The monastic schools taught theology mainly, but instruction was also given in speaking, reading and writing Latin, in copying manuscripts, in painting and architecture, and in elementary notions of astronomy and mathematics.[56] The most famous of these schools were those of Luxeuil, Soissons, Lérins and Saint-Vandrille. At the last-named school there were about three hundred scholars.
The Episcopal Schools were closely modelled on the type originated by St. Augustine. They were mainly intended for those who proposed to offer themselves for ordination. The curriculum of these schools was narrower and more definitely theological than that of the monastic schools. The best known were those of Paris, Poitiers, Le Mans, Clermont, Vienne, Chalons-sur-Saône and Gaps. These schools, however, differed from the seminary of St. Augustine on which they were modelled because the special circumstances of the time rendered it necessary that classes were also held in connection with them for the boys, who were attached in some capacity or other to the cathedral church. Thus the choir boys and others who were desirous of preparing themselves for subsequent employment in any capacity in which the education available would afterwards be of service to them, found in these classes the opportunities they sought.
Our analysis of the educational institutions existing in Gaul in the sixth century has brought out that there existed, as models for imitation, the monastic schools and the episcopal schools. In addition, schools had also developed in connection with the parish churches, but we propose to deal with that development later. We have already considered the monastic schools of this country; our present problem is then to consider whether there is any evidence that schools, conducted by the bishop himself or by his deputy, similar to those we have shown to have existed in France, were to be found in this country.
Our reply is emphatically in the affirmative. Thus there was a school at Hexham. Bede tells us of Herebald, who was a member of the school kept by St. John of Beverley, whilst Bishop of Hexham. “When in the prime of my youth,” Herebald is reported to have said, “I lived among his clergy[57] applying myself to reading and singing.”[58] Another school existed at Canterbury, and during the time it was conducted by Archbishop Theodore and the Abbot Hadrian it ranked as the most famous of the episcopal schools of this country. With regard to these two famous teachers, Bede writes: “They gathered a crowd of disciples, and there daily flowed from them rivers of knowledge to water the hearts of their hearers; and, together with the books of Holy Writ, they also taught them the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic. A testimony of which is, that there are living at this day some of their scholars who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in their own in which they were born.”[59] It is owing to the labours of these two men that England, for a time, occupied the leading place in the schools of the west.[60] One of the most celebrated scholars of the school of Canterbury was Aldhelm, who can claim the distinction of being the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success, and the first of whom any literary remains are preserved.[61] Bede describes Aldhelm as “a wonder of erudition in the liberal as well as ecclesiastical learning.”[62] It is from a letter written by Aldhelm that we gain an insight into the curriculum followed at Canterbury, and learn that the course of study pursued there included grammar, geometry, arithmetic, metre, astronomy, and Roman Law.[63]
A third famous episcopal school was that of York, of which we possess a full account in Alcuin’s poem “De Pontificibus Sanctae Ecclesiae Eboracensis.” Alcuin writes in most eulogistic terms of the work of this school, and, more particularly, of the educational labours of Archbishop Albert, to whom Alcuin was personally indebted for the instruction he received.
“He gave drink to thirsty minds at the fountain of the sciences. To some he communicated the art and the rules of grammar; for others he caused floods of rhetoric to flow; he knew how to exercise these in the battles of jurisprudence, and those in the songs of Adonis; some learned from him to pipe Castalian airs and with lyric foot to strike the summit of Parnassus; to others he made known the harmony of the heavens, the courses of the sun and the moon, the five zones of the pole, the seven planets, the laws of the courses of the stars, the motions of the sea, earthquakes, the nature of men, and of beasts and of birds, and of all that inhabit the forest. He unfolded the different qualities and combinations of numbers; he taught how to calculate with certainty the solemn return of Eastertide and, above all, he explained the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures.”[64]
The library of the school at York was particularly famous, and included the works of Jerome, Hilarius, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Orosius, Gregory, Leo, Basil, Fulgentius, Cassiodorus, Chrysostom, Aldhelm, Bede, Victorinus, Boethius, Pliny, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, etc. Mullinger remarks of this library: “The imposing enumeration at once calls our attention to the fact that the library at York at this period far surpassed any possessed by either England or France in the twelfth century, whether at Christ Church, Canterbury, St. Victor at Paris, or at Bec.”[65]
The school at York is also important because it is the first known instance in English educational history of the bishop’s school being conducted by a member of the staff of clergy associated with the bishop, instead of by the bishop himself. On the death of Archbishop Albert, his successor, instead of taking personal charge of the school, entrusted that duty to Alcuin. This was a special case of the principle of the division of labour, and the example thus set at York was of considerable importance in the subsequent development of education in this country.
As Alcuin is commonly regarded as the most important educator of the first half of the Middle Ages, and as it was through Alcuin that England influenced continental education, a slight digression from the main purpose of this chapter, for the sake of indicating the importance of Alcuin, may be allowed. The only education which Alcuin received was obtained at the bishop’s school at York, and a consideration of this fact should assist us in realising that these schools were in practice the universities of the period. The reputation which Alcuin gained must have spread beyond the borders of this country, because Charles the Great, who had determined upon a scheme of educational reform in the dominions ruled by him, invited Alcuin to come to his court to occupy a position analogous to that of a Minister of Education of modern days. This position Alcuin occupied for fourteen years, and during that period the famous capitularies of 787, 789, and 802 were issued.[66] The effect of the reforms carried out by Alcuin was, that scholars were attracted from all parts of Europe to the court of Charles the Great, the Palace Schools were developed and invigorated, learning was promoted among the clergy, and the activities of the monastic and episcopal schools were stimulated. It has been suggested that the reforms attributed to Alcuin owed little to his individual genius, but were based entirely upon the practice he found in operation in York.[67] If this is so, then the educational facilities provided in this country in the eighth century must have been of much greater importance than is commonly conceived. The available evidence is, however, too scanty for any definite statements to be made on the subject.
Alcuin was a voluminous writer, and his works bear further witness to the intellectual activity of his day. They include epistles, poems, exegetical works, dogmatic writings, liturgical writings, biographical writings, studies, and dialogues.[68] His educational writings include works On Grammar, On Orthography, On Rhetoric, On Dialectic, etc. They are written in the characteristic Anglo-Saxon dialogue form. In his On Grammar, Alcuin shows that true happiness is to be found in the things peculiar to the soul itself rather than in those things which are alien to it; of these things, “wisdom is the chief adornment.” Progress in wisdom was to be obtained, so far as secular knowledge was concerned, by the “seven ascents of theoretical discipline,” i.e. the trivium and the quadrivium.