The evidence that medieval PEASANTS could READ! Medieval Misconceptions

There is a wealth of evidence indicating that many Medieval Peasants could in fact read and in this video I present some of that evidence to you.
Sources:
Studying Medieval Urban Literacy, A Provisional State of Affairs. 2013:
medievalliteracy.wp.hum.uu.nl...
Literacy, reading, and writing in the medieval West:
web.archive.org/web/201304121...
Birchbark letters:
www.medievalists.net/2018/08/...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_b...
Middle English literature:
www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_ME_Writ...
A decent summery article:
medievalcolloquium.sewanee.edu...
Awesome shadiversity chainmail T-shirts:
teespring.com/stores/shadiver...
My novel, Shadow of the Conqueror Audio Book affiliate links:
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[@mahejo]

On the subject of reading. Just finished your book "Shadow of The Conqueror". I'll give it 5 out of 5 swords. I really like the way every chapter was a part of the letter.. Uhm.. No spoiler :) The way you worked on how some people was affected by certain actions towards then and the psychological effect it has was great. Details! The focus on details was great and not to much. It was in a great balance. It had me really immerse into Everfall and felt like you put me in the shoes of Daylen. I didn't need VR glasses to see every scene for me. Every emotion from the characters and feel what they felt. Really good job! Thank you for your contribution to the literate world!

[@sephirrothvt]

I want spoilers

[@sephirrothvt]

We use literary at the end

[@misterthedork]

I just bought "Shadow of the Conqueror". I'm looking forward to reading it.

[@benjamindupaix6425]

is there an Ebook version of it?

[@misterthedork]

@@benjamindupaix6425 Yes. I bought it on Amazon. I used Shad's affiliate link from his website to buy it. www.shadmbrooks.com/books

[@shkvorrel9660]

"What are you doing?" "I'm writing a letter to my mate". "But you can't write..." "That's not a problem. My mate can't read."

[@gameoflife9576]

Medieval education be like:

[@cgamejewels]

😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@gameoflife9576]

@@Nerdycopia your argument proves that medieval people weren't stupid at all

[@goodoc8248]

@@gameoflife9576 that wasn't an argument, that was a joke. this whole "replies" section isn't an argument. if you weren't stupid at all, maybe you would understand that

[@jeremyhunter2319]

"ah ha ha, classic Boris" "Why what does it s- wait this is blank" "Yeah it's kinda an in-joke"

[@thehussarsjacobitess85]

Not medieval, but in line with modern ignorance, one of the dumbest parts of Disney's new Beauty and the Beast was when people objected to Belle teaching a girl to read... Meanwhile at that exact time in history, the original fairytale was published in a quarterly geared for girls. 🙇🏻‍♀

[@droe2570]

Well, it's Disney trying to be all woke and such, who cares about reality.

[@blacktigerpaw1]

Paris had a high literacy rate. But the peasants at that point were living in abject poverty. They were in a worse state than they were during the Middle Ages.

[@MrMarinus18]

In the original it was not really her ability to read but more so how into it she was. Constantly with her head in the clouds.

[@jonajo9757]

Also in that same time period, wasn't there magazines heavily geared towards women?

[@jackarmstrong8790]

If anything, young girls would’ve been ENCOURAGED to read, because it’s one of the courtly arts.

[@veraxis9961]

Wow, imagine being the person whose legacy will forever be remembered in the chronicles of history as "That Russian guy who forgot his shirt that one time."

[@pRahvi0]

But did he really get his shirt? Or did the letter get lost before that? Because why was the letter spared if it had already filled its purpose...

[@ratbat1072]

@@pRahvi0 Find out next time on dragon ball z

[@Methodius7]

Well it is still much more than vast majority of people living before 19,20 century can say. So I quess he is ok with it. :D

[@queenannsrevenge100]

That their names are “Boris” and “Natasha” is mind-blowing to me - I can’t help seeing the two characters from Rocky and Bullwinkle playing this letter out in my mind’s eye... “Dear Natasja, send man on stallion with a shirt. And watch out for Moose and Squirrel...”

[@HalfgildWynac]

@@pRahvi0 That's the thing - a lot of these letters WERE NOT spared. Half the birch bark messages are found torn because for people these were just notes or drafts of little significance. Now, for us, these letters are important historical evidence. But people of the time just threw them away upon reading. Or maybe they just made their first attempt at a document on a birch bark. After sketching the text, they rewrote the whole thing on a more expensive parchment and ditched the draft (literally). By the way, the message was from Boris to NASTASJA. Nastasja is a form of Anastasia, not Natasha (Natalia)

[@cioplasmmajic8327]

Chronological snobbery: the insistence that we are better than everyone who came before, so we assume the worst about the past.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

Also known as historical revisionism.

[@billmelater6470]

As I see it, that's why some people claim that aliens did everything if they honestly believe that.

[@dgray7537]

Those people didn't have streaming video. We are better.

[@KristinkaAranova]

D Gray they didn’t have roblox

[@JonGunnarssonDotA]

Don't spit on the giants on whose shoulders you stand.

[@mermanhellville]

Drink up for Boris, who all the way back in XII century went out shirtless and didn't realize until he was already at work

[@DinnerForkTongue]

Vadim stole his tunic, blyat!

[@stephend50]

Maybe he just needed a clean shirt?

[@marcusrauch4223]

@@DinnerForkTongue I see, you're a comrade of culture as well.

[@Alex_Fahey]

@@stephend50 I'd imagine he accidentally tore a big hole in it on something sharp and wanted a new one. However, the idea of a bear-like Russian man going out into knee deep snow and not realizing he's missing a shirt is hilarious.

[@JackOpulski]

What a trooper indeed. He'll be remembered because he got a bit cold due to having forgotten to pack a shirt. 21st century journalists will be remembered because they got a bit chilly in the office in the middle of summer, and blamed the patriarchy.

[@Bluecho4]

Things I learned today that can be applied to a DnD campaign: 1) Parchment comes in a variety of qualities, with proportional costs 2) People wrote on bark or carved notes into wood 3) People being screwed over by other people and writing angry notes about it is nothing new 4) It is not out of the question for a laborer to send a letter asking for a ride and a change of clothes, because humans never stop being human Maybe when my players search bodies or stashes of possessions, they'll find notes written on bark giving them hints.

[@HalfgildWynac]

Oh, people being screwed over by other people are SO not new... There is a clay tablet from Ancient Babylon - the oldest known complaint letter. Imagine finding THAT in an ancient ruin (an then even finding the stash where the lousy merchant kept his coins). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

[@edim108]

I remember reading about this letter sent by a mother of a roman legionnaire stationed in Brittania that basically read "I hope you're doing all right sweety, I'm sending you a pair of socks because it gets cold in the north. Love you. Mom" and I thought to myself exactly that. People were always people. On a similar note, I've read about a song that fishermen sang in the Tang Dynasty to break up the monotonous work.

[@josearaujo8616]

@@edim108 letters are not evidence of literacy, there were people who could read and write to ileterate people. That was how it was done in Portugal not so long ago.

[@TrueFork]

Early estimates of Medieval literacy were based on how many people "marked a cross" versus "signed by name" on notary documents. It was not understood that the cross mark was considered the "real" signature, so even people who wrote their name would also draw a cross, and even literate people would not add their name if it was obvious from the context or not necessary. On the other hand illiterate people could be able to write their name. So counting crosses versus names was completely misleading.

[@josearaujo8616]

@@TrueFork Its not actually correct, since there are many sort of documents in parishes, including school/teaching records and literacy levels. Not only there is evidence of little literacy on all sources, there are very little evidence of schools, and even the use of Arab numbers in daily life. In order to contradict what we think about literacy levels in the middle ages we need much more evidences, specially considering that we still remember times of very low literacy in almost all countries.

[@Sky_IvFE]

I always found this misconception very odd. At school we were taught how important the development of an alphabet and language were. About the establishment of literary schools and libraries. So it always came as a shock to me how someone could think that a society that values linguistics and education so much could be illiterate. Yes, defiantly less literate than us today but the only reason we are more literate is because of those people developing the foundations of modern literacy.

