MEDIEVAL EDUCATION:
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Thesis for the Degree of M. A
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JOHN J. CONTRENI
1968

 

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ABSTRACT

MEDIEVAL EDJCATION:
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY*

by John J. Contreni

Before research can be undertaken on a particular
problem it is helpful and, indeed, imperative to first re—
view the "state of the question." The purpose of this essay,
therefore, is to provide background for a further study of
medieval education. This essay does not aim to supply a
history of medieval education or even a history of one as-
pect of medieval education. Rather, it aims to uncover the
various approaches of historians toward medieval education.
and the major trends in the historiography of medieval edu-
cation..

The essay begins with a sampling of humanists'
attitudes toward medieval culture. Though not historians of
the Middle Ages, the men of the Renaissance entertained
strong feelings about the age which preceded their own.
Implicitly they compared the educational system of their
own day to that of the late Middle Ages. The comparison was
not favorable to medieval education. To the classicists of
the Renaissance the concerns of medieval education smacked only

of ignorance and barbarity.

John J. Contreni
During the Enlifitenment period various scholars
who turned their attention to medieval education and edu-
cational institutions produced works of real merit. His-
tories of particular universities and of the refinement of
culture and knowledge were, for the most part, based on a
consideration of medieval education. But here again the pre—
ponderant note in historical scholarship was the exaltation
of the most recent period and that period's institutions to
the detriment of those of a "less fortunate” time.
A break in the historiography of the Middle Ages
and, therefore, of medieval education, came with the roman-
tic wave of the late XVIIIth and early XIXth centuries.
For various reasons, the romanticists exalted the Middle

ges and replaced the negative approach of previous scholars
toward that period with a constructive approach which attempted
to treat the Middle Ages on its own terms. It was with the
revolt of the romanticists against Enlrflflenment rationalism
that medieval studies, properly considered, were born.

In the historiography of medieval education since
the XIXthCBntury, the major emphases have been placed on
individuals and institutions, especially during the period
of the universities. The universities of the High Middle Ages
have dominated the field of medieval educational studies.

The universities and, to a lesser extent, the cathedral schools
and other educational institutions of the Middle Ages have
been examined from a judicial, political, and constitutional

viewpoint. Indeed, education during the Middle Ages in general

John J. Contreni
has been viewed apart fro: any larger context, the larger
context in which individuals moved and institutions were
formed and evolved.

It is the conclusion of this essay that our under-
standing of medieval education and intellectual life would
be enriched by a fresh approach to the major educational
movements and developments that occurred during the Mid-
dle Ages. One such approach would consider the impact of

social phenomena on cultural lifea

MEDIEVAL SDUCATION:

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
By

zx
John JITContreni

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER.OF ARTS

Department of History

, 1968

PREFACE.

In some fashion or another every society and cul-

ture has made some provision for what we call today edu-

cation. Whether it has been some sort of prehistoric in-

struction in survival or in the requirements of the cult or
today’s audio-visual, computerized, multiversity "living-
learning experience," man has always taught, instructed, and,
in general initiated some sort of transfer of knowledge. From
the "Go ye therefore and teach all nations” of the Scriptures
through the missionaries who closely followed (and sometimes
preceded) the conquerors and gold-seekers into new territories
to today's Peace Corps volunteers and social workers in the
Great Society, education has been an integral part of Western
man's culture and, thereby, his history.

The study of the history of education, therefore,
would seem to be especially fruitful to the historian who
attempts to understand a people's ideas and institutions.

It can be argued that a people's values are reflected in the
substance of their educational theory and system. Conversely,
it can be argued, perhaps more strongly, that a people's
educational system and content reflect more a set of ideals

as differentiated from the actual, lived values practiced by
society.. In either event, the study of the history of edu-

cation provides us with an excellent Opportunity to know, and

ii

 

more importantly, to understand the intellectual history of
a people and an era.” I

The present study aims to establish an historical
background for a future study of medieval educational and
intellectual history. Such a background study is of im-
portance to the historian for two reasons.. First, it aoquaints
him with the results of previous historical scholarship.
Secondly, an historiographical study of a particular prob—
lem opens up new approaches to the problem and suggests new
questions to be asked concerning it. The important element
in historical scholarship is, I'think, not so much the sources
but rather the questions that are put to the sources. It
is closer to the truth of the matter to say that each gen--
eration asks different questions than to say merely that
each generation writes its own historye

In the preparation of the historiographical analysis
of opinion concerning medieval education, I have operated
with several guideposts in mind which it would be well to
note at the outset.. First, I have found it convenient to
organize the first major section of this paper according to
the well-known.(and well-worn) conventional periods of his--
tory, g;g£, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism.
I have done this chiefly to bring some semblance of coherency
and order to the paper while remaining secure in the belief
that no reader will give more importance to labels than is
their due.. In general, there does seem to be a difference
in outlook between Erasmus and his contemporaries and Vol-

taire and his contemporaries which warrants placing the for-

111

mer in the Renaissance and the latter in the Enlightenment.
Beyond this, though, the over—emphasis of labels to the point
where they are used to typify an outlook ascribable to all
men of a certain period is dangerous. Here, such conventional
terms used to designate historical periods will be used ex-
actly as that.- conventional terms and no more.

Secondly, I have not confined my researches solely
to the writings of the historians of each period. Rather, I
have felt free to consult the opinions of philosophers, edu-
cational theorists, novelists, "popular" writers, and thinkers
in general in addition to historians. I have done this pri-
marily because for some time historians did not treat of the
Middle Ages, much less medieval education, whereas the other
types of sources did in some respect or another. Also, aside
from increasing the number of useful sources available, such
a broad sampling of opinion gig g Egg medieval education is
more representative of any attitude than a sampling of his-
torians alone is.

By no means have I exhaustively examined the full
depth of possible opinion toward the Middle Ages and education
during that period.. In general, for the earlier periods I
have examined only the writings of the major figures of those
periods.. From approximately the middle of the XVIIIth century,
however, the number of writers and thinkers consulted has be-
come fuller.

Thirdly, my study of medieval education will focus

on the period from the decline of classical education to the

iv

establishment of the medieval university, 1:2;1 from ap-
proximately the beginning of the.IVth to the XIIIth century
inclusivea In terms of the development of education in the
Middle Ages I believe this period to be an historically sig-
nificant ones

A note should be made of the implications of the
term "education" as employed in this paper. I use the term
"education" in the narrow sense, that is, as referring to
schools, teachers, and the taught, and only secondarily to
such considerations as the state of learning or the develop-
ment of science or literature during any particular period.

Finally, it is in the very nature of this study to
raise more questions than it purports to answer. In surveying
the representative source material pertaining to medieval
education for the last six centuries and more, many interesting
problems that beg for further analysis have been seemingly
slighted.. If the reader has been made aware of these prob-
lems, however, this study will have fulfilled the purpose
for which the author undertook it.

e e *

It is a pleasurable duty to gratefully acknowledge
the assistance of those who aided and guided my labors. To
Professor Richard E. Sullivan, Chairman, Department of History,
Michigan State University, who first suggested this study, I
am grateful for encouragement, insights, and valuable criticism.
Without the aid of Mr. Halter Burinski and his staff at the

Inter-Library Loan department of the Michigan State University

‘ .

Library many of the COCKS and articles noted in the body

of this essay would have been urave'

Si.
fJ
H
5;)
(J
H
d-
0

me. I ap-
pneciate their work in my behalf. My wife, Katharine,
assisted in the long preparation of this study with cheer
and patience. Not only did she assist with the lion's
portion of the onerous task of typing, re-typing and cor-
recting the manuscript but, in addition her keen appraisal
of the text and my prose saved me from numerous embarrass—
ments and tested my conclusions. To her belongs the special

gratitude of a graduate student husband.

East Lansing, Michigan
June, 1967 - September, 1968

fags
PREFACE o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 9.. o o o o o o o 0 ii
PART I. THE HISTORY OF
MEDIEVAL EDUCATION TO 1850

Chapter
I. HUMANISM AID THE RENAISSANCE (1350-1600). 9 - - ° 14

II. THE ENLIGHTERHENT‘AND THE ROEAHTIC REVOLT
(1600‘1850) o o o o o o o

O O O O O O O O 0- O O 29

PART II. THE HISTORY OF
MEDIEVAL EDUCATION, 1850-1960'3

I. GENERAL WORKS . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . 72

II. EDUCATION IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES . . . . . . . 84
III. SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS . . . . . . . . 113
IV. THE UNIVERSITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . o . . 122

V. LITERACY AND THE QUESTION OF LAY INSTRUCTION . 0 14C
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0‘ O 0 .v 165

INTRODUCTION
THE MIDDLE AGES IN.HISTORI'

In the first part of this study, I will examine the
historiography of medieval education in broad outline.
Chronologically, this part of the paper will cover the period
from the XIVth century humanists to the XIXth century
romanticists.. Before examining the literature, however, I
would like to make a few general remarks concerning the ten-
or of historical thought in regard to the Middle Ages as a
whole and medieval education in specific.

The humanists had little knowledge of the Middle Ages.
It was not as if there were no textbooks to inform the Renais-
sance of the "facts" of medieval history, but rather that the
humanists had a peculiar historical sense which_made impos-
sible any real View of the Middle Ages. In reading the works
of the various humanists and Renaissance thinkers, one is
repeatedly struck by their far- gag short-sightedness to the
complete lack of any balanced, over-all view, The humanists
were concerned with either their own era or, at most, the
previous generation or two and, of course, with classical
antiquity.. It was as if the period from the IVth century A. D.
to the XIVth century had never existed. There is, of course,
no call and little merit to fault the humanists for the neg-

lect of such a euphemistic commodity as a "balanced, over-all

2
View.” The fact remains, however, that the humanists thought
little about the period we call medieval. They thought and
knew more of Agesilaus and Epaminondas than of Clovis and
Charlemagne.

Still, it is possible to construct an informative
picture of the humanists' attitude toward medieval education.
The humanists themselves were not so far removed from the Mid-
dle Ages that certain aspects of it were not familiar to them.
One legacy of the Middle Ages which survived into the Renais-
sance was the educational system of the later Middle Agese
In celebrating the advances of their own time, the humanists
did not refrain from commenting on those elements which
smacked on a non-classical (that is, in effect, medieval)
milieu. Thus, by examining the humanists"attitude toward
things medieval which were in their own midst it is possible
to obtain some notion.of their attitude toward the Middle Ages
and medieval education.

The hallmarks of the humanistic ideals of education
and learning were polite letters and Latinity. Insofar as
medieval education had become largely a matter of dialectic,
the humanists did not hesitate to fulminate against the bar-
barities of the scholastics.. Also, the grammar taught in the
schools of the late Middle Ages was not strictly Ciceronian
and thus all the medieval manuals and grammatical treatises
were considered by the humanists to be out-worn and even vul-
gar in their linguistic rudeness. In fact, any vestige of

medieval education or any medieval author was only recommended

3
1

insofar as the medieval element was classical in some fashion.
By far though, the most salient criticism levelled by the
humanists against medieval education was against the lack
of good literary style taught in medieval schools and against
the product of those schools, scholasticism.

In the period of the Enlightenment medieval education
was given a fuller treatment than had been accorded to it
by the Renaissance humaniSts. The treatment itself may not
have been particularly sympathetic to medieval education

and the Middle Ages in general;2 however, it at least reflected

 

lThus, Lionardo Bruni D'Arezzo's (fl. 1405) advice
on a program of studies in Lady Baptista Malatestat

Ybu may naturally turn first to Christian writers,
foremost amongst whom, with marked distinction stands
Lactantius, by common consent the finest stylist of the
pgst classicalgperiod.. Especially do I recommend to your
study his works 'Adversus falsam Religionsm,’ 'De via Dei,“
and 'De 0 ificio.TLKfter Lactantius your choice may lie
betweenlsidlAugustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Cyprian; should
you desire to read Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and
Basil, be careful as to the accuracy of the translations
you adopt." (First set of italics mine.)

It was primarily Lactantius"and the Fathers”clas-
sical style which recommended them and not the thoughts that
that style conveyed.. "De Studiis et Literis," tr.gWilliam
Harrison Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist:
Educators (”Classics in Education," no. 18; New YHrk: Bur-
eau.of Publications, Teacher's College, Columbia University,
1963)..pp..124-125-

2Wallace K. Ferguson's analysis of rationalist his—
'toriography is the best concise statement of the Enlighten-
Inent's view of the Middle Ages that I have found and is an
excellent guide to the presuppositions held by one age writing
of another::
"The assumption of the basic similiarity of human nature
in all times and places in itself tended to get in the way
of a sympathetic understanding of men who lived under dif-
ferent conditions from their own.. If men in the past
acted in ways that to the enlightened philosophers seemed
unreasonable, it could only be because they were the vic-
tims of ignetancrh or superstition or of unjust institutions

{3

4
some attempt to come to grips with the period the humanists
ignored almost completely.

The writers of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries
turned to the medieval period more than their predecessors
had for three reasons which may be epitomized by the words
Reformation, Nationalism, and Enlightenment.

The Reformation made of history a vast proving
ground to which polemicists, apologists, and historians of
both camps - Protestant and Catholic - resorted in order to
trace the development of their own particular point of View.
The history of the Middle Ages could no longer be ignored as
it highlighted the despotism of the Catholic Church and the
misery of its communicants wallowing in servitude, ignorance,
and superstition, or, on the other hand, provided the defense

against such a view and proved how bankrupt Western civilization

 

and irrational laws. In any case, the historian gg_philg-
soghe seemed often less concerned with attempting to
understand than with his duty to sit in judgement on the
actions of men of the past.. This situation was particularly
evident in the approach of the rationalist historians to
the Middle Ages.. By all the standards of the Enlighten-
ment, medieval men were hopelessly sunk in ignorance,
superstition, and barbarism, victims of every form of op-
pression. Moreover, the elements in the society of the

old regime which the French rationalists were endeavouring
to overthrow - the dominant position of the Church and the
privileged position of the nobility - were all legacies
from the Middle Ages.. Their attitude toward that benighted
period, then, could only be one of undiluted condemnation.
In the words of Voltaire: 'It is necessary to know the
history of that age only in order to scorn it.‘ "
"Introduction" to J..C. L. Sismondi, A History of the
Italian Republic Being a View of the Origin, Progress

and Fall of Italian Freedom (Garden City: Doubleday and
Company, 1965),,vii-viii.

5

would have been had it not been for the culture-saving and
darkrdispelling work of the medieval Church.

Nationalism dictated that the Middle Ages be plumbed
for the story of a particular nation’s development. It was
obvious that a history which attempted to narrate how England
or France came to be could not stop at the history of Imperial
Rome.. In a very real way, the nations of the XVIIth and XVIIIth
centuries had their roots in that period after the ”fall" of
Rome - those ten centuries which the humanists all but ig-
nored. Thus, in tracing the antiquities and history of their
nation, historians placed at the head of their narrative an
account of the Middle Ages-

Prides in one's national language is perhaps the most
telling manifestation of nationalistic sentiment. Closely
allied to identification with one language is the pride taken
in the literature of that language and its linguistic ante-
cedents.. The humanists knew of only one language - Latin ~-
and of only one literature - that of Antiquity. However, in
the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries we begin to witness the
emergence of histories of literature which have in common two
traits:~ first they are written to show the development of a
national literature; secondly they consider the medieval period
integral to that development. Boethius and Cassiodorus, King
Alfred and Beowulf, Charlemagne and the chansons deggeste all
occupy their place in the histories of Italian, English, and
French literature for one reason or another.

The third reason for historical interest in the Mid-

6
dle Ages is somewhat more difficult to delineate than the
influence of the Reformation and Nationalism. The term "en-
lightenment" characterizes a frame of mind which tended to
place the accomplishments of its own age at the zenith of
human progress.. However, there would have been little satis-
faction in "having arrived," as it were, if ;-: one could not
have been reminded of whence he came.. Some comparison with
less happy times was therefore necessary in order for the
XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries to celebrate their own advances.
Thus the rationalist historians turned to the Middle Ages to
begin the story of man's progress from medieval ignorance to

eventual enlightenment.3

These three new ingredients in historical writing

 

3Thomas Warton (1728-1790), professor of history at
Oxford and poet laureate of England (1785) eloquently captured
this sentiment:.

"In an age advanced to the highest degree of refine-
ment, that species of curiosity commences, which is busied
in contemplating the progress of social life, in displaying
the gradations of science, and in tracing the transitions
from barbarism to civility.

That these speculations.should beaime the favourite
pursuits, and the fashionable topics, of such a period,
is extremely natural. We look back on the savage con-
dition of our ancestors with the triumph of superiority;
we are pleased to mark the steps by which we have been
raised from rudeness to elegance: and our reflections
on this subject are accompanied with a conscious pride,
arising in great measure from a tacit comparison with the
infinite disproportion between the feeble efforts of
remote ages, and our present improvements in knowledge."

The History of English Poetry From the Close of the Eleventh
tp_the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century To Which ArewFrefixed
Thrge Dissertations: 1. Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction

in Europe, 2. On the Introduction of Learning into England,

.2; On the geistg Romanorum_(4 vols.; London:: Thomas Tegg,
1824), I, 2.

 

7

did not insure the Middle Ages a respectable place in his—
torical scholarship. Gilbert Stuart (1742-1786) could still
fault the Middle Ages for its lack of taste and relegate the
notes he made on medieval sources to an appendix in his A
View of Society in Europe4 and Voltaire (1694-1778) in
addressing his Essai sur les moeurs et l’ésprit des nations
to Mme. du Chatelet could still characterize the attitude toward
the Middle Ages as one of "révulsion."5 Indeed, the Encyclo-

Id 1’

ped ie, that great index of Enlightenment opinion, had no

article titled either mgyen-aggor medievale.6 If some could

 

 

4"The foundations of a work like this I have attempted,
must be the laws of barbarous ages, antie nt Esic] records,
and charters. These I could not incorporate with propriety
in my narrative. This instructive, but tasteless erudition,
did not accord with the tenor of a portion of my performance,
which I wished to address to men of elegance, as well as
to the learned."

A View of Society in Europe in its Progress from Rude-
ness to Refinement: Or, Incguirie s Concerning the History of
Law, GovernmentLgand Manners (Edinburgh: John Bell and J.
Murray, 1778), vi.

5”Vous voulez enfin surmonter le de— gout que vous cause
l'histoire moderne, depuis la decadence de l'empire romain
et prendre une idée generale des nations oui habitent et
qui desolent la terre."
sai sur les moeurs et l'ésprit de 3 nations at sur
les principaux faits de l‘histoire depuis Clarleniagne jusgu'a
Louis XIII (2 vols.; Paris: Editions Garnier Freres, 1965),

I ’= 195m

61h an eleven page article entitled "ecoles" the En-
_yclopedie dismissed the medieval period in three curt sen-
tences:
"Dans la primitive eglise, les ecoles etoifint dans les
eglises cathedrales, & sous les yeux de eveoue. Depuis,
elles passerent dans les monast ores; il y en eut de fort
celebres: telles que celles des abba yes de Fulde &c de Cor-
bie. Mais depuis l'etablissement des universites, est-
a- -dire depuis le douzieme siecle, la reputation de ces
ancienncs ocolcs s 'est obscurcie, & ceux qui les te noient
ont cesse d'e nseigner.

l)

8

demonstrate greater attention toward the Middle Ages, some
could just as well ignore it.

Several histories of medieval education, schools,
and learning were written during this period.. One should not
expect to encounter, however, a perceptive and stimulating ‘
treatment of this aspect of medieval social and intellectual
history.. In the idiom of the period's historians, "the times
were as yet unfelicitous" for anything more in historical
writing than a chronicling of who taught what, where, and
when. Often history was written according to centuries.
Although this method might have proved useful "for uniting
in the mind the great current of events and recalling to the
memory their order and connexion,"7 it was singularly inept
for getting at the heart of human history - a history which
does not run according to the neat, mechanical pattern of
century, decade, year, month, and week. Also, the prevailing
notion of the Middle Ages as ”dark", "gloomy", and ignorant

hindered any real appreciation of medieval culture. Education

 

Encyclopedia, edd. Diderot, D'Alembert, et al. (37
$013.; Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1775).
‘ 303..
9

7The quote is from a much-used XVIII-XIXth century
textbook and seems to typify the prevailing attitude toward
the uses of history, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Elements of,
General Historyg}Ancient and Modern (Concord, N. H.: Isaac
Hill, 1825), p. 102. Two influential.works examined below
used the century-by-century approach with deadening effect:
Johann Loranz von Mosheim, An Ecclesiastical Histogy,fiAnc ent
and Modern and, the Maurists, Histoire literaire de la France
(see below pp.38-42, 46-49.)

9
fostered under the "leaden gray skies” of the Middle Ages
little invited seriou and scholarly consideration.

In the Romantic period the notion of the Middle
Ages as the "Dark Ages" was laid to rest and one can begin
to point to some substantial and significant historical treat-
ments of medieval education.. However, the former came to pass
not without a struggle (even today a surprising number of
people believe without qualification that the Middle Ages were
"dark”) and the latter was accomplished only after much
chaff accompanied the wheat with which we are primarily con-
cerned in this paper-

One of the most signal phenomena of historical
scholarship within the last century and a half has been the
genesis and rapid growth of medieval studies on a professional
level. Before the turn of the XIXth century, there were only
individuals_who wrote about the Middle Ages; beginning with
the early 1800's there were medievalists. The explanation
for the emagence and expansion of a trained group of people
specializing in medieval history has been as varied as it
has been elusive.. Some would have it that the intellectuals
of Europe, having witnessed the excesses of the French.Rev-
olution, turned their attention to a more remote and supposedly
happier past - the Middle Ages. Again, the wars of liberation
fought against Napoleon Bonaparte may have spurred nationalis-
tic sentiment, particularly among the Germans, to delve

deeper into themedieval period.. The novels of Walter Scott

10
and the aura of the entire romantic movement also furnished
a possible explanation for the new and wider interest in the
Middle Ages..

Whatever the ultimate wellspring or wellsprings of
this new movement in historical scholarship, the important
fact for this study is that subjects such as medieval education
at last began to receive full historical treatment. That
this treatment did not mature overnight and that sometimes
there was more chaff than whait will, I trust, be shown be-
low.. The fact remains though that beginning in this period
serious attempts were being made to come to grips with the
history of the Middle Ages.

These attempts were manifested in three new trends
in the writing of medieval history. First, in this later
period beginning in the early XIXth century,.there was much
less emphasis on the Greek and Roman eras. The story of
medieval education for the most part began with the leavings
of the Roman Empire - notably with a consideration of Gallo-
Roman education - before launching into the familiar litany=
of monastic, palace, and cathedral schools and the universities.
Secondly, the Middle Ages were no longer universally condemned
as "dark." For the historians of the XIXth century, it was
a century that was epitomized by the term ”dark” and not an
entire period.. The favorite dark century was either the VIIth
or the Xth.. Historians found that more of the Roman Empire
lingered on into the Middle Ages than had been previously'

thought and that the revival of learning in the XIVth and XVth.

11
centuries had some antecedents in previous centuries. These
considerations plus the long acceptance of the Carolingian
period as a time of significant revival and light, served
to circumscribe the actual length of "darkness" in the Mid-
dle Ages. And now, the Xth century has received flxsofficial
"rehabilitation"35 a like event for‘HMB VIIth century can
not be far off-

Lastly, there was a transformation in the actual
treatment of medieval education. Previously historians had
dealt with the key figures, the "great men" of medieval edu—
cation, and built their remarks about medieval education around
the premise that the history of that education was for the
most part a function of the activities of those few individuals.
Along with this emphasis on individuals, the closely allied
treatment of a particular institution's foundation and history
comprised the boundaries of the standard historical treat-
ment of medieval education.. However with the XIXth century
and the advent of full-fledged medieval studies and the con-
committant specialization, the history of medieval education
became more varied.. To the historians of this later period,
medieval education revealed aspects untouched by their predeces-
sors. The whole complex of medieval education now began to
be approached from legal, social, philosophic, economic, edu-
cational, and even scientific vieWpoints. Historical interest

;ranged all the way from such weighty subjects as the corporate

 

u 8Lynn White, Jr., 22.2l-g "Symposium on the Tenth Cen—
tury, Mediaevalia et Humanistica, IX (1955), 3-50.

12
nature of the medieval universities and papal policy toward
education to such seeming minutiae as the daily lives of
the students and a mother's manual of instruction for her
son.. Unfortunately, for the most part the universities

were the major recipients of this varied scholarly interest

in medieval education.

PART ONE

THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION TO. 1850

CHAPTERLI
HUMANISM AND THE RENAISSANCE (1350—1600)

Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), the "Father of Ben—
aissance Humanism,” had little liking for the office of school-
master.. He recommended it only to those
who can do nothing better, whose qualities are laborious
application, sluggishness of mind, mudiness of intellect,
prosiness of imagination, chill of the blood, patience
to bear the body's labors, contempt of glory, avidity
for petty gains, indifference to boredom.

Other than this rather unflattering depiction of the school-

master's qualities, Petrarch wrote little of education,

especially of that of the Middle Ages.2 In his De lgnorantia,

 

he voiced the characteristic Renaissance attack on scholastia~
(flsm and further criticized medieval medical education for'
its dependence on the use of bestiaries...3 Petrarch was more

to the point of education in his autobiographical "Letter to

Posterity." It would seem from this document that Petrarch

 

1”To Zanobi da Strada, Florentine schoolmaster and
poet, in Letters From Petrarch, selected and ed. by Morris
Bishop (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1966),
p. 108..

2In a paper fundamental to the understanding of the
humanists' view of the Middle Ages, Theodor E. Mommsen has
shown that Petrarch, far from treating sympathetically of
any aspect of the Middle Ages, was indeed the author of the
notion of the "dark ages.” "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark
Ages,’ " Speculum, XVII (1942), 226—242.

3Sur ma proprc ignorance et celle de beaucoup d'autres
(Paris: Felix Alcan, 1929), pp. 12-13, 68-69.

14

15
received an education which was very much medieval and which
served him well despite his dissatisfaction with the trivium.
His final judgment of his education, however, was not so much
against medieval education per E2 but against the profession
for which his education prepared him:;
In both these places [Avignon and Carpentrasj I learned a
little grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, fitted to my
age.. And how much one commonly learns in the schools,
or how little, you know well, dear reader.. Then I went
to study law at Montpellier for four years, and then to
Bologna, where I took a three-year course and heard lec-
tures on thewhole body of civil law. Many asserted that
I would have done very well if I had persisted in my course.
But I dropped that study entirely as soon as my parents'
supervision was removed. Not because I disliked the power
and authority of the law, which are undoubtedly very
great, or the laws saturation with Roman antiquity which
I love; but because law practice is befiouled by its
practicionerss I had no taste for learning a trade Xhich
I would practice dishonestly and could not honestly.

The educational theorists of the Renaissance had more
to say of medieval education if only by implication. Pietro
Paulo Vergerio (1349-1420), Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446),
Lionardo Bruni D'Arezzo (fl, 1405), Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini
(1405-1465),.Matteo Palmieri (1405-1457), and Battista
Guarino (1434-1513) each made important contributions to
Western education.. Indeed the histories of Western education
usually trace the roots of modern education to the thought
of these Italian humanists” The essentials of that thought
was determined largely by two events, both of which involved

the recovery of some lost part of antiquity.. The first event

was the translation in 1411 of Plutarch's treatise On Education.

 

The second was Poggio's famous "rescue" of Quintillian's

 

4Letters From Petrarch, ed. Bishop, p. 8.

,-

1b

Institutes from the moldy recesses of St. Gall. With such

 

guideposts as Plutarch and Quintillian, it could hardly
have been expected that the humanists would cast a favorable
eye toward the medieval period.

Matteo Palmieri in his Libro della Vita Civile spoke

 

for most humanists when he described the advances in edu-
cation of his own day over the educational system of the
Middle Ages:

Thus the noble achievements of our far-off ancestors
[that is, the men of ancient Rome] are forgotten and have
become impossible to modern men. Where was the painter's
art til Giotto tardily restored it? A caricature of the
art of human dilineation (sic)! Sculpture and architecture,
for long years sunk to the merest travesty of art, are on-
ly today in process of rescue from obscurity; only now
are they being brought to a new pitch of perfection by
men of genius and erudition. Of letters and liberal
studies at large it were best to be silent altogether.

For these, the real guides to distinction in all the arts,
the solid foundation of all civilisation, have been lost
to mankind for 800 years and more. It is but in our own
day that men dare boast that they see the dawn of better
things. For example, we own it to our own Lionardo

Bruni that Latin,.so long a bye-word for its uncouthness,
has begun to shine forth in its ancient purity, its

beauty, its majestic rhythm. Now, indeed, may every
thoughtful spirit thank God that it has been permitted

to him to be born in this new age, so full of hope and
promise, which already rejoices in a greater array of
nobly-gifted souls than the world has seen in the thousand
years that have preceded it. If but our distressed land
enjoy assured peace, most certainly shall we garner the
fruits of the seed now being sown. Then shall we see

these errors, deep-seated and long reputed, which have
perverted every branch of knowledge surely rooted out.

