Christian Schools and Scholars / or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

Now, however, a change passes over the picture; scholasticism is about to appear less as a vocation than as a profession, and a profession sought with the view of earning for him who embraces it, honour at least, and perhaps also the more solid advantages of worldly fortune and rich preferment. Some writers have supposed that the promotion of Gerbert to the Papal dignity was one cause of this change, leading others to hope that a brilliant scholastic career might chance to prove the high road to wealth and dignities. Rohrbacher recognises in the rising spirit of the age distinct traces of an infernal agency. “Hitherto,” he says, “heresy had made no great progress in the West. But in the eleventh century the Spirit of Darkness, seeing its empire confirmed in the East by the great apostacy of Mahomet and the formal schism of the Greeks, seems to have transferred the war from the East to the West. From that epoch down to our own time, the great revolt against God and His Church has never ceased to appear in one form or another. Its two principal sources have been Pride and Luxury, the corruption of the intellect, and the corruption of the heart. Hence, in princes, the attempt to usurp authority over the Church: hence, among men of learning, the mania for innovation, together with that superficial vanity which urged Berengarius to his fall; which Luther and Calvin erected into a principle under the name of Reform, and to which Voltaire and Rousseau put the key-stone under the title of Philosophy.”[146] Fleury also supports this view, and speaking of the swarm of heresies that sprang up suddenly in the eleventh century, sees in the fact a fulfilment of the prophecy in the Apocalypse that Satan should be loosed after being bound for a thousand years. The whole of Christendom was possessed at the time with a vague foreboding that an era had opened big with melancholy change, and this presentiment of evil naturally enough took the shape among the vulgar, of the belief that the world was about to come to an end.

It is at this precise epoch that we first begin to meet with teachers who were neither monks nor clerics. Free from the restraints of cloisteral discipline, these new scholastics were professors of grammar and rhetoric, and they were nothing more. The saintly rule of a Benedict or a Columbanus had not moulded them to habits of humility and obedience; they taught, and they made profit by their teaching; and he who taught the most attractive novelty drew most pupils, and made his teaching answer the best. It was a question in which worldly lucre, rather than the interests of souls, was at stake, and to be successful it became necessary for the teacher to adapt himself to the tastes and humours of his audience. Hence arose a race of pedants who had nothing in common with the elder scholastics, and who bore a peculiar stamp of self-sufficiency and arrogance, which impresses them all with a sort of family likeness, and carries back one’s thoughts to the sophists of the pagan schools.

The first notice which we find of a scholastic who was neither monk nor canon, occurs about the year 1024, when Rodolphus Glaber, a monk of Cluny, mentions in his chronicle a certain Witgard, a grammarian by profession, who was so bewitched by the study of the Latin poets, that he fancied he beheld in a vision Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal, who thanked him for the affection he bore them, and promised him immortality. The poor man’s head was so turned with this idea, that he immediately began to teach that whatever was contained in the poets, was to be believed de fide, and strange to say, not a few were found to listen to him. He was cited before the archbishop of Ravenna, and put to silence, after creating a good deal of disturbance. I merely name him here as an indication of the new class of men into whose hands the work of teaching was beginning to fall; a far more important illustration of the subject is to be found in the history of Berengarius. Before speaking of him, however, something must be said of his master, Fulbert, the pupil of Gerbert, and the restorer of the cathedral school of Chartres. Though reckoned among French worthies, he seems to have been a Roman by birth, and received his early education in a very humble school. However, he afterwards studied under Gerbert, and under his direction the school of Chartres rose to such an eminence, that it rivalled that of Rheims, and Fulbert may be said to have become preceptor to almost every man of letters who distinguished himself in France during the eleventh century.

We gather from the catalogue of the Chartres library, that Fulbert had inherited no inconsiderable portion of his master Gerbert’s scientific tastes. We find in it treatises on the properties of the sphere and the globe, on the astrolabe, on the measurement of superficies, and on land measurement, together with a Greek and Arabic alphabet. Fulbert himself had the rare accomplishment of Hebrew learning, as may be seen by his “Treatise against the Jews.” His disciples went forth from his school to restore sacred studies all over France, and the honour of being a pupil of him whom they lovingly termed “Father Fulbert,” was claimed by a long list of excellent masters, every one of whom might be described in the terms with which Adelman has sketched the character of Rainald of Tours; as “ready with the tongue, fluent with the pen, and mighty in grammar.” “As to thee, Father Fulbert,” he exclaims, “when I attempt to speak of thee, my words fail, my heart melts, my eyes break forth into weeping.”[147] Fulbert was, in fact, worthy of any praise that could be bestowed on him, and so thoroughly convinced of the sacredness of the office of teaching, that even after he became Bishop of Chartres in 1016, he continued to direct the studies of his episcopal school. He was regarded as the prelate of his time most thoroughly versed in ecclesiastical discipline, which he caused to be exactly practised. As a writer, he is best known by his letters, which display a wonderful delicacy of thought. He was knit in bonds of close friendship with St. Odilon of Cluny, to whom he confided his fears, lest he might not have been truly called to fill an office, the solemn responsibilities of which almost overwhelmed him. “Yet,” he adds, “remembering my own nothingness, and that without birth or fortune I have been raised to this chair like a beggar from the dunghill, I am forced to believe it is the will of God.”

