Fruhmoderne Alphabetisierung

Research on literacy highlights one of the fundamental issues facing societies, as only those who can read printed texts can participate in the written discourses of their time. Using the Descriptions of Souls, around 70,000 data sets on Zurich’s rural and urban populations between 1630 and 1770, this study disproves the paradigm of an illiterate Europe pre-1800. Literacy began before the Enlightenment within the scope of confessionalization.