The Early Christian Schools and Scholars. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: Christian Schools and Scholars; or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent. By the author of The Three Chancellors, etc. Two vol. London: Longmans, Green & Co.]
The history of the schools and scholars of the early ages of the church is not only interesting as forming an important chapter in the history of the church itself, but is full of most remarkable facts and valuable suggestions bearing on the as yet apparently unsolved problem of education. It is replete with matter well worthy the profound attention of all who consider the proper training of youth one of the gravest and most important of public questions; and one which, in this age of advanced enlightenment, still remains the subject of many crude and conflicting opinions. Not only do we recommend its perusal to the Catholic teacher, who is manfully overcoming the peculiar obstacles presented in our unsettled community, as a source of consolation and encouragement; but we call it to the notice of those gentlemen who spend so much of their time during summer vacations debating on the quantity and quality of discipline necessary to enforce the time-honored authority of the teacher, and in endeavoring to define the exact minimum of moral training required to be administered to the secular student to fit him for the proper discharge of the duties of life. We do this in all sincerity; for with this latter class of persons we are not inclined to find too much fault. Many of them are men of intelligence and good intentions; but, groping as they are in utter darkness, and bringing to their deliberations a lamentable ignorance of the essential principles of Christian education, it is not wonderful that their counsels should be divided, and their labors as unprofitable as that of Sisyphus. Disguise it as we may, it cannot be doubted that the state colleges and schools of our country, after a very fair trial, have not answered the expectations of even those who profess themselves their warmest admirers. There is a feeling in the public mind, as yet partially expressed, that there is something lacking in our method of dealing with the ever-constant flood of young hearts and minds which is daily looking to us for direction and guidance. It is becoming more and more painfully apparent that the mere intellect of the children who attend our public institutions is stimulated into unnatural and unhealthy activity, while their moral nature is left wholly uncultivated and undeveloped. Conducted, as such institutions must necessarily be, by persons unqualified or unauthorized to administer moral instruction, it cannot, of course, be expected that the souls for a time entrusted to their care can be fortified by wise counsels and that moral discipline which was considered in past ages and in all nations as the fundamental basis of all Christian education.
Even in a worldly sense, it ought to be a source of our greatest solicitude that the generation which is to hold the honor and integrity of the nation in its keeping should be schooled in the principles of justice and rectitude upon which all true individual and national greatness must depend. If, then, we have exhausted the wisdom of the present, with all its examples before our eyes, to no good purpose, let us turn reverently to the experience of the past, and see if we cannot find something fit for meditation in the varied pages of the history of the Christian church, in her struggles against ignorance and false philosophy.
From the very beginning the church had to contend against three distinct elements, positively or negatively, opposed to her teachings. In the East, as then known, what was called the Greek civilization, superimposed on the Roman, denied all particular gods while worshipping many, and culminated either in refined atheism or the deification of man himself: proud of its disputants, its arts and literature, it affected to feel, and perhaps actually felt, a contempt for the simple doctrines of Christianity, accompanied, as they were, by self-denial, poverty, and lowliness. Over continental Europe and many of its islands the wave of Roman conquest had swept irresistibly and receded reluctantly, leaving behind it the sediment of an intelligence which served only to nourish the latent weeds of ignorance and paganism; while in the far West existed a people with a peculiar and, in its way, a high order of civilization, untouched, it is true, by Roman or Greek pantheism, but completely shut out from the light of the gospel.
To overcome the scattered and diversified opposition thus presented, to overturn false gods and uproot false opinions, to bend the stubborn neck of the barbarian beneath the yoke of Christian meekness, and to mould whatever was brilliant and intellectual in mankind to the service of the true God, was the task assumed by the church through the means of education.
During the first three centuries of our era schools were established at Alexandria, Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch, and other centres of Eastern wealth and learning; of these, that at Alexandria, founded by St. Mark, A.D. 60, was the most celebrated, and had for its teachers and scholars some of the most learned men of the period. They were catechetical in their nature, and at first were confined to oral instructions on the chief articles of the faith and the nature of the sacraments; but in process of time their sphere of usefulness was greatly enlarged, and the character of the studies pursued in them assumed a wider and higher tone, till not only dogmatic theology and Christian ethics, but human sciences and profane literature, were freely taught. Thus we read that, toward the close of the second century, St. Pantaeus, a converted Stoic of great erudition, and Clement of Alexandria, who is said to have "visited all lands and studied in all schools in search of truth," taught in the school of St. Mark, with an eloquence so convincing, and a knowledge of Grecian philosophy so thorough, that multitudes of Gentiles flocked to hear them, astonished to find the doctrines of the new faith expounded in the polished language of Cicero, and the very logic of Aristotle turned against the pantheistic philosophy of Greece. Their successor, the celebrated Origen, whose reputation has outlived all the attacks of time, in a letter to his friend St. Gregory, gives us some idea of the course of instruction pursued in his time, in this school, in regard to the study of the human sciences. "They are to be used," he writes, "so that they may contribute to the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy, all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of Christianity. We are permitted, when we go out of Egypt, to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle; only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go down into Egypt and seek for treasure; that is what Jeroboam did in olden time, and what heretics do in our own." Here we find expressed, at so early a day, the beautiful idea of the church respecting education; that enduring pyramid which she would build up, whose base is human science, and whose apex is the knowledge of God.
