[MUSIC] Carolingian Minor School, taken it's name from the great Charles Charlemagne, developed in the final years of the 8th century in the North of the present France. And reached its plenitude during the following two centuries. It is the first script that can be qualified as properly European since it was known and used in practically the totality of Latin Europe. Although it didn't arrive in Great Britain until the 10th century, and in the Iberian Peninsula until the 11th. And as a matter of fact, it never reached the south of Italy, where script was utilized to well into the 13th century, when the rest of Europe already wrote Gothic. As for its graphical characteristics the Carolingian Minor School is the perfect book hand because of its legibility, clarity, calligraphy, lack of graphical variants, and very limited use of ligatures. Its shapes are rounded with generous descenders and ascenders, the latter with widening, in the end that remembers a spatula during the 9th century. But during the 10th and 11th evolves to a triangular serif or a sort of bifurcation. The general appearance is of a spaciousness and clearness. But the Carolingian Minor School evolved. The written angle tilted and the letters acquired a very distinctive vertical chiaroscuro. And progressively it became narrower, and as a consequence of both changes the adopt an angular appearance becoming small polygons. And the individual letters get closer each one like leaning on the previous one and by the end of the 12th century it was Carolingian no more but Gothic. Or rather Gothics because under this umbrella fall a wide number of hands, many of which are actually local varieties. But in the same time and place, we can find several types, even written by the same copyist. The terminology applied to this entire assemblage is very fluid and one of the most discussed paleographical questions of the second half of the 20 century. Although the underlying problem is not so much terminology as classification and the criteria utilized to classify them. One of the most recent and comprehensive attempt is Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the 12th to the early 16th century. In it this French paleographer makes a superb synthesis of all the nomenclature systems proposed until now. And clarifies the definitions of the different types, extending the system previously proposed by Gerard Isaac Lieftink and then polished by his disciple Johan Peter Gumbert. And later revised by Julian Browne and made available to the more general public by Michelle Browne in her 1993, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts. Where, by the way, one can find beautifully reproduced examples of all the scripts I mention in here. And if I'm allowed to confess, this was my first paleography book and the one that made me fall in love with medieval manuscripts. But back to the point. Lifting systematization consisted on distinguishing three general types of fonts. Textualis, cursive and hybrid, depending on the shape of the a and the serifs on the basis of the vertical strokes combined with another three execution levels, formata, libraria, and currens. And has extended these criteria with their respective in between terms, adding as well the denomination that each hand had traditionally received in its homeland. That said, the system distinguishes the following types. Praegothica, textualis, that is the script that we normally consider gothic or and that can be subdivided in textualis septentrionalis, or and textualis meridionalis, or textualis. Semitextualis, cursivae antiquiores, cursivae recentiores, hybridae, and gothico antiqua. This clearly excessive proliferation and super abundance of graphic types and the graphic mannerism that it produced giving birth to less and less functional hands. Because of their sophisticated shapes, difficult to read caused a the desire to return to the purity and simplicity of the old forms. This graphic reaction has a name, humanistic script, also called, sometimes, italic or bastard italic. An humanistic script has the peculiarity, unique in the history of the Latin writing, that its introduction was due not to the natural evolution, but to the conscious decision of a narrow number of centers and individuals. Italian universities, and notaries, and their masters and officials. And above all the humanists whose names are well known and documented starting with Francis Schaeffer. Because although humanistic script was in its forms nothing but a reborn Carolingian renewed and restructured. From an ideological point of view it was the symbol of a new classical culture inherited from the Roman world but applied to the precise historical moment of the Renaissance. And this humanistic script is base and origin of our modern writing. Eventually it consolidated as the only script in western Europe with the only exception of the German letter. And in the rest of continents there where Latin characters are used is the only existing type. [MUSIC]
