Literacy in the Roman Empire

[Razgovory]

It was all right, as an intentional groaner.  Raz, you need to get off Yi's case.

I'm not really on Yi's case lately.  Though it may seem that way.  Yi is so nebulous on things I have to bark questions to pin down what exactly he's saying.  It may be simply because our assumptions are just so far from one another it's difficult to understand one another.

[Valmy]

Feudal accounting was done via notches on sticks or somesuch (called tally sticks, hence the modern term "to tally"). No need to be literate for that.

History of England Podcast?

Man I love that podcast.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not really on Yi's case lately.  Though it may seem that way.  Yi is so nebulous on things I have to bark questions to pin down what exactly he's saying.  It may be simply because our assumptions are just so far from one another it's difficult to understand one another.

You don't bark questions at me pin me down on a nebulous statement, you try to catch me out in an inconsistency.  Which is a fine thing to do, except that often you're gimmicky on the inconsistency.

[Tonitrus]

Your joke is unfunny.

Depends on what they're doing with that seal.

[Razgovory]

I'm not really on Yi's case lately.  Though it may seem that way.  Yi is so nebulous on things I have to bark questions to pin down what exactly he's saying.  It may be simply because our assumptions are just so far from one another it's difficult to understand one another.

You don't bark questions at me pin me down on a nebulous statement, you try to catch me out in an inconsistency.  Which is a fine thing to do, except that often you're gimmicky on the inconsistency.

Your use of the Yicratic method makes hard to know exactly what you are arguing.  I do respect that to a point, but I've learned not to unveil a counterargument until I get you to commit.

[Malthus]

You guys are forgetting that the main use of literacy aside from religion is to do accounting, basically so that nobles can extract their share from the peasants, higer nobles from lower, and the king from everyone; and that this task is more complex and not simpler in cash-poor economies.

Hense such Medieval documents as the "Domesday Book" - the whole point of which was to make sure William the Bastard got what he was owed.

Illiterate nobles there may have been, but that put them at the mercy of their clerks, a major disadvantage.

The flaw in this argument is that literacy for accounting purposes is relatively simple; in no way does it rule out functional illiteracy.  There's the (likely, IMO) possibility that nobles were taught what they needed to know for accountancy, but still needed an advisor to read off letters from other nobles, likely prepared by a similar advisor.  The whole concept of the wax seal would suggest this- the seals functioned as a signature; given literacy and the uniqueness of handwriting, seals would have been unnecessary and redundant.

As I said, it ain't so simple when you are working with a buch of variables - which is one of the reasons literacy developed in the first place.

The Sumerians did their accounting by making little counters out of clay to represent what was owed - little cows and pigs, that sort of thing. They soon realized it was easier to simply draw a picture of cows or pigs, and viola! Ideograms.

[Malthus]

You guys are forgetting that the main use of literacy aside from religion is to do accounting, basically so that nobles can extract their share from the peasants, higer nobles from lower, and the king from everyone; and that this task is more complex and not simpler in cash-poor economies.

Hense such Medieval documents as the "Domesday Book" - the whole point of which was to make sure William the Bastard got what he was owed.

Illiterate nobles there may have been, but that put them at the mercy of their clerks, a major disadvantage.

The flaw in this argument is that literacy for accounting purposes is relatively simple; in no way does it rule out functional illiteracy.  There's the (likely, IMO) possibility that nobles were taught what they needed to know for accountancy, but still needed an advisor to read off letters from other nobles, likely prepared by a similar advisor.  The whole concept of the wax seal would suggest this- the seals functioned as a signature; given literacy and the uniqueness of handwriting, seals would have been unnecessary and redundant.

Feudal accounting was done via notches on sticks or somesuch (called tally sticks, hence the modern term "to tally"). No need to be literate for that.

Want to guess the date on which England ceased to use tally sticks?

Okay, I'll tell you: it was 1826.

The Bank of England, being a sensible
and conservative institution naturally
suspicious of new technologies, continued
to use wooden tally sticks until
1826: some 500 years after the invention
of double-entry bookkeeping and
400 years after Johann Gutenburg's
invention of printing. The tally sticks
were then taken out of circulation and
stored in the Houses of Parliament until
1834, when the authorities decided
that the tallies were no longer required
and that they should be burned. As it
happened, they were burned rather
too enthusiastically and in the resulting
conflagration the Houses of Parliament
were razed to the ground

Cite: http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/tally%20stick%20article.pdf

Presumably, you are not going to tell me that the use of tally sticks of necessity correlates with illiteracy! 

No doubt the use of sticks such as this initially gained popularity as a simple device for illiterates, but it was, just as obviously, used as a storage device by people who were clearly literate-- as were wax seals and the like appended to documents.

In short, the use of such devices is worthless for determining how literate people were, as they were very obviously used by quite literate people.

Common sense ought to tell you that it is one thing to make a scratched mark on a stick to reord a simple quantity list, and quite another to organize a great mass of such sticks to keep track of the income from a whole manorial estate, province or kingdom. Any illiterate peasant can keep track of how many sheep he has with a tally stick, but the royal government of England - though it used tall sticks into modern times - required literacy to function, which is why such very early monarchs as Alfred the Great put such emphasis on his nobles being literate.

Now, there were no doubt illiterate nobles, but this was a big disadvantage for them, as it enabled them to be easily cheated by their clerks.