The episcopal seminaries, intended exclusively for the training of ecclesiastics, were coeval with, if not anterior to, the catechetical schools, for we find the germ of the system in the very earliest apostolic times. They originally formed but part of the bishops' households; and the students were taught by him personally, or by his deputy. When the community life became more general and the number of ecclesiastical pupils increased, the seminaries assumed more extensive proportions, the school being held in the church attached to the bishop's house, but the scholars still living under his roof. Great care was always manifested by the early fathers of the church in the moral and intellectual training of ecclesiastical students. Thus, Pope St. Siricius, in his decretal, A.D. 385, to the Bishop of Tarragona, lays down the following rules to be observed in preparing candidates for the priesthood. He orders that they shall be selected principally from those who have been devoted to the service of the church from childhood. At thirty years of age they are to be advanced through inferior orders to subdiaconate and diaconate, and after five years thus spent they may be ordained priests. In several provincial councils held in the early centuries we find the greatest stress laid on the importance of the careful culture of seminarians, and the second council of Toledo, A.D. 531, fixes the ordination of subdeacons at twenty, and of deacons at twenty-five years of age. As to the course of studies pursued, besides the reading of the Scriptures, the Psalter, and a knowledge of the duties of the holy offices, Latin, Greek, and generally Hebrew were taught, together with the liberal sciences, and sometimes even law and medicine.
Thus did the church gradually but firmly lay the foundation of her system. First, by giving to the adult neophyte such instruction as befitted his age and condition, to enable him to become a worthy member of her fold; and next, by providing, under the direct inspection of each bishop, a school where children, disciplined in his household, taught from his mouth and by his example lessons of piety, humility and self-control, and armed with all the resources of sacred and profane learning, were at mature years sent forth to convert a gentile world, and in turn become teachers of men.
While the catechetical schools were flourishing in the East and the episcopal seminaries assuming form in Spain and Gaul, the bloody persecutions which prevailed intermittingly at Rome retarded for a long time education in that city. Many of her first citizens, it is true, regardless alike of family considerations and imperial edicts, were to be daily found by the side of her humblest bondmen, listening, through the gloom of the catacombs, to the teachings of the gospel; and to this day their places can be pointed out beside the rough hewn seat of their teachers. The Roman pontiffs also labored in their own dwellings to educate their young priests, many of whom, like St. Felicitanus, passed only from their care to testify their devotion to the faith by a glorious martyrdom. When the Emperor Constantine was converted, the palace of the Laterni became the residence of the popes, and here was established the Patriarchium, or seminary, which for several centuries gave so many distinguished occupants to the chair of Peter. The schools of the empire were also thrown open to the Christians, who largely availed themselves of their superior advantages to become acquainted with the old authors. But the professors of the imperial academies were but semi-christianized, and, though conforming outwardly to the new order of things, they retained not a little of their old ideas and customs. Hence, we find a variety of opinions entertained by contemporary authorities as to the propriety of Christians studying in them. In most cases, however, where the danger of contamination was not imminent, or where, as in the case of Victorinus, the academicians were bona-fidè Christians, the practice was permitted, so eager were the fathers to encourage learning.
Tertullian was of opinion that, while Christians could not lawfully teach in the schools with pagans, they might be listeners, without, however, taking part in idolatrous ceremonies. St. Basil, who studied for a time in them, and who was a devoted lover of classical learning, entertained much the same views, comparing the student to a bee who sucks honey out of the poisoned flower. St. Chrysostom, who cannot be accused of any antipathy to education in all its most elegant branches, but who had in his own person experienced the dangers which beset the young Christian in the academies, after great deliberation, and with evident reluctance, decided against the public schools as then conducted. His words have a significant sound, even in these days. He writes:
"If you have masters among you who can answer for the virtue of your children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to a monastery. On the contrary, I should strongly insist on them remaining where they are. But, if no one can give such a guarantee, we ought not to send our children to schools where they will learn vice before they learn science, and where, in acquiring learning of relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious, their integrity of soul. … 'Are we, then, to give up literature?' you will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill souls. … When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two alternatives a liberal education, which you may get by sending your children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls, which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so, by all means; but, if not, choose the most precious."
The character of the academies must have soon changed for the better; for, when Julian some time after closed them to the Christians, ostensibly with a view to the purity of morals, but actually to deprive Christian students of the benefit of any education, St. Gregory, who quickly saw through the Apostate's designs, protested in the strongest terms against the injustice. "For my part," he says, "I trust that every one who cares for learning will take part in my indignation. I leave to others fortune, birth, and every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man. I value only science and letters, and regret no labor that I have spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and ever shall prefer, learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity." The decree was afterward revoked by the Emperor Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, and the academies gradually fell into decay; and, growing dim in the light of the new Christian foundations of other countries, finally ceased to be objects of discussion.
Perhaps the greatest good that resulted from the evils complained of by St. Chrysostom was the establishment of the Benedictine order; an organization destined to exercise for centuries a controlling influence over the educational system of Christendom. In the year A.D. 522, a poor solitary named Benedict, while engaged at his devotions in the grotto of Subiaco, was visited by two Roman senators, who desired him to take charge of the education of their sons, Maurus and Placidus. He consented, and other children of the same rank, whose parents feared the contagion of the imperial schools, were soon after placed in his care. For their government he established a rule, and from this apparently slight foundation sprang the numberless monasteries which were the custodians and dispensaries of learning in the middle ages. In 543, St. Maurus carried the Benedictine rule into Gaul, where under his charge and that of his successors monasteries multiplied with great rapidity. We have seen that at first this illustrious order was designed only for the education of the children of the rich, who were to be instructed "non solum in Scripturis divinas, sed etiam in secularibus litteris;" but so great did its reputation become that, in a short time, we find the doors of its schools thrown open to all classes.
It was not, however, in the polished circles of the cities of Greece and her colonies, nor even in the future centre of Christendom, that the church was destined to achieve her most substantial triumphs. The civilization of the East, long in a state of decay, waned with the decline of the Empire, and its opulent cities and elaborate literature became part of the débris of the colossal ruins of that once stupendous power. The soil in which the seeds of education had been planted by St. Mark and St. Basil, Origen and Cassian, was already exhausted, and incapable of producing those hardy plants and gigantic trees which defy time and corruption. We must, therefore, look to Western Europe as the proper field wherein were to be sown the germs of a more enduring growth.
