CHAPTER XXIV.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.--A.D. 1534 TO 1580.

Election of Paul III. His Cardinals. The Commission of Reform. Its

important declaration on the subject of the state of education,

especially at the universities. The sixteenth article on the

professorial system. St. Ignatius and the Jesuit Colleges. The

Council of Trent. Influence of Cardinal Pole in that Council. He

is recalled to England. His attempts to reform the universities

and establish Church seminaries. His provincial decrees. B. Peter

Canisius. Decrees on education passed by the Council of Trent.

Establishment of Church seminaries. Illustrious men who forwarded

this work. St. Pius V. Ghiberti, Bartholomew of the Martyrs and St.

Charles Borromeo. The schools and seminaries of Milan. Conclusion. 704

INDEX. 727

CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS.

_CHAPTER I._

THE RISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.

A.D. 60 to 543.

In the seventh year of the Emperor Nero, and the sixtieth of the

Christian era, a little ship entered the harbour of Alexandria, and

after rounding the great Pharos that stood at its northern extremity,

cast anchor by that granite quay, round which was grouped, as in an

amphitheatre, six miles in span, a city of palaces and temples. It

bore on its decks one of whom that proud city as yet knew nothing,

but who had come to erect his patriarchal throne in the midst of her

sea girt walls, bringing with him his Gospel and the sovereignty of

St. Peter’s keys. It was St. Mark, the interpreter and spiritual son

of the Prince of the Apostles, sent in his name and by his authority

to plant the Church in the southern capital of the Empire. Descending

from the ship, and crossing the crowded quay overshadowed by its

plane-trees, he made his way towards the great Moon-gate which opened

into the street of the Seven Stadia. He was partially bald, and his

hair and beard were sprinkled with grey hairs; but his beautiful

eyes flashed beneath their high arched eyebrows, and there was a

quickness in his step and a grace in his movements which bespoke him

not yet past the middle age.[1] So at least he has been described by

the historian Simeon Metaphrastes, who, though writing in the tenth

century, has embodied in his narrative the account of far earlier

authors, who have minutely recorded the circumstances which attended

the entry into Alexandria of her first patriarch.

We need not describe the world in which he found himself. It was

the fairest city of the East; Greek in its aspect and population

though planted on Egyptian soil, with a clearer sky than even that

of Athens; a nobler harbour than Corinth could boast of; and that

which was denied to Rome and Carthage, the command of a mighty river,

which brought down to the port the corn and rose-coloured granite

of Upper Egypt, the ivory of Ethiopia, the spices and gold-dust of

Arabia, and the gems of Eastern lands. Like that other more ancient

city on whose site she was reared, she “dwelt in the midst of the

rivers; the sea was her riches, the waters were her walls.”[2] Then

as now the highway to India lay through Egypt, and her seaport of

Arsinoe on the Arabian Gulf communicated by a canal with the Nile,

the western branch of which flowed out into the Mediterranean just

north of the Alexandrian harbour. Thus the capital of the Ptolemies

became the central point between East and West, and into her

markets flowed the costly Oriental luxuries which were carried by

her merchants into every European port. She was rich and she was

populous; all nations met to traffic in her harbour, all tongues were

spoken in her “many-peopled” streets. Yet her trading pre-eminence

formed but a small part of her glory. It is not often that a great

commercial emporium becomes the haunt of the Muses; but Alexandria

united graces and attractions of the most opposite character, and her

fame for learning eclipsed even that of her wealth. Three hundred

years before the time of which we are speaking, one of Alexander’s

royal successors, after erecting the temple of Serapis and the great

Pharos, which last was numbered among the wonders of the world,

bethought him of another way of rendering his name immortal, and

gathered together a society of learned men whose duty was to consist

in studying and teaching every known science. He built schools for

them to lecture in, halls in which they ate in common, and marble

porticoes, where, after the fashion of the Greek philosophers, they

could walk and converse with their disciples. A noble library, which

was enlarged by successive princes till it consisted of seven hundred

thousand volumes, completed the Musæum or University of Ptolemy

Soter, and the whole was joined to his own palace and delicious

gardens by stately marble colonnades. Royal patronage was scarcely

needed to foster the intellectual life of a city which had been

designed by its founder to be the capital of the world; but with

such encouragement the schools of Alexandria grew apace, and in the

Apostolic age ranked as the first within the wide dominions that

owned the Roman sway.

Here then the Blessed Peter came in the person of his chosen

disciple, to claim for Christ the southern capital of the Empire,

as he had already in his own person taken possession of East and

West--of Antioch and Rome. Solitary and unknown, the Evangelist came

there bent on conquests vaster than those of Alexander, for he had

but enslaved a base material world; but St. Mark, as he stood at

the Mendion, or Moon-gate, that led from the harbour into the busy

streets, was deliberating on the conquest of a million of souls.

How was he to begin? Where should he first bear his message of good

tidings? Should he bend his steps to the porticoes of the Musæum,

or try to find a listener in the crowded exchange which met his eye

through that open gate? Providence itself was to give the reply, and

neither wealth nor science was to yield him his first convert. The

thong of his sandal snapped in two, and to get it mended he entered

the shop of a cobbler that stood close at hand. The cobbler, whose

name was Anianus, gave him hospitality that night; and questioning

him as to who he was, heard in reply that he was the servant of

Jesus Christ, declared in the Scriptures to be the Son of God. “Of

what Scriptures do you speak?” he inquired; “I have never heard of

any writings but the Iliad and the Odyssey, and other such things

as are taught to the sons of the Egyptians.” Then St. Mark sat down

and unfolded to him the Gospel; through the long hours of the night,

in the midst of that heaving world of idolatry and sin--the teacher

spoke, and the disciple listened; and when morning dawned the first

fruits of Alexandria had been laid up in the garner of Christ.[3]

It was meet that an Evangelist should deliver his first message to

the poor; but it was not with the poor alone that he had to do. The

Church of Alexandria was to receive into her embrace the philosopher

of the Musæum as well as the despised Egyptian slave. She was to

address herself to the wise and prudent of this world as well as

to little ones. So St. Mark, as we are told, surrounded his see

with learned men, and became the founder of a catechetical school.

Although its chief celebrity dates only from the end of the second

century, yet its first foundation is universally attributed to St.

Mark.

It rose under the shadow of the temple of Serapis, near those

marble porticoes where the Neo-Platonists, who despised such vulgar

idolatry, were dreaming of some misty impersonal abstraction to

which they gave the name of God; where Pyrrhonists took refuge

in a system of universal doubt; where many were content to know

nothing at all about the soul, and concerned themselves rather with

mathematics and material prosperity; where Greek Epicureans talked

of a world that had made itself by chance, and set up sense as the

standard of certainty, and enjoyment as the end of life; while Roman

freethinkers quoted the witty atheisms of Lucretius, and then went

to burn incense before the statue of the Emperor. What new elements

of knowledge could a Christian Evangelist contribute to such a world

as this? There was no need for him to bring it the literature of

Greece and Rome; and as to the sciences of figures and numbers, Egypt

was their native soil. Even the Hebrew Scriptures had long ago been

translated into Greek and laid up in the library of Ptolemy. But he

brought the Gospel--his own Gospel in particular;[4] the one Book out

of which for long ages the faithful of Alexandria were exclusively

instructed, and which the teacher of the catechetical school was

required to hold in his hand when he stood before his hearers. He

brought the traditions of St. Paul and of St. Peter, for he had been

the disciple of both. He brought the Creed, the Apostolic symbol,

which in the brief compass of its twelve articles contains more

truths than Plato or Cicero had ever known, and which discovered in

the certainty of faith that _Eureka_ which every system of human

philosophy had sought in vain. He brought his Liturgy too; if not

that which bears his name, at least some earlier form which served

as its groundwork. And lastly, he brought that Liturgy’s musical

voice--the eight ancient tones, which, like so many things that

belong to the Church, when first we meet with them in history, are

already clothed with venerable antiquity: those tones to which the

Jewish Church had for centuries chanted the Psalms of David; which

must so often have fallen on the ears of Jesus, and in whose melody,

it may be, His Divine Voice had sometimes mingled; the sweet songs

of Sion which Jewish captives had sung by the rivers of Babylon, and

whose echoes now floated from Christian lips over the dark waters

of the Nile.[5] The Holy Gospels, the Creed, the Liturgy, and the

Ecclesiastical Chant, these were the contributions which were offered

by the Patriarch of Alexandria to her learned stores, and which

formed the first class-books of the Christian schools. But St. Mark

did something more than this. All early writers agree in declaring

that he established among his clergy that canonical rule of life

which was a copy of the community life of the first Christians; while

at the same time, as St. Jerome and Cassian[6] inform us, some of

his disciples retiring into the neighbourhood of the city, and there

giving themselves up to prayer and the study of the Scriptures, laid

the first foundations of the cœnobitical, or monastic life.

To St. Mark, therefore, and through him to the Prince of the

Apostles, may be traced up every one of those institutions which

were the nurseries of the Christian schools. For, as will hereafter

be seen, the Christian seminaries took their origin in the episcopal

and monastic schools, and these again grew out of that system of

community life which, being first embraced by the faithful at

Jerusalem, was afterwards elsewhere established by the Apostles, who

lived with their immediate followers as they themselves had lived

with their Divine Master. The Apostolic origin of the canonical rule

of life has never been denied. When St. Augustine was accused by

Petilianus the Donatist of introducing a novelty into the Church by

establishing his community of regular clergy, he defended himself

by appealing to the example of the first Christians, and showing

that, if the name of monastery were new, the manner of life which he

and his brethren followed was as old as Christianity itself. It is

thus that the author of the ancient book called the “Recognitions”

describes St. Peter as living, with a chosen number of disciples,

among whom were St. Mark, St. Clement, St. Evodius, and St. Linus;

so St. Paul was accompanied by St. Luke and St. Timothy, and St.

John the Evangelist by St. Polycarp and St. Papias. St. Irenæus, a

disciple of the last-named saints, carried into Gaul the discipline

of the school in which he had been nurtured, and, writing in after

years to the heresiarch Florinus, reminds him how, when yet a child,

he had been accustomed to meet him in the house of Polycarp. “Early

recollections,” he says, “grow with the soul, and entwine themselves

about it, so that I could tell of the very place where the blessed

Polycarp sat when he spoke, of his employments and his external

appearance.”[7]

Out of this manner of life, as we shall presently show, sprang up

the episcopal seminaries, which were designed for the training of

the younger clerics, whilst the catechetical schools were intended

for the religious instruction of the neophytes. But though this

last-named institution was, of course, _sui generis_, and exclusively

belonged to those primitive ages when adult converts from Paganism

had to be prepared for baptism by at least a two years’ course of

instruction, yet their history, and specially that of the Alexandrian

school, helps us in a convenient manner to watch the absorption

into the Christian system of education of every branch of learning

afterwards cultivated in the schools.

In the absence of more particular details of the kind of instruction

which prevailed at Alexandria before the time of St. Pantænus, we

may reasonably suppose that the same system was adopted in that

city as we find established at Jerusalem under St. Cyril. There the

_Hearers_ or Catechumens assembled in the porch of the church; the

men and women sat separate from one another, and the master stood

to deliver his instruction. The catecheses of St. Cyril that are

preserved are twenty-three in number, eighteen being a summary of

the chief articles of the Faith, given in the form of an exposition

of the Creed, and the five others intended for the _competent_, or

those preparing to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation,

and the Holy Eucharist. The last-named subject is treated in an

explanation of the Liturgy of St. James. This, of course, was the

sort of teaching for which the catechetical schools were primarily

intended, and up to the year 179 the teachers of Alexandria do not

appear to have aimed at anything of a higher character. But about

that time Pantænus, a former stoic, whose eloquence earned him

the title of _the Sicilian Bee_, became master of the school, and

introduced a wider range of studies. He made use of his old learning

to illustrate and defend his new faith. Clement of Alexandria, his

earliest disciple, speaks of his “transcendent powers,” and St.

Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, gloried in calling him his lord and

blessed father.

