Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

Yet the Church had more to gain from scholarship than simply passing on the Good News. Right from the start of the Middle Ages, religious institutions were major landowners. This meant they had practical needs in worldly fields like land conveyancing and administration. Popes had taxes to collect and kings and emperors with whom to argue by long-distance post. Bishops had dioceses full of priests with whom they needed to communicate the latest matters of doctrinal or behavioral reform. Monasteries had obligations to their benefactors past and present, and needed to keep track of whose soul they were meant to be praying for on any given day. (They also had choirs, which needed young boys who could read or understand music well enough to sing the treble parts in their daily offices and masses.) Bureaucracy never ended. So the Church always needed literate people among its staff at every level.