Besides the sciences above enumerated, some schools, and particularly those of England, taught a certain amount of natural philosophy, very imperfect, if compared with our own larger and more accurate knowledge of these subjects, yet valuable in its way, as directing the mind to a branch of learning where improvement could only be hoped for by patient and persevering observation. Geography, again, though in its infancy, was a favourite study with the Anglo-Saxons, and from none did it receive greater extension than from king Alfred, who added whole chapters to the science as it existed before his time. This, in common with a great many other branches of knowledge, was sometimes taught to tardy scholars by the help of verses. Several versified summaries of grammatical rules and geographical definitions are in existence in very early English, but for the credit of the geographers, I will not say in what quarter of the globe they place the land of Egypt.
We have yet to speak, however, of a far more important subject connected with the early monastic schools, the religious training of their pupils, and the sacred studies which they pursued. In nothing, probably, did the ancient system of education differ more widely from our own, than in the amount of vocal prayer in which children were expected to take a part. Of course we must bear in mind when reading of children assisting at all the Canonical Hours of the monastery in which they were educated, that in most cases the children spoken of were those “offered” by their parents and intended for the monastic state. They were the pupils of the interior or claustral schools; and it is probable that those belonging to the exterior school were subject to a less rigorous discipline. Still, in either case, they were children, with the propensities common to all children, whether of the ninth or nineteenth centuries; yet we find nothing to indicate that the choral attendance described by the Anglo-Saxon schoolboy in the dialogues of Ælfric, was found by experience to be excessive. “To-day,” says the boy, “I have done many things; this night, when I heard the knell, I arose from my bed and went to the church and sang Night-song with the brethren; after that we sang the service of All Saints and the morning Lauds; then followed Prime and the Seven Psalms, and the Litanies, and the first Mass; then Tierce, and the Mass of the day; then Sext; and then we ate and drank and went to sleep, and rose again and sang None; and now we are here before thee ready to hear what thou hast to say to us.” “Who awakens you for Night-song?” asks the interlocutor. “Sometimes,” answers the scholar, “I hear the knell, and rise of myself; but ofttimes the master arouseth me with his rod.”
If this attendance in choir surprise us as being daily required from young children, we must remember that the habits of the grown-up laity in early ages would be equally at variance with our own. The Divine Office of the Church was not then exclusively recited by priests and religious; the faithful assisted even at the Night-hours, and were constantly urged to do so. In the days of Charlemagne, as in those of St. John Chrysostom, rich and poor, men and women, took part in that sublime worship, and so eager were they in their desire to join in the chant, that it became necessary for abbots to issue injunctions, forbidding their monks to cut up their Psalters in order to distribute the leaves to seculars who solicited the precious fragments, certain devout women being foremost among the beggars. Without some knowledge of the habits of the time, we can form no tolerably fair judgment on the education which was of course fitted and adapted to those habits. The spirit of these early ages was pre-eminently Liturgical. The world was as yet too little civilised to furnish her children with those countless elegant methods of killing time which later ages have so marvellously multiplied; theatres had no existence, and even the superabundant games and pastimes so popular in the Middle Ages, were as yet unthought of. The people sought not merely their instruction, but their recreation also in the Church, and their education thoroughly fitted them to join in her ceremonies and ritual, which it is to be feared, by more cultivated intellects of a later generation, are too often but very imperfectly understood. The education of children partook, of course, of the character of the age; it was more or less ecclesiastical, even for those not intended for the religious or clerical state; and this has given rise to the very hasty conclusion that in the centuries of which we speak, education was given to none save those who aspired to the priesthood. But in point of fact the whole atmosphere of society was then so permeated with the Christian, and what we have ventured to denominate the Liturgical spirit, that children of seculars then received a training which, to modern eyes, appears exclusively suited to ecclesiastics.
