EDUCATION OF THE LAITY IN THE MIDDLE

AGES.

CHAP. I. THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES.

The last stronghold of paganism in the Roman Empire was the school. Long after the conflict of the pagan State with the Christian Church had subsided the antagonism of the public school continued. At times it was an open fight, again an opposing influence to the struggling Church. The emperors who had first liberated the Church, and emancipated her subjects, did not remove this obstacle to her progress. Those who were of Christian convictions would not interfere with a widespread and effective instrument for the maintenance of the civil power. Their training and the traditions of their office made them conservative, loath to interfere with the existing order,1 and they contented themselves with ruling that nothing objectionable to Christians, such as religious ceremonies and rites, be continued in the schools. Pagan instructors were still allowed to teach and very few Christians were decorated with the official titles of rhetoricians

and grammarians.2 Even in the new university of Constantinople, founded by Constantine the Great, pagan as well as Christian teachers were officially employed.

The last futile attempt to rehabilitate pagan culture was made through the schools. The Christians who were the most serious obstacle to the scheme were expressly forbidden to hold positions as instructors and even to apply themselves as students.3 The Galileans could not conscientiously worship at the altar of Minerva; they

'Marion, Histoire de l'Eglise. I, 488. Paris, 1906.

Lalanne, Influence des Peres de l'Eglise (sur) l'éducation publique, 58. Paris, 1850.

"Allard, Julien L'Apostat, II, 360. Paris, 1903 (Discussion as to whether Christians as students were forbidden.)

could return to their churches and interpret Matthew and Luke, Julian had said, and despite the protests of Christian bishops, some of whom, like Gregory Nazianzen, had been his fellow students at the University of Athens, the ruling prevailed until the champion of the Hellenic gods was himself vanquished.

It was only when the system of State schools had been hopelessly shattered that the Christian Church found herself free to follow her plans of school organization and development. When the last stronghold of paganism fell in the East, the new stronghold of the Christian educational forces sprang up in the West. The School of Athens was closed by imperial decree in 529, and that same year Monte Cassino opened. In that same eventful year also the bishops of Gaul met in council at Vaison, and passed their famous decree for the establishment of parish schools throughout their jurisdiction.5

The primitive Church, prompted by her mission to teach all men, very early enlisted the school among her working forces. Her immediate needs, and the circumstances of time and place, tended to foster the types of schools which represented her first educational efforts. To instruct the converts from paganism the catechetical and catechumenal schools were provided; to combat the heretics and the infidels she encouraged the philosophical schools like those of Origen and Justin Martyr; to prepare servants for the sanctuary the episcopal or cathedral schools came into existence. Christian children needed to be instructed in virtue as well as in wisdom, and when free to do so the Church had sought that provision be made for them.

St. Chrysostom furnishes evidence of the decline of primitive fervor in the Christian family of the fourth century by his contention that the domestic circle was no longer capable of supplying the proper religious and

'Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship. Cambridge, 1906. "Mansi, Collectio Amplissima Conciliorum, vol. 8. Parisüs, 1901.

moral training for the children. Pagan society and environment had affected the Christian home, and the care and diligence of former days in instructing the children in virtue had disappeared to an alarming extent. Under these circumstances attendance at the pagan or Jewish schools was unquestionably fraught with the greatest danger for Christian faith and morals, and although he and others of the Fathers had studied under pagan masters, he directed parents to send their children to those who would diligently serve their spiritual as well as their intellectual wants.

The anchorites and cenobites of the East had responded to this need of the time and undertaken to educate Christian children. Those whom they received as pupils into their communities were not necessarily candidates for the religious life. Some of them were orphans who were given the saving protection of Christian surroundings; others were received from their parents in the presence of witnesses that they might be instructed in Christian virtue. No doubt the hope was entertained both by the parents and the monks that the child would eventually offer himself for service in the monastery, but no irrevocable pledge was made at that time either by the child or by the parents. The matter of entering the order or of taking vows was deferred until the subject attained the proper age to decide for himself. The immediate aim in receiving the children was to educate them, to train them to lives of Christian virtue. Those who proved their fitness, and manifested the desire, could later elect to return to the world, to enter the monastery or the hermit's cell."