[@SepticFuddy]

I would challenge the idea that they were less literate than us today. Given how high their academic class had set the bar for "literacy", and how low we've set it today, I might suggest they were fairly comparable. The average American colonist appears to have been far more literate than the average person today. The Federalist Papers were written for the average New York farmer, after all, and most "educated" people I know have trouble getting through them. Also, reading "the classics", usually in their original Latin, Greek, etc., was far more prevalent among the self-educated at that time than among the "educated" now. Universities barely touch them now, and when they do, pretty much always translated.

[@Sky_IvFE]

@@SepticFuddy Those are fair points you bring up but I don't think I can generalize them outside of America. But that generalization also applies to my statement. It would strictly depend on what is considered literate and where.

[@SepticFuddy]

@@Sky_IvFE True

[@georgederuiter1412]

bullshit

[@robby7025]

In Flanders people could read. The taxes were in Latin in the beginning and afterward they went to French, the Flemish peasants then revolted to get their taxes to be paid in Flemish. So, why would anyone explicitly want their taxes to be in their own language if they cant read anyway? I imagine it would be similar with other language groups as well.

[@Altrantis]

Presumably the switch from latin to french was also made to make it easier. Most flemish people, much like today, also spoke french to some extent or another. And much like today, they also complained about it.

[@htoodoh5770]

@@Altrantis lol

[@redsoldier7220]

Stupid literate Flanders!

[@MadameSomnambule]

Ah, the beginnings of the Belgian language war

[@patrickjanecke5894]

Rudimentary Latin was also understood by peasants. The bar set for Latin "literacy" in medieval Europe and Britain was pretty high. This was the language of every Sunday Mass, official legal documents, etc., while "literacy" would imply a refined understanding of classical literature and philosophy in Latin. Pick up St. Augustine's "City of God" in English, and see how far you get with the detailed refutations of various mythologies and philosophies before your head spins. That isn't very easy in your own mother tongue. Now try it in a foreign language...

[@DrTheRich]

Well latin has very complex grammar, so i wonder if all they knew were just some common words (like Deus > God) but not actually understanding a full meaning of a sentence...

[@patrickjanecke5894]

@@DrTheRich Well, the finer points of the optative subjunctive or the wonderful world of gerunds may pass over many heads...

[@gillesdupouy8357]

I'm following a complex formation focusing on literature, history, philosophy, languages and latin, and I work way too much for Latin, and most of the time I have to translate a text I look it up for tips on the Internet and I don't even understand it in my mother tongue, even though it's French which is pretty close to Latin

[@louisvictor3473]

Also consider that many Europeans (farm more than Britain) still spoke vulgar Latin, which eventually morphed enough to become the Romance languages of today. Also, the Middle Ages are a pretty lengthy period of time, it is apples to cinder blocks to compare the average European literaly of the 500s or 600s to 1200s, so a lot of "middle age statistics" are meaningless, crunching a thousand years into a single contextless value.

[@AngDavies]

@@zacharybrown5325 what language is used for often dictates how easy it is to understand, a lot of technical writing is blunt and straight to the point, with much less figurative language/idiomatic use. From experience It can be far easier reading a scientific paper in a language that you're only vaguely familiar in, than a teenage adventure story. Technical words often end up being basically identical/loanwords between different languages because there's rarely a word to represent them in the native language. So paradoxically the more abstract it gets, the easier it is to understand. trigonometry-triangle metering, almost understandable. Bull- Tauros, basically nothing alike. From friends who've studied classics I'm told that Newton's Principia is remarkably easy to understand compared to something like the bible.

[@friend_trilobot]

The lack of spelling standardization is very accurate. I've read, as part of an old English course as a grad student, old English manuscripts where the same author in the same page of the same codex spells the word oþþe ("or") as oþðe, oþþe, and oððe (etc.) using the two variants of "th", thorn (þ) and eth (ð) interchangeably, seemingly in the whim of the moment and possibly for flair. My teacher claimed they valued being able to spell things many different ways rather than knowing one "correct" way. The thing that brought, and brings, standardization, is not literacy or education per se, but the printing press, and then only for practical purposes. And what's happening is usually selecting one dialect out of many (arbitrarily, or the one spoken by the people with the most power and prestige) and using that, which leads people to erroneously believe that that dialect is superior. Even if you use a true one to one sound-to-symbol system, like the IPA, you're going to get variety in how you record words, because there's always variety in how they are spoken. And all languages are always changing - unless they are a dead language.

[@muche6321]

I wonder whether it was indeed random, or used as a steganographic tool.

[@SonicsniperV7]

Most people don't realize English itself wasn't really standardized until the early 19th century...And even then we have differences between American and British English

[@OcarinaSapphr-]

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said, ‘It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell’ And Shakespeare spelt his name at least 6 different ways!

[@fauxtaco3426]

So its slang

[@friend_trilobot]

@@muche6321 if I understand what you mean (that the during choices contains a hidden code or message) that'd make for a very interesting fiction book about ancient mysteries buried in medieval manuscripts (I'd write it), but I doubt it serves that purpose in the actual manuscripts. Though early English monks did write some suggestive riddles where the answer seems like it'll be something inappropriate, but the provided answer ends up being "onion" - I was told there's debate on whether the monks were just being cheeky or were actually ignorant of the double entandre.

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

I had a German teacher in college who was studying some medieval German medical books, and he proved that they knew a very modern emergency medical procedure hundreds of years ago. A pleural effusion (also called water on the lungs) is a condition that happens in heart disease, kidney failure, pnumonia, infections, several other long term problems, and (in the case he was investigating) traumatic chest injuries where the lining (or pleura) between your lungs and the inside of your ribs begins to fill with fluid, which then displaces your lungs and makes it hard or impossible to breath. In modern times, it is a very commonly treated problem, and the treatment is just to jab a needle or a catheter into your chest cavity in between your ribs and drain out the fluid. It was thought to be a relatively modern procedure, invented sometime in the 1800's, but my teacher stumbled across a description of a case where some guy in the middle-late medieval times had been crushed by a runaway cart, and the physicians rushed to save him. And the treatment described in this old text was that he was having trouble breathing, and so they cut a slit in between his ribs and stuck a tube in there to drain out a clear fluid. The amazing thing about this find was that the way it was described made it seem like the physicians knew _exactly_ what they were doing, not like they were just trying whatever to help him. So he started digging into these old German texts, and sure enough he kept finding references to treating "water on the lungs" in this (or a similar enough) way. Now, remember that a lot of "physicians" back in the day were actually barber and executioners. Physicians were often too expensive for common people, and honestly, a lot of times their methods weren't any better or could actually be worse than what the common folk had access to, depending on when, where, and who it was. So for this to be a common enough procedure for the closest "emergency responders" to perform on the spot means that there must have been a lot of writing going on that we just don't have anymore (not to mention how much of this knowledge was passed down orally). And executioners, especially had to keep pretty detailed and accurate records, since they were operating on behalf of the ruling power/ state.

[@georgederuiter1412]

No, that is totally wrong

[@alexmag342]

@@georgederuiter1412 Copium

[@bunnieseatliverspots]

Hey - I wrote my senior thesis on medieval book production and paleography, and peasants could absolutely read. Many lay families owned a single book (vellum alone cost a pretty penny, let alone the cost of production), which contained their favorite stories/poems, prayers, genealogies, etc. In the margins and flyleaves of these books, you would often find what scholars call marginalia: handwritten poems, prayers, and even medicinal recipes -- confirming that peasants were reader/writers. There was also a ton of lowbrow humor in medieval literature--a friar tricking a man into praying on the roof while he slept with his wife, a priest convincing a young maiden to put the devil (his penis) back into hell (her vagina)--that would have appealed to the peasant class. In fact, Chaucer was so special because he wrote from a commoner's perspective in many of his works (although he was born into an emerging middle class in the mid-14th century). Of course, not every peasant could read, but plenty could -- especially in the late medieval period.

[@user-qd8yy9lc4g]

Among Novgorod's birch bark writing, perhaps most important are ones writen by a young boy named Onfim. They include alphabet and writing practice, as well as doodles of rake-handed stickmen striking down foes wand other stuff not unlike what I have done in my young day.

Here is one of those doodles: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Birch_bark_document_210.jpg

[@chicoti3]

That's so good hahaha. Do you have any idea of how they discovered that he was called Onfim?