The renown of St. Pantænus passed into the Indies, carried thither

by some of the swarthy Hindoos, who were no strangers in the busy

streets of Alexandria, and who had managed to find their way to that

school where Jew and Gentile, bond and free, met together without

distinction. The Indians invited him to come among them, and St.

Pantænus accordingly exchanged his mastership for an apostolic

life, and went to preach the faith to the Brahmins. Clement, his

former disciple and assistant, succeeded him. He had visited all

lands and studied in all schools in search of truth, and had found

it at last on the humble bench of the Catechumen. No one understood

better than he the emptiness of human learning when pursued as an

end, or its serviceableness when used as a means. His end was to win

souls to Christ; and to reach it, he laid hands indifferently on

all the intellectual weapons that fell within his reach; poetry and

philosophy, science and even satire;--he neglected nothing that would

serve his turn. He did not disdain to give a Christian interpretation

to Pagan fables, and took occasion from the stories of Orpheus and

Amphion, who, as the poets pretended, had moved the stones and tamed

the wild beasts with the music of their lyres, to present to his

hearers the Word made Flesh, conquering the stony and ferocious heart

of fallen man, and restoring that universe which he beautifully

calls “a lyre whose harmony has been destroyed by sin.” He could

use with equal ease the phraseology of the Neo-Platonists whilst

engaged in dispersing their transcendentalism into thinnest air, or

the plainer language of the Gospel when he had to put heretics to

silence. Nor was he too deep or profound for the comprehension of the

simple-hearted faithful; he could write hymns for little children to

sing in church, and when he spoke to exclusively Christian hearers

set forth no other wisdom, no other model for their imitation, than

“Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.”

The result of all this may be imagined. While the first neophytes of

St. Mark and his immediate followers had been chiefly gained from

the ranks of the Jews, to whom Alexandria was a second home, Gentile

converts now flowed into the Church in ever-increasing numbers. The

philosophers found in the Christian teachers those who could beat

them with their own weapons, and human learning became elevated

and ennobled by its marriage with the faith. It may be taken as a

proof how thoroughly it was now recognised that Christians were men

who could think and reason like other men, had as fair a knowledge

of books and as great a command of what the Roman world valued far

more than mere book-knowledge--eloquence; in short, that they were

men of whom a university city need not be ashamed, and who might

even be capable one day or other of setting up a university of

their own--that it was becoming possible for Christians to gain a

livelihood by teaching grammar and profane letters. There was one

who so began his career, and who, at the age of eighteen, succeeded

Clement in the direction of the catechetical school. The child of a

martyr, Origen had been the pupil of saints. He had been taught not

only by Clement, but also by St. Hyppolitus the martyr, commonly

called Bishop of Porto, the disciple of Irenæus, the disciple of

Polycarp, the spiritual son of the Apostle St. John. Hyppolitus was

a man of many sciences, a philosopher, a poet, and a mathematician.

He was one of the earliest who comes before us as attaining eminence

in that distinctively Christian science, which will often appear in

these pages under the name of the _Computum_. The computum was in

fact the art of calculating the time of Easter, and included so much

astronomical and arithmetical knowledge as was necessary for that

purpose.[8] Hence it was a science indispensable in the education

of clerics; for in those days the _Tabula Paschalis_ did not as now

figure at the beginning of every Prayer-book; nor did the invention

of almanacs bring home much science in a simple form to the fireside

of the most unlettered layman. The calculation of Easter, therefore,

had to be painfully gone through year after year, to the sore travail

of many heads; and he was a benefactor to his species who first

thought of lightening the labour. Hyppolitus, who is supposed to have

been an Alexandrian by birth, and to whom, therefore, astronomy and

arithmetic were second nature, composed two cycles which determined

the Easter for a hundred and twelve years to come; and after his

death a statue was erected representing the bishop, with the cycles

engraved on his chair, which is still preserved in the Christian

Museum of the Lateran.[9]

Under Hyppolitus and the other masters provided for him by his

father’s care, Origen had made progress in every human science; but

on becoming chief catechist of Alexandria he had to make a sacrifice.

He was forced to resign his grammar-school and to sell his books.

Not, indeed, that he had no further need of these treasures, but

they were his solitary riches; and as even he could not absolutely

live on nothing, he parted from them and lived on the small pension

of four oboli a day, which was paid him by the purchaser. And having

thus wedded himself to poverty, alike the spouse of the scholar

and the saint, he began to study Hebrew, and entered on those vast

labours which had for their object the production of a correct

version of the Sacred Text. And all the time the business of the

school went on, and persecution raged with small intermission. Seven

of his disciples suffered under Severus--a glorious crown for the

master who envied them their palms. But we are only concerned with

the history of Origen in so far as it exhibits the expansion of the

Christian studies. So passing over twenty years of his life, we

shall follow him to Cæsarea, where in 231 he retired from the storm

that had driven him from Alexandria, and accepted the direction

of another school entrusted him by the two bishops, Theoctistus

of Cæsarea and Alexander of Jerusalem. It appears to have been a

combination of the episcopal seminary and the catechetical school,

for scholars of all classes resorted to it. Among them were Theodore,

better known by his Christian name of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus,

and his brother Athenodorus, who were then studying in the famous

law-schools of Berytus. The conversation of Origen, however, soon

put Roman jurisprudence out of their heads, and determined them to

apply exclusively to philosophy under the guidance of their new

friend. Both were at this time pagans, and Origen had to prepare

their minds to receive the truth in a very gradual manner. He began

by mercilessly rooting out the weeds and briars of bad habits and

false maxims which he found choking up the soil, a process which at

first, as his pupils acknowledged, cost them not a little. Then

he taught them in succession the different branches of philosophy:

logic, in order to exercise their minds and enable them to discern

true reasoning from sophistry; physics, that they might understand

and admire the works of God; geometry, which by its clear and

indisputable demonstrations serves as a basis to the science of

thought; astronomy, to lift their hearts from earth to heaven; and

finally, philosophy, which was not limited like that taught in the

pagan schools to empty speculations, but was conveyed in such a way

as to lead to practical results. All these were but steps to ascend

to that higher science which teaches us the existence and nature

of God. He permitted his pupils freely to read whatever the poets

and philosophers had written on this subject, himself watching and

directing their studies, and opening their eyes to distinguish those

sparks of truth which are to be found scattered in the writings of

the pagans, however overlaid by a mass of fable. And then at last he

presented them with the Sacred Scriptures, in which alone the true

knowledge of God is to be found. In one of his letters to St. Gregory

he explains in what way he wishes him to regard the profane sciences.

“They are to be used,” he says, “so that they may contribute to

the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are

accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and

astronomy all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may

say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of

Christianity. We are permitted when we go out of Egypt to carry with

us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle;

only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go

down into Egypt and seek for treasure: that is what Jeroboam did in

old time, and what heretics do in our own.”

In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been

named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century,

Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts,

profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their

teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a

critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had

established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic

science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of

physical science also. It matters very little that these latter were

but imperfectly known; the real point worth observing is, that every

branch of human knowledge, in so far as it had been cultivated at

that time, was included in the studies of the Christian schools;

and, considering that this had been the work of scarcely more than

two centuries, and those centuries of bloody persecution, it must be

acknowledged to have been a tolerably expansive growth.

We have now to consider the gradual development of the episcopal

seminaries, which in their early stage formed but a part of the

bishop’s household. I have already spoken of the sort of community

life established among the bishops and their clergy in apostolic

times. During the first four centuries of the Church this manner

of life was the more easily carried out, as the clergy were to be

found only in towns. The establishment of rural parishes and the

appointment of parochial priests to country villages, is first spoken

of in the Council of Vaison, held in 528. The community life of

the city clergy had many obvious advantages, and afforded singular

facilities for training younger aspirants to the ecclesiastical

state under the eye of the chief pastor. Accordingly, we very early

find notices of the schools for younger clerics, which sprang up in

the episcopal households. Thus, the martyr St. Vincent is stated to

have been educated in sacred letters, even from his childhood, by

Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa. St. John Chrysostom studied for three

years as lector in the household of Meletius, Bishop of Antioch,

St. Cyril in that of his uncle Theophilus, and St. Athanasius with

Alexander of Alexandria. Towards the close of the second century we

read how Pope St. Eleutherius placed the future martyr St. Felicianus

in the school which was then presided over by his archdeacon, St.

Victor,[10] his successor in the Apostolic Chair; and all the early

annals of the Roman Church represent her clergy as for the most

part educated in this manner, under the eye of her Pontiffs. The

author of the _Philosophumena_ acquaints us with the fact that Pope

Calixtus I. established a school of theology at Rome, which appears

from his account to have been crowded with disciples. When, after

the conversion of Constantine, the imperial palace of the Lateran

became the residence of the popes, their ecclesiastical school was

maintained within the _Patriarchium_, as the papal palace was called,

and in it not a few of the greatest popes of the first nine centuries

received their education. It possessed a noble library, and the names

of its librarians are preserved in unbroken order from the fifth

century. Here, ecclesiastical students were received at an early age,

and admitted to the successive degrees of holy orders only at long

intervals and after careful preparation. The very first Decretal that

exists of known authenticity, that of Pope St. Siricius, addressed,

in 385, to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona, lays down the rules to

be observed in promoting clerics to holy orders, and indicates the

existence of such episcopal seminaries as we have described. _Those

who have been devoted to the service of the Church from childhood_

are to be first placed in the rank of lectors. Then, if they have

persevered to the age of thirty, they may be advanced through the

inferior orders to the subdiaconate, and thence to the diaconate,

in which they must pass five years before being admitted to the

priesthood.[11] A few years later we find St. Zozimus ordaining that

the young clerics should remain in the rank of lectors till their

twentieth year, and that they should not be raised to the priesthood

until after many years of trial. St. Leo I. writes to the African

bishops, about the middle of the fifth century, appealing to the

venerable ordinances of the holy fathers on the ordination of those

_who have lived from childhood subject to ecclesiastical discipline_,

by which expression we must certainly understand the young lectors of

the episcopal seminaries. And, glancing on to the eighth and ninth

centuries, we find exactly the same discipline kept up in the school

of the Patriarchium as had existed in the seventh. Pope Gregory II.

is spoken of as brought up from childhood in the Lateran palace,

“under the eye and discipline of the Blessed Pontiff Sergius,”[12]

as being promoted by him to the subdiaconate, and after having for

some years discharged the offices of treasurer and librarian, being

advanced to the rank of deacon and, subsequently, of priest. So,

too, Pope Leo III. is described as “educated from infancy in all

ecclesiastical and divine discipline in the _vestiarium_ of the

Lateran Palace.” In most cases the Lateran seminary was presided over

by the Roman archdeacon, and, as we shall see, the superintendence of

the cathedral schools continued, in after ages, to form one of the

duties commonly attached to the archdiaconate.

In the fourth century, when the monastic institute spread from the

East into the West, the community life of the bishops and their

clergy assumed, in many places, a yet more regular form. St. Eusebius

of Vercelli, who had himself been committed by his mother in early

youth to the care of Pope Eusebius, and had been instructed and

baptized by him, was the first to erect an episcopal monastery in his

own city, which became a nursery of illustrious prelates. This was

in 354, and forty years later St. Augustine established a similar

monastery at Hippo, which is regarded as the parent of all houses

of canons regular. Yet, though these establishments are sometimes

called _monasteries_, the rule of life observed in them is ordinarily

designated the _Apostolic_ rule,[13] and the monasteries or colleges

of a similar kind established in Gaul and Britain are said to be “of

the Apostolic Order.” From this time the community life of the clergy

became subject to fixed rules or canons. In 398 the fourth Council of

Carthage, whilst prescribing the laws for the administration of holy

orders, regulates the manner of life to be observed by the bishops

with their clergy in very precise terms. The bishop is to have his

residence near the church; he is to commit the care of temporalities

to his archdeacon, and to occupy himself exclusively with prayer,

study and preaching. In the church he is to have a higher seat

than his clergy, but in the house he must recognise them as in all

respects his colleagues, and never to suffer them to remain standing

while he is seated.[14] Similar canons were passed in the first

Council of Toledo, held two years later.

