Asking questions is appropriate here, I hope

[rohajavongareth.livejournal.com]

I was wondering how widespread education was in the Revolutionary era and/or the decades immediately prior to that.

To be a little more precise, how many people were actually literate and how was that spread over the different social classes? How much farther than that did the average education go? For example, who would have been able to understand Latin? Would you need to attend a special institution to get that degree of education?

On a related note, how widespread was the knowledge of different political theories? Who would have been well versed in those?

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

For example, who would have been able to understand Latin?
I think those who went to college (that is, bougeois boys) were all able to, which means that most of the revolutionary deputies did. (Note: not all the revolutionaries, since there were revolutionaries of the craftsman and shopkeepers classes who weren't deputies but who were nonetheless revolutionaries! The boys who went to college had already well-established careers ahead: lawyer, doctor or priest.) The colleges were held by congregations of priests. For example, Vinot, in Saint-Just's biography, mentions that in the Oratorian College he went to, silence was the rule, and discussion only authorized in Latin starting in the third year and limited to religious subjects (p. 39). However, I think it was rather rare to study Greek (I read it somewhere, but I can't quote you the reference, because I can't remember, and I can't say the reason either...). In the same way, it seems strange but I think, for the Antiquity texts, they more often referred themselves to the translations than to the originals, for example Jacques Amyot's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Amyot) and André Dacier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Dacier)'s translations (I have an article studying the different translations available at the time and the differences in the texts, but I think Dacier's was the most common and popular). I don't really know why though: maybe Latin was more closely linked to religion? Maybe they didn't have enough expertise to read full Ancient texts in Latin? Note, though, that one of the main Ancient source of the era, Plutarch, wrote in Greek -- which would explain, since Greek was rarely taught, that they would refer themselves to Amyot's or Dacier's translations.

There are, sometimes, Latin quotes in the texts during the Revolution, but they're really, really, really, really rare: I suspect it's because the texts are addressed to the people, who may not have learnt Latin (in this sense, I think I find more Latin quotes in counter-revolutionary, aristocratic, haute bourgeoisie-leaning texts). Also, because in the education projects the revolutionaries made, there are many references to giving up the study of Latin, which is considered to be pointless and too attached to religion (I think it's a thought shared by the philosophers).



P.S. Um, I fucked up the italics in the first part and can't fix it, so nevermind. -_-;;

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Re, Latin quotes: I forgot to mention, it's "rare" that they put a lot of quotes in Latin in their texts, but you can still find a very few, depending on the author, OR they put one in the beginning of the text, and sometimes they join a translation.