A STUDENT’S HISTORY OF EDUCATION

BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
By
Dean Frank P. Graves
A History of Education in Three Volumes
Vol. I. Before the Middle Ages Vol. II. During the Middle Ages and
the Transition to Modern
Times Vol. III. In Modern Times ——
Great Educators of Three Centuries
Peter Ramus and the Educational
Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century
A Student’s History of Education

A STUDENT’S HISTORY
OF EDUCATION
BY
FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES
(Ph.D., COLUMBIA)
DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSOR
OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1915,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
——
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1915.
Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO
WILLIAM OXLEY THOMPSON, LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
WITH APPRECIATIVE MEMORIES OF
SIX PLEASANT YEARS OF ASSOCIATION

PREFACE

There is a growing conviction among those engaged in training teachers that the History of Education must justify itself. It is believed that, if this subject is to contribute to the professional equipment of the teacher, its material must be selected with reference to his specific needs. Antiquarian interests and encyclopædic completeness are alluring and may in their place prove praiseworthy and valuable, but they do not in themselves supply any definite demand in the training of teachers. The greatest services that the History of Education can perform for the teacher are to impel him to analyze his problems more completely and to throw light upon the school practices with which he is himself concerned. By presenting a series of clear-cut views of past conditions, often in marked contrast to his own, it should make him conscious that the present educational situation has to a large degree been traditionally received, and it should at the same time especially help him to understand the origin and significance of current practices.

In this way a study of the History of Education will disrupt the teacher’s complacent acceptance of the present, and will enable him to reconstruct his ideas in the light of the peculiar conditions out of which the education of his times has sprung. Whenever historical records do not assist in such an analysis and synthesis of present day problems, they may be frankly dismissed from discussion. This conception of the subject, I have myself, with much reluctance, come to accept. My own regard for the classics, philosophy, and general history as college disciplines has caused me to view with apprehension any disposition to curtail their scope. It now seems clear, however, that the modern tendency to emphasize the functional aspects of the History of Education is both necessary and wise. The present work, therefore, is not a mere condensation of my History of Education in Three Volumes, but has been very largely re-written from the new angle.

In the first place, I have sought to stress educational institutions and practices, rather than theories that did not find embodiment in the times. This has led to the omission of much that is unessential or more strictly related to philosophy, general history, or literature. For example, even the immortal work of Plato and Aristotle has been epitomized; the entire subject of mysticism and most of scholasticism have been dropped; the masterpieces of such pure theorists as Rabelais, Montaigne, and Mulcaster, are barely mentioned; and the various historical epochs are given only so much detail as may be needed to form a social setting for the educational movements of those periods.

Secondly, it has seemed to me that our present problems in education can best be analyzed through a knowledge of the practices that have developed in modern times. Hence, while this book includes an account of all educational endeavor from the day of primitive man to the present, somewhat more than one-half the material is connected with the last two centuries. Even the attractive period of Hellenic activity and the fascinating stories of monasticism and of chivalry have been reduced to a minimum. But, though most of the changes in the earlier half of the work are in the nature of shortening, or have to do with more immediate connections, some topics, notably the development of commerce and cities (Chapter XI) and the analysis of formal discipline (Chapter XVI), have seemed to be so closely connected with subsequent progress as to deserve more adequate treatment.

Finally, since this book is intended chiefly for teachers in the United States, I have believed it most helpful to give considerable space to the discussion of American education. The account of each educational movement has included at least an attempt to trace its influence upon the content, method, and organization of education in the United States, while three chapters have been devoted exclusively to the rise of educational systems in this country.

My indebtedness for many valuable features in this book is heavy. The idea of an Outline, which appears at the beginning of each chapter, was first suggested to me by the History of Modern Elementary Education of Dean S. C. Parker of the College of Education, University of Chicago, although I have adopted a different explanation of its value. Professor Parker also read through the manuscript and sent me a general estimate of it. Professors J. H. Coursault of the University of Missouri, A. J. Jones of the University of Maine, W. H. Kilpatrick of Columbia University, A. R. Mead of Ohio Wesleyan University, and A. L. Suhrie of the West Chester (Pennsylvania) State Normal School, have all read the manuscript through with exceeding care and furnished me with numerous corrections and criticisms, both particular and general. Professor T. H. Briggs of Columbia University suggested a number of improvements in the chapter upon Present Day Tendencies in Education (XXVII). The chapter upon the Educational Influences of the Reformation (XIII) has been relieved of several inaccuracies, and possibly of some Protestant bias, through the assistance of the Rev. Benedict Guldner, S. J., of St. Joseph’s College, and of Brother Denis Edward, F. S. C., President of La Salle College, Philadelphia. I have also, as usual, been greatly aided by my wife, Helen Wadsworth Graves.

F. P. G.

FOREWORD

Each chapter in this book will be prefaced by an Outline, or generalized statement of the ideas to be included in it. Logically such an epitome is needed at the beginning as well as at the end of the chapter. At the beginning, it serves as a hypothetical or tentative generalization of the facts; at the end, as a conclusion whose truth has been tested in the light of these facts and accepted with conviction.

By having this outline in mind when he studies the facts, the student is enabled not only to see that the general statements are verified and made more significant by the details, but at the same time to organize the facts with reference to the generalization, and thereby secure an easier control of them, and, through the relation of each to the others, discover a fuller meaning in them all. Then, after this study of the details has established the truth of the outline and enriched its meaning, he can review the outline and fix it in mind as the conclusion of the chapter.

PART I
ANCIENT TIMES

A STUDENTS HISTORY OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

THE EARLIEST EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Even a brief survey of the history of education may greatly broaden one’s view.

Starting with primitive man, we find that his training aims only at the necessities of life, and is acquired informally through the elders and the medicine-men.

In Oriental education, the next stage in progress, illustrated by India, a traditional knowledge is acquired through memoriter and imitative methods.

While Oriental, Jewish education afforded greater development of individuality, but it was late in organizing schools, memoriter in methods, and restricted in content.

Thus all education before the day of the Greeks was largely non-progressive.

Breadth of view obtained

The Value of the History of Education.—The History of Education from the earliest times should contribute largely to one’s breadth of view and prove a study of the greatest liberal culture. A record of typical instances of the moral, æsthetic, and intellectual development of man in all lands and at all periods should certainly enlarge one’s vision and enable him to appreciate more fully the part that education has played in the progress of civilization. Such cultural values may be found even in a limited survey of the world’s educational development.

Space and perspective here given to subject matter.

Its Treatment in This Book.—And this is all that will be undertaken here. For, while valuable as a liberal study, the History of Education finds its justification chiefly in the degree to which it functions in the professional training of a teacher, and it will be necessary in a brief treatise to omit or pass over hastily much that might be of interest and value in a more complete account of the development of civilization. Therefore, the amount of space and the perspective afforded the various peoples, epochs, and leaders must here be determined in large measure by the part they have played in the evolution of educational institutions and practices, and by the light their history sheds upon the aim, organization, content, and method of education to-day. At times, too, the history of a single epoch, state, or educational leader will be selected as a type, to the exclusion of others equally important, and treated with considerable intensiveness, instead of describing all sides of the subject with encyclopædic monotony. Now the first historical epoch to leave a real impress upon modern practice is that of Athens at its height. Hence a mere statement of the salient features of education preceding that period is all that can be afforded in this brief survey. A detailed account of the educational processes used by savage tribes, Oriental nations, and even Judæa may prove interesting and important in other connections, but it must here be largely curtailed.

Training through elders and medicine-men ties the savage to the present.

Primitive Education.—There is little to be noted in the training of the young among primitive peoples, save that it is intended largely for the satisfaction of immediate wants—food, clothing, and shelter. Naturally no such actual institution as a school has yet been evolved, but the training is transmitted informally by the parents. The method used is simply that of example and imitation, or, more specifically, ‘trial and success.’ But a more conscious and formal education is given at puberty through the ‘initiatory ceremonies’ ([Fig. 1]). In these rites the youths are definitely instructed by the older men about their relation to the spirits and the totem animals, subordination to the elders, the relations of the sexes, the sacredness of the clansman’s obligations, and other traditional usages. Strict silence is enjoined upon them concerning this information, and to impress it upon their minds, and test their endurance, they are required to fast for several days and are often tortured and mutilated. As the savage does not clearly distinguish between himself and the tribe to which he belongs, there is practically no development of individuality, and since the race has not yet learned to treasure its experience in writing, he has no record of past experience and is virtually tied to the present.

Vocational training and class divisions of the Orient.

Oriental Education.—The nations of the ancient Orient—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, China, India, and Persia—may be said to represent the next higher stage in civilization. Their systems of education prepare mostly for vocations, and are not sufficiently advanced to undertake a training for manhood or citizenship. But since a division of labor has now been evolved, the training has become more clearly differentiated and fits for specific occupations. In this way, class divisions, or even castes, have generally arisen in society, and the young people are educated according to the position in life they desire, or are required to fill. As an illustration of this stage of development, we may consider somewhat in detail the social environment and education of India.

Mystic religion and caste system in India.

India: Its Religion and Castes.—In India, largely as a result of the debilitating climate, there was formulated about 1200 B. C. a dreamy philosophy, according to which nothing except Brahma, the one universal spirit, really exists. While men would seem to be temporarily allowed a separate existence of their own, it was held that they should remain inactive as far as possible and seek an ultimate absorption into the great Eternal Spirit. Although somewhat modified by the infusion of Buddhism, between 500 B. C. and 500 A. D., and by the British occupation of the peninsula during the nineteenth century, this mystic and static religion still dominates in India. Connected with it is the caste system, by which the people are divided into four hereditary classes. These are (1) the brahmins, or sacerdotal class, which includes all those trained for law, medicine, teaching, and other professional occupations; (2) the warriors, or military and administrative caste; (3) the industrial group; and (4) the sudras, or menial caste. Altogether outside the social order are the pariahs, or outcasts. The caste system is exceedingly strict. One may fall into a lower caste, but he cannot rise, and loss of caste by one person in a family will degrade all the rest.

The Hindu Education.—Hence Hindu education has always endeavored to fill the pupils with the tenets of their religion, and so prepare them for absorption into the Infinite, rather than for activities in this life, and to preserve the caste system and keep all within the sphere of their occupation. The three upper castes are, therefore, Knowledge of sacred books and training in laws and traditions. supposed to gain a knowledge of certain sacred works, especially the four Vedas or books of ‘knowledge,’ the six Angas on philosophical and scientific subjects, and the Code of Manu, which is a collection of traditional customs; but few, outside the brahmin class, are ever allowed to take advantage of this opportunity. The warriors are expected to pay more attention to martial exercises, and the industrial caste to acquire through apprenticeship the arts necessary for its hereditary occupations. Sudras, pariahs, and women are generally allowed no education. Except the sudras, all the castes obtain elementary education from a study of the laws, traditions, and customs of the country through the medium of the family, and more recently through village schools held in the open air ([Fig. 2]). The higher education is largely carried on in brahminic colleges, called parishads, and, as also in the case of the elementary work, the teachers have to be brahmins. Since all learning has been preserved by tradition, the chief methods of instruction are those of memorizing and imitation. Even the later texts are so written as to be easily committed, and the lines are sung aloud by the pupils until they have memorized them. Writing is learned by imitating the teacher’s copy on the sand with a stick, then on palm leaves with a stylus ([Fig. 2]), and finally on plane leaves with ink.

Much traditional learning, but no progress results.

Effect of the Hindu Education.—Hence, among the Hindus education is forbidden to ninety-five per cent of the population, and, as far as it does exist, it is a mere stuffing of the memory. It concerns itself but little with mental culture or with preparation for real living. The brahmins have handed down considerable traditional learning, grammar, phonetics, rhetoric, logic, ‘Arabic’ notation, algebra, astronomy, and medicine, but new knowledge of any sort is barred. The Hindus still plow with sticks of wood, and their crops are harvested and threshed by devices equally primitive. They bake bricks, work metals, and weave cloth, but with the same kind of appliances that were used by their remote ancestors. Until recently, they have been greatly lacking in ambition, self-reliance, and personal responsibility, and have not yet come to any feeling of solidarity or national unity. To them prosperity and progress are foreign ideas.

Oriental education in bondage to the past.

India as Typical of the Orient.—The other countries of the ancient Orient never fixed their social classes in so hard and fast a manner, and have never included so elaborate a philosophy among the products of their culture. But India may well be considered broadly typical of the stage of development in the Orient. Certain common features appear in the education of all the nations there. In the system of each, the classes below the sacerdotal or priestly are given little intellectual education, and the women none at all, but both are trained by apprenticeship in their vocations. Actual schools, both elementary and higher, have been instituted; and the latter, except in China, are conducted at temples or priestly colleges by members of the sacerdotal class. The educational content is naturally traditional. It is, for the most part, ensured against change by being embalmed in sacred books, such as the Vedas. The educational method consists largely in the memorizing of the test and imitation of the copy set, and little attempt is made to give a reason for the customs and traditional knowledge taught. Hence, while individuality has begun to emerge, it is suppressed by every agency possible; and, although these peoples have largely overcome the primitive enslavement to nature and the present, they are completely in bondage to the past.

Fig. 1.—Elders explaining to young men of an Australian tribe at the ‘initiatory ceremonies.’

(Reproduced from Spencer and Gillen’s Across Australia.)

Fig. 2.—A Hindu school in the open air, with the village schoolmaster teaching boys to write on a strip of palm leaf with an iron stylus.

Reproduced from Things as They Are by Amy Wilson-Carmichael, by permission of the Fleming H. Revell Company.)

Jewish Education.—The Jews are classed among the nations of the Orient, but they formulated loftier Greater development of personality, aims and have exerted more influence upon modern ideals in education. While their theology greatly developed in the course of their history, from the first they held to an ethical conception of God, and the chief goal of their education was the building of moral and religious character. Not until after the Babylonish captivity (586-536 B. C.), however, did they establish actual schools. Before that, children were given an informal training in the traditions and observances of their religion by their parents. But they brought back from Babylon the idea of institutions for higher training and started such schools through their synagogues. In the second century B. C. the founding of elementary schools also began, and eventually the Jews made education well-nigh universal. The beneficial effect of this training is seen in the respect shown by the Jews for their women, their kind treatment of children, and their reverence for parents. The defects of their education appear in the stereotyped and formal way in which the religious material came to be interpreted, and the consequent hostility to science but Oriental and non-progressive. and art, except as they threw light on some religious festival or custom. Although appeal was made to various types of memory, systems of mnemonics devised, and other good pedagogical features suggested, their methods of instruction were largely memoriter. The Jewish system of education, as a whole, afforded a greater development of personality than that of the other Oriental nations, and through it have been spread some of the world’s most exalted religious conceptions. Nevertheless, it did not depart much from its traditions and the past, and to this extent it may be classed with the training of the primitive tribes and of the Oriental nations as predominantly non-progressive.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

For general works, see Graves, F. P., History of Education before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chaps. I-XI; Monroe, P., Text-book in the History of Education (Macmillan, 1905), chaps. I-II. A general interpretation of the evolution of education in savagery and barbarism is also given in Laurie, S. S., Pre-Christian Education (Longmans, Green, 1909), pp. 1-207; Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society (Holt, 1907), Part I; and Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals (Macmillan, 1913), vol. I, chaps. I-V. An illustration of primitive training of especial interest to American students is found in Spencer, F. C., Education of the Pueblo Child (Columbia University, Department of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 7, no. 1); and a detailed description of the puberty rites of a variety of savage tribes, in Webster, H., Primitive Secret Societies, (Macmillan, 1908), chaps. I-V. A more complete account of the Hindu philosophy and education appears in Dutt, R. C., Civilization of India (Dent, London), and Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals (Macmillan, 1913), vol. I, chaps. III and IV. A systematic statement of the Jewish training has been adapted from a German work, in Leipziger, H. M., Education of the Jews (New York Teachers College, 1890), and a more detailed account worked out in Spiers, B., School System of the Talmud (Stock, London, 1898).

CHAPTER II

THE EDUCATION OF THE GREEKS

OUTLINE

The Spartan training was intended to serve the state by making warriors, and little attention was paid to intellectual education.

At first the Athenian education was also mainly concerned in serving the state. For the earliest stage of the boy’s education, there were schools of two types,—one for intellectual training, as well as one for physical; from fifteen to eighteen a more advanced physical training was given; and then, for two years, a preparation for military life.

After the Persian wars, the Athenians adopted ideals of education affording a larger recognition of individualism. The sophists introduced the new educational practices, and went to an extreme in their individualism.

The systematic philosophers,—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, tried to mediate the outworn institutional education and the extreme individualism. Socrates held that the sophistic ‘knowledge’ was only ‘opinion,’ and that the more universal knowledge could be reached in every person by stripping off his individualistic opinion.

But Plato maintained that only the intellectual class could attain to knowledge. For them he formulated a new course of study, in addition to that in vogue, consisting of mathematical subjects and dialectic. Aristotle held that the training for every one before seven should be bodily; up to fourteen, the irrational soul should be trained; and until twenty-one, the rational. While Plato and Aristotle had little effect upon educational practice at the time, they have since greatly influenced education.

After Aristotle, there arose individualistic schools of philosophy and formal schools of rhetoric, and out of them universities sprang up. Then Greek culture and education spread throughout the world.

First development of individuality appeared among Greeks.

Progressive Nature of Greek Education.—Real educational progress began with the Greeks. In their training gradually appeared considerable regard for individuality. They were the first people whose outlook seems to have been toward the future rather than the past, and they first made a serious attempt to promote human development in accordance with a remote ideal progressively revealed. As a result, they not only gave a wonderful impetus to educational practice in their own time, but ever since then the world has had constant recourse to them for inspiration and counsel. While this intellectual emancipation did not appear to any extent before its development among the Athenians in the middle of the fifth century B. C., well-planned systems of education existed in Greece several centuries before this and paved the way for the system in Athens during the Age of Pericles.

Spartan Education: Its Aim and Early Stages.—Among the states of ancient Greece, Sparta possessed the earliest education of which we have any extended information. Its citizens dwelt in the midst of hostile peoples they had subjugated, and this made it necessary to produce a race of hardy and patriotic warriors. Strength, courage, and obedience to the laws were held as the aim of education. Service to state the object. The Spartan educational system was intended to serve the state, and the rights of the individual were given little or no consideration. State control began with birth. The infant was immediately inspected by a council of Exposure of sickly infants. elders, and, if he were sickly or deformed, he was ‘exposed’ to die in the mountains; but if he appeared physically promising, he was formally adopted by the state and left with his mother for rearing until seven. At that age the boys were placed in charge of a state officer and ate and slept in a kind of public barracks. Here their life became one of constant drill and discipline. In addition to hard beds, scanty clothing, and Barracks training of boys. little food, they were given a graded course in gymnastics. Besides ball-playing, dancing, and the pentathlum—running, jumping, throwing the discus, casting the javelin, and wrestling—the exercises included boxing, and even the brutal pancratium, in which any means of overcoming one’s antagonist—kicking, gouging, and biting, as well as wrestling and boxing—was permitted.

Little intellectual or moral training.

The Spartan boys, however, received only a little informal training in the way of intellectual education. They simply committed to memory and chanted the laws of Lycurgus and selections from Homer, and they listened to the conversation of the older men during the meals at the common table, and were themselves exercised in giving concise and sensible answers to questions put to test their wisdom. Every adult was also required to choose as his constant companion or ‘hearer’ a youth to whom he might become an ‘inspirer.’

Training in Youth and Manhood: Results.—When a youth reached eighteen, he began the distinctive study of warfare. For two years he was trained in the use of arms and skirmishing, and every ten days had his courage and his physique tested by being whipped before the altar of Artemis. Then he regularly entered the army, Military training. and for ten years guarded some border fortress and lived upon the coarsest of fare. When he became thirty, he was considered a man and forced to marry at once, but even then he could visit his wife only clandestinely and was still obliged to live in common with the boys and assist in their training.

The education of women was very like that of the men. While the girls were allowed to live at home, they were Similar education of girls. given a similar physical training in the hope that they would become the mothers of sturdy sons. Thus the Spartan education was shaped entirely with reference to the welfare of the state. Their educational system served well its purpose of creating strong warriors and devoted citizens, but it failed to make for the highest manhood. Sparta developed practically no art, literature, or philosophy, and produced little that tended to promote civilization. She has left to the world little but examples of heroism and foolhardiness alike.

