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Title: THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Author: ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

Release Date: February, 2005  [EBook #7521]
[This file was first posted on May 13, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION ***




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THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE AND PROGRESS CONSIDERED AS A PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT
AND SPREAD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

BY

ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY


TO MY WIFE
FOR THIRTY YEARS BEST OF COMPANIONS IN BOTH WORK AND PLAY




PREFACE


The present volume, as well as the companion volume of _Readings_, arose
out of a practical situation. Twenty-two years ago, on entering Stanford
University as a Professor of Education and being given the history of the
subject to teach, I found it necessary, almost from the first, to begin
the construction of a Syllabus of Lectures which would permit of my
teaching the subject more as a phase of the history of the rise and
progress of our Western civilization than would any existing text. Through
such a study it is possible to give, better than by any other means, that
vision of world progress which throws such a flood of light over all our
educational efforts. The Syllabus grew, was made to include detailed
citations to historical literature, and in 1902 was published in book
form. In 1905 a second and an enlarged edition was issued, [1] and these
volumes for a time formed the basis for classwork and reading in a number
of institutions, and, though now out of print, may still be found in many
libraries. At the same time I began the collection of a series of short,
illustrative sources for my students to read.

It had been my intention, after the publication of the second edition of
the Syllabus, to expand the outline into a Text Book which would embody my
ideas as to what university students should be given as to the history of
the work in which they were engaged. I felt then, and still feel, that the
history of education, properly conceived and presented, should occupy an
important place in the training of an educational leader. Two things now
happened which for some time turned me aside from my original purpose. The
first was the publication, late in 1905, of Paul Monroe's very
comprehensive and scholarly _Text Book in the History of Education_, and
the second was that, with the expansion of the work in education in the
university with which I was connected, and the addition of new men to the
department, the general history of education was for a time turned over to
another to teach. I then began, instead, the development of that
introductory course in education, dealing entirely with American
educational history and problems, out of which grew my _Public Education
in the United States_.

The second half of the academic year 1910-11 I acted as visiting Lecturer
on the History of Education at both Harvard University and Radcliffe
College, and while serving in this capacity I began work on what has
finally evolved into the present volume, together with the accompanying
book of illustrative _Readings_. Other duties, and a deep interest in
problems of school administration, largely engaged my energies and writing
time until some three years ago, when, in rearranging courses at the
university, it seemed desirable that I should again take over the
instruction in the general history of education. Since then I have pushed
through, as rapidly as conditions would permit, the organization of the
parallel book of sources and documents, and the present volume of text.

In doing so I have not tried to prepare another history of educational
theories. Of such we already have a sufficient number. Instead, I have
tried to prepare a history of the progress and practice and organization
of education itself, and to give to such a history its proper setting as a
phase of the history of the development and spread of our Western
civilization. I have especially tried to present such a picture of the
rise, struggle for existence, growth, and recent great expansion of the
idea of the improvability of the race and the elevation and emancipation
of the individual through education as would be most illuminating and
useful to students of the subject. To this end I have traced the great
forward steps in the emancipation of the intellect of man, and the efforts
to perpetuate the progress made through the organization of educational
institutions to pass on to others what had been attained. I have also
tried to give a proper setting to the great historic forces which have
shaped and moulded human progress, and have made the evolution of modern
state school systems and the world-wide spread of Western civilization
both possible and inevitable.

To this end I have tried to hold to the main lines of the story, and have
in consequence omitted reference to many theorists and reformers and
events and schools which doubtless were important in their land and time,
but the influence of which on the main current of educational progress
was, after all, but small. For such omission I have no apology to make. In
their place I have introduced a record of world events and forces, not
included in the usual history of education, which to me seem important as
having contributed materially to the shaping and directing of intellectual
and educational progress. While in the treatment major emphasis has been
given to modern times, I have nevertheless tried to show how all modern
education has been after all a development, a culmination, a flowering-out
of forces and impulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a
civilization such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in
the past as is ours, any adequate understanding of world practices and of
present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of
development to give proper background and perspective. The rise of modern
state school systems, the variations in types found to-day in different
lands, the new conceptions of the educational purpose, the rise of science
study, the new functions which the school has recently assumed, the world-
wide sweep of modern educational ideas, the rise of many entirely new
types of schools and training within the past century--these and many
other features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are
better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical
setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with
a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the
past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the
leaders in both school and state is given new emphasis.

To give greater concreteness to the presentation, maps, diagrams, and
pictures, as commonly found in standard historical works, have been used
to an extent not before employed in writings on the history of education.
To give still greater concreteness to the presentation I have built up a
parallel volume of _Readings_, containing a large collection of
illustrative source material designed to back up the historical record of
educational development and progress as presented in this volume. The
selections have been fully cross-referenced (R. 129; R. 176; etc.) in the
pages of the Text. Depending, as I have, so largely on the companion
volume for the necessary supplemental readings, I have reduced the chapter
bibliographies to a very few of the most valuable and most commonly found
references. To add to the teaching value of the book there has been
appended to each chapter a series of questions for discussion, bearing on
the Text, and another series of questions bearing on the Readings to be
found in the companion volume. In this form it is hoped that the Text will
be found good in teaching organization; that the treatment may prove to be
of such practical value that it will contribute materially to relieve the
history of education from much of the criticism which the devotion in the
past to the history of educational theory has brought upon it; and that
the two volumes which have been prepared may be of real service in
restoring the subject to the position of importance it deserves to hold,
for mature students of educational practice, as the interpreter of world
progress as expressed in one of its highest creative forms.

ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
_Stanford University, Cal. September_ 4, 1920




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION: THE SOURCES OF OUR CIVILIZATION


PART I
THE ANCIENT WORLD
FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION GREECE--ROME--CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER I. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION
    I. GREECE AND ITS PEOPLE
   II. EARLY EDUCATION IN GREECE

CHAPTER II. LATER GREEK EDUCATION
  III. THE NEW GREEK EDUCATION

CHAPTER III. THE EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME
    I. THE ROMANS AND THEIR MISSION
   II. THE PERIOD OF HOME EDUCATION
  III. THE TRANSITION TO SCHOOL EDUCATION
   IV. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AS FINALLY ESTABLISHED
    V. ROME'S CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER IV. THE RISE AND CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY
    I. THE RISE AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
   II. EDUCATIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH
  III. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH

PART II
THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD
THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM; THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND
REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER V. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE

CHAPTER VI. EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
    I. CONDITION AND PRESERVATION OF LEARNING

CHAPTER VII. EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
    I. SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED

CHAPTER VIII. INFLUENCES TENDING TOWARD A REVIVAL OF LEARNING
    I.   MOSLEM LEARNING FROM SPAIN
   II.  THE RISE OF SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY
  III. LAW AND MEDICINE AS NEW STUDIES
   IV.  OTHER NEW INFLUENCES AND MOVEMENTS

CHAPTER IX. THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES

PART III
THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN ATTITUDES
THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT LEARNING; THE REAWAKENING OF SCHOLARSHIP; AND
THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

CHAPTER X. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

CHAPTER XI. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

CHAPTER XII. THE REVOLT AGAINST AUTHORITY

CHAPTER XIII. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
    I. AMONG LUTHERANS AND ANGLICANS

CHAPTER XIV. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
   II. AMONG CALVINISTS AND CATHOLICS

CHAPTER XV. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
  III. THE REFORMATION AND AMERICAN EDUCATION

CHAPTER XVI. THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

CHAPTER XVII. THE NEW SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE SCHOOLS
    I.   HUMANISTIC REALISM
   II.  SOCIAL REALISM
  III. SENSE REALISM
   IV.  REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS

CHAPTER XVIII. THEORY AND PRACTICE BY THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
    I. PRE-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL THEORIES
   II. MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS

PART IV
MODERN TIMES
THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE; THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY; A NEW THEORY FOR
EDUCATION EVOLVED; THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL

CHAPTER XIX. THE EIGHTEENTH A TRANSITION CENTURY
    I. WORK OF THE BENEVOLENT DESPOTS OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE
   II. THE UNSATISFIED DEMAND FOR REFORM IN FRANCE
  III. ENGLAND THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC NATION
   IV. INSTITUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN
       AMERICA
    V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SWEEPS AWAY ANCIENT ABUSES

CHAPTER XX. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
    I. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE
   II. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN FRANCE
  III. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN AMERICA

CHAPTER XXI. A NEW THEORY AND SUBJECT-MATTER FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
    I. THE NEW THEORY STATED
   II. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO WORK OUT A NEW THEORY
  III. THE WORK AND INFLUENCE OF PESTALOZZI
   IV. REDIRECTION OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

CHAPTER XXII. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN PRUSSIA
    I. THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
   II. A STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM AT LAST CREATED

CHAPTER XXIII. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN FRANCE AND ITALY
    I. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN FRANCE
   II. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN ITALY

CHAPTER XXIV. THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN ENGLAND
    I. THE CHARITABLE-VOLUNTARY BEGINNINGS
   II. THE PERIOD OF PHILANTHROPIC EFFORT (1800-33)
  III. THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION
    IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL SYSTEM

CHAPTER XXV. AWAKENING AN EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES
    I. EARLY NATIONAL ATTITUDES AND INTERESTS
   II. AWAKENING AN EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS
  III. SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC INFLUENCES
   IV. ALIGNMENT OF INTERESTS, AND PROPAGANDA

CHAPTER XXVI. THE AMERICAN BATTLE FOR FREE STATE SCHOOLS
    I. THE BATTLE FOR TAX SUPPORT
   II. THE BATTLE TO ELIMINATE THE PAUPER-SCHOOL IDEA
  III. THE BATTLE TO MAKE THE SCHOOLS ENTIRELY FREE
   IV. THE BATTLE TO ESTABLISH SCHOOL SUPERVISION
    V. THE BATTLE TO ELIMINATE SECTARIANISM
   VI. THE BATTLE TO ESTABLISH THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL
  VII. THE STATE UNIVERSITY CROWNS THE SYSTEM

CHAPTER XXVII. EDUCATION BECOMES A GREAT NATIONAL TOOL
    I. SPREAD OF THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA
   II. NEW MODIFYING FORCES
  III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION

CHAPTER XXVIII. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
    I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION
   II. NEW IDEAS FROM HERBARTIAN SOURCES
  III. THE KINDERGARTEN, PLAY, AND MANUAL ACTIVITIES
   IV. THE ADDITION OF SCIENCE STUDY
    V. SOCIAL MEANING OF THESE CHANGES

CHAPTER XXIX. NEW TENDENCIES AND EXPANSIONS
    I. POLITICAL
   II. SCIENTIFIC
  III. VOCATIONAL
   IV. SOCIOLOGICAL
    V. THE SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION

CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE




LIST OF PLATES


 1. THE CLOISTERS OF A MONASTERY, NEAR FLORENCE, ITALY
 2. THE LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT WALLBERG, AT ZUTPHEN, HOLLAND
 3. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
 4. A LECTURE ON THEOLOGY BY ALBERTUS MAGNUS
 5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL
 6. EDUCATIONAL LEADERS IN PROTESTANT GERMANY
 7. THE FREE SCHOOL AT HARROW
 8. MAP SHOWING THE SPREAD OF JESUIT SCHOOLS IN NORTHERN TERRITORY BY THE
    YEAR 1725
 9. TWO TABLETS ON THE WEST GATEWAY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
10. JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1670)
11. JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI
12. FELLENBERG'S INSTITUTE AT HOFWYL
13. TWO LEADERS IN THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA
14. FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT (1787-1874)
15. JOHN POUNDS' RAGGED SCHOOL AT PORTSMOUTH
16. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE VOLUNTARY SCHOOL
17. TWO LEADERS IN THE EDUCATIONAL AWAKENING IN THE UNITED STATES
18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY




LIST OF FIGURES


  1. THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD
  2. ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN WORLD
  3. THE CITY-STATE OF ATTICA
  4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF ATHENS AND ATTICA, ABOUT 430 B.C.
  5. A GREEK BOY
  6. AN ATHENIAN INSCRIPTION
  7. GREEK WRITING-MATERIALS
  8. A GREEK COUNTING-BOARD
  9. AN ATHENIAN SCHOOL
 10. GREEK SCHOOL LESSONS
 11. GROUND-PLAN OF THE GYMNASIUM AT EPHESOS, IN ASIA MINOR
 12. SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)
 13. EVOLUTION OF THE GREEK UNIVERSITY
 14. THE GREEK UNIVERSITY WORLD
 15. THE KNOWN WORLD ABOUT 150 A.D.
 16. THE EARLY PEOPLES OF ITALY, AND THE EXTENSION OF THE ROMAN POWER
 17. THE PRINCIPAL ROMAN ROADS
 18. THE GREAT EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
 19. A ROMAN FATHER INSTRUCTING HIS SON
 20. CATO THE ELDER (234-148 B.C.)
 21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS
 22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD
 23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL
 24. A ROMAN SCHOOL OF RHETORIC
 25. THE ROMAN VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, AS FINALLY EVOLVED
 26. ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
 27. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
 28. A BISHOP
 29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS
 30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE CHURCH
 31. A BODYGUARD OF GERMANS
 32. THE GERMAN MIGRATIONS
 33. THE KNOWN WORLD IN 800
 34. A GERMAN WAR CHIEF
 35. ROMANS DESTROYING A GERMAN VILLAGE
 36. A PAGE OF THE GOTHIC GOSPELS
 37. A TYPICAL MONASTERY OF SOUTHERN EUROPE
 38. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY
 39. INITIAL LETTER FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT
 40. A MONK IN A SCRIPTORIUM
 41. CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE, AND THE IMPORTANT MONASTERIES OF THE TIME
 42. WHERE THE DANES RAVAGED ENGLAND
 43. AN OUTER MONASTIC SCHOOL
 44. THE MEDIAEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED
 45. A SCHOOL: A LESSON IN GRAMMAR
 46. AN ANGLO-SAXON MAP OF THE WORLD
 47. AN EARLY CHURCH MUSICIAN
 48. A SQUIRE BEING KNIGHTED
 49. A KNIGHT OF THE TIME OF THE FIRST CRUSADE
 50. EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
 51. SHOWING CENTERS OF MOSLEM LEARNING
 52. ARISTOTLE
 53. THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME, AT PARIS
 54. THE CITY-STATES OF NORTHERN ITALY
 55. FRAGMENT FROM THE RECOVERED "DIGEST" OF JUSTINIAN
 56. THE FATHER OF MEDICINE, HIPPOCRATES OF COS
 57. A PILGRIM OF THE MIDDLE AGES
 58. A TYPICAL MEDIAEVAL TOWN (PRUSSIAN)
 59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID
 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES
 61. SHOWING LOCATION OF THE CHIEF UNIVERSITIES FOUNDED BEFORE 1600
 62. SEAL OF A DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
 63. NEW COLLEGE, AT OXFORD
 64. A LECTURE ON CIVIL LAW BY GUILLAUME BENEDICTI
 65. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN, IN HOLLAND
 66. A UNIVERSITY DISPUTATION
 67. A UNIVERSITY LECTURE AND LECTURE ROOM
 68. PETRARCH (1304-74)
 69. BOCCACCIO (1313-75)
 70. DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511)
 71. BOOKCASE AND DESK IN THE MEDICEAN LIBRARY AT FLORENCE
 72. TWO EARLY NORTHERN HUMANISTS
 73. AN EARLY SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PRESS
 74. AN EARLY SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING
 75. THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO CHRISTIAN EUROPE BEFORE COLUMBUS
 76. SAINT ANTONINUS AND HIS SCHOLARS
 77. TWO EARLY ITALIAN HUMANIST EDUCATORS
 78. GUILLAUME BUDAEUS (1467-1540)
 79. COLLEGE DE FRANCE
 80. JOHANN REUCHLIN (1455-1522)
 81. JOHANN STURM (1507-89)
 82. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1467-1536)
 83. SAINT PAUL'S SCHOOL, LONDON
 84. GIGGLESWICK GRAMMAR SCHOOL
 85. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STUDIES
 86. JOHN WYCLIFFE (1320?-84)
 87. RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN BOHEMIA
 88. SHOWING THE RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
 89. HULDREICH ZWINGLI (1487-1531)
 90. JOHN CALVIN (1509-64)
 91. A FRENCH PROTESTANT (c. 1600)
 92. TWO EARLY VERNACULAR SCHOOLS
 93. THE FIRST PAGE OF WYCLIFFE'S BIBLE
 94. LUTHER GIVING INSTRUCTION
 95. JOHANNES BUGENHAGEN (1485-1558)
 96. EVOLUTION OF GERMAN STATE SCHOOL CONTROL
 97. A CHAINED BIBLE
 98. A FRENCH SCHOOL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
 99. A DUTCH VILLAGE SCHOOL
100. JOHN KNOX (1505?-72)
101. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (1491-1556)
102. PLAN OF A JESUIT SCHOOLROOM
103. AN URSULINE
104. A SCHOOL OF LA SALLE AT PARIS, 1688
105. THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS BY 1792
106. TENDENCIES IN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE, 1500 TO 1700
107. MAP SHOWING THE RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA
108. HOMES OF THE PILGRIMS, AND THEIR ROUTE TO AMERICA
109. NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1660
110. THE BOSTON LATIN GRAMMAR SCHOOL
111. WHERE YALE COLLEGE WAS FOUNDED
112. AN OLD QUAKER MEETING-HOUSE AND SCHOOL AT LAMPETER, PENNSYLVANIA
113. NICHOLAS KOPERNIK (COPERNICUS) (1473-1543)
114. TYCHO BRAKE (1546-1601)
115. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)
116. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)
117. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657)
118. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
119. THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF THE SCIENCES
120. RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)
121. FRANCOIS RABELAIS (1483-1553)
122. JOHN MILTON (1608-74)
123. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-92)
124. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
125. AN ACADEMIE DES ARMES
126. A SAMPLE PAGE FROM THE "ORBIS PICTUS"
127. PART OF A PAGE FROM A LATIN-ENGLISH EDITION OF THE "VESTIBULUM"
128. AUGUSTUS HERMANN FRANCKE (1663-1727)
129. A FRENCH SCHOOL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
130. A HORN BOOK
131. THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM
132. THOMAS DILWORTH (?-1780)
133. FRONTISPIECE TO NOAH WEBSTER'S "AMERICAN SPELLING BOOK"
134. TITLE-PAGE OF HODDER'S ARITHMETIC
135. A "CHRISTIAN BROTHERS" SCHOOL
136. AN ENGLISH DAME SCHOOL
137. GRAVEL LANE CHARITY-SCHOOL, SOUTHWARK
138. A CHARITY-SCHOOL GIRL IN UNIFORM
139. A CHARITY-SCHOOL BOY IN UNIFORM
140. ADVERTISEMENT FOR A TEACHER TO LET
141. A SCHOOL WHIPPING-POST
142. AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN SCHOOL
143. CHILDREN AS MINIATURE ADULTS
144. A PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY
145. FREDERICK THE GREAT
146. MARIA THERESA
147. MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755)
148. TURGOT (1727-81)
149. VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
150. DIDEROT (1713-84)
151. JOHN WESLEY (1707-82)
152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BY THE FAMILY NAMES
     IN THE CENSUS OF 1790
153. THE STATES-GENERAL IN SESSION AT VERSAILLES
154. ROUSSEAU (1712-78)
155. LA CHALOTAIS (1701-83)
156. ROLLAND (1734-93)
157. COUNT DE MIRABEAU (1749-91)
158. TALLEYRAND (1758-1838)
159. CONDORCET (1743-94)
160. THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE
161. LAKANAL (1762-1845)
162. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)
163. THE ROUSSEAU MONUMENT AT GENEVA
164. BASEDOW (1723-90)
165. IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)
166. THE SCENE OF PESTALOZZI'S LABORS
167. FELLENBERG (1771-1844)
168. THE SCHOOL OF A HANDWORKER
169. THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, 1740-86
170. A GERMAN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCHOOL
171. DINTER (1760-1831)
172. DIESTERWEG (1790-1866)
173. THE PRUSSIAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM CREATED
174. AN OLD FOUNDATION TRANSFORMED
175. COUNT DE FOURCROY (1755-1809)
176. VICTOR COUSIN (1792-1867)
177. OUTLINE OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE FRENCH STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
178. EUROPE IN 1810
179. THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY, SINCE 1848
180. COUNT OF CAVOUR (1810-61)
181. OUTLINE OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE ITALIAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
182. A RAGGED-SCHOOL PUPIL
183. ADAM SMITH (1723-90)
184. THE REVEREND T. R. MALTHUS (1766-1834)
185. THE CREATORS OF THE MONITORIAL SYSTEM
186. THE LANCASTRIAN MODEL SCHOOL IN BOROUGH ROAD, SOUTH-WARE, LONDON
187. MONITORS TEACHING READING AT "STATIONS"
188. PROPER MONITORIAL-SCHOOL POSITIONS
189. ROBERT OWEN (1771-1858)
190. LORD BROUGHAM (1778-1868)
191. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE SCHOOL IN 1840
192. EXPENDITURE FROM THE EDUCATION GRANTS, 1839-70
193. LORD T. B. MACAULAY (1800-59)
194. WORK OF THE SCHOOL BOARDS IN PROVIDING SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS
195. THE ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AS FINALLY EVOLVED
196. THE FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE BUILT BY THE FREE SCHOOL SOCIETY IN NEW YORK
     CITY
197. "MODEL" SCHOOL BUILDING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY
198. EVOLUTION OF THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL
     SYSTEM
199. DATES OF THE GRANTING OF FULL MANHOOD SUFFRAGE
200. THE FIRST FREE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN DETROIT
201. THE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL ELECTIONS OF 1835
202. THE NEW YORK REFERENDUM OF 1850
203. STATUS OF SCHOOL SUPERVISION IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1861
204. A TYPICAL NEW ENGLAND ACADEMY
205. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES
206. THE FIRST HIGH SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES
207. HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860
208. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ESTABLISHED BY 1860
209. THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL LADDER
210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK
211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH
     CENTURY
212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM
214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER
215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)
216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)
217. LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)
218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM
219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO
220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY, ABOUT 1830
221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD
222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS
223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM
224. THE FIRST MODERN NORMAL SCHOOL
225. TEACHER-TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860
226. EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM, AND OF METHODS OF
     TEACHING
227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS
228. REDIRECTED MANUAL TRAINING
229. HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)
230. THOMAS H. HUXLEY (1825-95)
231. A REORGANIZED KINDERGARTEN
232. THE PEKING UNION MEDICAL COLLEGE
233. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TRADES IN MODERN INDUSTRY
234. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, FOURTEEN TO TWENTY YEARS OF
     AGE
235. ABBE DE L'EPEE (1712-89)
236. THE REVEREND THOMAS H. GALLAUDET TEACHING THE DEAF AND DUMB
237. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS MAINTAINED BY THE STATE
238. KARL GEORG VON RAUMER (1783-1865)
239. THE ESTABLISHED AND EXPERIMENTAL NATIONS OF EUROPE
240. THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE




GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY


In addition to the List of Readings and the Supplemental References given
in the chapter bibliographies, the following works, not cited in the
chapter bibliographies, will be found in most libraries and may be
consulted, on all points to which they are likely to apply, for additional
material:


I. GENERAL HISTORIES OF EDUCATION

 1. Davidson, Thomas. _History of Education_. 292 pp. New York, 1900.
    Good on the interpretation of the larger movements of history.

*2. Monroe, Paul. _Text Book in the History of Education_. 772 pp.
    New York, 1905.
    Our most complete and scholarly history of education. This volume
    should be consulted freely. See analytical table of contents.

 3. Munroe, Jas. P. _The Educational Ideal_. 262 pp. Boston, 1895.
    Contains very good short chapters on the educational reformers.

*4. Graves, F. P. _A History of Education_. 3 vols. New York, 1909-
    13. Vol. I. _Before the Middle Ages_. 304 pp. Vol. II. _During
    the Middle Ages_. 314 pp. Vol. III. _In Modern Times_. 410 pp.
    These volumes contain valuable supplementary material, and good
    chapter bibliographies.

 5. Hart, J. K. _Democracy in Education_. 418 pp. New York, 1918.
    An interpretation of educational progress.

 6. Quick, R. H. _Essays on Educational Reformers_. 508 pp. 2d ed.,
    New York, 1890.
    A series of well-written essays on the work of the theorists in
    education since the time of the Renaissance.

*7. Parker, S. C. _The History of Modern Elementary Education_. 506
    pp. Boston, 1912.
    An excellent treatise on the development of the theory for our modern
    elementary school, with some good descriptions of modern practice.


II. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATION

 1. Cubberley, E. P. _Syllabus of Lectures on the History of
    Education_. 358 pp. New York. First ed., 1902; 2d ed., 1905.
    Gives detailed and classified bibliographies for all phases of the
    subject. Now out of print, but may be found in most normal school and
    college libraries, and many public libraries.


III. CYCLOPAEDIAS

*1. Monroe, Paul, Editor. _Cyclopedia of Education_. 5 vols. New
    York, 1911-13.
    The most important Cyclopaedia of Education in print. Contains
    excellent articles on all historical points and events, with good
    selected bibliographies. A work that should be in all libraries, and
    freely consulted in using this Text. Its historical articles are too
    numerous to cite in the chapter bibliographies, but, due to the
    alphabetical arrangement and good cross-referencing, they may be found
    easily.

*2. _Encylopaedia Britannica_. 11th ed., 29 vols. Cambridge, 1910-11.
    Contains numerous important articles on all types of historical
    topics, and excellent biographical sketches. Should be consulted
    freely in using this Text.


IV. MAGAZINES

*1. Barnard's _American Journal of Education_. Edited by Henry
    Barnard. 31 vols. Hartford, 1855-81. Reprinted, Syracuse, 1902.
    _Index_ to the 31 vols. published by the United States Bureau of
    Education, Washington, 1892.
    A wonderful mine of all kinds of historical and educational
    information, and should be consulted freely on all points relating to
    European or American educational history.

In the chapter bibliographies, as above, the most important references are
indicated with an asterisk (*).




THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION




INTRODUCTION

THE SOURCES OF OUR CIVILIZATION


The Civilization which we of to-day enjoy is a very complex thing, made up
of many different contributions, some large and some small, from people in
many different lands and different ages. To trace all these contributions
back to their sources would be a task impossible of accomplishment, and,
while specific parts would be interesting, for our purposes they would not
be important. Especially would it not be profitable for us to attempt to
trace the development of minor features, or to go back to the rudimentary
civilizations of primitive peoples. The early development of civilization
among the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, or the
American Indians all alike present features which to some form a very
interesting study, but our western civilization does not go back to these
as sources, and consequently they need not concern us in the study we are
about to begin. While we have obtained the alphabet from the Phoenicians
and some of our mathematical and scientific developments through the
medium of the Mohammedans, the real sources of our present-day
civilization lie elsewhere, and these minor sources will be referred to
but briefly and only as they influenced the course of western progress.

The civilization which we now know and enjoy has come down to us from four
main sources. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians laid the
foundations, and in the order named, and the study of the early history of
our western civilization is a study of the work and the blending of these
three main forces. It is upon these three foundation stones, superimposed
upon one another, that our modern European and American civilization has
been developed. The Germanic tribes, overrunning the boundaries of the
Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, added another new force of
largest future significance, and one which profoundly modified all
subsequent progress and development. To these four main sources we have
made many additions in modern times, building an entirely new
superstructure on the old foundations, but the groundwork of our
civilization is composed of these four foundation elements. For these
reasons a history of even modern education almost of necessity goes back,
briefly at least, to the work and contributions of these ancient peoples.

Starting, then, with the work of the Greeks, we shall state briefly the
contributions to the stream of civilization which have come down to us
from each of the important historic peoples or groups or forces, and shall
trace the blending and assimilating processes of the centuries. While
describing briefly the educational institutions and ideas of the different
peoples, we shall be far less concerned, as we progress down the
centuries, with the educational and philosophical theories advanced by
thinkers among them than with what was actually done, and with the lasting
contributions which they made to our educational practices and to our
present-day civilization.

The work of Greece lies at the bottom and, in a sense, was the most
important of all the earlier contributions to our education and
civilization. These people, known as Hellenes, were the pioneers of
western civilization. Their position in the ancient world is well shown on
the map reproduced opposite. To the East lay the older political
despotisms, with their caste-type and intellectually stagnant organization
of society, and to the North and West a little-known region inhabited by
barbarian tribes. It was in such a world that our western civilization had
its birth. These Greeks, and especially the Athenian Greeks, represented
an entirely new spirit in the world. In place of the repression of all
individuality, and the stagnant conditions of society that had
characterized the civilizations before them, they developed a civilization
characterized by individual freedom and opportunity, and for the first
time in world history a premium was placed on personal and political
initiative. In time this new western spirit was challenged by the older
eastern type of civilization. Long foreseeing the danger, and in fear of
what might happen, the little Greek States had developed educational
systems in part designed to prepare their citizens for what might come.
Finally, in a series of memorable battles, the Greeks, led by Athens,
broke the dread power of the Persian name and made the future of this new
type of civilization secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of
our western civilization trembled in the balance. Now followed the great
creative period in Greek life, during which the Athenian Greeks matured
and developed a literature, philosophy, and art which were to be enjoyed
not only by themselves, but by all western peoples since their time. In
these lines of culture the world will forever remain debtor to this small
but active and creative people.

[Illustration: FIG. I. THE EARLY GREEK CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD
The World according to Hecataeus, a geographer of Miletus, Asia Minor.
Hecataeus was the first Greek traveler and geographer. The map dates from
about 500 B.C.]

The next great source of our western civilization was the work of Rome.
Like the Greeks, the Romans also occupied a peninsula jutting southward
into the Mediterranean, but in most respects they were far different in
type. Unlike the active, imaginative, artistic, and creative Greeks, the
Romans were a practical, concrete, unimaginative, and executive people.
Energy, personality, and executive power were in greatest demand among
them.

The work of Rome was political, governmental, and legal--not artistic or
intellectual. Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and weak where Greece
was strong. As a result the two peoples supplemented one another well in
laying the foundations for our western civilization. The conquests of
Greece were intellectual; those of Rome legal and governmental. Rome
absorbed and amalgamated the whole ancient world into one Empire, to which
she gave a common language, dress, manners, religion, literature, and
political and legal institutions. Adopting Greek learning and educational
practices as her own, she spread them throughout the then-known world. By
her political organization she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and
government throughout the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the
Roman foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the
Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Roman conquest of
the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western history,
spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the world from a
great disaster.

To Rome, then, we are indebted most of all for ideas as to government, and
for the introduction of law and order into an unruly world. In all the
intervening centuries between ancient Rome and ourselves, and in spite of
many wars and repeated onslaughts of barbarism, Roman governmental law
still influences and guides our conduct, and this influence is even yet
extending to other lands and other peoples. We are also indebted to Rome
for many practical skills and for important engineering knowledge, which
was saved and passed on to Western Europe through the medium of the monks.
On the other side of the picture, the recent great World War, with all its
awful destruction of life and property, and injury to the orderly progress
of civilization, may be traced directly to the Roman idea of world empire
and the sway of one imperial government, imposing its rule and its culture
on the rest of mankind.

Into this Roman Empire, united and made one by Roman arms and government,
came the first of the modern forces in the ancient world--that of
Christianity--the third great foundation element in our western
civilization. Embracing in its early development many Greek philosophical
ideas, building securely on the Roman governmental organization, and with
its new message for a decaying world, Christianity forms the connecting
link between the ancient and modern civilizations. Taking the conception
of one God which the Jewish tribes of the East had developed, Christianity
changed and expanded this in such a way as to make it a dominant idea in
the world. Exalting the teachings of the fatherhood of God, the
brotherhood of man, the future life, and the need for preparation for a
hereafter, Christianity introduced a new type of religion and offered a
new hope to the poor and oppressed of the ancient world. In so doing a new
ethical force of first importance was added to the effective energies of
mankind, and a basis for the education of all was laid, for the first
time, in the history of the world.

Christianity came at just the right time not only to impart new energy and
hopefulness to a decadent ancient civilization, but also to meet, conquer,
and in time civilize the barbarian hordes from the North which overwhelmed
the Roman Empire. A new and youthful race of German barbarians now
appeared upon the scene, with resulting ravage and destruction, and
anarchy and ignorance, and long centuries ensued during which ancient
civilization fell prey to savage violence and superstition. Progress
ceased in the ancient world. The creative power of antiquity seemed
exhausted. The digestive and assimilative powers of the old world seemed
gone. Greek was forgotten. Latin was corrupted. Knowledge of the arts and
sciences was lost. Schools disappeared. Only the Christian Church remained
to save civilization from the wreck, and it, too, was almost submerged in
the barbaric flood. It took ten centuries partially to civilize, educate,
and mould into homogeneous units this heterogeneous horde of new peoples.
During this long period it required the strongest energies of the few who
understood to preserve the civilization of the past for the enjoyment and
use of a modern world.

Yet these barbarian Germans, great as was the havoc they wrought at first,
in time contributed much to the stream of our modern civilization. They
brought new conceptions of individual worth and freedom into a world
thoroughly impregnated with the ancient idea of the dominance of the State
over the individual. The popular assembly, an elective king, and an
independent and developing system of law were contributions of first
importance which these peoples brought. The individual man and not the
State was, with them, the important unit in society. In the hands of the
Angles and Saxons, particularly, but also among the Celts, Franks,
Helvetii, and Belgae, this idea of individual freedom and of the
subordination of the State to the individual has borne large fruit in
modern times in the self-governing States of France, Switzerland, Belgium,
England and the English self-governing dominions, and in the United States
of America. After much experimenting it now seems certain that the Anglo-
Saxon type of self-government, as developed first in England and further
expanded in the United States, seems destined to be the type of government
in future to rule the world.

It took Europe almost ten centuries to recover from the effects of the
invasion of barbarism which the last two centuries of the Roman Empire
witnessed, to save itself a little later from Mohammedan conquest, and to
pick up the lost threads of the ancient life and begin again the work of
civilization. Finally, however, this was accomplished, largely as a result
of the labor of monks and missionaries. The barbarians were in time
induced to settle down to an agricultural life, to accept Christianity in
name at least, and to yield a more or less grudging obedience to monk and
priest that they might thereby escape the torments of a world to come.
Slowly the monasteries and the churches, aided here and there by far-
sighted kings, worked at the restoration of books and learning, and
finally, first in Italy, and later in the nations evolved from the tribes
that had raided the Empire, there came a period of awakening and
rediscovery which led to the development of the early university
foundations, a wonderful revival of ancient learning, a great expansion of
men's thoughts, a great religious awakening, a wonderful period of world
exploration and discovery, the founding of new nations in new lands, the
reawakening of the spirit of scientific inquiry, the rise of the
democratic spirit, and the evolution of our modern civilization.

By the end of the eleventh century it was clear that the long battle for
the preservation of civilization had been won, but it was not until the
fourteenth century that the Revival of Learning in Italy gave clear
evidence of the rise of the modern spirit. By the year 1500 much had been
accomplished, and the new modern questioning spirit of the Italian Revival
was making progress in many directions. Most of the old learning had been
recovered; the printing-press had been invented, and was at work
multiplying books; the study of Greek and Hebrew had been revived in the
western world; trade and commerce had begun; the cities and the
universities which had arisen had become centers of a new life; a new sea
route to India had been found and was in use; Columbus had discovered a
new world; the Church was more tolerant of new ideas than it had been for
centuries; and thought was being awakened in the western world to a degree
that had not taken place since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed
about ready for rapid advances in many directions, and great progress in
learning, education, government, art, commerce, and invention seemed
almost within its grasp. Instead, there soon opened the most bitter and
vindictive religious conflict the world has ever known; western Christian
civilization was torn asunder; a century of religious warfare ensued; and
this was followed by other centuries of hatred and intolerance and
suspicion awakened by the great conflict.

Still, out of this conflict, though it for a time checked the orderly
development of civilization, much important educational progress was
ultimately to come. In promulgating the doctrine that the authority of the
Bible in religious matters is superior to the authority of the Church, the
basis for the elementary school for the masses of the people, and in
consequence the education of all, was laid. This meant the creation of an
entirely new type of school--the elementary, for the masses, and taught in
the native tongue--to supplement the Latin secondary schools which had
been an outgrowth of the revival of ancient learning, and the still
earlier cathedral and monastery schools of the Church.

The modern elementary vernacular school may then be said to be essentially
a product of the Protestant Reformation. This is true in a special sense
among those peoples which embraced some form of the Lutheran or
Calvinistic faiths. These were the Germans, Moravians, Swedes, Norwegians,
Finns, Danes, Dutch, Walloons, Swiss, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, French
Huguenots, and the English Puritans. As the Renaissance gave a new
emphasis to the development of secondary schools by supplying them with a
large amount of new subject-matter and a new motive, so the Reformation
movement gave a new motive for the education of children not intended for
the service of the State or the Church, and the development of elementary
vernacular schools was the result. Only in England, of all the revolting
countries, did this Protestant conception as to the necessity of education
for salvation fail to take deep root, with the result that elementary
education in England awaited the new political and social and industrial
impulses of the latter half of the nineteenth century for its real
development.

The rise of the questioning and inferring spirit in the Italian
Renaissance marked the beginnings of the transition from mediaeval to
modern attitudes, and one of the most important outgrowths of this was the
rise of scientific inquiry which in time followed. This meant the
application of human reason to the investigation of the phenomena of
nature, with all that this eventually implied. This, slowly to be sure,
turned the energies of mankind in a new direction, led to the substitution
of inquiry and patient experimentation for assumption and disputation, and
in time produced a scientific and industrial revolution which has changed
the whole nature of the older problems. The scientific spirit has to-day
come to dominate all lines of human thinking, and the applications of
scientific principles have, in the past century, completely changed almost
all the conditions surrounding human life. Applied to education, this new
spirit has transformed the instruction and the methods of the schools, led
to the creation of entirely new types of educational institutions, and
introduced entirely new aims and methods and purposes into the educational
process.

From inquiry into religious matters and inquiry into the phenomena of
nature, it was but a short and a natural step to inquiry into the nature
and functions of government. This led to a critical questioning of the old
established order, the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, the
growth of a consciousness of national problems, and the bringing to the
front of questions of political interest to a degree unknown since the
days of ancient Rome. The eighteenth century marks, in these directions, a
sharp turning-point in human thinking, and the end of mediaevalism and the
ushering in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The eighteenth
century, too, witnessed a culmination of a long series of progressive
changes which had been under way for centuries, and the flood time of a
slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the
intellect and the limitation of natural human liberties by either Church
or State. The flood of individualism which characterized the second half
of the eighteenth century demanded outlet, and, denied, it rose and swept
away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers--religious, intellectual,
social, and political--and opened the way for the marked progress in all
lines which characterized the nineteenth century. Out of this new spirit
was to come the American and the French Revolutions, the establishment of
constitutional liberty and religious freedom, the beginnings of the
abolition of privilege, the rise of democracy, a great extension of
educational advantages, and the transfer of the control of the school from
the Church to the State that the national welfare might be better promoted
thereby.

Now arose the modern conception of the school as the great constructive
instrument of the State, and a new individual and national theory as to
both the nature and the purpose of education was advanced. Schools were
declared to be essentially civil affairs; their purpose was asserted to be
to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political
State; ministers of education began to be appointed by the State to take
over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the
organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the
instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly
broadened in scope; and the education of all now came to be conceived of
as a birthright of the child of every citizen.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century a great world movement for the
realization of these new aims, through the taking-over of education from
religious bodies and the establishment of state-controlled school systems,
has taken place. This movement is still going on. Beginning in the nations
which were earliest in the front of the struggle to preserve and extend
what was so well begun by little Greece and Imperial Rome, the state-
control conception of education has, in the past three quarters of a
century, spread to every continent on the globe. For ages a Church and
private affair, of no particular concern to government and of importance
to but a relatively small number of the people, education has to-day
become, with the rise and spread of modern ideas as to human freedom,
political equality, and industrial progress, a prime essential to the
maintenance of good government and the promotion of national welfare, and
it is now so recognized by progressive nations everywhere. With the spread
of the state-control idea as to education have also gone western ideas as
to government, human rights, social obligations, political equality, pure
and applied science, trade, industry, transportation, intellectual and
moral improvement, and humanitarian influences which are rapidly
transforming and modernizing not only less progressive western nations,
but ancient civilizations as well, and along the lines so slowly and so
painfully worked out by the inheritors of the conceptions of human freedom
first thought out in little Greece, and those of political equality and
government under law so well worked out by ancient Rome, Western
civilization thus promises to become the dominant force in world
civilization and human progress, with general education as its agent and
greatest constructive force.

Such is a brief outline sketch of the history of the rise and spread and
progress of our western civilization, as expressed in the history of the
progress of education, and as we shall trace it in much more detail in the
chapters which are to follow. The road that man has traveled from the days
when might made right, and when children had no claims which the State or
parents were bound to respect, to a time when the child is regarded as of
first importance, and adults represented in the State declare by law that
the child shall be protected and shall have abundant educational
advantages, is a long road and at times a very crooked one. Its ups and
downs and forward movements have been those of the progress of the race,
and in consequence a history of educational progress must be in part a
history of the progress of civilization itself. Human civilization,
though, represents a more or less orderly evolution, and the education of
man stands as one of the highest expressions of a belief in the
improvability of the race of which mankind is capable.

It is such a development that we propose to trace, and, having now
sketched the broader outlines of the treatment, we next turn to a filling-
in of the details, and begin with the Ancient World and the first
foundation element as found in the little City-States of ancient Greece.




PART I

THE ANCIENT WORLD

THE FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION
GREECE--ROME--CHRISTIANITY




CHAPTER I

THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION


I. GREECE AND ITS PEOPLE

THE LAND. Ancient Greece, or Hellas as the Greeks called their homeland,
was but a small country. The map given below shows the Aegean world
superimposed on the States of the old Northwest Territory, from which it
may be seen that the Greek mainland was a little less than half as large
as the State of Illinois. Greece proper was about the size of the State of
West Virginia, but it was a much more mountainous land. No spot in Greece
was over forty miles from the sea. Attica, where a most wonderful
intellectual life arose and flourished for centuries, and whose
contributions to civilization were the chief glory of Greece, was smaller
than two average-size Illinois counties, and about two thirds the size of
the little State of Rhode Island. [1] The country was sparsely populated,
except in a few of the City-States, and probably did not, at its most
prosperous period, contain much more than a million and a half of people--
citizens, foreigners, and slaves included.

[Illustration: FIG. 2. ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN WORLD
Superimposed on the East-North-Central Group of American States, to show
relative size. Dotted lines indicate the boundaries of the American
States--Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, etc. All of Greece will be seen to be
a little less than half the size of the State of Illinois, the Aegean Sea
about the size of the State of Indiana, and Attica not quite so large as
two average-size Illinois counties.]

The land was rough and mountainous, and deeply indented by the sea. The
climate and vegetation were not greatly unlike the climate and vegetation
of Southern California. Pine and fir on the mountain-slopes, and figs,
olives, oranges, lemons, and grapes on the hillsides and plains below,
were characteristic of the land. Fishing, agriculture, and the raising of
cattle and sheep were the important industries. A temperate, bracing
climate, short, mild winters, and a long, dry summer gave an opportunity
for the development of this wonderful civilization. Like Southern
California or Florida in winter, it was essentially an out-of-doors
country. The high mountains to the rear, the sun-steeped skies, and the
brilliant sea in front were alike the beauty of the land and the
inspiration of the people. Especially was this true of Attica, which had
the seashore, the plain, the high mountains, and everywhere magnificent
views through an atmosphere of remarkable clearness. A land of
incomparable beauty and charm, it is little wonder that the Greek citizen,
and the Athenian in particular, took pride in and loved his country, and
was willing to spend much time in preparing himself to govern and defend
it.

THE GOVERNMENT. Politically, Greece was composed of a number of
independent City-States of small size. They had been settled by early
tribes, which originally held the land in common. Attica, with its
approximately seven hundred square miles of territory, was an average-size
City-State. The central city, the surrounding farming and grazing lands,
and the coastal regions all taken together, formed the State, the citizens
of which--city-residents, farmers, herdsmen, and fishermen--controlled the
government. There were in all some twenty of these City-States in mainland
Greece, the most important of which were Attica, of which Athens was the
central city; Laconia, of which Sparta was the central city; and Boeotia,
of which Thebes was the central city. Some of the States developed
democracies, of which class Athens became the most notable example, while
some were governed as oligarchies. Of all the different States but few
played any conspicuous part in the history of Greece. Of these few Attica
stands clearly above them all as the leader in thought and art and the
most progressive in government. Here, truly, was a most wonderful people,
and it is with Attica that the student of the history of education is most
concerned. The best of all Greece was there.

[Illustration: FIG. 3. THE CITY-STATE OF ATTICA]

The little City-States of Greece, as has just been said, were independent
States, just like modern nations. While all the Greeks regarded themselves
as tribes of a single family, descended from a common ancestor, Hellen,
and the bonds of a common race, language, and religion tended to unite
them into a sort of brotherhood, the different City-States were held apart
by their tribal origins, by narrow political sympathies, and by petty
laws. A citizen of one city, for example, was an alien in another, and
could not hold property or marry in a city not his own. Such attitudes and
laws were but natural, the time and age considered.

Sometimes, in case of great danger, as at the time of the Persian
invasions (492-479 B.C.), a number of the States would combine to form a
defensive league; at other times they made war on one another. The federal
principle, such as we know it in the United States in our state and
national governments, never came into play. At different times Athens,
Sparta, and Thebes aspired to the leadership of Greece and tried to unite
the little States into a Hellenic Nation, but the mutual jealousies and
the extreme individualism of the people, coupled with the isolation of the
States and the difficulties of intercommunication through the mountain
passes, stood in the way of any permanent union. [2] What Rome later
accomplished with relative ease and on a large scale, Greece was unable to
do on even a small scale. A lack of capacity to unite for cooeperative
undertakings seemed to be a fatal weakness of the Greek character.

THE PEOPLE. The Greeks were among the first of the European peoples to
attain to any high degree of civilization. Their story runs back almost to
the dawn of recorded history. As early as 3500 B.C. they were in an
advanced stone age, and by 2500 B.C. had reached the age of bronze. The
destruction of Homer's Troy dates back to 1200 B.C., and the Homeric poems
to 1100 B.C., while an earlier Troy (Schliemann's second city) goes back
to 2400 B.C. This history concerns the mainland of Asia Minor. By 1000
B.C. the southern peninsula of Greece had been colonized, between 900 and
800 B.C. Attica and other portions of upper Greece had been settled, and
by 650 B.C. Greek colonization had extended to many parts of the
Mediterranean. [3]

The lower part of the Greek peninsula, known as Laconia, was settled by
the Dorian branch of the Greek family, a practical, forceful, but a wholly
unimaginative people. Sparta was their most important city. To the north
were the Ionic Greeks, a many-sided and a highly imaginative people.
Athens was their chief city. In the settlement of Laconia the Spartans
imposed themselves as an army of occupation on the original inhabitants,
whom they compelled to pay tribute to them, and established a military
monarchy in southern Greece. The people of Attica, on the other hand,
absorbed into their own body the few earlier settlers of the Attic plain.
They also established a monarchy, but, being a people more capable of
progress, this later evolved into a democracy. The people of Attica were
in consequence a somewhat mixed race, which possibly in part accounts for
their greater intellectual ability and versatility. [4]

It accounts, though, only in part. Climate, beautiful surroundings, and
contact with the outside world probably also contributed something, but
the real basis underneath was the very superior quality of the people of
Attica. In some way, just how we do not know, these people came to be
endowed with a superior genius and the rather unusual ability to make
those progressive changes in living and government which enabled them to
make the most of their surroundings and opportunities, and to advance
while others stood still. Far more than other Greeks, the people of Attica
were imaginative, original, versatile, adaptable, progressive, endowed
with rare mental ability, keenly sensitive to beauty in nature and art,
and possessed of a wonderful sense of proportion and a capacity for
moderation in all things. Only on such an assumption can we account for
their marvelous achievements in art, philosophy, literature, and science
at this very early period in the development of the civilization of the
world.

CLASSES IN THE POPULATION. Greece, as was the ancient world in general,
was built politically on the dominant power of a ruling class. In
consequence, all of course could not become citizens of the State, even
after a democracy had been evolved. Citizenship came with birth and proper
education, and, before 509 B.C., foreigners were seldom admitted to
privileges in the State. Only a male citizen might hold office, protect
himself in the courts, own land, or attend the public assemblies. Only a
citizen, too, could participate in the religious festivals and rites, for
religion was an affair of the ruling families of the State. In
consequence, family, religion, and citizenship were all bound up together,
and education and training were chiefly for citizenship and religious
(moral) ends.

Even more, citizenship everywhere in the earlier period was a degree to be
attained to only after proper education and preliminary military and
political training. This not only made some form of education necessary,
but confined educational advantages to male youths of proper birth. There
was of course no purpose in educating any others. [5] From Figure 4 it
will be seen what a small percentage of the total population this
included. Education in Greece was essentially the education of the
children of the ruling class to perpetuate the rule of that class.

