Part 218

"Up to the end of the eleventh century the instruction was, speaking generally, and allowing for transitory periods of revival, and for a few exceptional schools, a shrunken survival of the old 'trivium et quadrivium.' The lessons, when not dictated and learnt by heart from notes, were got up from bald epitomes. All that was taught, moreover, was taught solely with a view to 'pious uses.' Criticism did not exist; the free spirit of speculation could not, of course, exist. … As we approach the period which saw the birth of those institutions known as Studia Publica or Generalia, and ere long to be known as 'universities,' we have to extend our vision and recognize the circumstances of the time, and those changes in the social condition of Europe which made great central schools possible—schools to be frequented not merely by the young ecclesiastic, but by laymen. Among other causes which led to the diffusion of a demand for education among the laity, was, I think, the institution or reorganization of municipalities. It was about the end of the eleventh century that the civic Communes (Communia) began to seek and obtain, from royal and other authorities, charters of incorporation constituting their internal government and conferring certain freedoms and privileges as against the encroachment of lay and ecclesiastical feudal barons. … About the same time, and somewhat prior to this, trade guilds had been formed in many cities for mutual protection, the advancement of commerce, and the internal regulation of the various crafts. There immediately followed a desire for schools in the more important commercial towns. In Italy such schools arose in Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and Florence; and in Germany they arose in Lübeck, Hamburg, Breslau, Nordhausen, Stettin, Leipsic, and Nürnberg. The distinctive characteristic of these city schools was, that they do not seem to have been under the direct control of the Church, or to have been always taught by priests; further, that the native tongue (German or Italian, as the case might be) was taught. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic seem to have formed the staple of the instruction. The custom of dictating, writing down, and then learning by heart what was written—universal in the schools of the preceding centuries—was, of course, still followed in these burgh schools. This custom was almost inevitable. … The increased communication with Africa and the East through the Crusades had introduced men to a standard of learning among the Arabs, unknown in Europe. Outside the school, the order of chivalry had introduced a new and higher ethical spirit than had been known in the previous centuries. Civic communities and trade guilds were forming themselves and seeking charters of incorporation. Above all; the Crusades, by stimulating the ardour and exciting the intellects of men, had unsettled old convention by bringing men of all ranks within the sacred circle of a common enthusiasm, and into contact with foreign civilizations. {693} The desire for a higher education, and the impulse to more profound investigation, that characterized the beginning and course of the twelfth century, was thus only a part of a widespread movement, political and moral. … While the Romano-Hellenic schools had long disappeared, there still existed, in many towns, episcopal schools of a high class, many of which might be regarded as continuations of the old imperial provincial institutions. … In Bologna and Paris, Rheims and Naples, it was so. The arts curriculum professed in these centres was, for the time and state of knowledge, good. These schools, indeed, had never quite lost the fresh impulse given by Charlemagne and his successors. … According to my view of educational history, the great 'studia publica' or 'generalia' arose out of them. They were themselves, in a narrow sense, already 'studia publica.' … Looking, first, to the germ out of which the universities grew, I think we must say that the universities may be regarded as a natural development of the cathedral and monastery schools; but if we seek for an external motive force urging men to undertake the more profound and independent study of the liberal arts, we can find it only in the Saracenic schools of Bagdad, Babylon, Alexandria, and Cordova. … To fix precisely the date of the rise of the first specialized schools or universities is impossible, for the simple reason that they were not founded. … The simplest account of the new university origins is the most correct. It would appear that certain active-minded men of marked eminence began to give instruction in medical subjects at Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and manner not previously attempted, to youths who had left the monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to equip themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked to them; and the more able of these students, finding that there was a public demand for this higher specialized instruction, remained at headquarters, and themselves became teachers or doctors. The Church did not found universities any more than it founded the order of chivalry. They were founded by a concurrence (not wholly fortuitous) of able men who had something they wished to teach, and of youths who desired to learn. None the less were the acquiescence and protection of Church and State necessary in those days for the fostering of these infant seminaries. … Of the three great schools which we have named, there is sufficient ground for believing that the first to reach such a development as to entitle it to the name of a studium generale or university was the 'Schola Salernitana,' although it never was a university, technically speaking."

