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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

IV. OTHER NEW INFLUENCES AND MOVEMENTS

THE CRUSADES. Perhaps the most romantic happenings during the Middle Ages were that series of adventurous expeditions to the then Far East, undertaken by the kings and knights of western Europe in an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidel Turks, who in the eleventh century had pushed in and were persecuting Christian pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem. For centuries single pilgrims, small bands of pilgrims, and sometimes large numbers led by priest or noble, had journeyed to distant shrines, to Rome, and to the birthplace of the Saviour, [24] impelled by pure religious devotion, a desire to do penance for sin, or seeking a cure from some disease by prayer and penance. It was the spirit of the age. Says Adams: [25]

A pilgrimage was … in itself a religious act securing merit and reward for the one who performed it, balancing a certain number for his sins, and making his escape from the world of torment hereafter more certain. The more distant and more difficult the pilgrimage, the more meritorious, especially if it led to such supremely holy places as those which had been sanctified by the presence of Christ himself. For the man of the world, for the man who could not, or would not, go into monasticism, the pilgrimage was the one conspicuous act by which he could satisfy the ascetic need, and gain its rewards. A crusade was a stupendous pilgrimage, under especially favorable and meritorious conditions.

[Illustration: FIG. 57. A PILGRIM OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(From an old manuscript in the British Museum)]

The Mohammedan Arabs who took possession of the Holy Land in the seventh century had treated the pilgrims considerately, but the Turks were of a different stamp. In 1071 they had defeated the Eastern Emperor, captured all Asia Minor, and had taken possession of the fortress of Nicaea (Map, p. 183), near Constantinople. The Eastern Emperor now appealed to Rome for help. In 1077 the Turks captured Jerusalem, and returning pilgrims soon began to report having experienced great hardships. In 1095 Pope Urban, in a stirring address to the Council of Clermont (France), issued a call to the lords, knights, and foot soldiers of western Christendom to cease destroying their fellow Christians in private warfare, and to turn their strength of arms against the infidel and rescue the Holy Land. The journey was to take the place of penance for sin, many special privileges were extended to those who went, and those who died on the journey or in battle with the infidels were promised entrance into heaven. [26] nobles and peasants, filled with a desire for adventure and a sense of personal sin, no surer way of satisfying either was to be found than the long pilgrimage to the Saviour's tomb. In France and England the call met with instant response. Unfortunately for the future of civilization, the call met with but small response from the nobles of German lands.

The First Crusade set out in 1096. A second went in 1144, and a third in 1187. These were the great Crusades, though five others were undertaken during the thirteenth century. Jerusalem was taken and lost. The Christians quarreled with one another and with the Greeks, though with the Saracens they established somewhat friendly relations, and a mutual respect arose. The armies which went were composed of all kinds of people —lords, knights, merchants, adventurers, peasants, outlaws—and a spirit of adventure and a desire for personal gain, as well as a spirit of religious devotion, actuated many who went. In 1204 the Venetians diverted the fourth crusade to the capture of Constantinople, and established there an outpost of their great commercial empire. The history of the crusades we do not need to trace. The important matter for our purpose was the results of the movement on the intellectual development of western Europe.

RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES ON WESTERN EUROPE. In a sense the Crusades were an outward manifestation of the great change in thinking and ideals which had begun sometime before in western Europe. They were at once both a sign and a cause of further change. The old isolation was at last about to end, and intercommunication and some common ideas and common feelings were being brought about. Both those who went and those who remained at home were deeply stirred by the movement. Christendom as a great international community, in which all alike were interested in a common ideal and in a common fight against the infidel, was a new idea now dawning upon the mass of the people, whereas before it had been but little understood.

The travel to distant lands, the sight of cities of wealth and power, and the contact with peoples decidedly superior to themselves in civilization, not only excited the imagination and led to a broadening of the minds of those who returned, but served as well to raise the general level of intelligence in western Europe. Some new knowledge also was brought back, but that was not at the time of great importance. The principal gain came in the elimination forever of thousands of quarreling, fighting noblemen, [27] thus giving the kingly power a chance to consolidate holdings and begin the evolution of modern States; in the marked change of attitude toward the old problems; in the awakening of a new interest in the present world; in the creation of new interests and new desires among the common people; in the awakening of a spirit of religious unity and of national consciousness; and especially in the awakening of a new intellectual life, which soon found expression in the organization of universities for study and in more extensive travel and geographical exploration than the world had known since the days of ancient Rome. The greatest of all the results, however, came through the revival of trade, commerce, manufacturing, and industry in the rising cities of western Europe, with the consequent evolution of a new and important class of merchants, bankers, and craftsmen, who formed a new city class and in time developed a new system of training for themselves and their children.