The monastic system, more or less defined, was introduced into Gaul long before the advent of St. Maurus, and the education, not only of monks, was attended to with care, but of the laity also. From the earliest times we find traces of the exterior schools attached to the monasteries for the training of children not intended for a clerical life. The rules of Saints Pachominus and Basil, then generally followed, were careful to provide that children should be taught to read and write, and instructed in psalmody and such portions of the Holy Scriptures as were suited to their comprehension. They were to live in the monastery and be allowed to sit at table with the monks, who were strictly cautioned not to do or say anything that could disedify their young minds. With a tenderness truly paternal, the young scholars were allowed a separate part of the building for themselves, and plenty of time for amusement. On the subject of punishment, we recommend the following advice of St. Basil to modern teachers, believing that juvenile human nature is much the same now as it was sixteen or seventeen centuries ago. "Let every fault have its own remedy," says this experienced teacher, "so that, while the offence is punished, the soul may be exercised to conquer its passions. For example: Has a child been angry with his companion? Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble service; for it is by accustoming him to humility that you will eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day. Has he eaten to excess and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him be corrected by diet and silence."
The early Gallican bishops showed as great a desire to encourage learning among their clergy as did those of Spain, and were never tired of enforcing the necessity of the attentive study of the Scriptures and the cultivation of letters, even in religious houses occupied by women. The result of this zealous spirit is to be found in the establishment of the schools of Tours and Lyons, Grinni and Vienne, the abbey of Marmontier and the more famous one of Lerins, which produced thousands of missionaries, and such scholars as Apollinaris of Lyons, Maumertius, the author of The Nature of the Soul, and the poets, Saints Prosper and Avitus. The "Academy of Toulouse," of disputatious memory, is claimed to have had a very ancient origin, but was probably not in existence until the sixth century.
But the first period of literary culture on the continent of Europe was fast drawing to a close. At the end of the fifth century heresy and schism; the converted Ostrogoths of Northern Italy were subdued by the semi-paganized Lombards; the Roman empire existed but in name; and civil war broke out in Gaul, desolating her fields and laying in ruins her churches and schools. Darkness succeeded light, and anarchy and barbarism prevailed on both sides of the Alps. But the cause of Christian learning was not lost. Driven from the mainland, the Christian scholars had already taken refuge in the adjacent islands, where they rekindled their torches, and kept them burning with an effulgence unknown in the palaces of kings or the schools of the empire. The providence of God, which permitted the ravages of war and heresy to prevail for a time in Gaul, Spain, and Italy, ordained that a newer and more secure asylum should be provided for the handmaid of the faith, whence were to issue, when the storm passed over, of hosts of zealous and learned men to reconquer for the church her desolated and darkened dominions.
Ireland and England were destined to be this asylum, and, even humanly speaking, no choice could have been more propitious. The qualities which distinguished the people of these islands, and which characterize them even at this day, admirably adapted them for missionary life. The Anglo-Saxon genius, mollified by contact with the more imaginative mind of the Briton, developed a strong, unconquerable will, great tenacity of purpose, vast powers of cooperation, and a capacity for solid attainments; while the Celts of the sister island, who had never known a conqueror, exhibited the indomitable zeal of a free-born people united to an insatiable love of learning and fine arts, and a subtility of mind which easily grasped the most beautiful and abstruse dogmas of Christian philosophy.
The earliest monastic schools of England were destroyed by the Saxon invaders about the middle of the fifth century, and what remained of their teachers were driven with the remnant of the Britons into the mountains of Wales. Yet even before the invasion many of her youth found their way to the continent, and there obtaining an education, returned to their native country to teach their compatriots. Thus St. Ninian, who had studied at Rome under Pope St. Siricius and had visited Tours, established his episcopal seminary and a school for the neighboring children at Witherne, in Galloway, about the beginning of that century. He was, says his biographer, St. Aelred, "assiduous in reading." St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes followed in 429, and established at Caerleon, the capital of the Britons, seminaries and schools, in which they lectured on the Scriptures and the liberal arts. Stimulated by their example, monastic schools sprang rapidly into existence, the most successful of which were those at Hentland; Laudwit, among whose first scholars was the historian Gildas; Bangor on the Dee, in which, according to Bede, there were over two thousand students; Whitland, where St. David studied; and Llancarvan, founded by St. Cadoc. This latter saint was educated by an Irish recluse named Fathai, who was induced to leave his hermitage in the mountains to take charge of the school of Gwent, in Monmouthshire.
We must not be surprised to find an Irish teacher at that early period in Wales; for already the wonderful exodus of Irish missionaries and teachers had commenced. The twenty years' missionary labors of St. Patrick and his disciples had literally converted the entire people of Ireland, and, following the lessons taught him at Tours, Rome, and Lerins, that saint studded the island with seminaries and monastic schools. His own, at Armagh, founded A.D. 455, doubtless formed the model upon which the others were built. "Within a century after the death of St. Patrick," says Bishop Nicholson, "the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated there, and drew thence their bishops and teachers." So numerous, indeed, were the schools of Ireland founded by the successors of St. Patrick that it is impossible even to enumerate their names in the limits of an article. The most celebrated were those of Armagh, which at one time furnished education to seven thousand pupils; Lismore; Cashel; Aran, "the Holy;" Clonard, the alma mater of Columba the Great; Conmacnois; Benchor, of which St. Bernard speaks in such terms of admiration; and Clonfert, founded by St. Brendan the navigator. When we remember the disturbed condition of the continent during the sixth and seventh centuries, and the almost profound peace which prevailed in Ireland during that time, we cease to be astonished at the influx of foreigners which thronged her schools. St. AEngus mentions the names of Gauls, Romans, Germans, and even Egyptians who visited her shore; and St. Aldhelm of Westminster, in the seventh century, rather petulantly complains of his countrymen neglecting their own schools for those of Ireland. "Nowadays," he remarks, "the renown of the Irish is so great that one sees them daily going or returning; and crowds flock over to their island to gather up, not merely the liberal arts and physical sciences, but also the four senses of Holy Scripture and the allegorical and tropological interpretation of its sacred oracles."
