PART III

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

1. INTRODUCTORY: CHURCH AND STATE

We have seen how large the emperors loomed in the ideas and education of

the fourth century, and what some of the evil effects of this were. As we

pass into the fifth century we find a growing reaction. The balance is

shifted, and the Church begins to receive from the emperors an authority

which had previously been confined to the secular State.

At first the Church had been independent, unnoticed by the State; then,

after the persecutions of the early Empire, it found imperial recognition

with the accession of Constantine. But there was still a measure of

independence of the State: the emperors did not interfere with Church

dogma, and the bishops took no part in politics. They were, as yet, very

humble and submissive, for they felt the need of imperial protection,

having no sufficient organization of their own and no effective

ecclesiastical government; though a considerable machinery had been

created by the councils which had been meeting since the third century.

A third stage is reached when the bishops become haughty and imperious

and begin to meddle with politics. The clergy have strengthened

themselves by organization and training. The latent antagonism between

Church and State becomes prominent, and the State sometimes comes off

worse. And when the political framework goes under, the power of the

Church grows and prospers.[878]

Now it is this growth of Church influence in the fifth century and its

effect upon ideas and ideals that is important for our purpose. On the

material side this growth is indicated by an increase of civil power. The

Edict of Milan restored the confiscated buildings of the churches, and

Constantine in 321[879] allowed the clergy to receive bequests. A vast

amount of property was bequeathed to the Church in the fifth century,

the administration of which was settled by the canons of the various

synods. These canons gave rise to an ecclesiastical law which was later

augmented by the decisions of the Popes, and played a great part in

the Middle Ages. Civil jurisdiction largely passed into the hands of

the bishops, and against their sentence, which was carried out by the

civil authorities, there was no appeal. The entire administration of the

widespread Church property and affairs was in the hands of the bishop.

The State reserved criminal law for itself. Like the pagan ‘flamen’, the

bishop sat on the ‘Curia’ of his city, where he exercised great authority.

More and more the State came to recognize the ecclesiastical society as

a separate polity. Manumissions within the Church were sanctioned by the

emperors.[880] The clergy are repeatedly excused from all public burdens

whatsoever.[881] This cleavage between Church and State, which had been

momentarily accentuated by Julian’s law of 362 forbidding Christians to

teach, is further emphasized by the establishment of separate courts for

ecclesiastical offenders. ‘The clergy’ (so ran the law of Honorius and

Theodosius in 412) ‘may be tried only before an episcopal court.’[882]

More and more, therefore, the bishop came to be appealed to as a civil

power,[883] and when the crisis came bishops like Sidonius defended the

towns against the invaders.[884] A sense of the failing Empire made men

turn to the Church for help against the oppression of imperial officials,

and the ruin of invading barbarians.[885] Above all they turned to her

for education.

For this position the Church had strengthened herself by increased

organization during the fourth and fifth centuries. She assimilated the

principles of imperial government and law, applied them in creating her

bishoprics, and modelled on them her methods of administration. Thus law,

the great contribution of the Roman Empire, passed into the Church, and

so down the ages.

On the spiritual side this development of Christianity is marked

by a greater kindliness (due also to the teaching of the pagan

philosophers[886]) in the hard Roman world. Hints of a new attitude to

slaves are to be found in the Theodosian Code. There are lengthy laws

providing protection from enslavement—‘non erit impunita labefactatio

atque oppugnatio libertatis’[887]—and steps are taken to enable people to

rise out of slavery by placing legal means within their reach and making

the assertion of liberty easier.[888] Moreover, the breaking up of slave

families is forbidden, and the objection is stated from the moral point

of view. ‘Quis enim ferat liberos a parentibus, a fratribus sorores ...

segregari? Igitur qui dissociata in ius diversum mancipia traxerunt,

in unum redigere eadem cogantur: ac si cui propter redintegrationem

necessitudinum servi cesserint, vicaria per eum qui eosdem susceperit

mancipia reddantur.’[889] But while we must grant to the philosophers

and to Christianity an important share in the gradual disappearance

of slavery, it must be remembered that the process was largely due to

economic causes. It was found that it paid better to give a man some

measure of personal freedom, and the economists tell us that the colonate

which appeared at the beginning of the third century was a natural

economic development of slavery. The absence of wars of conquest also

contributed to this result.[890]

Moreover, liberation of body and spirit was aimed at by the attitude

of the Church to the stage and the arena. Attendance was forbidden to

Christians, and actors were not allowed to be baptized. The discredit

thus cast upon these professions was emphasized by the emperors. A great

many restrictions were introduced,[891] and games were forbidden on

certain Christian feast-days.[892] It was enacted that actresses who had

become Christians—‘quas melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis condicionis

evolvit’—should not be forced back into the profession.[893] Similarly,

actors and actresses who had received the sacrament when thought to be

dying must not be allowed to act again.[894]

Against the arena, too, a blow was struck. Constantine enacted in 325

that all those criminals who had previously been condemned to the

arena should now be assigned to the mines. This did not mean the total

abolition of gladiatorial contests, but it certainly meant a decrease in

the victims of the ‘ludi gladiatorii’, and the moral lead it gave was

valuable. ‘Cruenta spectacula’, he said, ‘in otio civili et domestica

quiete non placent.’[895]

Later, he forbade soldiers to become gladiators,[896] and Valentinian

exempted Christians from the punishment of the arena.[897] Gibbon gives

the story of St. Telemachus to mark the final abolition of these contests

by Honorius[898] in 404, though Bury points out that there is evidence

of such shows some years later. As late as the fourth century we still

find a man like Symmachus spending £80,000 on games for his son’s

praetorship,[899] but, on the whole, the influence of the Christian ideal

made for greater frugality and gentleness.

This influence was also seen in the increase of charities. The bishops,

for example, often distributed corn among the people when times were

bad.[900] That misuse was made of this spirit is seen from the strict law

of Valentinian against mendicancy;[901] but the misuse is not so serious

as the previous lack of charitable spirit.

The feeling of the Christians against slavery and the manual labour

of the monks tended to destroy the aristocratic prejudice against

practical work, and made for a simpler and more natural life. The

artificial position in which the pagan world had placed women was to

some extent remedied along the same line of the brotherhood of man.

Jerome’s correspondence with Paula and Eustochium is an indication of

this new attitude.[902] Naturalness also resulted from a reaction against

the exaggerated centralization of the Empire, and was manifested in a

development of individuality. The Western Church occasionally showed that

it could stand up to the emperor.[903] When Constantius commanded that

all the bishops assembled at the synod of Ariminum should be given their

food (_annonae et cellaria_) the bishops of Gaul and Britain refused

the gift, fearing the diplomacy of Constantius because ‘it did not seem

fitting. They refused the imperial support and preferred to live at their

own expense.’[904]

There was, therefore, a considerable and increasing independence on the

part of the Church. Yet Church and State co-operated in many things.

One of these points of co-operation, which was most important for

education, was the holding of councils. First the Council of Arles

(314), representing the Western Church, and then the Council of Nicea

(325), representing the whole Church, was summoned by Constantine. And

the influence of these councils in clearing away provincial prejudices

and producing breadth of vision must have reacted very favourably on

education, though the bishops of Gaul, owing to the larger extent of

their bishoprics, did not have that close relation of teacher and pupil

with their congregations which was the case in the East.

With all this in her favour the Church drew into her service men of

the best blood and intellect. The nobility became the holders of the

bishoprics, and the Christians consented. Indeed, they did more than

consent. They sometimes demanded it, as in the case of Ambrose, feeling,

no doubt, the value of having a man of high social rank to protect them

in the political world. Men like Sidonius who had been living quite a

‘worldly’ life became bishops, moved, one is inclined to suspect, rather

by the sense of power than the spirit of devotion. Thus aristocratic

ideas were introduced into the Church and the bishop’s office was

sometimes made hereditary, as in the case of Eucherius and his sons

Salonius and Veranius. These aristocrats were at the same time the

intellectuals of their time, and men like Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who

was consulted by all the writers of the South,[905] Arbogast of Trèves,

afterwards Bishop of Chartres,[906] of whose learning, as of that of

Auspicius, Sidonius thought much,[907] Patiens of Lyons,[908] Faustus of

Riez,[909] Mamertus of Vienne,[910] Graecus of Marseilles,[911] Perpetuus

of Tours,[912] and many others, all friends of Sidonius and therefore of

culture, shifted the balance of intellect from the pagan to the Christian

side of society.

And yet, in spite of these hopeful signs, this growth in the power of

ideals, we feel that the Church in Gaul did not transform the Roman

Empire. Power the Church obtained, but found it a perilous possession.

For with power came the whole host of political corruptions which had

found a home in the imperial system, and entered, unsuspected, along the

paths which custom had made. In becoming, to some extent, the successor

of the Empire, the Church exposed herself to imperial dangers. Politics

tended to overshadow principles. At least one of the two invasions of

which Montalembert speaks[913] was needed in order that the Church should

save Society—that of the monks from the South.

