The History of Education Part 8

Workmen and slaves, and women rather than men, const.i.tuted the large majority of the early converts to the new faith. The character of its missionaries [8] also was against it, and its challenge of almost all that characterized the higher social and governmental life of Rome was certain to make its progress difficult, and in time to awaken powerful opposition [9] to it. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, its progress was relatively rapid.

THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. By the close of the first century there were Christian churches throughout most of Judea and Asia Minor, and in parts of Greece and Macedonia. During the second century other churches were established in Asia Minor, in Greece, and along the Black Sea, and at a few places in Italy and France; and before four centuries had elapsed from the crucifixion Christian churches had been established throughout almost all the Roman world. This is well shown by the map on the opposite page.

The message of hope that Christianity had to offer to all; the simplicity of its organization and teachings; the great appeal which it made to the emotional side of human life; the hope of a future life of reward for the burdens of this which it extended to all who were weary and heavy laden; the positiveness of conviction of its apostles and followers; and the completeness with which it satisfied the religious need and longings of the time, first among the poor and among women and later among educated men--all helped the new faith to win its way. The unity in that Rome had everywhere established; [10] the Roman peace (_pax Romana_) that Rome had everywhere imposed; the spread of the Greek and Latin languages and ideas throughout the Mediterranean world; the right of freedom of travel and speech enjoyed by a Roman citizen, and of which Saint Paul and others on their travels took advantage; [11] the scatterment of Jews throughout the Empire, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.--all these elements also helped.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: FIG. 27. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY]

That Christianity made its headway unmolested must not be supposed. While at first the tendency of educated Romans and of the government was to ignore or tolerate it, its challenge was so direct and provocative that this att.i.tude could not long continue. Under the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) "all the Jews who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus" were unsuccessfully ordered banished from Rome. In the reign of the Emperor Nero, in 64 A.D., many horrible tortures were inflicted on this as yet small sect. It was not, however, till later, when the continued refusal of the Christians to offer sacrifices to the Emperor brought them under the law as disloyal (R. 30 a) subjects, that they began to be much punished for their faith (R. 31 a-b). The times were bad and were going from bad to worse, and the feelings of many were that the adverse conditions in the Empire--war, famine, floods, pestilence, and barbarian inroads--were due to the neglect of the old state religion and to the tolerance extended the vast organized defiance of the law by the Christians. In the first century they had been largely ignored. In the second, in some places, they were punished. In the third century, impelled by the calamities of the State and the urging of those who would restore the national religion to its earlier position, the Emperors were gradually driven to a series of heavy persecutions of the sect (R. 30 a). But it had now become too late. The blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church (R. 35). The last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, in 303 (R. 33), ended in virtual failure. In 311 the Emperor Galerius placed Christianity on a plane of equality with other forms of worship (R.

36). In 313 Constantine made it in part the official religion of the State [12] and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors gradually extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important privileges (R. 38) and exemptions, [13] a.n.a.logous to those formerly enjoyed by the teachers of rhetoric under the Empire (R. 26), and likewise began the policy, so liberally followed later, of endowing the Church. In 391 the Emperor Theodosius forbade all pagan worship, thus making the victory of Christianity complete. In less than four centuries from the birth of its founder the Christian faith had won control of the great Empire in which it originated. In 529 the Emperor Justinian ordered the closing of all pagan schools, and the University of Athens, which had remained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christianity, closed its doors. The victory was now complete.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. We have now before us the third great contribution upon which our modern civilization has been built. To the great contributions of Greece and Rome, which we have previously studied, there now was added, and added at a most opportune time, the contribution of Christianity. In taking the Jewish idea of one G.o.d and freeing it from the narrow tribal limitations to which it had before been subject, Christianity made possible its general acceptance, first in the Roman world, and later in the Mohammedan world. [14] With this was introduced the doctrine of the fatherhood of G.o.d and his love for man, the equality before G.o.d of all men and of the two s.e.xes, and the sacredness of each individual in the eyes of the Father. An entirely new conception of the individual was proclaimed to the world, and an entirely new ethical code was promulgated. The duty of all to make their lives conform to these new conceptions was a.s.serted. These ideas imparted to ancient society a new hopefulness and a new energy which were not only of great importance in dealing with the downfall of civilization and the deluge of barbarism which were impending, but which have been of prime importance during all succeeding centuries. In time the church organization which was developed gradually absorbed all other forms of government, and became virtually the State during the long period of darkness known as the Middle Ages.

