gregorian

That attitude towards Easterners goes back to Roman times.
The troops in Gaul living in frozen backwaters, the ones in the East living comfy and lazy.

BrowniesRule

Here for anyone who reads french, this is a ph.d thesis from a teacher I've had in school. It's precisely about this whole question that we have been talking about.
http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/croisade...rc_carrier.pdf

MonomachmosIV

The fact that Byzantium remained a literate society ruled by Literate emperors and with a vast body of literate clergy while the Franks were ruled by a martial nobility with their roots in Dark Age nomads who placed a high value on oral tradition should be a pretty big clue to the differences in literacy ability. The vast differences in reading material available (library of Alexandria anyone?) and the fact that the Constantinople Patriarchate had no qualms about allowing the flock to read the Bible and listen to the liturgy in their native language (Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian) should also be a clue to the literacy of the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire as compared to the Frankish world. I can't remember the source off-hand, but I recall reading that 12th Century Byzantium had a literacy rate greater than 18th century France.

Lars Brownworth quotes it in his podcast/blog actually:

The average literacy rate for Byzantium probably averaged around 30%- which may not seem particularly high by contemporary standards, but for comparison’s sake is higher than 18th century France. Of course there were the inevitable ups and downs- the 7th and 8th centuries are known as the ‘Byzantine dark ages’ where the literacy rate probably plunged well below 30%- but on the whole imperial subjects were better educated than their western brethren.

Finding History » Byzantine education

DreamWeaver

literacy rates and literacy rates of the elites, about who history is recorded, matters to be considered.

Kirialax

First off, Lars Brownworth is not an academic historian of Byzantium. While he has some very good stuff, a lot of it comes from J.J. Norwich's three volume Byzantium series, which is pretty atrocious. For example, a lot of his material in his podcast on Byzantium and the crusades is excellent, while other aspects reflect a complete unfamiliarity with contemporary scholarship (like this article: http://larsbrownworth.com/blog/2012/...or-iconoclasm/)While he doesn't cite any literature on the link you provided, I suspect I know his source, Angeliki A. Laiou's The Byzantine Economy, p. 19-20, because that is the figure she has and she makes the 18th c. France connection. There are two problems with Laiou's figure, and the first is that (as she admits) it is at best speculation, as we just do not have much surviving documentary evidence from Byzantium with which we could get a better idea on how people beyond Constantinople lived. The second problem is that Brownworth isn't quoting the whole thing - she says that the reason the figure is so high is because of a large number of provincial men who have functional literacy. These men aren't reading Plato or the New Testament; they know the couple hundred words it takes to do their taxes.

MonomachmosIV

That's fair enough, but now can you provide information on the functional literacy of the Franks( nobles and commoners)? My guess is that the sheer amount of Byzantines who joined the monastic way of life alone easily puts their literacy rate far ahead of Western Europe. And remember, reading your taxes is still reading... a couple of hundred words in your native tongue is still astounding to a French peasant who has never even seen their native tongue transcribed. (or it hasn't been transcribed yet)

DreamWeaver

Comparative rates as opposed to overall numbers

Chrysoloras

Liutprand of Cremona's report to his King (Otto IIRC) is very illuminating for the attitude of 10th century Westerners towards the Roman Greeks.



As to the other parts of the discussion thus far until the 12th century and the destruction wrought by the Fourth Crusade the Romans had a higher level of literacy than Westerners. What Kirialax said about education being confined to Constantinople is wrong.

Britannica Education artcile

Quote:

Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the empire’s existence, not only in towns but occasionally in the countryside as well. Literacy was therefore much more widespread than in western Europe, at least until the 12th century. Secondary education was confined to the larger cities. Pupils desiring higher education almost always had to go to Constantinople, which became the cultural centre of the empire after the loss to the Muslim Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the 7th century. Monasteries sometimes had schools in which young novices were educated, but they did not teach lay pupils. Girls did not normally attend schools, but the daughters of the upper classes were often educated by private tutors. Many women were literate, and some—such as the hymnographer Kasia (9th century) and the historian-princess Anna Comnena (1083–c. 1153)—were recognized as writers of distinction.

Yaunâ

The Byzantines were viewed as effiminate because of their war tactics (western warriors fought more individually), their diplomacy, and their view towards the war, which should be avoided by any means.

Also secular education was separated from religious education in Byzantium.

Kirialax

Of course one could get basic education outside of Constantinople. However, we do not see aristocrats sending their children anywhere other than Constantinople in a brief period. The exception is late eleventh and early twelfth-century Thessalonika, where pupils were occasionally sent from the schools in Constantinople to Eustathios there. Our only source for this is Eustathios' own letters (Opusc. 66.26-27), so a smug realization of that is also possible. Yet in the same period both Niketas and Michael Choniates were sent to Constantinople from Khonai for their education, and not somewhere else. When sent to be bishop in Athens, Michael lamented about what a bunch of uneducated hillbillies he was surrounded by. The survival of the lead seals suggests a literacy amongst the lower administration in the provinces, who are less likely to have come from Constantinople, but yet we see the Constantinopolitan aristocracy mock anyone not educated in Constantinople to their standards. While one could be educated in the provinces, this seems to be a much more basic education than what one would receive in the capital. Kazhdan and Epstein (Change in Byzantine Culture, p. 121) would have no reason to remark that Constantinople lost some of its supremacy in education in the eleventh-century as the urban revival took over if Constantinople had not been supreme up to that point.