Old Athenian Education: Its Aim and Early Training.—For many centuries the Athenian education was not unlike the Spartan in promoting the welfare of the state without much consideration of individual interests. But even in early days Athens felt that the state was best served when the individual secured the most complete personal development. Hence, the Athenian boys Two types of schools: (1) the palaestra, furnishing physical training; (2) the didascaleum, furnishing music, reading, and writing. began to receive at seven years of age two kinds of training,—(1) the pentathlum and other physical exercises in the palaestra ([Fig. 3]) or exercising ground, and (2) singing and playing upon the flute or lyre, and reading and writing at the didascaleum (Fig. 4.) or music school. After the The paedagogus. boy had learned his letters by tracing them in the sand, he was taught to copy verses and selections from well-known authors, at first upon wax-tablets with a stylus, and later upon parchment with pen and ink. It was, moreover, necessary for the pupils in singing to be taught the rhythm and melody, and to understand the poem so as to bring out its meaning. Hence the explanations and interpretations given by the teachers brought in all the learning of the times, and the moral and intellectual value of the studies must have been much greater than would be suggested by the meagerness of the course. Some moral training and discipline were also given the boy by a slave called the paedagogus, who conducted him to school and carried his lyre and other appurtenances. This functionary was often advanced in years or incapacitated for other duties by physical disability.

Fig. 3.—The palaestra.

Fig. 4.—The didascaleum.

(Reproduced from illustrations taken from old vases by Freeman in his Schools of Hellas.)

Training for the Youth.—At fifteen the Athenian Advanced physical training in gymnasia, and ephebic course in military duties. boy might take physical training of a more advanced character at one of the exercising grounds just outside Athens, which were known as gymnasia. He was now permitted to go wherever he wished and become acquainted with public life through first-hand contact. When eighteen the youth took the oath of loyalty to Athens, and for two years as an ephebus or cadet continued his education with a course in military duties. The first year he spent in the neighborhood of Athens and formed part of the city garrison, but in the second year he was transferred to some fortress on the frontier. At twenty the young man became a citizen, but even then his training continued through the drama, architecture, sculpture, and art that were all about him.

Women given little training.

Effect of the Old Athenian Education.—Little attention was, however, given by the Athenians to the education of woman. It was felt that her duties demanded no knowledge beyond ordinary skill in household affairs. With this exception, the Athenian education was superior to the Spartan in allowing greater opportunity for individual development and in furnishing a more rounded training. Nevertheless, until about the middle of the Resemblance of old Athenian education to Spartan. fifth century B. C., while differing considerably in degree from Sparta, Athens may be grouped with that country as adhering to the ‘old’ education, where the individual was subordinated to the good of the social whole.

Causes and Character of the New Athenian Education.—This characterization is, of course, in contrast to Greek education in the ‘new’ period, which is represented by Athens alone. This later type of education was probably somewhat the result of the gradual rise of democratic ideals in Athens, but a more immediate set of factors grew out of the Persian wars (492-479 B. C.). This extended conflict with a powerful Oriental people, possessing a well-organized but widely different body of traditions tended to broaden the views of the Athenians greatly, and the ensuing political and commercial intercourse with a variety of dependent states and nations in the Delian League, together with social contact with the foreigners from every land that were thronging the Extreme individualism in new Athenian education. streets of Athens, led even more directly to a reconstruction of practices and beliefs. A rapid transition in the old traditions took place and society seems for a time to have been sadly disorganized. The old was shattered, and while new ideals were being constructed, a groping ensued. Although the latitude given the individual was destined, as always, to produce progress in the long run, and was of great ultimate service to the world, more immediately a low ebb in morals at Athens resulted. Individualism ran riot. Education reflected the conditions of the period. Its ideals became more and more individualistic. The times demanded a training that would promote the happiness of the individual with little consideration for the welfare of the state as a whole. The old education seemed narrow and barren of content; and there arose a desire for all sorts of knowledge that might contribute to one’s advancement, whether it increased his social usefulness or not. Skill in debate and public speaking was especially sought, because of the unusual opportunity for personal achievement in politics.

Study of grammatical and rhetorical subtleties, in the place of the old education.

The Sophists and Their Training.—To meet these new demands, a set of teachers known as the sophists came into prominence. They professed to train young men for a political career, and some of them even claimed to teach any subject whatsoever, or how to defend either side of an argument. These pretensions, together with their charging a fee for their services, contrary to Athenian custom, seriously offended the more conservative of the citizens of Athens. But many of the first sophists afforded an honest and careful training. The effect of their teaching was especially felt by the adolescents in the gymnasium stage of education, since they were ambitious to distinguish themselves politically. The physical training that had hitherto dominated the gymnasium course gave way to a study of grammatical and rhetorical subtleties, and whenever a sophist appeared in the street, market-place, or house, the young men crowded about him to borrow from his store of experience and wisdom, and acquire his method of argument. To a less degree the same influence was felt in the lower schools and by the cadets and younger citizens. The exercises of the palaestra were no longer as rigorous, and existed for the sake of individual health and pleasure rather than for the making of citizens. The literary work of the didascaleum came to include, besides the Homeric epics, a wide range of didactic, reflective, and lyric poetry, with a superabundance of discussions. In music the old patriotic and religious songs sung to the simple Doric airs and accompanied upon the seven-stringed lyre, were replaced by rhythms of great difficulty, like the Lydian and Phrygian, and by complicated instruments of all sorts.

Reaction from the old subordination of the individual to the state.

Their Extreme Individualism.—All this inroad upon the time honored curriculum shows how fully the sophists embodied the individualism of the times. Although they held no body of doctrine common to them all, they were generally at one in their position of extreme individualism. They often went so far as to insist that there could not safely be any universal criteria in knowledge or morals; that no satisfactory interpretation of life could be made for all, but that every fact and situation should be subject to the judgment of the individual. No doubt the formula attributed to Protagoras, “Man (i. e. the individual) is the measure of all things, both of the seen and the unseen,” would have expressed the attitude common to most of them. They but carried to its legitimate conclusion the complete reaction from the old ideal of subordination of the individual to the state.

The Reactionaries and the Mediators.—Meanwhile, the conservative element was making its usual attempt to adjust the unsettled conditions by suggesting a return to the old. Various schemes had been advanced, even The attitude of Pythagoras and Aristophanes; before the sophists had come into prominence. Of these the most complete plan was that of Pythagoras (about 580-500 B. C.). By adopting an analogy from the ‘harmony’ of the celestial bodies and from the relation of the powers in the individual to each other, he arranged a definite hierarchy in society, so that each member should have his proper place, and complete harmony and social order should ensue. As the influence of the sophists began to be felt, later representatives of the reactionary movement, such as the matchless caricaturist, Aristophanes (445-380 B. C.), began to appear and inveigh against the new conditions. But the social process can never move backward, and reconstruction on some higher plane was needed to overcome the destructive tendencies of the times. To furnish this, was and of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. the task set themselves by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Like the sophists, they recognized that the traditional beliefs and sanctions, the old social order, and the former ideals and content of education, had been outlived, and that the individual could not find truth and morality through an institutional system. At the same time they felt that the extreme individualism of the sophists was too negative a basis upon which to build, and that a more socialized standard of knowledge and morality must be sought.

The Method of Socrates.—This mediating effort was begun by Socrates (469-399 B. C.). While he started with the formula of Protagoras, he maintained that the ‘man’ indicated thereby was not the individual, but mankind as a whole. It is not the peculiar view of any individual that represents the truth, but the knowledge that is the same for everyone. The former, which the ‘Knowledge’ versus ‘opinion’. sophists considered ‘knowledge,’ Socrates held to be only ‘opinion,’ and declared that the reason men think so differently is because each sees but one side of the truth. He believed that everyone could get at universal knowledge by stripping off individual differences and laying bare the essentials upon which all men are agreed. He conceived it to be the mission of the philosopher or teacher to enable the individual to do this, and he endeavored to deal with the mind of all those with whom he The ‘dialectic’ of Socrates. came in contact, so that they would form valid conclusions. By his method, known as the dialectic, or ‘conversational,’ he first encouraged the individual to make a definite statement of his belief, and then, through a set of clever questions, caused the person to develop his thought, until he became so involved in manifest contradictions that he was forced to admit that his view had been imperfectly formed. He thus caused the individual to see that the view he had first expressed was mere ‘opinion’ and but a single phase of the universal truth. As Socrates further held that morality consists in right knowledge and made no distinction between the knowledge of an action and the impulse to perform it, he strove through his methods of developing knowledge to harmonize the individual welfare with that of the social group.

Plato’s System of Education for the Three Classes of Society.—But the believers in the old traditions and institutional morality felt that Socrates was atheistic and immoral. They persuaded Athens to give him the hemlock, and thus destroyed the man who might have proved her savior. A pupil, Plato (427-347 B. C.), undertook to continue his work, but his aristocratic birth and temperament caused him to underestimate the intelligence of the masses. He held that they were incapable of attaining to ‘knowledge’—that they possessed only ‘opinion.’ In his most famous dialogue, In the Republic government was to be by the intellectual class. The Republic, he endeavors to show that the ideal state can exist only when the entire control of the government is entrusted to the ‘philosophers,’ or intellectual class, who alone possess ‘real knowledge.’ Those who are to compose the three classes of society Plato would have selected during the educational process on the basis of their ability. For all boys up to eighteen years of age he prescribes an education similar to that in vogue in the palaestra, didascaleum, and gymnasium, except that he Early education. would somewhat expurgate the literary element, and would confine the musical training to the simpler melodies and instruments. The youths who prove capable of going beyond this lower education are next to take up Cadet training. the cadet training between eighteen and twenty, but those who are incapable of further education are to be relegated to the industrial class. During the cadet period are to be determined those capable of going on with the higher education of philosophers, while those who here reach their limit become members of the military class.

As Athenian education did not extend beyond the twentieth year, Plato is here obliged to invent a new course of study that will enable the future philosophers Higher education for philosophers: to acquire the habit of speculation. This additional course, he declares, should also be graded, in order that a further test of intellectual and moral qualities may be made. Arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, music, and (1) mathematical subjects; astronomy, are to occupy the first ten years of the course. These subjects, however, are not to be studied for calculation or practical purposes of any sort, but entirely from the standpoint of theory or the universal relations underlying them, since only thus can they furnish a capacity for abstract thought. After this, at thirty, the young men who can go no further, are to be placed in the minor offices of the state, while those who have (2) dialectic. shown themselves capable of the study of dialectic, go on with that subject for five years longer. It then becomes the duty of these highest philosophers to guide and control the state until they have reached the age of fifty, when they may be allowed to retire.

The Weakness of Plato’s System.—Thus, where Socrates found the basis of universal truth in everyone, Plato held that only one class of people, the most intellectual, could attain to real knowledge. He, therefore, maintained that the philosophers should absolutely guide the conduct of the state, and that education should be organized with that in view. Plato’s ideal state would Return to subordination of the individual; thus become a sort of intellectual oligarchy, and in a way was a return to the old principle of subordinating the individual to society. The Republic thus quite neglected neglect of human will; human will as a factor in society and assumed that men can be moved about in life like pieces upon failure to see all human traits in each individual; the chess board. Plato failed to see, too, that each individual really possesses all human characteristics. The workers have reason, and the philosophers have passions, and a human being is not a man unless all these functions are his. But even if his scheme had been a no means of evolution. happy one, the treatise provided no method of evolution from current conditions, and if it were further granted that this order of things could be established at once. Plato put the ban upon all innovation or change, and so closed the door to progress.

Hence The Republic was viewed as a visionary conception, and had no immediate effect upon education or any other institution of Athens. So in his declining years, without denying The Republic as ideal, he wrote The Laws offered a more practical and traditional system of education. the more practical dialogue known as The Laws. In it he welded elements from the educational systems of Sparta and older Athens, and reverted to traditions and ideals not dissimilar to the doctrines of Pythagoras. He replaced the philosophers with priests, an hereditary ruler, a superintendent of education, and various other officials; and the course of study reached its height with the subject of mathematics, while dialectic was not mentioned.

His Influence upon Educational Theory and Practice.—Thus the efforts of Socrates, as continued by Plato, to obtain the benefit of the growing individualism for society and education without disrupting them, had seemingly come to naught. Nevertheless, Plato has had considerable influence upon the thought and practice of men since the Greek period. The ideal society where everything is well managed and everyone is in the position for which nature intended him, has ever since the day of The Republic been a favorite theme for writers, as Model for later Utopias. witness More’s Utopia and the New Atlantis of Bacon. A specific movement that shows the impress of Plato, as we shall see later, is the formulation of the more advanced studies of the mediæval ‘seven liberal arts’ The ‘quadrivium’ and ‘formal discipline.’ under the name of the ‘quadrivium.’ It is even possible that the whole conception of ‘liberal’ studies, and so the doctrine of ‘formal discipline’ (see p. 182), may be traced back to Plato’s idea that the mathematical subjects in the course for philosophers should never be studied from a practical point of view. On the whole, Plato has been a factor in educational theory and practice that cannot be overlooked.

Aristotle’s Ideal State and Education.—A more practical attempt to unify the new with the old in Athenian society and education was made by Aristotle (386-322 B. C.), the pupil of Plato. From his father, the court physician at Macedon, and from his study under Plato, Aristotle obtained an excellent scientific training, which is evident in the way he approaches his problems. It is in his Politics especially that he discusses the ideal state and the training of a citizen. His method of investigation to determine the nature of this ideal state is inductive, and before formulating his conception of it, he makes a critical analysis of Plato’s Republic and Laws, and analyzes the organization of many other states, both ideal and actual. He concludes that a monarchy is Theoretically a monarchy, but practically a democracy is best. theoretically the best type of government, but that the form most likely to be exercised for the good of the governed is the democracy. He then considers in detail the best natural and social conditions for a state. Among these practical considerations is the proper education to make its citizens virtuous.

Education necessary for virtue.

Since virtue is of two kinds, moral or practical, and intellectual or speculative, and the former is merely the stepping-stone to the latter, the education needed for the virtue of the state must not, like that of Sparta, be purely a training for war and practical affairs. In marking off the periods of education, Aristotle holds that “the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul, and Training of the body,— the training of the impulsive side of the soul ought to come next; nevertheless, the care of it must be for the sake of the reason, and the care of the body for the sake of the soul.” The development of the body he wishes to sensible advice. start even before birth by having the legislator “consider at what age his citizens should marry and who are fit to marry.” Also he deems it necessary to sanction the usage of his time of ‘exposing’ (see p. 13) all deformed and weakly children. However, his advice concerning the food, clothing, and exercise of children is humane and in keeping with the best modern hygiene.

The training of the body is a preparation for the formal schooling, which is to last from seven to twenty-one. This is divided into two periods by puberty, the first to be devoted to the training of the impulsive or irrational Training of the irrational soul,— side of the soul, and the second to that of the rational side. Education, he claims, should be public, as in Sparta, for it is the business of the state to see that its citizens are all rendered virtuous. However, the industrial classes, not being citizens, have no need of education, and women are to be limited in the scope of their training. The course of study for the irrational period is largely the same as that in use at Athens,—gymnastics, gymnastics, music, and literary subjects. music, and literary subjects, although he recommends some reforms. Gymnastics is intended for self-control and beauty of form, and the making of neither athletes nor warriors should be the object, since the training of the former exhausts the constitution, and that of the latter is brutalizing. The literary subjects, which with Aristotle includes drawing, as well as reading and writing, are not to be taught merely for utilitarian reasons. Music is to be used not so much for relaxation or intellectual enjoyment as for higher development. Since melodies that afford pleasure are connected with noble ideas, and those which give us pain are joined to debased ideas, the study of music “cultivates the habit of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions.” Another moral effect of music is that it produces katharsis or ‘purification’; that is, by arousing in us pity and fear for humanity at large, it lifts us out of ourselves and affords a safe vent for our emotions.

Such was to be the training for the body and for the irrational period, but how Aristotle would have advised Training of the rational soul,—mathematical subjects, dialectic, and sciences. that the education of the rational soul be carried on can only be surmised, since the treatise breaks off suddenly at this point. It is probable that it would have included a higher training in mathematical subjects and dialectic similar to that advocated by Plato, and, from Aristotle’s own predilections, he would have been likely also to add some of the physical and biological sciences.

The Permanent Value of His Work.—Thus Aristotle, like Plato, endeavored to work out the harmonizing of individual with social interests by the creation of an ideal state, and he similarly failed to answer the demand of the times. His work was much less visionary than The Republic, but he did not fully recognize that the day of the small isolated states of Greece, with their narrow prescriptions for patriotism and social order, Somewhat in bondage to his times. had passed forever. Hence he hoped to achieve some reform by departing but little from existing conditions and reading a philosophy into them, and this bondage to the times prevented his educational system from making any advance beyond that of Plato. But while Aristotle had little effect upon the society of the times, his works have since been considered of great value, and the methods that he formulated have been most important. He not only started, or made the first great contributions Contribution to sciences, formulation of laws of thought, and invention of terminology. to a number of sciences, but he crystallized the laws of thought itself. Also, as instruments to assist in fashioning the various sciences, Aristotle invented a complete system of terminology, and created such pairs as ‘matter’ and ‘form,’ ‘mean’ and ‘extreme,’ and ‘cause’ and ‘effect,’ and such convenient expressions as ‘principle,’ ‘maxim,’ ‘habit,’ and ‘faculty.’ A more important effect of Aristotle’s ideas has been that upon the Formulation of Church doctrine. formulation of doctrine in the Christian Church. After the spread of Mohammedanism, which had largely absorbed the Aristotelian principles, the Church, though at first bitterly opposing them, finally found it impossible to suppress them, and began to clothe her own doctrine in their dress. The greatest of the scholastics began to study Aristotelianism, and soon made it the effective weapon of the Church by reducing all human knowledge to a finished Aristotelian system with theology at the top.

The Post-Aristotelian Schools of Philosophy.—But the harmonizing attempt of Aristotle was fruitless. Like Socrates and Plato, he failed to reconcile with the old and settled order the ever-expanding movement toward individualism. Thus all efforts to control the individualistic and disintegrating tendencies of the times were in vain, and the conquest of the Greek states by Philip of Macedon (358-338 B. C.) was only symptomatic of the complete collapse of corporate life and the inability to reconstruct it successfully. All possibility of social unity disappeared, and philosophy no longer considered the individual from the standpoint of membership in society. It was occupied no further with the harmonization of the individual and the state, but concerned itself with the welfare of the individual and the art of living. Triumph of individualism. Individualism was completely triumphant, and education was considered simply as a means to personal development or happiness, without regard to one’s fellows. The new theories of life and education were formulated by such schools of philosophy as the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics, which kept themselves far removed from society. None of these ‘schools’ could be so termed in the sense of offering an education, but rather in the modern usage of a group of adherents to certain teachings. They spent their energy, for the most part, in interpreting, elaborating, and lauding the original teachings of the founders, and with them a stereotyped dogmatism took the place of philosophy.

The Schools of Rhetoric.—But these schools were not the only outcome of the teaching of the sophists. Just as they came about gradually from the speculative tendencies of the sophists as developed through certain famous philosophers, there likewise grew up more directly from the sophistic efforts to train young men in rhetoric and public speaking a multitude of rhetorical Formal study and general knowledge. schools. In these a formal study was made of oratory and the knowledge of the day. Their professed object was to make successful men of the world, and, although they at first included such reputable and influential schools as that of Isocrates (436-338 B. C.), they laid little claim to teaching anything solid or profound, much less to forming any philosophic habits. They succeeded in spreading a popular education among a people that had lost all hope of a political life, but they soon degenerated into the use of narrow and formal methods. The later rhetoricians attempted to hasten oratorical training and preparation for life, by teaching their pupils ready-made speeches and dialogues, together with a general knowledge of current questions. Nevertheless, these schools flourished for several centuries and closely rivalled those of the philosophers.