As to the course of study pursued in the Irish monastic schools, there is reason to believe that not only were theology, grammar, that is, languages, and the physical sciences taught, but poetry and music also received special attention. The bardic order were the first to embrace Christianity, and their love for those two beautiful arts was proverbial. Latin and Hebrew were studied, but the sonorous language of Homer and Cicero seems to have been most in favor, probably on account of its remarkable resemblance, in euphony at least, to the vernacular Gaelic. Mathematics and astronomy ranked first on the list of the sciences, and geography, as far as then known, must have been familiar to St. Brendan and his adventurous companions.
But, as we have said, the missionary labors of the Irish had already commenced. Obedient to a law beyond human control, the pent-up zeal of the people had burst its boundaries and overflowed Europe. Of the devoted men destined to roll back the tide of paganism, the first in point of greatness, if not in time, was St. Columba, the founder of the schools of Iona, A.D. 563. Amid all the Irish missionaries, this saint stands out in the boldest relief. Of proud lineage and dauntless spirit, passionately fond of books, yet sharing willingly with his monks the toils of the field, we fancy we can almost see his tall, austere figure stalking amid the unknown and unheeded perils of the barbarous Hebrides and the mountains of North Britain, with his staff and book, overawing hostile chiefs and princes by his very presence, and winning the hearts of the humble shepherds by his sweet voice and gentle demeanor. "He suffered no space of time," says Adamnan, "no, not an hour to pass, in which he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading or writing, or manual work."
Leaving Ireland forging the weapons of spiritual and intellectual combat, and the Albanian Scots to the care of Columba and his monks, we turn again to England, which, with the exception of Wales, was up to the end of the sixth century sunk in the grossest paganism. In the year 596, when, to use the words of Pope Gregory, "all Europe was in the hands of the barbarians," that pontiff conceived the idea of converting the Saxons of England. He accordingly despatched St. Augustine and some monks from Monte Cassino, lately reduced to ruins. St. Augustine brought with him a Bible, a psalter, the gospels, an apocryphal lives of the apostles, a martyrology, and the exposition of certain epistles and gospels, besides sacred vessels, vestments, church ornaments, and holy relics. He forthwith established a seminary and school at Canterbury, which afterward attained great celebrity. But the schools of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aiden, A.D. 635, eclipsed all lesser luminaries. Aiden was a worthy descendant of Columba, and brought to his task all the learning and discipline of Iona. "All who bore company with Aiden," says the Venerable Bede, "whether monks or laymen, were employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing psalms. This was his own daily employment wherever he went." In the south of England, Maidulf, also an Irish missionary, founded the schools of Malmsbury; Wilfred, a student of Lindisfarne, the abbey and school of Ripon, introducing the Benedictine rule into England; while Archbishop Theodore, a native of Tarsis, and Adrian, described as a "fountain of letters and a river of arts,"' gave a wonderful impetus to the study of letters in Canterbury. These latter added to St. Augustine's library the works of St. Chrysostom, the history of Josephus, and a copy of Homer. The studies pursued at Canterbury consisted of theology, Latin and Greek, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy, and astrology. The most illustrious pupil of the early schools of Canterbury were St. Aldhelm, who was thoroughly familiar with the classical authors, himself a writer of no mean order, and who afterward became teacher at Malmsbury; St. Bennet Biscop, who founded schools at Monk Wearmouth, Yarrow, and various other places, endowing them with valuable books which he had collected on the continent. He first introduced the use of glass in England.
In the school at Yarrow, Bede commenced his studies. This extraordinary man, besides attending to his duties as a missionary and teacher, found time to compose forty-five books on the most diverse subjects, including commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, works on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music, geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum or method of calculating Easter, and natural philosophy, besides his Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the Saints. He was well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and, for his success in reducing the barbarous Anglo-Saxon tongue to something like grammatical rules, he has been justly styled the father of the English language. For the immense knowledge which he displayed in his various writings, he was indebted, doubtless, to the valuable libraries collected by St. Bennet, who, like a true son of Iona, seized upon a book whenever or wherever an opportunity was afforded. At the beginning of the eighth century, the schools of York attained general notoriety under the management of Egbert, who taught the seven liberal sciences, chronology, natural history, mathematics, and jurisprudence. Here Alcuin, the adviser and friend of Charlemagne, received his first lessons.
Nor are we to suppose that the great schools above mentioned occupied the entire attention of the hierarchy of England. On the contrary, every bishop had his own seminary; and every monastery, of which there were hundreds in the seventh and eighth centuries, had its interior or claustral, and its exterior school for the education of the children of its neighborhood. In England, as elsewhere, wherever a monastery was built, no matter how remote the situation or how barren the soil, people flocked round it not only to hear the gospel preached, but to learn the mechanical arts and the laws of agriculture. Besides this, parish priests, or, as they were called in the Anglo-Saxon, "mass priests," were obliged to open and sustain parochial free schools for the children of the peasantry and serfs.
It is acknowledged by all writers, no matter how sceptical they may be on other points, that the church was the first to raise woman to her true place in society. In pagan times woman was treated much the same as she now is in Mohammedan countries, and only the very vilest of the sex enjoyed any freedom of speech or action; but Christianity not only threw its aegis around her, but provided for her education with a care only second, if indeed not fully equal, to that bestowed on ecclesiastics. We find by the correspondence between St. Boniface and his relative Lioba, that the nuns of England at that time understood and could write the Latin language, and were well versed in the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers. Nunneries were, in fact, in the middle ages almost as numerous as monasteries, and in their sphere as powerful agents in the advancement of religion and education.
