732-804
Alkuin
Charlemagne’s adviser
What is a letter? – A guardian of history.
Alcuin, Gespräch des jungen hochedlen Königssohns Pippin mit seinem Lehrer Albinus
Alcuin was an important scholar, head of the palace school in Aachen and advisor to Charlemagne. These positions explain his influence in the Frankish imperial court. This led him to become one of the protagonists in the Carolingian Renaissance.
His editing of the Vulgata, the Latin Bible, was highly influential. However his most important contribution to the cultural unification of Western Europe was that he introduced the Carolingian Minuscule, which was subsequently used for almost three hundred years. From this the Humanists of the Renaissance era developed the lower case letters still in use today.