For the books which in an age of darkness are themselves -
how otherwise? - dark and obscure, and in their turn
darken all learning by their subleties and confusion. . . .
But I see the day coming when all philosophy and wisdom
and all arts shall be drunk from the pure fountainhead -
the great intelligences of old. . . . By way of illustration,
it is not so long ago that a man would spend a large
portion of his working life in the intricacies of Latin
grammar. Inferior mas ers, teaching from perverse manuals,
mingled grammar with philosophy, with logic, with heter-
Ogeneous learning, reducing it to an absurdity. But

17

we now rejoice in seeing our youth entering on

the study of Latin by such an order and method that

in a year or two they come to speak and write that

language with a fluency and correctness which it was

impossible that our fathers should ever attain at all.

Here we read all the Renaissance complaints against

the process of learning in the Middle Ages: it took so
long, was conducted in an uncouth language, and suffered
confusion by its contamination with logic. None of the
other Italian humanists added to this indictment of medi-
eval education.. Lionardo Bruni opposed "true learning,"
that is, "the knowledge of realities - Facts and Principles -
united to a perfect familiarity with Letters and the art
of expression" to the scholastics' "mere acquaintance with
that vulgar, threadbare jargon which satisfies those who
devote themselves to Theology.."6 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
when he recommended the study of history to Ladislas, King
of Bohemia and Hungary, had in mind the ancient historians,
the Bible, and the deeds of Aeneas and Romulus and Remus and
not anything which the Middle Ages might have offered. The
”Renaissance pope" characterized the products of medieval his-
torians as the "products of mere ignorant chroniclers, a

farrago of nonsense and lies, destitute of attraction in

form, in style and in.grave reflection."7 Additional bits

‘

5Quoted and translated by William Harrison Woodward,
Studies in Education During the Ase of the Renaissance (New
Ibrk: Russell and Russell Inc., 1965). pp. 66- 68.

6"De Studiis et Liseris, pp. 123-124.

7”De Liberorum Educatione, in Vittorino da Feltre an

18
and snips could be gleaned from the writings of the humanists
to further substantiate the point being made here: that
the Italian humanists condemned what they thought to be
medieval education for its lack of emphasis on style and
graceful eXpression and for its over-emphasis on logic.

Simply put, the humanists labeled as "barbarian" all that

was not classical.8
From the theories of the Italian humanists, subse-
quent educators took their cue until the advent of John
Dewey.9 It is perhaps not too far-fetched to attribute the
bad press which the Middle Ages has generally received through-
out history to the biases against things medieval which the

widespread and long—lived acceptance of the humanists"edu-

 

Other Humanist Educators, p. 152m

8The formula would seem to work in the opposite direction

also.. The humanists recommended the study of medieval authors
who were in the least particular classical. See, Bruni
D'Arezzo, pp. 124, 127;~ Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, p. 152;
Battista Guarino, "De Ordini Docendi et Studendi,” in gig;
torino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, p. 173.
St. Augustine appears to have been a favorite medieval author
of the humanists. The reason for this is apparent in Bruni's
warning to Lady Baptista to shun the writin§ of the holy men
of her own day:;

”Let her not for an instant yield to the impulse to look

into their writings, which, compared with those of Augustine,

are utterly destitute of sound and melodious style, and seem

to me to have no attraction whatever."

9Eugene F. Rice, Jr., foreword to William Harrison Wood-
ward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist.Educators, xv-xvi:

TIThe principles of the fifteenth-century Italian human-
ist educators were restored with only minor shifts of emphasis
by Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, the greatest educational
theorists of the sixteenth-century, and took firm institution-
al form in the secondary schools, both Catholic and Protes-
tant of the early modern period. They remained the domin-

ant ideals of education until the end of the nineteenth
centuryt"

19
cational tenets and program made inevitable.
Perhaps the most valuable document in assessing
the Renaissance attitude toward medieval education is
Francois Rabelais"(g. 1494-1553) The Histories of Gar-

gantua and Pantagruel. The entire work represents a mine

 

of information illustrative of the Renaissance's view of
medieval institutions in general. In addition to education,
monasticism, the Church, and medieval science and other-
facets of the Middle Ages, all come under the biting satirical
criticism of Rabelais' pen. Rabelais' particular value stems
from his penchant for detail in describing the activities

of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Where most humanists cast

vague aspersions at medieval education, Rabelais gave the
names of specific medieval educators and texts which aroused
hissmorn. Thus, a rather long passage from Gargantua and
Pantagruel in which the education Grandgousier provided for'
Gargantha is described and evaluated is worth quoting:

Accordingly they appointed as his tutor a great doc-
tor and sophist named Thubal Holofernes, who taught him
his letters so well that he said them by heart backwards;
and he took five years and three months to do that. Then
the sophist read to him Donatus, Facetus, Theodolus, and
Alanus in Parabolis, which took him thirteen years six
months and a forthnight. But note that during all this
time he was teaching Gargantua to write the Gothic script,
and that he copied out all these books himself, for the
art of printing was not yet practiced.. Also he generally
carried a huge writing desk weighing more than seven
thousand hundredweight, the pencil case of which was as
big and stout as the great pillars of Ainay, while the ink-
norn hung from it on great iron chains, capable of carrying
a ton of merchandise.

After this the sophist read him De modis significandi,
with the commentaries of Bang-breeze, Scally-wag, Claptrap,
Gualehaul, John the Calf, Copper-coin, Flowery-tongue, and
a number of others; and this took him more than ten years

20

and eleven months- And Gargantua knew the book so well
that at testing time he repeated it backwards by heart,
proving to his mother on his fingers that de modis sige
nificandi non erat scientia.

The sophist read him the Compostum, on which he
spent sixteen years and two months, at which point his
said preceptor died. In the year fourteen-twenty he
caught the pox-

After that he had another 01 wheezer named Master
Jobekin Bride, who read him Hugutio, Hebrard's Groc’mus,
the Doctrinal, the Parts of Speech, the Quid est, the
Supplementum, Mumble On the Psalms, De morious in Mensa
servandis, Seneca, Dc quator virtutibus cardinalibus,
Passavantus, cum commento, Dormi secure for festivals,
and several more works of the same dough; by the reading
of which he became as wise as any man baked in an oven.

Meanwhile his father observed that although he was
really studying quite well, and spent all his time at
his lessons, he was making no progress at all. What
was worse, he was becoming quite sawny and simple, all
dreamy and doltish-

When Grandgousier complained of this to Don Philippe
des Marays, Viceroy of Papeligosse, that gentlemen answered
that it was better for the boy to learn nothing than to
study such books under such masters.. For their learning
was mere stupidity, and their wisdom like an empty glove;
it bastardized good and noble minds and corrupted all the
flower of youth,

"To prove this,” said Don Philippe, "take any young
person of the present day, who has studied only two years;
and if he has not a better judgement, a better command of
words, better powers of speech, better manners, and greater
ease in company than your son, account me forever a
boaster from La Brenne." This proposal greatly pleased
Grandgousier, and he ordered it to be carried out.10

 

 

 

 

As a result of Don Philippe's comparison, it was made

 

1OTr. J. M. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955).
pp. 70-71. In dramatizing the faults of medieval education,
Rabelais held up to satire the standmn educational treatises
of the later Middle Ages.. Among the identifications that can
be made from the above quoted passage are Michael de Morbais'
(otherwise known as Modista from the title of his work) 23
modis significandi which first appeared around 1220. Hebrard
(£;,.1212) was known as Graecista from his Grecimus, a metrical
work on grammar.. Hugutio's (£l,.1200) dictionary contained
an especkflhrdamning feature in the eyes of the Renaissance
thinkers as it ignored classical authority. Donatus, of
course, provided the standard Latin grammar which was read
throughout the Middle Ages.

Ad

21
manifest that there was a considerable gulf "between the
knowledge of your old-time hon-sensological babblers and the
young people.” Subsequently, Gargantua was sent off to
Paris and presumably to a better, more modern education.
In this description of his education under the tutelage of
Thubal Holofernes and Jobekin Bride, Rabelais launched a
full-scale attack on the underpinnings of medieval education -
or, at least, what he knew of medieval education. Here again
we read the complaint that the medieval prOgram of studies
took inordinately long (Gargantua's studies under Thubal
Holofernes glggg consumed forty-five years, ten months, and
a forthnight!) and, in the end, accomplished nothing.
In a later passage, Gargantua recounted to his son
his educational experiences by way of enjoining Pantagruel
to make the best of the opportunities which were not available
in his day. Here, the sad state of Gargantua's education,
of medieval education, was linked to the prevailing darkness
of the entire medieval period and to the barbarian invasions:
The times were not as fit and favorable for learning
as they are to-day, and I had no supply of tutors such as
you have. Indeed the times were still dark, and mankind

was perpetually reminded of the miseries and disasters

wrought by those Goths who had destroyed all sound scholar—
ship..

With mention of the barbarian invasions, the two foci
of practically all subsequent adverse criticism of medieval

education were established.. From within, the manuals and

and soholasticism of the Middle Ages made of education a

 

1‘Ibid., p..194.

22
travesty. From without, the invasions made any kind of
learning during the Middle Ages of necessity of a rather
rudimentary and sorry sort.

No sampling of Renaissance opinion could ever be com-
plete without a consideration of the two XVIth century lumin-
aries of the Renaissance, Desiderius Erasmus (g. 1469-1536)
and Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). Both these men never actually'
.referred to medieval education. However, there were enough
elements of medieval education within their own experience
to warrant an examination of their reflections on learning.

Erasmus' early education was at the hands of the
Brethren of the COmmon Life whose educational outlook and
practices were strongly medieval although the influence of
the Italian humanists had begun to affect the Brethren in the

latter half of the XVth century.12 The influence of the

 

12The rapid transition that the Brethren made during
the latter half of the XVth century is succinctly stated by
Albert Hyma:
"Until the middle of the fifteenth century the Brethren
of the Common Life were not affected by the educational
theories of the humanists.. Their methods remained ithoroughly
medieval and their textbooks differed not at all from those
used in smaller centers of learning.- But after 1455 a
few ofthe most progressive brethren came in touch with
with humanistic principles, while near the close of the
century the educators in their midst evinced a rather
surprising liking for the teachings of such bold writers
as Valla and Ficino. Though it may not be proper to say
that the Devotio Moderna absorbed the teachings of the
leading humanists, it certainly is true that many brothers
openly sided with radical reformers who attacked the papacy,
and ridiculed the standard texts used in the schools."
The YOuth of Erasmus ("University of Michigan Publications:
History and Political Science," vol. X; Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1930), p..30.

23
humanists on the Brethren was apparently too feeble in
Erasmus' case. In his autobiography, Erasmus wasted little

enthusiasm on his early education:

He @rasmus' father] provided a liberal education for the
boy, and sent him to school when scarcely more than four
years old; but in his early years he made little pro-
gress in that unattractive sort of learning for which

he was not born. In his ninth year he was sent to Dev-
enter; his mother followed him to watch over his tender
age. That school was still barbarous. The Pater Meus
was read over, and the boys had to say their tenses‘
Ebrardus and Johannes de Garlandia were read aloud.15

 

In this brief passage, Erasmus gave no clue as to
E21 the school was barbarous. A later remark made in the
preface of the 1520 edition of his Book Against the Barbarians
provides this piece of information: ”In my childhood," he
wrote, "polite letters were wholly banished from the schools
of learning."14 It was only by a "certain native impulse"
that Erasmus was able to escape the barbarism of the schools
and be "carried off to the haunts of the Muses, just as if
I had been inspired." The Renaissance humanists had an
ideal of education which centered on the authors of classical

antiquity, on polite letters. Any other kind of education

 

13The Epistles of Erasmus From His Earliest Letters
to His Fifty-First Year Arranged in Order of TimeA ed. and
tr. F..M..Nichols (3 vols.; London: Longmans, Green, and
Company, 1901),.1, 7. The Pater Meus was a declining exer-«
cise (pater meus, patris mei, etc.) which in some form or'
another is still practiced by Latin classes in today's
secondary schools. Ebrardus was mentioned by Rabelais and
John de Garland (£l3. 1230) was an Englishman who spent most
of his life in France.. His Synonima_and Vocabularum aequivo-
corum interpretatio were very popular in the schools.

14Quoted by Albert Hyma. p. 183.

24
which omitted polite letters was, therefore, of necessity,
barbaric.
Erasmus wrote several treatises embodying his own

educational ideals.. In Do Ratione Studii, he fulminated

 

against masters who wasted students' time by forcing them
to memorize grammatical rules. Learning comes not from
rules, he wrote, but "by daily intercourse with those
accustomed to express themselves with exactness and re-
finement, and by copious reading of the best authors."15
He grudgingly allowed logic a place in the course of studies
butonly on the stipulation that logical studies be con-
fined to the study of Aristotle:

... ..I prohibit the verbiage of the schools. Do not

let us forget that Dialectic is an elusive maiden, a

Siren, indeed in quest of whom a man may easily suffer‘

intellectual shipwreck. Not here is the secret of

style tosbe discovered.. That lies in the use of the

pen. .....
Again, the emphasis was on the cultivation of style, style
which was better learned by reading and writing than by
memorization and dialectic according to Erasmus.

In another treatise, De Pueris statim ac liberaliter

.instituendis, Erasmus remarked how the education of his day,

‘influenced by the Middle Ages, fell far short of the ideal

Presented by antiquity:

151a Nilliam Harrison Woodward, Desiderius Erasmus
Cculcerning the Aim and Method of Education ("Classics in
ndtueation," no. 19; New York: Bureau of Publications,
Teaxihers Cbllege, Columbia University, 1964), pp. 163-164.

6 . ,
Ibid., p. 165.

25

What a contrast when we look around to-day! We see
boys kept at home in idleness and self-indulgence until
they are fourteen or fifteen years of age. They are then
sent to some school or other. There, if they are lucky,
they gain some touch of grammar, the simpler inflections,
the agreement of noun and adjective. They are then sup-
posed to "know" Latin, and are put on to some terrible text
in Logic, which will spoil what little good Latin accidence
or syntax they have acquired. My own childhood was tor-
tured by logical subtleties which had no reference to
anything that was true in fact or sound in expression.
Not a few Masters postponed Grammar to Logic and Meta-
physic, but found that they had to revert to the rudi-
ments of Latin when their pupils were fast growing up.
Great heavens, what a time that was when with vast pre-
tension the verses of John Garland, eked out with amazing
commentary were dictated to the class, learnt by heart,
and said as repetition! When Florista and the Floretus
were set as lessons! Alexander de Villa Dei, compared
with such a crowd, is worthy of positive commendation.
Again, how much time was spent in sophistries and vain
mazes of logic! Further, as to the manner of teaching,
what confused methods, what needless toil, characterized
instruction.17

Erasmus' critique of education stands by itself and
needs no comment. One can only wonder how it was, in the
face of archaic and pernicious standards , that any humanists
emerged intact from the schools.

JUan Luis Vives18 during his short life span wrote

 

17Ibid., pp..2fiO—221. Florista was responsible for a
Inetrical syntax which was especially employed in the Nether-
.lands; Alexander de Villa Dei (fl, 1200) was perhaps the
(Inly medieval grammarian favored by the humanists. He wrote
a. hexameter prose poem which dealt with accidence, syntax, and
Zprosody. Alexander's work was edited by Sintheim of Deventer
‘who was credited by Erasmus for bringing the ”first scent of
Ilearhing" to the school at Deventer. The Epistles of Erasmus,
(Ed. and tr..F. M. Nichols, I, 7.

7 18A good, short introduction to Vives' place in the
Reruaissance has been provided by Lynn Thorndike, “John Louis
Vives: His Attitude To Learning and To Life,” Essay in In—
imfitlectual History (New Yerk: Harper and Brothers, 1929),
PIN».329-342.. Thorndike concluded that Vives, as humanist and
critifi, was of a higher status than Erasmus:

' o.he.was not only not one of those humanists who

 

26
voluminously as a humanist and as a critic of humanism.
An examination of his works reveals a different attitude
ltoward the past than that espoused by the majority of
humanists.. In his two treatises concerned with learning
and education in general, De Causis Corruptarum Artium and
De Tradensis Disciplinis,19 Vives, alone of all the humanists,
viewed the Middle Ages in a positive light. Not only did
he recommend the reading of medieval authors,20 in addition,
he traced the problems which beset eduCation to antiquity
and to mankind in general than to some catch-all period of

chaos and darkness.21

 

flattered princes and toadied to patrons, but further

. ....he was a true scholar and citizen of the world.

In these respects he is even somewhat superior to Erasmus,
whom he resembles in many other respects. If he does not

have Erasmus"genius for sly sarcasm and ridicule of human
folly, he is perhaps a man of wider reading and of deeper

sincerity.” (p. 342)

‘

19Both in Opera Omnia, vol. VI- Valencia: Benedicti
Monfort, 1745-

20Most humanist educators when recommending the study'
of history ended their proposed reading lists with the Roman
historians.. It is quite eye-opening in light of this to read
Vives"list of recommendations which not only included medi-
éBVal Latin historians such as Bede, Hermann the Lame, and Otto
cxf Freising, but, in addition, such vernacular authors as
Ekaxo Grammaticus, Froissart, Monstrelet, Commines, and
Valera Hispanus. Also, unlike Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini
(see p. 17, above) Vives recommended historians who had
anxitten of small nations or single cities. Ibid., De Tra-
dendis Disciplini, Bk. V, chapter 2.

21The causes for the corruption of the arts in his own
day- Vives felt to be: rivalry among masters, lack of humility,
avalfiice, ambition, and the obscurity of the ancients, notably
Alumstotlew-an obscurity which was compounded by Aristotle's
<NHmnentators. Ibid., De Causis Corruptarum Artium, Bk. I,
Chapters 3-4.

27

From a humanist who thought that a good sentence
in French or Spanish was to be preferred to the in cor-
rupt Latin, one might expect a positive treatment of
medieval education, a treatment that did not fault the
men of the Middle Ages for not being Greeks or Romans.
But, he re, as sin, the gen ral lack of knowledge and in-
terest in the Middle Ages made any kind of historical
treatment of it an impossibility.. Vives seemed to be
rather open-minded toward the medieval period; however, no-
where in his educational treatises did he concern himself

with medieval education.22

In sum, no historiography of Renaissance opinion
toward medieval education is possible.. From the various
autobiographical writings and 3cucational treatises it is
possible, however, to piece together the general outlines of
the humanists'stance toward medieval education. This can
only be done by conceding the assumption that the education
of the Renaissance period was still strongly medieval. Such
a concession is necessary because the humanists did not re-
flect in any meaningful way on what we have come to know as

the medieval period. Rather their historical observations

and critiques were confined to their own era and experiences

 

22In the De Causis Corrupta rum Artium, Bk. II, chap—
ter 2, Vives did list medieval grammarians in much the same
vein as did Rabelais and Erasmus:

.. .Hugutio, Papias, Catholicon, Brachylogus,
Graecismus Johannes de Garlandia et alia ridicule
nomina, quae docerent suam quisque patriam, non
Latinam linguam.u

28
or to an immediately preceding generation. These ob-
servations.were juxtaposed with some ideal taken from their
notion of classical antiquity, the net result being that
the medieval period received only vague and skimpy treat-
ment from the humanists. Thus, any picture of nedieval

education which we can ascribe to the Renaissance is only

one indirectly and by implication.

CHAPTER II
THE ENLIGHTEEAENT
AND THE ROMANTIC REVOLT (1600-1850)

From the middle of the XVIth century and especially
after the beginning of the XVIIth century, European scholars
poured out a spate of tomes treating of education in i'b
various aspects.] The majority of works were written by
scholars attached to the universities whose history they
commemorated or by scholars who were in the patronage of
the aristocracy and were thus encouraged to write of a par-
ticular family's educational and cultural works and of atpar-
ticular area's educational develOpment. Aristocrats of all
ranks during this period of enlightenment felt it their
duty-t0 subsidize men who task it was, in effect, to act
as erudite ornaments to a particular dynastic house.

Their histories rarely went beyond the bounds of a narrative

 

1One good index to the amount of historical literature
written on the subject of education during this period is
Christopher Heumann's appendix, “Bibliotheca Historica Acad-
emicii, to the 1739 edition oprermann Conring's De Antiqui-
tatibus Academicis. At the end of Conring's series of essays,
Heumann attached an annotated bibliography which recommended
the most important works dealing with education in general,
education in specific countries, and particular educational
institutions, primarily universities. The list was 212 pages
long! See, De Antiquitatibus Academicis: Dissertationes
Septem Una Cum Eius supplementis. Recognovit Christbphor
Heumann.. G0ttingen: Sumtibus Bibliopoli Academici Privile-
giati, 17390-

29

30

chronology of the founding and history of an individual
institution. Yet, in this the savants of the period ex-
ercised a knowledge of the medieval sources that is both
surprising and fresh in light of the almost complete ignorance
of the XVth and early XVIth centuries toward the Middle
Ages.. Also, there was no effort among these men to ridi-
cule and castigate the men of the Middle Ages as others had
and have continued to do, but rather, for the first time
a segment of scholarly societyrthought that there was some-
thing historically worthwhile to describe in the Middle Ages.

One example of this kind of scholarship is Hermann
COnring's (1606-1681) De Antiguitatibus Academicis which
he first published in 1651 and later again in 1674 with sup-

plementary notes.2 Of the seven dissertations assembled

in this book, the third, "In hac de ortu.Academiarum agitur,

 

2The full citation for this work can be found in the
previous note»

In addition to Conring's book, there were several
other important studies of medieval education written during
this period which, however, were unavailable to me: Midden-
dorpius, Academiarum Orbis Christiani Libri Duo, Cologne, 1567:
Jean Mabillion, Traite des Etudes monastigues, Paris, 1692:
Jean Launoy, De scholis celebrioribus seu a Carolo Magno,
geu post eundem Carolum per Occidentem, Paris: iartin, 1672;
Claude Joly, Traitte historique dos ecoles Episcopales et
écclésiastiques, Paris: Muguet, 1678; Hermann Itter, Qg_
Honoribus Academicis Liber, Frankfurt, 1685; Johann Lorenz
von Mosheim, De Schola Palatinum veterum Francorum regnum,
Halae, 17--; J. H. Stuss, De prim. coenobiorum sohol.,
Nordhusae, 1728; Johanne Georg Hagelgans, Orbis Literatus
Academicus Germanico-Europaeus, Frankfurt a/M: Hocker, 1737;
G. Keuffel, Historia originis et progressus soholarum inter
Christianos Helmstadt, 1743; Cesare Bulaeus (:Du Boulay,
=DuboullaiS, Historia Universitas Parisiensis, 2 VOlSr,
Frankfurt a/M: Minerva GmbH, 1966 (Originally, 1665).

1..

31
nominatim Oxoniensis, Cantabrigiensis, Parisiensis,
Bononiensis, & Salernitanae,”3 has the greatest bearing
on medieval education. Conring's aim in this address
was to disclose the origins of European schools ~ origins
which he confessed "valde latet in obscuro"4 and which
his previous addresses, dealing with remoter antiquity, had
overlooked.

Beginning with the Yth century, Conring noted that
the flood of Germanic peoples into the Roman Empire had
almost completely eradicated professors and public schools
"per omnem illum terrarum tractum." True, there was a Cassio-
dorus and a Boethius and under the Ostrogothic rulers of
Italy there were schools of grammar, rhetoric, and law,

"sed dubio procul per fuerunt rudia omnia."5 The decisive

 

3Ibid., pp. 65-109. The first and longest address,

"In qua de statu scholarum ubique terrarum ac gentium inde ab
antiquissima memoria usque ad academiarum in Europa artium
agitur," is a general history of education which dealt suc-
cessively with education among the Egyptians, Chaldeans,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Gauls, the Eastern oman Empire,
the MOslems and the Jews before it considered medieval
education: "Atque huius quidem prium initium factum est

de occidentalium scholarum nova origine] Lutetiae Parisorum
auspiciis Caroli, cui ulli alii, virtus, pietas ac res gestae
Magni cognomentum merito indiderunt." (p, 49; italics in the
original) In addition, Alfred's founding of Oxford was
praised before a list of European universities and the
Story of their foundations ended the essay. Essays V and VI‘
traced the development of the legal status of the schools
and emphasized the privileges and immunities given to scholars
and students, especially by Frederick II. (pp. 141-191)

 

4Ibid., p. 66.

51bid., p. 67.

32

moment in Western education Conring felt was the work of
St. Benedict and the institution of his Rule throughout the
West.6 The monastic fathers in the East had their sacred
schools and there was Honorius"foundation at Lerins; how-
ever, with the work of Benedict and his followers all the
old monasteries were not only reformed but were given .ew
constitutions - constitutions which made of the monasteries
both schools of piety and schools of learning. Soon, it
was impossible anywhere in the West for anyone throughout
the VIth, VIIth, and VIIIth centuries to find a book
which did not reflect monastic influence...7 Despite the
monastic schools however there were as yet no philosophy,
no Roman law, no polite letters, no Christian doctrine,
no medical arts, nO' professional chairs to be found any-
where in.tkm West for more than 200 years.8 The light of
erudition remained in the East, specifically in Constantinople,
while Western learning suffered constant harassment at the
hands of the barbarians,

The IXth century and the Carolingian educational
reforms vastly improved the status of Western education.
Under the Carolingians9 the number and quality of monastic

schools increased as did the number of their distinguished

 

6Ibid-

7Ibid., p. 69.

8Ibid., pp. 69-70-

9Ibid., "Supplementum XXXII," pp. 283-293.

33

alumni..1O In addition, a new kind of school, based on the
household schools of Basil in the East and Augustine in
.Africa, was instituted.. These cathedral schools, like
the monastic schools, were grounded in the Rule. Under the
authority of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, every episcopal
see had a ”canonicorum collegio"H adjoined to it.

Conring's sketch of the history of the monastic
and episcopal schools was designed as background for the
proper subject of his address, the origins of the public
schoolsfil’2 It is to this third type of school that Con-
ring devoted the major portion of his dissertation. In this
section, he discussed the questions surrounding the founding
of the universities at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Ticino,
Osnabrflck, returned to Paris to consider the greatness of
that university, and finished with short treatments of
Bologna and Salerno. Wisely deciding that the true origins
of the academies of his own day could not be traced to a
single source,.13 Conring concentrated on outlining the con-

tributions of men iistrumental in the foundation of particular

schools and the disciplines for which each school had achieved

 

1OIbid., p. 70.
11Ibid., p. 72.

121t is difficult to determine the exact meaning of
the term "public schools" (schola publica) as it is employed
by Conring and other historians of this period. Whatever the
exact meaning of the terminology, the public schools after-
the year 1000 perceptibly began to eclipse the monastic and
cathedral schools. Ibid., ”Supplementum XLV," pp. 331-332.

131bid., p. 74,

/1

34

fame. He conceded that Alfred and Charlemagne were somehow
influential in the establishment of the Universities of
Oxford and Paris, but exhibited more reserve in questioning
whether Charlemagne founded all the universities whose
origins were attributed to him. The account of the uni-
versities was written from a legal point of view with more
importance attached to popes, kings, and emperors who
granted charters, privileges, and immunities to schools
than to the masters, students, and the schools themselves.
For all the impressiveness of Conring's work, his knowledge
of medieval sources and his lack of antipathy toward the
Middle Ages, one leaves his work somewhat disappointed in
its fundamentally antiouarian nature.

Jean Baptiste Crevier's (1633-1765) history of the

University of Paris14

is a good example of the kinds of
histories written about that university and other European
universities. Although Paris perhaps had a more spectacular-
history as a university town than many others, the histories
of all were of the same mold: more histories of institutions
than of institutions of education and learning.

Crévier wrote his work in order to bring up to date
and rectify portions of a previous history of the univer-
sity written by Duboullai. Crévier in large measure followed

Duboullai's work and the Histoire Litiraire de la France
—::——

differing with them only on certain points of chronology

 

14Histoire de l'universite de Paris depuis son
origins jusgu'en l'annEe 1600. 7 vols. Paris: Desaint
et Saillant, 1761.

35

and detail.15 Crévier, too, had his own opinion about
Charlemagne's part in the establishment of the university.
If the university did not originate with the Carolingian’s
re-estahlishment of learning, then it certainly grew out
of Charlemagne's Palace School::16 "Ciest cette Ecole que
nous devons considerer avec le plus d'attention, puisoue
c'est afelle que l’University de Paris rapporte son ori—
gine.”17 The crucial point concerning the relationship
between the palace school and the university was the
question of whether the school was fixed or whether it
moved with the court. Duboullai, in Crevier's opinion,
had too hastily opted for placing the Palace School at
Paris from the reign of CharlemagneJ8 All that Crévier
was willing to concede was that the School probably became
fixed at Paris during the reign of Charles the Bald.19

Whatever the ultimate origins of the University of
Paris, there was no doubt on Crevier's part that the
splendor and fame of the school at Paris dated from the
twelfth century. Until that time, the school at Reims
under Gerbert, that of Chartres under Fulbert, and that of
Bec under Lanfranc and Anselm, all strongly contested Paris'

20

place as the most populous and most fecund school. The

 

15l21Q" I, preface.
16;g;g., pp. 13-14.
17;2ig., p. 26.
183331., p. 46.