Attica almost alone among the Greek States adopted anything approaching a
liberal attitude toward the foreign-born; in Sparta, and generally
elsewhere in Greece, they were looked upon with deep suspicion. As a
result most of the foreign residents of Greece were to be found in Athens,
or its neighboring port city (the Piraeus), attracted there by the
hospitality of the people and the intellectual or commercial advantages of
these cities. After Athens had become the center of world thought, many
foreigners took up their residence in the city because of the importance
of its intellectual life. Foreigners, though, they remained up to 509 B.C.
(See page 40.) Only rarely before this date, and then only for some
conspicuous act of patriotism, and by special vote of the citizens, was a
foreigner admitted to citizenship. Unlike Rome, which received those of
alien birth freely into its citizenship, and opened up to them large
opportunities of every kind, the Greeks persistently refused to assimilate
the foreign-born. Regarding themselves as a superior people, descended
from the gods, they held themselves apart rather exclusively as above
other peoples. This kept the blood pure, but, from the standpoint of world
usefulness, it was a serious defect in Greek life. [6]

Beneath both citizens and foreign residents was a great foundation mass of
working slaves, who rendered all types of menial and intellectual
services. Sailors, household servants, field workers, clerks in shops and
offices, accountants, and pedagogues were among the more common
occupations of slaves in Greece. Many of these had been citizens and
learned men of other City-States or countries, but had been carried off as
captives in some war. This was a common practice in the ancient world,
slavery being the lot of alien conquered people almost without exception.
The composition of Attica, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War (431 B.C.) is shown in Figure 4. The great number of slaves and
foreigners is clearly seen, even though the citizenship had by this time
been greatly extended. In Sparta and in other City-States somewhat similar
conditions prevailed as to numbers [7] but there the slaves (Helots)
occupied a lower status than in Athens, being in reality serfs, tied to
and being sold with the land, and having no rights which a citizen was
bound to respect.

[Illustration: FIG. 4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF ATHENS AND
ATTICA, ABOUT 430 B.C. (After Gulick)]

Education, then, being only for the male children of citizens, and
citizenship a degree to be attained to on the basis of education and
training, let us next see in what that education consisted, and what were
its most prominent characteristics and results.


II. EARLY EDUCATION IN GREECE

Some form of education that would train the son of the citizen for
participation in the religious observances and duties of a citizen of the
State, and would prepare the State for defense against outward enemies,
was everywhere in Greece recognized as a public necessity, though its
provision, nature, and extent varied in the different City-States. We have
clear information only as to Sparta and Athens, and will consider only
these two as types. Sparta is interesting as representing the old Greek
tribal training, from which Sparta never progressed. Many of the other
Greek City-States probably maintained a system of training much like that
of Sparta. Such educational systems stand as undesirable examples of
extreme state socialism, contributed little to our western civilization,
and need not detain us long. It was Athens, and a few other City-States
which followed her example, which presented the best of Greece and passed
on to the modern world what was most valuable for civilization.

1. _Education in Sparta_

THE PEOPLE. The system of training which was maintained in Sparta was in
part a reflection of the character of the people, and in part a result of
its geographical location. A warlike people by nature, the Spartans were
for long regarded as the ablest fighters in Greece. Laconia, their home,
was a plain surrounded by mountains. They represented but a small
percentage of the total population, which they held in subjection to them
by their military power. [8] The slaves (Helots) were often troublesome,
and were held in check by many kinds of questionable practices. Education
for citizenship with the Spartans meant education for usefulness in an
intensely military State, where preparedness was a prerequisite to safety.
Strength, courage, endurance, cunning, patriotism, and obedience were the
virtues most highly prized, while the humane, literary, and artistic
sentiments were neglected (R. I). Aristotle well expressed it when he said
that "Sparta prepared and trained for war, and in peace rusted like a
sword in its scabbard."

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. At birth the child was examined by a council of
elders (R. I), and if it did not appear to be a promising child it was
exposed to die in the mountains. If kept, the mother had charge of the
child until seven if a boy, and still longer if a girl. At the beginning
of the eighth year, and until the boy reached the age of eighteen, he
lived in a public barrack, where he was given little except physical drill
and instruction in the Spartan virtues. His food and clothing were scant
and his bed hard. Each older man was a teacher. Running, leaping, boxing,
wrestling, military music, military drill, ball-playing, the use of the
spear, fighting, stealing, and laconic speech and demeanor constituted the
course of study. From eighteen to twenty was spent in professional
training for war, and frequently the youth was publicly whipped to develop
his courage and endurance. For the next ten years--that is, until he was
thirty years old--he was in the army at some frontier post. At thirty the
young man was admitted to full citizenship and compelled to marry, though
continuing to live at the public barrack and spending his energies in
training boys (R. 1). Women and girls were given gymnastic training to
make them strong and capable of bearing strong children. The family was
virtually suppressed in the interests of defense and war. [9] The
intellectual training consisted chiefly in committing to memory the Laws
of Lycurgus, learning a few selections from Homer, and listening to the
conversation of the older men.

As might naturally be supposed, Sparta contributed little of anything to
art, literature, science, philosophy, or government. She left to the world
some splendid examples of heroism, as for example the sacrifice of
Leonidas and his Spartans to hold the pass at Thermopylae, and a warning
example of the brutalizing effect on a people of excessive devotion to
military training. It is a pleasure to turn from this dark picture to the
wonderful (for the time) educational system that was gradually developed
at Athens.

2. _The old Athenian education_

SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS. Athenian education divides itself naturally into two
divisions--the old Athenian training which prevailed up to about the time
of the close of the Persian Wars (479 B.C.) and was an outgrowth of
earlier tribal observances and practices, and later Athenian education,
which characterized the period of maximum greatness of Athens and
afterward. We shall describe these briefly, in order.

The state military socialism of Sparta made no headway in more democratic
Attica. The citizens were too individualistic, and did their own thinking
too well to permit the establishment of any such plan. While education was
a necessity for citizenship, and the degree could not be obtained without
it, the State nevertheless left every citizen free to make his own
arrangements for the education of his sons, or to omit such education if
he saw fit. Only instruction in reading, writing, music, and gymnastics
were required. If family pride, and the sense of obligation of a parent
and a citizen were not sufficient to force the father to educate his son,
the son was then by law freed from the necessity of supporting his father
in his old age. The State supervised education, but did not establish it.

The teachers were private teachers, and derived their livelihood from
fees. These naturally varied much with the kind of teacher and the wealth
of the parent, much as private lessons in music or dancing do to-day. As
was common in antiquity, the teachers occupied but a low social position
(R. 5), and only in the higher schools of Athens was their standing of any
importance. Greek literature contains many passages which show the low
social status of the schoolmaster. [10] Schools were open from dawn to
dark. The school discipline was severe, the rod being freely used both in
the school and in the home. There were no Saturday and Sunday holidays or
long vacations, such as we know, but about ninety festival and other state
holidays served to break the continuity of instruction (R. 3). The
schoolrooms were provided by the teachers, and were wholly lacking in
teaching equipment, in any modern sense of the term. However, but little
was needed. The instruction was largely individual instruction, the boy
coming, usually in charge of an old slave known as a _pedagogue_, to
receive or recite his lessons. The teaching process was essentially a
telling and a learning-by-heart procedure.

For the earlier years there were two schools which boys attended--the
music and literary school, and a school for physical training. Boys
probably spent part of the day at one school and part at the other, though
this is not certain. They may have attended the two schools on alternate
days. From sixteen to eighteen, if his parents were able, the boy attended
a state-supported _gymnasium_, where an advanced type of physical training
was given. As this was preparatory for the next two years of army service,
the _gymnasia_ were supported by the State more as preparedness measures
than as educational institutions, though they partook of the nature of
both.

[Illustration: FIG. 5. A GREEK BOY]

EARLY CHILDHOOD. As at Sparta the infant was examined at birth, but the
father, and not a council of citizens, decided whether or not it was to be
"exposed" or preserved. Three ceremonies, of ancient tribal origin, marked
the recognition and acceptance of the child. The first took place five
days after birth, when the child was carried around the family hearth by
the nurse, followed by the household in procession. This ceremony,
followed by a feast, was designed to place the child forever under the
care of the family gods. On the tenth day the child was named by the
father, who then formally recognized the child as his own and committed
himself to its rearing and education. The third ceremony took place at the
autumn family festival, when all children born during the preceding year
were presented to the father's clansmen, who decided, by vote, whether or
not the boy or girl was the legitimate and lawful child of Athenian
parents. If approved, the child's name was entered on the registry of the
clan, and he might then aspire to citizenship and inherit property from
his parent (R. 4).

Up to the age of seven both boys and girls grew up together in the home,
under the care of the nurse and mother, engaging in much the same games
and sports as do children anywhere. From the first they were carefully
disciplined for good behavior and for the establishment of self-control
(R. 3). After the age of seven the boy and girl parted company in the
matter of their education, the girl remaining closely secluded in the home
(women and children were usually confined to the upper floor of the house)
and being instructed in the household arts by her mother, while the boy
went to different teachers for his education. Probably many girls learned
to read and write from their mothers or nurses, and the daughters of well-
to-do citizens learned to spin, weave, sew, and embroider. Music was also
a common accomplishment of women. [11]

THE SCHOOL OF THE GRAMMATIST. A Greek boy, unlike a modern school child,
did not go to one teacher. Instead he had at least two teachers, and
sometimes three. To the _grammatist_, who was doubtless an evolution from
an earlier tribal scribe, he went to learn to read and write and count.
The grammatist represented the earliest or primary teacher. To the music
teacher, who probably at first taught reading and writing also, he went
for his instruction in music and literature. Finally, to the _palaestra_
he went for instruction in physical training (R. 3).

[Illustration: FIG. 6. AN ATHENIAN INSCRIPTION
A decree of the Council and Assembly, dating from about 450 B.C. Note the
difficulty of trying to read without any punctuation, and with only
capital letters.]

Reading was taught by first learning the letters, then syllables, and
finally words. [12] Plaques of baked earth, on which the alphabet was
written, like the more modern horn-book (see Figure 130), were frequently
used. [13] The ease with which modern children learn to read was unknown
in Greece. Reading was very difficult to learn, as accentuation,
punctuation, spacing between words, and small letters had not as yet been
introduced. As a result the study required much time, [14] and much
personal ingenuity had to be exercised in determining the meaning of a
sentence. The inscription shown in Figure 6 will illustrate the
difficulties quite well. The Athenian accent, too, was hard to acquire.

[Illustration: FIG. 7. GREEK WRITING-MATERIALS]

The pupil learned to write by first tracing, with the stylus, letters cut
in wax tablets, and later by copying exercises set for him by his teacher,
using the wax tablet and writing on his knee. Still later the pupil
learned to write with ink on papyrus or parchment, though, due to the cost
of parchment in ancient times, this was not greatly used. Slates and paper
were of course unknown in Greece.

There was little need for arithmetic, and but little was taught.
Arithmetic such as we teach would have been impossible with their cumbrous
system of notation. [15] Only the elements of counting were taught, the
Greek using his fingers or a counting-board, such as is shown in Figure 8,
to do his simple reckoning.

[Illustration: FIG. 8 A GREEK COUNTING-BOARD
Pebbles of different size or color were used for thousands, hundreds,
tens, and units. Their position on the board gave them their values. The
board now shows the total 15,379.]

GREAT IMPORTANCE OF READING AND LITERATURE. After the pupil had learned to
read, much attention was given to accentuation and articulation, in order
to secure beautiful reading. Still more, in reading or reciting, the parts
were acted out. The Greeks were a nation of actors, and the recitations in
the schools and the acting in the theaters gave plenty of opportunity for
expression. There were no schoolbooks, as we know them. The master
dictated and the pupils wrote down, or, not uncommonly, learned by heart
what the master dictated. Ink and parchment were now used, the boy making
his own schoolbooks. Homer was the first and the great reading book of the
Greeks, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ being the Bible of the Greek people.
Then followed Hesiod, Theognis, the Greek poets, and the fables of Aesop.
[16] Reading, declamation, and music were closely interrelated. To appeal
to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a
fundamental purpose of the instruction (R. 5). A modern writer well
characterizes the ancient instruction in literature in the following
words:

By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material of
their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of
attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient poetry of
Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and characters, its
accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its manliness and
pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom, its respect
for law and order, combined with its admiration for personal initiative
and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a
material for a complete education such as could not well be matched even
in our own day. What instruction in ethics, politics, social life, and
manly bearing could not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not
to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary criticism, and the
history which the comprehension of them involved? Into what a wholesome,
unsentimental, free world did these poems introduce the imaginative Greek
boy! What splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood did they hold up for
his admiration and imitation! From Hesiod he would learn all that he
needed to know about his gods and their relation to him and his people.
From the elegiac poets he would derive a fund of political and social
wisdom, and an impetus to patriotism, which would go far to make him a
good man and a good citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to
express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and
tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable
to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or
singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his
sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With
what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund
of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he
would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in
sympathy with them! And all this was possible even before the introduction
of letters. With this event a new era in education begins. The boy now not
only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his Simonides or Sappho; he
learns also to write down their verses from dictation, and so at once to
read and to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these two (to us)
fundamental arts were acquired. As soon as the boy could trace with his
finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters,
and combine them into syllables and words, he began to write poetry from
his master's dictation. The writing-lesson of to-day was the reading,
recitation, or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading
book, and, if he found it illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only
himself to blame. The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the
greatest stress on reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the
youth who could not do all three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could
he hide his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon,
both at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part
in the social entertainment. [17]

[Illustration: FIG. 9. AN ATHENIAN SCHOOL
From a cup discovered at Caere, signed by the painter Duris, and now in
the Museum of Berlin.

A LESSON IN MUSIC AND LANGUAGE _Explanation_: At the right is the
_paidagogos_; he is seated, and turns his head to look at his pupil, who
is standing before his master. The latter holds a writing-tablet and a
stylus; he is perhaps correcting a task. At the left a pupil is taking a
music lesson. On the wall are hung a roll of manuscript, a folded writing-
tablet, a lyre, and an unknown cross-shaped object.

A LESSON IN MUSIC AND POETRY _Explanation_: At the right sits, cross-
legged, the _paidagogos_, who has just brought in his pupil. The boy
stands before the teacher of poetry and recites his lesson. The master, in
a chair, holds in his hand a roll which he is unfolding, upon which we see
Greek letters. Above these three figures we see on the wall a cup, a lyre,
and a leather case of flutes. To the bag is attached the small box
containing mouthpieces of different kinds for the flutes. Farther on a
pupil is receiving a lesson in music. The master and pupil are both seated
on seats without backs. The master, with head erect, looks at the pupil
who, bent over his lyre, seems absorbed in his playing. Above are hanging
a basket, a lyre, and a cup. On the wall is an inscription in Greek.]

THE MUSIC SCHOOL. The teacher in this school gradually separated himself
from the grammatist, and often the two were found in adjoining rooms in
the same school. In his functions he succeeded the wandering poet or
minstrel of earlier times. Music teachers were common in all the City-
States of Greece. To this teacher the boy went at first to recite his
poetry, and after the thirteenth year for a special music course. The
teacher was known as a _citharist_, and the instrument usually used was
the seven-stringed lyre. This resembled somewhat our modern guitar. The
flute was also used somewhat, but never grew into much favor, partly
because it tended to excite rather than soothe, and partly because of the
contortions of the face to which its playing gave rise. Rhythm, melody,
and the feeling for measure and time were important in instruction, whose
office was to soothe, purge, and harmonize man within and make him fit for
moral instruction through the poetry with which their music was ever
associated. Instead of being a distinct art, as with us, and taught by
itself, music with the Greeks was always subsidiary to the expression of
the spirit of their literature, and in aim it was for moral-training ends.
[18] Both Aristotle and Plato advocate state control of school music to
insure sound moral results. Inferior as their music was to present-day
music, it exerted an influence over their lives which it is difficult for
an American teacher to appreciate.

[Illustration: FIG. 10. GREEK SCHOOL LESSONS

THE SINGING LESSON The boy is singing, to the accompaniment of a flute. On
the wall hangs a bag of flutes.

THE LITERATURE LESSON The boy is reciting, while the teacher follows him
on a roll of manuscript.]

The first lessons taught the use of the instrument, and the simple chants
of the religious services were learned. As soon as the pupil knew how to
play, the master taught him to render the works of the great lyric poets
of Greece. Poetry and music together thus formed a single art. At thirteen
a special music course began which lasted until sixteen, but which only
the sons of the more well-to-do citizens attended. Every boy, though,
learned some music, not that he might be a musician, but that he might be
musical and able to perform his part at social gatherings and participate
in the religious services of the State. Professional playing was left to
slaves and foreigners, and was deemed unworthy a free man and a citizen.
Professionalism in either music or athletics was regarded as disgraceful.
The purpose of both activities was harmonious personal development, which
the Greeks believed contributed to moral worth.

THE PALAESTRA; GYMNASTICS. Very unlike our modern education, fully one
half of a boy's school life, from eight to sixteen, was given to sports
and games in another school under different teachers, known as the
palaestra. The work began gradually, but by fifteen had taken precedence
over other studies. As in music, harmonious physical development and moral
ends were held to be of fundamental importance. The standards of success
were far from our modern standards. To win the game was of little
significance; the important thing was to do the part gracefully and, for
the person concerned, well. To attain to a graceful and dignified carriage
of the body, good physical health, perfect control of the temper, and to
develop quickness of perception, self-possession, ease, and skill in the
games were the aims--not mere strength or athletic prowess (R. 2). Only a
few were allowed to train for participation in the Olympian games.

The work began with children's games, contests in running, and ball games
of various kinds. Deportment--how to get up, walk, sit, and how to achieve
easy manners--was taught by the masters. After the pupils came to be a
little older there was a definite course of study, which included, in
succession: (1) leaping and jumping, for general bodily and lung
development; (2) running contests, for agility and endurance; (3) throwing
the discus, [19] for arm exercise; (4) casting the javelin, for bodily
poise and cooerdination of movement, as well as for future use in hunting;
(5) boxing and wrestling, for quickness, agility, endurance, and the
control of the temper and passions. Swimming and dancing were also
included for all, dancing being a slow and graceful movement of the body
to music, to develop grace of motion and beauty of form, and to exercise
the whole human being, body and soul. The minuet and some of our folk-
dancing are our nearest approach to the Greek type of dancing, though
still not like it. The modern partner dance was unknown in ancient Greece.

The exercises were performed in classes, or in small groups. They took
place in the open air, and on a dirt or sandy floor. They were accompanied
by music--usually the flute, played by a paid performer. A number of
teachers looked after the boys, examining them physically, supervising the
exercises, directing the work, and giving various forms of instruction.

THE GYMNASIAL TRAINING, SIXTEEN TO EIGHTEEN. Up to this point the
education provided was a private and a family affair. In the home and in
the school the boy had now been trained to be a gentleman, to revere the
gods, to be moral and upright according to Greek standards, and in
addition he had been given that training in reading, writing, music, and
athletic exercises that the State required parents to furnish. It is
certain that many boys, whose parents could ill afford further expense for
schooling, were allowed to quit the schools at from thirteen to fifteen.
Those who expected to become full citizens, however, and to be a part of
the government and hold office, were required to continue until twenty
years of age. Two years more were spent in schooling, largely athletic,
and two years additional in military service. Of this additional training,
if his parents chose and could afford it, the State now took control.

[Illustration: FIG. II. GROUND-PLAN OF THE GYMNASIUM AT EPHESOS, IN ASIA
MINOR
_Explanation:_ A, B, C, pillared corridors, or portico; D, an open space,
possibly a palaestra, evidently intended to supply the peristylium; E, a
long, narrow hall used for games of ball; F, a large hall with seats; G,
in which was suspended a sack filled with chaff for the use of boxers; H,
where the young men sprinkled themselves with dust; I, the cold bath; K,
where the wrestling-master anointed the bodies of the contestants; L, the
cooling-off room; M, the furnace-room; N, the vapor bath; 0, the dry-
sweating apartment; P, the hot bath; Q, Q', rooms for games, for the
keepers, or for other uses; R, R', covered stadia, for use in bad weather;
S, S, S, S, S, rows of seats, looking upon T, the uncovered _stadium_; U,
groves, with seats and walks among the trees; V, V', recessed seats for
the use of philosophers, rhetoricians, and others.]

For the years from sixteen to eighteen the boy attended a state
_gymnasium_, of which two were erected outside of Athens by the State, in
groves of trees, in 590 B.C. Others were erected later in other parts of
Greece. Figure 11 shows the ground plan of one of these _gymnasia_, and a
study of the explanation of the plan will reveal the nature of these
establishments. The boy now had for teachers a number of gymnasts of
ability. The old exercises of the _palaestra_ were continued, but running,
wrestling, and boxing were much emphasized. The youth learned to run in
armor, while wrestling and boxing became more severe. He also learned to
ride a horse, to drive a chariot, to sing and dance in the public
choruses, and to participate in the public state and religious
processions.

Still more, the youth now passed from the supervision of a family
pedagogue to the supervision of the State. For the first time in his life
he was now free to go where he desired about the city; to frequent the
streets, market-place, and theater; to listen to debates and jury trials,
and to witness the great games; and to mix with men in the streets and to
mingle somewhat in public affairs. He saw little of girls, except his
sisters, but formed deep friendships with other young men of his age. [20]
Aside from a requirement that he learn the laws of the State, his
education during this period was entirely physical and civic. If he abused
his liberty he was taken in hand by public officials charged with the
supervision of public morals. He was, however, still regarded as a minor,
and his father (or guardian) was held responsible for his public behavior.

THE CITIZEN-CADET YEARS, EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY. The supervision of the State
during the preceding two years had in a way been joint with that of his
father; now the State took complete control. At the age of eighteen his
father took him before the proper authorities of his district or ward in
the city, and presented him as a candidate for citizenship. He was
examined morally and physically, and if sound, and if the records showed
that he was the legitimate son of a citizen, his name was entered on the
register of his ward as a prospective member of it (R. 4). His long hair
was now cut, he donned the black garb of the citizen, was presented to the
people along with others at a public ceremony, was publicly armed with a
spear and a shield, and then, proceeding to one of the shrines of the
city, on a height overlooking it, he solemnly took the Ephebic oath:

    I will never disgrace these sacred arms, nor desert my companion in
    the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone
    and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, not only not less, but
    greater and better, than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the
    magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will observe both the
    existing laws and those which the people may unanimously hereafter
    make, and, if any person seek to annul the laws or to set them at
    naught, I will do my best to prevent him, and will defend them both
    alone and with many. I will honor the religion of my fathers. And I
    call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and
    Hegemone.

He was now an _Ephebos_, or citizen-cadet, with still two years of severe
training ahead of him before he could take up the full duties of
citizenship. The first year he spent in and near Athens, learning to be a
soldier. He did what recruits do almost everywhere--drill, camp in the
open, learn the army methods and discipline, and march in public
processions and take part in religious festivals. This first year was much
like that of new troops in camp being worked into real soldiers. At the
end of the year there was a public drill and inspection of the cadets,
after which they were sent to the frontier. It was now his business to
come to know his country thoroughly--its topography, roads, springs,
seashores, and mountain passes. He also assisted in enforcing law and
order throughout the country districts, as a sort of a state constabulary
or rural police. At the end of this second year of practical training the
second examination was held, the cadet was now admitted to full
citizenship, and passed to the ranks of a trained citizen in the reserve
army of defense, as does a boy in Switzerland to-day (R. 4).

RESULTS UNDER THE OLD GREEK SYSTEM. Such was the educational system which
was in time evolved from the earlier tribal practices of the citizens of
old Athens. If we consider Sparta as representing the earlier tribal
education of the Greek peoples, we see how far the Athenians, due to their
wonderful ability to make progress, were able to advance beyond this
earlier type of preparation for citizenship (R. 5). Not only did Athens
surpass all Greece, but, for the first time in the history of the world,
we find here, expressing itself in the education of the young, the modern
western, individualistic and democratic spirit, as opposed to the
deadening caste and governmental systems of the East. Here first we find a
free people living under political conditions which favored liberty,
culture, and intellectual growth, and using their liberty to advance the
culture and the knowledge of the people (R. 6).

Here also we find, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply
concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing
education as a necessity to make life worth living and secure the State
from dangers, both within and without. To prepare men by a severe but
simple and honest training to fear the gods, to do honest work, to despise
comfort and vice, to obey the laws, to respect their neighbors and
themselves, and to reverence the wisdom of their race, was the aim of this
old education. The schooling for citizenship was rigid, almost
puritanical, but it produced wonderful results, both in peace and in war.
[21] Men thus trained guided the destinies of Athens during some two
centuries, and the despotism of the East as represented by Persia could
not defeat them at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea.

THE SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE CURRICULUM. The simplicity of the curriculum was
one of its marked features. In a manner seldom witnessed in the world's
educational history, the Greeks used their religion, literature,
government, and the natural activities of young men to impart an education
of wonderful effectiveness. [22] The subjects we have valued so highly for
training were to them unknown. They taught no arithmetic or grammar, no
science, no drawing, no higher mathematics, and no foreign tongue. Music,
the literature and religion of their own people, careful physical
training, and instruction in the duties and practices of citizenship
constituted the entire curriculum.

It was an education by doing; not one of learning from books. That it was
an attractive type of education there is abundant testimony by the Greeks
themselves. We have not as yet come to value physical education as did the
Greeks, nor are we nearly so successful in our moral education, despite
the aid of the Christian religion which they did not know. It was, to be
sure, class education, and limited to but a small fraction of the total
population. In it girls had no share. There were many features of Greek
life, too, that are repugnant to modern conceptions. Yet, despite these
limitations, the old education of Athens still stands as one of the most
successful in its results of any system of education which has been
evolved in the history of the world. Considering its time and place in the
history of the world and that it was a development for which there were
nowhere any precedents, it represented a very wonderful evolution.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why are imaginative ability and many-sided natures such valuable
characteristics for any people?

2. Why is the ability to make progressive changes, possessed so markedly
by the Athenian Greeks, an important personal or racial characteristic?

3. Are the Athenian characteristics, stated in the middle of page 19,
characteristics capable of development by training, or are they native, or
both?

4. How do you explain the Greek failure to achieve political unity?

5. Would education for citizenship with us to-day possess the same defects
as in ancient Greece? Why? Do we give an equivalent training?

6. Which is the better attitude for a nation to assume toward the
foreigner--the Greek, or the American? Why?

7. Why does a state military socialism, such as prevailed at Sparta, tend
to produce a people of mediocre intellectual capacity?

8. How do you account for the Athenian State leaving literary and musical
education to private initiative, but supporting state _gymnasia_?

9. Would the Athenian method of instruction have been possible had all
children in the State been given an education? Why?

10. How did the education of an Athenian girl differ from that of a girl
in the early American colonies?

11. Why did the Greek boy need three teachers, whereas the American boy is
taught all and more by one primary teacher?

12. Contrast the Greek method of instruction in music, and the purposes of
the instruction, with our own.

13. How could we incorporate into our school instruction some of the
important aspects of Greek instruction in music?

14. What do you think of the contentions of Aristotle and Plato that the
State should control school music as a means of securing sound moral
instruction?

15. Does the Greek idea that a harmonious personal development contributes
to moral worth appeal to you? Why?

16. Contrast the Greek ideal as to athletic training with the conception
of athletics held by an average American schoolboy.

17. Contrast the education of a Greek boy at sixteen with that of an
American boy at the same age.

18. Contrast the emphasis placed on expression as a method in teaching in
the schools of Athens and of the United States.

19. Do the needs of modern society and industrial life warrant the greater
emphasis we place on learning from books, as opposed to the learning by
doing of the Greeks?

20. Compare the compulsory-school period of the Greeks with our own. If we
were to add some form of compulsory military training, for all youths
between eighteen and twenty, and as a preparedness measure, would we
approach still more nearly the Greek requirements?

21. Explain how the Athenian Greeks reconciled the idea of social service
to the State with the idea of individual liberty, through a form of
education which developed personality. Compare this with our American
ideal.

22. The Greek schoolboy had no long summer vacation, as do American
children. Is there any special reason why we need it more than did they?

23. Do we believe that virtue can be taught in the way the Hellenic
peoples did? Do we carry such a belief into practice?


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  1. Plutarch: Ancient Education in Sparta.
  2. Plato: An Athenian Schoolboy's Life.
  3. Lucian: An Athenian Schoolboy's Day.
  4. Aristotle: Athenian Citizenship and the Ephebic Years.
  5. Freeman: Sparta and Athens compared.
  6. Thucydides: Athenian Education summarized.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Describe and characterize the Laws which Lycurgus framed for Spartan
training (1).

2. Describe and characterize the instruction of the Ireus at Sparta.
Compare with the training given among the best of the American Indian
tribes (1).

3. Contrast the type of education given an Athenian and a Spartan boy, as
to nature and purpose and character (1 and 2).

4. What degree of State supervision of education is indicated by Plato
(2)? By Freeman (5)?

5. Compare an Athenian school day as described by Lucian (3) with a school
day in a modern Gary-type school.

6. Compare the Ephebic years of an Athenian youth (4) with those of a
Spartan youth (1).

7. What were some of the chief defects of Athenian schools (5)?

8. What was the position of the State in the matter of the education of
youth (5)?

9. What were the great merits of the Athenian educational and political
system of training (6)?

(For SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES, see following chapter.)




CHAPTER II

LATER GREEK EDUCATION


III. THE NEW GREEK EDUCATION

POLITICAL EVENTS: THE GOLDEN AGE OF GREECE. The Battle of Marathon (490
B.C.) has long been considered one of the "decisive battles of the world."
Had the despotism of the East triumphed here, and in the subsequent
campaign that ended in the defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis (480
B.C.) and of the Persian army at Plataea (479 B.C.), the whole history of
our western world would have been different. The result of the war with
Persia was the triumph of this new western democratic civilization,
prepared and schooled for great national emergencies by a severe but
effective training, over the uneducated hordes led to battle by the
autocracy of the East. This was the first, but not the last, of the many
battles which western democracy and civilization has had to fight to avoid
being crushed by autocracy and despotism. Marathon broke the dread spell
of the Persian name and freed the more progressive Greeks to pursue their
intellectual and political development. Above all it revealed the strength
and power of the Athenians to themselves, and in the half-century
following the most wonderful political, literary, and artistic development
the world had ever known ensued, and the highest products of Greek
civilization were attained. Attica had braved everything for the common
cause of Greece, even to leaving Athens to be burned by the invader, and
for the next fifty years she held the position of political as well as
cultural preeminence among the Greek City-States. Athens now became the
world center of wealth and refinement and the home of art and literature
(R. 7), and her influence along cultural lines, due in part to her mastery
of the sea and her growing commerce, was now extended throughout the
Mediterranean world.

From 479 to 431 B.C. was the Golden Age of Greece, and during this short
period Athens gave birth to more great men--poets, artists, statesmen, and
philosophers--than all the world beside had produced [1] in any period of
equal length. Then, largely as a result of the growing jealousy of
military Sparta came that cruel and vindictive civil strife, known as the
Peloponnesian War, which desolated Greece, left Athens a wreck of her
former self, permanently lowered the moral tone of the Greek people, and
impaired beyond recovery the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas. For
many centuries Athens continued to be a center of intellectual
achievement, and to spread her culture throughout a new and a different
world, but her power as a State had been impaired forever by a revengeful
war between those who should have been friends and allies in the cause of
civilization.

TRANSITION FROM OLD TO THE NEW. As early as 509 B.C. a new constitution
had admitted all the free inhabitants of Attica to citizenship, and the
result was a rapid increase in the prestige, property, and culture of
Athens. Citizenship was now open to the commercial classes, and no longer
restricted to a small, properly born, and properly educated class. Wealth
now became important in giving leisure to the citizen, and was no longer
looked down upon as it had been in the earlier period. After the
Peloponnesian War the predominance of Attica among the Greek States, the
growth of commerce, the constant interchange of embassies, the travel
overseas of Athenian citizens, and the presence of many foreigners in the
State all alike led to a tolerance of new ideas and a criticism of old
ones which before had been unknown. A leisure class now arose, and
personal interest came to have a larger place than before, with a
consequent change in the earlier conceptions as to the duty of the citizen
to the State. Literature lost much of its earlier religious character, and
the religious basis of morality [2] began to be replaced by that of
reason. Philosophy was now called upon to furnish a practical guide for
life to replace the old religious basis. A new philosophy in which "man
was the measure of all things" arose, and its teachers came to have large
followings. The old search for an explanation of the world of matter [3]
was now replaced by an attempt to explain the world of ideas and emotions,
with a resulting evolution of the sciences of philosophy, ethics, and
logic. It was a period of great intellectual as well as political change
and expansion, and in consequence the old education, which had answered
well the needs of a primitive and isolated community, now found itself but
poorly adapted to meet the larger needs of the new cosmopolitan State. [4]
The result was a material change in the old education to adapt it to the
needs of the new Athens, now become the intellectual center of the
civilized world.

CHANGES IN THE OLD EDUCATION. A number of changes in the character of the
old education were now gradually introduced. The rigid drill of the
earlier period began to be replaced by an easier and a more pleasurable
type of training. Gymnastics for personal enjoyment began to replace drill
for the service of the State, and was much less rigid in type. The old
authors, who had rendered important service in the education of youth,
began to be replaced by more modern writers, with a distinct loss of the
earlier religious and moral force. New musical instruments, giving a
softer and more pleasurable effect, took the place of the seven-stringed
lyre, and complicated music replaced the simple Doric airs of the earlier
period. Education became much more individual, literary, and theoretical.
Geometry and drawing were introduced as new studies. Grammar and rhetoric
began to be studied, discussion was introduced, and a certain glibness of
speech began to be prized. The citizen-cadet years, from sixteen to
twenty, formerly devoted to rather rigorous physical training, were now
changed to school work of an intellectual type.

NEW TEACHERS; THE SOPHISTS. New teachers, known as Sophists, who professed
to be able to train men for a political career, [5] began to offer a more
practical course designed to prepare boys for the newer type of state
service. These in time drew many Ephebes into their private schools, where
the chief studies were on the content, form, and practical use of the
Greek language. Rhetoric and grammar before long became the master studies
of this new period, as they were felt to prepare boys better for the new
political and intellectual life of Hellas than did the older type of
training. In the schools of the Sophists boys now spent their time in
forming phrases, choosing words, examining grammatical structure, and
learning how to secure rhetorical effect. Many of these new teachers made
most extravagant claims for their instruction (R. 8) and drew much
ridicule from the champions of the older type of education, but within a
century they had thoroughly established themselves, and had permanently
changed the character of the earlier Greek education.

By 350 B.C. we find that Greek school education had been differentiated
into three divisions, as follows:

    1. _Primary education_, covering the years from seven or eight to
       thirteen, and embracing reading, writing, arithmetic, and chanting.
       The teacher of this school came to be known as a _grammatist_.

    2. _Secondary education_, covering the years from thirteen to
       sixteen, and embracing geometry, drawing, and a special music
       course. Later on some grammar and rhetoric were introduced into
       this school. The teacher of this school came to be known as a
       _grammaticus_.

    3. _Higher or university education_, covering the years after
       sixteen.

THE FLOOD OF INDIVIDUALISM. This period of artistic and intellectual
brilliancy of Greece following the Peloponnesian War marked the beginning
of the end of Greece politically. The war was a blow to the strength of
Greece from which the different States never recovered. Greece was bled
white by this needless civil strife. The tendencies toward individualism
in education were symptomatic of tendencies in all forms of social and
political life. The philosophers--Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle--proposed
ideal remedies for the evils of the State, [6] but in vain. The old ideal
of citizenship died out. Service to the State became purely subordinate to
personal pleasure and advancement. Irreverence and a scoffing attitude
became ruling tendencies. Family morality decayed. The State in time
became corrupt and nerveless. Finally, in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon
became master of Greece, and annexed it to the world empire which he and
his son Alexander created. Still later, in 146 B.C., the new world power
to the west, Rome, conquered Greece and made of it a Roman province.

Though dead politically, there now occurred the unusual spectacle of
"captive Greece taking captive her rude conqueror," and spreading Greek
art, literature, philosophy, science, and Greek ideas throughout the
Mediterranean world. It was the Greek higher learning that now became
predominant and exerted such great influence on the future of our world
civilization. It remains now to trace briefly the development and spread
of this higher learning, and to point out how thoroughly it modified the
thinking of the future.

NEW SCHOOLS; SOCRATES. In the beginning each Sophist teacher was a free
lance, and taught what he would and in the manner he thought best. Many of
them made extraordinary efforts to attract students and win popular
approval and fees. Plato represents the Sophist Protagoras as saying, with
reference to a youth ambitious for success in political life, "If he comes
to me he will learn that which he comes to learn." At first the
instruction was largely individual, but later classes were organized.
Isocrates, who lived from 436 to 338 B.C., organized the instruction for
the first time into a well-graded sequence of studies, with definite aims
and work (R. 8). He shifted the emphasis in instruction from training for
success in argumentation, to training to think clearly and to express
ideas properly. His pupils were unusually successful, and his school did
much to add to the fame of Athens as an intellectual center. From his work
sprang a large number of so called Rhetorical Schools, much like our
better private schools and academies, offering to those Ephebes who could
afford to attend a very good preparation for participation in the public
life of the period.

In contrast with the Sophists, a series of schools of philosophy also
arose in Athens. These in a way were the outgrowth of the work of
Socrates. Accepting the Sophists' dictum that "man is the measure of all
things," he tried to turn youths from the baser individualism of the
Sophists of his day to the larger general truths which measure the life of
a true man. In particular he tried to show that the greatest of all arts--
the art of living a good life--called for correct individual thinking and
a knowledge of the right. "Know thyself" was his great guiding principle.
His emphasis was on the problems of everyday morality. Frankly accepting
the change from the old education as a change that could not be avoided,
he sought to formulate a new basis for education in personal morality and
virtue, and as a substitute for the old training for service to the State.
He taught by conversation, engaging men in argument as he met them in the
street, and showing to them their ignorance (R. 9). Even in Athens, where
free speech was enjoyed more than anywhere else in the world at that time,
such a shrewd questioner would naturally make enemies, and in 399 B.C. at
the age of seventy-one, he was condemned to death by the Athenian populace
on the charge of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens.

[Illustration: FIG. 12 SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)
(After a marble bust in the Vatican Gallery, at Rome)]

Socrates' greatest disciple was a citizen of wealth by the name of Plato,
who had abandoned a political career for the charms of philosophy, and to
him we owe our chief information as to the work and aims of Socrates. In
386 B.C. he founded the Academy, where he passed almost forty years in
lecturing and writing. His school, which formed a model for others,
consisted of a union of teachers and students who possessed in common a
chapel, library, lecture-rooms, and living-rooms. Philosophy, mathematics,
and science were taught, and women as well as men were admitted.

Other schools of importance in Athens were the Lyceum, founded in 335 B.C.
by a foreign-born pupil of Plato's by the name of Aristotle, who did a
remarkable work in organizing the known knowledge of his time; [7] the
school of the Stoics, founded by Zeno in 308 B.C.; and the school of the
Epicureans, founded by Epicurus in 306 B.C. Each of these schools offered
a philosophical solution of the problem of life, and Plato and Aristotle
wrote treatises on education as well. Each school evolved into a form of
religious brotherhood which perpetuated the organization after the death
of the master. In time these became largely schools for expounding the
philosophy of the founder.

[Illustration: FIG. 13. EVOLUTION OF THE GREEK UNIVERSITY]

THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS. Coincident with the founding of these schools
and the political events we have previously recorded, certain further
changes in Athenian education were taking place. The character of the
changes in the education before the age of sixteen we have described. As a
result in part of the development of the schools of the Sophists, which
were in themselves only attempts to meet fundamental changes in Athenian
life, the education of youths after sixteen tended to become literary,
rather than physical and military. The Ephebic period of service (from
eighteen to twenty) was at first reduced from two years to one, and after
the Macedonian conquest, in 338 B.C., when there was no longer an Athenian
State to serve or protect, the entire period of training was made
optional. The Ephebic corps was now opened to foreigners, and in time
became merely a fashionable semi-military group. Instead of the military
training, attendance at the lectures of the philosophical schools was now
required, and attendance at the rhetorical schools was optional. Later the
philosophical schools were granted public support by the Athenian
Assembly, professorships were created over which the Assembly exercised
supervision, the rhetorical and philosophical schools were gradually
merged, the study years were extended from two to six, or seven, a form of
university life as regards both students and professors was developed, and
what has since been termed "The University of Athens" was evolved. Figure
13 shows how this evolution took place.

As Athens lost in political power her citizens turned their attention to
making their city a center of world learning. This may be said to have
been accomplished by 200 B.C. Though Greece had long since become a
Macedonian province, and was soon to pass under the control of Rome, the
so-called University of Athens was widely known and much frequented for
the next three hundred years, and continued in existence until finally
closed, as a center of pagan thought, by the edict of the Roman-Christian
Emperor, Justinian, in 529 A.D. Though reduced to the rank of a Roman
provincial town, Athens long continued to be a city of letters and a
center of philosophic and scientific instruction.

SPREAD AND INFLUENCE OF GREEK HIGHER EDUCATION. Alexander the Great
rendered a very important service in uniting the western Orient and the
eastern Mediterranean into a common world empire, and in establishing
therein a common language, literature, philosophy, a common interest, and
a common body of scientific knowledge and law. It was his hope to create a
new empire, in which the distinction between European and Asiatic should
pass away. No less than seventy cities were established with a view to
holding his empire together. These served to spread Hellenic culture.
Greek schools, Greek theaters, Greek baths, and Greek institutions of
every type were to be found in practically all of them, and the Greek
tongue was heard in them all. With Alexander the Great the history of
Greek life, culture, and learning merges into that of the history of the
ancient world. Everywhere throughout the new empire Greek philosophers and
scientists, architects and artists, merchants and colonists, followed
behind the Macedonian armies, spreading Greek civilization and becoming
the teachers of an enlarged world. [8] "Greek cities stretched from the
Nile to the Indus, and dotted the shores of the Black and the Caspian
seas. The Greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a
universal language of culture, spoken even by barbarian lips, and the art,
the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy,
developed in isolation by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage
of many nations." [9]

Greek universities were established at Pergamum and Tarsus in Asia Minor;
at Rhodes on the island of that name in the Aegean; and at the newly
founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Antioch, in Syria, became another
important center of Greek influence and learning. A large library was
developed at Pergamum, and it was here that writing on prepared skins of
animals [10] was begun, from which the term "parchment" (originally "per-
gament") comes. It was also at Pergamum that Galen (born c. 130 A.D.)
organized what was then known of medical science, and his work remained
the standard treatise for more than a thousand years. Rhodes became a
famous center for instruction in oratory. During Roman days many eminent
men, among whom were Cassius, Caesar, and Cicero, studied oratory here.

[Illustration:  FIG. 14 THE GREEK UNIVERSITY WORLD]

MINGLING OF ORIENT AND OCCIDENT AT ALEXANDRIA. The most famous of all
these Greek institutions, however, was the University of Alexandria, which
gradually sapped Athens as a center of learning and became the
intellectual capital of the world. The greatest library of manuscripts the
world had ever known was collected together here. [11] It is said to have
numbered over 700,000 volumes. These included Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, and
Oriental works. In connection with the library was the museum, where men
of letters and investigators were supported at royal expense. These two
constituted an institution so like a university that it has been given
that name. Alexandria became not only a great center of learning, but,
still more important, the chief mingling place for Greek, Jew, Egyptian,
Roman, and Oriental, and here Greek philosophy, Hebrew and Christian
religion, and Oriental faith and philosophy met and mixed. It was this
mingled civilization and culture, all tinged through and through with the
Greek, with which the Romans came in contact as they pushed their
conquering armies into the eastern Mediterranean (R. 10).

[Illustration: FIG. 15. THE KNOWN WORLD ABOUT 150 A.D.
A map by Ptolemy, geographer and astronomer at Alexandria. Compare this
with the map on page 4, and note the progress in geographical discovery
which had been made during the intervening centuries.]

CHARACTER OF ALEXANDRIAN LEARNING. The great advances in knowledge made at
Alexandria were in mathematics, geography, and science. The method of
scientific investigation worked out by Aristotle at Athens was introduced
and used. Instead of speculating as to phenomena and causes, as had been
the earlier Greek practice, observation and experiment now became the
rule. Euclid (c. 323-283 B.C.) opened a school at Alexandria as early as
300 B.C., and there worked out the geometry which is still used in our
schools. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), who studied under Euclid, made many
important discoveries and advances in mechanics and physics. Eratosthenes
(226-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria, is famous as a geographer [12]
and astronomer, and made some studies in geology as well. Ptolemy (b.?; d.
168 A.D.) here completed his Mechanism of the Heavens (_Syntaxis_) in 138
A.D., and this became the standard astronomy in Europe for nearly fifteen
hundred years, while his geography was used in the schools until well into
the fifteenth century. The map of the known world, shown in Figure 15, was
made by him. Hipparcus, the Newton of the Greeks, studied the heavens both
at Alexandria and Rhodes, and counted the stars and arranged them in
constellations. Many advances also were made in the study of medicine, the
Alexandrian schools having charts, models, and dissecting rooms for the
study of the human body, The functions of the brain, nerves, and heart
were worked out there.

Except in science and mathematics, though, the creative ability of the
earlier Greeks was now largely absent. Research, organization, and comment
upon what had previously been done rather was the rule. Still much
important work was done here. Books were collected, copied, and preserved,
and texts were edited and purified from errors. Here grammar, criticism,
prosody, and mythology were first developed into sciences. The study of
archaeology was begun, and the first dictionaries were made. The
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was begun for the benefit
of the Alexandrian Jews who had forgotten their Mother tongue, this being
the origin of the famous _Septuagint_ [13] version of the Old Testament.
It is owing to these Alexandrian scholars, also, that we now possess the
theory of Greek accents, and have good texts of Homer and other Greek
writers.

ALEXANDRIA SAPPED IN TURN. In 30 B.C. Alexandria, too, came under Roman
rule and was, in turn, gradually sapped by Rome. Greek influence
continued, but the interest became largely philosophical. Ultimately
Alexandria became the seat of a metaphysical school of Christian theology,
and the scene of bitter religious controversies. In 330 A.D.,
Constantinople was founded on the site of the earlier Byzantium, and soon
thereafter Greek scholars transferred their interest to it and made it a
new center of Greek learning. There Greek science, literature, and
philosophy were preserved for ten centuries, and later handed back to a
Europe just awakening from the long intellectual night of the Middle Ages.
In 640 A.D. Alexandria was taken by the Mohammedans, and the university
ceased to exist. The great library was destroyed, furnishing, it is said,
"fuel sufficient for four thousand public baths for a period of six
months," and Greek learning was extinguished in the western world.

OUR DEBT TO HELLAS. As a political power the Greek States left the world
nothing of importance. As a people they were too individualistic, and
seemed to have a strange inability to unite for political purposes. To the
new power slowly forming to the westward--Rome--was left the important
task, which the Greek people were never able to accomplish, of uniting
civilization into one political whole. The world conquest that Greece made
was intellectual. As a result, her contribution to civilization was
artistic, literary, philosophical, and scientific, but not political. The
Athenian Greeks were a highly artistic and imaginative rather than a
practical people. They spent their energy on other matters than government
and conquest. As a result the world will be forever indebted to them for
an art and a literature of incomparable beauty and richness which still
charms mankind; a philosophy which deeply influenced the early Christian
religion, and has ever since tinged the thinking of the western world; and
for many important beginnings in scientific knowledge which were lost for
ages to a world that had no interest in or use for science. So deeply has
our whole western civilization been tinctured by Greek thought that one
enthusiastic writer has exclaimed,--"Except the blind forces of Nature,
nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." [14] (R.
11)

In education proper the old Athenian education offers us many lessons of
importance that we of to-day may well heed. In the emphasis they placed on
moral worth, education of the body as well as the mind, and moderation in
all things, they were much ahead of us. Their schools became a type for
the cities of the entire Mediterranean world, being found from the Black
Sea south to the Persian Gulf and westward to Spain. When Rome became a
world empire the Greek school system was adopted, and in modified form
became dominant in Rome and throughout the provinces, while the
universities of the Greek cities for long furnished the highest form of
education for ambitious Roman youths. In this way Greek influence was
spread throughout the Mediterranean world. The higher learning of the
Greeks, preserved first at Athens and Alexandria, and later at
Constantinople, was finally handed back to the western world at the time
of the Italian Revival of Learning, after Europe had in part recovered
from the effects of the barbarian deluge which followed the downfall of
Rome.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Try to picture what might have been the result for western civilization
had the small and newly-developed democratic civilization of Greece been
crushed by the Persians at the time they overran the Greek peninsula.

2. Do periods of great political, commercial, and intellectual expansion
usually subject old systems of morality and education to severe strain?
Illustrate.

3. Why was the change in the type of Athenian education during the Ephebic
years a natural and even a necessary one for the new Athens?

4. Do you understand that the system of training before the Ephebic years
was also seriously changed, or was the change largely a re-shaping and
extension of the education of youths after sixteen?

5. Were the Sophists a good addition to the Athenian instructing force, or
not? Why?

6. How may a State establish a corrective for such a flood of
individualism as overwhelmed Greece, and still allow individual
educational initiative and progress?

7. Do we as a nation face danger from the flood of individualism we have
encouraged in the past? How is our problem like and unlike that of Athens
after the Peloponnesian War?

8. What is the place in Greek life and thought of the ideal treatises on
education written by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, after the flood of
individualism had set in?

9. In what ways was the conquest of Alexander good for world civilization?

10. Of what importance is it, in the history of our western civilization,
that Greek thought had so thoroughly permeated the eastern Mediterranean
world before Roman armies conquered the region?

11. Picture for yourself the great intellectual advances of the Greeks by
contrasting the tribal preparedness-type of education of the early Greek
States and the learning possessed by the scholars of the University at
Alexandria.

12. Compare the spread of Greek language and knowledge throughout the
eastern Mediterranean world, following the conquests of Alexander, with
the spread of the English language and ideas as to government throughout
the modern world.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  7. Wilkins: Athens in the Time of Pericles.
  8. Isocrates: The Instruction of the Sophists.
  9. Xenophon: An Example of Socratic Teaching.
 10. Draper: The Schools of Alexandria.
 11. Butcher: What we Owe to Greece.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Characterize the many educational influences of Athens, as pictured by
Wilkins (7).

2. Were the evils of the Sophist teachers, which Isocrates points out (8),
natural ones? Compare with teachers of vocal training to-day.

3. What would be necessary for the proper training of one for eloquence?
Could any Sophist teacher have trained anyone?

4. Would it be possible to-day for any one city to become such a center of
the world's intellectual life as did Alexandria (10)? Why?

