"It is a prevalent opinion that common schools, as we now have

them, were an American invention. No legislation, it is

asserted, taxing all in order that all may be taught can be

traced back further than to the early laws of Massachusetts.

Those who deny this assertion are content with showing

something of the sort in Scotland and Germany a generation or

two before the landing of the Plymouth pilgrims. The truth is,

however, that, as much of our social wit is now credited to

the ancient Greeks, something of our educational wisdom ought

to be. Two centuries ago John Locke, as an able political

writer, was invited to draw up a code of fundamental laws for

the new colony of Carolina, and in like manner, more than

2,300 years ago, Charondas, a master of a similar type in

Magna Græcia, was called to a similar task. This was to frame

a series of statutes for the government of a Greek colony

founded about 446 B. C., in the foot of Italy. This colony was

Thurii, and conspicuous among the enactments of Charondas was

the following: 'Charondas made a law unlike those of lawgivers

before him, for he enacted that the sons of the citizens

should all learn letters (or writing) ... the city making

payment to the teachers. He thought that the poor, not able to

pay wages themselves, would otherwise fail of the best

training. He counted writing the most important study, and

with reason. Through writing, most things in life, and those

the most useful, are accomplished--as ballots, epistles, laws,

covenants. Who can sufficiently praise the learning of

letters? ... Writing alone preserves the most brilliant

utterances of wise men and the oracles of gods, nay philosophy

and all culture. All these things it alone hands down to all

future generations. Wherefore nature should be viewed as the

source of life, but the source of living well we should

consider the culture derived from writing. Inasmuch, then, as

illiterates are deprived of a great good, Charondas came to

their help, judging them worthy of public care and outlay.

Former legislators had caused the sick to be attended by

physicians at the public expense, thinking their bodies worthy

of cure. He did more, for he cured souls afflicted with

ignorance. The doctors of the body we pray that we may never

need, while we would fain abide for ever with those who

minister to the mind diseased.'--This extract is from the

'Bibliotheca Historica' of Diodorus Siculus (Book x. § 13),

who was flourishing at the birth of Christ and was the most

painstaking chronicler of the Augustan age. The legislation is

worth notice for more than one reason. It rebukes the

self-conceit of those who hold that the education of all at

the charge of all is an idea born in our own time or country.

It has also been strangely unnoticed by historians who ought

to have kept it before the people."

_The Nation, March 24, 1892, pages 280-231._

EDUCATION:

Socrates and the Philosophical Schools.

"Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the people had

been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after that event he

gradually gives place to the sophist (... one who makes wise),

or, as he later with more modesty calls himself, the

philosopher (... lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for

centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle

between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher

represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the

one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other.

The transition from the first to the second of these mental

conditions was accomplished for the world, once for all, by

the Greeks."

_T. Davidson, Aristotle, book 1, chapter 5._

"There is no instance on record of a philosopher whose

importance as a thinker is so closely bound up with the

personality of the man as it was in the case of Socrates. ...

His teaching was not of a kind to be directly imparted and

faithfully handed down, but could only be left to propagate

itself freely by stirring up others to a similar self·culture.

... The youth and early manhood of Socrates fall in the most

brilliant period of Grecian history. Born during the last

years of the Persian war, he was a near contemporary of all

those great men who adorned the age of Pericles. As a citizen

of Athens he could enjoy the opportunities afforded by a city,

which united every means of culture by its unrivalled

fertility of thought. Poverty and low birth were but slender

obstacles in the Athens of Pericles. ... Socrates, no doubt,

began life by learning his father's trade, ... which he

probably never practised, and certainly soon gave up.

{683}

He considered it to be his special calling to labour for the

moral and intellectual improvement of himself and others--a

conviction which he felt so strongly that it appeared to him

in the light of a divine revelation. Moreover he was confirmed

in it by a Delphic oracle, which, of course, must not be

regarded as the cause of, but rather as an additional support

to his reforming zeal. ... To be independent, he tried, like

the Gods, to rise superior to his wants; and by carefully

practising self-denial and abstemiousness, he was really able

to boast that his life was more pleasant and more free from

troubles than that of the rest of mankind. Thus he was able to

devote his whole powers to the service of others, without

asking or taking reward; and thus he became so engrossed by

his labours for his native city, that he rarely passed its

boundaries or even went outside its gates. He did not,

however, feel himself called upon to take part in the affairs

of the state. ... Anyone convinced as he was, that care for

one's own culture must precede care for public business, and

that a thorough knowledge of self, together with a deep and

many-sided experience, was a necessary condition of public

activity, must have thought that, to educate individuals by

influence, was the more pressing need, and have held that he

was doing his country a better service by educating able

statesmen for it, than by actually discharging a statesman's

duties. Accordingly, Socrates never aimed at being anything

but a private citizen. ... Just as little was he desirous of

being a public teacher like the Sophists. He not only took no

pay, but he gave no methodical course. He did not profess to

teach, but to learn in common with others, not to force his

convictions upon them, but to examine theirs; not to pass the

truth that came to hand like a coin fresh from the mint, but

to stir up a desire for truth and virtue, to point out the way

to it, to overthrow what was spurious, and to seek out real

knowledge. Never weary of talking, he was on the look out for

every opportunity of giving an instructive and moral turn to

the conversation. Day by day he was about in the market and

public promenades, in schools and workshops, ever ready to

converse with friends or strangers, with citizens and

foreigners, but always prepared to lead them to higher

subjects; and whilst thus in his higher calling serving God,

he was persuaded that he was also serving his country in a way

that no one else could do. Deeply as he deplored the decline

of discipline and education in his native city, he felt that

he could depend but little on the Sophists, the moral teachers

of his day. The attractive powers of his discourse won for him

a circle of admirers, for the most part consisting of young

men of family, drawn to him by the most varied motives,

standing to him in various relations, and coming to him, some

for a longer, others for a shorter time. For his own part, he

made it his business not only to educate these friends, but to

advise them in everything, even in worldly matters. But out of

this changing, and in part loosely connected, society, a

nucleus was gradually formed of decided admirers,--a Socratic

school, which we must consider united far less by a common set

of doctrines, than by a common love for the person of

Socrates."

_E. Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, chapter 3._

"Nowhere, except in Athens, do we hear of a philosophic body

with endowments, legal succession, and the other rights of a

corporation. This idea, which has never since died out of the

world, was due to Plato, who bequeathed his garden and

appointments in the place called after the hero Hekademus, to

his followers. But he was obliged to do it in the only form

possible at Athens. He made it a religious foundation, on the

basis of a fixed worship to the Muses. ... The head or

President of Plato's 'Association of the Muses,' was the

treasurer and manager of the common fund, who invited guests

to their feasts, to which each member contributed his share.

... The members had, moreover, a right to attend lectures and

use the library or scientific appointments, such as maps,

which belonged to the school. It was this endowment on a

religious basis which saved the income and position of Plato's

school for centuries. ... This then is the first Academy, so

often imitated in so many lands, and of which our colleges are

the direct descendants. ... The school of Plato, then governed

by Xenocrates, being the bequest of an Athenian citizen who

understood the law, seems never to have been assailed. The

schools of Epicurus and Zeno were perhaps not yet recognised.

But that of Theophrastus, perhaps the most crowded, certainly

the most distinctly philo-Macedonian, ... this was the school

which was exiled, and which owed its rehabilitation not only

to the legal decision of the courts, but still more to the

large views of King Demetrius, who would not tolerate the

persecution of opinion. But it was the other Demetrius, the

philosopher, the pupil of Aristotle, the friend of

Theophrastus, to whom the school owed most, and to whom the

world owes most in the matter of museums and academies, next

after Plato. For this was the man who took care, during his

Protectorate of Athens in the interest of Casander, to

establish a garden and 'peripatos' for the Peripatetic school,

now under Theophrastus. ... It is remarkable that the Stoic

school--it too the school of aliens--did not establish a local

foundation or succession, but taught in public places, such as

the Painted Portico. In this the Cynical tone of the Porch

comes out. Hence the succession depended upon the genius of

the leader."

_J. P. Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, chapter 7._

An account of the Academy, the Lyceum, etc., will be found

under the caption GYMNASIA.

EDUCATION:

University of Athens.

"Some scholars ... may doubt if there was anything at Athens

which could answer to the College Life of modern times. Indeed

it must be owned that formal history is nearly silent on the

subject, that ancient writers take little notice of it, and

such evidences as we have are drawn almost entirely from a

series of inscriptions on the marble tablets, which were

covered with the ruins and the dust of ages, till one after

another came to light in recent days, to add fresh pages to

the story of the past. Happily they are both numerous and

lengthy, and may be already pieced together in an order which

extends for centuries. They are known to Epigraphic students

as the records which deal with the so-called Ephebi; with the

youths, that is, just passing into manhood, for whom a special

discipline was provided by the State, to, fit them for the

responsibilities of active life. It was a National system with

a many-sided training; the teachers were members of the Civil

Service; the registers were public documents, and, as such,

belonged to the Archives of the State.

{684}

The earlier inscriptions of the series date from the

period of Macedonian ascendency, but in much earlier times

there had been forms of public drill prescribed for the

Ephebi. ... We find from a decree, which, if genuine, dates

even from the days of Pericles, that the young men of Cos were

allowed by special favour to share the discipline of the

Athenian Ephebi. Soon afterwards others were admitted on all

sides. The aliens who had gained a competence as merchants or

as bankers, found their sons welcomed in the ranks of the

oldest families of Athens; strangers flocked thither from

distant countries, not only from the isles of Greece, and from

the coasts of the Ægean, but, as Hellenic culture made its way

through the far East, students even of the Semitic race were

glad to enrol their names upon the College registers, where we

may still see them with the marks of their several

nationalities affixed. The young men were no longer, like

soldiers upon actual service, beginning already the real work

of life, and on that account, perhaps, the term was shortened

from the two years to one; but the old associations lasted on

for ages, even in realistic Athens, which in early politics at

least had made so clean a sweep. The outward forms were still

preserved, the soldier's drill was still enforced, and though

many another feature had been added, the whole institution

bore upon its face the look rather of a Military College than

of a training school for a scholar or a statesman. The College

year began somewhat later than the opening of the civil year,

and it was usual for all the students to matriculate together;

that is, to enter formally their names upon the registers,

which were copied afterwards upon the marble tablets, of which

large fragments have survived. ... 'To put the gown on,' or,

as we should say, 'to be a gownsman,' was the phrase which

stood for being a member of the College; and the gown, too,

was of black, as commonly among ourselves. But Philostratus

tells us, by the way, that a change was made from black to

white at the prompting of Herodes Atticus, the munificent and

learned subject of the Antonines, who was for many years the

presiding genius of the University of Athens. The fragment of

an inscription lately found curiously confirms and supplements

the writer's statement. ... The members of the College are spoken

of as 'friends' and 'messmates'; and it is probable that some

form of conventual life prevailed among them, without which

the drill and supervision, which are constantly implied in the

inscriptions, could scarcely have been enforced by the

officials. But we know nothing of any public buildings for

their use save the gymnasia, which in all Greek towns were the

centres of educational routine, and of which there were

several well known at Athens. ... The College did not try to

monopolise the education of its students. It had, indeed, its

own tutors or instructors, but they were kept for humbler

drill; it did not even for a long time keep an organist or

choirmaster of its own; it sent its students out for teaching

in philosophy and rhetoric and grammar, or, in a word, for all

the larger and more liberal studies. Nor did it favour any

special set of tenets to the exclusion of the rest. It

encouraged impartially all the schools of higher thought. ...

The Head of the College held the title of Cosmetes, or of

rector. ... The Rector, appointed only for a year by popular

election, was no merely honorary head, but took an important

part in the real work of education. He was sometimes clothed

with priestly functions. ... The system of education thus

described was under the control of the government throughout.

... It may surprise us that our information comes almost

entirely from the inscriptions, and that ancient writers are

all nearly silent on the subject. ... But there was little to

attract the literary circles in arrangements so mechanical and

formal; there was too much of outward pageantry, and too

little of real character evolved."

_W. W. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens, chapter 1._

_J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches, chapter 4._

The reign of the Emperor Justinian "may be signalised as the

fatal epoch at which several of the noblest institutions of

antiquity were abolished. He shut the schools of Athens (A. D.

529), in which an uninterrupted succession of philosophers,

supported by a public stipend, had taught the doctrines of

Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, ever since the time of

the Antonines. They were, it is true, still attached to

paganism, and even to the arts of magic."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire,

volume 1, chapter 10._

See ATHENS: A. D. 529.

EDUCATION:

Alexandria.

