The History of Education Part 17

1. Distinguish between song and grammar schools (70), and state what was taught in each. Do we have any modern a.n.a.logy to the same teacher teaching both schools, as was sometimes done?

2. Distinguish between monastic and episcopal (cathedral) schools (71).

When was the great era of each? How do you explain the change in relative importance of the two?

3. Explain the process of evolution of a parish school out of a chantry school.

4. What was the nature of the cathedral school at Salisbury (72)?

5. What type of a school was provided for in the Aldwincle chantry (73)?

Why was it not until after the twelfth century that the endowing of schools (73) began to supersede the endowing of priests, churches, and monasteries?

6. How do you explain the need for so many years to master the Seven Liberal Arts (74)?

7. Into what subjects of study have we broken up the old subject of grammar, as described by Quintilian (76), and how have we distributed them throughout our school system? Is technical grammar at present taught in the best possible place?

8. What stage in scientific knowledge do the selections from Anglicus (77 a-b) indicate? What rate of scientific progress is indicated by its translation and length of use?

9. What scope of knowledge is represented in the library (78) of the tenth-century schoolmaster? What does the list indicate as to the state of learning of the time?

10. Picture the manners and morals of a time which called for the proclamation of a Truce of G.o.d (79). Would the rate of progress of civilization and the rate of elimination of warfare up to then, and since, indicate that the Church has been very successful in imposing its will?

11. Show how Chivalry was made a great a.s.set to the Church (80).

12. How do you explain the much greater simplicity of the church service of modern Protestant churches than that of the Roman (81) or Greek Catholic churches?

13. Explain the form of mild compulsion toward learning which the diocesan council of Winchester (82) attempted to inst.i.tute.

14. Is the modern state teacher's certificate a natural outgrowth of the mediaeval licenses (83) to teach grammar and song? Why did the Church insist on these when Rome had not required such?

15. Show how the modern oath of office of a teacher, and the possibility of dismissal for insubordination, is a natural development from the oath of fealty and obedience (84 b) of the mediaeval teacher? Is this true also for our modern notices of appointment (84 a)?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Abelson, Paul. _The Seven Liberal Arts_.

Addison, Julia de W. _Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages_.

Besant, W. _The Story of King Alfred_.

* Clark, J. W. _The Care of Books_.

Davidson, Thomas. "The Seven Liberal Arts"; in _Educational Review_, vol. II, pp. 467-73. (Also in his _Aristotle_.) Mombert, J. I. _History of Charles the Great_.

* Mullinger, J. B. _The Schools of Charles the Great_.

Sandys, J. E. _History of Cla.s.sical Scholars.h.i.+p_, vol. I.

Scheffel, Victor. _Ekkehard_. (Historical novel of monastic life.) Steele, Philip. _Mediaeval Lore_. (Anglicus' Cyclopaedia.)

CHAPTER VIII

INFLUENCES TENDING TOWARD A REVIVAL OF LEARNING

I. MOSLEM LEARNING FROM SPAIN

THE MOHAMMEDANS IN SPAIN. It will be recalled that in chapter V we mentioned briefly the Mohammedan migrations of the seventh century, and said that we should meet them again a little later on as one of the minor forces in the development of our western civilization. After their defeat at Tours (732) the Mohammedans retired into Spain, mixed with the Iberian- Roman-Visigothic peoples inhabiting the peninsula, and began to develop a civilization there. Figure 33 (p. 114) shows how much of the world the Mohammedans had overrun by 800 A.D., and how much of Spain was in their possession.

In Spain they developed a skillful agriculture (R. 85), as, in lands as hot and dry as Spain, all agriculture to be successful must be. They introduced irrigation, gave special attention to the breeding of horses and cattle, and developed garden and orchard fruits. To them western Europe is indebted for the introduction of many of its orchard fruits, useful plants, and garden vegetables, as well as for a number of important manufacturing processes. The orange, lemon, peach, apricot, and mulberry trees; the spinach, artichoke, and asparagus among vegetables; cotton, rice, sugar cane, and hemp among useful plants; the culture of the silkworm, and the manufacture of silk and cotton garments; the manufacture of paper from cotton, and the making of morocco leather--these are among our debts to these people. Though many of the above had been known to antiquity, they had been lost during the barbarian invasions and were restored only through their re-introduction by the Moslems.

GREAT ABSORPTIVE POWER FOR LEARNING. The original Arabians themselves were not a well-educated people. Before the time of Mohammed we have practically no records as to any education among them. When in their religious conquests they overran Syria (see Map, p. 103), they came in contact with the survivals of that wonderful Greek civilization and learning, and this they absorbed with greatest avidity.

It will be recalled, too, that in chapter IV (p. 94), it was stated that the early Christians developed very important catechetical schools in Egypt and Syria, and especially at Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis, Harran, and Caesarea. [1] (See Figure 27, p. 89.) It was also stated that the Christian instruction imparted at these eastern schools was tinctured through and through with Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought.

