Timeline for How literate were common people in Medieval Europe?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Post Revisions
37 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 26, 2022 at 14:12 | comment | added | Crazymoomin | @Jan Depends on where you are. Not everywhere in the UK is densely populated, even more so back in the Medieval era. You could be walking for at least an hour to get to the nearest settlement, so being able to navigate without assistance would be very useful. | |
| Jan 26, 2022 at 14:07 | comment | added | Crazymoomin | @OscarBravo Yes, I'm basing my argument on archeological evidence. Here's a good site documenting most of what has been found: romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/sites/map. Of course, anything written or carved on a perishable material, such as wood, would likely not have survived, so it's reasonable to suppose that this is only a fraction of what was present in Roman Britain. | |
| Jan 26, 2022 at 10:09 | comment | added | Oscar Bravo | @Crazymoomin ...Signs and placards have been common ... since the Romans... You do know that The Life of Brian's Romanes Eunt Domus sketch is not actually history, yeah? | |
| Jan 25, 2022 at 9:25 | answer | added | Vladimir F Героям слава | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jan 25, 2022 at 9:10 | comment | added | Bartors | >The guy argues that probably at least one person per household was able to read What is "one household"? Assuming nuclear family of one father, one mother and 3 children (I have no actual demographical data on hand right now but I think to recall that having 3 or more children was non unusual), then if the father can read, this means that 20% of the family's population is literate. The Quora that @MCW linked to claim between 15% and 25% of literacy in XIII century. So statistically speaking, it is doable. My point being, 25% of literacy is vastly different from 4% during "Dark Ages". | |
| Jan 25, 2022 at 9:03 | comment | added | MrVocabulary | I was taught at school that in 15-16th century, 50% of all women in Poland could read, and 10% of total polulation could communicate in Latin. This is just a comment as I don't have any sources. | |
| Jan 25, 2022 at 3:26 | comment | added | Mazura | 1500 AD : 10% of men and hardly any women" - 1800 AD : 40 percent of males and 60 percent of females in England. 1900 AD : 97% | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 21:09 | answer | added | Ed Wynn | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 17:44 | comment | added | Henry | It seems about half of the UK population was literate in 1800 (and almost all in 1900). Education, Literacy and the Reading Public by Amy J. Lloyd says "In 1800 around 40 percent of males and 60 percent of females in England and Wales were illiterate; by 1900 illiteracy for both sexes had dropped to around 3 percent." | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 16:54 | comment | added | Jan | @Crazymoomin There would probably be people in the fields or at least in the next village. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 16:42 | comment | added | Crazymoomin | @Jan If there's anyone around to ask! A traveller could be waiting a very long time... | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 16:40 | comment | added | Jan | @Crazymoomin: There are methods to find your way without road signs, e.g. asking other people for the way. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 15:55 | comment | added | Crazymoomin | @NeMo I can image that would be a small minority. Signs and placards have been common in everyday life in most parts of Europe since the Romans. Milestones would have been found on most major roads, otherwise travellers would end up very lost! | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 15:05 | comment | added | Tristan | I'd also like to point out that, outside some specific areas of expertise (e.g. fortifications) Shad of Shadiversity (who produced the linked video) is often wildly unreliable, and often does a very poor job distinguishing between his own speculations and well-researched opinion, and when called out on these inaccuracies has often responded in an unscholarly way (just doubling down and not acknowledging his actual shortcomings) | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 15:01 | comment | added | Tristan | Worth pointing out that literacy is far from a binary literate/illiterate thing and many people who can read a simple text if they concentrate are still functionally illiterate enough to be substantially limited in modern society. I imagine many people in the Middle Ages would be able to read a sentence if they cared to try, but without the regular practice of reading they'd have no habit for doing so automatically as soon as they see writing, and likely rarely bother | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 13:21 | comment | added | Vladimir F Героям слава | @MCW There are many birch-bark manuscripts from medieval Veliky Novgorod. Most of them in the local dialect and most of them dealing with the daily life and businness. Ordinary notes and messages from someone to someone. BTW., the said region is in Europe. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 13:07 | comment | added | MCW♦ | I'm skeptical of the scholarship behind Shadversity videos; we've had several questions about Shadversity. His conclusions frequently challenge commonly held and well researched conclusions, but, in my experience, rarely support this with scholarship. My inclination is to accept citations over common sense. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 12:47 | comment | added | Vladimir F Героям слава | @MCW There could be many reasons to read and write in the basic day to day life and businness. See the amount of ordinary lifetexts in Old Novgorod en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#East_Slavic_texts It helps when the only literally language isn't just Latin, though. In Bohemia, for example, Czech literature only appeared in the 14th century. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 11:50 | comment | added | ninjalj | While the argument may be sound logically, the premises may be false. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 10:20 | comment | added | Ron | Wow! Not used to so many replies! And just to make it clear: I don't believe 100% was some dude at youtube says. I said: The reasoning sounded logical to me. 🙂 | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 9:19 | answer | added | adam.baker | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 9:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackHistory/status/1485537912804495361 | ||
| Jan 24, 2022 at 1:59 | comment | added | Jan | You might compare modern societies with a large number of illiterate people, e.g. Afghanistan. Even there it is true that learning to read is not terribly hard if you have someone patiently explain it to you. But IMHO the assumption that reading is very very useful may not hold. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 1:16 | comment | added | Mary | The printing press is overrated. It would get nowhere without cheap paper. And they also didn't have cheap paper. Vellum was wonderful for preserving documents for a long time -- unlike papyrus, which lasted barely a century except in ideal conditions -- but it did begin by calculating how many ewes you had to breed. | |
| Jan 24, 2022 at 1:11 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jan 24, 2022 at 0:44 | comment | added | Ne Mo | As other comments have said, don't underestimate the importance of having something to read. Never mind whole books - some peasants probably went their whole lives without seeing words written down in any form. The availability of reading material is of course a necessary precondition for teaching people to read. In modern times people can and sometimes do teach themselves to read without any schooling, which medieval peasants couldn't do. | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 21:48 | answer | added | Moishe Kohan | timeline score: 42 | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 21:11 | comment | added | Moishe Kohan | Here are some numbers: By 1700 in France, 30% of men and 14% of women could sign civil registers; by 1800, the percentages had grown to 47% and 27%, and to 83% and 73% by 1881. See "Teaching Literacy in the West from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century" and references therein. I do not have time to dig through the books and papers references there. | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 21:05 | comment | added | Denis Nardin | Medieval Europe is huge both geographically and in time. The answer will be very different between Poland in 600 and Italy in 1300... | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 18:32 | history | edited | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited title
|
| Jan 23, 2022 at 18:22 | comment | added | Criminal_Affair_At_SO | I don't know who told you that at least one person per household was able to read, but I would be surprised if it was true. Two things to consider: books were remarkably expensive before the printing press and almost only monks could write and they were spending a large portion of their time copying books and most of the written text was in Latin that common people didn't really understand | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 18:19 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | Damn good question. I actually asked a variant of this one myself of a bunch of experts on twitter last week. | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 17:55 | comment | added | MCW♦ | Can you summarize why it would be helpful for a commoner to be able to read? I'm skeptical. Literacy rates were below 20% multiple similar conclusions What would they read? to whom would they write? | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 16:17 | comment | added | Steve Bird | Worth bearing in mind that books only became available (affordable) to the lowest classes relatively recently. Schooling for all is also relatively recent. It's easy to learn to read when you have teachers and parents who can read and there are plenty of things available for you to read. It's not so easy when the only books are at the church and they are written in Latin. | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 16:11 | history | edited | Steve Bird | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 1 character in body
|
| S Jan 23, 2022 at 16:08 | review | First questions | |||
| Jan 23, 2022 at 16:17 | |||||
| S Jan 23, 2022 at 16:08 | history | asked | Ron | CC BY-SA 4.0 |