The Hellenic Universities.—From these two classes of schools, the philosophical and the rhetorical, the fame of Athens spread rapidly, and from the fourth century B. C. onward the number of young men from all over the civilized world who came there to study steadily increased. Before the close of the century the old cadet Origin of University of Athens. training of Athens was united with this intellectual education, and there sprang up a regular institution or university, which the young Athenians and students from outside might attend. Before long, the Hellenic world Other universities. boasted other universities, such as those at Rhodes, Pergamon, Alexandria, and Rome. Until almost 300 A. D. Athens remained the chief intellectual center of civilization, and attracted students from all parts of the Roman Empire. Gradually, however, the higher education there tended toward the study of rhetoric alone and artificiality grew apace. In consequence, Alexandria came to displace Athens as the center of culture, and her university became the leading one of the world. Here Philosophy and science at Alexandria. the various philosophic and religious sects gathered to study and discuss, and the abstract Greek philosophy united with the more concrete beliefs of the Orient, especially Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Thus there flourished here the various systems of religious philosophy known collectively as ‘Hellenistic,’ such as Neopythagoreanism, Neomazdeism, Philonism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism. Considerably before this, too, there had developed at Alexandria the Ptolemaic theory of the universe. Other noted investigations, like those of Euclid in geometry, Archimedes in physics, Eratosthenes in astronomy, and Diophantus in algebra, also bore witness to the intellectual activity of this university.

Extension of Hellenic Culture.—It can thus be seen that the political downfall of Athens had only prepared Spread through the Orient the way for a larger intellectual influence. As Alexander extended his yoke over one Eastern country after another, he had carried with him all the culture of Greece, and within a century of his death the whole Orient was dotted with Greek gymnasia, stadia, and theaters, and saturated with Greek literature, art, philosophy, and education. Similarly Rome, which had come somewhat into contact with Greece before conquering her, had been tinctured with Greek life and learning; and, after her absorption of Macedon and Greece, she fell under the and the Roman world. spiritual thrall of the subjugated people. The history of Greek civilization and education was so intermingled with the Roman that it can scarcely be distinguished from it. The Greek schools of philosophy and rhetoric were continued in Rome, Roman youths made up a great body of the attendance at the universities of Athens and Alexandria, and the Roman emperors did much for the support and extension of the work in these institutions. Hence from the Greeks have developed some of the most advanced intellectual and æsthetic ideas that civilization has known.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. III. See also Laurie, Pre-Christian Education (Longmans, Green, 1900), pp. 208-318. Davidson, T., in his Aristotle (Scribner, 1896), develops the periods of Greek education in chronological order, and his Education of the Greek People (Appleton, 1903) gives the social setting of its development. A most scholarly and brilliant work is Freeman, K. J., Schools of Hellas (Macmillan, 1907), which is illustrated by vase-scenes and other reproductions of Greek education. Bosanquet, B., The Education of the Young in Plato’s Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1908), Nettleship, R. L., Theory of Greek Education in Plato’s Republic (See Evelyn Abbott’s Hellenica, Longmans, Green, 1908), and Burnet, J., Aristotle on Education (Cambridge University Press) afford a good interpretation of the theorists mentioned; while Capes, W. W., in the University Life in Ancient Athens (Harper, 1877), and Walden, J. W., in the Universities of Ancient Greece (Scribner, 1909), furnish a lively description of the students and professors.

CHAPTER III

THE EDUCATION OF THE ROMANS

OUTLINE

The contribution of the Romans to progress was largely due to their absorption of Greek culture, but their primitive training had an influence in itself. This was mostly civic and practical, and was given informally in the family and the forum.

Through amalgamation with the Greek, Roman education maintained three grades of schools: (1) the elementary school or ludus, (2) the ‘grammar’ school, and (3) the rhetorical school. Beyond the education of these schools, a young Roman might attend a university.

Schools were gradually subsidized by the emperors, but education eventually deteriorated into a formal qualification for senatorial rank. The practical Romans, however, created a universal empire and legal system, a universal religion, and other institutions for modern society.

Roman Education Amalgamated with Greek.—The name of Rome is still suggestive of power and organization. These characteristics seem to have been innate; but the significance of Roman development to the history of progress and education was largely due to the fact that, in her spread over the civilized world, the Eternal City amalgamated the Greek civilization with Until Hellenized, Roman ideals were narrow. her own. Until then her ideals of life, while effective in conquest, had been narrow and little adapted to the development of individuality or of cosmopolitanism. Unconsciously realizing the need of broader ideals, she absorbed those of Greece. But Rome could not be Hellenized without making some contributions to the result from her own genius, and for that reason it is important to learn something of Roman civilization and education, crude as they were, before they came into contact with Greek culture.

Early Education in Rome.—In the early days Rome was animated by intense patriotism and love for military life, and felt that each citizen was bound to merge his Its civic and practical aim. identity in that of the state. In the surrender of individuality they were, to be sure, not unlike the Spartans, although they believed that this subordination should be brought about voluntarily rather than by compulsion of law and state organization. But, with such a love as theirs for mere material achievement, the Athenian ideal of a full and harmonious development of one’s whole nature could scarcely be expected to make any appeal. They looked not for harmony, proportion, or grace, but for stern utility. They were sedate, grave, and serious, and their education was practical, prosaic, and utilitarian.

Until the Greek institutions began to be adopted, schools did not exist in Rome, except possibly the ludus or elementary school. During this pristine period education consisted in a practical training in Roman ideals and everyday living conducted largely through the family. Informal training in the family and in public. In childhood the boys and girls alike were given a physical and moral training by their mother, but, as the boy grew older, he went more in the company of his father, and learned efficiency in life informally through his example and that of the older men, while the girl was taught at home by her mother. If the boy belonged to a patrician family, he might acquire much knowledge concerning Roman custom and law by hearing his father advise and aid the family clients, or ‘dependents,’ and by attending banquets with him. He might also receive an apprenticeship training from his parent or some other older man in the profession of soldier, advocate, or statesman. In case he was born in a less exalted station, he might learn his father’s occupation at the farm or shop. The girl, whatever her social status, was trained by her mother in the domestic arts, especially in spinning and weaving wool. Through their parents children probably learned to read and write; and they committed to memory stories of Roman heroes, ballads, martial and religious songs, and the Twelve Tables of national laws, after these had been codified (451 B. C.). Physical exercise was secured largely by games, which were mostly in imitation of future occupations, and gymnastics were employed simply as training for war. The usages of home and public religion also played an important part in the education of the young Romans, especially since almost every activity in life was presided over by some deity, whom it was necessary to propitiate when engaging in it.

Practical and occupational character.

Thus education in early Rome was practical, and, to some extent, occupational. It was intended to produce efficiency as fathers, citizens, and soldiers. It consisted in training the youths to be healthy and strong in mind and body, and sedate and simple in their habits; to reverence the gods, their parents, the laws, and institutions; and to be courageous in war, and familiar with the traditional agriculture, or the conduct of some business. It did produce a nation of warriors and loyal citizens, but it inevitably tended to make them calculating, selfish, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious. They never possessed either lofty ideals or enthusiasm. Their training was best adapted to a small state, and became unsatisfactory when they had spread over the entire Italian peninsula. The golden age of valor and stern virtue had then largely departed, and they began unconsciously to seek a more universal culture. While such a people regarded the Greeks as visionary, just as the Greeks looked upon them as barbarians, they felt instinctively that only by absorption of the Hellenic ideals could their cosmopolitan ambitions be carried out. On the other hand, it was through the organization which the Romans were able to furnish, that the great ideals formulated by the Greeks were destined to be rendered effective and to become a matter of value and concern to civilization ever since.

The Absorption of Greek Culture.—There was a gradual infiltration of Greek culture into Rome from very early days. This received a great impulse through Spread through Alexander and Roman conquests. the conquests of Alexander (334-323 B. C.) and the absorption of Macedon by Rome (168 B. C.), but it was not until about half a century after Greece itself had become a Roman province (146 B. C.), that the Greek educational ideals and institutions can be said to have been completely absorbed by Rome. This new type of education was thus well established early in the first century B. C. It may be said to have remained almost unmodified until toward the end of the second century A. D., when political conditions at Rome became most unstable and the period of degeneracy set in. During these three centuries of Hellenized Roman education, three grades of schools resulted from the amalgamation. They were the (1) ludus or school of the litterator, as the lowest school was called; (2) the ‘grammar’ school, The schools resulting. taught by a grammaticus or litteratus; and (3) the schools of rhetoric and oratory, which furnished a somewhat higher education.

The Ludus.—The ludus, or lowest school, may possibly have existed before the process of Hellenization even began, but if it did, it must have been intended simply to supplement the more informal training of the home. Its content and methods. Whenever originated, it probably taught at first only reading, writing, and rudimentary calculation, as in the family, through the medium of historical anecdotes, ballads, religious songs, and the Twelve Tables. But as the Greek influence crept in more and more, the literary content was somewhat extended. About the middle of the third century B. C., Livius Andronicus translated the Odyssey into Latin; and a number of epics, dramas, and epigrams were soon composed after Greek models. These works, in whole or part, were introduced into the curricula of the ludi and by the beginning of the first century B. C., the Twelve Tables had been displaced by the Latinized Odyssey of Andronicus. The methods of instruction were memoriter and imitative. The names and alphabetic order of the letters were first taught without any indication of their significance or even shape, and all possible combinations of syllables were committed before any words were learned. Reading and writing were then taught by dictation, and, in tracing the letters on wax-tablets with the stylus ([Fig. 5]), the hand of the pupil was at first guided by the teacher. Calculation was learned by counting on the fingers, by means of pebbles, or upon the abacus, and eventually sums were worked upon the tablets.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 5.—School materials from wall paintings: (a) Wax tablet and capsa, containing rolls, or books. (b) Three stili, capsa, and roll leaning against it. (c) Wax tablet, with stilus tied to it.

Fig. 6.—Scene at a ludus or Roman elementary school, taken from a fresco found at Herculaneum.

Methods so devoid of interest were naturally accompanied Discipline and teachers. by severe discipline. The rod, lash, and whip seem to have been in frequent use, and the names ordinarily applied to schoolmasters in Latin literature are suggestive of harshness and brutality. Moreover, a fresco found at Herculaneum depicts a boy held over the shoulders of another, with the master beating the victim upon the bare back ([Fig. 6]). Under these circumstances, no real qualifications were required of the teacher, and his social standing was low. The Greek custom of having the boy accompanied to and from Slaves to accompany pupils. school by a slave that was otherwise incapacitated by age or physical disability soon came to be imitated by Buildings. the Romans. When a special building was employed for the school, it was usually a mere booth or veranda, and the pupils sat on the floor or upon stones.

Grammar Schools.—The ‘grammar’ school grew out of the increasing literary work of the ludus. But, while offering a more advanced course, it would seem to belong in part at least to the elementary stage of education, especially as its work was never sharply divided from that of the ludus. The young Roman might attend both a Greek and a Latin grammar school, but, in case he did, usually went first to the former. The curriculum in each Curriculum. consisted, according to Quintilian, of ‘the art of speaking correctly’ and ‘the interpretation of the poets,’ or, in other words, of a training in grammar and literature. ‘Grammar’ may, however, have included some knowledge of philology and derivations, as well as drill on the parts of speech, inflections, syntax, and prosody, and practice in composition and paragraphing. The literary training was obtained by writing paraphrases of the best authors, textual and literary criticism, commentaries, and exercises in diction and verse-writing. Some other studies, like arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, geography, and music may also have been added in time, from the suggestions of Plato, but the Romans naturally gave them a practical bearing. Some gymnastics, mostly for Methods and discipline. military training, were often in the course. The methods in the grammar schools were somewhat better than those of the ludus, but the commentary of the teacher on the text was usually taken down verbatim by the pupil. The discipline, in consequence, was not much in advance of that of the lower schools. But the accommodations for Buildings. these secondary schools were decidedly superior, and the buildings not only possessed suitable seats for the pupils and teacher, but were even adorned with paintings and sculpture.

Rhetorical Schools.—The ‘rhetorical’ schools were a development of work in debate that had gradually grown up in the grammar schools. The earliest of these institutions at Rome were Greek, but by the first century B. C., there had arisen a number in which Latin was used. While they afforded a legal and forensic training, and Professional, but broad training. seem more professional in spirit than the grammar schools, they were by no means narrow. The orator was for the Roman the typical man of culture and education, and he was supposed not only to have been trained in eloquence and law and history, but to possess wide learning, grace, culture, and knowledge of human emotions, sound judgment, and good memory. Besides a training in oratory, these schools furnished a linguistic and literary education of some breadth. They may be considered as belonging partly to the secondary and partly to the higher stage of education. The youths were exercised first in declamation on ethical and political subjects, which would bring in fine distinctions in Roman law and ethics, and later they were given practice in three types of speeches,—deliberative, judicial, and panegyric. Attention was given to all the various factors in making a successful oration: the matter, arrangement, style, memorizing, and delivery.

Universities.—When the young Roman had completed his course at a rhetorical school, he might, if he were ambitious, go to the university at Athens, Alexandria, Spread throughout the empire. or Rhodes for a higher training. Later, a university also sprang up at Rome, and before long these institutions spread throughout the empire. The Greek influence caused a large number of these institutions to be established in the East, but some were also located in the West. The latter gave more emphasis to practical subjects. In several instances the universities found their nucleus in one of the many libraries that were started with books brought from the sacking of Greece and Asia Minor.

Subsidization of Education.—Thus, through the adoption of the institutions of the Greeks, Roman education became thoroughly Hellenized. Although all the types of schools spread everywhere in the empire, there was, of course, no such thing as a real school system, except as the government gradually came to subsidize all schools. This the different emperors accomplished in Imperial control of schools. various ways,—by contributing to school support, paying a salary to certain teachers, or granting them exemption from taxation and military service, or offering scholarships to a given number of pupils. As a result, schools came to be established in many cases for the purpose of getting these special privileges for the teachers, rather than for promoting education. To stop these abuses, the emperor in 425 A. D. decreed that he had the sole authority to establish schools, and that a penalty would be laid upon anyone else assuming this prerogative. In this way the schools came fully into the hands of the imperial government, and the basis for the idea of public education was laid for the first time in history.

Decay of Education.—Before this, however, Roman education had deteriorated. With the political and moral decay that were obvious after the second century Formal and superficial character. A. D., it became a mere form and mark of the aristocracy. The training in oratory was continued, because it was a necessary qualification for entering the senatorial class, but it had lost its real function, since there was no longer any occasion for oratory when the emperor dominated all the government and law. It was not intended to furnish a training of any value in life, and the careful literary preparation was more and more shirked. While the grammarians and rhetoricians were still held in high esteem, they contented themselves with mere display, and wandered from town to town more for the purpose of entertaining than of teaching. Glittering phrases, epigrams, and other artificialities took the place of instruction and argument.

Influence of Roman Education.—But the Roman education and civilization had left their impress upon the world. This was accomplished by the practical nature of the Romans, and by their ability to make abstract ideals concrete and embody them in institutions that have been useful to civilization and progress. Through them was created the idea of a universal empire, which has been influential throughout the world’s history. Institutions furnished for the ideals of Judea and Greece. Similarly, the concept of law originating with the Greek philosophers became in the hands of the Romans the great system of principles that underlies and guides all our present civilization. And it was the Roman genius for organization that institutionalized a despised religious sect and expanded it into the position of the greatest world religion. If Judaism furnished the world with exalted religious ideals, and if from Hellenism came striking intellectual and æsthetic concepts, the institutions for realizing these ideals originated with Rome.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XIII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. IV. Interesting brief monographs on the subject are Clarke, G., Education of Children at Rome (Macmillan, 1896), and Wilkins, A. S., Roman Education, (Cambridge University Press, 1905). See also the treatment in Laurie, Pre-Christian Education (Longmans, Green, 1900), pp. 319-436.

CHAPTER IV

THE EDUCATION OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS

OUTLINE

Christianity accomplished much in the reform of the degraded Roman society. The earliest education of the Christians came through their ‘otherworldly’ life, but actual schools, called ‘catechumenal,’ before long furnished a moral and religious training.

After the amalgamation of Christianity with Græco-Roman philosophy, ‘catechetical’ schools furnished a higher training. When higher education came to be utilized by the bishops for training their clergy, institutions known as ‘episcopal’ or ‘cathedral’ schools were founded.

Later, although opposition grew up among the Christians to the culture of Greece and Rome, its impress was found to have been left upon the doctrines and organization of Christianity.

The Ideals of Early Christianity.—The actual social conditions amid which the religion of Christ was born, and which it was destined to reform, were most degraded. Impotence of Roman and other ideals. The Roman world had become sunk in vice and corruption. The Roman virtues of patriotism, bravery, and service to the state had largely disappeared with the development of the empire, and were impotent in checking the widespread depravity. Nor could the lofty Greek thought accomplish much, since it was too intellectual and philosophic to touch the masses. The debased Eastern religions, which Rome had admitted in her easy-going skepticism, were still less productive of good. While the more philosophic forms of Judaism and the Roman development of Stoicism tended to raise the tone of morals and pave the way for Christianity, not even these forces could have accomplished a successful reform in Roman society, without the stimulus and wide Universal appeal of Christianity. appeal of the Christian teachings. Christianity was the ethical and universal religion needed as a leaven. Its truths were based on faith rather than understanding, and its appeal was to the instinctive promptings and emotions rather than to the intellect. This made it democratic and enabled it to reach the masses, for everybody can feel and have faith, even where he cannot understand.

Early Christian Life as an Education.—Thus it came about that, while the earliest Christians were without schools of their own and were largely illiterate, their religion itself served as an education. They were practically deprived of intellectual development, but they received moral training of a very high order. The very dishonor and unpopularity of the Christian religion, and Segregation. the segregation of their Church membership, gave the Christian life itself all the effect of a species of schooling. The early Christians showed an extreme reaction to the vicious morals of the time, and endeavored to cultivate the higher ideals inculcated by the teachings of Christ. They had gathered from the statements of the Master that he would soon return and this world would come to an end. They, therefore, concerned themselves entirely ‘Otherworldliness.’ with a preparation for ‘Jerusalem the golden’ and ‘the life everlasting,’ and the ideal of this most primitive Christian training may be described as ‘otherworldly.’

Catechumenal Schools.—Early in the second century, however, when the Church began to extend itself rapidly, it seemed necessary to insist upon some sort of formal instruction as preliminary to Church membership. It was also deemed wise to fix a period of probation after the profession of one’s faith in Christ, in order that informers might not be admitted to the services, or the Church disgraced by apostasy or the lapses of those who Cause of their organization. had not well considered the step. These demands were met by the gradual institution of popular instruction in Christian principles for the Jewish and pagan proselytes, who were known as catechumens. While some effort was made to lift the pupils of these ‘catechumenal’ schools from the bondage of ignorance, they were primarily trained in the things needful for their souls’ salvation, and the ideal of Christian education remained prevailingly ‘otherworldly.’ The instruction was carried on Elementary content. in the portico or other special portion of the church; and consisted in moral and religious teachings, reading and memorizing the Scriptures, together with some training in early psalmody. The course usually lasted three years, and while some distinction was made between the general division of catechumens and those almost ready for baptism, there is little ground for supposing that the schools were divided into actual classes. The meetings in the church were held several times a week, or even every day.

Amalgamation of Christianity with Græco-Roman Philosophy.—But while the Christian ideals and training were developing and crystallizing, the Greek philosophy in its Roman form was being continued and expanded. Græco-Roman training a worldly one. This movement has been seen to be very different from early Christianity in its general purpose. It concerned itself chiefly with life in this world. The problem it attempted to solve was how one should live so as to get the most satisfaction out of life. The Hellenized Roman schools may, therefore, be accounted as ‘worldly’ as the Christian schools were ‘otherworldly’ in their aim. A general feeling of this marked difference in purpose and organization between Christianity and the contemporaneous Græco-Roman culture was destined to cause an opposition to pagan learning to spring up Union of the worldly and otherworldly,— among the Christians. But for two or three centuries this is scarcely noticeable, especially in the Eastern empire, where it was felt that philosophy was, like Christianity, a search after truth; and, as far as it went, confirmed the Bible. There was even a tendency to unite the two movements. As the new religion spread throughout the Roman world, and was compelled to defend itself against charges of immorality, atheism, and treason, the educated converts attempted to set forth the Christian teachings in terms of Greek thought, and to solve speculative problems that had never been considered by Jesus and his disciples. The first Hellenizing Christians Apologists are known as Apologists, since their efforts were directed toward reconciling Christianity with the Græco-Roman philosophy. In general, they mingled Stoicism with the teachings of Jesus. Later, other Hellenistic philosophers unified Christian doctrine with the principles of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. Perhaps the most extreme of these philosophic positions within Christianity was a combination with Platonism known as and Gnostics. Gnosticism, which was intended to be a sort of esoteric knowledge and to show the relation of Christianity to other religions and to the universe.

