SC - medieval cookbooks and literacy

[Stefan li Rous]

Adamantius commented:

I can imagine it, too, but I don't know how well the example of Chiquart
holds water. He appears to have had access to a pretty broad education
in medicine and philosophy in addition to his own field, and while he
does seem to have dictated to a scribe, that doesn't suggest to me he
was illiterate. He may, of course, have had what we would equate to a
fifth or sixth-grade reading level, which might make it difficult to
record huge reams of information quickly. Another aspect is that up
until the nineteenth century, in many parts of the world (and until
today if you count labor unions) it was considered wrong to deprive
people of their professional function. Duke Amadeus had a head cook, and
he also had a scribe. What more natural than to have them work together
on a book?
- ------------

There may be another complication here, also. I don't know enough about
Chiquart or what he wrote to guess here. This complication is the exact
definition of "literate". Some of the definitions of literate that I
have seen when referring to the Middle Ages are really referring to
literate in Latin. Not literate in their native tongues. A person
might well be considered illiterate because he or she couldn't read
or write Latin, although they could do one or both in their native
tongue.

I believe this file in the EDUCATION section of my Florilegium has
some more info on this:

literacy-msg      (17K)  1/27/92    Literacy levels in the Middle Ages.

Were most of the recipe manuscripts that we have available written in
native languages or in Latin of some type? I wouldn't count Apicius in
this since he wrote in the fourth(?) century and Latin was his native
tongue.

Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net
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