Carolingian minuscule: Encyclopedia II - Carolingian minuscule - Role in Cultural Transmission

Carolingian minuscule - 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 our knowledge of classical literature now derives from copies made in the scriptoria of Charlemagne. There are over 7000 manuscripts written in Carolingian script surviving from the 8^th and 9^th centuries alone.

Though the Carolingian minuscule was superseded by Gothic hands, it later seemed so thoroughly 'classic' to the humanists of the early Renaissance that they took these Carolingian manuscripts to be true Roman ones and modelled their Renaissance hand on the Carolingian one, and thus it passed to the 15^th century printers of books, like Aldus Manutius of Venice. In this way it is the basis of our modern typefaces. Indeed 'Carolingian minuscule' is a style of typographic font, which approximates this historical hand, eliminating the nuances of size of capitals, long descenders, etc..

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Role in Cultural Transmission", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki