Here’s a snippet from a letter about the educated man, written ca. 1160 A.D.:

…it is the knowlege of letters [literature] that leads one forth from the common ignorance of human beings and from the stolid torpor that characterizes the dull-witted, and renders to its pupil glorious liberty. And so the pagans rightly called the art of letters a liberal art, because this art liberates the one who studies it from the common lot of human beings enslaved to confusion; the one who obtains a mastery of letters is no longer oppressed and overwhelmed by the fetters of lethargy which bind the unlearned. 

– Philip of Harvengt, abbot of Bonne Esperance, to Henry, Count of Champagne (As translated by Robert Ziomkowski in Readings in Medieval Political Theory 1100-1400 [Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993], pg. 65.)