I mean, English *kings* were considered learned if they were *literate* until after the Norman conquest. And these were not average people.
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Replying to @davidfickling
Alcuin alone provides evidence of over 70 classical authors, not including the vast works of Augustine, Jerome, and other Christian authors—studied in his school. Your estimates seem off. I doubt the average student today has read 50 books. And schools were not ONLY for elites!
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Replying to @johnpauldickson @davidfickling
This is just embarassing. Students by the age of 18 have absolutely read more than 50 books.
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Also, in any school/monastery people weren’t sitting around reading books. People read sections or copied out sections but I can guarantee that not everyone read through the libraries at monasteries.
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And to that point, it is unlikely that they all knew Latin AND Greek. Usually only a few learned Greek and it was considered a well-respected skill but not widespread among those who were educated.
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If the knowledge of Greek was so widespread, the Medicis would not have had to seek out refugee scholars from the just-fallen Byzantium to teach it to their kids/translate ancient sources for them. And that was in the 1400s, mind, not the 800s.
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There were very few people who would know Greek, it was not something everyone learned. It happened, but it was considered a specialist skill. As was medieval astronomy. Not everyone was good at computus (which was what it was called).
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Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. (re: Greek, at least. I am afraid my knowledge of medieval astronomy is very lacking).
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My supervisor does medieval computus and it was highly complicated and not just general knowledge everyone had in a monastery. There was also a lot of debate over what system for calculating Easter was correct (spoiler: none of them).
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I mean, the ignorance (down to outright illiteracy at times) of many monks and clergymen who were supposed the fill the roles of educators was a big talking point of the Reformation for a reason.
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Well, that was largely polemic, and how illiteracy and ignorance was defined then and in 800 is different.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @DearestAnnabel and
Not that there weren’t issues with the Church, but take those accusations with a grain of salt.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @DearestAnnabel and
To be clear I am not saying that monks were illiterate or ignorant circa 800. They knew plenty, within the purview of their own time and what was available to learn.
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