Readers are Leaders



Photo: Me with a handwritten manuscript
transcribed by clergymen in the Middle Ages

 "What are you reading?"  The brilliant Berlin philologist Wilamowitz-Moellendorff would ask this of his students upon first introductions and other visits. According to Gilbert Highet, the lesson to be learned from the question is that “a scholar’s duty is to keep reading, reading, reading.”

Literate populations didn’t reach the majority until the 1870s. This was very surprising to me. I expected it to be much sooner than that. I would have thought literacy began to reach the majority of populations shortly after the invention of paper was brought to and reproduced in Europe after the 15^th century. Second, I would have expected it to be during the Renaissance when literature and the arts were rising from potent seeds in Italy and being sown across Europe. Lastly, I would expect literacy and education to be common by the time of the Enlightenment of the 18^th century.

Having given it more thought, let us look at what we already know. During the Imperial Age of Rome (27BC-476AD), only elite nobles were educated. After Rome fell and we entered the Dark Ages, saeculum obscurum, (5^th century to 15^th century) education became a privilege of the clergy. The Church essentially held a monopoly on education throughout the Middle Ages until the Renaissance of the late 15^th – 17^th centuries and was finally overcome by the Enlightenment in the 18^th century.

During the Age of Enlightenment, there was a public shift from religion to reason. Religion was considered to be merely superstition a way for the church to manipulate and abuse both people and government. The atrocities carried out in the name of God and the church would no longer be tolerated by the people. During this time, the western world was blessed with individual thinkers such as philosophers JJ Rousseau and John Locke, physicist Isaac Newton, statesmen Benjamin Franklin and Montesquieu, and other great minds of the time. This grudge against religion also led to the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence.



Photo: Me with a handwritten letter
from the Pope in 1250s AD

 
Did the Enlightenment break the Church as water splits the rock in winter? The church had already fallen far from its peak of power during the Middle Ages. Long before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church, the Great Schism had struck a mighty blow splitting the papacy between East and West. As time progressed, cracks in both doctrine and parishioners grew like fissures rent open from the colossal pressure of tectonic plates. Furthermore, the clergy was crippled by the Black Death. The Plague killed 1 out of 2 people in most major European cities. However, it killed 4 out of 5 people in the clergy. How is it the plague seemed to seek out to devastate the church? Some people thought it was God’s vengeance seeking those responsible for the Holy Wars. In fact, it was probably because priests were present for last rites to the dying and ill. They also were in close proximity to perform funeral ceremonies for the recently deceased. These activities most likely increased their chance of catching the Plague. It took the church and the rest of Europe around 150 years to regain healthy populations. During this time, the church had ongoing quarrels with several medieval kings of the European provinces.

The church, weakened by various means, finally lost its position of nearly unlimited power over the people. In the Age of Enlightenment, the people fought back hard. They took back education from the church and put it in the hands of the State. Within one hundred years, it became a right to the layman and his progeny. It has remained as such in all developed civilizations since. Blessed are the ones who lay no restriction on education. Blessed are those who share from their hearts with no requirement of class, creed, or race, and seek students everywhere their feet fall. Blessed at the teachers.

Remember, the world was not always this way.

Please be thankful that you can read this.

Now go share a book with someone.

Readers are Leaders!