^tpi- M m fff •■*t*p*^giww««iMW*ft -^v^'*- *" .^r * '•^mi^'^'iMli^iy * * N NO 92-80477-5 MICROFILMED 1992 COLINH^ \ UNT VER SIT Y LTBR A R TFS 'NT^ W YORK 55 as pciri of I lie Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project ?? Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEIVihNT The copyright h■^.' of the United States - Title V Unit-d States^ Code - concerns the making of phctocopies oroAer reproductions or copynghted materiaL.. Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulffllment of the order would mvolve violation of the copyright law AUTHOR: WILLIAMS, SAMUEL TITLE: HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION PLACE: SYRACUSE DA TE : 1903 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT ■ BIBL IOGRAPHIC MTrR QFORM TAunj^j Master Negative # Restriction:^ on I. rjm Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 940.1 X67 SC! Williams, Samuel Gardner, 1S27-] !)()(). TJie liistory of mediaeval education; an account of the course of educal.onu op.n.on and practice fron, the sixtli to theTf! cuho, A. 1 ., 0. \\ . J^ardeen, 1D03. '^ 1 p. I., 7-11)5 p. incl. IIIus., plates, ports. 1S3"-. 1. I-^ciiication— Hist. rJi)rMry of Conj,'ross 3—21)298 LAf»r,.W7 iMhlj • ( 1 :'\'irAL MiCRoroRM pata" viTMiATT: lA III n>' JIB P.I' DUCT! 0\- T t \ ■" T ' T /' :\ , \ i i (^ : /O ^ i .' I 1 " • '^f-^~^/-t2^^_ IN Hi \ I s £-^ c Association for Information and Image Management 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 '''l''''l''|'l''|'''T. I I I I I I I I I I Inches 1 iiiiiiiiiiiii liiiiliiiiliiiiliiiili T 11 8 1.0 I.I 1.25 wmm ImiliiiJj 10 11 12 13 14 15 ■ so '""•^^^— 2.5 u. 1^ 2.2 |6J ^j ^y^^ 2.0 Ikit&U 1.8 1.4 1.6 UUMMUii TTTTTi "'""I""'"' mm h MfiNUFOCTURED TO flllM STPNDPRDS BY fiPPLIED IMfiGE, INC. MA S TER NEGATIVE NO. 92-80477 MiCROhlLMtiD 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions nia\ not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United Stai. , Title 17. United States Code -- concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions 01 oop\ righted material. ., Columbia University Libran- reserv^es the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulffllment of the order would mvolve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: WILLIAMS, SAMUEL G. TITLE: HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION PLACE: SYRACUSE DA TE : 1903 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record f 940.1 W67 Restrictioiv on Use: Williams, Samuel Gardner, 1S2T--1900. The history of medicTval education; an account of the course of educational opinion and practice from the sixth to the fif- teenlli centuries, inchisive, by Samuel G. Williams ... ;:Djia- cuse, N. Y., C. W. Bardeen, liJ03. 1 p, 1., 7-105 p. Incl. ilUis., plates, ports. 18^"". 1. I^diication — Hist. Library of Conf:ross 3—20298 LAOO \^ liiiilj THCHNICAL MICROFORM DATA RHDUCTION RATIO FILM S\7E:____2:^^ SrVlX- IMAGE PLACEMFNT: IA"ii1 'm IIB ^ ^ DATE FI.MED: „&>iy?> INITIALS t^ ^^ FILMED l)\: RESFARCI I PL/BI JCAl lOr^'^INC Jl^\X)OnB RIDGF CJ / _ 1 r Association for Information and Image Management 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 UJ ITT 5 6 iiiiliiiilmiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiilnilliiiiliiiiliiiili Inches 1 4 m il m 1.0 I.I 1.25 8 iiiliii 9 mill ■iuu 1.4 T 10 miL 4 11 uuli |2.8 2.5 L^ ¥' 2.2 ^3 ■ 3.6 £0 to Im 2.0 1.8 1.6 12 13 14 15 mm TTT I III MRNUFflCTURED TO fillM STRNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE, INC. LIBRARY / i »s o I I PREFACE The publication of this volume completes the series of lectures on the history of education given by Prof. Williams at Cornell university, and the first appear- ance in English of histories of ancient and mediaeval education. Although issued after the author's death, the manuscript was so careful and matured and exact that it has been easy to present his record just as he wrote it. In so doing the publisher feels that he has made a distinct and needed addition to educational literature. 353342 H HISTORY OF lEDlfAL ED AN A^.^.uLNT OP THE COURSE OF EDUCATIONAL OPINION AND PRACTICE FROM THE SIXTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURIES, INCLUSIVE BY SAMUEL G. WILLIAMS, Ph.D. ite Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in Cornell University SYRACUSE, N. Y. C. W. BARDEEX. PUBLISHER Copyright, 1903. by Mr.s. Florence W. Cushin CONTE>^TS w CHAPTER I MOIIAMMKDAN AND BYZANTINK KDrCATION • - Ea fI y Christian efforts for education-Brilliant character of Saracen school, especially in Spain-Cultivation of Greek learning in Constantinople and its barrenness. . CHAPTER II Christian edi cation to the age of CnARLEMA(;NE.- Humanitarian ideal of education from Christ-Early Christian schools-Rejection of Greek and Roman literature as heathen-Extincti.»n of Roman schools- Text-books that were celebrated in the >Iiddle Ages -Monastic and cathedral schools-Better education in the British Isles CHAPTER III PAGES 17-38 39-61 The revival of leaunin<^ in the ninth centtry.- Charlemagne and his efforts for education-Circular to the monasteries and its results-Care for the ver- nacular-Alcuin and his services-Ralmnus Maurus and Scotus Erigena-Alfred the Great and his efforts for l)etter education in England CHAPTER IV The relapse of the tenth and eleventh centuries, AND THE TWELFTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE —Chiv- alry and its effects-Rise of municipalities and their demand for education-The Crusades and their ef- fects-Intluence of the Saracenic schools in Spam. . . . 9-^-114 (9) 10 THE HISTORY OF MEDI.tVAL EDUCATION CHAPTER V The revival of learning in the twelfth century and springing up of the mediaeval universities, — Causes of the rise of the universities — Constitution of the early universities — The nations — Privileges and their origin— What constitntfd h university 113-133 CHAPTER VI Studies, methods, and discipline of the Medi.^val UNIVERSITIES. — Arts — Sciences pursued — Length of courses and books used— Methods, dictation, disputa- tion, and lectures by bachelors— Inception and its costs— State of morals and discipline in universities — Influences exerted by universities — Changes in uni- versities wrought by printing 134-161 CHAPTER VII Close of the medleval period in education —State of education aside from the universities — German city schools — Brotherhood of the common life— The Bacchants — Barbamns discipline 162-175 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Medijeval System of Education Summarized 15 A Medieval School 49 A School of Mendicant Monks 91 Initiation into the Order of Knighthood 101 An Outer Monastic School 127 Lecture on Civil Law 138 Interior of a Norman School 147 PORTRAITS PAGE Abehird 81 St. Ambrose 75 Aristotle ^9 Ascham l^'^ St. Augustine 75 Bacon, Roger 81 Bede 81 St. Bernard 75 Charlemagne 65 Colet 81 Erasmus 165 St . Francis of Assisi 75 St. Jerome 75 Leonardo of Pisa • • 81 Luther 165 Melanchthon 165 Petrarch 81 Platter, Thomas 165 Socrates 81 Sturm 165 St. Thomas Aquinas 75 (11) History of Mediceval Education The cut on the opposite page is taken from Cubber- ley's excellent Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Education (Macmillan Company, 1902), which gives the following explanation : "An allegorical reresentation of the progress and degrees of education, from the 1508 [Bftle] edition of the Margarita Philoso- phim of Gregory de Reich, substantially the same as in the earlier editions. The youth, having mastered the Hornbook and the rudiments of learning, advances toward the temple of knowledge Wisdom is about to place the key in the lock of the door of the temple. Across the door is written the word rongruntur,—2X[ agree. On the first and second fliwrs of the temple he studies the Grammar of Donatus. and of Priscian, and at the first stage at the left on the third tloor he studies the Logic of Aristotle followed by the Rhetoric and Pr>etry of Tullv, thus completing the Trinum. The Arithmetic of Boethius also appears on the third floor. On the fourth floor of the temple he completes the studies of the Quadririum, taking in order the Music of Pytha- goras, Euclid's Geometry, and Ptolemy's Astronomy. The stu- dent now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying suc- cessively Physics, Seneca's Morals, and the Theology of Peter Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been directed." (14) TRiaiUlVnrPHILOSOPriiEl Mi:i»Lt:\ AL >vs'n:M oi- i:i>i lai i'>\ ^immaki/ki) (15) MEDIEVAL EDUCATION CHAPTER I l| EARLY CHRISTIAN, SARACEN, AND BYZANTINE EDUCATION We have seen that during the imperial rule at Rome, there was no lack of attention by the better classes to what may be termed secondary and superior education; that under favor of some of the wiser superiors, many large civil schools were scattered widely over the empire, not a few of which attained a reputation that has come down to us in at least a name; that in many cases aid was granted to these schools from the imperial treasury, and also, to cer- tain of the high teachers, valuable exemptions from taxes and military service; and that in these schools were taught grammar including literature, philosophy including dialectics, and in some of them, law and medicine. Such schools were especially numerous in Italy, Spain, and Roman Gaul. The teachers were either pagans or indifferent to religion; and on this account, the schools were less and less resorted to by the rapidly increasing Christians, who were besides at the outset most largely recruited from the poorer classes with whom school attendance had probably not been common. ** In the very heart of the schools," (17) 18 THE DARK AGES says Guizot speaking of the 4th century,^ *^ there was an entire absence of liberty; the whole *of the profe.- sors were removable at any time. The emperor had full power, not only to transfer them from one town to another, but to cancel their appointment whenever he thought fit. Moreover, in a great many of the Gaulish towns, the people themselves were' against them, for they were Christians, at least in a great nK^Jority of cases, and as such had a dislike for schools which were altogether pagan in origin and intention. Ihe professors accordingly were regarded with hostil- ity and often maltreated; they were, in fact, quite unsupported except by the remnant of the hither classes, and by the imperial authority which still m'ain- tamed order " To this statement may be added that the higher classes, to whom the schools must look for support, sunk in luxury and effeminacy, had lost all taste for learning, and hence were little strenuous that neir sons should be educated. It is not surpris- Tyfrv"! '; '''"\ '? '^' '^^ ^^"^"^'^ ^^^ ^i^il ^^^j'ools eve y^ here showed decay, that their efforts to attract s udents through knowledge made easy by abbrevi . t on. and epitomes failed of success, and that in the bh century they died out totally, having grown out The tenVenturies which intervene from oOO to 1500 t .fZ "''''^^' ''"'^ '^' ^^'^^^' ^^^^^' ^-^ the first ^x of them may not inappropriately be called the ^!::^J^?^1^^ hanng been illumed enT^*"'''v- '^ ^''^^^^"^i<^° '«» France. Lecture 4th entr- ' 'bis connection. which should be read GROWTH OF CHRISTIAXITY 19 only by a transient and local gleam of light in the age of Charlemagne. The power of Rome died out, quite as much in consequence of the degeneracy of life and manners as of the inroads of the barbarians. WTiile Rome retained her pristine virtues, such inroads had wrought only temporary injuries; but now in her de- generacy they brought wide-spread ruin, which yet held concealed within it the germs of a better civiliza- tion. The ages which succeeded the downfall of the Western Empire were marked by tumults and dis- orders, such as were incident to the breaking up of polities, and to the infusion, absorption, and general amelioration of barbarian elements, preparatory to the formation of new states. What seemed like final dis- solution was only incubation. For ages everything is in a state of perpetual fiux; new hordes of barbarians hurl themselves upon the partially assimilated and domesticated earlier swarms; kingdoms rise like bub- bles, and like bubbles burst and disappear; violence prevails; laws are silent: industry languishes: and learning has no encouragement; yet during these times Christianity spreads rapidly, and is accepted by the barbarians with as great avidity as by more civil- ized races. This was the hopeful element in the situa- tion. It was wholly natural that men whose earthly con- dition was wretched and precarious should grasp eagerly at the hope of something better beyond the grave. It was equally natural, in the circumstances of the times, that the pure and simple doctrine of Christ and his apostles, should become clouded by superstitions, and disfigured by corruptions. Hence > CAUSES OF GENERAL IGNORANCE 21 20 THE DARK AGES religion, on the one hand, grew into the form of an unlovely asceticism, which however had most important effects on learning and education; on the other and larger side, it assumed the shape of a great temporal authority. The church of Christ ^ who had declared that his kingdom was not of this world, gradually be- came a hierarchy, and for ages was the sole power whose behests had somewhat general influence among men. This was doubtless a fact which, on the whole, had a beneficent effect on the condition of Europe dur- m) that of the Eastern Empire, and (3) that of Western Europe. An at- tempt has also been made in (3) to indicate approxi- mately the main direction of educational progress bv expansions above and below the central line. We will first describe the Saracenic and Bvzantine efforts at intellectual progress, both because of their greater brilliancy during much of the Middle \ge3 and because they throw light on the later culture of Western Europe. Of the culture of the Saracen., u mav be truthfully said that it was most brilliant in the a^es when West- em Europe was in Cimmerian literarv darkness In 26 THE SARACEXS the enthusiastic ^ords of Karl S.), •. :me when, together .id d.e f!,f '"/'^r " ^° '^^ J-^P're. its culture also was uL '^' ^'"''^^ - J^- ■■ when barbarian inroaJt wefe'"'' "'!''^'^"°Pted ^-- ■earing with thetn cnnf """'P'"^ *'^^'- 'h' ,-'- Christian prie^ w e "r "' '"'^"^'■-=- '■^^^^ ^^f l^eretics/and w""n. a T"°^" P^oscriptior agamst classic literature ^ Z, • '^'^^^^^""i^e warfar, >-«f"ge in the cloister in 'J'V' ?'^ ^'^'^'^ to tak, ^^rirts were mechanic HcoSd ■'^^'^^'^"' -'>^« \P'"^- the arts and enej ^'^'^ "^^"^^ '^^ ^hr ;hone n-u lite a beam of ,4 'wh l,"1'*^ ""' ^''''^^^■ '^V^'^-° ~^Pint also in tt 7r t""'^ ^^^-'"'"^ ."^^Jan Spain Europe receive ''■ ^'""^ -'^-^ham- "^ fi^^t acquaintance whth'' "".^"^''^ ^•^'^^'"'^^ -nd ;^Peei.llv with Optics a,^ ^^^^-^neec of nature. Aroh:;,,,ure. The Moh.n '^f'''"'''\'- -^ also with the model of Christi,,n tS:f '"'^'"'''^ ''-'>- -Mohamre;rif";:rbe7o>!!:rT '"■- ••- ^-th o. ''"d the Koran, and rhrhl ''''''' '° ^^^^ing' Present time in schools atuctdT,r''°"^^^ '"^ 'hf' these soon succeeded higher 1 ? . ' '^"''i''''- To l«f-s. and colleges for U.o V ''"' '"' '""^ '^^^'thier ^'^ °'°^^-"nder teachers of Wi T^'^ " ^^o^^u^h and medicine. The artranT-'-^'"'^''"P^-^* '^^'>^ogr, amongst the Mohammedan nat,'""''' '^''^^ ^P^^^- »?ed by the caliphs. The trl ' "^ ^''' ^^'oj. »t^d the philoso;hr of [lloTr"' '' '^"''''^ ^^^^^Z ^ers,ons. were ransacked to ad r"'^'*'^' '^'"^ ^^^ •^^•^•i^rr TT— :: — - — ^l_f^ philosophy REMARKABLE PROGRESS 27 1 i of Aristotle. They cultivated Astronomy with success, erected many obseryatories, made tolerable astronomic measurment's, amongst these determining the earth's circumference at about '24,000 miles; but they adhered to Ptolemy's theofy of the solar system, and debased the science by mingling with it Astrology. For Medi- cine they showed special aptitude, and in this during the Middle Ages they were everywhere acknowledged as authorities. They had translations of Galen and Hippocrates, to which some of their writers added much of value, and the medical school of Salernum doubtless owes its origin to one of their pupils, Con- stantine of Carthage. The science of chemistry they originated— some of its names are theirs— though they also perverted it to a vain search after a means of transmuting base metals into gold; the invention of gunpowder in the 13th century is also with much probability ascribed to them. They had translations of the Greek mathematics, Euclid, and the algebra of Diophantus. Algebra was greatly advanced in their hands bv Mohammed-ibn-Mousa who carried equations through the second degree;* and Europe re- ceived from them its knowledge of the decimal nota- tion stamped with their name. The literature and language of Greece however they seem to have dis- dained, gaining their knowledge of its science solely through translations by Christians and Jews, to both of whom they extended a degree of toleration and even favor elsewhere unknown during those times. Much of this surprising scientific progress had been made within two c enturies succeeding the death of • Hiitoire G^fU-ra.e ii IV Steele etc.. Vol. 1, pp. T%5-45. 28 THE SARACENS Mohammed. The celebrated caliph, Ilaroun al Ras- chid, the contemporary of Charlemagne, did much to encourage education, by founding schools and libraries by caumug translations of Greek works, and by send- ing large numbers of learned men to make scientifio journeys. Other caliphs founded academies like those of Bagdad, Bokhara, and Damascus, provided them each with a library, and paid the salaries of their teachers. But great as is the interest attaching to the intel- lectual activity of the Saracens in the East, it is to the Arabs in Spain that Europe became chiefly indebted. In the last half of the 8th century, as the result of a fierce struggle between two royal families, Abdar- rahman of the line of the Ommeyades, escaping from the massacre of the residue of his family save one, fled westward through Africa, made a lodgment in Spain, which had already yielded to the Moslem arms and established there a flourishing Saracenic empire. The kindly alliance then formed with the Jews, by whom he Moslems had been materially aided in thlir con quest, endured according to Gibbon until both wore driven out of Spain seven hundred years later Zl rote Wh-M ^''.{ ^''P'^ ^"''"^'^ •^■^^^•h^'« '- Eu- rope. Whilst in other parts of Europe confusion and prlSeTtr".'' "/"'^" -^Pain peace and order pre^alled; the arts and agriculture flourished; indus- try was secure of its fruits; and education was so un - versally diffused that it is said it was difficul to find in Andalusia a person who could not read and write Famous universities arose like those of Cordovl S ! THE TENTH CENTURY 29 ville, Toledo, and Salamanca, to which a few studious youth from Italy and Gaul, like Gerbert and Arezzo resorted, undeterred by the tales of necromancy which ignorant Europe told of the sciences that the Moslems there pursued.* A rich poetic, romantic, and philosophic literature so greatly flourished that the learned Oriental scholar Deutsch asserts that in the library of one of the later caliphs there were over 400,000 books, mostly by Span- ish authors; and this statement is confirmed by a very recent author in the Ilistoire Generale, Vol. 1. Karl Schmidt gives the number as 600,000, but the smaller number is sufficiently incredible, and affords a suffi- ciently vivid contrast to the literary poverty of Chris- tian Europe in those ages. Deutsch states that the prototypes of many European legends, like those of the Cid and Arthur of the Round Table, as also the metres of poems of Dante and Petrarch, are traceable to the Arabic poetry of Spain and Sicily. The highest point of Mohammedan culture in Spain appears to have been reached during the 10th century. Up to this time there had been an equal toleration of all religious beliefs; but in the succeeding ages there occurred an outburst of religious fanaticism, the result of wars with Christian Spain and of change of dynas- ties, by reason of which literature and learning declined to some extent; yet when driven from Spain, the Moors as they were called were still evidently far more en- lightened than their bigoted enemies. Besides the remarkable intellectual activity dis- played by the Saracens in the cultivation of science ♦Schmidt-Geschichte der Pftdagogik, Vol. 2, pp. 111-113. 30 THE SARACKXS and literature, and in fostering schools, academies, libraries, and universities, they produced on the shores of the Caspian, about 1060 A. D., a Moslem Solomon in the person of the roval author of the Book of Cabus; and in Spain in 1190, an educational prototype of Rousseau in Ibn Tophail.* The Book of Cabus was written by a father for his son and heir, giving him wise counsels for the sciences he should master; for the virtues which he should make habitual in his practice, and the prudence that belongs with virtue; for the bodily exercises in which he should be skilled, and the moderation that he should observe in these as in all other parts of life • for the interest that he should manifest in all the' vocations pursued by his people, since a prince should have knowledge of all that concerns his subjects; and for the manner in which he shall hereafter train up his sons and daughters. A brief passage on the treat- ment of children, which is curious in itself, mav serve as a specimen of the style of this treatise. " Should the teacher beat thy son, show no over-drawn sympa- thy with him; let him be beaten; for children learn sciences, arts and good manners onlv under the rod- -that IS they learn only from fear of blows and of the teacher's chidings, but from nature or of their own impulse learn they nothing." The divergence of this advice from that of the Greek and Roman theo- rists IS not more obvious than its coincidence with the Ideas of Solomon in regard to the treatment of chil- dren. Great emphasis is laid on the knowledge of '}ZJ^^_^^^_Goiin so far as he mav be known ♦Schmidt Gt^sch. der PWagocik. Vol. 2. pp. 114-124." 'I IBX TOPHAIL / 31 through the study of man who is his image, and of the world which '* He created not wantonly but that He might show forth His justice and excellence, and which He adorned because He knew well that beauty is better than ugliness and riches better than poverty." Hence in the opinion of this author '* religion is the loftiest and most excellent of all sciences. It is a tree whose roots are the belief in the onlv God, and whose branches are the law." *' Therefore," he says, ** apply thyself diligently, my son, to the knowledge of relig- ion, for it is the pith of the tree of which the rest of the sciences are only the twigs." The fundamental idea of Ibn Tophail is that a human being without any intercourse with his fellow men, and so without the inculcation of any positive religious or other ideas through education, could, by dint of the ordinary experiences which nature thrusts upon him and by natural inferences from these, attain to a true knowledge of nature and of God. Hence he imagines an illegitimate son, born of a king's daughter and committed to the waves immediately after birth in a little ark. He is driven upon an uninhabited island where he is nursed by a doe. Living here amongst beasts and birds, he learns to subordinate himself to nature's laws, and to fashion for himself clothing after the example of his brute associates. From observation of the special, he attains to general ideas. From the organization of living beings and from their unseen life-energies, he conceives the idea of an invisible Power who originates life; and from the unity and order of the universe, he convinces himself that this unseen Power is one and is intelligent. Furthermore, MJAnWi^ii^ .w^.-...i.A»«..t 32 THE SARACENS by reflecting on his own spiritual operations, he arrives at the idea that as this thought-power in himself, which while using the experiences of the senses still transcends them, is incorporeal, therefore God must be a spirit. Such is a very condensed sketch of the work of Ibn Tophail, which like Kousseau's is couched in the form of a romance. When we come to study Rousseau's Emile, it will not be difficult to see that, whilst some of the ideas of this moslem work are curi- ously analogous to those of Emile, the divergences are greater than the resemblances. The idea in both of isolating the pupil from his fellows, and subjecting him wholly to the influences of nature that he may be objec- tively taught by the experiences of nature, is well-nigh the sole point of contact and is especially striking; but with this, both resemblance and analogy end. The ideas of the two men as to the course which intellectual, moral, and religious development takes in the human being under the influences of experience, have little resemblance. Fanciful, however, as the educational scheme of the Moorish author may appear to be, it is hardly more fanciful or impracticable than that of the erratic Frenchman, save that the latter substitutes a paragon of a tutor as a companion for the child, in place of the beasts and birds of Ibn Tophail. \ Literary Actiyity of the Byzantines The mediseval Byzantine learning was the lineal suc- cessor of that of the ancient Greeks. After the ex- tinction of paganism, and the closing of the '* schools of Athens " early in the 6th century, the old Greek studies were mostly restricted to some of the monas- teries and to the Royal College of Constantinople. But during the dynastic and religious disorders of the 7th and 8th centuries, the college was destroyed, its library of many thousand volumes was burned, and learning found its sole refuge in the monasteries on Mt. Athos, and in a few of those on the islands of the Archipelago. The 9th century however witnessed a great revival of interest in learning. The Caesar, Bardos, uncle of the emperor, became its patron, and founded in the capitol '' a free university, independent of church and clergy in which distinguished teachers of philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and high gram- mar, gave lectures which he himself attended." The salaries of the teachers were paid by the state ; Leo, archbishop of Thessalonica, a man famous for his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy, was placed at its head; and Photius, reputed the most [earned man of the age, was summoned to the capitol as patriarch. A library of the ancient works of Greek literature was carefully collected ; and, on account of the intellectual indolence that prevailed, its contents (33) 34 THE BYZANTINES were imparted in extracts, abridgments, and epitomes. From this time forth until Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453, amidst all the revolutions and changes of dynasties, a certain type of learning, in- ferior indeed in essential character, had its continuous centre in Constantinople. It was promoted by succes- sive emperors, and its resources were enlarged by ad- ditions of books, so that in the 12th century, Constan- tinople had a rich collection of the ancient Greek lit- erature, in which are named some works, like the comedies of Menander, whose loss is deplored by scholars. Some of the old monasteries also had val- uable libraries, and these in much later ages became famous as places where valuable manuscripts have been found after centuries of oblivion. The lan- guage of the court and church had something of Attic purity; literary works in the ancient tongue were undertaken by Anna Comnena, daughter of the emperor Alexius, of whom and of the manners of the court, and the Greek pride of race, Sir Walter Scott gives a graphic picture in ** Count Robert of Paris "; and a persistent effort was made to re-establish the reign of the ancient Greek science, literature, and philosophy, under Christian auspices. But the Byzantines showed themselves incapable of making any original and independent use of all their learned resources. The stamp of intellectual barren- ness is impressed on all that they did. They could collect, edit, comment, and copy manuscript; could make epitomes; could compile lexicons and manuals of rules; but their attempts at poetic and historic com- \ INTELLECTUAL STAGNATION 35 position are valueless, and their efforts at philosophy are a mere " scholastic summary of Aristotle ". Gibbon* attributes their literary and scientific sterility to the bewilderment of their understandings by metaphysical controversies, to which they were fatally prone; to the vitiation of their taste by monk- ish homilies, which