“On feast days, the masters celebrate assemblies at the churches, en fête. The scholars hold disputations, some declaiming, others by way of question and answer. These roll out euthymemes, these use the better form of perfect syllogisms. Some dispute merely for show as they do at collections; others for truth, which is the grace of perfection. The sophists using the Socratic irony are pronounced happy because of the mass and volume of their words; others play upon words. Those learning rhetoric, with rhetorical speeches, speak to the point with a view to persuasion, being careful to observe the precepts of their art, and to leave out nothing that belongs to it. The boys of the different schools vie with each other in verses; or dispute; or dispute on the principles of grammar, or the rules of preterites and supines.”
Fitzstephen concludes with a quotation from Persius:—
“multum ridere parati
Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos.”[708]
We may also note, from the same work, the reference which Fitzstephen gives to the education of Beckett. He tells us that the future archbishop was first brought up “in religiosa domo canonicorum Meritoniae,” then he passed the years of “infantiae, pueritiae, et pubertatis” in the home of his father and “in scholis urbis.” When he became a young man, Thomas proceeded to Paris to study.[709]
These accounts we have given of the education of John of Salisbury, Alexander Neckham, and Thomas à Beckett are noteworthy. They show that education in the twelfth century was much more general, and much more advanced, than we usually think. The audiences, assembled at the school festivities, were able to understand, and thoroughly to appreciate dialectical disputations carried on in Latin. So too, we learn elsewhere, that when Giraldus Cambrensis was giving addresses, he was everywhere understood when he spoke in Latin.
Taking these three accounts together, we are justified in distinguishing four stages of education during the twelfth century.
I. The Grade of Elementary Instruction.—At this stage, the children would learn from the horn book and primer,[710] and would also commit certain psalms to memory.
II. The Grammar Grade.—The object of the instruction at this stage would be to give the student a working knowledge of the Latin language. The chief grammars used were those of Donatus and Priscian; these would be supplemented by a study of various compilations of proverbs, fables, and dialogues, e.g. Cato’s “Distichs.” Song was studied concurrently with grammar.
III. The Logic Grade.—This would be the study of the boys who had made satisfactory progress with grammar. It consisted of formal logic only. The writings of Boethius were the sources from which the early Middle Ages drew their knowledge of logic.
IV. The University Grade.—This term we use to denote the advanced studies of the period, whether pursued at Paris or Oxford, or at any other famous centre of intellectual activity. The examples we have given, of the studies carried on by John of Salisbury and Alexander Neckham, will serve to illustrate the character of the work which was being done at this stage.