2. Crafting the Codex; The Humanist Scribe at Work
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The renewal of interest in Greco-Roman antiquity that characterized the Renaissance was a gradual process of intellectual and material rediscovery. As works by ancient authors were being uncovered, translated, and edited, so too were the physical vehicles through which these ancient texts were transmitted—manuscripts from the high Middle Ages—examined and copied anew. The most prominent early figure to carefully consider older manuscripts was Francis Petrarch (1304– 74), whose own handwriting remained anchored in the upright, angular forms of Gothic textualis script. His call for the reform of writing was taken up a generation later by the chancellor of Florence Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), who helped to develop a simplified semi-Gothic script, which remained in use throughout the fifteenth century. But it was Salutati’s young protégé Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) who developed a reformed script based on the Caroline minuscule, a highly legible style of lettering first devised in the late eighth century. Within a few years, the scholar-bibliophile Niccolò Niccoli (1364–37) had produced a more flowing, cursive humanistic script, and it was Niccoli’s cursive that was adapted as the now-standard Italic font by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. Italian scribes adopted these innovations rapidly, but diffusion beyond the Italian peninsula was slow, though isolated examples written in France do survive.