A document given by Mabillon illustrates in an amusing manner the jealousy existing at this time between the schools of Italy and France. A certain prior of Chiusi, named Benedict, coming to the abbey of St. Martial at Limoges, was imprudent enough to call in question the commonly-received opinion that St. Martial was an immediate disciple of our Lord. Of course a storm arose, its fury bursting over the head of the luckless and too enlightened critic. The quarrel was taken up by all the monasteries of southern Gaul; and Ademar, a monk of Angoulême, thought it his duty to address a circular to the French monasteries, warning them not to listen to the horrible scandals promulgated by Benedict, whose conceit, he says, was at the bottom of the whole affair. He attempts to pillory his antagonist, by putting in his mouth a ridiculous speech. “I am the nephew,” he is made to say, “of the abbot of Chiusi. He has taken me to many cities of France and Lombardy to study grammar, and my various masters have cost him the round sum of 2000 soldi. I studied grammar nine years, and am studying it still. I am a most learned man. I have two great boxes full of books, and I have not yet read one-half of them. In fact there is not a book in all the world that I have not got. When I leave the schools there will not be such a doctor as myself under heaven.... I am prior of Chiusi, and know how to write sermons.... I am so wise I could arrange and manage an entire council. In Aquitaine there is no learning of any kind, every one there is a dunce; if a man knows a sprinkling of grammar, he is thought at once to be a second Virgil. In France (that is, the province, not the kingdom of France), there is a little more erudition, but not much. The real seat of wisdom is in Lombardy, where I have carried on my studies.” In spite of the sarcastic exaggeration running through this passage, we may gather from it that Benedict had probably assumed a tone of superiority over his Gallican neighbours, and that studies must have greatly revived in Lombardy since the days of the Othos, to furnish the text for a jeu d’esprit of this description.
An age of such increased intellectual activity could hardly fail to be attended with many changes, bad as well as good. We have seen in the last chapter that the new class of teachers who were now springing up taught for gain or reputation, rather than with an eye to the higher ends of education, and that thus learning in their hands lost much of its Christian dress. The intellectual curiosity of students induced many to seek for knowledge in distant lands, with the same perseverance and spirit of enterprise which young knights displayed in quest of military adventure. We can hardly in our day appreciate the difficulties which had to be overcome by men like Athelhard and Robert of Retines, whose student life was the very romance of scholarship. If the stock of knowledge thus collected, surpassed in breadth and variety that which could have been gained in any single monastic school, it is evident, on the other hand, that the education of these itinerant scholars must have been sadly deficient both in mental and moral discipline, failings which were abundantly evident in the character of the new scholastics. They had picked up, it may be, a knowledge of medicine at Salerno, and of mathematics at Cordova, but the claustral rule, the strict subjection to authority, the holy atmosphere or devotion and obedience, had not entered into their intellectual life. They had gained their learning from the lips of professors, in order to become professors in their turn; but a wandering life through half the cities of Europe was but a poor exchange for the claustral discipline; and not a few were found to embrace this kind of life for the very sake of its greater license and freedom from restraint.
