This passage may assist us in determining the meaning assigned to Grammar as one of the Seven Liberal Arts. It suggests that everything which was not music, eloquence, logic, mathematics, astronomy, geometry, was grammar, i.e. nearly the whole of the humanities; or, in other words, the study of grammar was synonymous with the study of “letters” so far as the term was then understood.
In actual practice, however, grammar did not possess this connotation. This was due to the fact that a study of letters was not possible until a mastery of Latin had been acquired, and consequently it resulted that the term “grammar school” was applied to denote a place in which instruction was given in “Donat” or “Priscian.” Donat was a Roman rhetorician who wrote Ars Grammatica about the middle of the fourth century. His grammar was the most generally used elementary text-book on the subject. In its abbreviated form, which was the one in common use, it only consisted of eight or nine pages. Priscian was a grammarian who flourished in the early part of the sixth century, and who published, about 526, his Institutiones Grammaticae, a most elaborate and systematic treatise on Latin grammar. For over a thousand years Priscian’s work was regarded as the leading and authoritative text-book on the subject.
We may also note here that classical Latin literature was rarely used for school purposes. This was the result of the attitude of the early Christian Fathers towards these writings. We have previously pointed out that this classical literature was closely associated with pagan beliefs and practices, and consequently was not regarded as suitable for introduction into classes taught by Christian priests. Even as late as 1518, the statutes of Dean Colet prescribed that the books to be studied in his school were to be the works of such “auctours Christian as lactantius prudentius and proba and sedulius and Juvencus and Baptisa Mantuanus.”
This analysis will help us to realise that when the term “grammar school” is used with reference to the schools of Medieval England, what is generally meant is a class in which elementary instruction was given in “Donat,” and in the power of speaking Latin. If advanced work was attempted, then Priscian would be studied and the works of “Christian authors” read.
Free.
We next pass to consider the term “free”—an epithet which usually accompanies the expression “grammar school” and which has given rise to a certain amount of controversy. A special meaning was given to this term in 1862 by Dr. Kennedy, headmaster of Shrewsbury School, in a paper which he submitted to the Public Schools’ Commission and which was published by them. This special meaning was that the term “free” denoted a “school free from the control of a superior body, e.g. a chapter, a college, a monastery.” He advances the following arguments in support of his contention.
(1) “Most of the schools being then gratuitous, such a fact would hardly have been chosen to give the distinctive title of these schools.”
(2) “That free school is in Latin ‘schola libera’ and that ‘liber’ appears never at any period to be used by itself to mean gratuitous.”[171]
(3) “That whatever franchise or immunity was denoted by the word, it would, according to ordinary usage, be an immunity for the school or its governors, not for the scholars.”
(4) “That the nearest analogies are ‘free town,’ ‘free chapel,’ and that these mean free from the jurisdiction of the sheriff and of the bishop respectively.”