The History of Education Part 12

The main writing was done with black, but the page was frequently bordered with red, gold, or some other bright color, while many beautiful ill.u.s.trations were inserted by artistic monks. Sometimes an initial letter was beautifully embellished, as is shown in Figure 39; sometimes ill.u.s.trations were introduced in the body of the page, of which Figures 39 and 40 are types; and sometimes a colored ill.u.s.tration was painted on a sheet of vellum and inserted in the book. Figure 44 represents such an ill.u.s.trated page in an old ma.n.u.script. Finally, when completed, the lettered and ill.u.s.trated parchment sheets were arranged in order, sewed together with a deerskin or pigskin string, bound together between oaken boards and covered with pigskin, properly lettered in gold, fitted with metal corners and clasps (R. 57), as shown in Plate 2, and often chained to their bookrack in the library with heavy iron chains as well. (See Figure 71 and Plate 2.) Still further to protect the volume from theft, an anathema against the thief was usually lettered in the volume (R. 58).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39. INITIAL LETTER FROM AN OLD Ma.n.u.sCRIPT This shows the beautiful work done by some of the nuns and monks in "illuminating" the books they copied. This was done in colors by a nun, who pictured her own work in this initial letter L.]

Such was the painfully slow method of producing and multiplying books before the advent of printing, and in days when skill in copying ma.n.u.scripts was not particularly common, even among the monks. It required from a few months to a year or more to produce a few copies, depending on the size and nature of the work, whereas to-day, with printing-presses, five thousand copies of such a book as this can be printed and bound in a few days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 40. A MONK IN A SCRIPTORIUM (From an illuminated picture in a ma.n.u.script in the Royal Library at Brussels) This picture shows the beautiful work done in "illuminating"

ma.n.u.script books by mediaeval writers. Each copy was a work of art. This represents a better type of _scriptorium_ than is usually shown.]

THE SCRIPTORIUM. An important part of the material equipment of many monasteries, in consequence, came to be a _scriptorium_, or writing-room, where the copying of ma.n.u.scripts could take place undisturbed. In some monasteries one general room was provided, though it was customary to have a number of small rooms at the side of the library. In the monastery shown in Figure 38, seven small rooms for this purpose are shown built out on one side of the library. Sometimes individual cells along a corridor were provided. The advantage of the single room in which a number of monks worked came when an edition of eight or ten copies of a book was to be prepared. One monk could then dictate, while eight or ten others carefully printed on the skins before them what was dictated by the reader. [13]

Figure 40 shows a monk at work, though here he is copying from a book before him. After an edition of eight or ten copies of a book had been prepared and bound the extra copies were sent to neighboring and sometimes distant monasteries, sometimes in exchange for other books, and sometimes as gifts to brothers who had longed to read the work (R. 55). New monasteries were provided with the beginnings of a library in this way, and churches were supplied with Missals, Psalters, and other books needed for their services.

The writing-room, or rooms, came to be a very important place in those monasteries noted for their literary activity. West gives an interesting description of the _scriptorium_ at Tours, where the learned English monk, Alcuin, was Abbot from 796 to 804, and which at the time was the princ.i.p.al book-writing monastery in Frankland. Describing Alcuin's labors to secure books to send to other monasteries in Charlemagne's kingdom, he says:

We can almost reconstruct the scene. In the intervals between the hours of prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for the copying of books under the presiding genius of Alcuin. The young monks file into the _scriptorium_, and one of them is given the precious parchment volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or else some portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen author. He reads slowly and clearly at a measured rate while all the others seated at their desks take down his words, and thus perhaps a score of copies are made at once. Alcuin's observant eye watches each in turn, and his correcting hand points out the mistakes in orthography and punctuation.

The master of Charles the Great, in that true humility that is the charm of his whole behavior, makes himself the writing-master of his monks, stooping to the drudgery of faithfully and gently correcting their many puerile mistakes, and all for the love of studies and the love of Christ.

Under such guidance, and deeply impressed by the fact that in the copying of a few books they were saving learning and knowledge from perishing, and thereby offering a service most acceptable to G.o.d, the copying in the _scriptorium_ went on in sobriety from day to day. Thus were produced those improved copies of books which mark the beginning of a new age in the conserving and transmission of learning. Alcuin's anxiety in this regard was not undue, for the few monasteries where books could be accurately transcribed were as necessary for publication in that time as are the great publishing houses to-day. [14]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41. CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE, AND THE IMPORTANT MONASTERIES OF THE TIME Charlemagne's empire at his death is shaded darker than other parts of the map.]

