Literacy in the Middle Ages: A Luxury Skill
Books in the modern era are common thanks to modern technology enabling the cheap printing and publishing of printed materials. Additionally, literacy rates are very high compared to previous generations. However, this was not the case in the Middle Ages; very few people were literate. As an aside, one was only considered literate in this period if one knew how to read and write Latin, the language of the Church and intelligentsia. Because the Church was an international institution, Latin facilitated communication across many regions and ethnicities. Intellectual communities in the medieval period were usually tied to the Church; universities were often affiliated in some way. Very few people had the time and resources to invest in a formal education unless they formally joined the Church (as a priest, a monk, etc.). Literacy was thus something of a luxury and did not apply to the ability to read and write in one’s own, vernacular language (English, French, German, etc.). Personally, I think this skill was much more common in the Middle Ages than we give medieval people credit for—at least at a basic level. Craftsmen, for example, likely needed to be able to keep some sort of track of their clientele. Nonetheless, it still would have been very basic and limited in scope (just enough to be able to write some sort of ledger). Furthermore, it would not have been a necessary skill for the vast majority of people, who worked the land as farmers.
With that being said, reading and writing comprised a luxury skillset of which few people had possession. Being able to read and write Latin was even rarer still. Books of hours were Latin texts that few people would have been objects for which few people had use. That is strike one for checking if an object was a luxury or common commodity. The second strike is that books of hours were, well, books! It was only from the invention of the Gutenberg press in ca. 1450 that books could be mass produced. Even then, each page had to be manually put together and then individually printed en masse by printers. Paper, made of scrap pieces of cloth until replaced with wood pulp in the modern era, was also something of a luxury. Mass produced printing made books more affordable than before but they remained luxuries until, again, the modern era.
What Is Parchment Paper? How Animal Hides Became Pages
But when we talk about medieval illuminated manuscripts, we’re not talking about early printed books: we’re talking about ones that were handwritten on parchment paper. These were automatically fabulously expensive. To begin with, one needed enough parchment paper to assemble into a folio. What is parchment paper, ProfessorMom? It’s animal skin refined by a tanner! A tanner did not just make leather but also parchment paper. He’d soak the hide in a lye solution to loosen up the fur/hair and other gunk (I’m not an anatomist, okay?) for about a week. Then he’d remove the hide from the solution and scrape off the basic gunk before stretching it on a palate. He’d then use a different type of scraper to further refine the hide. He’d then let it dry; the collagen in the skin made it harden into a papery consistency. It is much less pliable than modern paper, however. I’m sure I’ve grossed you out. Guess what else? You can tell which side of the parchment was the side of the hide where hair grew versus the side that was connected to fat and muscle.
The quality of the parchment did not just depend on the skill of the tanner but also the type of animal that was used. The most refined parchment, vellum, was made from goatskin; the rougher, lower quality parchment was made from cattle (animals with tougher skin vs. delicate skin). Animals would not just be slaughtered for their hides; the hide was the byproduct of the slaughter. Livestock was a precious commodity in the medieval period and no part could go to waste. Tanning was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, a rather smelly and dirty trade. As such, tanners plied their trade on the edges of town just inside or outside the walls. Even though most medieval folks did not bathe regularly, it was believed that diseases spread by smells. And so it was considered more hygienic to place dirty trades farther away from the centres of towns.
What Does “Illuminated” Mean?
Since so much work went into making parchment, it was not a cheap material (at least not for the average person). A book was also not written on a single piece of parchment but an assembly of them. A book also required skill to assemble and bind into a proper folio of pages. One then needed to actually write the damned thing. The only people who knew how to write books were those people with formal educations who knew how to read and write Latin. And so we find ourselves back where we started: books were a commodity to which few people had access either in their creation or consumption. Because they were already specialty items, they were usually decorated as richly as one could afford. Although I don’t generally encourage drawing modern parallels when analyzing the past, I do think that a good comparison is the purchase of luxury cars. People who are all ready to spend an arm and a leg on a fancy vehicle usually do not cheap out on the bells and whistles: they spring for the handstitched leather seats, the seat warmers and massagers, etc. In the case of illuminated manuscripts, not only could they be gilded, but also painted with miniatures; the pigments used for painting could vary in terms of quality. Therefore, books did not just require the expertise of a scribe, but painters who specialized in miniature illumination. They also required a number of different materials that were expensive to acquire and prepare (lapis lazuli, for example, had to be ground by hand in order to make the brilliant blue pigment that we see in surviving examples). Books were already luxuries few could afford without the decoration; illuminating them made them even more exclusive.
And so, when we look at examples of medieval books, we have to have this knowledge in mind in order to understand their basic parameters. I look forward to discussing examples with you while having this knowledge in mind.
Featured Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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