The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

CHAPTER VIII

[1] "In the school of Nisibis the Church possessed an institution, which for centuries secured her a system of higher education, and therewith an important social and political position. To the older literature, consisting of translations, there was added, from the middle of the fifth century onward, a large number of philosophical, scientific, and medical treatises belonging to Greek antiquity, and especially the works of Aristotle. Through these Greek wisdom and learning, clothed in Syrian attire, found a home on these borders of Christendom." (Müller, D. K., Kirchengeschichte, vol. I, p. 278.)

[2] "By the year 600 A.D. the triumph of the oriental element in Christendom had well-nigh banished learning and education from the domain of the Church, giving place to a gloomy, unquestioning faith which sank ever deeper and deeper in the mire of superstition. What enlightenment survived had found a home beyond the limits of the Roman Empire,—in Ireland, in the extreme West; in Syria, in the far East." (Davidson, Thomas, History of Education, p. 133.)

[3] This was determined as being 56-1/3 miles, which would make the circumference of the earth 20,280 miles. The correct distance is 69 miles.

[4] The fanaticism of the eastern Arabs now reasserted itself, and higher education In the Mohammedan countries of the East drew permanently to a close. A harsh, rigid orthodoxy, fatal to educational progress, now triumphed. The coming of the Turks only made matters worse, and with their advent education throughout Arabia and Asia Minor became a thing of the past. Some day it will be the task of western Europe to hand back schools and learning to the Mohammedan East. This may be one of the by-products of the great World War.

[5] The Alhambra, built between 1238 and 1354, at Granada, is an exquisite example of their art. (See plate in vol. 1, p. 658, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., for an illustration of their architecture and art.)

[6] It was an age of superstition and miracles, diabolic influences, witchcraft and magic, private warfare, trials by ordeal, robber bands, little dirty towns, no roads, unsanitary conditions, and miserable homes. Even the nobility had few comforts and conveniences, and personal cleanliness was not common. Disease was punishment for sin and to be cured by prayer, while the insane were scourged to cast out the devils within them.

[7] Frederic II was Emperor of the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire, ruling from 1227 to 1250. Though a German by birth, he had lived long in Sicily, and spent most of his time in Italy after becoming Emperor. He greatly admired the Saracens for their learning, and tried to transfer some of their knowledge to Christian Europe. He lived, however, at a time when the Papacy was cementing its temporal power and the Pope was becoming the Emperor of Europe. This encroachment Frederick resisted and tried to break, but without success. At his death the mediaeval German dream of world empire perished; Germany was left a collection of feudal States; and the temporal power of the Pope was henceforth for centuries to come undisputed.

[8] Christianity had not as yet been introduced among the mixed Slavic and Germanic tribes along the eastern Baltic. In Prussia and Lithuania, where missionary efforts had been made from 900 on, success did not come until more than three centuries later. (See art. "Missions," Ency. Brit., 11th ed., vol. 18.)

[9] The more important questions arising concerned the Trinity, the Eucharist, and Transubstantiation.

[10] This discussion was over what was known as nominalism vs. realism. Anselm of Canterbury (1034-1109), basing his argument largely on some parts of Plato, had declared that ideas constituted our real existence. Roscellinus of Compiègne (1050-1105), basing his argument on parts of the Organon of Aristotle, had held that ideas or concepts are only names for real, concrete things. Anselm, as a realist, contended that the human senses are deceptive, and that revealed truth alone is reliable. Roscellinus, as a nominalist, held that truth can be reached only through investigation and the use of reason. The church accepted the realism of Anselm as correct, and Roscellinus was compelled to recant. The stifling effect of such an attitude toward honest doubt can be imagined.

[11] McCabe, Joseph, Peter Abelard, p. 7.

[12] By the beginning of the eleventh century this cathedral school had become the most important in France, a position which it retained for centuries. It was the great center for theological study, and drew to it a succession of eminent teachers—William of Champeaux, Abelard, Peter the Lombard—and, in time, thousands of students.

[13] The term scholasticism comes from scholasticus, because it was chiefly in the cathedral schools that scholasticism arose. It means, literally, the method of thinking worked out by the teachers in the cathedral schools.

[14] The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) once said that when he considered the inertness of the Middle Ages he was led to think that God had been content to make man a two-legged animal, leaving to Aristotle the task of making him a thinking being. The worship of Aristotle is easily explained by the great amount of information his works contained, his logical method and skillful classification of knowledge, and the way his ideas as to causes fitted into Christian reasoning.

