Schooling and literacy

As will be illustrated in greater detail later, almost all elements of form and content that constitute the individual medieval text have a certain indefiniteness or openness that do not appear in this fashion in modern times (Milroy 1992). This is clearly linked to the lack of linguistic standards in the Middle Ages, which can fundamentally only be mediated if the vast number of those involved in the communication process have access to schooling and a reading culture. Generally, it must be pointed out that the great majority of medieval laymen did not have any opportunity to educate themselves in reading and writing. Their productive share in literary culture is therefore infinitesimally small. Even today it is not easy to estimate the number of those in the Middle Ages who were able to read or write. However, the number probably may not have exceeded more than 1% of the population. The medieval illiteratus, found among the higher nobility as well as among country folk, can, then, in no way be compared with the illiterates of today (McKitterick 1990; Clanchy 1993). Wherever education was reserved for the few, and indeed only desired by a few, and where a book was still a precious rarity because of the conditions of its production, knowledge of a language could only be acquired by listening and by approximate imitation, thus immensely increasing the importance of memory (Carruthers 1990). Schooling was reserved for the younger generation of the monastic clergy and was only later offered to a certain extent to the urban middle class in the late Middle Ages. But as long as this was possible only by means of handwritten books or manuscripts, the learning process itself turned out to be a procedure subject to immense obstacles, as will be shown later.

Especially important in this connection is the fact that there are no clues to whether instruction in the vernacular was given in medieval schools, whatever type of schools they might have been. The first primers of standard English usage are known to us only from the early modern period (Hughes 1988: 92-124). Beyond that there are hardly any indications of any standardization of English in the Middle Ages. It seems that some type of linguistic norm had developed at some stage in the late West Saxon court of Winchester (Hofstetter 1987), which then, however, declined in the Middle English era since the Middle English of this period, due to political conditions, split once again into different non-standardized variants and sub-variants. In view of this, it is not surprising that the vernacular, acquired without recourse to written texts and teachers, possessed a great degree of openness and alternatives inconceivable today. Surprisingly, the same is moreover true of Latin, a type of lingua franca for those who could read and/or write. To be sure, there were popular primers, especially those of Donatus and Priscianus, but the Latin of the Middle Ages, depending on the nation, country or region, the situations and the time in which it was used, is just as multi-faceted, manifold and open to linguistic possibilities as the native or vernacular languages (Langosch 1988; Hunt 1991).