"Ptolemy, upon whom, on Alexander's death, devolved the

kingdom of Egypt, supplies us with the first great instance of

what may be called the establishment of Letters. He and

Eumenes may be considered the first founders of public

libraries. ... A library, however, was only one of two great

conceptions brought into execution by the first Ptolemy; and

as the first was the embalming of dead genius, so the second

was the endowment of living. ... Ptolemy, ... prompted, or at

least, encouraged, by the celebrated Demetrius of Phalerus,

put into execution a plan for the formal endowment of

literature and science. The fact indeed of the possession of

an immense library seemed sufficient to render Alexandria a

University; for what could be a greater attraction to the

students of all lands, than the opportunity afforded them of

intellectual converse, not only with the living, but with the

dead, with all who had anywhere at any time thrown light upon

any subject of inquiry? But Ptolemy determined that his

teachers of knowledge should be as stationary and as permanent

as his books; so, resolving to make Alexandria the seat of a

'Studium Generale,' he founded a College for its domicile, and

endowed that College with ample revenues. Here, I consider, he

did more than has been commonly done, till modern times. It

requires considerable knowledge of medieval Universities to be

entitled to give an opinion; as regards Germany, for instance,

or Poland, or Spain; but, as far as I have a right to speak,

such an endowment has been rare down to the sixteenth century,

as well as before Ptolemy. ... To return to the Alexandrian

College. It was called the Museum,--a name since appropriated

to another institution connected with the seats of science.

... There was a quarter of the city so distinct from the rest

in Alexandria, that it is sometimes spoken of as a suburb. It

was pleasantly situated on the water's edge, and had been set

aside for ornamental buildings, and was traversed by groves of

trees. Here stood the royal palace, here the theatre and

amphitheatre; here the gymnasia and stadium; here the famous

Serapeum.

{685}

And here it was, close upon the Port, that Ptolemy placed his

Library and College. As might be supposed, the building was

worthy of its purpose; a noble portico stretched along its

front, for exercise or conversation, and opened upon the

public rooms devoted to disputations and lectures. A certain

number of Professors were lodged within the precincts, and a

handsome hall, or refectory, was provided for the common meal.

The Prefect of the house was a priest, whose appointment lay

with the government. Over the Library a dignified person

presided. ... As to the Professors, so liberal was their

maintenance, that a philosopher of the very age of the first

foundation called the place a 'bread basket,' or a 'bird

coop'; yet, in spite of accidental exceptions, so careful on

the whole was their selection, that even six hundred years

afterwards, Ammianus describes the Museum under the title of

'the lasting abode of distinguished men.' Philostratus, too,

about a century before, calls it 'a table gathering together

celebrated men.' ... As time went on new Colleges were added

to the original Museum; of which one was a foundation of the

Emperor Claudius, and called after his name. ... A diversity

of teachers secured an abundance of students. 'Hither,' says

Cave, 'as to a public emporium of polite literature,

congregated, from every part of the world, youthful students,

and attended the lectures in Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry,

Philosophy, Astronomy, Music, Medicine, and other arts and

sciences'; and hence proceeded, as it would appear, the great

Christian writers and doctors, 'Clement, ... Origen,

Anatolius, and Athanasius. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the

third century, may be added; he came across Asia Minor and

Syria from Pontus, as to a place, says his namesake of Nyssa,

'to which young men from all parts gathered together, who were

applying themselves to philosophy.' As to the subjects taught

in the Museum, Cave has already enumerated the principal; but

he has not done justice to the peculiar character of the

Alexandrian school. From the time that science got out of the

hands of the pure Greeks, into those of a power which had a

talent for administration, it became less theoretical, and

bore more distinctly upon definite and tangible objects. ...

Egyptian Antiquities were investigated, at least by the

disciples of the Egyptian Manetho, fragments of whose history

are considered to remain; while Carthaginian and Etruscan had

a place in the studies of the Claudian College. The Museum was

celebrated, moreover, for its grammarians; the work of

Hephæstion 'de Metris' still affords matter of thought to a

living Professor of Oxford; and Aristarchus, like the Athenian

Priscian, has almost become the nickname for a critic. Yet,

eminent as is the Alexandrian school in these departments of

science, its fame rests still more securely upon its

proficiency in medicine and mathematics. Among its physicians

is the celebrated Galen, who was attracted thither from

Pergamus; and we are told by a writer of the fourth century,

that in his time the very fact of a physician having studied

at Alexandria, was an evidence of his science which superseded

further testimonial. As to Mathematics, it is sufficient to

say, that, of four great ancient names, on whom the modern

science is founded, three came from Alexandria. Archimedes

indeed was a Syracusan; but the Museum may boast of Apollonius

of Perga, Diophantus, a native Alexandrian, and Euclid, whose

country is unknown. To these illustrious names, may be added,

Eratosthenes of Cyrene, to whom astronomy has obligations so

considerable; Pappus; Theon; and Ptolemy, said to be of

Pelusium, whose celebrated system, called after him the

Ptolemaic, reigned in the schools till the time of Copernicus,

and whose Geography, dealing with facts, not theories, is in

repute still. Such was the celebrated 'Studium' or University

of Alexandria; for a while in the course of the third and

fourth centuries, it was subject to reverses, principally from

war. The whole of the Bruchion, the quarter of the city in

which it was situated, was given to the flames; and, when

Hilarion came to Alexandria, the holy hermit, whose rule of

life did not suffer him to lodge in cities, took up his

lodgment with a few solitaries among the ruins of its

edifices. The schools, however, and the library continued; the

library was reserved for the Caliph Omar's famous judgment; as

to the schools, even as late as the twelfth century, the Jew,

Benjamin of Tudela, gives us a surprising report of what he

found in Alexandria."

_J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches:

Rise and Progress of Universities, chapter 8._

"In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and

Augustus, Athens was preëminently the training school for

philosophy, Rhodes, on the other hand, as the only Greek state

of political importance in which a career of grand and

dignified activity was open for the orator, distinguished

itself in the study of eloquence, while Alexandria rested its

fame chiefly on the excellence of its instruction in Philology

and Medicine. At a subsequent period the last mentioned

University obtained even greater celebrity as having given

birth to a school of philosophers who endeavored to combine

into a species of theosophic doctrine the mental science of

Europe with the more spiritual minded and profoundly human

religions of the East. In the third century Alexandria became

conspicuous as the headquarters of the Eclectics and

Neo·Platonists."

_E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior

Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education,

volume 24, pages 466-467)._

EDUCATION:

Rome.

"If we cast a final glance at the question of education, we

shall find but little to say of it, as far as regards the

period before Cicero. In the republican times the state did

not trouble itself about the training of youth: a few

prohibitory regulations were laid down, and the rest left to

private individuals. Thus no public instruction was given;

public schools there were, but only as private undertakings

for the sake of the children of the rich. All depended on the

father; his personal character and the care taken by the

mother in education decided the development of the child's

disposition. Books there were none; and therefore they could

not be put into the hands of children. A few rugged hymns,

such as those of the Salii and Arval brothers, with the songs

in Fescennine verse, sung on festivals and at banquets, formed

the poetical literature. A child would hear, besides, the

dirges, or memorial verses, composed by women in honour of the

dead, and sometimes, too, the public panegyrics pronounced on

their departed relatives, a distinction accorded to women also

from the time of Camillus.

{686}

Whatever was taught a boy by father or mother, or acquired

externally to the house, was calculated to make the Roman

'virtus' appear in his eyes the highest aim of his ambition;

the term including self-mastery, an unbending firmness of

will, with patience, and an iron tenacity of purpose in

carrying through whatever was once acknowledged to be right.

The Greek palestra and its naked combatants always seemed

strange and offensive to Roman eyes. In the republican times

the exercises of the gymnasium were but little in fashion;

though riding, swimming, and other warlike exercises were

industriously practised, as preparations for the campaign. The

slave pædagogus, assigned to young people to take charge of

them, had a higher position with the Romans than the Greeks;

and was not allowed to let his pupils out of his sight till

their twentieth year. The Latin Odyssey of Livius Andronicus

was the school-book first in use; and this and Ennius were the

only two works to create and foster a literary taste before

the destruction of Carthage. The freedman Sp. Carvilius was

the first to open a school for higher education. After this

the Greek language and literature came into the circle of

studies, and in consequence of the wars in Sicily, Macedon,

and Asia, families of distinction kept slaves who knew Greek.

Teachers quickly multiplied, and were either liberti, or their

descendants. No free-born Roman would consent to be a paid

teacher, for that was held to be a degradation. The Greek

language remained throughout the classical [age] one for

Romans: they even made their children begin with Homer. As, by

the seventh century of the republic, Ennius, Plautus,

Pacuvius, and Terence, had already become old poets,

dictations were given to scholars from their writings. The

interpretation of Virgil began under Augustus, and by this

time the younger Romans were resorting to Athens, Rhodes,

Apollonia, and Mitylene, in order to make progress in Greek

rhetoric and philosophy. As Roman notions were based entirely

on the practical and the useful, music was neglected as a part

of education; while, as a contrast, boys were compelled to

learn the laws of the twelve tables by heart. Cicero, who had

gone through this discipline with other boys of his time,

complains of the practice having begun to be set aside; and

Scipio Æmilianus deplored, as an evil omen of degeneracy, the

sending of boys and girls to the academies of actors, where

they learnt dancing and singing, in company with young women

of pleasure. In one of these schools were to be found as many

as five hundred young persons, all being instructed in

postures and motions of the most abandoned kind. ... On the

other hand, the gymnastic exercises, which had once served the

young men as a training for war, fell into disuse, having

naturally become objectless and burdensome, now that, under

Augustus, no more Roman citizens chose to enlist in the

legions. Still slavery was, and continued to be, the foremost

cause of the depravation of youth, and of an evil education.

... It was no longer the mothers who educated their own

children: they had neither inclination nor capacity for such

duty, for mothers of the stamp of Cornelia had disappeared.

Immediately on its birth, the child was intrusted to a Greek

female slave, with some male slave, often of the worst

description, to help her. ... The young Roman was not educated

in the constant companionship of youths of his own age, under

equal discipline: surrounded by his father's slaves and

parasites, and always accompanied by a slave when he went out,

he hardly received any other impressions than such as were

calculated to foster conceit, indolence, and pride in him."

_J. J. I. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew,

volume 2, pages 279-281._

EDUCATION:

Higher Education under the Empire.

"Besides schools of high eminence in Mytilene, Ephesus,

Smyrna, Sidon, etc., we read that Apollonia enjoyed so high a

reputation for eloquence and political science as to be

entrusted with the education of the heir-apparent of the Roman

Empire. Antioch was noted for a Museum modelled after that of

the Egyptian metropolis, and Tarsus boasted of Gymnasia and a

University which Strabo does not hesitate to describe as more

than rivaling those of Athens and Alexandria. There can be

little doubt that the philosophers, rhetoricians, and

grammarians who swarmed in the princely retinues of the great

Roman aristocracy, and whose schools abounded in all the most

wealthy and populous cities of the empire east and west, were

prepared for their several callings in some one or other of

these institutions. Strabo tells us ... that Rome was overrun

with Alexandrian and Syrian grammarians, and Juvenal describes

one of the Quirites of the ancient stamp as emigrating in

sheer disgust from a city which from these causes had become

thoroughly and utterly Greek. ... That external inducements

were held out amply sufficient to prevail upon poor and

ambitious men to qualify themselves at some cost for vocations

of this description is evident from the wealth to which, as we

are told, many of them rose from extreme indigence and

obscurity. Suetonius, in the still extant fragment of his

essay 'de claris rhetoribus,' after alluding to the immense

number of professors and doctors met with in Rome, draws

attention to the frequency with which individuals who had

distinguished themselves as teachers of rhetoric had been

elevated into the senate, and advanced to the highest

dignities of the state. That the profession of a philologist

was occasionally at least well remunerated is evident from the

facts recorded by the same author in his work 'de claris

grammaticis,' section 3. He there mentions that there were at

one time upwards of twenty well attended schools devoted to

this subject at Rome, and that one fortunate individual, Q.

Remmius Palaemon, derived four hundred thousand sesterces, or

considerably above three thousand a year, from instruction in

philology alone. Julius Caesar conferred the citizenship,

together with large bounties in money, and immunity from

public burthens, on distinguished rhetoricians and

philologists, in order to encourage their presence at Rome.

... That individuals who thus enjoyed an income not greatly

below the revenues of an English Bishopric were not, as the

name might lead us to imagine, employed in teaching the

accidents of grammar, but possessed considerable pretensions

to that higher and more thoughtful character of the scholar

which it has been reserved for modern Europe to exhibit in

perfection, is not only in itself highly probable, but

supported by the distinctest and most unimpeachable evidence.

