Good grief...first of all read my tag line....done??
OK, now think....how many books were available to the public before the printing press?
answer...virtually none...all books were hand written and hand copied and were virtually works of art. There were books in the homes of royalty....in libraries in major cities, in monastaries...that type of thing.
The reason that most people couldn't read is simply because there wasn't much to read. There were scribes who wrote and read for a living and that is how most correspondence was done...no magazines, no newspapers, no mail service, no billboards, no advertisements on the bus, there were no labels in clothing, no roadsigns except picture signs, no internet, no twitter...almost no written documents at all available to the public. There were obviously business people and government people and people in religious positions who could read....but the shepherd, the farmer...not so much.
No obviously...they had the internet and all the written works of religion at their finger tips to reflect upon.
Just like we do now.
*snicker*