Part 10

Draper describes the fanaticism of the monastic schools, and finally assigns a reason for the exclusion from them of the study of physiology and anatomy and the science of medicine. “The body,” he says, “was under some spiritual charge,—the first joint of the right thumb being in the care of God the Father, the second under that of the blessed Virgin, and so on of other parts. For each disease there was a saint. A man with sore eyes must invoke St. Clara, but if it were an inflammation elsewhere, he must turn to St. Anthony.... For the propitiation of these celestial beings it was necessary that fees should be paid, and thus the practice of imposture—medicine became a great source of profit. In all this there was no other intention than that of extracting money.”[93]

[Sidenote: Doctors in secret]

While such was the teachings of the papacy, the Jews and Mohammedans were achieving wonderful success, and making discoveries of lasting benefit to mankind in Spain and Asia Minor. “Bishops, princes, kings, and popes had each in private his Hebrew doctor; though all understood that he was a contraband luxury, in many countries pointedly and absolutely prohibited by the law. In the eleventh century nearly all the physicians in Europe were Jews.” One reason for this was: “The church would tolerate no interference with her spiritual methods of treating disease, which formed one of her most productive sources of gain; and the study of medicine had been formally introduced into the rabbinical schools.”[94]

[Sidenote: Jewish physicians prohibited]

The bitter hatred of the papacy toward independence of mind is well illustrated in the treatment that the Jewish physicians received from the popes. Draper says: “The school at Salerno was still sending forth its doctors. In Rome, Jewish physicians were numerous, the popes themselves employing them.... At this period Spain and France were full of learned Jews; and perhaps partly by their exerting too much influence upon the higher classes with whom they came in contact (for the physician of a Christian prince was very often the rival of his confessor), and partly because the practice of medicine, as they pursued it, interfered with the gains of the church, the clergy took alarm, and caused to be re-enacted or enforced the ancient laws. The Council of Beziers (A.D. 1246) and the Council of Alby (A.D. 1254) prohibited all Christians from resorting to the services of an Israelitish physician.”[95]

[Sidenote: Hatred of physicians]

To show that this was a matter which concerned the _schools_, and in proof of the statement that papal schools still adhere to formalism, miracle cure, and relic worship, we need only to notice that “the faculty of Paris [University], awakening at last to the danger of the case, caused, A.D. 1301, a decree to be published prohibiting either man or woman of the religion of Moses from practicing medicine upon any person of the Catholic religion. A similar course was pursued in Spain. At this time the Jews were confessedly at the head of French medicine. It was the appointment of one of their persuasion, Profatius, _as regent_ of the faculty of Montpellier, A.D. 1300, which drew upon them the wrath of the faculty of Paris.”

[Sidenote: Jews banished]

“The animosity of the French ecclesiastics against the Jewish physicians at last led to the banishment of all the Jews from France, A.D. 1306.”[96] The papal universities were unwilling to teach medicine, and finding that the Jewish schools of science were greatly weakening papal authority in France, this race was banished bodily.

[Sidenote: Position of physiology]

Comparing this history with the present work of the medical fraternity, and especially with that class of medical students whose life work is to spread the gospel while relieving the body, one better understands that physiology should be the basis of every educational effort, and the place that it and kindred sciences should occupy in the courses of instruction pursued by our children, youth, and maturer minds; and also the cause of that spiritual darkness which is even now hanging over the world, and for centuries held Europe in its clutches; but it shall be pierced by Christian education.

[Sidenote: Papal method of meeting opposition]

The papacy, in case of opposition which threatened her authority, had two methods of procedure. The first was an attempt to annihilate both the trouble and the troublers. Thus she simply banished all Jews from France that her own universities might not be overshadowed by the light of truth. Her second method of procedure was a counter-reformation; that is, if a reform in education arose outside the church which threatened to undermine her doctrines, it might be met by a partial reform within her borders, the reform going only so far as was absolutely necessary to satisfy the cravings of minds that dared think for themselves.