Catechetical and Episcopal or Cathedral Schools.—In this way, during the second and third centuries, all the Christians at Alexandria, which had become the great seat of Hellenistic philosophy, had their theology tinctured with Greek thought. Before long, a sort of theological, or ‘catechetical’ school, was gradually organized at this center, to counteract the heathen schools there and to afford higher instruction for Christian Pupils in the school at Alexandria allowed to study all Greek subjects. teachers and leaders. This school had no building of its own, and the students met at the teacher’s house, but they were able to take advantage of the facilities at the University of Alexandria. In addition to a thorough training in the Bible, the pupils were allowed to study all types of Greek philosophy, except Epicureanism, the whole range of sciences, classical Greek literature, grammar, rhetoric, and other higher subjects of the pagan schools, but from a different point of view. Thus the Græco-Roman and the Christian movements had formed an alliance in education, and in this catechetical school we find an attempted union of the ‘otherworldly’ ideal with the ‘worldly.’

The best known heads of this school at Alexandria were Clement (150-215) and Origen (185-253). They were among the most noted of the Eastern Fathers in the philosophic interpretation of Christianity, and their work contributed not a little to heretical doctrine. Origen may even have been expelled for heresy. At any rate, he opened a new school of the same sort at Cæsarea, where he was kindly received. Other catechetical Other catechetical schools. schools sprang up rapidly at Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis, and elsewhere throughout the East. Later the accession of the followers of Nestorius, whose Hellenized theology had in 431 been proscribed by the Church at the Council of Ephesus, very greatly increased the importance of these cities as intellectual centers. In addition to the translations already there, the Nestorian Christians accumulated a larger range of the original Greek treatises on philosophy, science, and medicine.

But before this, higher training of the Hellenic type Bishops start Hellenic schools for their clergy. came to be regularly used by the bishops in training their clergy, and promotion in the Church began to depend upon having had this education. So higher schools of this sort were gradually instituted in every bishopric at the see city, and became known eventually as ‘episcopal’ or ‘bishop’s’ schools, or, from their location at the bishop’s church, as ‘cathedral’ schools. These cathedral schools became the most important educational institutions of the Middle Ages. From them were derived all the schools of Western Europe, but the bishop soon became too busy to attend to them himself and was forced to commit them to various officials. Thus they developed in time into at least three types,—the ‘grammar’ school, taught by one of the cathedral canons, known as the scholasticus; the ‘song’ or music school, taught by the cantor or precentor; and the ‘chorister’s’ school, which offered a combination of the training in the two other schools. Thus the cathedral schools virtually took the place of the old pagan schools supported by the Roman emperors.

Influence of Græco-Roman Culture upon Christianity.—However, by the century after the foundation of the catechetical school at Alexandria, the Christians Growth of opposition to the Græco-Roman culture. had begun to grow suspicious of Græco-Roman culture and the ‘worldly’ ideal in education. Even the Eastern or Greek Fathers of the Church appear to have cooled considerably in their attitude toward philosophy, and the Western or Latin Fathers were more pronounced in their opposition. Roman Christians could not forget the immorality of those who had been connected with this culture, nor the abuse and insults that these pagans had heaped upon them. They felt, too, that the one great mission of the Church was ethical, and that Christ’s second coming was at hand, and that all philosophy and learning were somewhat impertinent.

Nevertheless, despite this growth of opposition to pagan philosophy, primitive Christianity could not endure in its simplicity after it had been in contact with the advanced intellectual concepts of the Greeks, as modified by the organizing genius of the Romans. Both Greece and Rome left a permanent impress upon Christianity; and, though dead, they yet live in the Christian Church. The influence of Greek philosophy is seen in the formulation of a system of Christian doctrine. But great influence of Greece and Rome upon Christian doctrine and Church organization. This appears in the development of the Apostles’ Creed during the second century, in the selection of a canon of sacred writings or New Testament during the third century, and still more in the Nicene Creed (325), which was not formulated until Christianity had been largely Hellenized. Similarly, the Greek tendency to attribute universal validity to their sacred writings, and the pomp, ceremonies, and mysteries of the Hellenic worship, are more or less apparent in the various ecclesiastical tenets and usages. On the other hand, the Roman concepts of administration appear in the organization of the Church, which seems to have closely paralleled the Roman civil polity. By the third century priests and bishops had largely come to be similarly located, and to correspond in control, to the Roman district and city magistrates respectively. And in 445 the recognition of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome established a visible head of the entire Church, corresponding to the position of the emperor on the civic side.

Rise of the Monastic Schools.—Thus it has been seen how the two great movements of Græco-Roman culture and Christian teaching arose independently, in time united and later separated, although, after separation, the Christian doctrines were somewhat affected by their long association with pagan philosophy. Eventually the pagan schools were suppressed by the edict of Justinian in 529 A. D., and the Christian education was left alone in the field. It then found an additional Reversion to otherworldliness. means of expression in the ‘monastic’ schools, in which there was naturally a tendency to revert to an ascetic or ‘otherworldly’ ideal, and to leave intellectual attainments largely out of consideration. But these monastic institutions are to be grouped with mediævalism and belong more distinctly to the next chapter.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 221-243. For the moral effect of Christianity, see Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals (Appleton, 1869), vol. II, pp. 1-100. Other places in the chapter will be illumined by reading Ayer, J. C., Jr., Catechumenal Schools and Catechetical Schools (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vol. I); Dill, D., Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (Macmillan, 1899), especially book V; Hatch, E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures, 1888, Williams, London, 1891); Hodgson, G., Primitive Christian Education (Clark, Edinburgh, 1906); and Leach, A. F., Bishop’s Schools and Cathedral Schools (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vol. I).

PART II
THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER V

THE MONASTIC EDUCATION

OUTLINE

During the Middle Ages the German hordes absorbed ancient civilization under the authoritative guidance of the Church, and the chief means of leavening the barbarian lump was found in the cathedral and monastic schools.

Monasteries grew up to counteract the prevailing worldliness. To keep the monks busy, Benedict prescribed the copying of manuscripts, and this literary work rendered schools necessary. In these monastic schools were taught the ‘seven liberal arts’ by catechetical methods.

Thus monasticism helped preserve learning and education, although it was somewhat hostile to the classics and science.

The Middle Ages as a Period of Assimilation and Repression.—The Middle Ages may be regarded as an era of assimilation and of repression. On the one hand, the rude German hordes, who had by the sixth century everywhere taken possession of the decadent ancient world, were enabled during this period to rise gradually to such a plane of intelligence and achievement that Absorption of Greek, Roman and Christian civilization. they could absorb the Greek, Roman, and Christian civilization, and become its carriers to modern times. On the other hand, that this absorption might take place, it was necessary that the individual should conform to the model set, and it was inevitable that a bondage to authority, convention, and institutions should ensue.

Authoritative attitude of the Church.

The main power in effecting this subservience on the part of mediæval society was the Christian Church. For it was but natural during the period of assimilation that the Church, which had become completely organized and unlimited in power, should stand as the chief guide and schoolmaster of the Germanic hosts. By the decree of Justinian in 529 A. D., which closed the pagan schools and marks the beginning of the Middle Ages, Christian education was left without a rival. Hence the cathedral and monastic schools became almost the sole means of leavening the barbarian lump. Contrary to the view commonly accepted, the educational activities of the cathedral institutions were more important and general than those of the monastic schools. But the former have already been somewhat discussed, and so much relating to the course and services of the latter will also apply to them that we may now turn to a detailed description of the monastic schools.

The Evolution and Nature of Monasticism.—To understand these schools, it will be necessary to examine the movement out of which they arose. Monasticism grew up through the corruption in Roman society and the desire of those within the Church for a deeper religious life. Christianity was no longer confined to small extra-social groups meeting secretly, but was represented in all walks of society, and mingled with the world. It had become thoroughly secularized, and even the clergy Reaction to prevailing vice. had in many instances yielded to the prevailing worldliness and vice.

Under these circumstances there were Christians who felt that the only hope for salvation rested in fleeing from the world and its temptations and taking refuge in an isolated life of asceticism and devotion. This led Hermits and monasteries. eventually to the foundation of monasteries, in which the monks lived apart in separate cells, but met for meals, prayers, communion, and counsel. Monasticism started in Egypt, but soon spread into Syria and Palestine, and then into Greece, Italy, and Gaul. But in the West Monasticism in the West. monasticism gradually adopted more active pursuits and milder discipline, and the monks turned to the cultivation of the soil and the preservation of literature.

Benedict’s ‘Rule’ and the Multiplication of Manuscripts.—These monastic activities were especially crystallized and promoted by the Benedictine ‘rule.’ This was a code formulated by St. Benedict in 529 for his monastery at Monte Cassino in Southwest Italy, and it was generally adopted by the monasteries of Western Europe. In the forty-eighth chapter of the ‘rule’ he Manual labor and reading required. commanded that the monks each day engage in manual labor for at least seven hours and in systematic reading for at least two hours. The requirement of daily reading led to the collection and reproduction of manuscripts, and each monastery soon had a scriptorium, or ‘writing-room,’ in one end of the building ([Fig. 7]). Most of the works copied were of a religious nature and were limited in number, but the monks were occasionally occupied with the Latin classics, and they also became the authors Resulting literary activities. of some original literature, which included histories of the Church, the monasteries, and the times, as well as works upon religious topics.

Amalgamation of and Irish Christianity.—This preservation of learning and development of literature Especial preservation of learning in English monasteries. was especially apparent in the monasteries of England It came about through the amalgamation at the Council of Whitby, in 664, of the Roman Church in England, with Irish Christianity, which had preserved an unusually high order of learning after its isolation. An immense enthusiasm for the Church, culture, and literature of Rome resulted from this merging of the rival organizations, and the English monasteries, such as Jarrow and Wearmouth, and cathedral schools, like York, became the great educational centers for Europe.

The Organization of the Monastic Schools.—The literary work of the monasteries soon led to the establishment of regular schools within their walls ([Fig. 8]). Length of course. The course in these monastic schools may often have lasted eight or ten years, as boys of ten or even less were sometimes received, and no one could become a regular member of the order before he was eighteen. By the ninth century the schools sometimes also admitted pupils Types of pupils. who never expected to enter the order. These latter were called externi in distinction to the oblati, who were preparing to become monks. Some training was also given women in convents for nuns, such as that established by the sister of Benedict.

Fig. 7.—A monk in the scriptorium.

Fig. 8.—A monastic school.

The ‘Seven Liberal Arts’ as the Curriculum.—The curriculum of the monastic schools was at first elementary and narrow. It included only reading, in order to study the Bible; writing, to copy the sacred books; and calculation, for the sake of computing Church festivals. But after a while the classical learning was gradually introduced in that dry and condensed form of the ‘seven liberal arts’, which was also used by the cathedral schools. This mediæval canon of studies was a gradual evolution from Græco-Roman days. The discrimination of these liberal subjects may be said to have begun with Plato, whose educational scheme included a higher group of studies, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy; and during the later days of Greece and Rome these ‘liberal’ subjects of Plato were combined with the ‘practical’ studies of the sophists,—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. These ‘seven liberal arts’ were definitely fixed during the fifth and sixth centuries A. D., Evolution and scope of the trivium and quadrivium. through several treatises by such writers as Martianus Capella, Boëthius, and Cassiodorus; and the grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic eventually became classed as the trivium or lower studies, and the arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy as the quadrivium or higher ([Fig. 9]). While this curriculum was not a broad one, the scope was much wider than would be supposed. ‘Grammar’ was an introduction to literature, ‘rhetoric’ included some knowledge of law and history, ‘dialectic’ paved the way for metaphysics, ‘arithmetic’ extended beyond mere calculation, ‘geometry’ embraced geography and surveying, ‘music’ covered a broad course in theory, and ‘astronomy’ comprehended some physics and advanced mathematics.

The Methods and Texts.—The general method of teaching in the monastic schools was that of question and answer. As copies of the various books were scarce, the instructor often resorted to dictation, explaining the Dictation and memorizing. meaning as he read, and the pupils took the passage down upon tablets and committed it. The reading books preparatory to the study of literature, many of which are still extant, were generally arranged by each teacher, and careful attention was given to the etymological and literary study of the authors to be read. As to texts, the leading works upon grammar were at first Donatus and Priscian, the elementary work of Donatus (fourth century) and the more advanced treatise of Priscian (sixth century), but by the thirteenth century there had sprung up a series of simplified grammars, which, for the sake of memorizing, were often written in verse. As rhetoric was no longer much concerned with declamation, Cicero and Quintilian were rarely used as texts, but various mediæval treatises upon official letters, legal documents, and forms came into use. Dialectic was studied through Aristotle, Euclid, Boëthius, and Ptolemy. translations of the Organon of Aristotle, Euclid furnished the text on geometry, the works of Boëthius were generally used for arithmetic and music, and in astronomy adaptations of the treatises of Aristotle and Ptolemy became the texts.

Effect upon Civilization of the Monastic Schools.—Thus monasticism accomplished not a little for civilization. Maintenance of classical literature and education. While the works produced in the monasteries were uncritical and superstitious, they compose most of our historical documents and sources in the Middle Ages. And, although monastic schools were decidedly hostile to classical literature as representing the temptations of the world, and at all times their rigid orthodoxy prevented every possibility of science and the development of individualism, they, together with the cathedral schools, preserved a considerable amount of Græco-Roman culture. Without the cathedral and monastic schools, the Latin and Greek manuscripts and learning could scarcely have survived and have been available at the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, History of Education during the Middle Ages and the Transition to Modern Times (Macmillan, 1910), chaps. I-II; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 243-274. For the evolution of the ascetic life, see Lecky, History of European Morals (Appleton, 1869), vol. II, pp. 101-274; for the development of monasticism, Taylor, H. O., The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1913), chap. VII, and Wishart, A. W., A Short History of Monks and Monasticism (Brandt, Trenton, 1902). The contribution of Irish monasticism is shown in Healy, J., Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum (Sealy, Dublin, 1897), and Zimmer, H., The Irish Element in Mediæval Culture (Putnam, 1891). Succinct articles on Abbey Schools, Bishop’s Schools, Church Schools, and Cloister Schools by Leach, A. F. (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vols. I and II), furnish the most accurate ideas of monastic education as far as it is known. An account of the monastic libraries is given in Clark, J. W., Libraries in the Mediæval and Renaissance Monasteries (Macmillan and Bowes, Cambridge, 1894), and Putnam, G. H., Books and Their Makers during the Middle Ages (Putnam, 1896). The best account of The Seven Liberal Arts in English is that by Abelson, P. (Columbia University, Teachers College Contributions, No. 11, 1906).

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE’S REVIVAL OF EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Learning and schools had by the eighth century been sadly disrupted, and, to restore them, Charlemagne invited Alcuin of York to become his adviser in education. Alcuin induced Charlemagne to conduct higher education at the Palace School, and to improve the cathedral, monastic, and parish schools.

Even after Alcuin retired from the active direction of education, he continued his educational influence, but he became set and narrow. A broader spirit, however, appeared in his pupils, and intellectual stagnation never again prevailed.

Condition of Education in the Eighth Century.—In the course of the seventh and eighth centuries mediæval Decay of learning. education met with considerable retrogression. The learning of the sixth century was disappearing, the copying of manuscripts had almost ceased, and the cathedral and monastic schools had been sadly disrupted. The secular clergy, monks, nobility, and others who might have been expected to be trained, at times seem even to have lost the art of writing, although the leading churchmen must generally have maintained their knowledge of ecclesiastical Latin and some acquaintance with the classical authors and various compilations of the seven liberal arts. Just before this time the Franks had succeeded in establishing a supremacy over the other barbarian tribes and had spread their rule through what is now France, Belgium, and Holland, and most of Western Germany. Under a dynasty of vigorous kings, they now drove back the Moslems, conquered the Lombards and Saxons, and subdued the Slavs and Bohemians, and Charlemagne finally Charlemagne (742-814) even planned to re-establish the Western Roman Empire under his sovereignty. This monarch greatly strengthened and centralized his dominions by a number of improvements in external administration, but, even before his recognition as emperor by the pope (800), he had realized that a genuine unity of his people could be brought about only through a much more effective and universal education. He had a keen sense of the unfortunate educational situation, and made every effort to improve it. To assist and Alcuin. him in his endeavors, in 782 he called Alcuin (735-804) from the headship of the famous cathedral school at York (see p. 56) to be his chief adviser in education.

Higher Education at the Palace School.—Through this noted scholar Charlemagne proceeded to revive the cathedral, monastic, and parish schools, and to increase the importance of the ‘Palace School.’ At this latter school the great king, all his family, and many of his relatives and intellectual friends studied under the Saxon Methods and curriculum. educator. Alcuin must, however, have used a more discursive and less memoriter method with his adult students than the formal catechetical plan employed in instructing the youth. Among the subjects taught were grammar, including some study of the Latin poets and the writings of the Church Fathers, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, astronomy, and theology, but Alcuin appears to have had but little command of the Greek learning. Charlemagne himself seems to have become proficient in Latin and other languages, but, in spite of strenuous efforts, he began too late in life to train his hand to write.

Educational Improvement in the Cathedral, Monastic, and Parish Schools.—With the coöperation of Alcuin, Charlemagne also did everything in his power to increase facilities and improve standards in the existing types of Capitularies to abbots and bishops. schools. In 787 he issued an educational ‘capitulary’ or decree to the bishops and abbots, “urging diligence in the pursuit of learning and the selection of teachers for this work who are able, willing, and zealous to learn themselves and to teach others.” Two years later he wrote a more urgent capitulary to the bishops and abbots, in which he specified the subjects to be taught in the cathedral and monastic schools and the care to be taken in teaching them. Schools seem to have been everywhere established or revived in the various cathedrals, monasteries, and villages, and the instruction in several places became famous. All these schools came to offer at least a complete elementary course, and some added considerable work in higher education. Reading, Course in the monastic, cathedral, and village schools. writing, computation, singing, and the Scriptures were taught first, but, beyond this, instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic was often given, and at the more noted cathedral and monastic schools the quadrivium also appeared in the course. The schools in the villages, under the care of the parish priests, taught only the rudiments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Psalms. Free tuition. Tuition was free in all schools for those intending to become monks or priests, but for the higher work a small fee was sometimes paid by the laity. It seems to have been generally intended that education should be gratuitous and open to all. A letter of the Bishop of Orleans required it of his clergy; and through a capitulary in 802 Charlemagne strove to make it compulsory.

Alcuin’s Educational Work at Tours.—After fourteen years of strenuous service, Alcuin retired from the active After retirement Alcuin’s influence continued, but he became narrow. headship of the educational system to the abbacy of the monastery at Tours. But even here his educational work did not cease. He soon established a model house of learning and education, whither flocked the most brilliant youths in the empire, and since they rapidly became prominent as teachers and churchmen, his influence upon the schools remained fully as marked as before. He also wrote a number of educational works, mostly on the seven liberal arts, and had a large correspondence about education with kings and the higher clergy. Alcuin, however, was by nature conservative, and with his retirement he became decidedly set and narrow. His fear of dialectic and the more advanced views of certain Irish scholars is almost ludicrous, and his repudiation of the classic poets, even his former favorite, Vergil, is pathetic.

Rabanus Maurus, Erigena, and Others Concerned in the Revival.—Fortunately, Alcuin’s pupils, who at his death occupied practically all positions of educational importance, His pupils retained his broader spirit. retained his broader spirit. This was true in particular of Rabanus Maurus (776-856), whose leadership caused the monastic school at Fulda to become the great center of learning. Rabanus wrote even more prolifically than Alcuin upon grammar, language, and theology, but was not afraid to emphasize the study of classic literature or the new training in dialectic. He also greatly expanded the mathematical subjects of the curriculum, and tended to ascribe all phenomena to natural laws. Rabanus, in his turn, influenced a large number of pupils, and a further impetus was given to the movement by a cross-fertilization of Irish learning, which was also introduced, especially through the mastership of Joannes Scotus Erigena (810-876) at the Palace School.

Permanent effects of the revival.