By the close of the eighth century England had reached the zenith of her first period of literary glory. Not only were her people thoroughly instructed according to their degree and rank, but the island abounded in saints and scholars, many of whom, like those of Ireland, went forth, from time to time, to repay to benighted Europe a portion of the debt contracted two centuries earlier.
It were an interesting study, if space permitted, to trace the divergent paths pursued by Irish and English scholars on the continent, in what may be called their initial campaigns against ignorance. We find the Irish invading France, Switzerland, Italy, and even Spain, while the Anglo-Saxons, with a like affinity for race and habits, preferred the northern part of Europe, the cradle of their ancestors. St. Columbanus, whose rule, next to that of St. Benedict, was the most generally adopted in the continental monasteries, founded the schools of Luxeuil in Burgundy and of Bobbio in Italy; St. Gall, one of his companions, laid the foundation of the famous schools of that name in Switzerland; St. Cathal of Lismore became the patron saint of Tarentum, and Donatus and Frigidan were bishops of Fiesole in Tuscany and Lucca.
St. Winifred, or, as he was afterward called, Boniface, the first great English missionary to the continent, achieved great successes in the north about 723, and, being desirous of training up a native priesthood to perpetuate his works, invited several of his countrymen to Germany to take charge of the seminaries of the different bishoprics he had founded. Among those who accepted the invitation were his two nephews, one of whom, Willibald, established a college at Ordorp. The seminary of Utrecht owes its origin to one of his earliest pupils, Luidger, a direct descendant of Dagobert II., who also built several seminaries and monastic schools in Saxony. Another of St. Boniface's students, Strum, laid the foundation of the celebrated abbey and school of Fulda in 744; and, to complete the work of regeneration, thirty nuns were brought over from England, who established religious houses innumerable, and introduced among the rude Germans the learning and refinement which marked the nunneries of their native land. St. Boniface, having been appointed papal legate and vicar with jurisdiction over the bishops of Gaul and Germany, applied several years of his life to the reformation of abuses and the establishment of strict rules of life among the clergy of both countries. To this end we are told that in every place where he planted a monastery he added a school, not only for the benefit of young monks, "but in order that the rude population by whom they were surrounded might be trained in holy discipline, and that their uncivilized manners might be softened by the influence of humane learning." His grand work having been accomplished, he resigned his delegated powers, resumed his missionary life, and, with nothing but his "books and shroud," proceeded to Friesland, the scene of his first labors, where he suffered martyrdom in 755. This saint was a devoted friend to education, and that portion of the decrees of the council of Cloveshoe, held in 747, in which the subject of learning is treated, is ascribed to his pen. The council ordered that "bishops, abbots, and abbesses do by all means diligently provide that all their people incessantly apply their minds to reading; that boys be brought up in the ecclesiastical schools, so as to be useful to the church of God; and that their masters do not employ them in bodily labor on Sundays."
While Germany was being reclaimed from its primitive barbarism, Gaul, which had given so many missionaries to the Western Islands, was not neglected. For more than two hundred years this country, once so fertile in pious men and learned institutions, was the theatre of the most frightful disorders, consequent on domestic wars and foreign invasions. There were but few monasteries surviving, but even these were true to the design of their founders, and in them learning, to use the eloquent remark of the Protestant historian, Guizot, "proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier times should suffer it to appear in the world." But a memorable epoch had arrived in the history of France. In 771 Charlemagne became monarch of all the Franks, and by his extraordinary military successes and political wisdom soon made himself master of the entire continent north of the Pyrenees. But great as were his conquests in the field, his victories in the cause of letters in France were more splendid and far more durable. Under his long and brilliant sway the evils of previous centuries were swept away; churches were restored, monasteries rebuilt, seminaries and schools everywhere opened. Like all great practical men, the Frankish monarch knew admirably well how to choose his assistants when grand ends were to be reached, and in this instance he selected Alcuin of York as his agent in restoring to his dominions religious harmony and Christian education. The result showed the wisdom of his choice, for to no man of that day could so herculean a task be assigned with better hope of its execution. Trained in the schools of York, then among the best in England, he united to a solid judgment profound learning and an energy of mind as untiring as that even of his royal patron. The Palatine school, though in existence previous to the reign of Charlemagne, was placed under the charge of Alcuin, and the emperor and various members of his family became his first and most attentive pupils. It consisted of two distinct parts: one, composed of the royal family and the courtiers, followed the emperor's person; the other necessarily stationary, in which were educated young laymen as well as those intended for the cloister; Charlemagne, himself setting the example of diligent study, managed to acquire, amid the turmoil of war and the labors of the cabinet, a considerable knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the liberal sciences and astronomy, of the latter of which he seems to have been particularly fond.
The first step taken by Alcuin was the correction of the copies of the Holy Scriptures, which had become almost unintelligible from the accumulated errors of former transcribers. This he succeeded in doing about the year 800. He next turned his attention to the multiplication and replenishing of libraries. "A staff of skilful copyists was gradually formed, and so soon as any work had been revised by Alcuin and his fellow-laborers, it was delivered over to the hands of the monastic scribes."
The capitulars of Charlemagne in relation to civil affairs and municipal laws mark him as one of the ablest statesmen of any age, and are peculiarly his own; but those on education are so comprehensive, and of so elaborate a nature, that we cannot help thinking them the fruits of Alcuin's suggestions, embodying, as they do, in an official form the precise views so often expressed by him in letters and lectures. By these decrees monastic schools were divided into minor and major schools, and public schools, which answered to the free parochial schools of England. In the minor schools, which were to be attached to all monasteries, were to be taught the "Catholic faith and prayers, grammar, church music, the psalter, and computum;" in the major schools, the sciences and liberal arts were added; while in the public schools, the children of all, free and servile, were to receive gratis such instruction as was suitable to their condition and comprehension. Those monks who, either from neglect or want of opportunity, had not acquired sufficient education to enable them to teach in their own monasteries, were allowed to study in others in order to become duly qualified for the duty imposed on them. A more complete system of general education could not well be devised nor more rigidly carried out.
