The Writing Revolution

by Amalia E Gnanadesikan

  In the Latin of the Western Empire, contact with the provinces was not lost so quickly or so completely. The local provincial speech contained archaisms, inherited from the Latin of the time of colonization, but also participated in some of the linguistic changes occurring in Italy. Over time, however, with no political or administrative ties to bind the former provinces together, the local forms of Latin grew more and more dissimilar. What had been regional dialects would eventually become separate languages: Italian, French, Rumantsch, Spanish, Portuguese, Provençal, Galician, and Catalan in the west, and Romanian and Dalmatian (now extinct) in the east. Meanwhile the local forms of Latin continued to conquer the former provinces, completely replacing the various indigenous languages, with the exception of Basque in northern Spain.

  It was a long time, however, before anyone realized that linguistic fragmentation was underway. As far as anyone was concerned, they were speaking the Latin, or Roman, language. They knew that people from distant parts spoke rather differently, but this did not particularly trouble them, any more than the differences between Australian and American English lead anyone nowadays to conclude that these are two different languages. Like modern Australians and Americans, they shared a written language. That written language had remained relatively stable for centuries, fossilized by being written. From the point of view of early medieval speakers, however, there were numerous silent letters and unpronounced suffixes in that written language – though which ones these were varied from region to region. The grammar of the written language was noticeably different from the spoken language, leading to diglossia among the educated. A good education was rare, however, and many who were called upon to write were increasingly shaky in their grammar and spelling.

  In the educational and cultural decline and the linguistic fragmentation of the post-empire centuries, it is no surprise that the alphabet also began to fragment. The early forms of the Roman letters, preserved for us in carved inscriptions, had been exclusively capital letters. From rather crude strokes these had developed over the centuries into artistically balanced forms. Serifs were added, and shading effects were achieved by varying the width of letter strokes. The Roman capitals carved on Trajan’s column, erected in the early years of the second century AD in honor of the Emperor Trajan’s victories in Dacia, are considered among the finest of their kind. In modern type, the capital letters of serifed fonts are modeled after these ancient exemplars.

  Handwriting was something of another matter. Informal writing was done in Old Roman Cursive, while for books the Romans used what we now call Rustic Capitals, somewhat narrower in shape than the inscriptional capitals. In the last centuries of the empire, the Uncial and Half Uncial book hands developed, while the nearly illegible New Roman Cursive was used for less formal purposes. With the Uncial and Half Uncial styles came the first letters with ascenders and descenders extending above and below the main body of the line of text, as in d and p.

  With the fall of the empire, local styles proliferated. Uncial remained popular in Benedictine monasteries until the ninth century. Half Uncial and Christianity were both brought to Ireland by missionary efforts; a Roman Briton, St. Patrick, is credited with the conversion of Ireland, beginning in 432. The Irish, though they had never been part of the Roman Empire, took to Christianity enthusiastically and founded monasteries where churchmen could learn Latin, study, and make books. Although the Irish had their own writing system, Ogham (see figure 13.2), consisting of tally-like marks that could be cut into wood or stone, they learned the Roman alphabet for Latin and eventually used it for Irish as well. The Insular Half Uncial script style they created and cultivated as an art form (and later exported, along with Christianity, to northern England) survives in the famous Book of Kells (plate 8).

  In other places, New Roman Cursive mixed with Half Uncials to create the family of letter forms known as minuscules. Different regions developed their own new styles, such as the long-lived Visigothic Minuscule of Spain and Beneventan Minuscule of southern Italy. Monastic centers also created new styles, and the ties between monasteries – and even in some cases the movements of individual people – can be traced by the spread of particular minuscule hands. By the eighth century, Western Europe was beginning to look like India, its multitudinous script styles well on their way to becoming separate alphabets.

  The man who took it upon himself to reunite the Roman Empire, language, and alphabet is known to history as Charlemagne, Charles the Great. Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 768. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that under their king Clovis (482–511) had taken over the former Roman province of Gaul (roughly modern France). Clovis converted to Christianity, and his people acquired Latin as the language of civilization, but of course they learned to speak it in its local Gallic form and brought to it their own Frankish accent and a fair number of Frankish words. Unlike the Arian Goths, Clovis converted to orthodox Latin Christianity, establishing a lasting bond between the Frankish kings and the Roman pope. Clovis’s dynasty, the Merovingians, was replaced by the Carolingians under Charlemagne’s father, Pippin III, in 751.

  Charlemagne embodied many medieval ideals in a combination that now seems paradoxical: he was a devout Christian, a capable administrator, a patron of learning, a lover of many women, and a ferocious warrior. His expanded Frankish kingdom covered the lands now known as France, the Low Countries, western Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, while lands now known as eastern Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia were reduced to tributary status. To a large extent Charlemagne succeeded in reuniting the Western Roman Empire, though (to his frustration) without most of Spain and part of southern Italy. He even extended his realm northward into Germanic lands as far as the border of Denmark. He ruled much of Italy, and had made a gift of part of it to the pope. It was a natural next step, therefore, when Pope Leo III anointed Charlemagne emperor on Christmas Day in the year 800, inaugurating what was to become known as the Holy Roman Empire. (After Charlemagne’s death his kingdom was split between his sons, and the heirs to the eastern half, later Germany, took the title of emperor, while the heirs to the western half became the kings of France.)

