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 XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. It is often stated that the roots of all our modern educational practices in secondary education lie buried deep in the great Italian Revival of Learning. If we limit the statement to the time preceding the middle of the nineteenth century we shall be more nearly correct, as tremendous changes in both the character and the purpose of secondary education have taken place since that time. The important and outstanding educational result of the revival of ancient learning by Italian scholars was that it laid a basis for a new type of education below that of the university, destined in time to be much more widely opened to promising youths than the old cathedral and monastic schools had been. This new education, based on the great intellectual inheritance recovered from the ancient world by a relatively small number of Italian scholars, dominated the secondary-school training of the middle and higher classes of society for the next four hundred years. It clearly began by 1450, it clearly controlled secondary education until at least after 1850. Out of the efforts of Italian scholars to resurrect, reconstruct, understand, and utilize in education the fruits of their legacy from the ancient Greek and Roman world, arose modern secondary education, as contrasted with mediaeval church education.

Mediaeval education, after all, was narrowly technical. It prepared for but one profession, and one type of service. There was little that was liberal, cultural, or humanitarian about it. It prepared for the world to come, not for the world men live in here. The new education developed in Italy aimed to prepare directly for life in the world here, and for useful and enjoyable life at that. Combining with the new humanistic (cultural) studies the best ideals and practices of the old chivalric education— physical training, manners and courtesy, reverence—the Italian pioneers devised a scheme of education, below that of the universities, which they claimed prepared youths not only for an intellectual appreciation of the great and wonderful past of which they were descendants, but also for intelligent service in the two great non-church occupations of Italy in the fifteenth century—public service for the City-State, and commerce and a business life. This new type of education spread to other lands, and a new type of secondary-school training, actuated by a new and a modern purpose, thus came out of the revival of learning in Italy.

THE MOVEMENT IN ITALY PATRIOTIC. The inspiration for the revival of learning in Italy did not originate with the universities. Even the new chairs when established in the universities were regarded as inferior, and, in true university fashion, the occupants were tolerated by the other professors rather than approved of by them. Some of the universities— Pavia and Bologna, in particular—had practically nothing to do with the new movement. [1] Even in the rich and learned city of Florence, the head and front of the revival movement, the church scholars and many university men took little or no part in the restoration of the old studies. The learned archbishop, Saint Antoninus, who presided over the cathedral at Florence during the brightest days of that city's history, pursued his mediaeval scholastic instruction undisturbed, and even wrote a Summa Theologica of his own.

[Illustration: FIG. 76. SAINT ANTONINUS AND HIS SCHOLARS
Saint Antoninus (1380-1459) was the learned and pious Archbishop of
Florence from 1446 until his death. The picture of him giving instruction
is from the Venice (1503) edition of his Summa Theologica.]

The revival movement, on the contrary, was directed in its beginnings by a small group of patriotic Italians possessed of a modern spirit, and was financed by intelligent and patriotic merchants, bankers, and princes. Surrounded on all sides by monuments and remains testifying to Roman greatness, and with Roman speech in constant use by the scholars of the Church, the revival of Latin literature meant more to Italian scholars than to those of any other country. It seemed to them still possible to revive Roman life and make Roman speech once more the language of the learned world. The revival of Latin literature, too, meant much more to them than the revival of Greek. The chief value of the latter was to open up a still greater past, and through this to illuminate Roman life and literature. After about 1500 the enthusiasm for Greek rapidly died out in Italy, and the further interpretation of Greek life and thought was left to the northern nations.

In this effort to revive the old Roman world the Italian scholars received the sympathy of the great men of wealth, and of some of the popes of the time. It was the Medici family at Florence who aided the movement liberally there, rejuvenated the university of Florence along new humanistic lines, accumulated libraries there (R. 130) and at Venice, and aided scholars all over Italy. At Milan the Visconti family paid the expenses of a chair of Latin and Greek, established in the university there in 1440. Popes Nicholas V and Leo X were prodigal in their support of the new learning at Rome (R. 132), and the university there was reconstructed along modern lines. At Venice the rulers gave large financial and other support to the leaders of the new learning. Academies (R. 129), under the patronage of the nobility, were founded in almost all the northern Italian cities, and those in political power did much to make their cities notable centers for classical studies.