_S. S. Laurie, Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, lectures 6-7._

"Ideas, till this time scattered, or watched over in the various ecclesiastical schools, began to converge to a common centre. The great name of University was recognised in the capital of France, at the moment that the French tongue had become almost universal. The conquests of the Normans, and the first crusade, had spread its powerfully philosophic idiom in every direction, to England, to Sicily, and to Jerusalem. This circumstance alone invested France, central France, Paris, with an immense attractive power. By degrees, Parisian French became a proverb. Feudalism had found its political centre in the royal city; and this city was about to become the capital of human thought. The beginner of this revolution was not a priest, but a handsome young man of brilliant talents, amiable and of noble family. None wrote love verses, like his, in the vulgar tongue; he sang them, too. Besides, his erudition was extraordinary for that day. He alone, of his time, knew both Greek and Hebrew. May be, he had studied at the Jewish schools (there were many in the South), or under the rabbins of Troyes, Vitry, or of Orleans. There were then in Paris two leading schools: the old Episcopal school of the parvis Notre Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the hill, where shone William of Champeaux. Abelard joined his pupils, submitted to him his doubts, puzzled him, laughed at him, and closed his mouth. He would have served Anselm of Laon the same, had not the professor, being a bishop, expelled him from his diocese. In this fashion this knight-errant of logic went on, unhorsing the most celebrated champions. He himself declared that he had only renounced tilt and tourney through his passion for intellectual combats. Henceforward, victorious and without a rival, he taught at Paris and Melun, the residence of Louis-le-Gros, and the lords flocked to hear him; anxious to encourage one of themselves, who had discomfited the priests on their own ground, and had silenced the ablest clerks. Abelard's wonderful success is easily explained. All the lore and learning which had been smothered under the heavy, dogmatical forms of clerical instruction, and hidden in the rude Latin of the middle age, suddenly appeared arrayed in the simple elegance of antiquity, so that men seemed for the first time to hear and recognise a human voice. The daring youth simplified and explained everything; presenting philosophy in a familiar form, and bringing it home to men's bosoms. He hardly suffered the obscure or supernatural to rest on the hardest mysteries of faith. It seemed as if till then the Church had lisped and stammered; while Abelard spoke. All was made smooth and easy. He treated religion courteously and handled her gently, but she melted away in his hands. Nothing embarrassed the fluent speaker: he reduced religion to philosophy, and morality to humanity. 'Crime,' he said, 'consists not in the act, but in the intention.' It followed, that there was no such thing as sins of habit or of ignorance—'They who crucified Jesus, not knowing him to have been the Saviour, were guilty of no sin.' What is original sin?—'Less a sin, than a punishment.' But then, wherefore the redemption and the passion, if there was no sin?—'It was an act of pure love. God desired to substitute the law of love for that of fear.'"

_J. Michelet, History of France, volume 1, book 4, chapter 4._

"It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, to understand the effect he produced upon his hearers by the force of his argumentation, whether studied or improvised, and by the ardor and animation of his eloquence, and the grace and attractiveness of his person. But the testimony of his contemporaries is unanimous; even his adversaries themselves render justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic tool with more address; and assuredly, something of these qualities is to be found in the writings he has left us. But the intense life, the enthusiastic ardor which enlivened his discourses, the beauty of his face, and the charm of his voice cannot be imparted by cold manuscripts. {694} Héloise, whose name is inseparably linked with that of her unfortunate husband, and whom Charles de Rémusat does not hesitate to call 'the first of women'; who, in any case, was a superior person of her time; Héloise, who loved Abelard with 'an immoderate love,' and who, under the veil of a 'religieuse' and throughout the practice of devotional duties, remained faithful to him until death; Héloise said to him in her famous letter of 1136: 'Thou hast two things especially which could instantly win thee the hearts of all women: the charm thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking and singing.' External gifts combined with intellectual qualities to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds and hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a knowledge as profound as was compatible with the resources of his time, and a vast erudition which caused his contemporaries to consider him a master of universal knowledge. … How can one be astonished that with such qualities Abelard gained an extraordinary ascendency over his age; that, having become the intellectual ruler and, as it were, the dictator of the thought of the twelfth century, he should have succeeded in attracting to his chair and in retaining around it thousands of young men; the first germ of those assemblages of students who were to constitute the universities several years later? … It is not alone by the outward success of his scholastic apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as the precursor of the modern spirit and the promoter of the foundation of the universities; it is also by his doctrine, or at least by his method. … No one claims that Abelard was the first who, in the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics into theology, reason into authority. In the ninth century, Scotus Erigena had already said: 'Authority is derived from reason.' Scholasticism, which is nothing but logic enlightening theology, an effort of reason to demonstrate dogma, had begun before Abelard; but it was he who gave movement and life to the method by lending it his power and his renown."