Seneca tells us that history was amongst the subjects

professed by grammarians, and Cicero regards the most thorough

and refined perception of all that pertains to the spirit and

individuality of the author as an indispensable requisite in

those who undertake to give instruction in this subject. ...

The grammatici appear to have occupied a position very closely

analogous to that of the teachers of collegiate schools in

England, and the gymnasial professors in Germany."

_E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior

Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education,

volume 24, pages 468-470.)_

{687}

EDUCATION: Mediæval.

The Chaos of Barbaric Conquest.

"The utter confusion subsequent upon the downfall of the Roman

Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by

the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of

scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of

grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check

the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of

learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere

tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical

tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead

letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was

lost. ... Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond

description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The

three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and

mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies

like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for

the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was

reduced to a system of ingenious punning. ... Virgil, the only

classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed

from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from

Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as

the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend

him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools

of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar

consciousness into a wizard, he waited on the extreme verge of

the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the

type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and

Purgatory."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy:

the Revival of Learning; chapter 2._

EDUCATION: Mediæval.

Gaul: 4th-5th Centuries.

"If institutions could do all, if laws supplied and the means

furnished to society could do everything, the intellectual

state of Gaulish civil society at this epoch [4th-5th

centuries] would have been far superior to that of the

religious society. The first, in fact, alone possessed all the

institutions proper to second the development of mind, the

progress and empire of ideas. Roman Gaul was covered with

large schools. The principal were those of Trèves, Bordeaux,

Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, Marseilles,

Vienne, Besançon, &c. Some were very ancient; those of

Marseilles and of Autun, for example, dated from the first

century. They were taught philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence,

literature, grammar, astrology, all the sciences of the age.

In the greater part of these schools, indeed, they at first

taught only rhetoric and grammar; but towards the fourth

century, professors of philosophy and law were everywhere

introduced. Not only were these schools numerous, and provided

with many chairs, but the emperors continually took the

professors of new measures into favor. Their interests are,

from Constantine to Theodosius the younger, the subject of

frequent imperial constitutions, which sometimes extended,

sometimes confirmed their privileges. ... After the Empire was

divided among many masters, each of them concerned himself

rather more about the prosperity of his states and the public

establishments which were in them. Thence arose a momentary

amelioration, of which the schools felt the effects,

particularly those of Gaul, under the administration of

Constantius Clorus, of Julian, and of Gratian. By the side of

the schools were, in general, placed other analogous

establishments. Thus, at Trèves there was a grand library of

the imperial palace, concerning which no special information

has reached us, but of which we may judge by the details·

which have reached us concerning that of Constantinople. This

last had a librarian and seven scribes constantly

occupied--four for Greek, and three for Latin. They copied

both ancient and new works. It is probable that the same

institution existed at Trèves, and in the great towns of Gaul.

Civil society, then, was provided with means of instruction

and intellectual development. It was not the same with

religious society. It had at this epoch no institution

especially devoted to teaching; it did not receive from the

state any aid to this particular aim. Christians, as well as

others, could frequent the public schools; but most of the

professors were still pagans. ... It was for a long time in

the inferior classes, among the people, that Christianity was

propagated, especially in the Gauls, and it was the superior

classes which followed the great schools. Moreover, it was

hardly until the commencement of the fourth century that the

Christians appeared there, and then but few in number. No

other source of study was open to them. The establishments

which, a little afterwards, became, in the Christian church,

the refuge and sanctuary of instruction, the monasteries, were

hardly commenced in the Gauls. It was only after the year 360

that the two first were founded by St. Martin--one at Ligugé,

near Poitiers, the other at Marmoutiers, near Tours; and they

were devoted rather to religious contemplation than to

teaching. Any great school, any special institution devoted to

the service and to the progress of intellect, was at that

time, therefore, wanting to the Christians. ... All things in

the fifth century, attest the decay of the civil schools. The

contemporaneous writers, Sidonius Apollinaris and Mamertius

Claudianus, for example, deplore it in every page, saying that

the young men no longer studied, that professors were without

pupils, that science languished and was being lost. ... It was

especially the young men of the superior classes who frequented

the schools; but these classes ... were in rapid dissolution.

The schools fell with them; the institutions still existed,

but they were void--the soul had quitted the body. The

intellectual aspect of Christian society was very different.

... Institutions began to rise, and to be regulated among the

Christians of Gaul. The foundation of the greater portion of

the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to the

first half of the fifth century. ... The monasteries of the

south of Gaul were philosophical schools of Christianity; it

was there that intellectual men meditated, discussed, taught;

it was from thence that new ideas, daring thoughts, heresies,

were sent forth. ...

{688}

Towards the end of the sixth century, everything is changed:

there are no longer civil schools; ecclesiastical schools

alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of

Poitiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared; in

their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal

schools, because each episcopal see had its own. The cathedral

school was not always alone; we find in certain dioceses other

schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps,

of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming

metamorphosed, had perpetuated itself. ... The most

flourishing of the episcopal schools from the sixth to the

middle of the eighth century were those of:

1. Poitiers. There were many schools in the monasteries of the

diocese at Poitiers itself, at Ligugé, at Ansion, &c.

2. Paris.

3. LeMans.

4. Bourges.

5. Clermont. There was another school in the town where they

taught the Theodosian code; a remarkable circumstance, which I

do not find elsewhere.

6. Vienne.

7. Châlons-sur-Saone.

8. ArIes.

9. Gap.

The most flourishing of the monastic schools of the same epoch

were those of:

1. Luxeuil, in Franche-Comté.

2. Fontenelle, or Saint Vandrille, in Normandy; in which were

about 300 students.

3. Sithiu, in Normandy.

4. Saint Médard, at Soissons.

5. Lerens.

It were easy to extend this list; but the prosperity of

monastic schools was subject to great vicissitudes; they

flourished under a distinguished abbot, and declined under his

successor. Even in nunneries, study was not neglected; that

which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the

commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the

most part occupied in copying books, sometimes religious

books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients.

The metamorphosis of civil schools into ecclesiastical schools

was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall

often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in

the civil schools, rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry,

astrology, &c.; but these were evidently no longer taught

except in their relations to theology. This is the foundation

of the instruction: all was turned into commentary of the

Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral,

commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies,

whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result.

Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane

sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them."

_F. Guizot, History of Civilization to the French

Revolution, volume 2, lecture 4 and 16._

EDUCATION:

Ireland.

Scotland.

Schools of Iona.

Popular accounts represent St. Patrick as "founding at least a

hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the

greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his

followers after his death, admit the fact of his having

established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where

he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he

had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. ... The school,

which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon

rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before

joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the

number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that

the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into

three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of

the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools

were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all

through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries,

when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her

sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of

divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been

carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how

many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were

really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the

rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the

extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied

themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed

facts. 'Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,' says

Bishop Nicholson, 'the Irish seminaries had so increased that

most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here,

and drew thence their bishops and teachers.' The whole country

for miles round Leighlin was denominated the 'land of saints

and scholars.' By the ninth century Armagh could boast of

7,000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass,

and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary

multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be

explained partly by the constant immigration of British

refugees who brought with them the learning and religious

observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that

sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly

converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the

infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of

martyrs. ... The bards, who were to be found in great numbers

among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a

considerable share in directing the energies of their

countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned

class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily

disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred

letters. ... It would be impossible, within the limits of a

single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish

seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers,

everyone of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic

beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest

monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel,

in that western island called from the wild flowers which even

still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it

afterwards exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or

Aran-of-the-Saints. ... A little later St. Finian founded his

great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a

stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the

wooden horse. .... This desolate wilderness was soon peopled

by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3,000, of whom

the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles

of Ireland. ... Among them none were more famous than St.

Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is

known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and

Kieran, the carpenter's son, as he is called, is scarcely less

renowned among his own countrymen. ... It was in the year 563

that St. Columba, after founding the monasteries of

Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring

the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing

over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the

Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed

the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and

landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of

huge conical stones.

{689}

Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of

I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he

erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of

three hundred religious houses. ... Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as

it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief

seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole

Western world. 'Thither, as from a nest,' says Odonellus,

playing on the Latin name of the founder, 'these sacred doves

took their flight to every quarter.' They studied the

classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They

improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the

rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with

ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the

use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk

was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new

homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. ... In every

college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on

whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with

the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were

religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the

Church office was often kept up without intermission by day

and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein

sacred and profane studies were cultivated with equal success.

Not only their own monasteries but those of every European

country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the

researches of modern bibliopolists are continually

disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an

Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand

which traced its delicate letters."

_A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 2._

EDUCATION:

Charlemagne.

"If there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments

soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his

stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for

anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten

years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived

to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself

tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He

found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he

became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of

Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed

even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far

from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by

the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning

enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous

historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who

had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the

Lombards. ... Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of

Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish

sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he

was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of

confiscated territory made over by diploma to 'the Venerable

Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.' But none of these

learned personages were destined to take so large a part in

that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne's

reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on

occasion of the king's second visit to Italy, that the meeting

took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the

English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the

consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement,

Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several

of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis,

and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned

him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his

disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes,

and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the

first place in the literary society that surrounded the

Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which

were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once

claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books,

the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of

other public schools throughout the empire. ... But it was as

head of the Palatine school that Alcuin's influence was

chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne

presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three

princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his

daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and

Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found

plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called

on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and

courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new

Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the

doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All

the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as

that each should bear reference to religion, for this was

regarded as the final end of of all learning. Grammar was

studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and

to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much

attention was given, was chiefly confined to the

ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the

Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric

and dialectics were studied. 'In short,' says Crevier, 'the

thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with

him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being

considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to

that end.' At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic

poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater

reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. ... The authors whose

study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so

much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and

Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers,

gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his

court. The 'City of God' was read at the royal table, and the

questions addressed by the court students to their master

turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the

difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed

a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The

Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet;

Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself

adopted the more scriptural appellation of David. The

eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to

acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his

dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous

labours in which he was constantly engaged."

_A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 5._

See, also,

SCHOOL OF THE PALACE, CHARLEMAGNE'S,

{690}

EDUCATION: England

King Alfred.

King Alfred "gathered round him at his own court the sons of

his nobility to receive, in conjunction with his own children,

a better education than their parents would be able or willing

to give them in their own households. To this assemblage of

pupils Asser has attached the name of school, and a violent

controversy once distracted the literary world concerning the

sense in which the word was to be understood, and whether it

was not the beginning or origin of a learned institution still

existing. In speaking of this subject, Asser has taken

occasion to enumerate and describe the children who were born

to Alfred from his wife Elswitha, daughter of Ethelred the

'Big,' alderman of the Gaini, and a noble of great wealth and

influence in Mercia. 'The sons and daughters,' says Asser,

'which he had by his wife above mentioned, were Ethelfled the

eldest, after whom came Edward, then Ethelgiva, then

Ethelswitha, and Ethelwerd, besides those who died in their

infancy, one of whom was Edmund. Ethelfled, when she arrived

at a marriageable age, was united to Ethelred, earl of Mercia;

Ethelgiva was dedicated to God, and submitted to the rules of

a monastic life; Ethelwerd, the youngest, by the Divine

counsels and admirable prudence of the king, was consigned to

the schools of learning, where, with the children of almost

all the nobility of the country, and many also who were not

noble, he prospered under the diligent care of his teachers.

Books in both languages, namely, in Latin and Saxon, were read

in the school. They also learned to write; so that, before

they were of an age to practise manly arts, namely hunting and

such other pursuits as befit noblemen, they became studious

and clever in the liberal arts. Edward and Ethelswitha were

bred up in the king's court, and received great attention from

their servants and nurses; nay, they continue to this day,

with the love of all about them, and shew affability, and even

gentleness, towards all, both foreigners and natives, and are

in complete subjection to their father; nor, among their other

studies which appertain to this life and are fit for noble

youths, are they suffered to pass their time idly and

unprofitably, without learning the liberal arts; for they have

carefully learned the Psalms and Saxon books, especially the

Saxon Poems, and are continually in the habit of making use of

books.' The schools of learning, to which Asser alludes in

this passage, as formed for the use of the king's children and

the sons of his nobles, are again mentioned elsewhere by the

same author, as 'the school which he had studiously collected

together, consisting of many of the nobility of his own

nation:' and in a third passage, Asser speaks of the 'sons of

the nobility who were bred up in the royal household.' It is

clear, then, from these expressions, that the king's exertions

to spread learning among his nobles and to educate his own

children, were of a most active and personal nature,

unconnected with any institutions of a more public character:

the school was kept in his own household, and not in a public

seat of learning. We may perhaps adduce these expressions of

Asser as militating against the notion, that an University or

Public Seminary of Learning existed in the days of Alfred.