MONASTIC COLLECTION. Despite the important work done by a few of the monasteries in preserving and advancing learning, large collections of books were unknown before the Revival of Learning, in the fourteenth century. The process of book production in itself was very slow, and many of the volumes produced were later lost through fire, or pillage by new invaders. During the early days of wood construction a number of monastic and church libraries were burned by accident. In the pillaging of the Danes and Northmen on the coasts of England and northern France, in the ninth and tenth centuries, a number of important monastic collections there were lost. In Italy the Lombards destroyed some collections in their sixth-century invasion, and the Saracens burned some in southern Italy in the ninth. Monte Ca.s.sino, among other monasteries, was destroyed by both the Lombards and the Saracens. From a number of extant catalogues of old monastic libraries we know that, even as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a library of from two to three hundred volumes was large. [15] The catalogues show that most of these were books of a religious nature, being monastic chronicles, manuals of devotion, comments on the Scriptures, lives of miracle-working saints, and books of a similar nature (Rs. 55, 56). A few were commentaries on the ancient learning, or mediaeval textbooks on the great subjects of study of the time (R. 60). A still smaller number were copies of old cla.s.sical literary works, and of the utmost value (R. 57).

THE CONVENTS AND THEIR SCHOOLS. The early part of the Middle Ages also witnessed a remarkable development of convents for women, these receiving a special development in Germanic lands. Filled with the same aggressive spirit as the men, but softened somewhat by Christianity, many women of high station among the German tribes founded convents and developed inst.i.tutions of much renown. This provided a rather superior cla.s.s of women as organizers and directors, and a conventual life continued, throughout the entire Middle Ages, to attract an excellent cla.s.s of women.

This will be understood when it is remembered that a conventual life offered to women of intellectual ability and scholarly tastes the one opportunity for an education and a life of learning. The convents, too, were much earlier and much more extensively opened for instruction to those not intending to take the vows than was the case with the monasteries, and, in consequence, it became a common practice throughout the Middle Ages, just as it is to-day among Catholic families, to send girls to the convent for education and for training in manners and religion. Many well-trained women were produced in the convents of Europe in the period from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries.

The instruction consisted of reading, writing, and copying Latin, as in the monasteries, as well as music, weaving and spinning, and needlework.

Weaving and spinning had an obvious utilitarian purpose, and needlework, in addition to necessary sewing, was especially useful in the production of altar-cloths and sacred vestments. The copying and illuminating of ma.n.u.scripts, music, and embroidering made a special appeal to women (R.

56), and some of the most beautifully copied and illuminated ma.n.u.scripts of the mediaeval period are products of their skill. [16] Their contribution to music and art, as it influenced the life of the time, was also large. The convent schools reached their highest development about the middle of the thirteenth century, after which they began to decline in importance,

LEARNING IN IRELAND AND BRITAIN. As was stated earlier in this chapter, the one part of western Europe where something of the old learning was retained during this period was in Ireland, and in those parts of England which had not been overrun by the Germanic tribes. Christian civilization and monastic life had been introduced into Ireland probably as early as 425 A.D., and probably by monastic missionaries from Lerins and Saint Victor (see Figure 41). Saint Patrick preached Christianity to the Irish, about 440 A.D., and during the fifth and sixth centuries churches and monasteries were founded in such numbers over Ireland that the land has been said to have been dotted all over with churches, monasteries, and schools. Saint Patrick had been educated in the old Roman schools, probably at Tours when it was still an important Roman provincial city.

Other early missionaries had had similar training, and these, not sharing the antipathy to pagan learning of the early Italian church fathers, had carried Greek and Latin languages and learning to Ireland. Here it flourished so well, largely due to the island being spared from invasion, that Ireland remained a center for instruction in Greek long after it had virtually disappeared elsewhere in western Christendom. So much was this the case, says Sandys, in his _History of Cla.s.sical Scholarship_, "that if any one knew Greek it was a.s.sumed that he must have come from Ireland."

In 565 A.D., Saint Columba, an eminent Irish scholar and religious leader, crossed over to what is now southwestern Scotland, founded there the monastery of Iona, and began the conversion of the Picts. Saint Augustine landed in Kent in 597, and had begun the conversion of the Angles and Saxons and Jutes who had settled in southeastern Britain, while shortly afterwards the Irish monks from Iona began the conversion of the people of the north of Britain. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded about 635 A.D., and soon became an important center of religious and cla.s.sical learning in the north. Irish and English monks also crossed in numbers to northern Frankland, and labored for the conversion of the Franks and Saxons.

In 664 A.D., at a council held at Whitby, the Irish Church in England and the Roman Church were united, and a great enthusiasm for religion and learning swept over the island. In 670, Theodore of Tarsus and the Abbot Hadrian, whom Bede, the scholar and historian of the early English Church, describes as men "instructed in secular and divine literature both Greek and Latin" (R. 59 a), arrived in England from southern Italy and began their work of instructing pupils in Greek and Latin (R. 59 b). Both taught at Canterbury, and raised the cathedral school there to high rank. In 674 the monastery at Wearmouth was founded, and in 682 its companion Yarrow.

These were endowed with books from Rome and Vienne, and soon became famous for the instruction they provided. It was at the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Yarrow that the Venerable Bede (673-735), whose _Ecclesiastical History of England_ gives us our chief picture of education in Britain in his time, was educated and remained as a lifelong student. [17] As a result of all these efforts a number of northern monasteries, as well as a few of the cathedral schools, early became famous for their libraries, scholars, and learning. This culture in Ireland and Britain was of a much higher standard than that obtaining on the Continent at the time, because the cla.s.sical inheritance there had been less corrupted.

