Literacy in Early Modern Europe

R.A. Houston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317879251
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The new edition of this important, wide-ranging and extremely useful textbook has been extensively re-written and expanded. Rab Houston explores the importance of education, literacy and popular culture in Europe during the period of transition from mass illiteracy to mass literacy. He draws his examples for all over the continent; and concentrates on the experience of ordinary men and women, rather than just privileged and exceptional elites.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

The European societies which gave rise to the cultural regeneration and intellectual innovation termed the Renaissance enjoyed only restricted levels of literacy. Writing was secret and scarce, printing in its infancy. Three centuries later, a new industrial age began to dawn in the north west of a continent, many countries of which had achieved a majority of literate persons among their adult male inhabitants. The reasons for this fundamental change from restricted to mass literacy, the process by which it took place and the implications for European society are the focus of this book.

The early modern period marked an important transitional phase in European society and culture. Early medieval European culture had been dominated by what might be termed ‘primary orality’. Writing and reading were skills possessed by a few professionals, while the bulk of the population relied for information on what they could see and what they could hear, communicating through eyes, ears and voices. Specialists monopolised reading and writing for peasants and kings alike; familiarity with documents was limited. Economic interactions took place face to face. The words of a priest and the impact of visual symbols mediated religious experience for ordinary men, women and children. Schooling was scarce outside the larger towns, books and writing materials were expensive, most literature was in Latin and there was an aura of inaccessibility attached to writing. As a result, literacy was restricted. By 1800 Europe was a very different place in economic, religious, political, social and intellectual terms, and it is conventionally assumed that the progress towards a ‘modern’ and economically developed world was aided by the dramatic expansion in education and literacy which had taken place during the previous three centuries.

Arguably, modern developed countries are now moving towards what might be termed ‘secondary orality’ where electronic devices and communications have reduced the need for an individual to be able to read, write and count. Figures such as Marshall McLuhan emerged in the 1960s to identify and explain the process and its implications. In reality, a need for new literacies has developed as a result of these changes. This explains why contemporary debates rage on the ways in which children should be educated, the role which the school should play in society and the overwhelming importance to the individual of high-quality literacy and to society at large of mass literacy. Literacy tends to be associated with the development of abstract thought, broadening of the mind through vicarious experience, the intensification and extensification of intellectual exchange, personal independence of thought and action, economic development, democracy and even demographic change. Illiterates, on the other hand, are allegedly more restricted in their thought patterns, intellectually impoverished, culturally backward, isolated, inert and almost pathological (McLuhan 1973).

Much writing on the history of education and literacy at earlier periods was occasioned by similar arguments. Much of it was produced to make a specific political point about the need for literacy and the particular pathways that should be followed to achieve it. Such interchanges tended, for example, to occur at times of military failure or perceived political crisis. Examples include Prussia between 1806 and 1813 (when commentators debated the role of education in reviving and creating national sentiment), England during the 1830s, Russia after 1856, France in the 1870s and 1880s or Spain after the First World War. Writers argued about why literacy had failed to develop, or why it was apparently in retreat, and about whether one agency or another, church or state, public or private, was better at controlling the provision of education (Furet and Ozouf 1982: 1–4; Stone 1969: 87–8; Compère 1995). Traditional historical writing about literacy has, for its part, concentrated on schools and universities, print and publishing rather than on the extent of reading and writing and its social and cultural significance.

The influences that bore upon literacy in the early modern period are neatly summarised by the late Lawrence Stone, whose work in the 1960s was important in stimulating modern interest in the literacy and education of the masses. ‘The structure of education in a society is determined by… social stratification, job opportunities, religion, theories of social control, demographic and family patterns, economic organisation and resources, and finally political theory and institutions’ (Stone 1969: 70; Craig 1981). There is also the dimension of language, since it is easier to learn to read in the tongue of everyday communication than in an alien one, and easier if it uses phonetic spelling. Because of the diversity of social, political and economic structures across Europe, it would be unrealistic to expect that any single combination of these could be used to explain developments over the whole continent. Their relative significance varied over time and space.

The writings of educational theorists can be studied to determine prevailing attitudes to education among intellectuals, clerics and secular administrators who established the principles and guided the implementation of educational ‘policy’. However, assessing the effect of education on pupils or the reasons why parents chose to educate their children is a good deal harder because of shortcomings in documentation. Direct evidence of attitudes and aspirations is rare and it is usually necessary to infer from prescription or casual allusion and from patterns of school attendance and literacy which fit the rest of the social context. Such inferences are, nevertheless, essential since ‘an education incorporates three distinct things: a conscious cultural tradition, an educational ideology, and a curriculum’ (Grafton and Jardine 1986: 219). Much of this book depends on quantitative material which, in the words of Dr Johnson, ‘brings everything to a certainty which before floated in the mind indefinitely’. Yet statistical skeletons need to be fleshed out by more qualitative material when discussing meanings and understandings.

