The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

varied dews of learning,” and sorted out “youths of conspicuous intelligence” to whom he gave special attention. Alcuin afterward succeeded Aelbert as scholasticus, and was widely known as a gifted teacher. Well aware of the precarious condition of learning amid such a rude and uncouth society, he handed on to his pupils the learning he had received, and imbued them with something of his own love for it and his anxiety for its preservation and advancement. It was this Alcuin who was soon to give a new impetus to the development of schools and the preservation of learning in Frankland.

 

CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. In 768 there came to the throne as king of the great Frankish nation one of the most distinguished and capable rulers of all time—a man who would have been a commanding personality in any age or land. His ancestors had developed a great kingdom, and it was his grandfather who had defeated the Saracens at Tours (p. 113) and driven them back over the Pyrenees into Spain. This man Charlemagne easily stands out as one of the greatest figures of all history. For five hundred years before and after him there is no ruler who matched him in insight, force, or executive capacity. He is particularly the dominating figure of mediaeval times. Born in an age of lawlessness and disorder, he used every effort to civilize and rule as intelligently as possible the great Frankish kingdom. Wars he waged to civilize and Christianize the Saxon tribes of northern Germany, to reduce the Lombards of northern Italy to order, and to extend the boundaries of the Frankish nation. At his death, in 814, his kingdom had succeeded to most of the western possessions of the old Roman Empire, including all of what to-day comprises France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, large portions of what is now western Germany and northern Italy, and portions of northern Spain. (See Figure 41.)

 

Realizing better than did his bishops and abbots the need for educational facilities for the nobles and clergy, he early turned his attention to securing teachers capable of giving the needed instruction. These, though, were scarce and hard to obtain. After two unsuccessful efforts to obtain a master scholar to become, as it were, his minister of education, he finally succeeded in drawing to his court perhaps the greatest scholar and teacher in all England. At Parma, in northern Italy, Charlemagne met Alcuin, in 781, and invited him to leave York for Frankland. After obtaining the consent of his archbishop and king, Alcuin accepted, and arrived, with three assistants, at Charlemagne’s court, in 782, to take up the work of educational propaganda in Frankland.

 

[Illustration: PLATE 1. THE CLOISTERS OF A MONASTERY, NEAR FLORENCE, ITALY.

This monastery, located on a high hill and resembling a mediaeval fortress as one approaches it, was founded in 1341 by a Florentine merchant. The picture shows the cloisters and interior court. Eighteen cells, two churches, and other rooms are entered from the cloisters. A few monks were still in residence there late as 1905, one of whom is seen, but the monastery was then in the process of being closed by the Italian Government.]

 

[Illustration: PLATE 2. THE LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT WALLBERG, AT

ZUTPHEN, HOLLAND

 

“Ponderous Folios for Scholastics made”

 

This shows the large oak-bound and chained books as well as a common type of bookrack used in churches and monasteries during the earlier period.]

 

The plight in which he found learning was most deplorable, presenting a marked contrast to conditions in England. Learning had been almost obliterated during the two centuries of wild disorder from 600 on. From 600 to 850 has often been called the darkest period of the Dark Ages, and Alcuin arrived when Frankland was at its worst. The monastic and cathedral schools which had been established earlier had in large part been broken up, and the monasteries had become places for the pensioning of royal favorites and hence had lost their earlier religious zeal and effectiveness. The abbots and bishops possessed but little learning, and the lower clergy, recruited largely from bondmen, were grossly ignorant, greatly to the injury of the Church. The copying of books had almost ceased, and learning was slowly dying out.

 

THE PALACE SCHOOL. There had for some time been a form of school connected with the royal court, known as the palace school, though the study of letters had played but a small part in it. To the reorganization of this school Alcuin first addressed himself, introducing into it elementary instruction in that learning of which he was so fond. The school included the princes and princesses of the royal household, relatives, attach�s, courtiers, and, not least in importance as pupils, the king and queen. To meet the needs of such a heterogeneous circle was no easy task.

 

The instruction which Alcuin provided for the younger members of the circle was largely of the question and answer (catechetical) type, both questions and answers being prepared by Alcuin beforehand and learned by the pupils. Fortunately examples of Alcuin’s instruction have been preserved to us in a dialogue prepared for the instruction of Pepin, a son of Charlemagne, then sixteen years old (R. 62). With the older members the questions and answers were oral. For all, though, the instruction was of a most elementary nature, ranging over the elements of the subjects of instruction of the time. Poetry, arithmetic, astronomy, the writings of the Fathers, and theology are mentioned as having been studied.

Charlemagne learned to read Latin, but is said never to have mastered the art of writing. It was not an easy position for any one to fill. To quote from West’s description: [18]

 

Charles wanted to know everything and to know it at once. His strong, uncurbed nature eagerly seized on learning, both as a delight for himself and a means of giving stability to his government, and so, while he knew he must be docile, he was at the same time imperious.

