4. The Practice of Christian Education
In the Chronologia sacrae insulae Lerinensis[1037] we find a concrete example of a monastic school.
‘At the time when the studies of the monastery of Lérins flourished in the regions of Gaul, the Christian religion ... began to grow everywhere and to commit itself to the study of letters. In this place there was an excellent abbot, a holy man, Caesarius, the servant of Christ, who afterwards became bishop of Arles.’ Amid the general flocking of people to Lérins for education or edification (‘cumque ad eum omnes unanimiter concurrerent pro salute animarum sive studiis litterarum’), there came an Italian soldier and his son Siffredus, earnestly craving admittance. The soldier became a monk, and his son was put to school (‘filius vero litterarum studiis traditur’), and in a short time he attained proficiency in ‘grammar’, rhetoric, and dialectic.
Similarly, Salvian sends a fellow countryman of his to be educated at Lérins,[1038] and we may judge from the Regula of Caesarius that many boys went there for instruction. Laymen were not excluded. In 480 St. Melanius attended a school at Rennes controlled by priests, yet apparently attached to no monastery.[1039] That such semi-theological schools existed in Gaul, at least from the beginning of the fifth century, we may judge from the fact that the sons of Eucherius, Veranius and Salonius, were taught at Lérins in subjects religious and profane[1040] during the first years of that century.[1041] Not unjustifiable, therefore, is the statement of Barralis that Lérins was ‘litterarum et virtutis emporium’.[1042]
But while the existence of Christian schools cannot be questioned, their extent and organization in Gaul during the fifth century are vague and undefined. St. Benedict’s example had not yet brought about an ordered system of monasteries, and there was still much that was erratic and irregular. Though the leaders of the Church in the main allowed the use of pagan studies in Christian teaching, yet in practice the methods employed must have depended on the sympathy and the inclination of the autonomous abbot. Now where an abbot had enjoyed a rhetorical training, we can hardly doubt that he imparted it to his pupils: for it requires a great deal of intellectual development in a master not to teach as he has been taught. But only a certain proportion of abbots could have had this training. There were many brilliant monks, many perhaps of whose distinction we do not know. But they could not have directed all the monasteries of fifth-century Gaul. The temper of the people, too, was all against literary studies. The number, therefore, of such schools as Lérins, in which secular and religious studies were simultaneously kept up, was probably not large. In the following century the division between secular and religious schools became progressively marked, chiefly owing to the influence of Cassiodorus. The division between one Christian school and another was naturally far from rigid; we read of Honoratus sending three of his scholars at Lérins to hear the lectures of Paulinus at Nola.[1043]
The children who came to the monastery schools were of two kinds: the oblati,[1044] who remained and became monks, and those who attended the schola exterior and lived a secular life after their education. The age at which they were admitted was an early one. Ennodius says that Epiphanius became a ‘lector’ at eight,[1045] and Sidonius that Bishop John of Châlons-sur-Marne was ‘lector ab infantia.’[1046] Nunneries, like the one at Arles, took children at six or seven—‘ab annis sex aut septem, quae iam litteras discere et obedientiae possit obtemperare’.[1047]
Classes were generally held in the body of the church (in inferiori Basilicae navi[1048]) and the twenty-fourth canon of the fourth Council of Toledo (seventh century) probably represents the regular practice of our period. It provides that the children of the clergy should all be kept in one room to be trained in the ways of the Church, and that they should be entrusted to a senior person of approved character who was to give them both moral and intellectual instruction.[1049]
We hear of a head master variously called in later times ‘Scholasticus’, ‘scholaster’, ‘capischola’ (caput scholae) ‘Decanus’, ‘Cancellarius’. ‘Cum igitur Levitas feceris’, wrote Remigius, ‘Archidiaconum institueris Primicerium scholae clarissimae.’[1050] A sixth-century inscription of Lyons[1051] reads: ‘In hoc tomolo requiescit famolus D̅I̅ Stefanus primicirius scolae lectorum....’