NEW SCHOOLS CREATED. The "finds" began with Petrarch's discovery of two orations of Cicero, in 1333, and by the time "the century of finds" (1333- 1433) was drawing to a close the materials for a new type of secondary education had been accumulated. Not only was the old literature discovered and edited, but the finding of a complete copy of Quintilian's "Institutes of Oratory" at Saint Gall (R. 127), in 1416, gave a detailed explanation of the old Roman theory of education at its best. A number of "court schools" now arose in the different cities, to which children from the nobility and the banking and merchant classes were sent to enjoy the advantages they offered over the older types of religious schools.

[Illustration: FIG. 77. TWO EARLY ITALIAN HUMANIST EDUCATORS

GUARINO DA VERONA (1374-1460) (Drawn from a photograph of a contemporary painting. School at Ferrara, 1429-1460)

VITTORINO DA FELTRE (1378-1446)
(Drawn from a medallion in the British Museum. School at Mantua, 1423-46)]

Two of the most famous teachers in these court schools were Vittorino da Feltre, who conducted a famous school at Mantua from 1423 to 1446, and Guarino da Verona, who conducted another almost equally famous school at Ferrara from 1429 to 1460. Taking boys at nine or ten and retaining them until twenty or twenty-one, their schools were much like the best private boarding-schools of England and America to-day. Drawing to them a selected class of students; emphasizing physical activities, manners, and morals; employing good teaching processes; and providing the best instruction the world had up to that time known—the influence of these court schools was indeed large. Many of the most distinguished leaders in Church and State and some of the best scholars of the time were trained in them. By better methods they covered, in shorter time, as much or more than was provided in the Arts course of the universities, and so became rivals of them. The ultimate result was that, with the evolution of a series of secondary schools which prepared for admission to the universities, the gradual "humanizing" of the universities, and the introduction of printed textbooks, the Arts courses in the universities were advanced to a much higher plane. We have here one of the first of a number of subsequent steps by means of which new knowledge, organized into teaching shape, has been passed on down to lower schools to teach, while the universities have stepped forward into new and higher fields of endeavor.

THE HUMANISTIC COURSE OF STUDY. The new instruction was based on the study of Greek and Latin, combined with the courtly ideal and with some of the physical activities of the old chivalric education. Latin was begun with the first year in school, and the regular Roman emphasis was placed on articulation and proper accent. After some facility in the language had been gained, easy readings, selected from the greatest Roman writers, were attempted. As progress was made in reading and writing and speaking Latin as a living language, Cicero and Quintilian among prose writers, and Vergil, Lucan, Horace, Seneca, and Claudian among the poets, were read and studied. History was introduced in these schools for the first time and as a new subject of study, though the history was the history of Greece and Rome and was drawn from the authors studied. Livy and Plutarch were the chief historical writers used. Nothing that happened after the fall of Rome was deemed as of importance. Much emphasis was placed on manners, morality, and reverence, with Livy and Plutarch again as the great guides to conduct. Throughout all this the use of Latin as a living language was insisted upon; declamation became a fine art; and the ability to read, speak, and compose in Latin was the test. Cicero, in particular, because of the exquisite quality of his Latin style, became the great prose model. Quintilian was the supreme authority on the purpose and method of teaching (R. 25). Greek also was begun later, though studied much less extensively and thoroughly. The Greek grammar of Theodorus Gaza (p. 248) was studied, followed by the reading of Xenophon, Isocrates, Plutarch, and some of Homer and Hesiod.

This thorough drill in ancient history and literature was given along with careful attention to manners and moral training, and each pupil's health was watchfully supervised—an absolutely new thought in the Christian world. Such physical sports and games as fencing, wrestling, playing ball, football, running, leaping, and dancing were also given special emphasis. Competitive games between different schools were held, much as in modern times.