@@chicoti3 The boy wrote it down. He wrote: "Lord, help your servant Onfim" and other things. You can look up "Onfim" on Wikipedia, there is a pretty nice article about him.

[@user-xg9dk1ny5k]

He wrote his name. these birchbark was his school notebook. Of course he had drawing himself

[@chicoti3]

@@user-xg9dk1ny5k Very interesting. I asked because I didn't see his name written down on that particular page. But I reckon there is more where that came from.

[@MichaelEricMenk]

Some years ago in Norway they found message on a farm dating from the middle ages. The message stated that they would not be home for dinner. What was most notable was that it was written with the Fuþark alfabet. They thought that only elites knew how to write, and that the alfabet had been dead for several hundred years. The hypothesis is that they used Fuþark because unlike the Latin alfabet, Fuþark is design to be carved.. ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ is also known as rune.

[@moviereviews1446]

Could you link something to this? This sounds interesting.

[@blugaledoh2669]

Yes please bring a link

[@matthewheald8964]

Yo there’s a rune keyboard?

[@GoblinKnightLeo]

"Anita - writing to you from the war. Send a sword. I forgot my sword."

[@ernavill3261]

My medieval English lecturer at uni told us people in the middle ages didn't read silently. Reading silent is a later invention, instead people read out loud. Only the most skilled readers would mumble softly instead of read loudly. This makes reading even easier when everything is spelled out phonetically, as you are basically reading the text to yourself. You read out what it says on auto pilot and interpret what you hear.

[@ernavill3261]

Oh and Chaucer etc often wrote for the wealthy merchants who could afford to buy books (very expensive at the time). While these were technically commoners, it's not exactly fair to list them with peasants, as it was a specific type of elite. After all, some of them were wealthier than many a noble. So the fact that texts were being produced in Middle English, yet the nobility speaking French is not really proof that all commoners could read, just those wealthy enough to buy books. Your other arguments are very convincing, but that one was slightly off imo. Although, while I'm at it, the fact that Henry the 5th formalised English as the language of the court means this trend had been going on for a long time at court. It wasn't just a spur of the moment thing, but instead the nobility had gradually been switching to English for generations.

[@aker1993]

Many people reading the bible verse aloud during the medieval age in their language or dialect

[@Telcontar86]

Meanwhile, in the Beauty and the Beast remake people talk trash to Belle for being able to read and teaching another girl to read. Not like that shitty movie was going for historical accuracy with the agenda it was trying to push, but it still annoyed me

[@docstoise196]

I read somewhere that silent reading used to be an extremely rare skill. I always wondered about that, but if spelling wasn't considered important, it only makes sense that people had to sound out everything they were reading.

[@jrd33]

Sure. If you write phonetically, you have to read phonetically too!

[@keith6706]

Shore, tri makin owt wat im ritin rite nou widowt speakn it allowed.

[@lolloblue9646]

@@keith6706 so glad Italian doesn't have that issue

[@KP3droflxp]

@Keith not that hard tbh

[@DinnerForkTongue]

@@keith6706 Nat difcoolt. Sirilic and Letin lenguajes du it on de deilee.

[@rupertchapman4819]

Hiya Shad: I'm an archaeologist, specializing in the archaeology of the Levant, Lebanon, Coastal Syria, Israel and Jordan, in the Bronze and Iron Ages (roughly 3500-330 BCE). The same argument for limited literacy is still made in that region. But the first evidence for the use of early versions of the Canaanite alphabet, from which all other alphabets are derived, dates to around 2000 BCE, and is found in graffiti left by slaves working in the Egyptian mines in the Sinai Peninsula. By around 1200 BCE there are ostraca, pieces of broken pottery, on which someone was practicing their ABCs in ink. These come not from the towns and palaces, but from villages with a maximum population of 200. They were producing olive oil, which they processed and then sold to the merchants in the towns who sold it on to everyone else, including exporting it to Egypt, where the olive doesn't grow, and they had to keep records of these transactions. For every one potsherd there must have been many other writings on perishable materials which haven't survived. There is a wonderful book about the Nablus region in the 19th century which describes how this social and economic system worked in that period, which is very likely to be the tail end of a tradition going back to 3500 BCE. At the great Judaean city of Lachish there is a massive governor's palace. The steps leading into this building wore out in the Iron Age, and had to be replaced. While they were working on that job, in the ancient Judaean equivalent of a tea break, the masons practiced their ABCs by carving the letters into the soft limestone of the new steps. There were skilled workmen, but by no means highly privileged members of the ruling elite! Everything you say about Medieval literacy in the video rings true to me, not only for the Medieval period, but for all earlier periods after the development and spread of the alphabet in the ancient world. Stick to your guns, and don't let the turkeys get you down!

[@misterrioter3575]

A minor correction here but not all modern writing systems come from the Proto-Siniatic Script (which is where the Canaanite/Phonecian Abjad came from)- most of them do yes, but Chinese Characters, and the four Japanese scripts all come from the Oracle Bones Script; and Hangul (Korean Writing) was developed by a king and a group of scribes essentially ex-nihilo; there's also the Cherokee Syllabary which was developed by an illiterate man after seeing the concept of writing and wanting to share it with his fellow Cherokee; and the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabic Script which was invented ex-nihilo by some Missionaries. Beyond that in the ancient world there's the Linear A and B scripts and their relative the Cretan Hieroglyphs and Cyprominoan; plus Cunieform (and its descendent the Ugartic Alphabet), AND Mayan Hieroglyphs.

[@absentiambient]

I hope Boris got his shirt, it can get pretty cold out in Russia

[@o00nemesis00o]

I'd tell you but it's spoilers. Read the epic Ballad of Boris And Natasha

[@AdamMansbridge]

I bet it's the other way, Boris went out in warm clothes, but got too hot working

[@lotgc]

Just imagine, the fact that you sent a shirt has been written down in history for the rest of time

[@leverage1990]

Imagine forgetting your shirt and have 130 000 people laugh at it 800 years later

[@peterlyall7488]

@@o00nemesis00o Perhaps a poem about Boris and Natasha could be wrote?

[@Alias_Anybody]

The best thing about the Russian letter is actually how relatable it is. Heck, a "Boris" asking a "Natasha" to send guy with tool plus shirt because there's a lot of work to do could easily be a text message written in Russia today.

[@arnowisp6244]

It's funny how the more you learn about history. The more samey things actually are. For better or worst.

[@abcdef27669]

Peasant learn new ability: Reading. Unlock level 50 to reach the next ability: Writing.

[@kakhakheviashvili6365]

That gave me some heavy Kingdom Come Deliverance flashbacks.

[@Elyseon]

@@malahamavet Romanus eunt domus!

[@shadiversity]

Please bring me a shirt, I forgot a shirt.

[@nanoblast5748]

hey Shad, I think I have an interesting question concerning medieval warfare: what about the guy with the flag?

[@b1laxson]

The shirt you want is on teespring ... segwey to ad

[@KK-xz4rk]

2. letter seems to be about someone fu**ing other peoples horses and pigs on meadows. As i understood this seems to be the "damage" and disgrace.

[@widgren87]

That sounds just like something you usually get a text for today during summer-time, especially when working outdoors :-)

[@kinglouiev9530]

In the Byzantine Empire, Muscovy & Kievan Rus, Greek was the most prevalent language when it comes to literacy. In fact it was just as important as Latin in the West.

[@lepusarcticus5363]

"(...)And send a shirt. I forgot a shirt." This sounds like a fairly modern conversation on any IM. "Hey Natasja, can you tell someone do drive by and help me out with my work? And let him bring a shirt too" xDD

[@user-xg9dk1ny5k]

Exactly. Birchbark was like a messager at that time

[@Poodleinacan]

"I forgot my shirt and I'm not allowed to enter my workplace without a appropriate clothes."

[@RipOffProductionsLLC]

at least he didn't forget his pants.

[@paavobergmann4920]

@@Poodleinacan actually, yes. That might have been a thing, even.

[@StergiosMekras]

Nobody commenting on how stereotypical "Boris and Natasja" are?