In all this there is no distinct reference to the education of the

younger clerics as forming one of the duties of the cathedral clergy.

The Council of Vaison, held in 528, speaks, indeed, of the parish

priests, who are required, according to the practice of the priests

of Italy, to bring up young lectors in their houses, who may succeed

them in their cure; and the establishment of similar schools was

solemnly ordered, in 680, by the General Council of Constantinople;

but the institution, of which we here see the germ, was not the

episcopal, but the priest’s or parochial school. However, in 531, the

second Council of Toledo passed several canons, which bear distinct

reference to the bishop’s seminary, which by this time is evidently

supposed to be attached to the cathedral church. Those children

who are destined by their parents for the ecclesiastical state are

to receive the tonsure, and to be placed in the rank of lectors in

order to be instructed _in the house of the church under the eyes of

the bishop, by him who shall be appointed over them_. At the age of

eighteen their vocation is to be publicly examined, that no one may

embrace the ecclesiastical state save with his own free consent. If

this be given, they may be ordained sub-deacons at twenty and deacons

at twenty-five. And clerics so educated cannot pass to any other

diocese, but owe canonical obedience to the bishop at whose charge

they have been brought up.[15]

Here, then, is the cathedral seminary fairly established, and a few

years later we find it expanding into a noble public school. It was

St. Leander, of Seville, who first conceived the idea of establishing

a staff of professors for teaching the liberal arts in connection

with his cathedral. He directed their labours in person, and received

among his first scholars his own brother Isidore, who afterwards

succeeded him in his see. Isidore greatly extended the range of

studies, which included the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, and all

the liberal arts, besides law and medicine. His famous _Origines_

drawn up for the use of this school present an encyclopedia of every

known subject, and embody several fragments of ancient authors which

would otherwise have been lost to us. The first five books treat

of Grammar, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Dialectics, Music, Geometry,

Mechanics, Astronomy, Jurisprudence, Chronology, and History. The

sixth is on the Holy Scriptures, the seventh and eighth are on God

and the Angels, the ninth on the various nations and languages of

the earth, and the remaining books treat of Etymology. But his

efforts for the promotion of Christian education did not stop here.

In 633 he presided over the fourth Council of Toledo, at which all

the bishops of Spain were required to establish seminaries in their

cathedral cities on the model of that of Seville, the study of the

three learned languages being specially enjoined. This decree was

carried into effect, and hence it is commonly said that the system of

cathedral schools took its origin in Spain.

Besides the catechetical and episcopal schools, instances occur,

even in the age of martyrdom, of private schools kept by Christian

teachers. Such was the school of Imola, presided over by the martyr

Cassian; and the story of his martyrdom exhibits to us the light in

which the brutal pagan school-boy regarded his master. Yet there were

cases when the hearts even of Gentile scholars were softened by the

influence of a sanctity which they comprehended not. The exquisite

story of the Eight Martyrs of Carthage, as related in their authentic

Acts, exhibits to us the pagan scholars of the deacon Flavian

obtaining his reprieve from the judge by vehemently denying his

ecclesiastical character; and when he at last succeeds in proving

a fact which brings with it the joyful death-warrant, his Christian

disciples follow him to the place of execution to gather up the last

words of instruction from their master’s lips.[16] We have a yet more

particular account of the school established at Cæsarea by the martyr

St. Pamphilius. He had been educated, as a Gentile, in the public

schools of Berytus, where he attained to great proficiency in profane

science. But, on his conversion, he became desirous of acquiring

a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, and for this purpose placed

himself under the tuition of Pierius, the successor of Origen in the

catechetical school of Alexandria. On his return to Syria he was

ordained priest, and devoted the rest of his life, and his wealth, to

the creation of a Christian school and library. No Florentine scholar

in the age of the Renaissance had a more passionate love of books

than he. He caused them to be sent to him from every quarter, and his

library numbered no fewer than thirty thousand volumes, many of which

had been copied by his own hand. They included the best works of the

ancients, besides those of Christian writers. Pamphilius spent the

greater part of his life in transcribing books, and both bought and

wrote out an amazing number of copies of the Holy Scriptures, which

he distributed gratis to all who desired to have them. He applied

himself with unwearied diligence to obtain a correct edition of the

whole of the Sacred Text; and, in the midst of these labours, he

directed a school of sacred learning, wherein was reared more than

one martyr.

The public schools of the Empire were not generally resorted to

by the faithful until after the conversion of Constantine, when

Christians were permitted to aspire to the professor’s chair. But

this privilege, great as it was, did not produce any material change

in the character of the State academies; they continued to flourish

under the Christian Cæsars as they had done under their pagan

predecessors, but they never merited to be regarded as Christian

institutions. Though both Constantine and Gratian did much to provide

excellent rhetoricians and grammarians to instruct their subjects,

and though Valentinian I. made some laudable efforts, to correct

the worst abuses of the schools, they continued to bear the stamp

of their origin; and it is a significant fact that, long after the

establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of the

Empire, the saint whose children were destined to hold in their

hands the future education of Europe is introduced to us in the

first incident of his life, flying into the wilderness to escape

the corruption of the semi-pagan schools of Rome.[17] St. Augustine

has told us something of the condition of the schools of Carthage

in his time, which may probably be taken as a fair specimen of the

State gymnasia in other parts of the Empire. The masters exercised

an excessive severity with their pupils, so that, as the saint

confesses, he first began the use of prayer when yet a child, to

beg of God that He would save him from a school flogging. His

elders, and even his parents, were so used to the idea of these

punishments, “whereby labour and sorrow are multiplied to the sons

of Adam,” that they only made a jest of his sufferings. All the

sweets of Greek poetry were, he says, sprinkled with gall to him,

he being forced to learn them by “cruel terrors and stripes.” He

lets us know moreover that the wholesome admonitions of Quinctilian

were altogether neglected, and that the worst writings of the pagan

authors were placed in the hands of the scholars. In academies where

the professorial system reigned supreme, moral training was neither

given nor expected; the professors were paid for teaching their

pupils grammar and rhetoric, and, as St. Augustine remarks, would

have treated it as a greater fault to pronounce _homo_ without the

aspirate than to hate a man. Many were pagans, like Libanius, the

master of St. Chrysostom; others were content with the smallest

possible seasoning of Christianity. They were, in short, the

_sophists_ by profession--a pragmatical race of beings whose mental

horizon hardly extended beyond the logic of Aristotle and the rules

of rhetoric. Honourable exceptions of course were to be found, such

as Marius Victorinus, who in the Julian persecution resigned his

school rather than renounce the Divine Word who maketh eloquent

the tongues of children.[18] But as a general rule the professors

troubled themselves very little about questions of Christian faith

or ethics. Absolute dictators of a petty circle, they were devoured

by a vanity which tainted their very eloquence, and expressed itself

in such a turgid and affected style, that, as Cicero said of one of

their class, if you wanted to be dumb for the rest of your life you

had nothing to do but to study their lectures. This vanity showed

itself moreover in perpetual squabbles and rivalries, in which the

disciples took part with their masters. New-comers were laid violent

hands on by the scholastic jackals, who would endeavour by all manner

of insolence to press them into the school of their own particular

sophist, initiating them by burlesque and uproarious ceremonies.

Thus it was that they prepared to seize St. Basil on his first coming

to Athens, when St. Gregory of Nazianzen, who well knew how offensive

such riotous scenes would prove to one of his grave and reserved

character, interfered to protect him, and thus laid the foundation

of a friendship which has inspired some of the most exquisite pages

of Christian literature. I need not quote the well-known passage

that describes their university life: it is often cited as a model

for Christian students; yet St. Gregory does not forget to inform us

that it was as difficult for a youth to preserve his innocence in

the midst of such an atmosphere as it would be for an animal to live

in the midst of fire, or for a river to preserve its sweetness when

flowing through the briny ocean.

Nevertheless, the circumstances of the times compelled the

faithful to resort to these academies. Many had done so even when

the professorships were exclusively in the hands of the pagans.

Tertullian, in his treatise on Idolatry, examines the lawfulness of

the practice, and decides that though it would be impossible for

Christians to _teach_ in schools wherein the masters were obliged

to recommend the worship of false gods, and to take part in pagan

sacrifices and ceremonies, they might properly attend them as

students, because they could not otherwise acquire that necessary

knowledge of letters which he calls “the key of life,” and because

they were perfectly free to reject the fables to which they listened.

Such an argument of course implies the existence of very powerful

safeguards on the side of faith; and he seems to take it for granted

that Christian students will imbibe only the honey from the flowers

of eloquence, and reject the poison. The general feeling certainly

was that human learning was sufficiently necessary to justify some

risks being incurred in its acquisition. After the triumph of the

Church, the most religious parents, such as those of St. Basil,

hesitated not to send their sons to the public schools; and when

the crafty attempt was made by Julian the Apostate to close them to

the Christians, and to prohibit even their private study of pagan

literature, we know how strenuously the bishops protested against

his edict, as a cruel and unheard-of tyranny. So long as it remained

in force they exerted themselves to supply the want of the old

class-books, the use of which was interdicted, by imitations of the

poets from their own pens. No one was more active in this work than

St. Gregory Nazianzen, who took up the cudgels against his imperial

schoolfellow in good earnest. “For my part,” he exclaims, in his

fourth discourse, “I trust that every one who cares for learning will

take part in my indignation. I leave to others fortune, birth, and

every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man.

I value only science and letters, and regret no labour that I have

spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and shall ever prefer,

learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth,

next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity.” The decree was

revoked by Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, so unanimous

were the Christian prelates in regarding human learning as a treasure

the possession of which the faithful were jealously to vindicate.

Even in those passages which occur in the writings of the Fathers

wherein they appear to undervalue polite studies, it is evident that

they only do so relatively, and the scholar is pretty sure to peep

out before you have turned the page. “You ask me for my books,”

writes St. Gregory to his friend Adamanthus; “have you then turned a

boy again that you are going to study rhetoric? I have long ago laid

aside such follies, for one cannot spend all one’s life in child’s

play. We must cease to lisp when we aspire to the true science, and

sacrifice to the Divine Word that frivolous eloquence which formerly

so charmed our youth. However, take my books, my dear Adamanthus--all

at least that are not devoured by the worms, or blackened with the

smoke, on the shelves where they have lain so long. Take them, and

use them well. Study the sophists thoroughly, and both acquire and

teach to others all the learning you can, provided the fear of God

reign paramount over these vanities.” But though the Fathers, both

by word and example, authorised the study of the pagan literature,

they required that it should be read with certain restrictions,

and according to what may be termed the Christian method. This is

explained by St. Basil, in a treatise he wrote on the subject for

the guidance of some young relations. He advocates the right use of

human learning, comparing the soul to a tree, which bears not only

fruit but leaves also. The fruit is truth, to be found only in the

Sacred Scriptures, but the leaves are the ornaments of literature

which cover truth and adorn it. Moses and Daniel both became skilled

in the Gentile learning before they devoted themselves to the study

of sacred science. And it is not to be doubted that the poets and

philosophers have many wise and virtuous precepts, which cannot be

too deeply engraved on our minds. Christians are engaged in a mighty

struggle, in which they should make use of everything that can

help them--poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, or the arts. They should

contemplate the Sun of Truth as it is reflected in the waters of

human literature, and then lift their eyes to gaze on it in its full

effulgence in the heavens.

He then goes on to cite many passages from Homer, Hesiod, and

Socrates, and other ancient writers, showing that they abound in

excellent maxims, which a Christian may very well apply to his own

benefit. A Christian student, he says, should follow the example of

the bees, who draw out honey from flowers which seem only proper to

charm the eye, or gratify the smell. But then they must also imitate

them, in only selecting those flowers that yield honey; and when they

extract the sweet juices, let them be careful to leave the poison

behind. In like manner we should gather together from the heathen

literature whatever may be useful, and leave what is pernicious to

morals behind.[19] This was but saying what Plato and Cicero had said

before him, and it cannot be charged to the account of a Christian

prelate as narrow bigotry, that he should insist on at least as much

reserve in the use of profane writers as had been required by the

pagan moralists themselves.