Private teaching, which had always gone side by side with the schools, increased in the fifth century among Christian parents for three reasons: the opposition of pagan to Christian education, which, amid the unorganized state of the monastery schools, often forced home-education upon parents; the fact that the pagan schools catered chiefly for the upper classes and that Christianity was now inspiring the masses with a desire for instruction; and the influence of the monastic ideal which shunned public contact for fear of contamination.
In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school, which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century, set up a school at Antinoe (Antinoopolis), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ ... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052] Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method, which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be the more profitable.
Reading was a specially important subject on account of the ‘lectores’ who read the lessons in church. Originally they were charged with the reading of Scriptures, but later their duties became more general. The ‘lectores’ formed the second of the minor orders, and the office demanded a certain amount of education, though sometimes the ‘lectores’ seem to have been no more than choir boys. Isidore of Seville states that any one who is promoted to this office must be trained in books and learning, and well equipped with a knowledge of words and their meanings.[1059] The eighth canon of the fourth Council of Carthage describes the solemn ordination of a ‘lector’.[1060] Sometimes qualifications of birth and rank added to the dignity of the office. Julian, the emperor, and his brother Gallus were admitted as readers into the church of Nicomedia, and Paulinus of Nola tells us that St. Felix was a ‘lector’.[1061] The readers stood, as has been indicated, under a ‘primicerius’, who was also the head of all the minor orders. ‘Ad primicerium’, said Gregory, ‘pertinent acolythi et exorcistae, psalmistae atque lectores.’[1062]
On the teaching of writing Jerome again follows Quintilian in recommending a tracing of the letters on the wax for the help of the pupil.[1063] ‘Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere, vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli, vel in tabella sculpantur elementa ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur vestigia....’[1064] These wax-tablets, dating from ancient Roman times, go on into the eleventh century.[1065] Copying was, of course, an important part in the monastic writing activities, and Sulpicius Severus says that it was assigned to the ‘brethren of younger years’.[1066] Such was the importance attached to it, that in the less advanced cloisters, like that of Martin, no other art was practised.[1067] Even the nuns practised it. We find Caesarius exhorting them to vary their reading and psalm singing with transcribing, under the supervision of the abbess,[1068] and it was so that Rusticula, abbess of Arles, trained her nuns.[1069]
One of the borrowings from the pagan schools which the Church found most useful was shorthand. The bishops had their ‘notarii’ just as much as the officials of the imperial Civil Service. They were employed to take down the proceedings of the Councils, the acta of the martyrs,[1070] and the speeches and sermons of the prominent clergy. Their prevalence has been the plague of commentators, and has contributed much to the formlessness of Christian writing. For the scribe would take down the bishop’s speech verbatim and copy it out as it stood. There was no revision or rearrangement, and many errors and much diffuseness was the result, as in the Homilies of Hilary of Poitiers.[1071] Hilary of Arles, Honoratus tells us, used to have a ‘notarius’. ‘Sedili mensaque apposita liber ingerebatur et retia,[1072] adstante notario. Liber praebebat animo cibum, manus nectendi velocitate currebant, notarii simul ferebantur articuli et oculus paginam percurrebat.’[1073] Evidently the possession of a ‘notarius’ did not mean a decrease in activity, mental or otherwise. Similarly, Jerome on a certain occasion was compelled by his friend Ausonius to send for his secretary and dictate a letter to the bereaved Julian, and ‘as the words fell swiftly from his lips, they were swiftly overtaken by the hand of the writer’.[1074] Again, he describes the vigour of his secretarial department in terms of martial ardour and excitement: ‘ecce noster Ausonius coepit schedulas flagitare, urgere notarios, et hinnitu ferventis equi, ingenioli mei festinus arguere tarditatem’.[1075] That shorthand was connected with the schools is clear enough from Prudentius.[1076] He tells us of a tablet in a church at Forum Cornelii representing the martyr Cassianus who had been a teacher of stenography.