[@leomoran142]

There's no better proof that the peasantry were able to read than in the justice system of the day. Almost all offenses by peasants, with the exception of crimes against the King, were dealt with through courts made up of fellow peasants in the same village... and they kept records of everything, written by a peasant elected by the peasants to hold the position of reeve for a term of 12 months. The reeve of a village received no special education to make them literate, they were simply informed that they were the reeve for the coming year, and were expected to perform their duties accordingly.

[@jocosesonata]

Shad needs to make an extensive video _all_ about peasant life.

[@georgederuiter1412]

No that is untrue. The peasants in some regions gave judgment of a fellow peasant, yes. But the judge itself was still a special person in direct service of the king or at least the local lord. And this guy surely was not an ordinary peasant! And the knowledge about law was not in form of a law book which could be bought by everyone. Laws were told again an again to show the public this special law still matters. Your arguments is wrong and the whole argument, that peasantry in Medieval times were literate is just wrong!

[@alexmag342]

@@georgederuiter1412 Cope masonic revisionist

[@joemoe974]

This is so instructive and eye opening, I love it. Smashes through that old, old cliche of the classic Monty Python-esque mass ignorance which, even though it is excellent parody, I think too many people believe had basis in fact! Great work Shad and so absolutely wonderful to see you well back to your old self again!

[@gastronomist]

That cliche pertains to today in a different form. Rural and small town people are often seen as ignorant dullards.

[@ixiolirion8781]

The King Arthur legends (which Monty Python parodied) are set in the early medieval period, and in Great Britain there are almost no texts from that period that were not written by someone with some connection to the church, even if what they were writing about was often nothing to do with it. The sources Shad talks about in these videos are typically from hundreds of years after the time of Arthur. Other places do have other texts from that early period, though. So this more comes down to the point Shad often makes about depending on the time and the place. Of course, just because peasants Arthur may have came across were likely to have been illiterate, does not mean that they were stupid. Just like anyone else from any other place or time, they would have known what they needed to know to live their lives. Which simply may not have included the ability to read and write.

[@AbsentMinded619]

The church was the spoke of all of social and academic life back then, not just religious. Nearly everyone had a connection to the church.

[@rikremmerswaal2756]

By the way Shad, have you actually read medieval books? The interesting thing about them is that they seem to have been written in such a way that they are easy to read out loud. There are a lot of opening lines that go like ' no be still and listen good people.' Lots of the written ballads, stories and even legal texts are structured as speeches. The main use of medieval books was to be read out loud for others.

[@theblancmange1265]

Even when people read to themselves, they read out loud a lot of the time.

[@Maren617]

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the listeners couldn't read, but simply that books were often as expensive as houses and therefore had to be shared.

[@chicoti3]

Also, just like today, even back then there were books intended for professors teaching students. We have the same in our school books and nobody thinks the students are illiterate.

[@shibomi1]

@pyropulse you'll have to explain why you think people that read out loud are called idiots. The most common form of participation in school classrooms is to read text books out loud because it has shown to improve memorization. When you are writing a song, peom, or speech, it is a good idea to read it out loud or risk making mistakes. So if smart people read out loud, I guess that makes people who don't the real idiots.

[@DFX2KX]

@@shibomi1 I do occasionally read out loud. But I guess I'm an idiot despite getting A's in Economics, Biology, and at least two of my English classes....

[@AkkadDaily]

Best channel on KZbin.

[@shadiversity]

Thanks heaps man, really that means a lot. But Akkad Daily and the Simposeum certainly give me a run for my money ^_^

[@lekhaclam87]

I've watched this video a couple of time, still didn't expect to find you here.

[@thekingshussar1808]

Woah, Akkad!

[@MrCoxmic]

Social media writing artifact in the 21st century: "Hey Diane, I'm working hard here; I forgot a hat, send me a hat."

[@Beastlango]

If they couldn’t read why was one of Martin Luthers biggest points to translate the Bible into languages other than Latin??? 🤔

[@DFX2KX]

And if people couldn't read, why would the prohibition against translating it even need to exist?

[@Methodius7]

Because people didnt understand latin mass. So when native lanquage was used in church it was better. Its not like peasants got bible in every house before printing was invented but couldnt read it because it was in latin.

[@konstantingr5928]

@@Methodius7 yes thats the argument he is making . there was a need to translate cause people could read it in their own language. while most people have the assumption that people could not read back then

[@Beastlango]

Methodius yes of course, my comment wasn’t really a question 😂

[@Methodius7]

@@konstantingr5928 Thing is it was read to you in church by priest so u doeasnt realy need to know how to read.

[@balazsszucs7055]

Medieval literacy. Well, even if illiteracy were true at the very beginning I'm sure 300 years is enough to solve that problem. Besides if nobody could read and write in medieval times, who posted all those witcher contracts on the notice board?

[@mathewvanlonden8310]

And then ofcourse the entire mediaval times where 1000 years, nobody can tell me that during all that time the majority of the people couldn't read and wright in there local language

[@xenotypos]

@@mathewvanlonden8310 Yeah the medieval period is so long that the beginning and the end of it are like night and day. It should be at least separated in three separate periods. From the 12th century on, I think medieval Europe was pretty well developed for the standards of the era: incredible architecture (especially cathedrals), masters of high quality steel, inventions such as the glasses or the mechanical clock, impressive works of literature, and notable mathematicians like Fibonacci for example (or scientists like Bacon). There were downsides too, but overall Europe was more than decent, nothing comparable with the 3 first centuries of the middle ages, before Charlemagne.

[@TrueFork]

What was the point of all those runestones if nobody could read them?

[@geofff.3343]

Remember that the English alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet which is based on the Greek alphabet which is based on the Phoenician alphabet, and that word right there is where we get words like phonetic. The genius of the Phoenician language is that it's a merchant language. If you can sound it out, you can speak it. So if you can get the sounds right, you can communicate. Also fun fact about Middle English there are no silent letters. All letters in Middle English make a sound in the word. Knight for example is pronounced Ka-nikt. Aprile is pronounce ah-prilla

[@ColHoganGer90]

Geoff F. „Phonetic“ has nothing to do with „Phoenician“. It derives from „phōné“ = Voice in ancient Greek.

[@geofff.3343]

@@ColHoganGer90 I stand corrected. The words were similar and since Phoenecian was the first phonetic alphabet I put it together that way. It's apparently Greek for Purple People.

[@alexandrk9302]

thanks for mentioning novgorod bark letters/ We really do find a lot of them every year. Btw, the most common topics of these barks are lists of goods (mostly furs) from tax collectors. The main user of written language was government willing to manage its resources

[@SimuLord]

Some things never change; that's why the Sumerians invented writing in the first place. Most of the old cuneiform tablets are tax receipts.

[@thuglifebear5256]

18:39 "English was alot more unrefined, no standardization, spelling and grammar mistakes everywhere, until the poets and writers blazed the trail and evolved and formalized it." Thank you Shad for finally explaining to me the utility of writers and poets.

[@mattythewriter]

I always imagined it like in civil war movies where not necessarily everyone could read but absolutely everyone knew someone that could and would have a buddy read it to them.

[@DFX2KX]

And I imagine that, like today, some folks aren't terribly GOOD at it, even if they can. But the idea that it was an uncommon skill is silly.

[@boris6811]

I still haven't got my shirt.

[@toropazzoide]

As italian, I can say that pronounciation in english is a nightmare to learn. Why tf do you say "colonel" like "kernel"? It makes no sense whatsoever. I hated learning verbs in italian, we have too many conjugations, but AT LEAST we are consistent with our phonetics lol if I meet an italian word I never read before I know how to read it, while in english I, most often than not, have no idea.

[@bigredwolf6]

toropazzoide Because the military loves to complicate everything

[@sompret]

I think it's partly because pronouncing it like that rolls off the tongue faster. That being said, I would strongly encourage that you pronounce it kol-oh-nell, not only would it be distinguishable from kernel but it arguably adds a bit of exotic flair.

[@HSuper_Lee]

It's because the language formed as a merger of the more Germanic old English spoken by peasants and the French spoken by nobles. We essentially took two languages from two completely different language families and merged them together, then let that hybrid cultivate on an island for several centuries.

[@escudojoreg5194]

Where I can give credit to English is in the grammar. The grammar is super simple.

[@toropazzoide]

@@HSuper_Lee Yeah, I know, mine was more a rethoric question XD sometimes it still bugs me a lot tho.