Though it is most probable that the several monasteries, and

other societies of monks and churchmen, would employ a portion

of their idle time in teaching youth, and prosecuting their

own studies; yet there is no proof that an authorized seat of

learning, such as the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge,

existed in England, until many hundred years after the time of

Alfred."

_J. A. Giles, Life and Times of Alfred the Great, chapter 21._

EDUCATION:

Saracenic and Moorish learning.

"Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste

for learning and for elegant amenities found their way into

Spain from all adjoining countries; a practice in subsequent

years still more indulged in, when it became illustrated by

the brilliant success of Gilbert, who ... passed from the

Infidel University of Cordova to the papacy of Rome. The

khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the

fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature.

They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is

said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every

mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of

the poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the

precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there

were academies, usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty

apartments, each calculated for accommodating four students;

the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova,

Granada, and other great cities, there were universities

frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the Mohammedan

maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public

importance than any particular religious opinions he may

entertain. In this they followed the example of the Asiatic

khalif, Haroun Alraschid, who actually conferred the

superintendence of his schools on John Masué, a Nestorian

Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast

with the intolerance of Europe. ... In the universities some

of the professors of polite literature gave lectures on Arabic

classical works; others taught rhetoric or composition, or

mathematics, or astronomy. From these institutions many of the

practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held

Commencements, at which poems were read and orations delivered

in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these

schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly

for medicine. With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable,

the Arabians boasted of their language as being the most

perfect spoken by man. ... It is not then surprising that, in

the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the study of

language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were

produced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those

now in use, were composed; their copiousness is indicated by

the circumstance that one of them consisted of sixty volumes,

the definition of each word being illustrated or sustained by

quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They had

also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as

the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn

Abdallah, of Granada."

_J. W. Draper, History of the Intellectual Development of

Europe, volume 2, chapter 2._

"The Saracenic kings formed libraries of unparalleled size and

number. That of Hakem amounted to 600,000 volumes, of which 44

were employed in the mere catalogue. Upwards of 70 public

libraries were established in his dominions. 100,000 volumes

were numbered in the library of Cairo, and were freely lent to

the studious citizen. The taste of the sovereign communicated

itself to the subject, and a private doctor declared that his

books were sufficient to load 400 camels.

{691}

Nor were the Saracens less attentive to the foundation

of schools and colleges. Eighty of the latter institutions

adorned Cordova in the reign of Hakem; in the fifteenth

century fifty were scattered over the city and plain of

Granada. 200,000 dinars (about £100,000 sterling) were

expended on the foundation of a single college at Baghdad. It

was endowed with an annual revenue of 15,000 dinars, and was

attended by 6,000 students. The princes of the house of Omeya

honoured the Spanish academies by their presence and studies,

and competed, not without success, for the prizes of learning.

Numerous schools for the purpose of elementary instruction

were founded by a long series of monarchs. ... In this manner

the Arabians, within two centuries, constructed an apparatus

for mental improvement which hitherto had not been equalled

save in Alexandria, and to which the Church, after ruling the

intellect of Europe for more than five hundred years, could

offer no parallel."

_The Intellectual Revival of the Middle Ages

(Westminster Review, January, 1876)._

EDUCATION:

Scholasticism.

Schoolmen.

In the later times of the Roman empire, "the loss of the

dignity of political freedom, the want of the cheerfulness of

advancing prosperity, and the substitution of the less

philosophical structure of the Latin language for the delicate

intellectual mechanism of the Greek, fixed and augmented the

prevalent feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men forgot,

or feared, to consult nature, to seek for new truths, to do

what the great discoverers of other times had done; they were

content to consult libraries, to study and defend old

opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. They sought

their philosophy in accredited treatises, and dared not

question such doctrines as they there found. ... In the mean

time the Christian religion had become the leading subject of

men's thoughts; and divines had put forward its claims to be,

not merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of

reconciling them to their heavenly Master, but also to be a

Philosophy in the widest sense in which the term had been

used;--a consistent speculative view of man's condition and

nature, and of the world in which he is placed. ... It was

held, without any regulating principle, that the philosophy

which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses

of heathen antiquity, and the philosophy which was deduced

from, and implied by, the Revelations made by God to man, must

be identical; and, therefore, that Theology is the only true

philosophy. ... This view was confirmed by the opinion which

prevailed, concerning the nature of philosophical truth; a

view supported by the theory of Plato, the practice of

Aristotle, and the general propensities of the human mind: I

mean the opinion that all science may be obtained by the use

of reasoning alone;--that by analyzing and combining the

notions which common language brings before us, we may learn

all that we can know. Thus Logic came to include the whole of

Science; and accordingly this Abelard expressly maintained.

... Thus a Universal Science was established, with the

authority of a Religious Creed. Its universality rested on

erroneous views of the relation of words and truth; its

pretensions as a science were admitted by the servile temper

of men's intellects; and its religious authority was assigned

it, by making all truth part of religion. And as Religion

claimed assent within her own jurisdiction under the most

solemn and imperative sanctions, Philosophy shared in her

imperial power, and dissent from their doctrines was no longer

blameless or allowable. Error became wicked, dissent became

heresy; to reject the received human doctrines, was nearly the

same as to doubt the Divine declarations. The Scholastic

Philosophy claimed the assent of all believers. The external

form, the details, and the text of this Philosophy, were

taken, in a great measure, from Aristotle; though, in the

spirit, the general notions, and the style of interpretation,

Plato and the Platonists had no inconsiderable share. ... It

does not belong to our purpose to consider either the

theological or the metaphysical doctrines which form so large

a portion of the treatises of the schoolmen. Perhaps it may

hereafter appear, that some light is thrown on some of the

questions which have occupied metaphysicians in all ages, by

that examination of the history of the Progressive Sciences in

which we are now engaged; but till we are able to analyze the

leading controversies of this kind, it would be of little

service to speak of them in detail. It may be noticed,

however, that many of the most prominent of them refer to the

great question, 'What is the relation between actual things

and general terms?' Perhaps in modern times, the actual things

would be more commonly taken as the point to start from; and

men would begin by considering how classes and universals are

obtained from individuals. But the schoolmen, founding their

speculations on the received modes of considering such

subjects, to which both Aristotle and Plato had contributed,

travelled in the opposite direction, and endeavored to

discover how individuals were deduced from genera and

species;--what was 'the Principle of Individuation.' This was

variously stated by different reasoners. Thus Bonaventura

solves the difficulty by the aid of the Aristotelian

distinction of Matter and Form. The individual derives from

the Form the property of being something, and from the Matter

the property of being that particular thing. Duns Scotus, the

great adversary of Thomas Aquinas in theology, placed the

principle of Individuation in 'a certain determining positive

entity,' which his school called Hæcceity or 'thisness.' 'Thus

an individual man is Peter, because his humanity is combined

with Petreity.' The force of abstract terms is a curious

question, and some remarkable experiments in their use had

been made by the Latin Aristotelians before this time. In the

same way in which we talk of the quantity and quality of a

thing, they spoke of its 'quiddity.' We may consider the reign

of mere disputation as fully established at the time of which

we are now speaking [the Middle Ages]; and the only kind of

philosophy henceforth studied was one in which no sound

physical science had or could have a place."

_W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences,

book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1)._

"Scholasticism was philosophy in the service of established

and accepted theological doctrines. ... More particularly,

Scholasticism was the reproduction of ancient philosophy under

the control of ecclesiastical doctrine. ... The name of

Scholastics (doctores scholastici) which was given to the

teachers of the septem liberales artes [seven liberal arts]

(grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, in the Trivium; arithmetic,

geometry, music and astronomy, in the Quadrivium), or at least

some of them, in the Cloister-Schools founded by Charlemagne,

as also to teachers of theology, was afterwards given to all

who occupied themselves with the sciences, and especially with

philosophy. ... Johannes Scotus, or Erigena [ninth century]

is the earliest noteworthy philosopher of the Scholastic

period. He was of Scottish nationality, but was probably born

and brought up in Ireland. At the call of Charles the Bald he

emigrated to France."

_F. Ueberweg, History of Philosophy,

volume 1, pages 355-484._

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"Scholasticism, at the last, from the prodigious mental

activity which it kept up, became a tacit universal

insurrection against authority: it was the swelling of the

ocean before the storm. ... It was a sign of a great awakening

of the human mind when theologians thought it both their duty

and their privilege to philosophize. There was a vast waste of

intellectual labor, but still it was intellectual labor, and,

as we shall see, it was not in the end unfruitful."

_C. J. Stillé, Studies in Mediæval

History, chapter 13._

"Scholasticism had its hour of glory, its erudite doctors, its

eloquent professors, chief among whom was Abelard (1070-1142).

... At a time when printing did not exist, when manuscript

copies were rare, a teacher who combined knowledge with the

gift of speech was a phenomenon of incomparable interest, and

students flocked from all parts of Europe to take advantage of

his lectures. Abelard is the most brilliant representative of

the scholastic pedagogy, with an original and personal

tendency towards the emancipation of the mind. 'It is

ridiculous,' he said, 'to preach to others what we can neither

make them understand nor understand ourselves.' With more

boldness than Saint Anselm, he applied dialectics to theology,

and attempted to reason out the grounds of his faith. The

seven liberal arts constituted what may be called the

secondary instruction of the Middle Age, such as was given in

the claustral or conventual schools, and later, in the

universities. The liberal arts were distributed into two

courses of study, known as the 'trivium' and the 'quadrivium.'

The 'trivium' comprised grammar (Latin grammar, of course),

dialectics, or logic, and rhetoric; and the 'quadrivium,'

music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is important to

note the fact that this programme contains only abstract and

formal studies,--no real and concrete studies. The sciences

which teach us to know man and the world, such as history,

ethics, the physical and natural sciences, were omitted and

unknown, save perhaps in a few convents of the Benedictines.

Nothing which can truly educate man, and develop his faculties

as a whole, enlists the attention of the Middle Age. From a

course of study thus limited there might come skillful

reasoners and men formidable in argument, but never fully

developed men. The methods employed in the ecclesiastical

schools of the Middle Age were in accord with the spirit of

the times, when men were not concerned about liberty and

intellectual freedom; and when they thought more about the

teaching of dogmas than about the training of the

intelligence. The teachers recited or read their lectures, and

the pupils learned by heart. The discipline was harsh. Corrupt

human nature was distrusted. In 1363, pupils were forbidden

the use of benches and chairs, on the pretext that such high

seats were an encouragement to pride. For securing obedience,

corporal chastisements were used and abused. The rod is in

fashion in the fifteenth as it was in the fourteenth century.

'There is no other difference,' says an historian, 'except

that the rods in the fifteenth century are twice as long as

those in the fourteenth.'"

_G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,

trans. by W. H. Payne, chapter 4._

EDUCATION: Universities, Their Rise.

Abelard.

"Up to the end of the eleventh century the instruction was,

speaking generally, and allowing for transitory periods of

revival, and for a few exceptional schools, a shrunken

survival of the old 'trivium et quadrivium.' The lessons, when

not dictated and learnt by heart from notes, were got up from

bald epitomes. All that was taught, moreover, was taught

solely with a view to 'pious uses.' Criticism did not exist;

the free spirit of speculation could not, of course, exist.

... As we approach the period which saw the birth of those

institutions known as Studia Publica or Generalia, and ere

long to be known as 'universities,' we have to extend our

vision and recognize the circumstances of the time, and those

changes in the social condition of Europe which made great

central schools possible--schools to be frequented not merely

by the young ecclesiastic, but by laymen. Among other causes

which led to the diffusion of a demand for education among the

laity, was, I think, the institution or reorganization of

municipalities. It was about the end of the eleventh century

that the civic Communes (Communia) began to seek and obtain,

from royal and other authorities, charters of incorporation

constituting their internal government and conferring certain

freedoms and privileges as against the encroachment of lay and

ecclesiastical feudal barons. ... About the same time, and

somewhat prior to this, trade guilds had been formed in many

cities for mutual protection, the advancement of commerce, and

the internal regulation of the various crafts. There

immediately followed a desire for schools in the more

important commercial towns. In Italy such schools arose in

Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and Florence; and in Germany they

arose in Lübeck, Hamburg, Breslau, Nordhausen, Stettin,

Leipsic, and Nürnberg. The distinctive characteristic of these

city schools was, that they do not seem to have been under the

direct control of the Church, or to have been always taught by

priests; further, that the native tongue (German or Italian,

as the case might be) was taught. Reading, writing, and a

little arithmetic seem to have formed the staple of the

instruction. The custom of dictating, writing down, and then

learning by heart what was written--universal in the schools

of the preceding centuries--was, of course, still followed in

these burgh schools. This custom was almost inevitable. ...