2. THE PERSISTENCE OF RHETORIC: TRADITION AND REACTION

The development of Christianity, then, in the fourth and fifth

centuries, largely takes the form of a struggle between the old and the

new. Everywhere in the ecclesiastical society there are, inevitably,

survivals, and they loom particularly large on account of two factors:

the entry of Roman law into the Church, and the assumption of Church

leadership by large numbers of the aristocracy.

It is natural, therefore, that we should find survivals in education too,

and the extent to which we find them is evidence of the strength and

the universality of the rhetorical tradition. And we need to see this

tradition in its proper perspective before we can fully appreciate the

significance of Gallic education in our period.

As we look back on the long line of rhetorical teachers, we can trace

an increasing degree of narrowness and futility. The conditions of life

in the city-state had made public speaking a practical and personal

necessity. What Isocrates strove to do in his rôle as pamphleteer was

to raise oratory from the personal to the national level, to connect

education with statesmanship,[914] and to unify it by setting before it

the ideal of a united Greece. The sphere of rhetoric in his view was wide

and humane.[915] It is true that he himself was a theorist, unskilled

in the practical issues of politics.[916] He was what Crito in the

_Euthydemus_ called a ‘Boundary Stone’—one who tried to combine practical

politics and philosophy, avoiding the extremes of each. His attempt was

unpopular, though ultimately he succeeded, for his school became the

university of Greece.[917] But the ideal which he put forward had a real

inspiration, and had none of the cramping restrictions of later rhetoric.

Moreover, he taught the unity of moral and intellectual education: ‘The

more strongly a man desires to persuade his audience’ (the intellectual

practice of the rhetorical school) ‘the more will he train himself in

culture of mind and manners and in gaining the esteem of his fellow

citizens.’[918] Speech is regarded as the instrument of Persuasion, from

which all the blessings of human society proceed,[919] and its function

is to advance civilization by educating the ignorant and testing the wise.

Such was the high educational ideal of Isocrates, and we find much of it

reflected in Cicero, his admirer and his imitator. The breadth of view is

not impaired. For Cicero maintains that the power of eloquence is such

that it embraces the rise, the force, the vicissitudes of all affairs,

virtues, and duties; of everything in nature—character, mind, life. It

defines the moral code, the principles of law and right. It regulates

the State, and on every subject and in all its relations its words are

many and eloquent.[920] There is the same attempt to connect rhetoric

with politics, the same insistence that intellectual issues (_doctrina

bene dicendi_) cannot be separated from moral ones (_doctrina recte

faciendi_).[921] Wide and all-round knowledge is required of the orator:

‘mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni laude cumulatus orator,

nisi erit omnium rerum magnarum atque artium scientiam consecutus.’[922]

Yet Cicero was a panegyrist, and he followed the artificial rules of the

game in exactly the same way as the Gallic rhetoricians of the third and

fourth centuries did; and when he warns against spending too much time on

philosophy,[923] which may be lightly learned, he says, we feel that he

is giving rein to a natural Roman tendency to discount thought, and that

this tendency proved the bane of rhetoric.

Cicero’s attempt to make the oratorical education something of wide

scope, and to make it bear upon practical politics, was doomed to

failure. More and more the tyranny of rhetorical rules, co-operating

with the restriction of liberty under the Empire, produced a narrow

and formal result. The sciolists of the fourth century believed that

philosophy could be so easily learned that they hardly troubled to make

its acquaintance. A political connexion with oratory was kept up, but it

consisted in the degenerate panegyric. More and more rhetorical education

narrowed its range, and retired within the academical atmosphere of the

school.[924] As for moral education, we must find in the criticisms of

Tacitus and Juvenal an element of truth. The emperor set the fashion, and

the subject did not always find an inspiring example.

The change that came over oratory was not entirely one of artificiality.

This there had been in Isocrates, whose rules were just as artificial

as those of the ‘Panegyrici Latini’. It was rather a question of ideal.

Isocrates had a national ideal, which could give meaning and life to

his utterances; Cicero had the interests of a party to inspire him; but

the panegyrists of the fourth century were confined to the emperor; his

birthday or his benefits are the sort of subjects that stimulate their

oratory, and Pliny could praise with equal fervour the political reforms

and the white horses of Trajan.

Thus the rhetorical tradition, the ideal of oratory as the goal of

education, came down through the centuries to our period. It came to

Gaul, and flourished exceedingly on account of the natural aptitude

of the Gauls for eloquence. Lucian, in the _Herakles_,[925] gives a

picture of the Gallic Hercules who drags all men after him by fine chains

attached to his tongue and their ears, and they follow gladly though it

is in their power to break away. Cerialis, in addressing the Treveri and

Lingones, maintained that the Roman way of establishing justice was the

sword, but that words had most influence with the Gauls.[926]

And Jerome said of the Gauls: ‘The fact that they are prolific of orators

points not so much to the studious character of the country as to the

noise made by the rhetors: especially as Aquitaine boasts of its Greek

origin.’[927] This is borne out by the inscriptions. We are struck in the

south by the frequency of long-winded and ornate epitaphs, e.g.[928]

D.M.

Memoriae aeternae

Socchiae Enneanis

Dulcissim. et. super. ae

tatem. ingenio. nobi

lissimo. qui vixit. an

... Menses VII. D. XXIIII

L. Boconius. Pho(t)inus Pa

ter et Alpia Castina ma

ter. Parentes infelicis

simi repentina huius. a

missione orbati filio

Karissimo unico prae

cl.... p.... s.... sibi erepto (praeclaro pro sua aetate)

et sibi vivi posteris que

suis Po(s) et sub Ascia (posuit)

dedicaverunt.

As we go north epitaphs of this description become much rarer, which

seems to indicate that as the influence of the Celtic element, and,

perhaps, the Greek Massilia, decreases, there is a decrease also in the

‘ubertas Gallici sermonis’.[929]

We can hardly realize to-day how enormous the power and the extent of

rhetoric was. In all parts of the Empire it was the mark of a cultured

gentleman. As we have seen, it was the basis of education, the condition

of imperial appointments, a tremendous factor in the policy of the

emperors. ‘If we lose our eloquence’, said Libanius,[930] ‘what will be

left to distinguish us from the barbarians?’ and again, ‘If you know the

art of speaking you know the art of commanding.’[931] From Isocrates to

Libanius Persuasion (Peitho) cast her spell with unfailing charm, nor

was it Gaul alone that was bound by the chains of the tongue. Beyond the

Graeco-Roman world the influence went: Sidonius, the conservative, could

compliment an Arbogast on his eloquence,[932] and it was the rhetoric of

pagan Gaul, as well as the religion of Christian Gaul, that led captive

her fierce conquerors. So, too, beyond the pagan world, rhetoric invaded

the Church and left its manifold traces on Christian education.

Kaufmann estimates that by the year 450 pagan schools in Gaul were

disappearing under the influence of the Church militant.[933] Now it is

true that the Church considered it a duty to condemn the rhetoricians,

but their system persisted nevertheless through the monasteries up to our

own day both in the matter and in method.

The Christian literature of the period shows this clearly. In poetry

(except in a few cases like the _Ad uxorem_, and the _De providentia

Dei_) the fetters of the tradition are still strong, and in trying to

force biblical subjects into unsuitable forms, men like Sedulius, Marius

Victor, and Paulinus of Nola produce mere lifeless paraphrases; in

prose, where there were fewer rules to check naturalness and freshness

of thought, the results are much more gratifying. In the schools it is

recognized that the rhetorical system is indispensable. Tertullian[934]

allows Christian children to attend pagan schools, though he will not

permit Christians to teach in them, and Jerome, while he complains that

the clergy are too fond of Vergil and the Comedies, is constrained to

add ‘in pueris necessitatis est’.[935] The Church did not create a new

educational system.

One or two particular cases of the survival of rhetoric may be given.

Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, born in 474 at Arles, illustrates in a typical

way the enormous power which rhetoric could exercise over Christians

as late as the end of the fifth century. He is passionately in love

with the forms and methods of his pagan authors, loves their pomp

and glitter,[936] and is always playing a part in the hope of winning

applause.[937] He makes rhetoric say: ‘I am she who does things or

changes things done. Light can dispel the darkness, however vast, in

which the law involves a man, and this light by reading I can give. I am

she from whom men await prosecution if guilty and acquittal if innocent

... for my gain the Roman keeps vigil throughout the Empire. Unless

I adorn them, office, riches, honours lose their attraction: it is I

who rule the rulers.’[938] This is all very similar to what Isocrates

had said centuries ago, when he talked of the power and benefits of

Persuasion,[939] and the traditional moral note is there just as in

Isocrates[940] and in Cicero.[941] Rhetoric, says Ennodius, is the only

moulder of public opinion. Her charm is irresistible and universal. (Why

mention so obvious a fact?) The opinion she creates is eternal. It is

she who makes people believe whatever she wishes about the deeds of the

brave, she who can suppress facts with impunity. She is the mother of

poetry, jurisprudence, dialectic, arithmetic, and she gives them their

value.[942] ‘Grammar’ is recognized as the necessary precedent, the

nurse of knowledge and virtue, who produces the sparks that lead to the

Ciceronian fire of speech.[943] The idea that rhetorical adornment is

specially connected with the school is still current. A correspondent

begs him with many prayers that his letter to him should be embellished

with the graces of the school (_multis enim supplicationibus exegistis

ut pagina vobis concinnationis didascalicae fingeretur_[944]) and in the

_Libellus pro Synodo_ he urges ‘illas _didascalici_ libelli relegamus

argutias’.[945]

Later on Ennodius began to have misgivings about the part rhetoric

played in his life. ‘Erat orandi fastidium dum perorandi tenebar

cupiditate....’[946] He laments his placid satisfaction with his fine

speeches, his elation at poetic successes, while he had no ear for the

‘angelorum chori’ owing to the intoxication of applause. ‘Quotiens

adclamantium flatibus propter religionem vertex nudatus intumuit....’ But

even in his confessions rhetoric is present, and she triumphs at the very

time when he speaks of her defeat.

A curious instance of the survival of rhetoric is seen in the invective

of Hilary of Poitiers against Constantius.[947] The author has worked up

a great deal of feeling, and, to give it the most effective utterance,

he lets it flow into the moulds prescribed by tradition. His divisions

correspond perfectly to those of the schools. He spares no form of

contumely, even at the expense of historical fact.[948] His railing

reminds us of Milton’s denunciation of Salmasius:[949] for as late as

the seventeenth century Latin retained its reputation as the language

of invective. In spite of his preliminary professions of sincerity:

‘cesset itaque maledictorum opinio et mendacii suspicio. Veritatis enim

ministros decet vera proferre’, we feel that in following the rules of

the game he has proved himself a good player, but not always ‘a servant

of truth’.[950]

Of a truer type was the rhetoric of Hilary of Arles. Honoratus is

enthusiastic about the copious eloquence of his oratory, the gems of

expression which he produced, the varied shades and shapes of his

descriptions.[951] There was plenty of rhetorical colour, but there was

also elasticity. ‘If the learned company was absent, he fed the hearts of

the untutored with simple food’; and it was the opinion of contemporary

critics, the savants of the day, that Hilary ‘had attained something that

was neither eloquence nor learning, something superhuman’.[952] Famous

for eloquence were also Salvian, the master of fiery denunciation, and

Lupus, ‘scholis adhibitus et rhetorum studiis imbutus’.[953] In the very

monasteries the artifices of the rhetor’s school lingered. Valerian,

Bishop of Cemelium (near Nice), gives many examples of this in his

Homilies. He frequently uses Parallelism and Repetition: ‘Disciplina

igitur magistra est religionis, magistra verae pietatis; quae nec ideo

increpat ut laedat, nec ideo castigat ut noceat’;[954] or Chiasmus and

Assonance: ‘Alter de subscriptione patris disputat: alter de fratris

persona desperat’;[955] ‘Vitare ista, dilectissimi, per singulos gradus

forte difficile est, et laboriosum multis simul hostibus per diversos

errores occurrere’; or Alliteration: ‘Ita _e_st _e_rgo, ut in te antiqui

iuris districtio nihil habeat potestatis, si ea quae legis _p_lenitudo

_p_ostulat, _o_bedienter _o_bserves’.[956] ‘Et _n_ullus _p_rofecto adhuc

_p_oenae finis _n_isi Christus _n_oster cruentis _l_egibus o_l_eum

_m_isericordiae _m_iscuisset.’[957] ‘Sic erit ut _h_omo de _h_umiliore

_l_oco ad ce_l_siora perveniat et remuneratus honore _c_ondigno,

_c_aelestis gratiam potestatis adquirat.’[958]

The rhetorical tradition, therefore, lived on; and it survived the more

easily because of the controversial nature of Christianity at this time

and the importance of preaching. The change from the rhetor’s ‘cathedra’

to the pulpit was often merely one of place and subject: the method was

the same. And so the ideal of the orator persisted. In education it

persisted for the further obvious reason that the monasteries had not yet

organized themselves round the model of St. Benedict, and that very often

Christian parents had to send their children to the pagan schools—in

spite of Tertullian’s warnings.[959]

The triumph of rhetoric among the Christians, however, was only partial.

When the Christian Fathers observed their congregations of simple and

unlettered folk, and remembered the injunction of Christ[960] and the

teaching of St. Paul,[961] they began to feel the need of a more direct

style of speech. Largely, too, it was a natural reaction, springing from

the opposition between Christian and pagan, and the ascetism which the

monasteries preached.

This reaction is noticeable chiefly in the Church Fathers. In their

prefaces it became the customary thing to proclaim their ‘rusticity’, and

to hide (sometimes with false modesty) the traces of their rhetorical

training.[962] So much was this the tendency, that Sidonius, with all

his highly refined artificiality, must needs talk about his ‘countrified

style’ (‘Si quid stilo rusticante peraravero’,[963] ‘in hoc stylo cui non

urbanus lepos inest sed pagana rusticitas’[964]). Partly, of course, this

was due to the over-courteous ways of high society at that time, as we

may see from the correspondence of Symmachus or of Ausonius, and to an

idea (never carried out by these gentlemen) that letter-writing ought to

be careless and natural.[965] But the reaction against rhetoric was very

strong. None of the Christian clergy dared to defend the rhetoricians

openly. Lactantius, who did so,[966] was a layman.

The inscriptions reflect this tendency, or at any rate one of its

causes—the simplicity and ignorance of the people. The Christian

epitaphs, though influenced now and then by rhetorical floridness, as in

the case of those composed by Sidonius,[967] are much shorter and simpler

than the pagan ones. Sometimes they consist merely of a cross with the

name of the person.[968] Sometimes the words ‘pax tecum’ are added. The

increase in Christian education is indicated by the fact that there are

only four inscriptions dating from the fourth century and fifty-four from

the fifth.

How constantly the Church Fathers strove to check the rhetorical tendency

in themselves and in the clergy may be seen from their frequent protests.

Jerome remarked reprovingly of Hilary of Poitiers that he was affected

by the tragic and turgid vein in the Gallic character, and too much

adorned with the ‘flowers of Greece’, so that his long periods were not

understood by the simple friars.[969] And Vincent of Lérins had to warn

that a priest’s language must be ‘disciplined and grave’.[970] ‘Docente

te in ecclesia’, said Jerome elsewhere,[971] ‘non clamor populi sed

gemitus suscitetur.’ Gallus, in Sulpicius Severus,[972] expresses his

contempt for flowery language. ‘For if you call me a disciple of Martin

(the stern saint of Tours) you must also allow me the right of following

him in despising vain ornamental speech and verbal embellishment’

(_sermonum faleras et verborum ornamenta_). In a sermon on Rebecca,

attributed to Caesarius,[973] the preacher proclaims the principle

of adaptability: ‘The educated must accommodate themselves to the

ignorance of the simple. If, in expounding holy Scripture we desired the

arrangement and the eloquence of (certain) holy fathers, ... the food of

doctrine could reach only a small band of scholars (there is a secret

satisfaction in having had a superior training), while the remaining

masses of the people would go unfed. And therefore I humbly ask that the

ears of the learned bear patiently the words of simplicity (_rustica

verba_) if only the whole flock of God may partake of spiritual food by

means of speech unadorned and (if I may say so) pedestrian.’ Ruricius,

Bishop of Limoges, and a contemporary of Sidonius,[974] speaks of his

‘ineptia rusticitatis’,[975] his ‘rusticus sermo’.[976] ‘Rusticitatem

meam’, he says, ‘malo prodere quam perdere caritatem’.[977]

This prevalent cultivation of ‘rusticitas’ was, as has been said,

partly a reaction, and like all reactions it had a tendency to go too

far. It is not surprising to find men like Jerome protesting (though

with self-condemnation) against the bald style of certain Christian

writings.[978] Heyne, after describing the ‘verborum fucos, concinnos

et calamistrum’ of the rhetoricians, remarks on the uncultured and

disgusting lack of style into which the later writers fell. It was

natural, he says, that, having thrown eloquence overboard, they should

fall into ‘barbaries’ and subjects vulgar and essentially trivial

(_per se tenuia_). The charge of ‘barbaries’ is admitted. But the

subject-matter was not always ‘per se tenuia’; it was essentially the

reverse: and the ‘horrida oratio’ into which the Christian writers fell

had the compensation of sincerity and the capacity of rising into genuine

eloquence.

We have, then, these two facts: the persistence in Christian thought of

rhetoric, and the reaction in the direction of simplicity. But we must

ask what the Christian attitude was towards pagan education as a whole,

for on this attitude largely depended the nature of the Christian schools.

Sulpicius Severus is uncompromisingly harsh. All literature except the

Bible and theological writings are utterly vain. ‘For what did the pagan

writers themselves gain by a literary glory that was to perish with

their generation? Or what profit was it to posterity to read of Hector’s

battles or Socrates’ philosophy? Not only is it folly to imitate those

writers, but not to attack them with the utmost fierceness is sheer

madness....’[979] The pagan philosophy has been a mighty bane. ‘Qui

quidem error humanus (pagan philosophy) litteris traditus in tantum

valuit ut multos plane aemulos vel inanis philosophiae vel stultae

illius virtutis invenerit.’[980] Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius

on entering the Church abjured the heathen literature,[981] and Jerome

conceived of the difference between the two groups of writers as that

between light and darkness.[982] Philosophy was regarded as dangerous,

and extensive secular reading deprecated.[983] Poetry was banned because

it inflamed passion,[984] and Claudius Victor of Marseilles went so far

as to trace the misfortunes of his day to the pagan schools and authors.

‘Is not ours the blame?’ he wails: ‘Paul and Solomon are neglected and

the Vergil who wrote of Dido and the Ovid who described Corinna are

recited, the verses of Horace are applauded and the scenes of Terence,

and it is we, we who are at fault, we who basely feed those flames.’[985]

Paulinus writes to his old master Ausonius who is much concerned because

his pupil has deserted the Muses, and declares with pathetic firmness

that the Christian heart must needs say ‘No’ to Apollo and the Muses.

‘New is the force and greater the god that now moves the soul, and he

permits not leisure in work or play for the literature of fable.’[986]

To him the education and the literature of the pagan world is nothing

but ‘the clever influence of a sophist, the knack of a rhetor, the false

imagination of a bard’, and its professors men who miss the truth,

Qui corda falsis atque vanis imbuunt

tantumque linguas instruunt;

nihil adferentes ut salutem conferant,

quod veritatem detegat.[987]

In order to understand this exclusive spirit we must remember the

circumstances: the tenacity of paganism, which had taken its last stand

in the public amusements,[988] the persecutions, the close connexion

between the schools and the old religion. The Gallic panegyrists (most of

them teachers) ostentatiously proclaim the gods of ancient Rome even to

Christian emperors like Theodosius.[989] ‘Di boni’ and ‘Di immortales’

appear everywhere, the emperor is divine, and the school at Autun is

‘aedes Herculis atque Musarum’.[990] The rhetorical education had the

immense advantage of being traditional. Then, as now, the argument

carried great weight. Libanius in his defence of dancing asks indignantly

(and the method of his protest is typical) whether the settled opinion

of the ancients in this matter is to be upset: ἆρ’ οὖν πρᾶγμα ἀρχαῖον,

καὶ παρὰ τοῖς οὕτω γενναίοις οὕτω γενναῖον καὶ καλὸν εἶναι δοκοῦν, εἰκῆ

καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἡμεῖς τῶν φαύλων εἶναι πιστεύσομεν;[991] Everything that was

not cut according to the traditional pattern, according to the opinions

handed down with hardly any criticism, from one teacher to another,[992]

tended to be despised, and this was the attitude towards the Christians

in the educational world of the day.[993] Moreover, the old system was

properly organized, and Christians in being compelled to send their

children to pagan masters felt the danger. For the subject-matter of

both the grammatical and the rhetorical schools was largely the pagan

mythology, which was next door to religion. Even contemporary literature

proclaimed pagan ideas: the fourth-century comedy _Querolus_ is permeated

by the heathen conception of fate.

To all these causes of opposition and bitterness towards the pagan

culture, there were added the desperate earnest of these early Christians

to whom salvation and perdition were piercing and vivid realities, and

the bitter scorn of pagans like Rutilius Namatianus. As he returned to

his native country, Gaul, he saw in the growth of monachism one of the

causes of Rome’s decline—Rome who had all his devotion, whose magistrate

he was proud to have been.

Squalet lucifugis insula plena viris,

he says of Capraria,[994] where a monastery had been started. Pride and

prejudice make the monks an inexplicable problem to him:

Munera fortunae metuunt, dum damna verentur.[995]

Either they are really criminals forced to live this sort of life, or

else the slaves of black bile. To him, too, the youth who becomes a monk

is ‘impulsus furiis’.[996] Such was the temper towards the Christians

even as late as the fifth century, and the counterpart of this

bitterness is seen in the murder of Hypatia in Alexandria (A.D. 415).

The attitude of the ‘extreme’ Christians towards pagan literature is not,

therefore, entirely inexplicable. But all were not extreme. The better

spirits like Augustine, realizing that Christian education inevitably

depended largely on the nobles who had come to the Church from the

rhetorical schools, went on the principle of ‘spoiling the Egyptians’,

of taking from pagan education and literature whatever was good and

useful. Jerome protests against the narrow standpoint with considerable

emphasis. He criticizes those who neglect style, and flares up at the

suggestion that he is afraid of the pagan training of his opponents

in controversy.[997] Ignorance, he says, is not holiness, and lack of

culture is unfitting in a student of the Apostles. ‘Nec rusticus et

tantum simplex frater ideo se sanctum putet si nil noverit, nec peritus

et eloquens in lingua aestimet sanctitatem.’[998] He felt the need of

rhetoric as a weapon against opponents. A holy ignorance, he argued, is

a gain only to itself (he is curiously reluctant either to accept pagan

learning entirely or to condemn it utterly), but all it builds up of the

Church of Christ is lost if it does not meet its opponents.[999]

So, too, Paulinus of Nola and Prudentius ‘quidquid e paganis operibus

novae fidei non adversabatur laudabant et servabant’.[1000] Sedulius,

again, refused to draw the rigid line which the extremists drew: he

wants to retain the culture of his time, but in a Christianized form. In

the dedication of his _Carmen Paschale_ to Macedonius he argues that he

writes in verse because ‘there are many who, owing to their training in

secular studies, are attracted rather by the delights of verse and the

pleasures of poetry’; and that the Church must make use of this artistic

tendency in people (_horum mores non repudiandos aestimo_). They will

remember divine truths better if they are pleased with the form in which

they are presented, and everybody must be freely won for God along the

line of his particular bent (_ut quisque suo magis ingenio voluntarius

acquiratur Deo_). The way in which you approach the faith does not

matter so long as you get there and remain there.[1001] It is clear that

he stands for liberalism in this matter and does not object to pagan

literature if only the object in view is the right one.

Thus the wiser among the Christians opposed the policy of exclusiveness.

They foresaw that though bigoted zeal and a natural antipathy might keep

out pagan letters for a time, in the end they could not do so; and they

realized that it was one of the functions of the Church to hand down what

was good in the old culture. So the two Apollinarii (fourth century),

Christian teachers of Laodicea, turned the Old Testament into heroic

verse and the New Testament into Platonic dialogues;[1002] Juvencus put

the gospels into metre, and Nonnus wrote out St. John in hexameters. In

order to appeal to the intellectual classes the Christian writers were

bound to follow the pagan models, and so a virtue was made of necessity:

for amid the distraction of the failing Empire it was the Church alone

that could have saved the form and content of the ancient culture by

providing scribes for the one and thinkers for the other. It would have

been interesting to have Paulinus of Nola’s Panegyric on Theodosius.

‘Quid interfuerit tum inter Christianum oratorem, et oratorem, in

scriptis saltem, paganum’ (says Monnard[1003]) ‘diiudicare liceret,

nisi temporis invidia Panegyrico Theodosii, quem Paulinus scripserat,

quemque cum Ausonii Panegyrico conferre potuissemus nos privavisset.’ We

should also have been able to see how far he followed the pagan model,

especially in view of his extreme statements to Ausonius[1004] on the

subject of pagan literature. Probably he was just as rhetorical as Hilary

in his Demosthenic denunciation of Constantine. This supposition is

confirmed by the words of Jerome, who is enthusiastic in his praise of

the speech. ‘If the author’, he says, ‘surpasses others in the beginning

of his oration, towards the end he excels himself. His style is brilliant

with Ciceronian purity, yet copious in thought.’[1005] There was a

certain amount of hypocrisy in the railing of the Christian writers

against the pagan authors.

In spite of her criticism and antipathy, therefore, the Church listened

to her leaders in their wiser moods and saved pagan culture. She set

her monks to copy the ancient authors.[1006] Augustine ‘brought Plato

into the (Christian) schools under his bishop’s robe’, and even Jerome

expounded lyric and comic poets to the children at Bethlehem.[1007]

Vergil, in particular, was admitted on account of the prophecy supposed

to be contained in the fourth _Eclogue_. Roman law, of which Bossuet said

that good sense, the master of human life, reigned throughout it, was

regarded by the Church as a reflection of divine justice, and studied

more particularly on account of its supposed similarity to the law of

Moses.[1008] Through the Church it passed to the barbarians, and so

became a heritage of the civilized world.

This ultimate attitude of the Church is the determining factor of

Christian education, and it forms the background without which that

education cannot be rightly studied. Kaufmann maintains that towards

the end of the fifth century the rhetorical school lost its pedagogic

significance,[1009] but his statement needs modification. The number

of the rhetorical schools in Gaul certainly decreased as Christianity

advanced during the fifth century: their spirit, their importance and

meaning for education survived and, to a large extent, still survives.

3. THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS IN GAUL

One of the ways in which Christianity supplemented paganism was the

development of elementary schools. It began with the masses, where

knowledge was small and opportunities few, but these common people it

inspired with a desire to learn and made them potential scholars, who,

though backward, were yet not decadent, and who shared their spiritual

possessions with one another just as much as their material property.

In touching this kind of man Christian education did what the pagan

schools had neglected to do, as we have seen, on account of the rigid

class-distinctions. In paying particular attention to elementary

education the Church followed her own needs and Christ’s example of

sympathy with children. In so far as the Church applied the Pauline

teaching of the essential brotherhood and equality of man these hard

distinctions tended to disappear, and education became more generally

diffused. There was a real democratization of letters, but the masses

had so long been neglected that the diffusion was very slow. Caesarius

knew prominent business men who could not even read or write.[1010] Their

culture consisted largely in folk songs and tales handed down by word of

mouth. And besides, the Church was not always true to her principles: the

pagan influence, backed as it was by education, proved too strong when it

came to organization. The old relation of simple sincerity between clergy

and congregation had long passed away, and the fifth century was a time

of ecclesiastical dissensions. The bishops were chosen more and more from

the aristocracy, and the sort of church ‘cursus honorum’ which had been

instituted soon created barriers. In theory the government of the Church

was democratic, but Sidonius gives us a picture of the practice at the

episcopal elections, which shows how unstable the democracy was. On one

occasion there was a great tumult caused by the contending candidates:

one boasts of his ancient see, one relies on the attractiveness of his

kitchen, a third has a secret arrangement whereby he will allow his

followers to pillage the church property if he is elected. Finally, the

bishops, Euphranius and Patiens, take the matter into their own hands,

nominate an obscure worthy man, a ‘reader’ called John, and proclaim

him their colleague.[1011] So, too, at Bourges, Sidonius is asked by

the faction-wearied people to nominate them a bishop.[1012] In fact,

the general impression, derived from reading the account of bishops and

their elections in Sidonius, is that they would have said with Horace,

in exactly the same pagan spirit (though they might have resented being

connected with a pagan name), ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo’. They go in

for charities,[1013] but these are often only a form of patronage.

Thus, in attempting to provide for plebeian education, Christianity had

to contend with many difficulties. The first appearance of organized

Christian education is represented by the catechumen schools which

sprang up everywhere after the establishment of Christianity. The most

prominent one was that of Alexandria,[1014] dating at least from the

second century. The bishop, or, more frequently, a subordinate church

official, following the Apostolic example,[1015] would go to some

lecture-hall after the sermon and expound the doctrine of the Church to

all who cared to come, or would gather his disciples round him in some

private house. The school was therefore intended for adults. It had no

formal organization nor was it of a permanent character. It was a kind

of missionary movement that spread to all parts of the Empire. Among

the first attempts in the direction of Christian elementary education,

apparently, was the school at Edessa, where Lucian, a presbyter of the

third century, who became famous as a teacher at Antioch,[1016] was

educated.[1017] It was a place worthy of being a cradle of Christian

education; its church was martyred in the second century, its teachers

Protogenes and Eulogius were driven into banishment in the fourth, and

in the fifth it became famous for its active share in the Nestorian

controversy.

But in the West it was that ‘invasion from the South’, which Montalembert

referred to, that was the instrument of Christian education. Tradition

said that Athanasius introduced the idea of monasticism into Gaul (where

it spread more rapidly than anywhere else in the West[1018]) during his

exile at Trèves (336-7). This influence issued in action with Martin of

Tours (the most popular saint of the Gallic Church), when he founded

the monastery of Ligugé near Poitiers, and a second and larger one,

Marmoutier (‘maius monasterium’) near Tours, about the middle of the

fourth century. When he died, at the end of that century, there were

numerous monasteries not only in the province of Tours but in Rouen and

what afterwards became Normandy and Picardy.

The work of Martin influenced two men of Gaul, both of the upper classes,

and both educated in all the learning of the day—Sulpicius Severus,

‘vir genere et litteris nobilis’,[1019] and Paulinus of Nola, the

pupil of Ausonius. These men made monasticism fashionable—so much so

that even Sidonius patronized it.[1020] At the beginning of the fifth

century Cassian founded the monastery of St. Victor near Marseilles, and

Honoratus the famous cloister of Lérins. About 450 Romanus established a

monastery at Condat on the Jura, and around these centres there grew up a

network of abbeys.

Now at this time there were no orders of monks, and the Rule of the

Abbeys depended mainly on the choice of the abbot. The monasteries were

merely groups of people who had come to live the common life (κοινόβιοι)

and to discuss matters of common interest. Thus educational development

was stimulated, and we find a much stronger intellectual life among the

simple Christians than in the form-bound school of the rhetor. Whenever

there was a dangerous heresy abroad in Gaul, Jerome or Augustine would

write a refutation which was circulated throughout the country,[1021] and

Sulpicius’s _Life of Martin_ was eagerly read everywhere, and was much in

demand at Rome.[1022]

This intellectual activity presently overflowed the boundaries of the

monastery. Catechumens had to be trained for the Church, and it was

found necessary to establish informal schools for them, where, besides

religious training, they also received a smattering of the seven liberal

arts. These were the forerunners of those cathedral schools which became,

in the Middle Ages, the main intellectual support of the country.

The most famous episcopal school was at Arles, where Hilary taught a

large number of students.[1023] Among his pupils were Cyprian, Bishop

of Toulouse, Firminius, Bishop of Usez (Ucetia), and Bishop Vivencius.

The interest of the Fathers in education may be illustrated from the

life of Caesarius.[1024] ‘Who can describe how great and pleasing was

the zeal that shone forth from him, when he discussed the Scriptures

and expounded difficulties? His greatest delight was to be challenged

to discuss a problem, and he himself very often urged his class, saying

to us: “I know you don’t understand everything: why don’t you ask,

that you may know?”’ Whatever may be said as to the extent of their

teaching, it must be admitted that they showed the proper spirit of

education in thus stimulating knowledge. At Arles, also, taught Pomerius,

‘scientia rhetor, Afer genere’,[1025] whose interest in literature and

rhetoric was great,[1026] and whose lectures Caesarius attended. Another

famous Christian teacher of the fifth century, versed particularly in

ecclesiastical matters, was Victorius of Marseilles.[1027]

The monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles,[1028] built in the woods

over the grotto where the martyr Victor, a Roman legionary, had been

buried at the end of the third century, became a school for training the

clergy, though not at once, for the motto of its founder was to flee

all bishops and women.[1029] It did good work, but its fame is almost

entirely eclipsed by that of the older monastery at Lérins, the nursery

of bishops. Vincent the theologian,[1030] Patrick of Ireland, Cassian

the founder of St. Victor, Hilary of Arles, Faustus the bishop of the

_via media_ in theological controversy,[1031] Lupus, called by Sidonius

‘episcopus episcoporum’,[1032] Eucherius, and many other celebrities

were sons of Lérins. From Lérins and St. Victor were drawn almost all

the educated clergy of Gaul during the fifth century. ‘En général’,

says Fauriel,[1033] ‘ce furent ces évêques ou ces prêtres, sortis des

cloîtres de Lérins ou de Saint-Victor, qui formèrent la partie érudite et

savante du clergé ou de l’épiscopat gallo-romain....’ The _Chronologia

Lerinensis_[1034] likens Lérins to a trailing vine which fills the earth

with its fruits and extends, by the grace of God, beyond the rest. Among

the many other references to the monastery in the Chronicle, there are

numerous verse panegyrics extolling its congenial surroundings and

indicating a real love of learning. Sidonius, too, is enthusiastic in

its praise;[1035] and his commendation, imbued as he was with rhetorical

culture and prejudiced in its favour, says much for the educational

standard reached by Lérins. So famous was its school that Lupus, ‘the

prince of prelates’, came to study there for a year, before he went to

spread its spirit of study and piety. For, like most of these monks

from the aristocracy, ‘he had ... a cultivated mind and took an active

interest in intellectual development. He was anxious about schools

and educational facilities in his diocese, and gave protection to all

who encouraged learning.’[1036] Indeed, we may say that all the most

literary and philosophic men of the time, as well as the most religious,

flocked to the island-quiet of Lérins. It is no wonder that Mamertus, in

describing the failing culture of the fifth century, mentions Lérins as

an exception.

4. THE PRACTICE OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

In the _Chronologia sacrae insulae Lerinensis_[1037] we find a concrete

example of a monastic school.

‘At the time when the studies of the monastery of Lérins flourished in

the regions of Gaul, the Christian religion ... began to grow everywhere

and _to commit itself to the study of letters_. In this place there was

an excellent abbot, a holy man, Caesarius, the servant of Christ, who

afterwards became bishop of Arles.’ Amid the general flocking of people

to Lérins for education or edification (‘cumque ad eum omnes unanimiter

concurrerent _pro salute animarum sive studiis litterarum_’), there came

an Italian soldier and his son Siffredus, earnestly craving admittance.

The soldier became a monk, and his son was put to school (‘filius

vero _litterarum studiis traditur_’), and in a short time he attained

proficiency in ‘grammar’, rhetoric, and dialectic.

Similarly, Salvian sends a fellow countryman of his to be educated

at Lérins,[1038] and we may judge from the Regula of Caesarius that

many boys went there for instruction. Laymen were not excluded. In 480

St. Melanius attended a school at Rennes controlled by priests, yet

apparently attached to no monastery.[1039] That such semi-theological

schools existed in Gaul, at least from the beginning of the fifth

century, we may judge from the fact that the sons of Eucherius,

Veranius and Salonius, were taught at Lérins in subjects religious

and profane[1040] during the first years of that century.[1041] Not

unjustifiable, therefore, is the statement of Barralis that Lérins was

‘litterarum et virtutis emporium’.[1042]

But while the existence of Christian schools cannot be questioned, their

extent and organization in Gaul during the fifth century are vague and

undefined. St. Benedict’s example had not yet brought about an ordered

system of monasteries, and there was still much that was erratic and

irregular. Though the leaders of the Church in the main allowed the use

of pagan studies in Christian teaching, yet in practice the methods

employed must have depended on the sympathy and the inclination of the

autonomous abbot. Now where an abbot had enjoyed a rhetorical training,

we can hardly doubt that he imparted it to his pupils: for it requires

a great deal of intellectual development in a master not to teach as he

has been taught. But only a certain proportion of abbots could have had

this training. There were many brilliant monks, many perhaps of whose

distinction we do not know. But they could not have directed all the

monasteries of fifth-century Gaul. The temper of the people, too, was

all against literary studies. The number, therefore, of such schools as

Lérins, in which secular and religious studies were simultaneously kept

up, was probably not large. In the following century the division between

secular and religious schools became progressively marked, chiefly owing

to the influence of Cassiodorus. The division between one Christian

school and another was naturally far from rigid; we read of Honoratus

sending three of his scholars at Lérins to hear the lectures of Paulinus

at Nola.[1043]

The children who came to the monastery schools were of two kinds: the

_oblati_,[1044] who remained and became monks, and those who attended

the _schola exterior_ and lived a secular life after their education.

The age at which they were admitted was an early one. Ennodius says

that Epiphanius became a ‘lector’ at eight,[1045] and Sidonius that

Bishop John of Châlons-sur-Marne was ‘lector ab infantia.’[1046]

Nunneries, like the one at Arles, took children at six or seven—‘ab

annis sex aut septem, quae iam litteras discere et obedientiae possit

obtemperare’.[1047]

Classes were generally held in the body of the church (_in inferiori

Basilicae navi_[1048]) and the twenty-fourth canon of the fourth Council

of Toledo (seventh century) probably represents the regular practice of

our period. It provides that the children of the clergy should all be

kept in one room to be trained in the ways of the Church, and that they

should be entrusted to a senior person of approved character who was to

give them both moral and intellectual instruction.[1049]

We hear of a head master variously called in later times ‘Scholasticus’,

‘scholaster’, ‘capischola’ (_caput scholae_) ‘Decanus’, ‘Cancellarius’.

‘Cum igitur Levitas feceris’, wrote Remigius, ‘Archidiaconum institueris

Primicerium scholae clarissimae.’[1050] A sixth-century inscription

of Lyons[1051] reads: ‘In hoc tomolo requiescit famolus D̅I̅ Stefanus

primicirius scolae lectorum....’

Private teaching, which had always gone side by side with the schools,

increased in the fifth century among Christian parents for three

reasons: the opposition of pagan to Christian education, which, amid the

unorganized state of the monastery schools, often forced home-education

upon parents; the fact that the pagan schools catered chiefly for the

upper classes and that Christianity was now inspiring the masses with a

desire for instruction; and the influence of the monastic ideal which

shunned public contact for fear of contamination.

In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of

Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school,

which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa

in the latter part of the fourth century, set up a school at Antinoe

(_Antinoopolis_), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον

διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ

... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052]

Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially

the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of

his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With

considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which

she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with

letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for

in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational

matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He

deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is

remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them

together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by

the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual

being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important

place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his

method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post

lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat

syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual

method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words,

from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern

experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method,

which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be

the more profitable.

Reading was a specially important subject on account of the ‘lectores’

who read the lessons in church. Originally they were charged with the

reading of Scriptures, but later their duties became more general. The

‘lectores’ formed the second of the minor orders, and the office demanded

a certain amount of education, though sometimes the ‘lectores’ seem to

have been no more than choir boys. Isidore of Seville states that any one

who is promoted to this office must be trained in books and learning,

and well equipped with a knowledge of words and their meanings.[1059]

The eighth canon of the fourth Council of Carthage describes the solemn

ordination of a ‘lector’.[1060] Sometimes qualifications of birth and

rank added to the dignity of the office. Julian, the emperor, and his

brother Gallus were admitted as readers into the church of Nicomedia,

and Paulinus of Nola tells us that St. Felix was a ‘lector’.[1061] The

readers stood, as has been indicated, under a ‘primicerius’, who was

also the head of all the minor orders. ‘Ad primicerium’, said Gregory,

‘pertinent acolythi et exorcistae, psalmistae atque lectores.’[1062]

On the teaching of writing Jerome again follows Quintilian in

recommending a tracing of the letters on the wax for the help of the

pupil.[1063] ‘Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere,

vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli, vel in tabella

sculpantur elementa ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur

vestigia....’[1064] These wax-tablets, dating from ancient Roman times,

go on into the eleventh century.[1065] Copying was, of course, an

important part in the monastic writing activities, and Sulpicius Severus

says that it was assigned to the ‘brethren of younger years’.[1066] Such

was the importance attached to it, that in the less advanced cloisters,

like that of Martin, no other art was practised.[1067] Even the nuns

practised it. We find Caesarius exhorting them to vary their reading

and psalm singing with transcribing, under the supervision of the

abbess,[1068] and it was so that Rusticula, abbess of Arles, trained her

nuns.[1069]

One of the borrowings from the pagan schools which the Church found most

useful was shorthand. The bishops had their ‘notarii’ just as much as

the officials of the imperial Civil Service. They were employed to take

down the proceedings of the Councils, the _acta_ of the martyrs,[1070]

and the speeches and sermons of the prominent clergy. Their prevalence

has been the plague of commentators, and has contributed much to the

formlessness of Christian writing. For the scribe would take down the

bishop’s speech verbatim and copy it out as it stood. There was no

revision or rearrangement, and many errors and much diffuseness was

the result, as in the Homilies of Hilary of Poitiers.[1071] Hilary of

Arles, Honoratus tells us, used to have a ‘notarius’. ‘Sedili mensaque

apposita liber ingerebatur et retia,[1072] adstante notario. Liber

praebebat animo cibum, manus nectendi velocitate currebant, notarii simul

ferebantur articuli et oculus paginam percurrebat.’[1073] Evidently the

possession of a ‘notarius’ did not mean a decrease in activity, mental

or otherwise. Similarly, Jerome on a certain occasion was compelled by

his friend Ausonius to send for his secretary and dictate a letter to the

bereaved Julian, and ‘as the words fell swiftly from his lips, they were

swiftly overtaken by the hand of the writer’.[1074] Again, he describes

the vigour of his secretarial department in terms of martial ardour and

excitement: ‘ecce noster Ausonius coepit schedulas flagitare, urgere

notarios, et hinnitu ferventis equi, ingenioli mei festinus arguere

tarditatem’.[1075] That shorthand was connected with the schools is clear

enough from Prudentius.[1076] He tells us of a tablet in a church at

Forum Cornelii representing the martyr Cassianus who had been a teacher

of stenography.

Praefuerat studiis puerilibus, et grege multo

saeptus magister litterarum sederat.

verba notis brevibus comprendere multa peritus

raptimque punctis dicta praecipitibus sequi.

Transcribers of books were patronized by wealthy families, and apparently

sent from one house to another. Sidonius[1077] recommends to Ruricus

one who had copied out the Heptateuch, and had on sale also a copy of

the Prophets, which he had edited. The man was evidently of low social

standing, for Sidonius leaves it to Ruricus to fix the price of the work;

yet he must have had a considerable education to have been able to edit

the Prophets. We hear also of a citizen of Clermont who had wormed out

of the copyist or bookseller (_scriba sive bibliopola_) of Remigius at

Rheims a copy of the latter’s Declamations,[1078] which shows that the

scribe was sometimes also the librarian.

In arithmetic, the strict monastic rules for silence, which made it

necessary, for example, to ask for things at meals by signs,[1079]

increased the Roman tendency to finger-computation. How elaborate

a system was thus worked out we may see from Bede’s work on the

subject.[1080] Great stress was laid on the ‘Computus’, a set of

tables for calculating astronomical events and the movable dates of

the calendar. It was regarded by Cassiodorus as indispensable for the

clergy.[1081] The ‘calculus’ of Victorinus of Aquitaine, who invented

a new Paschal calendar about the middle of the fifth century, was

frequently used.[1082] The idea of mystical numbers, derived from

Pythagoras, led to much fanciful nonsense in the Middle Ages, as we may

see from Alcuin’s letter to his pupil Gallicellulus,[1083] in which he

compared the numbers mentioned in the Old Testament with those of the New.

We have seen that monastic education, where, as at Lérins, the abbot was

sympathetic, extended beyond the range of theological or church subjects.

The Chronicle of Lérins insists on this,[1084] and its statements are

borne out to a certain extent by the inscriptions, which show how

strongly Vergil’s influence survived among the Christians. Several times

we find on the tombstones:

Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo,

and the words ‘Subiectasque videt nubes et sidera caeli’[1085] in

an inscription on a Bishop of Arles recall the verse describing the

apotheosis of Daphnis. An inscription of Narbonne, belonging, probably,

to the fifth century, has the phrase ‘summi rector Olimpi’.[1086] As for

the Fathers, they are constantly bursting forth into Vergilian language.

Paulinus, in the midst of his tirade against the pagan Muses, in the heat

of his appeal to turn to the Christian God, slips into ‘inania murmura

miscent’,[1087] and Jerome, while urging Julianus to become a monk, ends

with a Vergilian quotation: he must follow the example of the Holy Vera,

‘et sit tibi tanti dux femina facti’.[1088] Thus the Christian writers by

their own words prove the folly of the extreme anti-pagan point of view,

even when they themselves have held it.

We may take it, then, that Vergil was read. We hear also of the fables

of Avianus, who lived under the Antonines,[1089] and the fourth-century

_Disticha Catonis_, a collection of moral rules. The former work remained

in the schools till the tenth century, while the latter was among the

commonest of elementary school-books as late as the sixteenth and

seventeenth century.[1090] The text-books of the grammarians were no

doubt freely used. Sidonius praises the ‘discipline’ of Agroecius[1091]

(fifth century), who wrote a famous work on Orthography, intended to

supplement a book on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It is significant

that the work is dedicated to Bishop Eucherius. As we go into the sixth

century the traces of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium begin to

appear.[1092] The fifth century was a transition period, in which the

doctrine of the extreme monastic party (if we may speak of a party when

so many eminent men spoke now on the one side and now on the other),

and the teaching of the liberals, were represented in the schools in

fluctuating and uncertain proportions. By the time of Gregory of Tours

(sixth century) the extremists had so far given way that he allowed his

theological students to pass through the seven arts of Capella, and to

write poetry, which, however, was still suspect, and had fallen from its

previous prominence to a precarious place at the end of the list.

‘Quod si te, sacerdos Dei, quicumque es, Martianus noster

septem disciplinis erudiit, id est si te in grammaticis docuit

legere, in dialecticis altercationes propositiones advertere,

in rhetoricis genera metrorum agnoscere, in geometris terrarum

linearumque mensuras colligere ... si in his omnibus ita

fueris exercitatus ut tibi stylus noster sit rusticus, nec sic

quoque deprecor ut avellas quae scripsi sed si tibi in his

quiddam placuerit, salvo opere nostro, te scribere versu non

abnuo.’[1093]

When we take all this into account we cannot fail to see a certain

exaggeration in Kaufmann’s[1094] statement that the training of the

monastic school was entirely religious and moral. These elements were

doubtless predominant, but they were not all.

During the fifth century, however, subjects for reading and discussion

came to be taken more and more from the Bible. The Bible, introduced

as literature in the schools, started its career of enormous influence

on the speech and writings, and so on the education, of all centuries.

The hexameters into which Claudius Marius Victor of Marseilles (fifth

century) turned the book of Genesis were meant for use in schools, and

represented a sort of compromise: Christian matter and pagan form. Psalm

singing and lessons in scripture and church ritual were naturally given a

fairly prominent place. Exegesis became the main subject of study, as we

may see, e.g. from Eucherius’s _Formularum spiritualis intelligentiae_,

_Instructionum libri_, _Dialogorum liber_. Scripture, he says, is to

be discussed and explained ‘secundum historiam, secundum tropologiam,

secundum anagogen’.[1095] ‘Historia’ is given a wide definition: all

that comes under ‘veritatem factorum ac fidem relationis’. ‘Tropologia’

is to lead to the improvement of life and of the mystic intellect, and

‘Anagoge’ leads ‘ad sacratiora caelestium figurarum’. These two sides,

which are speculative and philosophical, are developed at the expense of

‘Historia’; and falsely developed by abundant reference to allegorical

explanation, which becomes a regular solvent of obscure questions.[1096]

Stress is also laid on the etymological side, which is rather

unfortunate. Greek and Hebrew are studied to some extent, though the

answers which Eucherius, following the example of Jerome, wrote to the

questions of his son Salonius on these subjects suggest rather a low

standard. Curious as this catechism is, some of the theological questions

indicate considerable thought:

‘Scribitur in Genesi tentavit Deus Abraham, quasi ignorabat Dominus an

fidelis Abraham foret.’

‘Si Deus hominem immortalem fecerit, quemadmodum potuit mori?’

‘Quomodo accipiendum est quod legimus Regnum Dei intra vos est?’

‘Cum nulla esse ignorantia apud Deum possit, quomodo ipse in libro

Geneseos in exordiis dicit Dominus: Adam, ubi es?’[1097]

This part of Christian education as reflected in the Books of Instruction

stands in sharp contrast to the part which deals with language, and

suggests that the theological training far overshadowed the rest. Even at

Lérins the distinctly pagan education was given very little prominence.

Ennodius, of all people, forgetting his debt to pagan letters, and

all unconscious of his enslavement to rhetoric, pompously states the

superiority of ‘religious’ over ‘secular’ studies, thus advising Camilla

about the education of her son: ‘The Lord of salvation rejects not those

who hasten to him from secular teachings, but he refuses to let any one

leave his glory for these. If you have already withdrawn the child from

the world, you would not seek a worldly style in him. I blush to resort

to the polish of secular embellishments in the education of one who

professes to serve the Church.’[1098]

That there were different grades of advancement in the Christian schools

is implied in the words of Eucherius when he reminds his son that

his education was begun by Hilary but finished off (_consummatum_) by

Vincentius and Salvian.[1099] But the general standard was undoubtedly

low. To the remark of Caesarius that many business-men in his time

could not write, we may add the testimony of the inscriptions. On four

monuments of Briord we read:

‘Abstuta passiens dulcissema apta’,

‘Abstutus argus dulcissimus artus’,

‘Abstuti passiens dulcissimi aptu’,

‘Abstutus passiius dulcissernus aptus’,

all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many

variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:

Aspicis augustum praecisa in rupe sepulcrum,

hospitium Paulae est caelestia regna tenentis,

which proclaim the ignorance of the inscribers.[1100] This does not

mean that these people would have been better educated under the pagan

system: there are many instances of mistakes in pagan inscriptions too.

It merely means that Christianity was beginning to reach the simple folk,

who otherwise would probably not have had the ability or the ambition

even to make a wrong copy of a line of verse. In the pagan schools it is

the upper classes that are prominent: in the Christian schools it is the

lower.

Higher education, therefore, hardly appears at all in the Christian

writers. The former rhetorical school, with its declamations and its

applause, fell away, though its influence survived. The rules of rhetoric

may have been illustrated by examples which were applied in the pulpit,

but there was no separate school for the art of speaking. Yet the germ

of the modern university—as far as intellectual search for truth is

concerned—was found in some of the monasteries, and there is at least one

subject in which they had a contribution to make to higher education,

philosophy.

The curious way in which the Christian and pagan schools supplement and

oppose one another is evident throughout. The Christian elementary school

developed further the pagan system for lower education: the monastic

studies formed an antithesis to the social atmosphere of the Bordeaux

University; and, in particular, the study of philosophy and theology

supplemented that lack of thought which we have seen in Ausonius and the

fourth century in general. For it is in the fifth century that the most

flourishing period of Gallic theology begins. All the greatest minds of

the day busied themselves with the philosophy of religion.

The main thought-currents need here only be named. First and foremost

there was Pelagianism, with its questions of grace and free will, which

raised the central problem of personality. More directly connected with

Gaul (for its leaders were Cassian and Faustus) was Semi-Pelagianism,

which sought a middle way between the predestination implied in Augustine

and the free will of Pelagius. Then there were the questions about the

nature of the soul—whether it was corporeal, as Faustus argued, or

spiritual as Mamertus Claudianus maintained. There was also Neoplatonism,

which was never strong in the West, but appears here and there in

Hilary of Poitiers.[1101] How prevalent its incidental accompaniments

of Daemonology and Divination were appears from the decree of Valens

and Valentinian against magicians.[1102] Finally, there were minor

theological questions and points of worship and church discipline, for

example in the controversy between Vigilantius and Jerome.

