As Gothic writing had never won full acceptance in Italy, the new round characters were of great interest and were soon generally adopted there. “Gothic” was a term of deprecation. The Goths had from the 2nd to the 5th centuries fought the Romans several times and even conquered them. “Gothic” for this reason implied all that was hard and barbarian, and so was applied to the hard broken writing of the North, just as to its vertical, pointed architecture.