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

EDUCATION: Latin Language.

"Greek was an unknown tongue: only a very few of the Latin classics received a perfunctory attention: Boethius was preferred to Cicero, and the Moral Sentences ascribed to Cato to either. Rules couched in barbarous Latin verse were committed to memory. Aristotle was known only in incorrect Latin translations, which many of the taught, and some of the teachers probably, supposed to be the originals. Matters were not mended when the student, having passed through the preliminary course of arts, advanced to the study of the sciences. Theology meant an acquaintance with the 'Sentences' of Peter Lombard, or, in other cases, with the 'Summa' of Thomas Aquinas; in medicine, Galen was an authority from which there was no appeal. On every side the student was fenced round by traditions and prejudices, through which it was impossible to break. In truth, he had no means of knowing that there was a wider and fairer world beyond. Till the classical revival came, every decade made the yoke of prescription heavier, and each generation of students, therefore, a feebler copy of the last."

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

"What at first had been everywhere a Greek became in Western Europe a Latin religion. The discipline of Rome maintained the body of doctrine which the thought of Greece had defined. A new Latin version, superseding alike the venerable Greek translation of the Old Testament and the original words of Evangelists and Apostles, became the received text of Holy Scripture. The Latin Fathers acquired an authority scarcely less binding. The ritual, lessons, and hymns of the Church were Latin. Ecclesiastics transacted the business of civil departments requiring education. Libraries were armories of the Church: grammar was part of her drill. The humblest scholar was enlisted, in her service: she recruited her ranks by founding Latin schools. 'Education in the rudiments of Latin,' says Hallam, 'was imparted to a greater number of individuals than at present;' and, as they had more use for it than at present, it was longer retained. If a boy of humble birth had a taste for letters, or if a boy of high birth had a distaste for arms, the first step was to learn Latin. His foot was then on the ladder. He might rise by the good offices of his family to a bishopric, or to the papacy itself by merit and the grace of God. Latin enabled a Greek from Tarsus (Theodore) to become the founder of learning in the English church; and a Yorkshireman (Alcuin) to organize the schools of Charlemagne. Without Latin, our English Winfrid (St. Boniface) could not have been apostle of Germany and reformer of the Frankish Church; or the German Albert, master at Paris of Thomas Aquinas; or Nicholas Breakspeare, Pope of Rome. With it, Western Christendom was one vast field of labor: calls for self-sacrifice, or offers of promotion, might come from north or south, from east or west. Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was made the groundwork of education; not for the beauty of its classical literature, nor because the study of a dead language was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of acquiring a masterly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because it was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe, employed for public business, literature, philosophy, and science; above all, in God's providence, essential to the unity, and therefore enforced by the authority of, the Western Church."

_C. S. Parker, Essay on the History of Classical Education (quoted in Dr. Henry Barnard's "Letters, Essays and Thoughts on Studies and Conduct," page 467)._

EDUCATION: France.

"The countries of western Europe, leavened, all of them, by the one spirit of the feudal and catholic Middle Age, formed in some sense one community, and were more associated than they have been since the feudal and catholic unity of the Middle Age has disappeared and given place to the divided and various life of modern Europe. In the mediæval community France held the first place. It is now well known that to place in the 15th century the revival of intellectual life and the re-establishment of civilisation, and to treat the period between the 5th century, when ancient civilisation was ruined by the barbarians, and the 15th, when the life and intellect of this civilisation reappeared and transformed the world, as one chaos, is a mistake. The chaos ends about the 10th century; in the 11th there truly comes the first re-establishment of civilisation, the first revival of intellectual life; the principal centre of this revival is France, its chief monuments of literature are in the French language, its chief monuments of art are the French cathedrals. {695} This revival fills the 12th and 13th centuries with its activity and with its works; all this time France has the lead; in the 14th century the lead passes to Italy; but now comes the commencement of a wholly new period, the period of the Renaissance properly so called, the beginning of modern European life, the ceasing of the life of the feudal and catholic Middle Age. The anterior and less glorious Renaissance, the Renaissance within the limits of the Middle Age itself, a revival which came to a stop and could not successfully develop itself, but which has yet left profound traces in our spirit and our literature,—this revival belongs chiefly to France. France, then, may well serve as a typical country wherein to trace the mediæval growth of intellect and learning; above all she may so stand for us, whose connection with her in the Middle Age, owing to our Norman kings and the currency of her language among our cultivated class, was so peculiarly close; so close that the literary and intellectual development of the two countries at that time intermingles, and no important event can happen in that of the one without straightway affecting and interesting that of the other. … With the hostility of the long French Wars of Edward the Third comes the estrangement, never afterwards diminishing but always increasing."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 1._