Praefuerat studiis puerilibus, et grege multo
saeptus magister litterarum sederat.
verba notis brevibus comprendere multa peritus
raptimque punctis dicta praecipitibus sequi.
Transcribers of books were patronized by wealthy families, and apparently sent from one house to another. Sidonius[1077] recommends to Ruricus one who had copied out the Heptateuch, and had on sale also a copy of the Prophets, which he had edited. The man was evidently of low social standing, for Sidonius leaves it to Ruricus to fix the price of the work; yet he must have had a considerable education to have been able to edit the Prophets. We hear also of a citizen of Clermont who had wormed out of the copyist or bookseller (scriba sive bibliopola) of Remigius at Rheims a copy of the latter’s Declamations,[1078] which shows that the scribe was sometimes also the librarian.
In arithmetic, the strict monastic rules for silence, which made it necessary, for example, to ask for things at meals by signs,[1079] increased the Roman tendency to finger-computation. How elaborate a system was thus worked out we may see from Bede’s work on the subject.[1080] Great stress was laid on the ‘Computus’, a set of tables for calculating astronomical events and the movable dates of the calendar. It was regarded by Cassiodorus as indispensable for the clergy.[1081] The ‘calculus’ of Victorinus of Aquitaine, who invented a new Paschal calendar about the middle of the fifth century, was frequently used.[1082] The idea of mystical numbers, derived from Pythagoras, led to much fanciful nonsense in the Middle Ages, as we may see from Alcuin’s letter to his pupil Gallicellulus,[1083] in which he compared the numbers mentioned in the Old Testament with those of the New.
We have seen that monastic education, where, as at Lérins, the abbot was sympathetic, extended beyond the range of theological or church subjects. The Chronicle of Lérins insists on this,[1084] and its statements are borne out to a certain extent by the inscriptions, which show how strongly Vergil’s influence survived among the Christians. Several times we find on the tombstones:
Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo,
and the words ‘Subiectasque videt nubes et sidera caeli’[1085] in an inscription on a Bishop of Arles recall the verse describing the apotheosis of Daphnis. An inscription of Narbonne, belonging, probably, to the fifth century, has the phrase ‘summi rector Olimpi’.[1086] As for the Fathers, they are constantly bursting forth into Vergilian language. Paulinus, in the midst of his tirade against the pagan Muses, in the heat of his appeal to turn to the Christian God, slips into ‘inania murmura miscent’,[1087] and Jerome, while urging Julianus to become a monk, ends with a Vergilian quotation: he must follow the example of the Holy Vera, ‘et sit tibi tanti dux femina facti’.[1088] Thus the Christian writers by their own words prove the folly of the extreme anti-pagan point of view, even when they themselves have held it.
We may take it, then, that Vergil was read. We hear also of the fables of Avianus, who lived under the Antonines,[1089] and the fourth-century Disticha Catonis, a collection of moral rules. The former work remained in the schools till the tenth century, while the latter was among the commonest of elementary school-books as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth century.[1090] The text-books of the grammarians were no doubt freely used. Sidonius praises the ‘discipline’ of Agroecius[1091] (fifth century), who wrote a famous work on Orthography, intended to supplement a book on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It is significant that the work is dedicated to Bishop Eucherius. As we go into the sixth century the traces of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium begin to appear.[1092] The fifth century was a transition period, in which the doctrine of the extreme monastic party (if we may speak of a party when so many eminent men spoke now on the one side and now on the other), and the teaching of the liberals, were represented in the schools in fluctuating and uncertain proportions. By the time of Gregory of Tours (sixth century) the extremists had so far given way that he allowed his theological students to pass through the seven arts of Capella, and to write poetry, which, however, was still suspect, and had fallen from its previous prominence to a precarious place at the end of the list.
