# End of the Roman Empire and loss of literacy **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 1, 2012, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879 "2012-07-01T07:00:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/41 "2012-07-04T16:06:30Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Your average schmo could perfectly well have read letters, for one thing, but there are all sorts of ephemeral everyday writings that we may not see because they weren’t valuable enough to be copied and preserved for centuries. We have so little writing from the sixth and seventh centuries that you’d be a fool to argue that what we have is representative of what there was. Well, then it’s a good think I’m not arguing that! But your point seems to be circular. If people could read, they could read letters. But that assumes people did read and write and that they could afford the materials to write on (and with). It also assumes there was a postal system or the equivalent available to “the average schmo”. And that your average schmo-kid had someone to teach him to write and the time to learn and the parents who cared to make it available to him. And it assumes that there was someone he knew far enough away that he had any desire to stay in touch with, if he could. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/42 "2012-07-04T16:10:03Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > The libraries of teh great monasteries consisted of parchment books, not paper ones, and paper was almost unknown in Europe before 13th century, as the middle ages were drawing to a close. By the time paper books were common, printing and mass production of paper had been invented, and books were cheap and plentiful, but there was still little need to destroy them to provide ass wipes. Paper is is cheap to produce. Parchment, by contrast, was laborious to produce, and thus was valuable for writing on. Certainly once-used parchment was often erased, but that was so it could be used again as writing material. Indeed, that is what your little anecdote is really about. Certainly it is true that documents that we now consider to be important were sometimes erased to make space for documents that people at the time thought more important, but that we now think are of little value. However, this is a far cry from using books to wipe ones ass, as though they were considered of no value. > > You may be correct that illiterate barbarians may not always have been aware of the value of books, and may sometimes have destroyed them, but when you are talking about the 1500s you are very far from the time of the barbarian invasions, and even illiterate people would by then have been well aware of the value of books. Actually, many of the barbarians probably were too. > > When Henry VIII dissolved the English monasteries, many books from their libraries were indeed destroyed, but this was for regions of ideology and the assertion of power, not because of ignorance of their value. Yes, I know 1530 was well past the age of Vikings, well past when they settled for example as Normans. My point was that even then, when learning and literacy commanded more respect, the destruction was common. OK, it was parchement. Even worse, all that work to skin a sheep, tan the hide, and then make it into toilet paper. I think you overestimate the sensibilities of the ignorant through the ages. The dissolution, for example, was such a massive treasure trove that anything not immediately valuable like gold or silver was sold for scrap. So for the OP, if that was normal by the time of Henry VIII, imagine how little care was put into book learning back in the dark ages. Wikipedia as always is our friend: > [@](#): > > Along with the destruction of the monasteries, some of them many hundreds of years old, the related destruction of the monastic libraries was perhaps the greatest cultural loss caused by the English Reformation. Worcester Priory (now Worcester Cathedral) had 600 books at the time of the dissolution. Only six of them are known to have survived intact to the present day. At the abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York, a library of 646 volumes was destroyed, leaving only three known survivors. Some books were destroyed for their precious bindings, others were sold off by the cartload. The antiquarian John Leland was commissioned by the King to rescue items of particular interest (especially manuscript sources of Old English history), and other collections were made by private individuals; notably Matthew Parker. Nevertheless much was lost, especially manuscript books of English church music, none of which had then been printed. > > A great nombre of them whych purchased those supertycyous mansyons, resrved of those lybrarye bokes, _ **some to serve theyr jakes** _, some to scoure candelstyckes, and some to rubbe their bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and soapsellers. > > —John Bale, 1549 ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/43 "2012-07-04T16:19:27Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Repeating the Alexandria myth are we? Ceaser burnt down the main liabary and what the Christians burnt down was i) an annex and ii) most if its books had long been lost and iii) as many people have pointed out, Christians and Church leaders would have been familiar with the classical learning at the time anyway. Caesar did _not_ burn down the main library. His troops, probably accidentally (collateral damage), burned a warehouse by the docks which contained some overspill stock from the library. It was not a huge blow to the library’s situation, and Alexandria and its library continued to be the western worlds greatest center of learning for centuries after Caesar’s time. The Christian anti-pagan riots are no myth, and very likely did do more damage to the library than any other single event, although you are probably correct that, by that time, much had already been destroyed over the years (papyrus is very flammable and fragile stuff), and the Christian mobs probably did not destroy all of what was still there. Some small remnant of the original library may well have survived right up until the Muslim invasion. (The story that the Muslims deliberately burnt the last of it is probably a Christian propagandist lie, but it does not seem implausible to think the Muslims might have removed the last remaining books for safe keeping. Anyway, there seems to be no evidence of the library’s continued existence after the Muslim takeover.) Anyway, the story of the Alexandrian library is not very relevant to the survival of literacy in western Europe. In the East, literacy did not suffer anything like the same degree of decline, and before very long Muslim scholars would be very actively reviving the ancient learning. It did not get back to the West, however, for many centuries. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/44 "2012-07-04T16:21:29Z")
In the days of subsistence farming, don’t underestimate the cost of teaching. Unless you can afford candles you had to do this during sunlight, the prime work time. Children had to work too. Ink and paper would be pricelessly expensive;chalk and slate, would take a cetain amount of work to find, unless it is local resources; you can only do so much writing in the dirt. there will be nothing to practice reading, so the average mind would say “what’s the point?” Most literature (before Chaucer, for example) was bible in latin, so first you would have to learn a complete different complex language to give a purpose to your literacy. Then again, to local language was quite variable du to accents etc., and no standard pronunciation, grammar rules, or standardized spelling.Even vocabulary may be variable depending on the local usage, slang, and who knew what imported words. Try reading original Chaucer. It’s no surprise that literacy eventually was relagated to those who needed it, monasteries, some few teaching colleges, and the richer royal courts where actually, clerks were usually borrowed from the clergy. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/45 "2012-07-04T16:28:46Z")
Is there really any debate that literacy rates in Medieval Europe were somewhere in the 10% range and not the 50% range? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/46 "2012-07-04T16:29:24Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Caesar did _not_ burn down the main library. His troops, probably accidentally (collateral damage), burned a warehouse by the docks which contained some overspill stock from the library. It was not a huge blow to the library’s situation, and Alexandria and its library continued to be the western worlds greatest center of learning for centuries after Caesar’s time. The Christian anti-pagan riots are no myth, and very likely did do more damage to the library than any other single event, although you are probably correct that, by that time, much had already been destroyed over the years (papyrus is very flammable and fragile stuff), and the Christian mobs probably did not destroy all of what was still there. Some small remnant of the original library may well have survived right up until the Muslim invasion. (The story that the Muslims deliberately burnt the last of it is probably a Christian propagandist lie, but it does not seem implausible to think the Muslims might have removed the last remaining books for safe keeping. Anyway, there seems to be no evidence of the library’s continued existence after the Muslim takeover.) > > Anyway, the story of the Alexandrian library is not very relevant to the survival of literacy in western Europe. In the East, literacy did not suffer anything like the same degree of decline, and before very long Muslim scholars would be very actively reviving the ancient learning. It did not get back to the West, however, for many centuries. In many of the surviving Egyptian temples, the early Christians defaced them by chipping away the images of gods and occasionally humans mistaken for gods. In some they got lazy and only chipped away the face and hands, and also the penis of the fertility god. Those Christians were a destructive lot… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/47 "2012-07-04T16:31:05Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Well, then it’s a good think I’m not arguing that! > > But your point seems to be circular. If people could read, they could read letters. But that assumes people did read and write and that they could afford the materials to write on (and with). It also assumes there was a postal system or the equivalent available to “the average schmo”. And that your average schmo-kid had someone to teach him to write and the time to learn and the parents who cared to make it available to him. And it assumes that there was someone he knew far enough away that he had any desire to stay in touch with, if he could. No. There are a lot of assumptions here. One, it is perfectly possible to send letters without a postal system. It’s not efficient, but letters were carried by travellers in the ancient world. Two, the materials to write on and with were fairly cheap. Ink is not difficult, and of course people regularly wrote on papyrus, in wax, and in clay. The latter two not for letters, of course. It’s not just letters: people could make signs, lists, graffitti, etc. Reading and writing Latin isn’t terribly difficult if you (a) already speak Latin and (b) you’re not worried about fine details of spelling. Mastering the formal written language is another matter, of course. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/48 "2012-07-04T16:46:22Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Yes, I know 1530 was well past the age of Vikings, well past when they settled for example as Normans. My point was that even then, when learning and literacy commanded more respect, the destruction was common. > > OK, it was parchement. Even worse, all that work to skin a sheep, tan the hide, and then make it into toilet paper. I think you overestimate the sensibilities of the ignorant through the ages. The dissolution, for example, was such a massive treasure trove that anything not immediately valuable like gold or silver was sold for scrap. > > So for the OP, if that was normal by the time of Henry VIII, imagine how little care was put into book learning back in the dark ages. > > Wikipedia as always is our friend: The problem is that you are conflating the Dark Ages, from about 400 to 900 AD, a period when life was very hard and cheap, and, indeed, very few people had any time for book learning, with the dissolution of the monasteries over half a millennium later, an event that happened only in England, on the cusp of the renaissance, in a (by comparison) mostly peaceful and well ordered country, when economic and social conditions were vastly better, and secular literacy was once again beginning to be established. Book destruction was very far from normal or careless in the 16th century. What happened when Henry dissolved the monasteries was a one-off, extraordinary event, and one that, by its very enormity, tended to generate exaggerated stories, like the one about people using the books for toilet paper. (Who knows if it really happened? Conceivably some of the more enthusiastic Protestants did this with what tehy considered to be Popish works, or perhaps itis just Catholic propaganda being repeated.) By the 16th century books were not so horribly rare as they had been earlier in the middle ages anyway, and I am pretty confident that Henry and his minions kept any that they thought might actually be particularly valuable for themselves. I have never heard that any significant works (as opposed to copies) were lost at that time, whereas during the dark ages immediately following the fall of Rome (and even in the period of decline preceding that) many significant works were lost completely. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/49 "2012-07-04T16:52:10Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > No. There are a lot of assumptions here. One, it is perfectly possible to send letters without a postal system. It’s not efficient, but letters were carried by travellers in the ancient world. Two, the materials to write on and with were fairly cheap. Ink is not difficult, and of course people regularly wrote on papyrus, in wax, and in clay. The latter two not for letters, of course. It’s not just letters: people could make signs, lists, graffitti, etc. Reading and writing Latin isn’t terribly difficult if you (a) already speak Latin and (b) you’re not worried about fine details of spelling. Mastering the formal written language is another matter, of course. I think the main point is being lost in this exchange. That being: the average schmo in Medieval times could not read. Period. Is that a point of contention? Sure, it would have been great if they could have been able to read. Sure, all kinds of things could have been written and read. But most people could neither read nor write, and there wasn’t much the average schmo would come across that he would have the need to read anyway, especially since so much of the writing would have been in a language he didn’t even speak. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/50 "2012-07-04T16:54:26Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Is there really any debate that literacy rates in Medieval Europe were somewhere in the 10% range and not the 50% range? Define “medieval.” Life in 1300 was generally very different from, and, for most, much better, than life in 600. In the “dark ages” (approximately 5th to 10th century) would guess that 10% is way too high. By the end of the middle ages I could believe it was edging up to that sort of level or possibly a bit beyond, but it was never near 50%. (I don’t think **Dr Drake** is saying otherwise.) > [@md2000](#): > > In many of the surviving Egyptian temples, the early Christians defaced them by chipping away the images of gods and occasionally humans mistaken for gods. In some they got lazy and only chipped away the face and hands, and also the penis of the fertility god. > > Those Christians were a destructive lot… I can well believe it, but I am not sure why it is relevant to the topic. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/51 "2012-07-04T17:21:00Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > While Muslim fanatics in Mali are apparently today destroying the millenia-old shrines of Timbuktu, take a moment to contemplate the ability of humans of all persuasions to destroy history in the name of whatever motivates them this year. Yes, what’s happening in Mali is disheartening. And apparently, they’re destroying manuscripts. I understand why they’re destroying the shrines, but I don’t get why they would destroy manuscripts too. However, regarding the rest of your post, I fully agree with the response posted by **njtt**. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/52 "2012-07-04T18:48:10Z")
Sorry, I’m not confusing the dark ages and the 1500’s. I believe I said in my post, as an example of what can happen even that much later. As I said, even during the French Revolution, some people were about to use the Bayeux Tapestry as wrapping cloth when it was rescued. The only reason we have not lost a lot of the legacy of the 1500’s onward, is because of the exxtremely widespread availability of printing. However, that created the opposite problem - we for example don’t have many of Shakespeare’s original plays, because they were printed in multiple copies and nobody though to preserve at least one - instead we have reprints and copies from later. However, compare from the Wikipedia quote - a library was considered to be significant that had only 600 or so books. Heck, I probably have several times that many at home, so does my dad. Any bookstore in town likely has 10 times that number. Most people don’t because they sold or discarded them, while I still have my textbooks from the 1970’s. My point is that books were NOT considered valuable by the dark ages types who could not read and were bent on plunder and destruction. Thus, when civilization fell apart, whatever could nto be rescued by monks or scholars probably was used for jakes and lighting fires. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879/53 "2012-07-05T18:12:07Z")
**The Inheritance of Rome** is simply the best accessible and recent treatment of this subject. **dave** ’s recommendation is spot on. The most influential book on ancient literacy in general is William Harris’ **Ancient Literacy**. Harris discusses the differences between ancient and modern concepts of literacy, evidence for and against literacy, and how it changed over time. There is a huge modern discourse on the subject and like anything of ancient historical interest, its arguments are controversial. But it’s a good book. There were some comments above about postal systems. The late empire had the most comprehensive and reliable postal system that the world had ever seen or would see again until modernity. [Cursus publicus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_publicus) There is a lot of noise around what the “average” person could or could not do. This might not be the best way to think about it. But for a nice summary, see **Egypt in Late Antiquity** by Roger Bagnall, page 255 ([here](http://books.google.com/books?id=re9E5TiVzUsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=egypt+in+late+antiquity&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zNb1T83qNaLF6wHqicn2Bg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=literacy&f=false). Bagnall writes about Egypt, but much of this is generalizable to the late Empire, at least in the East. The passage is too lengthy to quote but is worth reading. I’m a historian of the late Roman empire. Among the things I read the most are contracts, personal correspondence between ordinary people, wills, tax receipts, the garbage cans of mid-level bureaucrats, and other documents of ordinary life. I especially like the petitions of peasants to high-level provincial and imperial authorities. One thing to remember is that even if individuals could not read or write, they usually had access to people who did. Scribes performed a vital social function in antiquity. Some scribes are so well-preserved that they can be individually identified on the basis of their handwriting alone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/end-of-the-roman-empire-and-loss-of-literacy/626879.md?page=2)