M. T. Clanchy (1936–2021)

What on the surface appears to be dry, turns out to be fascinating upon delving fully into the book. The thesis is the transformation of England from an oral to written culture in the post-Conquest Middle Ages. Clanchy explores the idea of literacy as it relates to a primarily oral culture that spoke in Latin, French, and early English dialects and the transformation to modern ideas of using the written record, and how the transformation was not even complete once written records became commonplace.
“Fundamentally letters are shapes indicating voices. Hence they present things which they bring to mind through the windows of the eyes. Frequently they speak voicelessly the utterances of the absent.” – John of Salisbury, (p. 202)
“Just as reading was linked in the medieval mind with hearing rather than seeing, writing (in its modern sense of composition) was associated with dictating rather than manipulating a pen. Reading and writing (in the sense of composition) were therefore both extensions of speaking and were not inseparably couple with each other, as they are today. A person might be able to write, yet not be considered literate. . . Literacy involved being learned in Latin, whereas writing was the process of making a fair copy on parchment, which was the art of the scribe.” (p. 218)
“Thus, without documents, the establishment of what passed for truth was simple and personal, since it depended on the good word of one’s fellows. Remembered truth was also flexible and up to date, because no ancient custom could be proved to be older than the memory of the oldest living wise man. There was no conflict between past and present, between ancient precedents and present practice. Customary law ‘quietly passes over obsolete laws, which sink into oblivion, and die peacefully, but the law itself remains young, always in the belief that it is old.’ Written records, on the other hand, do not die peacefully, as they retain a half life in archives and can be resurrected to inform, impress or mystify future generations.
“Those who objected in the Middle Ages to the literate preference for the artificial memory of written record, instead of living memory voiced by wise men of age and experience, were in a long tradition – had they known it – that extended back to the myths about the invention of writing. According to Socrates the god who invented writing had been rebuked by the king of Egypt, Thamus, who said:
If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks; what you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.” (p. 233)… (more)