5. Could the Socratic method (9) be applied to instruction in psychology,
ethics, history, and science equally well? Why? To what class of subjects
is the Socratic quiz applicable?

6. How do you account for the fact that the wonderful promise of
Alexandrian science was not fulfilled?

7. State our debt to the Greeks (11).


SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

_The most important references are indicated by an *_

* Bevan, J. O. _University Life in Olden Time_.
* Butcher, S. H. _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_.
* Davidson, Thos. _Aristotle, and Ancient Educational Ideals_.
* Freeman, K. J. _Schools of Hellas_.
  Gulick, C. B. _The Life of the Ancient Greeks_.
* Kingsley, Chas. _Alexandria and her Schools_.
  Laurie, S. S. _Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education_.
* Mahaffy, J. P. _Old Greek Education_.
  Sandys, J. E. _History of Classical Scholarship_, vol. I.
  Walden, John W. H. _The Universities of Ancient Greece_.
  Wilkins, A. S. _National Education in Greece in the Fourth
    Century_, B.C.




CHAPTER III

THE EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME


I. THE ROMANS AND THEIR MISSION

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN STATE. About the time that the Hellenes, in the
City-States of the Greek peninsula, had brought their civilization to its
Golden Age, another branch of the great Aryan race, which had previously
settled in the Italian peninsula, had begun the creation of a new
civilization there which was destined to become extended and powerful. At
the beginning of recorded history we find a number of tribes of this
branch of the Aryan race settled in different parts of Italy, as is shown
in Figure 16. Slowly, but gradually, the smallest of these divisions, the
Latins, extended its rule over the other tribes, and finally over the
Greek settlements to the south and the Gauls to the north, so that by 201
B.C. the entire Italian peninsula had become subject to the City-State
government at Rome.

[Illustration: FIG. 16. THE EARLY PEOPLES OF ITALY, AND THE EXTENSION OF
THE ROMAN POWER
In 509 B.C. Attica opened her citizenship to all free inhabitants, and
half a century later the Golden Age of Greece was in full swing. By 338
B.C. Greece's glory had departed. Philip of Macedon had become master, and
its political freedom was over. By 264 B.C. the center of Greek life and
thought had been transferred to Alexandria, and Rome's great expansion had
begun.]

[Illustration: FIG. 17. THE PRINCIPAL ROMAN ROADS]

By a wise policy of tolerance, patience, conciliation, and assimilation
the Latins gradually became the masters of all Italy. Unlike the Greek
City-States, Rome seemed to possess a natural genius for the art of
government. Upon the people she conquered she bestowed the great gift of
Roman citizenship, and she attached them to her by granting local
government to their towns and by interfering as little as possible with
their local manners, speech, habits, and institutions. By founding
colonies among them and by building excellent military roads to them, she
insured her rule, and by kindly and generous treatment she bound the
different Italian peoples ever closer and closer to the central government
at Rome. By a most wonderful understanding of the psychology of other
peoples, new in the world before the work of Rome, and not seen again
until the work of the English in the nineteenth century, Rome gradually
assimilated the peoples of the Italian peninsula and in time amalgamated
them into a single Roman race. In speech, customs, manners, and finally in
blood she Romanized the different tribes and brought them under her
leadership. Later this same process was extended to Spain, Gaul, and even
to far-off Britain.

A CONCRETE, PRACTICAL PEOPLE. The Roman people were a concrete, practical,
constructive nation of farmers and herdsmen (R. 14), merchants and
soldiers, governors and executives. The whole of the early struggle of the
Latins to extend their rule and absorb the other tribes of the peninsula
called for practical rulers--warriors who were at the same time
constructive statesmen and executives who possessed power and insight,
energy, and personality. The long struggle for political and social
rights, [1] carried on by the common people (_plebeians_) with the ruling
class (_patricians_), tended early to shape their government along rough
but practical lines, [2] and to elevate law and orderly procedure among
the people. The later extension of the Empire to include many distant
lands--how vast the Roman Empire finally became may be seen from the map
on the following page--called still more for a combination of force,
leadership, tolerance, patience, executive power, and insight into the
psychology of subject people to hold such a vast empire together. Only a
great, creative people, working along very practical lines, could have
used and used so well the opportunity which came to Rome [3]

[Illustration: FIG. 18. THE GREAT EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The map shows the Roman Empire as it was by the end of the first century
A.D., and the tribes shown beyond the frontier are as they were at the
beginning of the fourth century A.D. It was 2500 miles, air line, from the
eastern end of the Black Sea to the western coasts of Spain, 1400 miles
from Rome to Palestine, and 1100 miles from Rome to northern Britain. To
maintain order in this vast area Rome depended on the loyalty of her
subjects, the strength of her armies, her military roads, and a messenger
service by horse, yet throughout this vast area she imposed her law and a
unified government for centuries.]

THE GREAT MISSION OF ROME. Had Rome tried to impose her rule and her ways
and her mode of thought on her subject people, and to reduce them to
complete subjection to her, as the modern German and Austrian Empires, for
example, tried to do with the peoples who came under their control, the
Roman Empire could never have been created, and what would have saved
civilization from complete destruction during the period of the barbarian
invasions is hard to see. Instead, Rome treated her subjects as her
friends, and not as conquered peoples; led them to see that their
interests were identical with hers; gave them large local independence and
freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs; opened
up her citizenship [4] and the line of promotion in the State to her
provincials; [5] and won them to the peace and good order which she
everywhere imposed by the advantages she offered through a common
language, common law, common coinage, common commercial arrangements,
common state service, and the common treatment of all citizens of every
race. [6] In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the
common Roman race [7]--absorbed in dress, manners, religion, political and
legal institutions, family names, and, most important of all, in language.
As a result, race pride and the native tongues very largely disappeared,
and Latin became the spoken language of all except the lower classes
throughout the whole of the Western Empire. Only in the eastern
Mediterranean, where the Hellenic tongue and the Hellenic civilization
still dominated, did the Latin language make but little headway, and here
Rome had the good sense not to try to impose her speech or her culture.
Instead she absorbed the culture of the East, while the East accepted in
return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the
language of the courts and of government.

Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman
people, and indicated their great work for civilization, let us turn back
and trace the development of such educational system as existed among
them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the life and habits of
thinking of the Roman people, and what educational organization or
traditions Rome passed on to western civilization.


II. THE PERIOD OF HOME EDUCATION

THE EARLY ROMANS AND THEIR TRAINING. In the early history of the Romans
there were no schools, and it was not until about 300 B.C. that even
primary schools began to develop. What education was needed was imparted
in the home or in the field and in the camp, and was of a very simple
type. Certain virtues were demanded--modesty, firmness, prudence, piety,
courage, seriousness, and regard for duty--and these were instilled both
by precept and example. Each home was a center of the religious life, and
of civic virtue and authority. In it the father was a high priest, with
power of life and death over wife and children. He alone conversed with
the gods and prepared the sacrifices. The wife and mother, however, held a
high place in the home and in the training of the children, the marriage
tie being regarded as very sacred. She also occupied a respected position
in society, and was complete mistress of the house (R. 17).

The religion of the city was an outgrowth of that of the home. Virtue,
courage, duty, justice--these became the great civic virtues. Their
religion, both family and state, lacked the beauty and stately ceremonial
of the Greeks, lacked that lofty faith and aspiration after virtue that
characterized the Hebrew and the later Christian faith, was singularly
wanting in awe and mystery, and was formal and mechanical and practical
[8] in character, but it exercised a great influence on these early
peoples and on their conceptions of their duty to the State.

The father trained the son for the practical duties of a man and a
citizen; the mother trained the daughter to become a good housekeeper,
wife, and mother. Morality, character, obedience to parents and to the
State, and whole-hearted service were emphasized. The boy's father taught
him to read, write, and count. Stories of those who had done great deeds
for the State were told, and martial songs were learned and sung. After
450 B.C. every boy had to learn the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12), and
be able to explain their meaning (R. 13). As the boy grew older he
followed his father in the fields and in the public place and listened to
the conversation of men. [9] If the son of a patrician he naturally
learned much more from his father, by reason of his larger knowledge and
larger contact with men of affairs and public business, than if he were
the son of a plebeian. Through games as a boy, and later in the exercises
of the fields and the camps, the boy gained what physical training he
received. [10]

[Illustration: FIG. 19. A ROMAN FATHER INSTRUCTING HIS SON
(From a Roman Sarcophagus)]

EDUCATION BY DOING. It was largely an education by doing, as was that of
the old Greek period, though entirely different in character. Either by
apprenticeship to the soldier, farmer, or statesman, or by participation
in the activities of a citizen, was the training needed imparted. Its
purpose was to produce good fathers, citizens, and soldiers. [11] Its
ideals were found in the real and practical needs of a small State, where
the ability to care for one's self was a necessary virtue. To be healthy
and strong, to reverence the gods and the institutions of the State, to
obey his parents and the laws, to be proud of his family connections and
his ancestors, to be brave and efficient in war, to know how to farm or to
manage a business, were the aims and ends of this early training. It
produced a nation of citizens who willingly subordinated themselves to the
interests of the State, [12] a nation of warriors who brought all Italy
under their rule, a calculating, practical people who believed themselves
destined to become the conquerors and rulers of the world, and a reserved
and proud race, trained to govern and to do business, but not possessed of
lofty ideals or large enthusiasms in life (Rs. 15, 16).


III. THE TRANSITION TO SCHOOL EDUCATION

BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOL EDUCATION. Up to about 300 B.C. education had been
entirely in the home, and in the activities of the fields and the State.
It was a period of personal valor and stern civic virtue, in a rather
primitive type of society, as yet but little in contact with the outside
world, and little need of any other type of training had been felt. By the
end of the third century B.C., the influence of contact with the Greek
cities of southern Italy and Sicily (_Magna Graecia_), and the influence
of the extensive conquests of Alexander the Great in the eastern
Mediterranean (334-323 B.C.), had begun to be felt in Italy. By that time
Greek had become the language of commerce and diplomacy throughout the
Mediterranean, and Greek scholars and tradesmen had begun to frequent
Rome. By 303 B.C. it seems certain that a few private teachers had set up
primary schools at Rome to supplement the home training, and had begun the
introduction of the pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct to attract
attention to their schools. These schools, however, were only a fad at
first, and were patronized only by a few of the wealthy citizens. Up to
about 250 B.C., at least, Roman education remained substantially as it had
been in the preceding centuries. Reading, writing, declamation, chanting,
and the Laws of the Twelve Tables still constituted the subject-matter of
instruction, and the old virtues continued to be emphasized.

By the middle of the third century B.C. Rome had expanded its rule to
include nearly all the Italian peninsula (see Figure 16), and was
transforming itself politically from a little rural City-State into an
Empire, with large world relationships. A knowledge of Greek now came to
be demanded both for diplomatic and for business reasons, and the need of
a larger culture, to correspond with the increased importance of the
State, began to be felt by the wealthier and better-educated classes.
Greek scholars, brought in as captured slaves from the Greek colonies of
southern Italy, soon began to be extensively employed as teachers and as
secretaries.

About 233 B.C., Livius Andronicus, who had been brought to Rome as a slave
when Tarentum, one of the Greek cities of southern Italy, was captured,
[13] and who later had obtained his freedom, made a translation of the
Odyssey into Latin, and became a teacher of Latin and Greek at Rome. This
had a wonderful effect in developing schools and a literary atmosphere at
Rome. The _Odyssey_ at once became the great school textbook, in time
supplanting the Twelve Tables, and literary and school education now
rapidly developed. The Latin language became crystallized in form, and
other Greek works were soon translated. The beginnings of a native Latin
literature were now made. Greek higher schools were opened, many Greek
teachers and slaves offered instruction, and the Hellenic scheme of
culture, as it had previously developed in Attica, soon became the fashion
at Rome.

CHANGES IN NATIONAL IDEALS. The second century B.C. was even more a period
of rapid change in all phases and aspects of Roman life. During this
century Rome became a world empire, annexing Spain, Carthage, Illyria, and
Greece, and during the century that followed she subjugated northern
Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Gaul to the Elbe and the Danube (see Figure
18). Rome soon became mistress of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships
plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction
of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new provinces, which followed
their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people.
Private and public religion and morality rapidly declined; religion came
to be an empty ceremonial; divorce became common; wealth and influence
ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were used for
almost every type of service. From a land of farmers of small farms,
sturdy and self-supporting, who lived simply, reared large families,
feared the gods, respected the State, and made an honest living, it became
a land of great estates and wealthy men, and the self-respecting peasantry
were transformed into soldiers for foreign wars, or joined the rabble in
the streets of Rome. [14] Wealth became the great desideratum, and the
great avenue to this was through the public service, either as army
commanders and governors, or as public men who could sway the multitude
and command votes and influence. Manifestly the old type of education was
not intended to meet such needs, and now in Rome, as previously in Athens,
a complete transformation in the system of training for the young took
place. The imaginative and creative Athenians, when confronted by a great
change in national ideals, evolved a new type of education adapted to the
new needs of the time; the unimaginative and practical Romans merely
adopted that which the Athenians had created.

THE HELLENIZATION OF ROME. The result was the Hellenization of the
intellectual life of Rome, making complete the Hellenization of the
Mediterranean world. After the fall of Greece, in 146 B.C., a great influx
of educated Greeks took place. As the Latin poet Horace expressed it:

  Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror,
  And brought the arts to Latium.

So completely did the Greek educational system seem to meet the needs of
the changed Roman State that at first the Greek schools were adopted
bodily--Greek language, pedagogue, higher schools of rhetoric and
philosophy, and all--and the schools were in reality Greek schools but
slightly modified to meet the needs of Rome. _Gymnasia_ were erected, and
wealthy Romans, as well as youths, began to spend their leisure in
studying Greek and in trying to learn gymnastic exercises.

In time the national pride and practical sense of the Romans led them to
open so-called "culture schools" of their own, modeled after the Greek.
The Latin language then replaced the Greek as the vehicle of instruction,
though Greek was still studied extensively, and Rome began the development
of a system of private-school instruction possessing some elements that
were native to Roman life and Roman needs.

[Illustration: FIG. 20. CATO THE ELDER (234-149 B.C.)]

STRUGGLE AGAINST, AND FINAL VICTORY. That this great change in national
ideals and in educational practice was accepted without protest should not
be imagined. Plutarch and other writers appealed to the family as the
center for all true education. Cato the elder, who died in 149 B.C.,
labored hard to stem the Hellenic tide. He wrote the first Roman book on
education, in part to show what education a good citizen needed as an
orator, husbandman, jurist, and warrior, and in part as a protest against
Hellenic innovations. In 167 B.C., the first library was founded in Rome,
with books brought from Greece by the conqueror Paulus Emilius. In 161
B.C., the Roman Senate directed the Praetor to see "that no philosophers
or rhetoricians be suffered in Rome" (R. 20 a), but the edict could not be
enforced. In 92 B.C., the Censors issued an edict expressing their
disapproval of such schools (R. 20 b). By 100 B.C., the Hellenic victory
was complete, and the Graeco-Roman school system had taken form. In 27
B.C., Rome ceased to be a Republic and became an Empire, and under the
Emperors the professors of the new learning were encouraged and protected,
higher schools were established in the provinces, literature and
philosophy were opened as possible careers, and the Greek language,
literature, and learning were spread, under Roman imperial protection, to
every corner of the then civilized world. This victory of Hellenic thought
and learning at Rome, viewed in the light of the future history of the
civilization of the world, was an event of large importance.


IV. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AS FINALLY ESTABLISHED

THE LUDUS, OR PRIMARY SCHOOL. The elementary school, known as the _ludus_,
or _ludus literarum_, the teacher of which was known as a _ludi magister_,
was the beginning or primary school of the scheme as finally evolved. This
corresponded to the school of the Athenian _grammatist_, and like it the
instruction consisted of reading, writing, and counting. These schools
were open to both sexes, but were chiefly frequented by boys. They were
entered at the age of seven, sometimes six, and covered the period up to
twelve. Reading and writing were taught by much the same methods as in the
Greek schools, and approximately the same writing materials were used.
Something of the same difficulty was experienced also in mastering the
reading art (R. 21). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian who
lived in Rome for twenty-two years, during the first century B.C., has
left us a clear description of the Roman method of teaching reading:

    When we learned to read was it not necessary at first to know the name
    of the letters, their shape, their value in syllables, their
    differences, then the words and their case, their quantity long or
    short, their accent, and the rest?

    Arrived at this point we began to read and write, slowly at first and
    syllable by syllable. Some time afterwards, the forms being
    sufficiently engraved on our memory, we read more cursorily, in the
    elementary book, then in all sorts of books, finally with incredible
    quickness and without making any mistake.

[Illustration: FIG. 21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS.
Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus.]

Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek
schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books
(_dictata_). Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary
schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the _palaestra_ of the
Greeks was not reproduced at Rome.

Due in part to the practical character of the Roman people, to the
established habit of keeping careful household accounts, to the
difficulties of their system of calculation, [15] to the practice of
finger reckoning, and to the vast commercial and financial interests that
the Romans formed throughout the world which they conquered, arithmetic
became a subject of fundamental importance in their schools, and much time
was given to securing perfection in calculation and finger reckoning. [16]
Hence it occupied a place of large importance in the primary school. An
abacus or counting-board was used, similar to the one shown in Figure 22,
and Horace mentions a bag of stones (_calculi_) as a part of a schoolboy's
equipment.

[Illustration: FIG. 22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD.
Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered dividing partition being
counted. Each pebble above when moved downward counted five of those in
the same division below. The board now shows 8,760,254.]

THE _LUDI MAGISTER_. The _ludi magister_ at Rome held a position even less
enviable than that held by the _grammatist_ at Athens. "The starveling
Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good
dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in
this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their owners. It was not
regarded as of importance that the teachers of these schools be of high
grade. The establishment of and attendance at these primary schools was
wholly voluntary, and the children in them probably represented but a
small percentage of those of school age in the total population. These
schools became quite common in the Italian cities, and in time were found
in the provincial cities of the Empire as well. They remained, however,
entirely private-adventure undertakings, the State doing nothing toward
encouraging their establishment, supervising the instruction in them, or
requiring attendance at them. They were in no sense free schools, nor were
the prices for instruction fixed, as in our private schools of to-day.
Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usually at some
understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the
liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was
nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family.

[Illustration: FIG. 23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL(_Ludus_)
(From a fresco found at Herculaneum). This shows a school held in a
portico of a house.]

The schools were held anywhere--in a portico (see Figure 23), in a shed or
booth in front of a house, in a store, or in a recessed corner shut in by
curtains. A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room
for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods
(_ferula_) constituted the necessary equipment. The pupils brought with
them boxes containing writing-materials, book-rolls, and reckoning-stones.
Schools began early in the morning, pupils in winter going with lanterns
to their tasks. There was much flogging of children, and in Martial we
find an angry epigram which he addressed to a schoolmaster who disturbed
his sleep (R. 23 a).

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Secondary or Latin grammar schools, under a
_grammaticus_, and covering instruction from the age of twelve to sixteen,
had become clearly differentiated from the primary schools under a _ludi
magister_ by the time of the death of Cato, 149 B.C. At first this higher
instruction began in the form of private tutors, probably in the homes of
the wealthy, and Greek was the language taught. By the beginning of the
first century B.C., however, Latin secondary schools began to arise, and
in time these too spread to all the important cities of the Empire.
Attendance at them was wholly voluntary, and was confined entirely to the
children of the well-to-do classes. The teachers were Greeks, or Latins
who had been trained by the Greeks. Each teacher taught as he wished, but
the schools throughout the Empire came to be much the same in character.
The course of study consisted chiefly of instruction in grammar and
literature, the purpose being to secure such a mastery of the Latin
language and Greek and Latin literatures as might be most helpful in
giving that broader culture now recognized as the mark of an educated man,
and in preparing the young Roman to take up the life of an orator and
public official (R. 24). Both Greek and Latin secondary schools were in
existence, and Quintilian, the foremost Roman writer on educational
practice, recommends attendance at the Greek school first.

Grammar was studied first, and was intended to develop correctness in the
use of speech. With its careful study of words, phonetic changes, drill on
inflections, and practice in composing and paragraphing, this made a
strong appeal to the practical Roman and became a favorite study.
Literature followed, and was intended to develop an appreciation for
literary style, elevate thought, expand one's knowledge, and, by
memorization and repetition, to train the powers of expression. The method
practiced was much as follows: The selection was carefully read first by
the teacher, and then by the pupils. [18] After the reading the selection
was gone over again and the historical, geographical, and mythological
allusions were carefully explained by the teacher. [19] The text was next
critically examined, to point out where and how it might be improved and
its expressions strengthened, and much paraphrasing of it was engaged in.
Finally the study of the selection was rounded out by _a judgment_--that
is, a critical estimate of the work, a characterization of the author's
style, and a resume of his chief merits and defects. The foundations were
here laid for Grammar and Rhetoric as the great studies of the Middle
Ages.

Homer and Menander were the favorite authors in Greek, and Vergil, Horace,
Sallust, and Livy in Latin, with much use of _Aesop's Fables_ for work in
composition. The pupils made their own books from dictation, though in
later years educated slave labor became so cheap that the copying and sale
of books was organized into a business at Rome, and it was possible for
the children of wealthy parents to own their own books. Grammar,
composition, elocution, ethics, history, mythology, and geography were all
comprehended in the instruction in grammar and literature in the secondary
schools. A little music was added at times, to help the pupil intone his
reading and declamation. A little geometry and astronomy were also
included, for their practical applications. The athletic exercises of the
Greeks were rejected, as contributing to immorality and being a waste of
time and strength. In a sense these schools were finishing schools for
Roman youths who went to any school at all, much as are our high schools
of to-day for the great bulk of American children. The schools were better
housed than those of the _ludi_, and the masters were of a better quality
and received larger fees. Like the elementary schools, the State exercised
no supervision or control over these schools or the teachers or pupils in
them.

THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC. Up to this point the schools established had been
for practical and useful information (the primary schools) or cultural
(the grammar or secondary schools). On top of these a higher and
professional type of school was next developed, to train youths in
rhetoric and oratory, preparatory to the great professions of law and
public life at Rome. [20] These schools were direct descendants of the
Greek rhetorical schools, which evolved from the schools of the Sophists.
Suetonius [21] tells us that:

    Rhetoric, also, as well as grammar, was not introduced amongst us
    till a late period, and with still more difficulty, inasmuch as we
    find that, at times, the practice of it was even prohibited. [22] ...
    However, by slow degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful
    and honorable study, and many persons devoted themselves to it both as
    a means of defense and of acquiring a reputation. In consequence,
    public favor was so much attracted to the study of rhetoric that a
    vast number of professional and learned men devoted themselves to it;
    and it flourished to such a degree that some of them raised themselves
    by it to the rank of senators and to the highest offices.

These schools, the teachers of which were known as _rhetors_, furnished a
type of education representing a sort of collegiate education for the
period. They were oratorical in purpose, because the orator had become the
Roman ideal of a well-educated man (R. 24). During the life of the
Republic the orator found many opportunities for the constructive use of
his ability, and all young men ambitious to enter law or politics found
the training of these schools a necessary prerequisite. They were attended
for two or three years by boys over sixteen, but only the wealthier and
more aristocratic families could afford to send their boys to them.

In addition to oratorical and some legal training, these schools included
a further linguistic and literary training, some mathematical and
scientific knowledge, and even some philosophy. The famous "Seven Liberal
Arts" of the Middle Ages--Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic; Music,
Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy--all seem to have been included in the
instruction of these schools. [23] The great studies, though, were the
first three and some Law, Music being studied largely to help with
gestures and to train the voice, Geometry to aid in settling lawsuits
relating to land, Dialectic (logic) to aid in detecting fallacies, and
Astronomy to understand the movements of the heavenly bodies and the
references of literary writers. [24] There was much work in debate and in
the declamation of ethical and political material the fine distinctions in
Roman Law and Ethics were brought out, [25] and there was much drill in
preparing and delivering speeches and much attention given to the factors
involved in the preparation and delivery of a successful oration (R. 25).

[Illustration: FIG. 24. A ROMAN SCHOOL OF RHETORIC.
This picture, which has been drawn from a description, shows a much better
type of school than that of the _ludi_.]

These schools became very popular as institutions of higher learning, and
continued so even after the later Emperors, by seizing the power of the
State, had taken away the inspiration that comes from a love of freedom
and had thus deprived the rhetorical art of practical value. The work of
the schools then became highly stilted and artificial in character, and
oratory then came to be cultivated largely as a fine art. [26] Men
educated in these schools came to boast that they could speak with equal
effectiveness on either side of any question, and the art came to depend
on the use of many and big words and on the manners of the stage. Such
ideals naturally destroyed the value of these schools, and stopped
intellectual progress so far as they contributed to it.

Much was done by the later Emperors to encourage these schools, and they
too came to exist in almost every provincial city in the Empire. Often
they were supported by the cities in which they were located. The Emperor
Vespasian, about 75 A.D. began the practice of paying, from the Imperial
Treasury, the salaries of grammarians and rhetoricians [27] at Rome.
Antoninus Pius, who ruled as Emperor from 138 to 161 A.D., extended
payment to the provinces, gave to these teachers the privileges of the
senatorial class, and a certain number in each city were exempted from
payment of taxes, support of soldiers, and obligations to military
service. Other Emperors extended these special privileges (R. 26) which
became the basis for the special rights afterwards granted to the
Christian clergy (R. 38) and, still later, to teachers in the universities
(Rs. 101-04).

UNIVERSITY LEARNING. Roman youths desiring still further training could
now journey to the eastward and attend the Greek universities (see Figure
14). A few did so, much as American students in the middle of the
nineteenth century went to Germany for higher study. Athens and Rhodes
were most favored. Brutus, Horace, and Cicero, among others, studied at
Athens; Caesar, Cicero, and Cassius at Rhodes. Later Alexandria was in
favor. In a library founded in the Temple of Peace by Vespasian (ruled 69
to 79 A.D.) the University at Rome had its origin, and in time this
developed into an institution with professors in law, medicine,
architecture, mathematics and mechanics, and grammar and rhetoric in both
the Latin and Greek languages. In this many youths from provincial cities
came to study. The lines of instruction represented nothing, however, in
the way of scientific investigation or creative thought; the instruction
was formal and dogmatic, being largely a further elaboration of what had
previously been well done by the Greeks.

NATURE OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM DEVELOPED. Such was the educational
system which was finally evolved to meet the new cultural needs of the
Roman Empire. In all its foundation elements it was Greek. Having
borrowed--conquered one might almost say--Greek religion, philosophy,
literature, and learning, the Romans naturally borrowed also the school
system that had been evolved to impart this culture. Never before or since
has any people adapted so completely to their own needs the system of
educational training evolved by another. To the Greek basis some
distinctively Roman elements were added to adapt it better to the peculiar
needs of their own people, while on the other hand many of the finer Greek
characteristics were omitted entirely. Having once adopted the Greek plan,
the constructive Roman mind organized it into a system superior to the
original, but in so doing formalized it more than the Greeks had ever done
(R. 19).

[Illustration: FIG. 25. THE ROMAN VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, AS FINALLY
EVOLVED]

That the system afforded an opportunity to wealthy Romans to obtain for
their children some understanding and appreciation of the culture of the
Greek world with which their Empire was now in contact, and answered
fairly well the preparatory needs along political and governmental lines
of those Romans who could afford to educate their boys for such careers,
can hardly be doubted (R. 22). Roman writers on education, especially
Cicero (R. 24) and Quintilian (R. 25), give us abundant testimony as to
the value and usefulness of the system evolved in the training of orators
and men for the public service. In the provinces, too, we know that the
schools were very useful in inculcating Roman traditions and in helping
the Romans to assimilate the sons of local princes and leaders. [28]
During the days of the Republic the schools were naturally more useful
than after the establishment of the Empire, and especially after the later
Emperors had stamped out many of the political and civic liberties for the
enjoyment of which the schools prepared. On the other hand, the schools
reached but a small, selected class of youths, trained for only the
political career, and cannot be considered as ever having been general or
as having educated any more than a small percentage of the future citizens
of the State. Many of the important lines of activity in which the Romans
engaged, and which to-day are regarded as monuments to their constructive
skill and practical genius, such as architectural achievements, the
building of roads and aqueducts, the many skilled trades, and the large
commercial undertakings, these schools did nothing to prepare youths for.
The State, unlike Athens, never required education of any one, did not
make what was offered a preparation for citizenship, and made no attempt
to regulate either teachers or instruction until late in the history of
the Empire. Education at Rome was from the first purely a private-
adventure affair, most nearly analogous with us to instruction in music
and dancing. Those who found the education offered of any value could take
it and pay for it; those who did not could let it alone. A few did the
former, the great mass of the Romans the latter. For the great slave class
that developed at Rome there was, of course, no education at all.

RESULTS ON ROMAN LIFE AND GOVERNMENT. Still, out of this private and
tuition system of schools many capable political leaders and executives
came--men who exercised great influence on the history of the State,
fought out her political battles, organized and directed her government at
home and in the provinces, and helped build up that great scheme of
government and law and order which was Rome's most significant
contribution to future civilization. [29] It was in this direction, and in
practical and constructive work along engineering and architectural lines,
that Rome excelled. The Roman genius for government and law and order and
constructive undertakings must be classed, in importance for the future of
civilization in the world, along with the ability of Greece in literature
and philosophy and art. "If," says Professor Adams, "as is sometimes said,
that in the course of history there is no literature which rivals the
Greek except the English, it is perhaps even more true that the Anglo-
Saxon is the only race which can be placed beside the Romans in creative
power and in politics." The conquest of the known world by this practical
and constructive people could not have otherwise than decisively
influenced the whole course of human history, and, coming at the time in
world affairs that it did, the influence on all future civilization of the
work of Rome has been profound. The great political fact which dominated
all the Middle Ages, and shaped the religion and government and
civilization of the time, was the fact that the Roman Empire had been and
had done its work so well.


V. ROME'S CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILIZATION

GREECE AND ROME CONTRASTED. The contrast between the Greeks and the Romans
is marked in almost every particular. The Greeks were an imaginative,
subjective, artistic, and idealistic people, with little administrative
ability and few practical tendencies. The Romans, on the other hand, were
an unimaginative, concrete, practical, and constructive nation. Greece
made its great contribution to world civilization in literature and
philosophy and art; Rome in law and order and government. The Greeks lived
a life of aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and
their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was intellectual and
artistic; to the Romans the aesthetic and the beautiful made little
appeal, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was
utilitarian. The Greeks worshiped "the beautiful and the good," and tried
to enjoy life rationally and nobly, while the Romans worshiped force and
effectiveness, and lived by rule and authority. The Greeks thought in
personal terms of government and virtue and happiness, while the Romans
thought in general terms of law and duty, and their happiness was rather
in present denial for future gain than in any immediate enjoyment.

As a result the Romans developed no great scholarly or literary
atmosphere, as the Greeks had done at Athens, They built up no great
speculative philosophies, and framed no great theories of government. Even
their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though
possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people
who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means
and ends. Usefulness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the
worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they
gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Romanized
barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all parts of their Empire
that were the best the world had ever known, their aqueducts and bridges
were wonders of engineering skill, their public buildings and monuments
still excite admiration and envy, in many of the skilled trades they
developed tools and processes of large future usefulness, and their
agriculture was the best the world had known up to that time. They were
strong where the Greeks were weak, and weak where the Greeks were strong.

By reason of this difference the two peoples supplemented one another well
in the work of laying the foundations upon which our modern civilization
has been built. Greece created the intellectual and aesthetic ideals and
the culture for our life, while Rome developed the political institutions
under which ideals may be realized and culture may be enjoyed. From the
Greeks and Hebrews our modern life has drawn its great inspirations and
its ideals for life, while from the Romans we have derived our ideals as
to government and obedience to law. One may say that the Romans as a
people specialized in government, law, order, and constructive practical
undertakings, and bequeathed to posterity a wonderful inheritance in
governmental forms, legal codes, commercial processes, and engineering
undertakings, while the Greeks left to us a philosophy, literature, art,
and a world culture which the civilized world will never cease to enjoy.
The Greeks were an imaginative, impulsive, and a joyous people; the Romans
sedate, severe, and superior to the Greeks in persistence and moral force.
The Greeks were ever young; the Romans were always grown and serious men.

ROME'S GREAT CONTRIBUTION. Rome's great contribution, then, was along the
lines just indicated. To this, the school system which became established
in the Roman State contributed only indirectly and but little. The
unification of the ancient world into one Empire, with a common body of
traditions, practices, coinage, speech, and law, which made the triumph of
Christianity possible; the formulation of a body of law [30] which
barbarian tribes accepted, which was studied throughout the Middle Ages,
which formed the basis of the legal system of the mediaeval Church, and
which has largely influenced modern practice; the development of a
language from which many modern tongues have been derived, and which has
modified all western languages; and the perfection of an alphabet which
has become the common property of all nations whose civilization has been
derived from the Greek and Roman--these constitute the chief contributions
of Rome to modern civilization.

Roman city government, too, had been established throughout all the
provincial cities, and this remained after the Empire had passed away. The
municipal corporation, with its charter of rights, has ever since been a
fixed idea in the western world. Roman law, organized into a compact code,
and studied in the law schools of the Middle Ages, has modified our modern
ideas and practices to a degree we scarcely realize. It was accepted by
the German rulers as a permanent thing after they had overrun the Empire,
and it remained as the law of the courts wherever Roman subjects were
tried. Preserved and codified at Constantinople under Justinian in the
sixth century, and re-introduced into western Europe when the study of law
was revived in the newly founded universities in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, Roman law has greatly modified all modern legal
practices and has become the basis of the legal systems of a number of
modern states. [31]

[Illustration: FIG. 26. ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
The German type, like the so-called Old English (see Fig. 45), illustrates
the corruption of letter forms through the copying of manuscripts during
the Middle Ages.]

Of all the Roman contributions to modern civilization perhaps the one that
most completely permeates all our modern life is their alphabet and
speech. Figure 26 shows how our modern alphabet goes back to the old
Roman, which they obtained from the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and
which the Greeks obtained from the still earlier Phoenicians. This
alphabet has become the common property of almost all the civilized world.
[32] In speech, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian tongues go
back directly to the Latin, and these are the tongues of Mexico and South
America as well. The English language, which is spoken throughout a large
part of the civilized world, and by one third of its inhabitants, has also
received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely
utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of
ancient Rome.

Among the smaller but nevertheless important contributions which we owe to
Rome, and which were passed on to mediaeval and modern Europe, should be
mentioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the mechanic
arts; many inventions and acquired skills in the arts and trades; an
organized sea and land trade and commerce; cleared and improved lands,
good houses, roads and bridges; great architectural and engineering
remains, scattered all through the provinces; the beginnings of the
transformation of the slave into the serf, from which the great body of
freemen of modern Europe later were evolved; and certain educational
conceptions and practices which later profoundly influenced educational
methods and procedure.

How large these contributions were we shall appreciate better as we
proceed with our history. Of the negative contributions, the most
dangerous has been the idea of the rule of one imperial government, which
has inspired the autocratic governments of modern Europe to try to imitate
the world-wide rule of Imperial Rome.

THE WAY PAVED FOR CHRISTIANITY. It was the great civilizing and unifying
work of the Roman State that paved the way for the next great contribution
to the foundations of the structure of our modern civilization--the
contribution of Christianity. Had Italy never been consolidated; had the
barbarian tribes to the north never been conquered and Romanized; had
Spain and Africa and the eastern Mediterranean never known the rule of
Rome; had the Latin language never become the speech of the then civilized
peoples; had Roman armies never imposed law and order throughout an unruly
world; had Roman governors and courts never established common rights and
security; had Roman municipal government never come to be the common type
in the cities of the provinces; had Roman schools in the provincial cities
never trained the foreign citizen in Roman ways and to think Roman
thoughts; had Rome never established free trade and intercourse throughout
her Empire; had Rome never developed processes and skills in agriculture
and the creative arts; had there been no Roman roads and common coinage;
and had Rome not done dozens of other important things to unify and
civilize Europe and reduce it to law and order, it is hard to imagine the
chaos that would have resulted when the Empire gave way to the barbarian
hordes which finally overwhelmed it. Where we should have been to-day in
the upward march of civilization, without the work of Rome, it is
impossible to say.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Contrast the Romans as a colonizing power with the modern Germans. The
English. The French.

2. At what period in our national development did home education with us
occupy substantially the same place as it did in Rome before 300 B.C.? In
what respects was the education given boys and girls similar? Different?

3. What was the most marked advance over the Greeks in the early Roman
training?

4. Contrast the education of the Athenian, Spartan, and Roman boy, during
the early period in each State.

5. To what extent does early Roman education indicate the importance of
the parent and of study of biography in the education of the young?

6. Was the change in character of the education of Roman youths, after the
expansion of the Roman State and the establishment of world contacts,
preventable, or was it a necessary evolution? Why? Have we ever
experienced similar changes?

7. As a State increases in importance and enlarges its world contacts, is
a correspondingly longer training and enlarged culture necessary at home?

8. What idea do you get as to the extent to which the Latinized Odyssey
was read from the fact that the Latin language was crystallized in form
shortly after the translation was made?

9. What does the rapid adoption of the Greek educational system, and the
later evolution of a native educational system out of it, indicate as to
the nature of Roman expansion?

10. Was the introduction of the Greek pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct
natural? Why?

11. Why is a period of very rapid expansion in a State likely to be
demoralizing? How may the demoralization incident to such expansion be
anticipated and minimized?

12. Why does the coming of large landed estates introduce important social
problems? Have we the beginnings of a social problem of this type? What
correctives have we that Rome did not have?

13. State the economic changes which hastened the introduction of a new
type of higher training at Rome.

14. Was the Hellenization of Rome which ensued a good thing? Why?

15. How do you account for Rome not developing a state school system in
the period of great national need and change, instead of leaving the
matter to private initiative? Do you understand that any large percentage
of youths in the Roman State ever attended any school?

16. Why do older people usually oppose changes in school work manifestly
needed to meet changing national demands?

17. Compare the difficulties met with in learning to read Greek and Latin.
Either and English.

18. How do you account for the much smaller emphasis on literature and
music in the elementary instruction at Rome than at Athens? How for the
much larger emphasis on formal grammar in the secondary schools at Rome?

19. What subjects of study as we now know them were included in the Roman
study of grammar and rhetoric?

20. How do you explain the greater emphasis placed by the Romans on
secondary education than on elementary education?

21. What particular Roman need did the higher schools of oratory and
rhetoric supply?

22. What does the exclusive devotion of these schools to such studies
indicate as to professional opportunities at Rome?

23. How do you account for the continuance of these schools in favor, and
for the aid and encouragement they received from the later Emperors, when
the very nature of the Empire in large part destroyed the careers for
which they trained?

24. Compare Rome and the United States in their attitudes toward foreign-
born peoples.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  12. The Laws of the Twelve Tables.
  13. Cicero: Importance of the Twelve Tables in Education.
  14. Schreiber: A Roman Farmer's Calendar.
  15. Polybius: The Roman Character.
  16. Mommsen: The Grave and Severe Character of the Earlier Romans.
  17. Epitaph: The Education of Girls.
  18. Marcus Aurelius: The Old Roman Education described.
  19. Tacitus: The Old and the New Education contrasted.
  20. Suetonius: Attempts to Prohibit the Introduction of Greek Higher
      Learning.
      (a) Decree of the Roman Senate, 161 B.C.
      (b) Decree of the Censor, 92 B.C.
  21. Vergil: Difficulty experienced in Learning to Read.
  22. Horace: The Education given by a Father.
  23. Martial: The Ludi Magister.
     (a) To the Master of a Noisy School.
     (b) To a Schoolmaster.
  24. Cicero: Oratory the Aim of Education.
  25. Quintilian: On Oratory.
  26. Constantine: Privileges granted to Physicians and Teachers.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Give reasons why the Laws of the Twelve Tables (12) were considered of
such fundamental importance (13) in the education of the early Roman boy?
How do you explain their being supplanted later by the Latinized
_Odyssey_?

2. What does the Farmer's Calendar (14) reveal as to the character of
Roman life?

3. Contrast the Roman character (15, 16) with that of the Athenian.

4. Compare the education of a Roman matron, as revealed by the epitaph
(17), with that of a girl in later American colonial times.

5. After reading Marcus Aurelius (18) and Tacitus (19), what is your
judgment as to the relative merits of the old and the new education: (_a_)
as a means of training youths? (_b_) as adapted to the changed conditions
of Imperial Rome?

6. How do you account for the attempts of the conservative officials of
the State to prohibit the introduction of Greek higher schools (20 a-b)
proving so unsuccessful?

7. Compare the difficulties involved in learning to read Greek (Fig. 6)
and Latin (21). Either and English.

8. What type of higher educational advantages does the selection from
Horace (22) indicate as prevailing in Roman cities? Compare with present-
day advanced education.

9. What do Martial's Epigrams to the Roman schoolmasters (23 a-b) indicate
as to the nature of the schools, school discipline, and social status of
the Roman primary teacher?

10. Do the selections from Cicero (24) and Quintilian (25) satisfy you
that oratory was a sufficiently broad idea for the higher education of
youths under the Empire? Why?

11. What does the decree of Constantine (26) indicate as to the social
status of the higher teachers under the Empire?


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

  Abbott, F. F. _Society and Politics in Ancient Rome_.
* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
  Anderson, L. F. "Some Facts regarding Vocational Education among the
    Greeks and Romans"; in _School Review_, vol. 20, pp. 191-201.
* Clarke, Geo. _Education of Children at Rome_.
* Dill, Sam'l. _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western
    Empire_.
* Laurie, S. S. _Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education_.
  Mahaffy, J. P. _The Silver Age of the Greek World_.
  Ross, C. F. "The Strength and Weakness of Roman Education"; in
    _School and Society_, vol. 6, pp. 457-63.
  Sandys, J. E. _History of Classical Scholarship_, vol. i.
  Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.
  Westermann, W. L. Vocational Training in Antiquity; in _School
    Review_,  vol. 22, pp. 601-10.




CHAPTER IV

THE RISE AND CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY


I. THE RISE AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

RELIGIONS IN THE ROMAN WORLD. As was stated in the preceding chapter (p.
58), the Roman state religion was an outgrowth of the religion of the
home. Just as there had been a number of fireside deities, who were
supposed to preside over the different activities of the home, so there
were many state deities who were supposed to preside over the different
activities of the State. In addition, the Romans exhibited toward the
religions of all other peoples that same tolerance and willingness to
borrow which they exhibited in so many other matters. Certain Greek
deities were taken over and temples erected to them in Rome, and new
deities, to guard over such functions as health, fortune, peace, concord,
sowing, reaping, etc., were established. [1] Extreme tolerance also was
shown toward the special religions of other peoples who had been brought
within the Empire, and certain oriental divinities had even been admitted
and given their place in Rome.

Like many other features of Roman life, their religion was essentially of
a practical nature, dealing with the affairs of everyday life, and having
little or no relation to personal morality. [2] It promised no rewards or
punishments or hopes for a future life, but rather, by uniting all
citizens in a common reverence and fear of certain deities, helped to
unify the Empire and hold it together. After the death of Augustus (14
A.D.), the Roman Senate deified the Emperor and enrolled his name among
the gods, and Emperor worship was added to their ceremonies. This
naturally spread rapidly throughout the Empire, tended to unite all
classes in allegiance to the central government at Rome, and seemed to
form the basis for a universal religion for a universal empire.

FEELING THE NEED FOR SOMETHING MORE. As an educated class arose in Rome,
this mixture of diverse divinities failed to satisfy; the Roman religion,
made up as it was of state and parental duties and precautions, lost with
them its force; and the religious ceremonies of the home and the State
lost for them their meaning. The mechanical repetition of prayers and
sacrifices made no appeal to the emotions or to the moral nature of
individuals, and offered no spiritual joy or consolation as to a life
beyond. The educated Greeks before had had this same feeling, and had
indulged in much speculation as to the moral nature of man. Many educated
Romans now turned to the Greek philosophers for some more philosophical
explanation of the great mystery of life and death.

Of all the philosophies developed in the philosophical schools of Athens,
the one that made the deepest appeal to the practical Roman mind was that
of the Stoics, founded by Zeno, 308 B.C. Virtue, claimed the Stoics,
consists in so living that one's life is in accordance with that Universal
Reason which rules the world. Riches, position, fame, success--these count
for but little. He who trains himself to be above grief, hope, joy, fear,
and the ills of life--be he slave or peasant or king--may be happy because
he is virtuous. Reason, rather than the feelings, is the proper rule of
life. The Stoics also preached the brotherhood of man, and to a degree
expressed a humble reliance on a providence which controlled affairs. This
philosophy in a way met the need for a religion among the better-educated
Romans, and made considerable headway during the early days of the Empire.
[3] While serving as a sort of religion for those capable of embracing it,
it was too intellectual to reach more than a few, and was not adapted to
become a universal religion for all sorts and conditions of men. What was
needed was a new moral philosophy or religion that would touch all
mankind. To do this it must appeal to the emotions more than to the
intellect. Such a religion was at this time taking shape and gathering
force and strength in a remote corner of the Empire.

WHERE THIS NEW RELIGION AROSE. Far to the eastern end of the Mediterranean
there had long lived a branch of the Semitic race, which had developed a
national character and made a contribution of first importance to the
religious thought of the world. These were the Hebrew people who, leaving
Egypt about 1500 B.C., in the Exodus, had come to inhabit the land of
Canaan, south of Phoenicia and east and north of Egypt. From a wandering,
pastoral people they had gradually changed to a settled, agricultural
people, and had begun the development of a regular State. Unwilling,
however, to bear the burdens of a political State, and objecting to
taxation, a standing army, and forced labor for the State, the nationality
which promised at one time fell to pieces, and the land was overrun by
hostile neighbors and the people put under the yoke. After a sad and
tempestuous history, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by
the Romans in 70 A.D., the inhabitants were sold into slavery and
dispersed throughout the Roman Empire.

These people developed no great State, and made no contributions to
government or science or art. Their contribution was along religious
lines, and so magnificent and uplifting is their religious literature that
it is certain to last for all time. Alone among all eastern people they
early evolved the idea of one omnipotent God. The religion that they
developed declared man to be the child of God, erected personal morality
and service to God as the rule of life, and asserted a life beyond the
grave. It was about these ideas that the whole energy of the people
concentrated, and religion became the central thought of their lives. This
religion, unlike the other religions of the Mediterranean world,
emphasized duty to God, service, personal morality, chastity, honesty, and
truth as its essential elements. The Law of Moses became the law of the
land. Woman was elevated to a new place in the life of the ancient world.
[4] Children became sacred in the eyes of the people. Their literary
contribution, the Old Testament--written by a series of patriarchs,
lawgivers, prophets, and priests--pictures, often in sublime language, the
various migrations, deliverances, calamities, and religious hopes,
aspirations, and experiences of this Chosen People.

THE UNITY OF THIS PEOPLE. Just before their country was overrun and they
were carried captive to Babylon, in 588 B.C., the Pentateuch [5] had been
reduced to writing and made an authoritative code of laws for the people.
This served as a bond of union among them during the exile, and after
their return to Palestine, in 538 B.C., the study and observance of this
law became the most important duty of their lives. The synagogue was
established in every village for its exposition, where twice on every
Sabbath day the people were to gather to hear the law expounded. A race of
_Scribes_, or scripture scholars, also arose to teach the law, as well as
means for educating additional scribes. They were to interpret the law,
and to apply it to the daily lives of the people. As the law was a
combination of religious, ceremonial, civil, and sanitary law, these
scribes became both teachers and judges for the people. In time they
became the depositaries of all learning, superseded the priesthood, and
became the leaders (_rabbins_, whence _rabbi_) of the people. "The voice
of the rabbi is the voice of God," says the Talmud, a collection of Hebrew
customs and traditions, with comments and interpretations, written by the
rabbis after 70 B.C. By most Jews this is held to be next in sacredness to
the Old Testament (R. 27).

Realizing, after the return from captivity, that the future existence of
the Hebrew people would depend, not upon their military strength, but upon
their moral unity, and that this must be based upon the careful training
of each child in the traditions of his fathers, the leaders of the people
began the evolution of a religious school system to meet the national
need. Realizing, too, that parents could not be depended upon in all cases
to provide this instruction, the leaders provided it and made it
compulsory. Great open-air Bible classes were organized at first, and
these were gradually extended to all the villages of the country.
Elementary schools were developed later and attached to the synagogues,
and finally, in 64 A.D., the high priest, Joshua ben Gamala, ordered the
establishment of an elementary school in every village, made attendance
compulsory for all male children, and provided for a combined type of
religious and household instruction at home for all girls. Reading,
writing, counting, the history of the Chosen People, the poetry of the
Psalms, the Law of the Pentateuch, and a part of the Talmud constituted
the subject-matter of instruction. The instruction was largely oral, and
learning by heart was the common teaching plan. The child was taught the
Law of his fathers, trained to make holiness a rule of his life and to
subordinate his will to that of the one God, and commanded to revere his
teachers (R. 27) and uphold the traditions of his people.

After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) and the scatterment of the
people, the school instruction was naturally more or less disrupted, but
in one way or another the Hebrew people have ever since managed to keep up
the training of rabbis and the instruction of the young in the Law and the
traditions of their people, and as a consequence of this instruction we
have to-day the interesting result of a homogeneous people who, for over
eighteen centuries, have had no national existence, and who have been
scattered and persecuted as have no other people. History offers us no
better example of the salvation of a people by means of the compulsory
education of all.

THE NEW CHRISTIAN FAITH. It was into this Hebrew race that Jesus was born,
[6] and there he lived, learned, taught, made his disciples, and was
crucified. Building on the old Hebrew moral law and the importance of the
personal life, Jesus made his appeal to the individual, and sought the
moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of individual
men and women. This idea of individuality and of personal souls worth
saving was a new idea in a world where the submergence of the individual
in the State had everywhere up to that time been the rule. Even the
Hebrews, in their great desire to perpetuate their race and faith, had
suppressed and absorbed the individual in their religious State. The
teachings of Jesus, on the other hand, with their emphasis on charity,
sympathy, self-sacrifice, and the brotherhood of all men, tended to
obliterate nationality, while the emphasis they gave to the future life,
for which life here was but a preparation, tended to subordinate the
interests of the State and withdraw the concern of men from worldly
affairs. In a series of simple sermons, Jesus set forth the basis of this
new faith which he, and after him his disciples, offered to the world.