The increased communication with Africa and the East through

the Crusades had introduced men to a standard of learning

among the Arabs, unknown in Europe. Outside the school, the

order of chivalry had introduced a new and higher ethical

spirit than had been known in the previous centuries. Civic

communities and trade guilds were forming themselves and

seeking charters of incorporation. Above all; the Crusades, by

stimulating the ardour and exciting the intellects of men, had

unsettled old convention by bringing men of all ranks within

the sacred circle of a common enthusiasm, and into contact

with foreign civilizations.

{693}

The desire for a higher education, and the impulse to more

profound investigation, that characterized the beginning and

course of the twelfth century, was thus only a part of a

widespread movement, political and moral. ... While the

Romano-Hellenic schools had long disappeared, there still

existed, in many towns, episcopal schools of a high class,

many of which might be regarded as continuations of the old

imperial provincial institutions. ... In Bologna and Paris,

Rheims and Naples, it was so. The arts curriculum professed in

these centres was, for the time and state of knowledge, good.

These schools, indeed, had never quite lost the fresh impulse

given by Charlemagne and his successors. ... According to my

view of educational history, the great 'studia publica' or

'generalia' arose out of them. They were themselves, in a

narrow sense, already 'studia publica.' ... Looking, first, to

the germ out of which the universities grew, I think we must

say that the universities may be regarded as a natural

development of the cathedral and monastery schools; but if we

seek for an external motive force urging men to undertake the

more profound and independent study of the liberal arts, we

can find it only in the Saracenic schools of Bagdad, Babylon,

Alexandria, and Cordova. ... To fix precisely the date of the

rise of the first specialized schools or universities is

impossible, for the simple reason that they were not founded.

... The simplest account of the new university origins is the

most correct. It would appear that certain active-minded men

of marked eminence began to give instruction in medical

subjects at Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and

manner not previously attempted, to youths who had left the

monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to equip

themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked to them; and

the more able of these students, finding that there was a

public demand for this higher specialized instruction,

remained at headquarters, and themselves became teachers or

doctors. The Church did not found universities any more than

it founded the order of chivalry. They were founded by a

concurrence (not wholly fortuitous) of able men who had

something they wished to teach, and of youths who desired to

learn. None the less were the acquiescence and protection of

Church and State necessary in those days for the fostering of

these infant seminaries. ... Of the three great schools which

we have named, there is sufficient ground for believing that

the first to reach such a development as to entitle it to the

name of a studium generale or university was the 'Schola

Salernitana,' although it never was a university, technically

speaking."

_S. S. Laurie, Rise and Early Constitution of

Universities, lectures 6-7._

"Ideas, till this time scattered, or watched over in the

various ecclesiastical schools, began to converge to a common

centre. The great name of University was recognised in the

capital of France, at the moment that the French tongue had

become almost universal. The conquests of the Normans, and the

first crusade, had spread its powerfully philosophic idiom in

every direction, to England, to Sicily, and to Jerusalem. This

circumstance alone invested France, central France, Paris,

with an immense attractive power. By degrees, Parisian French

became a proverb. Feudalism had found its political centre in

the royal city; and this city was about to become the capital

of human thought. The beginner of this revolution was not a

priest, but a handsome young man of brilliant talents, amiable

and of noble family. None wrote love verses, like his, in the

vulgar tongue; he sang them, too. Besides, his erudition was

extraordinary for that day. He alone, of his time, knew both

Greek and Hebrew. May be, he had studied at the Jewish schools

(there were many in the South), or under the rabbins of

Troyes, Vitry, or of Orleans. There were then in Paris two

leading schools: the old Episcopal school of the parvis Notre

Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the hill, where shone

William of Champeaux. Abelard joined his pupils, submitted to

him his doubts, puzzled him, laughed at him, and closed his

mouth. He would have served Anselm of Laon the same, had not

the professor, being a bishop, expelled him from his diocese.

In this fashion this knight-errant of logic went on, unhorsing

the most celebrated champions. He himself declared that he had

only renounced tilt and tourney through his passion for

intellectual combats. Henceforward, victorious and without a

rival, he taught at Paris and Melun, the residence of

Louis-le-Gros, and the lords flocked to hear him; anxious to

encourage one of themselves, who had discomfited the priests

on their own ground, and had silenced the ablest clerks.

Abelard's wonderful success is easily explained. All the lore

and learning which had been smothered under the heavy,

dogmatical forms of clerical instruction, and hidden in the

rude Latin of the middle age, suddenly appeared arrayed in the

simple elegance of antiquity, so that men seemed for the first

time to hear and recognise a human voice. The daring youth

simplified and explained everything; presenting philosophy in

a familiar form, and bringing it home to men's bosoms. He

hardly suffered the obscure or supernatural to rest on the

hardest mysteries of faith. It seemed as if till then the

Church had lisped and stammered; while Abelard spoke. All was

made smooth and easy. He treated religion courteously and

handled her gently, but she melted away in his hands. Nothing

embarrassed the fluent speaker: he reduced religion to

philosophy, and morality to humanity. 'Crime,' he said,

'consists not in the act, but in the intention.' It followed,

that there was no such thing as sins of habit or of

ignorance--'They who crucified Jesus, not knowing him to have

been the Saviour, were guilty of no sin.' What is original

sin?--'Less a sin, than a punishment.' But then, wherefore the

redemption and the passion, if there was no sin?--'It was an

act of pure love. God desired to substitute the law of love

for that of fear.'"

_J. Michelet, History of France,

volume 1, book 4, chapter 4._

"It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, to

understand the effect he produced upon his hearers by the

force of his argumentation, whether studied or improvised, and

by the ardor and animation of his eloquence, and the grace and

attractiveness of his person. But the testimony of his

contemporaries is unanimous; even his adversaries themselves

render justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever

reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic tool

with more address; and assuredly, something of these qualities

is to be found in the writings he has left us. But the intense

life, the enthusiastic ardor which enlivened his discourses,

the beauty of his face, and the charm of his voice cannot be

imparted by cold manuscripts.

{694}

Héloise, whose name is inseparably linked with that of her

unfortunate husband, and whom Charles de Rémusat does not

hesitate to call 'the first of women'; who, in any case, was a

superior person of her time; Héloise, who loved Abelard with

'an immoderate love,' and who, under the veil of a

'religieuse' and throughout the practice of devotional duties,

remained faithful to him until death; Héloise said to him in

her famous letter of 1136: 'Thou hast two things especially

which could instantly win thee the hearts of all women: the

charm thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking and

singing.' External gifts combined with intellectual qualities

to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds and

hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a knowledge as

profound as was compatible with the resources of his time, and

a vast erudition which caused his contemporaries to consider

him a master of universal knowledge. ... How can one be

astonished that with such qualities Abelard gained an

extraordinary ascendency over his age; that, having become the

intellectual ruler and, as it were, the dictator of the

thought of the twelfth century, he should have succeeded in

attracting to his chair and in retaining around it thousands

of young men; the first germ of those assemblages of students

who were to constitute the universities several years later?

... It is not alone by the outward success of his scholastic

apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as the precursor

of the modern spirit and the promoter of the foundation of the

universities; it is also by his doctrine, or at least by his

method. ... No one claims that Abelard was the first who, in

the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics into theology,

reason into authority. In the ninth century, Scotus Erigena

had already said: 'Authority is derived from reason.'

Scholasticism, which is nothing but logic enlightening

theology, an effort of reason to demonstrate dogma, had begun

before Abelard; but it was he who gave movement and life to

the method by lending it his power and his renown."

_G. Compayré, Abelard, part 1, chapter 2-3._

EDUCATION: Latin Language.

"Greek was an unknown tongue: only a very few of the Latin

classics received a perfunctory attention: Boethius was

preferred to Cicero, and the Moral Sentences ascribed to Cato

to either. Rules couched in barbarous Latin verse were

committed to memory. Aristotle was known only in incorrect

Latin translations, which many of the taught, and some of the

teachers probably, supposed to be the originals. Matters were

not mended when the student, having passed through the

preliminary course of arts, advanced to the study of the

sciences. Theology meant an acquaintance with the 'Sentences'

of Peter Lombard, or, in other cases, with the 'Summa' of

Thomas Aquinas; in medicine, Galen was an authority from which

there was no appeal. On every side the student was fenced

round by traditions and prejudices, through which it was

impossible to break. In truth, he had no means of knowing that

there was a wider and fairer world beyond. Till the classical

revival came, every decade made the yoke of prescription

heavier, and each generation of students, therefore, a feebler

copy of the last."

_C. Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation, chapter 3._

"What at first had been everywhere a Greek became in Western

Europe a Latin religion. The discipline of Rome maintained the

body of doctrine which the thought of Greece had defined. A

new Latin version, superseding alike the venerable Greek

translation of the Old Testament and the original words of

Evangelists and Apostles, became the received text of Holy

Scripture. The Latin Fathers acquired an authority scarcely

less binding. The ritual, lessons, and hymns of the Church

were Latin. Ecclesiastics transacted the business of civil

departments requiring education. Libraries were armories of

the Church: grammar was part of her drill. The humblest

scholar was enlisted, in her service: she recruited her ranks

by founding Latin schools. 'Education in the rudiments of

Latin,' says Hallam, 'was imparted to a greater number of

individuals than at present;' and, as they had more use for it

than at present, it was longer retained. If a boy of humble

birth had a taste for letters, or if a boy of high birth had a

distaste for arms, the first step was to learn Latin. His foot

was then on the ladder. He might rise by the good offices of

his family to a bishopric, or to the papacy itself by merit

and the grace of God. Latin enabled a Greek from Tarsus

(Theodore) to become the founder of learning in the English

church; and a Yorkshireman (Alcuin) to organize the schools of

Charlemagne. Without Latin, our English Winfrid (St. Boniface)

could not have been apostle of Germany and reformer of the

Frankish Church; or the German Albert, master at Paris of

Thomas Aquinas; or Nicholas Breakspeare, Pope of Rome. With

it, Western Christendom was one vast field of labor: calls for

self-sacrifice, or offers of promotion, might come from north

or south, from east or west. Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was

made the groundwork of education; not for the beauty of its

classical literature, nor because the study of a dead language

was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of acquiring

a masterly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because

it was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe,

employed for public business, literature, philosophy, and

science; above all, in God's providence, essential to the

unity, and therefore enforced by the authority of, the Western

Church."

_C. S. Parker, Essay on the History of Classical Education

(quoted in Dr. Henry Barnard's "Letters, Essays and

Thoughts on Studies and Conduct," page 467)._

EDUCATION: France.

"The countries of western Europe, leavened, all of them, by

the one spirit of the feudal and catholic Middle Age, formed

in some sense one community, and were more associated than

they have been since the feudal and catholic unity of the

Middle Age has disappeared and given place to the divided and

various life of modern Europe. In the mediæval community

France held the first place. It is now well known that to

place in the 15th century the revival of intellectual life and

the re-establishment of civilisation, and to treat the period

between the 5th century, when ancient civilisation was ruined

by the barbarians, and the 15th, when the life and intellect

of this civilisation reappeared and transformed the world, as

one chaos, is a mistake. The chaos ends about the 10th

century; in the 11th there truly comes the first

re-establishment of civilisation, the first revival of

intellectual life; the principal centre of this revival is

France, its chief monuments of literature are in the French

language, its chief monuments of art are the French cathedrals.

{695}

This revival fills the 12th and 13th centuries with its

activity and with its works; all this time France has the

lead; in the 14th century the lead passes to Italy; but now

comes the commencement of a wholly new period, the period of

the Renaissance properly so called, the beginning of modern

European life, the ceasing of the life of the feudal and

catholic Middle Age. The anterior and less glorious

Renaissance, the Renaissance within the limits of the Middle

Age itself, a revival which came to a stop and could not

successfully develop itself, but which has yet left profound

traces in our spirit and our literature,--this revival belongs

chiefly to France. France, then, may well serve as a typical

country wherein to trace the mediæval growth of intellect and

learning; above all she may so stand for us, whose connection

with her in the Middle Age, owing to our Norman kings and the

currency of her language among our cultivated class, was so

peculiarly close; so close that the literary and intellectual

development of the two countries at that time intermingles,

and no important event can happen in that of the one without

straightway affecting and interesting that of the other. ...

With the hostility of the long French Wars of Edward the Third

comes the estrangement, never afterwards diminishing but

always increasing."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent,

chapter 1._

EDUCATION:

University of Paris.

