Editing Literacy (section)

===Antiquity===
Until recently, it was thought that the majority of people were illiterate in the classical world,{{efn|See for example: Harris, 1991.{{refn|{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=William V. |title=Ancient literacy |year=1991 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-03381-8 |location=Cambridge, MA}}}}}} though recent work challenges this perception.{{undue|date=May 2024}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wright |first=Brian J. |year=2015 |title=Ancient Literacy in New Testament Research: Incorporating a Few More Lines of Enquiry |url=https://www.academia.edu/13211795 |journal=Trinity Journal |volume=36 |pages=161–189}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life |publisher=De Gruyter |year=2018 |isbn=978-3-110-59188-0 |editor-last=Kolb |editor-first=Anne |location=Boston}}</ref> Anthony DiRenzo asserts that [[Culture of ancient Rome|Roman society]] was "a civilization based on the book and the register" and that "no one, either free or slave, could afford to be illiterate".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Di Renzo |first=Anthony |year=2000 |title=His master's voice: Tiro and the rise of the roman secretarial class |url=http://faculty.ithaca.edu/direnzo/docs/scholarship/mastersvoice.pdf |journal=Journal of Technical Writing and Communication |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=155–168 |doi=10.2190/b4yd-5fp7-1w8d-v3uc |s2cid=153369618}}</ref> Similarly, Dupont points out, "The written word was all around them, in both public and private life: laws, calendars, regulations at shrines, and funeral epitaphs were engraved in stone or bronze. The Republic amassed huge archives of reports on every aspect of public life."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Dupont |first1=Florence |title=Daily life in ancient Rome |last2=Dupont |first2=Florence |year=1997 |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=978-0-631-19395-1 |edition=Repr. |location=Oxford |pages=223}}</ref> The imperial civilian administration produced masses of documentation used in judicial, fiscal, and administrative matters, as did the municipalities. The army kept extensive records relating to supply and duty rosters and submitted reports. Merchants, shippers, and landowners (and their personal staffs), especially of the larger enterprises, must have been literate.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}}

In the late fourth century, the [[Desert Father]] [[Pachomius]] would expect the literacy of a candidate for admission to his monasteries:{{efn|[[Pachomius]], Rule 139.}}
<blockquote>They shall give him twenty Psalms or two of the Apostles' epistles or some other part of Scripture. And if he is illiterate he shall go at the first, third and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand before him and learn very studiously and with all gratitude. The fundamentals of a syllable, the verbs and nouns shall all be written for him and even if he does not want to he shall be compelled to read.</blockquote>

During the 4th and 5th centuries, the Church made efforts to ensure a better clergy, especially the bishops, who were expected to have a classical education—the hallmark of a socially acceptable person in higher society.{{Citation needed|date=June 2020}} Even after the remnants of the [[Western Roman Empire]] fell in the 470s, literacy continued to be a distinguishing mark of the elite, as communication skills were still important in political and church life (bishops were largely drawn from the senatorial class) in a new cultural synthesis that made "Christianity the Roman religion".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elsner |first=Jaś |title=Imperial Rome and Christian triumph: the art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450 |year=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-192-84201-5 |pages=141}}</ref> However, these skills were less needed in the absence of a large imperial administrative apparatus whose middle and top echelons were dominated by the elite.{{efn|This connection is pursued in [[Alan K. Bowman]] and [[Greg Woolf]], eds., ''Literacy and Power in the Ancient World'', (Cambridge) 1994.}} Even so, in pre-modern times, it is unlikely that literacy was found in more than about 30–40% of the population. During the [[Dark Ages (historiography)|Dark Ages]], the highest percentage of literacy was found among the clergy and monks, as they made up much of the staff needed to administer the states of western Europe.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}}

An abundance of graffiti written in the [[Nabataean script]] dating back to the beginning of the first millennium CE has been taken to imply a relatively high degree of literacy among the general population in the ancient Arabic-speaking world.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Macdonald |first=M. C. A. |date=2010 |title=Ancient Arabia and the written word |journal=Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies |volume=40 |pages=8–9 |jstor=41224041}}</ref>