Thus during the ninth century and the first half of the tenth there arose, through the initiative of Charlemagne and Alcuin, a marked revival in education, and for several generations the cathedral and monastic schools enthusiastically fostered education and learning. Curricula were expanded, and many famous scholars appeared. While, owing to the weakness of Charlemagne’s successors and the attacks of the Northmen, learning gradually faded once more, intellectual stagnation never again prevailed. Through the revival of the great Frankish monarch, classical learning had to some extent been recalled to continental Europe from its insular asylum in the extreme West.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. III; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 274-279. Read also Gaskoin, C. J. C., Alcuin, His Life and His Work (Clay, London, 1904), or West, A. F., Alcuin and the Rise of Christian Schools (Scribner, 1892), and Mullinger, J. B., The Schools of Charles the Great (Longmans, London, 1877).

CHAPTER VII

MOSLEM LEARNING AND EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Moslemism amalgamated in Syria with Greek philosophy and science, and the Moslem cities there became renowned for their learning.

The masses of the Moslems were suspicious of the Greek learning, however, and those who had absorbed the Hellenized philosophy were driven from the Orient into Spain, where they founded Moorish colleges.

The Moslems thus stimulated learning in the Christian schools, and introduced Aristotle once more, but, after bringing learning back, Moslemism itself reverted to its primitive stage.

The Hellenization of Moslemism.—One of the most important influences in awakening mediæval Europe was the revival of learning and education that came through Illiteracy of early Moslemism. the advent of the Moslems. Mohammed, the founder of Moslemism, had been almost illiterate, and the Koran, or sacred book, was a curious jumble of Judaistic, Christian, and other religious elements with which Mohammed had become acquainted during his early travels. As long as this religion was confined to the ignorant and unreflecting tribes of Arabia, it served its purpose without modification. But when it spread into Syria and came in contact with Greek philosophy, in order to appeal to the people there, it had to be interpreted in Hellenistic terms, and during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, through the influence of the Nestorian scholars (see p. 46), the Mohammedans were engaged in rendering into Arabic from the Syriac, or from the original Greek, the works of the great philosophers, mathematicians, and physicians. The Mohammedan cities of Learning of the Mohammedan cities of Syria. Syria soon became renowned for their learning. In them arose such scholars as Avicenna (980-1037), who wrote many treatises on mathematics and philosophy, and a Canon of Medicine that remained authoritative for five centuries. Similarly, there grew up a society called the ‘Brothers of Sincerity,’ which in its course of study amalgamated the Moslem theology with Hellenistic philosophy.

Hellenized Moslemism in Spain.—But the masses of the Mohammedans were as suspicious of the Greek learning as the orthodox Christians had been, and toward the end of the eleventh century Hellenized Moslemism was driven from the Orient and found a refuge in Northern Africa and in Spain. Here the advanced Mohammedans became known as ‘Moors,’ and their works were destined to have a pronounced influence upon the Christians. Averroës and the Moorish colleges. There soon appeared such scholars as Averroës (1126-1198), who became the authoritative commentator on Aristotle for several centuries; and Moorish colleges were founded at Cordova, Granada, Toledo, and elsewhere. In these institutions, while learning was still at a low ebb in the Christian schools, were taught arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, physics, biology, medicine, surgery, jurisprudence, logic, and metaphysics. Arabic notation was also introduced in place of the cumbersome Roman numerals and many inventions and discoveries were made.

Effect upon Europe of the Moslem Education.—These schools and colleges of the Moslems soon had their effect upon Christian education. Through their influence, Learning stimulated in Christian education. Raymund, Archbishop of Toledo, by the middle of the twelfth century had the chief Arabic treatises on philosophy translated into Castilian by a learned Jew, and then into Latin by the monks; and Frederick II had scholars render the works of Averroës into Latin. Such translations had, however, passed through several media—Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Castilian, Latin—and could not be at all accurate. But, stimulated by this taste of Greek learning, the Christians sought a more immediate version, and a half century later when the Venetians took the city of Constantinople, the works of Aristotle were recovered in the original and translated directly into Latin. Meanwhile the orthodox Mohammedanism had been coming to the front in Spain and overwhelming the Hellenized form, and it was left to Christian schools to continue the work of the advanced Moorish institutions. Moslemism had returned to its primitive stage, but it had helped bring back learning, especially the works of Aristotle, to Christendom. As the classical learning had been restored from the West during the revival of Charlemagne, it now returned from its refuge in the East through the coming of the Moslems.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. V; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 331-334. For a further account of Saracen education, see Coppée, H., History of the Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors (Little, Brown, Boston, 1881), especially bk. X; Davidson, T., The Brothers of Sincerity (International Journal of Ethics, July, 1898), and Draper, J. W., History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (Harper, 1875), vol. I, chaps. XI and XIII, and vol. II, chaps. II and IV.

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES OF SCHOLASTICISM

OUTLINE

Scholasticism was a peculiar method of philosophic speculation in the later mediæval period. At first, scholastic philosophers held that faith must precede reason, but eventually reason itself tended to become the means of testing the truth.

Scholastic education was organized in the monastic and episcopal schools, and consisted in the limited learning of the times, systematized on the basis of Aristotelian deduction. Scholasticism was extreme in its discussions, but it tended to rationalize the Church doctrines.

The Nature of Scholasticism.—One of the movements that most tended to awaken the mediæval mind, especially during the latter part of the Middle Ages, was the development of the Church philosophy known as Not a set of doctrines, but a peculiar method. ‘scholasticism.’ This movement does not indicate any one set of doctrines, but is rather a general designation for the peculiar methods and tendencies of philosophic speculation that became prominent within the Church in the eleventh century, came to their height during the twelfth and thirteenth, and declined rapidly the following century. The name is derived from doctor scholasticus, which was the title given during the mediæval period to the authorized teachers in a monastic or episcopal school, for it was among these ‘schoolmen’ that the movement started and developed. Its most striking characteristics are the narrowness of its field and the thoroughness with which it was worked.

The History of Scholastic Development.—The history of scholasticism belongs properly to the field of philosophy, but its influence in bringing on the Renaissance and its effect upon education make a brief consideration of its development necessary here. It began as an effort to vanquish heresy in the interest of the Church dogmas, which until late in the Middle Ages it had not generally been necessary to explain. Even then it was assumed that the Church was in possession of all final truth, which had come to it by Divine revelation, and was in harmony with reason, when fully understood. It was, therefore, the aim of the earlier schoolmen to show how Anselm these doctrines were consistent with each other and in accordance with reason. At first, as with Anselm (1033-1109), it was held that faith must precede reason, and where reason was incapable of penetrating the mysteries of revealed doctrine, it must desist from its efforts. But the conviction gradually gained ground that human reason is reliable and that truth can be and Abelard. reached only through investigation. Abelard (1079-1142) declared that the only justification of a doctrine is its reasonableness, that reason must precede faith, and that it is not sinful to doubt.

A new epoch for scholasticism dawned in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through contact with the Greek philosophy of the Moors in Spain and the subsequent recovery of some original treatises of Aristotle (see p. 67). For a time the Church endeavored to suppress the great philosopher, but, failing to do so, soon utilized his works for its own defense, and even made reason identical with Aristotle, whose authority was not to be disputed. A group of most prominent schoolmen arose, and, as a result of the discussions of Aquinas (1225-1274), Duns Aquinas, Scotus, and Occam. Scotus (1274-1308), and William of Occam (1280-1347), it came to be held that truth is established by the fiat of God, and that ecclesiastical dogmas are, consequently, not matters of reason, but purely of faith. As a result of this breach between revelation and reason, there arose two types of truth, and a tendency to choose that type which was supported by reason.

Scholastic Education.—The schoolmen were thus throughout attempting to rationalize the teachings of the Church, and to present them in scientific form. As Aim, an education, scholasticism aimed also at furnishing a training in dialectic and intellectual discipline that should make the student both keen and learned in the knowledge of the times. The scholastic course of study, which was given at first in the monastic and episcopal schools and later in the universities, consisted in the content, beliefs of the Church and the limited learning of the times arranged in a systematized form largely on the deductive basis of the Aristotelian logic. This knowledge could all be grouped under the head of philosophical theology. The best illustration of the formal and dogmatic and method. way in which these doctrines were usually presented can be found in the Sententiæ of Peter the Lombard (1100-1160) and the Summa Theologiæ of Aquinas (1225-1274), which were the standard texts of the day upon theology. The work of Aquinas has four main parts, under each of which is grouped a number of problems. Every problem is concerned with some fundamental doctrine, and is further divided into several subtopics. After the problem has been stated, first the arguments and authorities for the various solutions other than the orthodox one are given and refuted in regular order, then the proper solution with its arguments is set forth, and finally, the different objections to it are answered in a similarly systematic way. Peter the Lombard’s work has a like arrangement.

Its Value and Influence.—As a whole, the work of scholastic education has been underestimated. It has It systematized Church doctrines, and liberated philosophy from theology. been urged that it ruined all spiritual realities by its extreme systemization of religion, that it dealt with mere abstractions, and that it indulged in over-subtle distinctions and verbal quibbles. But the scholastic arguments were not as purposeless or absurd as they seem. For example, the celebrated inquiry of Aquinas as to the number of angels that could stand on the point of a needle is simply an attempt to present the nature of the Infinite in concrete form. It is the characteristic of reasoning beings to analyze, compare, abstract, and classify, and while scholasticism may have carried its abstractions, hair-splittings, and scientific terminology to an extreme, it performed a great service for knowledge. It found a confused mass of traditional and irrational doctrines and practices, made them systematic, rational, and scientific, and greatly assisted accuracy in thinking. The discussions of the schoolmen resulted in liberating philosophy from theology, and, without intending it perhaps, scholastic education aided the cause of human reason against dogmatism and absolute authority. It greatly stimulated intellectual interests, produced the most acute and subtle minds of the age, and helped to prepare the way for the Renaissance.

Fig. 9.—The temple of wisdom.

An allegorical representation of the mediæval course of study reproduced from the Margarita Philosophica of Gregorius Reisch, Freiburg, 1504. Donatus (elementary grammar) on the first floor; Priscian (advanced grammar) on second; Aristotle (logic), Cicero (rhetoric), and Boethius (arithmetic) on the third; Pythagoras (music), Euclid (geometry), and Ptolemy (astronomy) on the fourth; Pliny (natural history) and Seneca (ethics) on the fifth; and Peter the Lombard (theology) on top.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. VI; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 292-313. For a good account of all The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages (Hodder, London, 1881), see the work of Townsend, W. J.; for the beginnings of scholasticism, Mullinger, J. B., The University of Cambridge (Longmans, Green, 1888), vol. I, pp. 47-64; for the life and influence of Abelard, Compayré, G., Abelard (Scribner, 1893), chap. I; McCabe, J., Abelard (Putnam, 1901); and Rashdall, H., The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895), vol. I, chap. II.

CHAPTER IX

THE MEDIÆVAL UNIVERSITIES

OUTLINE

Universities began to spring up toward the close of the Middle Ages. Through local conditions, a course in medicine arose at Salerno; in civil and canon law at Bologna; and in theology at Paris. Bologna became the pattern for numerous universities in the South; and Paris for many in the North.

Popes and sovereigns granted privileges by charter to the various universities. The term ‘university’ originally signified a ‘corporation’ of students and teachers, and the students were usually grouped according to ‘nations.’ The teaching body was divided into four or five ‘faculties.’

The course in arts included the seven liberal arts and portions of Aristotle; in civil and canon law, the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian and the Decree of Gratian respectively; in medicine, the treatises of Greek and other medical writers; and in theology, mostly the Sententiæ of Peter the Lombard. The texts were read and explained by the lecturers, and a practical training in debate was furnished.

While the courses and methods were narrow and formal, the mediæval university contained the germ of modern inquiry and did much to foster independence of thought and action.

The Rise of Universities.—A most important effect upon subsequent education came through the foundation of the mediæval universities. These institutions grew out of the old cathedral and monastic schools, but found their models largely in the liberal and professional courses of the Moorish colleges. In general, In general a product of all that was best in the Middle Ages. they came into existence through the many broadening influences of the later Middle Ages. Their rise was intimately connected with the stimulus of the Moslem presentation of Greek philosophy and science, with the interest in dialectic and theological discussions, which led to the development of scholasticism, with the reaction from ‘otherworldliness’ resulting from the ideals of chivalry, and with the growth of cities and wealth, and the consequent emphasis upon secular interests and knowledge (see chap. xi). However, while they were all more or less the product of the same factors, no two sprang from exactly the same set of causes, and special conditions played a part in the evolution of each university.

The Foundation of Universities at Salerno, Bologna, and Paris.—The oldest of these institutions, that at Salerno, near Naples, was simply a school of medicine, Causes of the medical school at Salerno. and originated through the survival of the old Greek medical works in Southwestern Italy, and through the attraction of the mineral springs and salubrity of this particular place. By the middle of the eleventh century Salerno was well known as the leading place for medical study. It was, however, never chartered as a regular university, although in 1231 Frederick II recognized it as the school of medicine for the university he had created at Naples some seven years earlier.

On the other hand, Northern Italy became known as a center for the study of Roman law. The cities here, in Origin of the courses at Bologna order to defend their independence, were led to study this subject, and endeavored to find some special charter, grant, or edict from the old Roman emperors upon which to base their claims. Several northern centers were in civil law renowned for their investigation of the Roman civil law, but early in the twelfth century Bologna became preëminent through the lectures of Irnerius. By him the entire Corpus Juris Civilis, a compilation of Roman law made by eminent jurists in the sixth century at the command of the emperor Justinian, was collected and critically discussed. Influenced by this example, a monk of Bologna, named Gratian, undertook to codify all edicts and formulations of popes and councils in a convenient text-book. The Decree of Gratian, which resulted, was almost immediately recognized as the authority upon the subject, and canon law came to be studied and canon law. here with the same thoroughness as civil law. The university at Bologna was regularly chartered by Frederick Barbarossa in 1158, probably as a recognition of the services of its masters in support of his imperial claims, and faculties of arts, medicine, and theology were established at various times. It was thus the first real university, and its reputation soon became widespread.

Next in order of foundation came the university at Paris, which was by far the most famous of all. The Development of liberal arts and theology at Paris. special interest here, as in this part of Europe generally, was dialectic and scholasticism. The university grew out of the cathedral school at Notre Dame, which had acquired considerable reputation under the headship of William of Champeaux, Abelard, and Peter the Lombard, but it was not until 1200, after canon law and medicine had been added to the liberal arts and theology, that it received complete recognition by the charter of Philip Augustus.

Bologna and Paris as the Models for Other Universities.—Salerno, as we have seen, was not a real university, and it did not reproduce its type; but Bologna, and even more Paris, became the mother of universities, for many other institutions were organized after their general plans. At Bologna the students, who were usually mature men, had entire charge of the government of the university. They selected the masters and determined the fees, length of term, and time of beginning. But in Paris, where the students were younger, the government was in the hands of the masters. Consequently, new foundations in the North, where Paris was the type, ‘Master-universities’ in the North, but ‘student-universities’ in the South. usually became ‘master-universities,’ while those of the South were ‘student-universities.’ During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it became fashionable for the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, to charter existing organizations or to found new institutions on one of these two plans, and by the time the Renaissance was well started about eighty universities had been established in Europe. Not all of these foundations were permanent, however, for some thirty have, in the course of time, become extinct, and those which remain are much changed in character.

Privileges Granted to the Universities.—From the time of the earliest official recognition of the universities, a large variety of exemptions, immunities, and other special privileges were conferred upon the organizations or upon their masters and students, by the charters of popes, emperors, kings, and municipalities. The students of the universities were in many instances taken under Protection and autonomy. the immediate protection of the sovereign, and were allowed to be tried in special courts of their own, independent of civil jurisdiction, and to possess complete autonomy in all their internal affairs. Generally masters, students, and their retainers alike were relieved from all taxation and from military service. Likewise, universities were immunity from taxation and military service, and right to license masters and to ‘strike’. granted the right to license masters to lecture anywhere without further examination (jus ubique docendi), and the privilege of ‘striking’ (cessatio), when university rights were infringed. If no redress were given in the latter case, the suspension of lectures was followed by emigration of the university to another town. This could easily be done, since none of the mediæval universities had buildings of their own, and there was no need of expensive libraries, laboratories, and other equipment.

Through such special rights the universities obtained great power and became very independent. Soon the liberty allowed to students degenerated into recklessness and license, and they became dissipated and quarrelsome. Wandering students. This is especially seen in the life of the so-called ‘wandering students,’ who migrated from university to university, begging their way, and were shiftless, rollicking, and vicious. The one compensating feature of such degeneracy was their production of jovial Latin and German songs to voice their appreciation of forbidden pleasures and their protest against restraint.

Organization of the Universities.—The term universitas, or ‘university,’ did not imply originally, as often claimed since, an institution where ‘everything’ is taught, The ‘university’ a corporation. but it was used of any legal corporation, and only in the course of time was it limited to an organization of masters and students. The phrase studium generale was also often used of a university, to indicate a school where the students from all parts of civilization were received, and to contrast it with a studium particulare, which was confined to pupils of a limited neighborhood. The formation The nations, of a university had been preceded by the organization of ‘nations,’ or bodies of students grouped according to the part of Europe from which they came, but these nations soon began to combine for the sake of obtaining greater privileges and power. Every year each nation chose a councilors, ‘councilor,’ who was to represent it and guard its interests. On the side of the masters, the university became organized into ‘faculties,’ of which there might be at least four,—arts, law, medicine, and theology; and each faculties, deans, and rector. faculty came to elect a ‘dean’ as its representative. The deans and the councilors jointly elected the ‘rector,’ or head of the university.

Course in the Four Faculties.—The course of study to be offered by each faculty was largely fixed by papal decree or university legislation during the thirteenth century. Arts. The course in arts, which occupied six years, included the texts on the liberal arts mentioned for the monastic schools (see [pp. 56] f.) and several of the treatises of Aristotle, as rapidly as they were recovered. In the law course, Corpus Juris Civilis was the authorized text Law. for civil law, and the Decree of Gratian for canon law. Medicine. The faculty of medicine utilized the Greek treatises by Hippocrates (c. 460-375 B. C.) and Galen (c. 130-200 A. D.), the Canon of Avicenna (see p. 66), and the works of certain Jewish and Salernitan physicians. The Theology. students of theology put most of their time upon the four books of Peter the Lombard’s Sententiæ ([Fig. 9]), although the Bible was studied incidentally.

The Methods of Instruction.—The training of a mediæval student consisted not only in acquiring the subjects mentioned, but in learning to debate upon them. The acquisition of the subject-matter was accomplished Lectures. through lectures, which consisted in reading and explaining the text-book under consideration ([Fig. 10]). Beside the text itself, the teacher would read all the explanatory notes, summaries, cross-references, and objections to the author’s statements, which often quite overshadowed the original, and might even add a commentary of his own. The passage was read slowly and repeated whenever necessary. The whole exercise was carried on in Latin, which had to be learned by the student before coming to Debates. the university. The training in debate was furnished by means of formal disputations, in which one student, or group of students, was pitted against another ([Fig. 11]). In these contests, which also were conducted in Latin, not only were authorities cited, but the debaters might add arguments of their own. Thus, compared with the memorizing of lectures, debating afforded some acuteness and vigor of intellect, but by the close of the fifteenth century it had become no longer reputable. The aim came to be to win and to secure applause without regard to truth or consistency.

Examinations and Degrees.—At the close of the course, the student was examined in his ability to define and dispute; and if he passed, he was admitted to the Master or doctor. grade of master, doctor, or professor. These degrees seem originally to have been about on a par with each other, and signified that the candidate was now ready to Baccalaureate. practice the craft of teaching. The baccalaureate was at first not a real degree, but simply permission to become a candidate for the license to teach. During the thirteenth century, however, it came to be sought as an honor by many not intending to teach, and eventually became a separate degree.

The Mediæval Universities:
Fig. 10.—The lecture.
Fig. 11.—The disputation.

The Value and Influence of the University Training.—Obviously the mediæval universities had most of the defects of their times. From a modern point of view, the Meager and authoritative, content of their course of study was meager, fixed, and formal, and the methods of teaching were stereotyped and authoritative. They largely neglected the real literature of the classical age, and permitted but little that savored of investigation or thinking. Yet the universities were a product of the growing tendencies that later burst the fetters of mediævalism. They were a great encouragement to subtlety, industry, and thoroughness, and their efforts toward philosophic speculation but somewhat productive of inquiry and freedom. contained the germs of the modern spirit of inquiry and rationality. They were even of immediate assistance in promoting freedom of discussion and advancing democracy, and to their arbitration were often referred disputes between the civil and ecclesiastical powers. Thus they aided greatly in advancing the cause of individualism and carrying forward the torch of civilization and progress.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. IX; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 313-327. Standard works on the universities in general are Laurie, S. S., The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities (Appleton, 1886), and the more complete and accurate Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895), by Rashdall, H. For a brief source account of the privileges, courses, methods, and student life of universities, see Norton, A. O., Readings in the History of Education; Mediæval Universities (Harvard University, 1909), or Munro, D. C., The Mediæval Student (Longmans, Green, 1899). For the history of individual universities, see Compayré, G., Abelard and the Origin and Early History of Universities (Scribner, 1893); Lyte, H. C. M., A History of the University of Oxford (Macmillan, 1886); Mullinger, J. B., University of Cambridge (Longmans, London, 1888); and Paulsen, F., The German Universities (Macmillan, 1895; Scribner, 1906).