Alcuin ended his well-spent life in 804, and Charlemagne ten years later; but their reforms lived after them, and were perpetuated in succeeding reigns with equal vigor, if not with equal munificence. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, not only established schools in every part of his large diocese, but compiled class-books for the use of their pupils; the diocese of Verdun was similarly supplied by the Abbot Smaragdus; Benedict of Anian, reformed the Benedictine order, and like Leidrade, was a zealous teacher and a great collector of books; and Adalhard, the emperor's cousin, became, as it were, the second founder of Old Corby.
During the ninth and tenth centuries, so fruitful of scholars in every part of Europe, the monastic schools may be said to have reached their highest development. Of those north of the Alps we may mention Fulda, Old and New Corby, Richneau, and St. Gall, though there were a great many others of nearly equal extent and reputation.
Fulda, as we have seen, was founded by Strum, a pupil of St. Boniface, who adopted the Benedictine rule. After its founder, its greatest teacher was Rabanus, a pupil of Alcuin, who assumed the charge of the school about 813. His success in teaching was so great that it is said that all the German nobles sent their sons to be educated by him, and that the abbots of the surrounding monasteries were eager to have his students for professors. He taught grammar so thoroughly that he is mentioned by Trithemius as being the first who indoctrinated the Germans in the proper articulation of Latin and Greek. His course embraced all sacred and profane literature, science, and art; yet he still found time to compose, and afterward, when Archbishop of Mentz, to publish his treatise De Institutione Clericorum. Among his pupils were Strabo, author of the Commentaries on the Text of Scripture; Otfried, called the father of the Tudesque, or German literature; Lupus, author of Roman History; Heinie, author of the Life of St. Germanus; Regimus, of Auxerre; and Ado, compiler of the Martyrology. While those great scholars were teaching and writing, it is worth our while to inquire what the lesser lights of the monastery were doing. Here is the picture:
"Every variety of useful occupation was embraced by the monks; while some were at work hewing down the old forest which a few years before had given shelter to the mysteries of pagan worship, or tilling the soil on those numerous farms which to this day perpetuate the memory of the great abbey in the names of the towns and villages which have sprung up on their site, other kinds of industry were kept up within doors, where the visitor might have beheld a huge range of workshops, in which cunning hands were kept constantly busy on every description of useful and ornamental work, in wood, stone, and metal. It was a scene not of artistic dilettanteism, but of earnest, honest labor, and the treasurer of the abbey was charged to take care that the sculptors, engravers, and carvers in wood were always furnished with plenty to do. Passing on to the interior of the building, the stranger would have been introduced to the scriptorium, over the door of which was an inscription warning copyists to abstain from idle words, to be diligent in copying books, and to take care not to alter the text by careless mistakes. Twelve monks always sat here, employed in the labor of transcribing, as was the custom at Hirsauge, a colony sent out from Fulda in 830, and the huge library which was thus gradually formed, survived till the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was destroyed in the troubles of the Thirty Years' War. Not far from the scriptorium was the interior school, where studies were carried on with an ardor and a largeness of views which might have been little expected from an academy of the ninth century. Our visitor, were he from the more civilized south, might well have stood in mute surprise in the midst of these fancied barbarians, whom he would have found engaged in pursuits not unworthy of the schools of Rome. The monk Probus is perhaps lecturing on Virgil and Cicero, and that with such hearty enthusiasm that his brother professors accuse him, in good-natured jesting, of ranking them with the saints. Elsewhere disputations are being carried on over the Categories of Aristotle, and an attentive ear will discover that the controversy which made such a noise in the twelfth century, and divided the philosophers of Europe into the rival sects of the nominalists and realists, is perfectly well understood at Fulda, though it does not seem to have disturbed the peace of the school. To your delight, if you be not altogether wedded to the dead languages, you may find some engaged on the uncouth language of their fatherland, and, looking over their shoulders, you may smile to see the barbarous words which they are cataloguing in their glossaries; words, nevertheless, destined to reappear centuries hence in the most philosophical literature of Europe." [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Christian Schools and Scholars, pp. 205-206.]
The school of Old Corby owed its reputation not only to its royal abbot, but also to its master, Pachasius Radpert, who, like Strabo, was of humble origin, and was indebted to the nuns of Soissons for an education. He was one of the most remarkable scholars of the age, and the author of several books in prose and verse. His most famous pupil was Anscharius, the first teacher at New Corby, in Saxony, founded by monks of the parent house in 822, and afterward a missionary to Denmark and Archbishop of Hamburg. The two Corbys, founded on the same plan, long vied with each other in the erudition of their masters, the multitude of their students, and the rarity and number of their books.
But the monastery and schools of St. Gall surpassed in extent and variety of studies all their contemporaries. For the benefit of those who affect to believe that the monasteries of the middle ages were nests of slothfulness and ignorance, as well as for the beauty of the sketch itself, we transcribe the following description from the author before us, premising that it is a faithful condensation of Ekkehard's account of this celebrated house, of which he was one of the inmates:
"The first foundation of St. Gall's belongs, indeed, to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus, who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan population. Under the famous abbot, St. Othmar, who flourished in the time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that, in the ninth century, it was regarded as the first religious house north of the Alps. It is with a sigh of irrepressible regret, called forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone forever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness, an oasis of piety and civilization. Looking down from the craggy mountains, the passes of which open to the southern extremity of the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters, the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and the mill, or, rather, mills, for there were ten of them, all in such active operation that they every year required ten new millstones; and then the houses occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and workmen attached to the monastery; gardens, too, and vineyards creeping up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and sheep specking the green meadows, and, far away, boats busily plying on the lake and carrying goods and passengers—what a world it was of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It was, in fact, not a town, but a house—a family presided over by a father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or social side of such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention. Descend into the valley, and visit all the nurseries of useful foil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite modulations of those chants and sequences, peculiar to the abbey, which boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch to his wonderful copper images and his fine altar-frontals of gold and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred monks who form the community at their midnight office, and you will forget everything save the saintly aspect of those servants of God, who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odor of Christ, and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway. You may quit the circuit of the abbey, and plunge once more into the mountain region which rises beyond the reach of its softening, humanizing influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they sing so sweetly, going up and down among the hills, into the thick forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks, carrying their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you may have been listening to lectures in the learned and even in the Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains, you will hear those fine classical scholars preaching plain truths in barbarous idioms to a rude race, who, before the monks came among them, sacrificed to the evil one, and worshipped stocks and stones.
"Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of St. Gall's was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens, at least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found here not monks alone, and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state; it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate, in the exterior school. Not only were the sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained: Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but very little boys presumed to speak in anything but Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly taken from Scripture and church history, and, having written their exercises, they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets, others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite and cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world. They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex now of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the sacred books, and sometimes of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. They were Greek students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of the Cecropian muse were denominated the 'Fratres Ellencini.' The beauty of their native manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the names of their best transcribers find honorable mention in their annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with the original text—this duty being generally discharged during the interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood, cramped with ivory or iron, the sacred volumes being covered with plates of gold and adorned with jewels."
The English missionary scholars of the eighth century were followed in the ninth by their Irish brethren in even greater numbers. St. Bernard, in his Life of St. Malachi, notices this learned invasion, and Henry of Auxerre declares that it appeared as if the whole of Ireland were about to pass into Gaul. Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, was not only a learned man, but an ardent promoter of education. Clement, who succeeded Alcuin as scholasticus of the Palatine school, was an excellent Greek linguist. Dungal, his companion, opened an academy at Pavia, and finally died at Bobbio, to which he bequeathed his valuable classical library. Marx and his nephew Moengall settled at St. Gall in 840, where the latter became master of the interior school, and introduced the study of Greek; and finally Scotus Erigena appeared in the literary firmament, like a comet in brilliancy, and as portentous of dire strifes and contests. Erigena, who first came into notoriety by his translation of Dionysius the Areopagite, was unquestionably the most erudite man of his time, powerful in argument and exceedingly subtle in discussion, with a perfect knowledge of the learned languages, science, and the profane literature of both ancients and moderns. His great gifts, however, were sadly marred by extravagant vanity and a pugnacity which brought him into collision with nearly every contemporary of note. He wrote many books, in which he advanced opinions more remarkable for their boldness and originality than for soundness; and finally, his writings having been condemned by several provincial councils, he was obliged to retire from the Palatine school, of which he had enjoyed the direction for many years under Charles the Bald.
Let us now return to the country of St. Boniface and of Alcuin, which we left at the beginning of the ninth century, in the plenitude of its intellectual greatness. What a change has taken place in seventy-five years! Churches, monasteries, and schools in utter ruin; the weeds growing rank over broken altars; the reptile crawling undisturbed where worked the busy hands of a thousand monks; and the solitude of the once noisy school disturbed only by the flutter of the bat or the screech of the night owl. The fierce Northmen, the barbaric executors of the Huns and Vandals, had been over the land, and desolation everywhere marked their foot-prints. "The Anglo-Saxon Church," says Lingard, "presented a melancholy spectacle; the laity had resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers; the clergy had grown indolent, dissolute, and illiterate; the monastic order was apparently annihilated." When Alfred had crushed the Danish power at the battle of Ethandun in 873, and, like a wise prince, proposed to revive learning in his kingdom, he could not find one ecclesiastic south of the Thames who understood the divine service, or who knew how to translate Latin into English. Nevertheless, this king, justly surnamed the Great, resolutely set himself to work, and, with the help of the West British scholar, Asser, Grimbald of Rheims, John of Old Saxony, and other foreign monks, effected many useful reforms, and to a limited extent provided the means of education for his benighted subjects, setting the example himself by diligent and persevering study. He commenced to learn Latin at thirty-six, and left after him several works, principally translations from that language.
The grand designs of Alfred were not carried out in his lifetime. Their execution was reserved for St. Dunstan, a pupil of some poor Irish monks who had settled in the ruins of the old abbey of his native town, Glastonbury, and supported themselves by teaching the children of the neighboring peasantry. How strange a coincidence that the countrymen of Columba and Aidan were again to be the instruments, under Providence, of bringing back to England the light of the gospel, and all that adorns and beautifies life. St. Dunstan's reforms were of the most sweeping nature; he introduced the Benedictine rule in all its strictness, not only at Glastonbury, but in every monastery he restored or established; and, despairing of effecting any good through the medium of the secular clergy, he unhesitatingly turned them adrift, and proceeded to create a new and more intelligent body out of the young men who surrounded him: an exercise of authority the right to which he derived from his position as primate and apostolic legate. Of the assistants of St. Dunstan in his work of reorganization, the most active were St. Ethelwold, a close student not only of classics, but of Anglo-Saxon, in which language he composed several poems; AElfric, author of several school-books in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, and translator of Latin, German, and French; Abbo of Fleury came to England and taught for him in the school of Ramsey; and the monks of Corby, mindful, no doubt, of their ancient origin, sent him some of their best students, well versed in monastic discipline. From this time forth England, despite the occasional inroads of the Danes and the Norman conquest, advanced steadily in educational progress until the blight of the "Reformation" long after threw her back into ignorance and unbelief.