Much space could be used trying to define literacy. While the ability to sign one's name is a useful and much used indicator, it is best to think not of one literacy, but of several literackr, of a variety of ways in which the products of a culture can be acquired and transmitted. Reading of print or writing was possible at two levels. Some people could decipher texts, read them aloud and memorise them in a mechanical or ritual way – though their personal understanding may have been questionable. The facility of those who possessed this intermediate or semi-literacy should not be exaggerated. Those with better education and a deeper immersion in printed and written culture could comprehend the text with greater precision, reading and thinking silently. They could understand new texts as well as familiar ones. However, reading was not restricted to written or printed words alone. People could gather information and ideas from looking: interpreting pictures and prints in broadsheets and pamphlets or watching and participating in plays and processions. Gesture remained a subtle and important form of non-verbal communication.

If they wanted to transmit their own thoughts other than through speech, people had to learn to write, or rather compose – an advanced skill which required considerable training and practice, and which effectively marked full literacy for most people. The other, more common, level of writing was in fact copying or writing without necessarily understanding. It was at this stage that people learned to sign their names on documents, and this ability is commonly used as an indicator that someone could read and understand printed and written texts in the vernacular: the language of everyday life. A small minority of men could also copy or compose in Latin, the international language of learning throughout the middle ages and the sixteenth century, or in another pan-European language like French which came to take its place in the eighteenth century. Even those who had none of these skills were not culturally isolated for they could listen – hear a priest's sermons or a friend reading aloud – and therefore participate actively or passively in discussions with their peers. Finally comes numeracy, which ranged from the fundamental and nearly ubiquitous skill of day-to-day counting through formal arithmetic to abstract and esoteric mathematical sciences. The way to understand literacy in early modern Europe is to assess the access which people had to the different bands in the spectrum and the ways they used them.

The imperfect nature of early modern sources generally makes it necessary to categorise people as literate or illiterate. However these are best seen not as discrete categories, but as steps in a hierarchy of skills. At the same time, seeing and listening could bridge the gap between literate and illiterate. What is more, literacy can be used for different purposes: to serve some practical or functional end such as economic need among tradesmen, in which case reading and writing would be advantageous; or to fulfil a religious need, where reading alone is all that is commonly required. In the words of Harvey Graff (1987: 4), literacy ‘is above all a technology or set of techniques for communications and for decoding and reproducing written or printed materials’.

A negative definition is also possible. Illiteracy could mean inability to read and write Latin (the medieval illitteratus). The first known use of ‘illiterate’ in English was in 1556. The word illettré was scarcely used in north-east France or the southern Netherlands until the mid-eighteenth century, when it was included in Trevoux's Dictionnaire Universel to mean someone who did not know anything about literature; non lettré meant without Latin. The word analphabéte did not come into use until the late nineteenth century (Ruwet and Wellemans l978:14).

Just as literacy can be defined in different ways, so can it be acquired by following a variety of paths. The most obvious was attending a formal school held by a professional schoolmaster. However not all schools were in dedicated buildings. Some teachers worked in the homes of the pupils they taught or in barns and outhouses; they moved to their pupils rather than the children coming to a building designated as a school. Children might learn in the home from parents or older children or kin. Schooling was more often an expression of social practices rather than a discrete phase of the life cycle lived out in the distinctive environment of a formal classroom. Furthermore, the school could be an expression of a desire for learning as much as it was an independent stimulator of literacy. Schooling must be seen in the context of social and economic life in early modern Europe as well as being regarded as an autonomous force. Education and literacy created certain opportunities, but they were themselves dependent on the societies in which they grew and can thus be treated both as agents of change and as indicators or even products of social developments.

The institutional frameworks, social norms and mental climate in which people lived between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were very different from those of the modern world. Educational provision was, to modern eyes, fragmented and the scale of schools was small. The purposes of education may seem restrictive and the uses to which it could be put may appear limited. The family and the local community were far more significant to everyday life, communications were rudimentary, technology primitive, life expectancy at birth short (35 years on average), the role of magic and religion in everyday life pervasive – the latter was ‘the idiom in which men thought’ – concepts of ‘liberty’, ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ as they are presently understood were almost unknown. The societies of early modern Europe were varied both in their internal makeup and when compared with each other. Anything more than the broadest similarities in patterns and development should not be expected since there are bound to be inconsistencies, anomalies and contradictions in the structures of education and literacy and the way they changed.

The first part of this book deals with the ways in which people became literate, both in and out of school, and analyses the educational hierarchy, teaching methods, teachers and the forces behind developments in schooling in the early modern period. Alternative pathways to literacy are set alongside the demand for learning. Developments in higher education are also summarised. A chapter on the extent of reading and writing follows one on sources for the study of early modern literacy. The uses of literacy are discussed, including substantial chapters on book production, distribution, ownership and reading. The mental world of early modern readers is considered at different points in Chapters 8 and 9. Language differences and their impact on literacy and communication are assessed. Finally, the significance of literate and oral communication to cultural stability and change is considered.