The result was an all-round physical, mental, and moral training, vastly superior to anything previously offered by the cathedral and other church schools, and which at once established a new type which was widely copied. A number of these new teachers, called humanists, wrote treatises on the proper order of studies, the methods to be employed, the right education of a prince, liberal education, and similar topics. [2] One of these, Battista Guarino, describing the education provided in the school which his father founded at Ferrara (R. 135), laid down a dictum which was accepted widely until the middle of the nineteenth century, when he wrote:

I have said that ability to write Latin verse is one of the essential marks of an educated person. I wish now to indicate a second, which is of at least equal importance, namely, familiarity with the literature and language of Greece. The time has come when we must speak in no uncertain voice upon this vital requirement of scholarship.

HUMANISM IN FRANCE. From Italy the new humanism was carried to France, along with the retreating armies that had occupied Naples, Florence, and Milan (p. 252), and when Francis I came to the French throne, in 1515, the new learning found in him a willing patron. Though there had been beginnings before this, the new learning really found a home in France now for the first time. Here, too, it became associated with court and noble, and the schools created to furnish this new instruction were provided at the instigation of some form of public authority. The greatest humanistic scholar in France at the time, Budaeus, was made royal librarian, in 1522. His study of the old Roman coinage, upon which he spent nine years, would pass to-day as a study representing a high grade of scholarship, and was in marked contrast with the scholastic methods of the university. In his writings Budaeus set forth for France the dictum that every man, even if he be a king, should be devoted to letters and liberal learning, and that this culture can be obtained only through Greek and Latin, and of these, unlike the Italians, he held Greek to be the more important. Other scholars now helped to transfer the center for Greek scholarship to Paris, where it remained for the next two centuries.

[Illustration: FIG. 78. GUILLAUME BUDAEUS (1467-1540)]

A royal press was set up in Paris, in 1526, to promote the introduction of the new learning. Libraries were built up, as in Italy. Humanist scholars were made secretaries and ambassadors. The College de France was established at Paris, by direction of the King, with chairs in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics. To Hebrew the Italians had given almost no attention, but in France, and particularly in Germany, Hebrew became an important study. The development of schools in northern France was hindered by the dissensions following the religious revolts of Luther and Calvin, but in southern France many of the cities founded municipal colleges, much like the court schools of northern Italy in type. The work of the city of Bordeaux in reorganizing its town school along the new lines was typical of the work of other southern cities. Good teachers, liberal instruction, and a broad-minded attitude on the part of the governing authorities [3] made this school, known as the Collège de Guyenne, notable not only for humanistic instruction, but for intelligent public education during the second half of the sixteenth century. The picture of this college (school) left us by its greatest principal, Elie Vinet (R. 136), gives an interesting description of its work.

[Illustration: FIG. 79. COLLÈGE DE FRANCE Founded at Paris, in 1530, by King Francis I. for instruction in the new humanistic learning]

HUMANISM IN GERMANY. The French language and life was closely related to that of northern Italy, and French religious thought had always been so closely in touch with that of Rome that something of the Italian feeling for the old Roman culture and institutions was felt by the humanists of France. In Germany and England no such feeling existed, and in these countries any effort to discredit the rising native languages was much more likely to be regarded as mere pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue as an international language for scholarship, as a potent weapon for destroying barriers of language, religion, law, and possibly in time governments based on nationality, and for the promise it gave of peace in international relationships. In both Germany and England, in place of the patriotic fervor of the Italians, religious zeal, as we shall see later on, was kindled by the new humanistic studies.

[Illustration: FIG. 80. JOHANN REUCHLIN (1455-1522)
"Father of modern Hebrew Studies">[

Among the universities Vienna, Heidelberg, Erfurt, Tübingen, and Leipzig (see Figure 61) were foremost in the introduction of the new learning. Erfurt became the center of a group of humanistic scholars during the closing years of the fifteenth century, and the first Greek book printed in Germany appeared there, in 1501. At both Tübingen and Heidelberg Reuchlin (p. 254) taught for a time, and both institutions early became centers for the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. At Leipzig the reigning duke brought various humanistic scholars to the university to lecture, after 1507, and in 1519 entirely reformed the university by subordinating the mediaeval disciplines to the new studies. Four new universities— Wittenberg (1502), Marburg (1527), Königsberg (1544), and Jena (1558)— were established on the new humanistic basis, and from their beginning were centers for the new learning. At Wittenberg, Martin Luther had been made Professor of Theology, in 1508, when but twenty-five years of age, and to Wittenberg the Electoral Prince, in 1518, brought the young Melanchthon, then but twenty-one, as Professor of Greek. The universities of Germany were more profoundly affected by the introduction of the new learning than were those of any other country. The monastic orders and the Scholastics, who had for long controlled the German institutions, were overthrown by the aid of the ruling princes, and by the close of the first quarter of the sixteenth century the new humanism was everywhere triumphant in German lands.

GERMAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. The enthusiasm of the humanists for the new learning led them to urge the establishment of humanistic secondary schools in the German cities. The schools of "The Brethren of the Common Life" (Hieronymians), a teaching order founded by Gerhard Grote at Deventer, Holland, in 1384, and which had established forty-five houses by the time the new learning came into the Netherlands from Italy, at once adopted the new studies, soon trebled the number of its houses, and for decades supplied teachers of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to all the surrounding countries. [4] Wessel, Agricola, Hegius, Reuchlin, and Sturm were among their greatest teachers, and Erasmus their greatest pupil. Here and there in German cities Latin schools, teaching the subjects of the Trivium, but principally the elements of Latin and grammar, had been established in the course of the later Middle Ages, and to these scholars trained in the new learning gradually made their way, secured employment, and thus quietly introduced a purified Latin and the intellectual part of the new humanistic course of study. Up to 1520 this method was followed entirely in German lands.

As in Italy, the commercial cities were among the first to provide schools of the new type. In 1526 the commercial city of Nuremberg, in southern Germany, opened one of the first of the new city humanistic secondary schools, Melanchthon being present and giving the dedicatory address. A number of similar schools were founded about this time in various German cities—Ilfeld, Frankfort, Strassburg, Hamburg, Bremen, Dantzig—among the number. Many of these failed, as did the one at Nuremberg, to meet the needs of the people in essentially commercial cities. Whatever might have been true in more cultured Italy, in German cities a rigidly classical training for youth and early manhood was found but poorly suited to the needs of the sons of wealthy burghers destined to a commercial career. The rising commerce of the world apparently was to rest on native languages, and not on elegant Latin verse and prose. The commercial classes soon fell back on burgher schools, elementary vernacular schools, writing and reckoning schools, business experience, and travel for the education of their sons, leaving the Latin schools of the humanists to those destined for the service of the Church, the law, teaching, or the higher state service.

[Illustration: FIG. 81. JOHANN STURM (1507-89)
(After a contemporary engraving by Stofflin)]

THE WORK OF JOHANN STURM. The most successful classical school in all Germany, and the one which formed the pattern for future classical creations, was the gymnasium [5] at Strassburg, under the direction (1536-82) of the famous Johann Sturm, or Sturmius, as he came to call himself. This was one of the early classical schools founded by the commercial cities, but it had not been successful. In 1536 the authorities invited Sturm, a graduate of the University of Louvain, and at that time a teacher of classics and dialectic at Paris, where he had come in contact with the humanism brought from Italy, to become head of the school and reorganize it. This he did, and during the forty-five years he was head of the school it became the most famous classical school in continental Europe. His Plan of Organization, published in 1538; his Letters to the Masters on the course of study, in 1565; and the record of an examination of each class in the school, conducted in 1578, all of which have been preserved, give us a good idea as to the nature of the organization and instruction (R. 137).

Sturm was a strong and masterful man, with a genius for organization. Probably adopting the plan of the French colleges (R. 136), he organized his school into ten classes, [6] one for each year the pupil was to spend in the school, and placed a teacher in charge of each. The aim and end of education, as he stated it, was "piety, knowledge, and the art of speaking," and "every effort of teachers and pupils" should bend toward acquiring "knowledge, and purity and elegance of diction." Of the ten years the pupil was to spend in the gymnasium, seven were to be spent in acquiring a thorough mastery of pure idiomatic Latin, and the three remaining years to the acquisition of an elegant style. Cicero was the great model, but Vergil, Plautus, Terence, Martial, Sallust, Horace, and other authors were read and studied. Except that the Catechism was first studied in the native German, Latin was made the language of the classroom. Great emphasis was placed on letter-writing, declamation, and the acting of plays. Rhetoric, too, was made a very important subject of study. Greek was begun in the fifth year of school and continued throughout, all instruction in Greek being given through the medium of the Latin. [7] The instruction in both Latin and Greek was much like that of the court schools of Italy, except that in Greek the New Testament was read in addition. The plays and games and physical training of the Italian schools, however, were omitted; much less emphasis was placed on manners and gentlemanly conduct; and in educational purpose a narrow drill was substituted for the broad cultural spirit of the French and Italian schools.

