bourgeois skepticism about any learning devoid of utility. The utility (a word they used themselves) was in this case advancement in sanctity. Yet it would seriously distort their position not to recognize that they entirely presupposed the use of books and of writing in all their religious exercises—and this in a social class where most of their relatives were probably still illiterate. Every aspect of the brothers’ and sisters’ religious lives, from their Christocentrism to their private reading