User blog comment:Dragonfire8/Peasants being able to read/@comment-5674726-20131012005151/@comment-5102537-20131013121703

Yes, indeed. In real life, there was no education in the dark ages until the late medieval times in Europe. I don't know whether the nobles naturally thought they were superior because of their education or if they wanted to have the privilege of education in order to be superior.

The Church forbid education for peasants in order to be able to opress them and to preach their fairytales of hell and purgatory so that the Church got all the power and obedience from the people. I wouldn't be surprised if the nobles welcomed this and/or didn't want peasants to be too smart, even before Christianity took over and the church became so powerful.

On the show, it would have been an interesting contribution to have commoners rather uneducated and illterate unless they needed to be in order to study witchcraft.