Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Introduction
- 1 The Inquisition and the Campo de Calatrava in the Sixteenth Century
- 2 Literacy, Education, and Social Mobility
- 3 Justice and the Law
- 4 From Heretic to Presbyter: The Herrador Family, 1540–1660
- 5 Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 6 Opposition to the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 7 Those Who Stayed
- 8 Those Who Returned
- 9 Rewriting History
- 10 Good and Faithful Christians: The Inquisition and Villarrubia in the Seventeenth Century
- 11 Assimilation: Reality or Fiction?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Literacy, Education, and Social Mobility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Introduction
- 1 The Inquisition and the Campo de Calatrava in the Sixteenth Century
- 2 Literacy, Education, and Social Mobility
- 3 Justice and the Law
- 4 From Heretic to Presbyter: The Herrador Family, 1540–1660
- 5 Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 6 Opposition to the Expulsion of the Moriscos
- 7 Those Who Stayed
- 8 Those Who Returned
- 9 Rewriting History
- 10 Good and Faithful Christians: The Inquisition and Villarrubia in the Seventeenth Century
- 11 Assimilation: Reality or Fiction?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The issue of literacy in early modern Europe is complex. Even when we have defined what we mean by ‘literacy’, we still have to devise ways to measure it. It is important not to confuse current understandings of literacy with those operative in the early modern period. As Jacqueline Pearson has observed of women (although what she says holds good for men as well):
Literacy has traditionally been tested by the ability to write one's name: but in this period writing was taught separately from, and at a later stage than, reading, so that even the person unable to write her own name might have reasonably fluent reading skills. Moreover, even by 1700 an oral culture had not been entirely replaced by a print culture, and women participated fully in this oral culture as the special guardians of old tales, proverbs, songs, poems and ballads. ‘Passive reading’ also presented opportunities even to the functionally illiterate in a society where reading aloud was still common entertainment from the great house down to the village.
The order in which the skills were taught is thus important, as is the persistence of an oral culture throughout this period. One could be functionally literate in early modern Europe without being able to read or write, just as today many can read and write (just) but are barely literate in any real or worthwhile sense of the word.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern SpainThe Moriscos of the Campo de Calatrava, pp. 37 - 64Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014