Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 553

THE ALPHABET
This style, based on the earlier round minuscule, which at the time was considered to be the script of the classical Roman period and called therefore antiqua, developed mainly into two varieties: (1) the Venetian minuscule, nowadays known as italics, traditionally an imitation of the handwriting of Petrarch, and probably the most perfect form of printed letter and the most clearly legible which has yet been invented; and (2) the "Roman" type of letters, perfected in North Italy, chiefly at Venice, where it was used in the printing presses about the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and spread thence to Holland, England (about 1518), Germany, France and Spain.
The monumental Latin alphabet was taken over for the majuscules. This majuscule and both forms of the minuscule, the "Roman" type and the italics, spread all over the world. In England they were adopted, from Italy, in the sixteenth century.
ADAPTATIONS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET TO OTHER
LANGUAGES
The "national" scripts of the various European peoples are, with a few exceptions, adaptations of the Latin alphabet to Teutonic, Romance, Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian languages. For the alphabets of the Slavonic peoples of orthodox faith see Part II, Chapter VIII; the modern Greek alphabet is a development of the ancient Greek influenced by the Latin alphabet.
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In the history of the alphabet, it is important not to overlook the fact that the Latin language and script in ancient times had been, at first, carried by Roman legionaries and imperial officials to all parts of the vast empire, and particularly to the regions which were not Hellenized. In a few countries (Gaul, Spain and Roumania), Latin replaced the languages of the natives, and it became the ancestor of the modern Romance languages, the most important of them being Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Roumanian, all of which adopted the Latin alphabet (for early Roumanian, see p. 482).
At a later stage, churchmen and missionaries carried the Latin language and script still farther afield and for many more centuries. Catholic Rome was then the light of the western world, the centre whence religion and learning were disseminated to all parts of western, central and northern Europe. The emissaries of the Pope, either legates or missionaries, travelled over all Europe and carried with them the learning of their age. The abbeys were in the nature of large seminaries or colleges, where learning was carried on, and the monastic system spread Christianity and learning even to a wider extent. At the time when, for instance, neither the Saxon nor the Norman noblemen could sign their own names, but employed