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

I think an important point that Shad missed about parchment is that Parchment was frequently reused over and over again until it fell apart. You could wash or scratch the words off of parchment and reuse it several times before it became unusable. One of the ways we have been able to recover a lot of texts in recent years is by using digital and UV/ X-ray imaging to look deeper into scraps of parchment to see the stuff that got erased centuries ago. Sometimes books will have reused parchment with scraps of letters or even other books hidden underneath, and similarly sometimes old letters we have will be from books that had either had a page torn out of them or else had been destroyed (whether on purpose or just through wear) and we can sometime find the old text underneath! It makes sense, if you had a scribe or monk copy a book for you because the old copy had been completely worn out, then you would still have the old one that might be too far gone to be repaired but could still have a good number of sheets of parchment in it that could be reused to send a few letters rather than just getting tossed out.

[@---tr8fx]

letter and notes from nobles: "blah blah blah blah" notes from peasants "bring me a shirt, i forgot my shirt"

[@DerakosZrux]

Some potential lessons to learn. 1) You can't dunk on someone with ten minutes of googling (or less) and a single, not very relevant source. 2) It's a bad habit of our time to have an opinion on everything. But if you're not a researcher, academic, or at least an enthusiast, there's no reason for you to have an established opinion on something like medieval European literacy rates! All you really knew was that most academics thought a thing. And even knowing that what we know changes all the time, people still have a habit of not just having unsupported opinions but of also defending them like they're self-worth is somehow tied to them being right.

[@kellynolen498]

@@digslicuanan3225 i think some people are too trusting and tend to hold onto trivial information too long in general but good point i didnt factor in the sunken cost of collage I learned pretty early that everyone is human and are slaves of there emotions and biases it takes effort and constant atention to not be but that level of action is exausting so nobody will always be 100%. Rational and if challenged on an off day they may just double down on stupidity then they will want to defend there actions on priciple and so and such Edit:what was i saying anyway?

[@droe2570]

But..but..I have a right to my opinion! WHAA

[@droe2570]

@Jason Buford Well, actually, everyone has a right to their own opinion...but I was being facetious. Just because you have an opinion on something, doesn't mean it's a worthy opinion, however.

[@Barten0071]

when you forgot a shirt and now all world knows

[@CowCommando]

Boris thought he had simply forgotten his shirt, but in reality, he had become a legend.

[@Dinitroflurbenzol]

Not directly within the medieval period, but Martin Luthers graffito in Wittenberg came to my mind. A letter nailed to the church-door WAS ment to been reed by everyone and he was hard on writing in a language onderstood by all (so he choose saxon :P).

[@xxfalconarasxx5659]

There is no agreed upon end date for the Middle Ages, but most agree it is between the late 15th and early 16th century. In Norman Davies' book, "Europe: A History" , the author places the end date of the Middle Ages on 1517 AD, the exact year Martin Luther published the Ninety-five Theses, so one could say your example is with in the very end of the Middle Ages.

[@georgederuiter1412]

The nailing of these 95 Thesis by Luther is just a nice legend. It never happened!

[@dragonangel1786]

"Context is everything." This should be your motto, Shad. Keep those great videos coming. They are informative and interesting.

[@SeverMetal]

About poems written in the vernacular: just because we now have written versions of such poems, it doesn’t mean commoners primarily enjoyed them in the written form, whether hearing someone read them aloud or reading for themselves. Poems were usually accompanied by music, so the difference between poems, songs and “lyrics” (a fairly modern word) is often difficult to make. I think that mostly, people just listened to bards and other musicians tell and retell famous songs/poems. This is not to refute your entire argument, which I agree with.

[@gastronomist]

One literate person in the house-hold would certainly be very helpful in this regard.

[@Dian_Borisov_SW]

I just love this map 2:15 My country is there (Bulgaria) and it's kinda sad cuz it played kind of a big role in medieval times but nobody talks about it.

[@kylethomas9130]

Between the fall of Rome, and the Great War, plenty of notable events and cultures took place. Its unfortunate that Europe frequently get painted with a broad brush.

[@gwennblei]

Plenty of stuff wrong with it though ^^ Like Ireland being fully unified, Or the Normandy word covering Brittany, which by the way probably shouldn't be represented as unified to France, nor should Normandy, who was under English influence for most of that time, then again, 950-1300 is kind of a dumb title to give to that map, cause borders evolved A LOT in that time, but even some of the borders or countries that consistently existed are not there. A very poor job by whoever did this map, which I suspect is a simplified (and partially wrong) one to be used in kids books.

[@Dian_Borisov_SW]

@@gwennblei Yeah you got a good argument. I guess this map is just a very big oversimplification of what Europe would look like for those 400 years. Like fuck that's a lot of time

[@Dian_Borisov_SW]

@@kylethomas9130 By the brush of english media. Lol

[@OcarinaSapphr-]

Don’t get mad, but I only know of your country existing in the Medieval Period, because of Basil ‘the Bulgar Slayer’...

[@SuicV]

Curiously, just like latin was the academic language in medieval times, today ENGLISH has become the academic language. To people from non english-speaking countries, like me, if you want to research papers and studies, you will find something in your own language, but the great majority is writen in english. The same even applies to entertainment content in general. So you could say that anyone that does not know english would not be completely academically literate.

[@allangibson8494]

Google translate helps... Certainly helps with Russian websites.

[@lauraconnolly1184]

@Allan Gibson Google Translate is notorious for not being great at translating sentences. It's grand for translating individual words, though.

[@michaelhenry3234]

@@lauraconnolly1184 It's gotten quite a lot better in recent years though. While it's certainly not 100% accurate, it's good enough that you can still grasp the meaning. I can read youtube comments from different languages via translation and half the time I can't even tell the difference, even though I'm sure information and nuance gets lost.

[@Aufsammelkabbler]

@@allangibson8494 Trust me, you would not want to be in a situation where you for example try to collect quotes and sources for your PHD when your are forced to use google translate on scientific papers. Those are hard enaugh to understand without google messing with the meaning. Even slight changes of the text can render a scientific study meaningless.

[@Roy.404.]

I don't know how it is for the rest of Europe but in France we are taught in middle school that all peasant's kids were taught to read by the local priest after 800 ac thanks to our good boy Charlemagne. We are even taught that there were priests who were sent with the mission to create alphabets and teach it to unlettered populations in the east (and also convert them). So we can affirm that those "historians" don't know a loot about European history.

[@bmc7434]

Charlemagne basically traded with Ireland; Ireland was fighting the Great Crusades Against the Saxons and Danes; They traded Libraries and Churches to be built in France for Charlemagne to declare War against the Saxons (Present day England and Germany); Only lasted for about 20 years as Ireland is religious different from Rome since Ireland is Classical Western Catholic, Rome on the other hand had a Schism in 325AD in which they meddled Pagan traditions with Christianity Called the Nicaea Council; People forget that before 300 or so AD Rome basically murdered all Christians except for a few years, but Ireland was one of the few countries that allowed Christians to practice.

[@bmc7434]

Nicaea Council outlawed the teaching of the bible outside of a priest;

[@Myurridthaekish]

In addition to parchment and bark, there's also clay and leaves. Half of the Akkadian corpus is stuff like receipts, legal documents and notes, all written on clay tablets. Memorizing cuneiform signs is marginally more difficult than learning 20ish letters in my experience. Palm leaves were used in at least parts of the Indian Sub-continent. I'm not sure about how suited the leaves found in Europe are for writing, but clay is just pretentious dirt. You can even just write on potsherds, they used those for ballots, notes, grocery lists et c. in Greece. The more I think about, the more I start thinking this illiteracy thing is just a modernist and/or Masonic plot.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

Not only that. Have you tried running fat or oil over baked clay? It stains nice and visible! Now add a brush or even your finger...

[@skyereave9454]

Of course. From beginning to end, it's always the damned paperwork that gets left over.

[@exodeonsalviej9337]

Why aren't you a college professor? xD "Professor Brooks-" "No, Shad...o-kay?" "Professor-" "Shad." -Tosses a pommel-

[@Zaeyrus]

I must say Shad, I was about to start some rants about medeival literacy on your last video, but then I started some reasearch and I have to thank you for not only 2 informative videos, but also for making me do my own reaserch! And yes, it turns out they could use letters :D However, this now only raises further questions!