CHAPTER X

THE EDUCATION OF CHIVALRY

OUTLINE

Owing to the weakness of the regular sovereignty after Charlemagne’s day, the feudal system sprang up, and by the middle of the twelfth century it had developed a code of manners known as chivalry.

Out of this there arose a training for knighthood in religion, honor, and gallantry. Before becoming a knight, the boy was early trained at home, then at some castle, first as ‘page,’ and later as ‘squire.’

This chivalric education produced many contradictory results, but it tended to refine the times and to counteract ‘otherworldliness.’

The Development of Feudalism.—The mediæval education thus far described has had to do mostly with the schooling of the ecclesiastical and other select professional classes. Quite a different type of training was that given the knight. This has generally been known as the education of chivalry. Chivalry is a name for the code of manners in usage during the days of the feudal system. By this system is meant an order of society and government that gradually grew up in the Middle Ages alongside the regular political organization, and when, under the successors of Charlemagne, the monarchy Dependence upon a powerful neighbor became a regular form of government. became weak, tended to be substituted for it. Under feudalism small landowners and freemen lacking land had come to depend upon some powerful neighbor for protection, and even to seek from him a dependent tenure of land. Then, in time, the lords acquired a species of sovereignty over their tenants, and by the tenth century there had come to be a great social gulf between the nobility, who owned the land and lived in castles, and the peasantry, who tilled the soil and supported them. The only serious business of the former was fighting with spear, sword, or battle-axe, in their own quarrels or those of their feudal superiors. To prepare for this warfare, mock combats may occasionally have been engaged in as early as the tenth century ([Fig. 12]).

The Ideals of Chivalry.—But by the middle of the twelfth century, when the old heroic age had lapsed into an age of courtesy, with extravagant devotion to women and romantic adventure as its chief ideals, these encounters were organized into a definite species of pastime called ‘tournaments,’ and soon degenerated into mere pageantry. Hence the rules of chivalry became fixed and formal, and the art of horsemanship and the management of the lance and spear were developed and settled. The Religion, honor, and gallantry. ideals of knightly conduct and education could then be stated as ‘service and obedience’ to God, as represented by the organized church, to one’s lord, or feudal superior, and to one’s lady, whose favor the knight wore in battle or tournament. The three ruling motives of chivalric education were, therefore, held to be ‘religion, honor, and gallantry.’

The Three Preparatory Stages of Education.—There were three periods in the preparatory training of a knight. Training (1) at home, First, until the child was seven or eight, he was trained in religion, politeness, and physique at home by his mother. After this he became a ‘valet’ or ‘page’ at the home of a (2) as a page, nobleman, who was generally his father’s feudal superior. Here he performed personal duties for his lord and lady, and his education was conducted mostly by the latter. He learned the game of chess, acquired the etiquette of love and honor, and was taught to play the harp and pipe and to sing, to read and write, and to compose in verse. Outside the castle, the pages were trained in running, and wrestling, boxing, riding, and rudimentary tilting ([Fig. 14]). In the third stage, at fourteen or fifteen the youth (3) as a squire. passed to the grade of ‘squire,’ and, while he still attended the lady and carved the meat or handed around the viands for the guests, his chief service was to the knight and his training came through him. He slept near him at night, groomed his horses, kept his armor and weapons in condition, and attended him at the tournament or upon the battlefield. Through this service the squire himself was practiced in all the warlike arts. Toward the close of the period the embryo knight also chose his lady-love, and learned to write verses and dance. When the squire The knighting. became twenty-one, he was knighted with many religious ceremonies. After a season of fasting, the candidate entered the church in full armor and spent a night in vigil and holy meditation. In the morning he confessed, had his sword blessed upon the altar by the priest, and took an oath to defend the church, protect women, and succor the poor. He then knelt before his lord, who laid his own sword upon the candidate and dubbed him knight.

The Effects of Chivalric Education.—Such was the training of the knight in the ‘rudiments of love, war, and religion.’ It contained many apparent anomalies and contradictions, and every virtue seems to have been Courage, but cruelty; balanced by a correlative vice. The knights were recklessly courageous in battle, but their anger was ungovernable and their cruelty extreme. A great self-respect self-respect, but pride; was supposed to characterize the true knight, but this often reacted into an overweening pride. Likewise, while the knights were rated largely according to their liberality liberality, but extravagance; and other anomalies. and hospitality, these virtues degenerated into a great love of display and extravagance beyond measure. Again, although great respect for womanhood was inculcated, not much consideration could be expected by the woman beneath a certain rank. Similarly, the knightly word of honor, if accompanied by certain forms, would be held sacred, but should these forms be omitted, a decided breach of faith was not uncommon. As a whole, however, the chivalric training had a beneficial effect upon the society of the times. It helped to organize the turmoil and to refine the barbarism of mediæval Europe, and was an effective instrument in raising Counteraction of otherworldliness. the position of women. Moreover, while this peculiar training was artificial and worldly, by that very tendency it did much to counteract the ‘otherworldly’ ideal of monasticism and the general asceticism of the period. It encouraged an activity in earthly affairs and a frank enjoyment of this life, and thus helped to develop a striking characteristic of the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. VII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 284-291. Detailed descriptions of the stages of chivalric training can be found in Cornish, F. W., Chivalry (Sonnenschein, London, 1901) (Macmillan, 1908); Furnival, F. J., Early Education in England (Forewords to The Babees Book, Early English Text Society, Original Series, vol. 32); and Mills, C., The History of Chivalry (Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1844), vol. I, chaps. I-V, and vol. II, chap. VII. An ingenious, but uncritical reconstruction of the life of a knight in story form, is found in Gautier, L., Chivalry, chaps. V-XX.

The Education of Chivalry:

Figs. 12 and 13.—Preliminaries and termination of a combat.

Fig. 14.—Boys playing tournament with a ‘quintain,’ or dummy opponent.

(Reproduced from Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of England.)

CHAPTER XI

THE BURGHER, GILD, AND CHANTRY SCHOOLS

OUTLINE

In the later Middle Ages the commerce of Europe was greatly increased. Soon the towns received a large impulse from serfs that flocked into them, and before long an influential ‘burgher class’ arose.

There also sprang up merchant and craft gilds, which afforded an industrial training through apprenticeship, and a more formal education through ‘gild schools.’ As the gilds merged with the town, these institutions became ‘burgher schools,’ and afforded a practical education in reading, writing, and reckoning. Various ‘adventure,’ ‘chantry,’ and other schools were also absorbed by the burgher schools.

Thus these institutions came to represent the educational interests of the industrial classes, and paved the way for the civic control of education.

The Rise of Commerce and Industry.—A most important influence in producing a transition from the mediæval to modern times is found in the increase of commerce during the later Middle Ages. From the Roman days down, trade had never died out in Western Europe, especially Italy, despite the injuries wrought by barbarian invasions, as the nobles had always need Impulse caused by Crusades and desire for luxuries. of luxuries, and the Church of articles of utility in its services. But the demand for vessels and transports during the Crusades, and the desire for the precious stones, silks, perfumes, drugs, spices, and porcelain from the Orient afterward, gave a tremendous impulse to commercial and industrial activity. The people of Europe began to think of what articles others outside their own little groups might want in exchange for these luxuries, and to strive to produce such commodities. They also undertook themselves to make some of the new articles, such as light and gauzy cotton and linen fabrics, silks, velvets, and tapestries. Thus the means of communication between the European states was greatly facilitated, new commercial routes and new regions were opened, geographical knowledge was increased, navigation was developed, maritime and mercantile affairs were organized, manufactures and industries were enlarged, currency was increased, and forms of credit were improved. All this tended toward a larger intellectual view and a partial dissipation of provincialism and intolerance.

Development of Cities and the Burgher Class.—The most noteworthy consequence of this industrial and Contributed to the growth of cities, commercial awakening was the growth of towns and cities. There was little town life in Western Europe during the Middle Ages before the twelfth century, as the old Roman towns had, through the invasions of the Germans, largely disintegrated, and but few new organizations had sprung up in their place. While some towns still existed in Italy and Southern France, most of the people of Europe lived in the country upon feudal estates. These little communities were largely isolated and independent of the rest of the world. They produced among themselves all that their members needed, and little or no money was necessary for their crude forms of exchange. Their life was unbroken in its monotony, there was little opportunity for them to better their condition, and their industries were carried on in a perfunctory and wasteful fashion. But with the growth of commerce and population, these serfs began to find it more profitable to work in the towns and compensate the lord of the manor with money rather than work, and the lords, in turn, found it of advantage to accept money in lieu of services, especially as many of them had been impoverished by the Crusades. Great bodies of serfs flocked to the towns, and new centers sprang up around the manorial estates and monasteries as manufactures, trades, and commerce increased.

Feudalism thus began to be threatened as early as the twelfth century, and within a hundred years the extinction of serfdom was assured. The people soon rebelled against the rule of their lords and either expelled them altogether or secured from them for a monetary consideration a charter conferring more liberal rights and privileges. By these charters, the lord agreed to recognize the gild of merchants, and to permit the people to govern themselves. As industries, trade, and commerce and to the development of a burgher class. continued to develop, the craftsmen and merchants grew rapidly in wealth and importance. They were soon enabled to rival the clergy in education, and the nobility in the luxury of their dwellings and living. They began to read, and books were written or adapted for their needs. The ‘burgher class’ came to have a recognized position by the side of the clergy and nobility; and the king, in order to retain their support, was forced to take counsel with them. This development of industry and commerce, growth of town and city life, and rise of a ‘third estate’ is one of the most noteworthy changes of the late Middle Ages.

The Gilds and Industrial Education.—Such a new social attitude naturally gave rise to new forms of education. An informal type of training soon sprang up in connection with the development of ‘gilds.’ Besides the original gild of merchants, through which the town had presented a united front and gained its privileges, separate gilds for the various crafts had been established in each town. These craft gilds were the sole repositories of the traditional lore of the vocations, and became the chief channel for transmitting it. While their number and variety differed in each town, all the gilds sought to prevent anyone who had not been regularly approved and admitted to the corporation from practicing the trade he represented. In consequence of this attempt at regulation, industrial training in the craft of each gild grew up through an apprenticeship system. This was provided upon a domestic basis. The ‘apprentice’ entered the household of his ‘master,’ and learned the craft under his direction ([Fig. 15]). The time necessary for this varied greatly in different crafts. For example, in Paris it took two years to learn to become a cook, eight years an Stages of embroiderer, and ten years a goldsmith. While the apprentice received no wages during this period, he was (1) apprentice under the protection of the gild, and might appeal to the organization against ill-treatment or defective training. (2) journeyman, and (3) master. At the end of his apprenticeship, he became a ‘journeyman’ and could earn wages, but only by working for a master, and not through direct service for the public. After an examination by the gild, which might include the presentation of a ‘masterpiece,’ or sample of his work, the journeyman eventually became a master. In other ways, the organization regulated and protected its craft. In order that journeymen and masters might not become too numerous, all masters, save those on the governing board of the gild, were forbidden to take more than one apprentice. The methods of practicing each trade and the hours to be devoted to it each day were specified, and the handiwork of each man carefully scrutinized. In many instances, the gild put its own stamp upon good work, and might often seize products that it considered defective.

Gild Schools.—In this way there grew up a species of industrial education, with three definite stages in its organization and with inspection at every point. A more formal means of education was instituted through priests of the gilds and endowments. Before long, too, the gilds developed a more formal means of education. The existing ecclesiastical schools did not altogether meet the needs of the gilds, and they undertook the establishment of additional institutions for this purpose. Where the gilds had retained one or more priests to perform the necessary religious offices for their members, before long they also utilized these functionaries to keep a school for the benefit of their own and sometimes other children in the town. Later, endowments were furnished especially for a priest to teach school, or an amount sufficient for the purpose was paid out of the common funds of the gild. Some of these gild schools, like ‘Merchant Taylors’’ of London, or the Grammar School at Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was educated ([Fig. 16]), still survive as secondary institutions. Many instances, too, are recorded where the members of a certain gild were appointed trustees of a school established by an individual, and were granted the right of appointing and dismissing the master, admitting the pupils, managing the property, and formulating statutes. In some such fashion Colet later vested the management of the famous St. Paul’s school (see p. 118) in the gild of mercers.

Fig. 15.—Apprenticeship training in a gild. (The master bootmaker and his wife, two journeymen, and an apprentice.)

Fig. 16.—Gild school and church at Stratford-on-Avon. (In this ‘grammar’ school Shakespeare learned ‘little Latin and less Greek.’)

Burgher Schools.—As the gild organizations gradually merged with those of the towns, the gild schools were Gild schools absorbed by the burgher schools. generally absorbed in the institutions known as ‘burgher’ or town schools. At first these burgher schools were not very dissimilar to those established by the Church, except that they were more conveniently located, but later various types of vernacular schools arose to meet special practical demands, especially writing and reckoning. The Latin burgher schools were also somewhat practical in their course, and often admitted some pupils who desired to learn only to read, write, and reckon. Writing had become an important vocation, since printing had not yet been invented; and there was a definite demand Practical course. for writers in public offices, private secretaries, letter writers for the illiterate, and teachers of writing. Reckoning grew directly out of the new commercial life, and was often taught in the writing schools. It was not taught from the standpoint of theory or discipline, as was the arithmetic in the Latin schools, but for the sake of practical calculation and bookkeeping. But even all the facilities of the regular Latin and vernacular schools of the town were not sufficient to meet the demand for a more practical education. In consequence, private ‘adventure’ schools, taught by wandering teachers or by women, likewise often sprang up, and some teachers were even licensed by the town authorities to teach the vernacular. In most instances, however, these institutions were also combined with the burgher schools.

Chantry Schools.—Another type of institution that came into prominence toward the close of the Middle Ages was the ‘chantry school.’ Schools of this sort at first arose out of bequests by wealthy persons to support Arose from foundations for masses for the dead. priests who should ‘chant’ masses for the repose of their souls. Since these religious duties did not absorb all the time of the priests, they were able to do some teaching. And before long, the founders of chantries themselves came to direct that the priests carrying out their will should be required to teach. Often two chantry priests were provided, one to teach a ‘grammar’ school, and the other a ‘song’ or vernacular school. From the first most of these chantry schools were free of all tuition charges, the priest being requested to “teach gratis, without asking anything beyond his stipend for his pains,” but occasionally they were gratuitous only to the children of his parishioners or to poor children whose parents or guardians asked for the privilege.

Influence of the New Schools.—The chantry schools likewise were often united with various other schools within a town, and became jointly known as ‘burgher schools.’ Many new foundations of a similar nature were also made. These burgher schools were largely controlled and supported by the public authorities, although still generally taught by the priests. They came to represent Paved the way for a more secularized education. the interests of the mercantile and industrial classes, and gave instruction in subjects of more practical value than had any of the schools hitherto. Such institutions sprang up everywhere during the later Middle Ages. They were often strongly opposed by the ecclesiastical authorities, who struggled hard to abolish them or bring them under control, but they continued to grow and hold their own. The number of lay teachers in them gradually increased, and thus paved the way for the tendency toward the secularization and civic control of education that appeared later on. The new schools, therefore, that arose in connection with the development of commerce and industry and the growth of towns, were one of the largest factors that led into the broadening of outlook known as the Renaissance.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. X; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 337-339. Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages (Scribner, 1894), furnishes an illuminating chapter (XII) upon the Growth of Commerce and Its Results. The development of towns and gilds in various countries of Europe is described in detail by Ashley, W. J., English Economic History and Theory (Putnam, 1892), vol. I, chap. II; Green, Alice S., Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (Macmillan, 1894); Gross, C., The Gild Merchant (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890); Staley, E., The Guilds of Florence (Methuen, London, 1906); and Unwin, G., The Gilds and Companies of London (Methuen, London, 1908; Scribner, 1909). Accounts of the new types of schools are found in Leach, A. F., English Schools at the Reformation (Constable, 1896), chaps. 7-9; Nohle, E., History of the German School System (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-1898, vol. I), pp. 22-26; and Watson, F., English Grammar Schools to 1660 (Cambridge University Press, 1909), chap. VII.

PART III
THE TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES

CHAPTER XII

THE HUMANISTIC EDUCATION

OUTLINE

By the fourteenth century there appeared an intellectual awakening, known as the Renaissance. It was accompanied by a ‘revival of learning’ and an education called ‘humanistic.’

Italy first showed evidence of the new movement. The characteristics of the Renaissance were embodied in Petrarch and Boccaccio, but little was done with the Greek classics until Chrysoloras came from Constantinople.

The tyrants of various cities often had humanistic schools started at their courts. Of these the most typical was that under Vittorino da Feltre. These schools eventually forced the universities to admit the humanities to their course. But humanism gradually degenerated into ‘Ciceronianism.’

Humanistic education also gradually spread to the countries north of Italy, but it there took on more of a moral color. In France, the protection of Francis I encouraged the introduction of humanism into educational institutions by various scholars. The German universities likewise began to respond to humanistic influences.

The Hieronymians first introduced the classics into the schools, and Erasmus, who was trained by them, became the leader in humanistic education. Through other humanistic schools started by Sturm and others, the ‘gymnasium,’ the typical classical school of Germany, was evolved, and the humanistic education became fixed and formal.

In England the movement gradually developed at Oxford and Cambridge, and Colet started St. Paul’s school, which became the model for all secondary schools. Humanism in England, however, soon retrograded into a formalism, and the ‘grammar’ and ‘public’ schools there are little changed to-day.

The first secondary schools in the American colonies were modeled after the grammar schools of the mother country.

The Passing of the Middle Ages.—It can now be seen that a new spirit had crept into European civilization, and that the Middle Ages were passing. We have previously noted (pp. 53f.) that, in order to bring the German barbarians up to the level of the past, it was necessary for the Church to set an authoritative standard and repress all variation on the part of the individual. Yet such bondage of the human spirit was unnatural, and there were periodic tendencies to rebel against the system. Mediævalism contained the germ of its own emancipation. In fact, mediævalism contained within itself the germ of its own emancipation. During the eighth century there came about a new political order, which culminated in Charlemagne’s revival of education. While conditions were never again as desperate after this stimulus, with the disruption of Charlemagne’s empire another decline set in. But by the thirteenth century a new revival, material and intellectual, had also appeared. Several developments gave evidence of the expansion within, and assisted in producing it. The broadening of horizon through contact with the Moors, the development of scholasticism, the evolution of universities, the worldly appeal of chivalry, and the growth of cities, gilds, and commerce were all helping by accumulation to dispel the mediæval spirit.

And by the fourteenth century a new dawn had been ushered in. The period that followed was marked by a general intellectual and cultural progress that began to free men from their bondage to ecclesiasticism and to induce them to look at the world about them. The The general tendencies of the Awakening adherence to an ‘otherworldly’ ideal, the restriction of learning, the reception of the teachings of the Church without investigation, and the conformity of the individual were by this time rapidly disappearing. Such tendencies were clearly being replaced by a genuine joy in the life of this world, a broader field of knowledge and thought, a desire to reason and deal with all ideas more critically, and enlarged ideals of individualism. The days of mere absorption and assimilation had passed.

