The Current Evolution of Ancient Religious Institutions

[Thumpalumpacus]

It should be noted that kings and princes used divine right to justify their rule over peasants. It just so happens that those same kings and princes had sway in who could and could not be educated beyond, say, knowing when to plant crops.

They did? Can you point me to examples of evidence these kings limited who could be educated?

Sure. There's that whole money thing, because even then education costed money, which rather limited the opportunities for a peasant whose pay was, say, a peck of peppers. More to the point, universities were funded by either the royalty or the Church itself.

Here, check this out:

During the Middle Ages in Europe, education for children was largely influenced by social status, the dominant role of the Church, gender disparities, and the disruptive impact that the constant threat of war and invasion posed.

Education was primarily accessible to the privileged elite, such as nobility and wealthy landowners. The majority of the European population, who were overwhelmingly peasants and serfs, had limited access to formal education.

The Catholic Church played a significant role in education during this period. Most schools were "ecclesiastical," meaning they were related to the Catholic Church.

Monastic and cathedral schools were established by the Church to train future clergy and monks. Education centered around religious studies, reading and writing Latin, and studying scripture. The Church viewed education as a means to maintain its authority and perpetuate its teachings.

[...]

Apart from religious instruction, students might receive basic training in arithmetic, writing, and grammar. Arithmetic was primarily taught for practical purposes such as basic calculations related to trade and commerce. Writing skills were important for correspondence, record-keeping, and producing religious texts. Grammar instruction focused on the proper use of Latin, as it was the language of scholarly discourse.

There were no public schools and literacy rates among peasants was very low. Those who had the privilege of getting an education usually either learned at home with a tutor if they were not sent to an ecclesiastical school.

Read more: https://www.studentsofhistory.com/educat...iddle-ages

There's also the fact that because education was expensive, and peasants weren't generally wealthy because their products were expropriated in large part by their lieges, they lacked the resources to, say, attend the Sorbonne or Oxford. It just so happened that those lieges appealed to divine right to -- wait for it -- keep those peasants poor and uneducated.

Put shortly, who decided who needed education or not? Kings and princes supported by religious authorities, in a large part.

See above.

Right -- read above.

It should also be noted that the Church had a fairly hostile attitude to scientific learning in general, meaning to me that even it isn't directly culpable in misunderstanding geosphericity or heliocentricity, it's still guilty in part of retarding learning.

Again, can you give us evidence of this “hostility”?

Oh, I don't know, hauling Galileo to a court in the Vatican and threaten him with Inquisitory punishment unless he renounced heliocentricty? There's that whole Copernicus holding off on publishing until after death to avoid the same issue? We could also look at how long it took the Church to acknowledge that Darwin was right?

If you need more, I'll be happy to oblige. The evidence is there for you to examine.

That comes with punishing scientists for learning.

Can you give any examples of scientists “punished for learning”?

Read about Galileo.