It remains now to sketch briefly how the Church organized itself and became powerful enough to perform its great task during the Middle Ages, what educational agencies it developed, and to what extent these were useful.

II. EDUCATIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH

SCHOOLING OF THE EARLY CHURCH; CATECHUMENAL INSTRUCTION. The early churches were bound together by no formal bond of union, and felt little need for such. It was the belief of many that Christ would soon return and the world would end, hence there was little necessity for organization.

There was also almost no system of belief. An acknowledgment of G.o.d as the Father, a repentance for past sins, a G.o.dly life, and a desire to be saved were about all that was expected of any one. [15] The chief concern was the moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of converts. To accomplish this, in face of the practices of Roman society, a process of instruction and a period of probation for those wishing to join the faith soon became necessary. Jews, pagans, and the children of believers were thereafter alike subjected to this before full acceptance into the Church. At stated times during the week the probationers met for instruction in morality and in the psalmody of the Church (R. 39). These two subjects const.i.tuted almost the entire instruction, the period of probation covering two or three years. The teachers were merely the older and abler members of the congregation.

This personal instruction became common everywhere in the early Church, and the training was known as _catechumenal_, that is, rudimentary, instruction. Two sets of catechumenal lectures have survived, which give an idea as to the nature of the instruction. They cover the essentials of church practice and the religious life (RS. 39, 40). It was dropped entirely in the conversion of the barbarian tribes. This instruction, and the preaching of the elders (presbyters, who later evolved into priests), const.i.tuted the formal schooling of the early converts to Christianity in Italy and the East. Such instruction was never known in England, and but little in Gaul.

The life in the Church made a moral and emotional, rather than an intellectual appeal. In fact the early Christians felt but little need for the type of intellectual education provided by the Roman schools, and the character of the educated society about them, as they saw it, did not make them wish for the so-called pagan learning. Even if the parents of converts wished to provide additional educational advantages for their children, what could they do? A modern author states well the predicament of such Christian parents, when he says:

All the schools were pagan. Not only were all the ceremonies of the official faith--and more especially the festivals of Minerva, who was the patroness of masters and pupils--celebrated at regular intervals in the schools, but the children were taught reading out of books saturated with the old mythology. There the Christian child made his first acquaintance with the deities of Olympus. He ran the danger of imbibing ideas entirely contrary to those which he had received at home. The fables he had learned to detest in his own home were explained, elucidated, and held up to his admiration every day by his masters. Was it right to put him thus into two schools of thought?

What could be done that he might be educated, like every one else, and yet not run the risk of losing his faith? [16]

CATECHETICAL SCHOOLS. After Christianity had begun to make converts among the more serious-minded and better-educated citizens of the Roman Empire, the need for more than rudimentary instruction in the principles of the church life began to be felt. Especially was this the case in the places where Christian workers came in contact with the best scholars of the h.e.l.lenic learning, and particularly at Alexandria, Athens, and the cities of Asia Minor. The speculative Greek would not be satisfied with the simple, unorganized faith of the early Christians. He wanted to understand it as a system of thought, and asked many questions that were hard to answer. To meet the critical inquiry of learned Greeks, it became desirable that the clergy of the Church, in the East at least, should be equipped with a training similar to that of their critics. As a result there was finally evolved, first at Alexandria, and later at other places in the Empire, training schools for the leaders of the Church.

These came to be known as _catechetical_ schools, from their oral questioning method of instruction, and this term was later applied to elementary religious instruction (whence _catechism_) throughout western Europe. Pantaenus, a converted Greek Stoic, who became head of the catechumenal instruction at Alexandria, in 179 A.D., brought to the training of future Christian leaders the strength of Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought. He and his successors, Clement and Origen, developed here an important school of Christian theology where Greek learning was used to interpret the Scriptures and train leaders for the service of the Church. Similar schools were opened at Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis, and Caesarea (See Map, p. 89), and these developed into a rudimentary form of theological schools for the education of the eastern Christian clergy. In these schools Christian faith and doctrine were formulated into a sort of system, the whole being tinctured through and through with Greek philosophic thought. Out of these schools came some of the great Fathers of the early Church; men who strove to uphold the pagan learning and reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophic thinking. [17]

REJECTION OF PAGAN LEARNING IN THE WEST. In the West, where the leaders of the Church came from the less philosophic and more practical Roman stock, and where the contact with a decadent society wakened a greater reaction, the tendency was to reject the h.e.l.lenic learning, and to depend more upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the third century the hostility to the pagan schools and to the h.e.l.lenic learning had here become p.r.o.nounced (R. 41). Even the Fathers of the Latin Church, the greatest of whom had been teachers of oratory or rhetoric in Roman schools before their conversion, [18] gradually came to reject the pagan learning as undesirable for Christians and in a large degree as a robbery from G.o.d. Saint Augustine, in his _Confessions_, hopes that G.o.d may forgive him for having enjoyed Vergil. Jerome's dream [19] was known and quoted throughout the Middle Ages. Tertullian, in his _Prescription against Heresies_, exclaims:

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?... Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition.