seems to me a more doubtful cause; to a loss of all reliable principles of moral evidence through a belief in present miracles and visions; and to the total lack of emulous rivalry with other polished nations. *' Alone in the universe," he says, '' the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit; and it is no wonder if they fainted in the race, since they had neither competitors to urge their speed, nor judge to crown their victory.'' With regard to the first reason that Gibbon assigns, Hallam saysrf *' The Greeks abused their ingenuity in theological controversies, those especially which re- lated to the nature and incarnation of our Savior, wherein, as is usual, the disputants became more posi- tive and rancorous as their creed receded from the possibility of human apprehension." It is possible that some one or all of these circum- stances may have been influential in producing the undoubted intellectual stagnation of the Byzantines, their poverty of spirit amid great literary riches. But it is well that we should bear in mind that for abundantly more than ten centuries before the age that we are considering, th is same poverty of spirit * History of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, C. 53. t Middle Ages, C. VL 36 THE BYZANTINES had characterized the degenerate descendants of Socra- tes and Aristotle, of Homer, Sophocles, and Demos- thenes; and this too when their intellects were not jet bewildered with empty controversies, at least about ecclesiastical subjects, nor their judgments clouded by superstitious beliefs, nor their taste vitiated by barbarous homilies; and when a generous emulation with other polished nations was still vividly open to them in Rome and Alexandria, had their national self conceit been ready to accept it. Hence we must, I think, look for some deeper cause of the fact that we are considering; and it is quite possible that this may be found in the lack, by both the Byzantine Greeks and their predecessors for a long series of generations, of any high ideal of human life and human destiny, like that which the founder of Christianity presented, but which the nations were not yet prepared to receive, because even a Divine revelation requires ages for the experience of mankind to grow up to its apprehension. The Byzantine people had far greater treasures from antiquity than we have received from them, but they seemed incapable of advancing by their use; and, as Schlegel truly says, in his History of Literature (Lecture 7), '' The matter of chief importance in all civilization, and in all literature, is not the dead treas- ures we possess, but the living uses to which we apply them.'' He further says that amongst the country- men of Aristotle, ** such was the neglect of his writ- ings, which we consider as amongst the most precious monuments of the Grecian intellect, that there re- mained at one time but a single copy, and that too A SARCOPHAGUS OF LITERARY TREASURES 37 rescued from destruction by an accident of the most extraordinary nature." It would really seem that the ancient poets and orators, historians and philosophers, artists and scien- tists, had exhausted the entire cycle of possibilities of the Grecian intellect, on the plane on which it per- sisted in standing; and had bequeathed to their succes- sors a " barren sceptre ", entailing an inglorious show of empty sovereignty, until it should be transferred to the realm of some new and loftier ideal. Incapa- ble of this transfer, or too indolent to attempt it, there was 'left to the Byzantines only the humble yet eventually useful office of collecting scattered and rare books and thus rescuing from destruction the precious fragments of ancient science and literature ; of attempting to uphold the ancient world unchanged and unenlarged against new peoples and a new spirit; of becoming thereby, during many ages of disor^^er and barbarism, the sole refuge of the ancient culture; of preserving this always in its ancient form and practically unaltered, as it would inevitably not have been with a race of vigorous originality; and of thus saving the youthful western peoples, whom they de- spised as barbarians, many weary and devious wander- ings to attain a like culture, by presenting to them ultimately the unchanged antique types of which they ]iad before been ignorant. This was indeed a humble office, analogous to that of a sarcophagus iri-which are 3ntombed dead treasures, yet it performed a service to the future of learning not less great or noteworthy because wholly unintended. How important was this ajefti»M»A* 38 THE BYZANTINES work of the Byzntine Greeks, and how^great their un- conscious service to future generations, we shall see more clearly when we come to study the educational history of the 15th and 16th centuries. CHAPTER II CHRISTIAN EDUCATION TO THE AGE OF CHARLEMAGNE We have seen that amid the gloom and confusion of the Middle Ages there are discernible three currents of intellectual and educational effort ; and that these currents, while parallel in time, were for many ages wholly distinct in space, having no reciprocal influence, separated not more by location than by ruling ideas and purposes. All were monotheistic, believing in the same God whom the Hebrews adored ; all opposed the prevailing heathenism; two believed in the same Son of God who had come to save the world ;— -but aside from these facts they had little or nothing in common. The followers of Mohammed were filled with a fiery zeal which made them missionaries not less than war- riors, intent not merely on conquering but on convert- ing the nations with whom they came in contact. This fanatical enthusiasm, which combined earthly dominion with the spread of their faith, was for sev- eral ages correlated with an intellectual activity which, as we have seen, made their career the most brilliant and noteworthy fact of any which marked the world of that period. To confirm the faith which they ex- tended by their conquering arms, and to perpetuate the results of their intellectual activity, they early saw the need of a corresponding education, and made the brilliant educational efforts which we have witnessed. (39) 40 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE We have seen that the Byzantine education was doubtless a continuation of the ancient Greek culture, greatly attenuated indeed after the schools of Athens were closed by Justinian and during the religious con- tentions of the succeeding ages, but rising again into prominence from the 9th century. Here then for about six centuries the old Greek learning and litera- ture, with the dogmas of the Eastern Church, were industriously taught; but with an utter lack of orig- inality for which later ages have reason to be grateful, since thereby the finest products of the old Greek in- tellect have in large measure reached us unchanged. We come now to the examination of the third of these currents of intellectual life, long inconspicuous while the others were brilliant, yet into which these finally converge, and from which they gain their sig- nificance in educational history. And here it becomes essential that we should first observe the nature of the ideal which forms the basis of Christian education,— an ideal, towards which through ages of darkness and mistaken effort, it has slowly, deviously, and through many unavoidable errors, been gradually approximat- ing. In the ancient world, as we have seen, man was valued as a means for magnifying and exalting the state to which he belonged, and chiefly ih so far as he was useful for that purpose. With^ the coming of Christ, however, with the example of his divine man- hood, and with his teachings, a new idea was intro- duced into the world, which was destined to produce far-reaching consequences on both civilization and edu- cation. It was the idea of the infinite worth of the A NEW IDEAL 41 \ human being as such, since he is destined to an im- mortality of duration, since God is immanent in him, and since his loftiest work is to become perfect, as his Father in heaven is perfect. In its truest expression, therefore, Christianity views all men as equal in valuation before God, and their destiny as of equal moment to Him. Before him mere human rank and station are nothing. The like destination of all men as His children demands there- fore equal rights, equal duties, and, as far as possible, equal opportunities for education, for all men, and gives to all mankind a claim on the proper brotherly ofl&ces of their fellows. It is a confused recognition of this fundamental truth in our own times, a truth which in early ages the ancient Hebrews alone saw, and yet saw not clearly, which inspires the various humanitarian movements and the newly awakened consciousness of the mutual duties of capital and labor, the duties of the rich to the very poor, and of the learned to the ignorant, with which our age is rife. This idea, opposed by material- ism and selfishness, and so obscured by them that Christianity has often seemed little better than mere worldliness, has been slowly leavening the world and its educational agencies, and in these latter days is moving more swiftly towards its realization. Christ himself, in honoring marriage by his cooper- ation, in the love that he manifests for children, in the emphasis that he lays on character as of more worth than riches or worldly success, and in showing that the chief aim of man's existence is the elevation of him- self out of the earthly into the spiritual through 42 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE righteousness and truth,— as well as by his models of how teaching should be done and the spirit in which it must be done to attain the highest success, has both laid the foundations of modern pedagogy and revealed to us its ideal. This ideal, may be thus briefly expressed. Its aim is universal and purely humanitarian. It has no sec- tional limits, no merely utilitarian implications. '* It is to minister to the welfare of society and the state by caring for the welfare of the individual man; to push the divine and human in man's nature to its full- est possible development, that he may become intel- lectually and morally free and so like his Maker; and to use thereto all science and art, the world and life, as means of culture, by mastering which man may also become a benevolent and creative intelligence in his limited sphere, as God is in his infinite one." This idea which makes the individiuil and not the state the chief centre of interest, and which aims to prepare man for eternal happiness hereafter by bring- ing into vigorous activity during his earthly career all that is best in him, as thinker and worker, and as sharer in all the multiform relations of social life,— was so unlike anything in the ancient world, that it is not surprising that it required ages of blind groping before its fulness of meaning because apparent to mankind. Here as elsewhere, even a divine revelation has needed the interpretation of a long-continued human experience to make its meaning clear. The earliest Christians seem indeed, at least in some recorded cases, to have maintained with each other fraternal relations, having all things in common, and MONASTERIES 43 I the rich ministering of their abundance to their poorer brethren. The sphere of voman was in the family, but there she was the co-equal of man, the chief teacher of the young, and their guide in the forma- tion of character. Children were looked upon as a precious gift of God, who were to be trained for His service and for that of their fellow men. The earli- est Christian education was therefore domestic in character, and in this the child was trained to a keen sense of duty through the inculcation of Christian ideas by precepts and more etfectually by the example of parents and friends. So far then the early i)ractice conformed fairly though unconsciously to its ideal. But this uncon- scious conformity did not long contnue. With many, the dominion of old ideas was too strong to be at once overcome; while with the more zealous and spiritual- minded, exclusive contemplation of the future life presently led to a neglect of this world and its duties, that by ascetic observances they might prepare them- selves for the unseen world. Hence in the East pious men became at first hermits, and later were led by the strong social instinct to form societies for an exclu- sively religious life. This practice soon spread to the West, and in both East and West monasteries arose. This fact was fraught with the most important con- sequences to the future of learning, for which, during the ages of violence and disorder, the monasteries be- came the onlv safe retreat. The old Roman utilitarian spirit also did not disap- pear with the subversion of the empire. It survived in a new form, and as the Christian church gathered 44 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE strength by its accessions this spirit reappeared in its dogmas, its methods, and the purposes for which it used literature.* Amidst the violence and the con- flicts which were rife, the church was forced to rely on its dominion over the minds and consciences of men. Hence it was not strange that it should foster even superstitions that aided it in this purpose, and that it should in all ways claim, and exercise so far as practicable, a limitless control over thoughts, thus suppressing freedom of thinking, self-centred individ- uality, and self-judging responsibility. With the introduction into the world's history of this new humanitarian idea, an idea which cares best for society and the state, for this present world and for the unseen world, by caring primarily for the complete development of the individual, mankind has completed its cycle of experience of the ideas that can influence education, and has reached the last and highest, which it is now its duty to strive fully to realize. Let us now trace the history of its progress among the nations of Western Europe; let us note the ex- pedients that were adopted during ages of change and confusion to keep alive some feeble sparks of learning, at least among the clergy, and the vicissi- tudes to which these efforts were subjected; let us also, while noticing the deviations of education from Its high ideal under the pressure of invincible neces- sity, observe besides how an influence from Saracenic culture came to co-operate with other influences aris- ing from the circumstance s of the times in giving •Guizot. Civilization in France. Lecture 16th, p. 102. THE CATECHUMENATE 45 '^ origin, impulse, and direction to theearly universities; and how, a few centuries later, when the universities were struggling under the yoke of a narrow and nar- rowing dialectic, a fresh impulse springing from the effete East, which, while itself preserving a form with- out spirit, had yet been the conservator of the old Greek culture, came to infuse a new spirit into the vigorous but now lethargic West and to turn it ulti- mately to the pursuit of its long-misunderstood and neglected ideal. The first Christian efforts for education, apart from the domestic training which has already been alluded to, was the establishment of the Catechumenate, the ob- ject of which was to teach adult proselytes before baptism to read the Bible and to understand and ac- cept the fundamental Christian doctrines. These schools were taught by the pastors, and were divided, it is said, into first two and later four stages of ad- vancement. Their purposes were limited to impart- ing a knowledge of distinctively Christian truths, the purely literary education of the few who desired it being still gained from the heathen civil schools. The special training of those who desired to become Chris- tian teachers was gained by intimacy with the pastors and by imitation of their example, the civil schools being here also relied upon at first for imparting the knowledge that was needful for their sacred vocation. The first attempt to connect religious with literary and scientific teaching was made by Pantanus in Alex- andria, 181 A. D., in a school which from its procedure by question and answer was called the Catechetic school. It was founded as a school for the systematic -^- 46 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE interpretation of Scripture, together with instruction in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and geometry. Presumably it was intended to make attendance at heathen schools unnecessary. Pantanus was succeeded in this school by Clemens of Alexandria, who believed that the heathen philoso- phers were, like Moses, in some degree divinely in- spired, and that philosophy, like the Mosaic writings, was a preparation for the more complete revelation which was made by Christ and which is the fulfilment of philosophy as well as of the law. Hence he taught his pupils what was good in philosophy as well as in the Scriptures, and aimed thus gradually to lead them up to Christianity, — a procedure which seems to have been judicious with those who, while well-disposed towards the new faith, still had a hereditary respect for the works of the great heathen sages. Clemens was succeeded by the wise and learned Origen, under whom this school attained its greatest and most brilliant reputation. Origen connected the study of nature with dialectics, so as to lead his dis- ciples from nature up to God, a noteworthy etfort in that age. He also taught geometry and astronomy as a preparative to ethics. Then followed the reading and interpretation of the poets and philosophers, in which he encouraged his pupils to full freedom of investigation, whilst he accompanied their efforts with sympathy and guidance. Finally he brought them with this full preparation to the knowledge and inter- pretation of scripture, and in this he made use of the idea of an allegoric or mystic meaning in the explan- ation of passages which seemed to him to convey PANTANUS, CLEMENS, ORIGEN 47 notions unworthy of the Deity — a mode of interpre- tation which prevailed largely in the Middle Ages. This account, summarized from Karl Schmidt, will give an idea of the subjects and methods of this school during the time of its greatest prosperity in the 3d century. Origen was succeeded by other teachers of some repute, but the school sank into insignificance after the middle of the 4th century. Thus far we see no openly expressed opposition to heathen science and literature nor to the sending of Christian youth to heathen schools. But in the 3d century a note of opposition to the civil schools began to be heard, beginning with Tertullian and expressing itself prominently in the Apostolic Constitutions, about 300 A. D., and later in the writings of Chrys- ostom. The Constitutions say: " Refrain from all the writ- ings of the heathen; for what hast thou to do with strange discourses, laws, or false prophets, which in truth turn aside from the faith those who are weak in understanding." And then, directing attention to the Scriptures as containing what the faithful may need of poetry and prophecy, they conclude: '^ Where- fore abstain scrupulously from all strange and devilish books.""^ While the teachings of Chrysostom contain much good sense, as for example the declaration that women are the best teachers for children, they still insist that the cloister is the best and safest place for Christian education, because youth are there isolated from the corruptions of the world, and gain an inexpugnable * Mullinger. Schools of Charles the Great, p. 8. 48 CHBISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE habit of virtue. Chrysostom therefore dissuades from attendance at heathen schools, where he says ** boys learn vices rather than sciences, and in grasping after lesser goods lose the greatest. * * * if the soul is virtuous the ignorance of science will not hurt it, but if it is corrupted it suffers harm in spite of the most eloquent tongue.'' The veto of the Fathers on the civil schools has its justification in the fact that during the last four cen- turies of their existence they paid almost exclusive attention to the mere ornaments of heathen culture. During the 3d and 4th centuries a vigorous opposi- tion began to be manifested, not only to the heathen schools, but also to all heathen literature, the best and indeed the only literature then accessible, save the Scriptures, that was worthy to be called litera- ture. Early in the 3d century this opposition was led by the fiery and uncompromising Tertullian, who was followed by his disciple, Cyprian, the learned and pious bishop of Carthage, and he by St. Jerome and St. Augustine, all counted among the fathers of the Christian church. Nor, when we consider the circumstances and the times, does this opposition seem to have been prompted by an unwarrantable prejudice. For the world was but slowly emerging from the shades of heathenism, and all the surroundings still bore the heathen stamp; yet the literature that the church fathers proscribed presents the heathen ideas and mythology in their most alluring guise. It was not unreasonable there- fore to fear the influence of such literature on impres- sible youth, who must besides be brought into daily i i I A MKI)L*:VAL SCHOOL. (From Cublxriey's Syllabus, stfter h title pape of Anwykyll's Compt^ndiuin GrMmnijiticau) (49) l^ OPPOSITION TO HEATHEN LITERATURE 51 contact with heathenism, unless secluded in cloisters. But in those ages, besides this not unfounded fear, the heathen were meeting the Christian doctrine of miracles with rival pretensions to supernatural powers and to gifts of prophecy which, with the easy credulity of superstitious ages, the Christians accepted as true and attributed to sorcery and to the baleful aid of an omnipresent devil, thus adding horror to their distrust of the heathen and all his works. It is needful also to bear in mind the idea of the sole end of man then strongly entertained by the en- tire Christian church. As antiquity had regarded man only as a citizen of this world, so the church looked on him only as a pilgrim to the unseen world, a view quite as one-sided though incomparably more worthy and elevated. Of what value then to such a pilgrim this vain world with the allurements of its literary graces, especially when such literature bore for the Christian the fatal stamp of heathen ideas! Unfortunately for the culture of the Middle Ages, this idea gained the mastery; the study of ancient literature and science mostlj ceased; and thus, as Guizot remarks, the Christian world of Western Eu- rope deliberately cut itself loose from the past in which it had its roots. It was left to much more modern times to regard man more justly as a citizen of both worlds, so using this present time with all that is best in its accumulated stores as to become a more completely developed inheritor of the future world. Let it not be thought, however, that all the fathers of the church in the 3d and 4th centuries took this 52 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE narrow view of ancient literature. St. Basil (330- 379), justly surnamed the Great, was more liberal and judicious. Like Plato he advised in the education of the young the discriminating use of the ancient poets, and especially Homer. He even thought that such a study would be a useful preparative for the deeper study of the scriptures; and he adduces in support of this opinion the examples of Moses and Daniel, trained, the one in all the learning of the Egyptians, and the other in the deepest mysteries of the Chaldean lore, before occupying themselves with the religious con- templation whereby they became the law-giver and the prophet of their people. We may here call attention to the beginnings in these centuries of a distinctive church music, which originated in the regulation by St. Ambrose of the tones and measures which were best adapted to the solemn services of the church. Hence the church issued from its early experiences supplied with its two earliest and too often exclusively used means for youthful education, viz., religious doctrines and church song. To these was added, when all the branches of the western church had come to look to Rome as their common centre and national head, the only language which in the Middle Ages could lay any claim to uni- versality, the Latin. This became not only the gen- eral vehicle for ideas to the learned among many widely scattered peoples, but also a kind of universal symbol of a common faith, a sign of Christian unity, indeed in some sort a sacred language, in which all who would officiate in the services of the church and CELEBRATED TEXT-BOOKS 53 « i all who would aspire to influence in the gravest affairs, must be duly instructed. Here then we have outlined the staple of instruc- tion during a large part of the Middle Ages, and here the consecrated medium through which instruction was imparted. During the Middle Ages certain works had great celebrity as text-books, or, more properly speaking, as authorities, insomuch that they are of frequent men- tion in literary history, and hence they become import- ant factors in the educational history of the period. Both they and their authors had an importance and extent of influence that no text-book or its author has attained during the past five centuries. A few of these works deserve a brief mention here, in addition to the far earlier books described in my History of Ancient Education (chapter xviii, pp. 262-272). Martianus Capella, who is supposed to have died about 500 A. D., prepared a work in nine books on the liberal arts, in which verse is somewhat liberally interspersed. The arts are fancifully treated, since the first two books present science in general under the guise of a marriage of Mercury with Philology, merchandise with letters, utility with culture, at which the seven bridesmaids treat in turn of the seven liberal arts of the Middle Ages constituting the Trivium and Quadrivium. Extensive as its subject is, it is by no means a large book. The elementary treatment of any one of the arts that it touches would, at present, make quite as large a book. About the beginning of the 6th century treatise an- other on the seven liberal arts was written by Magnus 54 CHBI8TIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE CELEBRATED TEXT-BOOKS 55 Aurelius Cassiodorus, a Roman of high rank who later became a monk. Schmidt says this treatise had great ecclesiastical favor as a school book, on account of the piety of its author, as well as because of its brevity. At nearly the same period as these two authors, Boethius, a man of noble Roman family, wrote in prison a work entitled ** The Consolation of Philos- ophy ", in which also poetry is plentifully used. For many centuries this work was widely read in schools, and held well-nigh the place of a supplement to the Bible. Later it was translated into many languages, an English translation accompanied by a life of Boethius being published in 1695 by Richard, Lord Preston. Besides this work he composed also treatises on arith- metic, geometry, and music which were much used in schools, and were fuller and more satisfactory than those of Capella. Isidore, archbishop of Seville, (+ G36 A. D.) wrote a work in twenty books, which treats not only of the seven liberal arts but also of all other branches of knowledge then known to men, constituting a veritable encyclopoedia of the knowledge of the 7th century. This is probably the earliest encyclopaedia ever written, and is highly interesting as showing the range of sub- jects thought important in the 7th century. Beginning with the liberal arts, it ranges through ships and their equipment to household furniture, food, and even various kinds of drinking vessels. But of all the men who composed works tised in the schools of the Middle Ages, none is more worthy of consideration by Englishmen or their descendants than Baeda, commonly known as the Venerable Bede. His it&r ^ long and studious life, extending from 673 to 755 A. D., was passed chiefly in the monastery of Jarrow. Here he gradually mastered all the learning of his time, being skilled in Greek as well as Latin, a rare thing in his day. He, as well as Isadore, composed an encyclopaedic work for the use of his pupils, for he was all his life a teacher. He wrote also a long- esteemed History of the English Church. His last labor was a translation of the Gospel of St. John into his native Anglo-Saxon tongue, and his choice of this gospel was wholly in harmony with his own gentle and spiritual character. The brief but affecting account of the life and death of this great English scholar and teacher in Green's '' Short History of the English People '' will be read with interest by all who are at- tracted to educational history.