It cannot be supposed that the Christian prelates were insensible

to the dangers incurred by students in the State academies. St.

Chrysostom, indeed, who knew what they were by experience, and who

was certainly the last man to undervalue a knowledge of letters,

was induced to weigh the arguments for and against a public school

education, and decides that the risk is too great to be compensated

for by any intellectual advantage. He declares that he knows of no

school in his neighbourhood where the study of profane literature can

be found united to the teaching of virtue; and this being the case,

he considers that Christian parents will generously sacrifice the

superior tuition given in the State gymnasia, and send their children

to be brought up in a monastery. His words are the more remarkable

from the extreme moderation of their tone, and the evident reluctance

with which he advocates a course of conduct which must needs place

the faithful at a disadvantage. They are also important as showing

how very early the monasteries began to be regarded as places of

education, for seculars as well as religious. “If you have masters

among you,” he writes,[20] “who can answer for the virtue of your

children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to

a monastery; on the contrary, I should strongly insist on their

remaining where they are. But if no one can give such a guarantee,

we ought not to send children to schools where they will learn

vice before they learn science, and where in acquiring learning of

relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious,

their integrity of soul. Are we then to give up literature? you

will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill

souls.... When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should

seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than

for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two

alternatives; a liberal education which you may get by sending your

children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls,

which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the

day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so by

all means; but if not, choose the most precious.”[21]

It will be apparent from what has been said, that the State

academies of the Empire are not to be numbered among the nurseries

of the Christian schools. The only imperial foundation which had a

distinctly Christian character about it, appears to have been that

which grew up at Constantinople, under the patronage of the Greek

emperors. It was established in the Basilica of the Octagon, built

by Constantine the Great, where an immense library was collected,

which in Zeno’s time amounted to 120,000 volumes. Seven librarians

and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense, and the

college was presided over by a president, called the _Œcumenicus_,

because he was supposed to be a sort of university in himself. The

church attached to this academy was served by sixteen monks, and

prelates were often chosen from the ranks of the professors to

fill the first sees of the Empire. This noble foundation perished

in 730, by the hands of Leo the Isaurian, who, finding that the

academicians would not enter into his Iconoclastic views, and fearing

their learning and their influence, caused fire to be applied to the

building by night, so that the Basilica, the vast library, and the

professors themselves, were all pitilessly consumed together.

But the parentage of the Christian schools is to be traced to less

splendid sources than the Greek universities or the palace of the

Cæsars. What these were has been indicated at the beginning of the

chapter; the catechetical and the episcopal schools have been already

spoken of, and we have now to examine how the work of education came

to be embraced by the fathers of that monastic life which, like the

canonical life of the clergy, found its first development among the

followers of St. Mark. St. Chrysostom’s words, above quoted, show

that in his time the monks of the East were already in the habit of

receiving and training children. In the West, the work of education

did not fall into the hands of the Church until the dissolution of

the Roman Empire, when she saw herself obliged to open the doors

of her episcopal and monastic schools to secular students. But one

thing is evident, that from the first, the Western cœnobites had a

certain organised system among them for the education of their own

younger members and that the germ of the monastic school is to be

found even in the deserts of Egypt. In the rule of St. Pachomius,

special directions are given for the instruction of all those who

shall come to the monastery. If ignorant of letters, they are to

have the rule explained to them, and shall be sent to one who can

teach them, and standing before him, shall diligently learn from him,

with all thankfulness. After that they shall write for him letters,

syllables, words, and names, and they shall be compelled to read,

even if unwilling; there shall be no one in the monastery who shall

not learn letters, and know something of the Scriptures, at least

the New Testament and the Psalter.[22] Twice a week there were to

be disputations; that is, spiritual conferences or catechisms. Here

is evidently the origin of the interior or claustral school for the

instruction of the younger or more ignorant of the monks; and the

object of such very stringent regulations is better understood when

we study the rest of the rule, and observe the great importance

attached to the exercise of spiritual reading, which occupied almost

as large a place in the horarium of St. Pachomius as prayer or manual

labour.

Nor was this all. The rule of this great monastic legislator

distinctly proves that children were received, and that at a very

early age, to be educated among the monks. He felt great compassion,

we are told, for the young, and was accustomed to say, that in the

soil of their minds good seed might be sown more easily than in more

advanced years. He considered them particularly capable of being

trained to acquire the habit of the presence of God; by which they

might afterwards advance to great perfection. Accordingly, his rule

is full of provisions for the proper care of these young disciples.

The monks are warned not to scandalise them, even by an incautious

word: they are to have the recreation and food proper to their

age, but the monks are not to sport or laugh with them; and if any

boy be too much given to play and idleness, he is to receive sharp

correction. They are to eat in the refectory with the brethren, and

join them at their work, but at other times a sort of separation

is to be observed between them and the community.[23] The terms on

which the Fathers lived with their little disciples exhibit that

character of paternal tenderness which was one of the distinctive

features of the early Christian schools, offering a striking contrast

to the state of things existing in the pagan academies. There is,

indeed, frequent mention of the rod, but strict discipline was

never held incompatible with affectionate familiarity. The Fathers

of the Desert had received their traditions on this head from the

immediate followers of Him who took the young children in His arms,

and willingly suffered them to approach Him; and so it seemed

but natural that they who sought to imitate their Master, should

surround themselves with little ones, and permit them a certain holy

familiarity which constantly reappears in the intercourse between

monks and children. Every one will remember the anecdote that is told

of St. Pachomius, who, in his extreme humility, did not disdain to

be set right by a little boy. As he sat at work with his brethren,

making mats, one of the children said to him, “My father, you are

not working in the right way; the abbot Theodore does it quite

differently.” “Then sit down, my child,” replied the saint, “and

show me how I ought to do it;” and having received his lesson, he

untwisted his osiers, and began his work all over again. Another

time, the saint having returned to the monastery after an absence of

some weeks, one of the children ran out to meet him, saying, “I am

glad you have come back, my father; since you have been away they

have given us neither soup nor vegetables for dinner.” “Well, my

child,” was the kind reply, “I will take care that you do not want

them for the future;” and calling the cook, he administered to him a

sharp rebuke.

Sometimes, even solitaries were induced to undertake the care of

children not intended for the religious state. Thus St. Chrysostom

relates the example of a Christian lady living at Antioch, who

was very desirous to procure for her son the blessings of a holy

education, and induced a certain solitary to leave his retreat among

the mountains, and undertake the care of the youth: and he adds,

the boy made great progress in the sciences, but yet more in piety,

and by his example won many of his playfellows to embrace a life of

virtue. When, therefore, the great father of the monastic life in the

Western world received his two disciples, Placidus and Maurus, with a

view to their education, and so gave his followers an example which

resulted in the foundation of the great Benedictine schools, he was

not departing from the earlier monastic tradition, as Mabillon is

careful to show.[24] Nor must the decrees of certain councils which

prohibit monks from receiving any children, save those “offered” by

their parents to the religious state, be understood as implying more

than that such children could not be received into the _interior_

or claustral school; for, as the same writer proves, seculars were

always freely admitted into the _exterior_ schools of monasteries.

St. Pachomius was not the only monastic legislator of ancient times

who in his rule provided for the admission and education of children.

St. Basil permitted them to be received into his monasteries at a

very early age, especially if they had lost their parents, because

monks should be the fathers of orphans. Their education, he says,

should be strictly religious; they are to have a separate portion of

the monastery assigned them, and are to be governed by one of the

elder monks who shall be both mild and learned, and experienced in

the care of children. He is very precise on the point which proves

the _crux_ in most systems of education, namely, the method to be

observed in inflicting punishment; and though he does not prohibit

the use of the rod, he recommends in preference the adoption of such

penances as may correct the fault, as well as punish the offender.

“Let every fault have its own remedy,” he says, “so that while

the offence is punished the soul may be exercised to conquer its

passions. For example, has a child been angry with his companion?

Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble

service, for it is only by accustoming them to humility that you will

eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten

out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day.

Has he eaten to excess, and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of

repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their

food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at

the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he

has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him

be corrected by diet and silence.”

After this he passes on to the studies of the children, and desires

that instead of learning the fables of the poets they should be

taught the wonderful events narrated in Scripture History. They are

to learn by heart sentences chosen from the Book of Proverbs, and

little prizes are to be given them in reward for their exercises of

memory, “to the end that they may learn with the less reluctance,

nay rather with pleasure, and as though engaging in agreeable

recreation.” The masters are particularly enjoined to train them to

recall their wandering thoughts and fix their attention on their

work, by frequently interrogating them as to what they are thinking

about. And whilst acquiring a knowledge of letters, they are likewise

to be taught some useful art or trade.[25]

In most of the rules drawn up by the early Gallican prelates we

see that stringent regulations were introduced for obliging all

the brethren to acquire a certain knowledge of letters. “Literas

omnes discant,” is the thirty-second brief and emphatic rule of

St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles in the sixth century. What is more

remarkable, we find exactly the same provisions in rules drawn up

for religious women, as in those of St. Donatus and St. Cæsarius of

Arles.[26] The sixth chapter of the rule of St. Leander of Seville,

is headed thus: _Ut jugiter virgo oret et legat._ “Let your time and

occupation be so divided,” he says, “that after reading you pray,

and after prayer you read; and let these two good works perpetually

alternate, so that no part of your time be wholly without them. And

when you do any manual work or refresh your body with needful food,

then let another read, that when the hands and the eyes are intent

on work the ear may be fed with the Divine Word. For if even when

we read and pray we are hardly able to withdraw our minds from the

temptations of the devil, how much more prone will not the soul be

to vice, if it be not held back by the chain of prayer and assiduous

reading.”[27] And in the chapter that follows he gives directions for

the proper manner of studying the books of the Old Testament.

Before bringing these remarks to a close we cannot omit all notice

of the education received in primitive times by the children of the

faithful, in the bosoms of their own families. Fleury points out to

his readers as one proof of the care taken by Christian parents in

the instruction of their children, that in all antiquity we do not

find the least notice of any public catechism for children, or any

public instruction for those who had been baptized before they came

to the use of reason. It was not needed, he says, for in those days,

to use the words of St. Chrysostom, “every house was a Church.”[28]

The office of religious instruction generally devolved on the mother.

Even in Scripture there is evidence of this, for St. Paul, writing

to St. Timothy, reminds him of what he owed to the “faith unfeigned”

of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.[29] St. Basil, and

his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, gloried in preserving the faith

in which they had been trained by their grandmother St. Macrina

the elder. Their other brother, St. Peter of Sebaste, was chiefly

brought up by his sister of the same name. St. Gregory thus describes

the extraordinary care bestowed by his mother on the education of

her daughter. “My mother,” he says, “took extreme pains with her

instruction, not after the manner customary with those of her age,

who are ordinarily taught the fables of the poets.... Instead of

these she made her learn such portions of Scripture as were easiest

to understand. She began with the book of Wisdom, and thence went on

to the Psalms.”[30] St. Fulgentius owed his education, not merely in

sacred science, but also in polite literature, to the care of his

mother Mariana, the _religiosa mater_ as she is called in his life,

who was so solicitous about the purity of his Greek accent that she

made him learn by heart the poems of Homer and Menander before he

studied his Latin rudiments.[31] The early education, both liberal

and religious, of St. John Chrysostom was in like manner directed

by his admirable mother Anthusa, whose conduct in this particular

drew from the lips of the pagan sophist, Libanius, the exclamation,

“Ye gods of Greece! how wonderful are the women of the Christians!”

In fact it is remarkable how many Christian women of early times

are spoken of as being learned. Not to mention St. Catherine of

Alexandria, whose case was possibly exceptional, we know that St.