[@Dhampy]

Working in history, I'm always surprised by negative reactions to arguments that people in the past weren't ignorant. These are humans with the exact same craving for understanding their world as we have today. Sure, the medieval peasant lacked the means to achieve what the 21st century considers an education, but in many cases so did our own fathers and grandfathers. Did that make them less inquisitive? Of course not. Humans have a problem: in this example, it's the need for communication. And they solve it the best way they can. Everyone understands the spoken word, it's not a leap to learn to phonetically construct enough of a written language to get your point across. We see it today in people who had their education in a different language migrating to a new place where they have few applicable language skills and adapting to the different language. Often that results in a rather grammar-less phonetic attempt to make their message understood. Unsurprisingly, it works (unless the person receiving it decides not to understand it). This should not be controversial.

[@pinkbunchan9258]

Shad, whenever you post a video, I get so happy because I know I can get through at least part of my morning at work entertained. Thank you for these videos

[@peterjansen4826]

The biggest non-shocker ever? People needed the ability to read in those societies so yes, people learned it.

[@chiblast100x]

Pretty much. The next best would be a discussion on medieval peasants' ability to do basic arithmetic.

[@Ninjaananas]

@@chiblast100x Well, everyone can at least count. It does not take much from there on.

[@chiblast100x]

@@Ninjaananas Exactly.

[@thehulkster9434]

The assumption that literacy was non existant among the lower classes throughout history is a bit annoying. While certainly there would have been people who never learned to read on account of not needing to know or not having access to resources to learn, the assumption that only the ultra educated could read does not seem to be all that justified. Certainly, there have been points in history where literacy was more or less common, but to say that no one but the elite could read until the rise of the modern school system is more a result of our own desire to feel superior than actually being the result of historical evidence.

[@gastronomist]

I don't have proof, but I suspect phonetic alphabets made it a lot easier for the average person to read and write. Also, I think there is a misconception that lower classes didn't know any Latin at all.

[@grantflippin7808]

Feels like public school propaganda

[@bumponalog5001]

The Medieval era gets a lot of hate due to the enlightenment figures dumping on the Church and calling it the dark ages. The reality is the Medieval era is one of the most civilized and interesting periods of history.

[@pca1987]

True.

[@SeismicHammer]

Witch hunts were actually more prevalent during the Renaissance, partly due to more established legal systems.

[@Ninjaananas]

The middle ages were still rather unenlightened in Europe. It came from the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance was more enlightened and the middle east at that time was also more developed. But they weren't lacking in everything.

[@pca1987]

@@Ninjaananas That's what we learn in schools. But it's not really like that. That is thought because with the "enlightenment " era, they tried to erase all good that happened during the middle age.

[@Ninjaananas]

@@pca1987 It is the truth. Compare our architecture, medicine, science and organization to theirs. They did not even have aqueducts.

[@Infinitus05]

Great video Shad, very well thought out. One thing I would mention as well is in regard to the primary source material we have been left behind. Obviously, not everything produced in the Middle Ages has survived to today, so we are left with only a small sample of what was actually written back then. This raises an important question of who gets to decide what is saved and what is lost, and what standards are applied to make that decision. In relation to this topic, its important because the people deciding what survives are likely to be those at the top, the nobility who have the money to pay for better quality/more ornate works which carry sentimental value, thus it is more likely that written works geared towards these groups are more likely to survive, thereby fuelling a perception that literacy was the realm of the upper classes.

[@dorvinion]

This kind of a bias exists in other areas and really doesn't even require that things be ancient history. Not so much an observation of who does the choosing, as it is an observation that what is notable has a higher chance to survive. Modern movies suck compared to old films. Of course since nobody really remembers or even knows anything about many films released in 1939 for example, they essentially don't exist. However, even if they've never seen them, people have heard of Gone with the Wind, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and Wizard of Oz. So when they think of 1939 in film, all movies made in 1939 were excellent works of art, while 95% of movies released in 2019 were trash....ok, so maybe there is some truth in that... "They don't make em like they used to" You can go find for example old Maytag ringer washers at antique and collectible shops. But we only see the rare handful of examples that lasted 50, 70 years. The rest of them all wore out and got sent to the junk yard ages ago.

[@jonathanswavely7259]

This is perfect because I recently made a D&D character who's a peasant. I'm glad to hear my dear Inga can read, but I'm still gonna say her handwriting looks like it was written by a paraplegic blind man.

[@user-xg9dk1ny5k]

About birchbark letters I can remember "Kirik's inquiry" that's a compilation of questions from Novgorodian priest to his bishop. Between others Kirik asks about dumped letters thats covered all ground, is here a sin walk by step on it or not? Before investigation of first birchbark letter this moment of "Inquiry" was obscure

[@ForbiddenChocolate]

Thank you for all of the information you share, and for keeping it so entertaining. I'm writing an epic fantasy adventure with my son and you've saved me a lot of time on research! When we were first discussing plot details, I asked him if he'd heard of your channel. He was already subscribed! We spent the next half hour suggesting your videos to each other, discussing the relevant ones we'd both already seen, and those we found super entertaining. Thanks again!

[@SgtTeddybear66]

Whelp... There goes my fallback plan on "What I'd do if I was teleported back in time."

[@thsarias]

You remind me of a Japanese girl dancing to Dixie

[@nivircescrittore8304]

Then just invent the printting press earlier.

[@rustyshackelford3590]

Nivirce Scrittore do you think the average person knows how a printing press works

[@nivircescrittore8304]

@@rustyshackelford3590 Its a big stamp with many tiny parts that you can change around which are the letters or the spaces between then. This is the basic concept. You don't have to make it exactly how it was made when it was invented, you just need the basic concept and then you figure out the specifics as it becomes necessary.

[@McHobotheBobo]

Learn the secrets of gunpowder

[@beardedbjorn5520]

I literally just finished your last video and then this pops up. KZbin’s notifications actually worked for once.

[@frombaerum]

and its about literacy!

[@timl.b.2095]

Oh man, this is the most fascinating of the many videos of yours I have watched! Partly because I'm an aspiring writer for mid-grade readers, and this knocks a common trope of mid-grade novels into a cocked hat! There's still the problem of how a commoner might send a communication some distance, as there was no postal service. They would send it with someone who was going there, especially if the traveler knew who to give it to at the other end. I wonder if that might be a future topic?

[@Dark-wy9yb]

My ancestor was high noble from Venice. In 1410 he as volunteer fought on Polish side in Battle of Grunwald ( one of biggest medieval battles). In 1430 he moved to Poland permanently. My family since then live in Poland, but still after 600 years we have connection with Venice, and know italian(venetian) language. But the main reason why I told this story, and why I even know this, is that he could read and write. Thanks to him my family at least from 1400 can read and write. Everyone was supposed to read and write notes about their lives in my family. Of course they were nobles, but even not all nobles could read in medieval Europe. It is great. Now my family had hundreds of pages of our ancestors diary's ( diary is best world to describe it, also journal or memory is good). We were mostly fighters- knights, later hussars , then adventurers/ travelers and officers in more modern times, so I could read about many famous wars. It is amazing to see a perspective of my ancestors when they fought on Battle of Vienna 1683( in Polish hussars) , siege of Candia ( volunteer in Venetian army against Ottomans) Napoleonic wars( Napoleon side, in polish army from Warsaw Principality), american civil war ( my grand...grandfather's brother moved to America and bought farm in the South in 1850' and when my grand...grandfather visit him the war started, so both of then went as volunteers to fight from freedom ), I ww (in my family were 2 German Imperial Army capitains - one calvalry, and second fighter pilot, they were my grandgrandfather and his brother ( Poland was participationed, so all poles served in russian,german or austrian army ), and italian capitain, third brother ( we always have connection to Italy, and he liked Italy most), polish- bolshevic war ( Polish side) spanish civil war ( against communists) and and II ww ( Polish army). And I know all this just because "some person" in 1400' was literrated and he belived that his childs and grandchild must also be. And since then around 30 generations later, we still write diaries/ journals ( ofc mine is really boring, no wars, nothing interesting....) to future generations.