* Contemporaneous with Charlemagne and a pupil of Alcuin, was Rabanus Maurus, the head of the famous cloister-school of Fulda which still exists as a gymna- sium, who was later prince archbishop of Mainz, and who is known by the proud title ** Primus praeceptor Germaniie.'' He too, besides other works used as school-books, wrote for the use of his pupils an ency- clopaedic work on all the sciences then known. It was evidently modelled on the earlier work of Isidore, draws from the same sources, treats much the same topics in its twenty-two books in nearly the same order, and shows the same lack of any effort at extending the boundaries of knowledge. The last of the famous mediaeval school-books that shall be named is the Doctrinale of Alex. Dolensis, •OP. cit. C. 1. Section 4th. 56 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE ( MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS which was the great text-book of grammar from the 13th to the IGth century, and was doubtless the dread of all school boys who conned its crabbed pages.* Such then were the chief text-books on which was based most of the instruction given during the Middle Ages. Let us now see what provisions for school in- struction existed during the first centuries of this period. From 500 to 1100 A. D. these were wholly of two kinds, viz. Monastic schools belonging to the mon- asteries and taught by the monks, and Cathedral schools established at the seats of bishops and carried on un- der their supervision. The monastic schools, which chiefly afforded educa- tion to others than monks, owe their origin to St Benedict (+ 543 A. D.), who founded an order of monks that take their name from him. His object was the combination of religious contemplation with labor; labor in agriculture and other employments adapted to the secluded life of monks; labor in tran- scribing and multiplying manuscripts and in the study of the Scriptures; labor also, which chieflv interests us here, in the instruction of the young. This instruc- tion was primarily intended for those who expected to devote themselves to the service of the church, but ultimately instruction was sought for from the monks by those who had no such intention. Hence grew up m the course of time a separation of their pupils into interns and extems, or those taught within the cloisters ♦For further information on those old «r>hn«i »^.l ^chmldt. Gesch. der Padaeoeik Vol II nn i«*_i«o , o '-"'^^•^•IV; Unterrichtswesen in DeutschLnd ^ IV ''• "" ""' '^'"'^ ^««^»^- ^'^ 57 I f for the religious life, and those taught without for more secular purposes. These Benedictine communities multiplied rapidly over Europe, and extended the blessing of elementary and sometimes of more advanced instruction to not a few who contemplated secular vocations. Laurie says : ** It is to the monks of this rapidly-extending order, or to the influence which their rule exercised on other conventual orders, that we owe the diffusion of schools in the earlier half of the Middle Ages, and the preser- vation of ancient learning. The Benedictine monks not only taught in their own monasteries, but were everywhere in demand as heads of episcopal or cathe- dral schools."* .The subjects taught in these schools were first of all reading, writing, and singing in accordance with the system of St. Ambrose. To these were added enough arithmetic to calculate the return of the church festi- vals, occasionally some reading of classic authors for merely grammatical purposes, and in some cases an exceedingly elementary study of the Trivial and Quad- rivial branches. The greatest extent of any of these branches may be seen by consulting the encyclopaedias of Isidore or Rabanus Maurus. Episcopal or cathedral schools of some kind doubt- less arose at a quite early period to subserve the abso- lute necessities of the bishops in providing clergy, readers, and choristers for the extension and even for the bare continuance of their work. Indeed we might consider the Catechetic school of Alexandria as the prototype of these schools. Their studies, aside from • Laurie- Rise and Constitution of Universities. Lecture 2d. 58 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE the natural religious training, embraced branches of the Trivium and Quadrivium; but we have no reason to suppose that the instruction was other than of the most meagre and elementary character, presenting only such topics as were of the most obvious and press- ing necessity, and with little or no attention to the multiplication of manuscripts. It hardly need be said that the instruction in these schools as well as in the monasteries was given wholly in Latin. In the generation immediately preceding the activity of Charlemange, or about 750 A. D., Bishop Chrode- gang of Metz made a vigorous eflFort to improve the Episcopal schools by setting an example of their better organization, and his exertions seem to have produced some little effect; but any considerable change for the better, both in these and in the monastic establish- ments awaited the strong hand of the wise and ener- getic Charlemagne. The condition of learning previous to 790 A. D. may be brieffy summed up in this way. Learning pertained chiefly to the clergy and was by no means universal even among them. The peasantry as a class were taught only the dogmas of the church, though, in ac- cordance with the democratic spirit that, to its honor has always animated the Roman Catholic church' boys of ambition and promise from any class could gam ready admission to whatever opportunities for learning were available, and a capitulary of Charle- magne gives reason to believe that boys of humble birth formed the majority of the pupils. Nobles and princes at the best, learned only the elements of knowledge, together with church doctrines and sing- CONDITION OF LEARNING, 790 A. D. 59 4 I t ing, to which was added in the case of princes some elementary knowledge of whatever laws then existed. The ability to read and write was more common among noble girls than among their brothers, but for the best educated girls who were taught in the clois- ters, the chief subjects were church observances, domestic duties, and embroidery; and it is doubtful whether the small modicum of learning here enumer- ated existed to any considerable extent in the wide Frankish dominions until near the time of Charle- mange.* Even the consecrated language, the Latin, had de- generated and become barbarized. What better could be looked for when even so enlightened a prelate as Gregory the Great thought it shameful that the lan- guage of the Holy Spirit should be subjected to the petty restraints of grammar ?t In the times of which we are speaking Ireland and England were confessedly the brightest abodes of Christian learning. The suspicion of dislike^^f hea- then literature and science had not affected them seriously, and hence both Greek and Latin literature— the Greek more especially in Ireland— were cultivated in their monasteries with a zeal and success not exhib- ited elsewhere. The Venerable Bede was doubtless far above an average specimen of monkish learning in the early part of the 8th century, even in these favored islands, as yet comparatively little troubled by devas- tating wars; yet there can be no doubt that in the •Mullinger-Schools of Charlemagne, p. 68. Specht, Geach. des Unter- riohtswesens, etc. Ist chapter expresses a different opinion. t Schmidt, Geschichte der P&dagogik. Vol. 2, p. 188; and Hallam, Mid- dle Ages, C. IX part Ist. I 60 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE schools of Ireland and England, and especially in those of Jarrow and York, there was a relatively high grade of scientific attainment. Thus Alcuin is quoted by Guizot X as saying of that of York in his day, about 760 A. D., '' The learned Albert gave drink to thirsty minds at the sources of various studies and sciences. To some he was eager to communicate the art and rules of Grammar; for others he caused the waves of Rhetoric to flow. He exercised these in the combats of jurisprudence and those in the songs of Adonia. Some learned from him to sound the pipes of Castalia, and to strike with lyric foot the summits of Parnassus. To others he taught the harmony of the heavens, the works of the sun and moon, the five zones of the pole, the seven wander- ing stars, the laws of the course of the stars, their appearance and decline, the motions of sea, the tremb- lings of the earth, the nature of men, of beasts and birds, and the inhabitants of woods; he unveiled the various qualities and the combinations of numbers; he taught how to calculate with certainty the solemn re- turn of Easter; and, above all he explained the mys- teries of the Uoly Scriptures." From this description, whose evident inflation of style is due to the fact that it is a cold prose rendering of what was poetry in the original, we learn that in 'York there was, for that period, a generous course of study, including not only most of the seven liberal arts, but also jurisprudence, natural history, and the exposition of the Scriptures. It happened from this be tter state of learning in t History of Civilization in France, Lecture 22. .. THE DANISH INVASION 61 these islands that not a few scholars were summoned thence to promote learning in the continent, amongst whom was Alcuin himself, as we shall presently see, and, at a later day, John Scotus Erigena, whose name indicates his 'Irish origin. This brighter condition of learning, however, was doomed to a rude interruption, early in the 9th century, from the Danish invasions, which wrought such havoc in the places of study that m 871, when Alfred the Great came to the throne, he testifies that he could not '' remember one south of Thames who could explain his service book in Eng- lish "; whilst in the northern part of England " the Danish sword had left few survivors of the school of Ecgberht or Baeda."* i * Green, Short History of the Ens?lish People. Sec. V. J CHAPTER III THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN THE NINTH CENTURY When the state of learning in England and Western Europe was such as has been described in the preced- ing chapter, two monarchs arose who, in the last part of the 8th century and in the 9th, made vigorous and to a considerable degree successful efforts for the in- crease and reform of schools and for the revival of the literary spirit. These were Charlemange in Western Europe, + 814, and the English Alfred, + 901. Charlemagne, distinguished as a conqueror whose dominions extended over much of Europe, was also wise enough to desire that his monarchy should be characterized not less by its enlightenment than by its extent. To promote the culture which he desired, he made use of the clergy as the only learned class; but he was sagacious enough to look far beyond the then narrow limits of ecclesiastical learning, and to grasp all the best elements of progress then available among all the nations that he ruled. As a faithful son of the church he desired a learned clergy; but as a wise ruler he evidently regarded such a clergy as instruments for the elevation, through education, of the masses of his subjects, rather than as mere guardians of ecclesiastical lore. We shall most easily gain a clear view of Charle- magne's efforts for the advancement of learning by (62) CHARLEMAGNE'S LETTER TO BANGULF 63 considering separately the four most characteristic phases of these efforts: (1) his improvement of the instrumentalities through which he must work, (2) his measures for the founding or reformation of schools, (3) his encouragement of the use of the various vernaculars that prevailed among his subjects, as a means for bringing learning within their reach, (4) the learned men, especially Alcuin, whom he invited to supervise or further his designs. (1) The instruments on whom he must^ depend to further any efforts that he might make for the im- provement of education, were obviously the monks and clergy, for they were ex officio the representatives and conservators of whatever learning existed within his realm. But the intellectual and moral condition of this class was at that time not encouragiug.* His first care must therefore obviously be given to making them what they should be in life and conduct, and to secure in them a respectable grade of learning, as well scientific as ecclesiastical. He therefore issued to the superior clergy edicts for the improvement of those un- der their supervision, of which a good example is his cir- cular letter of 787 A. D. to Bangulf, Abbot of Fulda. Guizot in his 22d lecture on the History of Civiliza- tion in France gives with some ommissions a transla- tion of this imperial circular which I copy here, adding an omitted sentence which is suited to our purpose from ano ther version. f ♦ See Mullinger, The Schools of Charlemagne, p. 37 et seq. t A translation of the entire capitulary may be found in Mullineer Go Cit. p. 98. 64 .'the ninth centuky revival your Devotion tn p^h , "7'."®*''''- ""e beg to inform oprics and monasteries confided to « '" ^''*'" favor of Christ, care should b 'tin nTTrl'^ orderly and according to our holv r^l u^ '" ''"' over to ,.„,,,„,, ,„ tL L::Xv^iSr irr cording to the capacity of individuals lu 7 u billing and able to learn by Gld's hi v u' "' of the two it is better to be good tS't. b"/'""^' yet to h^^e knowledge leads tfbeing g^;; '' '""^'^' pray for us.itheifh^ ^'■'''"■'" ''°"*"'"«d to vate^risol Vet; IrrdtTfo^^" '^^'^ P^' while the sentiments were e.ce it ' th ! ""'' ""'' which they were convevedw!!,, '"^''^^age in erate. • * * J 'T*^ was generally rude and illit- »»re readily „„p,f„/„,i, ! ^.S J',' '^ .•''' "' '"•• vL r ?" "' '™'' '" «"•»"'.-..; "' CHARLKMAGN-r 742-814 (OT)) f I CHARLEMAGNE'S LETTER TO BANGULF 67 all the suffragan bishops and all the monasteries around you ; and let no monk go beyond his monastery to ad- minister justice, or to enter the assemblies and the voting places. Adieu." This imperial circular shows the earnest desire of Charlemagne that his clergy should be brought back to purity of morals and regularity of life, although he cautiously refrains from directly charging them with any delinquencies; that they should strive after a de- cent standard of scholarship, sagaciouslv basing his anxiety on this account on a motive likely to be influ- ential with the clerical mind, that they might be the better able to understand the Scriptures; and that they should select and establish those skilful to teach The final sentence conveys a warning against meddling with political and judicial affairs, to which we may in- fer from this that the monks and clergy had become addicted, to the neglect of their own proper duties :Noteworthy also is the emphasis with which he demands that his wishes in all these respects should be strictly observed. Evidences are not wanting that this circular of Char- lemagne had its desired effect. One of the most inter- esting of these is an autobiographic account by Wal- afried Strabo, of the teachers, subjects, and methods of study in the monastry of Reichenau on Lake Con- stance, from the year 815 to 825 A. D., during which time he was a pupil there.* This account by one of the pupils from his own standpoint, testifies to a con- dition of studies and to a n ability and zeal on the • Thl. Kcount may be found in full in Schmidt. Ge.chichte der Pid- »gogik, vol. 2d pp. 1*7-812. 68 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL part of teachers at this monastery which is highly credi- table. That it was no isolated instance is shown by the fact that Strabo went later to advance his learning at Fulda, then under the charge of Rabanus Maurus, " Primus praeceptor Germanise '\ and returned thence to Reichenau as teacher and ultimately as abbot. This two-fold fact is a striking indication of the effective- ness of Charlemagne's efforts. It is worthy of note that Charlemagne by his own example added weight to his commands; for he was a zealous student himself, had a school of the palace for himself and those who surrounded him which followed him wherever he went, and is even said to have learned to write after he came to the throne, though the testi- mony of his friend Eginhard shows that he never sue- ceeded in writing well. What courtier, what ecclesi- astic could fail to put new vigor into his efforts for learning, when he saw his sovereign, busy with wars and perplexed by the affairs of a vast empire, using whatever spare moments he could steal from the duties of his station, in the improvement of his learning ! (2) Having cared for the improvement of those who should be teachers of the young, the emperor turned his attention to the increase of schools, requiring that " in every episcopal see and every monastery, there should be a school for instruction in the Psalms, sing- ing, notation, counting, and the Latin tongue, and that the pupils should be supplied with accurately transcribed text-books."* One of the most energetic of his prelates, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, even * See also MuUinger. Schools of Charles the Great, for a cap.tulary of 789 A. D. to the same effect. P. 100. M^ AI.FI?i:i» THK (J RKAT. 819-901 ORKiKN ADAMANTirs 185?-2.\i S«e pu^i' 4(S Soe patr«» 27 (iALKN, 1»)-20(J N*e pu<;o 27 KUCLIU. MJ :-■: |{. (J. See page 27 (69) ARISTOTLK. :»4-3>2I{. C See page 142 CHARLEMAGNE'S ZEAL FOR LEARNING 71 ordered his clergy to establish schools in all the villages and towns, where elementary instruction should be gratuitously given to all willing youth. It is also believed by some that Charlemagne had in view the general education of the masses of his people in the elements of learning, and that such education should be enforced by penalties for neglect. This idea seems incredible to the point of absurdity, when we consider the unsettled character of the age, the lack of teachers, the scarcity and cost of books and writing materials, and the task which it would have involved of teaching a strange language to the masses of the people. Yet it evinces the impression produced by the zeal of the emperor for promoting learning. He not only cared for founding schools, but in some cases made personal examination of the progress of the pupils. A story that is told of him illustrates this. It is to the effect that having established a school in which boys of the noble class and others even of the lowest rank were taught together, on his return from one of his journeys, he caused their written exercises to be submitted to him; and then placing the idle sons of nobles on his left hand, and the poor but industri- ous lads on his right, he thus addressed the noble culprits: '' Ye sons of nobles, ye pretty fellows, who think yourselves so high-born that ye have no need to learn, ye lazy graceless scamps, I tell you that your high-birth and your pretty faces shall avail you noth- ing. If you do not change your course and improve yourselves, ye shall become grooms and not counts and marshals as your fathers are." This energetic kind of school inspection by the sovereign himself, even if 72 THE NINTH CENTUBT REVIVAL Of no frequent occurrence, was likely to be more than usually influential. (3) It may readily be supposed that a sovereign so • sagacious as Charlemagne would not fail to observe how serious an obstacle to his efforts for the spread of learning and for the growth of his people in the ap- prehension of religious truth, was presented by the fact that all school instruction and all church services were couched in a language unknown to the people Por more than two centuries before his time, the Latin, current in large portions of his dominions, had been undergoing a progressive change from its original punty, and the germs of several modern tongues were rapidly taking form in popular use. His Germanic subjects had a language of their own which underwent less change. Hence he set himself vigorously to encourage the cultivation of the German vernacular, and to bring religious truths home to the minds of the people by their presentation in the mother tongue. He is sail himself to have essayed the preparation of a German grammar doubtless by other iiands more skilled with the pen than his, and to have made a collection of the old German heroic songs which were current among the people * From the year preceding his death, the clergy of the west who were under the government of Charlemagae made a considerable use of the vernacu- lar tongues in preaching, and in instruction in the es- sentials of the Catholic faith,:F„lda and St. Gall seem- mg to have been special c entres of influence for the prefixed to a collection of his pedagogic wrUiog, "'""""" *""""'• P' ^• Charlemagne's helpers 73 use of the German. Under Charles the Bald, grand- son of Charlemagne, the French language is said to have been used to some extent as a literary language, as well as in the speech of the people. This is an evi' dence of the continuing influence of the efforts of Charlemagne in this interesting direction. (4) Having now discussed Charlemagne's efforts for the promotion of education in his dominions, under the three points of view, the better training of the monks and clergy who were the instruments that he must use in his reforms ; the spread of schools through- out his empire and the revival of those that already existed, at least in name; and his encouragement of the use in instruction and in worship of the vernacular tongues that had sprung up in his wide dominions, with his special efforts for the German which was his own native speech, we have to consider finally the men whom he summoned to his aid from a distance, and what they did for the advancement of learning. Like all great rulers, Charlemagne knew how to dis- tinguish, encourage, and reward men of uncommon merit; and, by this means, while furthering his own ends by their service, he also adorned his reign by the fruits of their genius. Thus, to confine ourselves solely to that which concerns learning, he first discerned the merit of Leidrade, though dwelling on the con- fines of his empire, and after testing him as librarian and royal messenger, he elevated him to the archbish- opric of Lyons, where he greatly aided the educational yiews of his sovereign. Thus he summoned from Italy Theodulf, an Italian Goth, and made him bishop of Orieans, where he dis- 74 THE NINTH CENTLRY REVIVAL tinguished himself by that zeal for the extension of schools that has already been mentioned. Thus he brought up at his court the promising youth, Eginhard, raised him from post to post till he became h.s trusted councillor and, as vague tradition says, also his son-in-law; and by this means he unwit- tingly trained up him who should afterwards transmit to posterity his name and deeds in the best literary work which that age produced. Thus when two young Irish scholars had astonished the crowds in the market place of Aix-la-Chapelle by crying, " Whosoever wants knowledge let him come to us and get it, for we have it for sale," and when some, thinking that they must be madmen to be thus hawk- ing so strange a commodity, brought to the palace the news of their curious conduct, the emperor at once sent for them, and finding that they were really learned inen who asked no other price for their scientific wares than a place to teach them in, pupils to learn them and needful food and rainent ", attached one of them to his own School of the Palace and sent the other to Italy as the head of a school in Pavia. But most notably of all he displayed his sagacity by enticing from the famous school of York its most dis- tinguished ornament, Alcuin, to be his trusted adviser and minister in all that concerned the advancement of learning. This eminent man, who was reputed to be the most learned scholar of the 8th century, was born at York about 735 A. D., was educated at the famous school of his native city, mastering all the learning then cur- rent, and finally on the retirement of his relative and T 1 ST. AlCiUSTlNK, 3:^-1-430 Si'e.pajre 48 ST. .IKKOMK. :i40/-420 iS«»e putje 48 (. ST. AMliKUSR, 340?-397 See ])iiiH' 52 1 '**_ ST. IfKHNARI), 1091-11.^3 ■-***8S.^^^'^*«' ■* ■" ST. FK.\NriS OK A.S.S1.SI 1182-1226 4 I (75) ST. THOMAS AC^UINAS, 1225-1274 See page 136 ALCUIN 77 » teacher became head of the school. In 781, while on the return from an honorable mission to 'Rome at Parma he attracted the attention of Charlemagne, who in the following year invited him to his court to become his adviser in all matters that concerned education. Whilst in learning Alcuin undoubtedly surpassed all His contemporaries, he does not seem to have been a man of any originality of genius. A devoted adherent of the Roman hierarchy, and implicitly subservient to the authority of the Latin fathers, his ability was dis- played chiefly in digesting, classifying, and arranging the stores of the past rather than in striking out any new Ideas of his own. This kind of ability eminently fitted h>m as well for his most weighty seVvice to the future of learning in the revision and correction of faulty manuscripts, as for success in his duties as a teacher. He was besides endowed with a lively imagin- ation, and this he displayed in fanciful and often far- fetched analogies in his teaching, somewhat after the fashion of Origen, the influence of which was apparent much later in the theology of the Medieval Universities In the 22d Lecture of his " History of Civilization in trance ", Guizot gives an interesting account of the services of this distinguished Englishman while at the court of Charlemagne. He states as the most impor- tant of Alcuin's practical contributions to learning his correction and restoration of the manuscripts of ancient literature, his agency in the revival of public schools and studies, and his own personal work as teacher. I quote from Ouizot his account of the re- vision of manuscripts, omitting only the embodied capitulary of Charlemagne which sets forth the need 78 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL T of this revision, and recommends its results to all ministers of religion throughout his realm. " From the 6th to the 8th century the ancient man- uscripts had gone through the hands of copyists so Ignorant that the texts had become altogether unrecog- nizable; infinite passages had been mutilated and mis- placed; the leaves were in the utmost disorder; all orthographical and grammatical correctness had dis- appeared; to read and understand the works thus injured required absolute science, and of science there was less and less every day. To remedy this evil, to restore ancient manuscripts to their proper reading and order, to correct their orthography and their grammar, was one of the first tasks to which Alcuin applied him- self; a task which continued to occupy him throughout the remainder of his life, which he constantly recom- mended to his pupils, and in the fulfilment of which he was supported by Charlemagne's authority. He concluded it about the year 801, in the abbey of St Martin de Tours, and sent it to Charlemagne. " Such examples and such orders (as those of Char- lemagne), could not fail of effect, and the ardor for the reproduction of ancient manuscripts became gen- eral ; as soon as an exact revision of any work had been completed by Alcuin or one of his disciples copies of it were transmitted to the principal churches and abbeys, where fresh copies were made for diffusion amongst the lesser churches and abbeys. The art of copying became a source of fortune, of glory even- the monasteries in which the most correct and beauti- ful copies were executed attained celebrity on this sole account; and in each.monastery, the monks who most ALCUIN 79 i t excelled in the art were, in like manner, honored among their brethren.