The early modern period witnessed substantial changes in political, religious, economic and social life. Yet alongside these developments there were also significant enduring characteristics which tempered their impact. The central themes of this book can be summarised under these two headings, beginning with continuities. The educational hierarchy comprised an anarchic and geographically uneven variety of overlapping and sometimes competing components. The standard of teaching too was far from uniform. Teaching methods and materials changed little until the eighteenth or even nineteenth century. At both elementary and more advanced levels the pedagogic regime was often rigidly traditional, designed to pass on an agreed body of knowledge and more or less fixed interpretations. Formal schooling was an important first stage in the learning process for many people, but it was usually brief and basic. Learning was a piecemeal affair that might last throughout a person's life, the pace and timing determined by their religious, cultural and economic needs. To call early schooling ‘primary’ implies a progression to ‘secondary’ which, for most people, did not exist. ‘Post-elementary’ education was very much the preserve of the middling and upper classes, for which it was an important way of preserving economic and social dominance. Order, stability and conformity were the watchwords of the authorities. The overriding aim was to offer an education appropriate to a person's established place in society.

This had profound implications not only for what was taught and how, but also to whom. One result was that women tended to be much less literate than men and the lower orders less educated than their social superiors. It was not until the eighteenth century that there began to be significant convergence in the basic literacy of males and females, and then only in north-western Europe. Sex and social class determined access to education, as did parental attitudes and cost in a world where children were expected to contribute to the family budget from an early age. University education was the preserve of the middling and upper classes. Oral culture remained central to the lives of ordinary people even though the printed word played an increasing role. The lower orders retained an interest in simple religious and recreational literature at a time when the middling and upper classes were broadening their reading tastes. Most people read religious works and popular ephemera rather than major volumes of current scholarship. The range of books available expanded enormously between 1500 and 1800, but censorship by ecclesiastical and secular authorities continued to restrict what could be read. What is more, the process by which ideas were transmitted remained a complex one. Language barriers existed within as well as between countries, denying access to ideas and information to those that did not speak or read the language in which literature was printed. The existence of multiple languages and dialects were one facet of the cultural variety of early modern Europe. The spread of new ideas depended not simply on what was read, but also on personal demonstration and on how literature was understood. The impact of literacy was contingent on the existing mental and material environment.

Ecclesiastical interest in and control of education grew in the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation and remained strong throughout the early modern period. Religious emphases were central to curricula, especially at elementary level. Yet the power of the state and the significance of secular concerns were growing. From the late medieval period, the state began to play an increasing role in everyday life through its administrators, who collected taxes, recruited soldiers, dispensed justice and enforced order. Such intervention increased noticeably during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had two implications for educational change. First, the state's demand for trained officials had a direct impact on the increase in post-elementary education and on the expansion of the universities that occurred at different times in the countries of early modern Europe. Second, those forced to deal with the state had similarly to seek out basic and advanced literacy. At the same time, the state's drive for control over its subjects involved an insistence on linguistic uniformity and, notably in the eighteenth century, national campaigns that sought to structure education under government control and to extend literacy. Some of these campaigns were highly successful by the standards of the day, but it is best to be wary of equating legislation with achievement. Nor should the spread of secularism be exaggerated, since many of the developments in post-elementary education were brought about by religious orders such as the Jesuits and even in the eighteenth century the church provided many of the teachers and much of the drive behind day-to-day schooling.

Indeed the state was not the only force for change. The struggle between the Reformed Faiths and the Roman Catholic Church from the time of Luther created a powerful incentive for both religions to provide education and to insist on basic literacy and religious knowledge for their adherents. Individual men and women also used reading and writing in their search for a satisfying relationship with God. Religious inspiration waned to some extent during the seventeenth century, but was revived towards its end when the Lutheran Pietist movement began to regenerate education in countries like Prussia and Denmark. Pietism was at its most successful when harnessed to the secular needs of the absolutist rulers of the eighteenth century. The third force behind change was economic. Population growth in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, urbanisation, nascent industrial developments and the expansion of both internal and overseas trade involved growing numbers of ordinary people in market transactions for which literacy and numeracy were useful. Most of the trends in education and literacy during this period, both positive and negative, were functions of political, religious and economic changes.

There were, however, certain largely autonomous developments of which the invention and spread of printing by movable type was the most significant. This technological innovation made books...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The World of the School
• 3 Ways of Teaching
• 4 Higher Education
• 5 Ways of Learning
• 6 Sources and Measures of Literacy
• 7 Profiles of Literacy
• 8 Books and Readers
• 9 Language, Orality and the Uses of Literacy
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index