[@foxygrandpa5064]

From this channel I've learned so much! Especially that the medieval era had many many differences depending on where you live.Thanks for your amazing content keep it up!

[@Maren617]

Many areas also had the custom of marrying daughters to husbands in other villages (also avoided inbreeding) so it seems very unconvincing to assume that families didn't keep in touch via written notes. Or all the kids they sent to the castle to work as servants there - surely they were highly motivated to quickly learn the alphabet so they could keep in touch.

[@dgthunderer]

I loved the first video you did on this. Really shifted my perception of the times and of many fantasy worlds (including my D&D campaign). Thanks for doing a followup!

[@paul_warner]

Shad, thanks to your videos I have taken up an interest in medieval studies and bested my boss in an impromptu "swordfight" about half an hour ago. He was armed with an umbrella and I was armed with a broom so it was more like longsword vs spear/rapier, since the balance of the broom is very close to the end, though it was actually more like two fools whacking sticks around. I've also started building a castle in Minecraft (machicolations included!!) and when I'm finished I'll post a video tour and explain how learning from you influenced the features and design. Thanks for the good content, Shad!

[@Alanth]

I'm very skeptical, that's why when someone comes with new evidence and a solid argument, I get more than excited.

[@TasTheWatcher]

Makes sense. There wouldn't be a reason for the church to ban translation of the Bible if the masses couldn't read it anyway.

[@billyumbraskey8135]

Where does this idea even come from? The WHOLE REASON literacy became a standard of living in western civ was due to church missions teaching people to read SO THAT they COULD read the Bible. Atheistic propaganda about "the dark ages" is so counter-factual it's ridiculous. Stop hating God.

[@sean668]

@@billyumbraskey8135 God isn't on trial here. The European Catholic clergy did actually work with the nobility to enforce a ban on vernacular Bibles. Even if someone uses that as targeted attack, it would be anti-clerical, not anti-christian.

[@benjaloza8127]

@@billyumbraskey8135 you just have to do a little reserch to see that in the middle ages it was prohibited and presecuted to reproduce the bible in other languages that wasnt vulgate, as well as doing private readings as "the people with mediocre learning could interpret it wrong". It was a form of control over the masses and there is no way around it.

[@billyumbraskey8135]

@@benjaloza8127 lmao, this is just plain false. satanic propaganda. the whole development of scientific inquiry, literacy etc was pushed by monks who just wanted people to know God. Stop hating your Creator, fedoras!

[@benjaloza8127]

@@billyumbraskey8135 jajajajaja ok, believe what you want, the data is there if you want to ignore it is your choice. We live in an era where information is in your pocket, if you want to use it, just search, if you want to believe what people told you instead of building your own thought, the only one to blame is yourself.

[@FaeFemboi]

Hey, Shad! Love your content! I would love to see an entire 15 minute episode of you reading Medieval messages and commenting on them! It'd be hilarious and would help us all get great insight into the mindset of these people from oh so long ago! Be safe! Love you!

[@FlyingNinjaish]

My personal favorite example of the non-standard spelling comes from VOC personel records (not Medivel, but close enough), which have several hundred or thousand different ways of spelling, for instance, The Hauge, where may employees came from.

[@janbosch5951]

Do you mean The Hague or Den Haag? For some reason the Dutch really liked naming stuff after our own little country. New Amsterdam (now New York) after Amsterdam, New Sealand after "Zeeland", The Hague after Den Haag, some parts of Kaapstad were just names of cities, such as Eindhoven... Surprised at the ammount of Dutch people in this comment section. And for the obligatory Dutch meme of preference, this comments section has now been GEKOLONISEERD

[@McHobotheBobo]

My family name has nearly a dozen variants because of non-standardized spelling in late medieval/early modern Scotland

[@FlyingNinjaish]

@@janbosch5951 I'm not 100% sure it was The Hauge - I'm going through my pile of VOC articles to find the right one to make sure - but it was certainly a Dutch city with a short name and few syllables. It might have been Hoorn, but Hoorn was a VOC Chamber City, so people joining the Company there probably would have been processed in that city, so I'd expect slightly less variation in the local city name (but that might be wrong).

[@annaamandarine7258]

Well, you made some good points. I agree, being a peasant in the middle ages doesn't say anything about their intelligence. In my opinion it is much harder to only rely on memory instead of writings. As a book historian, there are some things for me you missed out. ;) Yes, being a peasant doesn't mean you didn't had a chance to learn to read, but I still think, it weren't that many. If you have one or to persons in a community or a household who could read or write (because they were taught in monasteries or town schools), they did the job for everybody else. They read letters, announcements etc. and they also wrote in favor of friends and family. You can also pay someone to do so. And those in higher status, who had to address the common people or read something out to them (like poems, announcements) may have done that in their local language directly, because they had to communicate it in that way. You also mentioned pragmatic literacy: thats a good and very important point. Some scribes, who copied texts, may have been very good copiers, but it's not necessarily for them to know how to read (especially latin) . You can see it in old manuscripts when mistakes are copied over and over again. And some peasants may have known some numbers or had skills to read their bills, but not to read big literature (which had a huge oral tradition). In the end, I think, we would have much more traces of medieval peasant writing if your assumptions were true in that scale. Of course the materials are not that likely to survive, but more of them must have had survived as palimpsests or in medieval buildings etc.). See also: The estimated per capita production of manuscripts from 6th to 15th century, which is mostly a couple of hundreds per 1 million inhabitants. In: Eltjo Buringh u. Jan Luiten van Zanden, Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries, in: The Journal of Economic History 69. 2009, p. 409-445, p. 420.

[@JezzyJango]

“Your mother smells of bear dung.” - Some medieval drunkard wrote on the side of the local tavern at some point probably

[@OcarinaSapphr-]

L o n e l y K n i g h t Your father was a hamster, & yo mama smelled of elderberries! Ah, the days of classy insults, lol.

[@Alaryk111]

@@OcarinaSapphr- I spit in your general direction.

[@OcarinaSapphr-]

@@Alaryk111 Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?!

[@allangibson8494]

Why not - the Romans wrote similar stuff in Pompeii brothels.

[@Tiger89Lilly]

@@allangibson8494 there's a whole web page dedicated to graffiti found in Pompeii and Herculanium. My favourite says something similar to "fair well sweet breast of women I have had my fill. I'm now more interested in men's cocks"

[@edgarbm6407]

9:20 I can relate...I started learning Russian on Duolingo because I wanted to try a language with a different alphabet. It didn't take long, maybe a week or two, before I learned the Russian alphabet phonetically and I could start reading Russian words and writing English phonetically with Russian letters. While reading Russian, even if I didn't know what the word was, I could still pronounce it (more or less) by learning the alphabet phonetically. On a side note, there are a surprisingly large amount of words common to both English and Russian, but its hidden because often they look very different.

[@markguyton2868]

Thanks for giving this information, it really is good to break this trope of medieval times. Also gotta thank you for being so formal with correcting people instead of yelling at them like a lot of the internet likes to do, it's kind of relieving honestly.

[@DarkwaveMistress]

As a librarian, I really, really loved this! The notes made me laugh. Fantastic vid, man!

[@ornu01]

I believe the fact that we have dozens of written languages and dialects that are not Latin should be quite a bit of proof.

[@JustinLaw123]

Superb video! Thank you for diving deeper into the topic. From your laugh about the bark notes I would suppose that your recovery is on the good path. If that is true, keep it up, stay positive and healthy.

[@Yataro79]

Thank you, this is an exciting topic for me. My image of 'the medieval villager' just shifted. Now they seem more like normal people to me. People with their own kind of education, but education nonetheless. I'd like to learn more of that.

[@spartanhawk7637]

Course a lot could. Gotta keep a record of your livestock and labeling tally marks is surprisingly effective at doing just that. Trade was a MAJOR industry at the time and even most Romans were able to read before medieval times. Wasn't as easy to learn, but there were PLENTY of reasons to even back then.

[@LoganKearsley]

One quibble: there was *absolutely* grammar! Just not *standardized* grammar, with standardized literary forms.