Gregory the Great, Pope of the Church from 590 to 604, and who had been well educated as a youth in the surviving Roman-type schools, turned bitterly against the whole of pagan learning. "I am strongly of the opinion," he says, "that it is an indignity that the words of the oracle of Heaven should be restrained by the rules of Donatus" (grammar). In a letter to the Bishop of Vienne he berates him for giving instruction in grammar, concluding with--"the praise of Christ cannot lie in one mouth with the praise of Jupiter. Consider yourself what a crime it is for bishops to recite what would be improper for religiously-minded laymen."

As a result h.e.l.lenic learning declined rapidly in importance in the West as the Church attained supremacy, and finally, in 401, the Council of Carthage, largely at the instigation of Saint Augustine, forbade the clergy to read any pagan author. In time Greek learning largely died out in the West, and was for a time almost entirely lost. Even the Greek language was forgotten, and was not known again in the West for nearly a thousand years. [20]

THE CHURCH PERFECTS A STRONG ORGANIZATION. As was previously stated (p.

92), but little need was felt during the first two centuries for a system of belief or church government. As the expected return of Christ did not take place, and as the need for a formulation of belief and a system of government began to be felt, the next step was the development of these features. The system of belief and the ceremonials of worship finally evolved are more the products of Greek thought and practices of the East, while the form of organization and government is derived more from Roman sources. In the second century the Old Testament was translated into Greek at Alexandria, and the "Apostles' Creed" was formulated. During the third century the writings deemed sacred were organized into the New Testament, also in Greek. In 325 the first General Council of the Church was held at Nicaea, in Asia Minor. It formulated the Nicene Creed (R. 42), and twenty canons or laws for the government of the Church. A second General Council, held at Constantinople in 381, revised the Nicene Creed and adopted additional canons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28. A BISHOP Seventh Century (Santo Venanzio, Rome)]

The great organizing genius of the western branch of the Church was Saint Augustine (354-430). He gave to the Western or Latin Church, then beginning to take on its separate existence, the body of doctrine needed to enable it to put into shape the things for which it stood. The system of theology evolved before the separation of the eastern and western branches of the Church was not so finished and so finely speculative as that of the Greek branch, but was more practical, more clearly legal, and more systematically organized.

The influence of Rome was strong also in the organization of the system of government finally adopted for the Church. There being no other model, the Roman governmental system was copied. The bishop of a city corresponded to the Roman munic.i.p.al officials; the archbishop of a territory to the governor of a province; and the patriarch to the ruler of a division of the Empire. As Rome had been a universal Empire, and as the city of Rome had been the chief governing city, [21] the idea of a universal Church was natural and the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was gradually a.s.serted and determined. [22]

A STATE WITHIN A STATE. There was thus developed in the West, as it were a State within a State. That is, within the Roman Empire, with its Emperor, provincial governors, and munic.i.p.al officials, governing the people and drawing their power from the Roman Senate and imperial authority, there was also gradually developed another State, consisting of those who had accepted the Christian faith, and who rendered their chief allegiance, through priest, bishop, and archbishop, to a central head of the Church who owed allegiance to no earthly ruler. That Christianity, viewed from the governmental point of view, was a serious element of weakness in the Roman State and helped its downfall, there can be no question. In the eastern part of the Empire the Church was always much more closely identified with the State. Fortunately for civilization, before the Roman Empire had fallen and the impending barbarian deluge had descended, the Christian Church had succeeded in formulating a unifying belief and a form of government capable of commanding respect and of enforcing authority, and was fast taking over the power of the State itself.

