VII
If the fourteenth-century village was less ill off than we are apt to imagine it in regard to the medicines of the body, it appears that the training of the mind was less absolutely non-existent in the rural class than it has been our habit to assert. Many of the labourers on the farms of Bonis could sign their names, though probably their science in writing ended there. But every tenant-farmer, in an age when the accounts of tenant and landlord were peculiarly complicated, was obliged to know a certain amount of book-keeping: doubtless the steward was often more learned than his lord. Hedge-schools were common;[44] in every considerable village, if not in every hamlet, there was a schoolmaster, appointed generally by the patron of the village living. There was a certain regulated number of parish schools in every county, and this number might not be exceeded: our ancestors never could be brought to recognize the advantages of competition. Certain texts, however, prove the existence of unauthorized hedge-schools, promptly quashed as soon as they came to the knowledge of the authorities.
The Great Plague, which so changed the face of Europe, diminished education by carrying off the schoolmasters. The Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis remarks that, after the epidemic of 1348, there were not enough teachers for the requirements of the houses, hamlets, and castles of his country. Thus the sons of the men who fought at Crecy grew up, though richer, more ignorant than their fathers.
The schools of the fourteenth century were not entirely free; and as a certain proportion of their profits went to the patron, he filled up the gaps as soon as possible. The village priest was often the schoolmaster, and the instruction was always chiefly religious; but the boys were also taught the rudiments of Latin grammar. The ideal of every peasant was to have a son in the Church—a son who might become abbot, bishop, chancellor, cardinal. It was their one great chance of rising in the world. But in the kingdom of the Mind, many are called, few chosen. Of the dozen or so boys who went to every village school (each with a dim idea that perhaps by-and-by he might become a parish priest, or enter some religious order) a fair proportion grew up as stewards or labourers.[45] Some, no doubt, persevered in their original intention; some went to the town, or, tiring of grammar, ‘listed for a soldier; but, alas! we meet with a good many of them in the Registers of the Châtelet. Perhaps—who knows?—these ne’er-do-wells were the most useful of them all, for their depositions in the Court of Justice throw many curious lights on mediæval education. Thus, for example, one Jehannin de la Montaigne, a wandering mason accused of horse-stealing, invokes the privilege of clergy, asserting that he was tonsured at the age of eight years old when he went to school and learned his psalter—“car auparavant qu’il aprenist son dit métier de maçon, il avait esté avec plusieurs enfans d’icelle ville de Château Regnault à l’escole de la dite ville et avoit aprins jusqu’à son Donnet et Catonnet; et lors il savait bien lire.”[46] This Donnet or Donat was the grammatical treatise of the learned Ælius Donatus, that glory of the fourth century, whose vigilant elucubrations were very popular throughout a thousand years. Catonnet, a school-book equally universal, was one century older: it was a paraphrase of the distiches of Dionysius Cato, once a famous philologist. These were both great doctors. To-day, as you see, we scarcely know their names.
The names of these two guides to knowledge were known to Jehannin de la Montaigne, but his science went no further. After a judicious course of torture, he was taken to the kitchen (as was the custom of that guileful age), placed in a comfortable chair before a cosy fire, with a warm mantle round his shoulders and a glass of wine in his hand. Many criminals, obstinate to screw and pulley, succumbed to these more deceiving influences, especially as they succeeded the chill and dismal hour of execution (the torture of the fourteenth century was far less diabolic than that of ages more refined, but it was uncomfortable and rheumatic—pails of icy water being dashed from time to time upon the dislocated patient). Well, to return to Jehannin, whom we choose as an example from a crowd of fellow-sinners—he confessed, as he sat by the kitchen fire, that he was no more a priest than the cook. “But,” added he, “a tonsure is convenient in judicial circumstances. Many of my companion masons had tonsures, and it was they who advised me to get one also, which they said I could do without prejudice, as I have really been to school and could read and write well enough when I left it. Therefore I went to the village and had myself tonsured par un barbier, et non aultrement.” That confession was the end of friend Jehannin; having no longer any claim to the jurisdiction of the Church, he swung forthwith from the neighbouring gallows. “Il n’avoit aucuns biens.”
The courts of the Châtelet were literally encumbered with these sham clerks, who impeded the course of justice by asserting a non-existent benefit of clergy. Not one of them when confronted in the courts of justice with a psalter and a primer could read, write, spell a Pater, or say by heart a Latin prayer. This, however, proves nothing against the system of education, which was probably excellent. The School Board manager of the present day, in an age of unexampled science, knows how easily a boy may pass through half a dozen years of reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, botany, physics, chemistry, Biblical exegesis, and all the other necessaries that no modern ploughboy is complete without; and he emerges no less ignorant than he went in. Yet the boys nowadays stay at school till twelve, or sometimes till fourteen; in those days they left at eight or ten. It is probable that Donnet and Catonnet did not penetrate far into the average inner consciousness. But all were not as ignorant as the good-for-nothings who came before the courts of law for purse-slitting and horse-lifting; these we may probably take as a natural selection of the unfittest. M. Delisle, in his Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age, gives some delicious examples of the demi-Latinity of the learned peasant, which unfortunately I have not got by heart.