‘Quod si te, sacerdos Dei, quicumque es, Martianus noster septem disciplinis erudiit, id est si te in grammaticis docuit legere, in dialecticis altercationes propositiones advertere, in rhetoricis genera metrorum agnoscere, in geometris terrarum linearumque mensuras colligere ... si in his omnibus ita fueris exercitatus ut tibi stylus noster sit rusticus, nec sic quoque deprecor ut avellas quae scripsi sed si tibi in his quiddam placuerit, salvo opere nostro, te scribere versu non abnuo.’[1093]
When we take all this into account we cannot fail to see a certain exaggeration in Kaufmann’s[1094] statement that the training of the monastic school was entirely religious and moral. These elements were doubtless predominant, but they were not all.
During the fifth century, however, subjects for reading and discussion came to be taken more and more from the Bible. The Bible, introduced as literature in the schools, started its career of enormous influence on the speech and writings, and so on the education, of all centuries. The hexameters into which Claudius Marius Victor of Marseilles (fifth century) turned the book of Genesis were meant for use in schools, and represented a sort of compromise: Christian matter and pagan form. Psalm singing and lessons in scripture and church ritual were naturally given a fairly prominent place. Exegesis became the main subject of study, as we may see, e.g. from Eucherius’s Formularum spiritualis intelligentiae, Instructionum libri, Dialogorum liber. Scripture, he says, is to be discussed and explained ‘secundum historiam, secundum tropologiam, secundum anagogen’.[1095] ‘Historia’ is given a wide definition: all that comes under ‘veritatem factorum ac fidem relationis’. ‘Tropologia’ is to lead to the improvement of life and of the mystic intellect, and ‘Anagoge’ leads ‘ad sacratiora caelestium figurarum’. These two sides, which are speculative and philosophical, are developed at the expense of ‘Historia’; and falsely developed by abundant reference to allegorical explanation, which becomes a regular solvent of obscure questions.[1096]
Stress is also laid on the etymological side, which is rather unfortunate. Greek and Hebrew are studied to some extent, though the answers which Eucherius, following the example of Jerome, wrote to the questions of his son Salonius on these subjects suggest rather a low standard. Curious as this catechism is, some of the theological questions indicate considerable thought:
‘Scribitur in Genesi tentavit Deus Abraham, quasi ignorabat Dominus an fidelis Abraham foret.’
‘Si Deus hominem immortalem fecerit, quemadmodum potuit mori?’
‘Quomodo accipiendum est quod legimus Regnum Dei intra vos est?’
‘Cum nulla esse ignorantia apud Deum possit, quomodo ipse in libro Geneseos in exordiis dicit Dominus: Adam, ubi es?’[1097]
This part of Christian education as reflected in the Books of Instruction stands in sharp contrast to the part which deals with language, and suggests that the theological training far overshadowed the rest. Even at Lérins the distinctly pagan education was given very little prominence. Ennodius, of all people, forgetting his debt to pagan letters, and all unconscious of his enslavement to rhetoric, pompously states the superiority of ‘religious’ over ‘secular’ studies, thus advising Camilla about the education of her son: ‘The Lord of salvation rejects not those who hasten to him from secular teachings, but he refuses to let any one leave his glory for these. If you have already withdrawn the child from the world, you would not seek a worldly style in him. I blush to resort to the polish of secular embellishments in the education of one who professes to serve the Church.’[1098]
That there were different grades of advancement in the Christian schools is implied in the words of Eucherius when he reminds his son that his education was begun by Hilary but finished off (consummatum) by Vincentius and Salvian.[1099] But the general standard was undoubtedly low. To the remark of Caesarius that many business-men in his time could not write, we may add the testimony of the inscriptions. On four monuments of Briord we read:
‘Abstuta passiens dulcissema apta’,
‘Abstutus argus dulcissimus artus’,
‘Abstuti passiens dulcissimi aptu’,
‘Abstutus passiius dulcissernus aptus’,
all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:
Aspicis augustum praecisa in rupe sepulcrum,
hospitium Paulae est caelestia regna tenentis,
which proclaim the ignorance of the inscribers.[1100] This does not mean that these people would have been better educated under the pagan system: there are many instances of mistakes in pagan inscriptions too. It merely means that Christianity was beginning to reach the simple folk, who otherwise would probably not have had the ability or the ambition even to make a wrong copy of a line of verse. In the pagan schools it is the upper classes that are prominent: in the Christian schools it is the lower.