THE REVIVAL OF CITY LIFE. The old cities of central and northern Italy, as was stated above, continued through the early Middle Ages as places of some little local importance. In the eleventh century they overthrew in large part the rule of their Prince-Bishops, and became little City- Republics, much after the old Greek model. Outside of Italy almost the only cities not destroyed during the period of the barbarian invasions were the episcopal cities, that is cities which were the residences of bishops.

Outside of Italy the present cities of western Europe either rose on the ruins of former Roman provincial cities, or originated about some monastery or castle, on or adjacent to land at one time owned by monks or feudal lord. An ever-increasing company of peasants, themselves little more than serfs in the beginning, huddled together in such places for the protection afforded, and a walled feudal town eventually resulted (R. 94 a). This later, in one way or another, secured its freedom from monastic control or feudal lord, and evolved into the free city we know to-day. Originally each little city was a self-sustaining community. The farming and grazing lands lay outside, while the people were crowded compactly together within the protecting town walls. The need for walls that could be manned for defense, gates that could shut out the marauder, the narrow, dirty streets, and the lack of any sanitary ideas, all alike tended to keep the towns small. [28] The insecurity of life, the constant warfare, the repeated failures or destruction of crops without and want within, and the high death-rate from disease, all kept down the population. A town of a thousand people in the early Middle Ages was a place of some importance, while probably no city outside of Italy, excepting Paris and London, had ten thousand inhabitants before the year 1200. In all England there were but 2,150,000 people, according to the Domesday Survey (1086), while to- day the city of London alone contains nearly three times that number.

[Illustration: FIG. 58. A TYPICAL MEDIAEVAL TOWN (PRUSSIAN) All the elements of a typical mediaeval town are seen here—the walls for defense, the watch-towers, the churches, the tall cathedral, the castle, and the high houses huddled together.]

After about the year 1000 a revival of something like city life begins to be noticeable here and there in the records of the time (R. 94 a), and by 1100 these signs begin to manifest themselves in many places and lands. By 1200 the cities of Europe were numerous, though small, and their importance in the life of the times [29] was rapidly increasing (R. 94 b).

THE RISE OF A CITY CLASS. As the mediaeval towns increased in size and importance the inhabitants, being human, demanded rights. Between 1100 and 1200 there were frequent revolts of the people of the mediaeval towns against their feudal overlord, and frequent demands were made for charters granting privileges to the towns. Sometimes these insurrections were put down with a bloody hand. Sometimes, on the contrary, the overlord granted a charter of rights, willingly or unwillingly, and freed the people from obligation to labor on the lands in return for a fixed money payment. Sometimes the king himself granted the inhabitants a charter by way of curbing the power of the local feudal lord or bishop. The towns became exceedingly skillful in playing off lord against bishop, and the king against both. In England, Flanders, France, and Germany some of the towns had become wealthy enough to purchase their freedom and a charter at some time when their feudal overlord was particularly in need of money. These charters, or birth certificates for the towns, were carefully drawn and officially sealed documents of great value, and were highly prized as evidences of local liberty. The document created a "free town," and gave to the inhabitants certain specified rights as to self-government, the election of magistrates—aldermen, mayor, burgomaster—the levying and payment of taxes, and the military service to be rendered. Before the evolution of strong national governments these charters created hundreds of what were virtually little City-States throughout Europe (R. 95).

In these towns a new estate or class of people was now created (R. 96), in between the ruling bishops and lords on the one hand and the peasants tilling the land on the other. These were the citizens—freemen, bourgeoisie, burghers. Out of this new class of city dwellers new social orders—merchants, bankers, tradesmen, artisans, and craftsmen—in time arose, and these new orders soon demanded rights and obtained some form of education for their children. The guild or apprenticeship education which early developed in the cities to meet the needs of artisans and craftsmen (R. 99), and the burgh or city schools of Europe, which began to develop in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were the educational results of the rise of cities and the evolution of these new social classes. The time would soon be ripe for the mysteries of learning to be passed somewhat farther down the educational pyramid, and new classes in society would begin the mastery of its symbols.

[Illustration: FIG. 59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID
(From Smith, W. R., Educational Sociology, p. 176)
The concave pyramid suggests comparative numbers. Formal education began
at the top, and has slowly worked downward.]

THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. The first city of mediaeval Europe to obtain commercial prominence was Venice. She early sold salt and fish obtained from the lagoons to the Lombards in the Valley of the Po, and sent trading ships to the Greek East. By the year 1000 Venetian ships were bringing the luxuries and riches of the Orient to Venice, and the city soon became a great trading center. There the partially civilized Christian knight "spent splendidly," and the Bohemian, German, and Hunnish lords came [30] to buy such of the luxuries of the East as they could afford. By 1100 Venice was a free City-State, the mistress of the Adriatic, and the trade of the East with Christian Europe passed over her wharves. From the Crusades she profited greatly, carrying knights eastward in the great fleet she had developed, and carpets, fabrics, perfumes, spices, dyes, drugs, silks, and precious stones on the return voyage. From Tana and Trebizond her traders penetrated far into the interior. Her ships and merchants "held the Golden East in fee." By 1400 she was the wealthiest and most powerful city in Europe.

