EDUCATION AND RELIGION.
The fame of the Spanish universities has greatly fallen from what it was
in the early Middle Ages, when Salamanca ranked with Bologna, Paris, and
Oxford, as one of the four great universities in Europe; when its halls
were thronged with thousands of eager though needy scholars, and it was
the centre whence Semitic learning and civilization spread to the rest
of Europe. Even in a later day, in the sixteenth century, under the
patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, the university of Alcala de Henares
(Complutum) flashed into sudden fame as one of the great offshoots of
the Renaissance, with its 7800 students, and its noble production of the
first great Polyglot Bible since primitive times. In the eighteenth
century, however, this learning had all but disappeared from Spain, and
the education given in its universities was all but worthless. Little
was effected towards any true revival or improvement until 1845, though
something had been attempted before this in secondary education by the
successive reforms of 1771, 1807, and especially of 1824 and 1836.
The universities of Spain are now ten: Madrid, with 6672 students;
Barcelona with 2459; Valencia, 2118; Seville, 1382; Granada, 1225;
Valladolid, 880; Santiago de Compostella, 779; Saragossa, 771;
Salamanca, 372; and Oviedo with 216: making a total of 16,874 university
students. The number of regular professors is 415, with 240
supernumeraries and assistants, making a total of 655; that is, one
professor to every 26 students. The salary of the professors varies from
120_l._ to 260_l._ per annum, except in Madrid, where it is from 160_l._
to 300_l._ The budget of the whole universities is a little over
1,000,000_l._, and the expenditure slightly in excess, leaving a deficit
in 1879 of 4600_l._. The average cost of each student to the university
is a little over 6_l._.
Though the above institutions are all classed as universities by the
State, yet the course of instruction is by no means the same in all. At
Madrid alone the whole programme of university education is followed
out. This comprises the faculties of civil, canon, and administrative
law, of philosophy and literature, of science, of medicine, and of
pharmacy. Since 1868 theology is no longer studied in the universities,
but in the seminaries, of which there is one in each diocese, under the
direction of the bishop. The total number of pupils studying in these
institutions is 8562. At Valladolid are two theological colleges for
English, Scotch, and Irish students, established, one at the close of
the sixteenth, the other by the Jesuits at the close of the eighteenth
century.
Law is studied in all the Spanish universities, and medicine in all but
one--Oviedo; Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, and Compostella have faculties
of pharmacy, under which head a certain amount of natural science is
taught; of the exact sciences there are chairs only at Madrid,
Barcelona, and Salamanca; philosophy and literature are studied in
Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Salamanca, Seville, and Saragossa. In
Oviedo, Santiago, Valencia, Valladolid, only the first year's or
preparatory course of law is read, this consists of Latin, general
literature, and universal history.
Besides these State universities, there are several institutions
supported by the provincial deputations; for instance, there is a
faculty of medicine in Seville supported by the province, another in
Salamanca at the joint expense of the province and of the municipality.
In addition to these there are technical schools for the study of
special branches of industry or of administration, such as those of
roads, canals, and harbours, of mines, and of forests, in Madrid and
Villa Viciosa. A school of industrial engineering, and of the
application of chemistry and mechanics, is working at Barcelona. There
are technical schools of commerce at Madrid and at Barcelona. Schools or
colleges of veterinary science are to be found in Madrid, Saragossa,
Cordova, and Leon. Naval schools are established in Santa Cruz
(Teneriffe), in Palma (Majorca), in Masnou (Barcelona), in San
Sebastian, supported by the funds of the provinces; there is also one at
Gijon, in the Asturias, founded by Jovellanos; two other private
foundations also exist at Lequeito and Santurce in Biscay. In Madrid
there is a special school of architecture, and also one of painting,
sculpture, and engraving. Excellent schools of the fine arts exist in
Barcelona, Cadiz, Corunna, Granada, Malaga, Oviedo, Seville, Valencia,
Valladolid, Saragossa, and at Palma in the Balearic Isles; this last is
remarkable for the number of its pupils and its generally flourishing
condition.
In each of the forty-nine provinces of Spain are institutions of
superior or secondary education. With the exception of the institutes of
Cardinal Cisneros and of San Isidro at Madrid, which depend on the
Government, and which hold the first and third rank as to the number of
their pupils, these institutions are supported by the funds of the
provinces or municipalities, but the professors are nominated by the
Government; besides those in the capital of each province, there are
also 11 others in various large towns in Spain. There are also 356
colleges of secondary education affiliated to the institutes, 58 of
which are under religious corporations, making a total of 417
establishments of secondary education, with 2730 professors who have all
taken degrees in science or literature.
The institutes give instruction to 14,872 pupils, and the colleges to
almost the same number, 14,290; home or private education absorbs 4476;
making a total in 1880 of 33,638; more than three times the number in
1848, and, including the episcopal seminaries, giving one pupil to every
398 inhabitants. All these pupils are admitted to the official
examinations, and take their degrees equally on passing them. It is
found that 13 per cent of the candidates are rejected at the
examinations, 43.8 per cent. simply pass, and 43.1 gain honours of
various kinds; while 9 per cent. take the degree of Bachelor from the
colleges, and 37.2 proceed to take it from the universities.
The salary of the masters is from 120_l._ to 180_l._ (except in Madrid
where it is from 160_l._ to 220_l._), with a right to a portion of the
fees for matriculation and degrees. The supernumerary masters receive
60_l._ in Madrid and 40_l._ in the provinces; auxiliary masters are
unpaid. Pensions of 20_l._ are sometimes given to poor but distinguished
pupils. The cost of all the institutes is 118,935_l._, the income,
44,818_l._, leaving a deficit of 74,117_l._ to be supplied either by the
State, the provinces, or the municipalities.
The course of instruction is two-fold, general and special. The general
comprises: Spanish and Latin grammar, two courses; rhetoric and poetry,
geography, history of Spain, universal history, psychology, logic and
ethics, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry, physics and
the elements of chemistry, natural history, physiology and hygiene, and
elementary agriculture. The special courses are those of agriculture,
the fine arts, manufactures and commerce.
Of public schools of primary instruction there are about 23,000 of all
grades and classes, 1308 are infant schools and 1400 are for male and
100 for female adults.
The great drawback in the higher education of Spain is the
disproportionate number of students in law, medicine, or pharmacy, in
comparison with the few who cultivate the special branches of
agriculture, industrial or commercial science. Hence the former
professions are overstocked, with results productive of far-reaching
evils to the country and to the administration. Notwithstanding its far
inferior population the number of students in Spain who take their
degrees in law and medicine is almost treble that of France and of
Germany, while the total of degrees conferred in all the faculties of
Spain is equal to that of France, which has double the population.
Nothing more plainly shows the character of the people, and the mischief
of "_empleomania_" than such a fact in a country whose natural riches
in agriculture and mining are so great and so little developed, where
there is so large a field for industrial enterprises of many kinds, and
where the fruits of all these are at present almost wholly reaped by
foreigners.
The primary education of Spain, though nominally everywhere alike, is
really so very varied as to defy any average description. A few of her
infant schools are equal to the best of those of other countries. Where
the provincial deputations or the municipalities take an interest in
education the primary schools are very fair, but in other parts the
education is little more than nominal, and the schoolmaster's
appointment is well-nigh a sinecure both in pay and labour; and probably
at the present moment, notwithstanding the great improvements of late
years, two-thirds of the people can still neither read nor write.
_Church and Religion._
From the time of the OEcumenical Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, with the
brief exception of the reigns of the Arian Visigoth kings, Spain has
been the champion of orthodoxy in religion. From early times too the
demarcation between Church and State has been less marked, or rather the
influence of the former over the latter has been more constant and more
powerful, than in perhaps any other European kingdom. The great councils
of Toledo were scarcely more ecclesiastical than civil assemblies. The
recognition of the sovereign, the order of succession, the validity of
the laws, were either settled or sanctioned therein. Later, in the great
struggle with the Moors, through the antagonism of exclusive beliefs,
the war assumed the character of a religious crusade. The semi-monastic
Spanish military orders, the preaching of the monks, the sanction and
the bulls of the Popes--auxiliaries which the kings of Spain were forced
to summon to their aid--gave a complexion to the conquest and to the
national character quite different to what might have been the case had
the contest been fought out by the sovereign, the lay warriors, and the
civil power alone. Thus the triumph of the Christian over the Moor
became in some sort also the triumph of the Roman over the national
Spanish Church. The Mozarabic liturgy gave way to that of Rome. The
peculiar institution of the inquisition, following on that of the Santa
Hermandad in civil matters, developed in Spain a degree of power to
which it never attained in other lands. The certainty and the secrecy of
its proceedings, the mingled pomp and horror of its "autos de fe," the
whispers and the shudder with which men told of the tortures of its
hidden processes, deeply impressed and captivated the imagination of a
people singularly greedy of, and susceptible to, strong and vivid
emotions. The chivalrous respect for women, heightened by the reserve
and half-seclusion which the Spanish knights had learned from the Moors,
was transformed in the sphere of religion into an almost ardent passion
of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Centuries before the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception was proclaimed by Pius IX. the cry of the Spanish
beggar heard at every door throughout her vast dominions was, "Ave Maria
purisima, sin pecado concebida." Spain had been the champion of
Christendom against the Jews and against the Moors; she had without
remorse violated every compact she had sworn with the latter, and she
became equally the champion of Roman Catholicism against the
Reformation. Though Philip II. failed in his great armed struggle with
the northern powers, and wasted and destroyed therein all the real
resources of Spain, yet Spanish theologians were among the most eloquent
and the most learned in the Council of Trent; and it was the Jesuits of
Spain who headed the reaction of the seventeenth century, and who won
back all but the Teutonic and Scandinavian races to the allegiance of
Rome. This glory of Catholicism is never absent from the heart of a
Spaniard. His whole literature is steeped in it; it inspires Spain's
greatest painters. It is this deep but unconscious feeling that
Protestanism is un-Spanish which is the real stronghold of Catholicism
in Spain, and which, in spite of spoliation and political subjection,
still gives the clerical party there a greater power than they possess
in other countries. Yet the few Spaniards who embraced the reformed
doctrines in the sixteenth century were not inferior to those of other
lands in earnestness, in learning, in eloquence, or in high position,
both in Church and State. There was just a moment when the court of
Charles V. hovered on the verge of protest against Rome. When, as before
related, the liberties of Spain fell beneath the iron rule of the
Austrian sovereigns, it was the Church, by the hand of one of its
greatest ornaments, Cardinal Ximenes, which became the willing
instrument of despotism. In return for the servility of the court, and
the presence and the sanction of the sovereign at the "autos," the
inquisition lent its aid to the monarchy, and its assistance was called
in to suppress the trade in horses, so senselessly forbidden, on the
northern frontier. In the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish
court fell under the influence of the French encyclopaedists. The Jesuits
were banished in 1767. We need not detail again the various vicissitudes
of the abolition and re-establishment of the inquisition, of the
suppression of tithes, of the sale of Church property, the destruction
of the monasteries, and the exile of the monks, the effects of which
have been sufficiently indicated above.
[Illustration: VESPERS.]
Since the Concordat of 1851, Spain is ruled ecclesiastically by nine
archbishops; those of Toledo (the primate of all Spain), Burgos,
Saragossa, Tarragona, Valencia, Granada, Seville, Valladolid, and
Compostella, under whom are forty-six bishops, with their chapters, and
about 35,000 clergy. The mode of episcopal appointment is this: the
king presents three names to the Pope, of which his Holiness selects
one, who is forthwith nominated to the vacant see. Since 1868,
theological education is entirely under the hands of the bishops, who
have a seminary in each diocese. The clergy are paid by the State; but
the stipends of the country priests are said to be frequently in arrear.
In some parts of Spain, as in the manufacturing towns of Barcelona,
religion has to a great extent lost its hold upon the people; in other
parts, as in the Basque Provinces, the majority are still devout. Since
1871 a reaction from extremes of scepticism and advanced socialistic
views is manifest in many of the most popular writers. A small but
increasing body of Protestants has been established since 1868; but the
vicissitudes of revolution and reaction, and the present ambiguous state
of the law have acted unfavourably on the movement. The pastors have
honourably distinguished themselves by their zeal for the education of
the classes utterly neglected by the dominant Church. On the whole, the
clerical party in Spain, considered as a political body, seems gradually
sinking into a like condition to that of France. It is powerful enough
to thwart and check the policy of its opponents, but impotent to carry
out its own measures. The extreme Ultramontane party, for whom the Comte
de Chambord is too liberal and Pope Leo XIII. too comprehensive, has
lately adopted the banner of the Carlists. Whatever the future of Spain
may be, it is not probable that the Church will ever attain again the
political influence and the exclusive control of education which it
possessed in the past, in spite of the undoubted talents and virtues of
many of its upholders.