So, for those who want to fact check me, an example of the corrupted Roman texts would be the Vigil of Venus, or Pervigilium Veneri. In both surviving manuscripts, Pervigilium was converted into "Per Virgilium" or "By Virgil", leading to a nonsensical title if you can read. Throughout both manuscripts are similar errors that would have been caught had the person writing the manuscript had been able to read what he was writing.
Even had they been able to read the text, medieval copying of sacred texts was as much a form of devotion and worship as a way of transmitting information. Interacting with the text by /reading/ it would have been as much a distraction as chatting about the weather while praying. Many monastic copyists were *drawing* the page, not actually writing, as we mean the word, what they were seeing.
The Patriarch Nikon is the 17th century Russian patriarch I mention (my source is "Chamber's encyclopaedia), who wanted to have as much temporal power as The Pope, in addition to his significant spiritual power - and I see a lot of parallels between his behavior and situation and the situation in Rokari Tanisor at several points in history. He was one of the richest serf-owners in the nation, he surrounded himself with a kind of ecclesiastical court that was associated with the Pope, said court plundering the parish clergy of treasures, and in processions used a 'Latin' cross rather than the Eastern Cross. The correction process was already started by the Church before Nikon had become Patriarch, and was explicitly because of errors introduced by illiterate copyists, but under Nikon it became perceived as a case of real world 'God-Learnerism' - he was changing the holy texts to fit his agenda!
It is not universally agreed upon by historians that there was a significant population of illiterate copyists in 7th century Europe, but it is not fringe theory, either. Equally, it is not outside the realm of possibility that there are Talari scribes, who take dictation, and then illiterate Dronari copyists who simply draw the pages handed to them.
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