carolingian Renaissance
e
The Carolingian Renaissance is a period in the Middle Ages characterized by the revival of scholarship, and tagged with the figure of Charlemagne. After a period of stagnation and certain decadence in the development of intellectual awareness and art which marked the Middle Ages, in the second half of the 8th century there is a new uplift in these fields. Charlemagne brings the greatest scholars of his time to his court, in a desire to revive the level of artistic creation and nourishment of literacy from the time of the ancient Rome. Rome becomes an ideal in the recovery of art, architecture, philosophical writings. Transcriptions are made of ancient scholar works, which are some of the only copies of these works preserved to this day. As a result of a need for extended text on the scarce surface of pergaments, a new epistyle called minuscule is developed, which will have become the ground for today’s modern epistyle. Gina Pischel thus explains this Carolingian revival: „From an artistic point of view, the characteristic element of the Carolingian [...] Renaissance, is the persistence to reinforce, through the restoration of the Empire, the culture that, sparse and defective, found its resort in desolate monasteries. To rediscover the greatness of Antique was a myth, and, at the same time, an aspiration for a new prestige; still it is a retrieval of immortal virtues and ideas that began to fade and obscure.“1
The centers of this new scholarship were monasteries. They incorporated scriptoria where the transcriptions were made; the architecture was improved on their structures, and the interior was used for decorative art development. Still, secular clergy was kept outside of the monasteries, and they were educated in cathedral schools: „Even though cathedral schools became important institutions in ecclesiastical community, very little is known about them in the Carolingian period, and a certain thing is that clericals were generally corrupted, at least in
The Carolingian Renaissance is a period in the Middle Ages characterized by the revival of scholarship, and tagged with the figure of Charlemagne. After a period of stagnation and certain decadence in the development of intellectual awareness and art which marked the Middle Ages, in the second half of the 8th century there is a new uplift in these fields. Charlemagne brings the greatest scholars of his time to his court, in a desire to revive the level of artistic creation and nourishment of literacy from the time of the ancient Rome. Rome becomes an ideal in the recovery of art, architecture, philosophical writings. Transcriptions are made of ancient scholar works, which are some of the only copies of these works preserved to this day. As a result of a need for extended text on the scarce surface of pergaments, a new epistyle called minuscule is developed, which will have become the ground for today’s modern epistyle. Gina Pischel thus explains this Carolingian revival: „From an artistic point of view, the characteristic element of the Carolingian [...] Renaissance, is the persistence to reinforce, through the restoration of the Empire, the culture that, sparse and defective, found its resort in desolate monasteries. To rediscover the greatness of Antique was a myth, and, at the same time, an aspiration for a new prestige; still it is a retrieval of immortal virtues and ideas that began to fade and obscure.“1
The centers of this new scholarship were monasteries. They incorporated scriptoria where the transcriptions were made; the architecture was improved on their structures, and the interior was used for decorative art development. Still, secular clergy was kept outside of the monasteries, and they were educated in cathedral schools: „Even though cathedral schools became important institutions in ecclesiastical community, very little is known about them in the Carolingian period, and a certain thing is that clericals were generally corrupted, at least in