  Part of Charlemagne’s conquering vision was to spread and enhance civilization. He gathered to himself some of the greatest minds of his day, instituting what has been termed the Carolingian Renaissance. Scholars came from as far away as Ireland and England, where Latin education had been kept strong; Alcuin of York, a man of great learning, became one of Charlemagne’s closest advisors. The assembled scholars noticed something: they each pronounced Latin differently. Furthermore, they could all attest to the abysmally poor Latin grammar displayed by many of their countrymen. Under Charlemagne’s direction, they sought to correct and standardize the pronunciation and grammatical usage of Latin.

  Thus Charlemagne saved Latin, but in doing so he and his scholars helped found the Romance languages. What had been a slowly growing diglossia between written Latin and the local vernaculars came under conscious scrutiny, and what was perceived as deterioration in written Latin was halted. When read aloud, Latin was no longer to be pronounced as words of the vernacular, but each letter of the original spelling should be pronounced. Thus diglossia became bilingualism as eventually it was recognized that the vernaculars were distinct languages. In time, the Romance languages would themselves have literary forms. In Charlemagne’s day, however, vernacular Romance literature was still a long way off, and the long-term consequences of the scholars’ work remained unforeseen.

  Charlemagne also directed his scholars to create an easily readable, standardized script, to be used throughout his empire. The resulting Carolingian Minuscule was both simple and graceful. Ligatures and abbreviations had run rampant in the earlier minuscules, and very understandably so, as both writing surfaces and the scribes’ time and labor were at a premium. In Carolingian Minuscule, however, excessive abbreviations and ligatures were discouraged, though a number survived, such as the ampersand, �
�&”, originally a ligatured version of et (Latin “and”). Titles and headings still used capitals or uncials. Capitals, uncials, and minuscules were considered different versions of the alphabet, not the single alphabet with two versions of each letter that we regard capitals and minuscules to be today. However, it was this use of the older script styles alongside the newer ones that helped pave the way for the biform alphabet and the interspersion of capitals and minuscules that characterizes modern text.

  Carolingian Minuscule spread through much of Europe and replaced most of the other minuscules. It was even exported to England, where a distinctive local variety developed. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, it began to evolve into the Gothic or Black Letter script styles under an increased demand for books. Gothic hands could be written more quickly and, being very compact, took up less space on the page. Later, the coming of the Renaissance saw the birth of the humanist letter styles in Italy, which deliberately harked back to Carolingian Minuscule. Soon afterward Italian printers were casting type based on the humanist hands of the time. As a result, the letter forms of modern typefaces are strongly reminiscent of Carolingian minuscule.

  The modern world is also indebted to the Carolingian Renaissance for its knowledge of many Classical Latin works. Working long hours in royal or monastic scriptoria, medieval men – and some women – copied classical works out of disintegrating papyrus volumes onto strong parchment. Parchment was not a new material, its invention going back to the second century BC, supposedly in Pergamum, in Asia Minor, whence the name parchment ultimately derives. Most books of the Roman period, however, were made of papyrus. Official inscriptions were engraved on stone or metal, and temporary, informal writing was done on reusable wax tablets, but books were written on papyrus scrolls imported from Egypt, or occasionally on leather. A single volume was not very long, nor was it inexpensive.

  Parchment is a very fine, thinly stretched, untanned leather made from the hides of goats, sheep, cattle, or even sometimes rabbits or squirrels. Vellum is parchment made from cow or calf skin. Parchment is extremely durable and can last for thousands of years. By contrast, papyrus is quite perishable, except in very dry environments such as the Egyptian or Dead Sea deserts. Parchment can be written on on both sides, whereas papyrus and normal leather were used on only one side. The ancient scroll format of books was well served by leather or papyrus, but parchment helped to make possible the codex, or book with pages.

  Parchment began to be popular around the fourth century AD, along with the codex. The first known codices date to the first century AD, but at first they were rarities. Some of the earliest people to switch from the scroll to the bound book were Christians, as a codex provided a good format for authoritative texts such as the Gospels or Epistles. The text could be consulted simply by opening it at the desired place rather than unrolling the whole thing from the beginning (a factor that still favors books over scrolling computerized texts today). A codex could accommodate a larger text, allowing the books of the Christian Bible to be bound together into a single volume. Other early texts written in codices also tended to be ones that were frequently consulted for reference rather than read from the beginning in a leisurely fashion. Eventually literary works of all types were using the codex format. In Charlemagne’s time books of bound parchment pages were entirely standard.

  It has been estimated that a large-format Latin Bible of the early medieval period required over 500 calfskins. Understandably, full texts of the Bible were rare. Wealthy Carolingian nobles and monasteries had a ready supply of hides, but mass production of writing surfaces remained impossible until the introduction of paper. Books, especially religious books, were therefore objects of great value. In inventories of property they were listed under the category of “treasure.” The covers of biblical and liturgical volumes were often richly ornamented, sometimes encrusted with jewels in the style of a reliquary. The contents of volume and reliquary were considered equally precious.