The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning.—This tremendous widening of horizon has been generally While the Renaissance was caused by internal factors, it was promoted by the Revival of Learning. known as the Renaissance or ‘new birth.’ The term is used to indicate that the spirit of the Græco-Roman development had returned, and that opportunity for expression was granted to the individual once more. But this period is also appropriately known as the ‘Revival of Learning.’ For, while the awakening preceded and was caused by internal factors, rather than by the recovery of classical literature and learning, intellectual freedom was very greatly heightened and forwarded after a restoration of the classics once began. The only food at hand that could satisfy the awakened intelligence of the times was the literature and culture of the classical peoples. The discovery that the writings of the ancient world were filled with a genuine vitality and virility, and that the old authors had dealt with world problems in a profound and masterly fashion, and with far more vision than had ever been possible for the mediævalists, gave rise to an eager desire and enthusiasm for the classics that went beyond all bounds. A knowledge of classical literature had never altogether disappeared, and various works had been preserved by the monks and others. To search out the manuscripts of the Latin and Greek writers, the monasteries, cathedrals, and castles were now ransacked from end to end. The manuscripts found were rapidly multiplied, and the greatest pains taken to secure the correct form of every passage. The devotees of the new movement were Humanists and humanistic education. generally called ‘humanists,’ and the training embodying the classics has since been termed ‘humanistic education.’

Causes of the Awakening in Italy.—While the general tendency toward an awakening was apparent throughout Western Europe, it first became evident in Italy. This was due to the fact that Italy was at the time a seat of intellectual activity resulting from several factors. It Political storm center. was a storm center for civic and interstate quarrels, and, as a result of this political unrest, the citizens were kept constantly on the outlook for their own safety and interests, and their wits were greatly sharpened. Even the exile, into which one civic faction or another was constantly forced, had the effect of broadening their vision and bringing out the greatest possibilities within Commercial activity. them. Again, the commercial intercourse of the Italian cities with other countries had, for various physiographic and historic reasons, become extraordinarily active. This tended to open the minds of the Italians, break up their old conceptions, free them of prejudice, and increase their thirst for learning. Furthermore, Home of the classics. the ghost of the classic ages still haunted its old home. A knowledge of the Latin tongue had never ceased to exist in Italy, and many manuscripts of the Latin and Greek authors had been preserved. There was only needed an intellectual awakening sufficient to shake off the thraldom to the Church and produce an appreciation of classical literature and culture, in order to bring back this spirit of the past into real pulsating life.

The Revival of the Latin Classics.—The earliest of Petrarch embodied the Renaissance spirit, the great humanists was Petrarch (1304-1374). In him we find the very embodiment of the Renaissance spirit. He completely repudiated the ‘otherworldly’ ideal of mediævalism, and was keenly aware of the beauties and joys of this life. He did not hesitate to attack the most hoary of traditions, nor to rely upon observation, investigation, and reason. He likewise felt a kinship with the thinkers and writers of the classic age, when independence and breadth were given more scope, and held that their works must be recovered before their spirit could be continued. This led to a tremendous and was an enthusiast on the Latin classics. enthusiasm for the Latin classics, and he spent much of his life in restoring ancient culture. He devoted himself during his extensive travels largely to collecting manuscripts of the old Latin writers, which previously had been widely scattered, and endeavoring to repair in them the ravages of time. And he inspired every one he met with a desire to gather and study the works of the classic authors. He also wrote a number of Latin works that were filled with the classic spirit. Among them were several collections of Letters, a work of erudition On Famous Men, and an epic poem in honor of Scipio Africanus that he called Africa. Some of his letters were indited to Cicero, Homer, and other classical authors as if they were still living. After he His influence. had been crowned as poet laureate by the University of Rome in 1341, he spent most of his time visiting various Italian cities and spreading the humanistic spirit. Of the younger scholars and literary men influenced by him probably the most noted was Boccaccio (1313-1375). Through Petrarch this youthful poet developed a perfect passion for the ancient writers, and devoted the rest of his life to classical culture. He obtained a wide knowledge of the Latin writers, and searched out, preserved, and had copied as many manuscripts as possible.

The Development of Greek Scholarship.—With all this revival of Latin literature by the côterie of Petrarch, for some time there was little done with the Greek. That language had almost disappeared in Europe, and Little was at first known of the Greek classics. the greatest Greek authors were known only through Latin translations. But a knowledge of the Greek language and literature still persisted in the Eastern empire, and the humanists of Italy were, through the works of the Latin authors, constantly directed back to the writings of the Greeks. They became eager to read them in the original, and several humanists began the study of Greek. Nevertheless, Petrarch pathetically confessed: “Homer is dumb to me, while I am most certainly deaf to him.” And while, with the aid of his Greek teacher, Boccaccio made a translation of Homer, it showed little real appreciation of the original. Chrysoloras Not until Chrysoloras (1350-1415) came as an envoy from the Eastern emperor and was induced in 1396 to settle in Italy and teach Greek, was any systematic training possible. During the next sixteen years this man of learning taught in the leading centers, established schools, made translations of Greek authors, and his pupils. and wrote a Greek grammar. From his efforts sprang a number of famous scholars, such as Vergerio, Niccolo de’ Niccoli, Bruni, and Guarino da Verona and his son. These men collected or copied hundreds of volumes, started libraries and schools, made excellent translations, wrote treatises on humanistic education, and trained a number of humanists, who became distinguished later.

The Court Schools and Vittorino da Feltre.—A powerful support for the work of these humanists resulted from the rivalry of the Italian cities. The princes at the head of these centers were often usurpers, and depended largely upon city pride to maintain their power. City tyrants fostered humanism and started court schools. To appeal to the classical enthusiasm of their people, they did everything possible to propagate the humanistic movement and make their cities illustrious. Probably the most typical examples of these humanistic tyrants are found among the Visconti at Milan and the Medici at Florence. In some instances these court circles promoted the new learning informally, but often, where a scholar had been taken into the family of a prince as private tutor, children of the neighboring aristocracy were associated and a regular school was started. ‘Court schools’ of this sort soon existed at Florence, Venice, Padua, Pavia, Verona, Ferrara, and several other cities, but the best known of all was that organized by Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) at Mantua.

The Court School at Mantua.—Vittorino undertook this school at forty-five, when he had received the best possible education of the times in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and had greatly distinguished himself as a teacher and a man of piety. He received into the Types of pupils. school not only the royal princes and the scions of the leading Mantuan families, but, by special permission, the sons of his personal friends and promising boys of every degree. He dwelt with his pupils, and was most strict in his selection of masters and of attendants, that the morals of his pupils might be of the highest. Likewise, ‘the father of his pupils,’ as Vittorino held himself to be, looked out for their food, clothing, and health, and shared in their games, interests, and pleasures. It was his intention to secure for his pupils that The aim was harmonious development of mind, body, and morals. harmonious development of mind, body, and morals that the old Greeks had known as a ‘liberal education,’ but he emphasized the practical and social side of the individual’s efficiency, and wished to prepare his pupils for a life of activity and service rather than to create mere rhetoricians and pedants.

This he felt could be accomplished largely through a grammatical and literary study of the Greek and Roman writers. The pupils learned from the first to converse Course and methods. in Latin, and there were games with letters for the youngest and simple exercises to train them in clear articulation and proper accent and emphasis. Before they were ten, they were also drilled in memorizing and reciting with intelligence the easier portions of the classic authors. This elocutionary work, which was increased in length and difficulty as the boys grew older, gave them an excellent grasp of vocabulary, rhythm, and style. As Classics and mathematical subjects. they advanced, the pupils read a variety of Latin writers, and soon took up a study of the Greek authors and of the Church Fathers. The mathematical subjects were also taught with an enlarged scope, especially in their applications to drawing, mensuration, and surveying. Because of the lack of books, the teaching was carried on largely by dictation. Vittorino, however, carefully studied the ability, interests, and future career of his pupils, and selected the subjects and methods best suited to each intelligence. He thus inaugurated a Physical and moral and religious training. thoroughly elastic course for the school. Physical and moral education were likewise insisted upon quite as fully as intellectual. Vittorino introduced especially fencing, wrestling, dancing, ball-playing, running, and leaping, in all of which he was himself an expert, but the purpose of these was to aid and stimulate the mental powers. He also by both precept and example inculcated piety, reverence, and religious observances. He believed, moreover, that truth and moral beauty could be derived not only from the Christian authors, but also, by means of expurgation, from the classic writings.

The Relation of the Court Schools to the Universities.—The court school at Mantua had thus a most potent influence upon the educational practice of the times, and trained a large number of distinguished ecclesiastics, statesmen, scholars, and rulers. It doubtless was broadly typical of the court schools and of the humanistic education of Italy in general. These court schools, while taking pupils very early, often retained them until they were twenty-one, and covered as much, if not more, ground than the arts course of the university. Rivalry and adoption of the new learning by the universities. They were, in a way, competitors of the older institutions. A student might, for the sake of a degree, go from a court school to a university, but, as a rule, if what he wished were a general course, he would be satisfied with the greater prestige that came from being a pupil of one of the distinguished humanists that the court schools were generally able to retain at their head. In fact, the want of hospitality, if not actual hostility, of universities to the new learning, often stimulated the growth of court schools. In many instances where the university was especially conservative, a court school was set up by its side as a professed rival. Gradually, however, the humanistic training crept into all the universities of Italy, and the classical literature of the Greeks and Romans largely took the place of the former grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Before the close of the fifteenth century, Florence, Padua, Pavia, Milan, Ferrara, Rome, and other cities had admitted the humanities to their universities, and the other university seats were not long in following their example.

Decadence of Italian Humanism.—Toward the close of the fifteenth century, however, this liberal education Humanism eventually became formalized and largely a drill in grammar. of the humanists in Italy began to be fixed and formal. Until the middle of the century the ideals, content, and meaning of this training were constantly expanding, but after that there was a gradual narrowing and hardening, and during the early years of the sixteenth century the degeneration became complete. As the subject-matter became institutionalized, the literature of the Greeks and Romans failed more and more to be interpreted in terms of life. Emphasis was placed upon the form rather than the content of the classical writings, and grammatical drill was more and more emphasized as a means of formal discipline. Before long the course was limited largely to Cicero, and the new learning fell ‘Ciceronianism.’ into that decadent state known as ‘Ciceronianism.’ It consisted simply in an attempt to teach a perfect style with Cicero as a model, and to give one a conversational knowledge of Ciceronian Latin. The structure, metaphors, and vocabulary of all Latin writing had to be copied from the phrases of Cicero, and the literature of the day became little more than a sequence of model passages from that author.

The Spread and Character of Humanism in the Northern Countries.—Such was the effect of the Renaissance upon education in the country of its birth. But the Through the invention of printing humanism leaped the Alps. humanistic training could not be confined to Italy. By the middle of the fifteenth century, with the invention of printing, the texts of the classic authors were rapidly multiplied and spread everywhere. The Renaissance and the classic literature leaped the Alps, and made their way into France, the Teutonic countries, England, and elsewhere. At first, humanistic scholars wandered into the North, soon others were invited in large numbers by patrons of learning, and, at length, students from the Northern countries thronged into Italy for instruction. Towards the close of the fifteenth century the humanists outside the peninsula became very numerous, and during the sixteenth century the movement came to its height in the Northern lands.

But the character and effects of the Renaissance and humanism in the North differed greatly from those in the country of their origin. The peoples of the North, especially those of Germanic stock, were by nature more religious than the brilliant and mercurial Italians. With them the Renaissance led less to a desire for personal Less individual and more social in the North. development, self-realization, and individual achievement, and took on more of a social and moral color. The prime purpose of humanism became the improvement of society, morally and religiously, and the classical revival pointed the way to obtaining a new Use of Greek and Hebrew. and more exalted meaning from the Scriptures. Through the revival of Greek, Northern scholars, especially the German and English, sought to get away from the ecclesiastical doctrines and traditions, and turn back to the essence of Christianity by studying the New Testament in the original. This suggested a similar insight into the Old Testament, and an interest in Hebrew was thereby aroused. In consequence, to most people in the North a renewed study of the Bible became as important a feature of humanism as an appreciation of the classics.

The Development of Humanism in France.—In France humanism appeared early. In 1458 a professorship of Greek was established at the University of Paris, but the humanistic movement did not amount to much Expeditions of French kings into Italy. in France until it was stimulated by the expeditions of Charles VIII (1494) and Louis XII (1498) into Italy. These undertakings of the monarchs did not attain the military and political objects intended, but through them France came into direct contact with humanism at its sources, and a definite impression was made upon French art, literature, and education. Even then, owing to the conservatism of the university, the new learning met at first with formidable opposition. Happily, it Francis I, found an influential patron in the youthful Francis I (r. 1515-1547).

French Humanistic Educators and Institutions.—Under the protection of Francis, many prominent and Budæus. humanistic scholars and educators, like Budæus (1468-1540), appeared, classical manuscripts were collected, Greek and Latin authors were translated, treatises on humanistic education were produced, and the College of France, with chairs of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, was established (1530). Humanism was also introduced into various colleges in Paris and Bordeaux by such scholars Corderius, and Ramus. and practical teachers as Corderius (1479-1564) and Ramus (1515-1572), and many text-books and editions of the classics were published. Soon most of the schools of France responded to the new training. It would hardly be possible to consider many of them, but a brief description of the course and administration in vogue at College of Guyenne. the College of Guyenne, taken from an account of one of its teachers, may prove illuminating. This college contained ten classes in secondary work, and two years more in philosophy, which partially overlapped the faculty of arts in the university. Latin and religion were taught throughout the secondary school, and Greek, mathematics, rhetoric, and declamation could be taken in the last three or four classes. The pupils were introduced to the rudiments of Latin through the vernacular, and developmental methods and enlivening disputations were used. Probably the general conditions here were typical of the French humanistic schools everywhere during the sixteenth century.

Humanism in the German Universities.—Before humanism was well established in France, however, it had also spread through the Teutonic countries. By the end Erfurt and other existing universities. of the sixteenth century the German universities had begun to adopt the new learning. In 1494 Erfurt established a professorship of Poetry and Eloquence, which covered the field of classic literature, and lectures on humanistic subjects were before long given in Leipzig, Heidelberg, Tübingen, Ingoldstadt, and Vienna. Likewise, New universities. a number of new universities, Wittenberg, Marburg, Königsberg, and Jena, were started upon a humanistic basis, and before the middle of the sixteenth century humanism prevailed in practically all of the German universities.

The Hieronymians and Their Schools.—The earliest factor in Germanic humanism, however, appeared in the education furnished by the Hieronymians, or Brethren of At first instruction only in Bible and vernacular, the Common Lot. For the instruction of the poor, this order had started schools, or established teachers in institutions already existing, throughout the Netherlands, Germany, and France. At first, they stressed instruction in the Bible and the vernacular, but, as the Italian influence began to be felt in the upper countries, but humanism added. they broadened the course by the addition of classic literature and Hebrew, and the schools soon became recognized centers of humanism and intellectual interests. The pupils that were trained there strengthened the new learning as teachers in the universities and schools throughout Germany and the Netherlands. The first educator of importance to introduce humanism into the Wessel, Agricola, Reuchlin, Hieronymian training seems to have been Wessel (1420-1489). He was preëminently interested in teaching, and among his earliest pupils of distinction were Agricola (1443-1485), who had a most potent influence in introducing and classics, and Reuchlin (1455-1522), who taught the classics and Hebrew at various universities, and produced a monumental grammar and lexicon upon the latter subject. An even more noteworthy teacher was Wimpfeling. Wimpfeling (1450-1528), who became professor, dean, and rector at Heidelberg. He lectured upon the classical authors and the Church Fathers, and wrote a number of treatises upon education, in which he held to the attitude of Northern humanism that all learning is vain which does not lead to the advancement of mankind. But, while a true reformer, he never broke from the Church.

Erasmus, Leader in the Humanistic Education of Attitude of Erasmus. the North.—A similar attitude was held by Erasmus (1467-1531), the greatest of the humanists trained by the Hieronymians. While he was bitterly opposed to the corruption and obscurantism of ecclesiastics, he believed that the remedy lay, not in a division of the Church, but in the study of the classics and the Church Fathers, and His text-books, in the general removal of ignorance. Accordingly, to advance education, he assisted in the preparation of Lily’s Latin grammar, translated into Latin the Greek grammar of Theodore of Gaza, and wrote a work on Latin composition, called De Copia Verborum et Rerum, and an elementary text-book of Latin conversation on topics of the day, known as Colloquies. Similarly, he produced treatises on the New Testament, and popularized the Gospels and Church Fathers through satires, paraphrases. Even better known are the satires that he wrote in Latin to reform the abuses and foibles of his times. His Adages and Praise of Folly mercilessly scored the absurdities and vices of the Church and the priesthood, and in his Dialogue on Ciceronianism he ridiculed some of the narrower tendencies into which humanism had fallen. He also made direct contributions to educational and educational treatises. theory in his Latin treatises on The Liberal Education of Children, The Right Method of Study, and Courteous Manners in Boys, which are almost modern in some of their recommendations. Learning, morality, religion, and good manners, he held, must be trained together, and education must be open to everyone, according to his or her ability. It should be started in infancy by the mothers, and reading, writing, drawing, and some knowledge of familiar animals and objects taught by informal methods. At seven the boy is to be given a thorough training in the Scriptures, Church Fathers, and the classics, and the content rather than the language and form of these works is to be stressed.

The Development of Gymnasiums: Melanchthon’s Work.—It can thus be seen what a profound effect the humanists trained in the Hieronymian schools had upon the Teutonic universities and other educational institutions. But there sprang up another set of schools, known Developed out of old schools for benefit of municipalities. as Gymnasien, that was an even more typical and lasting institutional development of the Northern Renaissance. These ‘gymnasiums’ grew largely out of the old cathedral and upper burgher schools, and were established for the benefit of the municipality, rather than for State and Church. Their development was gradual, but they were given their first definite shaping by Melanchthon (1497-1560). After a thorough humanistic training from his great-uncle, Reuchlin, and from the universities at Heidelberg and Tübingen, that scholar had become associated with Luther at the University of Wittenberg, and was requested by the Elector of Saxony in 1528 to Latin schools for Electorate of Saxony. organize the schools in his state. The ‘Latin Schools,’ which he planned for every town and village of the electorate, were divided into three classes, and the work in Latin and religion was adapted to the grade. Not even Greek or Hebrew appeared in the course; much less the vernacular, mathematics, science, and history. Nevertheless, it was from these municipal Latin schools, when the course had been somewhat modified and expanded, that the ‘gymnasium’ may be said to have sprung.

Sturm at Strassburg.—A further step in fixing the type and the first use of the term ‘gymnasium’ are found in the case of the classical school organized by Johann Sturm (1507-1589) at Strassburg in 1538. Here during his forty-five years as rector, Sturm worked out a gymnasial course of ten classes, upon which the pupils entered at six or seven years of age. The aim of this training he Piety, knowledge, and eloquence as ideals. held to be ‘piety, knowledge, and eloquence,’ meaning by the last an ability to speak and write Latin readily. For ‘piety,’ the Lutheran catechism was studied in German for three years, and in Latin for three years Course of the ten classes. longer. The Sunday Sermons were read in the fourth and fifth years, and the Letters of Jerome also in the fifth year, while the Epistles of St. Paul were carefully studied from the sixth year through the rest of the course. On the ‘knowledge’ and ‘eloquence’ side, Latin grammar was begun immediately and the drill continued for four years, during which the pupil passed gradually from memorizing lists of words used in everyday life and reading dialogues that embodied them to the translation of Cicero and the easier Latin poets. In the fourth year exercises in style were begun, and this was accompanied by a grammatical and literary study of Cicero, Vergil, Plautus, Terence, Martial, Horace, Sallust, and other authors, together with letter writing, declamation, disputation, and the acting of plays. Greek was begun in the fifth year, and after three years of grammatical training, Demosthenes, the dramatists, Homer, and Thucydides were undertaken.

Formalism in the Gymnasiums.—This training, like that of the Italian humanists, soon became set, formal, Formalism, and mechanical. While other authors than Cicero were read, the object was to acquire an ability to read, write, and speak Ciceronian Latin, and words, phrases, and expressions were carefully committed. The main emphasis throughout was upon form, with little regard for content, and the Latin and Greek were largely regarded as an end in themselves. Yet the gymnasium of Sturm was an enormous success, and was soon crowded with students. His pupils became the headmasters of all the but wide influence. most prominent schools, and through his wide correspondence with sovereigns and educators, the course of study formulated by Sturm became a model not only for Germany, but, in a sense, for the rest of Europe. At any rate, most of the existing secondary schools in Germany, and many founded later, became gymnasiums. The majority of the Hieronymian schools soon adopted the gymnasial course. This was also the case with the Fürstenschulen, or ‘princes’ schools,’ a type of institution started in 1543 by Duke Moritz of Saxony to train well-prepared officials for Church and State at public expense, and afterward absorbed into the gymnasial system. And the gymnasiums have to-day changed but little from Sturm’s organization. Owing to the later influence of realism, the addition of mathematics, modern languages, and the natural sciences has somewhat mitigated the amount of classics prescribed, but otherwise the German gymnasiums adhere to their formal humanism as tenaciously as in the sixteenth century.