-The monastic libraries soon became very considerable in their extent; a great number of ez- ^ting manuscripts date frcm this period; and though its zeal was more peculiariy directed to sacred literature profane literature was not altogether neglected. " It will readily be seen from this account that no more weighty service could have been rendered at that time to the cause of learning which Chariemagne had 80 much at heart, nor one which had so great promise of permanent benefits. The schools might fall into neglect as many of them in reality did in the ages succeeding the death of Chariemagne, but the manu- scripts were likely to remain as a treasure-house of learning to future studious generations. In the reestablishment and spread of schools which at this time had fallen everywhere into decay, even in those few places where they had eariier existed, the agency of Alcuin was so intimately connected with the efforts of the sovereign whose minister he was, that it has already been described in previous paragraphs, and needs httle farther notice. There can be little doubt that the capitularies respecting education owed their iterary form to the skilful pen of Alcuin; but his lack of originality and of independent initiative that has before been mentioned, make it reasonable to sup- pose that the main ideas to be conveyed and the meas- ures to be adopted originated with the emperor rather than with his minister. Alcuin's services as a teacher were probably limited at first to 'the School of the Palace, which accom- panied Chariemagne wherever he went, and at which 80 THE NIXTH CEXTURY REVIVAL were regularly present all those who were with the emperor". Later however his labors as a teacher were not confined within this narrow compass; for Guizot says of him that most of the men who did honor to the great monastic schools, like those of Fulda, Reichenau, and Fontenelle, which now sprang into celebrity, " had been disciples of Alcuin himself, who, amid all his avocations, was a public preacher and a public teacher of great distinction.'* This was especially true of his last years, after he had retired from court and assumed the duties of Abbot at St. Martin de Tours. Of the form and method of Alcuin's instruction we have some information in his text-books for grammar, rhetoric, etc., which still exist, and in a specimen leason which Guizot gives nearly entire in the 22d lec- ture of his History of Civilization in France. In these his instruction has the dialogue or catechetic form, and is strongly marked by that tendency to a fanciful and allegoric mode of exposition to which attention has been before directed. Alcuic^s dialogue method of teaching grammar, and the entire meagre, authoritative, and often fanciful instruction of the Palace School, its marked lack of originality, and the meagre second-hand knowledge of Greek displayed by him, are sketched in lively colors by Mullinger in his history of the Schools of Charlemagne, pp. 75-89. Yet some persons looking only on the surface of things have been inclined to liken the method of Alcuin to that of Socrates, and to claim for him some- thing of the merit of Socrates. How superficial waa the resemblance of the two methods, extending only J soCkA TK>. 47t»-:wy. I!. < See paifc HO HKDK. rt73- 7:CS PK'l J.U Vi;hL.\KI». HCi* lUJ K*MiKK i;a< ON. i„'n:--iJW: S*^ p:tj»»' 133 LEONARbA OK IMSA. •-; FRANCES* <> f'FlTRAR* H 13i>4-1374 See pasfe IflO (81) ALCUIN 83 to their catechetic form, will be readily apparent from one of these so-called Socratic lessons given by Guizot. The interlocutors are Pepin, a son of Charlemagne, and Alcuin, the former of whom asks questions and the latter answers. P. — What is writing ? A. — The keeper of history. P. — What is speaking ? A. — The interpreter of the soul. P. — What is it gives birth to speaking ? A. — The tongue. P. — What is the tongue ? A. — The whip of the air. P.— What is the air? A. — The preserver of life. P.— What is life ? A.— Happiness for the happy, misery for the miser- able, the expectation of death. P.— What is death ? A.— An inevitable event, a doubtful journey, a sub- ject of tears for the living, the confirmation of wills, the robber of men. P.— What is man ? A. — The slave of death, a passing traveller, a guest in his own abode. P.— What is winter ? A.— The exile of spring. P. — What is spring ? A. —The painter of the earth. P. — What is summer ? A.—The power which clothes the earth and ripens fruits. 84 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL P. — What is autumn ? A. — The granary of the year. P.—What is the year ? A.— The chariot of the world, etc. It is not difficult to see that these fanciful and far- fetched analogies given in answer to the eager ques- tions of a mere school boy, or the other portions of the same dialogue in which Alcuin, becoming ques- tioner, proposes riddles for the prince to guess, bear no resemblance whatever to the searching dialectic method of the Grecian sage, whereby he exposed pretentious error to itself, or pushed some vaguely apprehended truth to its necessary consequences. Indeed, if we are to consider them as anything more serious than a mere pastime, intended as an amusement of a leisure hour, we should doubtless say with Guizot that '' as a means of education, these conversations are altogether and strangely puerile,'' and that '' if the influence of Alcuin had been confined within the walls of this academy, it would have elfected little worthy of our notice." This can, however, be no fair specimen of his in- struction given at the abbey of St. Martin de Tours, where he spent, chiefly in teaching, the closing years of his life. These lessons were addressed to disciples who were more thoroughly trained than the retainers of the court, and who had an object deeper than the qualification of a vague half-barbarian curiosity. Gui- zot has however given us no specimens of Alcuin's procedure with the distinguished disciples like Ra- banus Maurus who went forth from his lessons to shed lustre by their educational efforts on the age in which t- L ALCUIN 85 they lived. Probably no record of such lessons exists ; but It 18 certain that the specimens we have received have in them nothing of the method or the spirit of Socrates. In 796 Alcuin assumed his duties as abbot of St. Martin, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the management of the large interests of his monas- tery, in teaching theology to the group of eager and promising young men who were drawn together by his great reputation, and in an active correspondence, largely on educational matters, with his former pupils and with the emperor. This seemingly calm period of repose after a useful career, was, however, not free from vexations. He was evidently deeply moved by the favor with which Clement, an Irish scholar, was received at court, ap- prehending an influence subversive of some of his cherished ideas from the introduction of a type of scholarship in many respects unlike his own. For the Irish scholars of that age were skilled in Greek, in which Alcuin's attainments were very slender; they had a great regard for the Greek fathers and for Mar- tianus Capella, both of whom Alcuin as an adherent of extreme Romish ideas persistently ignored; and they were besides unusually proficient in astronomy, which made them formidable adversaries of the side favored by Alcuin in a vivid controversy waged at that time about the right date of Easter. The eager and inquiring spirit of the emperor soon showed the effects of novel views, and he distressed his old friend by frequent doubts of the validity of his former teachings, presented in the form of ques- 86 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL tions to be solved,— truly a distressful position for an authority hitherto dounted omniscient. The death of Alcuin, which occurred in 804 in his 70th year, is attributed by some authors to his grief and mortifica- tion at a reproof of Charles on a perhaps injudicious use in a broil of his authority as abbot. 1 The liability to overestimate the extent and depth of the education given, which is everywhere great during mediaeval times, is especially great in the early period that we have been considering; for it is easy to give a considerable list of monasteries and cathedral schools which gained fame, and yet which were dotted over vast spaces of territory and were often separated some- what widely in time— space and time estimates are apt to lose some of their importance when they relate to remote periods; so too it is easy to make a respectable enumeration of studies pursued, some here and some occasionally there, and from data of this vague char- acter, without a rigid scrutiny as to how much knowl- edge was really implied under some large sounding title, it is easy to infer that the benefits of education were more widely available and more generally enjoyed than they really were. Yet from what has been said m the preceding pages we may, I think, safely concede that the movement initiated by Charlemagne and inspired by his efforts deserved the lofty title of the First Renaissance which has sometimes been given to it; although unhappily, from the disorders of times which succeeded his death, this movement met with a serious check. Louis the Debonnaire, the first heir to the empire, distinguished- not more for his ascetic piety than for JOHN SCOTUS ERIGINA 87 his misfortunes resulting from feebleness of will, strove to continue the policy which his great father had in- itiated. During his troubled reign, Rabanus Maurus, a pupil of Alcuin and graced with the proud but well- deserved title '' Preceptor Germanise ", raised the school of Fulda to a widely-recognized pre eminence;- wrote pedagogic works distinguished rather for good sense and clearness of presentation than for any origin- ality of view, which have recently been found worthy to be presented in a German dress; and later as arch- bishop of Mainz insisted that the clergy of his diocese should preach in the vulgar tongue, '' that the com- mon people might be confirmed in their faith and improved in their morals." Under the favoring care of Charles the Bald, son of Louis, who in the division of the empire inherited the kingdom of France, the intellectual movement still retained some vigor, its most distinguished repre- sentatives being Lupus Servatus and John Scotus Erigena. The former, who was a pupil of Rabanus Maurus and abbot of Ferrieres during the times of the incur- sions of the Northmen, was held in the highest repute for his character, his diplomatic ability, and above all for his learning and for the distinguished support which he gave to classic studies during the decay of learning that followed the breaking up of the empire. Scotus Erigena, as his name indicates, was an Irish scholar of even more than the usual Irish independ- ence of opinion. He asserted the claims of classic literature, and gave such prominence to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle as to attract to it and to him- 88 THE mNTB. CENTURY REVIVAL ALFRED THE GREAT self a bitter clerical hostility. He filled the measure of his demerits when invited by Bishop Hincmar to enter the lists in one of the trivial religious contro- versies which were then so bitterly waged; for he not only dared to assert the claims of reason over mere unsupported authority, but he also used and defended the use of a dialectical method of treatment which was still discountenanced by the church, thus becom- ing from afar the forerunner of the later scholastic method, though without its servility to authority. On th.8 account his brilliant career ended in obscurity though It has been asserted on somewhat doubtful au- thority that he was later active at the court of Alfred the Great. In the succeeding period learning so far retrograded m Western Europe that the 10th and 11th centuries T 'r!'.,""'^ ^^ '"""^ ^"'^•"•« ^^^ 'ia'-kest period of he Middle Ages. Yet I am disposed to think that the impulse given to mind by Charlemagne never wholly ceased; that many of the schools which he established continued, though obscurely, to do their work, that in the words of Hallam *" France seems to have been uniformly though very slowly progressive from the time of Charlemagne;" that it would even be not impossible to construct a nearly unbroken succession of teachers of some note from Alcuin to William of Chanipeaux and Abelard, as Mulliager has donet; and that, though the movement of mind took a new form and passed into other and ruder hands than those of the learned class, it was still doin g its work * Middle Ages, C. IX. p. 40U. ' tOp. Cit.. final chapter.o 89 ♦ ) [^ of preparing the way for the 12th century Renaissance. But while the torch of learning on the continent of Europe seemed about to be extinguished, it was grasped and borne aloft for a time by the English Alfred, who became the representative of the Eirst Renaissance during the last decades of the 9th century. The condition in which he found learning in the south west part of England over which he ruled, and which, according to Ilallam, was then the most enlightened portion of the island, has already been mentioned;— he knew not a single clergyman south of the Thames who understood the ordinary prayers or could translate them into English, having merely memorized them as a formula to be used in the church service. If such was the condition of the class nominally learned, what could;,be lookedjfor^from the laity! Against the prevailing ignorance this energetic king made a valiant struggle during the last two decades of his reign, ** intent to leave to the men that came after him a remembrance of himself in good works." Like Charlemagne he had a keen judgment of the merits of men; and, since learning was at so low an ebb in ' his own realm, he summoned from abroad men like Grimbald and the Welch Asser, whom he placed at th^, head of monasteries to instruct his clergy. '' He him-^' self superintended a school which he had established for the young nobles of his court," after the manner of Charlemagne. Like Charlemagne also he saw the vital necessity, if learning and religion were to obtain any organic hold upon the minds of the people, that both learning and religion should be presented to them in their own 90 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL } nahve tongue " Let us endeavor," he Bays, " that all the English youth, especially the children of those read Enghsh before they take to any employment. Afterwards such as please may learn Latin "* To accomplish this end, the king himself was forced virtually to create a vernacular prose literature, which A i ^y ^'^""'^^^^^g "^OTka like the History of Bede and the Consolations of Boethius. These "works he enriched by remarks and additions of his own. Hav- ing thus brought the means of learning within the easy reach of his people, it is said, I know not w t h how much truth, that he required such magistrates as were unable to read to remedy their deficie'n : give place to more learned men. Under the fostering care of Alfred the English,' monasteries became again nurseries of learning and not a few schools were opened. It has even been claimed but with httle show of credibility, that the univers t? of Oxford grew out of a school founded by Alfred. But the impulse given by him, vigorous though it was, must have been evanescent; for in the time^ Dunstan primate of England towards the close of the century ,„ ,hich Alfred died, Hallam says that n n of the clergy knew how to write or translate a LatL letter; and at the time of the Norman conquest tte Enghsh are described as " rude and almost illUerl '' aoubtless as a consequeuce of thp Dar.;.!, • ' erature as well as laws was forced to silence. * Hallam, Middle \^h« r- t v 7"I . Spelman-Vita Alfred.' ' ^^^ ''^ ^^^^ "^'e to page 460. quoted from A SCHOOL OK .MKNDICANT MoNKS. ( From fuhlxTl.-vs Syllabus of Kduoaliou. after a iiiiiiialure of th«' 15tli cvniu'v in th«' IUir;,'uudy library. Hrussels) (91) ( CHAPTER lY THE RELAPSE OF THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CEN- TURIES, AND CAUSES OF THE TWELFTH CEN- TURY RENAISSANCE The first revival of learning in the ninth century was succeeded by nearly two centuries of educational lethargy and ignorance. Learning sank again into neglect, and whatever of it survived seems to have resumed an ecclesiastical character. The episcopal schools in some places still continued; the Benedictine monasteries still taught the few who resorted to them ; save perhaps in a few monasteries, like those of Paris and Rheims, Orleans and Erfurt, the staple of instruc- tion in both these classes of schools was, besides relig- ion, the dryest and most barren parts of the trivium and quadrivium, presented in barbarous Latin and im- pressed upon the memory by a free use of the rod. The good old times of ignorance returned. Says Hallam, *' In almost every council, the ignorance of the clergy forms a subject of reproach. It was asserted in one held in 992, that scarcely a person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first elements of letters." Laurie says, " King, baron, and knight, had a contempt for those who professed even an ele- mentary knowledge of letters." It was in the early part of the eleventh century that the already quoted assertion was made by a high church dignity that some (93) 94 TENTH CENTURY RELAPSE CHIVALRY 95 of his fellow archbishops did not know even the alphabet. In an autobiographical narration of Guibert de No- gent, quoted by Guizot,* we have a vivid picture of the extreme difficulties encountered even by a young noble, in the last half of the eleventh century, in his attempts to acquire a tolerable education to fit him for the priesthood, as well as of the exceeding incompe- tency and brutal methods of such teachers as were to be had. There was he says, '' so great a scarcity of masters of grammar that, so to speak, scarce one was to be seen in the country, and hardly could they be found in the great towns. He to whom my mother resolved to confide me had learned grammar in a rather advanced age, and was so much the less familiar with this science, as he had devoted himself to it at a later period; but what he wanted in knowledge, he made up for in virtue. My master, altogether un- skilful at reciting verses or composing them according to rule, almost every day loaded me with a shower of cuffs and blows, to force me to know what he himself was unable to teach me." He speaks of being beaten until his arms were all black and the skin of his shoulders all raised up and swollen with the blows he had received; yet such was his ardor for learning that when his mother would have interfered, and have had him desist from an effort attended with such barbar- ous treatment, he said to her *' I would rather die than cease learning letters and wishing to be a priest." The most favorable thing that can be said of this barren period is that in it the germs of a taste for art • History of Civilization, vol. 3d, p. 94. appear to have developed somewhat obscurely. Church music, in which the Gregorian tones had now been added to the original music of St. Ambrose, was cul- tivated with some success, and with a progress towards an art of music. Fine penmanship and the illumina- tion of manuscripts were considerably practised. Carving and painting, and the art of arts, architect- ure, were preparing the way for the artistic triumphs of succeeding ages. The first introduction of the Arabic figures into Christian Europe is assigned to this period, though they were little known and less used until some cen- turies later. This introduction is ascribed to Gerbert, then a teacher in the school at Rheims, but who in 999 became Pope Sylvester II. It is doubtful whether some knowledge of them was not possessed by a few learned men at an earlier period, but it seems certain from Weissenborn's wearisomely learned treatise on the introduction into Europe of our present figures, that neither Gerbert nor those succeeding him for several generations had any knowledge of the use of the cipher, and hence that they were ignorant of the decimal notation.* 1. Chivalry But while, as we have just seen, the means of intel- lectual education during the 10th and 11th centuries, were sinking again into disuse, and the knowledge of the liberal arts was neglected and even despised, a new educational agency was rising into prominence, which having its obscure origin in early times and old Ger- manic customs, now manifested itself in an altered ♦See Weissenborn. Eiuftlhrung der Jetzigen Ziffern in Europa 96 CHIVALRY and more brilliant form as an educative and civilizing force, in the effects which it produced on morals and manners. This agency was the institution of chiv- alry; an agency the more potent, because, growing out of the circumstances of the times and adapting itself to the modes of thinking and feeling of the age, it worked its way silently among men, and ere they were aware had wrought a great amelioration in the manners of a rude age. The liberal art^ had thus far proved themselves an extrinsic agency, striving for influence among men by no means prepared by previous experience to receive them or to appreciate their benefits. This new educa- tional force, by appealing to motives to which men were at that time keenly alive, as well through the changes wrought by itself as by other influences which it brought in its train, prepared the minds of men for that period of eager intellectual activity which began with the 12th century, and made them in some degree receptive for that literary culture to which they had hitherto been averse. ^ Hallam has said not more beautifully than truth- fully, '' There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits which have from time to time moved over the face of the waters, and given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor. It was the principal business of chivalry to animate and cherish the last of these three." In this time real liberty as a worid spirit did not exist, for violence and disorder reigned; the strong trampled on the rights of the weak, and wrenched THE SPIRIT OF HONOR 97 from each other what the mailed hand was not able to defend, and the idea of settled order under the sanc- tion of definite laws, without which there can be no individual liberty, had not yet been clearly appre- hended bv men. The case was not much better with religion, the second of these great controlling spirits; for religion had largely become dogma — dogma too which was rather accepted than understood, embodied in an un- known tongue, and exercising too little influence on the lives of those who professed to believe it; only too inoperative on the actions of those who taught it. But amongst the stronger class, the feudal lords, the feeling of personal importance, the germ of honor, was vigorously active. This spirit of honor the in- stitution of chivalry which now became prominent made its cardinal principle, and developed it ultimately to those extravagant and even fantastic forms to which, in a later age, the author of Don Quixote directed a well-merited ridicule. In the period that we are con- sidering, however, it was doubtless the best and most effective school of moral discipline that the age afforded. If we read with attention the oaths of chivalry in their developed form, which may be found in Guizot's History of Civilization, Vol. 3, Lecture 6th, we shall find in them, exacted from the candidate for knight- hood, an observance of a code of moral and social virtues of which those times of lawless violence stood in the deepest need. We here see that, besides per- sonal courage, which was of the very essence of honor, what are most strongly emphasized as the vitally essen- tial characteristics of the chivalrous knight, are the 98 CHIVALRY r i virtues of loyalty, courtesy, liberality, justice, and respect for women— loyalty which extended not merely to one's relatives, to friends, or to superiors, but which made one's word pledged either to friends or foes, a sacred obligation and stamped a breach of faith as in- famous; courtesy which powerfully ameliorated the forms of intercourse among rude men, and lent a tone of refinement even to hostile encounters; liberality which easily degenerated into extravagance and waste- fulness, but which nourished the feeling of honor by seeming to free valiant acts from any taint of avar- icious self-seeking; justice which bound the true knight, not only to upright dealing with all men, but to become the defender of the weak and helpless when oppressed by power; and a respect for women which expressed itself often in fantastic ways, and which degenerated too readily into licentious gallantry, but which elevated the best and purest of the female sex to an importance that had never before been accorded to them. It will readily be seen that by fumiliarizing men's minds with the ideas as estimable and desirable of such moral qualities as justice, loyalty, good faith, stead- fastness, and regard for the helpless, and of such social virtues as courtesy to equals and reverence for women and for superiors, chivalry was fitted to become an effective promoter of morals and civilization; and that although all these virtues were doubtless at first im- perfectly embodied in practice, they were likely still to have a powerful influence on the development of a higher type of general character. How many of us, it may be asked, even in this enlightened age, com'- CASTLE SCHOOLS 99 I t pletely exemplify in our lives the principles that we profess and even reverence ? Thus the virtues which chivalry exalted and on which it founded an order of personal nobility, even though incompletely practised, as from human frailty virtues are sure to be, slowly permeated mediaeval society; and, by softening rude manners and laying the foundations of order and of law, aided in preparing the minds of men for the re- ception of literary culture. To this also a strong re-enforcement was given by the springing up of chivalric poetry, which added its praises to chivalric virtues, and graced with the charms of verse the heroic deeds inspired by those virtues; and which thus, while extending the influence of chivalry, gradually turned the minds of men in the direction of literature. Men who had come to enjoy the lays of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, were more likely to relish the poems of Homer and Virgil and Ovid. But chivalry needed schools in which its virtues should be inculcated, its exercises made familiar, and its special culture promoted — for it had a culture of its own. Such schools, the Castle schools, sprang up soon after the time of Charlemagne, taking their rise in the interior of castles as ** a spontaneous outgrowth of feudal manners." The sons of vassals were sent to the castle of the Suzerain or great feudal lord to be brought up and trained in company with his sons; and thus, while being effective pledges for the loyalty of their fathers, they became familiar with the life of the castle, its principles, and its usages; they passed through all its grades of service as pages and esquires; 100 CHIVALRY and finally when deemed ripe were admitted to the ranks of knights at the hands of their lord. In this school were impressed by example and per- sistent practice those virtues which were considered essential to the character of the good and valiant knight. Here was imparted the special semi-literary culture of the castle, poetry and the art of verse- making, familiarity with heroic and sacred legends, skill in playing chess and in touching the lute, the art of carving skilfully at table, and the courteous man- ners which befitted the knightly dignity. The largest part in this castle education, however, was naturally devoted to perfecting the youths in all knightly exer- cises. Thus that physical education and that care for the body and its capabilities, which the ascetic spirit of earlier times had so neglected and contemned, and which it still continued to despise as unworthy of a spiritual being, the destined heir of immortality, was revived in the castle schools and never again fell into entire neglect. Karl Schmidt intimates a belief that the young can- didates for knighthood received also the elements of a scholastic education in the monasteries. This idea seems to me in a high degree impossible. If we recall to mind the account, given by Guibert de Nogent and already quoted (page 94) of the exceeding difficulty in finding any means of instruction encountered near the close of this period by a young noble who ardently desired learning, that he might become a priest, it will probably be conceded that there was little likely to be any culture of this kind among the mass of young men who were in training for a purely martial career INITiATlUN INTO Til K OHDKK OF KNUiHTHOOD. (From Cassell's History of Fniilund, \.l'.Vi) (101) DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUALITY 103 and who lived in a society where learning was disre- garded if not contemned. We should also, in forming an opinion on this matter, take into account the pre- vailing lawlessness of this age, and the fact that dur- ing a considerable part of it all warlike and religious interests were absorbed in the crusades. With all this in view, it will be easy to admit that the humbler our estimate of the extension of literary learning among the nobility during the 10th and 11th centuries, the nearer it will be likely to accord with truth. We ought not to take leave of chivalric education and of the better and more civilized spirit which it was slowly making influential among men, without empha- sizing a characteristic which has not yet been men- tioned, but in virtue of which it approximated, re- motely indeed yet obviously, to the Christian humani- tarian ideal. What I allude to is the fact that not only was the powerful world spirit which animated chivalry the spirit of honor, but it was the spirit of individual, of personal, of independent honor. Dur- ing the time of the crusades it gained its fullest ex- pression, in making of the knights an order of per- sonal nobility, whose rights and whose elevation were everywhere recognized. The knight went into battle or undertook perilous adventures with the proud con- sciousness that he was not an undistinguishable atom in a mass, but an important personality, whose deeds, if worthy, would be noted and mayhap sung, and would redound to the increase of the honor in which he was held. It seems not unnatural to fancy that this feeling of individuality, a relic of the old Germanic spirit of ^'^■&A^&^^S»i^^^iil&!