EDUCATION: University of Paris.

"The name of Abelard recalls the European celebrity and immense intellectual ferment of this school [of Paris] in the 12th century. But it was in the first year of the following century, the 13th, that it received a charter from Philip Augustus, and thenceforth the name of University of Paris takes the place of that of School of Paris. Forty-nine years later was founded University College, Oxford, the oldest college of the oldest English University. Four nations composed the University of Paris,—the nation of France, the nation of Picardy, the nation of Normandy, and (signal mark of the close intercourse which then existed between France and us!) the nation of England. The four nations united formed the faculty of arts. The faculty of theology was created in 1257, that of law in 1271, that of medicine in 1274. Theology, law, and medicine had each their Dean; arts had four Procurators, one for each of the four nations composing this faculty. Arts elected the rector of the University, and had possession of the University chest and archives. The preeminence of the Faculty of Arts indicates, as indeed does the very development of the University, an idea, gradually strengthening itself, of a lay instruction to be no longer absorbed in theology, but separable from it. The growth of a lay and modern spirit in society, the preponderance of the crown over the papacy, of the civil over the ecclesiastical power, is the great feature of French history in the 14th century, and to this century belongs the highest development of the University. … The importance of the University in the 13th and 14th centuries was extraordinary. Men's minds were possessed with a wonderful zeal for knowledge, or what was then thought knowledge, and the University of Paris was the great fount from which this knowledge issued. The University and those depending on it made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the population of Paris; when the University went on a solemn occasion in procession to Saint Denis, the head of the procession, it is said, had reached St. Denis before the end of it had left its starting place in Paris. It had immunities from taxation, it had jurisdiction of its own, and its members claimed to be exempt from that of the provost of Paris; the kings of France strongly favoured the University, and leaned to its side when the municipal and academical authorities were in conflict; if at any time the University thought itself seriously aggrieved, it had recourse to a measure which threw Paris into dismay,—it shut up its schools and suspended its lectures. In a body of this kind the discipline could not be strict, and the colleges were created to supply centres of discipline which the University in itself,—an apparatus merely of teachers and lecture-rooms,—did not provide. The 14th century is the time when, one after another, with wonderful rapidity, the French colleges appeared. Navarre, Montaigu, Harcourt, names so familiar in the school annals of France, date from the first quarter of the 14th century. The College of Navarre was founded by the queen of Philip the Fair, in 1304; the College of Montaigu, where Erasmus, Rabelais, and Ignatius Loyola were in their time students, was founded in 1314 by two members of the family of Montaigu, one of them Archbishop of Rouen. The majority of these colleges were founded by magnates of the church, and designed to maintain a certain number of bursars, or scholars, during their university course. … Along with the University of Paris there existed in France, in the 14th century, the Universities of Orleans, Angers, Toulouse, and Montpellier. Orleans was the great French school for the study of the civil law. … The civil law was studiously kept away from the University of Paris, for fear it should drive out other studies, and especially the study of theology; so late as the year 1679 there was no chair of Roman or even of French law in the University of Paris. The strength of this University was concentrated on theology and arts, and its celebrity arose from the multitude of students which in these branches of instruction it attracted."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 1._

EDUCATION: The Sorbonne.

The University of Paris acquired the name of "the Sorbonne" "from Robert of Sorbon, aulic chaplain of St. Louis, who established one of the 63 colleges of the University. … The name of Sorbonne was first applied to the theological faculty only; but at length the whole University received this designation."