"The name of Abelard recalls the European celebrity and

immense intellectual ferment of this school [of Paris] in the

12th century. But it was in the first year of the following

century, the 13th, that it received a charter from Philip

Augustus, and thenceforth the name of University of Paris

takes the place of that of School of Paris. Forty-nine years

later was founded University College, Oxford, the oldest

college of the oldest English University. Four nations

composed the University of Paris,--the nation of France, the

nation of Picardy, the nation of Normandy, and (signal mark of

the close intercourse which then existed between France and

us!) the nation of England. The four nations united formed the

faculty of arts. The faculty of theology was created in 1257,

that of law in 1271, that of medicine in 1274. Theology, law,

and medicine had each their Dean; arts had four Procurators,

one for each of the four nations composing this faculty. Arts

elected the rector of the University, and had possession of

the University chest and archives. The preeminence of the

Faculty of Arts indicates, as indeed does the very development

of the University, an idea, gradually strengthening itself, of

a lay instruction to be no longer absorbed in theology, but

separable from it. The growth of a lay and modern spirit in

society, the preponderance of the crown over the papacy, of

the civil over the ecclesiastical power, is the great feature

of French history in the 14th century, and to this century

belongs the highest development of the University. ... The

importance of the University in the 13th and 14th centuries

was extraordinary. Men's minds were possessed with a wonderful

zeal for knowledge, or what was then thought knowledge, and

the University of Paris was the great fount from which this

knowledge issued. The University and those depending on it

made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the

population of Paris; when the University went on a solemn

occasion in procession to Saint Denis, the head of the

procession, it is said, had reached St. Denis before the end

of it had left its starting place in Paris. It had immunities

from taxation, it had jurisdiction of its own, and its members

claimed to be exempt from that of the provost of Paris; the

kings of France strongly favoured the University, and leaned

to its side when the municipal and academical authorities were

in conflict; if at any time the University thought itself

seriously aggrieved, it had recourse to a measure which threw

Paris into dismay,--it shut up its schools and suspended its

lectures. In a body of this kind the discipline could not be

strict, and the colleges were created to supply centres of

discipline which the University in itself,--an apparatus

merely of teachers and lecture-rooms,--did not provide. The

14th century is the time when, one after another, with

wonderful rapidity, the French colleges appeared. Navarre,

Montaigu, Harcourt, names so familiar in the school annals of

France, date from the first quarter of the 14th century. The

College of Navarre was founded by the queen of Philip the

Fair, in 1304; the College of Montaigu, where Erasmus,

Rabelais, and Ignatius Loyola were in their time students, was

founded in 1314 by two members of the family of Montaigu, one

of them Archbishop of Rouen. The majority of these colleges

were founded by magnates of the church, and designed to

maintain a certain number of bursars, or scholars, during

their university course. ... Along with the University of

Paris there existed in France, in the 14th century, the

Universities of Orleans, Angers, Toulouse, and Montpellier.

Orleans was the great French school for the study of the civil

law. ... The civil law was studiously kept away from the

University of Paris, for fear it should drive out other

studies, and especially the study of theology; so late as the

year 1679 there was no chair of Roman or even of French law in

the University of Paris. The strength of this University was

concentrated on theology and arts, and its celebrity arose

from the multitude of students which in these branches of

instruction it attracted."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent,

chapter 1._

EDUCATION:

The Sorbonne.

The University of Paris acquired the name of "the Sorbonne"

"from Robert of Sorbon, aulic chaplain of St. Louis, who

established one of the 63 colleges of the University. ... The

name of Sorbonne was first applied to the theological faculty

only; but at length the whole University received this

designation."

_J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History,

volume 3, page 24, foot-note._

EDUCATION:

The Nations.

"The precise date of the organization at Paris of the four

Nations which maintained themselves there until the latest

days of the university escapes the most minute research.

Neither for the Nations nor for the Faculties was there any

sudden blossoming, but rather a slow evolution, an insensible

preparation for a definite condition. Already at the close of

the twelfth century there is mention in contemporary documents

of the various provinces of the school of Paris. The Nations

are mentioned in the bulls of Gregory IX. (1231) and of

Innocent IV. (1245). In 1245, they already elect their

attendants, the beadles. In 1249, the existence of the four

Nations--France, Picardy, Normandy, and England--is proved by

their quarrels over the election of a rector. ... Until the

definitive constitution of the Faculties, that is, until 1270

or 1280, the four Nations included the totality of students

and masters.

{696}

After the formation of the Faculties, the four Nations

comprised only the members of the Faculty of Arts and those

students of other Faculties who had not yet obtained the grade

of Bachelor of Arts. The three superior Faculties, Theology,

Medicine, and Law, had nothing in common thenceforward with

the Nations. ... At Bologna, as at Paris, the Nations were

constituted in the early years of the thirteenth century, but

under a slightly different form. There the students were

grouped in two distinct associations, the Ultramontanes and

the Citramontanes, the foreigners and the Italians, who formed

two universities, the Transalpine and the Cisalpine, each with

its chiefs, who were not styled procurators but counsellors;

the first was composed of eighteen Nations and the second of

seventeen. At Padua twenty-two Nations were enumerated.

Montpellier had only three in 1339,--the Catalans, the

Burgundians, the Provençals; each sub-divided, however, into

numerous groups. Orleans had ten: France, Germany, Lorraine,

Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, Guyanne, and

Scotland; Poitiers had four: France, Aquitaine, Touraine, and

Berry; Prague had four also, in imitation of Paris; Lerida had

twelve, in imitation of Bologna, etc. But whether more or less

numerous, and whatever their special organization, the Nations

in all the universities bore witness to that need of

association which is one of the characteristics of the Middle

Ages. ... One of the consequences of their organization was to

prevent the blending and fusion of races, and to maintain the

distinction of provinces and nationalities among the pupils of

the same university."

_G. Compayré, Abelard, part 2, chapter 2._

EDUCATION: Italy

Revived Study of Roman Law.

"It is known that Justinian established in Rome a school of

law, similar to those of Constantinople and Berytus. When Rome

ceased to be subject to Byzantine rule, this law-school seems

to have been transferred to Ravenna, where it continued to keep

alive the knowledge of the Justinian system. That system

continued to be known and used, from century to century, in a

tradition never wholly interrupted, especially in the free

cities of Northern Italy. It seems even to have penetrated

beyond Italy into Southern France. But it was destined to

have, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a very

extraordinary revival. This revival was part of a general

movement of the European mind which makes its appearance at

that epoch. The darkness which settled down on the world, at

the time of the barbarian invasions, had its midnight in the

ninth and tenth centuries. In the eleventh, signs of progress

and improvement begin to show themselves, becoming more

distinct towards its close, when the period of the Crusades

was opening upon Europe. Just at this time we find a famous

school of law established in Bologna, and frequented by

multitudes of pupils, not only from all parts of Italy, but

from Germany, France, and other countries. The basis of all

its instruction was the Corpus Juris Civilis [see CORPUS JURIS

CIVILIS]. Its teachers, who constitute a series of

distinguished jurists extending over a century and a half,

devoted themselves to the work of expounding the text and

elucidating the principles of the Corpus Juris, and especially

the Digest. From the form in which they recorded and handed

down the results of their studies, they have obtained the name

of glossators. On their copies of the Corpus Juris they were

accustomed to write glosses, i. e., brief marginal

explanations and remarks. These glosses came at length to be

an immense literature. ... Here, then, in this school of the

glossators, at Bologna, in the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries, the awakened mind of Europe was brought to

recognize the value of the Corpus Juris, the almost

inexhaustible treasure of juristic principles, precepts,

conceptions, reasonings, stored up in it."

_Jas. Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law, lecture 2._

EDUCATION: Italy

University of Bologna.

"In the twelfth century the law school of the University of

Bologna eclipsed all others in Europe. The two great branches

of legal study in the middle ages, the Roman law and the canon

law, began in the teaching of Irnerius and Gratian at Bologna

in the first half of the twelfth century. At the beginning of

this century the name of university first replaces that of

school; and it is said that the great university degree, that

of doctor, was first instituted at Bologna, and that the

ceremony for conferring it was devised there. From Bologna the

degree and its ceremonial travelled to Paris. A bull of Pope

Honorius, in 1220, says that the study of 'bomæ literæ' had at

that time made the city of Bologna famous throughout the

world. Twelve thousand students from all parts of Europe are

said to have been congregated there at once. The different

nations had their colleges, and of colleges at Bologna there

were fourteen. These were founded and endowed by the

liberality of private persons; the university professors, the

source of attraction to this multitude of students, were paid

by the municipality, who found their reward in the fame,

business, and importance brought to their town by the

university. The municipalities of the great cities of northern

and central Italy were not slow in following the example of

Bologna; in the thirteenth century Padua, Modena, Piacenza,

Parma, Ferrara, had each its university. Frederick II. founded

that of Naples in 1224; in the fourteenth century were added

those of Pavia, Perugia, Pisa, and Turin. Colleges of

examiners, or, as we should say, boards, were created by Papal

bull to examine in theology, and by imperial decree to examine

in law and medicine. It was in these studies of law and

medicine that the Italian universities were chiefly

distinguished."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities

on the Continent, chapter 9._

"The Bologna School of jurisprudence was several times

threatened with total extinction. In the repeated difficulties

with the city the students would march out of the town, bound

by a solemn oath not to return; and if a compromise was to be

effected, a papal dispensation from that oath must first be

obtained. Generally on such occasions, the privileges of the

university were reaffirmed and often enlarged. In other cases,

a quarrel between the pope and the city, and the ban placed

over the latter, obliged the students to leave; and then the

city often planned and furthered the removal of the

university. King Frederic II., in 1226, during the war against

Bologna, dissolved the school of jurisprudence, which seems to

have been not at all affected thereby, and he formally

recalled that ordinance in the following year. Originally the

only school in Bologna was the school of jurisprudence, and in

connection with it alone a university could be formed. ....

Subsequently eminent teachers of medicine and the liberal arts

appeared, and their pupils, too, sought to form a university

and to choose their own rector.

{697}

As late as 1295 this innovation was disputed by the jurists

and interdicted by the city, so that they had to connect

themselves with the university of jurisprudence. But a few

years later we find them already in possession again of a few

rectors, and in 1316 their right was formally recognized in a

compromise between the university of jurisprudence and the

city. The students called themselves 'philosophi et medici' or

'physici'; also by the common name of 'artistæ.' Finally a

school of theology, founded by pope Innocent VI., was added in

the second half of the 14th century; it was placed under the

bishop, and organized in imitation of the school at Paris, so

that it was a 'universitas magistrorum,' not 'scholarium.' As,

however, by this arrangement the students of theology in the

theological university had no civil privileges of their own,

they were considered individually as belonging to the

'artistæ.' From this time Bologna had four universities, two

of jurisprudence, the one of medicine and philosophy, and the

theological, the first two having no connection with the

others, forming a unit, and therefore frequently designated as

one university."

_F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages

(Barnard's American Journal of Education,

volume 22, pages 278-279)._

EDUCATION:

Other Universities.

"The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of

Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth

century. Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on the

personal conduct of the principal professors, who, when they

were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the habit

of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high

schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Reggio, and

elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound them to

reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education in a

rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult

in an age when what we have to call an university, consisted

of masters and scholars, without college buildings, without

libraries, without endowments, and without scientific

apparatus. The technical name for such institutions seems to

have been 'studium scholarium,' Italianised into 'studio' or

'studio pubblico.' Among the more permanent results of these

secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the high

school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the

opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circumstances in

1215; the great University of Padua first saw the light in

consequence of political discords forcing the professors to

quit Bologna for a season. The first half of the thirteenth

century witnessed the foundation of these 'studi' in

considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in 1228, the

municipality providing two certified copyists for the

convenience of students who might wish to purchase textbooks.

In 1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy

owed a precocious eminence in literature, established the

University of Naples by an Imperial diploma. With a view to

rendering it the chief seat of learning in his dominions, he

forbade the subjects of the Regno to frequent other schools,

and suppressed the University of Bologna by letters general.

Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard League, defied the

Emperor, and refused to close the schools, which numbered at

that period about ten thousand students of various

nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and

Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and

internal vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities

at this period, interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples.

In the middle of the thirteenth century Salerno proved a

dangerous rival. ... An important group of 'studi pubblici'

owed their origin to Papal or Imperial charters in the first

half of the fourteenth century. That of Perugia was founded in

1307 by a Bull of Clement V. That of Rome dated from 1303, in

which year Boniface VIII. gave it a constitution by a special

edict; but the translation of the Papal See to Avignon caused

it to fall into premature decadence. The University of Pisa

had already existed for some years, when it received a charter

in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in

1321. ... The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon

and Civil Law, Medicine, and Theology. These faculties,

important for the professional education of the public, formed

the staple of the academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric,

Philosophy, and Astronomy were added according to occasion,

the last sometimes including the study of judicial astrology.