The Humanistic Movement in England: Greek at Oxford and Cambridge.—In its northward march the humanistic education also effected profound changes in England. By the middle of the fifteenth century many former students of Oxford began to study at various humanistic centers in Italy. But the influence of such Grocyn and Linacre. innovators was scarcely felt until Grocyn and Linacre, who had gone to Florence about 1488, undertook to introduce Greek into education upon their return home. Grocyn (1442-1519) became the first lecturer on Greek at Oxford, but he was greatly assisted in the humanistic training by Linacre (1460-1524), although his lectureship was nominally on medicine. Among their pupils were Erasmus, Colet, and More. Erasmus, More, and Colet. Humanistic education did not reach Cambridge, however, until the close of the fifteenth century, but, with the progress of the sixteenth, that university rapidly overtook her sister institution. The real development began when Erasmus, while a professor of theology at Cambridge (1510-1514), consented also to lecture upon Greek as a labor of love. Erasmus was succeeded by a number of lecturers, and in 1540 the new regius professorship was held for four years each by the Cheke and Ascham. great teachers, Cheke (1514-1557) and Ascham (1515-1568).

Humanism at the Court.—As Cheke became private tutor to Prince Edward and Ascham to Princess Elizabeth, an Hellenic atmosphere was soon promoted in royal circles. A powerful assistance to the development of humanism was also found at the court through the More and Wolsey. influence of More, who was especially close to Cardinal Wolsey, and so for a time to the king, Henry VIII. A number of treatises upon humanistic education were written by members of the court, like More and Vives; Ascham’s Scholemaster. while Ascham produced his Scholemaster, a well-known work on teaching Latin and Greek by ‘double translation.’ This famous method consisted in having the child translate a passage into English, and then, after an hour, render it back into the original and have the master compare it with the text.

Colet and His School at St Paul’s.—The humanistic changes in English education, however, were not limited to the universities and the court. The schools also felt the effect of the new movement, and the most important factor in bringing this about was the foundation of Religious training combined with the classics. St. Paul’s School in 1509 by Colet. This scholar devoted most of the fortune left him by his father to establishing a humanistic school in St. Paul’s churchyard, dedicated to ‘the child Jesus.’ The institution was thus an outgrowth of Northern humanism, and combined religious training with a study of the classics. In connection with certain Latin authors and Church Fathers, the pupils studied the catechism in English, the Latin Grammar of Lily, who was the first headmaster of the school, and the De Copia of Erasmus. St. Paul’s school trained a long list of brilliant scholars, literary men, clergy, and statesmen, and became the immediate model for a host of other institutions. There were in existence at the time St. Influence upon other grammar schools. Paul’s was founded some three hundred ‘grammar’ schools of various types. These had come down from the Middle Ages, and their chief purpose had been the training of young men for the priesthood. Their curriculum was usually of the mediæval monastic type, but they soon felt the influence of the new school. Those which survived the general dissolution of ecclesiastical foundations by Henry VIII and Edward VI were gradually remodeled on the classical basis of St. Paul’s. New schools were also established in accordance with the humanistic ideals.

Humanism in the English ‘Grammar’ Schools.—But the humanism of the ‘grammar’ schools in England, as in Italy and Germany, soon became narrow and formal. The purpose of humanistic education came to be not so much a real training in literature as a practical command of Latin as a means of communication in all lands and Soon became narrow and formal. ages. Accordingly, the training became one of dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books. Expressions and selections were culled from authors and treasured in notebooks, and the methods became largely memoriter and passive. The formalism into which the schools of England had thus fallen by the seventeenth century is depicted in Brinsley’s Ludus literarius: or the Grammar Schoole, a work intended to ridicule and reform these conditions. It indicates that the training in Latin was devoted to drill in inflecting, parsing, and construing a fixed set of texts. Lily’s Grammar was memorized by the pupils, and references to it were glibly repeated, with little understanding of their meaning. All conversation was based upon some phrase-book, like the Colloquies of Corderius, and a Latin theme had to be ground out each week.

English ‘Grammar’ and ‘Public’ Schools To-day.—Although reforms have since been made in many of these directions, the organization and the formal humanism of the English ‘grammar’ school have been preserved Largely unchanged. in principle even to this day. Mathematics, modern languages, and sciences have been added, and a ‘modern side’ has been established as an alternate for the old course, but the classics are still the emphasized feature, and, to a large degree, the drill methods prevail. But, while it was originally intended that the grammar schools should, by means of the endowment, be open to rich and poor alike, because of the great increase in expenses, necessary and unnecessary, there are now not many opportunities for any one in the lower classes of society to attend a grammar school. Similarly, a distinction has come to be drawn between ‘grammar’ and The great ‘public’ schools. ‘public’ schools, although it is not a very clear one. In general, a ‘public school’ has a more aristocratic and wealthier patronage. Nine ‘great public schools’ were recognized by the Clarendon Commission in 1864,—Winchester ([Fig. 17]), Eton, St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Rugby, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, and Charterhouse; but several other old schools and a number of the stronger foundations of Victoria’s reign are generally admitted, and many others claim the dignity of the name that would not be considered eligible outside of the immediate locality.

The ‘Grammar’ Schools in the American Colonies.—It was after these ‘grammar’ schools of the mother country First American secondary schools modeled after English. that the first secondary schools in America were modeled and named. In many instances the fathers of the colonies, such as Edward Hopkins, William Penn, and Roger Williams, had been educated in the grammar schools of England, and naturally sought to model the institutions in their new home after them as nearly as the different conditions would permit. The Boston Latin (Grammar) School was founded as early as 1635 ([Fig. 23]), and other towns of Massachusetts,—Charlestown, Ipswich, Salem, Dorchester, Newbury, Cambridge, and Roxbury, also before long established grammar schools. Similarly, towns of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the other colonies, had in many cases founded grammar schools before the close of the century. Moreover, the legislatures of Massachusetts (1647) and Connecticut (1650) soon ordered that a ‘grammar’ school be established in every town having one hundred families. The American grammar schools, like their prototypes, were secondary and sustained no real relation to the elementary schools. They were mostly intended to fit pupils for college, although sometimes the college had not yet been established, and thus to furnish a preliminary step to preparation for the Christian ministry. Hence their course consisted chiefly in reading the classics and the New Testament, and used among its texts Lily’s Grammar and the Colloquies of Corderius. And while the hold of formal humanism upon secondary education was somewhat relaxed during the subsequent stages of the ‘academy’ and the ‘high school,’ the formal classical training was considered the only means of a liberal education until well into the nineteenth century.

a. Drawing of Winchester College and its inmates by Warden Chandler of New College, Oxford, in 1460. The picture reveals the relationship of Winchester to the old monastic institutions, before it became humanistic.

b. Eton College in 1688, from the drawing of David Loggan.

Fig. 17.—Great English Public Schools.

The Aim and Institutions of Humanistic Education.—It can now be seen how far the ideals of humanism had departed from those of the mediæval period. The ‘otherworldly’ aim, the monastic isolation, and the scholastic Interests of this life. discussions had given way to the interests of this life, personal and social development, and a study of the classics. In the North the movement took on rather a different color from what it did in the peninsula that gave it birth. While Northern humanism was narrower in not concerning itself so much with self-culture, personal expression, and the various opportunities of life, it had a wider vision through interesting itself in society as a whole and in endeavoring to advance morality and More social and moral in the North, and more individual in Italy. religion. It was democratic and social in its trend, where Italian humanism was more aristocratic and individual.

In Italy the chief educational institutions resulting from the humanistic movement were the schools that arose at the brilliant courts of the city tyrants. These institutions were sometimes connected with the universities, and gradually the universities themselves were forced to admit the new learning to the curriculum. In Organization, the North a number of new institutions—Hieronymian schools, princes’ schools, gymnasiums, and grammar schools—were developed from humanism, and the existing institutions soon showed the influence of the movement, but all of them stressed moral and religious studies, as well as classical. Everywhere the curriculum of the content, humanistic foundations consisted mostly in the mastery of Latin and Greek, but in the North the renewal of Greek meant also a study of the New and Old Testaments and the Church Fathers. Where the Italian Renaissance re-created the liberal education of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, the movement in its Northern spread found in the classical revival a means of moral and religious training. But just as humanism methods, in Italy by the beginning of the sixteenth century had degenerated into mere Ciceronianism, so the humanistic education in the North, after about a century of development, began to grow narrow, hard, and fixed. By the middle of the sixteenth century the spirit of criticism, investigation, and intellectual activity had begun to abate, and by the opening of the seventeenth humanism and effect. had been completely formalized. In the study of the classics all emphasis was placed upon grammar, linguistics, and style; form was preferred to content; and methods became memoriter and imitative. Humanism had largely performed its mission, and a new awakening was needed to revivify education and society in general.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chaps. XII-XIV; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. VI. An interesting interpretation of the Renaissance both in Italy and the North is found in Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages (Scribner, 1894), chap. XV. An account of the movement, including its educational aspects in Italy, is found in Burckhardt, J., Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Sonnenschein, London, 1892; Macmillan), vol. I, especially part III; Symonds, J. A., Renaissance in Italy (Holt, Scribner), vol. II, especially chaps. III-VIII; or Symonds’ Short History of the Renaissance (Holt, 1894), especially chaps. I and VII, and IX-XI. Woodward, W. H., gives us a vivid account of the educational work of Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge University Press, 1897), and of Erasmus concerning Education (Cambridge University Press, 1904), and of Education during the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1906) as a whole. Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Macmillan, 1912), by Graves, F. P., furnishes some idea of conditions in France. The Italian Renaissance in England (Columbia University Press, 1905), especially chap. I, is succinctly described by Einstein, L.; and an account of Colet and St. Paul’s School can be found in Barnard, H., English Pedagogy, second series, pp. 49-117.

CHAPTER XIII

EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE REFORMATION

OUTLINE

Luther’s educational positions are most fully revealed in his well-known Letter and Sermon. He holds that education should prepare for citizenship, and should be state-supported, and these recommendations were somewhat embodied in actual schools by his associates.

Zwingli was killed before he could greatly influence education, but the educational institutions of Calvin spread rapidly through Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Puritan England, and Scotland.

In England Henry VIII and Edward VI confiscated the property of some three hundred monastic and other ecclesiastical schools, but subsequently many of these were refounded.

The Jesuit colleges were organized to extend Catholic Christianity. The lower colleges were humanistic, and the higher taught ‘philosophy’ and theology. The teachers were trained, and the methods, though memoriter and emulative, were effective. The influence of the Jesuit colleges was phenomenal, but they have failed to meet new conditions.

The Port Royalists held that reason was more important than memory, but, while their ‘little schools’ stressed vernacular, logic, and geometry, they offered nothing beyond the best elements in the education of the past.

Elementary and industrial education was given an impulse for the Catholics by the schools of the Christian Brothers. They also opened training schools for teachers, and perfected the ‘simultaneous’ method.

Among the Protestants and some Catholics in Germany, Holland, Scotland, and certain of the American colonies, the Reformation inclined toward universal elementary education and control of the schools by the state. The secondary schools in Protestant countries also came largely under civic authorities, although the clergy still taught and inspected them; while Catholic secondary education was furnished mostly by the Jesuit colleges. In many instances the universities turned Protestant; and new universities, Protestant and Catholic, were founded.

The Relation of the Reformation to the Renaissance.—The series of revolts from the Catholic Church, generally known collectively as the ‘Reformation,’ may be regarded as closely connected with the Renaissance. As shown in the last chapter, humanism in the North led to a renewed study of the Scriptures and a reform of ecclesiastical doctrines and abuses, and took on a moral and religious color. Reformers arose, like Wimpfeling and Erasmus, who, while remaining within the Church, sought to purify it of corruption and obscurantism. But the Church at first stubbornly resisted all efforts at internal A series of revolts from the Church accompanied Northern humanism. reform. Its immense wealth, large numbers, and training enabled it for a long time to thwart the spirit of the age, and a condition of ecclesiastical upheaval followed. Revolts against papal authority ensued in various parts of Europe north of Italy, and were furnished support by the awakened intellectual and social conditions of the sixteenth century. The result was the establishment of a church, or rather a set of churches, outside of Catholic Christianity. While each revolt had some peculiarities of its own, there were underlying them all certain general causes that indicated their relation to the Renaissance.

The Revolt and Educational Works of Luther.—Even the attitude of Martin Luther (1483-1546) seems to have been bound up with the tendencies of the day. Apparently he had at first no idea of breaking from the Church, and supposed that the ninety-five theses he nailed to the church door at Wittenberg (1517) were quite consistent with Catholic allegiance. But even before this he had In his revolt, Luther relied upon the individualistic spirit of the times. attacked Aristotle and scholasticism with great vigor, appealing to primitive Christianity and the right of free thought, and thus identified himself in spirit with the Northern Renaissance. And two years later, in his contest with Eck, when he was actually led to deny the authority of both pope and council, he was evidently relying upon the humanistic and individualistic atmosphere of the times.

When once he had revolted, Luther gave much of his time to promoting the reform and education of the masses by writing. All his works, whether religious or pedagogical, were clearly intended, in a broad sense, to be educational. After his condemnation at the Diet of His translation of the Bible Worms (1521), when he had taken refuge at the Wartburg, he undertook to awaken the minds and hearts of the common people by a translation of the Greek Testament. Contrary to general opinion, a large number of translations had preceded that of Luther, and their popularity must have proved suggestive to him, but his edition was unusually close to the colloquial language of the times. A dozen years later, he had completed a translation of the entire Bible, which contributed greatly to education by getting the masses to read and reflect. and his catechisms. For the further instruction of the people, he also followed the fashion of the day in producing two catechisms, one for adults and the other for children, together with many tracts, addresses, and letters, filled with allusions to the organization and methods of education. But the documents which most fully reveal his educational His Letter and Sermon. positions are his Letter to the Mayors and Aldermen of All Cities of Germany in behalf of Christian Schools (1524), and his Sermon on the Duty of Sending Children to School (1530).

Luther’s Ideas on Education.—The purpose of education, Luther everywhere holds, involves the promotion of the State’s welfare quite as much as that of the Church. Civic aim. The schools were to make good citizens as well as religious men. Educational institutions should, on that account, be maintained at public expense for every one,—rich and poor, high and low, boys and girls, alike, and attendance should be compelled by the civic authorities. Industrial and academic training. Realizing that some pupils may find it hard to give the time to school, Luther planned that “they should spend an hour or two a day in school, and the rest of the time in work at home, learn some trade and do whatever is desired, so that study and work may go on together.” But he also desired a more academic course “for the brightest pupils, who give promise of becoming accomplished teachers, preachers, and workers.” In any case, Luther naturally believed that the chief studies should be the Bible and the catechism. But, as a Northern humanist, he recommended the ancient languages—Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—for the light they would throw on the Scriptures and the patristic Enlarged content. writers. He likewise approved of rhetoric and dialectic, which were very valuable subjects in those days of controversy; and he made a decided advance in advocating history, natural science, vocal and instrumental music, and gymnastic exercises. History is advised, not only, as was common with the humanists, for the sake of illustrating moral truth, but also for the purpose of understanding social institutions. The study of nature was intended to reveal “the wonders of Divine Goodness and the omnipotence of God.” Gymnastics he considered of value both for the body and the soul, and music a means of “driving away all care and melancholy Rational methods. from the heart.” The methods he recommended were equally rational. He would utilize the natural activity of children and not attempt to repress them, and would make use of concrete examples, wherever possible. Languages he would teach less by grammar than by practice. This belief in the importance of selecting the proper content and method in education led him to rate the function of the teacher as higher, if anything, than that of the preacher.

The Embodiment of Luther’s Ideas in Schools by His Associates.—These recommendations of Luther were largely embodied in actual institutions by his associates. The year after his Letter to the Mayors was published, the Protestants were requested by the Count of Mansfeld to establish in Luther’s native town, Eisleben, a school that should put his educational theories into practice, Melanchthon and Sturm. and this was performed by Melanchthon. The subsequent organization of Latin schools throughout the Electorate of Saxony, and the foundation of the gymnasium of Sturm at Strassburg upon the Protestant basis have already been touched upon ([pp. 114] ff.). But of fully as much importance were the educational foundations Bugenhagen in Northern Germany. of Bugenhagen (1485-1558). While engaged in reorganizing the churches in the cities and states of Northern Germany, by his general ‘church orders’ to each, he made ample provision for schools of the Lutheran type. For instance, at Hamburg in 1520 he organized a single Latin school with a rector and seven teachers, together with a German school for boys and one for girls in every parish. Eight years afterward, the ‘church orders’ of Brunswick provided two classical schools, two vernacular schools for boys, and four for girls, so located in the city that all children could conveniently reach a school. Within a half dozen years he made similar requirements for Lübeck, Minden, Göttingen, Soest, Bremen, Osnabrück, and other cities, and throughout some entire states of Germany, such as Holstein and his Other associates. own native duchy of Pomerania. The educational theories of Luther were also put into practice in a number of schools taught by Trotzendorf, Neander, and other pupils of Melanchthon.

The Revolt and Educational Ideas of Zwingli.—The revolt under Zwingli (1484-1531) was more directly the Sprang from Northern humanism. outcome of Northern humanism than was that of Luther. Through Erasmus and others he had come to believe that there was little basis in the Bible for the traditional theology, and he carefully read the accounts himself in the original Greek and Hebrew. After he took charge of the cathedral at Zurich, he began his attack upon the dogmas and traditions of the Church, and, by securing the support of the town, managed in a fairly peaceful way to drop one form of the Church after another, until, within five years, he had abolished even the mass. Zwingli likewise made the extension of educational facilities a part of his reform. He founded a number of humanistic institutions, and introduced elementary schools into Switzerland. He also published a Brief Treatise on the Christian Education of Youth (1523), which recommended a course of studies not unlike that of Schools and course similar to Luther’s. Luther, except that, from his practical temperament, he did not mention history, but did add arithmetic and surveying.

Calvin’s Revolt and His Encouragement of Education.—While endeavoring to spread his reforms, Zwingli was slain in the prime of life. His positions were maintained by his successor in the cathedral, but the work was soon overshadowed and merged in the movement of Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin’s break with the Church, like that of French Protestants generally, also began Also began through Northern humanism. through the influence of Northern humanism and the study of the Greek Testament. He had, however, received an excellent legal and theological education, and did not content himself with merely attacking Catholic doctrine, but was the first Protestant to formulate an elaborate system of theology. The call of Calvin to reorganize the civil and religious administration of the city of Geneva gave him an excellent opportunity for working out his theories. Although he was much engrossed Calvin’s colleges in religious disputes, he established ‘colleges’ at Geneva and elsewhere, and in other ways undertook to found schools and promote education. He succeeded, and Corderius. too, in persuading his former teacher, Corderius (see p. 111), to come to Switzerland, and organize, administer, and teach in the reformed colleges.

The Colleges of Calvin.—Corderius here wrote four books of Colloquies, with the purpose of training boys by means of conversation on timely topics to speak Latin with facility, and from this work we can learn much of the character of the Calvinistic colleges. Clearly Aim, content, and organization. the ideal was the ‘learned piety’ of Melanchthon, Sturm, and the other Northern humanists and Protestants. An attempt seems to have been made to teach Latin in such a way as to cultivate a moral and religious life, and psalms were sung, public prayers offered, and selections from the Bible repeated each day. We also know that in the seven classes of a college at Geneva the pupils learned reading and grammar from the Latin catechism, and then studied Vergil, Cicero, Ovid, Cæsar, Livy, and Latin composition. Greek seems to have been begun in the fourth year, and, beside classical Greek authors, the Gospels and Epistles were read. Likewise, as in the other Reformation schools, logic and rhetoric were studied in the higher classes. The colleges of this type not Spread in Switzerland, France, Netherlands, England, and Scotland. only spread rapidly among Calvin’s co-religionists in Switzerland and France, but, as Geneva became a city of refuge for all the oppressed, a regard for humanistic, religious, and universal education was absorbed by the persecuted Netherlander, the English Protestants of Mary’s time, and the Scotch under the leadership of Knox in the days of Mary, Queen of Scots (1505-1572).