Part 216

"The utter confusion subsequent upon the downfall of the Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost. … Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was reduced to a system of ingenious punning. … Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard, he waited on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and Purgatory."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of Learning; chapter 2._

EDUCATION: Mediæval. Gaul: 4th-5th Centuries.

"If institutions could do all, if laws supplied and the means furnished to society could do everything, the intellectual state of Gaulish civil society at this epoch [4th-5th centuries] would have been far superior to that of the religious society. The first, in fact, alone possessed all the institutions proper to second the development of mind, the progress and empire of ideas. Roman Gaul was covered with large schools. The principal were those of Trèves, Bordeaux, Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, Marseilles, Vienne, Besançon, &c. Some were very ancient; those of Marseilles and of Autun, for example, dated from the first century. They were taught philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, literature, grammar, astrology, all the sciences of the age. In the greater part of these schools, indeed, they at first taught only rhetoric and grammar; but towards the fourth century, professors of philosophy and law were everywhere introduced. Not only were these schools numerous, and provided with many chairs, but the emperors continually took the professors of new measures into favor. Their interests are, from Constantine to Theodosius the younger, the subject of frequent imperial constitutions, which sometimes extended, sometimes confirmed their privileges. … After the Empire was divided among many masters, each of them concerned himself rather more about the prosperity of his states and the public establishments which were in them. Thence arose a momentary amelioration, of which the schools felt the effects, particularly those of Gaul, under the administration of Constantius Clorus, of Julian, and of Gratian. By the side of the schools were, in general, placed other analogous establishments. Thus, at Trèves there was a grand library of the imperial palace, concerning which no special information has reached us, but of which we may judge by the details· which have reached us concerning that of Constantinople. This last had a librarian and seven scribes constantly occupied—four for Greek, and three for Latin. They copied both ancient and new works. It is probable that the same institution existed at Trèves, and in the great towns of Gaul. Civil society, then, was provided with means of instruction and intellectual development. It was not the same with religious society. It had at this epoch no institution especially devoted to teaching; it did not receive from the state any aid to this particular aim. Christians, as well as others, could frequent the public schools; but most of the professors were still pagans. … It was for a long time in the inferior classes, among the people, that Christianity was propagated, especially in the Gauls, and it was the superior classes which followed the great schools. Moreover, it was hardly until the commencement of the fourth century that the Christians appeared there, and then but few in number. No other source of study was open to them. The establishments which, a little afterwards, became, in the Christian church, the refuge and sanctuary of instruction, the monasteries, were hardly commenced in the Gauls. It was only after the year 360 that the two first were founded by St. Martin—one at Ligugé, near Poitiers, the other at Marmoutiers, near Tours; and they were devoted rather to religious contemplation than to teaching. Any great school, any special institution devoted to the service and to the progress of intellect, was at that time, therefore, wanting to the Christians. … All things in the fifth century, attest the decay of the civil schools. The contemporaneous writers, Sidonius Apollinaris and Mamertius Claudianus, for example, deplore it in every page, saying that the young men no longer studied, that professors were without pupils, that science languished and was being lost. … It was especially the young men of the superior classes who frequented the schools; but these classes … were in rapid dissolution. The schools fell with them; the institutions still existed, but they were void—the soul had quitted the body. The intellectual aspect of Christian society was very different. … Institutions began to rise, and to be regulated among the Christians of Gaul. The foundation of the greater portion of the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to the first half of the fifth century. … The monasteries of the south of Gaul were philosophical schools of Christianity; it was there that intellectual men meditated, discussed, taught; it was from thence that new ideas, daring thoughts, heresies, were sent forth. … {688} Towards the end of the sixth century, everything is changed: there are no longer civil schools; ecclesiastical schools alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of Poitiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared; in their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal schools, because each episcopal see had its own. The cathedral school was not always alone; we find in certain dioceses other schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps, of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming metamorphosed, had perpetuated itself. … The most flourishing of the episcopal schools from the sixth to the middle of the eighth century were those of: 1. Poitiers. There were many schools in the monasteries of the diocese at Poitiers itself, at Ligugé, at Ansion, &c. 2. Paris. 3. LeMans. 4. Bourges. 5. Clermont. There was another school in the town where they taught the Theodosian code; a remarkable circumstance, which I do not find elsewhere. 6. Vienne. 7. Châlons-sur-Saone. 8. ArIes. 9. Gap.

The most flourishing of the monastic schools of the same epoch were those of: 1. Luxeuil, in Franche-Comté. 2. Fontenelle, or Saint Vandrille, in Normandy; in which were about 300 students. 3. Sithiu, in Normandy. 4. Saint Médard, at Soissons. 5. Lerens.

It were easy to extend this list; but the prosperity of monastic schools was subject to great vicissitudes; they flourished under a distinguished abbot, and declined under his successor. Even in nunneries, study was not neglected; that which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the most part occupied in copying books, sometimes religious books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients. The metamorphosis of civil schools into ecclesiastical schools was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in the civil schools, rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry, astrology, &c.; but these were evidently no longer taught except in their relations to theology. This is the foundation of the instruction: all was turned into commentary of the Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral, commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies, whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result. Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them."

_F. Guizot, History of Civilization to the French Revolution, volume 2, lecture 4 and 16._

EDUCATION: Ireland. Scotland. Schools of Iona.

Popular accounts represent St. Patrick as "founding at least a hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his followers after his death, admit the fact of his having established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. … The school, which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries, when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed facts. 'Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,' says Bishop Nicholson, 'the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here, and drew thence their bishops and teachers.' The whole country for miles round Leighlin was denominated the 'land of saints and scholars.' By the ninth century Armagh could boast of 7,000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass, and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be explained partly by the constant immigration of British refugees who brought with them the learning and religious observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of martyrs. … The bards, who were to be found in great numbers among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a considerable share in directing the energies of their countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred letters. … It would be impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers, everyone of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel, in that western island called from the wild flowers which even still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it afterwards exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or Aran-of-the-Saints. … A little later St. Finian founded his great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the wooden horse. …. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3,000, of whom the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. … Among them none were more famous than St. Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and Kieran, the carpenter's son, as he is called, is scarcely less renowned among his own countrymen. … It was in the year 563 that St. Columba, after founding the monasteries of Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of huge conical stones. {689} Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of three hundred religious houses. … Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world. 'Thither, as from a nest,' says Odonellus, playing on the Latin name of the founder, 'these sacred doves took their flight to every quarter.' They studied the classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. … In every college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the Church office was often kept up without intermission by day and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein sacred and profane studies were cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but those of every European country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the researches of modern bibliopolists are continually disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand which traced its delicate letters."

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

EDUCATION: Charlemagne.

"If there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the Lombards. … Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of confiscated territory made over by diploma to 'the Venerable Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.' But none of these learned personages were destined to take so large a part in that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne's reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on occasion of the king's second visit to Italy, that the meeting took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement, Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis, and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes, and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the first place in the literary society that surrounded the Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books, the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of other public schools throughout the empire. … But it was as head of the Palatine school that Alcuin's influence was chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as that each should bear reference to religion, for this was regarded as the final end of of all learning. Grammar was studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much attention was given, was chiefly confined to the ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric and dialectics were studied. 'In short,' says Crevier, 'the thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to that end.' At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. … The authors whose study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers, gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his court. The 'City of God' was read at the royal table, and the questions addressed by the court students to their master turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet; Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself adopted the more scriptural appellation of David. The eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous labours in which he was constantly engaged."

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

See, also, SCHOOL OF THE PALACE, CHARLEMAGNE'S.

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EDUCATION: England King Alfred.