Higher education, therefore, hardly appears at all in the Christian writers. The former rhetorical school, with its declamations and its applause, fell away, though its influence survived. The rules of rhetoric may have been illustrated by examples which were applied in the pulpit, but there was no separate school for the art of speaking. Yet the germ of the modern university—as far as intellectual search for truth is concerned—was found in some of the monasteries, and there is at least one subject in which they had a contribution to make to higher education, philosophy.
The curious way in which the Christian and pagan schools supplement and oppose one another is evident throughout. The Christian elementary school developed further the pagan system for lower education: the monastic studies formed an antithesis to the social atmosphere of the Bordeaux University; and, in particular, the study of philosophy and theology supplemented that lack of thought which we have seen in Ausonius and the fourth century in general. For it is in the fifth century that the most flourishing period of Gallic theology begins. All the greatest minds of the day busied themselves with the philosophy of religion.
The main thought-currents need here only be named. First and foremost there was Pelagianism, with its questions of grace and free will, which raised the central problem of personality. More directly connected with Gaul (for its leaders were Cassian and Faustus) was Semi-Pelagianism, which sought a middle way between the predestination implied in Augustine and the free will of Pelagius. Then there were the questions about the nature of the soul—whether it was corporeal, as Faustus argued, or spiritual as Mamertus Claudianus maintained. There was also Neoplatonism, which was never strong in the West, but appears here and there in Hilary of Poitiers.[1101] How prevalent its incidental accompaniments of Daemonology and Divination were appears from the decree of Valens and Valentinian against magicians.[1102] Finally, there were minor theological questions and points of worship and church discipline, for example in the controversy between Vigilantius and Jerome.
Philosophy was divided by Eucherius into three parts: ‘Sapientia mundi huius philosophiam suam in tres partes divisit: Physicam, Ethicam, Logicam’,[1103] which includes metaphysics and theology. This was the traditional division alluded to by Seneca: ‘Philosophiae tres partes esse dixerunt et maximi et plurimi actores: moralem, naturalem, rationalem.’[1104] Of these, the part called ‘ethica’ or ‘moralis’ was naturally most popular, but the sort of theological discussion that came under ‘Logica’ was most developed by the thinkers of the time. Foremost in this department stands Claudianus, Bishop of Vienne, whose work De Statu animae was a real contribution to the thought of his age. ‘These ideas’, says Guizot, referring to this work, ‘are deficient neither in elevation nor in profundity: they would do honour to the philosophers of any period; seldom have the nature of the soul and its unity been investigated more clearly or described with greater precision.’[1105] This is high praise, but it is justified in the main. Claudianus was at least no mere compiler. He draws largely on Augustine and the Pythagorean authors like Philolaus, Architas, and Hippo Metapontinus (known to him, perhaps, only in extracts), whose works are now lost.[1106] Plato and the later Platonists, too, are extensively quoted. We feel that there is a great deal of vague metaphysics in his work, ‘purement négative, impuissante à pénétrer dans la nature intime des phénomènes’.[1107] As an example of this sort of thing we may quote the passage[1108] where he is referring to the work of Philolaus περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ μέτρων, and talks about the mystic number and the spiritual law according to which the soul enters the body, using this thesis as a satisfactory basis for argument. He is content to quote the ‘ipse dixit’ of Philolaus alone. ‘Memet’ (he declares) ‘causa auctoritatis in medium tanti testimonium philosophi iecisse sufficiet.’ There was an idea (not unnaturally) that the study of philosophy was prejudicial to religion, but Claudianus was one, says Sidonius, ‘qui ... indesinenter salva religione philosopharetur’.[1109] Plato was the main inspiration. Most of the Gallic Platonists were Christians, though Sidonius says that those who attack Faustus for his mystic philosophy will find ‘ecclesiae Christi Platonis academiam militare’.[1110] From Sidonius and Claudianus we should judge that Aristotle—especially the Ethics and the Categories—was fairly prevalent in Gaul.[1111]
Methods and Masters.
