Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Chris Vail's avatar

Geoffrey Chaucer may have been murdered in 1400 by a paramilitary death squad. The possible motive would have been to stop him from publishing literature in the vernacular. When books were written in Latin, the Catholic Church could rest easy that most of the population couldn't read them, and thus rely upon the Church for interpretation. Books in the vernacular encouraged literacy. See Terry Jones, et al., Who Murdered Chaucer?

More generally, China had the necessary technology to print books for 1,000 years, but didn't do that because the Chinese leadership saw no benefit to widespread literacy. Muslim societies picked up the same technology from the Chinese, and likewise didn't print books for the same reason, ironically given their emphasis on the Quran. Why did Europe develop printing as soon as they picked up the technology? Due to the Atlantic current, Europe gets heavy rainfall, leading to increased grain production, leading to increased populations. So the Black Death had a bigger impact in Europe than elsewhere. Europeans were scrambling to find ways to replace the suddenly missing labor, and widespread literacy was part of their solutions.

Expand full comment
1 more comment...

No posts