Britain was not the only country which suffered from the greedy and ubiquitous sea-kings. Ireland, France, Italy, even to the suburbs of Rome, were ravished by those barbarians during the tenth century. In some countries, as in Italy and Ireland, they were eventually expelled or subdued; in others, like France, they made a permanent lodgment, and were strong enough to dictate terms to kings. Wherever they appeared, they seem to have been actuated by the same diabolical lust of plunder and murder, the monasteries and schools being special objects of hatred, and favorite places where their ferocity could be gratified at little risk of opposition. Even the Saracens, taking courage from the distractions of the times, took possession of accessible points on the French coast, and added to the general disorder. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the tenth century is generally considered the darkest intellectual epoch in our era. Germany perhaps was the only country comparatively free from those disturbing causes, and, under the protection of a line of sagacious kings, the cause of learning, if it did not advance with rapid strides, certainly did not retrograde. That country continued to produce great teachers like Adelberon, Bennon, Notker, and Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II., and to sustain such schools as St. Gall's, Richneau, and Gorze.
With the opening of the eleventh century we begin to perceive the gradual decay of the monastic schools, the rise of scholasticism and the university system, and the consequent evils resulting from the teachings of irresponsible and sceptical professors. Heretofore Christian education went hand in hand with religion; the priest who celebrated the divine mysteries in the morning taught his assembled pupils during the day; religion became more beautiful, clothed, as she was, in the garments of science and art; and education was ennobled by losing its selfishness and pride in its contact with the faith; humility, order, and obedience marked the scholar, and disinterestedness and a deep sense of the greatness of his calling distinguished the master. Teaching with the monks was a sacred duty, a means by which they might gain salvation and "shine like stars for all eternity;" with the scholastics of the eleventh and succeeding centuries it became a profession like that of law or medicine, in the exercise of which money and notoriety could be gained, opponents silenced, and, as was too often the case, vanity gratified and senseless applause won from the unthinking multitude. The school ceased to be a holy retreat, and the professor's chair was converted into a rostrum from which the most absurd and illogical dogmas were fulminated, alike dangerous to religion, morals, and good government. In the statement of abuses presented to the Council of Trent in 1537-63 by the commission appointed by Paul III., it is declared that "it is a great and pernicious abuse that, in the public schools, especially in Italy, many philosophers teach impiety;" and it is a well-recognized fact in history that, from the time the universities adopted the study of the Roman civil law, to the exclusion almost of ecclesiastical and common law, they became the strongest bulwarks of despotic power, and the pliant tools of absolute princes.
It is true that the change was gradual and almost imperceptible to its friends and enemies; but, when we come to compare the wild vagaries of Berengarius, the eloquent but empty harangues of Abelard, the scepticism of Erasmus, and the revelries which disgraced such universities as Oxford and Paris, with the moral spirit and peaceful calm that brooded over the monasteries of St. Gall, Fulda, and Glastenbury, we can at once perceive to what monstrous excesses the mind of man is prone when unrestrained by religion. Many of the old-established monastic schools continued to flourish, and new ones, like that of Bec and the college of St. Victor's at Paris, became celebrated. Men distinguished for piety and learning were numerous during the middle ages, notwithstanding the growing tendency toward irreligion and heresy; among whom may be mentioned such theologians as St. Thomas and Anselm, scholars like Lanfranc and Thomas à Kempis, great doctors like St. Bernard and John Duns Scotus, devotees of science such as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, authors of the calibre of William of Malmsbury, and the almost inspired writer of the Following of Christ, St. Bonaventure, and Peter the Venerable.
But the schools of Europe, notwithstanding the examples and exhortations of those illustrious divines, continued in their downward tendency toward materialism. The introduction of Eastern books of philosophy, due to the returned crusaders, the Arabic symbolism and pretended magic of some of the Spanish schools, and, finally, the fall of Constantinople and the dispersion of Greek scholars over Europe: all had their peculiar and decided influence on the manners and views of the generations which immediately preceded the Council of Trent. Seminaries had entirely disappeared, so that ecclesiastical education could only be obtained in the dissolute and noisy universities, and it became the fashion with the dilettanti of the great cities to ridicule and underrate the quiet teachings of the country monasteries.
The Council of Trent, mindful of the welfare of the children of the church, took the first great step toward the correction of those abuses. By its eighteenth chapter, twenty-seventh sessions, it reestablished the seminaries in every diocese in Christendom, giving to each bishop authority over the professors, and making the expense of educating ecclesiastics a charge on the faithful. In accordance with this decree, an unwonted degree of activity was observable in Europe. Provincial councils took steps to enforce it in their special localities; saints, like Charles of Borromeo, became champions of genuine Christian education, and the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the illustrious order of the Jesuits vied with each other in their devotion to its interests, and became the inheritors of the glories of the monks of Saints Benedict and Columbanus.
In looking back for fifteen centuries, and perusing the long and brilliant catalogue of those holy teachers who, through danger, degradation, and defeat, never allowed their minds to swerve from the even tenor of their way; who cared as tenderly for the soul and intellect of the poor young barbarian as for the nursling of a palace; who despised death, and braved alike the fury of the savage and the wrath of princes, that they might win souls to God and develop the God-given gift of human genius; we are lost in astonishment at the ignorance or mendacity, or both, of some modern writers who unblushingly repeat and exaggerate the slander of the post-"Reformation" writers against the monks of the middle ages. With a history like that of the Christian Schools and Scholars before us, so fruitful in incidents and so suggestive of moral lessons, we are equally at a loss to account for the tenacity with which people, otherwise sensible, cling to the idea of education divorced from moral instruction. Whatever is great in the past, personally or nationally considered—whatever was pure, unselfish, and heroic, is due, and only due, to the monk-teachers of the Christian church. They were not only the custodians of the books which we now prize so much, but they were the conservators of arts, science, and literature, and the originators and discoverers of most of the useful inventions which now adorn life and make men more civilized, and bring them nearer to their Creator. They were not only all this, but they were, as soldiers of the church, the guardians of civilization itself, and without them the darkness that enshrouded the world would have been as perpetual as the causes which produced it were active, and, against any other power, irresistible.