Thecla, the disciple of St. Paul, was versed in philosophy, poetry,

and rhetoric; St. Olympia, the holy widow of Constantinople, not

only corresponded with St. Chrysostom, seventeen of whose letters

are addressed to her, but received the dedication of several of

St. Gregory of Nazianzen’s poems. St. Jerome, again, dedicated his

commentaries on Isaias and Ezechiel to his pupil St. Eustochium,

who, he assures us, wrote, spoke, and recited Hebrew without the

least trace of a Latin accent. And, not to multiply examples, we

may just refer to that passage in his epistles where he speaks of

St. Marcella, “the glory of the Roman ladies,” as showing that the

learned accomplishments of these illustrious women were not acquired

at any sacrifice of qualities more peculiarly becoming their sex.

“What virtues did I not find in her?” he says, writing to her

spiritual daughter, Principia; “what penetration, what purity, what

holiness! She became so learned that after my departure from Rome,

when difficulties were found in any obscure passage of Scripture,

people applied to her as to a judge; yet she possessed in a sovereign

degree that delicate discernment which always perceives what is

becoming; and used always to communicate her ideas as if they had

been suggested by somebody else, so that while instructing others,

she appeared herself to be a pupil.”[32]

Never, surely, was there a greater error than that into which one

of our most learned critics has fallen, when he asserts that “the

idea and place of woman has been _slowly and laboriously_ elevated

by the Gospel.”[33] He could not have written thus had he been as

familiar with the records of the Christian Church as with those of

pagan antiquity. The most perfect exemplars of Christian womanhood

appear in the history of the primitive ages. The grand ideal of the

Roman virgin or matron, softened, purified, and elevated by the

Gospel precepts and the Apostolic teaching, retaining all its former

strength, but acquiring a new element of tenderness, produced those

exquisite flowers of sanctity whom the Church appears in some sort to

regard as her children of predilection. They were not the growth of

one Church or province, but simultaneously, wherever the Christian

faith was preached, they expanded their beautiful petals to the Sun

of Justice; and we have in Rome an Agnes and a Cecilia; in Sicily

a Lucy and an Agatha; in Carthage a Felicitas; in Alexandria a

Catherine; a Blandina in Gaul, and in barbarous Britain, an Ursula.

Whence arose this instantaneous regeneration of the womanly

character? The Catholic hardly needs to ask himself the question,

for the form on which it was modelled is so obvious that it requires

not to be indicated. It grew out of no dead code of precepts, but

out of the living memory of her, the Mother _par excellence_, the

Virgin-Mother of God, and the model of all Christian virgins and

mothers; she whose countenance St. Isidore describes as “gravely

sweet and sweetly grave;” whose tranquil gait and gentle voice St.

Ambrose has dwelt on, as well as her modesty and reverence, “rising

up in the presence of her elders.” And it was she of whom he also

says, gathering up the precious fragments of ancient tradition, that

she was “diligent in reading,” _legendi studiosior_, a trait which

reappears in the character of the holy women of early times, and

which we are thus able to link on to the source whence they derived

their ideal of womanly perfection.

It cannot be doubted that the influence of such women, and specially

of such mothers, was a powerful means of preserving the Roman youth

from the infection which hung over the public academies, even after

the establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of

the State. But of these academies I need speak no further. They

formed a part of the old Roman civilisation, and perished in its

wreck, swallowed up in those waves of barbarism which, as they poured

over Europe, ground to pieces every monument of the Empire, and swept

their fragments into oblivion. In the midst of the deluge, however,

the Ark of God floated over the waters, and accepted the mission of

reconstructing a ruined world. The Church alone preserved so much

as the memory of letters, though in the inconceivable troubles of

the crisis her utmost efforts for a time only sufficed to keep up

schools in which the clergy received the instruction necessary for

their state; and secular learning for the most part fell into decay.

But the want was felt and lamented by the clergy themselves, a proof

that learning, at any rate, never lost its value in their eyes. Thus,

in his letter to the Council of Constantinople in 680, Pope Agatho

excuses the simplicity of his legates; “for how,” he says, “can we

look for great erudition among men living in the midst of barbarous

nations, forced with difficulty to earn their daily bread by the

labour of their hands? Nevertheless,” he adds, “they will expound to

you the faith of the Apostolic Church, not with human eloquence, for

they have none; but with the simplicity of the faith which we have

held from our cradles.” The synodal letter of the Western bishops

to the same council is couched in similar terms. “As to secular

eloquence,” they say, “we think no one in our time will boast of

possessing it. Our countries are continually agitated by the fury

of different nations; there is nothing around us but war, invasion,

and plunder. In the midst of the barbarians our life is full of

disturbance, the patrimony of our churches has been seized, and we

have to live by the labour of our hands. The faith is all that is

left us, and our solitary glory is to preserve it during life, and to

be ready to die in its defence.”

These two documents, often quoted, have perhaps given rise to

somewhat exaggerated notions regarding the extent of the ignorance

complained of. It is certain that there were periods of comparative

tranquillity during which liberal studies were at least partially

preserved. The schools of Gaul did not begin to decay till the end

of the fifth century, and even then some were found who exerted

themselves to keep alive the ancient learning; such as St. Sidonius

Apollinaris, who received his education in the public schools of

Lyons before his elevation to the Episcopate in 471, and Claudian

Mamertus, a monk by profession and education, who was declared by

his friend Sidonius to be equally incomparable in every science

to which he applied. Besides being an amazing reader, he was an

original thinker. His great work on “The Nature of the Soul” is said

to display the precision and method of the latter scholastics, and

contains proofs of the existence and immateriality of the soul drawn

from its capacity of thought, which appear like anticipations of the

famous Cartesian formula _Cogito, ergo sum_. In his arguments he

appeals not only to the authority of Scripture and the Fathers, but

also to that of Plato and other Greek philosophers, and shows himself

not unacquainted with the systems of Zoroaster and the Brahmins. To

him we owe the arrangement of a great part of the Breviary office,

and the beautiful hymn for Passion Sunday, _Pange lingua gloriosi

prœlium certamina_. For poetry, no less than philosophy, found

votaries in the Gallican schools. The lyre, which had fallen from the

hands of Prudentius, was still touched by St. Prosper of Aquitaine

and St. Avitus of Vienne, the former of whom may be called the poet

of Divine grace, whilst the latter, eleven centuries before the time

of Milton, chose for the theme of his verses the Fall of Man.

Down to the beginning of the seventh century the schools of Gaul

still taught Virgil and the Roman law, and in them the sons of the

barbarous Visigoths received some tincture of polite letters. The

Gallo-Roman nobility showed the utmost solicitude to obtain such

education for their children as the times afforded; and we find

notices of schools wherein grammar, rhetoric, and law were taught in

separate courses after the Roman fashion. The Gallican orators, as

in the time of St. Jerome, betrayed their Celtic origin by a certain

verbose eloquence, which had to be pruned according to the severer

rules of Roman rhetoric. The mother of Rufinus had sent him to the

imperial capital, that the Roman gravity might temper the too great

fecundity of the Gallic speech, and St. Desiderius of Cahors was made

to go through a course of Roman jurisprudence with the same intention.

Nor, whilst noticing these evidences of a love of letters, surviving

even in the period of decay, must I neglect to mention that notable

academy of Toulouse, which at one time did its best to involve all

Europe in a fog of learned perplexity. Its eccentricities would

scarcely merit to be recorded, had they not left very distinct

traces both in the Irish and Anglo-Saxon literature. The history

of this academy has been written by one of its members, the false

Virgil, as he is called, who has contrived to mystify both the date

and whereabouts of its foundation. It is presumed, however, to have

flourished at Toulouse sometime in the sixth century. Holding to

the principle that pearls must not be cast before swine, certain

enthusiasts of Aquitaine formed among themselves a secret scholastic

society, the members of which spoke a language understood only by

the initiated, and conferred on men and places the nomenclature of

ancient Greece and Rome. The grand, I might almost say the exclusive,

study of these illuminati was grammar. An assembly of thirty of their

number had gravely determined that the subject most worthy of a wise

man’s meditation was the conjugation of the Latin verb, and on this

momentous theme they split into two sects, which rivalled Guelph and

Ghibelline in the ardour of their mutual animosities. The heads of

these two parties, whose academic names were Terence and Galbungus,

spent fourteen days and nights discussing the question whether

the pronoun _Ego_ had a vocative case: at last the difficulty was

referred to Eneas, who decided that it might be allowed to possess

one when employed in the interrogative phrase. These grammatical

debates took place when Virgil was but a youth, but in his riper

years he thoroughly maintained the reputation of his masters. It was

the exact government of words which left him no repose, and he tells

us how one night, having retired to rest, he was awaked by a knocking

at his door, and found that the disturbance was caused by the arrival

of a certain Spanish grammarian, named Mitterius, whom he honoured

neither more nor less than if he had been a prophet of God. Mitterius

begged for a night’s lodging, promising in return to answer any

question which his entertainer might put to him. The opportunity was

not to be lost; there was but one thing just then that Virgil desired

to know, and, springing from his bed, he at once required, as the

price of his hospitality, a direct rule by which he could determine

when the word _hic_ was an adverb and when it was a pronoun. These

anecdotes, however, give us but a faint notion of the labours of the

Toulouse grammarians. The difficulties of the Latin syntax were not

sufficient to satisfy their thirst for obscurity, and they therefore

expended their ingenuity on inventing new means of perplexing their

own brains and those of their scholars. “Was it to be supposed,”

they asked, “that this noble tongue was so poor and barren, that its

words could be used in one sense only? On the contrary, the true

grammarian knew very well that, besides the vulgar Latin known to the

common herd, there existed eleven other kinds, each of which had a

distinct grammar of its own.” According to this system of “the twelve

Latinities,” everything had twelve names, any one of which might be

used according to pleasure. New vocabularies had to be invented,

either by the Latinising of Greek roots, or transposing the letters

of the original words in such a way as to form a variety of new

combinations. New conjugations and declensions adorned the grammar of

the initiated, and to complete their system a new prosody was added,

in which the dactyls and spondees appear to have been measured, not

by quantity, but by accent.[34]

Even the triumphs of the barbarians did not in all cases result in

the immediate extinction of letters. In Italy a second Augustan

age bid fair at one time to arise under the rule of Theodoric,

the Ostrogoth. His court was adorned by the genius of two great

men--Boethius, the Christian philosopher, and the last of the classic

writers; and Cassiodorus, in whom closed the long line of Roman

consuls. Both of them exerted a powerful influence over the studies

of succeeding generations. The original Latin works of Boethius

supplied the schools with a series of Christian classics which were

naturally held in extraordinary esteem by teachers who, as time went

on, felt with increasing force the difficulty of training Christian

youth exclusively out of pagan class-books. And it was chiefly by

his translations from the Greek that the mediæval scholars acquired

their knowledge of the Greek philosophy, at a time when the study

of that tongue had ceased to be generally pursued. A yet further

addition to scholastic literature was contributed by Cassiodorus. He

was not indeed the only statesman who had distinguished himself in

this line. Towards the close of the fifth century Marcian Capella,

an African pro-consul, had produced his celebrated work on the

Espousals of Mercury and Philology, which he chooses to personify as

a goddess; the seven liberal sciences, into which all known learning

had been classified since the days of Philo, being represented

as the handmaidens presented by the bridegroom to the bride. His

_Satiricon_, written in nine books, continued to be one of the most

popular text-books in use during the middle ages, and was at an early

period translated into the vernacular.

But Cassiodorus was not merely a writer of schoolbooks; he was the

founder of a monastic school, which, for the variety of sciences

which it cultivated, has not unfrequently been given the title of a

university. And indeed it was not undeserving of the name. Its noble

founder, when still in the service of Theodoric, had attempted, in

conjunction with Pope St. Agapetus, to found a catechetical school at

Rome, on the model of those which formerly flourished at Jerusalem,

Alexandria, and Nisibis, in which he proposed to maintain a staff

of professors at his own expense. This magnificent design having

failed, in consequence of the troubles of the time, Cassiodorus

retired from a world in which he had nobly toiled for seventy years,

and devoted his old age to the creation of a seminary of Christian

learning on his own estate of Vivaria, at the very extremity of the

Calabrian peninsula. He collected a rich library, which he increased

by the labours of his monks, on whom he enjoined the transcription

of books as their principal manual labour. It was to ensure their

accuracy in this employment that, at the age of eighty-three, he

undertook the composition of his treatise _De Orthographia_. He drew

up a plan of studies for his scholars, and wrote for their use two

treatises, one “On the Teaching of Sacred Letters,” and the other

“On the Seven Liberal Arts.” This latter was a kind of encyclopædia,

including separate treatises on each subject, which formed some of

the favourite elementary class-books in use during the middle ages.