[15] The Dominicans, or Black Friars, were a new teaching and preaching monastic order, founded in 1216. It was a revival of monasticism, directed toward more modern ends. The Dominicans established themselves in connection with the new universities, and sought to control education and to defend orthodoxy. Another new order of this same period was that of the Franciscans, or Gray Friars, founded by Saint Francis in 1212. Their work was directed still more to preaching, missions, and public service. They were a less intellectual but a more democratic brotherhood. It was the Franciscans who followed the armies of Spain to Mexico, and later built and conducted the missions of the central and southern California coast.

[16] Special translations of Aristotle's Rhetoric and Politics, from the original Greek texts, obtained at Constantinople by the Crusaders, were made for Thomas Aquinas at his special request, about 1260, by William of Moerbeke, who knew enough Greek to perform the task. This gave him better translations from which to lecture and write.

[17] In 529 the Eastern Emperor, Justinian (see p. 76), directed that an orderly compilation be prepared of the many and confused laws and decisions which had been made in the Roman Empire, with a view to producing a standard body of Roman law in place of the unwieldy mass of contradictory material then existing. The result was the Corpus Juris Civilis, worked out by a staff of eminent lawyers between 529 and 533 (R. 93). This consisted of

I. The Code, in twelve books, containing the Statutes of the
Emperors;

II. The Digest, in fifty books, containing pertinent extracts
from the opinions of celebrated Roman lawyers;

III. The Institutes, in four books, being an elementary
textbook on the law for the use of students;

IV. The Novellae, or new Statutes, the final edition of which was issued in 565, and included the laws from 533 on. This was preserved and used in the East, but came too late to be of much service to the Western Empire.

[18] The subdivisions were as follows: I. Contained 106 "distinctions," relating to ecclesiastical persons and affairs. II. Contained 36 "distinctions," relating to problems arising in the administration of canon law. III. Contained 5 "distinctions," relating to the ritual and sacraments of the Church.

[19] The additions were:

I. The Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, issued in 1234, in five
books.
II. A Supplement to the above by Pope Boniface VIII (Liber
Sextus), issued in 1298.
III. The Constitutions of Clementine, issued in 1317.
IV. Several additions of Papal Laws, not included in any of the
above.

[20] He held that the body contained four humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Disease was caused by an undue accumulation of some one of the four. Hence the office of the physician was to reduce this accumulation by some means such as blood-letting, purging, blisters, diaphoretics, etc. In the monastery of Saint Gall (see Diagram, R. 69) a blood-letting room was a part of the establishment, and this practice was continued until well into the nineteenth century.

[21] Galen was born at Pergamon, in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. He studied medicine at Pergamon, Smyrna, and Alexandria, and for a time lived in Rome. Returning to Pergamon he was appointed physician to the athletes in the gymnasium there. He later went back to Rome and became physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He is credited with five hundred works on literature, philosophy, and medicine, one hundred and eighteen of which have survived. In medicine he wrote on anatomy, physiology, diagnosis, pathology, therapeutics, materia medica, surgery, hygiene, and dietetics. He was the first to use the pulse as a means of detecting physical condition.

[22] Saint Augustine, The City of God, book xxii, chap. 24.

[23] Often spoken of as Constantius Africanus. It is recorded that he studied the arts in Babylon, visited Egypt and India, and returned to his home in Carthage one of the most learned men of his age. Suspected of dealings with the Devil he fled to Salernum (c. 1065), taught there for many years, published many medical works of his own, and finally retired to the monastery of Monte Cassino, dying there in 1087.

[24] In 1064 a company of seven thousand is said to have started for the Holy Land.

[25] Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 2d ed., p. 261.

[26] "From Clermont the enthusiasm spread over France like wildfire. Stirring preachers, whereof the most notable was Peter the Hermit, set all France, peasant and noble, to arming. It was the old gospel of Mohammed recast in Christian guise:—pardon for sin and the spoils of the infidel if victorious!—a swift road to heaven if slain in the battle! Pressed with this hope and enthusiasm, armies to be reckoned by the hundreds of thousands were launched upon the East." (Davis, W. S., Mediaeval and Modern Europe, p. 95).

[27] Of the thousands of petty lords and knights who went to the hot East, clad in the heavy armor of northern Europe, large numbers left their bones along the way or in the Syrian sands, and the landholdings at home reverted to the Crown. This was a crushing blow to the old feudal regime, advanced the cause of civilization, and helped in the rise of the modern nations. Especially was this true in France and England, whose knights went in large numbers to the East. In Germany the knights and nobles, as a class, refused to have anything to do with the Crusades, and hence they were not killed off or impoverished, but remained to rule and multiply and be troublesome. This is one reason for the much earlier rise and greater strength of French than German nationality, and one reason why Germany has been so much slower than France and England in developing a democratic type of civilization.

