Western Civilization I / Unit 11 WC1 1029 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Literacy's Nadir and Revival: Monastery and Cathedral School
Captions available
The idea
Literacy fell to perhaps one percent by ten fifty, the anchor's figure, mostly priests, then rose until merchants and some peasants read by the fourteenth century. Monastic tutoring taught Latin to laypeople; cathedral schools trained priests and bureaucrats on Cicero and the Aeneid.
In practice
Scholarship prospered inside a corrupt Church.
Where people slip
The anchor rejects the dark-ages bias. Learning grew from one thousand.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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