What inference can be drawn about literacy in medieval Europe?

Concept: an inference is a conclusion the text forces you to accept. It must follow from what the passage states or clearly implies, it may not be imported from outside knowledge, and its scope may not run wider than the scope of the evidence actually supplied. Scope words such as "actively", "equally" and "only" tighten a claim sharply, so each one has to be matched by correspondingly tight support in the text.

Application: the passage gives three converging statements about who could read. It opens by saying that formal education was limited and that "literacy was rare". It then names the people who did read and write - monks copying manuscripts by hand and producing commentaries, chronicles and scientific observations - and the monastic schools that "trained clerics and administrators". It closes by noting that "access to this knowledge remained restricted". Rarity, restricted access, and a narrow named set of literate people together place literacy in the hands of particular sections of society rather than the population at large. The supported inference is therefore that literacy was limited to select groups.

Cross-check: test each competing reading against the same evidence.

• "It was actively discouraged" - this needs deliberate suppression. The passage traces the scarcity of learning to the collapse of Roman-era centres of learning, and it describes monastic communities that "continued to value reading, writing and study"; no agency working against literacy appears anywhere in the text.

• "It was equally distributed across regions" - this needs a comparison between regions. The passage never sets one region beside another, and uniform spread would also sit against its own statements that literacy was rare and access restricted.

• "It was found in urban regions only" - this needs a strict urban boundary. The passage places literate work in monasteries and their libraries without saying where those monasteries stood, so nothing in it separates town from countryside.

Result: the inference the passage supports is that literacy in medieval Europe was limited to select groups.