[Sidenote: Papacy can compromise]

It was not always possible to completely crush a reformation, or the reformers; and as was quite often the case in the schools, studies which could not be entirely banished, were taught, but in such a way as best to conserve the needs of the church. That medicine, as well as law, was taught in the higher papal schools, can not be denied. Says Mosheim: “The seven liberal arts [The Trivium and the Quadrivium] were gradually included under the term _philosophy_; to which were added _theology_, _jurisprudence_, and _medicine_. And thus these four _faculties_, as they are called, were in the next century formed in the universities.”[97]

[Sidenote: Medical study corrupted]

But in the study of medicine, as in philosophy or law, memory work devoid of understanding—the form without the spirit—was the characteristic. As the saints and martyrs in theology had taken the place of the Greek gods and goddesses, so in the study of other branches a multitude of pagan terms, clothed with what was then known as the “Christian spirit,” was made to satisfy the longing for real mental culture. The simplicity of the gospel was laid aside. What God had revealed was made to appear too complex for the human mind, and the secret things which are known only to God were pried into. In theology, dialectics, or logic, became the study of endless queries, difficult syllogisms, meaningless quibbles. Men delighted in propounding such questions as, “How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?” and others prided themselves on the acuteness of their reasoning powers in arguing such questions. Likewise in medicine, the study of the simple needs of the body and the rational treatment of disease was obscured by hundreds of _Latin terms_, and these were memorized to the neglect of the simple philosophy of the science. It is with this multitude of names, hoary with age, and savoring strongly of their pagan origin, that the student of medicine is still compelled to grapple.

[Sidenote: The Arabs as educators]

The history of the rise of European universities throws light on the attitude of the papacy toward education. While Europe was overspread by spiritual and intellectual darkness, God used another people to disseminate truth. When faith in God was lost, and in its place was substituted that blind faith in man and obedience to the church which is known in European history as the age of faith, learning was propagated by the Arabs. That power which had failed to conquer the world by the sword, now gained by intellectual culture what the arms of Mohammed and his immediate successors failed to achieve. Spain, while in the hands of the Moors, contributed more to European civilization than at any other time in her history; and it was as an _educator_ and through the _influence of her schools_ that the papacy received its blow from the south which made her more readily succumb to the revolt of Germany under Luther. By the Arabs “flourishing schools were established in all the principal cities, notably at Bagdad and Damascus in the East, and at Cordova, Salamanca, and Toledo in the West. Here grammar, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine were pursued with great ardor and success. The Arabians originated chemistry, discovering alcohol, and nitric and sulphuric acids. They gave algebra and trigonometry their modern form; applied the pendulum to the reckoning of time; ascertained the size of the earth by measuring a degree, and made catalogues of the stars.”[98] And all this was done when Europe as a whole was lying in darkness, when the chemist was considered a wizard, when astronomy was merely astrology, and whatever learning existed was formal and spiritless.

[Sidenote: Arabs and papal schools]

But the discoveries of the Arab teachers could not long remain with them alone, and it is with the spread of their ideas through the schools by means of the students that we are concerned. “For a time they [the Arabs] were the intellectual leaders of Europe. Their schools in Spain were largely attended by Christian youth from other European countries, who carried back with them to their homes the Arabian science, and through it stimulated intellectual activity in Christian [papal] nations.”[99]

[Sidenote: Arabs and universities]

The specialization of studies such as theology, medicine, or philosophy, together with the impulse derived from the Mohammedans in Africa and the Arabs in Spain, led to the establishment of the universities, which were, as before stated, composed of four faculties, or colleges. “They arose independently of both church and state.” The University of Paris “became the most distinguished seat of learning in Europe. At one time it was attended by more than twenty thousand students.”

[Sidenote: Papacy seized universities]

The growth of the universities was very rapid, and they threatened speedily to revolutionize the society of Europe and overthrow the papal hierarchy. “The influence and power of the universities were speedily recognized,” says Painter; “and though originally free associations, they were soon brought into relation with the church and the state, by which they were officially authorized and endowed.” If learning could not be suppressed, then it must be controlled by the church; and the “church sought to attach them [the universities] to itself, in order to join to the power of faith the power of knowledge. The first privileges that the universities received proceeded from the popes.” “While Rome was not the mother, she was yet the nurse of universities.” Scientific investigation had by this time received such an impulse from youth who had been students in the Arab schools that the church could not hope to crush it. The only hope of the papacy was to so surround the truth with fables and mysteries, and to so conduct the schools, that again the spirit of progress would be lost in its labyrinthine wanderings through empty forms. _Monopoly in education_ works havoc in the same way that a monopoly in commerce leads to oppression. And so it was.