The monks of the West were also engaged in this phase of education long before the establishment of Monte Cassino or the promulgation, in 529, of the great constitution

"Pat. Gr. Migne. T. 47, 349. Adversus oppugnatores Vitæ Monasticæ. Ad Patrem Fidelem. Lalanne, 167.

'Rule of Basil, Pat. Gr. XXIX; Rule of Packomius and Commentary, Pat. Lat. XXIII, 70.

of monasticism, the Benedictine Rule. The most illustrious examples of this are furnished by the monastic institutions of Gaul, both those of men and of women. In that territory where for two centuries, the third and the fourth, the pagan schools had reached their highest development and produced some of their ripest scholars, the Christian schools of the fifth and sixth centuries grow in power and increase in number in a degree proportionate to the decline of their antagonists. The control of education in those centuries passed into the hands of the clergy, and the work consequently of preparing youth for life in the cloister or in the world was an established institution in the early Church of Gaul.

At various times students were also received into the monasteries who prepared for the secular clergy, but these in the period under consideration were exceptional for the episcopal or cathedral schools amply provided for them. This latter type of school flourished at this time in almost every episcopal city of the Christian world and was especially efficient in the West. While the principal aim of the bishops in establishing them was to prepare levites for the sanctuary, other students were not denied admission. Judging from the curriculum followed in the early episcopal schools of Gaul, and from the number of lay teachers engaged (sometimes these were converted rhetoricians), a considerable portion of the students would seem to have had no intention of entering the clerical state. Converts were instructed there and, in Merovingian days, when the bishops became proprietary lords with the duty of providing education for all, it was but natural that they should first equip their own school for general educational purposes. The famous schools of Arles, Paris, Poitiers, Bourges, Clermont, Vienne, Chalons-sur-Saone and Gap were well attended when the State schools fell into decline."

'Cubberley, Syllabus of Lectures, I. 59. New York, 1902. (In 614 there were 112 bishoprics in Frankland alone.)

'Denk, Geschichte des Gallo-Frankisch Unterrichts, 191. Mainz, 1892.

The parish also supplied an important educational institution. The decree of the Council of Vaison, 529, that pastors should establish schools and undertake the instruction of the young, is significant not only for the territory immediately concerned but for the reference it makes to the custom already prevailing in Italy and there producing good results. It had been fruitful in fostering vocations to the priestly state, and that undoubtedly was one of the chief aims of the bishops of Gaul in adopting them. There is a warning in the canon, however, that those who desire to take up the married state be given all freedom to do so. The canon follows:

"Hoc enim placuit ut omnes presbyteri qui sunt in parochiis constituti secundum consuetudinem, quam per totam Italiam satis salubriter teneri cognovimus, juniores lectores, quantoscumque sine uxore habuerint, secum in domo, ubi ipsi habitare videntur, recipiant: et eos quomodo boni patres spiritaliter nutrientes, psalmos parare, divinis lectionibus insistere, et in lege Domini erudire contendant: ut et sibi dignos successores provideant, et a Domino praemia aeterna recipiant. Cum vero ad aetatem perfectam pervenerint, si aliquis eorum pro carnis fragilitate uxorem habere voluerit, potestas ei ducendi conjugium non negetur."'10

While this text is of the greatest historical importance for recording the official sanction of the presbyteral or parish school, the impression must not be taken that no other evidences remain of earlier institutions of this kind. In the second century a parish school was maintained at Edessa, where the priest Protogenes taught little children reading, writing, singing, and the elements of Christian Doctrine.11 Nor does the text imply that no parish schools existed in that part of the Church, for in the preceding century one is found at Rennes (480) which does

1o Mansi, Coll. Amp. Concil. vol. 8.

"Stöckl, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 78. Mainz, 1876.