Ennodius in his lines on ‘Grammatica’[1112] maintains that even in teaching philosophy a joke with the class is permissible, and that strict discipline must not always imply terror, and Sulpicius Severus writes to Bishop Paul[1113] commending his success in dealing with pupils without threats or force. But, on the whole, the pagan tradition of discipline was not mellowed by Christianity. It was rather reinforced by the ascetic spirit of the monasteries, and intensified by the added religious motive of mortification. The text ‘Quem enim diligit Dominus, increpat: flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit’, was literally and extensively applied. Jerome talks quite naturally of education as equivalent to ‘manum ferulae subducere’,[1114] and the severe training of Lérins is indicated by the phrase of Sidonius; ‘post desudatas militiae Lerinensis excubias’ (the sweated vigils of your campaign at Lérins).[1115] Valerianus, in his homily ‘De bono disciplinae’,[1116] illustrates the ideas of the time on this subject, and strengthens the impression that we get from reading the various ‘Regulae’ for the cloisters. He expatiates on the disciplined order of nature, and everywhere thinks of ‘disciplina’ as equivalent to ‘castigatio’, which is always assumed to be the corner-stone of teaching and the condition of progress on the part of the pupil. The militarism of the Roman Empire lingers on in seemingly uncongenial surroundings. Great stress is laid on fear. Fear has the great virtue of always obeying. It therefore knows how to avoid threatening dangers, or the wrath of judgement. Because of this estimable quality it has the power of keeping you safe. ‘All vices are prostrate before fear.’ He appeals to the word of the Prophet: ‘servite Domino in timore et exultate ei cum tremore’. The Old Testament harshness suits the temper of these disciplinarians very well, and appears far more frequently than the gentleness of Christ or the humanity of common sense.
Part of this idea of mortification and discipline was worked out in the manual labour which the monasteries made, and consistently have made, of considerable importance in their educational scheme. Partly, too, it was a reaction against the extreme artificiality of the rhetorical schools, and it was also undoubtedly an attempt to follow Christ and his Apostles in their adoption of some craft or trade. Mabillon shows[1117] how much this practical side was insisted on, and he speaks of a tradition which started in Gaul during our period. The correspondence between word and deed was made a vital point—a fact which proved a healthy corrective to the attitude apt to be produced by the rhetoric of the pagan schools. ‘Qui si volunt lectioni vacare ut non operentur, ipsi lectioni contumaces existunt, quia non faciant quod ibi legunt’,[1118] said Isidore of Seville, and his ‘Rule’, like that of Caesarius, expressed the thought of the fifth century as well as of the seventh. We find that at Lérins Hilary of Arles worked in the fields, and that it was the duty of Caesarius when he first entered that monastery to provide for the bodily needs of the brethren.[1119] Cassian made a strong point of manual labour. It prevents many faults,[1120] and we have the example of St. Paul[1121] and the precept of Solomon.[1122] The East, which gave the impulse to monasticism, emphasized this point, for example in Egypt,[1123] and there is the story of the Abbot Paul who burnt every year the work of his hands lest he should ever lack work.[1124]
Thus in its development of elementary education, in its ‘rusticitas’, in its greater concentration on thought, and in its emphasis on practical work, Christian education in fifth-century Gaul was in reaction against the brilliant but superficial schools of the previous century. That this was so, and that the movement was strong enough to make itself felt against the whole weight of the traditional education, was partly due to skilful leadership. How far was this effective leadership general in the Christian schools?
