In the Middle Ages the Lord's Prayer and the Creed were called the chief
parts for sponsors (_Patenhauptstuecke_), since the canons required
sponsors to know them, and at Baptism they were obligated to teach these
parts to their godchildren. The children, then, were to learn the Creed
and the Lord's Prayer from their parents and sponsors. Since the
Carolingian Epoch these regulations of the Church were often repeated,
as, for example, in the _Exhortation to the Christian Laity_ of the
ninth century. From the same century dates the regulation that an
explanation of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer should be found in every
parish, self-evidently to facilitate preaching and the examination in
confession. In confession, which, according to the Lateran Council,
1215, everybody was required to make at least once a year, the priests
were to inquire also regarding this instruction and have the chief parts
recited. Since the middle of the thirteenth century the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, together with the Benedicite, Gratias, Ave Maria, Psalms,
and other matter, were taught also in the Latin schools, where probably
Luther, too, learned them. In the _Instruction for Visitors,_
Melanchthon still mentions "der Kinder Handbuechlein, darin das
Alphabet, Vaterunser, Glaub' und andere Gebet' innen stehen--Manual for
Children, containing the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and
other prayers," as the first schoolbook. (W. 26, 237.) After the
invention of printing, chart-impressions with pictures illustrating the
Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments came into the
possession also of some laymen. The poorer classes, however, had to
content themselves with the charts in the churches, which especially
Nicolaus of Cusa endeavored to introduce everywhere. (Herzog's
_Realenzyklopaedie_ 10, 138.) They were followed by confessional
booklets, prayer-booklets, and also by voluminous books of devotion.
Apart from other trash, these contained confessional and communion
prayers instructions on Repentance, Confession, and the Sacrament of
the Altar; above all, however, a mirror of sins, intended as a guide for
self-examination, on the basis of various lists of sins and catalogs of
virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized.
Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring
them to Christ and to faith in the free grace of God, but merely to
serve the interest of the Romish penances, satisfactions, and
work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too,
there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not
declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement
depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such
confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The
chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere
correctly taught,--such was the chief hurt of the Church under the
Papacy.
In the course of time, however, even this deficient and false
instruction gradually fell into decay. The influence of the Latin
schools was not very far-reaching, their number being very small in
proportion to the young. Public schools for the people did not exist in
the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact not a single synod concerned itself
specifically with the instruction of the young. (_H. R._ 10, 137.) At
home, parents and sponsors became increasingly indifferent and
incompetent for teaching. True, the reformers of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries did attempt to elevate the instruction also in the
Catechism. Geiler's sermons on the Lord's Prayer were published. Gerson
admonished: "The reformation of the Church must begin with the young,"
and published sermons on the Decalog as models for the use of the
clergy. John Wolf also urged that the young be instructed, and
endeavored to substitute the Decalog for the prevalent catalogs of sins.
The Humanists John Wimpheling, Erasmus, and John Colet (who wrote the
_Catechyzon,_ which Erasmus rendered into Latin hexameters) urged the
same thing. Peter Tritonius Athesinus wrote a similar book of
instruction for the Latin schools. However, all of these attempts proved
ineffectual, and even if successful, they would have accomplished little
for truly Christian instruction, such as Luther advocated, since the
real essence of Christianity, the doctrine of justification, was unknown
to these reformers.
Thus in the course of time the people, and especially the young, grew
more and more deficient in the knowledge of even the simplest Christian
truths and facts. And bishops and priests, unconcerned about the ancient
canons, stolidly looked on while Christendom was sinking deeper and
deeper into the quagmire of total religious ignorance and indifference.
Without fearing contradiction, Melanchthon declared in his Apology:
"Among the adversaries there is no catechization of the children
whatever, concerning which even the canons give commands. ... Among the
adversaries, in many regions [as in Italy and Spain], during the entire
year no sermons are delivered, except in Lent." (325, 41.)