Sturm was the greatest and most successful schoolman of his day. In clearly defined aim, thorough organization, carefully graded instruction, good teaching, and sound scholarship, his school surpassed all others. Sturm's aim was to train pious, learned, and eloquent men for service in Church and State, using religion and the new learning as means, and in this he was very successful. In a short time after taking charge his gymnasium had six hundred pupils, and in 1578 there were "thousands of pupils, representing eight nations," in attendance. Sturm became widely known throughout northern Europe, and scholars and princes passing through Strassburg stopped to visit his school and secure his advice. He corresponded with scholars in many lands, and the influence of his institution was enormous. He was the author of many school textbooks, and of half a dozen works on the theory and practice of education. He fixed both the type and the name—gymnasium—of the German classical secondary school, which to-day is not very materially changed from the form and character which Sturm gave it. Sturm's work deeply influenced many later foundations in Germany, and also helped to mould the educational system devised later on by the Jesuits.

[Illustration: FIG. 82. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1467-1536) A contemporary portrait by the German artist, Hans Holbein the Younger, in the Louvre, Paris]

HUMANISM IN ENGLAND. Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet had introduced the new learning at Oxford, as we have already seen (p. 253), in the closing years of the fifteenth century (R. 133), but had made but little impression. They were ably seconded by Erasmus, who taught Greek at Cambridge (1510- 14), and who labored hard to substitute true classical culture for the poor Latin and the empty scholasticism of his time. He wrote textbooks [8] to help introduce the new learning, urged the importance of history, geography, and science as serving to elucidate the classics, edited editions of the classical authors, wrote two treatises of importance on education, [9] and in two other books [10] ridiculed those who mistook the form for the spirit of the ancient learning. His Latin Greek edition of the New Testament definitely fixed the place of the New Testament in the humanistic schools.

In spite of the opposition of monks and scholastics in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in the face of the coming religious turmoil in the days of Henry VIII, the new learning made steady progress in the universities, [11] with the court, and among the scholars and statesmen of the time. With the coming of Elizabeth to the throne, [12] in 1558, the court, from the Queen down, was imbued with the spirit of the new learning (R. 139). Elizabeth appointed new chancellors for the two universities, and these institutions were soon transformed from places for the training of mediaeval scholars and theologians into places for the production of a "due supply of fit persons to serve God in Church and State." As Sir Thomas Elyot so well expressed it, in his The Governour (1544)—a book on the education of rulers for a State, and which was permeated by the new spirit—"the new political order requires qualified instruments for its administration, and a trained governing class must henceforth take the place of the privileged caste and the clerk [cleric] education under the mediaeval disciplines."

COLET AND SAINT PAUL'S SCHOOL. The first real establishment of the new learning in England came through the secondary schools, and through the refounding of the cathedral school of Saint Paul's, in London, by the humanist John Colet, in 1510. Colet had become Dean of Saint Paul's Church, and Erasmus urged him to embrace the opportunity to reconstruct the school along humanistic lines. This he did, endowing it with all his wealth, and in a series of carefully drawn-up Statutes (R. 138), which were widely copied in subsequent foundations, Colet laid special emphasis on the school giving training in the new learning and in Christian discipline. Erasmus gave much of his time for years to finding teachers and writing textbooks for the school. William Lily (1468-1522), another early humanist recently returned from study in Italy, and the author of a widely known and much used textbook [13]—Lily's Latin Grammar (R. 140) —was made headmaster of the school.