THE CATHEDRAL OR EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS. The first churches throughout the Empire were in the cities, and made their early converts there. [23]

Gradually these important cities evolved into the residences of a supervising priest or bishop, the territory became known as a _bishopric_, and the church as a _cathedral church_. In time, also, some of the outlying territory was organized into parishes, and churches were established in these. These were made tributary to and placed under the direction of the bishop of the large central city. To supply clergy for these outlying parishes came to be one of the functions of the bishop, and, to insure properly trained clergy and to provide for promotions in the clerical ranks, schools of a rudimentary type were established in connection with the cathedral churches. These came to be known as _cathedral_, or _episcopal schools_. At first they were probably under the immediate charge of the bishop, but later, as his functions increased, the school was placed under a special teacher, known as a _Scholasticus_, or _Magister Scholarum_, who directed the cathedral school, a.s.sisted the bishop, and trained the future clergy. As the pagan secondary schools died out, these cathedral schools, together with the monastic schools which were later founded, gradually replaced the pagan schools as the important educational inst.i.tutions of the western world. In these two types of schools the religious leaders of the early Middle Ages were trained.

THE MONASTIC ORGANIZATION. In the early days of Christianity, it will be remembered (p. 87), the Christian convert held himself apart from the wicked world all about him, and had little to do with the society or the government of his time. He regarded the Church as having no relationship to the State. As the Church grew stronger, however, and became a State within a State, the Christian took a larger and larger part in the world around him, and in time came to be distinguished from other men by his profession of the Christian religion rather than by any other mark. Many of the early bishops were men of great political sagacity, fully capable of realizing to the full the political opportunities, afforded by their position, to strengthen the power of the Church. It was the work of men of this type that created the temporal power of the Church, and made of it an inst.i.tution capable of commanding respect and enforcing its decisions.

To some of the early Christians this life did not appeal. To them holiness was a.s.sociated with a complete withdrawal from contact with this sinful world and all its activities. Some betook themselves to the desert, others to the forests or mountains, and others shut themselves up alone that they might be undisturbed in their religious meditations. To such devoted souls monasticism, a scheme of living brought into the Christian world from the East, made a strong appeal. It provided that such men should live together in brotherhoods, renouncing the world, taking vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience, and devoting their lives to hard labor and the mortification of the flesh that the soul might be exalted and made beautiful. The members lived alone in individual cells, but came together for meals, prayer, and religious service.

As early as 330 a monastery had been organized on the island of Tebernae, in the Nile. About 350 Saint Basil introduced monasticism into Asia Minor, where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The monastic idea was soon transferred to the West, a monastery being established at Rome probably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint Victor, at Ma.r.s.eilles, was founded by Ca.s.sian in 404, and this type of monastery and monastic rule was introduced into Gaul, about 415. The monastery of Lerins (off Cannes, in southern France) was established in 405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of monastic foundations took place in western Europe, particularly along the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire in Gaul.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS (From a thirteenth-century ma.n.u.script)]

In 529 Saint Benedict, a Roman of wealth who fled from the corruption of his city, founded the monastery of Monte Ca.s.sino, south of Rome, and established a form of government, or rule of daily life, which was gradually adopted by nearly all the monasteries of the West. In time Europe came to be dotted with thousands of these establishments, many of which were large and expensive inst.i.tutions both to found and to maintain.

[24] By the time the barbarian invasions were in full swing monasticism had become an established inst.i.tution of the Christian Church. Nunneries for women also were established early. A letter from Saint Jerome to Marcella, a Roman matron, in 382, in which he says that "no high-born lady at Rome had made profession of the monastic life ... or had ventured ...

publicly to call herself a nun," would seem to imply that such inst.i.tutions had already been established in Rome.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS. Poverty, chast.i.ty, obedience, labor, and religious devotion were the essential features of a monastic life. The Rule of Saint Benedict (R. 43) organized in a practical way the efforts of those who took the vows. In a series of seventy-three rules which he laid down, covering all phases of monastic life, the most important from the standpoint of posterity was the forty-eighth, prescribing at least seven hours of daily labor and two hours of reading "for all able to bear the load." From that part of the rule requiring regular manual labor the monks became the most expert farmers and craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, while to the requirement of daily reading we owe in large part the development of the school and the preservation of learning in the West during the long intellectual night of the mediaeval period (R. 44).

