingian Empire

The Carolingian Renaissance was the first of three medieval renaissances, a period of cultural activity in the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne's reign led to an intellectual revival beginning in the 8th century and continuing throughout the 9th century, taking inspiration from ancient Roman and Greek culture and the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth century. During this period, there was an increase of literature, writing, visual arts, architecture, music, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms, and scriptural studies. Carolingian schools were effective centers of education, and they served generations of scholars by producing editions and copies of the classics, both Christian and pagan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blackletter</span> Historic European script and typeface

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish until the 1870s, Finnish until the turn of the 20th century, Latvian until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Hitler officially discontinued it in 1941. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is sometimes referred to as Old English, but it is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letter case</span> Uppercase or lowercase

Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals and smaller lowercase in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper- and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters: each in the majuscule set has a counterpart in the minuscule set. Some counterpart letters have the same shape, and differ only in size, but for others the shapes are different. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are typically treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antiqua (typeface class)</span> Typefaces that mimic 15C and 16C handwriting

Antiqua is a style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries. Letters are designed to flow, and strokes connect together in a continuous fashion; in this way it is often contrasted with Fraktur-style typefaces where the individual strokes are broken apart. The two typefaces were used alongside each other in the germanophone world, with the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute often dividing along ideological or political lines. After the mid-20th century, Fraktur fell out of favor and Antiqua-based typefaces became the official standard in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roman cursive</span> Form of handwriting used in ancient Rome

Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old cursive and new cursive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western calligraphy</span> Art of writing

Western calligraphy is the art of writing and penmanship as practiced in the Western world, especially using the Latin alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insular script</span> Medieval writing system common to Ireland and England

Insular script is a medieval script system originating from Ireland that spread to England and continental Europe under the influence of Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries took the script to continental Europe, where they founded monasteries such as Bobbio. The scripts were also used in monasteries like Fulda, which were influenced by English missionaries. They are associated with Insular art, of which most surviving examples are illuminated manuscripts. It greatly influenced modern Gaelic type and handwriting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visigothic script</span> Type of medieval script

Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beneventan script</span> Medieval script developed in southern Italy

The Beneventan script was a medieval script that originated in the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. In the past it has also been called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca, or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer E. A. Lowe.

Merovingian script or Gallo-Roman script was a medieval variant of the Latin script so called because it was developed in Gaul during the Merovingian dynasty. It was used in the 7th and 8th centuries before the Carolingian dynasty and the development of Carolingian minuscule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E caudata</span> Modified letter E used in transcribing old Gaelic, Latin and Old Norse texts

The e caudata is a modified form of the letter E that is usually graphically represented in printed text as E with ogonek (ę) but has a distinct history of usage. It was used in Latin from as early as the sixth century to represent the vowel also written ae or æ. In old Gaelic texts from the 13th century, it represented an ea ligature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Latin script</span> Evolution of the Roman alphabet

The Latin script is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the standard script of the English language and is often referred to simply as "the alphabet" in English. It is a true alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2,500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan. The phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles ("hands") developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters. Modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts, and there are few regional variants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chancery hand</span> Any of several styles of historic handwriting

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

The Epistola de litteris colendis is a well-known letter addressed by Emperor Charlemagne to Abbot Baugulf of Fulda, probably written sometime in the late 780s to 800s (decade), although the exact date is still debatable. The letter is a very important witness to the Carolingian educational reforms during the Carolingian Renaissance from the late 8th century to the 9th century. The letter shows Emperor Charlemagne's interest in promoting learning and education within his empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek minuscule</span> Handwritten script of medieval and early modern Greek

Greek minuscule was a Greek writing style which was developed as a book hand in Byzantine manuscripts during the 9th and 10th centuries. It replaced the earlier style of uncial writing, from which it differed in using smaller, more rounded and more connected letter forms, and in using many ligatures. Many of these forms had previously developed as parts of more informal cursive writing. The basic letter shapes used in the minuscule script are the ancestors of modern lower case Greek letters.

References

  1. ↑ Knox, E.L. Skip. "Carolingian Handwriting", Boise State University
  2. ↑ "Caroline Minuscule Predates Charlemagne", Heidelberg University, 9 January 2013
  3. 1 2 Colish, Marcia L. (1999). Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400–1400. The Yale Intellectual History of the West. Yale University Press. p. 67. ISBN   9780300078527.
  4. ↑ Rosamond, McKitterick. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751-987. Routledge, 2018, 150-157.
  5. ↑ Dales, Douglas (2013). Alcuin II: Theology and Thought. ISD LLC. ISBN   978-0-227-90087-1.
  6. ↑ Bowen, James (2018). Hist West Educ:Civil Europe V2. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-136-50096-1.
  7. ↑ Morison, Stanley (2009). Selected Essays On the History of Letter-forms in Manuscript and Print. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-18316-1.
  8. ↑ The production of the scriptorium at Tours was reconstructed by Rand, Edward Kennard (1929). A Survey of the Manuscripts of Tours. Harvard University Press. ISBN   9780910956024 – via Medieval Academy of America.
  9. 1 2 Slimane, Fouad; Schaban, Torsten; Margner, Volker (August 2014). "GMM-based handwriting style identification system for historical documents". 2014 6th International Conference of Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR). Tunis, Tunisia: IEEE. p. 389. doi:10.1109/SOCPAR.2014.7008038. ISBN   978-1-4799-5934-1. S2CID   14350674.
  10. ↑ "Wolfcoz I" (in German). Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  11. ↑ Ullman, Berthold Louis (1960). The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script . Rome: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura. p.  12. GGKEY:SC91X3J9KAG.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.