[Illustration: FIG. 83. SAINT PAUL'S SCHOOL, LONDON]

The course of study was of the humanistic type already described, coupled with careful religious instruction. In place of the monkish Latin pure Latin and Greek were to be taught, and the best classical authors took the place of the old mediaeval disciplines. The school met with much opposition, was denounced as a temple of idolatry and heathenism by the men of the old schools, and even the Bishop of London tried twice to convict Colet of heresy and suppress the instruction. Notwithstanding this the school became famous for its work, not only in London but throughout England. From its desks came a long line of capable statesmen, learned clergy, brilliant scholars, and literary men.

[Illustration: FIG. 84. GIGGLESWICK GRAMMAR SCHOOL One of the chief schools of Yorkshire, England, and dating back to 1499. This building was erected in 1507-12 by a chantry priest named James Carr (Ker). Drawn from an old print. On the front of the building was a Latin tablet (shown in the drawing), now in the British Museum, which, translated, read: "Kindly mother of God, defend James Ker from ill. For priests and young clerks this house is made, in 1512. Jesus, have mercy on us. Old men and children praise the name of the Lord.">[

INFLUENCE ON OTHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. In a preceding chapter (p. 152) we mentioned the founding of many English grammar schools after 1200. At the time Saint Paul's School was refounded there were something like three hundred of these, of all classes, in England. They existed in connection with the old monasteries, cathedrals, collegiate churches, guilds, and charity foundations in connection with parish churches, while a few were due to private benevolence and had been founded independently of either Church or State. The Sevenoaks Grammar School, founded by the will of William Sevenoaks, in 1432 (R. 141), and for which he stated in his will that he desired as master "an honest man, sufficiently advanced and expert in the science of Grammar, B.A., by no means in holy orders," and the chantry grammar school founded by John Percyvall, in 1503 (R. 142), are examples of the parish type. The famous Winchester Public School, founded by Bishop William of Wykeham, in 1382, to emphasize grammar, religion, and manners, and to prepare seventy scholars for New College, at Oxford, [14] where they were to be trained as priests; and Eton College, founded by Henry VI, in 1440, to prepare students for King's College, at Cambridge, are examples of the larger private foundations. A few, such as the grammar school at Sandwich (1579), owed their origin (R. 143) to the initiative of the city authorities. Most of these grammar schools were small, but a few were large and wealthy establishments.

These old foundations, with their mediaeval curriculum, after a time began to feel the influence of Colet's school. Within a century, due to one influence or another, practically all had been remodeled after the new classical type set up by Colet. In the course of study given for Eton (R. 144), for 1560, we see the new learning fully established, and in the course of study for a small country grammar school, in 1635 (R. 145), we see how fully the new learning, with its emphasis on Latin as a living language, had by this time extended to even the smallest of the English grammar schools. The new foundations, after 1510, were almost entirely new-learning grammar schools, with large emphasis on grammar, good Latin and Greek, games and sports, and the religious spirit. One of the most conspicuous of these later foundations was Merchant Taylor's School, [15] founded in London in 1561, and of which Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), the author of two important books on educational theory, [16] was for long the headmaster. The first American Latin grammar school (Boston, 1635) was a direct descendant of these English influences and traditions.

[Illustration: PLATE 5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL Established by the Holy Cross Guild of Stratford-on-Avon, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Grammar School was built in 1426, of wood, and at a cost of £10, 5_s_., 3-1/2_d_. The school was held on the upper floor, the lower being used as a guild-hall. Here Shakespeare went to school, and saw companies of strolling players in the hall below. The lower picture shows the grammar-school room after its "restoration," in 1892.]

THE REACTION AGAINST MEDIAEVALISM. Having traced the introduction of the new learning by countries, it still remains to point out certain significant educational features of the movement which were common in all lands, and which profoundly modified subsequent educational practice. Both the purpose and the method of education were permanently changed.

Up to about the middle of the fourth Christian century the aim of both Greek and Roman education had been to prepare men to become good and useful citizens in the State. Then the Church gained control of education, and for a thousand years the chief object was to prepare for the world to come. Success and good citizenship in this world counted for little, religious devotion took the place of the old state patriotism, the salvation of souls took the place of the promotion of the social welfare, and the aim and end of life here was to attain everlasting bliss in the world to come. To be able to appease the dread Judge at the Day of Judgment, prayer, penance, and holy contemplation were the important things here below. It was preëminently the age of the self-abasing monk, and this mental attitude dominated all thinking and learning.

