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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 8992199" data-attributes="member: 10738">I think you are missing the point.EDIT: Okay, I'll elaborate; perhaps my one-sentence comment in the prior email is not enough to clarify the real point. So maybe a reframe: there was a point when (and I am sure you would agree) that most people suffered from predominant illiteracy and only certain groups, of which monks tended to be one such group, were taught to read and write and transcribe. In these periods, that skill was critical and necessary, and those who could provide for it -- including and often quite specifically monks and other clergy-- were in many ways the only means by which most books survived and were copied. But over time literacy improved, and chiefly because the ability to transcribe books eventually moved from the labor of a single individual to a block printing method, which subsequently opened up a world of print media and improved literacy over time. Those for whom this task was an individual's hard labor no longer served the same critical role as a result, as technology had outstripped the need to manually copy books. However, it did not eliminate the need for those specialists, but allowed them to be repurposed.IANAH so please correct me if I am wrong. And I am sure I am, as I am only more generally familiar with monks in any historical sense and frankly don't want to suggest that I think all monks everywhere learned to read, write and make an effort at transcription. I am sure this is a broad generality. Maybe monks never did this and it was the pervue of other religious functionaries. I will defer to those more familiar with the groups you list. Indeed, you can likely educate me on this matter, if it sounds like my general understanding is off track.Anyway, that is what I got out of the OP's original list. YMMV.</blockquote>

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