19Ibid., p. 49.

 

36

immediate cause of the University' s rise to fame was the
vast number of students attracted to Paris by Abelard's
controversies and reputation. As a result of Abelard's
academic battles, especially those with William of Champeaux,
three new schools were founded. However, these schools,
lacking the qmality of a "corps ensemble", could not be
considered as constituting a university.21 Nevertheless,
the movement toward a university was well on the way.
After Abelard touched off the original spark, more and
better masters and students came to Paris to study until
they became quite unmanageable:

Ainsi le concours infini d'a uditeurs, & le trop grand

nombre des maitres, atteste par les écrivains du tems,

etoient des occasions de confusion & de dESordre. Et

c'est ce qui obligea l'E cole a‘se former en compagnie,

afin que cette vive et nombre use jeunesse put etre gou-

vernee par une discipline commune, & que les maitre 8 se

soutinssent mutellement, & gardassent la paix entre eux

s'astreignant a des devoirs respectifs les uns ail'egard

des autres. Aussi est-il prouve qu'avant la fin du

\ . - .

douzieme siecle, qui est celu de la grands multipli-

cation des disciples & des maitres a Paris, l'Ecole

saisoit corps.22

After this, the finishing touches were given to the

full-fledged establishment of the University in the
XIIIth century when the University acquired the legal
instrumentalities, the offices, privileges, and regimen

necessary for the functioning of a corporate entity.23

From this point, Crgvier went on to list and applaud the

 

20Ibid.. p. 111-
211bid., pp. 122-123-
22Ibid., p. 253.

23Ibid., pp. 276-277.

37

various masters and rectors of the University whose work
lent additional fame and prestige to it.

Enougl has been recounted of Crévier's treatment
of One aspect of medieval education to indicate the tenor
of so many works dedicated to tee genealogies of XVIIth
and XVIIIth century universities. They vere not so much
concerned with education in the medieval period as they
were with establishing some renowned base in the Middle Ages
for their own 'nstitution. In doing this, men like Crevier
represented a segment of Enlightenment thought which did
not conceive of the Middle Ages as totally dark. The
universities did not spring full—blown into the XVIIth century
and for this reason historians were forced to consider the
Middle Ages and medieval education in a positive, constructive
light if only from the aspect of origins, proto—origins at
that.

A less charitable View of the Middle Ages and,
consequently, of medieval education was taken by other his—
torians of this period who in their general historical

surveys readily pounced on the ignorance of the Middle ges

and the corruption and indolence of the ”popish”

clergy
who perpetmated the darkness of that period. It was pri-
marily this stance toward the Middle Ages rather than that
typified by Crevier, which was conveyed to the majority
of XVIIth and XVIIIth century readers. The specialized

histories of education tended to circulate among a select

scholarly audience, whereas the more general histories of

38
the medieval period enjoyed a wider circulation. One such
influential work was Johann Lorenz von Mosheim's (1694-1755)
An Ecclesiastical History.24 Mosheim's book, published the
year of his death, dominated opinion about the state of
learning in the Middle Ages for a century. It underwent
several editions in languages other than its original Latin
and was popular even in colonial America.

The plan of An Ecclesiastical History is a century-by-

 

century analysis of the "progresses and calamities" which
befell Christianity from its foundation until the XVIth
century Reformation. Each century received a chapter in
Mosheim's schema and each chapter was divided between the
”external" and "internal" history of the Church. Education
and the state of learning were subsumed under the heading

of internal history along with such matters as the evolution
of liturgy, theology, and Church organization. The external
history of the Church was comprised of the history of Christ—
ianity in general, that is, of political and civil history.
That Mosheim's is a standard "dark ages" treatment of the
Middle Ages is made obvious by a brief review of his "century-
chapters." As the Middle Ages progressed (or retrogressed?)
each of Mosheim's chapters became more and more compressed‘
evidently indicating that there was hardly anything of worth

to narrate in those particular centuries.. The VIIth, VIIIth,

 

24Tz‘r.»Archibal‘d Maclaine.5 2 vols.. New edition.
New York: Harper and Bros., 1844.

IXth, and Kth centuries chapters are the skimpiest in

the two volumes on An Ecclesiastical H'story. When the

state of Christianity and its culture rebounded in the XIth
century, the chapters entered into more detail and eventually
exceeded the length and scope of the chapters dedicated

to the first she centuries of Christian history.

For Mosheim, the barbarian invasions did not obliter-
ate education and learning in the West. Rather, worse than
this, the barbarians caused knowledge and public instruction
to be confined to the priests and monks, the worst possible
kinds of people for such tasks, under whose aegis learning
d-generated to

an enormous phantom of barbarous erudition. They in-
deed kept public schools, and instructed the youth in
what they called the seven liberal arts; but these, as
we learn from Augustin's account of them, consisted
only of a certain number of dry, subtile, and useless
precepts, and were consequently more adopted to load and
perplex the memory, than to improve and strengthen the
'udgeme t:;so that toward the conclusion of this century‘
he Vth , the sciences were almost totally extinguished;
at least, what remained of them was no more than a shadowy'
form, without solidity or consistence.

The priests and the monks were not entirely blameful
though. In them and in their cathedral and monastic schools,
the liberal arts and the sciences found a refuge, "such as
it was," to which "We owe the preservation and possession
of all the ancient authors, sacred and profane, who escaped

in this manner the savage fury of Gothic ignorance and are

happily transmitted to our times."26 The work of medieval men

 

 

40
then amounted to no more than the lesser of two evils,
albeit a fortunate evil.
Mosieim's work need not detain us longer ex-
cept to point up several characteristics of this kind of

reatment of medieval education. One trait could be character-

ized as the 'night and day approach to the Middle

Ages.. Invariably, the “dark ages" were painted in the
deepest gloom with the most despairing colors. Yet, para-
doxically, a Charlemagne or a Gerbert emerged somehow onto
to scene and were celebrated for’.his'genius and refinement.
Is it too much to ask where a Charlemagne and a Gerbert came
from if conditions were so universally prejudicial toward
earning of whatever sort?

Another characteristic that we might note in passing
is the use of a deus ex mpchina, as it were, when narrating
the educational history of the West. In the histories
of the Enlightenment period it becomes obvious that medi-w
eval men were hopelessly mired in ignorance and ensnared
by "the ignominious stupidity and dissoluteness of those
sacred orders which had been appointed as the guardians
of truth and learning,"27 despite the Charlemagnes and Al-
freds, the Alcuins and Gerberts. It becomes equally ob-
vious that they would have remained in such a state were

it not for Eastern learning which came into the West once

with the Arabs and a second time with the Greeks just before

 

27Ibid., p. 240.

41
the Renaissance. What makes the emphasis on outside sav-
ing elements rescuing Western learning particularly objection-
able is that the action between the two cultures, Western
and Eastern, is viewed only as one-way. iosheim wrote:

However excessive this veneration for the learned

Arabians may have been, it must be owned that all the
knowledge, whether of physio, astronomy, philosophy, or
mathematics, which flourished in Europe from the tenth
century, was originally derived from them: and that the
Spanish Saracens, in a more particular manneg, may be looked
upon as the fathers of European philosophy. b

The image of the father from the East bringing forth a
European child neglects entirely the part played by the
Europeans in the reception of Eastern learning. It was as
if the Europeans passively acqpiesced to the Arabian influence.
One more characteristic of the "dark ages" approach
to the Middle Ages is the rather sudden and jolting progress
those ages do make once the darkness has been banished.
For Mosheim it was the conversion of the Normans that
wrought the almost immediate reawakening of Europe:
The reception of Christianity had polished and civilized,
in an extraordinary manner, the rugged minds of the valiant
Normans. For those fierce warriors, who, under the dark-
ness of paganism had manifested the utmost aversion to
all branches of knowledge and every kind of instruction,
distinguished themselves after their conversion by their
ardent application to the study of religion and the pur-
suits of learning. This vehement desire of knowledge,
that increased from day to day, and became at length,
the predominant passion of the politest European nations,

produced many happy effects.29

.And in the XIIIth century,

 

28Ibid., p. 242.

29Ibid., p. 260.

42
In the western world the pursuit of knowledge was
now carried on with incredible emulation and ardour;
and all branches of science were studied with the
greatest application and industry.)0
As with the unexplained culture-heroes and the
introduction of Arabian learning into the Nest, this char-

acteristic of the "dark ages”

theory of medieval intellectual
life simply does not account for the history it purports to

relate. The sudden appearance of men of genius in an age

of ignorance, the rapid and complacent absorption of advanced
learning, and the overnight revivification of European in—
tellectual life all contribute to give the lie to the ”dark
ages" theory.. Even if the facts of the theory's proponents,
such as the genius and learning of Charlemagne or Alfred,
are adjusted, their notiOn of the "dark ages" yet remain
incredible. One reason why such a theory has long remained
attractive is, I believe, because the historians of the
"dark ages" neglected to treat adequately the bedrock of
.European intellectual history which for centuries were those
:nonastic and cathedral schools whose only merit in the eyes
of the majority of Enlightenment historians was the preservation
of ancient texts.

Two greater luminaries of Enlightenment historiography
than Mosheim, Voltaire and Gibbon, had little to write of
medieval education.. They both approached the Middle Ages

from the aspect of its "darkness” and, thus, little of their

energy or love was spent on medieval intellectual history let

 

BOIbido’ p0. 3011‘. '

alone medieval education.

If Voltaire's (1694-1778) attitude toward the
Middle Ages could be epitomized by a single word, that word
would be his oft-repeated sauvaac. For Voltiare, even the

7‘

appearance of a Charlemagne on the intellectual scene was
dampened by the prevailing savagery:

Les sciences et les beaux arts ne puuvai Meat avoir que
des commencements bien faibles dans ces vastes pays

tout sauvages encore.31
Voltaire, unlike many other historians of his

period, was consistent in his attitude toward medieval edu—
cation and intellectual life. Where others celebrated the
XIIth and XIIIth century awakening, Voltaire wrote instead,

On passa, ans ce XIIIe siecle, de l'ignorance sauvage

. 1 ’ n,

a31'ignorance scolastioue. Aloert, surnomme le Grand,

enseignait les principes du chaud, du froid, du sec, et

de l'humide; il enseignait aussi la politique suivant

les reeles de l'astrologie et de l'influence des astres,

et la morale suivant la logigue d'Aristote.32

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) perhaps gave the classic

expression to the "dark ages" theory of the Middle Ages.
Simply put, all wisdom and learning resided in the East
after the fall of the Empire in the West. The Renaissance
and reawakening came only with the introduction of classical
literature into the West in the carriages of the natives of
m" m _- . , _o 1 ‘1
inessalonica and Constantinople wno fled the terror and op-~

pression of Turkish arms and escaped "to a land of freedom,

curiosity, and wealth."33 However,

 

31Essai sur les moeurs, I, 349 (Full citation, page 7, n. 5)
32Ibid., p. 638. ( talics in the original)

33The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empir (3 vols.;

42+

90

Before the arrival of c assic liter
in Europe were immersed in ignoranc
tongues were warhed with the rudene
their manners.94

ture the barbarians
; and their vulgar
s a;d poverty of

U) C)

In a similiar vein with V ltaire and Gibbon was
William Robertson's (1721-1793) A View of the Progress of
Society in Europe.35 This short essay was intended to in-
History of

troduce the Scottish historian's larger work, The

Charles the Fifth. Paradoxically, it was the small essay

 

which received greater acclaim than the main work. In A
View of the Progress of Society in Europe, Robertson was
critical and harsh toward the Middle Ages and especially
toward the role that the Church, her monks and priests,
played in that period. Schools and education in the Middle
Ages were for Robertson a source of wonder:

Fruitless and indirected as these Echolastic-J spec-
ulations were, their novelty roused and their boldness
interested the human mind. The ardour with which men pur-
sued these uninviting studies was astonishing. Genuine
philosophy was never cultivated, in any enlightened age,
with more zeal. Schools, upon the model of those instit—
uted bv Charlemagne, were opened/in every cathedral, and
almost every monastery of note..50

Beyond this, medieval education received scant

attention from Robertson. At one point he stated that "the

establishment of colleges or universities is a remarxable era

in literary history."37 After that promising sentence, he

 

New York: The Modern Library, 1932), I, 720.
34Ibid., p. 725.
35In vol. I of The Hiatory of Charles the Fifth.

2 vols. New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1360.

 

36Ibid., I, 72.

37Ib1d., p. 251.

 

45

proceeded to describe the workings of the universities

01
SD
:3
<4
ci-
5‘
k...
,2
C 9

rather than to communicate to his reader

 

such as the establishment of a college or university should
be remarkable.

Other than the specialized educational histories
of the period, various literary histories dealt more with
medieval education than did Mosheim, Voltaire, Gibbon, or-
Robertson.. The literary histories were, generally, less
critical toward the Middle Ages than the period's general
histories and more concerned with the topic of education.
The schools were often the seed-beds for literary productions
and,.discounting oral literature, the schools provided the
only audiences for medieval authors.

The literary histories, like the general histories,
exerted much infleunce and had a wide reading public.
Thwo'mreatments of literature stand out as probably the most
often quoted and authoritative of the Enlightenment period.
The less well-known of the two today is a collection of
essays by Ludovico Muratori (1672-1750); Muratori in his.
essays, collected in the six volume Antiquitates Italicae
Medii Aevi,38 touched on practically every aspect of life
in medieval Italy. Two of the essays, "De Literarum Statu,
Neglecta et Culture in Italia Post Barbaros in Eam Invectos

usque as Annum Christi Millesium Centesium: Dissertatio

 

Mediolani: Ex Typographia Societates Palatinae
in Rogia Curie, 174C.

46
XLIII,"39 and "De Literarum Fortune in Italia Post Annum
Christi MC. Et De Academiarum sive Gymnasiorum Erectione:
Dissertatio XLIV,"4O dealt with the state of Italian liter-
ature during the Middle Ages and were widely quoted by both
antagonists and protagonists of medieval intellectual
history. The reason for this becomes apparent upon exam-
ining Muratori's work. Muratori's essays were remarkable
not so much for what he said, but rather for the enormous
amount of source material Muratori wove into his narrative.41
Ebr'subseouent writers, Muratori was to be a mine not only
of scholarly opinion, but, more, of original sources. His
treatment of medieval education, however, never advanced
beyond the stage of listing schools founded and the quotation
of pertinent medieval sources illustrative of a particular
school's early history. Muratori took particular care to
defend Italian medieval culture and in this respect may be
considered as outside the camp of the "dark age" historians.
Italy did, Muratori showed, have schools of some sort, as
the sources indicate, and Charlemagne did, significantly,

draw some of the men to staff his court school from Italy.
The second influential literary history of the En-

lightenment period was begun in the years just before the

 

39Ibid., III, 0018. 809-881.
40Ibid., III, cols. 881-999.

 

41For example, in order to show the influence of
scholars from the British Isles on Italian learning, Mura-
tori included in one of his essays four pages full of the
catalogue of Bobbio's library. Ibid.

47
close of Muratori's lif 3 Beginning approximately in mid—
XVIIIth century, the Maurists under the direction of Dom
Antoine Rivet de la Grange (1633-1749 an publication of
hacn volume in this

series is given over to a particular century aid a full list

resume of their works occupies each voluIe. Unlike the
chapters on the Riddle Ages in Mosheim' s An Ecclesiastical
Hi storz, the volumes in the Histoire literaire devoted to

the medieval centuriIes are no less full than the volumes

for other centuries. The Ha urists tapped almost every
bishop, priest, and monk who wrote anything and included

him in their collection.. The entire work is still t°”“‘rqu
today and remains of some use despite the drawbacks of a

oentury-by-century compilation. For this study he relevant

\

portion of the Hietcire literaire de la France is

describes, in genelal, the state of learning for that century.

In addition to giving every cathedral aid monastic
school in medieval France some notice, the Histoirc lit-eraire
had a favorable attitude toward medieval education in

eneral. For the Maurists, no matter how unfavorable civil

CQ

4.1.

nd political events were to learning in the Riddle Ages,

m

the schools of France always performed creditable service.
The Maurists' just;I fication for this Mud ment becomes evi-

dent in the following euote:

 

/.. . . .
42iaTouvelle edition par h. Paulin. 16 vols. Paris:
Victor Paine, 1363-1392.

[.0

NJ

,
Pour juger du m/rite d2 02s Ecoles, et du soin que les
Moines ont pris de cultiver les letres dans les thps
133 plus daplorables, il S‘fflt d3 sgevoir qu'eu us
les to-‘Ips, meis sur- -tout en ce siecle-Ci'Ctr: 'JItlil

et les six s ivants, ils ont fourni a l'jglise de France
en pa‘ticulier un noneIe prodigieur d3 scaIants Eysoues,
9t donne a§la.Republieue des letres vne nuSe de celdbres
Ecrivains.43

Obviously, one must accept the po s1ition that there K332
a prodigious number of learned bishops and a ”cloud” of
renowned writers in tne Middle n3es in order to appreciate
the cathedral and mon2s tic scIIools as the Maurists did.
Most hi storipns of this p-e riod, nowevc r, did not View
medieval bishops and writers in the same lM 3ht as did the
Haurists. For the majority of commentators tr e bishops
were "rude" and "indolent" (not to mention being part of
the Remish conspiracy to reduce mankind to a kind of eccles—
iastical servitude) and the writers were slavis hly imitat
and sterile. If one can accept the notion that den of some
learning and ability were produced in the Middle Ages, then
one must inevitably agree with the Maurists that the schools
were doing something and that they did it well. This latter
position seems to me to be the more historically re Hli ti 0
especially when we renernber that the ”indolent" bishops
and ”imitative" writers were prejudged by the biases and
standards of another age.

The basic attitude of the Maurists the2 n, I think

'was perhaps the most fruitful to emerge in this period vis-

 

ae—vis medieval education. There was among the Maurists a

 

'1 ,,

A . 1 w - w , \‘ - - . ,— .- r -' .. i 1 -~ 1 -.I- r - ‘1‘. ‘r x l V
tendency to over—euphaSine the learneeness of churcnmen

1

‘ *‘n‘ .- Pa ,- w v r ' _ r‘ ‘ ,,., - a ,~ ‘-,-~ '
ness union seemed always to oe tempered oy a note

A
gr
H
(I)
f
H
L:

\
{L

of sanctity and piety) just Cs the dank age historians
had been too eager to condemn the barbarity and ignorance
of the same churchmen.l Also, the haurists were susceptible
to the general notion of historical writing of the time and
were content merely to list schools and teachers and to
describe what was taught rather than to relate the schools

and education in general to the work and position of the
sociological bloc they isolated as the finest products of
medieval education: the bishops. However, despite certain
lacunae and over-statements, I think the approach toward

the schools of the Eiddle Ages which emphasizes their function
in their own society to be a more fruitful one than one

which emphasizes the schools solely as a function of the

emagnes, Alfreds, Gerberts, and Abelards of the Middle

}_J

Char
Ages.
To balance the account of literary histories, short

mention should be made of another such history which 0 n-

O

tinued to be popular for a century after its original publi-
cation and which, unfortunately, was more literary than
n’storical..

In his The History of English Poetry From the Close

 

V

of the leventh to th- Commencement of the eighteenth

th

(

 

Century, Thomas Warton (1723-1790) included an essay "0n

the Introduction of Learning into England."Z+4 In it we

 

44330 p. 6, n. 3, above, for the complete Citation.

50

learn the ”anong the disasters introduced by those irre-

1

si<t

59

bis barbarians, the most calamitious seems

O

1

he destruction of those arts which the Romans still continued

c+

so successfully to cultivate in their capital, and which
they had universally communicated to their conquered
provinces,"45 and that in the Middle Ages learning in
general was so sparse that Pope Hartin in the VIIth century
had to send to the remotest parts of Germany for books for
the papal library and that the books, once acquired, were
deemed such valuable possessions that their alienation was

absolutely forbidden.46 Charlemagne, in addition to pro-

pagating Arabian literature and founding "the universities

Q

of Bononia, Pavia, Paris, and Osnabrfick"47 employed Alcuin

"to regulate the lectures and discipline of the universities."48

The general view of medieval education given Narton's readers
was at its ”best" when describing the XIth century revolution

in education:

Towards the close of the tenth century, an event
took place which gave a new and very fortunate turn to
the state of letters in France and Italy. A little
before that time, there were no schools in Europe but
those which belonged to the monasteries or episcopal
churches; and the monks were almost the only masters
employed to educate the youth in the principlas of
sacred and profane erudition. But at the commence-
ment of the eleventh century, many learned persons of
the laity as well as of the clergy, undertook in the

 

4

U1

Ibid., I, ciii.

 

#-
0\

Ibid., cvi, CiX-CX.

 

47Ibid., cxxx.

 

481bid., cxxx-cxxxi. "He Elcuirg first advised
Bede to write his ecclesiastical history of England.”

51
most capital cities of France and Italy this most
important charge. The Latin versions of the Greek
philosophers from the Arabic had now become so frequent
and common, as to fall into the lands of the people;
and many of these new preceptors having travelled into
Spain with a design of studying in the Arabic schools,
and comprehending in their course of instruction those
numerous and useful branches of science than the monastic
teachers were acquainted with, communicated their
knowledge in a better method, and taught in a much
more full, perspicuous, solid, and rational manner.
These and other beneficial effects, arising from this
practice of admitting others besides ecclesiastics to
the profession of letters, and the education of youth,
were imported into England by means of the Norman
conquest.49

One crou of writers the educational theorists

o ’
who provided valuable information on the Renaissance human-
ists' attitude toward medieval education, has been thus far
absent from this examination. However, the fact of the
matter is that the most noted Enlightenment educational
theorists, Michel de Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau,
for example, had little of significance to say of the Middle
VAges. Their concern was to reform educational practice
as it was in their own day and although they would have had
little sympathy for medieval educational concepts, that
period was of no concern to them.

In the period approximately from 1600 to 1800,
important advances were made in the study of medieval edu-
cation. In contrast to the previous, so-called Renaissance
period, this later period exhibited a much greater, if not
unprecedented, interest in the Middle Ages in general. In-

stead of the vague references that the humanists made toward

the Middle Ages, we have seen that the Enlightenment period

 

49Ibid., cxli.

52
devoted entire volumes and multi-velume collections to
various aspects of medieval history. In addition, the
medieval period was given a hearing in the general and
literary histories of the time. The wider interest in the
Middle Age brought with it, of course, interest in the
schools and education of that period. The preponderence
of material written on medieval education was in the form
of countless histories of universities and academies, al-
though the general histories and the histories of letters
gave significant attention to medieval education-

If the Middle Ages and medieval education received
a wider press in this period, that is not to say that they
received a better press. The scholarly works devoted
strictly to some aspect of education evinced a regard for
medieval source materials that was fresh and enlightened.
However,.their treatments of education and schools bordered
on the antiquarian and their main concerns, in the end,
were not so much for medieval education as they were, in
most cases, for quibbling questions about certain aspects
of medieval education.

Other types of historical writing treated of education
in the Middle Ages within the context of that age's prevailing
darkness and "leaden-gray skies."

Both these treatments served to establish the
general pattern within which the history of medieval edu-
cation, with notable exceptions, was to be studied for more

than a century and a half after 1800. The fundamental

concerns for many his orians who turned their attention

toward medieval learning and education would still be the
problems of who founded what school at what particular
point in time. there with an anti-medieval or anti—
clerical bent (or both) would still consult the history

of medieval education only for the purpose of demonstrating
the backward condition from whence civilization and edu-
cation had escaped.

Some, though, in the Enlightenment period and later

a
began to study medieval education outside the confines of
the prejudices of this Enlightenment pattern. Although
not writing directly of education, two men in the two
century period I have surveyed above gave expression to
new attitudes toward human events, especially those of the
mind, which promised much for the future study of medieval
intellectual and educational history.

In his essay, "0f the Rise and Progress of the Arts

" David Hume (1711-1776) struck out against those

and Sciences,
who interpreted the history of intellectual events in terms
of the few celebrities or culture-heroes of a particular age.
For-Hume, historical events could either be understood as the
products of a particular cause or, on the other hand, as pro—-
ducts of chance.

4 What depends on a few persons is, in a great measure, to

be ascribed to chance, or secret and unknown causes: what

arises from a great number, may often be accounted for
by determinate and known causes.5O

 

a: ,I

 

54

'assign causes which

Faulty history is written when historians '
never existed, and reduce what is merely contingent to stable
and universal principles."51 In regard to the progress of
learning and of the arts and sciences in general, one is first
inclined to attribute such progress to chance, to those
single, spectacular elements that so obviously highlight
the advances being made.
But there is a reason which induces me not to
ascribe the matter altogether to chance» Though the
persons who cultivate the sciences with such astonishing
success as to attract the admiration of posterity, be
always few in number in all nations and ages, it is im-
possible but a share of the same spirit and genius must
antecedently be diffused throughout the people among
whom they arise, in order to produce, form, and cultivate,
from their earliest infancy, the taste and judgement
of those eminent writers.. The mass cannot be altogether
insipid from which such fine spirits are extracted.D
Hume's observation would seem obvious to most to-
day. That it was not so obvious to a previous age's historians
has been, I trust, made clear above. Hume, in the above ex-
cerpt,,was indicating, perhaps only feebly and by implication,
a new direction in the study of intellectual history, a
direction which gave for the first time some importance to
the sociological aspect of manfs intellectual history.
In quite another context, Robert Jacques Turgot (1727—
1781), the French economist, in his Discours sur l'histoire

universelle made an observation which, again, at first seems

as obvious as Hume's. We have seen above how attractive

 

51Ibid., p. 114.

52Ibid., pp. 114-115.

(o

(W

55
the "dark ages" approach to the Middle Ages was throughout
the Enlightenment period. The notion itself was adduced
to characterize the result on intellectual affairs of bar-
barians, warfare, feudalism, and cmrrupt and ignorant

clergy, among a host of other elements of decadence. The

unstated assumption behind this notion of the "dark ages“'

is that all these agents of ignorance and corruption made
impossible any learning and intellectual history and, there-
fore, the historian need not bother to study or explore
periods of chaos and ”darkness" as they contain nothing

of value to him.. Turgot, on the other hand, thought other—
wise::

Il ne faut pas croire que, dans les temps d'af-
faiblissement et de decadence, ni meme dans ceux de
barbarie et d'obscurite qui succédent quelquefois aux
sieclés le lus brillants, l'ésprit humain ne fasse
aucun progr 3.. Les arts mécaniques, le commerce, le
usuages de la vie civile, font naitre une foule de
réflexions qui se repondent parmi les hommes, qui se
melent a‘l'education, et’dont la masse grossit
toujours en passant de generation a generation. Ils
préparent lentement, mais utilement et avec certitude,
des temps plus heureux: semblables Q‘ces rivieres qui
se cachent sous terre pendant une partie de leur cours,
mais qui réparaissent plus loin, o'rossiés d'une grande
quantité d'eaux qui se sont filtrees de toutes les
parties du sol que le courant determine par la pente
naturelle a‘ traverse sans le montrer.55

Although we know today that the designation "dark

age” is devoid of any real meaning, in Turgot's day it was
synonymous for many with the Middle Ages and the sterility

of that period. In that context, Turgot's point that even

 

Séln Oeuvres de Turgot, Eugene Daire (ed.) (2 vols.;
riouvelle edition; Paris:; Guillaumin, 1844), II” 666.

56
the most obscure times are never stagnant and that nothing
never happens in history, was ahead of its times. It
indicated that in at least one corner some consideration
was being given to the subtler movements and undercurrents
in history and not just to the moments of brilliance and
awakening. Perhaps times of adversity and trial are more
pregnant with meaning for the future than the supposed
renaissances of history. Perhaps, also, the renaissances
which occupy such a prominent place in so many historical
treatments have their roots and are determined by those
periods which are known only for their unrest and turbulence.
In any event, Turgot seemed to indicate that previous
historians in ignoring the "darkness" had not told the
whole story.

Despite the subtle hints and implications of men
such as Hume and Turgot which boded well for the future
study of periods such as the Middle Ages, it would be hard
to imagine, nevertheless, how any large-scale interest in
the Middle Ages would have developed and survived in the
generally hostile atmosphere of the Enlightenment. It was
the romantic movement coming at the turn of the XIXth
century which acted as midwife to the real birth of medieval
studies.