A teacher of this temper was sure to have it at heart to impress on the souls of his disciples a love of humility. It was the favourite virtue of this truly great man, who was perfectly aware that the elevation of Gerbert to the pontifical dignity had given rise to a sentiment of ambition among men of letters, from which he boded evil. He was therefore earnest in warning his pupils to avoid novelties and to walk in the old footpaths; and his keen sagacious eye rested with uneasiness on one young face among the scholars who were accustomed to gather round him in his little garden and listen to his affectionate exhortations, as children hang on the words of a venerated parent. Berengarius, for it was he, had begun his studies in the school of St. Martin of Tours, whence he passed to Chartres, in company with his friend Adelman. He had a brilliant rather than a solid genius, a ready tongue which made the most of what he knew, but withal a certain affectation in speech and manner which betrayed a fund of secret vanity. Fulbert knew him well, and often spoke to him even with tears, conjuring him never to forsake the beaten track, but to hold fast to the traditions of the fathers. In 1028 the good bishop, then lying on his death-bed, called all his disciples around him to bid them farewell, but seeing Berengarius among the rest, he motioned for him to withdraw, for, he said, “I see a dragon by his side.”

His prognostics were too soon fulfilled. Berengarius returned to Tours, where his reputation for scholarship induced the canons to commit their school to his management; and even after he was appointed archdeacon of Angers, he continued to lecture at Tours, earning the reputation of immense learning, eloquence, and skill in grammar and philosophy. All, however, were not equally pleased with the character of his teaching, and some hesitated not bluntly to avow their belief that the brilliant archdeacon was somewhat shallow, and that his philosophy verged on sophistry. He had a way of mystifying the simplest subjects by a display of learned words; affected new and startling definitions, and had some tricks for practising on the minds of his audience, which gave offence to many. He chose that his chair should be raised higher than the others, had a pompous way of walking, spoke in a slow and particularly plaintive tone of voice, and would sit with his head wrapped up in his mantle, like an ancient philosopher, absorbed, as it seemed, in some very profound meditation. In short, he was one of those who aim at what Bacon calls “being wise by signs;” did trifles in a solemn way, and so imposed on the simpler sort who thought him a prodigy; a sentiment in which, it is needless to say, he himself fully concurred.

Let us leave this pompous personage for a while to enjoy the admiration of his numerous disciples, whilst we cast our eyes on the schools of law which were just then springing up at Bologna, where a young student of Pavia, Lanfranc by name, was distinguishing himself by his skill as a writer and an advocate. On leaving Bologna, he is thought to have taught jurisprudence for some time in his native city, and then crossing the Alps, he came into France, bringing with him no other riches than his learned reputation. Arriving at Tours, his name reached the ears of Berengarius, who at once sought him out and challenged him to a public disputation. The end aimed at was evidently the glorification of the archdeacon, who counted on an easy victory over the young stranger, which might help to swell his reputation. Never were expectations more completely disappointed. Berengarius was worsted in his arguments, and obliged to retire with ruffled feathers; far from increasing his renown, he had suffered a severe defeat, and in the eyes of wounded vanity, defeat is the bitterest of mortifications. His followers were astonished to find their master was not infallible, and began to transfer their admiration to his successful rival. Lanfranc, meanwhile, proceeded to Avranches, where he opened a school which was soon thronged by deserters from that of Berengarius. It was a crisis in his life, for his character was one which was as likely as not to have yielded to the perils that surrounded him. If free from the vanity which devoured his rival, his proud and impetuous temper was at that time quite as little under the restraint of religious principle; his devotion to science was perhaps more thoroughly the genuine enthusiasm of a scholar who loved learning for its own sake, rather than for the meed of human applause, but it was as yet wholly unsanctified by a higher and diviner intention. Nevertheless, there was a candour and uprightness of soul about him which the other did not possess, and when the call of grace sounded in his ear, he responded to it with noble generosity.

One day as he was journeying from Avranches to Rouen, he had to pass through a forest, where he was attacked by robbers, who having stripped him of all he possessed, tied him to a tree, wrapped his hood about his head so as to muffle his cries for help, and then abandoned him. Left thus during the entire night exposed to danger of death from the wolves, or the more lingering tortures of starvation, Lanfranc in his extremity bethought him of his prayers, but the learned advocate and philosopher found himself unable to call to his remembrance the simplest form of devotion. That one fact spoke volumes to his conscience; during the long hours of that terrible night he had time bitterly to mourn over the years lost in pursuits, the vanity of which he had never known till now; and ere morning dawned he solemnly vowed, if God should deliver him from his danger, to dedicate the remainder of his life to the task of reparation.

At break of day some passing travellers discovered and unbound him, and Lanfranc’s first request was to be led to the nearest monastery. There was by this time no want of religious houses in the duchy of Normandy. The century that had elapsed since the conversion of Duke Rollo, had witnessed a very general restoration of the monastic institute in that province, and many of the great abbeys, such as Jumièges, St. Wandrille, Fécamp, and Bernai, had risen from their ashes, with even greater splendour than they had exhibited before their destruction. But it was to none of these that the good Providence of God guided the steps of Lanfranc. In the year 1039 the little house of Bec had been founded by a pious Norman knight named Herluin, who himself became the first abbot. Nothing could be ruder or simpler than the commencements of this famous abbey. Herluin was poor and unlettered, he and his monks had to live hardly by the labour of their hands, their ordinary food was bread made with bran, and vegetables, with muddy water brought from a well two miles off. At the very moment when Lanfranc presented himself, the abbot was superintending the construction of an oven, and was kneading the bread with somewhat dirty hands, for he had come fresh from the labour of the field. At another time the sight would have disgusted the refined and fastidious Lombard, but at that moment his heart felt an appetite for abasement, and he promptly offered himself, and was received as one of the little community.