[Sidenote: Character of students]

“The students led a free and uncontrolled life, seeking and finding protection in their own university authorities even from the civil power.”[100]

[Sidenote: Origin of courses and degrees]

Youth from the age of twelve and upward attended these universities, making it necessary to teach the secondary studies which terminated in a bachelor’s degree. “Boys ... attended the Parisian university merely for instruction in ... grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and after three or four years’ study they received the title of Baccalaureus.” “When he reached ... the age of seventeen or eighteen, he then began the study for the mastership.”[101]

It will be remembered that the schools established by the early church were marked for the simplicity of their methods, and their singleness of purpose. Their object was to educate workers for the spread of the gospel. For the accomplishment of this object the course of instruction was arranged, and students were sent forth into the world commissioned of God, as were the disciples after their ordination. There was no call for the granting of degrees. These, it is true, were used in the pagan schools, and indicated that the receiver had been initiated, after years of study, into the hidden mysteries of Greek wisdom. Among the pagans, indeed, the principle of degrees and diplomas dated back to the days of Egyptian and Babylonian supremacy, where it was indicative of fellowship in the grossest forms of licentiousness.

Greece, the country which united the learning of Babylon and the wisdom of Egypt, and offered it to Europe in the form of Platonism, naturally enough made use of diplomas and degrees. And the fact that her wisdom was so complicated in its nature made it necessary to spend long years in mastering her sciences.

Paganism, moreover, has but one model for all men; its aim is ever to crush individuality and mold all characters alike. To accomplish this purpose the schools arranged their studies in courses, demanding that each student should pass over the same ground. This is characteristic of all educational systems aside from that one, the true education, which comes from God. If you look to China, you find it there, as it develops the disciples of Confucius; India educates her Brahmans in the same manner; the priests and wise men of Egypt were taught in schools of a similar type. The Jews had aped the fashion of the pagan world, and it was from this custom that Christ called his disciples. One of the surest signs that the schools established in the days of Christian purity had lost the spirit which characterized the apostolic teaching, is the fact that the schools of the Middle Ages had adopted this pagan custom.

Students were called into the universities when mere boys, and by hundreds and thousands were run through the “grind” which we term “course of instruction,” and were turned out at the end of ten, twenty, and sometimes even forty years with a degree, which, in dignity, corresponded to the years spent in completing the course.

This custom is papal. It is opposed to the very spirit of Christianity; and any institution of learning which deigns to accept the approval of the state, while at the same time passing as a Christian institution, is not only linking itself with the papacy, but with paganism as well. Of His followers Christ says, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

“Older students, those especially in the theological faculty, with their fifteen or sixteen years’ course of study, achieved in this respect far greater notoriety. At the age of thirty or forty the student at the university was still a scholar.”[102] The idea of long courses is not, then, a modern one, and American colleges can truthfully point to the university of Paris for the precedent in this respect as in some others. In the granting of degrees another interesting subject is approached. Laurie continues: “Up to the middle of the twelfth century, anyone taught in the infant universities who thought he had the requisite knowledge.... In the second half of the twelfth century, when bishops and abbots, who acted, personally or through their deputies, as chancellors of the rising university schools, wished to assume to themselves exclusively the right of granting the license, ... Pope Alexander III forbade them, on the ground that the teaching faculty was a gift of God.”[103] This, however, must have been the work of a liberal pope, for earlier,—that is, in 1219,—“Pope Honorius III interfered with the granting of degrees; and in order to impose a check on abuses, directed that they should be conferred not by, but by permission of, the archdeacon of the cathedral, and under his presidency.”[104]

The church had gained control of the universities, and through her representative, usually the chancellor, _granted degrees_. Now, in order to keep the authority well in her own hands, no one was allowed to teach who did not hold a license granted by the university after an examination. Thus the educational _trust_ developed, and the iron hand of Rome, though concealed in a silken glove, clinched her victories, and strove to crush all opponents.

[Sidenote: Degrees and the papacy]

Our modern B.S., M.A., LL.D., D.D., etc., were adopted into the universities at this stage of educational history. “Itter informs us,” says Laurie, “that ... a complete university course was represented by _four degrees_—_bachelor_, _master_, _licentiate_, and finally _doctor_, which last was usually taken at the age of thirty or thirty-five.” “The next development of the degree system was the introduction of the _grades of bachelor_ and _master_, or licentiate, into each of the higher faculties—theology, law, and medicine. Thus a man who had finished his preliminary art studies, generally at the age of twenty-one, and wished to specialize in theology, medicine, or law, had to pass through the stages of _bachelor_ of theology, or of medicine, or of law, and then of _master_ or licentiate, before he obtained the title of _doctor_. The _bachelorship_ of medicine or law was reached in three years, of theology in seven. Four years’ further study brought the _doctor’s degree_.”[105] “The conferring of degrees was originated by a pope.”[106] The educational monopoly appeared quite complete; and having gained the form of godliness and the civil power, the old scheme of killing the life and substituting those things which would recognize the papal hierarchy, were again introduced. Leading educators are awakening to the true situation. Christian education alone can deliver.

