How is this an appropriate rejoinder? Inequality in education and the variability of fortunes persisted throughout Imperial and post-Medieval times. Rather, if we acknowledge that the rural person in Italy was still illiterate during the Enlightenment, then my point still stands; the rural laity was just as "mindless".

In the case of the Black Death, an appropriate characterization of it did not gain currency until well after the heyday of the Enlightenment.

This has little bearing on the argument I was making, but I'd like to note that religion had a great incentive to teach abstract notions to the laity (and they did) as the Christian God and its dogma are extremely abstract in contrast to most agrarian notions.