The one branch of learning, therefore, which, in the judgment of the monastic teachers, exceeded in importance all the rest, was undoubtedly the study of the Scriptures. “In the study of the Scriptures,” says Mabillon, “consisted the whole science of the monks.” Scholastic theology was as yet unknown, and the Holy Scriptures and the commentaries of the Fathers formed the exclusive study of theologians. That alliance between faith and reason, wherein reason, exercising itself on revealed truth under the control and guidance of faith, built up the dogmas of the Church into a compact and well-ordered system, was the work of later centuries; the monastic scholars of the age of Charlemagne knew nothing about it. They had the Scriptures, interpreted by the Fathers, and the decrees of the Church, for their guides in dogma; and for discipline, the sacred Canons. With these they were abundantly satisfied. Placed in green pastures and by the side of running waters, they enjoyed the inheritance that had fallen to them, and sought for nothing more. Their divines, therefore, hardly aimed at the merit of original composition, and were content to study, to copy, and to compile the teaching, and often the very phraseology of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, or St. Gregory. Hence the complaint not unjustly brought against them, is that, though tolerably acquainted with books, they were for the most part deficient in original argument. In fact, they sought to hand on the traditions of the Church pure and uncorrupted, rather than to earn for themselves a fame as original thinkers; and one of the marks of the age is an absence of the disputatious spirit which, if it diminishes their rank in the world of letters, forms the charm of their characters as men. There was nothing of the sophist or logician in those sweet and venerable countenances, the unruffled beauty of which is so often dwelt on by their biographers. True, indeed, controversies did arise, as we have seen in the beginning of this chapter, but they were out of harmony with the time. The character of Scotus Erigena, like his learning, was that of a man born out of due time; he belonged to the twelfth rather than to the ninth century, and his wrangling must have sounded strangely discordant in the ears of his contemporaries. The real spirit of the age was one of reverence for Tradition; and the large and active intellects of a Bede, a Boniface and a Paschasius, found all they sought and all they desired in the Positive Theology of the Church.
So much has been done in our time to dispel the vulgar illusion that the Scriptures were unknown and uncared for in the Dark Ages, that I need not here enter into any proof of what is now, or at least ought to be, an uncontroverted fact. Mr. Maitland’s “Essays” have convincingly proved that if the monks read nothing else they at least read the Bible. But what he has not shown with equal power, is the love, the enthusiasm with which, to use the expression of the biographer of Rabanus, they “fed themselves on the Divine Scriptures.” Like the Jews of old, they meditated on them, “sitting in the house or walking on a journey;” they were written “on the entry and on the doorposts.”[108] At the tables of bishops and abbots, of nobles and of kings, the Scriptures were daily read aloud: the little child learnt from them his first lesson, and the old man died with their accent on his lips. What need had they of the fables of the poets, when the beauties of the inspired writers were graven on their memories, familiar as household words? How could they care to listen to what Ovid had to tell them of the Golden Age, they to whom the glowing imagery of the Prophet had painted the kingdom of the Son of Jesse, where the wolf was to dwell with the lamb, and the kid with the leopard, and a little child should lead them? And what great wonder was it if the degrading tales of heathen deities, even when sung by the Muse of Virgil, should fall somewhat flat and profitless on their ears, accustomed as they were to the sublime marvels of God’s dealings with His ancient people, and the history of the Incarnate Word?
It was not merely as the inspired Word of God that the Holy Scriptures were thus valued; but in the schools of which we are speaking they held the place of the great Christian classic. They were not a mere dry repertory of texts illustrative of doctrine, but they formed at once the favourite book of prayer, of meditation, of spiritual reading, and of recreative delight. Pondered on day and night, with all their hidden meaning laid open by the comments of the Fathers, what a treasury of wisdom, what a fountain of poesy was there! The very language of Scripture wonderfully harmonised with the daily monastic life, so patriarchal in its simplicity, its noble toils, and its humble duties of the shepherd, the husbandman, and the vinedresser. It harmonised with the scenes in the midst of which they lived, the mountains, and the wooded valleys, the fields standing thick with corn, the wilderness in its untrampled beauty, where rose up “the verdure of the reed and the bulrush,” and where the myrtle and the olive-tree grew by the running waters. It harmonised with their deep sympathy with the Beautiful, their intimate acquaintance with Nature in all her aspects, by day or by night, so familiar to the eyes of those who sanctified all hours by prayer, and to whom “the outgoings of the morning and of the evening were made joyful,” by the Matins and Vesper psalmody. But chiefly and above all, it harmonised with that thirst that devoured their souls for the true and living God; a thirst which made them weary of all things in which He was not to be found, which made all things sweet in which He had His part; which led them by a strange inspired ingenuity to turn all things to Him, to Christianise every study, to divinise every act; which taught them to create new arts to deck His sanctuary, new sciences to minister to His praise—a thirst which, unslaked by the choicest fountains of Gentile antiquity, drank deep and refreshing draughts at those streams of sacred poetry, out of which they framed the language of their daily Office, and which moulded the very fashion of their daily speech.