The romantic movement by almost everyone's definition

was of shnrt duration.54 Occupying at most only the first

 

54Wallace K. Ferguson dates it from c. 1780-c. 1830,
The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of

57
half of the XIXth century, the romantic period seems im-
portant to the medievalist today not so much for its posi-
tive contributions to Western thought, but rather for the
somewhat negative contribution it made to historical
scholarship by snapping the rigid classifications and biases
of the Enlightenment. For the biases of the rationalists,
the romanticists, of course, substituted their own with the
important difference that their biases were weighed in
favor of the Middle Ages. The romantic picture of the
Middle Ages was no more true than that of the Enlightenment.
However, it could only encourage medieval studies whereas
the Enlightenment View of the medieval period as barbaric
and despicable could only result in the frame of mind ex-
emplified by one XIXth century scholar's attitude: "I
know nothing of those ages which know nothing."55 The
romantic's glasses may have been too rose-tinted to present
an accurate view, but at least they chose to look at the

Middle Ages. Where the rationalists ignored, the romantics

 

Interpretation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948),

p. 113, n. 1. Ferguson's book is an excellent guide to the
historical development of the concept of the Middle Ages as
well as of the Renaissance. Throughout the last five
centuries each period has been defined in terms of the other
and, thus, in tracing the vicissitudes of the development

of the notion of the Renaissance, Ferguson was often led to
consider the Middle Ages in tandem with the later period.
Chapters V ("The Romantic Reaction") and XI ("The Revolt

of the Medievalists") were most pertinent and helpful for
this study.

55Anonymous, quoted by S. R. Maitland, The Dark Ages:
A Series of Essays Intended to Illustrate the State of Religion
and Literature in the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth
Centuries (3rd edition; London: Francis and John Rivington,
1853), p. 10

 

58
attempted to understand.

The romantic movement defined itself as the anti-
thesis of the Enlightenment and the rationalist view of the
universe. Wallace K. Ferguson has succinctly stated the
main aspects of the romantic revolt and outlined its own
historical tenets:

The men of the late eighteenth century were beginning

to lose faith in the utilitarian and mechanistic phil-
osophy of the Enlightenment, with its exclusive emphasis
on reason and natural laws, even before the failure of
the French Revolution proclaimed the bankruptcy of
rationalism; but, that event turned the rationalists,

a bewildered generation, to a more earnest search for

a substitute. They found what they sought, according

to their various characters , in idealistic philosophy,i11
niigion, in a more profound feeling for subjective
morality, in personal identification with the state,

the nation, the church, or some other corporate

social group, or in the nostalgic study of their national
past. Convinced that reason was not enough, the Roman-
ticists were thrown back upon instinct and faith, upon
'the lOgic of higher sentiment.’

s‘!’ 9(- * 9% 'N- '3!-

Medieval civilization attracted the Romanticists
by those very qualities that had repelled their predecessors,
they idealized what the rationalists and the humanists had
condemned, and with equal exaggeration. They gloried in
the eccentricity, formlessness, and naivete of medieval
art. They loved the childlike simplicity and piety of
medieval painting, and like young Goethe, they found in
the Gothic cathedrals a 'titanic quality of vital orig-
inality, free from the cramping effects of classical
rules. Where the rationalists had seen only ignorant
and supertitious barbarism, the Romanticists perceived
noble simplicity pure, uncomplicated emotions, and in-
tuitive faiths. 7 '

The Middle Ages which emerged from such presuppositions is

 

56The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries
of Interpretation, pp. 115-116.

57Ibid., p. 120.

59
reminiscent of the Brueghals' many representations'
of peasant scenes full of a kind of rustic merriment and
pastoral cheerfulness - true enough perhaps for what they
intended to portray, but a terribly inaccurate and lopsided
account of the entire Middle Ages.

Important though the romanticists may have been in
the history of historical scholarship, they produced n0‘
serious evaluation of medieval education and learning. Their
emphases hardly ran in that direction. Stirred by an almost
mystical view of history, the romanticists reveled in the
stories of a nation's heroic building or in a peOple's epic
wanderings.. Their subject was the "Folk" and particularly
the Germanic folk groups who were endowed by the men of the
early XIXth century with a variety of fantastic attributes.

For the romanticists, medieval education was worthy
of consideration insofar as it was the means by which the new,
youthful, pure, but as yet uncultured and barbaric, Germanic
tribes were infused with the superior wisdom of Christianity
and all that that implied. The pure Germanic spirit combined
with the best of the culture of the worn-out, defeated, and
decadent Romans was the basis, according to the romantics,
of modern Europe. Considered in this light, education in the
Middle Ages was an exciting and important element of the epic.

The most detailed and perhaps the most typical treat-
ment of medieval education by a romantic appeared in Antoine
Frederic Ozanam's (1813-1853) Etudes germaniques. Two pieces

especially concern us here.. Both works dealt primarily with

60
the earlier Middle Ages and both, quite noticeably in com-
parison to the attitude of the Enlightenment, offered a favor-
able account of medieval intellectual life. In a short essay,
"Des ecoles et de l'instruction publique en Italie aux temps
barbares,"58 Ozanam attempted to show that Italy never suc-
cumbed to medieval darkness. There were schools in Italy
and, what is more, unlike the remainder of Europe, taly
always enjoyed a flourishing program of lay education. In
a summary paragraph, Ozanam stated his thesis thus:

On a dit que la lumiere he s 'eteignit point aux plus
mauvais temps du moyen age, mais qu 'elle se depla a;

et que du septieme au onzieme siecle, l'astre des let-
tres, couche sur 1' Italie, se levait sur 1' Irlande,

l' Angleterre et 1' Allemagne. Je puis ajouter maintenant
que 1' Italie eut une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les
dernieres clartés du soir se prolongent usqu 'aux
premieres blancheurs du matin. D' un cote, le souvenir
des ecoles imperiales se perpétué dans l' enseignement
laique, qui subordonne la grammaire et la rhetoric a
l'etude des lois qui entretient chez les Italiens la
passion du droit et qui finde our cette science toute
laique, la puissante universite de HBologna. D' un autre
cote, la tradition des premiers siecles chretiens se
converse dans l'enseignement ecclesiastique: les lettres
y trouvent asile a condition de servir la foi, de devel-
opper la vocation theologique des Italiens, et de leur
assurer la palme de la philosophie ecolastique. Nous
avons vu l' instruction descendre du clerge et des cor-
porations savantes jusque dans la’multitude. Ce peuple,
encore tout penetre de l' antiquite, n' en peut oublier

ni la gloire, ni les fables, ni la langue. 59

Ozanam's oth€£”treatise, "Les eccles,"6O offered more

insight into the romantic treatment of medieval education.

 

58In La ficivilisation du cinpuieme siecle: introduction
:1 une histoire de la civilisation aux temps barbares suivie
(1 un essaie sur les ecoles en Italie du Ve au XIIIe siecle,fl
‘vola II of Oeuvres completes, 2nd ed., Paris: J. Iecoffre, 1862.

59Ibid.. pp. 432-433.

6OLa civilisation chrétienne, vol. IV, ibid., 1861.

61

Ozanam began this study with an examination of the late

Roman schools and especially of Martianus Capella's 23_
Nuptiis Philogiae et Mercurii. The chief merit of Mar—
tianus"account (”une composition strange”) of the seven
liberal arts.was its mythical setting. This was eXactly

the kind of presentation needed to appeal to the imaginations
of the barbarians who were destined to reopen the fallen

schools of the Romans. The De Nuptiis satisfied their

 

poetic instinct in a way that conjugations and syllogisms
never could.

Among the already cultured groups, men of the stature
of Boethius, Cassiodorus, and ISidore of Seville handed down
the torch of ancient learning to each successive generation.
Also,.amidst the barbarism, the Gallo—Romans, out of pride for'
their own class and a desire to advance in the administrative
ranks of the Merovingian court, maintained a love for learn-
ing and letters. This relatively optimistic picture of
learning painted by Ozanam was at variance with a host of
his predecessors who refused to accept any hint of learning
in the Middle Ages. Ozanam, however, went even further and,
in a passage which was to provoke much controversy, stated
that the secular schools, modelled on those of the Romans,
perpetuated themselves through the VIIth century61 which was
traditionally the century at the heart of the "dark ages."

For Ozanam even these schools eventually grew weaker with the

 

61Ibid., p. 451-

62

passage of time and the classic muses lost their last cult.
The influence of the barbarians which had been the ruination
of the Roman state also affected the Church and thereby
learning altogether. In the VIIIth century what education
there was available was quickly dissipated as the Saracenic
invasions forced the clergy to become warriors, not scholars.63

Charlemagne, for Ozanam as for others, was the pivotal
agent who initiated Western civilization's slow emergence from
ignorance. ngever, unlike previous historians, zanam's
Charlemagne was not a solitary figure who rose up to halt the
barbarization of Europe.. For Ozanam (believing that God had
created nothing solitary in nature) the way had been prepared
for Charlemagne by almost three centuries cf mounting chaos
and confusion. In a smmiliar way, Greece had been the scene
of warfare and turmoil for two centuries before the advent
of Alexander the Great.. Rome,.too, had been rent apart by civil
discord in order to give birth to a Julius Caesar. These men,
far from being innovators in their own right, summed up in
themselves the aspirations of previous generations. They
were, in effect, the embodiment of the spirit of the times
which had been waiting for the fortunate moment and right
person in which to eXpress itself. It was not that Charle-
magne was advantageously placed in a milieu favorable to .his
particular talents, a milieu perhaps in which all the ingredients

for reform and progress awaited only a reformer and guiding

 

62Ibid., pp. 528—529.

63
hand. Rat ner, Charlemagne somehow symbolized for Oz'nam
the unity of a people of whom he was the fines tzmgmesen tative.

Au lieu d'une colonne isolae dans le desert, c"st la
beffroi (1 ui couronne une ville, au pied duquel on arrive
de toutes les partes, dont l' inevitable perspective
se repree ente au detour de chaque rue, et dont la cloche
re‘gle le sommeil et le reveil d'un peuple.03
Charlemagne's schools were not perfect: "le pEdantisme
male ses travers au premier enthousiasme des plaisirs d'esprit."64
However, they were able to educate the baroarians under the
form best suited to them. The imperfect was quite satisfactory
for the far from perfect. Charlemagne's real achievement
was to give birth to a spirit of intellectual activity whicn
was to outlast his political and administrative accomplish-
ments and which was eventually to take form as the medieval
universitya
Ozanam, aside from his view that the Roman schools
persisted until the VIIth century, added nothing new to the
history of medieval education. He is interesting today be—
cause of the romantic framework in which he cast his history
and, particularly for this study, his account of medieval ed-

ucation.

There were, of course, historians of the "dark ages"

'1)

‘

school contempora ary with Ozanam and the romantics. Henry
Hallam (1777-1859) deserves mention here as he was amon the

Chief XIXth century decriers of medieval intellectual life.

¥

631bid 1., p. 532.

64Ibid., p. 548.

64

A literary historian, his multi-volume works exercised and
continue to exercise65 a venerable influence. In his:1;g3;
of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages66 Hallam
described learning in the Middle Ages.as backwards and made
much of the medieval "poverty in arts." The whole period
was, he wrote. "almost absolutely barren, and presents little
but a catalogue of evils."67 Like other works of its kind.
the View of the State of Europe During the Middle Aggs‘ of-
fered little perceptive.analysis of its subject matter.
The XIIth century revival was described by Hallam in these
less than precise terms:;

About the latter part of the eleventh century a greater-

ardour for intellectual pursuits began to show itself

in Europe, which in.the twelfth broke out into a flame.

This was manifested in the numbers who repgéred to the

public academies or schools of philosophy.

Hallam's more famous and popular work, Introduction to
the Literature of Europe in the FifteenthL Sixteenth, and
Seventeenth Centuries,69 when it first appeared in the late
1830's was a biting denunciation of the.Middle Ages. Reacting

to adverse criticism, Hallam qualified some of his assertions

in the footnotes to subsequent editions; however, the work

65Howard Mumford James, "The Nature of Literary History,”
_purnal of the History of Ideas, XXVIII (1967). 153-154.

66Three volumes. New edition. London: John Murray, 1872.
67Ibid.,.III, 269.
68Ibid., p. 240.

69Three volumes.. Fourth edition. Boston; Little,
BrOwn and Company, 1854.

65
still remained the product of a man who despised the Middle
Ages without coming to know them.

The age of the Hallams, the Voltaires, Robertsons,
and the Wartons was, however, all but closed by mid-century.
The impetus given.medieval studies by the romantic movement
and the intellectual demands of the late XIXth and XXth
centuries made obsolete in the scholarly world any view of the
Middle Ages which at its best said nothing of that period.

Three works appearing before 1850 can be pointed to
as indicative that at last the Middle Ages and our concern here,
medieval education, were coming into their own as fields of
scholarly inquiry.. On the popular level, Auguste Vallet de
Viriville in his Histoire de l'instruction publique en Europe
et principalement en France depuis le Christianisme jusunQ
nos jours presented to the_public a handsome work in which a
fair, though not overly enligdtening, account of medieval edu-
cation was given]?0 In his On the Origins of Universities and
Academical Degrees71 Henry Malden likewise was content to of-
fer little more than a summary of previous scholars' findings.
Although not a historian by profession, Malden acted in the
best traditions of historical scholarship when he undertook
to correct his society's false notions of the history and

development of the medieval universities. Malden, a member of

the British Parliament, along with several other enlightened

 

184 70Paris: Administration du Moyen Age et la Renaissance,
9.

71London: John Taylor, 1835.

66
men of that body, was interested in chartering a new Eng-
lish university - the University of London. Their greatest
opponent was the tradition which surrounded Oxford and Cam-
bridge, England's ancient universities. The origins of
those universities were so far out of sight that Malden and
his comrades could gain little headway in combatting the op-
position (and ignorance) of their antagonists who little
thought that universities could be made by men. In order to
foster worthwhile debate, while at the same time buttressing
his case for the University of London, Malden read the contin-
ental authors on the subject of the universities (Conring,
Itter, Heumann, Duboulay) and produced a compact pamphlet
containing the outlines of the early universities. Again
his findings were by no means novel and he is interesting to—
day for the place that his work occupies in the general trend
of-mdting about medieval education rather than for the work
itself.

The third and most important work indicative of the
new turn in the history of medieval historical writing in this
half century was S. R. Maitland's already mentioned The Dark
5525.. Iaitland, grandfather of the legal historian, Frederic
'Nilliam Maitland, wrote the first work which directly challenged
and debunked the tenets of the "dark ages" school of historical
writers. Maitland's purpose was not to show that the "dark ages"
w... 25.1... a... a. .3 .5... mod... was... ua- has...
'while admiring medieval virtue as some of the romantics had

done..72 His aim was simply "to furnish some materials toward

67
forming a right judgment of the real state of learning, know—
ledge, and literature during the dark ages;73. . . to contra-
dict falsehood, and to bate down exaggeration into at least
something like the truth."74 In so doing Maitland wrote a
series of essays that make enjoyable and at some times al-
most humorous reading.. With the confidence of a debater
who knows all the weak spots in his opponent's argument, Mait-
land proceeded to tear apart the groundless generalizations
that had formed the substance of the "dark age" historians'
account of the Middle Ages. Maitland had little trouble
in showing how uninformed, illogical, and at times blatantly
dishonest his chosen opponents were.
William Robertson and his View of the Progress of

Society were the main targets for Maitland's well-directed
queries.. Henry's History of England and Warton's literary
histcry also provided ammunition for Maitland's pen. Basically,
his technique was to question the graceful prose in which the
"dark ages" theories were couched.. Robertson had written
of mggy charters which proVidedC innumerable proofs of widespread
medieval illiteracy.. Probing this sweeping judgment, Maitland
showed that

surely two instances in the eighth century, one in the

ninth, and one in the twelfth, of men of rank who could

not write - it does not appear, and really does not
follow, that they could not read - form too slender a

 

72Page 7. (The full citation for this work can be found
on Po 57, n. 55, above.)

73Ibid., p. 5.
741bid,, p. 16.

68

ground for such broad assertions as Robertson has ven-
tured to make respecting the state of letters.75

Henry, in another "hack story" as Maitland called them,
had proved that the clergy of the Xth century were as al-
most as illiterate as the laity by referring to one example
"out of many:"
Meinwerc, Bishop of Paderborn, in this century, in
reading the public prayers, used to say, - "Benedic
Domine regibus.at reginis mulis et mulabis (sic) tuis:"--
instead of "famulis et famuéabis; (sic)” which made it
a very ludicrous pet1tion.7
In a delightful fifteen page disquisition on this one point
Maitland demonstrated that Meinwerc was really no fool and
that Henry's one example "out of many" was, at base, an
absurd story.

As Maitlandvrote in reaction to the writers of "dark
age" history, there is little mention of medieval education in
his work; however, Maitland deflated with ease the condemnations
of medieval learning built up out of an instance of a monk’s
scraping a parchment containing a work of Tacitus or Livy
in order to use the parchment to copy prayerbooks and out of
the high value placed on some books which supposedly indicated
their extreme scarcity.. Maitlandiflote a book which was as

surprising for its day as it was ahead of its day. One ap-

preciates The Dark Ages after having surveyed 400 years of

 

literature which was almost without exception hostile to things

medieval.

 

76Ibid., p. 129, Maitland following Henry's History
of England. (The 8103 appear in Maitland s text.)

PART, TWO

TILE HISTORY'OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION, 1850-1960'8

The impetus given medieval studies during the
late XVIIIth century and the first half of the XIXth century
manifested itself after 1850 in an ever-increasing amount of
historical scholarship devoted to the Middle Ages. This
trend could only have had a beneficial effect on the study
of medieval education and culture. Unfortunately, however,
although much brilliant work was produced, one must conclude
that the over-all effect of increased attention directed
toward the Middle Ages has largely been quantitatively bene-
ficial for medieval studies.. One can sense that although
much has been written on the various aspects of medieval edu-
cation, somehow historians have generally not got at the heart
of the matter.. Throughout the last century and more much of
the huge body of literature on medieval education has dealt
with the stories of particular institutions and their founders,
with the books used in medieval schools, and with the question
of who taught where and at what time.. These are, no doubt,
legitimate concerns but they serve to little enlighten us as
to the deeper forces of medieval education, forces which run
not only through education and learning, but throughout the

ididdle Ages itself..

The following examination of recent studies of medieval

71
education has been arranged according to several broad
topical divisions which have suggested themselves in the
reading of this literature.. My purpose here is not so
much to examine scholarly opinion on every phase of medieval
educational activity. Rather, Efiam more interested in the
general interpretations and the main thrusts that that opinion

has taken.

CHAPTER I
GENERAL WORKS

At first glance, it appears quite difficult to
designate a good ganral treatment of medieval education.
General often meant popular and popular often meant more
fiction than history, more rhetoric than scholarly criticism
and synthesis.

A, T..Drane's (Mother Francis Raphael, O. S. D.)
attempt in 1867 to provide a general history of medieval
education in her Christian Schools and Scholars OrLgSketches
of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent1
made much use of medieval source material, but her use of
that material tended to the glorification of the Church and
its saints rather than to the history of medieval schools
and scholars.. She concluded her unimaginative account by
Observing that it was a shame in her day that education
more and more was coming under the aegis of the State rather
than of the Church.

Another example of late XIXth century concern with,
medieval education can be found in an unsigned review of J.

Bass'Mullinger's The Schools of Charles the Great and the

M

1New edition. London: Burns Oates and Washburne, 1924.

72

Restoration of Education in the hinth Century which appeared

 

in the April, 1880 number of The Edinburgh Review.2 The
review hardly gave notice to Mullinger's book but it did
provide an insight into the general notion of medieval edu-
cation. The reviewer endowed the Franks with all the stereo-
typed Germanic qualities ("When their warlike tendencies
were checked by the 'Roman Peace' their intellectual ap-
petites were all the more excited"5) and wrote his medieval
history from the point of view of the XIXth century: "The
University of Bordeaux in the fourth century was, we may
suppose, maintained on the principles of the modern board
school; we might even imagine from the silence of Ausonius
on the subject, that all denominational teaching was sternly

"4 In this account, learning steadily

forbidden in it.
declined (unlike Ozanam, the reviewer thought Martianus
Capella's book an "encyclopedia of declining knowledge"5)y
until it reached its nadir with Gregory of Tours who was, of
course, "both a witness to it and an example of its effects."6
The ultimate cause of this decline was Clovis' compact with

the Church.. Education became the prerogative of the Church

and thus became narrow and clerical. The sole cause of the

 

2American edition, CLI, (1880), 195-211.
3;§;§., 196.
tgggg., 197.
5;p;g,, 201.

6Ibid., 204.

74
revival was Charlemagne who"at the critical epoch of the

5)
n7

foundation of the revived Roman Empire, made education a
function and servant of the State and wrested it from the
"Priestly orders."

Just as anti-clerical influences were still to be

found in hist

O

rical scholarship, an occasional advocate of

’ I ‘1 o /
medieval gloom was always available. Gabriel Compayre
believed that once the Roman schools had closed "Christianity
did not open others, and, after the fourth entury, a pro-
found night enveloped humanity."8 A vigorous opponent of
Comgayre's views was Brother Azarias (P. J. Mullany) who
somewhat like Maitland, but with less scholarship and polish,

undertook a personal crusade to restore the tarnished image

of the Middle Ages. In his Essays Educational9 he directed

 

 

his attack against the general histories and educational
textbooks which, enjoying the largest audience, were often
the worst account of medieval education. Brother Azarias'
combattive and rather graeeless style ("Here is the sweet
tid-bit on which our public school teachers have been chew-

10) hardly lent dignity and

ing for the past ten years"
scholarship to his work, but one cannot help sympathizing
with his cause in light of all the bad work which had been

done in the history of medieval education.

 

7Ibid., 211.

8The History of Pedagogy, tr. W. H. Payne (Boston:
D. C. Heath and Company, 1690), p. 67.

 

9Chicago: D. H. McBride and Co., 1896.

1OIbid., p. 3.

75
A true contribution to the history of medieval
education was made in 1906 with the publication of Paul
Abelson's study, The Seven Liberal Arts: A Stu‘y in Mediaeva

ngture.11

which is at the heart of medieval education. A stimulating

This work is an excellent treatment of a subject

piece of scholarship, Abelson's study combined a thorough
grounding in medieval sources with the best secondary works.
In the process of examining the history of the liberal arts
in the Middle Ages, Abelson exposed some of the most vener—
able preCOnceptions about education in the Middle Ages.
Abelson's purpose in tracing the history of the liberal

arts was "to discover how the inevitable spirit of change
and adjustment interacted with the spirit of tradition of
the Middle Ages in a single sphere of mediaeval life -

the culture of the average educated man of the day."12
What resulted from Abelson's investigation was a brilliant
study not only of the liberal arts but of the men and milieu
in which those arts were studied.

All the arts changed in content and application
according to the demands the men of the Middle Ages made of
them. Because Latin was essentially a foreign language,
the study of grammar was perhaps most affected by the con-

ditions of the Middle Ages. Medieval masters devised their

 

11 . . .
("Columbia UniverSity Teachers College Contri-
butions to Education," no. 11), New York: Russdl and

Russell, Inc., 1965.

121b1d., "Introduction."

6

"J

own grammar manuals (based on folklore, riddles, and proverbs)
in order to overcome the difficulties of the ancient manuals
which were addressed to a Latin speaking world. Similiary,
the other arts enazg d to meet t1 e cxigenc'es of medieval
culture. Abe lsen' s treatment of the much underrated study
of the quadrivium restored proper pers ective to that
portion of the liberal arts. The question of whether or
not the Middle Ages possessed little or much mathematical
knowledge is educationally beside the point. The fact of

the matter was "that the schools fulfilled their mission

and tran suitt ed all the mathematical knowled ge tiley possessed
to future generations, and that the student was obliged to
master this knowledge before he took up the advanced study

of philosophy."13

Abelson demonstrated that change, ingenuity and

shifting emphases were all a part of mi) die val education and
culture. His stress on the dynamism and creativity of the
Middle Ages in tne matter of the transmission of the arts

ade his book an extraordinary guide to this aspect of edu-
cation in the Middle Ages

Not as much can be said for A. F. Leach's The Schools

of Medieval England,14 the first attempt at a history of

 

 

13Ibid., pp. 92-93,

14(The Antiouary's Books). Second edition. London:
Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1916. his book enjoyed an authori-
tative position for more than half a century. For some recent
criticism see, John Nelson Miner, Senools and Lite racy in
Later Medieval 1*“.r'*..;;l,:1nd, " British Journal of Edt cational
tudies, XI (1962), 16- 27.

 

77

"fi‘ n. O ‘l’ "\ 0' ‘ 17 ' 4" . ~’ .. '7. _ ‘7‘ ‘. , o _. _.V "‘ J. : ‘-
he lisn education oeiore tne time of ne neiornation.

“D
Leach provided a service to the study of medieval education
by constantly emphasizing that not all the education pro-
vided Tnglishmen during the Middle Ages was at the hands of
the monks. There was a significant amcunt of education,
he showed, which was fostered by non-monastic elements in
society. However, Leach overdid his point somewhat and
seemed at times to bend over backward in order to cut
English monasticism down to size, as it were. As Leach
would have it, the primary English educational institutions
throughout the Middle Ages were the public, or grammar,
schools.15 The models and the source for these schools
were not the Church schools at all
but the schools of heathendom, the schools of Athens
and Alexandria, of Rome, of Lyons, of Vienne. They
were in fact the very sane 'heatnen' or 'pagan' or,
in other words, Graeco-Roman institutions, in which,

Horace and Juvenal, Jerome and St. Augustine had
learnt the scansion of hexameters and the accredited

methods of speech-making and argument.10

If it is at all possible to point to one figure

who, more than any other, has influenced modern medieval
studies that one figure would be Charles Homer haskins.

Haskins in a number of very readable, yet erudite, books
and articles suggested a fresh, realistic appraisal of

medieval thought. Strictly, only one of Haskins' works

is of concern for this study, The Rise of the Universities.17

15Ibid., p. 2.
J6Ibid., p. 13.

17(The Colver Lecture, Brown University, 1923) New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1925. See p.126, below.

78
However, Haskins also offered some pertinent observations
concerning medieval education in his more general works.
In the first issue of Speculum, haskins contributed an
article which was a foretaste of his later classic, Th;
Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. In "The Spread of

. .. 13 L . . , 1
Ideas in the Middle Ages," he studied the proolem of tne

 

communication of ideas in medieval society. In noting that

previous historians had offered rather far-fetched accounts

of the transmission of ideas (e.g., Vulkmeist, Zeitgeist)

Haskins called for a more realistic approach to the question.
For him, ideas we e generated in and transmitted by a

handful of institutions which, acting as high energy cells,

I 'I

not only transmitted their ideas to each other, but, in
addition, influenced each other in the formulation of those
ideas:

0 m . the spread of ideas in the Middle Ages is only

in part a history of slow diffusion through the resisting
medium of local habit and custom. It is chiefly COL-
cerned with the relations of scattered centres of
another sort, stations of high tension, if you like,
communicating with other stations of the same type with
comparatively little reference to distance or to the
nature of the intervening space. Such centres, repres-
enting different social strata, consisted chiefly of
monasteries and cathedrals, courts, towns, and uni—
versities.

With this article it seemed as though the first step
had been taken in bringing the intellectual and eduCational

history of the Middle Ages down to earth. The consideration

of the development of medieval thought and especially of

k

18I‘(1926), 19-30.

191bid., 20-21.

79

education could no longer resolve itself in an account of
the mysterious racial qualities of a people or of the
equally vague celebration of the spirit of the times or of
one man - be he Charlemagne or Abelard. It now became
necessary to turn to those ”stations of high tension", as
Haskins aptly described them, in order to understand their
development and activity in relation to each other.

Haskins' The Ren<issance of the Twelfth Centtry'2
did so many good things for the study of the Middle Ages.
Judging by some of the literature surveyed in this study,
there was a desperate need for this scholarly and stimu-
lating work.‘ Although primarily concentrating on the XIIth
century, Haskins emphasized the change and vitality evi-
dent throughout much of the medieval period. Nowhere is
this more apparent in his book than in the last chapter,
”The Beginnings of the Universities." The medieval uni-
verSity was in itself a new creation without precedent in
history. The very fact that it came to be during the
Middle Ages attests to the ability of medieval society and
institutions not only to evolve with time but also to es-
tablish new patterns of growth. Haskins described the uni-
versities as the end product of an intellectual and insti-
tutional revolution centered on the reception, not passive

to be sure, of the "new knowledge" from the East.21 The

 

20(Meridian Books) Cleveland: The World Publishing
Company. 1957.

21Ibid., p. 368.

80
institutional revolution involved the application of the
guild system to educational practices which had been
radically altered by the dialectical revolution and which
in the end produced a new institution - the university.