Hallam remarks of this encyclopædia and of others undertaken on a

similar plan, that they themselves furnish significant indications

of a decadence of letters. Such collections must necessarily include

only the most meagre sketches of the sciences of which they profess

to treat, and their multiplication at this period indicates that men

were beginning to be content with a very superficial description

of knowledge. So also the numerous translations from the Greek

undertaken by Boethius and Cassiodorus are sufficient evidence that

the knowledge of that language was becoming rare. Nor will the

praises bestowed by Cassiodorus on his friend’s versions, which he

declares superior to the originals, probably raise his character as

a critic in the judgment of scholars. But the fact that his labours

were undertaken at a period of literary decay, when the inconceivable

disorders of the time seemed to present an insuperable obstacle to

the pursuit of learning, increases our admiration of the energy and

zeal displayed by the old Roman, which enabled him in spite of every

discouragement to create a school of sacred and profane learning,

where strangers were encouraged to seek that hospitality the

exercise of which was regarded as one of the most sacred duties of

the brethren. There, under porticoes and gardens adorned with every

beauty that could charm the eye or soothe the heart, pilgrims, weary

with those scenes of violence and devastation that were turning many

a fair district of Gaul and Italy into a howling wilderness, found

all that remained of Roman learning and civilisation linked with the

higher attractions of Christian devotion; and were able, amid the

monastic shades of Vivaria, to enjoy at one and the same time the

calm of retirement and the solace of prayer.

The foundation of Cassiodorus took place in the year 540. Eighteen

years previously--in 522--the two Roman senators, Equitius and

Tertullus, had taken their sons Maurus and Placidus to the grotto of

Subiaco, and committed them to the care of a solitary named Benedict.

Maurus was twelve years old and Placidus seven, and they were soon

joined by other children of the same age. They were humble beginnings

indeed of a mighty edifice, the first fruits of the Benedictine

schools.[35] In 543 St. Maurus carried the rule of St. Benedict into

Gaul, where monasteries soon multiplied, in which were cultivated

letters both sacred and profane.[36] But they were not the earliest

monastic schools which had sprung up on the Gallican soil. I need not

here remind the reader of that famous abbey of Marmoutier, erected by

St. Martin of Tours in the fourth century, and formed on the model

of those episcopal monasteries founded by St. Eusebius of Vercelli

and St. Ambrose of Milan. Yet more celebrated, and more closely

associated with the history of letters in our own country, was the

school of Lerins, a rocky isle off the coast of Gaul, where, about

the year 400, St. Honoratus fixed his abode, peopling it with a race

of monks who united the labours of the scholar to the penitential

practices of the recluse. Its rule, though strictly monastic, aimed

at making its disciples apostolic men, “thoroughly furnished to all

good works.” Hence the brethren were not required to renounce the

pursuit of letters. St. Honoratus himself did not disdain the flowers

of eloquence, and the sweetness of his style drew from St. Eucher

the graceful remark, that “he restored the honey to the wax.”[37]

St. Hilary of Arles, another of the Lerins scholars, is represented

by his biographer sitting among his clergy with a table before him,

whereon lay his book and the materials of his manual work, and while

his fingers were busy making nets, dictating to a cleric, who took

down his notes in shorthand. It would take us too long to enumerate

the distinguished prelates who were sent forth from the school of

Lerins during the sixth century. The names of St. Cesarius of Arles

and St. Vincent of Lerins; of Salvian, the master of bishops as

he was called; of St. Eucher, the purity of whose Latin eloquence

even Erasmus has praised; and of St. Lupus of Troyes, whom Sidonius

Apollinaris hesitated not to call the first bishop in the Christian

world--may suffice to show what sort of scholars were produced by

this holy congregation.

Such then was the state of letters at the opening of the sixth

century, an epoch when Europe was covered with the shattered remains

of an expiring civilisation, and when whatever literary activity

lingered about the old academies of Italy and Gaul must be regarded

as the parting rays of a light, fast sinking below the horizon. Yet,

as it sank, another luminary was sending forth its rising beams, and

the essentially Christian institution of the monastic schools was

acquiring shape and solidity. Such an epoch stood in need of a master

to harmonise its disordered elements, and such a master it found

in St. Gregory. But before speaking of him and of his Anglo-Saxon

converts we must glance at the state of letters among that earlier

Celtic population which sent students from Britain to the schools

of Rome in the days of St. Jerome and St. Damasus. Nor whilst doing

so, can we forget that sister-isle which never felt the tread of the

Roman legions, and which, sharing with Britain the glorious title

of the “Isle of Saints,” merited by its extraordinary devotion to

learning to be designated also the “Isle of Scholars.”

_CHAPTER II._

SCHOOLS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

A.D. 380 TO 590.

Although the monastic institute existed in Britain almost from the

period of her first conversion to the faith, yet the seminaries

which produced her most illustrious scholars were only founded at

a comparatively later date. Whatever schools may have existed in

connection with the British episcopal monasteries of earlier times,

had fallen into decay by the beginning of the fifth century, when

fresh foundations of learning began to spring up, the origin of which

must be traced to three distinct sources. I say _three_ distinct

sources, because the apostolic labours of St. Ninian among the Picts,

of St. Palladius in North Britain, and of St. Germanus and St.

Lupus in the southern portion of the island, were undertaken among

different races, and on different occasions; nevertheless, in reality

these three streams flowed forth from one common fountain, which was

no other than the Holy and Apostolic See of Rome.

The mission of St. Ninian was the first in order of time. The son of

a petty prince of Cumberland, he travelled to Rome for the purpose

of study, about the year 380, and being introduced to the notice

of Pope Damasus, was placed by him under the care of teachers, and

in all probability received into the school of the Patriarchium.

There he was thoroughly instructed, _regulariter edoctus_, in

all the mysteries of the faith, and after spending fifteen years

in Rome he at last received consecration from the hands of Pope

St. Siricius, by whom he was sent back to exercise the episcopal

functions in his own country. The fifth century, which was then

just opening, was precisely that in which the discipline of the

Church received its fullest development. Ninian, who had so long

studied the ecclesiastical system at its fountain-head, and who on

his homeward journey had visited Tours, and conversed with St.

Martin, then drawing near his end, was fully prepared to introduce

into his northern diocese the rule and manner of life which he had

seen carried out in the churches of Italy and Gaul. At Whitherne in

Galloway, where he fixed his see, he built a stone church, after

the Roman fashion, and lived in a house adjoining it, together with

his cathedral clergy, in strict observance of the ecclesiastical

canons. In this episcopal college the younger clerics followed their

ecclesiastical studies, whilst a school was likewise opened for the

children of the neighbourhood, as appears from the anecdote related

by St. Ælred of one little rebel who ran away to escape a flogging,

and was nearly drowned when attempting to put to sea in a coracle,

or wicker boat, which chanced to be without its usual covering of

hides.[38] The great school, as St. Ninian’s seminary is often

styled, was resorted to both by British and Irish scholars, and among

the works left written by the founder was a Book of Sentences, or

selections from the Fathers, which seems to have been intended for

the use of his students.

The death of Ninian took place at the time when the churches of

South Britain were suffering from the ravages of the Pelagian

heresy. Pelagius, himself a Briton by birth, had nowhere found more

ready recipients of his doctrines than among his own countrymen,

and the infection spread with such alarming rapidity that at the

solicitation of Palladius, deacon of the Church of Rome, Pope St.

Celestine commissioned the two Gallican bishops, St. Germanus of

Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes, to visit Britain in the quality of

Papal legates, and take the necessary steps for putting a stop to

the troubles caused by the heretics. Their first visit took place in

429, on which occasion they introduced many reforms of discipline.

One of the chief measures which they adopted in order to check the

progress of error was the foundation of schools of learning both

for clergy and laity. At Caerleon, then the British capital, they

themselves began the good work by lecturing on the Holy Scriptures

and the liberal arts. Their scholars appear to have done them credit,

for some, we read, became profound astronomers, able to observe the

course of the stars and to foretell prodigies (that is, to calculate

eclipses), whilst others wholly devoted themselves to the study of

the Scriptures.

Under these disciples a vast number of monastic schools soon sprang

up in various parts of Britain. Indeed so undoubted is the claim of

Germanus to be considered as the founder of the ancient British

colleges, that some imaginative writers have assigned to him the

origin of our two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His most

celebrated followers were Dubricius and Iltutus, the first of whom

established two great schools of sacred letters on the banks of the

Wye, one of which, situated at Hentland, was attended by a thousand

students. But this was surpassed by the monastery of Lantwit in

Glamorganshire, where St. Iltutus presided over a community of two

thousand four hundred members, including many scholars of note, such

as the historian Gildas, the bard Taliesin, and the famous prelates,

St. Sampson and St. Paul of Leon. Here, according to the Triads, the

praises of God never ceased, but one hundred monks were employed each

hour in chanting the divine office, which was kept up both by day and

night. Iltutus was also the founder, or restorer, of the school of

Bangor on the Dee, where had been a college of Christian philosophers

in the days of King Lucius, and where, according to Bede, there were

seven houses or colleges, each containing, at least, three hundred

students; and this, says William of Malmesbury, “we may well believe

by what we see; for so many half-ruined walls of churches, so many

windings of porticoes, and so great a heap of ruins you may scarce

see elsewhere.”

Another Bangor, the same that still retains the name which was

indeed common to all these foundations, owed its origin to Daniel,

the fellow disciple of St. Iltutus, who, we are assured, received

under his care all the most hopeful youths of West Britain. Paulinus,

one of his scholars, founded the college of the White House, in

Caermarthenshire, afterwards known as Whitland Abbey, or Alba Landa;

receiving among other pupils St. David, who began his studies at

Bangor under Iltutus. This celebrated man, whose name in our days is

often regarded as almost as legendary as that of his contemporary,

King Arthur, completed the extirpation of the Pelagian heresy, and by

his apostolic labours merited the title bestowed on him by British

historians of “the father of his country.” He was the founder of

no fewer than twelve monasteries, in all of which he contrived to

combine the hard work of the scholar and the equally hard labour of

the monk. Ploughing and grammar-learning succeeded each other by

turns. “Knowing,” says Capgrave, “that secure rest is the nourisher

of all vices, he subjected the shoulders of his monks to hard

wearisomeness.... They detested riches, and they had no cattle to

till their ground, but each one was instead of an ox to himself and

his brethren. When they had done their field-work, returning to

the cloisters of their monastery, they spent the rest of the day

till evening in reading and writing. And in the evening at the sound

of the bell, presently laying aside their work, and leaving even a

letter unfinished, they went to the church and remained there till

the stars appeared, and then all went together to table to eat, but

not to fulness. Their food was bread with roots or herbs, seasoned

with salt, and they quenched their thirst with milk mingled with

water. Supper being ended they persevered about three hours in

watching, prayer, and genuflections. After this they went to rest,

and at cock-crowing rose again, and abode in prayer till the dawn of

day. Their only clothing was the skins of beasts.” Yet these austere

cœnobites cultivated all the liberal arts, and the monastery of the

Rosy Valley, near Menevia, founded in the year 519, was no less a

school of polite learning than it was a nursery of saints.