Alcuin knew how to meet him, and at need could be either patiently jocular or grave and reproving. Thus, on one occasion when he had been informed of the great learning of Augustine and Jerome, he impatiently demanded of Alcuin, “Why can I not have twelve clerks such as these?”

Twelve Augustines and Jeromes! and to be made arise at the king’s bidding! Alcuin was shocked. “What!” he discreetly rejoined, “the Lord of heaven and earth had but two such, and wouldst thou have twelve?”

But his personal affection for the king was most unselfish, and he consequently took great delight in stimulating his desire for learning….

 

He studied everything Alcuin set before him, but had special anxiety to learn all about the moon that was needed to calculate Easter. With such an eager and impatient pupil as Charles, the other scholars were soon inspired to beset Alcuin with endless puzzling questions, and there are not wanting evidences that some of them were disposed to levity and even carped at his teachings. But he was indefatigable, rising with the sun to prepare for teaching. In one of his poetical exercises he says of himself that “as soon as the ruddy charioteer of the dawn suffuses the liquid deep with the new light of day, the old man rubs the sleep of night from his eyes and leaps at once from his couch, running straightway into the fields of the ancients to pluck their flowers of correct speech and scatter them in sport before his boys.”

 

CHARLEMAGNE’S PROCLAMATIONS ON EDUCATION. After reorganizing the palace school, Alcuin and Charlemagne turned their attention to the improvement of education among the monks and clergy throughout the realm. The first important service was the preparation and sending out of a carefully collected and edited series of sermons to the churches containing, “in two volumes, lessons suitable for the whole year and for each separate festival, and free from error.” These Charlemagne ordered used in the churches (R. 63). He also says, “we have striven with watchful zeal to advance the cause of learning, which has been almost forgotten by the negligence of our ancestors; and, by our example, also we invite those whom we can to master the study of the liberal arts,” meaning thereby to incite the bishops and clergy to a study of the learning of the mediaeval time. The volumes and letter were sent out in 786, four years after Alcuin’s arrival at the court. Further to aid in the revival of learning, Charlemagne, in 787, imported a number of monks from Italy, who were capable of giving instruction in arithmetic, singing, and grammar, and sent them to the principal monasteries to teach.

 

In 787 the first general proclamation on education of the Middle Ages was issued (R. 64 a), and from it we can infer much as to the state of learning among the monks and clergy of the time. In this document the king gently reproves the abbots of his realm for their illiteracy, and exhorts them to the study of letters. The signature is Charlemagne’s, but the hand is Alcuin’s. In it he tells the abbots, in commenting on the fact that they had sent letters to him telling him that “sacred and pious prayers”

were being offered in his behalf, that he recognized in “most of these letters both correct thoughts and uncouth expressions; because what pious devotion dictated faithfully to the mind, the tongue, uneducated on account of the neglect of study, was not able to express in a letter without error.” He therefore commands the abbots neither to neglect the study of letters, if they wish to have his favor, nor to fail to send copies of his letter “to all your suffragans and fellow bishops, and to all the monasteries.” Two years later (789) Charlemagne supplemented this by a further general admonition (R. 64 b) to the ministers and clergy of his realm, exhorting them to live clean and just lives, and closing with: And let schools be established in which boys may learn to read.

Correct carefully the Psalms, the signs in writing, the songs, the calendar, the grammar, in each monastery and bishopric, and the catholic book; because often some desire to pray to God properly, but they pray badly because of incorrect books.

 

In 802 he further commanded that “laymen shall learn thoroughly the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer” (R. 64 c). Finally, in his enthusiasm for schools, Charlemagne went so far as to direct that “every one should send his son to school to study letters, and that the child should remain at school with all diligence until he should become well instructed in learning.”

Charlemagne, of course, was addressing freemen of the court and the official classes. That he ever meant to include the children of the laboring classes, or that the idea of compulsory education ever entered his head, may well be doubted.

 

EFFECT OF THE WORK OF CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN. The actual results of the work of Charlemagne and Alcuin were, after all, rather meager. The difficulties they faced are almost beyond our comprehension. Nobles and clergy were alike ignorant and uncouth. There seemed no place to begin. It may be said that by Charlemagne’s work he greatly widened the area of civilization, created a new Frankish-Roman Empire to be the inheritor of the civilization and culture of the old one, checked the decline in learning and reawakened a desire for study, and that he began the substitution of ideas for might as a ruling force among the tribes under his rule. That for a time he gave an important impetus to the study of letters, which resulted in a real revival in the educational work of some of the monasteries and cathedral schools, seems certain. Men knew more of books and wrote better Latin than before,