At the time of his crucifixion his disciples numbered scarcely one hundred
persons. For some years after his death his disciples remained in
Jerusalem, preaching that he was the Messiah or Christ, whom the Hebrew
people had long expected, and making converts to the idea. Later in
Samaria, Damascus, and Antioch they made additional converts among the
Jews. Up to this point the Christians had been careful to keep up all the
old Jewish customs, and it was even doubted at first whether any but Jews
could properly be admitted to the new faith. A new convert, Saul of
Tarsus, a Jew who had studied in the Greek university there and who
afterwards became the Apostle Paul, did much to open the new faith to the
Gentiles, as the men of other nations were known. Speaking Greek, and
being versed in Greek philosophy, and especially Stoicism, he gave thirty
years of most effective service to the establishment of Christian churches
[7] in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece (R. 29), and Italy (R. 28). His work
was so important that he has often been called the second founder of the
Christian Church.

THE CHALLENGE OF CHRISTIANITY. Into a Roman world that had already passed
the zenith of its greatness came this new Christian faith, challenging
almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. In place of Roman
citizenship and service to the State as the purpose of life, the
Christians set up the importance of the life to come. Instead of pleasure
and happiness and the satisfaction of the senses as personal ends, the
Christians preached denial of all these things for the greater joy of a
future life. In a society built on a huge basis of slavery and filled with
social classes, the Christians proclaimed the equality of all men before
God. To a nation in which family life had become corrupt, infidelity and
divorce common, and infanticide a prevailing practice, the Christians
proclaimed the sacredness of the marriage tie and the family life, and the
exposure of infants as simple murder. In place of the subjection of the
individual to the State, the Christians demanded the subjection of the
individual only to God. In place of a union of State and religion, the
Christians demanded the complete separation of the two and the
subordination of the State to the Church. Unlike all other religions that
Rome had absorbed, the Christians refused to be accepted on any other than
exclusive terms. The worship of all other gods the Christians held to be
sinful idol-worship, a deadly sin in the eyes of God, and they were
willing to give up their lives rather than perform the simplest rite of
what they termed pagan worship (R. 28). To the deified Emperor the
Christians naturally could not bend the knee (Rs. 30 b, 31 a-b, 34).

At first the new faith attracted but little attention from anybody of
education or influence. Its converts were few during the first century,
and these largely from among the lowest social classes in the Empire.
Workmen and slaves, and women rather than men, constituted the large
majority of the early converts to the new faith. The character of its
missionaries [8] also was against it, and its challenge of almost all that
characterized the higher social and governmental life of Rome was certain
to make its progress difficult, and in time to awaken powerful opposition
[9] to it. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, its progress was
relatively rapid.

THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. By the close of the first century there were
Christian churches throughout most of Judea and Asia Minor, and in parts
of Greece and Macedonia. During the second century other churches were
established in Asia Minor, in Greece, and along the Black Sea, and at a
few places in Italy and France; and before four centuries had elapsed from
the crucifixion Christian churches had been established throughout almost
all the Roman world. This is well shown by the map on the opposite page.
The message of hope that Christianity had to offer to all; the simplicity
of its organization and teachings; the great appeal which it made to the
emotional side of human life; the hope of a future life of reward for the
burdens of this which it extended to all who were weary and heavy laden;
the positiveness of conviction of its apostles and followers; and the
completeness with which it satisfied the religious need and longings of
the time, first among the poor and among women and later among educated
men--all helped the new faith to win its way. The unity in that Rome had
everywhere established; [10] the Roman peace (_pax Romana_) that Rome had
everywhere imposed; the spread of the Greek and Latin languages and ideas
throughout the Mediterranean world; the right of freedom of travel and
speech enjoyed by a Roman citizen, and of which Saint Paul and others on
their travels took advantage; [11] the scatterment of Jews throughout the
Empire, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.--all these elements
also helped.

[ILLUSTRATION: FIG. 27. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE END OF THE
FOURTH CENTURY]

That Christianity made its headway unmolested must not be supposed. While
at first the tendency of educated Romans and of the government was to
ignore or tolerate it, its challenge was so direct and provocative that
this attitude could not long continue. Under the Emperor Claudius (41-54
A.D.) "all the Jews who were continually making disturbances at the
instigation of one Chrestus" were unsuccessfully ordered banished from
Rome. In the reign of the Emperor Nero, in 64 A.D., many horrible tortures
were inflicted on this as yet small sect. It was not, however, till later,
when the continued refusal of the Christians to offer sacrifices to the
Emperor brought them under the law as disloyal (R. 30 a) subjects, that
they began to be much punished for their faith (R. 31 a-b). The times were
bad and were going from bad to worse, and the feelings of many were that
the adverse conditions in the Empire--war, famine, floods, pestilence, and
barbarian inroads--were due to the neglect of the old state religion and
to the tolerance extended the vast organized defiance of the law by the
Christians. In the first century they had been largely ignored. In the
second, in some places, they were punished. In the third century, impelled
by the calamities of the State and the urging of those who would restore
the national religion to its earlier position, the Emperors were gradually
driven to a series of heavy persecutions of the sect (R. 30 a). But it had
now become too late. The blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the
Church (R. 35). The last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian,
in 303 (R. 33), ended in virtual failure. In 311 the Emperor Galerius
placed Christianity on a plane of equality with other forms of worship (R.
36). In 313 Constantine made it in part the official religion of the State
[12] and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors
gradually extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important
privileges (R. 38) and exemptions, [13] analogous to those formerly
enjoyed by the teachers of rhetoric under the Empire (R. 26), and likewise
began the policy, so liberally followed later, of endowing the Church. In
391 the Emperor Theodosius forbade all pagan worship, thus making the
victory of Christianity complete. In less than four centuries from the
birth of its founder the Christian faith had won control of the great
Empire in which it originated. In 529 the Emperor Justinian ordered the
closing of all pagan schools, and the University of Athens, which had
remained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christianity,
closed its doors. The victory was now complete.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. We have now before us the third great
contribution upon which our modern civilization has been built. To the
great contributions of Greece and Rome, which we have previously studied,
there now was added, and added at a most opportune time, the contribution
of Christianity. In taking the Jewish idea of one God and freeing it from
the narrow tribal limitations to which it had before been subject,
Christianity made possible its general acceptance, first in the Roman
world, and later in the Mohammedan world. [14] With this was introduced
the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and his love for man, the equality
before God of all men and of the two sexes, and the sacredness of each
individual in the eyes of the Father. An entirely new conception of the
individual was proclaimed to the world, and an entirely new ethical code
was promulgated. The duty of all to make their lives conform to these new
conceptions was asserted. These ideas imparted to ancient society a new
hopefulness and a new energy which were not only of great importance in
dealing with the downfall of civilization and the deluge of barbarism
which were impending, but which have been of prime importance during all
succeeding centuries. In time the church organization which was developed
gradually absorbed all other forms of government, and became virtually the
State during the long period of darkness known as the Middle Ages.

It remains now to sketch briefly how the Church organized itself and
became powerful enough to perform its great task during the Middle Ages,
what educational agencies it developed, and to what extent these were
useful.


II. EDUCATIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH

SCHOOLING OF THE EARLY CHURCH; CATECHUMENAL INSTRUCTION. The early
churches were bound together by no formal bond of union, and felt little
need for such. It was the belief of many that Christ would soon return and
the world would end, hence there was little necessity for organization.
There was also almost no system of belief. An acknowledgment of God as the
Father, a repentance for past sins, a godly life, and a desire to be saved
were about all that was expected of any one. [15] The chief concern was
the moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of
converts. To accomplish this, in face of the practices of Roman society, a
process of instruction and a period of probation for those wishing to join
the faith soon became necessary. Jews, pagans, and the children of
believers were thereafter alike subjected to this before full acceptance
into the Church. At stated times during the week the probationers met for
instruction in morality and in the psalmody of the Church (R. 39). These
two subjects constituted almost the entire instruction, the period of
probation covering two or three years. The teachers were merely the older
and abler members of the congregation.

This personal instruction became common everywhere in the early Church,
and the training was known as _catechumenal_, that is, rudimentary,
instruction. Two sets of catechumenal lectures have survived, which give
an idea as to the nature of the instruction. They cover the essentials of
church practice and the religious life (RS. 39, 40). It was dropped
entirely in the conversion of the barbarian tribes. This instruction, and
the preaching of the elders (presbyters, who later evolved into priests),
constituted the formal schooling of the early converts to Christianity in
Italy and the East. Such instruction was never known in England, and but
little in Gaul.

The life in the Church made a moral and emotional, rather than an
intellectual appeal. In fact the early Christians felt but little need for
the type of intellectual education provided by the Roman schools, and the
character of the educated society about them, as they saw it, did not make
them wish for the so-called pagan learning. Even if the parents of
converts wished to provide additional educational advantages for their
children, what could they do? A modern author states well the predicament
of such Christian parents, when he says:

    All the schools were pagan. Not only were all the ceremonies of the
    official faith--and more especially the festivals of Minerva, who was
    the patroness of masters and pupils--celebrated at regular intervals
    in the schools, but the children were taught reading out of books
    saturated with the old mythology. There the Christian child made his
    first acquaintance with the deities of Olympus. He ran the danger of
    imbibing ideas entirely contrary to those which he had received at
    home. The fables he had learned to detest in his own home were
    explained, elucidated, and held up to his admiration every day by his
    masters. Was it right to put him thus into two schools of thought?
    What could be done that he might be educated, like every one else,
    and yet not run the risk of losing his faith? [16]

CATECHETICAL SCHOOLS. After Christianity had begun to make converts among
the more serious-minded and better-educated citizens of the Roman Empire,
the need for more than rudimentary instruction in the principles of the
church life began to be felt. Especially was this the case in the places
where Christian workers came in contact with the best scholars of the
Hellenic learning, and particularly at Alexandria, Athens, and the cities
of Asia Minor. The speculative Greek would not be satisfied with the
simple, unorganized faith of the early Christians. He wanted to understand
it as a system of thought, and asked many questions that were hard to
answer. To meet the critical inquiry of learned Greeks, it became
desirable that the clergy of the Church, in the East at least, should be
equipped with a training similar to that of their critics. As a result
there was finally evolved, first at Alexandria, and later at other places
in the Empire, training schools for the leaders of the Church.

These came to be known as _catechetical_ schools, from their oral
questioning method of instruction, and this term was later applied to
elementary religious instruction (whence _catechism_) throughout western
Europe. Pantaenus, a converted Greek Stoic, who became head of the
catechumenal instruction at Alexandria, in 179 A.D., brought to the
training of future Christian leaders the strength of Greek learning and
Greek philosophic thought. He and his successors, Clement and Origen,
developed here an important school of Christian theology where Greek
learning was used to interpret the Scriptures and train leaders for the
service of the Church. Similar schools were opened at Antioch, Edessa,
Nisibis, and Caesarea (See Map, p. 89), and these developed into a
rudimentary form of theological schools for the education of the eastern
Christian clergy. In these schools Christian faith and doctrine were
formulated into a sort of system, the whole being tinctured through and
through with Greek philosophic thought. Out of these schools came some of
the great Fathers of the early Church; men who strove to uphold the pagan
learning and reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophic thinking. [17]

REJECTION OF PAGAN LEARNING IN THE WEST. In the West, where the leaders of
the Church came from the less philosophic and more practical Roman stock,
and where the contact with a decadent society wakened a greater reaction,
the tendency was to reject the Hellenic learning, and to depend more upon
emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the
third century the hostility to the pagan schools and to the Hellenic
learning had here become pronounced (R. 41). Even the Fathers of the Latin
Church, the greatest of whom had been teachers of oratory or rhetoric in
Roman schools before their conversion, [18] gradually came to reject the
pagan learning as undesirable for Christians and in a large degree as a
robbery from God. Saint Augustine, in his _Confessions_, hopes that God
may forgive him for having enjoyed Vergil. Jerome's dream [19] was known
and quoted throughout the Middle Ages. Tertullian, in his _Prescription
against Heresies_, exclaims:

    What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there
    between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and
    Christians?... Away with all attempts to produce a mottled
    Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition.

Gregory the Great, Pope of the Church from 590 to 604, and who had been
well educated as a youth in the surviving Roman-type schools, turned
bitterly against the whole of pagan learning. "I am strongly of the
opinion," he says, "that it is an indignity that the words of the oracle
of Heaven should be restrained by the rules of Donatus" (grammar). In a
letter to the Bishop of Vienne he berates him for giving instruction in
grammar, concluding with--"the praise of Christ cannot lie in one mouth
with the praise of Jupiter. Consider yourself what a crime it is for
bishops to recite what would be improper for religiously-minded laymen."

As a result Hellenic learning declined rapidly in importance in the West
as the Church attained supremacy, and finally, in 401, the Council of
Carthage, largely at the instigation of Saint Augustine, forbade the
clergy to read any pagan author. In time Greek learning largely died out
in the West, and was for a time almost entirely lost. Even the Greek
language was forgotten, and was not known again in the West for nearly a
thousand years. [20]

THE CHURCH PERFECTS A STRONG ORGANIZATION. As was previously stated (p.
92), but little need was felt during the first two centuries for a system
of belief or church government. As the expected return of Christ did not
take place, and as the need for a formulation of belief and a system of
government began to be felt, the next step was the development of these
features. The system of belief and the ceremonials of worship finally
evolved are more the products of Greek thought and practices of the East,
while the form of organization and government is derived more from Roman
sources. In the second century the Old Testament was translated into Greek
at Alexandria, and the "Apostles' Creed" was formulated. During the third
century the writings deemed sacred were organized into the New Testament,
also in Greek. In 325 the first General Council of the Church was held at
Nicaea, in Asia Minor. It formulated the Nicene Creed (R. 42), and twenty
canons or laws for the government of the Church. A second General Council,
held at Constantinople in 381, revised the Nicene Creed and adopted
additional canons.

[Illustration: FIG. 28. A BISHOP
Seventh Century (Santo Venanzio, Rome)]

The great organizing genius of the western branch of the Church was Saint
Augustine (354-430). He gave to the Western or Latin Church, then
beginning to take on its separate existence, the body of doctrine needed
to enable it to put into shape the things for which it stood. The system
of theology evolved before the separation of the eastern and western
branches of the Church was not so finished and so finely speculative as
that of the Greek branch, but was more practical, more clearly legal, and
more systematically organized.

The influence of Rome was strong also in the organization of the system of
government finally adopted for the Church. There being no other model, the
Roman governmental system was copied. The bishop of a city corresponded to
the Roman municipal officials; the archbishop of a territory to the
governor of a province; and the patriarch to the ruler of a division of
the Empire. As Rome had been a universal Empire, and as the city of Rome
had been the chief governing city, [21] the idea of a universal Church was
natural and the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was gradually asserted and
determined. [22]

A STATE WITHIN A STATE. There was thus developed in the West, as it were a
State within a State. That is, within the Roman Empire, with its Emperor,
provincial governors, and municipal officials, governing the people and
drawing their power from the Roman Senate and imperial authority, there
was also gradually developed another State, consisting of those who had
accepted the Christian faith, and who rendered their chief allegiance,
through priest, bishop, and archbishop, to a central head of the Church
who owed allegiance to no earthly ruler. That Christianity, viewed from
the governmental point of view, was a serious element of weakness in the
Roman State and helped its downfall, there can be no question. In the
eastern part of the Empire the Church was always much more closely
identified with the State. Fortunately for civilization, before the Roman
Empire had fallen and the impending barbarian deluge had descended, the
Christian Church had succeeded in formulating a unifying belief and a form
of government capable of commanding respect and of enforcing authority,
and was fast taking over the power of the State itself.

THE CATHEDRAL OR EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS. The first churches throughout the
Empire were in the cities, and made their early converts there. [23]
Gradually these important cities evolved into the residences of a
supervising priest or bishop, the territory became known as a _bishopric_,
and the church as a _cathedral church_. In time, also, some of the
outlying territory was organized into parishes, and churches were
established in these. These were made tributary to and placed under the
direction of the bishop of the large central city. To supply clergy for
these outlying parishes came to be one of the functions of the bishop,
and, to insure properly trained clergy and to provide for promotions in
the clerical ranks, schools of a rudimentary type were established in
connection with the cathedral churches. These came to be known as
_cathedral_, or _episcopal schools_. At first they were probably under the
immediate charge of the bishop, but later, as his functions increased, the
school was placed under a special teacher, known as a _Scholasticus_, or
_Magister Scholarum_, who directed the cathedral school, assisted the
bishop, and trained the future clergy. As the pagan secondary schools died
out, these cathedral schools, together with the monastic schools which
were later founded, gradually replaced the pagan schools as the important
educational institutions of the western world. In these two types of
schools the religious leaders of the early Middle Ages were trained.

THE MONASTIC ORGANIZATION. In the early days of Christianity, it will be
remembered (p. 87), the Christian convert held himself apart from the
wicked world all about him, and had little to do with the society or the
government of his time. He regarded the Church as having no relationship
to the State. As the Church grew stronger, however, and became a State
within a State, the Christian took a larger and larger part in the world
around him, and in time came to be distinguished from other men by his
profession of the Christian religion rather than by any other mark. Many
of the early bishops were men of great political sagacity, fully capable
of realizing to the full the political opportunities, afforded by their
position, to strengthen the power of the Church. It was the work of men of
this type that created the temporal power of the Church, and made of it an
institution capable of commanding respect and enforcing its decisions.

To some of the early Christians this life did not appeal. To them holiness
was associated with a complete withdrawal from contact with this sinful
world and all its activities. Some betook themselves to the desert, others
to the forests or mountains, and others shut themselves up alone that they
might be undisturbed in their religious meditations. To such devoted souls
monasticism, a scheme of living brought into the Christian world from the
East, made a strong appeal. It provided that such men should live together
in brotherhoods, renouncing the world, taking vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience, and devoting their lives to hard labor and the
mortification of the flesh that the soul might be exalted and made
beautiful. The members lived alone in individual cells, but came together
for meals, prayer, and religious service.

As early as 330 a monastery had been organized on the island of Tebernae,
in the Nile. About 350 Saint Basil introduced monasticism into Asia Minor,
where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The
monastic idea was soon transferred to the West, a monastery being
established at Rome probably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint
Victor, at Marseilles, was founded by Cassian in 404, and this type of
monastery and monastic rule was introduced into Gaul, about 415. The
monastery of Lerins (off Cannes, in southern France) was established in
405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of monastic foundations
took place in western Europe, particularly along the valleys of the Rhone
and the Loire in Gaul.

[Illustration: FIG. 29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS
(From a thirteenth-century manuscript)]

In 529 Saint Benedict, a Roman of wealth who fled from the corruption of
his city, founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, south of Rome, and
established a form of government, or rule of daily life, which was
gradually adopted by nearly all the monasteries of the West. In time
Europe came to be dotted with thousands of these establishments, many of
which were large and expensive institutions both to found and to maintain.
[24] By the time the barbarian invasions were in full swing monasticism
had become an established institution of the Christian Church. Nunneries
for women also were established early. A letter from Saint Jerome to
Marcella, a Roman matron, in 382, in which he says that "no high-born lady
at Rome had made profession of the monastic life ... or had ventured ...
publicly to call herself a nun," would seem to imply that such
institutions had already been established in Rome.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS. Poverty, chastity, obedience, labor, and religious
devotion were the essential features of a monastic life. The Rule of Saint
Benedict (R. 43) organized in a practical way the efforts of those who
took the vows. In a series of seventy-three rules which he laid down,
covering all phases of monastic life, the most important from the
standpoint of posterity was the forty-eighth, prescribing at least seven
hours of daily labor and two hours of reading "for all able to bear the
load." From that part of the rule requiring regular manual labor the monks
became the most expert farmers and craftsmen of the early Middle Ages,
while to the requirement of daily reading we owe in large part the
development of the school and the preservation of learning in the West
during the long intellectual night of the mediaeval period (R. 44).

Into these monastic institutions the _oblati_, that is, those who wished
to become monks, were received as early as the age of twelve, and
occasionally earlier (R. 53 a). The final vows (R. 53 b) could not be
taken until eighteen, so during this period the novice was taught to work
and to read and write, given instruction in church music, and taught to
calculate the church festivals and to do simple reckoning. In time some
condensed and carefully edited compendium of the elements of classical
learning was also studied, and still later a more elaborate type of
instruction was developed in some of the monasteries. This, however,
belongs to a later division of this history, and further description of
church and monastic education will be deferred until we study the
intellectual life of the Middle Ages.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. Aside from the general instruction in the
practices of the church and home instruction in the work of a woman, there
was but little provision made for the education of girls not desiring to
join a convent or nunnery. A few, however, obtained a limited amount of
intellectual training. The letter of Saint Jerome to the Roman lady Paula
(R. 45), regarding the education of her daughter, is a very important
document in the history of early Christian education for girls. Dating
from 403, it outlines the type of training a young girl should be given
who was to be properly educated in Christian faith and properly
consecrated to God. What he outlined was education for nunneries, a number
of which had been founded in the East and a few in the West. In the West
these institutions later experienced an extensive development, and offered
the chief opportunity for any intellectual education for women during the
whole of the Middle Ages.


III. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH

WHAT THE CHURCH BROUGHT TO THE MIDDLE AGES. From a small and purely
spiritual organization, devoting its energies to exhortation and to the
moral regeneration of mankind, and without creed or form of government, as
the Christian Church was in the first two centuries of its development, we
have traced the organization of a body of doctrine, the perfection of a
strong system of church government, and the development of a very limited
educational system designed merely to train leaders for its service. We
have also shown how it added to its early ecclesiastical organization a
strong governmental organization, became a State within a State, and
gradually came to direct the State itself. It was thus ready, when the
virtual separation of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western
division took place, in 395, and when the western division finally fell
before the barbarian onslaughts, to take up in a way the work of the
State, force the barbarian hordes to acknowledge its power, and begin the
process of civilizing these new tribes and building up once more a
civilization in the western world. In addition to its spiritual and
political power, the Church also had developed, in its catechumenal
instruction and in the cathedral and monastic schools, a very meager form
of an educational system for the training of its future leaders and
servants. A great change had now taken place in the nature of education as
a preparation for life, and intellectual education, in the sense that it
was known and understood in Greece and Rome, was not to be known again in
the western world for almost a thousand years. The distinguishing
characteristic of the centuries which follow, up to the Revival of
Learning, are, first, a struggle against very adverse odds to prevent
civilization from disappearing entirely, and later a struggle to build up
new foundations upon which world civilization might begin once more where
it had left off in Greece and Rome.

THE THREE GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. Thus, before the
Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world
which were to form the foundations of our future western civilization had
been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature
of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic
ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system
of wonderful effectiveness--one that in its higher development in time
took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly modified all
later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient
world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are
especially indebted for out conceptions of law, order, and government, and
for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of
other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest
conceptions of God, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to
Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas
universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world.

All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down
to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part
of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the
Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into
an East and West, in 395; and the final division of the Christian Church
into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually
effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek
language from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the
West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more
tolerant of pagan learning than was the Western, and was better able to
withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had
done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become
sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it.
Hellenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through
the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning
which we know as the _Renaissance_. Of the Latin literature and learning
much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the
monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously
deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of
barbarism and general ignorance through which it passed, and only in
modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of
its founder.

[Illustration: FIG. 30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE
CHURCH

The map also shows conditions as they were in Europe at the end of the
fourth century A.D. Syria, Egypt, Africa, and a portion of Asia Minor were
overwhelmed by the Saracens in the seventh century and became Mohammedan,
but Constantinople held out until 1453. The eastern division eventually
gave rise to the Greek Catholic Church of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia,
while the western division became the Roman Catholic Church of western
Europe. At Constantinople Greek learning was preserved until the West was
again ready to receive it. The Eastern Empire for a time retained control
of Sicily and southern Italy (the old _Magna Graecia_), but eventually
these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity.]

THE FUTURE STORY. For the long period of intellectual stagnation which now
followed, the educational story is briefly told. But little formal
education was needed, and that of but one main type. It was only after the
Church had won its victory over the barbarian hordes, and had built up the
foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that
education in any broad and liberal sense was again needed. This required
nearly a thousand years of laborious and painful effort. Then, when
schools again became possible and learning again began to be demanded,
education had to begin again with the few at the top, and the
contributions of Greece and Rome had to be recovered and put into usable
form as a basis upon which to build. It is only very recently that it has
become possible to extend education to all.

In Part II we shall next trace briefly the intellectual life of the Middle
Ages, and the reawakening, and in Part III we shall, among other things,
point out the deep and lasting influence of the work of these ancient
civilizations on our modern educational thoughts and practices.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Point out the many advantages of a universal religion for such a
universal Empire as Rome developed, and the advantages of Emperor worship
for such an Empire.

2. What do modern nations have that is much akin to Emperor worship?

3. Explain why Stoicism made such an appeal to the better-educated classes
at Rome.

4. Why is an emotional faith better adapted to the mass of people than an
intellectual one?

5. Explain how the Hebrew scribes, administering such a mixed body of
laws, naturally came to be both teachers and judges for the people.

6. Illustrate how the Hebrew tradition that the moral and spiritual unity
of a people is stronger than armed force has been shown to be true in
history.

7. What great lessons may we draw from the work of the Hebrews in
maintaining a national unity through compulsory education?

8. Why was Jesus' idea as to the importance of the individual destined to
make such slow headway in the world? What is the status of the idea to-day
(a) in China? (b) in Germany? (c) in England? (d) in the United States? Is
the idea necessarily opposed to nationality or even to a strong state
government?

9. Show how the political Church, itself the State, was the natural
outcome during the Middle Ages of the teachings of the early Christians as
to the relationship of Church and State.

10. Is it to be wondered that the Romans were finally led to persecute
"the vast organized defiance of law by the Christians"?

11. Show how the Christian idea of the equality and responsibility of all
gave the citizen a new place in the State.

12. State the reasons for the gradually increasing lack of sympathy and
understanding between the eastern and western Fathers of the Church, and
which finally led to the division of the Church.

13. Explain what is meant by "a State within a State" as applied to the
Church of the third and fourth centuries. Did this prove to be a good
thing for the future of civilization? Why?

14. Would Rome probably have been better able to withstand the barbarian
invasions if Christianity had not arisen, or not? Why?

15. Show how the Christian attitude toward pagan learning tended to stop
schools and destroy the accumulated learning.

16. What was the effect of the Christian attitude toward the care of the
body, on scientific and medical knowledge, and on education? Was the
Christian or the pagan attitude more nearly like that of modern times?

17. Why did the emphasis on form of belief, in the third and fourth
centuries, come to supersede the emphasis on personal virtues and simple
faith of the first and second centuries?

18. Compare the work of the Sunday School of to-day with the catechumenal
instruction of the early Christians.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  27. The Talmud: Educational Maxims from.
  28. Saint Paul: Epistle to the Romans.
  29. Saint Paul: To the Athenians.
  30. The Crimes of the Christians.
      (a) Minucius Felix: The Roman Point of View.
      (b) Tertullian: The Christian Point of View.
  31. Persecution of the Christians as Disloyal Subjects of the Empire.
      (a) Pliny to Trajan.
      (b) Trajan to Pliny.
  32. Tertullian: Effect of the Persecutions.
  33. Eusebius: Edicts of Diocletian against the Christians.
  34. Workman: Certificate of having Sacrificed to the Pagan Gods.
  35. Kingsley: The Empire and Christianity in Conflict.
  36. Lactantius: The Edict of Toleration by Galerius.
  37. Theodosian Code: The Faith of Catholic Christians.
  38. Theodosian Code: Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy.
  39. Apostolic Constitutions: How the Catechumens are to be instructed.
  40. Leach: Catechumenal Schools of the Early Church.
  41. Apostolic Constitutions: Christians should abstain from all Heathen
      Books.
  42. The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D.
  43. Saint Benedict: Extracts from the Rule of.
  44. Lanfranc: Enforcing Lenten Reading in the Monasteries.
  45. Saint Jerome: Letter on the Education of Girls.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Characterize the type of education to be provided and the status of the
teacher, as shown in the selections from the Talmud (27). Compare with
Rome. With Athens.

2. Characterize the attitude of Saint Paul toward the Romans (28). Does
his description of Athens (29) tally with the description of the Athenians
given in the text?

3. Was it possible for the Roman and the Christian to understand one
another, thinking as they did in such different terms (30 a-b)?

4. Considering Pliny and Trajan (31 a-b) as Roman officials, with the
Roman point of view, and taking into account the time in the history of
world civilization, would you say that they were quite tolerant of rebels
within the State?

5. Compare the privileges and immunities granted the clergy (38) with the
privileges previously given by Constantine to physicians and teachers
(26).

6. Characterize the irrepressible conflict as pictured by Kingsley (35).
Name a few other somewhat similar conflicts in world history.

7. Outline the type of instruction for catechumens as directed in the
Apostolic Constitutions (39).

8. What would have been the effect of the continued rejection of secular
books called for in the Apostolic Constitutions (41)?

9. What was the governmental advantage of the adoption of the Nicene Creed
(42)?

10. Why did the rule of Saint Benedict (43) requiring readings and study
lead to the copying and preservation of manuscripts?

11. What does the selection from Lanfranc (44) indicate as to the state of
monastic learning?

12. Was there anything pedagogically sound about the letter of Saint
Jerome (45) on the education of girls? Discuss.


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Dill, Sam'l. _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western
    Empire_.
  Fisher, Geo. P. _Beginnings of Christianity_.
* Fisher, Geo. P. _History of the Christian Church_.
* Hatch, Edw. _Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian
    Church_. (Hibbert Lectures, 1888.)
  Hodgson, Geraldine. _Primitive Church Education_.
  Kretzmann, P. E. _Education among the Jews_.
  MacCabe, Joseph. _Saint Augustine_.
* Monro, D. C. and Sellery, G. E. _Mediaeval Civilization_.
* Swift, F. H. _Education in Ancient Israel to 70 A.D._
  Taylor, H. O. _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_.
  Wishart, A. W. _Short History of Monks and Monasticism_.




PART II

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD

THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM
THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION




CHAPTER V

NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE


THE WEAKENED EMPIRE. Though the first and second centuries A.D. have often
been called one of the happiest ages in all human history, due to a
succession of good Emperors and peace and quiet throughout the Roman
world, [1] the reign of the last of the good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius
(161-180 A.D.), may be regarded as clearly marking a turning-point in the
history of Roman society. Before his reign Rome was ascendant, prosperous,
powerful; during his reign the Empire was beset by many difficulties--
pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German
inroads--to which it had not before been accustomed; and after his reign
the Empire was distinctly on the defensive and the decline. Though the
elements contributing to this change in national destiny had their origin
in the changes in the character of the national life at least two
centuries earlier, it was not until now that the Empire began to feel
seriously the effects of these changes in a lowered vitality and a
weakened power of resistance.

The virtues of the citizens of the early days of the Republic, trained
according to the old ideas, had gradually given way in the face of the
vices and corruption which beset and sapped the life of the upper and
ruling classes in the later Empire. The failure of Rome to put its
provincial government on any honest and efficient civil-service basis, the
failure of the State to establish and direct an educational system capable
of serving as a corrective of dangerous national tendencies, the lack of a
guiding national faith, the gradual admission of so many Germans into the
Empire, the great extent and demoralizing influence of slavery [2]--all
contributed to that loss of national strength and resisting power which
was now becoming increasingly evident. Other contributing elements of
importance were the almost complete obliteration of the peasantry by the
creation of great landed estates and cattle ranches worked by slaves, in
place of the small farms of earlier days; the increase of the poor in the
cities, and the declining birth-rate; the introduction of large numbers of
barbarians as farmers and soldiers; and the demoralization of the city
rabble by political leaders in need of votes. Captured slaves performed
almost every service, and a lavish display of wealth on the part of a few
came to be a characteristic feature of city life. [3] The great middle,
commercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and contented,
but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corruption, and new ideals
[4] had gradually sapped the old national vitality and destroyed the
resisting power of the State in the face of a great national calamity.
Rome now stood, much like the shell of a fine old tree, apparently in good
condition, but in reality ready to fall before the blast because it had
been allowed to become rotten at the heart. Sooner or later the boundaries
of the Empire, which had held against the pressure from without for so
long, were destined to be broken and the barbarian deluge from the north
and east would pour over the Empire.

[Illustration: FIG. 31. A BODYGUARD OF GERMANS
A relief from the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome, erected to celebrate
his victories over the Marcomanni, and other German tribes.]

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE BROKEN. While temporary extensions of
territory had at times been made beyond the Rhine and the Danube, these
rivers had finally come to be the established boundaries of the Empire on
the north, and behind these rivers the Teutonic barbarians, or _Germani_,
as the Romans called them, had by force been kept. To do even this the
Romans had been obliged to admit bands of Germans into the Empire, and had
taken them into the Roman army as "allies," making use of their great love
for fighting to hold other German tribes in check. In 166 A.D. the plague,
brought back by soldiers returning from the East, carried off
approximately half the population of Italy. This same year the Marcomanni
(see Figure 18), a former friendly tribe, invaded the Empire as far as the
head of the Adriatic Sea, and it required thirteen years of warfare to put
them back behind the Danube. Even this was accomplished only by the aid of
friendly German tribes. From this time on the Empire was more or less on
the defensive, with the barbarian tribes to the north casting increasingly
longing eyes toward "a place in the sun" and the rich plunder that lay to
the south, and frequently breaking over the boundaries. Rome, though, was
still strong enough to put them back again.

In 275 A.D., after a five years' struggle, the Eastern Emperor gave the
province of Dacia, to the south of the Danube, to the Visigoths, in an
effort to buy them off from further invasion and warfare. This eased the
pressure for another century. In 378 A.D., now pressed on by the terrible
Huns from behind, the Visigoths, as a body, invaded the Eastern Empire,
and in the Battle of Adrianople, near Constantinople, defeated the Roman
army, slew the Roman Emperor, definitely broke the boundaries of the
Empire, and they and the Ostrogoths now moved southward and settled in
Moesia and Thrace. The Germans at Adrianople learned that they could beat
the Roman legions, and from this time on it was they, and not the Romans,
who named the terms of ransom and the price of peace. A few years later,
under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Greece, then turned westward through
Illyria to the valley of the Po, in northern Italy, which they reached in
the year 400. In 410 the great calamity came when they captured and sacked
Rome. The effect produced on the Roman world by the fall of the Eternal
City, as the news of the almost incredible disaster penetrated to the
remote provinces, was profound (R. 48). For eight hundred years Rome had
not been touched by foreign hands, and now it had been captured and
plundered by barbarian hordes. It seemed to many as though the end of the
world were approaching. The Visigoths now turned west once more, carrying
with them the beautiful sister of the Emperor as a captive bride of the
chief, and finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul, which provinces
were thenceforth lost to Rome. This was the first of the great permanent
inroads into the Empire, and from now on Roman resistance seemed powerless
to stop the flood.

[Illustration: FIG. 32. THE GERMAN MIGRATIONS
The barriers of the Empire along the Rhine and the Danube now are broken
down. Take a pencil and trace the route followed by each of these
peoples.]

A PERIOD OF TRIBAL MOVEMENTS. The Hunnish pressure also started the
Vandals and Suevi, and within fifty years they had been able to move
across Germany, France, and Spain, plundering the cities on their way.
Finally they crossed to the northern coast of Africa, where they became
noted as the great sea pirates of the Mediterranean. In 455 they crossed
back to Italy, and Rome was sacked for the second time by barbarian
hordes. The Huns, under the leadership of Attila, the so-called "Scourge
of God," now moved in and ravaged Gaul (451) and northern Italy (452), and
then, at the intercession of the Roman Pope Leo, were induced by a ransom
price to return to the lower Danube, where they have since remained. In
476 the barbarian soldiers of the Empire, tired of camp life and demanding
land on which they too might settle, rose in revolt, displaced the last of
the Western Emperors, and elevated Odovacar, a tribesman from the north,
as ruler in his stead. The Western Roman Empire was now at an end. In 493
Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, became king of Italy.

Between 443 and 485 the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes left their earlier homes
in what is now Denmark and northwestern Germany, and overran eastern and
southern Britain. In 486 the Franks, a great nation living along the lower
Rhine, began to move, and within two generations had overrun almost all of
Gaul. In 586 the Lombards invaded and settled the valleys of northern
Italy, displacing the Ostrogoths there. Slavic tribes now moved into the
Eastern Empire--Serbs and Bulgars--and settled in Moesia and Thrace.
Southeastern Europe thus became Slavic-Greek, as western Europe had become
Teutonic-Latin. Figure 32 shows the results of these different migrations
up to about 500 A.D.

EUROPE TO BE TEUTONIC-LATIN. In the seventh century another great wave of
people, of a different racial stock and religion--Semitic and Mohammedan--
starting from Arabia and along the shores of the Red Sea, swept rapidly
through Egypt and Africa and across into Spain and France. For a time it
looked as though they might overrun all western Europe and bring the
German tribes under subjection. Fortunately they were definitely stopped
and decisively defeated by the Franks, in the great Battle of Tours, in
732. They also overran Syria and Persia, but were held in check in Asia
Minor by the Eastern Empire, which did not completely succumb to barbarian
inroads until Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453.

The importance of the result, to the future of our western civilization,
of this battle in the West can hardly be overestimated. The future of
European government, law, education, and civilization was settled on that
Saturday afternoon in October, on the battle plains of Tours. [5] It was a
struggle for mastery and dominion between the Aryan and Semitic races,
between the Christian and Mohammedan religions, between the forces
representing order on the one side and destruction on the other, and
between races destined to succeed to the civilization of Greece and Rome
and a race representing oriental despotism and static conditions.

[Illustration: FIG. 33. THE KNOWN WORLD IN 800
This map shows the great extent of the Mohammedan conquests. The part
marked as "European Heathen" was added to Christianity within the next few
centuries, and became a part of our Latin-Teutonic or western
civilization.]

Driven back across the Pyrenees by the Franks, these people settled in
Spain; later developed there, for a short period, a for-the-time
remarkable civilization, but one that only slightly influenced the current
of European development; and then disappeared as a force in our western
development and progress. We shall meet them again a little later, but
only for a little while, and then they concern our western development no
more.

Our interest from now on lies with the Teutonic-Latin peoples of western
Europe, for it is through them that our western civilization has been
worked out and has come down to us.

WHO THESE INVADERS WERE. A long-continued series of tribal migrations,
unsurpassed before in history, had brought a large number of new peoples
within the boundaries of the old Empire. They finally came so fast that
they could not have been assimilated even in the best days of Rome, and
now the assimilative and digestive powers of Rome were gone. Tall, huge of
limb, white-skinned, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue eyes, and clad in
skins and rude cloths, they seemed like giants to the short, small, dark-
skinned people of the Italian peninsula. Quarrelsome; delighting in
fighting and gambling; given to drunkenness and gluttonous eating;
possessed of a rude polytheistic religion in which _Woden_, the war god,
held the first place, and Valhalla was a heaven for those killed in
battle; living in rude villages in the forest, and maintaining themselves
by hunting and fishing--it is not to be wondered that Rome dreaded the
coming of these forest barbarians (R. 46).

[Illustration: FIG 34. A GERMAN WAR CHIEF
Restored, and rather idealized (From the Musee d'Artillerie at Paris)]

The tribes nearest the Rhine and the Danube had taken on a little
civilization from long contact with the Romans, but those farther away
were savage and unorganized (Rs. 46, 47). In general they represented a
degree of civilization not particularly different from that of the better
American Indians in our colonial period, [6] though possessing a much
larger ability to learn. The "two terrible centuries" which brought these
new peoples into the Empire were marked by unspeakable disorder and
frightful destruction. It was the most complete catastrophe that had ever
befallen civilized society.

[Illustration: FIG. 35. ROMANS DESTROYING A GERMAN VILLAGE
(From the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome) Note the circular huts of
reeds, without windows, and with but a single door.]

THEY SETTLE DOWN WITHIN THE EMPIRE. Finally, after a period of wandering
and plundering, each of these new peoples settled down within the Empire
as rulers over the numerically larger native Roman population, and slowly
began to turn from hunting to a rude type of farming. For three or four
centuries after the invasions ceased, though, Europe presented a dreary
spectacle of ignorance, lawlessness, and violence. Force reigned where law
and order had once been supreme. Work largely ceased, because there was no
security for the results of labor. The Roman schools gradually died out,
in part because of pagan hostility (all pagan schools were closed by
imperial edict in 529 A.D.), and in part because they no longer ministered
to any real need. The church and the monastery schools alone remained, the
instruction in these was meager indeed, and they served almost entirely
the special needs of the priestly and monastic classes. The Latin language
was corrupted and modified into spoken dialects, and the written language
died out except with the monks and the clergy. Even here it became greatly
corrupted. Art perished, and science disappeared. The former Roman skill
in handicrafts was largely lost. Roads and bridges were left without
repair. Commerce and intercourse almost ceased. The cities decayed, and
many were entirely destroyed (R. 49).

The new ruling class was ignorant--few could read or write their names--
and they cared little for the learning of Greece and Rome. Much of what
was excellent in the ancient civilizations died out because these new
peoples were as yet too ignorant to understand or use it, and what was
preserved was due to the work of others than themselves. It was with such
people and on such a basis that it was necessary for whatever constructive
forces still remained to begin again the task of building up new
foundations for a future European civilization. This was the work of
centuries, and during the period the lamp of learning almost went out.

BARBARIAN AND ROMAN IN CONTACT. Civilization was saved from almost
complete destruction chiefly by reason of the long and substantial work
which Rome had done in organizing and governing and unifying the Empire;
by the relatively slow and gradual coming of the different tribes; and by
the thorough organization of the governing side of the Christian Church,
which had been effected before the Empire was finally overrun and Roman
government ceased. In unifying the government of the Empire and
establishing a common law, language, and traditions, and in early
beginning the process of receiving barbarians into the Empire and
educating them in her ways and her schools, [7] Rome rendered the western
world a service of inestimable importance and one which did much to
prepare the way for the reception and assimilation of the invaders. [8] In
the cities, which remained Roman in spirit even after their rulers had
changed, and where the Roman population greatly preponderated even after
the invaders had come, some of the old culture and handicrafts were kept
up, and in the cities of southern Europe the municipal form of city
government was retained. Roman law still applied to trials of Roman
citizens, and many Roman governmental forms passed over to the invader
chiefly because he knew no other. The old Roman population for long
continued to furnish the clergy, and these, because of their ability to
read and write, also became the secretaries and advisers of their rude
Teutonic overlords. In one capacity or another they persuaded the leaders
of the tribes to adopt, not only Christianity, but many of the customs and
practices of the old civilization as well. These various influences helped
to assimilate and educate the newcomers, and to save something of the old
civilization for the future. Being strong, sturdy, and full of youthful
energy, and with a large capacity for learning, the civilizing process,
though long and difficult, was easier than it might otherwise have been,
and because of their strength and vigor these new races in time infused
new life and energy into every land from Spain to eastern Europe (R. 50).

The most powerful force with which the barbarians came in contact, though,
and the one which did most to reduce them to civilization, was the
Christian Church. Organized, as we have seen, after the Roman governmental
model, and as a State within a State, the Church gained in strength as the
Roman government grew weaker, and was ready to assume governmental
authority when Rome could no longer exert it. The barbarians here
encountered an organization stronger than force and greater than kings,
[9] which they must either accept and make terms with or absolutely
destroy. As all the tribes, though heathen, possessed some form of spirit
or nature worship or heathen gods, which served as a basis for
understanding the appeal of the Church, the result was the ultimate
victory, and the Christianizing, in name at least, of all the barbarian
tribes. This was the first step in the long process of civilizing and
educating them.

THE IMPRESS OF CHRISTIANITY UPON THEM. The importance of the services
rendered by bishops, priests, and monks during what are known as the _Dark
Ages_ can hardly be overestimated. In the face of might they upheld the
right of the Church and its representatives to command obedience and
respect. [10] The Christian priest gradually forced the barbarian chief to
do his will, though at times he refused to be awed into submission,
murdered the priest, and sacked the sacred edifice. That the Church lost
much of its early purity of worship, and adopted many practices fitted to
the needs of the time, but not consistent with real religion, there can be
no question. In time the Church gained much from the mixture of these new
peoples among the old, as they infused new vigor and energy into the blood
of the old races, but the immediate effect was quite otherwise. The Church
itself was paganized, but the barbarians were in time Christianized.

Priests and missionaries went among the heathen tribes and labored for
their conversion. Of course the leaders were sought out first, and often
the conversion of a chieftain was made by first converting his wife. After
the chieftain had been won the minor leaders in time followed. The lesson
of the cross was proclaimed, and the softening and restraining influences
of the Christian faith were exerted on the barbarian. It was, however, a
long and weary road to restore even a semblance of the order and respect
for life and property which had prevailed under Roman rule.

One of the most interesting of all the conversions was that made by the
Bishop Ulphilas (c. 313-383) among the Visigoths, before they moved
westward from their original home north of the Danube, in what is now
southwestern Russia. Ulphilas was made bishop and sent among them in 343,
and spent the remainder of his life in laboring with them. He devised an
alphabet for them, based on the Greek, and gave them a written language
into which he translated for them the Bible, or rather large portions of
it. In the translation he omitted the two books of Kings and the two
Samuels, that the people might not find in them a further stimulus to
their great warlike activity.

[Illustration: FIG. 36. A PAGE OF THE GOTHIC GOSPELS (_reduced_)
One of the treasures of the library of the University or Upsala, in
Sweden, is a manuscript of this translation by Bishop Ulphilas. Greek
letters, with a few Runic signs were used to represent Gothic sounds. The
word "rune" comes from a Gothic word meaning "mystery." To the primitive
Germans it seemed a mysterious thing that a series of marks could express
thought.]

Christianity had been carried early to Great Britain by Roman
missionaries, and in 440 Saint Patrick converted the Irish. In 563 Saint
Columba crossed to Scotland, founded the monastery at Iona, and began the
conversion of the Scots. After the Angles and Saxons and Jutes had overrun
eastern and southern Britain there was a period of several generations
during which this portion of the island was given over to Teutonic
heathenism. In 597 Saint Augustine, "the Apostle to the English," landed
in Kent and began the conversion of the people, that year succeeding in
converting Ethelbert, King of Kent. In 626 Edwin, King of Northumbria, was
converted, and in 635 the English of Wessex accepted Christianity. The
English at once became strong supporters of the Christian faith, and in
878 they forced the invading Danes to accept Christianity as one of the
conditions of the Peace of Wedmore. (See Map, Figure 42.)

In 496 Clovis, King of the Franks, and three thousand of his followers
were baptized, following a vow and a victory in battle; [11] in 587
Recarred, King of the Goths in Spain, was won over; and in 681 the South
Saxons accepted Christianity. The Germans of Bavaria and Thuringia were
finally won over by about 740. Charlemagne repeatedly forced the northern
Saxons to accept Christianity, between 772 and 804, when the final
submission of this German tribe took place. Finally, in the tenth century,
Rollo, Duke of the Normans, was won (912); Boleslav II, King of the
Bohemians, in 967; and the Hungarians in 972. In the tenth century the
Slavs were converted to the Eastern or Greek type of Christianity, and
Poland, Norway, and Sweden to the Western or Roman type. The last people
to be converted were the Prussians, a half-Slavic tribe inhabiting East
Prussia and Lithuania, along the eastern Baltic, who were not brought to
accept Christianity, in name, until near the middle of the thirteenth
century, though efforts were begun with them as early as 900. As late as
1230 they were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods to
secure their favor, but soon after this date they were forced to a nominal
acceptance of Christianity as a result of conquest by the "Teutonic
Knights." It was thus a thousand years after its foundation before Europe
had accepted in name the Christian faith. To change a nominal acceptance
to some semblance of a reality has been the work of the succeeding
centuries.

WORK OF THE CHURCH DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. Everywhere throughout the old
Empire, and far into the forest depths of barbarian lands, went bishops,
priests, and missionaries, and there parishes were organized, rude
churches arose, and the process of educating the fighting tribesmen in the
ways of civilized life was carried out. It was not by schools of learning,
but by faith and ceremonial that the Church educated and guided her
children into the type she approved. Schools for other than monks and
clergy for a time were not needed, and such practically died out. The
Church and its offices took the place of education and exercised a
wholesome and restraining influence over both young and old throughout the
long period of the Middle Ages. These the Church in time taught the
barbarian to respect. The great educational work of the Church during this
period of insecurity and ignorance has seldom been better stated than in
the following words by Draper:

    Of the great ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks
    of society, and these men, true to their democratic instincts, were
    often found to be the inflexible supporters of right against might.
    Eventually coming to be the depositaries of the knowledge that then
    existed, they opposed intellect to brute force, in many instances
    successfully, and by the example of the organization of the Church,
    which was essentially republican, they showed how representative
    systems may be introduced into the State. Nor was it over communities
    and nations that the Church displayed her chief power. Never in the
    world before was there such a system. From her central seat at Rome,
    her all-seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equally take
    in a hemisphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any
    individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces,
    and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was
    not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her.
    Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her
    altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his
    funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her
    confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of
    sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her
    exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his reliance on God, or
    strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of the holy
    and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to give repose to the souls of
    his dead. When, even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an
    offense, in the name of God she received it into her consecrated
    ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great reckoning-day.
    From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be his equal,
    and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recompense for
    those noble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside. Discountenancing
    all impure love, she put round that fireside the children of one
    mother, and made that mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In
    ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above savages,
    she vindicated the inviolability of her precincts against the hand of
    power, and made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the despairing
    and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in many a
    weary land. [12.]

