Today the word ‘illiterate’ is associated with a lack of education. But the methods of passing down information in the non-literate communities of early medieval England were incredibly sophisticated.34 Individuals could recite poems from memory over the course of many hours, if not days. They had to retain information on bloodlines, land possession, law codes, as well as a vast body of stories, myths and history. To be illiterate was not to be ignorant, but rather to utilise more of the memory actively. It was Christianity that brought literacy and Latin to a people who had depended for three
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