Punctuation
Modern conventions for the
punctuation of Latin were largely established by the Italian humanist
scholar turned printer, Aldus Manutius (?1449-1515).
Latin
conventionally capitalizes proper nouns and adjectives derived from
proper nouns;
German
capitalizes the first word in a sentence and all nouns, but not adjectives
derived from proper nouns;
English
capitalizes the first word, proper nouns and adjectives derived from
proper nouns;
Spanish
capitalizes the first word and proper nouns, but not adjectives derived
from proper nouns.
Hence:
in urbe Italica habitamus
Wir wohnen in einer italienischen Stadt
We live in an Italian city
Vivimos en una
ciudad italiana.
Fewer than 200 manuscripts
of pagan Latin texts are extant from before AD 800, the year in which
Charlemagne, the great (but almost illiterate) patron of literature
and scholarship, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. From the monastic establishments
which he fostered, more than 6,000 texts survive, written mostly in
the Carolingian script, named in his honor. The actual term Holy Roman
Empire (sacrum Romanum imperium) dates only from 1254. (Voltaire
observed that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.)
Almost no pagan Latin texts
survive that were copied in the very dark centuries from 550 till 750.
Worse still, that was the great age of the palimpsest, when unwanted
pagan texts were washed off parchment, to be replaced with Christian
devotional works. The monasteries at Luxeuil and Bobbio, founded by
Irish monks, were particularly fervent centers for such recycling.