THE CIVILIZING WORK OF THE MONASTERIES. No less important than the Church
and its clergy was the work of the monasteries and their monks in building
up a basis for a new civilization. These, too, were founded all over
Europe. To make a map of western Europe showing the monasteries
established by 800 A.D. would be to cover the map with a series of dots.
[13] The importance of their work is better understood when we remember
that the Germans had never lived in cities, and did not settle in them on
entering the Empire. The monasteries, too, were seldom established in
towns. Their sites were in the river valleys and in the forests (R. 69),
and the monks became the pioneers in clearing the land and preparing the
way for agriculture and civilization. Not infrequently a swamp was taken
and drained. The Middle-Age period was essentially a period of settlement
of the land and of agricultural development, and the monks lived on the
land and among a people just passing through the earliest stages of
settled and civilized life. In a way the inheritors of the agricultural
and handicraft knowledge of the Romans, the monks became the most skillful
artisans and farmers to be found, and from them these arts in time reached
the developing peasantry around them. Their work and services have been
well summed up by the same author just quoted, as follows:

    It was mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant class of Europe
    was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions and charities;
    the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal; their meager
    clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived; their
    shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful objects;
    the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their
    passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch on his brother;
    the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of the monastery,
    which had its own mill, its own bakehouse, and whatever was needed in
    an abstemious domestic economy (Figure 38); their silent hospitality
    to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands
    around their buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and,
    above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and
    celibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation
    from the world and a sacrifice to heaven--these were the things that
    arrested the attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on to
    civilization. [14]

THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MIDDLE AGES. That the lamp of learning burned low
during this period of assimilation is no cause for wonder. Recovery from
such a deluge of barbarism on a weakened society is not easy. In fact the
recovery was a long and slow process, occupying nearly the whole of a
thousand years. The problem which faced the Church, as the sole surviving
force capable of exerting any constructive influence, was that of changing
the barbarism and anarchy of the sixth century, with its low standards of
living and lack of humane ideals, into the intelligent, progressive
civilization of the fifteenth century. This was the work of the Middle
Ages, and largely the work of the Christian Church. It was not a period of
progress, but one of assimilation, so that a common western civilization
might in time be developed out of the diverse and hostile elements mixed
together by the rude force of circumstances. The enfeebled Roman race was
to be reinvigorated by mixture with the youthful and vigorous Germans (R.
50); to the institutions of ancient society were to be added certain
social and political institutions of the Germanic peoples; all were to be
brought under the rule of a common Christian Church; and finally, when
these people had become sufficiently civilized and educated to enable them
to understand and appreciate, "nearly every achievement of the Greeks and
the Romans in thought, science, law, and the practical arts" was to be
recovered and made a part of our western civilization.

In this chapter we have dealt largely with the great fundamental movements
which have so deeply influenced the course of human history. In the
chapters which immediately follow we shall tell how learning was preserved
during the period and what facilities for education actually existed;
trace the more important efforts made to reestablish schools and learning;
and finally describe the culmination of the process of absorbing and
educating the Germans in the civilization they had conquered that came in
the great period of recovery of the ancient learning and civilization--the
age of the Renaissance.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Do the peculiar problems of assimilation of the foreign-born, revealed
to us by the World War, put us in a somewhat similar position to Rome
under the Empire as relates to the need of a guiding national faith?

2. Outline how Rome might have been helped and strengthened by a national
school system under state control.

3. Outline how our state school systems could be made much more effective
as national instruments by the infusion into their instruction of a strong
national faith.

4. Try to picture the results upon our civilization had western Europe
become Mohammedan.

5. The movement of new peoples into the Roman Empire was much slower than
has been the immigration of foreign peoples into the United States, since
1840. Why the difference in assimilative power?

6. How do you think the Roman provinces and Italy, after the tribes from
the North had settled down within the Empire, compared with Mexico after
the years of revolution with peons and brigands in control? With Russia,
after the destruction wrought by the Bolshevists?

7. Explain the importance of the long civilizing and educating work of
Rome among the German tribes, in preparing the means for the preservation
of Roman institutions after the downfall of the Roman government.

8. What does the fact that Roman institutions and Roman thinking continued
and profoundly modified mediaeval life indicate as to the nature of Roman
government and the Roman power of assimilation?

9. Though Rome never instituted a state school system, was there not after
all large educational work done by the government through its intelligent
administration?

10. Show how the breakdown of Roman government and Roman institutions was
naturally more complete in Gaul than in northern Italy, and more complete
in northern than in central or southern Italy, and hence how Roman
civilization was naturally preserved in larger measure in the cities of
Italy than elsewhere.

11. Show how the Christian Church, too, could not have completely
dispensed with Roman letters and Roman civilization, had it desired to do
so, but was forced of necessity to preserve and pass on important portions
of the civilization of Rome.

12. What do you think would have been the effect on the future of
civilization had the barbarian tribes overrun Spain, Italy, and Greece
during the Age of Pericles?

13. What modern analogies do we have to the civilizing work of the monks
and clergy during the Middle Ages?

14. Picture the work of the monasteries in handing on to western Europe
the arts and handicrafts and skilled occupations of Rome. Cite some
examples.

15. What civilizing problem, somewhat comparable to that of barbarian
Europe, have we faced in our national history? Why have we been able to
obtain results so much more rapidly?


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  46. Caesar: The Hunting Germans and their Fighting Ways.
  47. Tacitus: The Germans and their Domestic Habits.
  48. Dill: Effect on the Roman World of the News of the Sacking of Rome
      by Alaric.
  49. Giry and Reville: Fate of the Old Roman Towns.
  50. Kingsley: The Invaders, and what they brought.
  51. General Form for a Grant of Immunity to a Bishop.
  52. Charlemagne: Powers and Immunities granted to the Monastery of Saint
      Marcellus.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. State the differences in character Caesar observes (46) between the
Gauls to the west of the Rhine and the Germans to the east.

2. What German characteristics that Tacitus describes (47) would prove
good additions to Roman life?

3. Do the emotions of Saint Jerome on hearing of the sacking of Rome (48)
reveal anything as to the extent to which the Roman had become a Churchman
and the Churchman a Roman? Illustrate.

4. Is it probable that a quarter-century of Bolsheviki rule in Russia
would produce results comparable to those described by Giry and Reville
(49)?

5. Is Kingsley right in stating (50) that the best elements of all the
modern European peoples came from the barbarian invaders? State what seem
to you to be the important contributions of barbarian invader, Roman, and
Churchman.

6. Do the grants of privileges and immunities shown in the general form
(51)and the specific form (52) seem to follow naturally from the earlier
grants to physicians and teachers (26) and to the clergy (38)? Point out
the relationship.


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
  Church, R. W. _The Beginnings of the Middle Ages_.
  Kingsley, Chas. _The Roman and Teuton_.
* Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.




CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES [1]


I. CONDITION AND PRESERVATION OF LEARNING

THE LOW INTELLECTUAL LEVEL. As was stated in the preceding chapter, the
lamp of learning burned low throughout the most of western Europe during
the period of assimilation and partial civilization of the barbarian
tribes. The western portion of the Roman Empire had been overrun, and rude
Germanic chieftains were establishing, by the law of might, new kingdoms
on the ruins of the old. The Germanic tribes had no intellectual life of
their own to contribute, and no intellectual tastes to be ministered unto.
With the destruction of cities and towns and country villas, with their
artistic and literary collections, much that represented the old culture
was obliterated, [2] and books became more and more scarce. [3] The
destruction was gradual, but by the beginning of the seventh century the
loss had become great. The Roman schools also gradually died out as the
need for an education which prepared for government and gave a knowledge
of Roman law passed away, and the type of education approved by the Church
was left in complete control of the field. As the security and leisure
needed for study disappeared, and as the only use for learning was now in
the service of the Church, education became limited to the narrow lines
which offered such preparation and to the few who needed it. Amid the
ruins of the ancient civilization the Church stood as the only
conservative and regenerative force, and naturally what learning remained
passed into its hands and under its control.

The result of all these influences and happenings was that by the
beginning of the seventh century Christian Europe had reached a very low
intellectual level, and during the seventh and eighth centuries conditions
grew worse instead of better. Only in England and Ireland, as will be
pointed out a little later, and in a few Italian cities, was there
anything of consequence of the old Roman learning preserved. On the
Continent there was little general learning, even among the clergy (R. 64
a). Many of the priests were woefully ignorant, [4] and the Latin writings
of the time contain many inaccuracies and corruptions which reveal the low
standard of learning even among the better educated of the clerical class.
The Church itself was seriously affected by the prevailing ignorance of
the period, and incorporated into its system of government and worship
many barbarous customs and practices of which it was a long time in
ridding itself. So great had become the ignorance and superstition of the
time, among priests, monks, and the people; so much had religion taken on
the worship of saints and relics and shrines; and so much had the Church
developed the sensuous and symbolic, that religion had in reality become a
crude polytheism instead of the simple monotheistic faith of the early
Church. Along scientific lines especially the loss was very great.
Scientific ideas as to natural phenomena disappeared, and crude and
childish ideas as to natural forces came to prevail. As if barbarian
chiefs and robber bands were not enough, popular imagination peopled the
world with demons, goblins, and dragons, and all sorts of superstitions
and supernatural happenings were recorded. Intercommunication largely
ceased; trade and commerce died out; the accumulated wealth of the past
was destroyed; and the old knowledge of the known world became badly
distorted, as is evidenced by the many crude mediaeval maps. (See Figure
46.) The only scholarship of the time, if such it might be called, was the
little needed by the Church to provide for and maintain its government and
worship. Almost everything that we to-day mean by civilization in that age
was found within the protecting walls of monastery or church, and these
institutions were at first too busy building up the foundations upon which
a future culture might rest to spend much time in preserving learning,
much less in advancing it.

[Illustration: FIG. 37. A TYPICAL MONASTERY of SOUTHERN EUROPE]

THE MONASTERIES DEVELOP SCHOOLS. In this age of perpetual lawlessness and
disorder the one opportunity for a life of repose and scholarly
contemplation lay in the monasteries. Here the rule of might and force was
absent (R. 52), and the timid, the devout, and the studiously inclined
here found a refuge from the turbulence and brutality of a rude
civilization. The early monasteries, and especially the monastery of Saint
Victor, at Marseilles, founded by Cassian in 404, had represented a
culmination of the western feeling of antagonism to all ancient learning,
but with the founding of Monte Cassino by Saint Benedict, in 529 A.D., and
the promulgation of the Benedictine rule (R. 43), a more liberal attitude
was shown. [5] This rule was adopted generally by the monasteries
throughout what is now Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, and the
Benedictine became the type for the monks of the early Middle Ages. To
this order we are largely indebted for the copying of books and the
preservation of learning throughout the mediaeval period.

The 48th rule of Saint Benedict, it will be remembered (R. 43), had
imposed reading and study as a part of the daily duty of every monk, but
had said nothing about schools. Subsequent regulations issued by superiors
had aimed at the better enforcement of this rule (R. 44), that the monks
might lead devout lives and know the Bible and the sacred writings of the
Church. Imposed at first as a matter of education and discipline for the
monks, this rule ultimately led to the establishment of schools and the
development of a system of monastic instruction. As youths were received
at an early age [6] into the monasteries to prepare for a monastic life,
it was necessary that they be taught to read if they were later to use the
sacred books. This led to the duty of instructing novices, which marks the
beginning of monastic instruction for those within the walls. As books
were scarce and at the same time necessary, and the only way to get new
ones was to copy from old ones, the monasteries were soon led to take up
the work once carried on by the publishing houses of ancient Rome, and in
much the same way. This made writing necessary, and the novices had to be
instructed carefully in this, as well as in reading. [7] The chants and
music of the Church called for instruction of the novices in music, and
the celebration of Easter and the fast and festival days of the Church
called for some rudimentary instruction in numbers and calculation.

Out of these needs rose the monastery school, the copying of manuscripts,
and the preservation of books. Due to their greater security and quiet the
monasteries became the leading teaching institutions of the early part of
the Middle-Age period, and those who wished their children trained for the
service of the Church gave them to the monasteries (R. 53 a). The
development of the monastic schools was largely voluntary, though from an
early date bishops and rulers began urging the monasteries to open schools
for boys in connection with their houses, and schools became in time a
regular feature of the monastic organization. From schools only for those
intending to take the vows (_oblati_), the instruction was gradually
opened, after the ninth century, to others (_externi_) not intending to
take the vows, and what came to be known as "outer" monastic schools were
in time developed.

[Illustration: FIG. 38. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A MEDIAEVAL MONASTERY
(From an engraving by Viollet-le-Duc, dated 1718, of the Cistercian Abbey
of Citeaux, in France) This monastery was founded in the forests of what
is now northeastern France, in 1198 A.D., and was the first of a reformed
Benedictine order, known as Cistercians. For an explanation of the
monastery, see the opposite page. (Note: explanation follows.)

_Explanation of the Monastery opposite_: The cross, by the roadside,
indicates the entrance gate. Passing through the orchards and fields, the
traveler reached the outer gate-house. At the almonry (_C_) food and drink
were given out; on the second floor rooms for the night could be had; in
the little chapel (_D_) prayers could be said; and in the stable (_F_) the
traveler's horse could be cared for for the night. An inner gate through
(_E_) opened into an inner court, around which were the barns, chicken-
yards, cow-sheds, etc. The Abbot lived at _H_. _G_ was a dormitory for the
lay brothers who did the heavy work of the monastery, and who entered the
church (_N_) at the rear through a special doorway (_S_). All of these
buildings were considered as outside the monastery proper.

Inside were the great church (_N_), with the library (_P_) in the rear.
Seven _scriptoria_ are shown on the side of the library building. _M_ was
the large dormitory for the monks, and _R_ the infirmary for old and sick
brothers. _I_ was the kitchen, _K_ was the dining-hall (refectory), and
_L_ the stairs to the upper dormitory rooms. _C_ and _E_ are two cloisters
with corridors on the four sides, somewhat similar to the cloisters shown
for the monastery on Plate I. The copying of books often took place in
these cloisters, though a _scriptorium_ was usually found under the
library, the library proper, as in Plate 2, being on the second floor
(_P_) and reached by a winding stair. A wall surrounded the monastery
grounds, and a stream of running water passed through them.]

The monasteries became the preservers of learning. Another need developed
the copying of pagan books, and incidentally the preservation of some of
the best of Roman literature. The language of the Church very naturally
was Latin, as it was a direct descendant of Roman life, governmental
organization, citizenship, and education. The writings of the Fathers of
the Western Church had all been in Latin, and in the fourth century the
Bible had been translated from the Greek into the Latin. This edition,
known as the _Vulgate_ [8] _Bible_, became the standard for western Europe
for ten centuries to come. The German tribes which had invaded the Empire
had no written languages of their own, and their spoken dialects differed
much from the Latin speech of those whom they had conquered. Latin was
thus the language of all those of education, and naturally continued as
the language of the Church and the monastery for both speech and writing.
All books were, of course, written in Latin.

Under the rude influences and the general ignorance of the period, though,
the language was easily and rapidly corrupted, and it became necessary for
the monasteries and the churches to have good models of Latin prose and
verse to refer to. These were best found in the old Latin literary
authors--particularly Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil. To have these, due to
the great destruction of old books which had taken place during the
intervening centuries, it was necessary to copy these authors, [9] as well
as the Psalter, the Missal, [10] the sacred books, and the writings of the
Fathers of the Church (Rs. 55, 56). It thus happened that the monasteries
unintentionally began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and
from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their
contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as
farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were
never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number
gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their literary
activity and for the character of their instruction. The monasteries thus
in time became the storehouses of learning, the publishing houses of the
Middle Ages (Rs. 54, 55, 56), teaching institutions of first importance,
and centers of literary activity and religious thought, as well as centers
for agricultural development, work in the arts and crafts, and Christian
hospitality. Many developed into large and important institutions (R. 69).

THE COPYING OF MANUSCRIPTS. [11] The work of the more important
monasteries and the monastic churches in copying books was a service to
learning of large future significance. While many of the books copied were
for the promotion of the religious service, such as Missals and Psalters
(R. 55), and many others were tales of saints and wearisome comments on
the sacred writings, a few were old classical texts representing the best
of Roman literary work. A few monastic chronicles and histories of
importance were composed by the brothers, and also preserved for us by the
copying process.

The production of a single book was a task of large proportions, and
explains in part the small number of volumes the monasteries accumulated.
After the raids of the Mohammedans across Egypt, in the seventh century,
the supply of Egyptian papyrus stopped because of the interruption of
communications, and the only writing material during the Middle Ages was
the skin of sheep or goats or calves. Sheepskins were chiefly used, and a
book of size might require a hundred or more skins. These were first
soaked in limewater to loosen the hair, then scraped clean of hair and
flesh, and then carefully stretched on board frames to dry. After they had
dried they were again scraped with sharp knives to secure an even
thickness, and then rubbed smooth with pumice and chalk. When finished,
the clean, shining, cream-colored skin was known as vellum, [12] or
parchment. This was next cut into pages of the desired size and arranged
ready for writing. The larger pieces were used for large books, such as
are shown in Plate 2, and the remnants to produce small books. The inks,
too, had to be prepared, and the pages ruled.

The main writing was done with black, but the page was frequently bordered
with red, gold, or some other bright color, while many beautiful
illustrations were inserted by artistic monks. Sometimes an initial letter
was beautifully embellished, as is shown in Figure 39; sometimes
illustrations were introduced in the body of the page, of which Figures 39
and 40 are types; and sometimes a colored illustration was painted on a
sheet of vellum and inserted in the book. Figure 44 represents such an
illustrated page in an old manuscript. Finally, when completed, the
lettered and illustrated parchment sheets were arranged in order, sewed
together with a deerskin or pigskin string, bound together between oaken
boards and covered with pigskin, properly lettered in gold, fitted with
metal corners and clasps (R. 57), as shown in Plate 2, and often chained
to their bookrack in the library with heavy iron chains as well. (See
Figure 71 and Plate 2.) Still further to protect the volume from theft, an
anathema against the thief was usually lettered in the volume (R. 58).

[Illustration: FIG. 39. INITIAL LETTER FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT
This shows the beautiful work done by some of the nuns and monks in
"illuminating" the books they copied. This was done in colors by a nun,
who pictured her own work in this initial letter L.]

Such was the painfully slow method of producing and multiplying books
before the advent of printing, and in days when skill in copying
manuscripts was not particularly common, even among the monks. It required
from a few months to a year or more to produce a few copies, depending on
the size and nature of the work, whereas to-day, with printing-presses,
five thousand copies of such a book as this can be printed and bound in a
few days.

[Illustration: FIG. 40. A MONK IN A SCRIPTORIUM
(From an illuminated picture in a manuscript in the Royal Library at
Brussels) This picture shows the beautiful work done in "illuminating"
manuscript books by mediaeval writers. Each copy was a work of art. This
represents a better type of _scriptorium_ than is usually shown.]

THE SCRIPTORIUM. An important part of the material equipment of many
monasteries, in consequence, came to be a _scriptorium_, or writing-room,
where the copying of manuscripts could take place undisturbed. In some
monasteries one general room was provided, though it was customary to have
a number of small rooms at the side of the library. In the monastery shown
in Figure 38, seven small rooms for this purpose are shown built out on
one side of the library. Sometimes individual cells along a corridor were
provided. The advantage of the single room in which a number of monks
worked came when an edition of eight or ten copies of a book was to be
prepared. One monk could then dictate, while eight or ten others carefully
printed on the skins before them what was dictated by the reader. [13]
Figure 40 shows a monk at work, though here he is copying from a book
before him. After an edition of eight or ten copies of a book had been
prepared and bound the extra copies were sent to neighboring and sometimes
distant monasteries, sometimes in exchange for other books, and sometimes
as gifts to brothers who had longed to read the work  (R. 55). New
monasteries were provided with the beginnings of a library in this way,
and churches were supplied with Missals, Psalters, and other books needed
for their services.

The writing-room, or rooms, came to be a very important place in those
monasteries noted for their literary activity. West gives an interesting
description of the _scriptorium_ at Tours, where the learned English monk,
Alcuin, was Abbot from 796 to 804, and which at the time was the principal
book-writing monastery in Frankland. Describing Alcuin's labors to secure
books to send to other monasteries in Charlemagne's kingdom, he says:

We can almost reconstruct the scene. In the intervals between the hours of
prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for
the copying of books under the presiding genius of Alcuin. The young monks
file into the _scriptorium_, and one of them is given the precious
parchment volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or
else some portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen author. He
reads slowly and clearly at a measured rate while all the others seated at
their desks take down his words, and thus perhaps a score of copies are
made at once. Alcuin's observant eye watches each in turn, and his
correcting hand points out the mistakes in orthography and punctuation.
The master of Charles the Great, in that true humility that is the charm
of his whole behavior, makes himself the writing-master of his monks,
stooping to the drudgery of faithfully and gently correcting their many
puerile mistakes, and all for the love of studies and the love of Christ.
Under such guidance, and deeply impressed by the fact that in the copying
of a few books they were saving learning and knowledge from perishing, and
thereby offering a service most acceptable to God, the copying in the
_scriptorium_ went on in sobriety from day to day. Thus were produced
those improved copies of books which mark the beginning of a new age in
the conserving and transmission of learning. Alcuin's anxiety in this
regard was not undue, for the few monasteries where books could be
accurately transcribed were as necessary for publication in that time as
are the great publishing houses to-day. [14]

[Illustration: FIG. 41. CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE, AND THE IMPORTANT
MONASTERIES OF THE TIME
Charlemagne's empire at his death is shaded darker than other parts of the
map.]

MONASTIC COLLECTION. Despite the important work done by a few of the
monasteries in preserving and advancing learning, large collections of
books were unknown before the Revival of Learning, in the fourteenth
century. The process of book production in itself was very slow, and many
of the volumes produced were later lost through fire, or pillage by new
invaders. During the early days of wood construction a number of monastic
and church libraries were burned by accident. In the pillaging of the
Danes and Northmen on the coasts of England and northern France, in the
ninth and tenth centuries, a number of important monastic collections
there were lost. In Italy the Lombards destroyed some collections in their
sixth-century invasion, and the Saracens burned some in southern Italy in
the ninth. Monte Cassino, among other monasteries, was destroyed by both
the Lombards and the Saracens. From a number of extant catalogues of old
monastic libraries we know that, even as late as the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, a library of from two to three hundred volumes was
large. [15] The catalogues show that most of these were books of a
religious nature, being monastic chronicles, manuals of devotion, comments
on the Scriptures, lives of miracle-working saints, and books of a similar
nature (Rs. 55, 56). A few were commentaries on the ancient learning, or
mediaeval textbooks on the great subjects of study of the time (R. 60). A
still smaller number were copies of old classical literary works, and of
the utmost value (R. 57).

THE CONVENTS AND THEIR SCHOOLS. The early part of the Middle Ages also
witnessed a remarkable development of convents for women, these receiving
a special development in Germanic lands. Filled with the same aggressive
spirit as the men, but softened somewhat by Christianity, many women of
high station among the German tribes founded convents and developed
institutions of much renown. This provided a rather superior class of
women as organizers and directors, and a conventual life continued,
throughout the entire Middle Ages, to attract an excellent class of women.
This will be understood when it is remembered that a conventual life
offered to women of intellectual ability and scholarly tastes the one
opportunity for an education and a life of learning. The convents, too,
were much earlier and much more extensively opened for instruction to
those not intending to take the vows than was the case with the
monasteries, and, in consequence, it became a common practice throughout
the Middle Ages, just as it is to-day among Catholic families, to send
girls to the convent for education and for training in manners and
religion. Many well-trained women were produced in the convents of Europe
in the period from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries.

The instruction consisted of reading, writing, and copying Latin, as in
the monasteries, as well as music, weaving and spinning, and needlework.
Weaving and spinning had an obvious utilitarian purpose, and needlework,
in addition to necessary sewing, was especially useful in the production
of altar-cloths and sacred vestments. The copying and illuminating of
manuscripts, music, and embroidering made a special appeal to women (R.
56), and some of the most beautifully copied and illuminated manuscripts
of the mediaeval period are products of their skill. [16] Their
contribution to music and art, as it influenced the life of the time, was
also large. The convent schools reached their highest development about
the middle of the thirteenth century, after which they began to decline in
importance,

LEARNING IN IRELAND AND BRITAIN. As was stated earlier in this chapter,
the one part of western Europe where something of the old learning was
retained during this period was in Ireland, and in those parts of England
which had not been overrun by the Germanic tribes. Christian civilization
and monastic life had been introduced into Ireland probably as early as
425 A.D., and probably by monastic missionaries from Lerins and Saint
Victor (see Figure 41). Saint Patrick preached Christianity to the Irish,
about 440 A.D., and during the fifth and sixth centuries churches and
monasteries were founded in such numbers over Ireland that the land has
been said to have been dotted all over with churches, monasteries, and
schools. Saint Patrick had been educated in the old Roman schools,
probably at Tours when it was still an important Roman provincial city.
Other early missionaries had had similar training, and these, not sharing
the antipathy to pagan learning of the early Italian church fathers, had
carried Greek and Latin languages and learning to Ireland. Here it
flourished so well, largely due to the island being spared from invasion,
that Ireland remained a center for instruction in Greek long after it had
virtually disappeared elsewhere in western Christendom. So much was this
the case, says Sandys, in his _History of Classical Scholarship_, "that if
any one knew Greek it was assumed that he must have come from Ireland."

In 565 A.D., Saint Columba, an eminent Irish scholar and religious leader,
crossed over to what is now southwestern Scotland, founded there the
monastery of Iona, and began the conversion of the Picts. Saint Augustine
landed in Kent in 597, and had begun the conversion of the Angles and
Saxons and Jutes who had settled in southeastern Britain, while shortly
afterwards the Irish monks from Iona began the conversion of the people of
the north of Britain. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded about 635
A.D., and soon became an important center of religious and classical
learning in the north. Irish and English monks also crossed in numbers to
northern Frankland, and labored for the conversion of the Franks and
Saxons.

In 664 A.D., at a council held at Whitby, the Irish Church in England and
the Roman Church were united, and a great enthusiasm for religion and
learning swept over the island. In 670, Theodore of Tarsus and the Abbot
Hadrian, whom Bede, the scholar and historian of the early English Church,
describes as men "instructed in secular and divine literature both Greek
and Latin" (R. 59 a), arrived in England from southern Italy and began
their work of instructing pupils in Greek and Latin (R. 59 b). Both taught
at Canterbury, and raised the cathedral school there to high rank. In 674
the monastery at Wearmouth was founded, and in 682 its companion Yarrow.
These were endowed with books from Rome and Vienne, and soon became famous
for the instruction they provided. It was at the twin monasteries of
Wearmouth and Yarrow that the Venerable Bede (673-735), whose
_Ecclesiastical History of England_ gives us our chief picture of
education in Britain in his time, was educated and remained as a lifelong
student. [17] As a result of all these efforts a number of northern
monasteries, as well as a few of the cathedral schools, early became
famous for their libraries, scholars, and learning. This culture in
Ireland and Britain was of a much higher standard than that obtaining on
the Continent at the time, because the classical inheritance there had
been less corrupted.

THE CATHEDRAL SCHOOL AT YORK. One of the schools which early attained fame
was the cathedral school at York, in northern England. This had, by the
middle of the eighth century, come to possess for the time a large
library, and contained most of the important Latin authors and textbooks
then known (R. 61). In this school, under the _scholasticus_ Aelbert, was
trained a youth by the name of Alcuin, born in or near York, about 735
A.D. In a poem describing the school (R. 60), he gives a good portrayal of
the instruction he received, telling how the learned Aelbert "moistened
thirsty hearts with diverse streams of teaching and the varied dews of
learning," and sorted out "youths of conspicuous intelligence" to whom he
gave special attention. Alcuin afterward succeeded Aelbert as
_scholasticus_, and was widely known as a gifted teacher. Well aware of
the precarious condition of learning amid such a rude and uncouth society,
he handed on to his pupils the learning he had received, and imbued them
with something of his own love for it and his anxiety for its preservation
and advancement. It was this Alcuin who was soon to give a new impetus to
the development of schools and the preservation of learning in Frankland.

CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. In 768 there came to the throne as king of the
great Frankish nation one of the most distinguished and capable rulers of
all time--a man who would have been a commanding personality in any age or
land. His ancestors had developed a great kingdom, and it was his
grandfather who had defeated the Saracens at Tours (p. 113) and driven
them back over the Pyrenees into Spain. This man Charlemagne easily stands
out as one of the greatest figures of all history. For five hundred years
before and after him there is no ruler who matched him in insight, force,
or executive capacity. He is particularly the dominating figure of
mediaeval times. Born in an age of lawlessness and disorder, he used every
effort to civilize and rule as intelligently as possible the great
Frankish kingdom. Wars he waged to civilize and Christianize the Saxon
tribes of northern Germany, to reduce the Lombards of northern Italy to
order, and to extend the boundaries of the Frankish nation. At his death,
in 814, his kingdom had succeeded to most of the western possessions of
the old Roman Empire, including all of what to-day comprises France,
Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, large portions of what is now western
Germany and northern Italy, and portions of northern Spain. (See Figure
41.)

Realizing better than did his bishops and abbots the need for educational
facilities for the nobles and clergy, he early turned his attention to
securing teachers capable of giving the needed instruction. These, though,
were scarce and hard to obtain. After two unsuccessful efforts to obtain a
master scholar to become, as it were, his minister of education, he
finally succeeded in drawing to his court perhaps the greatest scholar and
teacher in all England. At Parma, in northern Italy, Charlemagne met
Alcuin, in 781, and invited him to leave York for Frankland. After
obtaining the consent of his archbishop and king, Alcuin accepted, and
arrived, with three assistants, at Charlemagne's court, in 782, to take up
the work of educational propaganda in Frankland.

[Illustration: PLATE 1. THE CLOISTERS OF A MONASTERY, NEAR FLORENCE,
ITALY.
This monastery, located on a high hill and resembling a mediaeval fortress
as one approaches it, was founded in 1341 by a Florentine merchant. The
picture shows the cloisters and interior court. Eighteen cells, two
churches, and other rooms are entered from the cloisters. A few monks were
still in residence there late as 1905, one of whom is seen, but the
monastery was then in the process of being closed by the Italian
Government.]

[Illustration: PLATE 2. THE LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT WALLBERG, AT
ZUTPHEN, HOLLAND

"Ponderous Folios for Scholastics made"

This shows the large oak-bound and chained books as well as a common type
of bookrack used in churches and monasteries during the earlier period.]

The plight in which he found learning was most deplorable, presenting a
marked contrast to conditions in England. Learning had been almost
obliterated during the two centuries of wild disorder from 600 on. From
600 to 850 has often been called the darkest period of the Dark Ages, and
Alcuin arrived when Frankland was at its worst. The monastic and cathedral
schools which had been established earlier had in large part been broken
up, and the monasteries had become places for the pensioning of royal
favorites and hence had lost their earlier religious zeal and
effectiveness. The abbots and bishops possessed but little learning, and
the lower clergy, recruited largely from bondmen, were grossly ignorant,
greatly to the injury of the Church. The copying of books had almost
ceased, and learning was slowly dying out.

THE PALACE SCHOOL. There had for some time been a form of school connected
with the royal court, known as the _palace school_, though the study of
letters had played but a small part in it. To the reorganization of this
school Alcuin first addressed himself, introducing into it elementary
instruction in that learning of which he was so fond. The school included
the princes and princesses of the royal household, relatives, attaches,
courtiers, and, not least in importance as pupils, the king and queen. To
meet the needs of such a heterogeneous circle was no easy task.

The instruction which Alcuin provided for the younger members of the
circle was largely of the question and answer (catechetical) type, both
questions and answers being prepared by Alcuin beforehand and learned by
the pupils. Fortunately examples of Alcuin's instruction have been
preserved to us in a dialogue prepared for the instruction of Pepin, a son
of Charlemagne, then sixteen years old (R. 62). With the older members the
questions and answers were oral. For all, though, the instruction was of a
most elementary nature, ranging over the elements of the subjects of
instruction of the time. Poetry, arithmetic, astronomy, the writings of
the Fathers, and theology are mentioned as having been studied.
Charlemagne learned to read Latin, but is said never to have mastered the
art of writing. It was not an easy position for any one to fill. To quote
from West's description: [18]

    Charles wanted to know everything and to know it at once. His strong,
    uncurbed nature eagerly seized on learning, both as a delight for
    himself and a means of giving stability to his government, and so,
    while he knew he must be docile, he was at the same time imperious.
    Alcuin knew how to meet him, and at need could be either patiently
    jocular or grave and reproving. Thus, on one occasion when he had been
    informed of the great learning of Augustine and Jerome, he impatiently
    demanded of Alcuin, "Why can I not have twelve clerks such as these?"
    Twelve Augustines and Jeromes! and to be made arise at the king's
    bidding! Alcuin was shocked. "What!" he discreetly rejoined, "the Lord
    of heaven and earth had but two such, and wouldst thou have twelve?"
    But his personal affection for the king was most unselfish, and he
    consequently took great delight in stimulating his desire for
    learning....

    He studied everything Alcuin set before him, but had special anxiety
    to learn all about the moon that was needed to calculate Easter. With
    such an eager and impatient pupil as Charles, the other scholars were
    soon inspired to beset Alcuin with endless puzzling questions, and
    there are not wanting evidences that some of them were disposed to
    levity and even carped at his teachings. But he was indefatigable,
    rising with the sun to prepare for teaching. In one of his poetical
    exercises he says of himself that "as soon as the ruddy charioteer of
    the dawn suffuses the liquid deep with the new light of day, the old
    man rubs the sleep of night from his eyes and leaps at once from his
    couch, running straightway into the fields of the ancients to pluck
    their flowers of correct speech and scatter them in sport before his
    boys."

CHARLEMAGNE'S PROCLAMATIONS ON EDUCATION. After reorganizing the palace
school, Alcuin and Charlemagne turned their attention to the improvement
of education among the monks and clergy throughout the realm. The first
important service was the preparation and sending out of a carefully
collected and edited series of sermons to the churches containing, "in two
volumes, lessons suitable for the whole year and for each separate
festival, and free from error." These Charlemagne ordered used in the
churches (R. 63). He also says, "we have striven with watchful zeal to
advance the cause of learning, which has been almost forgotten by the
negligence of our ancestors; and, by our example, also we invite those
whom we can to master the study of the liberal arts," meaning thereby to
incite the bishops and clergy to a study of the learning of the mediaeval
time. The volumes and letter were sent out in 786, four years after
Alcuin's arrival at the court. Further to aid in the revival of learning,
Charlemagne, in 787, imported a number of monks from Italy, who were
capable of giving instruction in arithmetic, singing, and grammar, and
sent them to the principal monasteries to teach.

In 787 the first general proclamation on education of the Middle Ages was
issued (R. 64 a), and from it we can infer much as to the state of
learning among the monks and clergy of the time. In this document the king
gently reproves the abbots of his realm for their illiteracy, and exhorts
them to the study of letters. The signature is Charlemagne's, but the hand
is Alcuin's. In it he tells the abbots, in commenting on the fact that
they had sent letters to him telling him that "sacred and pious prayers"
were being offered in his behalf, that he recognized in "most of these
letters both correct thoughts and uncouth expressions; because what pious
devotion dictated faithfully to the mind, the tongue, uneducated on
account of the neglect of study, was not able to express in a letter
without error." He therefore commands the abbots neither to neglect the
study of letters, if they wish to have his favor, nor to fail to send
copies of his letter "to all your suffragans and fellow bishops, and to
all the monasteries." Two years later (789) Charlemagne supplemented this
by a further general admonition (R. 64 b) to the ministers and clergy of
his realm, exhorting them to live clean and just lives, and closing with:

    And let schools be established in which boys may learn to read.
    Correct carefully the Psalms, the signs in writing, the songs, the
    calendar, the grammar, in each monastery and bishopric, and the
    catholic book; because often some desire to pray to God properly, but
    they pray badly because of incorrect books.

In 802 he further commanded that "laymen shall learn thoroughly the Creed
and the Lord's Prayer" (R. 64 c). Finally, in his enthusiasm for schools,
Charlemagne went so far as to direct that "every one should send his son
to school to study letters, and that the child should remain at school
with all diligence until he should become well instructed in learning."
Charlemagne, of course, was addressing freemen of the court and the
official classes. That he ever meant to include the children of the
laboring classes, or that the idea of compulsory education ever entered
his head, may well be doubted.

EFFECT OF THE WORK OF CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. The actual results of the
work of Charlemagne and Alcuin were, after all, rather meager. The
difficulties they faced are almost beyond our comprehension. Nobles and
clergy were alike ignorant and uncouth. There seemed no place to begin. It
may be said that by Charlemagne's work he greatly widened the area of
civilization, created a new Frankish-Roman Empire to be the inheritor of
the civilization and culture of the old one, checked the decline in
learning and reawakened a desire for study, and that he began the
substitution of ideas for might as a ruling force among the tribes under
his rule. That for a time he gave an important impetus to the study of
letters, which resulted in a real revival in the educational work of some
of the monasteries and cathedral schools, seems certain. Men knew more of
books and wrote better Latin than before, and those who wished to learn
found it easier to do so. The state of society and the condition of the
times, however, were against any large success for such an ambitious
educational undertaking, and after the death of Charlemagne, the division
of his empire, and the invasions of the Northmen, education slowly
declined again, though never to quite the level it had reached when
Charlemagne came to the throne. In a few schools there was no decline, and
these became the centers of learning of the future. Charlemagne having
substituted merit for favoritism in his realm, promoting to be bishops and
abbots the most learned men of his time, many of these became zealous
workers in the cause of education and did much to keep up and advance
learning after his death.

Among the most able of his helpers was Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans. He
carried out most thoroughly in his diocese the instructions of the king,
giving to his clergy the following directions:

    Let the priests hold schools in the towns and villages, and if any of
    the faithful wish to entrust their children to them for the learning
    of letters, let them not refuse to receive and teach such children.
    Moreover, let them teach them from pure affection, remembering that it
    is written, "the wise shall shine as the splendor of the firmament,"
    and "they that instruct many in righteousness shall shine as the stars
    forever and forever." And let them exact no price from the children
    for their teaching, nor receive anything from them, save what their
    parents may offer voluntarily and from affection.

Another able assistant was Alcuin himself, who, after fourteen years of
strenuous service at Charlemagne's court, was rewarded by the king with
the office of Abbot at the monastery of Saint Martin, at Tours. There he
spent the last eight years of his life in teaching, copying manuscripts,
and writing letters to bishops and abbots regarding the advancement of
religion and learning. The work of Alcuin in directing the copying of
manuscripts has been described. In a letter to Charlemagne, soon after his
appointment, he reviews his labors, contrasts the state of learning in
England and Frankland, and appeals to Charlemagne for books from England
to copy (R. 65). So important was his work as a teacher as well that at
his death, in 814, most of the important educational centers of the
kingdom were in the hands of his former pupils. Perhaps the most important
of all these was Rabanus Maurus, who became head of the monastery school
at Fulda. We shall learn more of him in the next chapter.

[Illustration: FIG. 42. WHERE THE DANES RAVAGED ENGLAND.]

NEW INVASIONS; THE NORTHMEN. Five years after Alcuin went to Frankland to
help Charlemagne revive learning in his kingdom, a fresh series of
barbarian invasions began with the raiding of the English coast by the
Danes. In raid after raid, extending over nearly a hundred years, these
Danes gradually overran all of eastern and central England from London
north to beyond Whitby, plundering and burning the churches and
monasteries, and destroying books and learning everywhere. By the Peace of
Wedmore, effected by King Alfred in 878, the Danes were finally given
about one half of England, and in return agreed to settle down and accept
Christianity. The damage done by these invaders was very large, and King
Alfred, in his introduction to an Anglo-Saxon translation of Pope
Gregory's _Pastoral Care_ (R. 66), gives a gloomy picture of the
destruction wrought to the churches and the decay of learning in England.

Other bands of these Northmen (Danes and Norwegians) began to prey on the
northern coast of Frankland, and in the tenth century seized all the coast
of what is now northern France and down as far as Paris and Tours. From
Tours to Corbie (see Figure 41) churches and monasteries were pillaged and
burned, Tours and Corbie with their libraries both perishing. Amiens and
Paris were laid siege to, and disorder reigned throughout northern
Frankland. _The Annals of Xanten_ and the _Annals of Saint Vaast_, two
mediaeval chronicles of importance, give gloomy pictures of this period.
Three selections will illustrate:

    According to their custom the Northmen plundered East and West Frisia
    and burned ... towns.... With their boats filled with immense booty,
    including both men and goods, they returned to their own country. [19]

    The Normans inflicted much harm in Frisia and about the Rhine. A
    mighty army of them collected by the river Elbe against the Saxons,
    and some of the Saxon towns were besieged, others burned, and most
    terribly did they oppress the Christians. [20]

    The Northmen ceased not to take Christian people captive and kill
    them, and to destroy churches and houses and burn villages. Through
    all the streets lay bodies of the clergy, of laymen, nobles, and
    others, of women, children, and suckling babes. There was no road or
    place where the dead did not lie, and all who saw Christian people
    slaughtered were filled with sorrow and despair. [21]

After much destruction, Rollo, Duke of the Normans, finally accepted
Christianity, in 912, and agreed to settle down in what has ever since
been known as _Normandy_. From here portions of the invaders afterward
passed over to England in the Norman Conquest of 1066. This was the last
of the great German tribes to move, and after they had raided and
plundered and settled down and accepted Christianity, western Europe,
after six centuries of bloodshed and pillage and turmoil and disorder, was
at last ready to begin in earnest the building-up of a new civilization
and the restoration of the old learning.

WORK OF ALFRED IN ENGLAND. The set-back to learning caused by this latest
deluge of barbarism was a serious one, and one from which the land did not
recover for a long time. In northern Frankland and in England the results
were disastrous. The revival which Charlemagne had started was checked,
and England did not recover from the blow for centuries. Even in the parts
of England not invaded and pillaged, education sadly declined as a result
of nearly a century of struggle against the invaders (R. 66). Alfred,
known to history as _Alfred the Great_, who ruled as English king from 871
to 901, made great efforts to revive learning in his kingdom. Probably
inspired by the example of Charlemagne, he established a large palace
school (R. 68), to the support of which he devoted one eighth of his
income; he imported scholars from Mercia and Frankland (R. 67); restored
many monasteries; and tried hard to revive schools and encourage learning
throughout his realm, and with some success. [22] With the great decay of
the Latin learning he tried to encourage the use of the native Anglo-Saxon
language, [23] and to this end translated books from Latin into Anglo-
Saxon for his people. In his Introduction to Gregory's volume (R. 66) he
expresses the hope, "If we have tranquillity enough, that all the free-
born youth now in England, who are rich enough to be able to devote
themselves to it ... be set to learn ... English writing," while those who
were to continue study should then be taught Latin. The coming of the
Normans in 1066, with the introduction of Norman-French as the official
language of the court and government, for a time seriously interfered with
the development of that native English learning of which Alfred wrote.

In the preceding chapter and in this one we have traced briefly the great
invasions, or migrations, which took place in western Europe, and
indicated somewhat the great destruction they wrought within the bounds of
the old Empire. In this chapter we have traced the beginnings of Christian
schools to replace the ones destroyed, the preservation of learning in the
monasteries, and the efforts of Charlemagne and Alfred to revive learning
in their kingdoms. In the chapter which follows we shall describe the
mediaeval system of education as it had evolved by the twelfth century,
after which we shall be ready to pass to the beginnings of that Revival of
Learning which ultimately resulted in the rediscovery of the learning of
the ancient world.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Picture the gradual dying-out of Roman learning in the Western Empire,
and explain why pagan schools and learning lingered longer in Britain,
Ireland, and Italy than elsewhere.

2. At what time was the old Roman civilization and learning most nearly
extinct?

3. Explain how the monasteries were forced to develop schools to maintain
any intellectual life.

4. Explain how the copying of manuscripts led to further educational
development in the monasteries.

5. Would the convents have tended to attract a higher quality of women
than the monasteries did of men? Why?

6. Explain why Greek was known longer in Ireland and Britain than
elsewhere in the West.

7. What was the relative condition of learning in Frankland and England,
about 900 A.D.?

8. What light is thrown on the conditions of the civilization of the time
by the small permanent success of the efforts of Charlemagne, looking
toward a revival of learning in Frankland?

9. Explain how Latin came naturally to be the language of the Church, and
of scholarship in western Europe throughout all the Middle Ages.

10. After reading the story of the migrations, and of the fight to save
some vestiges of the old civilization, try to picture what would have been
the result had Rome not built up an Empire, and had Christianity not
arisen and conquered.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  53. Migne: Forms used in connection with monastery life:
      (a) Form for offering a Child to a Monastery.
      (b) The Monastic Vow.
      (c) Letter of Honorable Dismissal from a Monastery.
  54. Abbot Heriman: The Copying of Books at a Monastery.
  55. Othlonus: Work of a Monk in writing and copying Books.
  56. A Monk: Work of a Nun in copying Books.
  57. Symonds: Scarcity and Cost of Books.
  58. Clark: Anathemas to protect Books from Theft.
  59. Bede: On Education in Early England.
      (a) The Learning of Theodore.
      (b) Theodore's Work for the English Churches.
      (c) How Albinus succeeded Abbot Hadrian.
  60. Alcuin: Description of the School at York.
  61. Alcuin: Catalogue of the Cathedral Library at York.
  62. Alcuin: Specimens of the Palace School Instruction.
  63. Charlemagne: Letter sending out a Collection of Sermons.
  64. Charlemagne: General Proclamations as to Education.
      (a) The Proclamation of 787 A.D.
      (b) General Admonition of 789 A.D.
      (c) Order as to Learning of 802 A.D.
  65. Alcuin: Letter to Charlemagne as to Books and Learning.
  66. King Alfred: State of Learning in England in his Time.
  67. Asser: Alfred obtains Scholars from Abroad.
  68. Asser: Education of the Son of King Alfred.
  69. Ninth-Century Plan of the Monastery at Saint Gall.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Point out the similarity between: (a) The form for offering a child to
a monastery and the monastic vow (53 a-b), and a modern court form for
renouncing or adopting a child. (b) The letter of dismissal from a
monastery (53 c), and the modern letter of honorable dismissal of a
student from a college or normal school.

2. Compare the type of books copied by the Abbot of Saint Martins (55) and
those copied by the nun at Wessebrunn (56).

3. Was the evolution of the school-teacher out of the copyist at Ratisbon
(55), by a specialization of labor, analogous to the process in more
modern times?

4. Explain the mediaeval belief in the effectiveness to protect books from
theft of such anathemas as are reproduced in 58.

5. What do the selections from Bede (59 a-c) indicate as to the
preservation of the old learning in the cities of southern Italy? What as
to the condition of learning and teaching in England in Bede's day?

6. What is the status of education indicated by the selections from
Alcuin, on the cathedral school at York (60) and the palace school
instruction of Pepin (62)?

7. What was the condition of learning among the higher clergy and monks as
shown by Charlemagne's proclamations (64)?

8. What was the extent of the destruction wrought by the Danes in England,
as indicated by King Alfred's Introduction to Pope Gregory's _Pastoral
Care_ (66), and his efforts to obtain scholars from abroad (67)?

9. What was the character of the education King Alfred provided for his
son (68)?

10. Study out the plan of the monastery of Saint Gall (69), and enumerate
the various activities of such a center.


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
* Clark, J. W. _Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Period_.
* Cutts, Edw. L. _Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages_.
* Eckenstein, Lina. _Women under Monasticism_.
  Leach, A. F. _The Schools of Mediaeval England_.
  Munro, D. C. and Sellery, G. E. _Medieval Civilization_.
  Montalembert, Count de. _The Monks of the West_.
  Taylor, H. O. _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_.
  Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.
  West, A. F. _Alcuin, and the Rise of Christian Schools_.
* Wishart, A. W. _Short History of Monks and Monasticism_.




CHAPTER VII

EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES


II. SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED


1. _Elementary instruction and schools_

MONASTIC AND CONVENTIONAL SCHOOLS. In the preceding chapters we found
that, by the tenth century, the monasteries had developed both inner
monastic schools for those intending to take the vows (oblati), and outer
monastic schools for those not so intending (externi). The distinction in
name was due to the fact that the _oblati_ were from the first considered
as belonging to the brotherhood, participating in the religious services
and helping the monks at their work. The others were not so admitted, and
in all monasteries of any size a separate building, outside the main
portion of the monastery (see Figure 38), was provided for the outer
school. A similar classification of instruction had been evolved for the
convents.

[Illustration: FIG. 43. AN OUTER MONASTIC SCHOOL
(After an old wood engraving)]

The instruction in the inner school was meager, and in the outer school
probably even more so. Reading, writing, music, simple reckoning,
religious observances, and rules of conduct constituted the range of
instruction. Reading was taught by the alphabet method, as among the
Romans, and writing by the use of wax tablets and the stylus. Much
attention was given to Latin pronunciation, as had been the practice at
Rome. As Latin by this time had practically ceased to be a living tongue,
outside the Church and perhaps in Central Italy, the difficulties of
instruction were largely increased. The Psalter, or book of Latin psalms,
was the first reading book, and this was memorized rather than read. Copy-
books, usually wax, with copies expressing some scriptural injunction,
were used. Music, being of so much importance in the church services,
received much time and attention. In arithmetic, counting and finger
reckoning, after the Roman plan, was taught. Latin was used in
conversation as much as possible, some of the old lesson books much
resembling conversation books of to-day in the modern languages (R. 75).
Special attention seems to have been given to teaching rules of conduct to
the _oblati_, [1] and much corporal punishment was used to facilitate
learning. Up to the eleventh century this instruction, meager as it was,
constituted the whole of the preparatory training necessary for the study
of theology and a career in the Church. In the convents similar schools
were developed, though, as stated in the last chapter, much more attention
was given to the education of those not intending to take the vows.