^iA^iU: 104 GROWTH OF 2dLxMCIPALITIES independence which Tacitus records, and which was pushed to an extreme in feudal society and in chivalry, was the natural reaction against the spirit of national- ism which had ruled the ancient world, and that it paved the way for the acceptance in much later times of the humanitarian ideal long latent in Christianity. Thus the excess of individuality neutralized the exces- sive spirit of nationalism, and prepared for the nobler ideal which should harmonize the two, being trans- formed into freedom and patriotism. 2. Growth of Municipalities During the latter part of the period we are now considering, municipalities begin to emerge from the confusion, and to claim an increasing importance. In France, where they gained influence considerably earlier than in Germany, they had, according to Guizot a threefold origin. In some cases they were the obscure survivals of old Roman municipalities. In others like Orleans, they were cities which had been nourished and encouraged by the grant of special privileges and by freedom from arbitrary exactions, whether in con- sideration of money payments or through a more than usually wise policy of their feudal lords, who found their own importance increased and their needs sub- served by the existence within their domains of settled industries and a growing trade. The third class in- eluded towns whose citizens, wearied by the tyranny and robberies of their rude masters, had wrenched from them by force of arms certain chartered rights in virtue of which they managed their own internal TOWN SCHOOLS 105 affairs, and stood ready to maintain their own interests by a military organization of their citizens. In all of these municipalities, with the attainment of a measure of security, industries began to spring up and trade to appear, both of which demanded some means of education for boys that they might be fitted to pursue with greater success the avocations of their fathers. Hence town schools began to appear, in which were taught such elements as reading, writing, simple reckoning, and in some cases a little geography! The teachers were undoubtedly clerics. The language that was used in these early town schools is said to have been the vernacular, as would seem necessary that they might subserve their purpose of supplying the pressing needs of trade and indus- tries. In England, however, in the 12th century, the schools of London used Latin as the vehicle of instruc- tion, and the boys seem to have been fitted for their business careers by engaging in hair-splitting disputes about ablatives and gerunds. In Germany also, the citizen schools which arose in the 12th and 13th cen- turies were Latin schools, to which were attached as preparatory schools the so-called *' writing schools ", genuine schools of the vernacular, in which were taught reading, writing, and reckoning as a preparation for trades. In the Latin school, Latin naturally reigned supreme, associated with religion, and the method of disputation, borrowed from the Scholastics, had a paramount place. Their privileges, however, such as they were, were open without cost to the poor as well as to the rich. These last named schools belonged to a somewhat later period than the 10th and 11th cen- 106 THE SCHOLASTIC RENAISSANCK turies, to which for the eake of clearness I have de- sired >n this chapter to confine our attention.* It has however seemed most convenient to mention them here. The period to which attention has here been briefly directed, was apparently barren of interest from an educational point of view; and yet the two facts which we have gust been considering, chivalry and the rise of municipalities, were amongst the mos't import- ant preparations for the extraordinary intellectual movement which the 12th century ushered!!, and the bchola tic Eenaissance, the second renaissance, if we account the revival of schools under Charlemagne and Alfred as the first, as I think we properly may' This Renaissance was characterized by a remark- able and wide-spread intellectual activity, which, be- gmning outside the ranks of the regular dergy, ^re - ently swept them also into its vortex; and which although ,t took a peculiar form and expended itself in seemingly barren efforts, was yet marked by an energy of intellectual life that was full of promise for the future, whenever better means of culture should n cLlir,; /" ''I "^" ^'"^■"^^- '' -« "-Je es- pecially illus nous by the origin of many still famous universities, hke those of Bologna, Oxford, and Cam- bridge, fo lowed by such great German universitieHs Prague Vienna, Heidelberg, and Leipsic at a some what later date. Like all great historic movements, this intellectual With the earlie.. u.,,.r!^t. g Bolo,'. '"• "' '""""""^ "'•"»" GUILDS 107 ( ^ revolution had its forerunners and efficient causes. Two of these have already been touched upon in con- sidering the period of barrenness which preceded. These were, first the rise of chivalry with the higher moral standard that it set up, the refinement of man- ners that it initiated by its principle of courtesy, and the germs of literary taste that were fostered by chiv- alric poetry; and second, the growth of municipalities endowed with chartered or conceded rights, busied with industries which tended to an ever-increasing diversification, and feeling the need for their success of a kind of civic knowledge quite unlike anything that was presented in the sparsely distributed schools that existed, whose chief aim was to subserve the faith and to train the clergy to perform the services of the church in the consecrated language of the church. To the internal polity of the municipalities, Profes- sor Laurie also ascribes an interesting influence exerted upon the inner organization of the universities, which were the nurseries and representatives of the 12th cen- tury Renaissance. This influence was due to the man- ner in which their powers and privileges were gained. From the disorders of the times in which no settled laws and no generally recognized supreme authority existed, the towns as they arose had been obliged as the very condition of their existence to assume certain powers of organization, internal direction, and control, with- out which no united life could have continued, and no individual could have pursued his vocation unhindered. These powers thus assumed and exercised with the general concurrence of the members of the communi- ties, soon grew into customs of the towns, and were 108 THE CRUSADES essentia ly democratic in their character; in many cases th,s k.nd of internal organization extended itselJ to the various industries carried on within the towns. Thus grew up the Guilds of the Middle Ages some of which St, 1 exist in the cities of Europe. Ihese g ild rights and power., thus at first tacitly assumed Lm he necessities of the case, when they came to be no- ticed by the supreme authority had already grown into immemonal usuagea, and were then regulated, coT firmed, or even extended by royal charters To the example afforded by this guild organization which had specially abundant instances in Italy, and to the mode in which it originated in the assumption of necessary powers of self-goyernment, Professor Laune in his " Rise and Constitution of U;iversitle " wrth some probability refers the privileges and disci- pline of the earlier universities. 3- The Crusades A third cause which was highly influential in rous- ing Europe from the intellectual torpor in which it had long been sunk, may be found in the Crusades, tht offspring born of union of religious fanaticism with he chivalnc love of adventure. These wonder- ful religious expeditions gave a new impulse to intel- lectual life in many ways. They broke up effectually and orever the isolation which had resulted from feudal manners, which had sundered not merely dis- tinct nationalities but also the various members of the same nationality, and which therefore prevented all that active movement of spirits, that lively curiosity inquiry, and exchange of diverse experiences which COMPANIONSHIP OF NATIONS 109 we behold where there is a free intermingling of peoples. This isolation, which had been one great cause of the darkness that brooded over Europe, the Crusades brought forever to an end. Princes and peasants, feudal nobles and burghers, from all the Christian nationalities of western Europe, were united in the bonds of a common enterprise and inspired by a com- mon purpose. For the first time in ages the various peoples of Europe and even men from neighborhoods not widely separated, really looked into each other's faces and saw each other as they were — recognized that kindred blood flowed in their veins and that they were animated by impulses kindled by a common faith. The barriers once broken down, there began an even freer commerce of ideas. Experiences gained under the most 'diverse circumstances and from the most various modes of life were actively compared in the companionship of arms; and a whole new world of ideas was opened and an intellectual quickening gained which was fraught with important consequences for the future of Europe. Nor did this intellectual impulse come only from the intermingling with their comrades. They trav- ersed wide realms before unknown to them. They saw the wonders of Byzantine architecture and art, and the splendor of that Saracenic culture which they had come to combat. Some dim sense, at least, of the vastness of the earth and its interests, of the worth of those sciences, of the art and poetry and philosophy of which they were ignorant, found access to their minds; and when they finally returned to 'i' '. '-*!■.<-., 110 SAKACENIC SCHOOLS their homes they were no longer the same men who had set forth on their wild pilgrimage to the empty sepulchre of the risen Christ. Xew ideas and higher aspirations were awakened in many hearts; new yearn- mgs after a knowledge that might sweeten human life and render it better worth, living stirred many a more generous spirit, not inclined to an ascetic waste of ife; and the disposition was aroused which prompted the youth of the laity to flock by the thousands from ail parts of western Europe to any new centre of earning of whose existence the rumor was brought to their ears. ° What if, as Gibbon alleges, a new swarm of legends and superstitions was brought back to Europe on the returning tide of the Crusades. The intellectual awakening which they had caused was richly worth any temporary corruption of the faith by imported superstitions to which ignorant credulity is always prone; it could indeed be trusted soon" to correct effectually any corruption, and to cause wholesome modifications ,n faith itself; for to errors of opinion thought alone can bring a sure corrective: mental lethargy alone is hopeless of cure. 4. The Saracenic Schools A fourth cause of the intellectual awakening of the 12th century may be found in an impulse proceed- ing from the great Saracenic schools of Spain and from the high grade of culture which there existed. Even in the 10th century these schools by their eminence had tempted some ambitious youth, like Gerbert, to brave the mysterious dangers that tales of necromancy and INFLUENCE UPON EUROPE 1 111 devirs lore had frightened ignorant Europe withal, that they might bring back something of value from these forbidden sources of learning. But after the first Crusades, the numbers who visited the Moham- medan schools evidently became greater — possibly encouraged by the advancement of Gerbert to the popedom — and a new and sharper stimulus to pro- gress was added to the impulse given to mind by the Crusades. The reality of the influence exerted at this time by the Saracens on neighboring Europe may be inferred with some probability from the scholastic direction which the intellectual activity in Europe at once took on, a direction which in this age prevailed in the Mohammedan schools of Spain. It was natural then as now that learners should copy the practice of their most influential teachers; and thus a highly stimulating method was added to the pedagogic re- sources of Europe.* To these four facts may be added as a circumstance which greatly facilitated the new intellectual movement and aided to make it general, the universal domination of the Catholic church and the universal acceptance of its consecrated language, the Latin, as a common me- dium of communication among the learned. By the universal sway which the church exercised over the minds of her faithful sons, travel was made easier and safer for the many thousand youths who, as *Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Aees, Vol. I, pp.35, gives as the cause of the special form of intellectual activity, i. e., the Scholastic form, the use of the favorite dialectic method, long familiar at part of the Trivium. on the Platonic metaphysical question of the nature of UnicertaU, which was discussed with great fury because of its bearing on Theological dogmas, i. e., Transubstantiation. and so brought Scholastic Theology to greater prominence than Scholastic Philosophy. 112 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ft students under the protecting aegis of the church, desired to pursue their studies at distant seats of learn- ing; whilst, amid the multiplicity of languages and djalects that had now sprung up, the common ifnguage of the earned served as an accepted means of com- munication, as well in the schools as in the monaster- ies, which were the hostelries of travelling scholars I CHAPTER V THE TWELFTH CENTURY REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND THE MEDI.^VAL UNIVERSITIES The most interesting fact as well as the truest repre- sentative of that remarkable intellectual movement in Europe, which began in the 12th century, and whose inciting and favoring causes we have just ex- amined, was unquestionably the rise of the medieval universities. These not only constituted the most unique and permanent product of the movement, but in their method and subject-matter they also truly represented its spirit and its results. Hence they merit at our hands a somewhat careful examination, though our limits will permit little detail.* That the vigorous wakening of Europe from its long lethargy should have been followed, as a natural consequence, by the revival of old schools that had become dormant, and by the multiplication of new ones, would be precisely what we might look for; and this is doubtless the most wide-reaching form in which the movement of mind found expression; but the • Those 5peci*lly interested in this subject will do well to read The Rise and Constitution of Universities by Prof. S. S. Laurie, and Compavres Abe- lard, and to consult Denifl^, Die UniversitAten des Mittelalters'; the first ▼olume of Hubers English Universities, the first two chapters of Mullin- gers The University of Cambridge. Lete's History of the University of Ox- ford. Vol. 4 of Von Raumer's Geschichte der Pidagogik, translated in full in Barnard's Journal of Education, and the first portion of Paulsen's Ge- tchichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts. Also RashdelL Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. - (113) 114 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES .1 reasons are not so obvious why it should have resulted m the 8pnng;ng up in many parts of Europe of those pecml.zed h>gh schools which we call uuiversTti s-a ypeo schools of which Europe had had no ex "ple^ S Spain" '" ''"'""''' ^'' " '''' '*^''<=^'^'« ^'^hools JmtZom"^i" ""■'"' ""•'"^ '^'- ''^'•^ ^-^ -hich we may profitably examine. The first reason that he assigns ,s, " that the growth of traditionar" earning accumulated so great a weight on the subjectsTaf to" s' weir' ''^ ""' "' "^•^ •'"'^ -« most e nti to hs welfare as a member of society, as to demand speciahzat.on;" and that thus, when thought awak ened and men became conscious of their spiritual and o?e bHti'nrf ^"^^' '-'^'^'^ ''^' '-^ -^---t^B arose by a kind of inner necessity. I do not wholly agree with the learned professor in the emphasis that he lays upon this as a ca'use of uni" whe hi Zr'""' '" " * ™«"- 0^ f-t I doubt ttnlrv lel "'"\"''^ '"'•^ accumulation of tradi- tionary learning as he seems to assume, i„ at least two appea ef ^:: ''""^'" '^'^'^'^ «P-ialization earliest appeared, viz., medicine and jurisprudence The ormer was indeed somewhat studied and practised in the monastics, but it was in the works of'oa en anS Hippocrates, to which nothing seems to have been added; any addition, in truth, would have run^ounter to the entire spirit of the times, which was who y subservient to authority. The Saracens during tS creit them "rl ""'•^'^'''''^ ^'^"'•*'««' ""d GilX'on credits them with the origination of the first special- CAUSES OF THEIR RISE 115 ized school of medicine at Salernum in 1060 A D Laurie, who assigns the origin of this school to the same date ascribes the first instruction given there to monks and later to one Constantine, who had returned from the east stored with varied learning. In either case we have no indication of an accumulation of traditionary lore. The case is still weaker with jurisprudence, which during these ages had sunk into the greatest neglect, so that in those centuries when might was the chief source of right, the very tradition of the Roman civil aw would seem to have been well-nigh lost, or at best to hare been confined to a few obscure Italian schools. Yet It was in these two departments, in which we have little encouragement to look for an accumulation of traditionary learning, that special schools first made their appearance, for medicine at Salernum, and at ijologna for law. In theology however and in this alone, the case was difl-erent; for here there had indeed accumulated a jast body of ecclesiastical lore and ecclesiastical tradi- tion which stood in great need of being sifted by an age of rising intelligence; and it was sifted during succeeding times, with the result however rather of adding to Its bulk, than of condensing by a just dis- crimination and thus increasing its value. I am therefore inclined to think that the case might perhaps be more exactly stated in this form; that as intelligence increased, and the state of society became more settled, and industries and trade assumed larger proportion8,-life and its concomitant health were felt to be more valuable; and the need was realized I I I 116 THE MEDIEVAL CNIVERSITIES for a more settled and systematic and complete system oflawsthan was then anywhere in force; and that hence ambitious young men were ready to flock eagerlv to any centre of learning where it was reported that these desjrable knowledges might be gained, la the- ology had long been nearly an exclusive object of at- tention ,ts nse to prominence under better teachers lor Its explanation. ^ thelt'T'"^ fact to which Professor Laurie ascribes the rise of universities and the particular form that they early assumed, is doubtless to a limited extent valid for we have good reason to believe that the growth of ZrTiTT'' '"1"^ ''^'"'^ *^^ '--'^ '^ to the pursuit of the great leading specialities in schools not th EaMn?' 1 "^ ''''''^''' ^'''"^^t •'"•^k from stil-rr K . r ^. ' "''' '"PP'y '^ ^'Senda and super- stations but also ,n not a few instances a skepticism which degenerated sometimes into downright dfsbeliel' Monasteries increased indeed and according to Hal- am superstition took on its most monstrous forms in tts.'but'sidf r' *.'" "f ' '""^ "«« «^ -'--- t^es but side by side with this fact, running parallel wuh It, and probably heightened by it, was tL fac of the growth of a skeptical spirit which gave b rth ,t i,/^ 1° disrepute. It seems quite probable that was from this latter class, inclined to skepticism and sSons^'Il IT' '■"■'^^ "^ '"""'^^ -' -na^t c restrictions that the crowds who flocked to the incipi- ent universities were considerably recruited. Thl CAUSES OF THEIR RISE 117 may at least plausibly account for their measurable freedom from clerical control in times when all other schools were so controlled. Yet when we consider all the facts in the early growth of the universities, I am inclined to think that we may easily push this idea too far. We may admit Professor Laurie's third cause, viz., ** the actual specializing of the leading studies," law, medicines, and theology, at certain centres where in- struction was open to all comers without monastic restrictions, with its tendency in the state of feeling which then existed to attract to such centres crowds of eager young men, ** as the chief key to the explana- tion of the rise of the higher university schools ". It would be well, however, to look upon it merely as a starting point from which to date the origin of the university as suchy since without this limitation every special school of law, medicine, or theology might be regarded as an incipient university. Professor Laurie's idea of the constitution of the early universities seems, in the main, eminently clear, comprehensive, and satisfactory, accounting as it does for all the known prominent facts in their early his- tory. His idea may thus be briefly summarized: (1) they were specialized schools of some one or more of the great professional studies; (2) they were generally at the seats of pre-existing schools of the liberal arts which ultimately were absorbed into their organiza- tion; (3) they were open to all comers without distinc- tion of nationality; (4) they were free from direct clerical domination and especially at the outset from monastic restrictions, and (5) after the example of the existing guilds they assumed to themselves at first 118 THE MEDIEVAL LNIVERSITIES needful powers of self-government, direction, and protection, which at a later date were confirmed by ecclesiastical or royal authority. We shall be able more easily to give a brief yet reasonably dear ac count of these remarkable institutions by following in their order the five parts of this description. With few exceptions they first appear as centres of instruction in some one of the three great professional specialties; as for example, Salernum in medicine, Bologna in civil law, Paris in theology, and Montpellier in both medicine and law. Though lectures in civil law were early given in Oxford, Its real specialty was philosophy, with which theology was intimately connected; this was also true of Cambridge; and in later centuries the professional specialties never so prominently characterized these institutions as they did the continental universities. Their honorable distinction is that they have been best known as great schools for an advanced and non-pro- fessional culture. Yet no one would deny them the university name and rank. Hence it would not seem that the prominence of professional specialties was at all vital as a character- istic of universities save in later German opinions In process of time the continental universities added other specialties to that with which they had begun, unti finally most of them had the four faculties, arts theology, medicine, and law; and by 1300 a univers- ity was considered incomplete that did not provide for instructing and graduating students in all these facul- ties.* On this basis, how ever, Paris, - the mother * Laurie. Rise and Constitution of Universities, p. 166. ' THEIR ORIGIN 119 of universities ", was incomplete, having no faculty of civil law. The origin of all the earliest universities is obscure, being lost in the mists of antiquity. Consider for example the universities of Bologna, of Paris, and of Oxford; it is impossible to assign any precise date when they may be said to have begun. The University of Bologna, in her recent invitation to the celebration of her eighth centennial, speaks of this uncertainty and fixes upon the date 1087 as the nearest approxi- mation. A like obscurity rests upon the origin of Paris, of Oxford, and of Cambridge. Much of this uncertainty arises from the fact that they were off-shoots or, in a limited sense, continua- tions of schools of the liberal arts that had long ex- isted. Thus Bologna was an off-shoot of such a school that was of unknown antiquity; Paris grew out of a school connected with the cathedral of Xotre Dame that may possibly have originated in the impulse given by Charlemagne;'^ and Oxford is supposed by some, on very insuflScient and even mythical grounds, to be the higher development of a school possibly as old as Alfred the Great. f From what has been said it will readily be under- stood that the earliest universities were not founded as later institutions of the kind were, by charters and grants conferred by popes or rulers; they simply grew and in some cases had existed long and become famous before they received a formal governmental recogni- tSee E)enifl6. Die Universitftten. des Mittelalters, pp. 238-241. See also Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, etc., p 80, on the ob- scurity of the origin of Oxford and Cambridge; and Lyte. History of Ox- ford. C. IX. I I 120 THE MEDIEVAL UNITER8ITIES tion. The process of their formation was analogous to that by >hich the ** Schools of Athens " grew out of the teachings of the sophists and philosophers. Some man of talent, learning, and enthusiasm for his subject, began to lecture at the seat of an existing school on his favorite specialty, using a new method suited to the needs of the age; and by attracting to himself a swarm of eager learners, started a movement which ended in a famous university. Savigny in his '' History of the Roman Law " gives this graphic account of the beginnings of these insti- tutions: **It would be wholly erroneous were we to consider the earliest universities of the Middle Ages as institutions of learning in our sense, i. e., as foun- dations in which a prince or a city had chiefly in view to provide instruction for the native population, the participation of strangers however being permitted. Such was not the case, but when a man inspired with an ardent love of teaching had gathered around him a multitude of scholars eager to learn, there easily sprung up a succession of teachers; the circle of hearers increased and thus a permanent school was established wholly by a kind of inner necessity."