The spirit behind the Revival of Learning was a protest against this mediaeval attitude, and the protest was vigorous and successful. The Revival of Learning was a clear break with mediaeval traditions and with mediaeval authority. It restored to the world the ideals of earlier education—self-culture, and preparation for usefulness and success in the world here. In Italy, France, Germany, and England the movement, too, met with the most thorough approval from modern men—merchants, court officials, and scholars who were ready to break with the mediaeval type of thinking. The court and other types of secondary schools now established were popular with the higher classes in society, and this aristocratic stamp the humanistic schools and courses have ever since retained. These schools restored to the world the practical education of the days of Cicero, and preparation for intelligent service in the Church, State, and the larger business life became one of their important purposes. Supported as they were by the ruling classes, the new schools were close to the most progressive forces in the national life of the different countries. They represented an unmistakable reaction against the world of the mediaeval monk and the Scholastic, and their early success was in large part because of this.

MODIFICATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CURRICULUM. The mediaeval curriculum, as we have seen (chap. VII), was based on instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts. Grammar at first was the great subject, but later Dialectic became the master science. Knowledge was regarded as an organic whole, capable of being stated in a brief encyclopaedia, and each man could learn it all. With the rise of university instruction some new knowledge was added, chiefly from Moslem sources, and the old knowledge was minutely re-ground. With the revival of the ancient learning there came, within a little more than a century, an enormous increase in the world's sum of knowledge, and the invention of printing came just in time to multiply and scatter this new knowledge throughout western Europe. To all the old subjects a new wealth of detail was added which made teaching encyclopaedias impossible. New purposes in education now came to prevail, and the great mediaeval teaching curriculum was changed in content and in relative importance.

Of the subjects in the old Trivium, Dialectic or Logic, which Scholastics had raised to the place of first importance, was dethroned, and relegated to a minor position in university instruction. In its place Grammar, as Quintilian knew and used the term (R. 76) and as based on and including Literature, was raised once more to the place of first importance. Out of this, Literature—at first the classical and later the modern—later came as a separate study, as did also the study of History and Mythology. By the latter part of the sixteenth century technical Grammar had been separated from Literature, and made a more elementary subject, while Rhetoric had developed into a critical study of literary art. Of the subjects of the Quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy were each greatly expanded, as a result of the introduction of much new knowledge, and each was reduced to textbook form, while Algebra and Trigonometry were now organized as teaching subjects. Due to their newness and difficulty these subjects were taught chiefly in the universities. There they remained for a long time before being passed down to the secondary schools. Out of the very elemental instruction given in Geography and Astronomy were in time evolved all the biological and physical sciences, though this development belongs to a later chapter (XVII), and these new subjects did not reach the secondary schools until well into the nineteenth century. The last of the quadrivial subjects, Music, experienced a different history in different countries. In the Germanic countries it continued to receive its old emphasis, while in England and France much less was made of it. After the setting-in of Puritanism in England, when music was regarded with great disfavor, it in large part passed out of the English curriculum. As a result the Germanic and Scandinavian nations are to-day singing nations, while the English and American are not. In early America, in particular, was the religious reaction against music especially strong.

[Illustration: FIG. 85. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STUDIES The great study of each period is in CAPITALS; subjects in italics indicate that they also were quite important. Least important subjects in ordinary type.]

NEW TEACHING METHODS. Such important changes naturally called for a progressively evolving series of printed textbooks, and these now came fast from the presses. The day of one textbook, which could dominate all instruction for hundreds of years, was over forever. A few books, such as Lily's or Melanchthon's Latin grammars and the textbooks of Erasmus, were still used for a long time, but throughout the sixteenth century, before the schools became formalized and lost their earlier purpose, each textbook issued was soon superseded by a better one. The invention of printing, too, changed teaching from a reading-by-the-professor to a textbook method, and tremendously shortened the time necessary to give instruction in any subject. With the manufacture of paper the written theme, too, displaced the disputation, with great gains in accuracy of thinking and refinement in the use of words. It was still the Latin theme or verse or oration, to be sure, and the object of the new instruction was to teach Latin as a living language, but before long the time was to come when the same methods would be transferred to instruction in the native tongues and for national ends.

