14 Facts About Carolingian minuscule

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.

Carolingian minuscule was most likely responsible for copying and preserving the manuscripts and upkeep of the script.

Carolingian minuscule was created partly under the patronage of the Emperor Charlemagne.

Carolingian minuscule 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.

The new Carolingian minuscule was disseminated first from Aachen, of which the Ada Gospels provided classic models, and later from the influential scriptorium at Marmoutier Abbey, where Alcuin withdrew from court service as an abbot in 796 and restructured the scriptorium.

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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.

In Switzerland, Carolingian was used in the Rhaetian and Alemannic minuscule types.

Alemannic Carolingian 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.

German Carolingian minuscule tends to be oval-shaped, very slender, and slanted to the right.

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 Carolingian minuscule' survived in the lands of the Lombard duchy of Benevento through the 13th century, although Romanesca eventually appeared in southern Italy.

Scholars during the Carolingian minuscule Renaissance sought out and copied in the new legible standardized hand many Roman texts that had been wholly forgotten.

Over 7000 manuscripts written in Carolingian minuscule script survive from the 8th and 9th centuries alone.

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.