* Thus Irnerius at Bologna, by his instruction in civil law, and William of Champeaux or his pupil Abelard in Paris, by lectures on theology and philosophy, using the dialectic method which earlier from its theological implications had discredited Scotus Erigena, gave the impulse out of whi ch grew great universities. The ♦Geschichte des ROmischen Rechts in Mittelalter, Vol. 3 p 154. This passage is quoted by Mullinger in his History of Cambridge University p 72 as also by Laurie, Rise and Constitution of Universities, p. 168. ENORMOUS NUMBER OF STUDENTS 121 interest that attaches to the more ancient schools on which they grew, consists solely in the fact that sooner or later these schools became the faculty of arts, i. e., preparatory schools in the developed uni- versities. From the manner in which they originated and from the circumstances of the times, these incipient uni- versities were open to all comers, and soon ceasing to be local or even national, they became international. If we recall the condition of things that existed in Western Europe at this epoch, as already described (page 113), the movement of mind, the vividly awak- ened interest in a higher learning corresponding to the improving conditions of existence, and the greater facilities for intercourse now afforded; and add to all these facts, the small number of the men throughout Europe who were fitted to give any advanced special instruction, and that *' oral instruction was almost the only path to comprehensive knowledge ", since cen- turies were yet to elapse before printing was invented to bring to one's very door whatever of value was any- where known — it will readily be understood why such prodigious numbers should have flocked to some of the more famous centres of learning from regions very widely separated. Thus we hear of 10,000 and 20,000 at Bologna, and of 30,000 each at Paris and Oxford. Lyte however in his recent History of the Univers- ity of Oxford shows that this was a gross exaggeration of the numbers at Oxford, as it probably was for Paris and Bologna. To account for these great assemblages, we are told that great numbers of mere boys went to the universities for quite elementary training, inso- 122 THE MEDIAEVAL UNIVEBSITIES i * much that Paris was obliged to refuse to receive lads under twelve years of age, a fact which suggests the paucity and the inferiority of local schools; also that the college servants, as well as the retainers of the richer students, were matriculated that they might enjoy the privileges and immunities of the university. Xow although these students, drawn together from the most diverse nationalities by the fact that famous seats of learning were open freely to all comers, presumably had some facility in the use of Latin, still it was only natural that those who used the same native dialect should group themselves together, should occupy con- tiguous lodgings or even erect lodgings for themselves, should have in many respects a community of inter- ests, and should lead a common life. Hence arose the " nations " which make so great a figure in many of the mediaeval universities, and which would seem at times almost to have been thought an essential feature of a university. Thus Paris had four nations, and these had erected halls for their own accommodations long before the university had any place save a borrowed church in which to hold meetings of its regents. Bologna had two great groups of nations, the Cisalpine and Trans- alpine, each with many subdivisions, and these through their representatives exerted a controlling influence on university affairs, governing the teachers as well as the students. When two centuries later the first German universities were founded, the idea of nations as a feature of university organization still had such hold that they were provided for there also, though the membership was sure to be mostly local. THE nations"; freedom of teaching 123 Amongst these groups of students thus freely called together, there was naturally at the outset a freedom of studying when and what they pleased, untram- melled by any prescribed courses, wholly analogous to what we have seen in the universities of antiquity,* with the like concomitants of unobstrusive industry and obtrusive idleness, tumults, and disorders. Parallel with this perfect freedom of study was also a like freedom of teaching. At first, any man who felt that he had desirable knowledge which he wished to impart could hire a room and collect about himself a group of students; if his lectures proved acceptable his audiences might swell to great dimensions and give him a wide reputation. In the paragraph from which a quotation was given above, Savigny calls attention to an inconvenience in- herent in this freedom of teaching in universities, in- asmuch as ** Their special reputation depended in part on accidental, personal, changeable conditions. A few teachers of great talent could elevate a school, and under the unskilful hands of their immediate succes- sors it might again decline. For the universities stood quite alone, based upon themselves, without connection with a thorough national culture, and without the in- dispensable substratum of learned schools." A remedy for this inconvenience was found later, for when certificates of attainments came to be given they took the form of a ** licencia docendi ", without which it is not likely that a man would be permitted to teach in a university. If however the institution granting the license had been recognized by the pope, • Williams's History of Ancient Education, page 1^. 124 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES It was valid throughout Christendom, and gave the licentiate liberty to teach wherever he could attract hearers. The licenses of Paris and Bologna naturally had the highest consideration. Thus I have considered as natural incidents of the fact that the universities were open to all comers, both the formation of the ** nations ", and the freedom of teaching and of learning which early characterized them. The universities differed markedly from the Chris- tian schools that had existed in the preceding centuries, and from most of those in the centuries that followed,' in their freedom from direct clerical control, and es- pecially in their freedom from monastic restrictions. The most famous schools that had existed hereto- fore had been in monasteries and had been subject to strict monastic rules; and though from the time of Charlemagne episcopal schools had assumed a relatively greater prominence, they were also under rigid clerical dominance, held in churches and taught by clerics, and mostly subserved mere ecclesiastical purposes. The new institutions had views much wider than the horizon of the church, views which embraced the ex- tending needs of a busy world, amongst which the needs of the church, though usually prominent, con- stituted but one of many. To accomplish these vari- ous purposes, the universities must be free from the domination of any single influence, and the character- istic that is now under consideration sprang from the necessities of the situation, quite as much possibly as from any rising spirit of hostility to clerical control among the laity. NOT UNDER CLERICAL CONTROL 125 The teachers were doubtless largely of the clerical order; the students were mostly adherents of the church, at least in name, and many of them also clergy; but they exercised influence in university affairs not as clergy or as churchmen, but merely as members of the university. In Bologna indeed it has. been said that no member of a monastic order could hold the rectorship; yet after 1250 A. D. it seems probable that the rector must have been a clerical per- son, since he had jurisdiction over clerics. To the freedom of life which the lack of monastic restrictions permitted were doubtless due most of the disorders and riots which make so considerable a figure in early university history, and which, from the still rude manners of the times, as well as from the custom of carrying weapons, too frequently ended in bloodshed. Young men unused to freedom learned to use it by at first using it badly, a thing not unknown to modern times. The earliest universities, as we have seen, were not founded, but sprang up as a kind of spontaneous growth. As these voluntary assemblages increased in membership, they experienced the necessity of some internal organization, some settled order, some gener- ally recognized power, as well for the purposes of self- protection from rude and not always friendly surround- ings, as for the attainment of their scholarly aims. Hence we early find them exercising powers and enjoy- ing privileges needful for their purposes, making of themselves republics of letters in the midst of the cities where they were established, and even extending their authority over their members to many things 126 THE MEDI.EVAL UNIVERSITIES which are usually matters of municipal jurisdiction. They had their own officers elected in rarious ways at different universities, with a rector at the head, their own statutes, and even their own judges and prison for the trial and punishment of offenders. These remarkable privileges have been plausibly ascribed to the assumption of powers in imitation of the guilds of trades, and especially those of travelling merchants, that then existed in southern and western Europe. It is evident however that such assumed powers would be in their very nature purely local and held on the precarious tenure of local toleration. The recent and exhaustive researches of Denifl^ * show that far too great emphasis has been laid on the idea of assumption of powers of internal organization and government. These assemblages of teachers and students evidently eariy felt the need of some more efficient and far-reaching means of protection than their own tacit agreements; for by the middle of the 12th century we see the Bolognese seeking and obuin- ing from the emperor the important privileges of secure residence while at the university, of choosing their tribunal in cases of accusation, and of safe-conduct in their journeys to and from the universitv citv. Yet the student associations in Bologna, largely composed of mature men, were doubtless formed on the model of the Italian guild ; and their earl? resort to the emperor proves how precarious they found their •wumption of privileges. The university of Paris likewise evidently had privileges granted by'the French king in the 12th cen tury, although no records of them taken from Lftcroii) (1?7) 4ll \ I PRIVILEGES; ORGANIZATION 129 exist earlier than 1200 A. D., since such privileges are assigned as reasons for the great frequentation of its schools, and since members of the schools defended them even by secessions as their ancient rights conferred by kings and popes. The associations of arts students and masters to form nations, which most resemble guilds, it may be remarked, seem not to have assumed any definite form in Paris till the 13th century, and they bear certain marks of having been not of spontan- eous but artificial formation. As concerns the internal organization of the univer- sities, it was evidently the result of a slow internal growth, the aggregation of masters teaching the same subjects gradually developing faculties, and these, by a certain concert of action, forming a university, to which was finally granted the power to use a seal in attestation of its acts. Paris certainly, according to the researches of Denifl^, had no generally recognized head until the 14th century, when the rector of the nations finally became the head of the entire university but with powers by no means great. From all this it will be obvious that though the ex- ample of the guilds probably influenced to some extent the internal polity of Bologna and some other Italian universities of early date, this can hardly be true of Paris and the French universities fashioned after its model. The course of development naturally differed in different countries; and the numerous guilds exist- ing at that period in Bologna could hardly fail to have their influence on the thousands of young men who flocked to that centre of learning. To this should be added the fact that the Bolognese nations and their 130 THE MEDIvETAL UNIVERSITIES special privileges were limited to students who were not natives of Bologna. When collisions arose with the local authorities the very poverty of the universities was a source of strength As for ages they had no buildings of their own, no apparatus and no equipment of their own save learned teachers who lectured in rooms hired for the purpose they were naturally in light marching order; and they could easily coerce their opponents in the cities to whom their trade was very valuable, by the threat of removing elsewhere if they were seriously interfered with. This threat was often resorted to'and usually with the desired effect, though more than once we read of serious secessions in cases of unreconciled disputes whether with the local authorities or within their own body.* Indeed the danger of secessions was felt to be so great at Bologna that the municipality strove to bind the university to itself by requiring of the profes- sors an oath not to teach elsewhere.f Besides, as the universities grew strong in numbers' and reputation, they naturally became greater objects of interest to popes and princes, who hastened to at- tach these rising powers to themselves by not only con- firming the privileges of autonomy and jurisdiction which had already been assumed or granted, but by giv- ing wider powers and range of influence, by granting sources of revenue, and by according protection to students and their property on journeys as well as in residence. The papal bulls also made t heir degrees, •S*eLyte.HistoryoftheUniv.rsityof 0.ford.pp.41 98 etc for«M«. sions and power oj poverty. • ff- ■" . •<>. etc. , lor wioei- t Denill«, Die CniversitSten des MitteUlteti. i STCDIITM GENERALE jg, (.una i.a„enc. .i .„ Z^'^Z^Z E™ ' ""■ xne names that were earlv annlipr? f^ ^u were variftna o/,.^- , -^ ^PP^^ea to them re various, studium generate being the most usdrI A few words will herp ho ir. ^) usual. essence of an univerlv J. ^^ "' '' ^^'' ^^« '^' KaW Schmidt sayTHl^ .^rS s^IT-V ^^ ndTurlsTrld^nt-T i '''^''''^ ^^eology,^ed;cfn: point to a^^^t'v:^;; '?"'"^' ^'^ °°' necessarily to the fa^tlha fh! T T'""'"'' ^""^ "=«"« ^"^'^"on the fact that these schools were open to all comers. si^rnrfi./?^ "'' '°^^'«*' *^«* 'he name may have signified the general acceptance of th^ir a ! r 132 I THE M2DI.EVAL UNIVERSITIES tian universities of Europe, and had the right to teach anywhere." Professor Laurie feels quite sure that studium generale meant a higher, specialized, and self-governing school, open to all the world, free from monastic restrictions or canonical rule, and endowed with certain privileges, among which was included the right of promotion, that is, of granting degrees. As the last definition contains whatever is of much significance in both the others, we may safely accept it as fairly descriptive, though it is quite possible that it contains more than the idea originally included. According to Denifl^, pp. 1-29, the term seems origin- ally to have emphasized the fact that certain institu- tions were open to all who desired to study, to which the idea of privileges came soon to be added. We may the more willingly accept Laurie's defini- tion of a mediaeval university, with which that of Denifl^ substantially coincides, because von Raumer'a would postpone the real origin of universities to the date of papal recognition, when in point of fact they had, in several instances, existed and exercised their privileges long before, besides which at least five were founded by imperial authorization, without any papal confirmation; while Schmidt's conception would ex- clude from the list of universities institutions which did not give prominence to professional specialties. The antiquity of some of the best-known of the mediaeval universities, is a matter of no small interest. In 1400 A. D. 44 universities were already in existence, of which 10 or 12 were earlier than 1300 A. D. Bologna was a noted school of law, probably before STUDIUM GENERALE 133 the close of the 11th century. Its late centennial was celebrated as from 1087 A. D. The University of Pans existed as early as the beginning of the 12th century, privileges were confirmed to it by both kinff and pope before 1180 A. D., and degrees were con ferred before the century closed. Montpelliir was a famous school of medicine in 1137, in 1181 it was declared to be open to all comers in full freedom, and Its first statutes date from 1220 A. D. Oxford existed as an institution in which were taught philosophy, theology, and civil law, as early as 1150 A. D -was expressly mentioned in 1201 A. D. as a university with several thousand students; and in the 13th cen- tury was blamed by Roger Bacon for the preponder- ance there given to the study of civil law. These few well-known universities, which by no means ex- haust the list, will suflBce to show the antiquity of some mediaeval universities. The earliest German universities were all founded by spiritual or temporal authorities, and hence the dates of their origin are not uncertain. Those of some of the earlier and best known, omitting Cologne and rJ;o .. '''' ^^°^^' ^^''^^ ^'^ ^« ^«"ows: Prague 1348 Vienna 1365, Heidelberg 1386, and Leipsic 1409, largely by a secession from Prague. The University of Berhn, as is generally known, though now one of the largest and most famous of them all, is a comparatively modern creation, having been founded in 1809. SUBJECTS 135 CHAPTER VI STUDIES, METHODS, AND DISCIPLINE OF THE MEDIiEVAL UNIVERSITIES We have now seen that the early universities grew from obscure beginnings, assuming powers needful for self-government which later were confirmed and even extended as rights by princes and popes; that amongst these rights was the right of self-government and of jurisdiction over their own members, even in cases of crime; that they soon acquired the rights of prescrib- ing studies and of conferring degrees which were of universal validity, and that security for persons and property of students and for their servants was guar- anteed to them in journeys to and from as well as within the university precincts. To this may be added that they often received legacies and also grants from popes and princes of sources of revenue, that usuallv thev were freed from taxes and other munici- pal burdens, and that those early established became models that were imitated in the organization of those founded later. We have now to examine what use they made of these extraordinary privileges, i. e., (1) what was the nature of the subjects taught in them; (2) what mode of teaching and learning they pursued; (3) what wm their discipline and what the state of morals that pre- vailed; (4) what indirect effects aside from studies (134) pursued the universities produced on education and civilization; and (5) the profound changes wrought in them by the invention of printing and by the revival of classical learning, and their early attitude towards the latter. We shall be fully warranted in this exami- nation, not only by the circumstance that the uni- versities and their teachings are by far the most im- portant and influential facts in the history of educa- tion during the four centuries which preceded 1500 A I «' .. "Ir. ^^"""^ ^^''' ''"^'«« ''"^ "methods vitally affected all instruction given elsewhere. The subjects pursued in the medieval universities divide themselves into two great groups, viz., the arts, which were the culture studies with no special profes- sional beanng, and the sciences, which comprised the three professional branches, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine regarded by most investigators as con- stituting the distinctive notes of an university The arts, or culture studies, were the seven liberal arts of the Middle Ages, the Trivium and Quadrivium that have so often been mentioned, and with much the same extension of meaning for some of the subjects that have been described in preceding pages. It is well observe, however, that grammar, in which formal grammar was emphasized, hardly included any- thing that could be called literature, the authors of classical antiquity that had retained some feeble hold on the monastic schools of the preceding period being now neglected; * and that dialectics, or the art of.dis «hool of Ch«tm „d lu ^ of cL!^ J*.K r '• ""• *"'' '" "■* 136 THE MEDI.ETAL CXIVERSITIES putation W.S the preponderating subject, with the then llf ''f ' r- '"'"^'^^ '""^ ^^'>'<^^' '^-' had preme authorities. The student in arts received first the degree of bachelor and some years later that of master, the two degrees requmng at Oxford about seven vears. U well as in the sciences now to be mentioned, wm given entirely in Latin. If for no other reason, this w'^u d have been imperative with students coming from many t?"?yT"''/"'^ ^P^""^'^"^ many different dia' lects; though it is probable that students, as a rule attached themselves to masters who were their coun trvmen. the^ w'^' '"f r"*^'"' '"' '^' '^*°^ P«P*™tion for m Oxford and Pans as inferior in rank- The num- bers in arts naturally exceeded those in aJi the higher faculties combined. "'gner T,h? wl^' '"',^'''' '^""^'^- ^'^ "^ h^^nifwHd philoso- phy was usual y considered chief. This required of the student, already a master of arts, seven or eigh years of study and the acquisition of skill in disputing and preaching. Its sole studies seem to have be^n 2f Bible and the four books of - Sentences • of Peter hi Lombard a famous doctor in Paris in the l^h centurr rir T?"?"''^ ■■ '^" '-'"^ '"^^ authoritative tS book of Theology. To these the '• 3„^ " .f xho,^ t^Zr'^^''^r''''' 'J^^lo?*". w« u> some c«e. *!^!flJ^^!l!^l^|[^fidat^^ master's degr^ • Deaifl^, p S(i 4s:i Lr^ Op. 51 THEOLOGY; LAW 139 « .T.v r..,.r.H|,uvcl in (•.,I.U.ri»'y-.s SvlUhus) (138) had mastered the Bible and the Sentences, ** he must still practise himself three years at the university in disputing and preaching, and must also be present at disputations.''* The course was evidently a long one, but from the modern point of view its length was more than equalled by its dry formality and its emptiness. In civil and common law, the subjects were the com- pilations and collections of the Roman law that had been handed down from the time of Justinian, and the papal Decretals, with comments and expositions there- upon from the doctors, and with abundant disputa- tion, in a course of eight or even ten years, after which and the passing of examinations, in which disputation played a large part, the student became a licentiate and doctor utrixisque legis. Roger Bacon complains that in his day, civil law had too great attention in the Eng- lish universities. The professional education in medicine consisted of a preliminary course of two or three years in an ele- mentary work, some book on practice, and certain parts of the medical writings of Avicenna. a celebrated Arabian writer on medicine and philosophy of the 10th and 11th century who had made a more than usually systematic statement of Greek medical ideas, and whose works had been translated into Latin. This pre- liminary course, which admitted to the baccalaureate, was followed by five or six years study, chiefly of Galen and Hippocrates, preparatory to the doctorate. Thus the medical course was of seven or nine years, ♦See von Raumer. Gesch. der Pad. Vol. IV. p. 20. etc. For the require- ments in sciences in England see Mullinger, The University of Cambridge from the Earliest Time. pp. 3B^-b: also Lyte, History of the University of Oxford, p. 21&-223 for all the faculties including theology. 140 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES according as the Student was or was nof. . a . arts. In Cambridge *},« of 7 . * graduate in arts, and must have atlf . ?' """"^ ""' ' ""^'^^ '"^ authors at least fii "l^'l '"!"".*'" ^^^^^"''^^ practice for the doctorate n T'-^"' ''^^ ^^«'« obligatory even here buT.- ^''P""'"""^ '^ere also strations are not m;nHnn .°"' T*^ anatomical demon- in English uni:elStt; S^rm^^ ^^^ ^°^'"^^^ In the 12th and T^th ! ""^ ^^"'^ '^n practica " . Montpellier had an o Jsh Z ' '""^ ^"'--*^ of school of medicine, "^'"'""'^"'^'"g reputation as a from the opinion that t welh' If ? .T ''"'''''^ ]-8}n the several science haTof it f"f "?' '""'- -at.ou. The surprise that win douMlerb '"""'" by a comparison of length J.^'"'^^^^'' ^e caused brevity of the subjec 'mfttr wS TT' "''"^ *^« ^e observe the method ofZll ' '"''"""'^ '^ben then prevailed, :S l"^t;f l' '""'°^ ^'''^'^ necessary by circumstances and Ik ' ''*' '"*'^« controlling cause of specialization '" ''''^' ""'^ » would hardly suffice for Z! !t ' ''°'^ " «'"g'« '''e (2) We mus a" : out 1 "^ *'" ^^"'■^'^^• cient nurseries of learnlr'n"' ^°'""' ^« '^^^^^ »»- printing had not ye b en n'^: V". ""' ''^ '"«' '"-^ sequence books o'f ever? k nd t'' '"' "^-^^ '" '">- dear, «ince they could be'm'SlildlllT:.''"' ^"^ process of transcribing uZ ^ !'^ ^^^ ^^^'^^^ METHOD OF TEACHING 141 tury, the library of the Medici in Florence had less than 1,000 manuscripts, and the Vatican library only about 5,000, nearly all collected with vast labor and expense after a new spirit had begun to agitate the turbid depths of mediaeval ideas. Moreover, the human intellect, though now aroused to a remarkable activity, was still far from emancipating itself from the habit of a servile deference to authority in science as well as in religion. From these causes, the methods of instruction that came to be devised were dictation from manuscripts of prescribed subject matter which students were to copy and memorize, and dialectic disputations on these by students and teachers as a mental gymnastic, to which was added a third expedient soon to be mentioned. With regard to the first, we may quote a lively descrip- tive paragraph from Karl Schmidt,* which, though more exactly applicable to the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, when some degeneracy had possibly crept into the teaching of the universities, may yet by the subtraction of a little coloring be considered fairly descriptive of the dictation method in general. '* According to the expression then in 'vogue, the professor read a book and the student listened to a book. To lessen labor they hit upon the idea of pre- senting abstracts, the so-called summaries (mmmm), which soon entirely supplanted the original works. Into the narrow frame of the explanation of these few books must be crowded everything worth knowing, an artificial process which led to all sorts of subtleties and strange interpretations. Hence it may have been advis- ♦Geschichte der P&dagojjik. Vol. II, pp. 3^6-7. 142 THE MEDI.f:VAL UNIVERSITIES able to demand dictation. Therefore the statutes of the university of Vienna required of every reader * that he should dictate honestly and exactly, slowly and distinctly, so indicating the paragraphs, capitals, commas, etc., as the sense demands, as to lighten the labor of copying. ' In this dictation the students were often miserably swindled. The dishonest master made use of unknown writings containing many errors, or of pretended works of honored masters in order to attract more copyists, and also dictated recently-penned books of foreign scholars. The students were not to be out- done in tricks. In Italy many young men made use of the dictated manuscripts of others, studied at home and so saved the fees; the nobles sent their servants' into the college to copy; and there was yet lacking only that the dictating teachers should likewise send their servants to the reading desk." In all this it will be seen that there is no thought on the side of the professors of presenting the results of original research or independent thought. All is ex- position based on authority, and the older the authority the better. It was rank heresy or presumption, for example, to question the authority of Aristotle; and it IS related of an old professor that when a student called his attention to the rumor that spots had been seen on the sun, he replied, - There can be no spots for I have read Aristotle twice from beginning to end, and he says the sun is incorruptible; " so, with an injunction to wipe his glasses that he might see more clearly, the doubting student was dismissed. For the students, on the other hand, there is no place for the use of reason; they are merely to copy what DISPUTATIONS 143 is given and to cram it up for a distant examination or for use as indisputable arguments in future verbal conflicts. Such was the dictation method that was in vogue in the mediaeval universities, its essence author- ity and receptivity. In the correlative disputation, on the other hand, there was real movement of mind, but it was move^ ment in no determined direction, stir without change of place, to mark time but not to advance. These disputations, which were shared by both teachers and students, might have been a useful expedient in the lack of books for bringing to notice new ideas that had been originated by any one, thus serving as a medium of publication; or for defending received opinions against unwarranted novelties; or for impressing strongly what had been learned, by its use in lively discussion; but they soon degenerated into hair-split- ting distinctions, into verbal duels in which the princi- pal fought for victory rather than truth, and '' made a merit of being able to prove the most opposite things with equal facility " from the same premises, or ** of disputing several successive days about nothing with the greatest dialectic skill ". Empty though they were, these verbal battles, we are told, were waged with such vigor and heat that it was found necessary to separate the contestants by barriers to prevent them from coming to blows. Yet however much they may have fostered intellectual acuteness and mental dexterity, as they doubtless did, they were very far from encouraging freedom of thought ; for though the disputants might explain away and thus minimize the force of received ideas, or might 144 THE MEDIEVAL DIVERSITIES I question their application to the case in hand, they might not cast doubt upon their authority in gen ral Hence resulted, in the words of von Raumer '" hit dm ect.c8 not merely in the philosophic faculty but in ajl acult.es of all universities, ruled so overmast'ering W hat everywhere the interest in the essential impoft the essenfal truth, and the essential cultivation oHh^ scientific subjects that were taught, sunk out of s ght and men were completely satisfied with a mere formal dialectical truth."