gests that the owner was in a position to read it, and
among Protestants too poor to possess more than just one
book a Bible in the vernacular was the popular choice.
The Renaissance is generally seen as a period in which
literacy rapidly expanded across society as the new tech-
nology of PRINTINGenabled books to move out of the
exclusive enclaves of the Church, universities, and aris-
tocracy. Although this general impression is correct, with
book-ownership growing steadily over the period, histori-
ans have shown that the impact was patchy, with more
townspeople literate than country dwellers, and more men
than women; for instance, Natalie Zemon Davis quotes a
survey of documents from Lyons dating from the 1560s
and 1570s which suggests that even in a prosperous and
sophisticated city only 28% of women were able to sign
their names: almost all of those belonged to families of the
city’s mercantile elite (Society and Culture in Early Modern
France, Stanford, 1975).
The reformers’ emphasis on personal access to the
Scriptures for the laity was undoubtedly a factor in the es-
tablishment of elementary schools where children of all
social classes could be taught to read. In England the DIS-
SOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIESclosed one point of access
to education but the disappearance of monastic schools
was often balanced by the foundation of new grammar
schools in the 1540s. Arrangements for teaching young
children (age eight and under) were often informal and
transient: four or five boys and girls under the tuition of
the local vicar or of a woman teacher in her own house.
Literacy for non-noble women was considered in theory a
fine thing, provided it enabled them to function better in
their sphere of household management and child rearing;
in practice when a woman’s reading of the Bible led her to
address theological questions on her own account male
Protestant theologians were generally as alarmed and dis-
missive as their predecessors of the unreformed Church.
See also: BIBLE, TRANSLATIONS OF; EDUCATION; VER-
NACULAR
Further reading: Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Re-
naissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Balti-
more, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
Little Masters (of Nuremberg) A group of 16th-
century engravers, influenced by DÜRER, whose work was
mainly on a small scale. The English phrase translates the
German Kleinmeister, which would more informatively be
rendered “masters in little.” Hans Sebald Beham (1500–
50) and his brother Bartel (1502–40) were foremost in the
group, which also included Georg Pencz (c. 1500–50),
Jakob Binck (died c. 1569) and Heinrich ALDEGREVER.
Their characteristic work was small, finely worked illus-
trations of biblical, mythological, and historical scenes,
with a strong decorative interest.
liturgy The term “liturgy” refers to a Church’s public,
communal worship (as opposed to private devotions), and
more particularly to the Eucharistic service. The Roman
Catholic MASS in pre-Reformation Europe was not a
monolithic entity—for instance, there were local variants
(called “uses” or “rites”) associated with local saints and
traditions—but there was nonetheless a degree of unifor-
mity throughout Western Christendom. In Britain, the
form of the rite used in the cathedral of Salisbury (“the
Use of Sarum”) had been gradually adopted by other dio-
ceses, so that by the mid-15th century it was in wide-
spread use in England, Wales, and Ireland. For much of
the Middle Ages, unifying factors included: use of a single
liturgical language (Latin); the weight of Church author-
ity backing the core doctrines (such as TRANSUBSTANTIA-
TION) embodied in the ritual; and general practices such
as the laity receiving communion in one kind only (that is,
the consecrated bread, with the consecrated wine being
taken by the celebrant alone). All these were challenged
and rejected by the reformers.
The use of Latin in church services was an early tar-
get of the reforming drive to wrest the monopoly in divine
matters from the priesthood. Belief in an individual’s right
to study and reflect on the Bible and theological issues
opened up the possibility—and desirability—of conduct-
ing Mass in the vernacular. Latin’s supremacy as the lingua
franca of the Church was already being challenged in the
late 15th century, when, from 1480, the business of the
papal Curia began to be conducted in Italian, and in the
course of the following century its hold continued to be
loosened. The HUGUENOTSin particular were enthusiastic
supporters of the use of French in all religious contexts.
The extremist early reformer Andreas CARLSTADT
made a comprehensive attack on the traditional Catholic
liturgy in 1521, when he conducted a vernacular Christ-
mas Day Mass in which the Host was not elevated, VEST-
MENTSwere not worn, and the laity communicated in both
kinds. The issue of the elevation of the Host (the lifting up
of the consecrated bread to display it to the people for
their veneration) is an example of a practice that became
immensely contentious; in 16th-century England it was
one of the touchstones by which priests who covertly
sympathized with Catholic traditions were distinguished
from true reforming clergy, and both parishioners and
Church authorities avidly monitored such indicators of
priests’ allegiance. Similarly, the character of the vest-
ments worn at services was another visible pointer to the
thoroughness or otherwise of a reforming dispensation, a
fact not lost on Calvinistically inclined critics of the ELIZ-
ABETHAN SETTLEMENT.
LUTHER’s denunciation of the Roman Catholic doc-
trine of Purgatory entailed the reformers’ rejection of a
whole subtype of liturgy, the Mass for the Dead. Otherwise
Luther was cautious in promoting liturgical change—even
to the extent of not hastening to jettison Latin—and inlliittuurrggyy 2 28833