Readings in the History of Education Part 1

Readings in the History of Education.

by Arthur O. Norton.

PREFACE

These readings in the history of mediaeval universities are the first installment of a series, which I have planned with the view of ill.u.s.trating, mainly from the sources, the history of modern education in Europe and America. They are intended for use after the manner of the source books or collections of doc.u.ments which have so vastly improved the teaching of general history in recent years. No argument is needed as to the importance of such a collection for effective teaching of the history of education; but I would urge that the subject requires in a peculiar degree rich and full ill.u.s.tration from the sources. The life of school, college, or university is varied, vivid, even dramatic, while we live it; but, once it has pa.s.sed, it becomes thinner and more spectral than almost any other historical fact. Its original records are, in all conscience, thin enough; the situation is still worse when they are worked over at third or fourth hand, flattened out; smoothed down, and desiccated in the pages of a modern history of education. Such histories are of course necessary to effective teaching of the subject; but the records alone can clothe the dry bones of fact with flesh and blood.

Only by turning back to them do we gain a sense of personal intimacy with the past; only thus can we realize that schools and universities of other days were not less real than those of to-day, teachers and students of other generations not less vividly alive than we, academic questions not less unsettled or less eagerly debated. To gain this sense of concrete, living reality in the history of education is one of the most important steps toward understanding the subject.

In selecting and arranging the records here presented I have had in mind chiefly the needs of students who are taking the usual introductory courses in the subject. Students of general history--a subject in which more and more account is taken of culture in the broad sense of the term--may also find them useful.

Within the necessarily limited s.p.a.ce I have chosen to ill.u.s.trate in some detail a few aspects of the history of mediaeval universities rather than to deal briefly with a large number of topics. Many important matters, not here touched upon, are reserved for future treatment. Some doc.u.ments pertinent to the topics here discussed are not reproduced because they are easily accessible elsewhere; these are mentioned in the bibliographical note at the close of the volume.

In writing the descriptive and explanatory text I have attempted only to indicate the general significance of the translations, and to supply information not easily obtained, or not clearly given in the references or text-books which, it is a.s.sumed, the student will read in connection with this work. It would be possible to write a commentary of genuinely mediaeval proportions on the selections here given; doubtless many of the details would be clearer for such a commentary. Some of these are explained by cross-references in the body of the text; in the main, however, I have preferred to let the doc.u.ments stand for their face value to the average reader.

I have given especial attention to university studies (pp. 37-80) and university exercises (pp. 107-134) because these important subjects are unusually difficult for most students, and because surprisingly few ill.u.s.trations of them from the sources have been heretofore easily accessible in English. In particular, there has not been, I believe, a previous translation of any considerable pa.s.sage from the much discussed and much criticised mediaeval commentaries on university text-books. The selection here given (pp. 59-75) is not intended for continuous reading; but it will fully repay close and repeated examination. Not infrequently single sentences of this commentary are the outcroppings of whole volumes of mediaeval thought and controversy; indeed anyone who follows to the end each of the lines of study suggested will have at command a very respectable bit of knowledge concerning the intellectual life of the middle ages. The pa.s.sage requires more explanation by the teacher, or more preliminary knowledge on the part of the student, than any other selection in the book.

The sources from which the selections have been made are indicated in the footnotes to the text My great indebtedness to Mr. Hastings Rashdall's "Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages" is also there indicated. Messrs. G.P. Putnam's Sons and Mr. Joseph McCabe generously gave me permission to quote more extensive pa.s.sages from the latter's brilliant biography of Abelard than I finally found it possible to use.

Mr. Charles S. Moore has been my chief a.s.sistant in the preparation of the ma.n.u.script; most of the translations not otherwise credited are due to his careful work, but I am responsible for the version finally adopted in numerous pa.s.sages in which the interpretation depends on a knowledge of detailed historical facts. In conclusion, I have to thank Professor Charles H. Haskins and Professor Leo Wiener for information which has spared me many days of research on obscure details, and Professor Paul H. Ha.n.u.s for suggestions which have contributed to the clearness of the text.

A.O.N.

READINGS IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

I

INTRODUCTION

The history of education, like all other branches of history, is based upon doc.u.ments. Historical doc.u.ments are, in general, "the traces which have been left by the thoughts and actions of men of former times"; the term commonly refers to the original records or _sources_ from which our knowledge of historical facts is derived. The doc.u.ments most generally used by historians are written or printed. In the history of education alone these are of the greatest variety; as is shown in the following pages, among them are university charters, proceedings, regulations, lectures, text-books, the statutes of student organizations, personal letters, autobiographies, contemporary accounts of university life, and laws made by civil or ecclesiastical authorities to regulate university affairs. Similar varieties of records exist for other educational inst.i.tutions and activities. The immense ma.s.ses of such written or printed materials produced to-day, even to the copy-book of the primary school and the student's note-book of college lectures, will, if they survive, become doc.u.ments for the future historian of education.

