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

EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

II. SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED

1. Elementary instruction and schools

MONASTIC AND CONVENTIONAL SCHOOLS. In the preceding chapters we found that, by the tenth century, the monasteries had developed both inner monastic schools for those intending to take the vows (oblati), and outer monastic schools for those not so intending (externi). The distinction in name was due to the fact that the oblati were from the first considered as belonging to the brotherhood, participating in the religious services and helping the monks at their work. The others were not so admitted, and in all monasteries of any size a separate building, outside the main portion of the monastery (see Figure 38), was provided for the outer school. A similar classification of instruction had been evolved for the convents.

[Illustration: FIG. 43. AN OUTER MONASTIC SCHOOL

(After an old wood engraving)]

The instruction in the inner school was meager, and in the outer school probably even more so. Reading, writing, music, simple reckoning, religious observances, and rules of conduct constituted the range of instruction. Reading was taught by the alphabet method, as among the Romans, and writing by the use of wax tablets and the stylus. Much attention was given to Latin pronunciation, as had been the practice at Rome. As Latin by this time had practically ceased to be a living tongue, outside the Church and perhaps in Central Italy, the difficulties of instruction were largely increased. The Psalter, or book of Latin psalms, was the first reading book, and this was memorized rather than read. Copy-books, usually wax, with copies expressing some scriptural injunction, were used. Music, being of so much importance in the church services, received much time and attention. In arithmetic, counting and finger reckoning, after the Roman plan, was taught. Latin was used in conversation as much as possible, some of the old lesson books much resembling conversation books of to-day in the modern languages (R. 75).

Special attention seems to have been given to teaching rules of conduct to the oblati, [1] and much corporal punishment was used to facilitate learning. Up to the eleventh century this instruction, meager as it was, constituted the whole of the preparatory training necessary for the study of theology and a career in the Church. In the convents similar schools were developed, though, as stated in the last chapter, much more attention was given to the education of those not intending to take the vows.

SONG AND PARISH SCHOOLS. In the cathedral churches, and other larger non-cathedral churches, the musical part of the service was very important, and to secure boys for the choir and for other church services these churches organized what came to be known as song schools (R. 70). In these a number of promising boys were trained in the same studies and in much the same way as were boys in the monastery schools, except that much more attention was given to the musical instruction. The students in these schools were placed under the precentor (choir director) of the cathedral, or other large church, the scholasticus confining his attention to the higher or more literary instruction provided. The boys usually were given board, lodging, and instruction in return for their services as choristers. As the parish churches in the diocese also came to need boys for their services, parish schools of a similar nature were in time organized in connection with them. It was out of this need, and by a very slow and gradual evolution, that the parish school in western Europe was developed later on.

CHANTRY SCHOOLS. Still another type of elementary school, which did not arise until near the latter part of the period under consideration in this chapter, but which will be enumerated here as descriptive of a type which later became very common, came through wills, and the schools came to be known as chantry schools, or stipendary schools. Men, in dying, who felt themselves particularly in need of assistance for their misdeeds on earth, would leave a sum of money to a church to endow a priest, or sometimes two, who were to chant masses each day for the repose of their souls. Sometimes the property was left to endow a priest to say mass in honor of some special saint, and frequently of the Virgin Mary. As such priests usually felt the need for some other occupation, some of them began voluntarily to teach the elements of religion and learning to selected boys, and in time it became common for those leaving money for the prayers to stipulate in the will that the priest should also teach a school. Usually a very elementary type of school was provided, where the children were taught to know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Salutation to the Virgin, certain psalms, to sign themselves rightly with the sign of the cross, and perhaps to read and write (Latin). Sometimes, on the contrary, and especially was this the case later on in England, a grammar school was ordered maintained. After the twelfth century this type of foundation (R. 73) became quite common.

2. Advanced instruction

CATHEDRAL AND HIGHER MONASTIC SCHOOLS. As the song schools developed the cathedral schools were of course freed from the necessity of teaching reading and writing, and could then develop more advanced instruction.