* mere lormal Such then was the scholastic method, a subtle use of he machinery of formal logic, which, at first appl ed to the philosophic questions of theology in attempts to support the doctrines of the church afd t^ recon He dogma with reason, spread soon to all the ubZs f the university, and ififected the methods of al/c a ae of^schools during ttTl^r centuries of the uZl later"" in Zl'tl' '"'"'''''' '^'^^ ''''''^'' "^ London later in the 12th century: " When the feast of the fchZ:"!': '"'T''^': ''^ '"''«'«" convene thei scholars. The youth on that occasion dispute, some in the demonstrative way, and some logically The ^ produce their enthymemes and those the more perfect BylIog,sms Some, the better to show their parts ar whlTol" ''''"'*'"'^ '^^'^'^^^-^ -^h oneCthe lav of 1": 'r '"* r " ««'''^>"«'^in^ ^ome truth by' way of illustration. Some sophists endeavor to apulv on feigned topics a vast heap and flow of words oS to impose upon you with false conclusions * * * i^i^^Z!jl^^i^!!!^if^h^olswrHngle with one another ♦ Qeschiohteder Pftdagogik. Vol. IV, p. 2^ " DISPUTATIONS 145 t Zl'lT^rS:' t? *'^ P""^^P^- "^ grammar tne rules of the perfect tenses and supines "* opinion of the scholastic methods is likplv f^K siderablv modifipH n • ^"^ , ^^ ^^*^^^J to be con- aujjr moamed. It is not wholly aurp ihai fv,^ - quite the contrary. It is certain that in that a/e Lv ♦ Education in Early Enj?lRnH r. ka ■ 77 " Text. Soc. ^ t-ngland, p. 54, in publications of Early English 146 THE MEDI.€VAL CXIVERSITIES If we find in them little or nothing that would be valuable to as, it would not be quite just for us, meas- uring them by our standards, to condemn them as absurd. It is not wholly sure that future ages may not Tis.t a like judgment on some of our favorite means. In this regard the words of Mullinger are worthy of our consideration.* " Their earnestness and devotion invest with a certain dignity even their obscure and errant metaphysics their interminable logic, their artificial theology", and their purely hypothetical science; and if we "reflect that It IS far from improbable that in some future era the studies now predominant at Oxford and Cambridge may seem for the greater part as much ei«mples of misplaced energy as those to which we look back with such pitying contempt, we shall perhaps arrive at the conclusion that the centuries bring us no nearer to absolute truth, and that it is pursuit rather than the prize, the subjective discipline rather than the object- ive gain, which gives to all culture its chief meaning and worth." ^ A third expedient for assuming the mastery of the subjects taught remains to be mentioned, and it was wholly admirable. In all the facilities of at least some of the universities, the bachelors were required to alternate their higher work by lecturing to those less advanced on books that they had themselves. They learned by teaching: and as Mullinger remarks, " the duties of the lecture-room and the dispnUtions of the schools enabled all to test their powers and weigh their chances of practical succcsa lo ng before the period of • Th« History of Cambr.d^-" from ib^ Ear f^- m >k,^ ^ Vol I. INTFRIoR OF A NORMAN SrH.Kjf. iJth «;KNTLRV. (From Cubberltry'. ^ 't«Tacot in \Vr n*^, of fnb#»r iMy*. Tb*- teacher on the riuht ii I«^turinz. with two writ#»r4 on ih« l^ft.) (147) INCEPTION 149 preparation had expired." The admission of the bachelor to the right and duty to give certain lectures and to preside over disputations was called inception or commencing, since he was now to begin to teach as well as to learn. For the master, inception was a very imposing cere- mony, ending with his receiving the insignia of his rank, being saluted as noster magister, and being em- powered to teach in any university. In some univer- sities, if not in all, the master was required, if called on, to give ordinary lectures in his alma mater for at least a year; thus the right of teaching was also a duty which might be imposed. It is hardly necessary to remark that inception is the origin of our modern commencement, though the significance that com- mencing conveyed to a mediaeval student has been greatly modified in later times. Both Lyte and Mullinger speak of the heavy cost of '* inception ", and of taking any of the higher degrees. The former says p. 225: ** The cost of taking a degree in theology, or indeed in any of the superior faculties, was very heavy. Members of the religious orders, having no private property, were therefore unable to become doctors without the aid of a grant from their brethren assembled in chapter. In 1400, the convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, paid no less than £118 38. 8d. for the inception of two Benedictine monks, in theology and in canon law respectively. The money wag spent, partly, in the entertainment of the regent masters, and other members of the university." When it is considered that at this time the purchase power of money was at least twelve times as great as 150 THE MEDIEVAL FNirEKSITIES at present, and that sons of wealthy families could be respectably maintained at Oxford for not more than £10 per year, it will be apparent how grossly exorbi- tant were such expenses. (3) In giving an account of the condition of morals in the early universities, von Raumer judiciously re- minds us by an apt quotation, that while the evil d'eeds of the vicious and reckless make a prominent figure in the records of the times, from being the subjects of warnings and punishments, the quiet virtues of the well-ordered and studious majority who grow up to be the pride and ornament of their age are unrecorded, and so are likely to be left out of the account when we make up our estimate of the general character of these ancient institutions. With this caution he cites for us those pages in the statues of the universities of Paris and \'ienna, taken as typical, which concern the mor- als of students and professors, remembering that what is prohibited has quite probably occurred in the uni- versities.* In Paris such vices are denounced as thieving, house- breaking, abduction of giris, and aasaagi nation, besides some crimes too shameful to admit of mention. A papal bull of 12:6 denounces excommunication against those Paris students who were guilty of various forms of sacrileore. The statutes of Vienna are not aimed at such glar- ing crimes as are those of Paris, a fact which possibly bespeaks some amelioration of manners during the centuries which elapsed between the rise of the Uni- MORALS 151 f casion, TL !0- t'a 4? ^ noMgofik. vo: IV p. a batham § j versity of Paris and the foundation of that of Vienna; still theological students in Vienna are warned not to be drunkards and debauchees; students of law are en- joined to be quiet at lectures, not to shout, yell and hiss, and to avoid the company of infamous persons, brawlers and gamblers; and the students in general are naively bidden " not to spend more time in tippling places, in fights, and in guitar-playing than they de- vote to physics, logic, and college studies." Expul- sion is denounced against such students as after warn- ing are guilty of drunkenness, thieving, gambling, insulting citizens, and making night hideous with student songs, and especially against such as break in doors. Evidently therefore the state of morals and manners among the uneasy spirits in these old universities was not an ideal one, not better than that of the ages in which such offences occurred. I do not mention such ordinarv matters as riotous collisions between *' town m and gown '\ which, from the common practice of carry- ing weapons, frequently ended in bloodshed. In Paris and Oxford where many of the students were still very young, the collection of the students, which was somewhat early begun, into halls and en- dowed colleges where they lived under some oversight, did much to correct some of the worst disorders. In imitation of Paris, some of the older German universi- ties established what were called Burses, or authorized lodging houses, where the students were placed under the charge of a rector who was to exercise a strict oversight over them and to aid them in their studies. But the rectors, to entice students to their houses. 152 THE MEDIEVAL UKIVERSITIE8 wmked at their vices or even shared them, retailed beer to them at a large profit, and grew rich by the neglect of their duties.* These Burses, having no endow- ments, have long since disappeared, leaving no trace of their former existence save the term Bursche ap- plied to university students. Not so the endowed colleges of Paris and the English universities, which came in time to overshadow the universities of which they were members. In Paris we are told that besides the punishments inflicted by the university in its municipal capacity flogging was commonly resorted to even so late as the 15th century, bachelors as well as under-graduates in arts being thrashed for their ofifences. It is interesting to note in this connection that in Bologna, where the students were older and were themselves the governing body, a much better condi- tion of morals and manners seems to have prevailed. Yet coarse and even shocking as much that is re- ported seems to our modern idea, it is quite probable that as a whole it stands in much the same relation to the general tone and standard of life and conduct of the period in which it was true of the universities, as student pranks in other ages stand to the morals and manners of their times. It always has been true and possibly always will be true, that young fellows just released from home restraints and enjoying their first taste of complete freedom and self-direction, have dis- played a certain amount of exuberance and extrava- gance of spirit, extravagance because it overleaps to some extent the general standard of cond uct of the •von Raumer, Op. olt., Vol. IV., p~aft f AS AN EDUCATIVE AGENCY 153 age, but always doubtless has reference to it even while transgressing it. If therefore the conduct of mediaeval students seems to us coarse and rude even to the point of repulsive- ness, it was because the times were still marked by the same characteristics though in a somewhat less degree. If the college-boy of to-day no longer carries weapons, nor engages in bloody broils, nor breaks into houses, nor thieves nor gambles nor abducts, this fact is due not so much to any change in youthful human nature, as to the enormous advances in civiliz- ation and refinement which the latest centuries have brought in their train. (4) Besides their direct and intended influence in promoting a certain style of learning which probably was suited to the times and made use of the best means that were then available, and which thus by its conformity to the state and means of culture did much to prepare for a better future culture, the universities indirectly and without conscious intention did import- ant services as a civilizing and educative agency. Let ns here briefly indicate some of these incidental services. (a) They brought young men from widely distant countries, marked by the greatest diversities in modes of living and thinking, into the most intimate rela- tions, at an age in which the most vivid of lasting im- pressions are made. From this association they not only gained some ideas of European geography and history which were then but very little known, but also by their intercourse wore away much of !iheir provincialism of manners and feeling; they came to 154 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES EFFECT UPON THE LOWER SCHOOLS 155 recognize with the ready instinct of youth the points of superiority, each of the other; and thus what ever of strength and refinement then existed anywhere came to be blended into a European type of character. This was ultimately borne by every student to his own home, where he became a centre of influence to his fellows. The importance of this fact can hardly be overesti- mated; nor can that of a fact closely allied to it, viz., the counteraction that the freedom of travel and the protection guaranteed to students and their servants wrought against what still survived of the isolating spirit of feudalism. With the guarantee of safety of travel to those who were in that age the most efficient agents for the spread of whatever civilizing ideas then , existed, it cannot be doubted that the most harmful feature of feudalism, its isolating tendency, already undermined by the Crusades, was doomed to speedy extinction. (b) The universities taught the lesson, greatly needed in that rude age, of the supremacy of human reason over mere brute force. In this they became the efficient coadjutors of the church, which had long been the sole power that enforced respect without resort to armed violence. The spiritual power of the church, however, was reinforced by supernatural and superstitious terrors. This new power had no such adventitious aids. It gained its influence ;by the mere superiority which trained intellect has over brute force, through sagacity, through foresight, through command of resources in unlocked for exigencies. By such qualities the nurse- \ lings of the universities, trained though they were under an imperfect system, yet trained, gradually at- tained a supremacy which supplanted the reign of violence and gave a vast impulse to European civili- zation. (c) Furthermore the universities promoted and shaped general education through that pervasive influence which higher centres of learning inevitably exert upon all lower schools. For they not only furnished teach- ers for such schools and supplied them with their in- tellectual equipment, but also by reason of whatever standard of attainment they set up, they directed the minds of both teachers and pupils to the mark which they should strive to reach. Thus we have seen al- ready how soon the scholastic methods of the universi- ties had made their way into the schools of London, 80 that the sons of teachers and craftsmen strove to fit themselves for the probable pursuit of their fath- ers' callings by gaining dexterity in subtle argumenta- tion. To this may be added that the requirements for entering on university work made it necessary that whatever lower schools existed should fit their pupiJs to meet these requirements, and thus gave an indirect but powerful impulse towards something higher even to these pupils who had no intention to enter the university. We have seen also in the case of Guibert de Nogent how great difficulty was experienced in the age immediately preceding the rise of universities in finding teachers fitted for even the humblest kind of teaching. By supplying this want the universities doubtless gave a very considerable impulse to the estab- . # 156 THE MEDIiflVAL UNIVERSITIES liahment of schools, and thus to the spread of educa- tion; whilst the rapid multiplication of universities already mentioned testifies eloquently to the spread of intelligence, and to the growth of desires which could be satisfied only by a considerable increase in the num- ber of local schools. The high estimate that was placed on the licencia docendi conferred by the univers- ity, probably the sole degree for two centuries, shows clearly the direction in which university instruction was tending; and though, as we shall presently see, elementary schools seem to have been somewhat tardy in their growth, there was doubtless a vast increase in family education through private tutorships. {d) The last of the indirect benefits conferred by the universities was certainly wholly unintentional, since while emphasizing authority and servilely defer- ring to it, they yet, by their dialectic disputations, trained men to doubt everything, authority included, and thus paved the way unwittingly for that spirit of free inquiry which has done so much in the past few centuries for every department of knowledge. To this may be added that it is by no means unlikely that the organized self-government which characterized the ancient universities, whether in its more democratic form as in Bologna, where the student associations were the source of authority, or in the more aristo- cratic form which it assumed in Paris under the sway of the regent masters, codperated with the example of the guilds in generating in men's minds, slowly but surely, more democratic ideas and truer conceptions of the rightful source of governmental authority. This brief account of the services of the mediaeval •i) i INVENTION OF PRINTING 157 universities could not be more truthfully concluded than by quoting a sentence from Denifl^.* *' The Middle Ages need, in truth, no excuse for not having accomplished everything, since perfection even to-day after six or seven centuries has not been reached. Just at the present time we are involved in manifold doubt as to the best way to set about reforming our higher institutions of learning; although we should soon reach greater certainty by the adoption of a prin- ciple which the Middle Ages instinctively applied, but which in later times has alas! been too often neglected, viz., that the new should rest upon the old, and that the old should remain living in the new." (5) Our final topic in treating of the mediaeval uni- versities relates to the changes wrought in them by the invention of printing, the introduction and cheap- ening of linen paper, and the revival of interest in classical literature. These facts which, occurring in the 15th century, brought to an end the mediaeval period, revolutionized the subject-matter and methods of the universities, though not without a vigorous struggle, and deeply affected their very organization. It would be difficult for us fully to conceive how profound was the change produced by the invention of printing and by the introduction of linen paper into common use which took place at nearly the same time.f Heretofore, not only had transcription been / • Die Univ. deg Mittelalters, p. 7W. t Hallam'8 Middle Ages, C. IX, Pt. 2d., and Hattenbach, Das Schrlftwesen des Mittelalters. p. 114-123, both indicate that though paper was known from Arabian sources as early as the 12th century, it was little used till the 16th. See Quentin Durward, C. X. Ill for vivid statement of eflfect of printing. 158 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES slow and costly, but the material on which to write was also costly, both causes preventing a rapid multi- plication of books. Henceforth all this was changed, in many ways. Most obviously, it made no longer indispensable the tedious work of dictation and copying with subsequent memorizing. As the professors might no longer dic- tate from works that would be in every hand, they were remitted to the necessity, if they read at all, of doing some work which bore the stamp of their own person- ality, and of submitting it to the test of a ready com- parison with the works of honored authors. Thus professors were stimulated to work as they had never been before. They dictated indeed, and in some cases have continued to do so down to the present century, but it has been from work which they have done them- selves. However, the old subtle hair-splitting habits long remained and led to what has been called ** the aca- demic art of spinning ". As an example of this we are told of a professor in Vienna that ** he lectured twenty-two years on the first chapter of Isaiah, and was surprised by death before he was done." On the part of students, the release from copying and to some extent from memorizing, both gave more opportunity for the use of the higher powers of the intellect, and greatly lessened the time needed for ac- quiring knowledge. We have already seen how long was the time and how meagre the knowledge under the old regime. Fur- thermore, access to books made it no longer necessary for students to undertake long journeys, that they INVENTION OF PRINTING 159 might hear the words of famous masters from their own lips. Through the medium of print they might enjoy the wisdom of such masters at home and be spared the vexations and expense of travel. This fact doubtless had a tendency to diminish somewhat the numbers that flocked to special universities, or at least to make their clientage more largely local. A further consequence was, that under the new or- der of things introduced by printing fewer professors were required than before. This had a double effect; for the students it meant diminished fees; for the uni- versities, a more select teaching force by the retention of only the more highly gifted and learned masters whilst the less efficient were dispensed with. That the multiplication of masters who were often of very inferior character, and the consequent increased ex- pense of students, had grown to be great evils in the mediaeval universities, and that these evils were slow in yielding to the new order of things, may be clearly seen in the '' Advertissemens au Roy " of the famous Ramus in 1562 with regard to the university of Paris.* Such were the more obvious effects produced on the universities by the invention of printing in the 15th century. It may readily be seen that they were im- portant in a high degree, affecting their methods of teaching and their efficiency, the expenses of instruc- tion and its breadth of influence. The revival of interest in classical literature and its growing use in instruction wrought changes in all classes of schools quite as weighty as those that have ♦ Waddington. Vie de Ramus, pp. 141 and 409. 160 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES just been mentioned, — changes in the subject-matter of arts studies in all schools, universities included; still further changes in method by the abolition or the lessening of scholastic disputation; changes also in parts of the organization of many universities, espec- ially those in Germany. Wuh the general subject of the struggle of classic- ism for supremacy in education and its final triumph, we have nothing to do just now ; since for the sake of clearness and orderliness of view as to the sequence of events it is essential that we should limit ourselves strictly to that which belongs to the period antecedent to 1500 A. D. But the revival of interest in Greek and Roman literature which began in Italy in the time of Petrarch took on great proportions during the 15th century; what it was likely to do for the universities began now to be seen, and it is fitting here to state briefly its obvious tendencies. It would obviously arouse a virulent but futile oppo- sition. It would revolutionize the arts studies by driving out scholasticism as empty and outworn, and by the introduction of the literature of classical an- tiquity in place of the barbarous Latin and monkish homilies of the Middle Ages. It would complete the revolution in method, by installing real observation and reasoning based thereon in the place of hair-split- ting definitions and distinctions, and by substituting for barren disputation with it3 mechanical readiness in the use of words and empty abstractions, a truly developing exposition of the best products of human genius. By the disuse of disputation with its need of incessant practice it would make no longer necessary CLASSICISM 161 for this purpose the associated life of colleges and burses, thus slowly effecting changes in the organiza- tion of universities in which these were unendowed. The fulness of these momentous changes belongs to a later period, but its beginnings may now be seen, and hence have been mentioned in concluding our review of the early universities. CHAPTER VII ^ CLOSE OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION The schools other than the universities during the four centuries that we have under review will need no very extended description. Indeed Compayr^ says in his History of Pedagogy that, '* save claustral and cathedral schools, to which must be added some parish schools, the earliest examples of our village schools, the sole educational establishment of the Middle Ages was what is called the university.'' This statement, which may be correct as regards France, though even there the parish schools were so numerous that in 1380 there were 63 teachers of this class in Paris alone, is somewhat too sweeping when applied to Germany, the Low Countries, and England. Equally too favorable a view is conveyed by a state- ment attributed to Roger Bacon, '' that there had never been so great an appearance of learning and so general an application to study in so many different faculties as in this time (the 13th century), when schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and castle." There can indeed be little doubt that in England, during the last centuries of the Middle Ages, larger provisions were made for the education of the wealth- ier classes than elsewhere, not only in the monastic and cathedral schools, but also by private schools and (162) LOWER SCHOOLS 163 tutors, by city schools, and the endowed grammar schools, of which at least thirty antedate 1500, includ- ing such still famous schools as Eton and Winchester; yet all this would hardly warrant such breadth of statement as is attributed to Bacon. In Germany and Switzerland the old monastic schools seem to have fallen largely into decay. The Benedict- ine cloisters had so greatly declined that, even in St. Gall, which had earlier been famous as a seat of learn- ing, but a single monk could be found in 1291 who could read and write.* The cathedral schools also declined for a time, but in the 13th century there was in them a marked revi- val of interest, old schools were improved, and many new ones were founded under church auspices in the more important cities, devoted however almost solely to the education of the clergy and of such sons of nobles as rose above the contempt of learning that prevailed in this class ; such scanty instruction as was vouchsafed in them to poor children was confined to the church catechism. As has earlier been said, city organizations sprang up later in Germany than in Italy and France; but when they did arise, the growing industries of the cities soon made apparent to the more opulent class the need of a culture suited to their wants, a practi- cal education adapted to fit men for their worldly duties as artisans and citizens. Hence during the 13th and 14th centuries, many schools were founded by the magistracy of nearly all cities, in which were taught reading, writing, reckon- •DitteB, Schule der Pftdagogik, Pt. 4, § 20. 164 CLOSE OF MEDIJCVAL EDUCATION 4 ing, and some elements of Latin. Such schools were sometimes called ** writing schools '*. The clergy naturally claimed jurisdiction over these schools, and seem always to have maintained their rights of super- vision; but in not a few instances the quarrels between clergy and magistrates which grew out of this claim were detrimental to the schools. Any instruction beyond the merest elements was still confined to the church; and in this, increasing numbers of sons of the wealthier citizens shared, impelled by the ambition to vie with the nobility.