. —

The momentum given medieval studies by Hasmins and
other medievalists instrumental in the founding of the
Mediaeval Academy rapidly bore fruit if we can judge from
the amount of research done by American medievalists in
the field of medieval education. Enough attention was
directed toward education and learning in the Middle ges
from our shores to warrant a twenty-four page review and
critique of that research by Professor Gray Cowan Boyce

92
in 1947. In his "American Studies in Medieval Education,"L
Professor Boyce not only presented an incisive, terse, and
perceptive survey of the literature, but, going further,
he pointed to the lacunae in the American treatment of
medieval education. He also made a special plea for an
adequate survey of medieval education ("rationally organized,
based upon a deep knowledge and adequate control of fact,
written with clarity and preeision”23) intended for the
use of students of education. For too long, Professor

Boyce noted, medievalists had been content seemingly to

write only for themselves and not for the audience most in

 

22Progress of Medieval and Renaissance Studies in
the United States and Canada, Bulletin no. 19—T1947),
6-30.

2BI‘DOdQ, 60

 

n

01

need of the benefits of their scholarship.

The biases of American medievalist ha been quite

<
(L)

U)

noticeable: the universities, especially the one at Paris,
has attracted the large share of attention directed toward
the Middle Ages; little or no significant contributions
have been made to the history of the lower schools and
hardly any attention has been given to the German studia
and to Spainfiz1L

In 1940, Lynn Thorndike published a short article
on the lower schools which challenged the notion that there
was only a system of higher education throughout the Mid—
dle Ages and that all education was dominated by the

clergy.23

Although the article was excellent as far as it
went (Professor Thorndike had little trouble substantiating
his thesis ”that in the period of developed mediaeval
culture elementary and even secondary education was fairly
widespread"), it provided a good example of Professor
Boyce's contention that American medievalists had left the
field of non-university education and instruction practi-
cally untouched. Perhaps we Americans with our supposed
penchants for bigness, organization, and administration,
combined with a sort of parochialism that sees in the
medieval universities some resemblance to our own univer-

sities, have been attracted by the obvious charms which the

iv—

24Ibid., 7.

25"Elementary and Secondary Education in the Middle
Ages," Speculum, XV (1940), 400—408.

82
study of these universities held over other medieval
educational institutions: the parish, monastic, and cath—
edral schools.

The best recent general treatment of medieval
education, especially during the later period, was Philippe
Delhaye's "L'organisation scolaire au XIIe sie‘cle.”26 Del-
haye's study began with the Carolingian educational reforms
and is an excellent guide to the vicissitudes experienced
by the monastic schools (both interior and exterior) and the
cathedral schools during the Xth, XIth, and XIIth centuries.
During this period whatever education was provided by the
monks was replaced by' that of the cathedral schools and
the regular and secular clergy. The crucial development
of the XIIth century was the liberalization of the policy
governing the necessary licentia docendi. Not only did this
mean that more masters could be licensed to teach, but, in
addition, these masters gained a measure of independence from
the cathedralcnnons and the cathedral scholastic who had
previously' governed the issuance of the license. With
this freedom came experimentation in course programs and the
emergence of a new corporation of masters, the university,
separate from the cathedral chapter. It was not long before
these new corporations replaced the cathedral school as
the primary educational institution of the Middle Ages:

/ . /
La faveur des etudlants n'a pas eta longue a’se porter'

26Traditio, v (1947), 211-260.

I .. l“ ._ at I
vers les ecoles liores es mai es aoreg s; les ecoies
t
s

capitdlaires se sont trouves s vite en inferiorite.
Un programme plus va ste, une veillance moins
stricte, un souci constant de se conquerir la favour
du public estudiantin devaient necessairement attirer
la jeunesse.2/
The period that askir s, D»e lhaye and others chose
to study in the history of medieval education was, of course,
a crucial one. With the development of the university
medieval education came to maturity and made a unique con-
tribution to the history of Western civilization. However,
despite the fact that scholars have long recognized the pivotal
nature of the XIth and XIIth century period, they have not
produced a general study ofthe conditions which led to the
universities.. There are innumerable discussions of the de-
velopment of the town and its impact on education and, similiarly,
of the development of dialectic and Abelard's contribution
to the evolution of the university. But almost all of these
have been undertaken from the point of view of the universities.
It may be only a small point but, nevertheless, one is not
satisfied with an account of education before the University
of Paris which looks ahead to the University and neglects

to study the earlier period on its own ter rms.28

 

27ibid.., 268.

28Stephen D' Irsay had made explicit the tacit ap-
proach to this period in education history (see oelow, p. N51).
The one general work which does do justice to the "pre-uni-
versity period is La renaissance du XIIe siecle: les heeles
et l'ensxugprmnt (seeatmlow, p.J55).

CHAPTER II
EDUCATION N THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

The history of education and learning during this
period has suffered from two inter-related factors: the
period has largely been neglected by historians more intent

1

on the study of the universities and when the period nas
been stu‘ied, it has almost inevitably been in anticipation
of the later universities. The result has been a rather
meager collection of historical monographs devoted to the
700 years of this period most of which, by this date, are
somewhat old and in need of revision.

The period of transition from classical to medieval
civilization has attracted considerable attention from
those interested in the educational history of the early
Middle Ages. The focal point of this period has been the
confrontation between the imperial and Christian educational
systems. Rather than a replacement of one system by the
other, what actually occurred was the co-existence of the
two systems for a not inconsiderable period. What this
period of transition has meant for education has been
variously interpreted. In the main, classicists have be-
moaned the supplanting of the Roman system by the Christian

‘with its supposedly anti-classical attitude while medieval-

e4

ists and partisans of Christianity ha‘e noted that the

Roman educational system was decadent and hollow anyway

and that th infusion of Ct“isti3n prinCi ple s, morals,

(D

and aims was 11 ads d in ordcm to revitalize education and
make it meaningful.
A good treatment of this whole period can be found

in Theodore Haarhoff’s Schools of Gaul: A Stu y of Pe~a

 

nd Clirist ian Education in the Last Centi ir7 of the Western
:mpire.1 Haarhoff was quite sensitive to the fact that
his work was the first to consider education in the IVth
and Vth centuries. Despite his belie that the ”immense
fabric of Roman education" continued to endure to his own
day irrespective of the silifting see es of Roman, barbarian,
pagan, and Christian education,2 Haarhoff provided a
creditable example of the work yet to be done in this area.

1

Tne crucial point in the transition from imperial
to Christian education came in the Vth century when the
Church received from t‘11e emperors the educatii oral authority
which had formerly been the province of the state alone.3
The Romanization of Christianity had put any over-night

change in the educational program out of the que estion.

 

1London: Oxford University Press, 1920. To a
lesser degree, but more suggestively, H. I. Marrou has
recently studied tliis period. See his closing pages in A
History of Education in Antiouity, tr. Georg e La imb (New _
York: The New American Library, 1964), pp. 419- —4o5.

2Ibid., vii.

3%., p0 1550

86

Nevertheless by the end of the Vth centiry the number of

etorical schools in Gau l was on the wane. The Church's
influence though was not entirely ”negative." Unlike the
classical and imperial schools, the schools of the Church
attempted to educate the masses in some sense of the notitn
of education. In this way the Church reached out to the
man ignored by the Romans.

The system of Gallo—Roman and Christian education
disintegrated du uring the Vth century as much from the in-
vasions as, Haarhoff noted, from certain internal weaknesses
wit hin the system itself. The schools theim elves killed
any true spirit of education. The rhetorical emphasis of
the old Roman system neglected the ultimate goal of know-
ledge, the search for truth, and thus failed because it
aimed not for the best truth, but rather for goods of
secondary importance - polish, style, and external refinement.
The Church was also to blame for the death of the old
tradition.‘ Exigencies of the period forced the Church to
become reactionary and zealously narrow: ”By limiting the
meaning of 'divina' to dogma, the Church imposed fetters
on the seeker after truth which, though not very prominent
in our period became exceedingly galling in the times that

followed."5

 

41bid., p. 249-256.

5ibid., p. 260. Amédee Thierry had some bitter
words for the Church's failure to rescue the literary forms
and spirit of the schools of "la veille societe romain”
when the Church was the only vital and youthful element in
a moribund world. "La litterature profane en Gaule au

'_\
VJY‘

O
Niti tne passing of the old system, education
entered the Middle Ages and we can infer fron Haarhoff's
description of the "Decline of Education” that medieval
education meant for him the abandonment of the search for
truth in favor of the secure complacency of dogma, the

1

dulling of the spirit of inquiry by the willingness to
accept and believe. Haarhoff wrote as a classicist firmly
convinced that the Roman rhetorical tradition, when at its
best, was (and is, apparently) without equal as an education-
al model. Although this bias prevented him from appreci-
ating education in the early Middle Ages, it did not prevent
him from compiling a scholarly and well—documented account
of the last days of the old ways.

Somewhat in Haarhoff's vein, an earlier work sought
to determine how much and in what manner the classics in-
fluenced medieval learning after the IVth and Vth century

period of transition. Maurice Roger's L'enseignement des

 

lettres classioues d'Ausone a)Alcuin: Introduction a

 

/
l'histoire des ficoles carolingiennes,O although some of

 

its conclusions have been revised, remains the single most
comprehensive and perceptive consideration of the classics
in the early Middle Ages.

Ausonius, the IVth century Roman poet, and Alcuin,
the VIIIth century Carolingian monk, were for Roger types -

types at apposite ends of a revolution which changed the

 

. ’ 0 O
IVe Siecle: les grandee eccles--Ausone et Rutilius,"
QRevue des DeuX Mondes, H, CV (1873), 793—814.

6Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1905.

88
world. his revolution, which saw power and leadership
in the Hestern world gradually transferred from the Romans
to the Franks, als< 0 had its effect on education: classical
education gave way to Christian. Like most revolutions,
however, a good deal of the old order of things remained.
Classical letters, after considerable debate took their
place in the Christian scheme of instruction. However,
what kind of place was this?

In order to answer this question, Roger examined
the thought of Alcuin who, though original in the choice
and nature of his borrowings, was essentially a compiler
and therefore a pre-eminent witness to the thought of his

ge and milieu.7 For Alcuin, wisdom was attained by prayer
and the help of God. From this, one can begin to per-
ceive that the classics placed in a Christian setting
received a radically different emphasis than they had in
their original setting. Roger attributed this to a funda—
mental divergence in the classical and Christian outlooks:

. I O i O O C I
La sagesse antioue laisse aFla seience un cnamp illimite°

’
la sages se chretieniie, telle Q_ue l' entend Alcuin, lui
attribue un object limite oui est de parvenir a)l' in-
telligence d' un te xte arrete immuable, sacré, jus que
dans la lettre. C'est la une difference essen tielle,
qui va peser lourdement sur toute l' edgcation, pendant
le moyen age et meme beaucoup au de la.

Christian wisdom, then, had both its goal and limit

in the sacred scriptures. Christian instruction ultimately

 

7ibid., p. 441.

 

81bid., pp. 443-444.

 

9

Cf)

led to the absorption and comprehension of the lactic
divina which, being divine, admitted of no eeual or rival

attention of the Christian student. The question

H“
H

for
can now be repeated more urgently: of what 003 i ble use

was antique learning, particularly the classics, to tie

‘

Christians? Roger poignantly framed his answer and sum-
marized the course of early medieval intellectual history
thus:

Cine cents ans apres Iguscnius1,une grande revolution
8 'est accom_plie, la plusg grande cu 'ait connue notre
OCCide nt. Un monde nouveau s 'eleve dans les conditions
oui different absolunent des celles du monde aneien.

La culture littéraire, esthetique et morale va-t—elle

y occuper une plus grande place? Cette société, fondee
sur’des croyances spiritualistes beaucoup plus accen-
tuee s, qu 'elle porte meme jusou 'aux exagerations du
mysticisme et de l' ascetisme' va-t-elle donner aux
sciences excitatrices de l' esprit un role preponderant?
Rien de semblable ne nous apparait. C' est gicore a‘

un but d'utilite etroite ou 'elle s sont anitees on

ne les conserve, on ne les tolere que comme un appareil
trés secondaire, non pas meme d'Etude, mais de prepar-
ation a l' etude. C'est une simple propédeutioue.

Les lettres ne servent plus d'obtcnir dos places dans
la hierarchie imperiale, elles servent é mettre le
clerc en Etat d'aborder la seule science vraie, la
theologic.

The true place, then, of the classics in medieval
education was as a stepping-stone to more important and
meaningful concerns. The classics were considered alway
as means, never as ends. They provided images, vocabulary,
and examples which the Christian could borrow and use in
the eXplication and service of tr e faith. Perhaps there

did occur local iLstances in which the purely secondary

 

91bid., p. 444.

nature of classical studies was forgotten. however, as
Roger described such occurrences, they were rare deviations
from the general attitude and principle mentioned above

and in no way implied an attempt at the restoration of

1C

antiQUitYQ

In the second chapter of L'enseiinement des lettres

[‘1‘
L)

g

classioues d'Ausone a Alcuin Roger challenged Frederic
Ozanam's belief that Gallo-Roman schools survived until
the end of the VIIth century. For Roger the last traces
of Gallo-Roman education did not survive the invasions of
the Vth century (A. D. 406). By the decade 420-430, there
was no longer any question that these schools existed.
Roger, in his turn, has been challenged on this point by
the foremost contemporary student of medieval education -
Pierre Riche.

M. Riche, in a short essay, "La survivance des ecoles
publiques en Gaule au Ve siecle,"1attempted to restore
the proper perspective to the history of this transitional
period in ancient-medieval culture by questioning what he
held to be exaggerations in Roger's thesis. Roger, in
challenging Ozanam's assertion that vestiges of antique
education remained until the end of the VIIth century in
Gaul, overshot the mark in the opposite extreme, Riche'

. . I .
wrote. This, Riche graCiously conceded, was easy enough

 

1OIbid., pp. 447-448.

11Le ngen—gge: revue d’histoire et de philolggie,
LXIII, (1957), 421-436.

)

91
to do given the extravagance of Osanam's Claim.

However, Roger's exaggeration can not be attributed
solely to an excess of exuberance. There was a certain
methodological flaw in his argument which, when examined,
betrayed his thesis of a Vth century closing of all the

antique schools. The flaw was Roger's argument ex silentic

 

,., . x . . . _
wnicn Riche warned had little value in any Situation and
/
”11 en a encore mOins pour une epcque auss1 pauvre en
‘ , .\ "12
documents que la Je Siecle.
o /[ o 1 0+

It was Riche s contention that the BXLSUEHCG of
at least one official Gallo-Roman school could be docu-
mented as late as 474. Building his case on an examination
of certain texts (notably the letters of Sidonius Apollin-

. . /_

arius and Avitus), Riche demonstrated that the masters

‘

t ing at the end of the Vth century in such municipal

(D
J

aci

O
G)

nters as Bordeaux, Vienne, Clermcnt, and Lyon differed
little, according to contemporary description, from the
masters praised by Auscnius in the previous century:
"Leur Ecole pcuvait Etre encore ouverte a tous, et leur
foncticn, retribuee par les municipalities, du moins rien

13

ne nous interdit de le supposer." Going beyond this
proof by implication, Riche turned to a letter from Sidonius
Apollinarius to Claudien Mamertus (which Roger had missed)

that established the definite existence of a municipal

school in 474. This discovery indicated to Riche that

 

 

92
municipal school systems survived beyond the invasions,
but more fundamentally it indicated some hing of the very
nature of this period:
Ainsi, la cd‘le system municipal résiste, l'école
publique peut continuer son existence. Les municipal—
ites avaient tout interet anreserver ce qui symbolisent
- u 0’ o Y' 7
le mieux la superiorite des Romaine en face des carcares
germaniques. Mais cela ne s'est pas produit dans toutes
, 4.-- ‘ . ..,.I_ _
les Villes. Certains’centres urbains privglegies cnt
. ’.,_‘ ._
pu, tels des buttes-temOins, reSister a‘l'erOSion
barbare, d'autres se sont disloqués plus rapidement.
L'histoire des institutions de l'epoque ”barbare"
est bien souvent l'histcire de cas particulier.1
There was no dramatic, sudden, and complete closing
of the Gallo-Roman schools. Barbarian influences by no
1 .,/
means completely blanketed Europe. Rather, as Ricne has
shown, the critical area of confrontation between Gallo-
Roman and barbarian resembled a checkerboard pattern.
Throughout the Vth century if the schools had fallen in
one locale, it was highly probable that they remained open
in another.
I
In a later work, M. Riche expanded this point.

~

His Education et culture dan3_l'cccident barbare: VIe-

VIIIe siecles,15

which resulted from his perceptive in-

sights intc medieval education and his brilliant analysis
of the main themes of early medieval intellectual history,
is the most outstanding work on this subject. It is out-

. I O ’ I
standing for two reasons. First, Riche's intimate know-

ledge of early medieval culture has enabled him to write

 

1411mm, 436.

15("Patristica Sorbonensia;'no.4), Paris: Editions
du Seuil, 1962.

5

KO

with authority on almost every major aspect of that culture.

In Education et culture dans l'occident barbare, the reader

 

is offered not only a more comprehensive view of the inter-
action between antique and Cl ristian culture tr an that
hinted at in ”La survivance des eboles publiques en Gaule
au'@.siecle,” but, and this is the second point, the entire
work serves to underscore the main achievement of that
interaction: the creation of a new culture and educational
system peculiarly medieval and Christian.

The critical areas of confrontation between bar-
barian and anticue culture was indeed of a checkerboard
pattern. Despite the barbarian invasions large blocs of
the Mediterranean world remained in the antique tradition:
Gaul until the beginning of the VIth century, Italy until
the VIIth century, and Africa until the advance of Islam.
The antique system of education essentially survived in
such men as Gregory the Great, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of
Seville and his VIIth century disciples. The Anglo-Saxon
and Irish monastic movements perhaps most tellingly ex-
emplified this co-existence of antique and medieval cultural
elements:

A leur example, des clercs et des moines d' Occident
sont restes fideles a la forme classique da.ns leurs
poesies at dans leurs discours, mais genes par leur
premiere instruction, ils ont ete incapacles de cre er

une veritable/culture chretienne dont la Bible eut
ete la base.

A truly Christian culture, however, emerged and was

 

161mm, p. 549.

94
propagated in the critical period from the end of the
VIIth century to the middle of the VIIIth century. This
new culture no longer bore within it the antique-Christian
antinomy of the earlier period but was strictly medieval
and strictly based on the study of the divinagpagina. The
monastic element was the important catalyst in this new
development. By the beginning of the VIIIth century, the
monks were more ascetic and missionary than literary in
the classical sense. Monastic wisdom certainly evinced
some classical aspects, primarily the study of grammar and
mathematics, but these were put into an entirely new set-
ting: ”La science, monastique, . . . eut pour but essentiel
l'etude de la Bible et la celebration de la liturgie, dans
laquelle'se concilient l'amour des lettres et le desir

:17

de Dieu." It was this particular culture which formed

 

17Ibid., pp. 549-550.. The quote is from Jean Le-
clercq's The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A
Study of Monastic Culture (New York: The New American
Library, 1962). Dom Leclercq's stimulating work is funda-
mental for an understanding of the monastic ethos during
this period. For centuries, the chief centers of intel-
lectual activity were the rural monasteries. In the monas-
teries, however, it would not be too unfair to say that edu—
cational facilities and intellectual life in general was of
minor importance. The center of monastic life was really
'the opus Dei. Intellectual activities were really only a
concession to the practical aspects of the monks' prayer-
life: they had to be able to compute the dates of impor-
tant holy—days, they had to have an orderly daily chronology,
they had to be able to chant in a manner pleasing to God,
'they had to be able, obviously, to read and to understand
Latin. In any event, the monasteries never made learning
an.end in itself. Their schools isolated in the country-
side served only a small number of ”students." It is striking
"to note, perhaps, that the word most often used when monks
speak of education and learning is some form of "nourish-
rnent" or "to nourish." A monk nourishes his "students" and
'they in turn are referred to as ones who are nourished.

95

the bases for the various renaissances which began in the
period 680-700 - renaissances which were peculiarly medieval
and which culminated in the most famous re nais sance of the
early Middle Ages, that of the Carolingians. This latter
renaissance Riche urges us to regard not so much as a
point of departure for later intellectual and cultural
movements, but rather as a brilliant culmination of a
critical period in We stern civilization, a crucial period
of transition in which that civilization

est passe de l'education antitue t l'education medi-

evale, and in which la la ttre romain avait pu laisser

la place au Clerc du Moyen Age.1O

Concomitant with the inte Wiact on between the antique

and Christian cultures and the subsequent development of

a unique medieval culture, another pattern was emergin:

111

L

‘

the growth and Spread of Church education. Education after
the Vth century largely meant Church education and the
history of medieval education became thereafter the history
of the education fostered, in its various aspects, by the
Church. All general works and most specific works give
some consideration to the Church's role in medieval edu-
cation.

An illuminating background study of the Church's
”official” position in regard to education in the Middle
Ages has been provided by Ellen Perry Pride. In an article
in Church History, Profes scr Pride undertook to investigate

a much debated aspect of medieval education: the nature

 

13Ioid., p. 20

96
of the actual role played by the Church in education. In
1p,;)‘ ”I? '3 .‘ , f3 ”\fi"Q - _ ‘ .j‘i], '3'. t 'h 700-
ncr ncclcs1astical Legislation on L(dCaEiOfl, n. J. J
1200,”19 she concentrated solely on the institutional
policies of the Church as expressed in papal pronouncements
and Chur h councils. Her findings would have surprise:
those historians who made much over the Church's absolute
control over education. In reality, the import of Church
pronouncements rarely extended beyond exhortations for an
educated clergy: ". . . the councils usually contented
themselves with laying down the broad general principle
that an educated clergy was desirable. With the exception
of the one at Vaison (529), they made no specific mention
of schools until spurred by Charlemagne's direction."20
With only one exception in the Xth century, no
official pronouncements were made by the Church concerning
education or learning until the XIIth century and by then
the pronouncements of the Church were probuletic:
By the time of Alexander III (1159—1181), when the
Church first seems deeply interested, the activities of
the many teachers and scholars had already reached re-
markable proportions; their associations had assumed
many of their customary rights, and the course of the
higher studies had been determined. Any action of the
pope or councils served merely to crown the accomplished

faCto21

Professor Pride held that the Clunaic and other

reform movements affecting the papacy during the XIth and

 

19Church History, XII (1943), 235—254.
20Ibid., 245.

21Ibid., 252.

97
XIIth centuries accounted for the seeiing indifference of

H

the Church to the "vanities of education. When the Church

did act, it usually re-acted as, for example, against the

I

(D
(I)
O)

G

dialectical spirit of the new learning. In - -ence, the
official position of the Church was not as blue-printed
and as organized as some historians had claimed. In re-
iterating that the tenor of papal and conciliar policy
toward education was of a vague sort and consisted chiefly
of perennial recommendations for greater educational ef-
forts, Professor Pride made a key observation in describing
the Church councils. They, she noted, "were composed not
of educational specialists, but of executives with many
problems, living in an age where there was little demand for
teaching. They showed themselves ahead of their time in
doing even that much."22

In turning to the content of Christian education
in the early Middle Ages, we may note the only worn on
the relationship between the Church Fathers and medieval
education. Unfortunately, the title of the Rev. Frank P.
Cassidy's work, The Moldags of the Medieval Mind: The
Influence of the FatLers of the Church on the Medieval

23

Schoolmen, promised more than its author delivered.

 

Father Cassidy, rather than demonstrating the educationa

influence of the Fathers on medieval education, or even

 

221101do, 24‘5.

23Port Washington, New York: Kennihat Press, Ind.,
1966. (originally, 1944)

98

on the medieval schoolmen, was content merely to outline

1 ‘I

and summarize the educational tracts of the Fetter ven

02
:5

'»

this sketch of an interesting subject is disappointing.
Instead of a thorough historical analysis of patristic
thought and its relation to medieval education, Father
Cassidy has provided what amounted to a sermon on the
glories of the medieval Catholic viewpoint.

One aspect of educational activity undertaken by
the Church which has received little notice from historians
is the role of the missionaries as educators. In at least
the broad sense of the term, the missionaries were educators.
In their proseltyzing activity much effort was inevitably
given to education. An investigation of that effort would
promise to bring to light some interesting findings con—
cerning a relatively neglected aspect of medieval education.

Only one specific study has considered the relation-
ship between the missions and education and even that has
done so indirectly. Putnam Fennell Jone3in his "The Gre-

H24

gorian Missions and English Education, questioned A. F.

. 2 .fl ., . .
Leach's contention 5 that anglisn education, espeCially at

0

Canterbury, in the time of Augustine, "the Apostle of

" was marked by secularity and semi-independence

England,
from Rome. Leach had made the seemingly fantastic state-

ment that the model of England's first schools was not the

 

24Speculum: III (1928), 335-348.

253

ee above, pp. 76-77.

99

schools of the Church, but rather those of pagan anti—
cuity. In seeking to substantiate his own thesis to the
contrary, Jones tried to ascertain what educational purposes,
if any, the Gregorian mission to England had and the nature
of the education actually imparted by the missionaries.

A brief examination of the personalities and thought
of Gregory, the architect of the English mission, and of
his agent, Augustine, provided sufficent evidence to Jones
that if there was an educational purpose to the mission,
it was certainly neither secular nor semi-independent.
Although an examination of Augustine's activities from 597
to his death in 604/605 indicates that the monks had little

time for "additional enterprise,"

they must have certainly
made some provision for education. Beginning in 644 with
Ithamar of Rochester, native (and presumably educated)
Englishmen were elevated to episcopal sees.26 Granted, then,
that some form of education was provided by the mission-
aries in the early VIIth century, what can be said of its
nature? Again, hypothesizing from the personality and pre-
dilections of Gregory, Jones judged it to be the standard
Benedictine education of the day27 and thus concluded that
the first English schools were exclusively religious in

purpose and in method.28

 

26Jones, 342-345.
27Ibid., 345.

2QIbid., 348.

100

If the missionaries have not received their full
due in the history of medieval education, there is yet
another group of medieval churchmen whose role in education
has been comparatively neglected. The cathedral schools
have received some attention from historians, but as yet
there has been no full scale study of the bishops who
patronized and, in many cases, taught in these schools.
One recent and specific essay, Sister Consuelo Maria Aherne,
S. S. J.'s ”Late Visigothic Bishops, Their Schools and
the Transmission of Culture,"29 focussed some attention on
this question; however, a nine page article is hardly
sufficent. Sister Consuelo's point was to emphasize the
unique contribution, the transmission of culture from anti-
quity to the High Middle Ages, made by seven late Visigothic
bishops: "A galaxy of enlightened bishops, inheritors and
transmitters of the highly developed Hispano—Roman intel-
lectual tradition, who graced the Church in seventh century
Spain."30

Her terse and well-written article was essentially
a systhesis of the findings of previous historians on the
cultural roles played by the bishops and thus, other than
the synthesis itself, little new was added to the subject
except some publicity for a chapter in the educational-
cultural history of the Middle Ages as yet unwritten.

The institutional aspect of medieval education in

 

292.229.2222. XXII (1966), 435-444,

3OIbid., 435.

101
the early period has received more attention and has fared
better than both the missionaries and the bishops at the
hands of scholars.

The palace schools, both those of the Merovingians
and Carolingians in addition to the court schools of other
dynasties, have not been the recipients of a comprehensive
monographic study although they all have had their indivi—
dual histories narrated in general educational histories
and in accounts of the cultural aspects of a particular
dynasty. We have already noted that the Carolingian palace
schools loomed large in an earlier period's consideration

31

of the origins of the universities. The Merovingian
palace schools, less documented than the Carolingian's
court schools and thus more of an enigma to historians,
have consequently been the object of some debate. The de-
bate seemed to be settled and the outlines of the palace
schools of the Merovingians established in a series of
articles by E..Vancamhrd at the turn of this century.

The series began with the appearance of ”La scola

"32 in which N. Vancandard took the

. ’ I Q
du palais merOVIngien,
opportunity to dispute the long held thesis of Dom Pitra
(in Histoire de saint Leger, eveque d'Autun et martyr)

and Fustel de Coulanges (in La monarchie franque) that the

existence of an ӎeole litteraire" at the court of the Mero-

 

313ee above, pp. 29-37, 49-51.

32Revue des Questions Historiques, n.s., XVII
(LXI of the collection)(1897), 490-BO2.