[Illustration: FIG. 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES]

Genoa in time became the great rival of Venice. Marseilles also developed a large trade in the Mediterranean and with the north. From these three cities trade routes ran to the cities of Flanders, England, and Germany, as is shown in the map below. By the thirteenth century, Augsburg, Nuremburg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres, Bruges, and London were developing into great commercial cities. Despite bad roads, bad bridges, [31] bad inns, "robber knights" and bandits, the commerce once carried on by Rome with her provinces was reviving. Great fairs, or yearly markets, came to be held in the large interior towns, to which merchants came from near and far to display and exchange their wares, and, still more important, from the standpoint of advancing general education, to exchange ideas and experiences. The "luxuries" displayed at these markets by traveling merchants from the south—salt, pepper, spices, sugar, drugs, dyestuffs, glass beads, glassware, table implements, perfumes, ornaments, underwear, articles of dress, silks, velvets, carpets, rugs—dazzled and astounded the simple townspeople of western Europe. These fairs became educational forces of a high order.

THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY AND BANKING. The trading of articles at seaports and at the interior city fairs came first, and this soon worked a revolution in industry. Instead of agriculture being almost the only occupation, and the feeding of the local population the only purpose, with only such arts and industries practiced as were needed to supply the wants of the townsmen, it now became possible to create a surplus to barter at the fairs for luxuries from the outside. Local industries, heretofore of but little importance, now developed into trades, and the manufacture of articles for outside sale was begun. At first manufacturing was very limited in scope, and confined largely to local handicrafts or the imitation of imported articles, but later new and important industries arose—the glass industry in Venice, the gold and silver industry of Florence, the weaving industry at Mainz and Erfurt, and the wool industry of Flanders. The craftsman and artisan, as well as the merchant and trader, were now developed in the towns, and soon became important members of the new social order. As serfs and villeins [32] were set free from the land [33] they came to the towns, adding more members to the new industrial classes (R. 96). From 1200 on there was a great revival of industry in western Europe, and by 1500 merchants and craftsmen had won back the place once held by merchants and craftsmen in Roman life and trade.

At Florence a banking class arose, and instead of barter, banks and the use of money and credit were developed. From Florence this system gradually extended to the other commercial cities. Gradually the mediaeval objection to the taking of interest for the use of money, which the Church had forbidden in the early Middle Ages as "usury" and wicked, was overcome, and Italian bankers and merchants led the world in the establishment of that credit which has made modern trade and industry possible. With money once more in general use as a measure of value, the Arabic system of notation in use for commercial transactions, and credit at reasonable interest rates provided as a basis for finance, an era in trade and commerce and manufacturing set in unknown since the days of Roman rule. Order, security, and a wider extension of educational advantages now were needed, and nothing contributed more to securing these than the growth of wealth and manufacturing industries in the towns, and the extension of commerce and the use of money throughout the country. Nothing tends so powerfully to demand or secure these things as the possession of wealth among a people.

EDUCATION FOR THESE NEW SOCIAL CLASSES. With the evolution of these new social classes an extension of education took place through the formation of guilds. [34] The merchants of the Middle Ages traded, not as individuals, nor as subjects of a State which protected them, for there were as yet no such States, but as members of the guild of merchants of their town, or as members of a trading company. Later, towns united to form trading confederations, of which the Hanseatic League of northern Germany was a conspicuous example. These burgher merchant guilds became wealthy and important socially; [35] they were chartered by kings and given trading privileges analogous to those of a modern corporation (R. 95); they elbowed their way into affairs of State, and in time took over in large part the city governments; they obtained education for themselves, and fought with the church authorities for the creation of independent burgh schools; [36] they began to read books, and books in the vernacular began to be written for them; [37] they in time vied with the clergy and the nobility in their patronage of learning; they everywhere stood with the kings and princes to compel feudal lords to stop warfare and plundering and to submit to law and order; [38] and they entertained royal personages and drew nobles, clergy, and gentry into their honorary membership, thus serving as an important agency in breaking down the social-class exclusiveness of the Middle Ages. In these guilds, which were self-governing bodies debating questions and deciding policies and actions, much elementary political training was given their members which proved of large importance at a later time.

