What percentage of people could read in medieval times?

Answer 1

I would guess at a literacy rate of 50% in the Byzantine Empire; a rate starting at well below 10% among the Germanic tribes and the people they conquered during the Age of Migrations, with the literacy rate rising to perhaps 25% at the end of the Middle Ages in Western Europe; and a rate remaining very low in the remainder of Eastern Europe.

We have no records of what the levels of literacy were, and it is really difficult to try to piece information about literacy together in a way that would say with any certainty what the rate of literacy was. Nevertheless, we can make some observations that point toward educated guesses.

The East Roman Empire opened a system for primary education in the year 425, the same year the University of Constantinople was opened. The purpose of this system was to see that the soldiers were literate, but the system is said to have been open to both boys and girls, and it operated at the level of the village. That being the case, it is possible that the majority of people, or numerically more than 50%, were literate, though we cannot know for sure. This system operated for the entire Middle Ages until the Byzantine Empire was destroyed in 1453.

We have anecdotal evidence of very low literacy rates in Western Europe, such as a famous letter from a Muslim diplomat at Charlemagne's court in which he describes the Frankish nobles as people experimenting at the art of signing their names. While this is viewed as a simple fact by some people, it should not be taken at face value.

We do know that the Visigoths had opened their first schools hundreds of years before the time of Charlemagne, as had the Anglo Saxons. We know that there was at least one school in Wales that was opened by a Roman Emperor that remained open during the entire Middle Ages, only to be closed by Henry VIII. The list of schools remaining from the period before 1066 shows seventeen of them: eleven in Britain, four in Germany, and one each in Denmark and Iceland (there is a link to this list below). A little math tells us that if we guess the "life expectancy" of a school was 100 years at the time it was founded, any given school from this period had no more than one chance in a thousand of surviving, and so there must have been many thousands of them at the time for this number to have survived. My guess is that in the Early Middle Ages, something over 10% of the people in Western Europe were literate, and possibly many more.

With the increase in the size and wealth of the middle class associated with the rise of towns and cities, the rate of literacy could only have grown. The introduction of Arabic numerals at the turn of the 13th century created a demand for schools so merchants could learn to use them, and the result was the introduction of what are called abacus schools. These schools educated both boys and girls in the new arithmetic, but also in reading and writing in the vernacular. The result was that some large percentage of middle class people, both men and women, were literate during the High Middle Ages.

It is interesting to note that most of the secular literature of the Middle Ages was written in vernacular languages, indicating both the author and the expected reader would have been literate in that language.

Answer 2

My guess is about 30% to 40% as an average level of literacy for the Middle Ages in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire. I know others often give lower figures, but I have heard higher.

The percentage of literacy in the Middle Ages depended on time and place. In the Byzantine Empire, there was a system of primary education that operated at the village level and taught both boys and girls. It was started in 425 AD, the same year as the founding of the University of Constantinople, and it continued to operate until 1453. It is possible, or even probable, that the majority of the people in the Byzantine Empire could read at most times in history.

Regardless of where they were, in Europe or elsewhere, Jews and Muslims were very likely to be able to read. They constituted an important part of the population in parts of Europe, especially Spain, which was controlled by Muslims at one time, and had important Jewish and Muslim presence from 711 AD to the end of the Middle Ages.

In the West, what percentage of the population was educated is debatable. There were schools open when the Middle Ages began, and there is clear history that they continued to operate for quite a long time. One School in Wales was opened by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, who died in 395 AD, before the Middle Ages started, and was only closed by King Henry VIII, long after the Middle Ages ended (Cor Tewdws, or Theodosius' College). Visigoths opened schools in the 6th century, and the Viking government of the Danelaw had one state supported school that remains open to this day (Beverley Grammar School).

There is a famous letter from a Muslim emissary at the court of Charlemagne in which he says the Frankish nobility was busily learning the art of signing their own signatures. I think it is probably dangerous to consider this as a literal fact, rather than a disparaging exaggeration. Charlemagne was a great supporter of education, who opened schools and set a goal of seeing that all free people could get educated. Alfred the Great did the same.

There was a large number of priests, monks, and nuns, and these people were likely to be literate. Many teachers were not clergy, as we know from such examples as Peter Abelard.

The advantages of literacy for merchants are so great that it is likely that many were literate, and in fact there were schools called abacus schools opening from the middle of the 13th century for the purpose of teaching the children of merchants the arts of using Arabic numerals, reading and writing in the vernacular, and other things; these taught both boys and girls.

The advantages of soldiers being literate are obvious, and were the reason why the Byzantines had their school system.

The legal system was run by literate people, once the advantages of written law became obvious to the Germanic peoples, whose judges had prided themselves in having the law memorized (but sometimes disagreed over what it was).

Physicians had to read. Architects and engineers had to read. There were good reasons for stonemasons and carpenters to be able to read the instructions of the architects and engineers. The steward on a manor had to read and write to do a proper job, and it was probably of benefit if the reeve did, even if he was a serf.

A king who depended on others to heavily was unwise, as Childeric III found out to his dismay, but others doubtless knew. And the nobility had good reasons, aside from legal and military, to read and write; in fact books became fashionable to have and read. There were a number of authors who wrote secular material in vernacular languages, as we can see in the case of Christine de Pizan, who supported her family by writing poems on a commission basis. Many of her poems were written for people who wished to used them to court the people they admired.

One woman, Héloïse d'Argenteuil, who was famous for her scholarship, was most probably not of the nobility; she became a nun, but that was not the intention of her education. There were even people who were not well off and had little particularly reason to read or write who did so nevertheless, Margery Kempe being an example; she wrote the earliest known autobiography in the English language.

Legal systems had both secular and ecclesiastical courts, the later being for clergy. The ecclesiastical courts were more lenient than the secular, and in some times and placers, the clergy were defined for legal purposes as anyone who could read the 51st Psalm, so even felons had reason to want to learn to read.

By the time you add these people together, you get a substantial part of the population.

While I have seen figures as low as 10% as an average literacy level for the Middle Ages, I find it hard to believe, especially because this would have to mean that at most times, a large part of the clergy would have had to have been illiterate. My bet is that the literacy level was above 50% in the Byzantine Empire and possibly in Muslim Spain as well. I am guessing it was somewhat lower, perhaps 25% to 35%, in much of Western Europe, depending on the conditions of the time, with the low level dropping a bit in the worst times.

In judging the level of literacy of the Middle Ages, we must remember that written materials have to be maintained, and at that time, this meant copying them by hand. Private medieval materials would have been very unlikely to be considered important enough to copy before the 19th century, so nearly all would have been lost. We are judging in a situation where there is an absence of information, but that is what we should expect, and not an indication that the information, private writings, did not exist at the time.

There is a link below to a related question on schools, and it has source links for Cor Tewdws, the Byzantine school system, and others. A second link is to a question whose answer discusses some of the women mentioned above, with source links.

Answer 3

Globally you would expect to see some 90% of people of the time were unable to read or even write their names.