102

vingian min s could be proved by an exa ination of the saints

_- _ ‘ ~. ~, 5 — ,.. ’4 .. 121°. 1'. ‘: ‘ ,r',- "
Lives of the Vitn and Vxlth centuiies. m. fancaudird s
. " 4‘" r ' r~ ‘ '- r‘ , r ‘-\ '. w. i “ I ‘. , ' '- ‘ LA ,‘ ' Ir ' 1" ' ‘fl
reading oi the relevant te ts led him to oeiieve taat Iatdei

than being a center of literary studies, the palace school
was essentially a training ground for court functionnaries
and bureaucrats. There may have been some hnewled.
letters required even for these positions; however, ”Le
palais était une pepinere de comtes, de dues, de domes—
tiques, et non une ecole de lettres: les maitres stait
des fonctionnaires et non des gram ariens et des dialec-
ticiens."33
The focal point of the disag eement between Van—

candard and Dom Pitra and Fustel de Coulanges was the

meaning to be attributed to the word scola which appeared
over and over again in the texts. LFor the latter, seela

"school" and, in particular, to a literary

referred to a
school in the old tradition. Vancandard demonstrated how-

ever that cola in Merovingian times had come to have a

U)

 

different and more comprehensive meaning than it had

previously. Instead of simply a "school,”

scola had Come
to connote a branch of court organization under which a
complex of activities, primarily adninistrative and bureau-
cratic, was subsumed. Along with such tasks as the minting

I

of coinage for the realm, the scola also had a 'school" in

which future functionnaries in the scola were trained. A

more exact description of the scola and its specialized

 

53Ibid., 497.

vocational trainin“ program can not be gleaned from the
texts: ”3n tous cas, ce cui est dur, c'est que la scola

palatine des temps mirovi nsi ens n' a rien de commun avec
une ecole littéraire.
The Carolingian palace schools and especially the
educational reforms undertaken by Char emagne and his
successors have attracted some attention in their own right
but more often as the primai y effect and witness to the
Carolingian revival or renaissance. Indeed, all histories
of the Iiiddle Ages usually consider the Carolingian edu-
cational revival and the rise of the universities as the
foremost events in that period's intellectual history.
Little specific attention, however, has been given to Care-
lingian education in its own right. J. Bass Mullinger in

his The Schools of Charles the Great and the Restoration

 

35

of Education in the Ninth Century, which first appeared

 

in 1877, produced perhaps the standard study for this im-
portant period in the history of medieval education although

the work is old and shows the biases of its age.36

 

34Ibid., 502. Subsequent articles served to main-
tain Vanca ndard' s thesis ag ainst proponents of the pa la
school as a literary center. See M. Vanca ndard' s rejoin-
ders, "Encore un mot sur la scola du palais:m9rov1nsitn
ibid., n. s., XVIII (LXII of the collection) (189 7), 546- 551;
dernier mot sur l'eeole du palais erOVin ien," ibid.,

n.s., XXXII (LXXVI of the collection), (1904), 549- 555.
35New York: G. E. Stechert and Company, 1932.

36Mullinger managed to touch all t1 ie bases in his
account of Carolingian educationl Yet, the factual narrative
somehow, does get get at the heart of the matter. For
Mullinger, Caro lingia n education, rather than occupying a
unique chapter in the history of . edieval education exem-
plified a confluence of ideals endemic in Western thouoht,

W

' V

104
A better, more recent treatment of Carolingian
edication can be found in the second half of M. L. W.

-' ‘/ I . ,.. i e'. 1",,‘_i_,__, 1:17... .
Laistner s TIIW‘flb and Letters in Jester: Lmropi Al-

 

though Laistner was more conce' rne d with detailing the sub-
stance of the Carolingian renaissance than with education
alone his remarks on ”irolin‘ien edu ation are illuminatini.
Unlike many others who have turned to this period, Laistner
treated education within the larger context of Carolingian

policy, especially relirious policy. Carolingian education

a
becomes more meaningful when understood as an out growth of
Charles' concern to assure the purity of the faith and the
ability of the clergy to perform their function in society
than when understood merely as an interlude in the "dark
ages” or as a first step, via the palace school, toward the
university. Aside from Laistner' s narrative of the empb as es
of Carolingian education and of the luminaries who fostered
that education, his inte eta tion of the place of Care-

lingia n education in the total stream of medieval iistory

is, perh ps, more interesting. As with so many Carolingian

 

a set of ideals which the XIXth century was fond of finding
in all "good” things:
the traditions, handed down from republican and imperial

Rome, of law and order, of re verance for aut:iority 31G
tee e tablished order of toiofr; the mere iiu-;;ije‘t

and vigorous intellectual characteristics of Teutonism;
the inquiring restless, and often unruly Celtic spirit,
touched and<1uiccened or Ielle nic thought.

77 o o 1 o o
)I2nd edition. Ithaca: Cornell UniverSity Press,
1957.

innovations and acnievcmcnts, there is always a note of
failure:
COMUELFBd . . . with conditions in the nrccedinv centuries
the extent to which education had by 814 become
available was trtlly astonishing. It is unhaj ily
true also that the phenomenon was ennenvral
But in the case of Carolingian education, Laistner saw an
element of continuity which traversed the "transitional”
Xth century and "perpetuated sufficent of Carolingian
learning to serve as the foundation for the mo re vig orous
‘7
‘lndS of the eleventh and twelfth centuries”)9 If this

is so,a reassessment of the Xth century will have to oe made

on at least two levels. The implications of Laistner s

U)
0..
(L)

thesi hand tnat we ask if the th century was really
intellectually fertile. Secondly, if it was,despite all
that we have traditionally held about that century, we

must ask how much of the intellectual lif' of the Xth

(D

centumr was a continuation of Carolingian hemes and, how

1

much, if any, was a response to tne circumstanc s and a

(0

product of the resources of the Xth century.
One fundamental work which dealt with the post-
Carolingian period touched on some of the questions later

- - 4
posed by Laistner. however, Lcon haitrds Les 6colas

 

’ I O I O
episcopales et monasticues en occ1dent -vent l as univer-

 

/
sites (788-11802fi0 in the end, disappoints. It must be

 

331bid., p. 202.

‘7 r", z’)

Q ‘ '
“Ibid., p. 30o.
40(1!
I

 

Archives de la France Mon stitui " vol. XXVI).
euxieme edition re fondue Liguge: Aboagre Saint—Martin;
Pari': A. Pica rd et Fi ls, 1924. (Or rig inally, 1866)

106
admitted though that we cannot begin the study of medieval
. . J. ,6. -.. .
education without consulting haitres survey of the monastic
and cathedral schools from the time of the Carcling'ais b0
the first universities.

-..— 4‘ - w i , ‘
Maitre's treatment of the cathedral and monastic

centers of learning fell into two main se

0
FT
kl
C
L)
U}
C
H-
r—L.
(D
\O
H
I._J
*1
0
d
U

listed and described in century by century fashion the

v

ncipal schools in each ecclesiastical province. Having

*0
H.

r
described the most important schools, in the second section

of his work he d? cribed the condition of the masters and

(3
U)

students and noted the course of studies pursued.

The first section is a veritable Baedeker's to the
chief centers of learning throughout ten metropolitan sees
during the four centuries which concerned haitre. The most
salient fact concerning these four centuries which emerged
from Maitre's study was the very noticeable "epanouissement"
of the monastic and cathedral schools whicn began in the
XItn century and reached its peak in the XIIth century.

The reasons for this burst of vitality during this period
lay, one suspects at the very roots of medieval society in
general. A whole complex of phenomena boas witness to the
fact that the Xth and, even man so, the XIth and Xllth
centuries were times of radical change throughout medieval
society. What I am suggesting is that the dynamic stirrings
that we can note in medieval education, as well as in art,
lite‘ature, architecture, religion, and even in medieval

politics, are less sui generis (as some descriptions of t“

In
= _ fir)
ALC Q \A

 

, _ A; , ' ‘ r. ‘ ‘ i i .° .3. , ,.‘ _ .4.
: nos would Lead Ode to oolicve) infil Mi re riectL01s to
.0 . - . » _._r‘~. .04. .L ,i o ,- 3 - -,
a lundanental sniit or traisiormat ion in medic val seeiety

mw'fio‘r‘ ° r

* .-.'-.—. ,1..:. - ..‘-.-.., . ...°4.,
tnerciore medieval cultire. -his is not puite tn3

go
:3
CL

place to eXplore more fully this ascinating question.

0

But I do want to indie te part of the reason why in the

s

. w 6 . . .
Sis I thinn Maitre's account of tne Situation

‘I

nal

1“)
I._J
u
m
H
m
C'\

to be somewha superficial.

)

Aaitrc explained the revival of schools by falling

F—J

back on the tLeory that the men of the “idd le Ages eXpected

the world to come to an end in the year 1,000. With su h

an e pe ctation, the medieval man could hardly be expected
to do much durin3 tne Kt icentury except to await the fated

moment. An education, *articular y, would be of no avail

in light of the impending end of things. Once the awaited
moment passed without eve.t however, there burst OUb a re-
vival which today serves to eXplain, anong other t;’

revived educational activity in the XIth century.

A
M ii tre was cogfli zant of thle objections to millen-

iarism and even quoted an opinion voiced in 1850 contrary

to his own.[+1 However, the fact that Adson de Montier-

<3n— Der and Abbe of Fleury had publisi ied refut a ions of the
o I o o o u 3‘ ' n o
.milleniarists lent weight, in Maitre s opinion, to Raoul
n

Glaber's incontestable" authority that the approaching

erui of the world was accepted "parmi le peuple." But, if

 

41Ibid., p. 64. “h opinionS was that of M. Digot,
Ehec 11erches sur les ecoles épis sconile et monastioues de

 

la. erovinc3 de Trgves

108

the end of the world was held to be innineit among the people
so much so that it caused a su pesedly noticeable period
of dormancy and then revival throughout Europe (or at
least within the ten metropolitan sees compr'sin3 the
intellectual capitals oi the medieval pee ried) - one would
exeect t7g' iat we would h? ve a vast amount of evidence, either
pro or con, indicative of the impact of this belief on
Europe. wnat the evidence Maitre cited does prove is that
there may have been some here or there preparing for the
end of the world in the Xth century, but certainly not
enough to explain a wid3s pre ad intellectual and cultural
revolution.

Likewise in his account of the XIIth century renais—

A
sance, Maitre seemed to have ignored some of the f unda-

mental explanations and considerations and to have attri—

buted the whole movement to a small and s:3 condary, although
per ha ps centributive, aspect of the cul tural re liaissaace

of the XIIth centuri. For Maitre, the mnergeace and flour-
ishing of the religious orders in the XIth century led to
an intense rivalry among them which manifested itself in
increased ardor and zeal for studies.42 Again, this ex-
planation seems somewhat inadequate to account for a move-
ment as widespread (not only geographically, but especially
intellectually) as the re nais ance of the XIIt h centb ry.

I
’3

In the second section of Les nCOlCS 4 isc ope is s

r";- J

et monastieues, Maitre pointed out that the internal organs

 

42Ibid., p. 94.

109
ization of the various schools followed a eneral pattern
with no strictly uniform system applicable amen them.
In describing the origins of a common organizational system

in the XIth century, his explanation again glossed over

root causes of some of the most '.portant developments in

in
A
altre noted that as a

medieval educational hiStory. M
reaction to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie and the
concomitant multiplication of error, the Church, exercising
her accustomed teaching authority, took the regulation of
education into her own hands by demanding that teachers

~ 0 0 ~ w - . 1 - «P 0
Obtain a license to teacn. In this way, the Cnurcn, maitre
wrote had some control over education while at the same

43

time organizing the cathedral school structure. However,
there are two oversights in this explanation of the insti-

tution of the licetia docendi. For one thing, it was not

 

”the Church" which required the licentia of the masters,

but rather the bishops acting within their dioceses.

There is a difference. The bishops regulated the teaching
profession for reasons of their own and were often in con-
flict with the Papacy in so doing.44 To say simply "the
Church” overlooks much of the Question. Secondly, the

bishops were motivated to control the teaching profession

not so much because of the unorthodox views of the bourgeoisie,

although these there certainly were, but rather because

 

43Ibid., p. 120.

44 . L . . . ,
Professor Gaines POSU has illumined this wnole
question, see below, pp..130-132.

 

110
education had become by the XIth century a rather profitable
monopoly of the bishoprics. The fact of the matter was

touih that the cathedral schools and tneir canons could

t

;‘_4
()(2

not meet the demands being made for education in the XIth

CL

and XIIth centuries. 3y requiring the licentia oeendi,

 

the cathedral chapters were able to provide more education
while at the same time having control over it and gaining
some reve.ue from it. Again, to say simply that the licentia
docendi was a safeguard against doctrinal error is an over-
simplification.

. k’ -

haitre's book, when it was first published over a
century ago, was a remarkable achievement and is still use-
ful. It remains the only serious consideration of the
monastic and cathedral schools during a crucial period in
their history. Today we know much more than Maitre did
about the framework in which that history was made.

One recent specialized article which concentrated
on a particular century, the nefarious Xth century which
Baronius notarized as the age of blood and iron, hinted,
with Laistner, at how that framework has changed. Professor

Luitpold Wallach in his brief contribution to a Symposium

 

on the Tenth Century, entitled "Education and Culture in
w [— o o - 1 o n

the Tenth Century,"43 indicated that perhaps our indices

for measuring the degree of education and culture in any

one period are somewhat in need of revision. The Xth century

 

45Medievalia et Hu‘nanistica, DC (19:35)". 1842.

111
is one which has been traditionally depicted as a cultural
desert by intellectual historians. Yet, as Professor
Wallach pointed out, the true state of affairs, far from
being bleak, was less than dismal and even snowed some
sL fins of advancenent and improvement:
Despite the destruction, wrought by wars, of numerous
seats of learning, and despite the general decline of
culture, the process of education was never comaletely
interrupted. Established schools, monastic, episcopal,
and rural, continued to function everywhere. And new
educational institutions were erected in newly mis-
sionized sections of the Slavic Ea st and in the Sout n
East of Europe. 0
In addition to helping exonerate the Xth century of

" Professor Nallach also

the charge of having been "dark,
indicated a more radical and exeitine developme;t in the
framework within which medieval education had theretofore
been viewed. For generations, medieval education has meant
exclusively the education fostered by the Church. Although
this has been no doubt rightly so, Professor Wallach noted
that this Kind of education, at best, only affected a small
segment of the entire population. Citing recent work by
two German scholarsfl,7 Professor Wallach objected to the
usual conclusion that is often drawn from the realization

of the small impact made by the Church's educational system

on Europe at large:

 

46Ibid.’ 1‘89

 

. . . ll .
47J. Sofer, "Die Differenzierung der romanischen
1 . . . . m -
Sprachen ' Die Sprache: Zeitschrift fur sprachwisser isChaft,
II Q19503, 23-50; J. von wartburg, Die Entstehung der
ro nischer Volker. Tubingen, 1951.

 

 

 

112

 

 

B U the populace illiterate because it lacned
the ixirtiCLLLir tyfiia of (JdLC: Lion s mnnsored.krr the
Church would be in error. After all, the entire Latin
educational s tem zoneais lite a small surierstratum
in1<ased (n1 a image s uLstrattrn of ;Wniuanic :Lid Ge: ninic
pe LJQLS, who by the tLL;un century uosovvnt d Iii tiges

n h1d alreadv produced dmi ing the 43

p

o

d cultures w c ,

e y a literary exnre ssion of tieir wn-
l

i
ceding ce ntur

Although it was an e itist group, educated by he clergy

in the Church schools, which guided the fate of medieval

Europe, an underst aiiding of opu 11a r" education would perhaps

..

go a long) wav toward illuminating a heretofore rather darn

(1

corner of the Middle Ares: the history of the education

C)

1

~ 11
of the huge suostratu

:9

 

0
4“’"Education and Culture in the

1‘3
(D
L)
CL
C5
( D
E .4
I" )
(+-

L.:']I',7,' 200-

CHAPTER III
SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Nien Heumann compiled his bibliography of educa-
tional histories, not one work appeared which had as its
subject any type of educational institution other than the
universities or academies founded during the Renaissance.

In fact, interest in non-university educational institu—
tions is only of comparatively recent date. It is difficult
to account for this neglect, except perhaps to saw that

it simply indicates the lack of interest in the subject.

Of the scores of centers of learning and education, no more
than a handful have been studied at any length-

The schools of Chartres, second only to those of
Paris, have been fortunate in attracting the interest of
several scholars. Chartres warrants such interest. Long
a rival of Paris for primacy among the schools of northern
France, Chartres was an important center of neo—Platonic
and scientific studies.

Chartres found its historian alm’st three ouarters

o

o; a century ago when Jules Alexandre Clerval published

1 ' T, 6 . , 1 +— , . at--.
his hes ecoles e Chartres au moved—
I

are du Ve au XVIe

. \ 1 1 - v v? o a o
Siecles. Cngr es homer nasrins rightly deSignated Clerval's

1

114
ooox as tne best tr eat tment of a nirticrlir cathedral

»i
V

H)

indicated

0)

school and with justifiable pride Clerval him

flous avons couis avec amour touzs les d tails de leur
orsanisation. i: avons rétrouve la trace de leurs
maitres, de leurs eleves, de leurs pro wr tics, de
leurs livres, et nous les avons :nis en lumie Mr avec
tout le soin qui nous a eie possible. nous ne croyons
pas ou' aucune autre ecole ont juspu 'ici une histoire
auss i complete que celle-Ci, plus rcmplie e faits

pre Ccis. 3

O U)
C. (D
U)

\

Until the XIth century, Chartres germinated. Its
schools educated adequately and it would be wrong to say
that the school lay dormant. It did lie however in the

.0

shadow oi its more famous neighbors, Reims and Fleury.

In the world of the cathedral school fame came and went

with a particular master and a school experienced lean or
fat seasons, as it were, depending on the calibre of the men

sacking at the time. Before the XIth century, hartres
had established the groundwork for a fine cathedral school:

IA . . 1‘

elle a ses eveques, ses Chancelliers, ses maitres,

ses étudiants; elle enseigne avec eclat, elle pose ede
outre les livres du ned cine et de chant, tous les

.I . A

auteurs classicues des arts liberaux. Vienne un maitre
éznir nent, et elle est prete a§prendr3 rang, afoote, sinon

au—dessus, des plus grande ts écoles.+

 

1Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1o95. Chartres'
most recent historian, Raymond Klibansky ("The School of
Chartres," Twelfth-C,nuuiy Europe and the Foundations of
Modern Society, edd. Gaines Post, Robert Reynolds, Marshall
Clagett Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1961 ,
3-14) was concerned not wit h the school there but with the
function assigned to science in the worn of Thierry of Che rtres.

2The Renaissance of the Twelfth Centuri, p. 397.
3Clerval, vi.
4Ibid.,

d
D o 24.) 0

4L

. ‘W - r . '1 r .- ‘u , 4" r’ “- I” , " J- n 1 - \ r 1‘ . - 7"“ , .’ r ,-‘ ,- - ~ L» .
Tue Oilllozit thStei‘ Cain: 'uO vuia.l.trds if. 15.--: person of the

-T' / 7-1 1 ‘ "‘ “x “ " I' z‘- Fa I J“ J.” '4‘ . J“ i ‘1
UlldCf EthCTt, Chit. 13:13 8 03:58.;3. L10 aUU.FELCU BULL 31468

from other episcopal centers. Reins especially was

:3
1
l

U)
K J
FJ
H)

fected by Chartres' new found brilliance. Chartres it

was of course affected by the lare2 e numbers of student

U)

who came to study under Fulbert. Clerval, basing his re-
search on contemporary documents, was able to reconstruct
a roster of Fulbert's disciples which included more than
fifty names of scholars who cane from all points on the
compass and as far away as Celogne to study at CMi- rtres.
Chartres' prestige and fame were enhanced under
Fulbert's successor, Ives of Chartres, during the first
half of the XIIth century despite the proximity and at-
traction exercised by Paris' schools. However, unfortun—
ately for the Chartrain 8010018, Paris soon presen ed an
irre sistable attraction for studer ts and b; the second half
of the XIIth century had completely eclipsed Chartres.
The schools at Chartres still remained, of course, but their
role in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages became
secondary to that of the universities: "elles descendent
peu e peu au rang d'éboles locales, prepar rat oires aux
Universités et aux Functions ecclesiastiques."5

Clerval's work was an Keellent cvnpeddium of detail

relating to Chartres and its schools. Because he did not

 

5Ibid., p. 273.

attempt to address his sLJ: y to more funiencntal cuestions
of medieval edJcation - such as the nevement liist to

C

(D

nters like Chartres and then later, and finally, to Paris
:hich played such an important part in the history of all
the sci ools, llS work is 30333 3t inexini Recent studies
have indicated that Cler al's narrowness may have led him
to misinterpret certain 33p=3 cts of C13rtres' history as

an educational center. One such study, Leien C. MacKinney's

, r
ishco Fulbert and Education at the School of ChartresO

A

Lil

demonstrated that Clerval had depended more on legend than
on fact when de scrib ping Fulbert's activities as an edu-
cator.

chool of

U1

In Bish op Fulbert add jii.lcat i011 at the
Chartres, Professor flacKinney proposed to set the record
straight. Fulbert's activities and influence as a teacher
had really been magnified out of true proportion ever since
his contetupor ar ies eulogized him. Clerval with his long
list of Fulbertian disciples was only the last and perhaps
best in a long series of scholars who had attributed to
Fulbert every i.tellect ual advaice in France and the {nine-
land, be it literary, scientific, or theological, during
the XIth century. Professor MncKinney suggested a limited,
if not more realistic, appraisal of Fulbert's importance:

In the interest of historical objectivity, it is well
to differentiate carefully between Fulbert's benign

 

H .3 . ., .
6Q'Texts and Studies in the history of Mediaeval
Education, no. VI) Notre Dame, Indiana: the Mediaeval
Institute, University of Notre D me, 1957.

117

reputation throughout northe n France and his actual
pedagogical activities at Chartres; also between his
general influence as an outstanding bishop and his
teaching of learned subjects. A rigid analysis in
Keeping with the available evidence reveals a Fulbert
whose pedagogical influence was narrower than that of
Gerbert. Fulbert was not the head of an institution

of higher education in the modern sense of the term,

but rather a busy bishop, only a portion of whose
functions were pedagogical. Aside from his enviable
reputation as an episcopal administrator, he was Known
chiefly as an orthodox theologian, and his actual sphere
of teaching influence was limited. There is, we believe,
no valid evidence to the effect that he dominated
educational circts outside the Ile de France, or that

he was necessarily the inspirer of all scientific and
literary achievements of his so-called 'disciples'

in distant regions such as the Low Countries and the
Rhinelands. In many cases he seems to have been

merely the most pious or most famous of several teachers,
and Chartres merely one of several schools that had

a part in the migratory education of a wandering
SChOlaro

Fulbert, then, was more an administrator than a
teacher. The trend in all the schools of the XIth and
XIIth centuries, on the whole, was to relegate the teaching
duties of the cathedral to a Specially designated indivi-
dual. Rarely, at this date, would we find the bishops
personally providing the backbone of instruction in the oath-
edral. There is another sense though in which the bishops
provided education and thus ”taught" and it is this sense
which MacKinney thought more accurately described Fulbert's
role: he was the bishop of Chartres and thus all the acti-
vities of that see might be said to originate from and be
guided by him although he need not have engaged in all the

activities emanating from the cathedral.

 

7ibid., pp. 12-13.

Reims, often Chartres' greatest competitor during
the Kiddie Ages, has been the only other cathedral school
which has received recent study. In two articles devoted
to Reims' schools, Professor John R. Williams unfolded
their XIth and early XIIth century history. In his "The

' he

Cathedral School of Rheims in the Eleventh Century,‘
traced the fortunes of the school in the period immediately
after Gerbert, whom many believe represented the zenith of
educational activity at Reims.8 Gerbert's fame and his

work at Reims might have been expected to carry over some
momentum into the XIth century. However, as Professor
Williams showed, the opposite was more the case. The school
in the XIth century lacked distinction and, in fact, for

the historian becomes an '

'elusive entity."9 For two and

a half decades during the second half of the century,

under the Archbishoprics of Gervase (1055-1067) and Manages I
(1068—1080), the school regained some of its former prestige.
At one point in the early 1070's there were four masters at
Reims - a fact attesting to its renewed vitality. However,
with the passing of the last of these masters the school
again fell back into obscurity. The most probable explan-
ation for this was the already mentioned quirk ofCathedral
school existence: beginning in the late XIth century

potential students for Reims were going instead to Laon

 

Beneouium, XXIX, (1954), 661-677.

91bid., 672-

119
where Anselm and Ralph of Laon lectured until 1117. The
students followed the masters.
Reims flourished once again when Laon lost Anselm
to death and Anselm's most brilliant pupil, Alberic, came
to Reims in the early XIIth century. The period of Al-

beric's magistracy at Reims formed the basis for Professor

-. . . ., . ,. 1v. , , , ,. fl :1 1.-
williams' second study of tne scnools theie. In his The
Cathedral School of Reims in the Time of haster Alberic,

1118-1136,”10 Professor Nilliams again demonstrated his

intimate knowledge of the individuals and history of

Reims schools. Alberic restored to the school some of the

I

lustre it had had under Gerbert and again under the four
masters who taught a half-century after Gerbert. However,
Alberic was interesting to Professor Williams chiefly as

a theologian. As a former pupil of Anselm, Alberic was

the last outpost, the last remnant of the traditional ap—
proach to theology immediately before the advent of Abelard.

As Professor Williams put it, "Alberic was the representative

of an obsolesccnt method."11

For eighteen years at Reims Alberic continued to comment
on divina pagina according to the pattern beoueathed

him by Anselm. The pattern itself was soon to be
altered, yet the interest and enthusiasm he communicated
to his international clientele of students was to prove
an important stimulus to the advancement of theological
scholarship. Miss Beryl Smalley, in her excellent

work on the Bible in the Middle Ages, traces the progress
of theological studies from eleventh century Paris,

to Laon under Anselm, and thence bac: to Paris.

Could it be that the road back to Paris passed through the
Reims of Master Alberic?”12

 

13Traditio, XX (1364), 93—114.

11Ibid., 113.

120

Profes:or fiilliams' answer would be that it did.

So_:ne specific studies have been made of schools
in the post—university period. These studies have con-
centrated for the most part on the colleges wni h :‘ew
up as adjuncts to the universities. One such coll3.e which
has been the object of a scholarly study was Paris' Ave
Maria College. In his history of this institution, §tg-

dent Life in Ave Maria College, Nadia eval Paris: history

 

and Chartulajy of the College,15 Astrik L. Gabriel provided

 

not only a narrative of the college's h story from its
founding but also a general introduction to the Parisian
colleges of the early XIVth century. his study recreated
the studies and pattern of life of the youn3 students of
grammar and the arts who lived at the colle3e. The neighbor-
hood, the ar hitecture of its buildings and its inte‘nal
organization were all pieced together from a variety of
documents.

Gray Cowan Boyce, in addition to investi3atin3
the non- university milieu, ventured into an even more un-
transeled field when he studied the pre-university schools
at Erfurt. In "Erfurt Schools and Scholars in the Thir-

teenth Century,"14 Professor Boyce presented a study both

of the town of Erfurt and its schools. He found in Central

 

12Ibid., 113-114.

1 n . . . - ,, .
3( Publications in Me diaeval studies, no. 14),
Notre Dame, Indiana: T’1lV3"‘lty of Notre Dame Press, 1935.

 

H

1431meu ulun, XXIV, (1949), 1—18.

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QJ

CHAPTER IV
THE UNIVdRSITIES

It has already been indicated that the universities,
peculiarly medieval institutions, have been the major
recipients of scholarly attention since the end of the
Renaissance. This pattern changed little in the period
from 1850 to the present. However, the form that it took
did.

Some works such as Simon Somerville Laurie's 22;
'Rise and Early Constitution of Universities With a Survey

I
of Mediaeval Education1 and Gabriel Compayre's Abelard and

2

 

the

O

7

ri in and Early History of the Universities contained

L

U

much that was already hackneyed in the history of the uni-
versities but, and this indicated that the form of university
histories was changing, they showed some interest in ques-
tions other than the sterile search for a founding date

for the university or the meaningless sermonizing over the
dogmatism of the Church in the early middle Ages.

Laurie's work, essentially a textbook for students

 

1("International Education Series") New York:
D. Appleton and Company, 1891»

| . =‘1 1 1 ' 0 '
('The Great educators") New York: Cnarles Scrib-
ner's Sons, 1893.

122

o—L
I U
\N

of education, has little to recommend it. He did, however,
link the origins of the universities to the rise of the
towns and the hour eoisie although all that this meant
for him was that at long last a secular spirit had risen

3

up against the long dominant clerical orders. Again,

another trenchant point hinted at br Laurie yes that the

U

1

vast cornus of new knowledge which came into tne West from
the East demanded specialization - specialization which
only a university could make effective. In fact, Laurie's

definition of a university rested heavily on the notion

 

of specialization: ”They (the universities] were specialized

schools, as opposed to the schools of Arts, and they were

0

pen to all without restrictions as studia publica or

__.A_

 

generalia, as opposed to the more restricted ecclesiastical

.. _ 4
schools wnich were under a 'Rule.'"

. ., I . . , . . .
In his work, Compayre highlighted the initial

H

D;

. o t . . A . . .
speCializer' in the evelopment Oi the univerSity: Abe—
lard, who more than anyone else differentiated theology

1 . I , .
from philosophy. For Compayre, Aoelard was to be credited

with the founding of the University of Paris or, at least,

U1

with the great intellectual movement" whiCh led to it.

-_ .,l _ w .. ‘ -.
HoweVer, Compavre's endorsement of Abelard as the prime

U

agent in the founding of the university was subject to an

 

3Laurie, pp. 95-97.
4

I‘Di.do, p. 1010

5a

/ .