But though this new element was making itself perceptibly felt in the learned world, it must not be supposed that in the eleventh century the old system of education was at all superseded for the cathedral and monastic schools still continued the chief seats of learning. They even witnessed a sort of classical renaissance, which sprung up under the encouragement of a crowd of masters who directed the labours of their scholars to the imitation of ancient models, without, however, in any way abandoning the line of Christian studies traced out by Alcuin and his disciples. At Mans, the office of scholasticus was held by the Blessed Hildebert a pupil of Berengarius, and a poet and philosopher, who afterwards became bishop of the same see, and had the distinguished honour of being imprisoned by the Red King, for refusing, at his bidding, to pull down the towers of his cathedral. At Autun, the cathedral schools were directed for twenty years by Honorius, who in his treatise De Exilio Animæ, reprinted in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum of Pez, has described the course of studies followed by his pupils. To the ordinary branches of the trivium and quadrivium, he added instructions in physical science, and gave a distinct course of Holy Scripture. His lectures on rhetoric included the explanation of the best Latin classics, and the same was done in most monastic schools of the period. The notices become more frequent of scholars learned in Greek and Hebrew, and the fact of their being named as engaged in the correction of manuscripts in those languages, compels us to believe that their learning was something more real and solid than that which has been before noticed as rather foolishly displayed on the pages of certain writers of the preceding centuries. Thus, Sigebert of Gemblours, and Marbœuf of Angers, are both spoken of as Greek and Hebrew scholars. Sigebert is said by his biographer to have been learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, which he used in his controversies with the Jews. He was also a good Latin classic, and much addicted to the composition of verses in imitation of his favourite author Horace. He gave lectures on poetry and logic in Paris, but his vanity was not proof against temptation, and led him to take part with Henry IV. against the Holy See. He is the author of a chronicle and other historical works, which he made the vehicle for conveying grave calumnies against the Roman pontiffs. Dante to whom his character as a Ghibelline partisan was itself a recommendation, has placed him in Paradise and notices him as lecturing on logic in the streets of Paris, to students seated, after the custom of the time, on bundles of straw.[156]
It is difficult to determine how much the scholars of this period were really in advance of their predecessors. Hallam, who is generally so sparing of his praise when speaking of any period earlier than that of the Cinque Cento, admits that at the close of the eleventh century a good, and even elegant school of Latin writers was springing up; and notices the Latin vocabulary of Papias as evincing an amount of profane learning far superior to anything that had hitherto been known. Du Cange, however, shows that Papias drew his materials from a dictionary which had been compiled in the Dark Ages, namely, that published in the tenth century, by Solomon, abbot of St. Gall’s. Still, it may be concluded that classical studies were more universally followed than they had hitherto been, and at the same time extraordinary activity was displayed in the multiplication of books and the collection of libraries. Useful results sometimes flow from human infirmities, and there is said to have mingled with the honest love of learning which encouraged this activity, a certain spirit of rivalry and emulation among the different monasteries and religious orders. The Black Monks did not like to be cut out by the new Cistercians; and Bec, as a matter of course, was not going to yield to Cluny. Mabillon says that it was the peculiar pride of the Benedictine abbots of this time, to collect large libraries, and to have their manuscripts handsomely written and adorned. Never, therefore, was there a busier time in the scriptorium; a finer character of writing, and a more convenient system of abbreviation was introduced, and many abbots are mentioned as remarkable for their skill as miniaturists. It is said, however, I know not with what truth, that the copyists, if they got through a greater amount of work, were often less accurate than their brethren of the eighth and ninth centuries, and that in this, as in other things, the proverb held good of “more haste and worse speed.” Hallam, whilst complaining of the multiplication of blunders, does full justice to the prodigious industry exhibited by the monastic copyists of this particular period. As an illustration of the subject, we may quote the account which Othlonus, the scholasticus of St. Emmeran’s, gives of his labours. He seems to have been a Bavarian by birth, and his first school was that of Tegernsee, in Bavaria, a monastery which had been founded in 994, and was famous for its teachers in utrâque linguâ, and even for its Hebrew scholars. Here, in the twelfth century, lived the good monk Metellus, whose eclogues, written in imitation of those of Virgil, describe the monastic pastures and cattle, and the labours of the monks in the fields. The library of Tegernsee was rich in classic works, and possessed a fair illuminated copy of Pliny’s “Natural History,” adorned with pictures of the different animals, from the cunning hand of brother Ellinger. Medicine was likewise studied here, to facilitate which, the monks had a good botanical garden. In such a school Othlonus had every opportunity of cultivating his natural taste for study, which grew by degrees to be a perfect passion. As a child he had intended to embrace the monastic state, but the persuasions of his father, and his own desire to give himself up exclusively to learned pursuits, induced him to abandon this design, and after leaving school he devoted himself for several years to classical studies, with an ardour which his biographer finds no words strong enough to express.
His only earthly desire at this time, as he himself tells us in one of his later spiritual treatises, was to have time to study, and abundance of books. It would seem, however, that this excessive devotion to human learning had its usual results in the decay of devotion. It is thus he describes himself at this period of his life, in his versified treatise De doctrina Spirituali. “Desiring to search into certain subtle matters, in the knowledge of which I saw that many delighted, to the end that I might be held in greater esteem by the world, I made all my profit to consist in keeping company with the Gentiles. In those days what were not to me Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and Tully the rhetorician?... that threefold work of Maro, and Lucan, whom then I loved best of all, and on whom I was so intent, that I hardly did anything else but read him.... Yet what profit did they give me, when I could not even sign my forehead with the cross?”