To St. Dubricius, St. Daniel, and St. David, the three dioceses

of Llandaff, Bangor, and Menevia owe their origin; the fourth of

the ancient sees, that of St. Asaph, sprang out of a monastic

foundation which must be traced to a different source. It has

been already said that the mission of St. Germanus and St. Lupus

had been conferred on them by St. Celestine at the solicitation

of the deacon Palladius, who by some writers is said to have been

himself a Briton by birth. However that may be, his interest in the

affairs of our northern islands induced St. Celestine, in the year

430, to send him to Ireland, after having first consecrated him

bishop “over the Scots believing in Christ.” The Christian faith

had, in fact, already penetrated into Ireland, either from Gaul or

Britain, but the faithful were as yet few in number, and possessed

no regular hierarchy. Palladius at first met with such success,

that St. Prosper, in his book against Cassian, written about this

time, was able to say that St. Celestine, after preserving the

_Roman_ island Catholic, had made the _barbarous_ island Christian.

He baptized many persons, and erected three churches in which he

deposited the sacred books, some relics of SS. Peter and Paul,

and his own writing-tablets. But soon afterwards the hostility of

the native princes obliged him to withdraw from the country, in

order not to expose his followers to persecution. As his mission

was to the Scottish people, and not to any particular province or

kingdom, he crossed over to North Britain, where several colonies

of the Scots had already settled, and there pursued his apostolic

labours with more prosperous results. His subsequent history is

differently related by different authors. Some represent him as

surviving for many years, and firmly establishing the ecclesiastical

discipline of the North British Church. Others, with more appearance

of probability, represent his death as taking place very shortly

after his arrival in Scotland. It is certain, however, that regular

discipline was established by him among his clergy, and that

episcopal colleges were founded either by him or his immediate

successors, in which young children were received and trained for the

ecclesiastical state. Here the Scottish Christians of Hibernia would

naturally repair, before the establishment of similar seminaries had

begun in their own island, and among those who acquired the first

seeds of learning in the Bishop’s school was Cœlius Sedulius, whose

Irish name is said to have been Sheil. His history is obscure, but,

according to Trithemius, he passed over from Ireland into Britain

about the year 430, and afterwards perfected his studies in the best

schools of Gaul and Italy. Having embraced the ecclesiastical state,

he thenceforward devoted himself exclusively to sacred letters; but

his “Carmen Paschale,” a Latin poem on the life of our Lord, betrays

his familiarity with the poetry of Virgil. From another smaller poem

on the same subject are taken two of the hymns used by the Church on

the festivals of Christmas and the Epiphany.[39] St. Servanus, the

first bishop of Orkney, is represented by some as a disciple of St.

Palladius, but it is probable that he lived some years later. He was

the founder of the monastery of Culross, where he brought up many

youths from childhood, and educated them for the sacred ministry.

Among these was one named Kentigern, so beautiful in person, and so

innocent in manners, that his companions bestowed on him the title of

_Mungo_, or the dearly beloved, by which name he is still best known

in Scotland. When only twenty-five years of age the people demanded

him for their bishop; he was accordingly consecrated by an Irish

prelate, and chose for his residence a certain solitary place at the

mouth of the river Clyde, the site of the present city of Glasgow.

Here he erected a church and monastery, where he lived with his

clergy according to the apostolic rule, his diocese extending from

the Atlantic to the shores of the German Ocean; and over its vast

extent he constantly journeyed on foot, preaching and administering

baptism. The throne of the Scottish prince Rydderch the Liberal

having been seized by one of his rebellious nobles, St. Kentigern

was forced by the usurper to quit the country, and took refuge in

Wales, where, after visiting St. David at Menevia, he received from

one of the Welsh princes a grant of the tract of land lying between

the rivers Elwy and Clywd, where he erected the monastery and school

of Llan-Elwy. Local tradition affirms that the name of Clywd was

bestowed by him on the stream that bounded his domain, in memory

of his old home on the banks of the Clyde. Here he was joined by a

great number of followers, among whom he established regular monastic

discipline. His rule, however, had some peculiarities in it. He

divided his community into three companies, two of them, who were

unlearned, were employed in agriculture and the domestic offices,

the third, which was formed of the learned, devoted their time to

study and apostolic labours; and this last class numbered upwards of

three hundred. These again were divided into two choirs, one of whom

entered the church as the others left, so that the praises of God at

all hours resounded in their mouths. From this college a great number

of apostolic missionaries went forth, not only into different parts

of Britain, but also to Norway, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands St.

Kentigern himself continued to journey about, preaching the faith,

silencing the Pelagian heretics, and founding churches. On the

restoration of Rydderch, in 544, St. Kentigern was recalled to his

see, and left the government of his monastery and school at Llan-Elwy

to St. Asaph, his favourite scholar, whose name was afterwards

conferred upon the church and diocese.

One other British school must be named before passing on to the

nurseries of sacred science established in the sister isle, it is

that of Llancarvan, whose founder was indeed a British saint and

prince, but one who had received his early education in the seminary

of an Irish recluse. Few names in the ecclesiastical annals of

Britain are more illustrious than that of St. Cadoc; the son of a

prince of Brecknockshire, he was placed at the age of seven years

under the care of Tathai, an Irish teacher, who had been induced

to leave his mountain hermitage, and to take the government of the

monastic college of Gwent in Monmouthshire. There Cadoc spent twelve

years, studying the liberal arts and the Divine Scriptures. The times

were simple, and the habits of the Irish doctor, as he is called,

were somewhat austere. The young prince lighted his master’s fire

and cooked his frugal repast, whilst in the interval of such homely

duties he conned his Latin grammar, and construed Virgil. This sort

of school discipline, however, far from disgusting him with learning,

inspired him with such a passion for letters, that when his father

retired from the world to embrace an eremitical life, Cadoc would

not accept of the dignity of chief thus left vacant, but chose to

travel to various schools in Britain and Ireland, in order to perfect

his studies. At last he fixed on a rural solitude in Glamorganshire,

about three miles from the present town of Cowbridge, and there

laid the foundation of a church and monastery, which became one of

the most famous of all the British schools. It obtained the name of

Llancarvan, or the Church of the Stags, because, according to the

ancient legend, whilst it was in course of building, some stags from

the neighbouring forest, forgetting their natural wildness, came and

offered themselves to the service of the saint, suffering him to yoke

them to the cart which two weary or discontented monks had refused to

draw.

Gildas the Wise, the pupil of St. Iltutus, was invited by Cadoc to

deliver lectures in his college, which he did for the space of one

year, desiring no other stipend than the prayers of his scholars;

and during this time, says John of Tinmouth, he with his own hand

copied out a book of the Gospels long preserved in the monastery of

Llancarvan. At last the troubles caused by the advancing arms of “the

dragons of Germany,” as the Saxons were sometimes termed, obliged

Cadoc and Gildas to quit Llancarvan, and take refuge in some small

islands lying at the mouth of the Severn called the Holmes. Tradition

still points to the Steep Holmes as the place of their retreat; and

the wild peony and onion, which blossom there in profusion, but are

not to be found on any part of the neighbouring coast, are commonly

said to have sprung from those which grew in the garden of Gildas. He

did not, however, long remain there, but in company with Cadoc joined

some bands of British emigrant who had crossed over to Armorica. The

two saints chose for their residence a cave in the little island of

Ronech, where their fame attracted a crowd of disciples, who were

accustomed twice a day to pass over from the mainland in little boats

in order to enjoy their instruction. Cadoc was touched by their

perseverance, and at last employed his mechanical genius in the

contrivance of a bridge for their use, and did not refuse to deal

out to them the bread of science. He made them learn Virgil by heart

as well as the Scriptures; indeed his love for the old Mantuan was

so enthusiastic that he generally carried the Æneid under his arm,

and was accustomed to express his regrets to Gildas that one who on

earth had sung so sweetly should be for ever shut out from the joys

of heaven. St. Cadoc is said by some to have returned to Britain and

found a martyr’s crown at the hands of the pagan Saxons. According

to the Glastonbury historians, St. Gildas also returned to his own

country, and lies buried among the unnumbered saints of the isle of

Avalon.

We have now to turn to the shores of that island which, if termed

barbarous by St. Prosper from the circumstance of its never having

formed any portion of the Roman Empire, was soon to become the means

of enlightening many a land of more ancient civilisation. The history

of the mission of St. Patrick has found too many narrators to need

repetition in this place, and we shall only advert therefore to such

points as have a particular interest in connection with the Irish

schools. Whatever disputes have arisen as to the birthplace of St.

Patrick, there has never been any difference of opinion as to the

sources whence he derived his education. It seems certain that after

his return from his second captivity in Ireland he studied for four

years at Tours under St. Martin, whose nephew he is commonly said to

have been; after which, in the thirtieth year of his age--that is to

say, about the year 418--he placed himself under the direction of

St. Germanus of Auxerre, with whom he continued his studies. Hence

in the hymn attributed to Fiech it is said of him that “he read his

canons under Germanus.” The chronology of the next twelve years of

his life is exceedingly confused, but he is stated to have been

sent by Germanus to study in an island in the Mediterranean Sea,

_in mari Tyrrheno_, which was evidently Lerins. Nennius adds that

he also visited Rome, and spent nearly eight years there, “reading

and searching into the mysteries of God, and studying the books of

Holy Scripture.” The length of time spent by him in Rome appears

uncertain, but most writers agree on the point of his having visited

the city, and of his being _Romanis eruditus disciplinis_. Having

returned to Germanus, he is said to have accompanied him in his first

visit to Britain, and was afterwards sent back to Rome by that holy

prelate, who recommended him to Pope St. Celestine as a fit person to

be employed in the Irish mission. The endless differences to be found

in the various versions of his life do not affect the main facts here

established, namely, that he acquired his ecclesiastical training

in the first schools then existing in Christendom--those of Tours

Auxerre, Lerins, and Rome--and that his institution to the apostolic

office was received from the hands of the Vicar of Christ.

On his journey through Gaul we are told by Jocelin that he turned

out of his road in order to pay a farewell visit to “his nurse and

teacher,” St. Germanus, who furnished him with a welcome supply of

chalices, priestly vestments, and books. The same writer adds that he

was accompanied into Ireland by twenty Roman clerics, but it appears

probable that his companions were chiefly gathered in Gaul and

Britain, and Lanigan mercilessly reduces their number from twenty to

two. Passing over the circumstances of his first arrival on the Irish

coast, and his ineffectual efforts to convert his old master Milcho,

we next find the saint in the neighbourhood of Down Patrick, where he

instructed, baptized, and tonsured a young disciple named Mochoe, to

whom he also taught the Roman alphabet. This last-named incident is

one of very frequent recurrence in the life of St. Patrick. Nennius

indeed affirms that he wrote no less than 365 alphabets;[40] but,

as Bishop Lloyd quaintly remarks, “the writers of those times, when

they were upon the pin of multiplying, used generally to say that

things were as many as the days of the year.” It is quite certain,

however, that this teaching of the Roman alphabet, the first step

necessary for acquiring a knowledge of Latin, formed a very common

item in the instruction of the Irish converts. We are not to conclude

from this with the Bollandists, that previous to the arrival of St.

Patrick the Irish possessed no knowledge of written characters, but

it is at least clear that the apostle of Ireland considered it a part

of his office to diffuse among the people committed to his pastoral

care a knowledge of the letters, as well as of the faith of Rome.

He also received into his company a number of young disciples, who,

after being instructed in the faith, were gradually admitted to holy

orders, and given the care of the newly-formed congregation. Thus, on

his road to the great festival of Tara, which fills so conspicuous a

place in the history of the saint, he preached the faith to a certain

man whose young son Benan, or Benignus, fell at his feet weeping, and

desiring ever to be in his company; and the saint, with the consent

of his parents, received him as his disciple, or, as he is elsewhere

called, his _alumnus_. This event took place on Good Friday; on the

following Easter Sunday, when St. Patrick was invited to Tara to

hold a conference with the pagan priests in presence of the king,

the young neophyte, robed in white, carried the book of the gospels

before his master, who advanced with his clergy in solemn procession,

chanting an Irish hymn which he had composed for the occasion.

