Practice question · Select all that apply
Why is "renaissance" a term to use carefully for the Carolingian revival of learning?
Hints
- Three of these qualify the word; the fourth would deny the revival happened at all.
- The lasting result is a hand you can read and a library you can rely on.
Show the answer
- A. Its most durable achievement was in copying and script rather than in original composition
- B. Literacy did not spread beyond a narrow elite
- D. It was a programme aimed at clergy and the court, not at the general population
Why
The achievement is real and specific: legible script with word division, systematic copying, and corrected texts. What it was not is a broadening of education. Calling it a renaissance invites a comparison with fifteenth-century Italy that flatters neither, because the Carolingian programme was about accuracy in transmission, not about a new relation to antiquity.
Practise Carolingian Europe
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