The known sources for the history of education in western Europe since the twelfth century--to go no further afield--are exceedingly numerous, and widely spread among various public and private collections; the labor of a lifetime would hardly suffice to examine them all critically.

Nevertheless many printed and written doc.u.ments have been collected, edited, and published in their original languages; and in some instances the collections are fairly complete, or at least fairly representative of the doc.u.ments in existence. a.s.suming that they are accurate copies of the original records, many are now easily accessible to students of the subject, since these reproductions may be owned by all large libraries.

These records, rightly apprehended, have far more than a mere antiquarian interest. The history of mediaeval universities is profoundly important, not only for students, but also for administrators, of modern higher education. For to a surprising degree the daily and hourly conduct of university affairs of the twentieth century is influenced by what universities did six centuries ago. On this point the words of Mr. Hastings Rashdall, a leading authority on mediaeval universities, are instructive: "... If we would completely understand the meaning of offices, t.i.tles, ceremonies, organizations preserved in the most modern, most practical, most unpicturesque of the inst.i.tutions which now bear the name of 'University,' we must go back to the earliest days of the earliest Universities that ever existed, and trace the history of their chief successors through the seven centuries that intervene between the rise of Bologna or Paris, and the foundation of the new University of Stra.s.sburg in Germany, or of the Victoria University in England."

Knowledge of the subject should, however, yield much more than understanding: it should also influence the practical att.i.tudes of those who are concerned with university affairs. Here I take issue with those historians who hold that history supplies no "information of practical utility in the conduct of life"; no "lessons directly profitable to individuals and peoples." The evidence cannot be exhibited here, but such information notoriously has been of the utmost practical value in education, both in shaping influential theories and in determining even minute details of educational practice. There is no reason to suppose that it may not continue to be thus serviceable. Other utilities of university history are less direct, but not less important. The study of individual inst.i.tutions and their varying circ.u.mstances and problems "prepares us to understand and tolerate a variety of usages"; the study of their growth not only "cures us of a morbid dread of change," but also leads us to view their progressive adaptation to new conditions as necessary and desirable. If such study teaches only these two lessons to those who may hereafter shape the course of educational affairs it more than justifies itself. For to eradicate that intolerance of variety in educational practice so characteristic of the academic man of the past, and to diminish in future generations his equally characteristic opposition to changes involving adaptation to new conditions, is to render one of the greatest possible services to educational progress.

II

THE RENAISSANCE OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY

During the twelfth century a great educational revival manifested itself in western Europe, following upon several centuries of intellectual decline or relative inactivity. Though its beginnings may be traced into the eleventh century, and though its culmination belongs to a much later period, the movement is often called the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. In that century it first appears as a widely diffused and rapidly growing movement, and it then takes on distinctly the characteristics which mark its later development. The revival appears first in Italy and France; from these regions it spreads during the next three centuries into England, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Scotland.

Certain facts concerning this educational Renaissance should be clearly understood in connection with the following selections:

1. To men of the times it first showed itself as a renewal of activity in existing schools. Here and there appeared eminent teachers; to them resorted increasing numbers of students from greater and greater distances. In a few years some of these inst.i.tutions became schools of international fame. The newly roused enthusiasm for study in France at the opening of the twelfth century is thus described by a modern writer:

The scholastic fever, which was soon to inflame the youth of the whole of Europe, had already set in. You could not travel far over the rough roads of France without meeting some footsore scholar, making for the nearest large monastery or cathedral town. Before many years, it is true, there arose an elaborate system of conveyance from town to town, an organization of messengers to run between the chateau and the school; but in the earlier days, and, to some extent, even later, the scholar wandered afoot through the long provinces of France. Robbers, frequently in the service of the lord of the land, infested every province. It was safest to don the coa.r.s.e frieze tunic of the pilgrim, without pockets, sling your little wax tablets and stylus at your girdle, strap a wallet of bread and herbs and salt on your back, and laugh at the nervous folk who peeped out from their coaches over a hedge of pikes and daggers. Few monasteries refused a meal or a rough bed to the wandering scholar. Rarely was any fee exacted for the lesson given. For the rest, none were too proud to earn a few sous by sweeping, or drawing water, or amusing with a tune on the reed-flute; or to wear the cast-off tunics of their masters.[1]

This account refers to the study of logic and theology, which soon became dominant in Paris and in various cathedral schools in other parts of France. With slight modifications it would describe also the revival of interest in Roman law in Italy, especially at Bologna.

