Thesis: the average 18 year old student in, say, York in AD 800 (the middle of the so-called "Dark Ages") had read more, knew more languages, was better trained in logic, could read more music, knew more mathematics and astronomy than the average student from a university today.
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Like do you understand what a privilege that is, what level of economic surplus that entails that we have a society where vast swathes of the population can buy a guitar and learn to play it in their spare time and do so long enough to get good at it
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Bach - a thousand years after the time period you're describing - struggled mightily in his early years as a composer because he *could not find* performers skilled enough in large enough groups to accurately perform his compositions, until he moved to the big city
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It took 10+ years of training to learn enough church music to be even somewhat useful, and even then they weren't *reading* it.
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