[Sidenote: Form had replaced the life]

“The moral tone of the universities was low,” says Painter; “there were brawls, outbreaks, and abominable immoralities. ‘The students,’ say the Vienna statutes, ‘shall not spend more time in drinking, fighting, and guitar playing than at physics, logic, and the regular courses of lectures; and they shall not get up public dances in the streets. Quarrelers, wanton persons, drunkards, those that go about serenading at night, or who spend their leisure in following after lewd women; thieves, those that insult citizens, players at dice—having been properly warned and not reforming, besides the ordinary punishment provided by law for those misdemeanors, shall be deprived of their academical privileges and expelled.’ These prohibitions give us a clear insight into university life of the time, for it was not worse at Vienna than at Paris and elsewhere.”[107]

Could some of those medieval students be resurrected and placed in some of the universities of the nineteenth century, they might feel quite at home, not only as far as courses of study and the granting of degrees is concerned, but in revelings, parties, etc., judging from the reports of the hazing, drinking, and general carousing of the students in our university towns.“[108] The conduct of students is the reflex of the instruction given. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the instruction of the universities, containing as it did the form without the life, should fail to develop stability of character in its students.

“The true Catholic attitude to all investigation was, and is, one admitting of great advances in every department of learning, while checking all true freedom of thought.”[109]

The _North American Review_ for October, 1842, expresses in concise language the relation of students and schools to the general government and consequent state of society. It says: “In the colleges is determined the character of most of the persons who are to fill the professions, teach the schools, write the books, and do most of the business of legislation for the whole body of the people. The general direction of literature and politics, the prevailing habits and modes of thought throughout the country, are in the hands of men whose social position and early advantages have given them an influence, of the magnitude and permanency of which the possessors themselves are hardly conscious.”

Recognizing this fact, the papacy controlled the education of the Middle Ages, and is to-day seeking to do the same thing. Luther and other reformers, also recognizing this fact, sought to overthrow the tyranny of the papacy by establishing new schools where freedom of thought would be fostered through faith in God’s Word.

[Sidenote: Work for Protestants to-day]

Protestants to-day, looking upon the system of education as it now exists, and tracing there the same long courses in the classics and the sciences; the same degrees granted in a manner similar to the Dark Ages, the text-book containing the same theories, the same terms, the same doctrines of philosophy; the same tendency toward monarchism, or the monopoly of education by certain universities, and through them by the same power that has borne sway, should, for the sake of their government, and for the sake of their faith, establish schools of their own. As the papacy, by the subjection of thought, builds up a monarchy in place of democracy; as she in the same way overthrows faith in God, substituting faith in man or the church, so _Protestant schools should educate children_ in the pure principles of that gospel freedom which recognizes the equality of every man in the sight of heaven, and makes it possible for the government to be of, for, and by the people by developing the Christian character through faith in Jesus Christ.

XII

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY REFORMATION AN EDUCATIONAL REFORM

While following the history of education through the Dark Ages, we have often been compelled to recognize that an influence was at work slowly but surely undermining the structure which the papacy was, with the greatest perseverance, erecting, and which that power purposed should withstand all the attacks brought against it. The papacy had calculated well; it had, in absorbing the educational system of the times, laid its hand on the very tap-root of society, and, in its education as well as in its doctrines, woven about the human race meshes which only the Prince of heaven could rend with the sword of eternal truth.

[Sidenote: Secret of papal strength]

Never has the world seen such an enduring system as the papacy. Patterned so nearly after the truth of God, and resembling so closely, both in church government and educational principles, the plan delivered to the chosen nation, that only an expert, guided by the Spirit of truth, could judge between the true and the counterfeit, it had, as had the Jews before them, replaced the life by the mere form. Nevertheless, so firmly laid was the foundation, and so substantially built were the walls, that for centuries it baffled all attempts at overthrow.

This structure had as its foundation an _educational system_; the mortar which held the bricks in the wall was _educational methods_, and should the building fall, the foundation itself must be attacked.

As a civil power, the papacy was periodically attacked by ambitious kings and princes; but these shocks scarcely disturbed the serenity of the papal head, so firm was his throne. The sword of the Mohammedans was broken at Tours; and the Crescent, instead of advancing to the full by encircling the Mediterranean, waned as its light receded to the shores of Africa and the west of Asia.

[Sidenote: The revival of learning]