* Outside of the cities, little seems to have been done even for the elementary religious instruction of the poorer classes during these centuries, so that the ex- amination into the conditon of the rural regions made by Melanchthon and Luther early in the 16th century, reveals a deplorable ignorance which Luther depicts in his vigorous way. In the Low Countries, the chapter schools which were converted later into municipal schools, and in which instruction in grammar, music, and morals was carried far enough to admit to the universities, to- gether with some elementary schools, did valuable ser- vice in dispelling ignorance. The most noteworthy service to general education in northern Europe, however, grew out of the efforts of Gerhard Groot (+1384) of Deventer in Holland. Born in easy circumstances, and highly educated in the lore of the times, he gained his master^s degree at an early age and devoted himself for some years to an * Specht, Geschichte des UnierrichuweteDs Id Deuuchland bis 12S0. pp. 246-2&4. Ll'THFR. USi-IM6 M K L A N i H i Ho N . 1 4t*7- I.VH) p:4^f |(V4 $«e page IQB THOMAS PLATTKR. M99-1582 S»^ pasr** 171 (165) ASCHAM. 15l«:'-15«i8 Se*? page 171 THE HIER0NYMIAN8 167 easy yet studious life. Possibly from the nature of his studies, he conceived a disgust for the emptiness of his life, became an ascetic, and preached with great effect in the vernacular until he was silenced by the hostility of the monks. Then he founded a peculiar society, the '' Brotherhood of the Common Life ", called also Hieronymians. The members of this society had all things in common and were bound by no irrevocable vows. They supported themselves by the labor of their own hands, mostly through the mul- tiplication of books by transcription until the intro- duction of printing superseded this form of industry. They had an especial regard for religious culture, to further which they translated the Bible and the service books into the mother tongue that they might be brought to the understanding of the people. They were distinguished likewise for their dislike of scho- lastic subtleties.* The order grew and its houses multiplied rapidly in the countries of northern Europe. The , rothers devoted themselves with especial zeal to the . istruc- tion of the young. Schools were connected with all their houses, besides which they rounded schools or taught in those already established. While laying special emphasis on religions teaching, they did not neglect literary culture, and when the new classical learning became known they were its effective advo- cates and its best teachers. Florentius Radewin (+U00) succeeded Groot, and Gerard of Zutphen aided Florentius working for translating the Scriptures to • Von Kaumer, Gesch. der Pftd, L. p. 54-60 and Schmidt, Gesch. der PSd. II. p, 329. Barnard's Journal of Education, iv. 652. / 168 CLOSE OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION vernacular. Poor boys and girls were often objects of their special care and nurture. During the two centuries of their activity, they undoubtedly did much for the spread of learning in northern Europe. The most celebrated of those once their pupils were Thomas a Kempis, Rudolph Agricola, Erasmus and Sturm, the last three of whom became eflBcient promoters of the cause of classical learning, whilst the first is known to entire Christendom by his *' Imitation of Christ ".* I have thus endeavored to give a concise sketch of the condition of European education, aside from the universities, during the closing centuries of the Mid- dle Agei^. It is obvious that, while not reaching very deep in point of generality, it yet extends somewhat widely and has in it a promise of better things to come. It is likewise obvious that it does not justify any sweeping assertions, either as to its lack or as to its universal diffusion. Little need be added regarding the method that pre- vailed in these schools. Whatever of change is to be found from the methods of earlier ages, is in the di- rection of scholasticism, save among the brethren of Deventer. The principles if not the practices of scholasticism, and its paramount emphasis of au- thority, are to be seen everywhere. Dictation, which in the most favorable cases assumes somewhat the form of oral instruction, must necessarily prevail where books are few; pupils must copy from dictation; and, since they are to be expected to reproduce what *A good account of this order may be found in Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. IV, p. 622, translated from von Raumer, Ges- chichte der P&dagogik, Vol. 1, pp. 51, etc. SCHOOL ACCOMODATIONS AND MASTERS 169 has been given them, they are but too likely to mem- orize without any too anxious efforts to understand. Improvements in what seem to us tedious, ineffective, and time-wasting methods, must await the advent of books and the coming of that happier age when reform should be the order of the day, as in other things, so also in the subjects, the methods, and the spirit of the schools. Aside from the universities, it is probable that few or no buildings dedicated solely to school purposes, were erected in Europe, until near the close of the Middle Ages. From the intimate connection of the schools with the church, they were naturally held in buildings devoted chiefly to religious uses, and which had little or no reference to the conveniences or com- fort of school children. Possibly this remark may not apply to all of the English endowed grammar schools which originated in the IMh and 15th centuries, nor to some of the German city schools; yet the accounts that have been preserved of the equipment even of the universities, which the elementary schools could hardly be expected to excel, show how little regard was paid to comfort. School accommodations indeed smacked strongly of the asceticism in the midst of which Chris- tian education had originated. As were the school accommodations so were the school-masters of this period. With some honorable exceptions in the case of a few devoted parish priests, and among the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Brethren of Deventer, the ranks of elementary teach- ers were largely recruited, as they have too often been in later days, from the failures in other callings. 170 CLOSE OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION Many of them were engaged only for brief periods, were miserably but probably adequately paid for their inefficient services, and wandered from place to place seeking employment, a poor, despised, and too often immoral class. Most prominent among these vagabond school-mas- ters was a somewhat numerous class of wanderers called Vagants or Bacchants. This class had its origin in the privilege of safe conduct granted to the univer- sities for their travelling students. This privilege, which was peculiarly liable to abuse by the idle and vicious, seems very early to have bred a set of tramps amongst men of some little university education but of depraved tastes, who used the name of travelling students to derive alms from the charitable, and more especially from the parish priests, whom they occasion- ally aided in teaching the children of the parish and in other duties. Claiming the privileges of clergy their lewd Latin songs and their discreditable con- duct soon disgusted even the coarse age in which they lived. As early as the 13th century they had become so intolerable a nuisance that some bishops and abbots caused them to be met with cudgels instead of alms; and about the end of this century the church author- ities forbade the parish clergy to aid the Goliards, as they were called at first, in any way, and denounced weighty penalties in case of disobedience.* But though checked for a time by such vigorous measures, these vagabond scholars were by no means suppressed. They reappeared in the following cen- turies, known now as Vagants from their roving mode ♦Specht, Gesch. des Unterrichtswesens, etc., pp. 198-201. BACCHANTS 171 of life, and even more frequently as Bacchants because of the vicious conviviality of their habits. They are not by any means exclusively wandering teachers seek- ing casual jobs at teaching and living off the country meanwhile, but lusty young fellows of coarsely rois- tering manners, who occasionally do some teaching between times, while visiting the schools of cities that offer abundant though coarse means of living to stu- dents. They are attended by a number of wretched lads calley *' A. B. C. shooters ", whose studies they nom- inally direct, but who are really their fags begging and even stealing for their brutal masters, and learning so little that one of them, Thomas Platter, who after- wards gained distinction, tells us that after nine years as an A. B. C. shooter, when he came into a school at Zurich, ** 1 knew nothing, nor could I even read Donatus, and yet I was eighteen years of age; and I sat there like a hen among chickens.''* If the ped- agogical efforts of the Bacchants when they were engaged as teachers were of the same character as their dealings with their fags. Platter's account gives us a lively picture of the character and success of the most numerous class of elementary teachers. After the end of the 15th century, nothing of this discreditable class survives but their name, which continued to be given to the new-comers in the German universities. Whilst England does not seem to have been infested with these vagrant teachers, it is evident from a com- • Von Rnumer, Op. Cit. Vol. 1, p. 335, which is translated in Barnard's American Journal, Vol, 6, pp. 79-90; and ibid p. 603 is another account of the Bacchants. 172 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCAFION plaint made by Roger Ascham in the 16th century that no greater care was there exercised in the choice of teachers. "It is pity," he says, *' that commonly more care is had, yea and that amongst very wise men, to find out a cunning man for their horse, than a cun- ning man for their children. They say nay in word but they do so in deed. For the one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by the year, and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God that sitteth in heaven laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for he suffereth them to have tame and well-ordered horses, but wild and unfortunate children."* As would naturally be expected, the discipline in the schools was everywhere severe and barbarous. The brutal treatment of the fags by the Bacchants is de- picted by Platter. Erasmus inveighs bitterly against the barbarity current in the schools of his day as de- feating its object by creating a dislike for study, and he gives an example of it in his own case. More than a generation later Ascham testifies to the same effect that before he was fourteen years old *' a fond school- master drave him so with fear of beating from all love of learning " that he felt its effects even in his mature years. Compayr^ says: ** the whip was in fashion in the 15th as in the 14th century. There was no other ilifference, says a historian, save that the whips of the 15th century were twice as long as in the 14th." What better could be looked for in the lower schools when the University of Paris still resorted to the rod even with its bachelors. The English practice in the ♦The Schoolmaster, Arber's edition, p. 83. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT 173 treatment of pupils, and the punishments commonly resorted to, are quaintly illustrated in the following old English rhyme: ** For all their noble bloode. He plucks them by the hood And shakes them by the eare. And bryngs them in such feare : He bayteth them lyke a beare. Like an ox or a bul. Their wittes he sayth are dul: He sayth they have no brayne Their estate to maintain: And make to bowe the knee Before his Majestic."* Such then were the schools and school-masters of the last four centuries of the Middle Ages; such were the narrow limits of their influence; such their studies their methods, and their discipline. It is not diflBcult however to see that there has been a perceptible ad- vance over the two preceding centuries, at least in the numbers of those who receive some kind of schooling and in the facility of finding some kind of teachers. The instruction is no longer so largely confined to mere dogma; in the schools of the cities the studies are made to bear upon a better preparation for active life; the parish schools have evidently become more numerous, evincing greater earnestness in the religious training of the young; and I am inclined to think that, bad as a large part of the teachers may have been they were no worse morally than in the 10th and 11th ♦ Education in Early England, p. 7, in publications of the early Eng- lish Text Soe.. 174 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION" centuries, and were considerably more learned as well as numerous. Xor in this connection should be overlooked the humble yet devoted and meritorious services of many men of the new religious orders, and of some teachers of this period who were of a high type; like Guarino (+ 1460) and Vittorino da Feltre (+1446), both of whom were famous as teachers and became tutors of princes; both of whom distinguished themselves by zeal for better literature in instruction, and by their rejection of the prevailing scholastic methods as tend- ing " to make boys twice as ignorant and silly " as they had been before; whilst Guarinc also inspired by his teaching at least five English scholars who later rose to distinction.* Likewise the '* gentle Gerson " ought not to be for- gotten as a promoter of the education of the masses, who, rising from a humble station to be chancellor of the University of Paris, distinguished himself in his high station by '' his sympathy for the disinherited ones of this world '\ and by writing small elementary treatises for the common people in their mother tongue, t If now we add to this the work of the universities, about fifty in number, that were established during these four centuries, and consider the great numbers of men that they reached and the wide extent of their influence, it will easily be seen how vast has been the educational progress made in this period. It is well for us thus to take considerate account of J * Lyte, History of Oxford University. C. XIV. p. 393. tCompayr6, p. 76. THE RENAI88AKCE 175 the state of education at this time, for with the close of the 15th century we reach the end of the old order of things, and approach the era of that tremendous intellectual as well as religious revolution called the Great Renaissance, whose inciting causes we have al- ready observed in the invention of printing, render- ing intellectual intercourse easier, and in the revival of interest in classical literature; to which may be added a profound religious unrest, and an intellectual expectancy springing from great geographical dis- coveries. Nor were the conditions lacking which would favor a swift advance in education as well as civilization. For, during the period that was ending, the political administration of most of the European states had assumed a more settled form with the decline of feud- alism and the consequent strengthening of the powers of the central governments, thus assuring that measure of order and legal security so essential to the progress of learning; to which was added the need that began to be felt in the diplomatic intercourse of states of a kind of knowledge hitherto neglected, which urgently prompted men to new forms of culture and became a powerful influence for enlightenment.* Thus with these powerful incitements to a new and better learning and under such more favorable condi- tions for its cultivation the Middle Ages ended and the new era was ushered in. •Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe, Lecture XI. I X D E X A 8tar78hows that portrait or illustration is given; q. indicates quotation. ABC shooters 171 Abdarrahman 28 Abelard, Peter 81*, 88, 120 academic art of spinning 158 adventure, love of 108 Advertissemens au Roy 159 JElbert 60 Agricola, Rudolph 168 Aix-la-chapelle , 74 Alcuin 63, 74-86 Alexandria 36, 45, 47, 57 algebra 27 Alfred the Great 61, 62, 69*, 88, 89-90, 106, 119 Ambrose, St 52, 57, 75*, 95 Anna Comnena 34 anti-monastic feeling 116 antiquity of universities 132 Anwykyll, q 49 Apostolic Constitutions 47 Aquinas, St. Thomas 75* Summa of 136 Arabic education 39 literature 29 figures 95 (177) » 178 HISTORY OF MEDIJEVAL EDUCATION Arabic poetry 29 Arabs 28 architecture 95 Arezzo 29 Aristotle 26, 35, 36, 69*, 87, 136, 142 arithmetic 54, 57, 60, 68, 105, 163 art....: 109 arts 26, 118, 135 ascetic spirit 100 Ascham, Roger 165*, 172 Asser 89 astrology 27 astronomy 26, 27, 33, 46, 60, 85 Athens 40 schools of 120 Augustine, St 48, 75* 'Avicenna 139 Bacchants 170, 171, 172 Bacon, Roger 81*, 133, 139 q 162, 163 Bgeda (see Bede) 54 Bagdad 28 Bangui!, letter to 63-67 Bardos 33 Barnard's American Journal of Education 113, ...150, 168, 171 Basil, St 52 Bede Venerable 54, 59, 61, 81* History 90 Benedict, St 56 Benedictine monasteries 57, 91, 163 monks 149 INDEX 179 4 Berlin 133 Bernard, St 75* Bible 21, 46, 47, 48, 59, 60, 64, 136, 139, 167 interpretation of 46 translation 55 Boethius 54, 140 Consolations 90 Bokhara 28 Bologna 106, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 129, 130, 132, 152, 156 books 158 Bursche 152 burses 151 Byzantines 24, 33-38 architecture 109 art 109 barrenness of 34 education 40 learning 33 Cabus, Book of 30 Cambridge 106, 119, 121, 140, 146 carving 95 Cassell's England, q 101 castle schools 99, 100 Catechetic school 45, 57, 83 Catechumenate 45 cathedral schools 56, 57, 58, 86, 119, 162 Catholic church 23,58,111 Chaldean lore 52 chapter schools 164 Charlemagne 20, 28, 55, 58, 59, 62, 65*, 88, 89, 99, 106, 119, 127 180 HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION Charlemagne, helpers 73-90 himself a student 68 zeal for learning 71 ^ Charles the Bald 73, 87 chemistry 27 chess 100 children 43 Christ, teaching of 19,41 Christian education 39-90 ideal 103,104 school s 124 Christianity 36 growth of 19, 20 truest expression of 41 Christians 18, 21 chivalric education 103 chivalry 95-104, 107 Chrodegang, of Metz 58 Chrysostom 47, 48 church, power of 1 54 Cicero 1 40 cipher 95 city schools 163 civic knowledge 107 civil law 118 civilization 98 classic authors 57 literature 159 classicism 160 Clemens of Alexandria 46 Clement 85 clergy 63, 67, 106 INDEX 181 clerical control 17, 124, 125, 132 cloister 47, 163 Colet, John 81* college servants 122 collisions with local authority 130 Cologne 133 commencement 149 companionship of nations 109 Compayr^, q 113, 162, 172, 174 compulsory education 71 Constan tine 115 of Carthage 27 Constantinople, culture 34 Royal College 33 constitution of universities 117 copying 21, 34, 78 Cordova 28 corporal punishment 30, 93, 94, 152 courtesy 98, 107 crusades 103, 108-110, 154 Cubberley, q 15, 49, 91, 127, 138 culture 22, 26, 44, 51, 58, 110, 145 Arabic 29 literary 99 non-professional 118 studies 135 currents of educational activity 23, 25*, 39 customs of the towns 107 Cyprian 48 Damascus 28 Daniel 52 Danish invasions 90 182 HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION INDEX 183 Dance 29 Dark ages 18, 23 darkest ages 88 decimal notation 27 degrees 131, 134 cost of 149 democracy 108 democratic education 71 Demosthenes 36 Denifl^, q...ll3, 119, 126, 129, 130, 132, 135, 136, 157 development of individuality 103 Deutsch, q 29 Deventer, brethren of 164, 168, 169 dialectics 41, 46, 88, 135, 136, 144 dictation 141, 142, 158, 168 Diophantus 27 direction 118 discipline of the mediaeval universities 134 disorders and riots 125 disputations 139, 140, 143, 160 Dittes, q 163 dogma 97 Dolensis, Alex 55 domestic training 43, 45, 59 Dominicans 169 Don Quixote 97 Dunstan 90 ecclesiastical authority 118, 119, 123, 130 Education in Early England, q 144, 173 educational history 55 Eginhard 68, 74 q 20 A elementary schools 164 embroidery ^^ encyclopsedia 54, 55 England 59, 60, 62, 105, 162 episcopal schools .57, 58, 93, 124 Erasmus 165*, 168, 172 Erfurt ••93, i:>3 ethics 46, 136 Eton 1^3 Euclid 27,69* E uropean type 1^^ externs 56 ,98 extravagance faculties 11^» 1^1 feudal system 22, 154, 1T5 First Renaissance 86, 89 revival of learning 93 Fontenelle ^^ France 104, 163 Francis of Assisi, St 75* Franciscans 1^9 freedom of study 1^3, 134 of teaching l'^^^ of travel ^53, 154 French universities 1^9 vernacular 73 Freundgen '^^ Fulda 55, 72, 80, 87 Galen 27, 69*, 114, 139 Gall, St 72,163 Gaul 17, 18, 29 ^ geography 105, 153 184 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION geometry 33, 46, 54 Gerard of Zutphen 167 Gerbert 29, 95, 110, 111 German grammar 72 songs 72 universities 133, 151, 160 vernacular 72, 73 Germanic independence 103, 104 Germany 104, 105, 162, 163 Gersen 174 Gibbon 35, 110, 114 q 28 God 31, 41 Goliards 170 good faith 98 grammar 33, 46, 56, 60, 78, 80, 94, 135 schools 163, 169 Great Renaissance 145, 175 Grecian intel lect 37 Greek culture 40, 45 language 80, 85 learning ...33, 40 literature 27, 28, 33, 34, 40, 52, 57, 59, 160 science 26,34 Green, q 55, 61 Gregory the Great 59 Grimbald 89 Groot, Gerhard 164 Guarino I74. Guibert de Xogent 94, 100, 155 guilds of trades 107, 108, 117, 126 INDEX 185 Guizot, q 18' 4*^' 51, 55, 60, 63, 77, 80, 83, 84, 94, 97, 104, 175 gunpowder ^ * hair-splitting 1^8, 160 Hallam, q 35, 59, 88, 89, 90, 93, 105, 106, 116, 157 Haroun al Raschid '^^ heathen literature ^^i ^^ schools 46,48 heathenism ^^ Hebrews '^^' ^^^^ ^^ Heidelberg ^^^^ ^^^ helpless, regard for ^^^ hermits **^ hierarchy "^ Hieronymians ^" * Hincmar, Bishop ^^ "^Hippocrates 27, 69*, 114, 139 Histoire Generale, q "^'^^ ^^ history ^^^ Home; 36, 52, 99 Huber, q ^^^ humanitarian ideal ^^^ '^^^ 1^^ Ibn Tophail ^0-32 ideal, humanitarian 4:^? ^4, 103 of Christian education 40 ideals 36 ignorance, causes of '^^ j^eneral ^^^ ^3 r • 1 49 inception ^^^ independent honor ^^3 thought ^"^^ indi vidual, development of ^4: 186 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION IXDEX 187 individualitv development of industries influence of universities... initiation into knighthood. in practica inspection intellectual activity awakeninsr 59, .17, 29, interior of Xorman school interns invention of printing Ireland Irnerius Isidore of Seville isolation Italian schools Italy Jarrow sciiooi.. Jerome, St jurisprudence justice Justinian knights Koran labor Liicroix, q Latin 52, 59, 68, 93, barbarous degenerate literature schools ...60, 40, 42 103 105, 107 153 101* 140 71 106 110 147* 56 157 60, 61, 74, 87 120 ...54, 55, 57 22, 109, 154 115 142, 160, 163 .54, 60 ...48, 75* 114, 115, 135 98 ...40, 139 103 26 56 127 105, 136, 164 93 59 .57, 59 105 II ! : if a Latin vs. vernacular. 22 ......58, 72, 90, 97, 105, 111, 112, 122, 136, 160 Laurie, q...56, 57, 93, 107, 108, 113, 114-118, 120, 1.32 ^^^ 59, 115, 117, 138*, 139 Bologna -j^g Montpellier j^o Oxford 117^ 118**140 Paris jjg lawlessness ,^.o learning by teaching j^g lecture on civil law jqo:^^ Leidrade \^ Leipsic Leo of Thessalonica Leonardo of Pisa liberal arts q^ ^.^ ,., ,. oh, 117 liberality ^g liberty, religion, honor ' ..7.' 96 libraries -ili/^ Medici J... 106. 133 ..33 81* Pari: 140 licencia docendi 123,131,156 linen paper ,.y literary culture qa --^^''^ '. .'.'.'.'.'.■ ■.".■.■.■.■.■.■.■. .■.■.■;.■;. .■.■.107 '■'"^'"^ 21,30,48,59,135 heathen -o p., , . 4o, 51 l^^V 26, iw J'°°!^<''^, - 105,144,155 L.0U1S the Debonnaire Low cou ntries loyalty 86 162, 164 98 186 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION INDEX 187 individuality 40 42 development of IO3 industries IO5, 107 influence of universities 153 initiation into knighthood loi* in practica 14(j inspection 71 intellectual activity lOG awakening no interior of Norman school 147* interns 55 invention of printing 157 Ireland 59, 60, Gl, 74, 87 Irneri us 120 Isidore of Seville 54^ 55^ 57 isolation 22, 109, 154 Italian schools II5 Italy 17, 29, 142, IGO, 163 Jarrow school 54 GO Jerome, St 4g 75* jurisprudence GO, 114, 115, 135 justice 9g Justinian 40, 139 knights 103 Koran 26 labor 56 Lacroi x, q 127 Latin 52, 59, 68, 93, 105, 136, 164 barbarous 93 degenerate 59 literature 57, 59 schools 105 1 Latin vs. vernacular '^'^ ......58, 72, 90, 97, 105, 111, 112, 122, 136, 160 Laurie, q...56, 57, 93, 107, 108, 113, 114-118, 120, 132 law 59, 115, 117, 138*, 139 Bologna ^^^ Montpellier ^^^ Oxford 117, 118, 140 Paris 11^ lawlessness 1^*^ learning by teaching 1^^ lecture on civil law 1'^° Leidrade ' ^ Leipsic 1^^' 1^^ Leo of Thessalonica ^^ Leonardo of Pisa ^1* liberal arts w^ xn liberality ^^ liberty, religion, honor ^^ libraries 1"^^ Medici 1'*! Paris 1^0 licencia docendi l^'^? 1^1' 1^^ linen paper 1^ ' 96 107 literary culture taste literature ^1, 30, 48, 59, 135 heathen ^^' ^1 logic ^6' 1^^ London 105, 144, 155 Louis the Debonnaire ^^ Low countries l^'^' 1^* loyalty ^^ 188 HISTORY OF MEDIJIVAL EDUCATIOX Lucan 14q Luther 1,;4^ 1,15* Lyte, q 113, 119, 121, 130, 139, 149, 174 Macaulay, q 23 Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus. . ...54 man, end of 51 manuscripts n, 34, 50, 78 illumination of 95 marriage 41 - Martianus Capella 5:5, 54, So -Martin de Tours, St :<5, 80, 84, 85 ^mathematics ...27 medicTval system summarized... 14* school 49* Medici library 141 ^medicine 26, ^:. 114, 115, 117, 118, 135, 139 Grecian sources 114 Montpellier. US Salernum Hg Melanch thon 164, 165* memorizing 15g Menander 34 metaphysics 35 methods at media?val universities ....134 of instruction 141 Middle Ages is, 39, 56, 88, 114 Minnesingers 99 miracles 5I monasteries 43, 47, 86, 90, 116 Benedictine 57, 91, 163 English 90 monastic restrictions 124 INDEX 189 I monastic schools 06, 127, 135, 162 Mohammed-ibn-Mousa 27 Mohammedans 26, 28, 39 schools Ill monotheism 39 Montpellier 118, 133, 140 Moors 29 morals 151 150 46, 52 28 at universities. Moses Moslems Mt. Athos 33 Mullinger, q 47, 59, 63, 6S, 80, 88, 119, 120, 139, 14C, 149 municipal schools 164 municipalities, growth of 104-108 Roman 104 music 54, 57, 58, 68, 95, 100 church 52 mythology -^8 national culture 123 nationalism, spirit of.-. 104 nations 122,124, 129 natural history 60 ninth century 62-90 noster magister 1-^^ oaths of chivalry 97 optics 26 Origen 46, 69*, 77 origin of universities 119 Orleans 93, 104 outer monastic school 127* 190 HISTORY OF MEDIJEVAL EDUCATION Ovid 99, 140 Oxford 00, 106, 119, 121, 133, 136, 146, 150, 151 painting 95 papyrus ^^ Palace school ..79,80 Pantanus ...45 parchment ^^ Paris.. ..93, 116, 118, 119, 120, 1-21, 122, 124, 126, 129, 133, 136, 150, 151, 152, 156, 162, 172, 174 library ^^^ students • ^^^ Paulsen, q ^^^ penmanship ....9o Pepin ^^ Peter the Lombard 1-^^ 29, 81*, 160 120 26, 33, 46, 54, 109, 120, 136 Petrarch philosophers, philosophy... Cambridge. Oxford Paris 118 118 120 33 100 .52, 87 ..165* 171 Photius physical education Plato Platter, Thomas poetry -^6, 54, 60, 100, 109 chivalric 99 poverty of the universities. 130 Prague 1^^» ^^^ preparatory schools 1*^1 printing ^"^ privileges and immunities of the university... 122, 134 INDEX 191 proselyting 39 protection 110 Ptolemy 27 Quadrivium 15, 53, 57^ 53^ 93^ ^35 Rabanus Maurus 55, 57, 68, 72, 84, 87 Radewin, Fiorentius 157 Ramus 1^9 ^^^dal^ q Ill, 113, 135 ^^^^i°g 57, 105, 163 reason above force 154 "se of ['^.Z'.in refinement go Reichenau 57^ gg gQ ^^^^^on 17^ 32^ 97 religious controversies 33 doctrines 32 fanaticism iQg teaching 1^4 revival of learning ^2 ^h^i^s 93*"95 ^^^^riC 46^ QQ gQ Roman civil law n^ education 43 literature 1^ ^^^ 17, 19,36,93 Rousseau 30^ 32 Salamanca 29 Salernum 27, 115, 118 Saracenic culture 44 109 schools 110-112,' 114 Saracens 24-28, 29, 111 sarcophagus of literature 37 192 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION Savigny, q 120, 123 Schlegel, q 36 Schmidt, q 26, 29, 30, 47, 54, 56, 59, 67, 72, 100, 131, 132, 141 scholastic education 100 method 88, 144, 145 renaissance 106 scholasticism 26, 105, 144, 160 school buildings 169 of mendicant monks 91* of the Palace 79, 80 sciences 26,29, 59, 135, 136 Scott, Sir Walter, q 34, 157 -Scotus Erigena 61, 87, 120 Scriptures. See Bible. self-government 118, 134, 156 -seeking 98 Servatus, Lupus 87 Seville 29 skepticism 116, 156 Socrates 36, 80, 81* 84 Solomon 30 sophists 120, 144 Sophocles 36 Spain 17, 26, 28, 110, 114 Specht, q 56, 59, 164, 170 specialization 114, 117 ^ of studies, charters 119 f spelling 78 spirit of honor 97 state, ed ucation for 42 steadfastness 98 INDEX 195 women as teachers 47 education of 59 respect for 98 writing 57, 105, 163 schools 105, 164 York school 60, 74 '? \.fiJ - ■ : 1 94C I u •—I a; X £2i- UMBU UN ' II 11 ii ii fyppc W€7 wAY y ♦ A'Jf