The Scriptures, then, were the Christian classics of the monks and their pupils. Their study was not confined to ecclesiastical students, but formed one of the chief branches of every Christian man’s education.[109] And by their study we must understand, of course, not a mere familiarity with the dead letter, but an intimate knowledge of their spiritual sense. We may gather some idea of what was implied in the monastic study of the Scriptures, from a letter written by a certain monk of Citeaux to one of his friends, in which he draws out a compendious method for his guidance. Together with the different divisions of his subject, he advises him to read appropriate commentaries. Thus Josephus and Hegesippus are to be read with the Pentateuch and the Historical Books, and if any words occur of doubtful signification, the student is to consult the “Etymologies” of St. Isidore, and St. Jerome on the “Explanation of Hebrew Names;” and that other book on “Derivations,” “which is to be found in most large libraries,” and finally the “Gloss.” Certain passages of more importance, and summaries of the principal facts, are to be written out and committed to memory; and the writer proceeds to give directions on this point, adding, that on all the subjects he names it will be useful to consult St. Augustine “De Quæstionibus.” When the Historical Books have been carefully studied, the Prophetical Books may be begun. We are to note which prophecies are fulfilled, and which unfulfilled, and the exact time and circumstances under which each was written. After these the Books of instruction, and then the Gospels. In reading the Gospels, it will be necessary to have St. Jerome’s description of the “Holy Places of Palestine,” and the “Harmony of the Gospels.” And we must carefully observe where, when, and before whom our Lord’s Sermons were delivered, and His miracles worked. The rest of the New Testament is afterwards to be read. The student is then directed to read certain works on the Sacraments, on the reason for assigning different portions of Scripture to different seasons, and some of the works of St. Augustine. And when the literal sense of the Holy Books has been thus carefully studied, and not before, he may pass on to their allegorical and mystic interpretation, and read both Testaments through in the same order a second time, special authors being recommended to assist his comprehension of their spiritual sense.[110]
This double method of study, in which the literal meaning of the Scriptures was made the basis of interpreting their spiritual signification, was begun very early, and even young children were considered capable of being introduced by degrees to the spiritual comprehension of the Sacred Books. So far from these being a treasure sealed up to all save the clergy, they formed the foundation stone of all education. Thus Thegan writes of the Emperor Louis le Debonnaire, that he had been perfectly instructed in the allegorical and mystical interpretation of the Scriptures, and we learn from St. Aldhelm’s treatise, “De Laudibus Virginitatis,” that the nuns for whom he intended it were not only accustomed to read the Old and New Testaments, together with the Commentaries of the Fathers, but that they also studied the historical, allegorical, and analogical senses of different passages. Nor is this by any means an exceptional case, for in the religious houses of women sacred studies were pursued with hardly less eagerness than in those of men.
And here the temptation presents itself to say something of the schools provided in the Dark Ages for the education of women, such as the royal house of Chelles, where the wise Bertilla presided over scores of English scholars sent by their parents to France, as we must needs suppose, for fashion’s sake, for there were certainly plenty of good schools to be found in England. Fashion, however, has much to do with the selection of a school, and Chelles was naturally popular with the English, having been founded in the seventh century by a princess of Anglo-Saxon blood.
Queen Bathildis, indeed, was not of royal birth; she was a poor maiden who had been sold as a slave into France, and attracting the attention of Clovis II., was raised by him to share his throne. Her first thought in her new position was to procure the abolition of slavery, or at least the amelioration of the condition of slaves. “She was,” says her biographer, “of a beautiful and cheerful countenance, to her husband an obedient wife, to the princes a mother, to boys and youths the best of counsellors; to all an amiable and gracious friend,” and he adds that among her other good deeds, “she was always exhorting and encouraging the youth around her to religious studies.” So soon as her son Clothaire was old enough to govern, Bathildis, who during his minority had acted as regent, retired to Chelles and spent the remainder of her days in the humble office of infirmarian. But her foundation had meanwhile acquired a great reputation for learning, which was yet further increased when Gisella, the sister of Charlemagne, and the pupil of Alcuin, assumed its government in the ninth century.