During the Reign of Charlemagne, Emperor of the West and King of the Franks, there was a birth of learning and growth. Why was it significant?
- Universal Writing Style Developed: Carolingian Minuscule was developed during the Carolingian Renaissance, and it introduced the modern system of writing; capital and lower-case letters, and punctuation. It also made a uniform way to write the characters, making it easy to read something from someone else.
- Lots and lots of copying: The Carolingians believed that they were inferior to the Romans and Greeks. However, they believed that it was their duty to copy and preserve all of the ancient writings of the Romans (who copied a lot from the Greeks), and the Early Church Fathers, as well as make sure that they had accurate copies of the scriptures.
This carried on for some time, and eventually this task was taken up by the Roman Catholic Monasteries spread all over Europe. Though the Monasteries withheld knowledge from the common person, we do owe them for maintaining the knowledge for the hundreds of years of the Dark Ages.