Literacy rates of the ancient and medieval world

[unmerged(45754)]

I am wondering what approximately literacy rates were in different areas/periods of time. How frequently did rural people read or write? How frequently did urbanites?

Did any particular cultures or religions stress reading or writing more strongly than the general populace with which they were surrounded?

 

[King of Men]

I have no general statistics for you, but an obvious candidate for valuing literacy more highly than average would be the Jews.

 

[StephenT]

In 12th century Genoa professional notaries made a good living. Anybody wanting to record a contract came to them: merchants making deals, nobles selling land, people making a will. The notary would take out a large scroll called a 'cartulary', unroll it and write down the details of their contract underneath the last one he wrote... so a cartulary might contain details of dozens of different contracts. If there was a legal dispute over the contract later, the notary would be summoned into court to read out from his scroll what was agreed.

Books were rare and expensive. In 1240 a copy of Justinian's lawcodes was sold for £40... the same price as a house, or eight year's income for a craftsman.

In 1304 there were 13 secular schoolteachers in Genoa, as well as monks and priests who also taught, and it's been estimated that as many as 20% of Genoa's male population could read to some extent at least (education for women was neglected). As an Italian commercial city-state with perhaps the most advanced technology in Christian Europe, however, Genoa was probably something of a special case.

 

[Basileios I]

During antiquity literacy was fairly common among city inhabitants. Indications for that are the countless grafitti found on walls in Pompeji, for example.


Literacy rates declined after the fall of the Roman Empire, except probably in the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East, where much of the ancient culture was preserved.

The rural population meanwhile always had an extremely low literacy rate.

 

[Fornadan]

Excavation at Bergen, Norway has uncovered quite a lot of runic inscriptions from the 14th century, some of them with rather mundane messages, so perhaps indicating that quite a few were literate in runic letters

 

[Skarion]

During antiquity literacy was fairly common among city inhabitants. Indications for that are the countless grafitti found on walls in Pompeji, for example.

Pompeji isn't the best indicator of general applications though as there was no slum in Pompeji and most people there were upperclass superrich - which would be quite natural to be educated in writing as it was so even during the medieval ages.

Pompeji can probably be compared with today's Bel-Air.

 

[Swamp Rat]

Pompeji isn't the best indicator of general applications though as there was no slum in Pompeji and most people there were upperclass superrich - which would be quite natural to be educated in writing as it was so even during the medieval ages.

Pompeji can probably be compared with today's Bel-Air.

But a Roman household, especially the upper class' household was very big and included a large number of slaves.

Besides those there were also a large number of small shops and snack bars/restaurants. Its not really the lowest of lower class, but the proprietors of those would be unlikely to read/write in the Middle Ages, while it seems almost mandatory in the Roman world. The large number of grafitti that mentions the writers occupation shows that.

 

[gagenater]

Pompeji isn't the best indicator of general applications though as there was no slum in Pompeji and most people there were upperclass superrich - which would be quite natural to be educated in writing as it was so even during the medieval ages.

Pompeji can probably be compared with today's Bel-Air.

But then again, a substantial amount of writing and grafitti was also found in areas of Pompeii that are not upper class - military barracks and whorehouses.

 

[Basileios I]

Pompeji isn't the best indicator of general applications though as there was no slum in Pompeji and most people there were upperclass superrich - which would be quite natural to be educated in writing as it was so even during the medieval ages.

Pompeji can probably be compared with today's Bel-Air.

What makes you think only the super-rich lived in Pompeji? The great majority of the city population were plebeians, just like in any other Roman town.

 

[Skarion]

What makes you think only the super-rich lived in Pompeji? The great majority of the city population were plebeians, just like in any other Roman town.

Pompeji was filled with enormous gigantic palaces that wasn't normal in most Roman cities (compare to the other Roman cities that got affected by the volcano, they were more usual in their architecture - don't remember the names atm) - which is also the reason why Pompeji was so liked by people like Winkelmann, it fit his idealistic view of the antic world, a view that hadn't even existed.

Even in Rome the temples and palaces quite small while the justiciary buildings (and the later built forums) were gigantic - while it's the opposite in Pompeji.

Then you can also comment on how usual it was with decorative objects in Pompeji compared to other Roman cities and so on.

Sure, plebejs (plebeians?) probably existed, but only in the same kind of way unemployed can be found in Bel-Air.