[28] "As presented to the eye, a typical mediaeval city would be a remarkable sight. Its extent would be small, both because of the limited population, and the need of making the circuit of the walls to be defended as short as possible; but within these walls the huge, many-storied houses would be wedged closely together. The narrow streets would be dirty and ill-paved—often beset by pigs in lieu of scavengers; but everywhere there would be bustling human life with every citizen elbowing close to everybody else. Out of the foul streets here and there would rise parish churches of marvelous architecture, and in the center of the town extended the great square—market-place—where the open-air markets would be held, and close by it, dwarfing the lesser churches, the tall gray cathedral— the pride of the community; close by, also, the City Hall, an elegant secular edifice, where the council met, where the great public feasts could take place, and above which rose the mighty belfry, whence clanged the great alarm-bell to call the citizens together in mass meeting, or to don armor and man the walls." (Davis, W. S., Mediaeval and Modern Europe, p. 146.)

[29] In Italy, in particular, the cities became strong and powerful, and eventually overthrew the rule of the bishops and defeated the German Emperor, Frederick I, in a long battle to preserve their independence. In Flanders such cities as Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent, came to dominate there. In 1302 their burghers defeated the French army; and in the sixteenth century they helped to break the autocratic power of Spain in a great struggle for human and civic freedom. By the thirteenth century Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Augsburg, and Nuremburg were important commercial cities in Germany.

[30] They came there because, due to their plundering and murdering proclivities, Venice forbade her merchants to go to them.

[31] So poor were the mediaeval bridges that the old prayer-books contained formulas for "commending one's soul to God ere starting to cross a bridge."

[32] The peasants were of two classes: (1) serfs, who were not free and who were attached to the soil, but unlike slaves had plots of land of their own and could not be sold off the land; and (2) villeins, who were personally free, but still were bound to their lord for much menial service and for many payments in produce and money.

[33] The Church originally held many serfs and villeins, as did the nobles. It began the process of setting them free, encouraging others to do likewise. In time it became common, as it did in our Southern States before the Civil War, for nobles in dying to set free a certain number of their serfs and villeins. These went as free men to the rising cities.

[34] The mediaeval guild was an important institution, and the guild idea was applied to many forms of mediaeval associations. Thus we read of guilds of notaries in Florence, pleaders' and attorneys' guilds in London, medical guilds and barber-surgeons' guilds in various cities, and of the book-writers-and-sellers' guild in Paris. In a religious pageant given at York, England, on Corpus Christi Day, 1415, fifty-one different local guilds presented each a scene. (See Cheyney, E. P., English Towns and Gilds., Pa. Sources, vol. II, no. I.)

[35] "The ready money of the merchant was as effective a weapon as the sword of the noble, or the spiritual arms of the Church. Very speedily, also, the men of the cities began to seize upon one of the weapons which up to that time had been the exclusive possession of the Church, and one of the main sources of its power,—knowledge and intellectual training. With these two weapons in its hands, wealth and knowledge, the Third Estate forced its way into influence, and compelled the other two (Estates) to recognize it as a partner with themselves in the management of public concerns." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 2d ed. p. 299.)

[36] In Hamburg, for example, the city council established four writing schools in 1402, to which the church authorities objected. The council refused to give them up, and for this was laid under the ban of the Church, compelled to recede, admit that it had no right to establish such schools, and pay the costs involved in the contest.

[37] For example, the three most widely read books of the thirteenth century were Reynard the Fox, a profoundly humorous animal epic; The Golden Legend, which so deeply impressed Longfellow; and the Romance of the Rose, for three centuries the most read book in Europe.

[38] Despite all the criticisms one may offer against business, commerce has always been a great civilizing force. While not anxious to pay heavy taxes, the merchant has always been willing to pay what has been necessary to support a public power capable of maintaining order and security for property. Feudal turmoil, private warfare, and plundering are deadly foes of commerce, and these have come to an end where commerce and industry have gained the ascendant.

[39] As a rule a master craftsman might teach his trade to all his sons, but could have only one other apprentice who received board, lodging, clothing, and training, as one of the family. The guild still supervised the apprentice, protecting him from bad usage or defective training by the master.

[40] This required the production of a "masterpiece." This piece of work had to be produced to prove high competency. For example, in the shoemakers' guild of Paris, a pair of boots, three pairs of shoes, and a pair of slippers, all done in the best possible manner, were required.

[41] Of thirty-three guilds investigated by Leach, all maintained song schools, and twenty-eight maintained a grammar school as well. In London, Merchant Taylors' School, Stationers' School, and the Mercers' School are present-day survivals of these ancient guild foundations.