[Justa]

"Literacy was very high in the Empire by the standards of any period prior to the 19th century, and not confined to the clergy, nor even the clergy and nobility....(witness Anna Comnena's biography of her father, the Emperor Alexius, replete with learned references to Scripture, classical literature and the scientific theories of the day.)

Yeah, one emperor's daughter is a great sampling for the literacy rate of the Europeans in the late Roman empire.

Then there's those tree ring thingies. Do you suppose the Irish trees were in cahoots with the Chinese scholars of the time?

[blam]

"Do you suppose the Irish trees were in cahoots with the Chinese scholars of the time?"

It wasn't just the Irish trees. Trees worldwide recorded this event.

[The_Reader_David]

Anna is not proof of the high literacy rate (read Vassiliev's history if you want more on that) but the fact that classical educations persisted into the 11th century. There was no "Dark Age" in the Empire--classical antiquity survived in Christianized form until the Muslims destroyed the Empire. The Dark Age in the East begins in the 1300's when the Empire is reduced to a city-state and the barbarous Turks are in control: literacy drops so that the stereotypes of 'illiterate Greeks' become a reality just as illiterate Franks were a reality in the West during the "Dark Ages."