Contrary to what the Catholic Church would have us believe, the early church fathers were big supporters of having people read and understand the scriptures. Chrystrostom encouraged people to read the scriptures and complained that they were not doing so. One of the fathers stated that if you were sitting in church and heard false doctrine being preached, the Holy Spirit would have you put your hands up to your ears and you would run screaming from the church. (Or something like that.) :O)
Furthermore, while our dear Catholic friends would like to talk about their council, here is a little gem Alex led me to:
The Vincentian Canon states that sound doctrine is built off of scripture and the way you can tell heretical doctrine is through the scriptures albeit, one should also reflect on sound teaching. Today our Catholic friends have this exactly backwards.
It is also plain from the early writings (and simple logic) that bishops and others were free to read and interpret sacred writings. It was when people strayed from sound doctrine not found in the scriptures that councils were called and people were branded as heretics. The Reformers encouragement of reading scriptures came from the same beliefs as the early fathers. For the scriptures are the power of God. They believed in the inerrant word of God profitable for teaching and reproof.
It was never taught that people were not allowed to study scripture until the 4th Lateran Council of 1215 decreed it so; that people were not even allowed to read it. The Council of Trent backed off (a little bit) of this extreme idea by saying, "Hey, it's OK to read it but we'll tell you what it means." What a stupid concept and is the reason Catholics today cannot figure out how scripture differs from any other writings. The early fathers never had that problem.
According to researchers at Israel's Bar-Ilan University first century literacy was less than 3%.
Peae be with you
You can often find quotes for both sides among CFs, but as regards 1st c. literacy rates, these are very speculative, yet they were higher among Jews than slaves for instance.
http://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/were-people-literate-in-the-time-of-jesus-r/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus#Literacy
I need to be more appreciative that i can both read and hear the Word.