Eucherius in a letter to Valerianus[1125] gives a list of men who have become monks. Clemens, ‘omni scientia refertus, omniumque liberalium artium peritissimus’; Gregorius, ‘philosophia primus apud mundum et eloquentia praestans’; another Gregorius, ‘litteris et philosophiae deditus’; Paulinus of Nola, ‘peculiare et beatum Galliae nostrae exemplum—uberrimo eloquentiae fonte’; Basilius, a rhetor and a learned man; and many others. Of Eucherius himself Claudianus says: ‘ingenio subtilissimus, scientia plenus, eloquii profluens’.[1126] There was, therefore, considerable learning in the monasteries towards the end of the fourth century. We have seen how many of the aristocracy brought pagan culture into the cloisters; we have also seen that the Christians were not without their rhetors (and rhetorical ability implied the liberal education of the day), nor without their theologians and philosophers. Of Hilary of Arles, whose eloquence Honoratus praises, Gennadius says: ‘Ingenio vero immortali aliqua et parva edidit, quae eruditae animae et fidelis linguae indicio sunt’.[1127] Even where a man did not have the initial advantage of education and birth, he often had the ambition and the opportunity to remedy his ignorance in the cloister. Vincentius, who had come to Lérins after having been a soldier, studied with such zeal that he became one of the tutors of Eucherius’s sons and wrote in a style praised by Gennadius.[1128]
Now all these men became the teachers of the Christian schools. They taught unceasingly and with great eagerness. They had within them the joy of the pioneer, and the inspiration of a great ideal. And if one does not agree entirely with their theory of education, it must be admitted that intellectually they were in most cases better equipped than the professors of Ausonius, and that they did more to inspire a true love of education and to preserve the triumphs of culture. When Gaul was separated from the Empire, it was the schools, and mostly the Christian schools (for imperial protection of education failed with the failing Empire), that saved civilization in Gaul and helped to perpetuate Rome’s great contribution to the world—her Law. Dull and uninteresting as their educational labours often were, they were often, like Browning’s Grammarian, possessed by a real love of learning. The pedestrian quality of the work—the jealous watching over the text of Vergil, the copying of manuscripts, the relentless monastic routine—was perhaps the best service that could have been rendered to humanity. What the world wanted, in view of the dark times that were to follow, was a tenacious watch-dog type of loyalty to letters, not the brilliant genius who needs somebody to look after his manuscripts. Not only books but garden art, architecture, wood- and stone-carving, and pottery were preserved by these watch-dogs. The dull lack of appreciation with which we sometimes think of their work, forgetting its true perspective, is well expressed by Kaufmann:[1129]
‘Der auf Unkenntniss gegründete Hochmuth moderner Bildung glaubt freilich mit dem einen Worte “Scholastik” über die Arbeit dieser Mönche hinweggehen zu können, als über eine Summe nutzloser Versuche ... allein schon die eine Beobachtung, dass in den wichtigsten Fragen schon damals dieselben Gegensätze aufeinanderplatzten, welche heute die Geister trennen, schon diese Beobachtung zeigt dass die kirchlichen Fesseln das geistige Leben nicht erstarren liessen.’
PART IV
CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES
While we have looked at the actual curricula and surroundings of the schools, it has been possible to treat Christian and pagan education apart. But there remain certain questions which do not directly or entirely belong to the schools, and yet are of importance for education because of the general educational principles underlying them (as in the case of history or the teaching of a strange language), or because of the ideas by which they moulded the individuality of people (as in the case of morality and art). Here the interplay of influences is such that, in the brief treatment which we propose, a strict division had better not be attempted. For not only would such a division be tedious within so limited a compass, but the merging into one another of customs and ideas makes it almost impossible. The questions we have indicated will therefore be regarded as common to either side of society.