"People started looking for themselves and thinking about it rather than simply accepting what they were told by priests and aristocrats."

Don, I find the rest of your post illuminating and as useful as you present it

But don't forget that copernicus was a monk and Galileo's education came from the church and Pope Urban initially supported Galileo and encouraged his work before Galileo was found guilty by the inquisition of breaching a decision made in 1616 that the copernican view was wrong.

The right wing of the church clearly had a lot to answer for, but the advances in knowledge that occurred during that period were made by christians in a religious environment so to imply that all priests were against progress is wrong.

As for elitism, the idea that the common man had access to this kind of education at all is wrong. Any education has been an elitist privelege till comparatively recently.