[@lilykatmoon4508]

I just watched the first reading video, and let me tell you, it was an eye opener. I’m a retired world history teacher , and in all the textbooks in the many years, it all said most people were completely illiterate. There was absolutely no distinction between the vernacular and Latin. This is blowing my mind, and it’s actually pretty upsetting that textbooks tell this lie. I’m looking forward to this deeper dive.

[@vispian7688]

As a history grad in the medieval and early modern period. Great video nice to see some actual work, however i would argue that the general historiographical consensus is that the general literacy rate of their native language was probably between 10-50%. A huge difference, but it would depend on a variety of factors locally, a key point to follow is the history of broadsidew. The premise of these were cheap "news" articles, by news this could be from songs of battles, stories of monstrous births etc. People would buy these even if they couldnt read and go to a social event, i.e. pub or village hall, and would share with their companions. One person who could read would read it out and teach people songs etc. Even if only one peasant in the whole community could read, it wouldnt matter nearly as much due to the sharing of information through broadsides

[@llamabing5215]

I really enjoyed this vid, the idea of pragmatic, phonetic literacy really resonated with me especially when you said you learn your letters VERY early.

[@rikremmerswaal2756]

Another thing. The most widely produced book in the Netherlands through out the medieval period was a Dutch version of the Bible. Pretty good evidence for a reasonable rate of literacy.

[@KaNoMikoProductions]

That's not good evidence for a reasonable rate of literacy. Literacy could be incredibly low and still have the most widely produced book during that period be a Dutch version of the Bible. Just because something is *the most* widely produced, it doesn't mean that it was actually *widely* produced. Moreover, it's expected to be the most widely produced book, because there were institutional reasons for its existence. Priests needed a Bible to hold mass, and using their own language would be easier to learn and more helpful for the preaching.

[@rikremmerswaal2756]

Taken into account that most of these books were were made to be sold to the public does make it a good point of evidence. These books have mostly been found in private collections, town halls and such.

[@KaNoMikoProductions]

@@rikremmerswaal2756 Who says they were made to be sold to the public, as opposed to being made primarily for the clergy, with the reading public, such as it was, being secondary? Also, being found in town halls is not in favor of your interpretation.

[@Yourmomma568]

sure, if you count post reformation as medieval.

[@ianalexander7082]

Maybe, but the invention of the printing press and wider availability of vernacular reading materials may have very quickly increased literacy rates. If you can't get hold of anything to read there's less incentive to learn to read. It's not brilliant evidence to suggest high literacy rates were high when the printing press was first invented. They were high enough to support an initaiily small (still fairly labour intensive) production, but no doubt increased rapidly thereafter.

[@carniiliar590]

Shad thank you for the Wonderful video! So glad your feeling better

[@trojanette8345]

Great video. Very, very enlightening. 10:16am -- Your note sheet with the 'play' on words is absolutely a scream!! Ironically, that page is something very similar to what was shown to me as a grammar student as part of a dictation exercise. Not only did we have to do the dictation (and hopefully correctly) we also, sometimes had to recite the page out loud as a measure for the teacher to see if, we really understood what she had said and what she had written. If I can speak to some of your viewers and in support of you (Shad) and your efforts. For anyone who was educated in the parochial / Catholic school tradition we actually got some of this information. What has thrown many people off is the fact that even, in parochial schools today they don't teach a lot of this literacy (background) knowledge and information to our nation's young people. Unfortunately / sadly, most teachers teaching schedule doesn't allow or accommodate the teaching of, 'non-essential' material. Thank you for sharing your own knowledge and information with the masses.

[@BrettOPediaTV]

Thanks for sharing!! This backs up what I’ve always argued if this subject ever came up. My honors lit and language classes in high school substantiated these claims, as we read many works in middle english and old english. It sounds crazy! Like Simlish almost haha Glad you’re feeling better after your surgery too!

[@beardedbjorn5520]

8:50 you’re spot on about people spelling things the way they sound. But also depends on accents as well. My grandfathers last name is Timperley, and it was a fairly common name in the 16-17th century around northern England. It is very frustrating to find any documents related to my family history because every darn county and church had their own way of spelling it. There are Timperley, Timperly, Timperlay, Timperlee and Timparlee. There’s probably a few more that I’ve forgotten. So yeah, written English can be a pain sometimes.

[@bigredwolf6]

Bearded Bjorn Easier than German or Chinese

[@DinnerForkTongue]

No wonder the slavs chose the Cyrillic alphabet to standardise their phonetics.

[@bigredwolf6]

Carey Hunt alles klar, you got me there

[@kellynolen498]

I just had a flashback guys so my dad was uhhh not a great educator as to say he just said "just sound it out" which would work if english worked that way but needless to say i didnt finish most english homework at home

[@essence9323]

Speaking of reading, I am a new subscriber to your channel and your videos are wonderful. Have you made a video or list anywhere of your book recommendations or what you've read to become so knowledgeable?

[@wickedcrayon6022]

Thanks for the link to the birch bark letters. I am really looking forward to reading those.

[@TheSonOfTheDragon]

You have no idea how much you've been helping me Shad.

[@adamek0020]

Same source you linked tells about written texts in both latin and cyrylica circulating in the city of Vilnius. Meaning there were people at the time, living in far north-eastern Europe, that were literate - in modern understanding of the word, not just reading - in more than one language. Makes sense if you think about it.

[@Errtuabyss]

Great video. I knew most of this but I have never seen it put together in context like this and it still made me see it in a different light. Especially the part about reading and writing beeing a different skill rings home with me. I live in germany, I read and write a lot in english and speak polish at home. But the latter I only learned from my mum, so I am actually medival peasant level literate at writing, while reading is no problem at all. The thing is understanding what you read and remembering all the rules to write is a very different level of skill. Having a latin proficiency certificate from school and very basic skills in french, a few extremely basic understanding of spanish and italien thanks to latin and a few word in japanese I am probably on the equivalent of what most people today would see as the medieval literate person. Now think about how most people on earth today are only literate at their native language (and not even all that good at it if you look at how people write on the internet..) and have very few basics in maybe one additional language. In the poor regions of the world they don't even have that. This is pretty much what you would expect back then. Another interesting equivalent is your main way of communication today: instant messaging. Most people don't use proper grammar or even emojis or memes. A peasant in the middle ages would use a similar way of communication, it would be the level of literacy they would be capable of. Functional literacy. An interesting aspect of language in medieval times is how wide spread some languages where through class differences. Latin was the language of education, theology and bureaucracy for most christian countries. French was the language of nobility as far as Poland. At the same time there where many different local languages within a single kingdom, some of which evolved into something else, others surviving until today. On a side note on this topic: Warhammer 40k has this build in the lore. Here Latin (or their own version of it: High Gothic) still holds basically the same position as in the middle ages. The official common language of the Imperium of Man is Low Gothic (basically english, because every SciFi universe uses the most common language of the readers as the universal language of the universe), used by basically anybody with some kind of education in the everyday live. At the same time the lower classes are using whatever local language they happen to know. So we have the same hierarchy of languages and the same interesting dynamic of literacy. Most people that are literate know Low Gothic while only the intelligentsia uses High Gothic and the lower classes are barely literate, using their own languages that may have very little similarities with any other language.

[@TeaspoonLicence]

So happy to see you back on your horse Shad, cant wait to watch this vid, in the comfort of my living room with the fire on.

[@bedrockitsinteresting9940]

Shad could you do a video on medieval humor, I’m interested to know what types of jokes people would have made those days.

[@bigredwolf6]

Bedrock, It’s interesting *climbs to the highest ledge in a cave* *writes this is very high*

[@mmyr8ado.360]

@@bigredwolf6 Vikings also did that, but it's in runes and instead of a cave it's in the Hagia Sophia

[@bigredwolf6]

Mmyr8ad O. Ancient trolls, skill level over 9,000

[@Baalaaxa]

Pretty common themes in medieval humor were probably flatulence, excrement, intimate body parts, sexual innuendos, etc. I'm just guessing here.

[@pedroduarte96]

I really love when Shad takes the time to research and present stuff like this. Takes a lot more time and effort thou!

[@FalloutZone]

Just picked up your book Shad! Now I’m ready for the quarantine

[@krazypipe]

Proud of you Shad. Well researched and informative video. Impressive, so the historians are right now deciding peasents could read, and you are sharing it with us. Proud of you.