SONG AND PARISH SCHOOLS. In the cathedral churches, and other larger non-
cathedral churches, the musical part of the service was very important,
and to secure boys for the choir and for other church services these
churches organized what came to be known as _song schools_ (R. 70). In
these a number of promising boys were trained in the same studies and in
much the same way as were boys in the monastery schools, except that much
more attention was given to the musical instruction. The students in these
schools were placed under the _precentor_ (choir director) of the
cathedral, or other large church, the _scholasticus_ confining his
attention to the higher or more literary instruction provided. The boys
usually were given board, lodging, and instruction in return for their
services as choristers. As the parish churches in the diocese also came to
need boys for their services, parish schools of a similar nature were in
time organized in connection with them. It was out of this need, and by a
very slow and gradual evolution, that the parish school in western Europe
was developed later on.

CHANTRY SCHOOLS. Still another type of elementary school, which did not
arise until near the latter part of the period under consideration in this
chapter, but which will be enumerated here as descriptive of a type which
later became very common, came through wills, and the schools came to be
known as _chantry schools_, or _stipendary schools_. Men, in dying, who
felt themselves particularly in need of assistance for their misdeeds on
earth, would leave a sum of money to a church to endow a priest, or
sometimes two, who were to chant masses each day for the repose of their
souls. Sometimes the property was left to endow a priest to say mass in
honor of some special saint, and frequently of the Virgin Mary. As such
priests usually felt the need for some other occupation, some of them
began voluntarily to teach the elements of religion and learning to
selected boys, and in time it became common for those leaving money for
the prayers to stipulate in the will that the priest should also teach a
school. Usually a very elementary type of school was provided, where the
children were taught to know the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Salutation
to the Virgin, certain psalms, to sign themselves rightly with the sign of
the cross, and perhaps to read and write (Latin). Sometimes, on the
contrary, and especially was this the case later on in England, a grammar
school was ordered maintained. After the twelfth century this type of
foundation (R. 73) became quite common.


2. _Advanced instruction_

CATHEDRAL AND HIGHER MONASTIC SCHOOLS. As the song schools developed the
cathedral schools were of course freed from the necessity of teaching
reading and writing, and could then develop more advanced instruction.
This they did, as did many of the monasteries, and to these advanced
schools those who felt the need for more training went. As grammar was,
throughout all the early part of the Middle Ages, the first and most
important subject of instruction, the advanced schools came to be known as
_grammar schools_, as well as cathedral or episcopal schools (R. 72). The
cathedral churches and monasteries of England and France early became
celebrated for the high character of their instruction (R. 71) and the
type of scholars they produced. All these schools, though, suffered a
serious set-back during the period of the Danish and Norman invasions,
many being totally destroyed. On the continent, due to the greater deluge
of barbarism and the more unsettled condition of society, more difficulty
was experienced in getting cathedral schools established, as the following
decree of the Lateran Church Council of 826 indicates:

    Complaints have been made that in some places no masters nor
    endowment for a grammar school is found. Therefore all bishops shall
    bestow all care and diligence, both for their subjects and for other
    places in which it shall be found necessary, to establish masters and
    teachers who shall assiduously teach grammar schools and the
    principles of the liberal arts, because in these chiefly the
    commandments of God are manifest and declared.

These two types of advanced schools--the cathedral or episcopal and the
monastic--formed what might be called the secondary-school system of the
early Middle Ages (Rs. 70, 71). They were for at least six hundred years
the only advanced teaching institutions in western Europe, and out of one
or the other of these two types of advanced schools came practically all
those who attained to leadership in the service of the Church in either of
its two great branches. Still more, out of the impetus given to advanced
study by the more important of these schools, the universities of a later
period developed; and numerous private gifts of lands and money were made
to establish grammar schools to supplement the work done by the cathedral
and other large church schools.

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS. The advanced studies which were offered in the
more important monastery and cathedral schools comprised what came to be
known as _The Seven Liberal Arts_ [2] of the Middle Ages. The knowledge
contained in these studies, taught as the advanced instruction of the
period, represents the amount of secular learning which was intentionally
preserved by the Church from neglect and destruction during the period of
the barbarian deluges and the reconstruction of society.

These Seven Liberal Arts were comprised of two divisions, known as:

I. THE TRIVIUM:
   (1) Grammar;
   (2) Rhetoric;
   (3) Dialectic (Logic).

II. THE QUADRIVIUM:
    (4) Arithmetic;
    (5) Geometry;
    (6) Astronomy;
    (7) Music.

[Illustration: FIG. 44. THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED
Allegorical representation of the progress and degrees of education, from
an illuminated picture in the 1508 (Basel) edition of the _Margarita
Philosophica_ of Gregory de Reisch.

The youth, having mastered the Hornbook (ABC's) and the rudiments of
learning (reading, writing, and the beginnings of music and numbers),
advances toward the temple of knowledge. Wisdom is about to place the key
in the lock of the door of the temple. On the door is written the word
_congruitas_, signifying Grammar. ("Gramaire first hath for to teche to
speke upon congruite.") On the first and second floors of the temple he
studies the Grammar of Donatus, and of Priscian, and at the first stage at
the left on the third floor he studies the Logic of Aristotle, followed by
the Rhetoric and Poetry of Tully, thus completing the _Trivium_. The
Arithmetic of Boethius also appears on the third floor. On the fourth
floor he completes the studies of the _Quadrivium_, taking in order the
Music of Pythagoras, Euclid's Geometry, and Ptolemy's Astronomy. The
student now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying successively
Physics, Seneca's Morals, and the Theology (or Metaphysics) of Peter
Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been directed.]

Beyond these came Ethics or Metaphysics, and the greatest of all studies,
Theology. This last represented the one professional study of the early
middle-age period, and was the goal toward which all the preceding studies
had tended. This mediaeval system of education is well summarized in the
drawing given on the opposite page, taken from an illuminated picture
inserted in a famous mediaeval manuscript, recopied at Basle, Switzerland,
in 1508.

Not all these studies were taught in every monastery or cathedral school.
Many of the lesser monasteries and schools offered instruction chiefly in
grammar, and only a little of the studies beyond. Others emphasized the
Trivium, and taught perhaps only a little of the second group. Only a few
taught the full range of mediaeval learning, and these were regarded as
the great schools of the times (R. 71).

Rhabanus Maurus (776-865), one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages,
Abbot for years at Fulda, and a mediaeval textbook writer of importance,
has left us a good description of each of the Seven Liberal Arts studies
as they were developed in his day, and their use in the Christian scheme
of education (R. 74).


I. THE TRIVIUM

Of the three studies forming the _Trivium_, grammar always came first as
the basal subject. No uniformity existed for the other two.

1. GRAMMAR. The foundation and source of all the Liberal Arts was grammar,
it being, according to Maurus, "the science which teaches us to explain
the poets and historians, and the art which qualifies us to speak and
write correctly" (R. 74 a). In the introduction to an improved Latin
grammar, [3] published about 1119, grammar is defined as "The doorkeeper
of all the other sciences, the apt expurgatrix of the stammering tongue,
the servant of logic, the mistress of rhetoric, the interpreter of
theology, the relief of medicine, and the praiseworthy foundation of the
whole quadrivium." Figure 45, from one of the earliest books printed in
English, also emphasizes the great importance of grammar with the words:
"Wythout whiche science (s)ycherly alle other sciences in especial ben of
lytyl recomme(d)." In addition to grammar in the sense we know the study
to-day, grammar in the old Roman and mediaeval mind also included much of
what we know as the analytical side of the study of literature, such as
comparison, analysis, versification, prosody, word formations, figures of
speech, and vocal expression (R. 76). These were considered necessary to
enable one to read understandingly the Holy Scriptures, and hence, "though
the art be secular," says Maurus, "it has nothing unworthy about it."

[Illustration: FIG. 45. A SCHOOL: A LESSON IN GRAMMAR
(After a woodcut printed by Caxton in _The Mirror of the World_, 1481 (?).
From Blades' _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, ii, Plate LVI)

This is a good example of early English printing. Can you read it? This
"Old English," like the German type (see Fig. 26), shows the change in
Latin letters which came about with the copying of manuscripts during the
Middle Ages. After the invention of printing the English soon returned to
the Latin forms; the Germans are only now doing so.]

The leading textbook was that of Donatus, [4] written in the fourth
century, and Donatus (_donat_) and grammar came to be synonymous terms.
The text by Priscian, [5] written in the sixth century, was also
extensively used. The treatment in each was catechetical in form; that is,
questions and answers, which were learned. The text was of course in
Latin, and the teacher usually had the only copy, so that the pupils had
to learn from memory or copy from dictation. The cost of writing-material
usually precluded the latter method. After sufficient ability in grammar
had been attained, simple reading exercises or colloquies (R. 75), usually
of a religious or moralizing nature, were introduced, though where
permitted the Latin authors, especially Vergil, [6] were read. At Saint
Gall, in Switzerland, and at some other places, many Latin authors were
read; at Tours, on the other hand, we find the learned Abbot Alcuin saying
to the monks: "The sacred poets are sufficient for you; there is no reason
why you should sully your mind with the rank luxuriance of Vergil's
verse."

2. RHETORIC. Rhetoric, as defined by Maurus, was "the art of using secular
discourse effectively in the circumstances of daily life," and enabling
the preacher or missionary to put the divine message in eloquent and
impressive language (R. 74 b). Much of the old Roman rhetoric had been
taken over by grammar, but in its place was added a certain amount of
letter and legal documentary writing. The priest, it must be remembered,
became the secretary and lawyer of the Middle Ages, as well as the priest,
and upon him devolved the preparation of most of the legal papers of the
time, such as wills, deeds, proclamations, and other formal documents.
Accordingly the art of letter-writing [7] and the preparation of legal
documents were made a part of the study of rhetoric, and some study of
both the civil ("worldly") and canon (church) law was gradually
introduced.

3. DIALECTIC. Dialectic, or logic, says Maurus, is the science of
understanding, and hence the science of sciences (R. 74 c). By means of
its aid one was enabled to unmask falsehood, expose error, formulate
argument, and draw conclusions accurately. The study was one of
preparation for ethics and theology later on. Extracts from the works of
Aristotle, prepared by Boethius, and later his complete works, constituted
the texts used. While grammar was the great subject of the seven during
all the early Middle Ages, dialectic later came to take its place. After
the rise of the universities and the organization of schools of theology,
with theology more of a rational science and less a matter of dogma,
dialectic came to hold first place in importance as a preparation for the
disputations of the later Middle Ages. Theological questions formed the
practical exercises, and the schools doing most in dialectic attracted
many students because of this.

These three studies, constituting the _Trivium_, based as they were
directly on the old Roman learning and schools, contained more that was
within the teaching knowledge of the time than did the subjects of the
_Quadrivium_, and also subject-matter which was much more in demand.


II. THE QUADRIVIUM

The _trivial_ studies, in most cases before the thirteenth century,
sufficed to prepare for the study of theology, though those few who
desired to prepare thoroughly also studied the subjects of the
_quadrivium_. In schools not offering instruction in this advanced group
some of the elements of its four studies were often taught from the
textbooks in use for the _Trivium_. Particularly was this the case during
the early Middle Ages, when the knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, and
astronomy possessed by western Europe was exceedingly small. No regular
order in the study of the subjects of this group was followed.

4. ARITHMETIC. Naturally little could be done in this subject as long as
the Roman system of notation was in use (see footnote, i, p. 64), and the
Arabic notation was not known in western Christian Europe until the
beginning of the thirteenth century, and was not much used for two or
three centuries later. So far as arithmetic was taught before that time,
it was but little in advance of that given to novitiates in the
monasteries, except that much attention was devoted to an absurd study of
the properties of numbers, [8] and to the uses of arithmetic in
determining church days, calculating the date of Easter, and interpreting
passages in the Scriptures involving measurements (R. 74 d). The textbook
by Rhabanus Maurus _On Reckoning_, issued in 820, is largely in dialogue
(catechetical) form, and is devoted to describing the properties of
numbers, "odd, even, perfect, imperfect, composite, plane, solid,
cardinal, ordinal, adverbial, distributive, multiple, denunciative, etc.";
to pointing out the scriptural significance of number; [9] and to an
elaborate explanation of finger reckoning, after the old Roman plan (see
p. 65). Near the end of the tenth century Gerbert, [10] afterwards Pope
Sylvester II, devised a simple abacus-form for expressing numbers, simple
enough in itself, but regarded as wonderful in its day. This greatly
simplified calculation, and made work with large numbers possible. He also
devised an easier form for large divisions.

Gerbert's form for expressing numbers may be shown from the following
simple sum in addition:

_Arabic Form_    _Roman Form_    _Gerbert's Form_
                                         _M    C    X     I_

      1204                    MCCIV         I   II         IV
       538                 DXXXVIII              V  III  VIII
      2455                 MMCCCCLV        II   IV    V     V
       619                    DCXIX             VI    I    IX
     -----                ---------       -------------------
      4816              MMMMDCCCXVI        IV VIII    I    VI

No study of arithmetic of importance was possible, however, until the
introduction of Arabic notation and the use of the zero.

5. GEOMETRY. This study consisted almost entirely of geography and
reasoning as to geometrical forms until the tenth century, when Boethius'
work on _Geometry_, containing some extracts from Euclid, was discovered
by Gerbert. The geography of Europe, Asia, and Africa also was studied, as
treated in the textbooks of the time, and a little about plants and
animals as well was introduced. The nature of the geographic instruction
may be inferred from Figure 46, which reproduces one of the best world
maps of the day. The main geographical features of the known world can be
made out from this, but many of the mediaeval maps are utterly
unintelligible.

To illustrate the reasoning as to geometrical forms which preceded the
finding of Euclid we quote from Maurus, who says that the science of
geometry "found realization also at the building of the tabernacle and the
temple; and that the same measuring rod, circles, spheres, hemispheres,
quadrangles, and other figures were employed. The knowledge of all this
brings to him, who is occupied with it, no small gain for his spiritual
culture." (R. 74 e). After Gerbert's time some geometry proper and the
elements of land surveying were introduced. The real study of geometry in
Europe, however, dates from the twelfth century, when Euclid was
translated into Latin from the Arabic.

6. ASTRONOMY. In astronomy the chief purpose of the instruction was to
explain the seasons and the motions of the planets, to set forth the
wonders of the visible creation, and to enable the priests "to fix the
time of Easter and all other festivals and holy days, and to announce to
the congregation the proper celebration of them." (R. 74 g).

[Illustration: FIG. 46. AN ANGLO-SAXON MAP OF THE WORLD
(From a tenth-century map in the British Museum)

This is one of the better maps of the period. Note the mixture of Biblical
and classical geography (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Pillars of Hercules), and
the animal life (lion) introduced in the upper corner. The Mediterranean
Sea in the center, the Greek islands, the British isles, the Italian
peninsula, the Nile, and the northern African coast are easily recognized.
Western Europe, the best-known part of the world at that time, is very
poorly done.]

Even after Ptolemy's _Mechanism of the Heavens_ (p. 49) and Aristotle's
_On the Heavens_ had filtered across the Pyrenees from the Saracens, in
the eleventh century, the Ptolemaic theory of a flat earth located at the
center of the heavenly bodies and around which they all revolved, while a
very pleasing theological conception, was absolutely fatal to any
instruction in astronomy worth while and to any astronomical advance. All
mediaeval astronomy, too, was saturated with astrology, as the selection
on the motion of the heavenly bodies reproduced from Bartholomew Anglicus
shows (R. 77 b), and the supernatural was invoked to explain such
phenomena as meteors, comets, and eclipses. The Copernican theory of the
motion of the heavenly bodies was not published until 1543, and all our
modern ideas date from that time.

Physics was often taught as a part of the instruction in astronomy, and
consisted of lessons on the properties of matter (R. 77 a) and some of the
simple principles of dynamics. Little else of what we to-day know as
physics was then known.

7. MUSIC. Unlike the other studies of the _Quadrivium_, the instruction in
music was quite extensive, and from early times a good course in musical
theory was taught (R. 74 f). Boethius' _De Musica_, written at the
beginning of the sixth century, was the text used. Music entered into so
many activities of the Church that much naturally was made of it. The
organ, too, is an old instrument, going back to the second century B.C.,
and the organ with a keyboard to the close of the eleventh century. This
instrument added much to the value of the music course, and the hymns
composed by Christian musicians form an important part of our musical
heritage. [11] The cathedral school at Metz and the monastery at Saint
Gall became famous as musical centers, and of the work of one of the
teachers of music at Saint Gall (Notker) it was written by his biographer:
"Through different hymns, sequences, tropes, and litanies, through
different songs and melodies as well as through ecclesiastical science,
the pupils of this man made the church of God famous not merely in
Alemannia, but everywhere from sea to sea."

[Illustration: FIG. 47. AN EARLY CHURCH MUSICIAN
(From a fourteenth-century manuscript, now in the British Museum)]

THE GREAT TEXTBOOKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. While the textbooks mentioned
under the description of each of the Liberal Arts formed the basis of the
instruction given, most of the instruction before the twelfth century was
not given from editions of the original works, but from abridged
compendiums. Six of these were so famous and so widely used that each
deserves a few words of description.

1. _The Marriage of Mercury and Philology_, written by Martianus Capella,
between 410 and 427 A.D., was the first of the five great mediaeval
textbooks. Mercury, desiring to marry, finally settles on the learned
maiden Philology, and the seven bridesmaids--Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric,
Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music--enter in turn at the ceremony
and tell who they are and what they represent. The speeches of the seven
maidens summarized the ancient learning in each subject. This textbook was
more widely used during the Middle Ages than any other book.

2. _Boethius_ (475-524) was another important mediaeval textbook writer,
having prepared textbooks on dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and
ethics. Nearly all of what the Middle Ages knew of Aristotle's _Logic_ and
_Ethics_, and of the writings of Plato, were contained in the texts he
wrote. His _De Musica_ was used in the universities as a textbook until
near the middle of the eighteenth century.

3. _Cassiodorus_ [12] (c. 490-585), in his _On the Liberal Arts and
Sciences_, prepared a digest of each of the Seven Liberal Arts for
monastic use, fixing the number at seven by scriptural authority. [13]

4. _Isidore_, Bishop of Seville (c. 570-636), under the title of
_Etymologies_ or _Origines_, prepared an encyclopaedia of the ancient
learning for the use of the monks and clergy which was intended to be a
summary of all knowledge worth knowing. While he drew his knowledge from
the writings of the Greeks and Romans, with many of which he was familiar,
contrary to the attitude of Cassiodorus he forbade the monks and clergy to
make any use of them whatever. Cassiodorus was still in part a Roman;
Isidore was a full mediaeval.

5. _Alcuin_, a learned scholar of the eighth century, whom we met in the
preceding chapter (p. 140), wrote treatises on the studies of the
_Trivium_ and on astronomy which were used in many schools in Frankland.

6. _Maurus_. In 819 the learned monk of Fulda, Rhabanus Maurus, a pupil of
Alcuin, issued his volume _On the Instruction of the Clergy_, in the third
part of which he describes the uses and the subject-matter of each of the
Arts (R. 74). He also wrote texts on grammar and astronomy, and in 844
issued an encyclopaedia, _De Universo_, based largely on the work of
Isidore, but supplemented from other sources.

These were the great textbooks for the study of the _Trivium_ and the
_Quadrivium_ throughout all the early Middle Ages. Considering that they
were in manuscript form and were in one volume, [14] their extent and
scope can be imagined. The teacher usually had or had access to a copy,
though even a teacher's books in that day were few in number (R. 78).
Pupils had no books at all. These "great" texts were composed of brief
extracts, bits of miscellaneous information, and lists of names. Their
style was uninviting. They were at best a mere shell, compared with the
Greek and Roman knowledge which had been lost. Some of these books were in
question-and-answer (catechetical) form. Their purpose was not to
stimulate thinking, but to transmit that modicum of secular knowledge
needed for the service of the Church and as a preparation for the study of
the theological writings. For nearly eight hundred years education was
static, the only purpose of instruction being to transmit to the next
generation what the preceding one had known.  For such a period such
textbooks answered the purpose fairly well.


3. _Training of the nobility_

TENTH-CENTURY CONDITIONS. Following the death of Charlemagne and the
break-up of the empire held together by him, a period of organized anarchy
followed in western Europe. Authority broke down more completely than
before, and Europe, for protection, was forced to organize itself into a
great number of small defensive groups. Serfs, [15] freemen lacking land,
and small landowners alike came to depend on some nobleman for protection,
and this nobleman in turn upon some lord or overlord. For this protection
military service was rendered in return. The lord lived in his castle, and
the peasantry worked his land and supported him, fighting his battles if
the need arose. This condition of society was known as _feudalism_, and
the feudal relations of lord and vassal came to be the prevailing
governmental organization of the period. Feudalism was at best an
organized anarchy, suited to rude and barbarous times, but so well was it
adapted to existing conditions that it became the prevailing form of
government, and continued as such until a better order of society could be
evolved. With the invention of gunpowder, the rise of cities and
industries, the evolution of modern States by the consolidation of numbers
of these feudal governments, and the establishment of order and
civilization, feudalism passed out with the passing of the conditions
which gave rise to it. From the end of the ninth to the middle of the
thirteenth centuries it was the dominant form of government.

The life of the nobility under the feudal regime gave a certain
picturesqueness to what was otherwise an age of lawlessness and disorder.
The chief occupation of a noble was fighting, either in his own quarrel or
that of his overlord. It is hard for us to-day to realize how much
fighting went on then. Much was said about "honor," but quarrels were
easily started, and oaths were poorly kept. It was a day of personal feuds
and private warfare, and every noble thought it his right to wage war on
his neighbor at any time, without asking the consent of any one. [16] As a
preparation for actual warfare a series of mimic encounters, known as
tournaments, were held, in which it often happened that knights were
killed. In these encounters mounted knights charged one another with spear
and lance, performing feats similar to those of actual warfare. This was
the great amusement of the period, compared with which the German duel,
the Mexican bullfight, or the American game of football are mild sports.
The other diversions of the knights and nobles were hunting, hawking,
feasting, drinking, making love, minstrelsy, and chess. Intellectual
ability formed no part of their accomplishments, and a knowledge of
reading and writing was commonly regarded as effeminate.

To take this carousing, fighting, pillaging, ravaging, destructive, and
murderous instinct, so strong by nature among the Germanic tribes, and
refine it and in time use it to some better purpose, and in so doing to
increasingly civilize these Germanic lords and overlords, was the problem
which faced the Church and all interested in establishing an orderly
society in Europe. As a means of checking this outlawry the Church
established and tried to enforce the "Truce of God" (R. 79), and as a
partial means of educating the nobility to some better conception of a
purpose in life the Church aided in the development of the education of
chivalry, the first secular form of education in western Europe since the
days of Rome, and added its sanction to it after it arose.

THE EDUCATION OF CHIVALRY. This form of education was an evolution. It
began during the latter part of the ninth century and the early part of
the tenth, reached its maximum greatness during the period of the Crusades
(twelfth century), and passed out of existence by the sixteenth. The
period of the Crusades was the heroic age of chivalry. The system of
education which gradually developed for the children of the nobility may
be briefly described as follows:

1. _Page._ Up to the age of seven or eight the youth was trained at home,
by his mother. He played to develop strength, was taught the meaning of
obedience, trained in politeness and courtesy, and his religious education
was begun. After this, usually at seven, he was sent to the court of some
other noble, usually his father's superior in the feudal scale, though in
case of kings and feudal lords of large importance the children remained
at home and were trained in the palace school. From seven to fourteen the
boy was known as a page. He was in particular attached to some lady, who
supervised his education in religion, music, courtesy, gallantry, the
etiquette of love and honor, and taught him to play chess and other games.
He was usually taught to read and write the vernacular language, and was
sometimes given a little instruction in reading Latin. [17] To the lord he
rendered much personal service such as messenger, servant at meals, and
attention to guests. By the men he was trained in running, boxing,
wrestling, riding, swimming, and the use of light weapons.

2. _Squire._ At fourteen or fifteen he became a squire. While continuing
to serve his lady, with whom he was still in company, and continuing to
render personal service in the castle, the squire became in particular the
personal servant and bodyguard of the lord or knight. He was in a sense a
_valet_ for him, making his bed, caring for his clothes, helping him to
dress, and looking after him at night and when sick. He also groomed his
horse, looked after his weapons, and attended and protected him on the
field of combat or in battle. He himself learned to hunt, to handle shield
and spear, to ride in armor, to meet his opponent, and to fight with sword
and battle-axe. As he approached the age of twenty-one, he chose his lady-
love, who was older than he and who might be married, to whom he swore
ever to be devoted, even though he married some one else. He also learned
to rhyme, [18] to make songs, sing, dance, play the harp, and observe the
ceremonials of the Church. Girls were given this instruction along with
the boys, but naturally their training placed its emphasis upon household
duties, service, good manners, conversational ability, music, and
religion.

3. _Knight._ At twenty-one the boy was knighted, and of this the Church
made an impressive ceremonial. After fasting, confession, a night of vigil
in armor spent at the altar in holy meditation, and communion in the
morning, the ceremony of dubbing the squire a knight took place in the
presence of the court. He gave his sword to the priest, who blest it upon
the altar. He then took the oath "to defend the Church, to attack the
wicked, to respect the priesthood, to protect women and the poor, to
preserve the country in tranquillity, and to shed his blood, even to its
last drop, in behalf of his brethren." The priest then returned him the
sword which he had blessed, charging him "to protect the widows and
orphans, to restore and preserve the desolate, to revenge the wronged, and
to confirm the virtuous." He then knelt before his lord, who, drawing his
own sword and holding it over him, said: "In the name of God, of our Lady,
of thy patron Saint, and of Saint Michael and Saint George, I dub thee
knight; be brave (touching him with the sword on one shoulder), be bold
(on the other shoulder), be loyal (on the head)."

[Illustration: FIG. 48. A SQUIRE BEING KNIGHTED (From an old manuscript)]

THE CHIVALRIC IDEALS. Such, briefly stated, was the education of chivalry.
The cathedral and monastery schools not meeting the needs of the nobility,
the castle school was evolved. There was little that was intellectual
about the training given--few books, and no training in Latin. Instead,
the native language was emphasized, and squires in England frequently
learned to speak French. It was essentially an education for secular ends,
and prepared not only for active participation in the feuds and warfare of
the time, but also for the Seven Perfections of the Middle Ages: (1)
Riding, (2) Swimming, (3) Archery, (4) Fencing, (5) Hunting, (6) Whist or
Chess, and (7) Rhyming. It also represents the first type of schooling in
the Middle Ages designed to prepare for life here, rather than hereafter.
For the nobility it was a discipline, just as the Seven Liberal Arts was a
discipline for the monks and clergy. Out of it later on was evolved the
education of a gentleman as distinct from that of a scholar.

That such training had a civilizing effect on the nobility of the time
cannot be doubted. Through it the Church exercised a restraining and
civilizing influence on a rude, quarrelsome, and impetuous people, who
resented restraints and who had no use for intellectual discipline. It
developed the ability to work together for common ends, personal loyalty,
and a sense of honor in an age when these were much-needed traits, and the
ideal of a life of regulated service in place of one of lawless
gratification was set up. What monasticism had done for the religious life
in dignifying labor and service, chivalry did for secular life. The Ten
Commandments of chivalry, (1) to pray, (2) to avoid sin, (3) to defend the
Church, (4) to protect widows and orphans, (5) to travel, (6) to wage
loyal war, (7) to fight for his Lady, (8) to defend the right, (9) to love
his God, and (10) to listen to good and true men, while not often
followed, were valuable precepts to uphold in that age and time. In the
great Crusades movement of the twelfth century the Church consecrated the
military prowess and restless energy of the nobility to her service, but
after this wave had passed chivalry became formal and stilted and rapidly
declined in importance (R. 80).

[Illustration: FIG. 49. A KNIGHT OF THE TIME OF THE FIRST CRUSADE
(From a manuscript in the British Museum)]


4. _Professional study_

As the one professional study of the entire early Middle-Age period, and
the one study which absorbed the intellectual energy of the one learned
class, the evolution of the study of Theology possesses particular
interest for us.

THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY. During the earlier part of the period under
consideration the preparatory study necessary for service in the Church
was small, and very elementary in character. The elements of reading,
writing, reckoning, and music, as taught to _oblati_ in the monasteries,
sufficed. As knowledge increased a little the study of grammar at first,
and later all the studies of the _Trivium_ came to be common as
preparatory study, while those who made the best preparation added the
subjects of the _Quadrivium_. Ethics, or metaphysics, taught largely from
the digest of Aristotle's _Ethics_ prepared in the sixth century by
Boethius, was the text for this study until about 1200, when Aristotle's
_Metaphysics_, _Physics_, _Psychology_, and _Ethics_ were re-introduced
into Europe from Saracen sources (R. 87).

The theological course proper experienced a similar development. At first,
as we saw in chapter V, there were but few principles of belief, and the
church organization was exceedingly simple. In 325 A.D. the Nicene Creed
was formulated (p. 96), and the first twenty canons (rules) adopted for
the government of the clergy. With the translation of the Bible into the
Latin language (_Vulgate_, fourth century), the writings of the early
Latin Fathers, and additional canons and expressions of belief adopted at
subsequent church councils, an increasing amount relating to belief,
church organization, and pastoral duties needed to be imparted to new
members of the clergy. Still, up to the eleventh century at least, the
theological course remained quite meager. In a tenth-century account the
following description of the theological course of the time is given: [19]

     1. Elements of grammar and the first part of Donatus.
     2. Repeated readings of the Old and New Testaments.
     3. Mass prayers.
     4. Rules of the Church as to time reckoning.
     5. Decrees of the Church Councils.
     6. Rules of penance.
     7. Prescriptions for church services.
     8. Worldly laws.
     9. Collections of homilies (sermons).
    10. Tractates on the Epistles and Gospels.
    11. Lives of the Saints.
    12. Church music.

It will be seen from this tenth-century course of theological study that
it was based on reading, writing, and reckoning, and a little music as
preparatory studies; that it began with the first of the subjects of the
_Trivium_, which was studied only in part; and that its purpose was to
impart needed information as to dogma, church practices, canon (church)
law, and such civil (worldly) law as would be needed by the priest in
discharging his functions as the notary and lawyer of the age. There is no
suggestion of the study of Theology as a science, based on evidences,
logic, and ethics. Such study was not then known, and would not have been
tolerated. There were no other professions to study for.

SYSTEMATIC INSTRUCTION BEGINS. About 1145 Peter the Lombard published his
_Book of Sentences_, and this worked a revolution in the teaching of the
subject. In topics, arrangement, and method of treatment the book marked a
great advance, and became the standard textbook in Theology for a long
time. It did much to change the study of Theology from dogmas to a
scientific subject, and made possible schools of Theology in the
universities now about to arise. In the thirteenth century it was made the
official textbook at both the universities of Oxford and Paris. The
studies of dialectic and ethics were raised to a new plane of importance
by the publication of this book.

By the close of the twelfth century the interest of the Church in a
better-trained clergy had grown to such an extent that theological
instruction was ordered established wherever there was an Archbishop. In a
decree issued by Pope Innocent III and the General Council it was ordered:

    In every cathedral or other church of sufficient means, a master ought
    to be elected by the prelate or chapter, and the income of a prebend
    assigned to him, and in every metropolitan church a theologian also
    ought to be elected. And if the church is not rich enough to provide a
    grammarian and a theologian, it shall provide for the theologian from
    the revenues of his church, and cause provision to be made for the
    grammarian in some church of his city or diocese. [20]

We also, in the early thirteenth century, find bishops enforcing
theological training on future priests by orders of which the following is
a type:

    Hugh of Scawby, clerk, presented by Nigel Costentin to the church of
    (Potter) Hanworth, was admitted and canonically instituted in it as
    parson, on condition that he comes to the next orders to be ordained
    subdeacon. But on account of the insufficiency of his grammar, the
    lord bishop ordered him on pain of loss of his benefice to attend
    school. And the Dean of Wyville was ordered to induct him into
    corporal possession of the said church in form aforesaid, and to
    inform the lord bishop if he does not attend school. [21]


5. _Characteristics of mediaeval education_

FOUNDATIONS LAID FOR A NEW ORDER. The education which we have just
described covers the period from the time of the downfall of Rome to the
twelfth or the thirteenth century. It represents what the Church evolved
to replace that which it and the barbarians had destroyed. Meager as it
still was, after seven or eight centuries of effort, it nevertheless
presents certain clearly marked lines of development. The beginnings of a
new Christian civilization among the tribes which had invaded and overrun
the old Roman Empire are evident, and, toward the latter part of the
Middle Ages, we note the development of a number of centers of learning
(R. 71) and the beginnings of that specialization of knowledge (church
doctrine, classical learning, music, logic and ethics, theology), at
different church and monastery schools, which promised much for the future
of learning. We also notice, and will see the same evidence in the
following chapter, the beginnings of a class of scholarly men, though the
scholarship is very limited in scope and along lines thoroughly approved
by the Church.

In education proper, in the sense that we understand it, the schools
provided were still for a very limited class, and secondary rather than
elementary in nature. They were intended to meet the needs of an
institution rather than of a people, and to prepare those who studied in
them for service to that institution. That institution, too, had
concentrated its efforts on preparing its members for life in another
world, and not for life or service in this. There were as yet no
independent schools or scholars, the monks and clergy represented the one
learned class, Theology was the one professional study, the ability to
read and write was not regarded by noble or commoner as of any particular
importance, and all book knowledge was in a language which the people did
not understand when they heard it and could not read. Society was as yet
composed of three classes--feudal warriors, who spent their time in
amusements or fighting, and who had evolved a form of knightly training
for their children; privileged priests and monks and nuns, who controlled
all book learning and opportunities for professional advancement; and the
great mass of working peasants, engaged chiefly in agriculture, and
belonging to and helping to fight the battles of their protecting lord.

For these peasants there was as yet no education aside from what the
Church gave through her watchful oversight and her religious services (R.
81), and but little leisure, freedom, wealth, security, or economic need
to make such education possible or desirable. Moreover, the other-worldly
attitude of the Church made such education seem unnecessary. It was still
the education of a few for institutional purposes, though here and there,
by the close of the twelfth century, the Church was beginning to urge its
members to provide some education for their children (R. 82), and the
world was at last getting ready for the evolution of the independent
scholar, and soon would be ready for the evolution of schools to meet
secular needs.

REPRESSIVE ATTITUDE OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH. The great work of the Church
during this period, as we see it to-day, was to assimilate and
sufficiently civilize the barbarians to make possible a new civilization,
based on knowledge and reason rather than force. To this end the Church
had interposed her authority against barbarian force, and had slowly won
the contest. Almost of necessity the Church had been compelled to insist
upon her way, and this type of absolutism in church government had been
extended to most other matters. The Bible, or rather the interpretations
of it which church councils, popes, bishops, and theological writers had
made, became authoritative, and disobedience or doubt became sinful in the
eyes of the Church. [22] The Scriptures were made the authority for
everything, and interpretations the most fantastic were made of scriptural
verses. Unquestioning belief was extended to many other matters, with the
result that tales the most wonderful were recounted and believed. To
question, to doubt, to disbelieve--these were among the deadly sins of the
early Middle Ages. This attitude of mind undoubtedly had its value in
assimilating and civilizing the barbarians, and probably was a necessity
at the time, but it was bad for the future of the Church as an
institution, and utterly opposed to scientific inquiry and intellectual
progress. Monroe well expresses the situation which came to exist when he
says:

    The validity of any statement, the actuality of any alleged instance,
    came to be determined, not by any application of rationalistic
    principle, not by inherent plausibility, not by actual inquiry into
    the facts of the case, but by its agreement with religious feelings or
    beliefs, its effect in furthering the influence of the Church or the
    reputation of a saint--in general, by its relationship to matters of
    faith. Thus it happens that the chronicles of the monks and the lives
    of the saints, charming and interesting as they are in their naivete,
    their simplicity, their trustful credulity, and their pictures of a
    life and an attitude of mind so remote from ours, are filled with
    incidents given as facts that test the greatest faith, strain the most
    vivid imagination, and shock that innate respect for reality, that it
    is the purpose of modern education to inculcate. [23]

This authoritative and repressive attitude of the Church expressed itself
in many ways. The teaching of the period is an excellent example of this
influence. The instruction in the so-called Seven Liberal Arts remained
unchanged throughout a period of half a dozen centuries--so much
accumulated knowledge passed on as a legacy to succeeding generations. It
represented mere instruction; not education. As a recent writer has well
expressed it, the whole knowledge and culture contained in the Seven
Liberal Arts remained "like a substance in suspension in a medium
incapable of absorbing it; unchanged throughout the whole mediaeval
period." Inquiry or doubt in religious matters was not tolerated, and
scientific inquiry and investigation ceased to exist. The notable
scientific advances of the Greeks, their literature and philosophy, and
particularly their genius for free inquiry and investigation, no longer
influenced a world dominated by an institution preparing its children only
for life in a world to come. Not until the world could shake off this
mediaeval attitude toward scientific inquiry and make possible honest
doubt was any real intellectual progress possible. In a rough, general way
the turn in the tide came about the beginning of the twelfth century, and
for the next five centuries the Church was increasingly busy trying, like
King Canute of old, to stop the waves of free inquiry and scientific doubt
from rising higher against the bulwarks it had erected.

THE MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. The educational system which the Church
had developed by 1200 continued unchanged in its essential features until
after the great awakening known as the Revival of Learning, or
Renaissance. This system we have just sketched. For instruction in the
elements of learning we have the inner and outer monastery and convent
schools, and, in connection with the churches, song schools, and chantry
or stipendary schools. In these last we have the beginnings of the parish
school for instruction in the elements of learning and the fundamentals of
faith for the children of the faithful. In the monasteries, convents, and
in connection with the cathedral churches we have the secondary
instruction fairly well organized with the _Trivium_ and the _Quadrivium_
as the basis. At the close of the period under consideration in this
chapter a few privately endowed grammar schools were just beginning to be
founded to supplement the work of the cathedral schools (RS. 141-143). In
some of the inner monastery schools and a few of the cathedral schools we
also have the beginnings of higher instruction, with theology as the one
professional subject and the one learned career.

[Illustration: FIG. 50. EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE
AGES
The relative weight of the lines indicates approximate development. The
lines along which educational evolution took place in the later Middle
Ages are here clearly marked out.]

All these schools, too, were completely under the control of the Church.
There were no private schools or teachers before about 1200. Only the
chivalric education was under the control of princes or kings, and even
this the Church kept under its supervision. The Church was still the
State, to a large degree, and the Church, unlike Greece or Rome, took the
education of the young upon itself as one of its most important functions.
The schools taught what the Church approved, and the instruction was for
religious and church ends. The monks who gave instruction in the
monasteries were responsible to the Abbot, who was in turn responsible to
the head of the order and through him to the Pope at Rome. Similarly the
_scholasticus_ in the cathedral school and the _precentor_ in the song
school were both responsible to the Bishop, and again through Archbishop
and Cardinal to the Pope.

THE FIRST TEACHER'S CERTIFICATES AND SCHOOL SUPERVISION. Toward the latter
part of the period under consideration in this chapter an interesting
development in church school administration took place. As the cathedral
and song schools increased assistant teachers were needed, and the
_scholasticus_ and _precentor_ gradually withdrew from instruction and
became the supervisors of instruction, or rather the principals of their
respective schools. As song or parish schools were established in the
parishes of the diocese teachers for these were needed, and the
_scholasticus_ and _precentor_ extended their authority and supervision
over these, just as the Bishop had done much earlier (p. 97) over the
training and appointment of priests. By 1150 we have, clearly evolved, the
system of central supervision of the training of all teachers in the
diocese through the issuing, for the first time in Europe, of licenses to
teach (R. 83). The system was finally put into legal form by a decree
adopted by a general council of the Church at Rome, in 1179, which
required that the _scholasticus_ "should have authority to superintend all
the schoolmasters of the diocese and grant them licenses without which
none should presume to teach," and that "nothing be exacted for licenses
to teach" issued by him, thus stopping the charging of fees for their
issuance. The _precentor_, in a similar manner, claimed and often secured
supervision of all elementary, and especially all song-school instruction.
Teachers were also required to take an oath of fealty and obedience (R. 84
b).

As a result of centuries of evolution we thus find, by 1200, a limited but
powerful church school system, with centralized control and supervision of
instruction, diocesan licenses to teach, and a curriculum adapted to the
needs of the institution in control of the schools. We also note the
beginnings of secular instruction in the training of the nobility for
life's service, though even this is approved and sanctioned by the Church.
The centralized religious control thus established continued until the
nineteenth century, and still exists to a more or less important degree in
the school systems of Italy, the old Austro-Hungarian States, Germany,
England, and some other western nations. As we shall see later on, one of
the big battles in the process of developing state school systems has come
through the attempt of the State to substitute its own organization for
this religious monopoly of instruction.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Outline the instruction in an inner monastery school.

2. Show how the mediaeval parish school naturally developed as an offshoot
of the cathedral schools, and was supplemented later by the endowed
chantry schools.

3. What effect did the development of song-school instruction have on the
instruction in the cathedral schools?

4. Why was it difficult to develop good cathedral schools during the early
Middle Ages?

5. About how much training would be represented to-day by the Seven
Liberal Arts, (_a_) assuming the body of knowledge then known? (_b_)
assuming the body of knowledge for each subject known to-day?

6. What great subject of study has been developed out of one part of the
study of mediaeval rhetoric?

7. Why would dialectic naturally not be of much importance, so long as
instruction in theology was dogmatic and not a matter of thinking?

8. Characterize the instruction in arithmetic, geometry, and geography
during the early Middle Ages. Would we consider such knowledge as of any
value? Explain the attention given to such instruction.

9. What great modern subjects of study have been developed out of the
mediaeval subjects of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy?

10. Compare the knowledge of mediaevals and moderns in (a) geography, (b)
astronomy.

11. What does the fact that the few great textbooks were in use for so
many centuries indicate as to the character of educational progress during
the Middle Ages?

12. Was the Church wise in adopting and sanctifying the education of
chivalry? Why?

13. What important contributions to world progress came out of chivalric
education?

14. What ideals and practices from chivalry have been retained and are
still in use to-day? Does the Boy Scouts movement embody any of the
chivalric ideas and training?

15. Compare the education of the body by the Greeks and under chivalry.

16. Compare the Athenian ephebic oath with the vows of chivalry.

17. Picture the present world transferred back to a time when theology was
the one profession.

18. What educational theory, conscious or unconscious, formed the basis
for mediaeval education and instruction?

19. Explain why the Church, after six or seven centuries of effort, still
provided schools only for preparation for its own service.

20. What does the lack of independent scholars during the Middle Ages
indicate as to possible leisure?

21. Was the attitude of Anselm a perfectly natural one for the Middle
Ages? Can progress be made with such an attitude dominant?

22. Contrast the deadly sins of the Middle Ages with present-day
conceptions as to education.

23. Contrast the purposes of mediaeval education and the education of to-
day.

24. When Greece and Rome offered no precedents, how did the Church come to
so fully develop and control the education which was provided?

25. Compare the supervisory work of a modern county superintendent with
that of a _scholasticus_ of a mediaeval cathedral.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  70. Leach: Song and Grammar Schools in England.
  71. Mullinger: The Episcopal and Monastic Schools.
  72. Statutes: The School at Salisbury Cathedral.
  73. Aldwincle: Foundation Grant for a Chantry School.
  74. Maurus: The Seven Liberal Arts.
  75. Leach: A Mediaeval Latin Colloquy.
  76. Quintilian: On the Importance of the Study of Grammar.
  77. Anglicus: The Elements, and the Planets.
      (a) Of the Elements.
      (b) Of Double Moving of the Planets.
  78. Cott: A Tenth Century Schoolmaster's Books.
  79. Archbishop of Cologne: The Truce of God.
  80. Gautier: How the Church used Chivalry.
  81. Draper: Educational Influences of the Church Services.
  82. Winchester Diocesan Council: How the Church urged that the Elements
      of Religious Education be given.
  83. Lincoln Cathedral: Licenses required to teach Song.
  84. English Forms: Appointment and Oath of a Grammar-School Master.
      (a) Northallerton: Appointment of a master of Song and Grammar.
      (b) Archdeacon of Ely: Oath of a Grammar-School Master to.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Distinguish between song and grammar schools (70), and state what was
taught in each. Do we have any modern analogy to the same teacher teaching
both schools, as was sometimes done?

2. Distinguish between monastic and episcopal (cathedral) schools (71).
When was the great era of each? How do you explain the change in relative
importance of the two?

3. Explain the process of evolution of a parish school out of a chantry
school.

4. What was the nature of the cathedral school at Salisbury (72)?

5. What type of a school was provided for in the Aldwincle chantry (73)?
Why was it not until after the twelfth century that the endowing of
schools (73) began to supersede the endowing of priests, churches, and
monasteries?

6. How do you explain the need for so many years to master the Seven
Liberal Arts (74)?

7. Into what subjects of study have we broken up the old subject of
grammar, as described by Quintilian (76), and how have we distributed them
throughout our school system? Is technical grammar at present taught in
the best possible place?

8. What stage in scientific knowledge do the selections from Anglicus (77
a-b) indicate? What rate of scientific progress is indicated by its
translation and length of use?

9. What scope of knowledge is represented in the library (78) of the
tenth-century schoolmaster? What does the list indicate as to the state of
learning of the time?

10. Picture the manners and morals of a time which called for the
proclamation of a Truce of God (79). Would the rate of progress of
civilization and the rate of elimination of warfare up to then, and since,
indicate that the Church has been very successful in imposing its will?

11. Show how Chivalry was made a great asset to the Church (80).

12. How do you explain the much greater simplicity of the church service
of modern Protestant churches than that of the Roman (81) or Greek
Catholic churches?

13. Explain the form of mild compulsion toward learning which the diocesan
council of Winchester (82) attempted to institute.

14. Is the modern state teacher's certificate a natural outgrowth of the
mediaeval licenses (83) to teach grammar and song? Why did the Church
insist on these when Rome had not required such?

15. Show how the modern oath of office of a teacher, and the possibility
of dismissal for insubordination, is a natural development from the oath
of fealty and obedience (84 b) of the mediaeval teacher? Is this true also
for our modern notices of appointment (84 a)?


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Abelson, Paul. _The Seven Liberal Arts_.
  Addison, Julia de W. _Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages_.
  Besant, W. _The Story of King Alfred_.
* Clark, J. W. _The Care of Books_.
  Davidson, Thomas. "The Seven Liberal Arts"; in _Educational
    Review_, vol. II, pp. 467-73. (Also in his _Aristotle_.)
  Mombert, J. I. _History of Charles the Great_.
* Mullinger, J. B. _The Schools of Charles the Great_.
  Sandys, J. E. _History of Classical Scholarship_, vol. I.
  Scheffel, Victor. _Ekkehard_. (Historical novel of monastic life.)
  Steele, Philip. _Mediaeval Lore_. (Anglicus' Cyclopaedia.)




CHAPTER VIII

INFLUENCES TENDING TOWARD A REVIVAL OF LEARNING


I. MOSLEM LEARNING FROM SPAIN

THE MOHAMMEDANS IN SPAIN. It will be recalled that in chapter V we
mentioned briefly the Mohammedan migrations of the seventh century, and
said that we should meet them again a little later on as one of the minor
forces in the development of our western civilization. After their defeat
at Tours (732) the Mohammedans retired into Spain, mixed with the Iberian-
Roman-Visigothic peoples inhabiting the peninsula, and began to develop a
civilization there. Figure 33 (p. 114) shows how much of the world the
Mohammedans had overrun by 800 A.D., and how much of Spain was in their
possession.

In Spain they developed a skillful agriculture (R. 85), as, in lands as
hot and dry as Spain, all agriculture to be successful must be. They
introduced irrigation, gave special attention to the breeding of horses
and cattle, and developed garden and orchard fruits. To them western
Europe is indebted for the introduction of many of its orchard fruits,
useful plants, and garden vegetables, as well as for a number of important
manufacturing processes. The orange, lemon, peach, apricot, and mulberry
trees; the spinach, artichoke, and asparagus among vegetables; cotton,
rice, sugar cane, and hemp among useful plants; the culture of the
silkworm, and the manufacture of silk and cotton garments; the manufacture
of paper from cotton, and the making of morocco leather--these are among
our debts to these people. Though many of the above had been known to
antiquity, they had been lost during the barbarian invasions and were
restored only through their re-introduction by the Moslems.

GREAT ABSORPTIVE POWER FOR LEARNING. The original Arabians themselves were
not a well-educated people. Before the time of Mohammed we have
practically no records as to any education among them. When in their
religious conquests they overran Syria (see Map, p. 103), they came in
contact with the survivals of that wonderful Greek civilization and
learning, and this they absorbed with greatest avidity.

It will be recalled, too, that in chapter IV (p. 94), it was stated that
the early Christians developed very important catechetical schools in
Egypt and Syria, and especially at Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis,
Harran, and Caesarea. [1] (See Figure 27, p. 89.) It was also stated that
the Christian instruction imparted at these eastern schools was tinctured
through and through with Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought.
Here monasteries also were developed in numbers, and Syrian monks had for
centuries been busy translating Greek authors into Syriac. It was also
stated (p. 94) that the Eastern or Greek division of the Christian Church,
of which Constantinople became the central city, was more liberal toward
Greek learning than was the Western or Latin division of the Church.

By the fifth century, though, due in part to the breakdown of government,
the increasing barbarity of the age, and the greater control of all
thinking by the Church, the Eastern Church lost somewhat of its earlier
tolerance. In 431 the Church Council of Ephesus put a ban on the
Hellenized form of Christian theology advocated by Nestorius, then
Patriarch of Constantinople, and drove him and his followers, known as
_Nestorian Christians_, from the city. These Nestorians now fled to the
old Syrian cities, which early had been so hospitable to Greek learning
and thinking. [2] Being now beyond the reach of Christian intolerance and
in a friendly atmosphere, they remained there, developing excellent higher
schools of the old Greek type, and there the Mohammedans found them when
they overran Syria, in 635 A.D.

