Literacy, Spirituality of Reading, and Catholic Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century Spain

Clerical attitudes toward reading and the book can help explain the spread of literacy as well as the marked popular interest in devotional literature in sixteenth-century Spain. The author argues that the Spanish clergy played an important, although underestimated, role in the dissemination of literality (i.e. knowledge of letters) in the early part of the sixteenth century. The article demonstrates how the catechetical efforts of Catholic clergy contributed to the long term forging of a confessional literary culture, a literary culture informed by Catholic religious ideas. The author moves away from customary scholarly focus on the coercive role of the clergy, examining instead how members of the clergy crafted a spirituality of reading. The article thus explores how the Spanish clergy elaborated a constructive understanding of reading that fused together the practice of reading, understood as spiritual/devotional practice, with the contents of the faith. Synodal constitutions as well as diverse genres of devotional literature are brought to bear as the author explains how the Spanish clergy endeavored to make a lay Catholic reader.