Carolingian minuscule orCaroline minuscule is ascript which developed as a calligraphic standard in themedieval European period so that theLatin alphabet ofJerome'sVulgate Bible could be easily recognized by theliterate class from one region to another. It is thought to have originated before 778 CE at thescriptorium of theBenedictine monks ofCorbie Abbey, about 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Paris, and then developed byAlcuin of York for wide use in theCarolingian 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 theHoly Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200.Codices,Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule.
Afterblackletter developed out of it, the Carolingian minuscule became obsolete, until the 14th centuryItalian Renaissance, when thehumanist minuscule script was also developed from it. By this latter line, the Carolingian minuscule is a direct ancestor of most modern-dayLatin letter scripts and typefaces.
The script is derived partly from various continental minuscule scripts ultimately descended from lateRoman cursive and partly fromRoman half uncial and its cursive version.[8] It also adopted certain features from theInsular scripts that were being used in Irish and English monasteries.
Carolingian minuscule was created partly under the patronage of the EmperorCharlemagne (hence Carolingian). Charlemagne had a keen interest in learning, according to his biographerEinhard (here withapices):
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 ones used in earlier periods of the Middle Ages and was also superior to the book scripts used in the Roman period, because it provided word spacing, more punctuation, and conventions such as the 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 scholarAlcuin of York to run his palace school andscriptorium at his capital,Aachen. Efforts to supplantGallo-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 theAda Gospels provided classic models, and later from the influential scriptorium atMarmoutier Abbey (Tours), where Alcuin withdrew from court service as anabbot in 796 and restructured the scriptorium.[9]
Carolingian minuscule was uniform with rounded shapes in clearly distinguishableglyphs, 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 theCarolingian Empire.[10]
Traditional charters, however, continued to be written in aMerovingian "chancery hand" long after manuscripts of Scripture and classical literature were being produced in the minuscule hand. Documents written in a local language, likeGothic orAnglo-Saxon rather than Latin, tended to be expressed in traditional local script.
Carolingian script generally has fewerligatures than other contemporaryscripts, although theet (&),æ,rt,st, andct ligatures are common. The letterd often appears in an uncial form with anascender slanting to the left, but the letterg is essentially the same as the modern minuscule letter, rather than the previously common uncialᵹ. Ascenders are usually "clubbed" – they become thicker near the top.[10]
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 lettera, similar to a doublec (cc), was still used in manuscripts from this period. There was also use of punctuation such as thequestion mark, as inBeneventan 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. Modernglyphs, such ass andv, began to appear (as opposed to the "longs"ſ andu), 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 letterw 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 moderndottedi appeared.[citation needed]
The new script spread through Western Europe most widely where Carolingian influence was strongest. In luxuriously producedlectionaries that now began to be produced for princely patronage of abbots and bishops, legibility was essential. It reached far afield: the 10th centuryFreising manuscripts, which contain the oldestSlovene language, the firstRoman-script record of anySlavic language, are written in Carolingian minuscule. InSwitzerland, Carolingian was used in the Rhaetian and Alemannic minuscule types. Manuscripts written inRhaetian 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 monkWolfcoz I at theAbbey of Saint Gall.[11] In theHoly Roman Empire, Carolingian script flourished inSalzburg,Austria, as well as inFulda,Mainz, andWürzburg, 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 atBobbio 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 theRoman Curia; nevertheless the Romanesca type was developed inRome 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 traditionalistVisigothic hand survived; and in southern Italy a 'Beneventan minuscule' survived in the lands of theLombardduchy of Benevento through the 13th century, although Romanesca eventually also appeared in southern Italy.
Scholars during theCarolingian 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 thescriptoria ofCharlemagne. Over 7000 manuscripts written in Carolingian script survive from the 8th and 9th centuries alone.
Though the Carolingian minuscule was superseded byGothic blackletter hands, in retrospect, it seemed so thoroughly 'classic' to thehumanists of the earlyRenaissance that they took these old Carolingian manuscripts to beancient Roman originals, and used them as bases for their Renaissance hand, the "humanist minuscule".[12] From there the script passed to the 15th- and 16th-century printers of books, such asAldus Manutius of Venice. In this way it forms the basis of our modern lowercase typefaces. Indeed, 'Carolingian minuscule' is a style oftypeface, which approximates this historical hand, eliminating the nuances of size of capitals, long descenders, and so on.
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