Into these monastic inst.i.tutions the _oblati_, that is, those who wished to become monks, were received as early as the age of twelve, and occasionally earlier (R. 53 a). The final vows (R. 53 b) could not be taken until eighteen, so during this period the novice was taught to work and to read and write, given instruction in church music, and taught to calculate the church festivals and to do simple reckoning. In time some condensed and carefully edited compendium of the elements of cla.s.sical learning was also studied, and still later a more elaborate type of instruction was developed in some of the monasteries. This, however, belongs to a later division of this history, and further description of church and monastic education will be deferred until we study the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. Aside from the general instruction in the practices of the church and home instruction in the work of a woman, there was but little provision made for the education of girls not desiring to join a convent or nunnery. A few, however, obtained a limited amount of intellectual training. The letter of Saint Jerome to the Roman lady Paula (R. 45), regarding the education of her daughter, is a very important doc.u.ment in the history of early Christian education for girls. Dating from 403, it outlines the type of training a young girl should be given who was to be properly educated in Christian faith and properly consecrated to G.o.d. What he outlined was education for nunneries, a number of which had been founded in the East and a few in the West. In the West these inst.i.tutions later experienced an extensive development, and offered the chief opportunity for any intellectual education for women during the whole of the Middle Ages.

III. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH

WHAT THE CHURCH BROUGHT TO THE MIDDLE AGES. From a small and purely spiritual organization, devoting its energies to exhortation and to the moral regeneration of mankind, and without creed or form of government, as the Christian Church was in the first two centuries of its development, we have traced the organization of a body of doctrine, the perfection of a strong system of church government, and the development of a very limited educational system designed merely to train leaders for its service. We have also shown how it added to its early ecclesiastical organization a strong governmental organization, became a State within a State, and gradually came to direct the State itself. It was thus ready, when the virtual separation of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western division took place, in 395, and when the western division finally fell before the barbarian onslaughts, to take up in a way the work of the State, force the barbarian hordes to acknowledge its power, and begin the process of civilizing these new tribes and building up once more a civilization in the western world. In addition to its spiritual and political power, the Church also had developed, in its catechumenal instruction and in the cathedral and monastic schools, a very meager form of an educational system for the training of its future leaders and servants. A great change had now taken place in the nature of education as a preparation for life, and intellectual education, in the sense that it was known and understood in Greece and Rome, was not to be known again in the western world for almost a thousand years. The distinguishing characteristic of the centuries which follow, up to the Revival of Learning, are, first, a struggle against very adverse odds to prevent civilization from disappearing entirely, and later a struggle to build up new foundations upon which world civilization might begin once more where it had left off in Greece and Rome.

THE THREE GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. Thus, before the Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world which were to form the foundations of our future western civilization had been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system of wonderful effectiveness--one that in its higher development in time took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly modified all later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are especially indebted for out conceptions of law, order, and government, and for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest conceptions of G.o.d, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world.

All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into an East and West, in 395; and the final division of the Christian Church into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek language from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more tolerant of pagan learning than was the Western, and was better able to withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it.

h.e.l.lenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning which we know as the _Renaissance_. Of the Latin literature and learning much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of barbarism and general ignorance through which it pa.s.sed, and only in modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of its founder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE CHURCH

The map also shows conditions as they were in Europe at the end of the fourth century A.D. Syria, Egypt, Africa, and a portion of Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the Saracens in the seventh century and became Mohammedan, but Constantinople held out until 1453. The eastern division eventually gave rise to the Greek Catholic Church of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia, while the western division became the Roman Catholic Church of western Europe. At Constantinople Greek learning was preserved until the West was again ready to receive it. The Eastern Empire for a time retained control of Sicily and southern Italy (the old _Magna Graecia_), but eventually these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity.]

THE FUTURE STORY. For the long period of intellectual stagnation which now followed, the educational story is briefly told. But little formal education was needed, and that of but one main type. It was only after the Church had won its victory over the barbarian hordes, and had built up the foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that education in any broad and liberal sense was again needed. This required nearly a thousand years of laborious and painful effort. Then, when schools again became possible and learning again began to be demanded, education had to begin again with the few at the top, and the contributions of Greece and Rome had to be recovered and put into usable form as a basis upon which to build. It is only very recently that it has become possible to extend education to all.

In Part II we shall next trace briefly the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and the reawakening, and in Part III we shall, among other things, point out the deep and lasting influence of the work of these ancient civilizations on our modern educational thoughts and practices.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Point out the many advantages of a universal religion for such a universal Empire as Rome developed, and the advantages of Emperor worship for such an Empire.

2. What do modern nations have that is much akin to Emperor worship?

3. Explain why Stoicism made such an appeal to the better-educated cla.s.ses at Rome.

4. Why is an emotional faith better adapted to the ma.s.s of people than an intellectual one?