View source for Talk:Medieval religion

==Oh Please==
From the stub '''It is relevant to note, that the vast majority of Roman Catholics were illiterate and therefore recognised their religion through the medium of Catholic clergy, and it is this ignorance of the Bible that seperates Catholics and Protestants to the present day.'''

While it may be true that most Roman Catholics were illiterate, (there is no cite for that, but anyway) perhaps the reason for that was the serfdom didn't need to know how to read given that most of their time was taken up serving their feudal lords and making sure they had enough to eat themselves and try to stay warm. Also, during this time books of any sort were very expensive as they had to be either hand copied or made on presses that had non-movable type (so that only a few hundred copies could be made before a new plate was made). Only in the fifteen century, ''after'' Gutenberg invented movable type, did publishing costs plummet. Hence a deluge of Bibles hit the market and people of modest means could afford to own one, (even then, it still it took a couple of generations until the populous was literate enough that demand for written materials made publishing a worthwhile occupation for the "middle class".)
Also...It was only after books were cheap enough that mandatory public education started in earnest. [[User_talk:U2| U2]] 12:03, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

:I have rewritten the section to avoid the needless inflammatory nature, but please add whatever information you believe is noteworthy.  We could always use improvement. ;-) Thanks [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 12:19, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

I'm new to the whole wiki thing but a couple of comments...... wouldn't it be more accurate to refer to Roman Catholicism as being the predominant religion of '''Western''' Medieval Europe? I suspect the people of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire would have been somewhat upset at being called '''Roman''' Catholics, particularly after the schism, even though they did consider themselves Romans and the heirs to the classical Roman Empire.

Second comment.....it appears that, in the UK at least, there is a general move amongst historians to drop the word "Medieval" since it's considered to be imprecise and inaccurate and anyway, and no two historians seem to be able to agree when it actually was!

Betsy

Sorry about that .....only just sorted out how to sign my name [[User:BetsyNewson|BetsyNewson]] 12:00, 9 August 2008 (EDT)