  The work involved in writing out a manuscript by hand was substantial, and it helped to limit the amount of writing that was done and the amount of reading material that was available. Writing was a job for specialists, somewhat like typing was in the twentieth century before the introduction of the word processor. Even Charlemagne, patron of educational renewal, was never satisfied with his attempts to learn to write as an adult. (This does not necessarily mean that he could not read.) Despite the comparative rarity of reading and writing, Carolingian society was a literate one, depending on access to the written word for a number of purposes. Both reading and writing, however, continued to be mediated through the spoken word, as writers often wrote at dictation, and readers often read aloud.

  The Carolingian Renaissance was a revival of learning in Latin. Though Rome was long fallen, Latin still ruled Western civilization, just as Greek ruled the Byzantine Empire, Classical Chinese ruled East Asia, and Sanskrit ruled South Asia. On the fringes of the Latin world, however, lived the inevitable rebels, a people who were not at all sure that Latin was the only valid written language. These people were the English.

  When the Romans withdrew from Britain in the early fifth century, most of the population south of the Scottish border spoke British, a Celtic language that was the ancestor of Welsh and of Cornish, a language extinct since about 1800. Writing in the early eighth century, the Venerable Bede, the first English historian, dated the beginning of the Germanic invasions to 449. Three tribes came from the continent – the Angles (whence “English”), the Saxons, and the Jutes – who together are known to history as the Anglo-Saxons. The native Britons resisted fiercely, as later romanticized in the legends of King Arthur, but the British culture and language (though surely not all the British people) were forced westward into Wales and Cornwall or across the Channel to Brittany.

  The early Anglo-Saxons were pagan, but the Christian Britons were not particularly interested in trying to convert their enemies. The job was left to Pope Gregory the Great, who sent Augustine (later St. Augustine of Canterbury) as a missionary to southern England in 597, and to the Irish, who sent missionaries to northern England in 634. Christianity spread rapidly among the Anglo-Saxons in the early seventh century, encouraged by the conversion of a number of their tribal kings.

  The Anglo-Saxons, like the Irish, produced fine scholars of Latin, among them Bede (c.673–735) and Alcuin of York (c.732–804). However, Latin was only distantly related to English and could never pass for being the written version of their native tongue. Perhaps this is why they dared to create vernacular literature, just as the Tamils did in India.

  The Roman alphabet was not the first writing the Anglo-Saxons knew. Their first script, learned back on the continent, was runes (figure 13.2). The runic alphabet, known as the futhark after the first six symbols of its sequence (“th” being spelled with a single rune), had originally been inspired by the Roman alphabet or some related script of Etruscan descent in northern Italy. The individual runes were designed to be carved into wood, and so horizontal lines were avoided, being hard to see against the grain of the wood. The earliest known, common Germanic futhark had 24 runes and is first attested in northern Europe around the second century AD. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought the futhark with them to Britain, where with some modifications it became the futhorc. The use of runes also spread northward into Scandinavia, where a shorter, 16-rune futhark came to be used. Despite the fact that 16 symbols were barely adequate to represent the Old Norse language, the Scandinavian futhark was nevertheless popular in the Viking Age. Particularly in Sweden, the Vikings erected inscribed rune stones detailing the exploits of deceased relatives, or even, sometimes, of themselves.

  The Anglo-Saxons used runes for memorial inscriptions, as labels on objects of value, and as coin legends. Some inscriptions contain verses of poetry. The Anglo-Saxons continued to use runes after their conversion, sometimes using both runes and the Roman alphabet in a single Christian inscription. Although the church had nothing
against runes, in the end the script could not compete with the internationally dominant Roman alphabet. The use of runes ceased in the tenth or eleventh century; if anyone was still using the futhorc at the time of the Norman invasion of 1066, no one did so afterward.

  Figure 13.2 Non-Roman scripts of the British Isles. Above, the Ogham alphabet, used to write Old Irish. An appendix was added to the list of symbols in medieval times, but the values assigned to these vowel letters were not consistent from one manuscript to the next. Below, the Anglo-Saxon runic futhorc, derived from the common Germanic futhark, and named after the first six runes in the alphabetical list. The runic alphabet was the source of some letters used to write Old English in the Roman alphabet: the thorn, , and the wynn, , as well as the name of , ash, applied to æ. Both of these scripts were probably inspired by the Roman alphabet, but their users felt no obligation to preserve Roman alphabetical order or (especially for Ogham) letter shapes.

  Although runic literacy may never have been high, the Anglo-Saxons knew that their language could be written down. They also knew enough not to regard the 23 letters of the Roman alphabet as immutable (clearly, they were barbarians!). Their language, known today as Old English or Anglo-Saxon, had a different set of phonemes than Latin. (They themselves called their language Englisc, pronounced almost exactly as it is today, except that the first vowel was pronounced as spelled, [ε] not [I].) They dropped and added letters as needed. Z was not considered necessary, as the [z] sound occurred only as a variant of [s] between voiced sounds. The redundancy of C, K, and Q was reduced to just C.