11B Antiquity to Us Flashcards
What is the Reformation?
A religious movement that looked back at what Christianity should be vs what it was at the time (leading to Protestantism)
What is a codex?
- A book in the modern book shape - made of pages and usually bound on the left
When is considered Late Antiquity?
The fourth, fifth and sixth centuries AD, the transition period between antiquity and the Middle Ages
What is uncial script?
More or less the modern capital letters
- normally does not include accents or breathings and does not normally leave spaces between words
- slow to write
What is miniscule script?
- More or less modern lower-case letters.
- Less clear than uncial, especially in later centuries
- Contains accents and breathings and takes up much less space than uncials
- Faster to write
When was miniscule script developed?
During the middle ages, shifting from uncial
How were books copied before the invention of printing?
By hand
What are three ways books were copied by hand?
- People could look at the original and write something that looked similar
- People could read the original and write only the words they understood
- People could read the text aloud and have others write it down. If they did not understand it, they would write something that sounded like what they had heard - this system could be used for mass production
What are the issues with the copying methods that were used?
- Almost every copy resulted in new mistakes, as well as reproducing the mistakes in the copy copied from
- Copying by hand takes forever and books are fragile
- After antiquity, political and cultural developments reduced the number of people who would copy books, which had a significant effect on the survival rate of ancient literature
What was the situation like in the early 4th century?
- The Roman empire was intact, powerful, and governed from Italy. It was illegal to be a Christian; both Latin and Greek were widely understood - most of the literary works from earlier centuries were in circulation, usually in the form of Papyrus rolls
What was the situation like at the end of the sixth century?
- Most of the Roman empire was gone and what remained was governed from Turkey; it was illegal not to be a Christian, knowledge of both Latin and Greek had sharply declined and large quantities of ancient literature had been lost, with what remained circulating in parchment codices rather than papyrus rolls
What happened in 330 AD?
Emperor Constantine established the capital at Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul)
What was the state of the Roman empire before 395 AD? What happened in this year?
- The Roman empire had two capitals and often at least two emperors, one or two in each half. Most of the western half spoke Latin while the eastern half spoke Greek
- Emperor Theodosius I died and the two halves of the empire officially separated
What three groups of invaders ravaged the West Empire? When? What effect did this have?
- The Visigoths - 410 AD
- The Vandals - 455 AD
- The Ostrogoths - 546 AD
- Books were destroyed, scholars were killed, education became very difficult and much knowledge was lost
What happened in 476 AD?
The teen emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed, marking the end of the Western Empire