 

[comagoosie]

I say that for the Roman time period it would be around 10%. As there was a big difference between classes. You either had enough money or you didn't.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

I say that for the Roman time period it would be around 10%. As there was a big difference between classes. You either had enough money or you didn't.

10% is the upper limit given by William Vernon Harris (Ancient Literacy (1989)). For most of the time, probably below. And in the provinces, lucky if it reached 5%.

 

[Divi]

However, the question for the medieval world would be what we count as literacy - there are a good number of texts that seem to indicate that literacy actually meant not only being able to read, but included latin and greek (mentioned in a few texts... Aurell 2003, but it's probably a tertiary source at this point).

Would Genoa actually conduct its business in the local vernacular in the 13th century?

 

[unmerged(10262)]

If you have to be silent when you read the numbers drop to almost zero

 

[Swamp Rat]

Pompeji was filled with enormous gigantic palaces that wasn't normal in most Roman cities (compare to the other Roman cities that got affected by the volcano, they were more usual in their architecture - don't remember the names atm) - which is also the reason why Pompeji was so liked by people like Winkelmann, it fit his idealistic view of the antic world, a view that hadn't even existed.

I would be hard pressed to think of any building in Pompeii that can be classified as a palace. Sure there are big mansions, but most of them was actually quite old and oldfashioned and to cater the Roman taste several of the old Oscan houses was bought up and some walls torn down to connect them. Not exactly the way of the super rich. The term super rich is somewhat of an exaggeration, but sure it was a town whose inhabitants was probably above average in wealth. The public buildings are quite big for a provincial town, while the temples are mostly small.

Now Herculaneum on the other hand, that was apparently a holiday resort town for the rich upper class.

 

[Aetius]

Tokugawa Japan approached 40% literacy overall, but it was highly regional and dependent on occupation. Women in farming families obviously had generally low rates

 

[StephenT]

Would Genoa actually conduct its business in the local vernacular in the 13th century?

Genoa actually stuck with Latin while other Italian cities were already switching to the vernacular. In the 12th century, the notaries I mentioned in my last post were recording all the contracts in Latin. By the 14th century a significant proportion of merchants would have been able to read and write themselves; the 13th century was therefore the cross-over period. Even so, private letters and poetry were written in Genoese dialect while official documents - business contracts, wills, land deeds and so on - were still written in Latin.

Genoa was even famous for producing some of the earliest dictionaries to help people learn Latin. In 1286 Giovanni Balbi of Genoa produced the Catholicon, which remained Europe's largest and most popular Latin dictionary for two centuries.

 

[Dysken]

If you have to be silent when you read the numbers drop to almost zero

Yeah, when did silent reading come about? Wasn't that like sometime during the late dark ages?

 

[unmerged(10262)]

Tokugawa Japan approached 40% literacy overall, but it was highly regional and dependent on occupation. Women in farming families obviously had generally low rates

These numbers are very late though. A country like Sweden rapidly climbed over 50% during the 19th centuary too for example. Apperntly the jesuits has some societies with close to 100% literacy for indians down in Paraguay during the 17th centuary too.

 

[unmerged(9310)]

Literacy rates?

I'd say (guess?) nobles and clergy are always over 90% literate after 1400 AD.

Now by the 16th to 17th century we see a percentage of nobles existing at:

England/Britain - 2% noble population
Spain - 8% noble population
France 3-5% population is nobility
Poland-Lithuania 10% of population is nobility
Italy - 1-5% of population is nobility (Depends where in Italy)

However not all trends remain the same. Poland, Spain and France all had for example impoverished nobles, for various reasons - such would be unheard of in say, southern Germany. France had special charity schools opened to educate ladies of poor and impoverished noble families, for example. In Poland-Lithuania we find cases of nobles starving to death in wartime famines because they simply cannot afford food. However in Britain (England moreso than Scotland) we find nobles controlling massive amounts of lands - thousands of acres for many estates for a single noble and his family, as compared to the 5 acres given to normal serfs in that same land. Generally the trend is, the more nobles, the less power shared between them - however does this play into education? Money always does

Does anyone know clergy population estimates around this era? Add it to the noble population, and you have your it - until the rise of the middle class (Again this screws up Italy's statistics earlier than most nations)

As for ancient nations, I simply have no idea.