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The Carolingian Empire

Carolingian Handwriting

One of the greatest accomplishments of the monasteries of the Carolingian era was the preservation of manuscripts. Not only did the monks copy the Bible, the works of the Church Fathers, and other sacred writings and commentaries, they copied works of classical authors as well. Almost 90% of the works of ancient Rome that we possess exist in their earliest form in a Carolingian manuscript, and almost nothing that survived up to 800 has subsequently been lost.

The illuminated manuscripts were beautiful, but these could be found in other than Frankish lands. What was notable now was the conscious revival of classical learning and an attention to preserving classical documents.

All this copying activity led to and was caused by a reform of handwriting. Merovingian script all but unreadable, and each copying led to new corruptions in the text. With the Carolingian Renaissance there was a new emphasis on accuracy, and this drew attention to the need for better handwriting.

The most long-lasting result was the invention of Carolingian miniscule, developed at abbey of Corbie. This script is characterized by clear, neat letters, with each word clearly separated from one another, rather than all run together as Merovingian script often was. Alcuin formed a scriptorium, a writing office, which produced many books in the new script and influenced writers far and wide. One of Charlemagne's capitularies is entitled "On Scribes - That They Should Not Write Corruptly". Carolingian miniscule was revived during the Renaissance and has survived as our lower case letters (the capital letters come from ancient Rome). Although this "renaissance" was not much, it was never completely extinguished, and without it the thread that leads from Greece and Rome to ourselves would have been completely broken.