BK: Tell your friend he’s mistaken. It’s for the edification of all.
RR: Maybe I was being too brief. It was my take on what he said.
If either of you two are interested, there is a rather extensive article in the old Catholic Encyclopedia about the subject, discussing the history of stained glass from the earliest times.
In describing the work of the 12th and 13th Centuries, it said the following;
The range of subjects represented being limited by the paramount object of all ecclesiastical decorations of the Middle Ages, viz. the instruction of the illiterate and promotion of piety among the people, these windows present scenes from Biblical history and the lives of the saints, and symbolic portrayals of the dogmas of the Church. In fact they were sermons which "reached the heart through the eyes instead of entering at the ears". But their choice of subjects was not made at random; it fell under the same rule that guided theencyclopedias of the time in their classification of the universe, commencing with God and the creation of angelic beings, and so on thorough nature, science, ethics, and history. The windows were indeed poems in glass, "The first canto, reflecting the image of God as the Creator, the Father, and the giver of all good gifts; the second, nature, organic and inorganic; the third, science; the fourth, the moral sense; and lastly, the entire world". Where there were not enough windows in a church to carry out the complete scheme, one or more portions were represented.
You need to keep in mind the literacy rate in the 12th and 13th centuries, before the moveable type press was invented by a couple of hundred years, was almost non-existant -- basically only the very wealthy would be taught to read. And that made sense, as even the smallest books, which would either have to be hand-copied or printed from individually engraved plates, would cost more than several years' salary for all but the wealthiest people. (i.e., why learn to read if there would be nothing to read)
For what it's worth.
That is closer to what my friend said. The kernel was that it was the bible “story” in pictures. Comics for those who cannot read. It was a different time back then. Now they are seen as “quaint” by many, both inside and outside the church.
That’s not what the passage is saying.
What the passage is saying is that it was for the edification of everyone, not just the illiterate.
Your argument is copied and pasted from Gibbon. Why, if people were illiterate, were books so popular when the movable press made them more cheaper?