In the thirteenth century the only educational reference which throws light on the school curriculum, outside the university of Oxford, which we have been able to trace, is an extract from the Chapter Act Book of Southwell Minster, which states that, in 1248, “non teneantur Scole de Grammatica vel Logica infra prebendas Canonicorum, nisi secundum consuetudinem Ebor.”[711] This passage serves to illustrate the continued existence of the three grades of educational instruction we have enumerated.
The statutes of Merton College, Oxford, which date from the thirteenth century, refer to the study of grammar, which is to be undertaken both by the scholars and the boys. The grammarian is to talk Latin with the boys whenever it shall be to their benefit, or he may talk to them in “idiomate vulgari” (i.e. French). The same chapter gives the studies of the scholars as consisting of “arts, philosophy, canon law, or theology.”
Further insight into the conditions of medieval education can be obtained from a study of some of the writings of Roger Bacon. Of his life scarcely anything is known: “Born, studied at Oxford, went to Paris, studied, experimented; is at Oxford again, and a Franciscan; studies, teaches, becomes suspect to his Order, is sent back to Paris, kept under surveillance, receives a letter from the Pope, writes, writes, writes—his three best-known works; is again in trouble, confined for many years, released and dead, so very dead, body and fame alike, until partly unearthed after five centuries.”[712]
Whilst at Oxford, Bacon studied under two teachers whose names he gives—Robert Grosseteste, who “knew the sciences better than any other man,”[713] and Adam Marsh, whom he links with Grosseteste as “perfect in divine and human wisdom.” From Oxford Bacon went to Paris, where he not only continued his studies but also engaged in teaching. He writes, “I caused youth to be instructed in languages and geometric figures, in numbers and tables and instruments, and many needful matters.”[714]
Interest in education was apparently spreading about this time. “Never,” writes Bacon, “has there been such a show of wisdom, nor such prosecution of study through so many regions as in the last forty years. Doctors are spread everywhere, especially in theology, in every city, castle, and burgh, chiefly through the two student orders.”[715] In spite of this general interest Bacon complains that “never was there so much ignorance and so much error.” Four causes are enumerated by him to account for this ignorance—“the example of frail and unworthy authority, long established custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd and the hiding of one’s own ignorance under the show of Wisdom.”[716] The fourth cause, especially, is arraigned by Bacon: “This is a lone and savage beast, which devours and destroys all reason—this desire of seeming wise, with which every man is born.”
In addition to this general attack upon the causes of the prevalent ignorance, Bacon specifies seven distinct charges against the teachers of his day.[717]
(1) Though theology is the queen of the sciences, yet philosophy is allowed to dominate.
(2) Theologians do not study sufficiently the “best sciences.” By the “best sciences,” Bacon meant “the grammar of the foreign tongues, from which all theology comes. Of even more value are mathematics, optics, moral sciences, experimental science, and alchemy.” The “common sciences” (scientiae viles) include “grammar, logic, natural philosophy in its baser part, and a certain side of metaphysic.”
(3) Scholars are ignorant of Greek and Hebrew and Arabic, and consequently they are ignorant of what is contained in the books written in these languages.
(4) They lecture on the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard, instead of on the text of Scripture.