Mohammedanism now came in contact with an educated people, as it did also
in Babylonia (637), in Assyria (640), and in Egypt (642), and the need of
a better statement of the somewhat crude faith now became evident. The
same process now took place as had occurred earlier with Christianity. The
Nestorian Christians and the Syrian monks became the scholars for the
Mohammedans, and the Mohammedan faith was clothed in Greek forms and
received a thorough tincturing of Greek philosophic thought. Within a
century they had translated from Syriac into Arabic, or from the original
Greek, much of the old Greek learning in philosophy, science, and
medicine, and the cities of Syria, and in particular their capital,
Damascus, became renowned for their learning. In 760 Bagdad, on the
Tigris, was founded, and superseded Damascus as the capital. Extending
eastward, these people were soon busy absorbing Hindu mathematical
knowledge, obtaining from them (c. 800) the so-called Arabic notation and
algebra.

THEY DEVELOP SCHOOLS AND ADVANCE LEARNING. In 786 Haroun-al-Raschid became
Caliph at Bagdad, and he and his son made it an intellectual center of
first importance. In all the known world probably no city, not even
Constantinople, during the latter part of the eighth century and most of
the ninth, could vie with Bagdad as a center of learning. Basra, Kufa, and
other eastern cities were also noted places. Schools were opened in
connection with the mosques (churches), a university after the old Greek
model was founded, a large library was organized, and an observatory was
built. Large numbers of students thronged the city, learned Greeks and
Jews taught in the schools, and a number of advances on the scientific
work done by the Greeks were made. A degree of the earth's surface [3] was
measured on the shores of the Red Sea; the obliquity of the ecliptic was
determined (c. 830); astronomical tables were calculated; algebra and
trigonometry were perfected; discoveries in chemistry not known in Europe
until toward the end of the eighteenth century, and advances in physics
for which western Europe waited for Newton (1642-1727), were made; and in
medicine and surgery their work was not duplicated until the early
nineteenth century. Their scholars wrote dictionaries, lexicons,
cyclopaedias, and pharmacopoeias of merit (R. 86).

This eastern learning was now gradually carried to Spain by traveling
Mohammedan scholars, and there the energy of conquest was gradually turned
to the development of schools and learning. By 900 a good civilization and
intellectual life had been developed in Spain, and before 1000 the
teaching in Spain, especially along Greek philosophical lines, had become
sufficiently known to attract a few adventurous monks from Christian
Europe. Gerbert (953-1003), afterward Pope Sylvester II (p. 159), was one
of the first to study there, though for this he was accused of having
transactions with the Devil, and when he died suddenly at fifty, four
years after having been elevated to the Papacy, monks over Europe are
recorded as having crossed themselves and muttered that the Devil had now
claimed his reward. A monk from Monte Cassino also studied at Bagdad, and
brought back some of the eastern learning to his monastery.

[Illustration: FIG. 51. SHOWING CENTERS OF MOSLEM LEARNING]

MOHAMMEDAN REACTION SENDS SCHOLARS TO SPAIN. The great intellectual
development at Bagdad was in part due to the patronage of a few caliphs of
large vision, and was of relatively short duration. The religious
enthusiasts among the Mohammedans were in reality but little more zealous
for Hellenic learning than the Fathers of the Western Church had been.
Finally, about 1050, they obtained the upper hand and succeeded in driving
out the Hellenic Mohammedans, just as the Eastern Christians had driven
out the Nestorians, and these scholars of the East now fled to northern
Africa and to Spain. [4] Almost at once a marked further development in
the intellectual life of Spain took place. In Cordova, Granada, Toledo,
and Seville strong universities were developed, where Jews and Hellenized
Mohammedans taught the learning of the East, and made further advances in
the sciences and mathematics. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics,
physiology, medicine, and surgery were the great subjects of study. Greek
philosophy also was taught. They developed schools and large libraries,
taught geography from globes, studied astronomy in observatories, counted
time by pendulum clocks, invented the compass and gunpowder, developed
hospitals, and taught medicine and surgery in schools (R. 86).

Their cities were equally noteworthy for their magnificent palaces, [5]
mosques, public baths, market-places, aqueducts, and paved and lighted
streets--things unknown in Christian Europe for centuries to come (R. 85).
It became fashionable for wealthy men to become patrons of learning, and
to collect large libraries and place them at the disposal of scholars,
thus revealing interests in marked contrast to those of the fighting
nobility of Christian Europe.

THEIR INFLUENCE ON WESTERN EUROPE. Western Europe of the tenth to the
twelfth centuries presented a dreary contrast, in almost every particular,
to the brilliant life of southern Spain. Just emerging from barbarism, it
was still in an age of general disorder and of the simplest religious
faith. [6] The age of reason and of scientific experiment as a means of
arriving at truth had not yet dawned, and would not do so for centuries to
come. Monks and clerics, representing the one learned class, regarded this
Moslem science as "black art," and in consequence Europe, centuries later,
had slowly to rediscover the scientific knowledge which might have been
had for the taking. Only the book science of Aristotle would the Church
accept, and even this only after some hesitation (Rs. 89, 90).

Western Europe had, however, advanced far enough through the study of the
Seven Liberal Arts to desire corrected and additional texts of the earlier
classical writers, particularly Aristotle, and also to be willing to
accept some of the mathematical knowledge of these Saracens. It was here
that the Moslem learning in Spain helped in the intellectual awakening of
the rest of Europe. Adelhard, an English monk, studied at Cordova about
1120, and took back with him some knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, and
geometry. His Euclid was in general use in the universities by 1300.
Gerard of Cremona, in Lombardy (1114-1187), who studied at Toledo a little
later, rendered a similar service for Italy. He also translated many works
from the Arabic, including Ptolemy's Almagest (p. 49), a book of
astronomical tables, and Alhazen's (Spanish scholar, c. 1100) book on
Optics. Other monks studied in the Spanish cities during the twelfth
century, a few of whom brought back translations of importance. Frederick
II [7] employed a staff of Jewish physicians to translate Arabic works
into Latin, but, due to his continual war against the Pope and his final
outlawry by the Church, his work possessed less significance than it
otherwise might have done. Among the books thus translated was the medical
textbook of Avicenna (980-1037), based in turn on the Greek works by Galen
and Hippocrates of Cos (p. 197). This book described ailments and their
treatment in detail, became the standard textbook in the medical faculties
of the universities, and was used until the seventeenth century. Another
Moslem whose translated writings had great influence on Europe was
Averroes (1126-1198) who tried to unite the philosophy of Aristotle with
Mohammedanism (R. 88). His influence on the thinkers of the later Middle
Ages was large, he being regarded as the greatest commentator on Aristotle
from the days of Rome to the time of the Renaissance.

[Illustration: FIG. 52. ARISTOTLE]

What Europe obtained through Moslem sources which it prized most, though,
was the commentary on Aristotle by Averroes and the works of Aristotle (R.
88). The list of the books of Aristotle in use in the mediaeval
universities by 1300 (R. 87) reveals the great importance of the additions
made. By the middle of the twelfth century Aristotle's _Ethics_,
_Metaphysics_, _Physics_, and _Psychology_, as well as some of his minor
works, had been translated into Latin and were beginning to be made
available for study. The translation route through which these works had
been derived was a roundabout one--Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Castilian,
Latin--and hence the translations could not be very accurate, but they
sufficed for the needs of Europe until the original Greek versions were
recovered when the Venetians and Crusaders took and sacked Constantinople,
in 1204. These were then translated directly into the Latin. Western
Europe also was ready to use the Arabic (Hindu) system of notation, the
elements of algebra, Euclid's geometry, and Ptolemy's work on the motion
of the heavens. These contributions western Europe was ready for; the
larger scientific knowledge of the Saracens, their pharmacopoeias,
dictionaries, cyclopaedias, histories, and biographies, it was not yet
ready to receive.

One other influence crept in from these peoples which was of large future
importance--the music and light literature and love songs of Spain. There
had been developed in this sunny land a life of light gayety, chivalrous
gallantry, elegant courtesies, and poetic and musical charm, and this
gradually found its way across the Pyrenees. At first it affected Provence
and Languedoc, in southern France, then Sicily and Italy, and finally the
gay contagion of lute and mandolin and love songs spread throughout all
western Europe. A race of troubadours and minnesingers arose, singing in
the vernacular, traveling about the country, and being entertained in
castle halls.

  Lordlyng listneth to my tale
  Which is merryr than the nightengale

won admission at any castle gate. "Out of these genial but not orthodox
beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose."


II. THE RISE OF SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY

THE ELEVENTH CENTURY A TURNING POINT. By the end of the eleventh century a
distinct turning-point had been reached in the struggle to save
civilization from perishing. From this time on it was clear that the
battle had been won, and that a new Christian civilization would in time
arise in western Europe. Much still remained to be done, and centuries of
effort would be required, but the Church, almost for the first time in
more than six hundred years, felt that it could now pause to organize and
systematize its faith. The invasions and destruction of the Northmen had
at last ceased, the Mohammedan conquests were over, almost the last of the
Germanic tribes in Europe had settled down and had accepted Christianity,
[8] and the fighting nobility of Europe were being held somewhat in
restraint by the might of the Church, the "Truce of God" (R. 79), and the
softening influence of chivalric education (R. 80). There were many
evidences, too, by the end of the eleventh century, that the western
Christian world, after the long intellectual night, was soon to awaken to
a new intellectual life. The twelfth century, in particular, was a period
when it was evident that some new leaven was at work.

Up to about the close of the eleventh century western Europe had been
living in an age of simple faith. The Christian world everywhere lay under
"a veil of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession." The mysteries of
Christianity and the many inconsistencies of its teachings and beliefs
were accepted with childlike docility, and the Church had felt little call
to organize, to systematize, or to explain. Here and there, to be sure,
some questioning monk or cleric had raised questions over matters [9] of
faith which his reason could not explain, and had, perhaps, for a time
disturbed the peace of orthodoxy, but a statement somewhat similar to that
made by Anselm of Canterbury (footnote, p. 173), as to the precedence of
faith over reason, had usually been sufficient to silence all inquiry.
Once, in the latter part of the eleventh century, when a great discussion
as to the nature of knowledge had taken place among the leaders of the
Church, a church council had been called to pass upon and give final
settlement to the questions raised. [10]

RISE OF THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. As the cathedral schools grew in importance
as teaching institutions, and came to have many teachers and students, a
few of them became noted as places where good instruction was imparted and
great teachers were to be found. Canterbury in England, Paris and Chartres
in France, and several of the cities in northern Italy early were noted
for the quality of their instruction. The great teachers and the keenest
students of the time were to be found in the cathedral schools in these
places, and the monastic schools now lost their earlier importance as
teaching institutions. By the twelfth century they had been completely
superseded as important teaching centers by the rapidly developing
cathedral schools. To these more important cathedral schools students now
came from long distances to study under some noted teacher. Says McCabe:
[11]

    The scholastic fever which was soon to influence the youth of Europe,
    had already set in. You could not travel far over the rough roads of
    France without meeting some footsore scholar, making for the nearest
    large monastery or cathedral town. Robbers, frequently in the service
    of the lord of the land, infested every province. It was safest to don
    the coarse frieze tunic of the pilgrim, without pockets, sling your
    little wax tablets and stylus at your girdle, strap a wallet of bread
    and herbs and salt on your back, and laugh at the nervous folk who
    peeped out from their coaches over a hedge of pikes and daggers. Few
    monasteries refused a meal or a rough bed to the wandering scholar.
    Rarely was any fee exacted for the lesson given.

The cathedral school in connection with the church of Notre Dame [12]
became especially famous for its teachers of the Liberal Arts
(particularly Dialectic) and of Theology, and to this school, just as the
eleventh century was drawing to a close, came a youth, then barely twenty
years of age, who is generally regarded as having been the keenest scholar
of the twelfth century. His brilliant intellect soon enabled him to refute
the instruction of his teachers and to vanquish them in debate. His name
was Abelard. Before long he himself became a teacher of Grammar and Logic
at Paris, and later of Theology, and, so widely had he read, so clearly
did he appeal to the reason of his hearers, and so incisive was his
teaching, that he attracted large numbers of students to his lectures. To
assist in his teaching of Theology he prepared a little textbook, _Sic et
Non_ (Yea and Nay), in which he raised for debate many questions as to
church teachings (R. 91 b), such as "That faith is based on reason, or
not." In the introduction to this textbook he held that "constant and
frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom" (R. 91 a). His method was
to give the authorities on both sides, but to render no decision. His
boldness in raising such questions for debate was new, and his failure to
give the students a decision was quite unusual, while his claim that
reason was antecedent to faith was startling. Even after being driven from
Paris, in part because of this boldness and in part because of a most
unfortunate incident which deservedly ruined his career in the Church,
students in numbers followed him to his retreat and listened to his
teachings. His method of instruction was for the time so unusual and his
spirit of inquiry so searching that he stimulated many a young mind to a
new type of thinking. One of his pupils was Peter the Lombard (p. 171),
who completely redirected the teaching of theology with his _Book of
Sentences_ (c. 1145)--This was based largely on Abelard's method, except
that a positive and orthodox decision was presented for each question
raised.

[Illustration: FIG. 53. THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME, AT PARIS
The present cathedral was begun in 1163, consecrated in 1182, and
completed in the thirteenth century. It is built on an island in the
Seine, and on the site of a church built in the fourth century. The little
community which grew up about the cathedral church formed the nucleus
about which the city of Paris eventually grew. This cathedral front, with
its statues and beautiful carving, formed a type much followed during the
great period of cathedral-building (thirteenth century) in Europe. The
school in connection with this cathedral early became famous.]

What took place at Paris also took place, though generally on a smaller
scale, at many other cathedral and monastery schools of western Europe.
The spirit of inquiry had at last been awakened, the Church was being
respectfully challenged by its children to prove its faith, and the
learning of the Saracens in Spain, which now began to filter across the
Pyrenees, added to the strength of their challenge. Returning pilgrims and
crusaders (First Crusade, 1099) also began to ask for an explanation of
the doubts which had come to them from the contact with Greek and Arab in
the East. A desire for a philosophy which would explain the mysteries and
contradictions of the Christian faith found expression among the scholars
of the time. In the larger cathedral schools, at least, it became common
to discuss the doctrines of the Church with much freedom.

THE RISE OF SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY. The Church, in a very intelligent and
commendable manner, prepared to meet and use this new spirit in the
organization, systematization, and restatement of its faith and doctrine,
and the great era of Scholasticism [13] now arose. During the latter part
of the twelfth and in the thirteenth century Scholasticism was at its
height; after that, its work being done, it rapidly declined as an
educational force, and the new universities inherited the spirit which had
given rise to its labors.

With the new emphasis now placed on reasoning, Dialectic or Logic
superseded Grammar as the great subject of study, and logical analysis was
now applied to the problems of religion. The Church adopted and guided the
movement, and the schools of the time turned their energy into directions
approved by it. Aristotle also was in time adopted by the Church, after
the translation of his principal works had been effected (Rs. 87, 90), and
his philosophy was made a bulwark for Christian doctrine throughout the
remainder of the Middle Ages. For the next four centuries Aristotle
thoroughly dominated all philosophic thinking. [14] The great development
and use of logical analysis now produced many keen and subtle minds, who
worked intensively a narrow and limited field of thought. The result was a
thorough reorganization and restatement of the theology of the Church.

[Illustration: PLATE 3. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS]

This was the work of Scholasticism. The movement was not characterized by
the evolution of new doctrines, but by a systematization and organization
into good teaching form of what had grown up during the preceding thousand
years. To a large degree it was also an "accommodation" of the old
theology to the new Aristotelian philosophy which had recently been
brought back to western Europe, and the statement of the Christian
doctrines in good philosophic form.

THE ORGANIZING WORK OF THE SCHOOLMEN. Peter the Lombard (1100-1160), whose
_Book of Sentences_, mentioned above, had so completely changed the
character of the instruction in Theology, began this work of theological
reorganization. Albert the Great (_Albertus Magnus_, 1193-1280) was the
first of the great Schoolmen, and has been termed "the organizing
intellect of the Middle Ages." He was a German Dominican monk [15], born
in Swabia, and educated in the schools of Paris, Padua, and Bologna. Later
he became a celebrated teacher at Paris and Cologne. He was the first to
state the philosophy of Aristotle in systematic form, and was noted as an
exponent of the work of Peter the Lombard. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274),
the greatest and most influential scholastic philosopher of the Middle
Ages, studied first at Monte Cassino and Naples, and then at Paris and
Cologne, under Albertus Magnus. He later became a noted teacher of
Philosophy and Theology at Rome, Bologna, Viterbo, Perugia, and Naples.
Under him Scholasticism came to its highest development in his harmonizing
the new Aristotelianism with the doctrines of the Church. His class
teaching was based on Aristotle, [16] the Vulgate Bible, and Peter the
Lombard's _Book of Sentences_. During the last three years of his life he
wrote his _Summa Theologiae_, a book which has ever since been accepted as
an authoritative statement of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

The character of the organization made by Peter the Lombard and Thomas
Aquinas may be seen from an examination of their method of presentation,
which was dogmatic in form and similar in the textbooks of each. The field
of Christian Theology was divided out into parts, heads, subheads, etc.,
in a way that would cover the subject, and a group of problems, each
dealing with some doctrinal point, was then presented under each. The
problem was first stated in the text. Next the authorities and arguments
for each solution other than that considered as orthodox were presented
and confuted, in order. The orthodox solution was next presented, the
arguments and authorities for such solution quoted, and the objections to
the correct solution presented and refuted (R. 152).

RESULTS OF THEIR WORK. The work of the Schoolmen was to organize and
present in systematic and dogmatic form the teachings of the Church (R.
92). This they did exceedingly well, and the result was a thorough
organization of Theology as a teaching subject. They did little to extend
knowledge, and nothing at all to apply it to the problems of nature and
man. Their work was abstract and philosophical instead, dealing wholly
with theological questions. The purpose was to lay down principles, and to
offer a training in analysis, comparison, classification, and deduction
which would prepare learned and subtle defenders of the faith of the
Church. So successful were the Schoolmen in their efforts that instruction
in Theology was raised by their work to a new position of importance, and
a new interest in theological scholarship and general learning was
awakened which helped not a little to deflect many strong spirits from a
life of warfare to a life of study. They made the problems of learning
seem much more worth while, and their work helped to create a more
tolerant attitude toward the supporters of either side of debatable
questions by revealing so clearly that there are two sides to every
question. This new learning, new interest in learning, and new spirit of
tolerance the rising universities inherited.


III. LAW AND MEDICINE AS NEW STUDIES

THE OLD ROMAN CITIES. The old Roman Empire, it will be remembered, came to
be largely a collection of provincial cities. These were the centers of
Roman civilization and culture. After the downfall of the governing power
of Rome, the great highways were no longer repaired, brigandage became
common, trade and intercourse largely ceased, and the provincial cities
which were not destroyed in the barbarian invasions declined in population
and number, passing under the control of their bishops who long ruled them
as feudal lords. During the long period of disorder many of the old Roman
cities entirely disappeared (R. 49). Only in Italy, and particularly in
northern Italy, did these old cities retain anything of their earlier
municipal life, or anything worth mentioning of their former industry and
commerce. But even here they lost most of their earlier importance as
centers of culture and trade, becoming merely ecclesiastical towns. After
the death of Charlemagne, the break-up of his empire, and the institution
of feudal conditions, the cities and towns declined still more in
importance, and few of any size remained.

In Italy feudalism never attained the strength it did in northern Europe.
Throughout all the early Middle Ages the cities there retained something
of their old privileges, though ruled by prince-bishops residing in them.
They also retained something of the old Roman civilization, and Roman
legal usages and some knowledge of Roman law never quite died out. In
other respects they much resembled mediaeval cities elsewhere.

REESTABLISHMENT OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. After the disintegration of
Charlemagne's empire, the portion of it now known as Germany broke up into
fragments, largely independent of one another, and full of fight and
pride. The result there was continual and pitiless warfare. This, coupled
with the raids of the Northmen along the northern coast and the Magyars on
the east, led to the election of a king in 919 (Henry the Fowler) who
could establish some semblance of unity and order. By 961 the German
duchies and small principalities had been so consolidated that a
succeeding king (Otto I) felt himself able to attempt to reestablish the
Holy Roman Empire by subjugating Italy and annexing it as an appendage
under German rule.

He descended into Italy (961), subjugated the cities, overthrew the
Papacy, created a pope to his liking, and reestablished the old Empire, in
name at least. For a century the German rule was nominal, but with the
outbreak of the conflict in the eleventh century between king and pope
over the question of which one should invest the bishops with their
authority (known as the _investiture conflict_, 1075-1122), Pope Gregory
VII humbled the German king (Henry IV) at Canossa (1077) and won a partial
success. Then followed repeated invasions of Italy, and a century and a
half of conflicts between pope and king before the dream of universal
empire under a German feudal king ended in disaster, and Italy was freed
from Teutonic rule.

[Illustration: FIG. 54, THE CITY-STATES OF NORTHERN ITALY
All of the cities in the valley of the Po, except Turin, Pavia, and
Mantua, were members of the Lombard League of 1167.]

THE ITALIAN CITIES REVIVE THE STUDY OF ROMAN LAW. As was stated above,
Roman legal usages and some knowledge of Roman law had never quite died
out in these Italian cities. But, while regarded with reverence, the law
was not much understood, little study was given to it, and important parts
of it were neglected and forgotten. The struggle with the ruling bishops
in the second half of the eleventh century, and the discussions which
arose during the investiture conflict, caused new attention to be given to
legal questions, and both the study of Roman (civil) and Church (canon)
law were revived. The Italian cities stood with the Papacy in the
struggles with the German kings, and, in 1167, those in the Valley of the
Po formed what was known as the _Lombard League_ for defense. Under the
pressure of German oppression they now began a careful study of the known
Roman law in an effort to discover some charter, edict, or grant of power
upon which they could base their claim for independent legal rights. The
result was that the study of Roman law was given an emphasis unknown in
Italy since the days of the old Empire. What had been preserved during the
period of disorder at last came to be understood, additional books of the
law were discovered, and men suddenly awoke to a realization that what had
been before considered as of little value actually contained much that was
worth studying, as well as many principles of importance that were
applicable to the conditions and problems of the time.

[Illustration: FIG. 55. FRAGMENT FROM THE RECOVERED "DIGEST" OF JUSTINIAN
Capitals and small letters are here used, but note the difficulty of
reading without spacing or punctuation.]

The great student and teacher of law of the period was Irnerius of Bologna
(c. 1070-1137), who began to lecture on the _Code_ and the _Institutes_ of
Justinian about 1110 to 1115, and soon attracted large numbers of students
to hear his interpretations. About this same time the _Digest_, much the
largest and most important part of the old law, was discovered and made
known. [17]

This gave clearness to the whole, as before its discovery the study of
Roman law was like the study of Aristotle when only parts of the _Organon_
were known. Irnerius and his co-laborers at Bologna now collected and
arranged the entire body of Roman civil law (_Corpus Juris Civilis_) (R.
93), introduced the _Digest_ to western Europe, and thus made a new
contribution of first importance to the list of possible higher studies.
Law now ceased to be a part of Rhetoric (p. 157) and became a new subject
of study, with a body of material large enough to occupy a student for
several years. This was an event of great intellectual significance. A new
study was now evolved which offered great possibilities for intellectual
activity and the exercise of the critical faculty, while at the same time
showing veneration for authority. Law was thus placed alongside Theology
as a professional subject, and the evolution of the professional lawyer
from the priest was now for the first time made possible.

CANON LAW ALSO ORGANIZED AS A SUBJECT OF STUDY. Inspired by the revival of
the study of civil law, a monk of Bologna, Gratian by name, set himself to
make a compilation of all the Church canons which had been enacted since
the Council of Nicaea (325) formulated the first twenty (p. 96), and of
the rules for church government as laid down by the church authorities.
This he issued in textbook form, about 1142, under the title of _Decretum
Gratiani_. So successful were his efforts that his compilation was "one of
those great textbooks that take the world by storm." It did for canon
(church) law what the rediscovery of the Justinian _Code_ had done for
civil law; that is, it organized canon law as a new and important teaching
subject.

The _Decretum_ of Gratian was published in three parts, and was organized
after the same plan as Abelard's _Sic et Non_, except that Gratian drew
conclusions from the mass of evidence he presented on each topic. It
contained 147 "Distinctions" (questions; cases of church policy), upon
each of which were cited the church canons and the views and decisions of
important church authorities. [18] This volume was added to by popes later
on, [19] so that by the fifteenth century a large body of canon law had
grown up, which was known as the _Corpus Juris Canonici_. Canon Law was
thus separated from Theology and added to Civil Law as another new subject
of study for both theological and legal students, and the two subjects of
Canon and Civil Law came to constitute the work of the law faculties in
the universities which soon arose in western Europe.

[Illustration: FIG. 56. THE FATHER OF MEDICINE HIPPOCRATES OF COS (460-
367? B.C.)]

THE BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL STUDY. The Greeks had made some progress in the
beginnings of the study of disease (p. 47). Aristotle had given some
anatomical knowledge in his writings on animals, and had theorized a
little about the functions of the human body. The real founder of medical
science, though, was Hippocrates, of the island of Cos (c. 460-367 B.C.),
a contemporary of Plato. He was the first writer on the subject who
attempted to base the practice of the healing art on careful observation
and scientific principles. He substituted scientific reason for the wrath
of offended deities as the causes of disease, and tried to offer proper
remedies in place of sacrifices and prayers to the gods for cures. His
descriptions of diseases were wonderfully accurate, and his treatments
ruled medical practice for ages. [20] He knew, however, little as to
anatomy. Another Greek writer, Galen [21](131-201 A.D.), wrote extensively
on medicine and left an anatomical account of the human body which was
unsurpassed for more than a thousand years. His work was known and used by
the Saracens. Avicenna (980-1037), an eastern Mohammedan, wrote a _Canon
of Medicine_ in which he summarized the work of all earlier writers, and
gave a more minute description of symptoms than any preceding writer had
done. These works, together with a few minor writings by teachers in Spain
and Salerno, formed the basis of all medical knowledge until Vesalius
published his _System of Human Anatomy_, in 1543.

The Roman knowledge of medicine was based almost entirely on that of the
Greeks, and after the rise of the Christians, with their new attitude
toward earthly life and contempt for the human body, the science fell into
disrepute and decay. Saint Augustine (354-430), in his great work on _The
City of God_, speaks with some bitterness of "medical men who are called
anatomists," and who "with a cruel zeal for science have dissected the
bodies of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under
their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body
to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be
cured." [22] During the early Middle Ages the Greek medical knowledge
practically disappeared, and in its place came the Christian theories of
satanic influence, diabolic action, and divine punishment for sin.
Correspondingly the cures were prayers at shrines and repositories of
sacred relics and images, which were found all over Europe, and to which
the injured or fever-stricken peasants hied themselves to make offerings
and to pray, and then hope for a miracle.

Toward the middle of the eleventh century Salerno, a small city
delightfully situated on the Italian coast (see Map, p. 194), thirty-four
miles south of Naples, began to attain some reputation as a health resort.
In part this was due to the climate and in part to its mineral springs.
Southern Italy had, more than any other part of western Europe, retained
touch with old Greek thought. The works of Hippocrates and Galen had been
preserved there, the monks at Monte Cassino had made some translations,
and sometime toward the middle of the eleventh century the study of the
Greek medical books was revived here. The Mohammedan medical work by
Avicenna (p. 185), also early became known here in translation. About 1065
Constantine of Carthage, a converted Jew and a learned monk, who had
traveled extensively in the East [23] and who had been forced to flee from
his native city because of a suspicion of "black art," began to lecture at
Salerno on the Greek and Mohammedan medical works and the practice of the
medical art. In 1099 Robert, Duke of Normandy, returning from the First
Crusade, stopped here to be cured of a wound, and he and his knights later
spread the fame of Salerno all over Europe. The result was the revival of
the study of Medicine in the West, and Salerno developed into the first of
the medical schools of Europe. Montpellier, in southern France, also
became another early center for the study of Medicine, drawing much of its
medical knowledge from Spain. Another new subject of professional study
was now made possible, and Faculties of Medicine were in time organized in
most of the universities as they arose. The instruction, though, was
chiefly book instruction, Galen being the great textbook until the
seventeenth century.


IV. OTHER NEW INFLUENCES AND MOVEMENTS

THE CRUSADES. Perhaps the most romantic happenings during the Middle Ages
were that series of adventurous expeditions to the then Far East,
undertaken by the kings and knights of western Europe in an attempt to
reclaim the Holy Land from the infidel Turks, who in the eleventh century
had pushed in and were persecuting Christian pilgrims journeying to
Jerusalem.  For centuries single pilgrims, small bands of pilgrims, and
sometimes large numbers led by priest or noble, had journeyed to distant
shrines, to Rome, and to the birthplace of the Saviour, [24] impelled by
pure religious devotion, a desire to do penance for sin, or seeking a cure
from some disease by prayer and penance. It was the spirit of the age.
Says Adams: [25]

    A pilgrimage was ... in itself a religious act securing merit and
    reward for the one who performed it, balancing a certain number for
    his sins, and making his escape from the world of torment hereafter
    more certain. The more distant and more difficult the pilgrimage, the
    more meritorious, especially if it led to such supremely holy places
    as those which had been sanctified by the presence of Christ himself.
    For the man of the world, for the man who could not, or would not, go
    into monasticism, the pilgrimage was the one conspicuous act by which
    he could satisfy the ascetic need, and gain its rewards. A crusade was
    a stupendous pilgrimage, under especially favorable and meritorious
    conditions.

[Illustration: FIG. 57. A PILGRIM OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(From an old manuscript in the British Museum)]

The Mohammedan Arabs who took possession of the Holy Land in the seventh
century had treated the pilgrims considerately, but the Turks were of a
different stamp. In 1071 they had defeated the Eastern Emperor, captured
all Asia Minor, and had taken possession of the fortress of Nicaea (Map,
p. 183), near Constantinople. The Eastern Emperor now appealed to Rome for
help. In 1077 the Turks captured Jerusalem, and returning pilgrims soon
began to report having experienced great hardships. In 1095 Pope Urban, in
a stirring address to the Council of Clermont (France), issued a call to
the lords, knights, and foot soldiers of western Christendom to cease
destroying their fellow Christians in private warfare, and to turn their
strength of arms against the infidel and rescue the Holy Land. The journey
was to take the place of penance for sin, many special privileges were
extended to those who went, and those who died on the journey or in battle
with the infidels were promised entrance into heaven. [26] nobles and
peasants, filled with a desire for adventure and a sense of personal sin,
no surer way of satisfying either was to be found than the long pilgrimage
to the Saviour's tomb. In France and England the call met with instant
response. Unfortunately for the future of civilization, the call met with
but small response from the nobles of German lands.

The First Crusade set out in 1096. A second went in 1144, and a third in
1187. These were the great Crusades, though five others were undertaken
during the thirteenth century. Jerusalem was taken and lost. The
Christians quarreled with one another and with the Greeks, though with the
Saracens they established somewhat friendly relations, and a mutual
respect arose. The armies which went were composed of all kinds of people
--lords, knights, merchants, adventurers, peasants, outlaws--and a spirit
of adventure and a desire for personal gain, as well as a spirit of
religious devotion, actuated many who went. In 1204 the Venetians diverted
the fourth crusade to the capture of Constantinople, and established there
an outpost of their great commercial empire. The history of the crusades
we do not need to trace. The important matter for our purpose was the
results of the movement on the intellectual development of western Europe.

RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES ON WESTERN EUROPE. In a sense the Crusades were an
outward manifestation of the great change in thinking and ideals which had
begun sometime before in western Europe. They were at once both a sign and
a cause of further change. The old isolation was at last about to end, and
intercommunication and some common ideas and common feelings were being
brought about. Both those who went and those who remained at home were
deeply stirred by the movement. Christendom as a great international
community, in which all alike were interested in a common ideal and in a
common fight against the infidel, was a new idea now dawning upon the mass
of the people, whereas before it had been but little understood.

The travel to distant lands, the sight of cities of wealth and power, and
the contact with peoples decidedly superior to themselves in civilization,
not only excited the imagination and led to a broadening of the minds of
those who returned, but served as well to raise the general level of
intelligence in western Europe. Some new knowledge also was brought back,
but that was not at the time of great importance. The principal gain came
in the elimination forever of thousands of quarreling, fighting noblemen,
[27] thus giving the kingly power a chance to consolidate holdings and
begin the evolution of modern States; in the marked change of attitude
toward the old problems; in the awakening of a new interest in the present
world; in the creation of new interests and new desires among the common
people; in the awakening of a spirit of religious unity and of national
consciousness; and especially in the awakening of a new intellectual life,
which soon found expression in the organization of universities for study
and in more extensive travel and geographical exploration than the world
had known since the days of ancient Rome. The greatest of all the results,
however, came through the revival of trade, commerce, manufacturing, and
industry in the rising cities of western Europe, with the consequent
evolution of a new and important class of merchants, bankers, and
craftsmen, who formed a new city class and in time developed a new system
of training for themselves and their children.

THE REVIVAL OF CITY LIFE. The old cities of central and northern Italy, as
was stated above, continued through the early Middle Ages as places of
some little local importance. In the eleventh century they overthrew in
large part the rule of their Prince-Bishops, and became little City-
Republics, much after the old Greek model. Outside of Italy almost the
only cities not destroyed during the period of the barbarian invasions
were the episcopal cities, that is cities which were the residences of
bishops.

Outside of Italy the present cities of western Europe either rose on the
ruins of former Roman provincial cities, or originated about some
monastery or castle, on or adjacent to land at one time owned by monks or
feudal lord. An ever-increasing company of peasants, themselves little
more than serfs in the beginning, huddled together in such places for the
protection afforded, and a walled feudal town eventually resulted (R. 94
a). This later, in one way or another, secured its freedom from monastic
control or feudal lord, and evolved into the free city we know to-day.
Originally each little city was a self-sustaining community. The farming
and grazing lands lay outside, while the people were crowded compactly
together within the protecting town walls. The need for walls that could
be manned for defense, gates that could shut out the marauder, the narrow,
dirty streets, and the lack of any sanitary ideas, all alike tended to
keep the towns small. [28] The insecurity of life, the constant warfare,
the repeated failures or destruction of crops without and want within, and
the high death-rate from disease, all kept down the population. A town of
a thousand people in the early Middle Ages was a place of some importance,
while probably no city outside of Italy, excepting Paris and London, had
ten thousand inhabitants before the year 1200. In all England there were
but 2,150,000 people, according to the Domesday Survey (1086), while to-
day the city of London alone contains nearly three times that number.

[Illustration: FIG. 58. A TYPICAL MEDIAEVAL TOWN (PRUSSIAN)
All the elements of a typical mediaeval town are seen here--the walls for
defense, the watch-towers, the churches, the tall cathedral, the castle,
and the high houses huddled together.]

After about the year 1000 a revival of something like city life begins to
be noticeable here and there in the records of the time (R. 94 a), and by
1100 these signs begin to manifest themselves in many places and lands. By
1200 the cities of Europe were numerous, though small, and their
importance in the life of the times [29] was rapidly increasing (R. 94 b).

THE RISE OF A CITY CLASS. As the mediaeval towns increased in size and
importance the inhabitants, being human, demanded rights. Between 1100 and
1200 there were frequent revolts of the people of the mediaeval towns
against their feudal overlord, and frequent demands were made for charters
granting privileges to the towns. Sometimes these insurrections were put
down with a bloody hand. Sometimes, on the contrary, the overlord granted
a charter of rights, willingly or unwillingly, and freed the people from
obligation to labor on the lands in return for a fixed money payment.
Sometimes the king himself granted the inhabitants a charter by way of
curbing the power of the local feudal lord or bishop. The towns became
exceedingly skillful in playing off lord against bishop, and the king
against both. In England, Flanders, France, and Germany some of the towns
had become wealthy enough to purchase their freedom and a charter at some
time when their feudal overlord was particularly in need of money. These
charters, or birth certificates for the towns, were carefully drawn and
officially sealed documents of great value, and were highly prized as
evidences of local liberty. The document created a "free town," and gave
to the inhabitants certain specified rights as to self-government, the
election of magistrates--aldermen, mayor, burgomaster--the levying and
payment of taxes, and the military service to be rendered. Before the
evolution of strong national governments these charters created hundreds
of what were virtually little City-States throughout Europe (R. 95).

In these towns a new estate or class of people was now created (R. 96), in
between the ruling bishops and lords on the one hand and the peasants
tilling the land on the other. These were the citizens--freemen,
bourgeoisie, burghers. Out of this new class of city dwellers new social
orders--merchants, bankers, tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen--in time
arose, and these new orders soon demanded rights and obtained some form of
education for their children. The guild or apprenticeship education which
early developed in the cities to meet the needs of artisans and craftsmen
(R. 99), and the burgh or city schools of Europe, which began to develop
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were the educational results
of the rise of cities and the evolution of these new social classes. The
time would soon be ripe for the mysteries of learning to be passed
somewhat farther down the educational pyramid, and new classes in society
would begin the mastery of its symbols.

[Illustration: FIG. 59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID
(From Smith, W. R., _Educational Sociology_, p. 176)
The concave pyramid suggests comparative numbers. Formal education began
at the top, and has slowly worked downward.]

THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. The first city of mediaeval Europe to obtain
commercial prominence was Venice. She early sold salt and fish obtained
from the lagoons to the Lombards in the Valley of the Po, and sent trading
ships to the Greek East. By the year 1000 Venetian ships were bringing the
luxuries and riches of the Orient to Venice, and the city soon became a
great trading center. There the partially civilized Christian knight
"spent splendidly," and the Bohemian, German, and Hunnish lords came [30]
to buy such of the luxuries of the East as they could afford. By 1100
Venice was a free City-State, the mistress of the Adriatic, and the trade
of the East with Christian Europe passed over her wharves. From the
Crusades she profited greatly, carrying knights eastward in the great
fleet she had developed, and carpets, fabrics, perfumes, spices, dyes,
drugs, silks, and precious stones on the return voyage. From Tana and
Trebizond her traders penetrated far into the interior. Her ships and
merchants "held the Golden East in fee." By 1400 she was the wealthiest
and most powerful city in Europe.

[Illustration: FIG. 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES]

Genoa in time became the great rival of Venice. Marseilles also developed
a large trade in the Mediterranean and with the north. From these three
cities trade routes ran to the cities of Flanders, England, and Germany,
as is shown in the map below. By the thirteenth century, Augsburg,
Nuremburg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Luebeck, Bremen, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres,
Bruges, and London were developing into great commercial cities. Despite
bad roads, bad bridges, [31] bad inns, "robber knights" and bandits, the
commerce once carried on by Rome with her provinces was reviving. Great
fairs, or yearly markets, came to be held in the large interior towns, to
which merchants came from near and far to display and exchange their
wares, and, still more important, from the standpoint of advancing general
education, to exchange ideas and experiences. The "luxuries" displayed at
these markets by traveling merchants from the south--salt, pepper, spices,
sugar, drugs, dyestuffs, glass beads, glassware, table implements,
perfumes, ornaments, underwear, articles of dress, silks, velvets,
carpets, rugs--dazzled and astounded the simple townspeople of western
Europe. These fairs became educational forces of a high order.

THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY AND BANKING. The trading of articles at seaports
and at the interior city fairs came first, and this soon worked a
revolution in industry. Instead of agriculture being almost the only
occupation, and the feeding of the local population the only purpose, with
only such arts and industries practiced as were needed to supply the wants
of the townsmen, it now became possible to create a surplus to barter at
the fairs for luxuries from the outside. Local industries, heretofore of
but little importance, now developed into trades, and the manufacture of
articles for outside sale was begun. At first manufacturing was very
limited in scope, and confined largely to local handicrafts or the
imitation of imported articles, but later new and important industries
arose--the glass industry in Venice, the gold and silver industry of
Florence, the weaving industry at Mainz and Erfurt, and the wool industry
of Flanders. The craftsman and artisan, as well as the merchant and
trader, were now developed in the towns, and soon became important members
of the new social order. As serfs and villeins [32] were set free from the
land [33] they came to the towns, adding more members to the new
industrial classes (R. 96). From 1200 on there was a great revival of
industry in western Europe, and by 1500 merchants and craftsmen had won
back the place once held by merchants and craftsmen in Roman life and
trade.

At Florence a banking class arose, and instead of barter, banks and the
use of money and credit were developed. From Florence this system
gradually extended to the other commercial cities. Gradually the mediaeval
objection to the taking of interest for the use of money, which the Church
had forbidden in the early Middle Ages as "usury" and wicked, was
overcome, and Italian bankers and merchants led the world in the
establishment of that credit which has made modern trade and industry
possible. With money once more in general use as a measure of value, the
Arabic system of notation in use for commercial transactions, and credit
at reasonable interest rates provided as a basis for finance, an era in
trade and commerce and manufacturing set in unknown since the days of
Roman rule. Order, security, and a wider extension of educational
advantages now were needed, and nothing contributed more to securing these
than the growth of wealth and manufacturing industries in the towns, and
the extension of commerce and the use of money throughout the country.
Nothing tends so powerfully to demand or secure these things as the
possession of wealth among a people.

EDUCATION FOR THESE NEW SOCIAL CLASSES. With the evolution of these new
social classes an extension of education took place through the formation
of guilds. [34] The merchants of the Middle Ages traded, not as
individuals, nor as subjects of a State which protected them, for there
were as yet no such States, but as members of the guild of merchants of
their town, or as members of a trading company. Later, towns united to
form trading confederations, of which the Hanseatic League of northern
Germany was a conspicuous example. These burgher merchant guilds became
wealthy and important socially; [35] they were chartered by kings and
given trading privileges analogous to those of a modern corporation (R.
95); they elbowed their way into affairs of State, and in time took over
in large part the city governments; they obtained education for
themselves, and fought with the church authorities for the creation of
independent burgh schools; [36] they began to read books, and books in the
vernacular began to be written for them; [37] they in time vied with the
clergy and the nobility in their patronage of learning; they everywhere
stood with the kings and princes to compel feudal lords to stop warfare
and plundering and to submit to law and order; [38] and they entertained
royal personages and drew nobles, clergy, and gentry into their honorary
membership, thus serving as an important agency in breaking down the
social-class exclusiveness of the Middle Ages. In these guilds, which were
self-governing bodies debating questions and deciding policies and
actions, much elementary political training was given their members which
proved of large importance at a later time.

In the same way the craft guilds rendered a large educational service to
the small merchant and worker, as they provided the technical and social
education of such during the later period of the Middle Ages and in early
modern times, and protected their members from oppression in an age when
oppression was the rule. With the revival of trade and industry craft
guilds arose all over western Europe. One of the first of these was the
candle-makers' guild, organized at Paris in 1061. Soon after we find large
numbers of guilds--masons, shoemakers, harness-makers, bakers, smiths,
wool-combers, tanners, saddlers, spurriers, weavers, goldsmiths,
pewterers, carpenters, leather-workers, cloth-workers, pinners,
fishmongers, butchers, barbers--all organized on much the same plan. These
were the working-men's fraternities or labor unions of mediaeval Europe.
Each trade or craft became organized as a city guild, composed of the
"masters," "journeymen" (paid workmen), and "apprentices." The great
mediaeval document, a charter of rights guaranteeing protection, was
usually obtained. The guild for each trade laid down rules for the number
and training of apprentices, [39] the conditions under which a
"journeyman" could become a "master," [40] rules for conducting the trade,
standards to be maintained in workmanship, prices to be charged, and dues
and obligations of members (R. 97). They supervised work in their craft,
cared for the sick, buried the dead, and looked after the widows and
orphans. Often they provided one or more priests of their own to minister
to the families of their craft, and gradually the custom arose of having
the priest also teach something of the rudiments of religion and learning
to the children of the members. In time money and lands were set aside or
left for such purposes, and a form of chantry school, which later evolved
into a regular school, often with instruction in higher studies added, was
created for the children of members [41] of the guild (R. 98).

APPRENTICESHIP EDUCATION. For centuries after the revival of trade and
industry all manufacturing was on a small scale, and in the home-industry
stage. There was, of course, no machinery, and only the simple tools known
from ancient times were used. In a first-floor room at the back, master,
journeymen, and apprentices working together made the articles which were
sold by the master or the master's wife and daughter in the room in front.
The manufacturer and merchant were one. Apprentices were bound to a master
for a term of years (R. 99), often paying for the training and education
to be received, and the master boarded and lodged both the apprentices and
the paid workmen in the family rooms above the shop and store.

The form of apprenticeship education and training which thus developed,
from an educational point of view, forms for us the important feature of
the history of these craft guilds. With the subdivision of labor and the
development of new trades the craft-guild idea was extended to the new
occupations, and a steady stream of rural labor flowing to the towns was
absorbed by them and taught the elements of social usages, self-
government, and the mastery of a trade. Throughout all the long period up
to the nineteenth century this apprenticeship education in a trade and in
self-government constituted almost the entire formal education the worker
with his hands received. The sons of the barbarian invaders, as well as
their knightly brothers, at last were busy learning the great lessons of
industry, cooeperation, and personal loyalty. Here begins, for western
Europe, "the nobility of labor--the long pedigree of toil." So well in
fact did this apprentice system of training and education meet the needs
of the time that it persisted, as was said above, well into the nineteenth
century (Rs. 200, 201, 242, 243), being displaced only by modern power
machinery and systematized factory methods. During the later Middle Ages
and in modern times it rendered an important educational service; in the
later nineteenth century it became such an obstacle to educational and
industrial progress that it has had to be supplemented or replaced by
systematic vocational education.

INFLUENCE OF THESE NEW MOVEMENTS. We thus see, by the end of the twelfth
century, a number of new influences in western Europe which point to an
intellectual awakening and to the rise of a new educated class, separate
from the monks and clergy on the one hand or the nobility on the other,
and to the awakening of Europe to a new attitude toward life. Saracen
learning, filtering across from Spain, had added materially to the
knowledge Europe previously had, and had stimulated new intellectual
interests. Scholasticism had begun its great work of reorganizing and
systematizing theology, which was destined to free philosophy, hitherto
regarded as a dangerous foe or a suspected ally, from theology and to
remake entirely the teaching of the subject. Civil and canon law had been
created as wholly new professional subjects, and the beginnings of the
teaching of medicine had been made. Instead of the old Seven Liberal Arts
and a very limited course of professional study for the clerical office
being the entire curriculum, and Theology the one professional subject, we
now find, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of new and
important professional subjects of large future significance--subjects
destined to break the monopoly of theological study and put an end to
logistic hair-splitting. The next step in the history of education came in
the development of institutions where thinking and teaching could be
carried on free from civil or ecclesiastical control, with the consequent
rise of an independent learned class in western Europe. This came with the
rise of the universities, to which we next turn, and out of which in time
arose the future independent scholarship of Europe, America, and the world
in general.

We also discover a series of new movements, connected with the Crusades,
the rise of cities, and the revival of trade and industry, all of which
clearly mark the close of the dark period of the Middle Ages. We note,
too, the evolution of new social classes--a new Estate--destined in time
to eclipse in importance both priest and noble and to become for long the
ruling classes of the modern world. We also note the beginnings of an
important independent system of education for the hand-workers which
sufficed until the days of steam, machinery, and the evolution of the
factory system. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were turning-points of
great significance in the history of our western civilization, and with
the opening of the wonderful thirteenth century the western world is well
headed toward a new life and modern ways of thinking.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why is it that a strong religious control is never favorable to
originality in thinking?

2. Show how the work of the Nestorian Christians for the Mohammedan faith
was another example of the Hellenization of the ancient world.

3. Would it be possible for any people anywhere in the world today to make
such advances as were made at Bagdad, in the late eighth and early ninth
centuries, without such work permanently influencing the course of
civilization and learning everywhere? To what is the difference due?

4. What were the chief obstacles to Europe adopting at once the learning
from Mohammedan Spain, instead of waiting centuries to discover this
learning independently?  5. Why did Aristotle's work seem of much greater
value to the mediaeval scholar than the Moslem science? What are the
relative values to-day?

6. Why should the light literature of Spain be spoken of as a gay
contagion? Did this Christian attitude toward fiction and poetry continue
long?

7. In what ways was the _Sic et Non_ of Abelard a complete break with
mediaeval traditions?

8. How did the fact that Dialectic (Logic) now became the great subject of
study in itself denote a marked intellectual advance? What was the
significance of the prominence of this study for the future of thinking?

9. What was the effect on inquiry and individual thinking of the method of
presentation used by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his _Summa Theologica_?

10. How do you explain the all-absorbing interest in scholasticism during
the greater part of a century?

11. State the significance, for the future, of the revival of the study of
Roman law: (a) intellectually; (b) in shaping future civilization.

12. How do you explain the Christian attitude toward disease, and the
scientific treatment of it? Has that attitude entirely passed away?
Illustrate.

13. Why was it such a good thing for the future of civilization in England
and France that so many of its nobility perished in the Crusades?

14. State a number of ways in which the Crusade movements had a beneficial
effect on western Europe.

15. Show how the revival of commerce was an educative and a civilizing
influence of large importance.  16. Would the organization of commerce and
banking, and the establishment of the sanctity of obligations in a
country, be one important measure of the civilization to which that
country had attained? Illustrate.

17. Show how the development of industry and commerce and the accumulation
of wealth tend to promote order and security, and to extend educational
advantages.

18. Contrast a mediaeval guild and a modern labor union. A guild and a
modern fraternal and benevolent society.

19. Why did apprenticeship education continue so long with so little
change, when it is now so rapidly being superseded?

20. Does the rise of a new Estate in society indicate a period of slow or
rapid change? Why is such an evolution of importance for education and
civilization?