Here monasteries also were developed in numbers, and Syrian monks had for centuries been busy translating Greek authors into Syriac. It was also stated (p. 94) that the Eastern or Greek division of the Christian Church, of which Constantinople became the central city, was more liberal toward Greek learning than was the Western or Latin division of the Church.

By the fifth century, though, due in part to the breakdown of government, the increasing barbarity of the age, and the greater control of all thinking by the Church, the Eastern Church lost somewhat of its earlier tolerance. In 431 the Church Council of Ephesus put a ban on the h.e.l.lenized form of Christian theology advocated by Nestorius, then Patriarch of Constantinople, and drove him and his followers, known as _Nestorian Christians_, from the city. These Nestorians now fled to the old Syrian cities, which early had been so hospitable to Greek learning and thinking. [2] Being now beyond the reach of Christian intolerance and in a friendly atmosphere, they remained there, developing excellent higher schools of the old Greek type, and there the Mohammedans found them when they overran Syria, in 635 A.D.

Mohammedanism now came in contact with an educated people, as it did also in Babylonia (637), in a.s.syria (640), and in Egypt (642), and the need of a better statement of the somewhat crude faith now became evident. The same process now took place as had occurred earlier with Christianity. The Nestorian Christians and the Syrian monks became the scholars for the Mohammedans, and the Mohammedan faith was clothed in Greek forms and received a thorough tincturing of Greek philosophic thought. Within a century they had translated from Syriac into Arabic, or from the original Greek, much of the old Greek learning in philosophy, science, and medicine, and the cities of Syria, and in particular their capital, Damascus, became renowned for their learning. In 760 Bagdad, on the Tigris, was founded, and superseded Damascus as the capital. Extending eastward, these people were soon busy absorbing Hindu mathematical knowledge, obtaining from them (c. 800) the so-called Arabic notation and algebra.

THEY DEVELOP SCHOOLS AND ADVANCE LEARNING. In 786 Haroun-al-Raschid became Caliph at Bagdad, and he and his son made it an intellectual center of first importance. In all the known world probably no city, not even Constantinople, during the latter part of the eighth century and most of the ninth, could vie with Bagdad as a center of learning. Basra, Kufa, and other eastern cities were also noted places. Schools were opened in connection with the mosques (churches), a university after the old Greek model was founded, a large library was organized, and an observatory was built. Large numbers of students thronged the city, learned Greeks and Jews taught in the schools, and a number of advances on the scientific work done by the Greeks were made. A degree of the earth's surface [3] was measured on the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea; the obliquity of the ecliptic was determined (c. 830); astronomical tables were calculated; algebra and trigonometry were perfected; discoveries in chemistry not known in Europe until toward the end of the eighteenth century, and advances in physics for which western Europe waited for Newton (1642-1727), were made; and in medicine and surgery their work was not duplicated until the early nineteenth century. Their scholars wrote dictionaries, lexicons, cyclopaedias, and pharmacopoeias of merit (R. 86).

This eastern learning was now gradually carried to Spain by traveling Mohammedan scholars, and there the energy of conquest was gradually turned to the development of schools and learning. By 900 a good civilization and intellectual life had been developed in Spain, and before 1000 the teaching in Spain, especially along Greek philosophical lines, had become sufficiently known to attract a few adventurous monks from Christian Europe. Gerbert (953-1003), afterward Pope Sylvester II (p. 159), was one of the first to study there, though for this he was accused of having transactions with the Devil, and when he died suddenly at fifty, four years after having been elevated to the Papacy, monks over Europe are recorded as having crossed themselves and muttered that the Devil had now claimed his reward. A monk from Monte Ca.s.sino also studied at Bagdad, and brought back some of the eastern learning to his monastery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51. SHOWING CENTERS OF MOSLEM LEARNING]

MOHAMMEDAN REACTION SENDS SCHOLARS TO SPAIN. The great intellectual development at Bagdad was in part due to the patronage of a few caliphs of large vision, and was of relatively short duration. The religious enthusiasts among the Mohammedans were in reality but little more zealous for h.e.l.lenic learning than the Fathers of the Western Church had been.

Finally, about 1050, they obtained the upper hand and succeeded in driving out the h.e.l.lenic Mohammedans, just as the Eastern Christians had driven out the Nestorians, and these scholars of the East now fled to northern Africa and to Spain. [4] Almost at once a marked further development in the intellectual life of Spain took place. In Cordova, Granada, Toledo, and Seville strong universities were developed, where Jews and h.e.l.lenized Mohammedans taught the learning of the East, and made further advances in the sciences and mathematics. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, physiology, medicine, and surgery were the great subjects of study. Greek philosophy also was taught. They developed schools and large libraries, taught geography from globes, studied astronomy in observatories, counted time by pendulum clocks, invented the compa.s.s and gunpowder, developed hospitals, and taught medicine and surgery in schools (R. 86).

Their cities were equally noteworthy for their magnificent palaces, [5]

mosques, public baths, market-places, aqueducts, and paved and lighted streets--things unknown in Christian Europe for centuries to come (R. 85).

It became fas.h.i.+onable for wealthy men to become patrons of learning, and to collect large libraries and place them at the disposal of scholars, thus revealing interests in marked contrast to those of the fighting n.o.bility of Christian Europe.