Philosophy was divided by Eucherius into three parts: ‘Sapientia mundi

huius philosophiam suam in tres partes divisit: Physicam, Ethicam,

Logicam’,[1103] which includes metaphysics and theology. This was

the traditional division alluded to by Seneca: ‘Philosophiae tres

partes esse dixerunt et maximi et plurimi actores: moralem, naturalem,

rationalem.’[1104] Of these, the part called ‘ethica’ or ‘moralis’ was

naturally most popular, but the sort of theological discussion that came

under ‘Logica’ was most developed by the thinkers of the time. Foremost

in this department stands Claudianus, Bishop of Vienne, whose work _De

Statu animae_ was a real contribution to the thought of his age. ‘These

ideas’, says Guizot, referring to this work, ‘are deficient neither in

elevation nor in profundity: they would do honour to the philosophers

of any period; seldom have the nature of the soul and its unity been

investigated more clearly or described with greater precision.’[1105]

This is high praise, but it is justified in the main. Claudianus was at

least no mere compiler. He draws largely on Augustine and the Pythagorean

authors like Philolaus, Architas, and Hippo Metapontinus (known to him,

perhaps, only in extracts), whose works are now lost.[1106] Plato and

the later Platonists, too, are extensively quoted. We feel that there

is a great deal of vague metaphysics in his work, ‘purement négative,

impuissante à pénétrer dans la nature intime des phénomènes’.[1107] As

an example of this sort of thing we may quote the passage[1108] where he

is referring to the work of Philolaus περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ μέτρων, and talks

about the mystic number and the spiritual law according to which the soul

enters the body, using this thesis as a satisfactory basis for argument.

He is content to quote the ‘ipse dixit’ of Philolaus alone. ‘Memet’ (he

declares) ‘causa auctoritatis in medium tanti testimonium philosophi

iecisse sufficiet.’ There was an idea (not unnaturally) that the study

of philosophy was prejudicial to religion, but Claudianus was one, says

Sidonius, ‘qui ... indesinenter _salva religione_ philosopharetur’.[1109]

Plato was the main inspiration. Most of the Gallic Platonists were

Christians, though Sidonius says that those who attack Faustus for

his mystic philosophy will find ‘ecclesiae Christi Platonis academiam

militare’.[1110] From Sidonius and Claudianus we should judge that

Aristotle—especially the _Ethics_ and the _Categories_—was fairly

prevalent in Gaul.[1111]

_Methods and Masters._

Ennodius in his lines on ‘Grammatica’[1112] maintains that even in

teaching philosophy a joke with the class is permissible, and that strict

discipline must not always imply terror, and Sulpicius Severus writes to

Bishop Paul[1113] commending his success in dealing with pupils without

threats or force. But, on the whole, the pagan tradition of discipline

was not mellowed by Christianity. It was rather reinforced by the ascetic

spirit of the monasteries, and intensified by the added religious

motive of mortification. The text ‘Quem enim diligit Dominus, increpat:

flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit’, was literally and extensively

applied. Jerome talks quite naturally of education as equivalent to

‘manum ferulae subducere’,[1114] and the severe training of Lérins is

indicated by the phrase of Sidonius; ‘post desudatas militiae Lerinensis

excubias’ (the sweated vigils of your campaign at Lérins).[1115]

Valerianus, in his homily ‘De bono disciplinae’,[1116] illustrates

the ideas of the time on this subject, and strengthens the impression

that we get from reading the various ‘Regulae’ for the cloisters. He

expatiates on the disciplined order of nature, and everywhere thinks of

‘disciplina’ as equivalent to ‘castigatio’, which is always assumed to

be the corner-stone of teaching and the condition of progress on the

part of the pupil. The militarism of the Roman Empire lingers on in

seemingly uncongenial surroundings. Great stress is laid on fear. Fear

has the great virtue of always obeying. It therefore knows how to avoid

threatening dangers, or the wrath of judgement. Because of this estimable

quality it has the power of keeping you safe. ‘All vices are prostrate

before fear.’ He appeals to the word of the Prophet: ‘servite Domino in

timore et exultate ei cum tremore’. The Old Testament harshness suits

the temper of these disciplinarians very well, and appears far more

frequently than the gentleness of Christ or the humanity of common sense.

Part of this idea of mortification and discipline was worked out in the

manual labour which the monasteries made, and consistently have made, of

considerable importance in their educational scheme. Partly, too, it was

a reaction against the extreme artificiality of the rhetorical schools,

and it was also undoubtedly an attempt to follow Christ and his Apostles

in their adoption of some craft or trade. Mabillon shows[1117] how much

this practical side was insisted on, and he speaks of a tradition which

started in Gaul during our period. The correspondence between word and

deed was made a vital point—a fact which proved a healthy corrective

to the attitude apt to be produced by the rhetoric of the pagan

schools. ‘Qui si volunt lectioni vacare ut non operentur, ipsi lectioni

contumaces existunt, quia non faciant quod ibi legunt’,[1118] said

Isidore of Seville, and his ‘Rule’, like that of Caesarius, expressed

the thought of the fifth century as well as of the seventh. We find that

at Lérins Hilary of Arles worked in the fields, and that it was the

duty of Caesarius when he first entered that monastery to provide for

the bodily needs of the brethren.[1119] Cassian made a strong point of

manual labour. It prevents many faults,[1120] and we have the example

of St. Paul[1121] and the precept of Solomon.[1122] The East, which

gave the impulse to monasticism, emphasized this point, for example in

Egypt,[1123] and there is the story of the Abbot Paul who burnt every

year the work of his hands lest he should ever lack work.[1124]

Thus in its development of elementary education, in its ‘rusticitas’, in

its greater concentration on thought, and in its emphasis on practical

work, Christian education in fifth-century Gaul was in reaction against

the brilliant but superficial schools of the previous century. That this

was so, and that the movement was strong enough to make itself felt

against the whole weight of the traditional education, was partly due to

skilful leadership. How far was this effective leadership general in the

Christian schools?

Eucherius in a letter to Valerianus[1125] gives a list of men who have

become monks. Clemens, ‘omni scientia refertus, omniumque liberalium

artium peritissimus’; Gregorius, ‘philosophia primus apud mundum et

eloquentia praestans’; another Gregorius, ‘litteris et philosophiae

deditus’; Paulinus of Nola, ‘peculiare et beatum Galliae nostrae

exemplum—uberrimo eloquentiae fonte’; Basilius, a rhetor and a learned

man; and many others. Of Eucherius himself Claudianus says: ‘ingenio

subtilissimus, scientia plenus, eloquii profluens’.[1126] There was,

therefore, considerable learning in the monasteries towards the end of

the fourth century. We have seen how many of the aristocracy brought

pagan culture into the cloisters; we have also seen that the Christians

were not without their rhetors (and rhetorical ability implied the

liberal education of the day), nor without their theologians and

philosophers. Of Hilary of Arles, whose eloquence Honoratus praises,

Gennadius says: ‘Ingenio vero immortali aliqua et parva edidit, quae

eruditae animae et fidelis linguae indicio sunt’.[1127] Even where a man

did not have the initial advantage of education and birth, he often had

the ambition and the opportunity to remedy his ignorance in the cloister.

Vincentius, who had come to Lérins after having been a soldier, studied

with such zeal that he became one of the tutors of Eucherius’s sons and

wrote in a style praised by Gennadius.[1128]

Now all these men became the teachers of the Christian schools. They

taught unceasingly and with great eagerness. They had within them the joy

of the pioneer, and the inspiration of a great ideal. And if one does

not agree entirely with their theory of education, it must be admitted

that intellectually they were in most cases better equipped than the

professors of Ausonius, and that they did more to inspire a true love

of education and to preserve the triumphs of culture. When Gaul was

separated from the Empire, it was the schools, and mostly the Christian

schools (for imperial protection of education failed with the failing

Empire), that saved civilization in Gaul and helped to perpetuate Rome’s

great contribution to the world—her Law. Dull and uninteresting as

their educational labours often were, they were often, like Browning’s

Grammarian, possessed by a real love of learning. The pedestrian quality

of the work—the jealous watching over the text of Vergil, the copying of

manuscripts, the relentless monastic routine—was perhaps the best service

that could have been rendered to humanity. What the world wanted, in view

of the dark times that were to follow, was a tenacious watch-dog type of

loyalty to letters, not the brilliant genius who needs somebody to look

after his manuscripts. Not only books but garden art, architecture, wood-

and stone-carving, and pottery were preserved by these watch-dogs. The

dull lack of appreciation with which we sometimes think of their work,

forgetting its true perspective, is well expressed by Kaufmann:[1129]

‘Der auf Unkenntniss gegründete Hochmuth moderner Bildung

glaubt freilich mit dem einen Worte “Scholastik” über die

Arbeit dieser Mönche hinweggehen zu können, als über eine Summe

nutzloser Versuche ... allein schon die eine Beobachtung, dass

in den wichtigsten Fragen schon damals dieselben Gegensätze

aufeinanderplatzten, welche heute die Geister trennen, schon

diese Beobachtung zeigt dass die kirchlichen Fesseln das

geistige Leben nicht erstarren liessen.’