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  85. Draper: The Moslem Civilization in Spain.
  86. Draper: Learning among the Moslems in Spain.
  87. Norton: Works of Aristotle known by 1300.
  88. Averroes: On Aristotle's Greatness.
  89. Roger Bacon: How Aristotle was received at Oxford.
  90. Statutes: How Aristotle was received at Paris.
      (a) Decree of Church Council, 1210 A.D.
      (b) Statutes of Papal Legate, 1215 A.D.
      (c) Statutes of Pope Gregory, 1231 A.D.
      (d) Statutes of the Masters of Arts, 1254 A.D.
  91. Cousin: Abelard's _Sic et Non_.
      (a) From the Introduction.
      (b) Types of Questions raised for Debate.
  92. Rashdall: The Great Work of the Schoolmen.
  93. Justinian: Preface to the Justinian Code.
  94. Giry and Reville: The Early Mediaeval Town.
      (a) To the Eleventh Century.
      (b) By the Thirteenth Century.
  95. Gross: An English Town Charter.
  96. London: Oath of a New Freeman in a Mediaeval Town.
  97. Riley: Ordinances of the White-Tawyers' Guild.
  98. State Report: School of the Guild of Saint Nicholas.
  99. England, 1396: A Mediaeval Indenture of Apprenticeship.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Contrast the state of civilization in Spain and the rest of Europe
about 1100 (85, 86).

2. Considering Aristotle's great intellectual worth (88) and work (87), is
it to be wondered that the mediaevals regarded him with such reverence?

3. Do we today accept Abelard's premise (91 a) as to attaining wisdom?
Would his questions (91 b) excite much interest to-day?

4. How do you explain the change in attitude toward him shown by the
successive statutes enacted (90 a-d) for the University of Paris?

5. Would the extract from Roger Bacon (89) lead you to think him a man
ahead of the times in which he lived? Why?

6. Did scholasticism represent the innocent intellectual activity, from
the Church point of view, pictured by Rashdall (92)?

7. What were the main things Justinian hoped to accomplish by the
preparation of the great Code, as set forth in the Preface (93)?

8. Characterize the mediaeval town by the eleventh century (94 a). What
was the nature of the progress from that time to the thirteenth century
(94 b)?

9. What were the chief privileges contained in the town charter of
Walling-ford (95), and what position does it indicate was held by the
guild-merchant therein?

10. What does the oath of a freeman (96) indicate as to social conditions?

11. State the chief regulations imposed on its members by the White-
Tawyers' Guild (97). Compare these regulations with those of a modern
labor union, such as the plumbers. With a fraternal order, such as the
Masons.

12. What is indicated as to the educational advantages provided by the
Guild of Saint Nicholas, in the city of Worcester, by the extract (98)
taken from the Report of the King's Commissioner?

13. Does a comparison of Readings 99, 201, and 242 indicate a static
condition of apprenticeship education for centuries?


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
  Ameer, Ali. _A Short History of the Saracens_.
* Ashley, W. J. _Introduction to English Economic History_.
  Cutts, Edw. L. _Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages_.
* Gautier, Leon. _Chivalry_.
* Giry, A., and Reville, A. _Emancipation of the Mediaeval Towns_.
  Hibbert, F. A. _Influence and Development of English Guilds_.
* Hume, M. A. S. _The Spanish People_.
* Lavisse, Ernest. _Mediaeval Commerce and Industry_.
* MacCabe, Jos. _Peter Abelard_.
* Munro, D. C., and Sellery, G. E. _Mediaeval Civilization_.
  Poole, R. L. _Illustrations of Mediaeval Thought_.
* Rashdall, H. _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_, vol. I.
  Routledge, R. _Popular History of Science_.
  Sandys, J. E. _History of Classical Scholarship_, vol. i.
  Scott, J. F. _Historical Essays on Apprenticeship and Vocational
    Education_. (England.)
* Sedgwick, W. J., and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_.
  Taylor, H. C. _The Mediaeval Mind_.
  Thorndike, Lynn. _History of Mediaeval Europe_.
  Townsend, W. J. _The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages_.




CHAPTER IX

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES


EVOLUTION OF THE _STUDIUM GENERALE_. In the preceding chapter we described
briefly the new movement toward association which characterized the
eleventh and the twelfth centuries--the municipal movement, the merchant
guilds, the trade guilds, etc. These were doing for civil life what
monasticism had earlier done for the religious life. They were collections
of like-minded men, who united themselves into associations or guilds for
mutual benefit, protection, advancement, and self-government within the
limits of their city, business, trade, or occupation. This tendency toward
association, in the days when state government was weak or in its infancy,
was one of the marked features of the transition time from the early
period of the Middle Ages, when the Church was virtually the State, to the
later period of the Middle Ages, when the authority of the Church in
secular matters was beginning to weaken, modern nations were beginning to
form, and an interest in worldly affairs was beginning to replace the
previous inordinate interest in the world to come.

We also noted in the preceding chapters that certain cathedral and
monastery schools, but especially the cathedral schools, [1] stimulated by
the new interest in Dialectic, were developing into much more than local
teaching institutions designed to afford a supply of priests of some
little education for the parishes of the bishopric. Once York and later
Canterbury, in England, had had teachers who attracted students from other
bishoprics. Paris had for long been a famous center for the study of the
Liberal Arts and of Theology. Saint Gall had become noted for its music.
Theologians coming from Paris (1167-68) had given a new impetus to study
among the monks at Oxford. A series of political events in northern Italy
had given emphasis to the study of law in many cities, and the Moslems in
Spain had stimulated the schools there and in southern France to a study
of medicine and Aristotelian science. Rome was for long a noted center for
study. Gradually these places came to be known as _studia publica_, or
_studia generalia_, meaning by this a generally recognized place of study,
where lectures were open to any one, to students of all countries and of
all conditions. [2] Traveling students came to these places from afar to
hear some noted teacher read and comment on the famous textbooks of the
time.

From the first both teachers and students had been considered as members
of the clergy, and hence had enjoyed the privileges and immunities
extended to that class, but, now that the students were becoming so
numerous and were traveling so far, some additional grant of protection
was felt to be desirable. Accordingly the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,
[3] in 1158, issued a general proclamation of privileges and protection
(R. 101). In this he ordered that teachers and students traveling "to the
places in which the studies are carried on" should be protected from
unjust arrest, should be permitted to "dwell in security," and in case of
suit should be tried "before their professors or the bishop of the city."
This document marks the beginning of a long series of rights and
privileges granted to the teachers and students of the universities now in
process of evolution in western Europe.

THE UNIVERSITY EVOLUTION. The development of a university out of a
cathedral or some other form of school represented, in the Middle Ages, a
long local evolution. Universities were not founded then as they are to-
day. A teacher of some reputation drew around him a constantly increasing
body of students. Other teachers of ability, finding a student body
already there, also "set up their chairs" and began to teach. Other
teachers and more students came. In this way a _studium_ was created.
About these teachers in time collected other university servants--
"bedells, librarians, lower officials, preparers of parchment, scribes,
illuminators of parchment, and others who serve it," as Count Rupert
enumerated them in the Charter of Foundation granted, in 1386, to
Heidelberg (R. 103). At Salerno, as we have already seen (p. 199), medical
instruction arose around the work of Constantine of Carthage and the
medicinal springs found in the vicinity. Students journeyed there from
many lands, and licenses to practice the medical art were granted there as
early as 1137. At Bologna, we have also seen (p. 195), the work of
Irnerius and Gratian early made this a great center for the study of civil
and canon law, and their pupils spread the taste for these new subjects
throughout Europe. Paris for two centuries had been a center for the study
of the Arts and of Theology, and a succession of famous teachers--William
of Champeaux, Abelard, Peter the Lombard--had taught there. So important
was the theological teaching there that Paris has been termed "the Sinai
of instruction" of the Middle Ages.

By the beginning of the thirteenth century both students and teachers had
become so numerous, at a number of places in western Europe, that they
began to adopt the favorite mediaeval practice and organized themselves
into associations, or guilds, for further protection from extortion and
oppression and for greater freedom from regulation by the Church. They now
sought and obtained additional privileges for themselves, and, in
particular, the great mediaeval document--a charter of rights and
privileges. [4] As both teachers and students were for long regarded as
_clerici_ the charters were usually sought from the Pope, but in some
cases they were obtained from the king. [5] These associations of
scholars, or teachers, or both, "born of the need of companionship which
men who cultivate their intelligence feel," sought to perform the same
functions for those who studied and taught that the merchant and craft
guilds were performing for their members. The ruling idea was association
for protection, and to secure freedom for discussion and study; the
obtaining of corporate rights and responsibilities; and the organization
of a system of apprenticeship, based on study and developing through
journeyman into mastership, [6] as attested by an examination and the
license to teach. In the rise of these teacher and student guilds [7] we
have the beginnings of the universities of western Europe, and their
organization into chartered teaching groups (R. 100) was simply another
phase of that great movement toward the association of like-minded men for
worldly purposes which began to sweep over the rising cities in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. [8]

The term _universitas_, or _university_, which came in time to be applied
to these associations of masters and apprentices in study, was a general
Roman legal term, practically equivalent to our modern word _corporation_.
At first it was applied to any association, and when used with reference
to teachers and scholars was so stated. Thus, in addressing the masters
and students at Paris, Pope Innocent, in 1205, writes: "_Universis
magistris et scholaribus Parisiensibus_", that is, "to the corporation of
masters and scholars at Paris." Later the term _university_ became
restricted to the meaning which we give it to-day.

The university mothers. Though this movement for association and the
development of advanced study had manifested itself in a number of places
by the close of the twelfth century, two places in particular led all the
others and became types which were followed in charters and in new
creations. These were Bologna and Paris. [9] After one or the other of
these two nearly all the universities of western Europe were modeled.
Bologna or Paris, or one of their immediate children, served as a pattern.
Thus Bologna was the university mother for almost all the Italian
universities; for Montpellier and Grenoble in southern France; for some of
the Spanish universities; and for Glasgow, Upsala, Cracow, and for the Law
Faculty at Oxford. Paris was the university mother for Oxford, and through
her Cambridge; for most of the northern French universities; for the
university of Toulouse, which in turn became the mother for other southern
French and northern Spanish universities; for Lisbon and Coimbra in
Portugal; for the early German universities at Prague, Vienna, Cologne,
and Heidelberg; and through Cologne for Copenhagen. Through one of the
colleges at Cambridge--Emmanuel--she became, indirectly, the mother of a
new Cambridge in America--Harvard--founded in 1636. Figure 61 shows the
location of the chief universities founded before 1600. Viewed from the
standpoint of instruction, Paris was followed almost entirely in Theology,
and Bologna in Law, while the three centers which most influenced the
development of instruction in medicine were Salerno, Montpellier, and
Salamanca.

[Illustration: FIG. 61. SHOWING LOCATION OF THE CHIEF UNIVERSITIES FOUNDED
BEFORE 1600]

While the earlier universities gradually arose as the result of a long
local evolution, it in time became common for others to be founded by a
migration of professors from an older university to some cathedral city
having a developing _studium_. In the days when a university consisted
chiefly of master and students, when lectures could be held in any kind of
a building or collection of buildings, and when there were no libraries,
laboratories, campus, or other university property to tie down an
institution, it was easy to migrate. Thus, in 1209, the school at
Cambridge was created a university by a secession of masters from Oxford,
much as bees swarm from a hive. Sienna, Padua, Reggio, Vicenza, Arezzo
resulted from "swarmings" from Bologna; and Vercelli from Vicenza. In
1228, after a student riot at Paris which provoked reprisals from the
city, many of the masters and students went to the studium towns of
Angers, Orleans, and Rheims, and universities were established at the
first two. Migrations from Prague helped establish many of the German
universities. In this way the university organization was spread over
Europe. In 1200 there were but six _studia generalia_ which can be
considered as having evolved into universities--Salerno, Bologna, and
Reggio, in Italy; Paris and Montpellier, in France; and Oxford, in
England. By 1300 eight more had evolved in Italy, three more in France,
Cambridge in England, and five in Spain and Portugal. By 1400 twenty-two
additional universities had developed, five of which were in German lands,
and by 1500 thirty-five more had been founded, making a total of eighty.
By 1600 the total had been raised to one hundred and eight (R. 100, for
list by countries, dates, and method of founding). Some of these
(approximately thirty) afterwards died, while in the following centuries
additional ones were created. [10]

PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES GRANTED. The grant of privileges to physicians
and teachers made by the Emperor Constantine, in 333 A.D. (R. 26), and the
privileges and immunities granted to the clergy (_clerici_) by the early
Christian Roman Emperors (R. 38), doubtless formed a basis for the many
grants of special privileges made to the professors and students in the
early universities. The document promulgated by Frederick Barbarossa, in
1158 (R. 101), began the granting of privileges to the _studia generalia_,
and this was followed by numerous other grants. The grant to students of
freedom from trial by the city authorities, and the obligation of every
citizen of Paris to seize any one seen striking a student, granted by
Philip Augustus, in 1200 (R. 102), is another example, widely followed, of
the bestowal of large privileges. Count Rupert I, in founding the
University of Heidelberg, in 1386, granted many privileges, exempted the
students from "any duty, levy, imposts, tolls, excises, or other exactions
whatever" while coming to, studying at, or returning home from the
university (R. 103). The exemption from taxation (R. 104) became a matter
of form, and was afterwards followed in the chartering of American
colleges (R. 187). Exemption from military service also was granted.

So valuable an asset was a university to a city, and so easy was it for a
university to move almost overnight, that cities often, and at times even
nations, encouraged not only the founding of universities, but also the
migration of both faculties and students. An interesting case of a city
bidding for the presence of a university is that of Vercelli (R. 105),
which made a binding agreement, as a part of the city charter, whereby the
city agreed with a body of masters and students "swarming" from Padua to
loan the students money at lower than the regular rates, to see that there
was plenty of food in the markets at no increase in prices, and to protect
the students from injustice. An instance of bidding by a State is the case
of Cambridge, which obtained quite an addition by the coming of striking
Paris masters and students in 1229, in response to the pledge of King
Henry III (R. 109), who "humbly sympathized with them for their sufferings
at Paris," and promised them that if they would come "to our kingdom of
England and remain there to study" he would assign to them "cities,
boroughs, towns, whatsoever you may wish to select, and in every fitting
way will cause you to rejoice in a state of liberty and tranquillity."

One of the most important privileges which the universities early
obtained, and a rather singular one at that, was the right of _cessatio_,
which meant the right to stop lectures and go on a strike as a means of
enforcing a redress of grievances against either town or church authority
(R. 107). This right was for long jealously guarded by the university, and
frequently used to defend itself from the smallest encroachments on its
freedom to teach, study, and discipline the members of its guild as it saw
fit, and often the right not to discipline them at all. Often the
_cessatio_ was invoked on very trivial grounds, as in the case of the
Oxford _cessatio_ of 1209 (R. 108), the Paris _cessatio_ of 1229 (R. 109),
and the numerous other _cessationes_ which for two centuries [11]
repeatedly disturbed the continuity of instruction at Paris.

DEGREES IN THE GUILD. The most important of the university rights,
however, was the right to examine and license its own teachers (R. 110),
and to grant the license to teach (Rs. 111, 112). Founded as the
universities were after the guild model, they were primarily places for
the taking of apprentices in the Arts, developing them into journeymen and
masters, and certifying to their proficiency in the teaching craft. [12]
Their purpose at first was to prepare teachers, and the giving of
instruction to students for cultural ends, or a professional training for
practical use aside from teaching the subject, was a later development.

Accordingly it came about in time that, after a number of years of study
in the Arts under some master, a student was permitted to present himself
for a test as to his ability to define words, determine the meaning of
phrases, and read the ordinary Latin texts in Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic
(the _Trivium_), to the satisfaction of other masters than his own. In
England this test came to be known by the term _determine_. Its passage
was equivalent to advancing from apprenticeship to the ranks of a
journeyman, and the successful candidate might now be permitted to assist
the master, or even give some elementary instruction himself while
continuing his studies. He now became an assistant or companion, and by
the fourteenth century was known as a _baccalaureus_, a term used in the
Church, in chivalry, and in the guilds, and which meant a _beginner_.
There was at first, though, no thought of establishing an examination and
a new degree for the completion of this first step in studies. The
bachelor's degree was a later development, sought at first by those not
intending to teach, and eventually erected into a separate degree.

When the student had finally heard a sufficient number of courses, as
required by the statutes of his guild, he might present himself for
examination for the teaching license. This was a public trial, and took
the form of a public disputation on some stated thesis, in the presence of
the masters, and against all comers. It was the student's "masterpiece,"
analogous to the masterpiece of any other guild, and he submitted it to a
jury of the masters of his craft. [13] Upon his masterpiece being adjudged
satisfactory, he also became a master in his craft, was now able to define
and dispute, was formally admitted to the highest rank in the teaching
guild, might have a seal, and was variously known as master, doctor, or
professor, all of which were once synonymous terms. [14] If he wished to
prepare himself for teaching one of the professional subjects he studied
still further, usually for a number of years, in one of the professional
faculties, and in time he was declared to be a Doctor of Law, or Medicine,
or of Theology.

[Illustration: FIG 62. SEAL OF A DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF PARIS]

THE TEACHING FACULTIES. The students for a long time grouped themselves
for better protection (and aggression) according to the nation from which
they came, [15] and each "nation" elected a _councilor_ to look after the
interests of its members. Between the different nations there were
constant quarrels, insults were passed back and forth, and much bad blood
engendered. [16] On the side of the masters the organization was by
teaching subjects, and into what came to be known as _faculties_. [17]
Thus there came to be four faculties in a fully organized mediaeval
university, representing the four great divisions of knowledge which had
been evolved--Arts, Law, Medicine, and Theology. Each faculty elected a
_dean_, and the deans and councilors elected a _rector_, who was the head
or president of the university. The _chancellor_, the successor of the
cathedral school _scholasticus_, was usually appointed by the Pope and
represented the Church, and a long struggle ensued between the rector and
the chancellor to see who should be the chief authority in the university.
The rector was ultimately victorious, and the position of chancellor
became largely an honorary position of no real importance.

[Illustration: FIG. 63. NEW COLLEGE, AT OXFORD
One of the oldest of the Oxford colleges, having been founded in 1379. The
picture shows the chapel, cloisters (consecrated in 1400), and a tall
tower, once forming a part of the Oxford city walls. Note the similarity
of this early college to a monastery, as in Plate 1.]

The Arts Faculty was the successor of the old cathedral-school instruction
in the Seven Liberal Arts, and was found in practically all the
universities. The Law Faculty embraced civil and canon law, as worked out
at Bologna. The Medical Faculty taught the knowledge of the medical art,
as worked out at Salerno and Montpellier. The Theological Faculty, the
most important of the four, prepared learned men for the service of the
Church, and was for some two centuries controlled by the scholastics. The
Arts Faculty was preparatory to the other three. As Latin was the language
of the classroom, and all the texts were Latin texts, a reading and
speaking knowledge of Latin was necessary before coming to the university
to study. This was obtained from a study of the first of the Seven Arts--
Grammar--in some monastery, cathedral, or other type of school. Thus a
knowledge of Latin formed practically the sole requirement for admission
to the mediaeval university, and continued to be the chief admission
requirement in our universities up to the nineteenth century (R. 186 a).
In Europe it is still of great importance as a preparatory subject, but in
South American countries it is not required at all.

Very few of the universities, in the beginning, had all four of these
faculties. The very nature of the evolution of the earlier ones precluded
this. Thus Bologna had developed into a _studium generale_ from its
prominence in law, and was virtually constituted a university in 1158, but
it did not add Medicine until 1316, or Theology until 1360. Paris began
sometime before 1200 as an arts school, Theology with some instruction in
Canon Law was added by 1208, a Law Faculty in 1271, and a Medical Faculty
in 1274. Montpellier began as a medical school sometime in the twelfth
century. Law followed a little later, a teacher from Bologna "setting up
his chair" there. Arts was organized by 1242. A sort of theological school
began in 1263, but it was not chartered as a faculty until 1421. So it was
with many of the early universities. These four traditional faculties were
well established by the fourteenth century, and continued as the typical
form of university organization until modern times. With the great
university development and the great multiplication of subjects of study
which characterized the nineteenth century, many new faculties and schools
and colleges have had to be created, particularly in the United States, in
response to new modern demands. [18]

NATURE OF THE INSTRUCTION. The teaching material in each faculty was much
as we have already indicated. After the recovery of the works of Aristotle
he came to dominate the instruction in the Faculty of Arts. [19] The
Statutes of Paris, in 1254, giving the books to be read for the A.B. and
the A.M. degrees (R. 113), show how fully Aristotle had been adopted there
as the basis for instruction in Logic, Ethics, and Natural Philosophy by
that time. The books required for these two degrees at Leipzig, in 1410
(R. 114), show a much better-balanced course of instruction, though the
time requirements given for each subject show how largely Aristotle
predominated there also. Oxford (R. 115) kept up better the traditions of
the earlier Seven Liberal Arts in its requirements, and classified the new
works of Aristotle in three additional "philosophies"--natural, moral, and
metaphysical. From four to seven years were required to complete the arts
course, though the tendency was to reduce the length of the arts course as
secondary schools below the university were evolved. [20]

In the Law Faculty, after Theology the largest and most important of all
the faculties in the mediaeval university, the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ of
Justinian (p. 195) and the _Decretum_ of Gratian (p. 196) were the
textbooks read, with perhaps a little more practical work in discussion
than in Arts or Medicine. The Oxford course of study in both Civil and
Canon Law (R. 116 b-c) gives a good idea as to what was required for
degrees in one of the best of the early law faculties.

In the Medical Faculty a variety of books--translations of Hippocrates (p.
197), Galen (p. 198), Avicenna (p. 198), and the works of certain writers
at Salerno and Jewish and Moslem writers in Spain--were read and lectured
on. The list of medical books used at Montpellier, [21] in 1340, which at
that time was the foremost place for medical instruction in western
Europe, shows the book-nature and the extent of the instruction given at
the leading school of medicine of the time. It was, moreover, customary at
Montpellier for the senior students to spend a summer in visiting the sick
and doing practical work. We have here the merest beginnings of clinical
instruction and hospital service, and at this stage medical instruction
remained until quite modern times. The medical courses at Paris (R. 117)
and Oxford (R. 116 d) were less satisfactory, only book instruction being
required.

[Illustration: FIG. 64. A LECTURE ON CIVIL LAW BY GUILLAUME BENEDICTI
(After a sixteenth-century wood engraving, now in the National Library,
Paris, Cabinet of Designs)]

Both Law and Medicine were so dominated by the scholastic ideal and
methods that neither accomplished what might have been possible in a freer
atmosphere.

In the Theological Faculty the _Sentences_ of Peter Lombard (p. 189) and
the _Summa Theologiae_ of Thomas Aquinas (p. 191) were the textbooks used.
The Bible was at first also used somewhat, but later came to be largely
overshadowed by the other books and by philosophical discussions and
debates on all kinds of hair-splitting questions, kept carefully within
the limits prescribed by the Church. The requirements at Oxford (R. 116 a)
give the course of instruction in one of the best of the theological
faculties of the time. The teachers were scholastics, and scholastic
methods and ideals everywhere prevailed. Roger Bacon's (1214-1294)
criticism of this type of theological study (R. 118), which he calls
"horse loads, not at all [in consonance] with the most holy text of God,"
and "philosophical, both in substance and method," gives an idea of the
kind of instruction which came to prevail in the theological faculties
under the dominance of the scholastic philosophers.

Years of study were required in each of these three professional
faculties, as is shown by the statement of requirements as given for
Montpellier, Paris (R. 117), and Oxford (R. 116 a).

[Illustration: FIG. 65. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN, IN HOLLAND
(After an engraving by J. C. Woudanus, dated 1610)
This shows well the chained books, and a common type of bookcase in use in
monasteries, churches, and higher schools. Counting 35 books to the case,
this shows a library of 35 volumes on mathematics; 70 volumes each on
literature, philosophy, and medicine; 140 volumes of historical books; 175
volumes on civil and canon law; and 160 volumes on theology, or a total of
770 volumes--a good-sized library for the time.]

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. A very important reason why so long a period of
study was required in each of the professional faculties, as well as in
the Faculty of Arts, is to be found in the lack of textbooks and the
methods of instruction followed. While the standard textbooks were
becoming much more common, due to much copying and the long-continued use
of the same texts, they were still expensive and not owned by many. [22]

[Illustration: PLATE 4. A LECTURE ON THEOLOGY BY ALBERTUS MAGNUS
An illuminated picture in a manuscript of 1310, now in the royal
collection of copper engravings, at Berlin. The master in his chair is
here shown "reading" to his students.]

To provide a loan collection of theological books for poor students we
find, in 1271, a gift by will to the University of Paris (R. 119) of a
private library, containing twenty-seven books. Even if the students
possessed books, the master "read" [23] and commented from his "gloss" at
great length on the texts being studied. Besides the mere text each
teacher had a "gloss" or commentary for it--that is, a mass of explanatory
notes, summaries, cross-references, opinions by others, and objections to
the statements of the text. The "gloss" was a book in itself, often larger
than the text, and these standard glosses, [24] or commentaries, were used
in the university instruction for centuries. In Theology and Canon Law
they were particularly extensive.

All instruction, too, was in Latin. The professor read from the Latin text
and gloss, repeating as necessary, and to this the student listened.
Sometimes he read so slowly that the text could be copied, but in 1355
this method was prohibited at Paris (R. 121), and students who tried to
force the masters to follow it "by shouting or whistling or raising a din,
or by throwing stones," were to be suspended for a year. The first step in
the instruction was a minute and subtle analysis of the text itself, in
which each line was dissected, analyzed, and paraphrased, and the comments
on the text by various authors were set forth. Next all passages capable
of two interpretations were thrown into the form of a question; _pro_ and
_contra_, after the manner of Abelard. The arguments on each side were
advanced, and the lecturer's conclusion set forth and defended. The text
was thus worked over day after day in minute detail. Having as yet but
little to teach, the masters made the most of what they had. A good
example of the mediaeval plan of university instruction is found in the
announcement of Odofredus, a distinguished teacher of Law at Bologna,
about the middle of the thirteenth century, which Rashdall thinks is
equally applicable to methods in other subjects. Odofredus says:

    First, I shall give you summaries of each title before I proceed to
    the text; secondly, I shall give you as clear and explicit a statement
    as I can of the purport of each Law (included in the title); thirdly,
    I shall read the text with a view to correcting it; fourthly, I shall
    briefly repeat the contents of the Law; fifthly, I shall solve
    apparent contradictions, adding any general principles of Law (to be
    extracted from the passage), and any distinctions and subtle and
    useful problems arising out of the Law with their solutions, as far as
    the Divine Providence shall enable me. And if any Law shall seem
    deserving, by reason of its celebrity or difficulty, of a Repetition,
    I shall reserve it for an evening Repetition.

It will be seen that both students and professors were bound to the text,
as were the teachers of the Seven Liberal Arts in the cathedral schools
before them. There was no appeal to the imagination, still less to
observation, experiment, or experience. Each generation taught what it had
learned, except that from time to time some thinker made a new
organization, or some new body of knowledge was unearthed and added.

Another method much used was the debate, or disputation, and participation
in a number of these was required for degrees (R. 116). These disputations
were logical contests, not unlike a modern debate, in which the students
took sides, cited authorities, and summarized arguments, all in Latin.
Sometimes a student gave an exhibition in which he debated both sides of a
question, and summarized the argument, after the manner of the professors.
As a corrective to the memorization of lectures and texts, these
disputations served a useful purpose in awakening intellectual vigor and
logical keenness. They were very popular until into the sixteenth century,
when new subject-matter and new ways of thinking offered new opportunities
for the exercise of the intellect.

[Illustration: FIG. 66. A UNIVERSITY DISPUTATION
(From Fick's _Auf Deutschland's Hoehen Schulen_)]

In teaching equipment there was almost nothing at first, and but little
for centuries to come. Laboratories, workshops, _gymnasia_, good buildings
and classrooms--all alike were equally unknown. Time schedules of lectures
(Rs. 122, 123) came in but slowly, in such matters each professor being a
free lance. Nor were there any libraries at first, though in time these
developed. For a long time books were both expensive and scarce (Rs. 78,
119, 120). After the invention of printing (first book printed in 1456),
university libraries increased rapidly and soon became the chief feature
of the university equipment. Figure 65 shows the library of the University
of Leyden, in Holland, thirty-five years after its foundation, and about
one hundred and fifty years after the beginnings of printing. It shows a
rather large increase in the size of book collections [25] after the
introduction of printing, and a good library organization.

[ILLUSTRATION: FIG 67. A UNIVERSITY LECTURE AND LECTURE ROOM
(From a woodcut printed at Strassburg, 1608)]

VALUE OF THE TRAINING GIVEN. Measured in terms of modern standards the
instruction was undoubtedly poor, unnecessarily drawn out, and the
educational value low. We could now teach as much information, and in a
better manner, in but a fraction of the time then required. Viewed also by
the standards of instruction in the higher schools of Greece and Rome the
conditions were almost equally bad. Viewed, though, from the standpoint of
what had prevailed in western Europe during the dark period of the early
Middle Ages, it represented a marked advance in method and content--except
in pure literature, where there was an undoubted decline due to the
absorbing interest in Dialectic--and it particularly marked a new spirit,
as nearly critical as the times would allow. Despite the heterogeneous and
but partially civilized student body, youthful and but poorly prepared for
study, the drunkenness and fighting, the lack of books and equipment, the
large classes and the poor teaching methods, and the small amount of
knowledge which formed the grist for their mills and which they ground
exceeding small, these new universities held within themselves, almost in
embryo form, the largest promise for the intellectual future of western
Europe which had appeared since the days of the old universities of the
Hellenic world (R. 124). In these new institutions knowledge was not only
preserved and transmitted, but was in time to be tremendously advanced and
extended. They were the first organizations to break the monopoly of the
Church in learning and teaching; they were the centers to which all new
knowledge gravitated; under their shadow thousands of young men found
intellectual companionship and in their classrooms intellectual
stimulation; and in encouraging "laborious subtlety, heroic industry, and
intense application", even though on very limited subject-matter, and in
training "men to think and work rather than to enjoy" (R. 124), they were
preparing for the time when western Europe should awaken to the riches of
Greece and Rome and to a new type of intellectual life of its own. From
these beginnings the university organization has persisted and grown and
expanded, and to-day stands, the Synagogue and the Catholic Church alone
excepted, as the oldest organized institution of human society.

The manifest tendency of the universities toward speculation, though for
long within limits approved by the Church, was ultimately to awaken
inquiry, investigation, rational thinking, and to bring forth the modern
spirit. The preservation and transmission of knowledge was by the
university organization transferred from the monastery to the school, from
monks to doctors, and from the Church to a body of logically trained men,
only nominally members of the _clerici_. Their successors would in time
entirely break away from connections with either Church or State, and
stand forth as the independent thinkers and scholars in the arts,
sciences, professions, and even in Theology. University graduates in
Medicine would in time wage a long struggle against bigotry to lay the
foundations of modern medicine. Graduates in Law would contend with kings
and feudal lords for larger privileges for the as yet lowly common man,
and would help to usher in a period of greater political equality. The
university schools of Theology were in time to send forth the keenest
critics of the practices of the Church. Out of the university cloisters
were to come the men--Dante, Petrarch, Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin,
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton--who were to usher in the modern spirit.

The universities as a public force. Almost from the first the universities
availed themselves of their privileges and proclaimed a bold independence.
The freedom from arrest and trial by the civil authorities for petty
offenses, or even for murder, and the right to go on a strike if in any
way interfered with, were but beginnings in independence in an age when
such independence seemed important. These rights were in time given up,
[26] and in their place the much more important rights of liberty to study
as truth seemed to lead, freedom in teaching as the master saw the truth,
and the right to express themselves as an institution on public questions
which seemed to concern them, were slowly but definitely taken on in place
of the earlier privileges. Virtually a new type of members of society--a
new Estate--was evolved, ranking with Church, State, and nobility, and
this new Estate soon began to express itself in no uncertain tones on
matters which concerned both Church and State. The universities were
democratic in organization and became democratic in spirit, representing a
heretofore unknown and unexpressed public opinion in western Europe. They
did not wait to be asked; they gave their opinions unsolicited. "The
authority of the University of Paris," writes one contemporary, "has risen
to such a height that it is necessary to satisfy it, no matter on what
conditions." The university "wanted to meddle with the government of the
Pope, the King, and everything else," writes another. We find Paris
intervening repeatedly in both church and state affairs, [27] and
representing French nationality before it had come into being, as the so-
called Holy Roman Empire represented the Germans, and the Papacy
represented the Italians. In Montpellier, professors of Law were
considered as knights, and after twenty years of practice they became
counts. In Bologna we find the professors of Law one of the three
assemblies of the city. Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and the Scottish
universities were given representation in Parliament. The German
universities were from the first prominent in political affairs, and in
the reformation struggle of the early sixteenth century they were the
battle-grounds.

In an age of oppression these university organizations stood for freedom.
In an age of force they began the substitution of reason. In the centuries
from the end of the Dark Ages to the Reformation they were the homes of
free thought. They early assumed national character and proclaimed a bold
independence. Questions of State and Church they discussed with a freedom
before unknown. They presented their grievances to both kings and popes,
from both they obtained new privileges, to both they freely offered their
advice, and sometimes both were forced to do their bidding. At times
important questions of State, such as the divorce of Philip of France and
that of Henry VIII of England, were submitted to them for decision. They
were not infrequently called upon to pass upon questions of doctrine or
heresy. "Kings and princes," says Rashdall, in an excellent summary as to
the value and influence of the mediaeval university instruction (R. 124),
"found their statesmen and men of business in the universities, most
often, no doubt, among those trained in the practical science of Law."
Talleyrand is said to have asserted that "their theologians made the best
diplomats." For the first time since the downfall of Rome the
administration of human affairs was now placed once more in the hands of
educated men. By the interchange of students from all lands and their
hospitality, such as it was, to the stranger, the universities tended to
break down barriers and to prepare Europe for larger intercourse and for
more of a common life.

On the masses of the people, of course, they had little or no influence,
and could not have for centuries to come. Their greatest work, as has been
the case with universities ever since their foundation, was that of
drawing to their classrooms the brightest minds of the times, the most
capable and the most industrious, and out of this young raw material
training the leaders of the future in Church and State. Educationally, one
of their most important services was in creating a surplus of teachers in
the Arts who had to find a market for their abilities in the rising
secondary schools. These developed rapidly after 1200, and to these we owe
a somewhat more general diffusion of the little learning and the
intellectual training of the time. In preparing future leaders for State
and Church in law, theology, and teaching, the universities, though
sometimes opposed and their opinions ignored, nevertheless contributed
materially to the making and moulding of national history. The first great
result of their work in training leaders we see in the Renaissance
movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to which we next turn.
In this movement for a revival of the ancient learning, and the subsequent
movements for a purer and a better religious life, the men trained by the
universities were the leaders.


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Why would the _studia publica_ tend to attract a different type of
scholar than those in the monasteries, and gradually to supersede them in
importance?

2. Show how the mediaeval university was a gradual and natural evolution,
as distinct from a founded university of to-day.

3. Show that the university charter was a first step toward independence
from church and state control.

4. Show the relation between the system of apprenticeship developed for
student and teacher in a mediaeval university, and the stages of student
and teacher in a university of to-day.

5. Show how the chartered university of the Middle Ages was an
"association of like-minded men for worldly purposes."

6. To what university mother does Harvard go back, ultimately?

7. Show how the English and the German universities are extreme evolutions
from the mediaeval type, and our American universities a combination of
the two extremes.

8. Do university professors to-day have privileges akin to those granted
professors in a mediaeval university?

9. What has caused the old Arts Faculty to break up into so many groups,
whereas Law, Medicine, and Theology have stayed united?

10. Do universities, when founded to-day, usually start with all four of
the mediaeval faculties represented?

11. Which of the professional faculties has changed most in the nature and
character of its instruction? Why has this been so?

12. Enumerate a number of different things which have enabled the modern
university greatly to shorten the period of instruction?

13. Aside from differences in teachers, why are some university subjects
today taught much more compactly and economically than other subjects?

14. After admitting all the defects of the mediaeval university, why did
the university nevertheless represent so important a development for the
future of western civilization?

15. What does the long continuance, without great changes in character, of
the university as an institution indicate as to its usefulness to society?

16. Does the university of to-day play as important a part in the progress
of society as it did in the mediaeval times? Why?

17. Is the chief university force to-day exerted directly or indirectly?
Illustrate.

18. What is probably the greatest work of any university, in any age?

19. Compare the influence of the mediaeval university, and the Greek
universities of the ancient world.

20. Explain the evolution of the English college system as an effort to
improve discipline, morals, and thinking. Has it been successful in this?

21. Show how the mediaeval university put books in the place of things,
whereas the modern university tries to reverse this.

22. Show how the rise of the universities gave an educated ruling class to
Europe, even though the nobility may not have attended them.

23. Show how, in an age of lawlessness, the universities symbolized the
supremacy of mind over brute force.

24. Show how the mediaeval universities aided civilization by breaking
down, somewhat, barriers of nationality and ignorance among peoples.

25. Show how the university stood, as the crowning effort of its time, in
the slow upward struggle to rebuild civilization on the ruins of what had
once been.


SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:

  100. Rashdall and Minerva: University Foundations before 1600.
  101. Fr. Barbarossa: Privileges for Students who travel for Study.
  102. Philip Augustus: Privileges granted Students at Paris.
  103. Count Rupert: Charter of the University of Heidelberg.
  104. Philip IV: Exemption of Students and Masters from Taxation.
  105. Vercelli: Privileges granted to the University by the City.
  106. Villani: The Cost to a City of maintaining a University.
  107. Pope Gregory IX: Right to suspend Lectures (_Cessatio_).
  108. Roger of Wendover: a _Cessatio_ at Oxford.
  109. Henry III: England invites Scholars to leave Paris.
  110. Pope Gregory IX: Early Licensing of Professors to teach.
  111. Pope Nicholas IV: The Right to grant Licenses to teach.
  112. Rashdall: A University License to teach.
  113. Paris Statutes, 1254: Books required for the Arts Degree.
  114. Leipzig Statutes, 1410: Books required for the Arts Degree.
  115. Oxford Statutes, 1408-31: Books required for the Arts Degree.
  116. Oxford, Fourteenth Century: Requirements for the Professional
       Degrees.
       (a) In Theology.   (c) In Civil Law.
       (b) In Canon Law.  (d) In Medicine.
  117. Paris Statutes, 1270-74: Requirements for the Medical Degree.
  118. Roger Bacon: On the Teaching of Theology.
  119. Master Stephen: Books left by Will to the University of Paris.
  120. Roger Bacon: The Scarcity of Books on Morals.
  121. Balaeus: Methods of Instruction in the Arts Faculty of Paris.
  122. Toulouse: Time-Table of Lectures in Arts, 1309.
  123. Leipzig: Time-Table of Lectures in Arts, 1519.
  124. Rashdall: Value and Influence of the Mediaeval University.


QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. What does a glance at the page giving the university foundations before
1600 (100) show as to the rate and direction of the university movement?

2. How do you account for the very large privileges granted university
students in the early grants (101, 102) and charters (103)? Should a
university student to-day have any privileges not given to all citizens?
Why?

3. Do universities, when founded to-day, secure a charter? If so, from
whom, and what terms are included? Do normal schools? What form of a
charter, if any, has your university or normal school?

4. Compare the freedom from taxation granted to masters and students at
Paris (104) with the grant to professors at Brown University (187b). Was
the Brown University grant exceptional, or common in other American
foundations?

5. Do any American cities to-day maintain colleges or universities, as did
the Italian cities (105)? Normal schools? Are somewhat similar ends
served?

6. What does the _cessatio_, as exercised by the mediaeval university
(107, 108), indicate as to standards of conduct on the part of teachers
and students?

7. Why is the licensing of university professors to teach not followed in
our American universities? What has taken the place of the license? What
did the mediaeval license (110, 111, 112) really signify?

8. Compare the license to teach (112) with a modern doctor's diploma.

9. Compare the requirements for the Arts degree (113, 114, 115) with the
requirements for the Baccalaureate degree at a modern university.

10. Compare the additional length of time for professional degrees (116,
117).

11. How do you account for the American practice of admitting students to
the professional courses without the Arts course? What is the best
American practice in this matter to-day, and what tendencies are
observable?

12. Characterize the medical course at Paris (117) from a modern point of
view.

13. Compare the instruction in medicine at Paris (117) and Toulouse (122).
How do you account for the superiority shown by one? Which one?

14. What does the extract from Roger Bacon (118) indicate as to the
character of the teaching of Theology?

15. What was the nature and extent of the library of Master Stephen (119)?
Compare such a library with that of a scholar of to-day.

16. Show how the Paris statute as to lecturing (121) was an attempt at an
improvement of the methods of instruction and individual thinking.

17. What do the two time-tables reproduced (122, 123) reveal as to the
nature of a university day, and the instruction given?

18. Show how Rashdall's statement (124) that lawyers have been a
civilizing agent is true.


SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

  Boase, Charles William. _Oxford_ (Historic Towns Series).
  Clark, Andrew. _The Colleges at Oxford_.
  Clark, J. W. _Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods_.
* Clark, J. W. _The Care of Books_.
  Corbin, John. _An American at Oxford_.
* Compayre, G. _Abelard, and the Origin and Early History of the
    Universities_.
* Jebb, R. C. _The Work of the Universities for the Nation_.
  Mullinger, J. B. _History of the University of Cambridge_.
* Norton, A. 0. _Readings in the History of Education; Medieval
    Universities_.
* Paetow, L. J. _The Arts Course at Mediaeval Universities_. (Univ.
    Ill. Studies, vol. in, no. 7, Jan. 1910).
* Paulsen, Fr. _The German Universities_.
  Rait, R. S. _Life of a Mediaeval University_.
* Rashdall, H. _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_.
  Sandys, J. E. _History of Classical Scholarship_, vol. I.
  Sheldon, Henry. _Student Life and Customs_.




PART III

THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN ATTITUDES

THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT LEARNING
THE REAWAKENING OF SCHOLARSHIP AND
THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY




CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING


THE PERIOD OF CHANGE. The thirteenth century has often been called the
wonderful century of the mediaeval world. It was wonderful largely in that
the forces struggling against mediaevalism to evolve the modern spirit
here first find clear expression. It was a century of rapid and
unmistakable progress in almost every line. By its close great changes
were under way which were destined ultimately to shake off the incubus of
mediaevalism and to transform Europe. In many respects, though, the
fourteenth was a still more wonderful century.

The evolution of the universities which we have just traced was one of the
most important of these thirteenth-century manifestations. Lacking in
intellectual material, but impelled by the new impulses beginning to work
in the world, the scholars of the time went earnestly to work, by
speculative methods, to organize the dogmatic theology of the Church into
a system of thinking. The result was Scholasticism. From one point of view
the result was barren; from another it was full of promise for the future.
Though the workers lacked materials, were overshadowed by the mediaeval
spirit of authority, and kept their efforts clearly within limits approved
by the Church, the "heroic industry" and the "in tense application"
displayed in effecting the organization, and the logical subtlety
developed in discussing the results, promised much for the future. The
rise of university instruction, and the work of the Scholastics in
organizing the knowledge of the time, were both a resultant of new
influences already at work and a prediction of larger consequences to
follow. In a later age, and with men more emancipated from church control,
the same spirit was destined to burst forth in an effort to discover and
reconstruct the historic past.

During the thirteenth century, too, the new Estate, which had come into
existence alongside of the clergy and the nobility, began to assume large
importance. The arts-and-crafts guilds were attaining a large development,
and out of this new burgher class the great general public of modern times
has in time evolved. Trade and industry were increasing in all lands, and
merchants and successful artisans were becoming influential through their
newly obtained wealth and rights. The erection of stately churches and
town halls, often beautifully carved and highly ornamented, was taking
place. Great cathedrals, those "symphonies in stone," of which Notre Dame
(Figure 53) is a good example, were rising or being further expanded and
decorated at many places in western Europe. Mystery and miracle plays had
begun to be performed and to attract great attention. In the fourteenth
century religious pageants were added. "All art was still religion," but
an art was unmistakably arising amid cathedral-building and the setting-
forth of the Christian mysteries, and before long this was to flower in
modern forms of expression in painting, sculpture, and the drama.

THE NEW SPIRIT OF NATIONALITY. The new spirit moving in western Europe
also found expression in the evolution of the modern European States,
based on the new national feeling. As the kingly power in these was
consolidated, the developing States, each in its own domain, began to curb
the dominion of the universal Church, slowly to deprive it of the
governmental functions it had assumed and exercised for so long, and to
confine the Pope and clergy more and more to their original functions as
religious agents. The Papacy as a temporal power passed the maximum period
of its greatness early in the thirteenth century; in the nineteenth
century the last vestiges of its temporal power were taken away.

New national languages also were coming into being, and the national epics
of the people--the Cid, the Arthurian Legends, the _Chansons_, and the
_Nibelungen Lied_--were reduced to writing. With the introduction from the
East, toward the close of the thirteenth century, of the process of making
paper for writing, and with the increase of books in the vernacular, the
English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages rapidly took
shape. Their development was expressive of the new spirit in western
Europe, as also was the fact that Dante (1264-1321), "the first literary
layman since Boethius" (d. 524), wrote his great poem, _The Divine
Comedy_, in his native Italian instead of in the Latin which he knew so
well--an evidence of independence of large future import. New native
literatures were springing forth all over Europe. Beginning with the
_troubadours_ in southern France (p. 186), and taken up by the _trouveres_
in northern France and by the _minnesingers_ in German lands, the new
poetry of nature and love and joy of living had spread everywhere. [1] A
new race of men was beginning to "sing songs as blithesome and gay as the
birds" and to express in these songs the joys of the world here below.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL MAN. The fourteenth century was a period
of still more rapid change and transformation. New objects of interest
were coming to the front, and new standards of judgment were being
applied. National spirit and a national patriotism were finding
expression. The mediaeval man, with his feeling of personal
insignificance, lack of self-confidence, "no sense of the past behind him,
and no conception of the possibilities of the future before him," [2] was
rapidly giving way to the man possessed of the modern spirit--the man of
self-confidence, conscious of his powers, enjoying life, feeling his
connection with the historic past, and realizing the potentialities of
accomplishment in the world here below. It was the great work of the
period of transition, and especially of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, to effect this change, "to awaken in man a consciousness of his
powers, to give him confidence in himself, to show him the beauty of the
world and the joy of life, and to make him feel his living connection with
the past and the greatness of the future he might create." [3] As soon as
men began clearly to experience such feelings, they began to inquire, and
inquiry led to the realization that there had been a great historic past
of which they knew but little, and of which they wanted to know much. When
this point had been reached, western Europe was ready for a revival of
learning.

THE BEGINNINGS IN ITALY. This revival began in Italy. The Italians had
preserved more of the old Roman culture than had any other people, and had
been the first to develop a new political and social order and revive the
refinements of life after the deluge of barbarism which had engulfed
Europe. They, too, had been the first to feel the inadequacy of mediaeval
learning to satisfy the intellectual unrest of men conscious of new
standards of life. This gave them at least a century of advance over the
nations of northern Europe. The old Roman life also was nearer to them,
and meant more, so that a movement for a revival of interest in it
attracted to it the finest young minds of central and northern Italy and
inspired in them something closely akin to patriotic fervor. They felt
themselves the direct heirs of the political and intellectual eminence of
Imperial Rome, and they began the work of restoring to themselves and of
trying to understand their inheritance.

[Illustration: FIG. 68. PETRARCH (1304-74)
"The Morning Star of the Renaissance"]

In Petrarch (1304-74) we have the beginnings of the movement. He has been
called "the first modern scholar and man of letters." Repudiating the
other-worldliness ideal and the scholastic learning of his time, [4]
possessed of a deep love for beauty in nature and art, a delight in
travel, a desire for worldly fame, a strong historical sense, and the
self-confidence to plan a great constructive work, he began the task of
unearthing the monastic treasures to ascertain what the past had been and
known and done. At twenty-nine he made his first great discovery, at
Liege, in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero. Twelve
years later, at Verona, he found half of one of the letters of Cicero
which had been lost for ages. All his life he collected and copied
manuscripts. His letter to a friend telling him of his difficulty in
getting a work of Cicero copied, and his joy in doing the work himself (R.
125), is typical of his labors. He began the work of copying and comparing
the old classical manuscripts, and from them reconstructing the past. He
also wrote many sonnets, ballads, lyrics, and letters, all filled with a
new modern classical spirit. He also constructed the first modern map of
Italy.

[Illustration: FIG. 69. BOCCACCIO (1313-75)
"The Father of Italian Prose"]

Through Boccaccio, whom he first met in 1350, Petrarch's work was made
known in Florence, then the wealthiest and most artistic and literary city
in the world, [5] and there the new knowledge and method were warmly
received. Boccaccio equaled Petrarch in his passion for the ancient
writers, hunting for them wherever he thought they might be found. One of
his pupils has left us a melancholy picture of the library at Monte
Cassino, as Boccaccio found it at the time of his visit (R. 126). He wrote
a book of popular tales and romances, filled with the modern spirit, which
made him the father of Italian prose as Dante was of Italian poetry;
prepared the first dictionaries of classical geography and Greek
mythology; and was the first western scholar to learn Greek.

  "In the dim light of learning's dawn they stand,
  Flushed with the first glimpses of a long-lost land."

A CENTURY OF RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION. The work done by these two
friends in discovering and editing was taken up by others, and during the
century (1333-1433) dating from the first great "find" of Petrarch the
principal additions to Latin literature were made. The monasteries and
castles of Europe were ransacked in the hope of discovering something new,
or more accurate copies of previously known books. At monasteries and
churches as widely separated as Monte Cassino, near Naples: Lodi, near
Milan; Milan, itself; and Vercelli, in Italy: Saint Gall and other
monasteries, in Switzerland: Paris; Cluny, near the present city of Macon;
Langres, near the source of the Marne; and monasteries in the Vosges
Mountains, in France: Corvey, in Westphalia; and Hersfeld, Cologne, and
Mainz in Germany--important finds were made. [6] Thus widely had the old
Latin authors been scattered, copied, and forgotten. In a letter to a
fr