If we enquire how the humanists or professors of classic

literature were related to the universities, we find that, at

first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank. The

permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who

enjoyed life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the

Latinists and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary

occupation of the Chair of Rhetoric, with salaries

considerably lower than those of lawyers or physicians."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of

Learning, chapter 3._

"Few of the Italian universities show themselves in their full

vigour till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the

increase of wealth rendered a more systematic care for

education possible. At first there were generally three sorts

of professorships--one for civil law, another for canonical

law, the third for medicine; in course of time professorships

of rhetoric, of philosophy, and of astronomy were added, the

last commonly, though not always, identical with astrology.

The salaries varied greatly in different cases. Sometimes a

capital sum was paid down. With the spread of culture

competition became so active that the different universities

tried to entice away distinguished teachers from one another,

under which circumstances Bologna is said to have sometimes

devoted the half of its public income (20,000 ducats) to the

university. The appointments were as a rule made only for a

certain time, sometimes for only half a year, so that the

teachers were forced to lead a wandering life, like actors.

Appointments for life were, however, not unknown. ... Of the

chairs which have been mentioned, that of rhetoric was

especially sought by the humanist; yet it depended only on his

familiarity with the matter of ancient learning whether or no

he could aspire to those of law, medicine, philosophy, or

astronomy. The inward conditions of the science of the day

were as variable as the outward conditions of the teacher.

Certain jurists and physicians received by far the largest

salaries of all, the former chiefly as consulting lawyers for

the suits and claims of the state which employed them. ...

{698}

Personal intercourse between the teachers and the taught,

public disputations, the constant use of Latin and often of

Greek, the frequent changes of lecturers and the scarcity of

books, gave the studies of that time a colour which we cannot

represent to ourselves without effort. There were Latin

schools in every town of the least importance, not by any

means merely as preparatory to higher education, but because,

next to reading, writing, and arithmetic, the knowledge of

Latin was a necessity; and after Latin came logic. It is to be

noted particularly that these schools did not depend on the

Church, but on the municipality; some of them, too, were

merely private enterprises. This school system, directed by a

few distinguished humanists, not only attained a remarkable

perfection of organisation, but became an instrument of higher

education in the modern sense of the phrase."

_J. Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Period

of the Renaissance in Italy, volume 1, part 3, chapter 5._

EDUCATION: Germany.

Prague and its Offspring.

"The earliest university in Germany was that of Prague. It was

in 1348, under the Emperor Charles IV., when the taste for

letters had revived so signally in Europe, when England may be

said to have possessed her two old universities already for

three centuries, Paris her Sorbonne already for four, that

this university was erected as the first of German

Universities. The idea originated in the mind of the Emperor,

who was educated in Paris, at the university of that town, and

was eagerly taken up by the townspeople of that ancient and

wealthy city, for they foresaw that affluence would shower

upon them if they could induce a numerous crowd of students to

flock together within their walls. But the Pope and the

Emperor took an active part in favouring and authorizing the

institution; they willingly granted to it wide privileges, and

made it entirely independent of Church and State. The teaching

of the professors, and the studies of the students, were

submitted to no control whatever. After the model of the

University of Paris, they divided themselves into different

faculties, and made four such divisions--one for divinity,

another for medical science, a third for law, and a fourth for

philosophy. The last order comprised those who taught and

learned the fine arts and the sciences, which two departments

were separate at Sorbonne. All the German universities have

preserved this outward constitution, and in this, as in many

other circumstances, the precedent of Prague has had a

prevailing influence on her younger sister institutions. The

same thing may be said particularly of the disciplinary tone

of the university. In other countries, universities sprang

from rigid clerical and monastic institutions, or bore a more

or less ecclesiastical character which imposed upon them

certain more retired habits, and a severer kind of discipline.

Prague took from the beginning a course widely different. The

students, who were partly Germans, partly of Slavonian blood,

enjoyed a boundless liberty. They lodged in the houses of the

townspeople, and by their riches, their mental superiority,

and their number (they are recorded to have been as many as

twenty thousand in the year 1409), became the undisputed

masters of the city. The professors and the inhabitants of

Prague, far from checking them, rather protected the

prerogatives of the students, for they found out that all

their prosperity depended on them. ... Not two generations had

passed since the erection of an institution thus constituted,

before Huss and Jerome of Prague began to teach the necessity

of an entire reformation of the Church. The phenomenon is

characteristic of the bold spirit of inquiry that must have

grown up at the new University. However, the political

consequences that attended the promulgation of such doctrines

led almost to the dissolution of the University itself. For,

the German part of the students broke up, in consequence of

repeated and serious quarrels that had taken place with the

Bohemian and Slavonic party, and went to Leipzig, where

straightway a new and purely German University was erected.

While Prague became the seat of a protracted and sanguinary

war, a great number of Universities rose into existence around

it, and attracted the crowds that had formerly flocked to the

Bohemian capital. It appeared as if Germany, though it had

received the impulse from abroad, would leave all other

countries behind itself in the erection and promotion of these

learned institutions, for all the districts of the land vied

with each other in creating universities. Thus arose those of

Rostock, Ingolstadt, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cologne, Erfurt,

Tübingen, Greifswalde, Trèves, Mayence and Bâles-schools which

have partly disappeared again during the political storms of

subsequent ages. The beginning of the sixteenth century added

to them one at Frankfort on the Oder, and another, the most

illustrious of all, Wittenberg. Everyone who is acquainted

with the history and origin of the Reformation, knows what an

important part the latter of these universities took in the

weighty transactions of those times. ... Wittenberg remained

by no means the only champion of Protestantism. At Marburg,

Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstadt, universities of a professedly

Protestant character were erected. These schools became the

cradle and nurseries of the Reformation."

_The Universities of Germany

(Dublin University Magazine, volume 46, pages 83-85)._

"The German universities of the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries were founded in the following order: Prague, 1348;

Vienna, 1388; Erfurt, 1392; Leipsic, 1409; Rostock, 1419;

Greifswald, 1456; Freiburg, 1457; Ingolstadt, 1472; Tübingen,

1477; and Mayence, 1477. Thus, it will be seen that they were

established in quick succession--an unmistakable proof of the

growing scientific interest of the age."

_F. V. N. Painter, History of Education,

chapter 3, section 5 (k)._

EDUCATION: Netherlands.

"Tradition reports that a school had ... been founded at

Utrecht, by some zealous missionary, in the time of Charles

Martel, at which his son Pepin received his education. However

this may have been, the renown of the Utrecht School of St.

Martin is of very ancient date. ... During the invasion by the

Normans, this school at Utrecht was suppressed, but was

reëstablished in 917, and regained its former renown. The

Emperor, Henry the Fowler, placed here his three sons, Otto,

Henry and Bruno, to be educated, of whom the last became

afterward archbishop of Cologne and archduke of Lottringen,

and was noted for his extraordinary learning and friendship

for the poet Prudentius. At the beginning of the 12th century,

Utrecht possessed no less than five flourishing schools,

several of which had each a 'rector' in addition to the

priests who had the general control. At about the same time,

several convents became distinguished as educational

institutions, especially those of Egmond, Nymwegen,

Middleburg, in Zealand, and Aduwert, near Gröningen.

{699}

In Holland, as in Belgium, in addition to the schools that

were attached to the cathedrals, convents, and chapters, there

were established in the course of the twelfth century, by the

more wealthy communities, public schools especially designed

for the instruction of the citizens and laity. It is also

worthy of notice that the authority to open such schools was

always derived from the counts--by whom it was conferred,

sometimes upon the cities as an especial privilege, and

sometimes upon merely private persons as a mark of particular

favor. The jurisdiction of the feudal lords was the same here

as in Belgium; but while in the latter country, with the

exception perhaps of the elementary schools in some of the

cities, the right of supervision everywhere devolved upon the

chapters, instruction in these public schools of Holland was

wholly withdrawn from the clergy, and they were made

essentially secular in their character. The privilege of thus

establishing schools was conferred upon some of the cities at

the following dates:

Dort, by Count Floris V., A. D. 1290;

the Hague, 1322;

Leyden, 1324;

and Rotterdam in 1328, by William III.;

Delft and Amsterdam, in 1334, by William IV.;

Leyden again, 1357;

Haarlem, 1389;

Alkmar, 1398;

Hoorn, 1358 and 1390;

the Hague, 1393;

Schiedam and Ondewater, 1394;

and Rotterdam, in 1402, by Albert of Bavaria.

These schools, adds Stallaert, on the authority of Buddingh,

were generally styled 'School en Schryfambacht,' 'Schoole en

Kostern,' (school and writing offices, schools and clerks'

houses,) and the 'Schoolmijsters' (school-masters) were looked

upon as professional men or craftsmen--as was the case also in

Belgium, where they formed distinct guilds and fraternities.

These public schools of Holland were divided into 'large' and

'small' schools, (groote en bijschoolen,) Latin being taught

in the first division. The institution at Zwolle, attained

special notoriety in the fourteenth century, under the

direction of the celebrated Johan Cele. According to Thomas à

Kempis and Ten Bussche, its pupils numbered about a thousand,

gathered from Holland, Belgium, and the principal provinces of

Germany."

_Public Instruction in Holland

(Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 14)._

EDUCATION: England.

Early Oxford.

"The University of Oxford did not spring into being in any

particular year, or at the bidding of any particular founder:

it was not established by any formal charter of incorporation.

Taking its rise in a small and obscure association of teachers

and learners, it developed spontaneously into a large and

important body, long before its existence was recognised by

prince or by prelate. There were certainly schools at Oxford

in the reign of Henry I., but the previous history of the

place does not throw much light on their origin, or explain

the causes of their popularity. The town seems to have grown

up under the shadow of a nunnery, which is said to have been

founded by St. Frideswyde as far back as the eighth century.

Its authentic annals, however, begin with the year 912, when

it was occupied and annexed by Edward the Elder, King of the

West Saxons. ... Oxford was considered a place of great

strategical importance in the eleventh century. Its position

on the borders of Mercia and Wessex rendered it also,

particularly convenient for parleys between Englishmen and

Danes, and for great national assemblies. ... Retaining for a

while its rank as one of the chief centres of political life

in the south of England, and as a suitable meeting-place for

parliaments and synods, Oxford became thenceforward more and

more distinctively known as a seat of learning and a nursery

of clerks. The schools which existed at Oxford before the

reign of King John, are so seldom and so briefly noticed in

contemporary records, that it would be difficult to show how

they developed into a great university, if it were not for the

analogy of kindred institutions in other countries. There can

be little doubt, however, that the idea of a university, the

systems of degrees and faculties, and the nomenclature of the

chief academical officers, were alike imported into England

from abroad. ... In the earliest and broadest sense of the

term, a university had no necessary connexion with schools or

literature, being merely a community of individuals bound

together by some more or less acknowledged tie. Regarded

collectively in this light, the inhabitants of any particular

town might be said to constitute a university, and in point of

fact the Commonalty of the townsmen of Oxford was sometimes

described as a university in formal documents of the middle

ages. The term was, however, specially applied to the whole

body of persons frequenting the schools of a large studium.

Ultimately it came to be employed in a technical sense as

synonymous with studium, to denote the institution itself.

This last use of the term seems to be of English origin, for

the University of Oxford is mentioned as such in writs and

ordinances of the years 1238, 1240, and 1253, whereas the

greater seat of learning on the banks of the Seine was, until

the year 1263, styled 'the University of the Masters,' or 'the

University of the Scholars,' of Paris. The system of

academical degrees dates from the second half of the twelfth

century."

_H. C. M. Lyte, A History of the University

of Oxford, chapter 1._

"In the early Oxford ... of the twelfth and most of the

thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were

unknown. The University was the only corporation of the

learned, and she struggled into existence after hard fights

with the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The

history of the University begins with the thirteenth century.

She may be said to have come into being as soon as she

possessed common funds and rents, as soon as fines were

assigned, or benefactions contributed to the maintenance of

scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of

fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the

compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year

1214 the Papal Legate, in a letter to his 'beloved sons in

Christ, the burgesses of Oxford,' bade them excuse the

'scholars studying in Oxford' half the rent of their halls, or

hospitia, for the space of ten years. The burghers were also

to do penance, and to feast the poorer students once a year;

but the important point is, that they had to pay that large

yearly fine 'propter suspendium clericorum'--all for the

hanging of the clerks. Twenty-six years after this decision of

the Legate, Robert Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln,

organized the payment and distribution of the fine, and

founded the first of the chests, the chest of St. Frideswyde.