At another time a pious mother brought him her son Lananus, whom

St. Patrick delivered to St. Cassan to be instructed in all good

learning; and such was the ardour with which the boy applied himself

to study, that in fifteen days he had learned the entire Psalter.[41]

Again, Enda of Westmeath is represented entrusting his son Cormac to

the care of the saint, to be educated by him; and he himself, in his

confession, alludes to the sons of the kings who journeyed about with

him (_qui mecum ambulant_). For this first seminary was not fixed in

any college or monastery, but, as the above words imply, was formed

of those who accompanied the apostle of Ireland in his ceaseless

wanderings over the country. Popular accounts, indeed, generally

represent him 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 government of this monastery

was committed in the first instance to Benignus, who afterwards

succeeded St. Patrick in the primacy.

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 7000 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; it was, perhaps, the only European country

in which Christianity was firmly established without the faithful

having to pass through the crucible of persecution. And hence the

burning devotion which elsewhere swelled the white-robed army of

martyrs, but which here found no such vent, sent its thousands to

people the deserts and the rocky islands of the west, and filled the

newly raised cloisters of Ireland with a countless throng who gave

themselves to the slower martyrdom of penance and love. 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. At the Easter

festival at Tara, already alluded to, the first convert gained by

St. Patrick was Dubtach, the arch-priest and poet of the country.

His conversion took place in 433, and after that time he devoted his

talents to the service of the faith, and taught whatever science he

possessed to a school of Christian disciples.

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, every one 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. There may yet be seen the rude stone church of the sixth

century within which rest the bodies of the 127 saints of Aran,

and at no great distance the remains of small beehive houses which

served as the abode of the monks. According to Lanigan, who is seldom

disposed to assign a very early date to the monastic establishments

of Ireland, the foundation of Enda cannot be fixed later than the

year 480. It became the nursery of some of the greatest Irish

teachers, and was also the resort of students from beyond the sea.

Hither came St. Carthag the elder, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. Here

too St. Fursey spent many years in solitude before going forth to

found his monasteries in England and France, and here he at last

returned from his splendid cloisters of Lagne on the Marne to end his

days and be laid to rest in the rude sanctuary of the “Four beautiful

Saints.” Nor does the holy soil of Aran fail to cherish a remembrance

of St. Columba the Great. He came here before undertaking his mission

to North Britain, and his admiration for the Isle of Saints is

commemorated in verses wherein he declares that to sleep on the dust

of Aran and within the sound of her church-bells is as desirable as

to be laid to rest on the threshold of the Apostles.

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. Finian was baptized

and instructed by one of the immediate disciples of St. Patrick,

and after studying under various Irish masters he passed over into

Britain, and there formed an intimate friendship with St. David, St.

Gildas, and St. Cadoc. He remained for several years in Britain, and

on returning to his own country founded several religious houses,

in one of which he lectured on the Holy Scriptures for seven years.

At last, about the year 530, he fixed his residence in the desert

of Clonard in Westmeath, which had up to that time been the resort

of a huge wild boar. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled by

his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3000, of whom the

twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Finian himself is commonly spoken of as the Master of Saints, and is

esteemed, next to St. Patrick, as the greatest doctor of the Irish

Church. “He was,” says the writer of his life, “replenished with all

science as a learned scribe to teach the law of God; and he was most

compassionate and charitable, weeping with those that wept and mildly

healing the bodies and souls of all who applied to him. He slept

on the bare ground with a stone under his head, and ate nothing but

bread and herbs,” and his disciples followed the same severe manner

of life. 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.

Some anecdotes are told of the school life of these two great men,

in which the youthful infirmities[42] so frankly recorded of both

will certainly not prejudice our opinion of their future sanctity.

A school in those days was not exactly arranged after the fashion

of Eton or Rugby: the scholars worked for their own maintenance and

that of the house; and under monastic masters this initiation into

the holy law of labour was never spared even to those of princely

blood. The prince and the peasant were accustomed to work and study

side by side; and so it was in the school of Clonard. Columba was of

royal extraction, while Kieran was of humble birth. The first task

assigned the young prince was to sift the corn that was to serve

for next day’s provision, and to the surprise of his more plebeian

associates he accomplished it so neatly and with such rapidity

that they all declared he must have been helped by an angel. Royal

and noble scholars, however, are seldom popular in public schools,

and Columba had not a little to endure from his companions on the

score of his gentle blood. He exacted a deference from them which

Kieran in particular would not submit to, and the result was a

continual bickering. But at last, says the old legend, an angel

appeared to Kieran, and laying before him a carpenter’s rule and

other instruments of his trade, said to him, “Behold what thou hast

renounced in giving up the world, but Columba has forsaken a royal

sceptre.” The good heart of the carpenter’s son was touched with this

reproach, and from that time he and Columba only contended in the

generous rivalry of the saints.

Of St. Columba’s apostolic mission to North Britain we shall

presently have occasion to speak; but first we must trace the

fortunes of his schoolfellow, Kieran, who became the founder of

another of the most renowned schools of Ireland. Kieran’s future

sanctity had been detected by the quick eye of St. Finian before

he left Clonard. One day as he was studying St. Matthew’s Gospel,

having come upon the sentence, “All things that ye would that men

should do unto you, do ye to them also,” he closed the book, saying,

“This is enough for me.” One of his comrades, jesting with him,

observed, “Then we shall call you not Kieran, but _Leth-Matha_

(half-Matthew), for you have stopped in the middle of the Gospel.”

“No,” said Finian, who overheard the remark, “call him rather

_Leth-Nerion_ (half-Ireland), for one-half of this island shall be

his,”--a prophecy which was fulfilled when half the Irish monasteries

accepted his rule. After leaving Clonard, Kieran, having received his

master’s blessing and license, repaired to an island in the lake of

Erne, where he spent some time studying under St. Nennidius, another

of the Clonard scholars. At last he found his way to Aran, where

Enda, who was still living, received him joyfully, and employed him

during the intervals of study in threshing out the corn for the use

of the other monks. After remaining there seven years he founded two

great monasteries, one of which was situated on the west bank of the

Shannon, at a spot called Cluain-Mac-Nois,[43] or the Retreat of the

Sons of the Noble. This foundation took place about the year 548, and

thence the austere rule or law of Kieran spread into a vast number of

other religious houses.

It is indeed worthy of note that all the great masters of the Irish

schools were followers of the most severe monastic discipline.

The nurseries of science were often enough the rude cave, or

forest hut of some holy hermit, such as St. Fintan, the founder of

Cluain-Ednech, or the Ivy Cave, near Mount Bladin in Queen’s County;

whose disciples lived on herbs and roots, laboured in the fields,

and, like the monks of Menevia, renounced the assistance of cattle.

Yet Abbot Fintan was a polished scholar, and particularly noted for

his skill as a logician; and learned men came in crowds to the Ivy

Cave to perfect themselves in sacred science and the rules of a holy

life. One of Fintan’s most celebrated scholars was St. Comgall, who

in 559 became the founder of Benchor, near the bay of Carrickfergus.

The fame of this great school of learning and religion has been

celebrated by St. Bernard, who, in his “Life of St. Malachi,” speaks

of the swarm of saints who came forth from Benchor, and spread

themselves like an inundation into foreign lands. In the Latin hymn

of its old Antiphonary it is extolled as the ship beaten with the

waves, the house founded on the rock, the true vine transplanted

out of Egypt whose rule is at once holy and learned, _simplex simul

atque docta_. The most famous of its scholars was St. Columbanus, the

founder of Luxeuil in Burgundy and of Bobbio in Italy, whose rule

spread over most European countries, and promised at one time to

rival that of St. Benedict. The letters of Columbanus prove him to

have been “a man of three tongues,” to use the ordinary term applied

in old times to one who added to his Greek, Hebrew. His acquaintance

with the Latin poets is evident in his letter to Hunaldus, and his

familiarity with those of Greece in his poetical epistle to Fedolius.

And as he was fifty years of age before he left his native land,

it is certain that his learning must have been entirely gained in

her native seminaries. Another of the Benchor scholars was Molua,

or Luanus, as he is called by St. Bernard, who tells us that he

founded at least a hundred monasteries. The story of his first

introduction to St. Comgall has been often told, but is one of those

that can scarcely be told too often. He was keeping his flocks on the

mountain-side, when Comgall, attracted by his appearance, wrote out

the alphabet for him on a slate, and seeing his eagerness to learn,

took him to Benchor and placed him in the school. Luanus conceived

such a thirst for the waters of science that he prayed night and day

that he might become learned. The prudent abbot, while he admired

the zeal of his new scholar, was not without some anxiety lest his

craving after human learning might sully the purity of his soul. One

day he beheld the boy seated at the feet of an angel, who was showing

him his letters and encouraging him to study. Calling Luanus to him,

he said, “My child, thou hast asked a perilous gift from God; many,

out of undue love of knowledge, have made shipwreck of their souls.”

“My father,” replied Luanus, with the utmost humility, “if I learn

to know God I shall never offend Him, for those only offend Him who

know him not.” “Go, my son,” said the abbot, charmed with his reply,

“remain firm in the faith, and the true science shall conduct thee on

the road to heaven.”

Luanus was the founder of the monastery of Clonfert, in Leinster, and

the author of another religious rule highly prized by his countrymen.

The no less celebrated school of Clonfert, in Connaught, owed its

foundation to St. Brendan, the fellow-student of Kieran and Columba.

Having passed some years under the direction of St. Jarlath at Tuam,

and St. Finian at Clonard, and become as familiar with Greek as he

was with Latin, he is declared by his historians to have set sail on

a voyage in search of the Land of Promise, which lasted seven years.

In the course of these wanderings by sea he discovered a vast tract

of land lying far to the west of Ireland, where he beheld wonderful

birds, and trees of unknown foliage, which gave forth the perfumes of

such excellent spices, that the fragrance thereof still clung to the

garments of the travellers when they returned to their native shores.

But it is time to speak of the Irish monastic patriot, whose name

is known in our own time, as it was probably revered in his own,

beyond any of those that have hitherto been mentioned. It was in

the year 563 that St. Columba,[44] 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. 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. If

Johnson felt his piety grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona, we surely

cannot be indifferent while contemplating the site of that missionary

college which educated so many of our early apostles, and diffused

the light of faith from Lindisfarne to the Hebrides. The life led by

its inmates was at once apostolic and contemplative. If at one time

the monks of Iona were to be met with travelling through the islands

and highlands of Scotland, preaching the faith and administering

baptism where no Christian missionaries had hitherto penetrated,

at others they were to be seen tilling the soil, teaching in their

schools, and transcribing manuscripts. In whatever labours they

engaged, Columba himself was the first to lead the way. “He suffered

no space of time,” says Adamnan, “no, not an hour, to pass in which

he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading, or writing, or

manual work. And so unwearied was his labour both by day and night,

that it seemed as if the weight of every particular work of his

seemed to exceed the power of man.” He penetrated into the Hebrides,

and twice revisited his native shores, but on his return from such

expeditions he loved to take part in the agricultural or scholastic

pursuits of his brethren. He would hear them read or himself read to

them, and overlook their work in the Scriptorium, where he required

the most scrupulous exactitude. He himself was a skilful penman, and

the magnificent Codex of Kells, still preserved in the library of

Trinity College, is known to have been written by his hand. 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. Of St. Munn, one of the pupils

of Columba, it is said that he spent eighteen years in uninterrupted

study, yet this devotion to intellectual pursuits was accompanied by

a singular simplicity and love of poverty. Wherever the apostles of

Iona appeared, they carried with them the reputation of frugality and

self-devotion. Thus Bede remarks on the extreme simplicity of life

observed by Bishop Colman and his disciples, how they were content

with the simple fare, “because it was the study of their teachers

to feed the soul rather than the body.” “And for that reason,” he

continues, “the religious habit was then held in great veneration,

and wherever any monk appeared, he was joyfully received as God’s

servant; and if men chanced to meet him on the way they ran to him

bowing, glad to be signed with his hand and blessed by his mouth. And

when a priest came to any village the inhabitants immediately flocked

to hear from him the Word of Life, for they went about on no other

account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and take care of

souls.”