THE CATHEDRAL SCHOOL AT YORK. One of the schools which early attained fame was the cathedral school at York, in northern England. This had, by the middle of the eighth century, come to possess for the time a large library, and contained most of the important Latin authors and textbooks then known (R. 61). In this school, under the _scholasticus_ Aelbert, was trained a youth by the name of Alcuin, born in or near York, about 735 A.D. In a poem describing the school (R. 60), he gives a good portrayal of the instruction he received, telling how the learned Aelbert "moistened thirsty hearts with diverse streams of teaching and the 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 n.o.bles 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 a.s.sistants, at Charlemagne's court, in 782, to take up the work of educational propaganda in Frankland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, attaches, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 doc.u.ment 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.ses. That he ever meant to include the children of the laboring cla.s.ses, 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. n.o.bles 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 subst.i.tution 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, and those who wished to learn found it easier to do so. The state of society and the condition of the times, however, were against any large success for such an ambitious educational undertaking, and after the death of Charlemagne, the division of his empire, and the invasions of the Northmen, education slowly declined again, though never to quite the level it had reached when Charlemagne came to the throne. In a few schools there was no decline, and these became the centers of learning of the future. Charlemagne having subst.i.tuted merit for favoritism in his realm, promoting to be bishops and abbots the most learned men of his time, many of these became zealous workers in the cause of education and did much to keep up and advance learning after his death.

Among the most able of his helpers was Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans. He carried out most thoroughly in his diocese the instructions of the king, giving to his clergy the following directions:

Let the priests hold schools in the towns and villages, and if any of the faithful wish to entrust their children to them for the learning of letters, let them not refuse to receive and teach such children.

Moreover, let them teach them from pure affection, remembering that it is written, "the wise shall shine as the splendor of the firmament,"

and "they that instruct many in righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and forever." And let them exact no price from the children for their teaching, nor receive anything from them, save what their parents may offer voluntarily and from affection.

Another able a.s.sistant was Alcuin himself, who, after fourteen years of strenuous service at Charlemagne's court, was rewarded by the king with the office of Abbot at the monastery of Saint Martin, at Tours. There he spent the last eight years of his life in teaching, copying ma.n.u.scripts, and writing letters to bishops and abbots regarding the advancement of religion and learning. The work of Alcuin in directing the copying of ma.n.u.scripts has been described. In a letter to Charlemagne, soon after his appointment, he reviews his labors, contrasts the state of learning in England and Frankland, and appeals to Charlemagne for books from England to copy (R. 65). So important was his work as a teacher as well that at his death, in 814, most of the important educational centers of the kingdom were in the hands of his former pupils. Perhaps the most important of all these was Raba.n.u.s Maurus, who became head of the monastery school at Fulda. We shall learn more of him in the next chapter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42. WHERE THE DANES RAVAGED ENGLAND.]

NEW INVASIONS; THE NORTHMEN. Five years after Alcuin went to Frankland to help Charlemagne revive learning in his kingdom, a fresh series of barbarian invasions began with the raiding of the English coast by the Danes. In raid after raid, extending over nearly a hundred years, these Danes gradually overran all of eastern and central England from London north to beyond Whitby, plundering and burning the churches and monasteries, and destroying books and learning everywhere. By the Peace of Wedmore, effected by King Alfred in 878, the Danes were finally given about one half of England, and in return agreed to settle down and accept Christianity. The damage done by these invaders was very large, and King Alfred, in his introduction to an Anglo-Saxon translation of Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Care_ (R. 66), gives a gloomy picture of the destruction wrought to the churches and the decay of learning in England.

Other bands of these Northmen (Danes and Norwegians) began to prey on the northern coast of Frankland, and in the tenth century seized all the coast of what is now northern France and down as far as Paris and Tours. From Tours to Corbie (see Figure 41) churches and monasteries were pillaged and burned, Tours and Corbie with their libraries both perishing. Amiens and Paris were laid siege to, and disorder reigned throughout northern Frankland. _The Annals of Xanten_ and the _Annals of Saint Vaast_, two mediaeval chronicles of importance, give gloomy pictures of this period.

Three selections will ill.u.s.trate:

According to their custom the Northmen plundered East and West Frisia and burned ... towns.... With their boats filled with immense booty, including both men and goods, they returned to their own country. [19]

The Normans inflicted much harm in Frisia and about the Rhine. A mighty army of them collected by the river Elbe against the Saxons, and some of the Saxon towns were besieged, others burned, and most terribly did they oppress the Christians. [20]

The Northmen ceased not to take Christian people captive and kill them, and to destroy churches and houses and burn villages. Through all the streets lay bodies of the clergy, of laymen, n.o.bles, and others, of women, children, and suckling babes. There was no road or place where the dead did not lie, and all who saw Christian people slaughtered were filled with sorrow and despair. [21]