{700}

These chests were a kind of Mont de Piété, and to found them

was at first the favourite form of benefaction. Money was left

in this or that chest, from which students and masters would

borrow, on the security of pledges, which were generally

books, cups, daggers, and so forth. Now, in this affair of

1214 we have a strange passage of history, which happily

illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the

whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which in 1209, had

hanged two clerks, 'in contempt of clerical liberty.' The

matter was taken up by the Legate--in those bad years of King

John, the Pope's viceroy in England--and out of the

humiliation of the town the University gained money,

privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the

things that the University wanted. About these matters there

was a constant strife, in which the Kings as a rule, took part

with the University. ... Thus gradually the University got the

command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the

city, and became masters where they had once been despised,

starveling scholars. ... The result, in the long run, was that

the University received from Edward III. 'a most large

charter, containing many liberties, some that they had before,

and others that he had taken away from the town.' Thus Edward

granted to the University 'the custody of the assize of bread,

wine, and ale,' the supervising of measures and weights, the

sole power of clearing the streets of the town and suburbs.

Moreover, the Mayor and the chief Burghers were condemned

yearly to a sort of public penance and humiliation on St.

Scholastica's Day. Thus, by the middle of the fourteenth

century, the strife of Town and Gown had ended in the complete

victory of the latter."

_A. Lang, Oxford, chapter 2._

"To mark off the Middle Age from the Modern Period of the

University is certainly very difficult. Indeed the earlier

times do not form a homogeneous whole, but appear perpetually

shifting and preparing for a new state. The main transition

however was undoubtedly about the middle of the fourteenth

century; and the Reformation, a remarkable crisis, did but

confirm what had been in progress for more than a century and

a half: so that the Middle Age of the University contained the

thirteenth century, and barely the former half of the

fourteenth. ... There is no question, that during this Middle

Age the English Universities were distinguished far more than

ever afterwards by energy and variety of intellect. Later

times cannot produce a concentration of men eminent in all the

learning and science of the age, such as Oxford and Cambridge

then poured forth, mightily influencing the intellectual

development of all Western Christendom. Their names indeed may

warn us against an undiscriminating disparagement of the

Monasteries, as 'hotbeds of ignorance and stupidity'; when so

many of those worthies were monks of the Benedictine,

Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, or reformed Augustinian

order. But in consequence of this surpassing celebrity, Oxford

became the focus of a prodigious congregation of students, to

which nothing afterwards bore comparison. The same was

probably true of Cambridge in relative proportion. ... A

tolerably well authenticated account, attacked of late by

undue scepticism, fixes [the number of] those of Oxford at

thirty thousand, in the middle of the thirteenth century. The

want indeed of contemporary evidence must make us cautious of

yielding absolute belief to this: in fact we have no document

on this matter even as old as the Reformation. ... Not only

did the Church and the new orders of Monks draw great numbers

thither, but the Universities themselves were vast High

Schools, comprising boys and even children. It is not

extravagant, if Cambridge was not yet in great repute, to

imagine fifteen thousand students of all ages at Oxford, and

as many more attendants. Nor was it at all difficult to

accommodate them in the town, when Oxford contained three

hundred Halls and Inns: and as several students dwelt in one

room, and were not careful for luxury, each building on an

average might easily hold one hundred persons. The style of

Architecture was of the simplest and cheapest kind, and might

have been easily run up on a sudden demand: and a rich flat

country, with abundant water carriage, needed not to want

provisions. That the numbers were vast, is implied by the

highly respectable evidence which we have, that as many as

three thousand migrated from Oxford on the riots of 1209;

although the Chronicler expressly states that not all joined

in the secession. In the reign of Henry III. the reduced

numbers are reckoned at fifteen thousand. After the middle of

the fourteenth century, they were still as many as from three

to four thousand; and after the Reformation they mount again

to five thousand. On the whole therefore the computation of

thirty thousand, as the maximum, may seem, if not positively

true, yet the nearest approximation which we can expect. Of

Cambridge we know no more than that the numbers were much

lower than at Oxford. ... While in the general, there was a

substantial identity between the scholastic learning of Oxford

and of Paris, yet Oxford was more eager in following positive

science:--and this, although such studies were disparaged by

the Church, and therefore by the public. Indeed originally the

Church had been on the opposite side; but the speculative

tendency of the times had carried her over, so that

speculation and theology went hand in hand. In the middle of

the thirteenth century we may name Robert Grosseteste and John

Basingstock, as cultivating physical science, and (more

remarkable still) the Franciscan Roger Bacon: a man whom the

vulgar held to be equal to Merlin and Michael Scott as a

magician, and whom posterity ranks by the noblest spirits of

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in all branches of

positive science,--except theology. A biography of Roger Bacon

should surely be written! Unfortunately, we know nothing as to

the influence of these men on their times, nor can we even

learn whether the University itself was at all interested in

their studies. ... We have ... a strange testimony to the

interest which in the beginning of the fourteenth century the

mass of the students took in the speculation of their elders;

for the street rows were carried on under the banners of

Nominalists and Realists. ... The coarse and ferocious manners

prevalent in the Universities of the Middle Ages are every

where in singular contrast to their intellectual pretensions:

but the Universities of the Continent were peaceful, decorous,

dignified,--compared with those of England. The storms which

were elsewhere occasional, were at Oxford the permanent

atmosphere. For nearly two centuries our 'Foster Mother' of

Oxford lived in a din of uninterrupted furious warfare; nation

against nation, school against school, faculty against

faculty. Halls, and finally Colleges, came forward as

combatants; and the University, as a whole, against the Town;

or against the Bishop of Lincoln; or against the Archbishop of

Canterbury. Nor was Cambridge much less pugnacious."

_V. A. Huber, The English Universities,

volume 1, chapter 3._

{701}

EDUCATION:

Cambridge.

"Various facts and circumstances ... lend probability to the

belief that, long before the time when we have certain

evidence of the existence of Cambridge as a university, the

work of instruction was there going on. The Camboritum of the

Roman period, the Grantebrycgr of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

the Grentebrige of Domesday, must always have been a place of

some importance. It was the meeting-place of two great Roman

roads,--Akeman Street, running east and west, and the Via

Devana, traversing the north and the south. ... Confined at

first to the rising ground on the left bank of the river, it

numbered at the time of the Norman Conquest as many as four

hundred houses, of which twenty-seven were pulled down to make

way for the castle erected by William the Conqueror. ... Under

the castle walls, with the view, it would seem, of making some

atonement for many a deed of violence and wrong, the Norman

sheriff, Picot by name, founded the Church of St. Giles, and

instituted in connection with it a small body of secular

canons. ... The year 1112 was marked by the occurrence of an

event of considerable importance in connection with the

subsequent history of the university. The canons of St. Giles,

attended by a large concourse of the clergy and laity, crossed

the river, and took up their abode in a new and spacious

priory at Barnwell. ... The priory at Barnwell, which always

ranked among the wealthiest of the Cambridge foundations,

seems from the first to have been closely associated with the

university; and the earliest university exhibitions were those

founded by William de Kilkenny, bishop of Ely from 1254 to

1257, for two students of divinity, who were to receive

annually the sum of two marks from the priory. In the year

1133 was founded the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, which, in the

reign of Henry VII., was converted into Jesus College; and in

1135 a hospital of Augustinian canons, dedicated to St. John

the Evangelist, was founded by Henry Frost, a burgess of the

town. ... It was ... a very important foundation, inasmuch as

it not only became by conversion in the sixteenth century the

College of St. John the Evangelist, but was also ... the

foundation of which Peterhouse, the earliest Cambridge

college, may be said to have been in a certain sense the

offshoot. ... In the year 1229 there broke out at Paris a feud

of more than ordinary gravity between the students and the

citizens. Large numbers of the former migrated to the English

shores; and Cambridge, from its proximity to the eastern

coast, and as the centre where Prince Louis, but a few years

before, had raised the royal standard, seems to have attracted

the great majority. ... The university of Cambridge, like that

of Oxford, was modelled mainly on the university of Paris. Its

constitution was consequently oligarchic rather than

democratic, the government being entirely in the hands of the

teaching body, while the bachelors and undergraduates had no

share in the passing of new laws and regulations."

_J. B. Mullinger, A History of the University of

Cambridge, chapter 1-2._

"The earliest existing college at Cambridge is St. Peter's,

generally called Peterhouse, historically founded A. D. 1257,

in the reign of Henry III. The Universities are known merely

by their situation; as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St.

Andrews'; but each college has a name, according to the taste

of its founder or first members. These names may be divided

into two classes, those named from the founder, as Pembroke,

Clare, Gonville and Caius (this had two founders, the restorer

being Dr. Kaye, who Latinized his name into Caius, always

pronounced Keys), King's (from King Henry VI.),--Queens' (from

the queens both of Henry VI. and Edward IV.), Sidney Sussex,

and Downing;--and those named for beatified persons and

objects of worship,--St. Peter's, St. John's, St. Catharine's,

St. Mary Magdalene, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ's,

Trinity and Trinity Hall. The apparent impiety of these names,

which in one case of an ancient name now changed, was

absolutely revolting, entirely passes off with a few days'

use. St. Catharine's soon becomes Cats, and St. Mary Magdalene

is always called Maudlin. You readily admit the superiority of

Trinity over Corpus ale; go to see a friend who lives on

Christ's piece; and hear with regret, that in the boat races

Emmanuel has been bumped by Jesus; an epithet being probably

prefixed to the last name. These names of course were given in

monkish times,--Trinity by Henry VIII., but all the colleges

except one were founded before the reign of James I. ... The

seventeen colleges ... are distinct corporations. Their

foundations, resources, buildings, governing authorities and

students, are entirely separate from each other. Nor has any

one college the least control in any other. The plan, however,

is much the same in all. The presiding authority is in most

cases called the Master, or speaking more generally, the Head;

while the net proceeds of all the college funds--for the vast

wealth supposed to belong to the University really is in the

hands of the separate colleges--are distributed among certain

of the graduates, called Fellows, who with the Head constitute

the corporation. These corporations give board and lodging on

various terms to such students as choose to enter the college

and comply with its rules, in order to receive its assistance

in obtaining the honors of the University; and each college

offers its own peculiar inducements to students. ... The whole

body of the colleges, taken together, constitutes the

University. All those who after residing seven years at some

college, have taken the degree of Master of Arts, or a higher

one, and keep their name on the college lists by a small

payment, vote at the University elections for members of

Parliament and all other officers, and manage its affairs. ...

The colleges, at certain intervals; present such students as

comply with their conditions to University authorities for

matriculation, for certain examinations, and for the reception

of degrees; and until one receives the degree of Master of

Arts, he must remain a member of some college, not necessarily

one and the same, to hold any University privileges. After

this stage, he may, under certain conditions, break up all his

college connections, and yet remain in the University."

_W. Everett, On the Cam., lecture 1._

{702}

EDUCATION:

Spain and Portugal.

"Salamanca was founded in the 13th-century, and received its

statutes in the year 1422, out of which was developed the

following constitution. The rector, with eight 'consiliarii,'

all students, who could appoint their successors, administered

the university. The doctors render the oath of obedience to

the rector. The 'domscholaster' is the proper judge of the

school; but he swears obedience to the rector. A bachelor of

law must have studied six years, and after five years more he

could become licentiate. In filling a paid teachership, the

doctor was chosen next in age of those holding the diploma,

unless a great majority of the scholars objected, in which

case the rector and council decided. This liberal constitution

for the scholars is in harmony with the code of Alphonzo X.,

soon after 1250, in which the liberty of instruction was made

a general principle of law. This constitution continued in

Salamanca into the 17th century, for Retes speaks of a

disputation which the rector held at that time under his

presidency. Alcala university was established by cardinal

Ximenes, in 1510, for the promotion of the study of theology

and philosophy, for which reason it contained a faculty of

canon, but not of civil law. The center of the university was

the college of St. Ildefons, consisting of thirty-three

prebendaries, who could be teachers or scholars, since for

admission were required only poverty, the age of twenty, and

the completion of the course of the preparatory colleges.

These thirty-three members elected annually a rector and three

councilors, who controlled the entire university. Salaried

teachers were elected, not by the rector and council alone,

but by all the students. It had wide reputation. When visited

by Francis I., while a prisoner of Spain, he was welcomed by

11,000 students. The Coimbra university, in Portugal, received

statutes in 1309, from king Dionysius, with a constitution

similar to those just mentioned."

_F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages

(Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 22, page 324)._

EDUCATION:

Renaissance.