M}. . ,- i. ,.._ .r 1., , ‘ "1 — ,, 7 Pa.-
oompayimz, Adelxnmi and tum: Orin; laind ne.fl,:;irstorv
..l T“ I O 4— O N _“'_\ V." 1
the JniverSicies, pp. )‘10.

D

Oi

inworta“* lrLl_ILCq21012
Howev,r L pestilt tne role of Abelard oak have b on,
I have no tnouin to attributing to a single nan, or
an individual influence, an acade_7c revolution so
cor sideraole as tlat of the foundation of the u 1i—
V9T°_Jl‘" ogf the Middle Ages. The :nest orillie nt per-
sonality an do n3thing if the so ocie ty i:n which it
finds itself is not propitious, if oiroansuances do
0

not second its action.

CC

ere was a hint of concern for the universities

O

which looked beyond the universities add its masters and
students to the larger context of the Kiddie Ages then-

v o a 1 _ H ‘ . H . ‘ .
selves wnich were ultimately tne true OFl:iflS cf tiose

. . . / - .
institutions. Cenpayre, however, did not expand upon his

T"

cautionary note. his book regailed a competent, though

.1

standard treatment of the universities in the Middle Ages.

H.

A more nportant and inflnential treatment of the

universities we Hastings Rashdall's The Universities of

(J)

 

A i
in

uurope in the Middle Ages7 which first appeared in 1h95.
Rashdall has been criticized for not saying enough and,
also, for saying some things wrongly. Nevertheless, it
has remained the book which everyone consults when beginning

>the study of the medieval universities. The Universities

 

[13

of urope has been re-edited and re—issued since 1895 8,

 

/

0Ibid., p. 24.

7Two volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1395.

am . ..‘ w

ihree volumes. New edition. sdi

Powicke and A. B. Emden. London: Oxford

1936 Professor Powicke best described th

the Oflilflal work:

he oiie f defect of Rashdall's Universities in

l“OUO in the Riddle Ages, to my mind - an inevitaole
t — is that it fails to convey an impression of

Gd by F. M.
live rsity Press,
major fault of

+
U
”7‘7
U
n
A-V

 

but even in its 1995 form, it is a landmark in the history
of medieval edu C3oio on.

The aipearanoe of Rasndall's work owed itself to,

erine worn of

J

(u

and indeed was made possible by, the pion

leinrich Denifle wiose Die Entstehung des Uiivarsitfiten

 

41‘

des hittelalters bis 1-OO (the only volume to appear in
a projected five volume series) and collection of sources

comeiled with the aid of M. Chatelain, Chartularium Uni-

 

versitatis Parisiensis, provided a firm base for Rashdall' s

 

own study. Rashdall went, however, beyond the limits of
university history narrated by Fr. Denifle. Rashdall's
plan was to trace the full history of the three archetypal

universities, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, and to ive

0’3

shorter notic ces of the many national universities which were
founded in the wake of these institutions. In achieving
that plan, Rashdall produce d a concise, readable, and
mature point of departure for the study of the medieval
univs1ty.

At every turn in his work, especially in volume

one which considered the period of origins, Ras hda ll d=e alt

L

 

depth. I mean de pth as a dimension, not as a metaphor
for intee llectua l tiourouM n ss. His picture of medieval
Paris he s extension but not depth. Hence it c cnvey
little sense of coherence, of a closely knit, if tur-
bulent, society actually alive and carried along by
its own impetus. Yet we cannot realise that the signi-
ficance of a medieval University if we do not go be—
yond a classification of its activities and a summary
description of its interests."

"Pr eside ;_1tial Address: Some Problems in the His—
tory of the Medieval University,'" Traiaaqtions of the
Royal Historical Society (F our-u h Sc rie s), XIII (1934),

 

120
the dca,iolov to all the venerable my ths w ich, from the
XVIth century, had accompanied the history of Iueu dieval

universitie

U)

. . ashdall realized that nis book wtxs a pion-
eering effort in its own right9 but could little realize
now extensively his initial effort would aid future his—
torians. The reason for the popularity of his worK lies
primarily in its sheer completeness.

In addition to giving a flat "no" to the tales of
Alcuin's founding of the University of Paris and to res-
toring some perspective to Abelard's true role in the es—
taolishient of that university, Rashdall scve his readers
in one book a detailed history of the major universities,
the national universities of Italy, Spain, France, Germany,
and Scotland, and even, in an appendix, the "paper univer-

sities", while all the wnile maintaining proper perspective

between university history and medieval history at larg.

(0

Despite its er

’3'

ors of omission and commission, the scholar-
ship and magnitude of the enterprise evinced in the ing
Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, make it, especially
as revised, the unsurpassed general history of the uni-
versities.

If there has been any general work which apprcxi-
mates Rashdall's for a broad understanding of the medieval

university, it is Charles Homer Haskins' quite different

 

9The Universities of Europe in th3 Middle Ag.es
T :3 -
(1 95),I , V. ramen I besan to work at the media 3val Uni-
versities no re ally critical book had appeared on the sub-

JG pct as a whole or on any large section of it.

The 3' se of the U iversities. Originally a lecture

 

delivered in 1923, in printed form The Rise of the Uni-

 

versities is of pe;n13hlet len3* tn in comparison to Rashdall's

 

monumental work. Haskins work comes unen umoered with

footnotes and is written in a more pleasing, almost popular

__,‘
—{

style. However, if The Rise of the niversities had none

C

of the weightincss of Rashdall's tomes, it did exhibit
the same scholarly faziliarity with the subject matter.
In some respects, Mask ins' condensation better lends itself
to an understandirg of the university movement than Rashd all's
critical study of origins, constitutions and the like.
This much in a leisurely, pleasant, and small book one
rarely finds.
The unenviable distinction of having produced the
worst general history of the medieval university falls to

Nathan Schachner for his The Mediaeval Universities.11

 

This work is poor not only for the errors of fact and
judgment which the author abounded in, but be cause of his
popular (in the pejorative sense), sleezy, reportorial
approach to the whole topic: an approach which admirably

conveyed the single valid point made by the author, namely

 

1OFull citation, note 17, p. 77 above.

11New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933.
Of this work, Professor Boyce commented (see above, p. 80):
”The work is not worthy of the
space here accorded it, but in educational practice
the bad scholar fitouently needs more attention than
the worth 3y student who follows the rules
MAnerican Studies in ih adieval Education," 11.

125

1 . " ‘5' " “ 1' ". ‘. 4'7 r ‘ * ~r ‘1 s 3" ' r' ’4' r Y . ‘ 'J r . i 1
his lacn oi any nullity and inowledse to wriic a SGFlOJb

4.. .1. -1- ,-J'- . ,..",,,,._,..'... , ,3 - .L .1
treadmunis of the inniieval Lufiifdioltf. KML. chld tn: tempted
‘ V 4‘1- ! . 'v -" - .~ m 1 r." V~.~ ‘r,
to handle this particular work in a sarcastic vein were

it not for the sad fact that such works have provided fuel
for needless tragedy in the past. A bad book is hardly a

topic for humor.

H

Seve al general works have appeared since the Second
World War which have added little to the Listory of the
medieval university. They have, however, by condensing

the findings of scholars such as Denifle and Rashdall,

given that history a wider reading public. Two such general

works deserve mention.

(I!

In 1961, Lowrie J. Daly's The Medieval Univ
12

rsitv

‘u_.

1200-1400 was published. Intended primarily for "college

 

students and teachers the in the course of their work have

need of information about medieval universities,”13 Daly

0

did not attempt a history beyond a general description

\_.I

v

based on the standard texts. Helenr Wieruszowsri's The

(

3 .. . . . . . 14
Medieval University: Masters, StudentsL Learning based
on Rasxdall's and Stephen D'Irsay's work, is in the same

vein as The Medieval University: 1200-1400. Although both

 

were perhaps too general, they did have the advantage of

J

being able to tersely summarize the more prolix findings

 

12New York: Sheed and flard, 1961.
13Ibid., vii.

4 . . . . a
1 ("An AnVil Original”) Princeton: D. Van hostrand
Company, Inc., 1966.

,
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i ersities.

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3Xp335ions oi “epLers of this WUFA. A 33¢ coapter 3ppeered

in 1929 under the title exeqde rIII, the Liceatie Do-

 

of the Unive3sities. The issue of

H.
C0
p
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(f'
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c3‘11d

 

the liccntia was a crucial one in the development of the
univers it, and iLs importance ned o;e: recognized by 1is-
torians other than P30133303 Post. As early as 137$ it
rece ivc d 3 “t3 sive s holarly treLV‘eit from Georges Bour-
boa19 a; 1d in 1931 it orovided the pivot of Louis Halohen's
study of the universities during a crucial period in their

3 .
+~ 3
U

history, the XIII a 031 Lury.

 

 

 

 

 

1:In ALHLVi”"W“” Ess rs in Eeflieevol HisLorv by
SLudents of Charles 1L mer ascins PreseiLec on iis chrletion
of Forty Elxx‘s of T‘lCle{:, edd. Charles Eh ilgihxr and John
L. LamouLe (eosoohz ion“3toa 3133 in Soups y, 1927), 253—477.

131
In his studr of tAe lmt entiate, Post was concerned
to de ternine whrei t1er Pope Alexander III’s ruling on the

lieentia docendi, a ruling which broke the catlro' Md al

 

scholasticus' monopoly of the license, proved a causative

 

factor in the rise of the universities in the XIIth century.
Rashdall had stated that the universities would never

have grown without Alelander's intervention in the matter

of the license.

Professor Post's findings, however, were to the
contrary. The Third Lateran Council's ruling affected only
cathedral schools. Only one university arose from a cath
dral school in the XIIth ce cntury, Paris, and thus this
particular case was the focus for Professor Post's inves—
tigations. At Paris Alexander's decrees had little effect.
Paris was a rich town and trade in the license we 8 pro it-
able. The scholastic, the bisi 10p' 8 educational agent, was
not restricting the distribution of the license before
1179 and thus the pope's liberal decrees were not really
needed at Paris:

The movements of the century were more powerful than
papal decrees, and the intellectual renaissance, what-
ever its causes, resulted in the concentration of
masters and students at Paris in spite of fees for the
licentia doce ndi and lac: of statutes for examinations
of the candidates for the lieer se. The masters were

already a de fa acto corporation when they obtained posi-
tive privileges from the papacy in the thirteenth

n . . I . .. .
20 Les un1vers1 es au XIIIe s1 so le, Revue n1stor1igue,

CLXVI (1930), 216-2381b1_.___c_1_., CLXVII (1933), 1-15.

Another studv of this same crucial period with, however, a

ionewhat different conclusion is P. ILandonnet, O. P., "La

lrise scolaire au debut du XIIIe siecle et la fondation de
ordre de sfreres—prech oeurs,‘l Revue d'Histoire eclesiosti ue
XV (1914 4°), 34- 49.

H

 

152
century..... ..In a word, the teachers at Paris de-
veloped into an organization, into the University of
Masters without privileges, in spite of minor hindrances
such as fees and the qualification of competency, as
a result of the advantages offered by the city and of
the intellectual and guild movements of the twelfth
century.. In his regulation of the lieentia docendi
Alexander III did not directly influence either ad-
versely or favorably the rise of the University.‘

In another article, "Master's Salaries and Student-
Fees in the Mediaeval Universities,”22 Professor Post examined
yet another implication of the papal decrees affecting education.
Agate,w1th. the question of whether the masters were pro-
hibited by the Church from charging for their services,
Professor Post found Church legislation to be of minimal
import.. The ultimate source of the master's livelihood remained
fees collected from their students despite some theological
arguments to the effect that God's wisdom could not be an
object of commerce.

Pearl Kibre's attention has been directed to the or-
ganizational aspects of the medieval university. In a series
of works published by the Mediaeval Academy of America,
Professor Kibre presented an erudite and comprehensive exam-
ination of the basic elements of university structure.. One

of these elements, the "nations" within the universities was

the basis of a study in 1948. In The Nations in Mediaeval Uni-

 

21"Alexander III, the Licentia Docendi and the Rise
of the Universities,"’275-275.

 

32speeu1um, VII (1932), 181-198. Another study of the
legal-constitutional aspect of university history contributed
by Professor Post, "Parisian Masters as a Corporation," ibid.,
IX (1954), 421-445, was unavailable to me.

133

versitie.23 Professor Kibre illumined the solution which

 

arose in the university community to some of the problems
attendent upon a large university grouping of students and
masters from various lands. The system that evolved was
that of the nations or the semi-autonomous associations
of masters and students grouped according to national
origin. It is this particular institution-within-an-
institution which Professor Kibre's study examined and
while it overwhelms one with detail and its almost mech—
anical view of the medieval university, this study, never-
theless,accomplishes its aims and is essential for an under-
standing of this particular facet of the university.
Professor Kibre's study of the nations was followed
by an investigation of the special status accorded scholars
throughout the Middle Ages. This second study of the
”rights, priviliges, and immunities” guaranteed all modern
diploma bearers maintained the high degree of scholarship
and comprehensiveness evinced in the earlier study. A
good introduction to Scholarly Privileges in the Middle
Ages: the Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of Scholars
and Universities at Bologna, Paris and Oxford24 is the
earlier ”Scholarly Privileges: Their Roman Origins and

1125

Medieval Expression. This article contained in germ the

 

23("Mediaeval Academy of America Publications,”
no. 49), Cambridge, Massd Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948.

24("Mediaeval Academy of America Publications,"
no. 72), Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1962.

134

conclusions of the later, longer work. Aside from indie
eating that scholars throughout Lestern history have enjoyed
some kind of Special status and prefe‘ential treatment
(at least in theory), Professor Kibre showed that these
privileges and immunities were largely determined by the
social exigencies of the times. Grants of privileges to
scholars were given in answer to specific requests and thus
no generalization, beyond this one, is possible. More than
anything else perh ps, a study of the privileges and grants
made to the scholars indicates that the universities were
not really separate entities revolving in an orbit all their
own. The medieval scholar as a representative of a unique
social class was defined in terms of the exigencies of
his lived situation. In giving emphasis to that situation,
and the responses made to it, as detailed in both the article
"Scholarly Privileges: Their Roman Origins and Medieval
Expression" and Scholarly Privileges in the Middle Ages,
Professor Kibre has made a stimulating and intelligible
contribution to our Knowledge of university life.

Some studies of the university have bordered on
the antiquarian. Dorothy Louise Macxay published a note
in 1932 of what must be the first record of a university's
attempt to recruit a student body. In her "Advertising a

. . . 26 ,
Medieval Un1vers1ty," she brought the attention of the

 

25The American Historical Review, LIX (1954), 543-567.

25Ibid., XXXVII (1932), 515-516.

155

scholarly world to a previously unknown letter which was
circulated by Charles I (who revived and enlarged the
University of Naples) in 1272 to the universities of Paris
and Orleans with the intention of attracting students and
masters from these places to come to Naples. In a some-
what longer article, R. J. Mitchell, after combing through
the fifteenth century records of the University of Bologna,
produced a chronological listing, without comment or con—
clusion, of fifty English law students present at Bologna
during that century.27

Before closing this section on the medieval uni-
versities, some mention is due those works which have es—
pecially focused on the University of Paris. While there
are not a great many works which have concentrated on Paris'
university, it should both be noted that Paris has received
the lion's share of the general literature and that what
studies have been made of a particular university in recent

years have been made almost exclusively of the University

2

CO

of Paris.

 

27"English Law Students at Bologna in the Fifteenth
Century," he English Historical Review, LI (1936), 270-287.

9

20Only one recent work has been encountered which
had as its subject a university other than that at Paris.
Cyril Eugene Smith's The University of Toulouse in the
Middle Ages: its Origins and Growth to 1500 A. D. (Mil-
waukee: The Marquette University Press, 1958) is an ex-
cellent study of a somewhat unique university. Unlike
other XIIth and XIIIth century universities, Toulouse can
point to the date and circumstances of its foundation.
The date was 1229 and the circumstance was the Treaty of
Paris which ended the wars against the Albigensian heretics.
Explicit provision was made in the treaty to establish
fourteen masters at Toulouse as a bastion of orthodoxy in

156

\)

Calling attention to a negleCted as ect of that

university, Charles Gross undertook to recount the political

influence exercised by the university in the Middle Ages.

0 + J.‘ _ ‘ ' t A. .1" , H 1. 7,- '
It 1s to be regretted that his snort article, The P011-

tical Influence of the University of Paris in the Middle

FJC

r not ng

(L)

1ges,"39 did not £111 the gap he indicated. Aft
that the University of Paris enjoyed a political role un-
paralleled by the Italian, German, and English universities

and that the "learned doctors of France"

seemingly preferred
party strife to scholastic disputation and, further, that
the University acted as an organ of state at times rather
than as a school of learning,30 Professor Gross confined

his remarks to a two decade period in the university's
"medieval” history: the years 1405-1422 during which time

gles between the

O

the reign of Charles VI witnessed strug
Burgundian and Armagnac factions. His account of the
University's political role was, at that, somewhat vague

and generalized. One wonders whether the University even
had a political function when Professor Gross noted that

the chief reason for its political.' activity during Charles

VI's reign was because Charles himself was cuite mad and

 

Langue-doc, the former Albigensian stronghold. Thus, the
University of Toulouse was the first "ma;-made" institution

of its kind: ”Before the thirteenth century it had apparently
not occurred to kings and princes that institutions of

higher learning could be artificially propagated." (32).

‘Th: American Historical Review, VI (1901), 440-445.

1U
\
J

(

3OIbid., 44o.

157
because the realm was split asunder by factional strife.
Did the University exercise political influence only during
such periods of national debilitation (which would indicate
that its political influence was of a limited, temporary
sort) or was the University in some manner politically
influential throughout its history? Better yet, we might
ask as to the nature and extent of the political influence
of all the universities as well as of that at Paris. The
lacunae in our knowledge of this aspect of medieval edu-
cational history yet remains.

A stimulating and subtle study of the Parisian
milieu which had important ramifications for the understand-
ing of the intellectual tradition of the West was Mary M.
McLaughlin's "Paris Masters of the Thirteenth and Four-

"31

teenth Centuries and Ideas of Intellectual Freedom. For
many the mere mention of intellectual freedom during the
Middle Ages is an anomaly. However as Professor McLaughlin
demonstrated in her article, it was a lively issue to the
men at Paris in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. Essentially,
the question of intellectual freedom at Paris during those
centuries revolved about the key issues which had been
raised throughout the Middle Ages: the conflict between
faith.and reason, the pursuit of "truth” as opposed to the

'Wlight of reason,‘ the autonomy of philosophy from theology,

‘the relationship between science and metaphysics. However,

 

31Church History, XXIV (1955). 195-207.

for certain masters

£0

t Paris these issues were no longer

theoretical considerations. Actively engaged as teachers

of large numbers of students, their notion of intellectual
freedom developed from their preoccupation with their
functions as ttachers.32
The choice which the master had to make was one
between philosophy and theolOgy, two branches of knowledge
which in the universities were rapidly redefining them-
selves. Men such as Sigcr of Brabant, John Buridan and
Peter Olivi chose philosophy. But this choice was not
simply one between two academic disciplines. The choice
to follow the light of reason wnerever she might lead
rather than to pursue an already established truth was made
on the ground of "the right of the teacher to discuss his
materials regardless of their truth."53 The appeal was
made not to the subjective notion of an individual's righ
in conscience to discuss whatever he willed, but rather to
the objective notion that his function as a teacher intel-
lectually demanded that he discuss matters contrary to

' Thus, intellectual freedom in XIIIth and XIVth

”truth.'
century Paris did not represent the acceptance of heretical
opinion or the endorsement of free-thought. Truth was

not abandoned wholesale for reason. Rather, men who still

clung to the faith and continued to uphold it fought for

the freedom and liberty of the teacher, the freedom and

 

321bid., 195-

 

33Ibid., 199..

139
liberty to go beyond the ”truth” as it were. This freedom
eventually led not only to accentuated emphasis on reason
but to an entirely new intellectual trend in the West.
As the teaching of John Buridan exemplified, the texts of
Aristotle were no longer the limits of human Knowledge.
Instead, man's reason was now trained on ”the whole moving

I
universe."34

 

34Ibid., 20C. (A final though less pertinent
study of Paris was H. C. Barnard's interesting "The Mes-
sageries of the Universit; of Paris," British Journal of
Educational Studies, IV 1955], 49-56. “Messageries”
were the pos -men of the medieval who answered the needs
for communication between the university and the scholars'
home—towns.)

 

CHAPTER V
LITERACY AND THE QUESTION OF LAY INSTRUCTION

Thus far, we have been concerned mainly with the
educational opportunities available to Churchmen of one
sort or another. But what of the laity? were they con—
demned to a condition of general ignorance as a superficial
examination of medieval education led many to believe?

Or were the laity educated to some degree? The question
of the intellectual status of this "huge substratum" of
medieval society is an important and fascinating one.
However, the question has not been studied in a manner
fully equivalent to its complexity. For the most part,
the criteria that have been used to define an educated
laity have been much the same as those used to define a
typically educated medieval cleric. This is no doubt a
valid procedure, but the question immediately raises it—
self as to the possibility of any kind of education other
than that in the Latin tradition. One wonders whether the
ability to read and write Latin was necessarily the only
hallmark of an educated person in the Middle Ages. For
many, facility with Latin has been the chief pivot upon
which the discussion of education offered to the laity in

'the Middle Ages has turned. Perhaps, though, there is a

140

141
broader aspect to the question of popular education.
In an address before the International Congress of
Historical Studies in 1913 entitled Monastic Schools in

the Middle Ages, G. G. Coulton asxed the basic question

 

whether the monasteries extended their instructional acti-
vity to those beyond their walls, that is, to the laity.1
Over three centuries of historical scholarship had created
what Coulton thought to be a false picture of the monxs as
educators. The monastic schools had come to be viewed as
the bedrock educational institutions of the Middle Ages
from which the universities developed. In truth, though,
very few instances can be found of monastic education
offered to those other than the monastery's oblates. It
was a rather exclusive affair with only two general ex-
ceptions to the monastic strictures against the education
of "outsiders". In a missionary situation, the monks Kept
school primarily for young heathen nobles. Secondly, the
:nonasteries often received king's sons whom they educated
and returned to the world. Beyond these exceptions, the
educational work of the monasteries in the world was prac-
tically nil,

But, apparently, the laity became educated in some
fashion. In a doctoral dissertation prepared at the Cath-
olic University of America, Patrick Joseph McCormick ex—

:amined "the nature and extent of the provisions made in the

 

1("Viedieval Studies," no. X) London: Simpkin,
Pharshall, Hamilton, Kent, and Co., Ltd., 1913.

142
early Kiddie Ag;s for t‘h e education of the laity.
provisions for lay education revealed themxselves to Father

" for education open to those

McCormick as "possibilities
not preparing; for the clerical or religious life. That
there actually was a program of lay education which availed
itself of these poss ilities was not demonstrate d in
Father McCorxick' s somewhat general study. The work itself
relied heavily on secondary works and while it covered the
principal educational centers during each medieval century,
it shed no new light on the study of lay education.

Definite proof of lay education of some sort was

exhibitied in James Nestfall Thompson's The Literacy of

 

the Laity in the Middle Ages.3 Literacy was defined by
Thompson as "the knowledge and use of the Latin langua age. "4
Using this criterion, it was with ease that Thompson proved
the widespread belief in medieval lay illiteracy to have
been a gross exaggeration. His book was a veritable cata-
lo. gue of literate medieval laymen who could read and write
Latin. Most of these men were nobles. While Thompson was
not concerned to account for their literacy, he did es-

tablish the framework within which the future discussion of

lay education was to re main.

 

_ 2Education of the Laity in the Early Middle A as
(Washington, D. C.: The Catholic Education Press, 1912), p. 5,

3("University of California Studies in Educat ion,"
vol. 9), New York: Burt Franklin, 1960.

41

0‘

id., v.

 

143

A key element in that discussion was contributed
by Henri Pirenne who in this instance, as in others, exhibited
his provocative scholarship. His article, ”De l'état de
l'instruction des laiques a l'epooue merovi;gienne,”5 was
another argument within the whole fabric of his famous thesis,
the ”Pirenne thesis.” For Pirenne, the Middle Ages really
began during the reign of the Carolingians when Europe was
cut off from the East by the advance of Islam. Until

that point, Europe had retained its "romanitas.' However,

 

after this epoch, Europe, thrown on its own resources,

defined itself no longer according to "romanitas" but

 

according to criteria peculiarly medieval. Whereas Roman
Europe until the VIIth century was urban and commercial,
medieval Europe was rural and agricultural. All sorts of
contrasts were possible which indicated a radical break

in the history of Europe during the period between the
times of Mohammed and Charlemagne. In addition to charting
the levels of gold and papyrus which came into the West
before and after the Islamic invasions, Pirenne pointed

to a violent change in the whole complexion of society which
he could observe occuring between the Merovingian and Caro-
lingian periods. Merovingian society, like that of Rome,
was predominantly secular in nature; Carolingian society

was more religious and less laic than that of its prede-

cessor. Carolingian society was medieval.

 

Baevue Benedictine, XLVI (1934), 165-177.

144

was the relative amount of lay

C)

One proof of thi
education in Carolingian and Merovingian times. Pirenne
believed that education under the Carolingians had become
the monopoly of the clerical class:

A part d'infimes exceptions, on peut dire que du
. .\- w .L' .- .
Ike au XIIe Siecle, non seulement la formation intel-
. A . .
lectuelle mais meme la Simple pratique de la lecture
1’..-_. .1.o I
et de l eeriture n eXisterant plus en denors du clerge
et cela au point hue dans toutes les langues euro-
peenes le me "clerc"/a fini par designer celui qui
sait manier la plume.O
The contrast between this state of affairs and that of the
Merovingian period Pirenne held to be marked. Instruction
rather than being concentrated in the hands of the clergy
was widespread among the Merovingian laity. This indicated
a secular spirit in Merovingian times and thus the survival
of the Roman spirit in Western Europe. There certainly
was illiteracy in the Merovingian state among the laymen,
but the more important fact of Merovingian history and
society for Pirenne was the existence of an antique lay
spirit in that society as exemplified by the comparative
prevalence of lay education.

Pirenne's entire explanation of the origins of the
Middle Ages has been challenged on its many fronts. While
not attaCking the ”Pirenne thesis" as a whole, Pierre Hiche
took the opportunity in 1962 to cuestion Pirenne's portrait
of lay education in the post-invasion period. The title of

- ’1 4- N 1 1 1- -
iiiche s study, Recnercnes sur 1 instruction de

Llaics du IXe au XIIe sie‘cle"7 In addition to proving that

 

6Ibid., 165.

145
there were more educated laymen during the IXth, Xth, and
XIth centuries, than the infimes exceptiors noted by
Pirenne, Richd introduced a new concept to the study of

medieval lay education.

,3

In studying the Lives of t_e saints and other

w\

personalities of this period, Rich. uncovered some in-
direct evidence of lay instruction: the hagiographer or
biographer "sans le vouloir il se fait historien de la

8 - . . 1.
" In these various lives we read of many cnildren

culture.
who received the rudiments of an education from their
parents or from an individual instructor within the com-
munity: The lives of Abelard and Guibert de Nogent re-
vealed two famous instances in which children were in-
structed by their parents. Apparently, then, there was
some form of instruction among the laity in the Carolingian
and post-Carolingian period.

A more crucial point made by Richa,jhowever, was
his re-interpretation of the traditional formula used to

describe the intellectual status of the laity during the

post-Carolingian centuries: laicuszillitteratus. The

 

laity were certainly illiterate - but they were so in their
own terms and, thus, not necessarily uninstructed:

Dans le vocabulaire classique, illitteratus sig-
nifie celui qui ne connait pas ses lettres, l'anal-
phabdte. Il est done synonyme d'idiota. Or aFla fin
du XIe et au XIIe siecle, ce mot prend un sens parti—

 

 

7Cahiers de civilisation mgdievaleLXe-Xlle sidcles,
v (1962), 175-182.

 

8Ibid., 177.

 

culier; illitteratus, c'e st ce ii i tii n' est pas 9
étudié la li.‘ re‘io; c 'est a dire la beanieiie latine.

 

‘I 1..
C

To say tna~ a layman was illiterate in this "cried, as the

sources frequently do, meant more that he did not have

John of Salisbury's education than it did that he had no
education. It meant that he had no access to Latin letters,
not th' at he had no access to learning. This alization

has forced historians to revise their notions concerning

, , . o 1 l ‘ 0
10 What is needed now, Ricne wrote, is a

lay education.
more general work which studies the laity and its role in
society in light of this new realization of its intellectual
status during the High Middle Ages. Perhaps the most im-
porta nt instruction in the Middle Age s was given to the

clerics in the Latin tradition; perhaps the most signi-

ficant instruction for the Middle Ages was given to the laity.

 

9ibid., 180.

