In an earlier post, I talked a little bit about why we read in this day and age. If anything, it is seen as more of a hobby or leisure activity. But reading hasn't always been such a simple pastime.
In a classical civilization course that I'm taking at BYU, we are currently studying the era between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. These centuries are known as the Middle or "Dark" Ages, and rightly so. Almost no one could read, and so books in general served an entirely different purpose. Here are the main points that I saw:
--Reading was basically a premium ticket to salvation, since the only book read was almost always the Holy Bible. You were in good shape if you could read the Word.
--Reading was very expensive, with a decorative family Bible usually amounting to the value of a standard house. And that doesn't even account for the weeks and months the monks spent handwriting each and every word, on every single page.
--There was certainly a narrow scope of what could actually be read, especially since almost everyone was illiterate. So basically, whatever the church wanted to publish, that's what you had to read.
I think that to wrap up, I just want to make a few observations about censorship and the role it played (and plays) in maintaining certain morals in society. Since the circulation was controlled by the church, they could make people read exactly what they wanted them to. It worked out pretty well for them, considering that much of the classic Greek and Latin works were preserved...but there's not a lot of particular hallmarks from the actual time period. So did censorship work? Maybe. I think that a lot of really creative ideas could have been silently suppressed by early church censorship. Of course, there is a line to draw somewhere. I think that maybe the morals of society should allow for free publishing, but without damaging the peaceable status of families within society. Draw the line somewhere good.