In the same way the craft guilds rendered a large educational service to the small merchant and worker, as they provided the technical and social education of such during the later period of the Middle Ages and in early modern times, and protected their members from oppression in an age when oppression was the rule. With the revival of trade and industry craft guilds arose all over western Europe. One of the first of these was the candle-makers' guild, organized at Paris in 1061. Soon after we find large numbers of guilds—masons, shoemakers, harness-makers, bakers, smiths, wool-combers, tanners, saddlers, spurriers, weavers, goldsmiths, pewterers, carpenters, leather-workers, cloth-workers, pinners, fishmongers, butchers, barbers—all organized on much the same plan. These were the working-men's fraternities or labor unions of mediaeval Europe. Each trade or craft became organized as a city guild, composed of the "masters," "journeymen" (paid workmen), and "apprentices." The great mediaeval document, a charter of rights guaranteeing protection, was usually obtained. The guild for each trade laid down rules for the number and training of apprentices, [39] the conditions under which a "journeyman" could become a "master," [40] rules for conducting the trade, standards to be maintained in workmanship, prices to be charged, and dues and obligations of members (R. 97). They supervised work in their craft, cared for the sick, buried the dead, and looked after the widows and orphans. Often they provided one or more priests of their own to minister to the families of their craft, and gradually the custom arose of having the priest also teach something of the rudiments of religion and learning to the children of the members. In time money and lands were set aside or left for such purposes, and a form of chantry school, which later evolved into a regular school, often with instruction in higher studies added, was created for the children of members [41] of the guild (R. 98).

APPRENTICESHIP EDUCATION. For centuries after the revival of trade and industry all manufacturing was on a small scale, and in the home-industry stage. There was, of course, no machinery, and only the simple tools known from ancient times were used. In a first-floor room at the back, master, journeymen, and apprentices working together made the articles which were sold by the master or the master's wife and daughter in the room in front. The manufacturer and merchant were one. Apprentices were bound to a master for a term of years (R. 99), often paying for the training and education to be received, and the master boarded and lodged both the apprentices and the paid workmen in the family rooms above the shop and store.

The form of apprenticeship education and training which thus developed, from an educational point of view, forms for us the important feature of the history of these craft guilds. With the subdivision of labor and the development of new trades the craft-guild idea was extended to the new occupations, and a steady stream of rural labor flowing to the towns was absorbed by them and taught the elements of social usages, self- government, and the mastery of a trade. Throughout all the long period up to the nineteenth century this apprenticeship education in a trade and in self-government constituted almost the entire formal education the worker with his hands received. The sons of the barbarian invaders, as well as their knightly brothers, at last were busy learning the great lessons of industry, coöperation, and personal loyalty. Here begins, for western Europe, "the nobility of labor—the long pedigree of toil." So well in fact did this apprentice system of training and education meet the needs of the time that it persisted, as was said above, well into the nineteenth century (Rs. 200, 201, 242, 243), being displaced only by modern power machinery and systematized factory methods. During the later Middle Ages and in modern times it rendered an important educational service; in the later nineteenth century it became such an obstacle to educational and industrial progress that it has had to be supplemented or replaced by systematic vocational education.

INFLUENCE OF THESE NEW MOVEMENTS. We thus see, by the end of the twelfth century, a number of new influences in western Europe which point to an intellectual awakening and to the rise of a new educated class, separate from the monks and clergy on the one hand or the nobility on the other, and to the awakening of Europe to a new attitude toward life. Saracen learning, filtering across from Spain, had added materially to the knowledge Europe previously had, and had stimulated new intellectual interests. Scholasticism had begun its great work of reorganizing and systematizing theology, which was destined to free philosophy, hitherto regarded as a dangerous foe or a suspected ally, from theology and to remake entirely the teaching of the subject. Civil and canon law had been created as wholly new professional subjects, and the beginnings of the teaching of medicine had been made. Instead of the old Seven Liberal Arts and a very limited course of professional study for the clerical office being the entire curriculum, and Theology the one professional subject, we now find, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of new and important professional subjects of large future significance—subjects destined to break the monopoly of theological study and put an end to logistic hair-splitting. The next step in the history of education came in the development of institutions where thinking and teaching could be carried on free from civil or ecclesiastical control, with the consequent rise of an independent learned class in western Europe. This came with the rise of the universities, to which we next turn, and out of which in time arose the future independent scholarship of Europe, America, and the world in general.

We also discover a series of new movements, connected with the Crusades, the rise of cities, and the revival of trade and industry, all of which clearly mark the close of the dark period of the Middle Ages. We note, too, the evolution of new social classes—a new Estate—destined in time to eclipse in importance both priest and noble and to become for long the ruling classes of the modern world. We also note the beginnings of an important independent system of education for the hand-workers which sufficed until the days of steam, machinery, and the evolution of the factory system. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were turning-points of great significance in the history of our western civilization, and with the opening of the wonderful thirteenth century the western world is well headed toward a new life and modern ways of thinking.