1OJean Gimpel in a stimulating cultural history in-

dicated that there was more intellectual affinity between
the medieval la ayman and the lett-ered individual than there
is today between the "inte llectual" and the so- -calle d 'Wian-
in-the-street.H Aft er describing the significance of
ti 1e frescoes and stained glass windows in cathedrals as
educational devices and not me rely as works of art as we
are prone to view them, M. Gimpe l noted:

Ce cui rend cette Epocue émouvante et harmonieuse, c'est

Que l'homme lettre et le peuple avaient le meme livre

d'images; ils avaient regu la méme education, la seule

differ rence e ant une difference de degre. Quelcues

siables plus tard, il en va autrement. L'homme lettre

de la Renaissance, en cultivant a al'e x ces l'antiouite,
va faire scdpter et peindre de s scenes mythologiques
absolum'e nt incomprehe nsibles au peuiile L' introduction

des humanites va couper, pour plusiers sie cles, le peuple
des gens lettres; cette coupure ne s'e st pas complete-
ment refermee aujourd’hui en Europe occidentale.
Les batisseurs de catherrales ("Collections microcosme:
les temps qui court," no. 11; Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1958), p. 49.

CONCLUSION.

The general pattern which has emerge from the
above review of historical scholarship on the subject of
medieval education almost escapes characterization. Much

ve and stimu-

H.

of what has appeared has been both percept
lating. Much, though has been poor, redundant, or simply
beside the point. Then, too, although historical scholar-
ship has been weighed in favor of the universities, there
has been much diversity in the material we have examined.
Yet, through all of this, through the good and the not so
good, through all the various aspects of medieval education
which have come under scholarly scrutiny, one characteristic
has seemed to emerge. To use Professor Powicxe's phrase,

it has lacked ”depth."

In concluding this study, I would like to discuss
somewhat further this lack of depth which is characteristic
of the generality of historical work on medieval education
and to mention several worts indicative of a fresh approach
to and a deeper understanding of medieval education.

The study of medieval education has manifested its
lack of depth by its superficiality. Somehow, despite
much good work which has been done, one receives the im-

enred the deewer

.L

O)

pression that only rarely have historians

undercurreits influencing and shaping the various forms that

1 48

149
edtcation took in the fiiddle Ages. But, one mignt inter—
ject, were there really ”deeper undercurrents" anyway,
and if there were, what were they? The answer to this
question resolves itself in a fundanental belief that man
only partially creates his own history. Much of man's
history is already created for him anc it is his creati‘e,

.L.

sometime accidental, shaping of that underlying history

0)

that results in history in the total significance of that
concept. Man does not find himself placed in a nothing-
ness out of which he defines himself and fashions his
history. Rather, man is placed in a world and it is in
interaction with that world, accepting some of it, re-
jecting some of it, moving all the while with it, that
man's history is created. Man in dialogue with the world
is history. Abelard removed from the very unique world

and set of circumstances in which he movedeecomes an
historical cipher. His importance, and our understanding
of his importance, lies in the fact that Abelard found
himself in a very particular world in which he wrote a
particular chapter in history by hk;reaction to that world.
Similiarly, medieval education did not develop in a void
but was party to a whole set of other developments which
Characterized the Middle Ages. These other developments,
social, political, economic, demographic, ideological,

were the underlying currents which fashioned and influenced
medieval education and which have been largely igrored by

historians.

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nstitution's

(1
Ho

birth of the universities, and have, in tza
later years, dissected it in order to undersjand it work-
invs and machinations. Almost all of this has been done
within a vacuum, or at least with n the confines of the

.‘

‘articuln 1r u'n ivers ity or school studied. what is ne we d

’11

is a broader, more fundamental abbrcach to medieval education.

Professor F. N. Powicxe s Presidential Addr ess
before the Royal historical Society hes already been alluded
to in conjunc. ion with the remarns he made cor cerning

tie stings Rasridall' rne UniverSitiee of Europe in the

h" 1 1 1 a w
Middle Ages. In that same address, Professor POWlCKG

 

1

‘torv of the

\J

t

noted that among the chief problems in the hi.
me die val university, and here we might ad in the history

of medieval education in general, has teen the failure of

)-<—‘

listorians to consider the university as a social structure
within the context of medieval society. The omiss ion of
the university as such was most glaring, for Professor

Powicke, in Ernst Troeltsch's Die Soziallehren der Christ-

 

lichen Lirchen in which no mention of hat institution occurred.
In his address, Professor Pcwicie called for a

anulti-dimensional understandinr

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vltv and place 13 tn3 313113 Adyd. one 13V3l 31 1333 uneer-
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standing has hinted at in otodnen D Irsay s bfisdt‘ilt oi
_ 'J

 

he early mistcry of the universities. D'Irsay's book,
I I
”lStOlTE dos u11versites frengaises 3t OCL“QSVF”” dos
\
{j o I v 0 .
origines a5nos jeurs,‘ should be read in conJunction With

 

Rashdall's volumes on the universities. Where Rasndall is

more compl3t3 and factual than D'Irsay, D'Irsa, comeense tes

for the deficiencies of 3 l3r 31y factual account. Un-
fortunately, D'Irsay studied the cathedral and ma nastic

centers as "les ecoles preuniv)“"1t31133,” but his treat-
ment of the orL ins of t1e uiiversity *0731 11 remains
nevertheleesstimulating and sug~est1v3.

For D'Irsay, the history of the universities reveals
itself under two aspects: as an idea and as an institution.
The history of the origins of the universities is that of
an idea becoming institutionalized. Indeed, to become

organized is the fate of all movemenJSOf thought.

. I A
Le destin commun de toute pensee est d etre on amnee
4-. ‘0 , d .
au mutism me, afimoins du'elle n3 puisse se realiser dans
les hpe” nces t1t5"1Olls; on n3 voit la lumiere cue

per son reflet sur 1' oojet eclaire.

L'histoire de universités est un aspect de cette
mCme venture, somere, et part3 ant glorieuse de cette
transiormation de l' idee solite ire en pensee commune,
ors31isee, c'est l'nistoire d3 l'ame cherchant 3
s 'exprime r 3 travers la matiere brute, la seconant,
la suojugant. Dans les universites . . . i'esprit
hunain, toujours impatient de se donner, a trouvc un
moyen admirable d'expression et de propagation.

This somewhat ethereal account of the university

2Two volumes. Paris: Editions Auauste Picard, 1935.

L.)

" 1»? --x .
3i2£§°2 vol. I: 'hoyen Age et xenaissance " 1.

1 . - r ‘— ~ «0 - i. r A. w ‘4‘ .- < ~~~ ‘ “ tr \ .' r' , J“ 7:. ~ ‘ ‘ '. ‘ ’ '\ ‘ C .
as an aspeco oi the 33331 spirit o3Co i”: the dllefJi'J
.- r~< r)“ ' "*‘4‘314’1V‘L’orv K ‘3 “ "r1 )0 m “ “-3 ‘3 m“. "\ 'r‘fi"l r V“ D' I'r-erzr
' .3 all L74.) 3 __ u u. L; 3. J31 L) "3 C Lin-J3 L) ;..U i -:, 31’, 73..-; 3.13:1" I. L: flirt, il a .73.th

‘ . a u 0 w n _ _ ’ _ _‘ ‘_ V .
ed tyne 13v elenmxrt in this gnwx33ss of H;R%:L3F and

\4

greater centralization. The pre-university certeis of
learning geie witness to the fact that learnie~ and Knew-
e in the High Middle Ages were vitally linked to

another centralizin: tendency, urbanization:

Les villes attirent 3u 3 peu les HEIGT‘S et la jaun-
esse; la vie necllic ue lle s3 dev Sleppe surtcut dans
des ceitres mnoitants: Metz et “oissehs, Tours et
O‘lecns, Utrecht et Idxfiy3, Chartres, Reins et Paris.
Ces villes sont >1 Etroite i3terde,endenc les migrL-
tions d'erudits attCIgnent des proportions de plus en
plus grandee et le nonde scolaire pr r3s3nte dfjé C3‘*e
uniformitC ca racteristicue qui le distinguer jusou' au

.(T

XIVe siecle. La vie intell ctuelle ne peut pas sub-
sister seule; la vie litteraire, politique, et QOe
la vie d' affa;i£es par tiCipent au developpement de

la vie urbaine.

\

.3.

Thus, the educational and inte lle tua movements of

the la tcr Middle Ages defined themselves in a particular

’

ambiance, that of the cities. Nowhere can this relationship
between intellect and urbanization be better seen tlm n in
the career of Abelard. In his wonderful essay on Abelard,

Johan Huizinga brought together all th e forces which moti-

f} I ' O 5 ‘ O .
vated and formed Aoeiard's milie Lu. The resulting portrait

Huizirga drew of tlie XIIth century, a portrait of ”new

forms of me ntal activity and social lif surpassed that

b
O

of Charles Hem r Haskins" The Ronr e of the Twelfth

‘LLJ'

1338

,_ J

A

enturv with its emphasis on the re-birth of classical

 

 

 

oid., I, 51.

 

iv”

, Men and Ideas: Historv, the
ance, pp. 17c—195.

153
forms. For Huizinga nothing really was reborn: HIt was
a ripening, a coming of age." As such, the XIIth century
was characterized by unrest, turbulence, and disturbance.
Into that age came Abelard, himself a turbulent figure.
Abelard came to the cities. In the cities were

the schools and in the schools were the only places where
men, essentially like Abelard, could exercise their pro-
fession. In this world which was coming of age and at
the same time grappling‘ with the new—found learning of
antiquity which was coming into the West in a larger and
larger stream, remcndous prestige was the reward of the
man who dedicated himself to teaching:

In a more primeval society the word falls on a virgin

soil thirsting after fecundity, it convinces and commands,

it banishes and binds, in short, it effectuates. The

authority of the few masters who have a command of it

is extraordinarily great. Every master is more or

less of a wonder. He Knows, he has secrets that he

will reveal to us if we propitiate him.0

The link between these masters and the cities formed

a social class unique in history: the intellectual. The
intellectual was a thinker by trade. He was an artisan
of the things of the mind and it was in the cities that
he was born and in which he plyed his trade. Jacques Le
Goff, in order to emphasize the significanee of the re—
lationship between the urban and intellectual movements

of the XIIth century, began his fascinating study, Les

. A . . I. .
intellectuels au moyen age, With the words, ”Au deout ll

 

 

 

154
y eut les villas."7

In the beginning the intellectual needed two
things: he needed to teach and he needed the ambiance that
the cities provided in order to teach. He was no longer
a monastery or cathedral scholastic, but an ”intellectual”

hose livelihood was his teaching ability. Abelard, the
"first professor”3 was the type of this class and in a
way he was the leavening ingredient which gave rise to this
unique, city-oriented group.

In time, the intellectuals abandoned teaching for
the comforts of patronage, abandoned the cities for the
country, in a word, abandoned the life of a ”universitaire”
for that of a humanist. While they taught in the schools,
however, medieval education underwent a radical change.
This change can only be understood in light of the complex
of forces which led to the formation of the intellectual.
These forces manifested themselves in the rise of the cities.
The growth of the cities, in turn, was symptomatic of the
ouickening tempo and expansion of adivity on several
fronts. By their cognizance of these developments which
are intimately linked to the history of education, D'Irsay,
Huizinga, and Le Goff point to a more rewarding treatment
of this particular period, the XIIth century, in medieval

intellectual history.

 

7("Collections microcosme: les temps cui court,"
no. 3; Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957), p. 9.

CD

Ibid., p. 40.

U1
KR

Might not this broader perSpective be applied to
earlier periods? would it not be fruitful to attempt to
relate the broader movements of history, the sociological,
the economic, the demographic, to the history of education
and ideas in periods other than the High Middle Ages?

Thus far little work has been done to correlate the effect
on education that movements of new kinds of people into
the schools with new kinds of ideas born of a changing
milieu had. It was these movements which produced the
culture that is characteristic of the High Middle Ages -
movements which were in process before the XIIth century
and which would, one might suppose, have had their first
intellectual impact in the schools.

The best general guide to an understanding of
medieval education within the larger context of the Middle,

Ages is the co-operative work by G. Pare, A. Brunet, P.

 

. . . \ I
Tremolay entitled, L3_renaissance du XIIe s1ecle: les scales

at l'enseignement.9 In recasting G. Robert's earlier Les

 

’ I l u 1
ecoles et l'enseggnement de la theologie pendant la pre-

 

' ’ 1 o \ 3
miere mdtie du KIIe Siecle, the authors toon advantage of

the progress which had been made during the twenty year
interval between the appearance of Robert's work and their
own in the history of civilization and in economic and

social history in order to correct the "unreal” and "de-

formed abstraction" that the history of education, studied

 

H ‘ ' ' 4-3 _ ' 1 . - 1 o
' 93 Publications de l'Institut d'ntudes Medievales
d Ottawa, no. III), Paris: Libraire Philosophieue, J.

Vrin, Ottawa. Institut d'Etudes Medie‘ales, 993.

156

apart from civilization as a wnole, had become.10 Their

enterprise was both a success and a good indication that

the pulse of medieval education could better be felt by
taking account of the world outsi e he schools. As new
economic and social conditions imposed themselves on
medieval society, the schools reacted in their turn. Ho-
where could this better be seen than in the development

of the cathedral school which was in a real sense the inter-
mediary between the monastic school and the university:

On peut pr5voir ouels deplacements geographicues des
centres culturels vont suivre pareils movements sociaux,
et il sera ais e d ooserver le transfert des ecoles
et de leur attirail, des monasteres aux centres urbains:
leur prosperitfi suivra la prosperite de la ”commune"
Mais ce n'e st la cue le signe exterieur de la trans-
formation spiritue lle Car, en s'ouvrant aux classes
nouvelles, ’ecole et culture vont changer d'ésprit, en
cha1geant de po ulation. sprit d' insatiable et
audacieuse curiosite, y compris dans le doma ine des
disciplines sacrees, malgré la resistance des reformes
monastio_ues; esprit d' indépendence, qui ouvre a
l' etudiant, oue la regle d' obeiss ance ne lie plus, les
ecole s du ma1tre de son choix, et l'incite a>la li—
berte des opinions e1 meme temps eu' aux turbulence s
de la rue; esprit seculier, sinon laic-—car tous ces
gens sont evidemnent des “clercs"-—, qui laisse libre
cours a§leurs gouts litteraires et detache leur re-
gherche scientifioue d'une tutelle religieuse indiscréte;
sprit de concurrence et d'association a la fois, car
les ma1tres seront sujets aux rivalites, aux jalousies,
aux discussions passionnees sur la place publique, en
meme emps ou'ils sentiront peu a peu la necessité de
s'entendre pour tenir leurs droits et privildges, y
compris contre les ”bourgeois," dont ils emanent.
Nous sommes cidement sor tis du mone astdrs.

The monastery schools were left to their rural

isolation and the episcopal schools in turn gave way to

_

1OIbid., p. 7.

 

11Ibid., pp. 20—21.

157

the universities. Each of these transitions in m1dieval
education marked a transition within the Kiddle Ages it-
self. The understanding of these transitions in the1selve s
and in relation to other tra11sitions :in medieval education
would be more intelligible than heretofore if approached
in the manner suggested by the few works noted here.

Throughout this study several areas of investigation
have suggested themselves which, if examined, give promise
of illuminating these important transitions in medieval
culture and education. The approach typified by the few
works mentioned above can generally be esignated as the
"sociocultural" approach to historical movements. Un-
fortunately as the above works indicate, this approach when
applied to the hiddle Ages has generally been reserved
for the late or High Middle Ages. The sociocultural per-
Spective has largely been trained on tM1o e more spectacular

achievements of the Middle A es (e.g., the rise of the

CG

universities, the revival of towns, trade, and urban life
in general, the early development of the intelle al as
a new social group) with which our modern world finds it-
self more prone to identify. Granted thatthis certainly
is an important and exciting development in historical
scholarship and that much yet remains to be done in tiese

I J, 2 ~ 0
specific areas of la medieval culture,1 the ouest1on

7‘

.L

h

(V
Cr
Ha
d“

t

e is a nee d for more
e worms cited above

ial movements and

do they go beyond

:34
(D

1a
1‘

\

J

(n.

12Hotably, one sense
detailed stud bias of these matt‘
empha asize the relationship between s
cultural-intellectual trends but rar»

J

C
U}
'1.

O

U

N

("A
v

v
‘1

(

,er}
13's
J‘ " ' ‘ "*' *" ’ 2 r‘! ‘ " r " i 1‘1 _‘
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fi f f” V‘ ' ~" I“. /‘ 'n I" . “ .1 "' ‘I ‘ 'i
e1p1oyau lot tn: sctu c1 ,afli,f periods. ”1,-1 1st 1

sociocultural study of an earlier par'cd in medieval

history prepare us to understan- the accomplishuents of

that more spectacular Woricd, tee XIIth a d Xillth centuries?
One area of study seems to es ciall/ 111d itself

to a sociocultural exanination of the earlier Middle Ages.

was an important cultural and e ucationa agent.13 Other

than Sister Consuelol llaria Aherne's brief study, there has
been no recent consideration of the intellectual and
cultural role of the medieval bishops. This social grou1,
whose imports m: e throughout the Middle Ages on a variety

of fronts needs no substantiation her , then, offers it-

(D

1 .

lf as a31 interesting and worthy suogect for fur tr er stou.

(D

s
It ace 5 witiout saying that tie cathedral schools wed

s.)

the

Ho
*5
(D
>4
H
U)
(“1“
1’
Q
0
(L)

in some way or another to the medieval
bishop. More than this though the medieval bishop was

Of‘en an i:nro:ta.nt patron of art and le a15i.ng outside the

.L

study a general ti313 must be limited in some way in order

U

tne general. f the revival of urban life hcd an inportant
effect on medieval UddcfitiOLul and intel la ccual li fc one
would 1113 to inow in a more specifi m11ner how an” why this
was so. It will not do to say merely that the urban ”spirit"
was a more pots Ilt force for intellectua expansion than the
rural and afra rien "spirit” and that the rebirth of commerce
and trade somehow iticicied mental activitv in a way that

agrarian concerns had not.

7 ‘\
DSee aoove, p. 100.

a . HH‘ ‘ “t~r'~1 “"" —. . fl" “4' -r:; V t r‘ "-13: ()1 '-YI".‘I‘V'\ ,-""\"b .1.".1‘w‘ ‘. 1
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I ’ ' | V'-’ ' It‘ ‘ '."'-‘ ‘ w - z - I '. " 4 ‘w ~ A '\

hp and profound inilieiee on tne intellectual and

cultural life of t

.T"

1e Iid’le Ages, under what specific
conditions shall tnet group be studied? More soecifi-
celly, whet c_rtnolowicel and
both appropriate and valid for a study of the cultural
activities of the medieval episcopecy? To be both ap—
propriate and valid, such divisions must be inherentl

significant and not arbitrari. The er'onologicel division

R

must have a tergin nus a quo and a terminus ad quem which

 

U
'\

embrace a period whicn is somehow a significant cultural

unit. The geographical limit must enbrece an area of a

more or less ccnmon cultur el pette n, vet an area whose

cultural uiity is not corn of isolation.

J

The period fro r

p:

approximately the late IXth

g}

century to the be3in nin;g o~ the XIIth cezwi Ty, roushlv
from A. D. 900 to 1100, seems to bee r the merks of a
culturally meaningful chronological entity. Of course,
for many this entity has represented the slough of despond
coming a ter the failure of the Carolingian erperiment.
Centuri s of blood and iron as they have oeen termed, they
are usually associated with the feudalization of European
society - e feudalizetion wh ich hes usue l; inplL d social
chaos, interminable civil war, political in as tebility and

all the ignorance and cultural harberisn traditionally

ttendeh t upon such conditions

r F J v- '\ —. an r J’
rzmvrd31 as culturallx constructive aid oi iiicazo. It

a ' . - .° .1. u. , -, ,. i . ,. , '_ . . 3‘ .° ,. p ,. n .. H - - M; 3,. 1‘ ,. .v, :
begins WLuh the apparent demise Ol the carolil3ian Renais—

‘ ' . ‘r‘ " \ r‘ “a '\ . -~‘ ’1 "‘P' 3!“ r J- 1. r- -.A av
sance and ends with the hole Signiiicant hlltn centuif

J.

Renaissa ane e. It i not too much to say the between those

to

two cultural pears a new world, at least a new ourope,

1

had been fashioned. «Tohn Scotus Erigena, the greatest

*"J o
(.0
(0

luminary of the Ce.relin3’a:1rena ance, had little effect
on his own milieu. In fact, it was not until the XIIth
centur’r that his thought exerted any al influence. On

of the

H

the other hand, Abelard, com'; is at the beginning

J

g

ii c;t i ‘a 21b e i;itf be ;- 'zte L, t e, ‘ 3-
X111:1 C31 urf, w s la to q tia‘e a1 ii‘ 1130 u l r
volution of:&rsreachin3 0%)1 eouence. Much of Erigena's
and Abelard's acc onpli siucnt (and lac: of accomplishment)

can of course “e ascribed to their pe senal talents.

H

But no little measure of their relative success or failure
can be attributed to their sociocultural milieux. One

8 3 life that his intellect

(0

HE

(D

s in John Scotus Erigena
and cre mti e powers operated in a relatively sterile or,
at least, culturally ambiguous ambiance. Peter Abelard's

03338

H

would have been eoua lly cir cumscrion had he been
placed in John Scot us Erigena's world. But Abelard's

burope was a different Europe from tha' of his predecessor.
Abelard was fortunate to have lived and mtmv d in an ambiance
amenable to his gedius and talents. his acc,noli hments

bear witness to the fact that nestern Europe was readf for

him in a way which it was not for Erieena. Obviously, then

161

something ether vita and ntell ctually important occurred

durins t»! o’riod betweed the r>qaissahce of tre VIIIth

>4
H

It

9*“
F)

and early IXth century and the renaissance of the
century. light not a study of the cultural activity of
the episcopacy during this period illuminate the nature
and history of this transformation of society - a study

.1.

which seems not only to record th specific intellectual-

(D

cultural activities of the Bishops (e.g., encouraging
translations, patronisin"r the er ts, building buildings)
but which in addition seeks to discover WLL tie r the bishops
as a social group mirrored in some way the larger social
movements of the IXth, Xth, and XIth centuries in their
cultural activity?

The region roughly between the Loire and the Rhine
rivers provides an interesting and important area in which

to examine the sociocultural role of the bishops during

mu! .
)S. i:n—LS £80.-

the period just prior to the Hish Middle A-

x.)
graphical entity exhibited sufficie nt cultural and social

unitv to warrant desiena thl! it as a significant geo-

’3‘
J x.) J
graphical entity while at the same time exhibiti ing a
fluidity that made this area receptive to new social

sion:

3

patterns and ideas. F. L. Ganshof has said of this re
T~T m _ 1 , , - ° . I ' . ' -
nous eiteadons donc lCl une region qui fut le coeur
onarchie franoue, et oui presents incontenstable-
ment de ce chef une reels unite d'institutions et de
structure sociale. Sous 1' action d'autre s facteurs,
la vie Economioue a re vetu la des formes relativement
unifornes; en ce oui concerns l'art‘égaleuent, une
certaine unite s observe. Ce” caractdr s
soit dit en passer ,
les difieredces et les OUDOSib

r .. ‘ - t _ I \- ‘ n _ V, ( u‘ A 1 _ _‘ \ ’
pOil“ Qie l on roleva a intermnud'cl:3 n3 es irontleiés:
' 1" ~—- " "—5 v r '5. 1’- , “0‘ 'w r fi‘I‘..‘ -,“- -.‘1' I I r .r I‘ " ~-.5—‘ _,
d Una p¢rt, dens les domalnos flle Lentiorncs, d autre
1
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tqu‘rn‘qto 4‘71» 03" ‘° :3 . 4‘ tic-7 (‘ r‘r.‘.- '~ ;:.1 W l a"), r: f“ 0" mm" h" A") at
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3e graghical entity for further study. Emile Lesne in
l

 

QQ‘F ' I r‘ {’1' ‘ f“ ~ - ‘ " .~ n"?
uLLOL‘e ri. 30:331' 1;; L Ull .
.L. 4-1 , - .0 _ ,. -.,
hat '3 bflc res lo 0L the Ca‘olin

"\ ‘v -~ v , ‘ J~ ‘ ’4 ,~ v . v .w I. 7‘1 . ', ,r 1 . "N ('1. I ‘ 2 '4‘ “‘
bquS Has a notaole revival ol 0 hools QUflLQ tne lion,

revival was the interaction of the Carolingian organizational

and regulatory decrees vis—e-vie education and the spon-

 

taneous initiatives and improvisations born of the exi-
gencies of the period which together molded education in

the pos t- Carolin3ian era. 17

In the second section of his work, "La carte et

 

14Etude sur le developpement des villes entre
Loire et Rhin au moyen age (Paris: Presses ”i’versitair s
de France, 1943), p. 7.

15Volume V of Histoire de la propri5te ecclesias-
tioue en Fran ( 'Memoires et Trauvaux publies par des
professeurs de: facultes catholiQaes de Lille," fasc. L).
Lille: Facultés Catholiques, 1940.

 

10See above, p. 87.

17Lesne, p. 45.

165

. . .. . .\ \ .
l'histOire des Eccles du milieu du IKe Siecle a la fin du
XlIe,”15 M. Lesne examined every French school for which
records were available according to geographical regions.
In addition to finding that a great deal of variety mani-
fested itself in the schools throughout the breadth of
France, M. Lesne concluded that

I. . .
les regions de la LOire, de la Seine, de l'Bscaut,
de la Meuse et du Rhin ont éte au cours de toute cette
’. ~. _- - '00 ° ,

periOQe les plus favorisees dans la diliu31on des

’ 3.1. . ‘ I _ .

etudes; c 88b dans ces contrees oue sont mentionnee

_ /
le plus souvent et en plus grand nombre les ecoles,

celles nbtamment qui on compte le plus de maitres ,
et d'éleves, et cui ont obtenu la plus haute renommee.

19
Once a general theme has been somewhat refined by

considerations of time and place, some attention should

be 3iven to the theoretical framework in which the theme

will be studied. Some remarks have already been made

concerning the advantages and the possibilities of a socio-

cultural approach to the cultural and intellectual activities

of the episcopacy in Northern France durin3 the ,IXth

Xth, and XIth centuries. This is not the proper place to

expand upon those remarks. Inevitably, the best framework

to be employed will be su33ested by a reading of the sources

and not by a set of preconceived suppositions. Suffice

it to say here that the theoretical literature, primarily

of a sociological nature, surveyed substantiates the

general validity and si3nificance of a sociocultural study

of the medieval episcopacy.2O

 

181b1d., pp. 44—423.

19Ibid., p. 414.

154

20See, Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of the Intel—

li3en sia, An Inmuiry into its Past and Present Role ”

Part Two of Essmirs on the Sociolo"y of Cu ture, edd.

hrnest Manheim and Paul ’ccstcnwti (Llow York: Oxford
Univ rsi y Press, 195 6), 91-170.. Pp. 121-159, HThe
Historical Role of the Intelligents a,‘ are cSpecially
pertinent and enli htadir" See also Pitirim A. Sorohin,
Social Pand Culture 1 ooilitv (London: The Free Press of
Glenco Collier-nacuillan Ltd., 1959). The appendix to
this work (” Genesis, Multiplication, MODllltT and Dif-
fusion of Sociocultural Phenoznena in Space,” 549- 640) is
a reprint of chapter V from volume IV of Professor Sorohin '3
Social and Cultural D"na ics. It provides some good in-
sights for the historian concerning the problem of cultural
change and the relationship between mobility, defined
sociOIO3ically, and the diffusion of cult ure..

 

 

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e
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‘ '0 I J .

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‘<

1

 

 

 

 

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fl

170

 

11-13. 1 . 4.1 I) 1‘. . a» 77-" ' .

. AHA? {01113.1 Oi 4:71...- HS. (Calif ,
'. - 4-

1- 3. £14..) UUFZJ Li. 1d. I01- J-LJ ,

3* 11. .. 1! ., 1 'T, —' . , —. r ‘ :- ,3- ’)~ ’_ ,- ._ :7”

A.) Adn Arbor: oniversi y of “Lenibag liess, 1990.

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L
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" I r . 'o '. .1 , ’ “ .I' 1" ' 4- ’ (a) "
Itterus.. D3 honorieus AeademiCis L.ber. Fraahfurt, 1o33.

 

 

 

 

 

 

o 1 a o 1 I . I .
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’ 1’ '- 1 3 --~A.‘.. *1 xv... -.....,)
GCCLBSLL-V'UC‘QSQ fiilfio .L‘Lbk-ivU.Lb i'zufidbt, 1J‘VQ.
Jones, Putnam Fennell. MTie Gre egorian Mission and English
~ V. I ' \.-"Q ~ »- ,,'r\
Education,' So3c1ilum, III (192o , 555—340.
Kedffel, G. Historia cri:inis et EFO”TeSSiS schelarum inter
Christ 3ios. helnstadt, 1745.
Kiore, Pearl. The Kati-es in the Mediaevel Universiti3s
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