Roman Numerals in the Middle Ages in Europe.

 Roman Numerals in the Middle Ages in Europe. An Example.

Religious manuscripts frankly outnumber secular manuscripts but I wanted to use this image while I'm thinking about typography and number to remind people how long roman numerals persisted.

You may see numbers in modern "Gothic" fonts but until the Renaissance and beyond Roman numerals were still quite commonly used in inscriptions and paintings and illustrations. 

This may be partly because the basic maths text for many centuries was Euclids Elements in a LATIN translation yet ironic both Latin and Greek used an acrophonic system to write numbers.

And why when 10 starts with a D in both Latin and Greek we switched to the Roman practice of writing 10 as an X is a mystery when the Romans sensibly used C for Centum 100?

Horn Books and Literacy

Although many of the surviving examples have frames of wood or metal its thought that at one stage cattle horn was used either for the frames or board in the frame.

These horn books are actually literacy primers. Notice the ABC followed by the Lord's Prayer. The idea was that children could copy the letters of the Abc and then since the Lord's Prayer was something they heard frequent in home or church they would be learning to read something they frequent HEARD.

The visual signs were matched to audio signals! Early Phonics?

The only examples I have seen come from England or the USA.

From the 18th century they were progressively replaced by printed versions "PRIMERS" which might include the ABC in upper and lower case  the Lord's Prayer and Numbers at the least.