This they did, as did many of the monasteries, and to these advanced schools those who felt the need for more training went. As grammar was, throughout all the early part of the Middle Ages, the first and most important subject of instruction, the advanced schools came to be known as grammar schools, as well as cathedral or episcopal schools (R. 72). The cathedral churches and monasteries of England and France early became celebrated for the high character of their instruction (R. 71) and the type of scholars they produced. All these schools, though, suffered a serious set-back during the period of the Danish and Norman invasions, many being totally destroyed. On the continent, due to the greater deluge of barbarism and the more unsettled condition of society, more difficulty was experienced in getting cathedral schools established, as the following decree of the Lateran Church Council of 826 indicates: Complaints have been made that in some places no masters nor endowment for a grammar school is found. Therefore all bishops shall bestow all care and diligence, both for their subjects and for other places in which it shall be found necessary, to establish masters and teachers who shall assiduously teach grammar schools and the principles of the liberal arts, because in these chiefly the commandments of God are manifest and declared.

These two types of advanced schools—the cathedral or episcopal and the monastic—formed what might be called the secondary-school system of the early Middle Ages (Rs. 70, 71). They were for at least six hundred years the only advanced teaching institutions in western Europe, and out of one or the other of these two types of advanced schools came practically all those who attained to leadership in the service of the Church in either of its two great branches. Still more, out of the impetus given to advanced study by the more important of these schools, the universities of a later period developed; and numerous private gifts of lands and money were made to establish grammar schools to supplement the work done by the cathedral and other large church schools.

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS. The advanced studies which were offered in the more important monastery and cathedral schools comprised what came to be known as The Seven Liberal Arts [2] of the Middle Ages. The knowledge contained in these studies, taught as the advanced instruction of the period, represents the amount of secular learning which was intentionally preserved by the Church from neglect and destruction during the period of the barbarian deluges and the reconstruction of society.

These Seven Liberal Arts were comprised of two divisions, known as: I. THE TRIVIUM:

(1) Grammar;

(2) Rhetoric;

(3) Dialectic (Logic).

II. THE QUADRIVIUM:

(4) Arithmetic;

(5) Geometry;

(6) Astronomy;

(7) Music.

[Illustration: FIG. 44. THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED

Allegorical representation of the progress and degrees of education, from an illuminated picture in the 1508 (Basel) edition of the Margarita Philosophica of Gregory de Reisch.

The youth, having mastered the Hornbook (ABC’s) and the rudiments of learning (reading, writing, and the beginnings of music and numbers), advances toward the temple of knowledge. Wisdom is about to place the key in the lock of the door of the temple. On the door is written the word congruitas, signifying Grammar. (“Gramaire first hath for to teche to speke upon congruite.”) On the first and second floors of the temple he studies the Grammar of Donatus, and of Priscian, and at the first stage at the left on the third floor he studies the Logic of Aristotle, followed by the Rhetoric and Poetry of Tully, thus completing the Trivium. The Arithmetic of Boethius also appears on the third floor. On the fourth floor he completes the studies of the Quadrivium, taking in order the Music of Pythagoras, Euclid’s Geometry, and Ptolemy’s Astronomy. The student now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying successively Physics, Seneca’s Morals, and the Theology (or Metaphysics) of Peter Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been directed.]

Beyond these came Ethics or Metaphysics, and the greatest of all studies, Theology. This last represented the one professional study of the early middle-age period, and was the goal toward which all the preceding studies had tended. This mediaeval system of education is well summarized in the drawing given on the opposite page, taken from an illuminated picture inserted in a famous mediaeval manuscript, recopied at Basle, Switzerland, in 1508.

Not all these studies were taught in every monastery or cathedral school.

Many of the lesser monasteries and schools offered instruction chiefly in grammar, and only a little of the studies beyond. Others emphasized the Trivium, and taught perhaps only a little of the second group. Only a few taught the full range of mediaeval learning, and these were regarded as the great schools of the times (R. 71).

Rhabanus Maurus (776-865), one of