To make the instruction as practical as possible, and thus prepare the pupils for service as Latin scholars in public or scholarly pursuits, the ancient literature was studied in part as a storehouse of adequate and elegant expression, and numerous phrase books [17] were written for use in the schools. When we remember that Latin was still the language of all learned literature, of the university classroom, of most diplomatic and legal documents, and a practical necessity for travel or communication abroad, we can realize why so much emphasis was placed on the constant use of Latin as the language of the school. [18] As Leach [19] so well puts it:

"The learned professions required a competent knowledge of Latin far more directly then than now. A need for Latin was not confined to the Church and the priest. The diplomatist, the lawyer, the civil servant, the physician, the naturalist, the philosopher, wrote, read, and to a large extent spoke and perhaps thought in Latin. Nor was Latin only the language of the higher professions. A merchant, or a bailiff of a manor, wanted it for his accounts; every town clerk or guild clerk wanted it for his minute book. Columbus had to study for his voyages in Latin; the general had to study tactics in it. The architect, the musician, every one who was neither a mere soldier nor a mere handicraftsman, wanted, not a smattering of grammar, but a living acquaintance with the tongue, as a spoken as well as a written language."

THE SCHOOLS BECOME FORMAL. After the new learning had obtained a firm footing in the schools there happened what has often happened in the history of new educational efforts—that is, the new learning became narrow, formal, and fixed, and lost the liberal spirit which actuated its earlier promoters. In the beginning the Italian humanists had aimed at large personal self-culture and individual development, and the northern humanists at moral and religious reform and preparation for useful service, both using the classics as a means to these new ends. After about 1500 in Italy, and 1600 in the northern countries, when the new-learning schools had become well established and thoroughly organized, the tendency arose to make the means an end in itself. Instead of using the classical literatures to impart a liberal education, give larger vision, and prepare for useful public service, they came to be used largely for disciplinary ends. The teaching of Campion at Prague (1574) well illustrates this degeneracy (R. 146). This change alienated practical men from the schools. French now in turn became the language of the court and of diplomacy, and the work of the schools tended to be confined largely to preparing students to enter the universities or the service of the Church. Men of the world hence turned to a new type of schools which now arose (chapter xvii), and which made preparation for social efficiency in a modern world their aim.

In consequence the aim of the new humanistic education came in time to be thought of in terms of languages and literatures, instead of in terms of usefulness as a preparation for intelligent living, and educational effort was transferred from the larger human point of view of the early humanistic teachers to the narrower and much less important one of mastering Greek and Latin, writing verses, and cultivating a good (Ciceronian) Latin style. Sturm's school at Strassburg clearly shows the beginnings of such a transformation (R. 137). As Latin came to be less and less used by scholars in writing, passed out of use as the language of government and of international communication, was replaced by French as the language of polite society, and was gradually superseded in the university lecture room by the vernaculars, the practical motive for learning Latin died out, except for service in the Church, and the disciplinary and cultural value of the study of the classics alone remained. The disciplinary, being easier to give, and better within the understanding of most teachers, gradually won over the cultural. As a result, classical education gradually became narrow and formal, and drill in composition and declamation and imitation of the style of ancient authors—particularly Cicero, whence the term "Ciceronianism" which came to be applied to it—grew to be the ruling motives in instruction. By the end of the sixteenth century this change had taken place in both the secondary schools and the universities, and this narrow linguistic attitude continued to dominate classical education, in German lands until the mid-eighteenth, and in all other western European countries and in America until near the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not until vigorously challenged by the enthusiasts for modern scientific studies that the teachers of the classics awoke to the need of improving their instruction and restoring something of the old cultural value to what they were teaching.

The new learning in northern and western Europe was also much changed in character by the violent religious dissensions, following the Protestant Revolt, to a consideration of which we next turn.