2. The revival was concerned mainly with professional, or--as later appeared--university, education. The prevailing interest was in Law, Medicine, Theology, and the philosophy of Aristotle. Schools of lower grade were much influenced by the intellectual activity of the times, but the characteristic product of this movement was the university. The universities, organized as corporations, with their teachers divided into faculties, their definite courses of study, their examinations, their degrees, their privileges, and their cosmopolitan communities of students, were not only the result of the revival, but they were inst.i.tutions essentially new in the history of education, and the models for all universities which have since been established.

3. Between the latter part of the twelfth century and 1500 A.D. at least seventy-nine universities were established in western Europe. There may have been others of which no trace remains. Several of them were short-lived, some lasting but a few years; ten disappeared before 1500.

Since that date twenty others have become extinct. The forty-nine European universities of to-day which were founded before 1500 have all pa.s.sed through many changes in character and various periods of prosperity and decline, but we still recognize in them the characteristic features mentioned above, and the same features reappear in the "most modern, most practical, most unpicturesque of the inst.i.tutions which now bear the name of 'University.'" This is one ill.u.s.tration of the statement on page 2 that the daily and hourly conduct of university affairs in the twentieth century is to a surprising degree influenced by what universities did seven centuries ago.

4. The term "University" has always been difficult to define. In the Middle Ages its meaning varied in different places, and changed somewhat in the centuries between 1200 and 1500 A.D. In these pages it signifies in general an inst.i.tution for higher education; and "inst.i.tution" means, not a group of buildings, but a society of teachers or students organized, and ultimately incorporated, for mutual aid and protection, and for the purpose of imparting or securing higher education.

Originally, universities were merely guilds of Masters or Scholars; as such they were imitations of the numerous guilds of artisans and tradesmen already in existence. Out of the simple organization and customs of these guilds grew the elaborate organization and ceremonials of later universities.

There were two main types of university organization,--the University of Masters, and the University of Students. In the former,--which is the type of all modern universities,--the government and instruction of students were regulated by the Masters or Doctors. In the latter, these matters were controlled by the students, who also prescribed rules for the conduct of the Masters. Paris and Bologna were, respectively, the original representatives of these types. Paris was the original University of Masters; its pattern was copied, with some modifications, by the universities of England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Scotland.

Bologna was the archetypal University of Students; its organization was imitated, also with variations, by the universities Italy, France (except Paris), Spain, and Portugal.

In and after the thirteenth century, the place or school in which a university existed was almost always called a _Studium Generale_, i.e. a place to which students resorted, or were invited, from all countries.

This term was used in contrast to _Studium Particulare_, i.e. any school in which a Master in a town taught a few scholars. In the _Studium Generale_ instruction was given by several Masters, in one or more of the Faculties of Arts, Law, Medicine, and Theology. In time the term came to be synonymous with "University"; it is so used in this book.

5. The theoretically complete mediaeval university contained the four faculties of Arts, Theology, Law, and Medicine. These we find reproduced in some modern universities. Then, as now, however, it was not common to find them all equally well developed in any single inst.i.tution; many possessed only two or three faculties, and some had but one. There are rare instances of five faculties, owing to the subdivision of Law. At Paris, the strongest faculties were those of Arts and Theology; Law and Medicine were in comparison but feebly represented. At Bologna, on the other hand, the study of Law was predominant, although the Arts, Medicine, and Theology were also taught there.

6. The studies pursued in the various faculties in and after the thirteenth century were in general as follows:

In the Faculty of Arts:

1. The "three philosophies"--Natural, Moral, and Rational--of Aristotle, together with his Logic, Rhetoric, and Politics. Of these, Logic and Rhetoric are included below.

2. The Seven Liberal Arts, comprising

{Grammar.

(_a_) {Rhetoric.

{Logic.

{Arithmetic.

(_b_) {Geometry.

{Music.

{Astronomy.

In the Faculty of Law:

1. The _Corpus Juris Civilis_, or body of Roman Civil Law, compiled at Constantinople 529-533 A.D., under direction of the Roman Emperor Justinian.

2. The Canon Law, or law governing the Church, of which the first part was compiled by the monk Gratian about the year 1142. His compilation of the Canon Law is usually referred to as the _Decretum Gratiani_.