THEIR INFLUENCE ON WESTERN EUROPE. Western Europe of the tenth to the twelfth centuries presented a dreary contrast, in almost every particular, to the brilliant life of southern Spain. Just emerging from barbarism, it was still in an age of general disorder and of the simplest religious faith. [6] The age of reason and of scientific experiment as a means of arriving at truth had not yet dawned, and would not do so for centuries to come. Monks and clerics, representing the one learned cla.s.s, regarded this Moslem science as "black art," and in consequence Europe, centuries later, had slowly to rediscover the scientific knowledge which might have been had for the taking. Only the book science of Aristotle would the Church accept, and even this only after some hesitation (Rs. 89, 90).

Western Europe had, however, advanced far enough through the study of the Seven Liberal Arts to desire corrected and additional texts of the earlier cla.s.sical writers, particularly Aristotle, and also to be willing to accept some of the mathematical knowledge of these Saracens. It was here that the Moslem learning in Spain helped in the intellectual awakening of the rest of Europe. Adelhard, an English monk, studied at Cordova about 1120, and took back with him some knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. His Euclid was in general use in the universities by 1300.

Gerard of Cremona, in Lombardy (1114-1187), who studied at Toledo a little later, rendered a similar service for Italy. He also translated many works from the Arabic, including Ptolemy's Almagest (p. 49), a book of astronomical tables, and Alhazen's (Spanish scholar, c. 1100) book on Optics. Other monks studied in the Spanish cities during the twelfth century, a few of whom brought back translations of importance. Frederick II [7] employed a staff of Jewish physicians to translate Arabic works into Latin, but, due to his continual war against the Pope and his final outlawry by the Church, his work possessed less significance than it otherwise might have done. Among the books thus translated was the medical textbook of Avicenna (980-1037), based in turn on the Greek works by Galen and Hippocrates of Cos (p. 197). This book described ailments and their treatment in detail, became the standard textbook in the medical faculties of the universities, and was used until the seventeenth century. Another Moslem whose translated writings had great influence on Europe was Averroes (1126-1198) who tried to unite the philosophy of Aristotle with Mohammedanism (R. 88). His influence on the thinkers of the later Middle Ages was large, he being regarded as the greatest commentator on Aristotle from the days of Rome to the time of the Renaissance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52. ARISTOTLE]

What Europe obtained through Moslem sources which it prized most, though, was the commentary on Aristotle by Averroes and the works of Aristotle (R.

88). The list of the books of Aristotle in use in the mediaeval universities by 1300 (R. 87) reveals the great importance of the additions made. By the middle of the twelfth century Aristotle's _Ethics_, _Metaphysics_, _Physics_, and _Psychology_, as well as some of his minor works, had been translated into Latin and were beginning to be made available for study. The translation route through which these works had been derived was a roundabout one--Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Castilian, Latin--and hence the translations could not be very accurate, but they sufficed for the needs of Europe until the original Greek versions were recovered when the Venetians and Crusaders took and sacked Constantinople, in 1204. These were then translated directly into the Latin. Western Europe also was ready to use the Arabic (Hindu) system of notation, the elements of algebra, Euclid's geometry, and Ptolemy's work on the motion of the heavens. These contributions western Europe was ready for; the larger scientific knowledge of the Saracens, their pharmacopoeias, dictionaries, cyclopaedias, histories, and biographies, it was not yet ready to receive.

One other influence crept in from these peoples which was of large future importance--the music and light literature and love songs of Spain. There had been developed in this sunny land a life of light gayety, chivalrous gallantry, elegant courtesies, and poetic and musical charm, and this gradually found its way across the Pyrenees. At first it affected Provence and Languedoc, in southern France, then Sicily and Italy, and finally the gay contagion of lute and mandolin and love songs spread throughout all western Europe. A race of troubadours and minnesingers arose, singing in the vernacular, traveling about the country, and being entertained in castle halls.

Lordlyng listneth to my tale Which is merryr than the nightengale

won admission at any castle gate. "Out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose."

II. THE RISE OF SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY

THE ELEVENTH CENTURY A TURNING POINT. By the end of the eleventh century a distinct turning-point had been reached in the struggle to save civilization from peris.h.i.+ng. From this time on it was clear that the battle had been won, and that a new Christian civilization would in time arise in western Europe. Much still remained to be done, and centuries of effort would be required, but the Church, almost for the first time in more than six hundred years, felt that it could now pause to organize and systematize its faith. The invasions and destruction of the Northmen had at last ceased, the Mohammedan conquests were over, almost the last of the Germanic tribes in Europe had settled down and had accepted Christianity, [8] and the fighting n.o.bility of Europe were being held somewhat in restraint by the might of the Church, the "Truce of G.o.d" (R. 79), and the softening influence of chivalric education (R. 80). There were many evidences, too, by the end of the eleventh century, that the western Christian world, after the long intellectual night, was soon to awaken to a new intellectual life. The twelfth century, in particular, was a period when it was evident that some new leaven was at work.