History links of interest
Nov. 18th, 2013 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lonemagpiePolitics in Ancient Greece-
http://www.ancient.eu.com/article/631/
This one's more fun though-
http://www.medievalists.net/2010/11/24/%E2%80%98i-have-traveled-a-good-deal-in-norfolk%E2%80%99-reconsidering-women%E2%80%99s-literacy-in-late-medieval-england/
Long story short, back in the day, "literate" and "illiterate" didn't mean you could or couldn't read and write - it meant you could or couldn't read and write *Latin*.
If you could read and write, but not in Latin, and were a woman, the word used was "lewed".
From which, interestingly, we get the totally-different-in-meaning word "lewd"...
The old English word Laewed originally meant non-clerical, you see, then came to mean coarse and vulgar later in the Middle Ages. So then the clergy managed to cast women who could read and write non-Latin into lewd women, deceptive with their non-clerical writings... You can see where that was going to lead...
http://www.ancient.eu.com/article/631/
This one's more fun though-
http://www.medievalists.net/2010/11/24/%E2%80%98i-have-traveled-a-good-deal-in-norfolk%E2%80%99-reconsidering-women%E2%80%99s-literacy-in-late-medieval-england/
Long story short, back in the day, "literate" and "illiterate" didn't mean you could or couldn't read and write - it meant you could or couldn't read and write *Latin*.
If you could read and write, but not in Latin, and were a woman, the word used was "lewed".
From which, interestingly, we get the totally-different-in-meaning word "lewd"...
The old English word Laewed originally meant non-clerical, you see, then came to mean coarse and vulgar later in the Middle Ages. So then the clergy managed to cast women who could read and write non-Latin into lewd women, deceptive with their non-clerical writings... You can see where that was going to lead...