However, two severe illnesses wrought a great change in his way of looking at life, and in 1032, remembering his early dedication of himself to God, he resolved to forsake the world and take the habit of religion in the monastery of St. Emmeran’s, at Ratisbon, where he gave up all thoughts of secular ambition, in order to devote himself heart and soul to the duties of his state. St. Emmeran’s was, like Tegernsee, possessed of an excellent school and library. In the former many good scholars were reared, such as abbot William of Hirschau, who became as learned in the liberal arts as in the study of the Scriptures, and who afterwards made his own school at Hirschau one of the most celebrated in Germany. Othlonus tells us that in this monastery he found “several men in different classes, some reading pagan authors, others the Holy Scriptures,” and that he began to imitate the latter, and soon learnt to relish the Sacred Books, which he had hitherto neglected, far above the writings of Aristotle, Plato, or even Boëthius.[157]
It will be seen from this little sketch that Othlonus was not a mere transcriber, and indeed he afterwards produced several treatises on mystic theology, besides his “Life of St. Wolfgang,” and was regarded by his brother monks as “a pious and austere man, possessed of an immense love of books.” This love he showed not only by reading them, but by multiplying them; and his achievements in this kind are related by himself with a certain prolix eloquence which, in mercy to the reader, I will somewhat abridge.
“I think it right,” he says, “to add some account of the great capacity of writing which was given me by the Lord from my childhood. When as yet a little child I was sent to school, and quickly learnt my letters; and began long before the usual time of learning, and without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing; but in a furtive and unusual way, and without any teacher, so that I got a bad habit of holding my pen in a wrong manner, nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to correct me in that point. Many who saw this, decided that I should never write well, but by the grace of God it turned out otherwise. For, even in my childhood, when, together with the other boys, the tablet was put into my hands, it appeared that I had some notion of writing. Then, after a time, I began to write so well and was so fond of it, that in the monastery of Tegernsee, where I learned, I wrote many books, and being sent into Franconia, I worked so hard as nearly to lose my sight.... Then, after I became a monk of St. Emmeran’s, I was induced again to occupy myself so much in writing, that I seldom got an interval of rest except on festivals. Meantime there came more work on me, for as they saw I was generally reading, writing, or composing, they made me schoolmaster; by all which things I was, through God’s grace, so fully occupied that I frequently could not allow my body the necessary rest. When I had a mind to compose anything, I could not find time for it, except on holidays or at night, being tied down to the business of teaching the boys, and transcribing what I had undertaken. Besides the books which I composed myself I wrote nineteen missals, three books of the Gospels, and two lectionaries; besides which I wrote four service books for matins. Afterwards, old age and infirmity hindered me, and the grief caused by the destruction of our monastery; but to Him who is author of all good, and who has vouchsafed to give many things to me unworthy, be praise eternal!” He then adds an account of a vast number of other books written out by him and sent as presents to the monasteries of Fulda, Hirschfeld, Lorsch, Tegernsee, and others, amounting in all to thirty volumes. His labours, so cheerfully undertaken for the improvement of his convent, were perhaps surpassed by those of the monk Jerome, who wrote out so great a number of volumes, that it is said a wagon with six horses would not have sufficed to draw them. But neither one nor the other are to be compared to Diemudis, a devout nun of the monastery of Wessobrun, who, besides writing out in clear and beautiful characters five missals, with graduals and sequences attached, and four other office books, for the use of the church, adorned the library of her convent with two entire Bibles, eight volumes of St. Gregory, seven of St. Augustine, the ecclesiastical histories of Eusebius and Cassiodorus, and a vast number of sermons, homilies, and other treatises, a list of which she left, as having all been written by her own hand, to the praise of God and of the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul. This Diemudis was a contemporary of Othlonus, and found time in the midst of her gigantic labours to carry on a correspondence with Herluca, a nun of Eppach, to whom she is said to have indited “many very sweet letters,” which were long preserved.
I have mentioned as one of the scholars of St. Emmeran’s the holy William of Hirschau, who was chosen abbot of his monastery in 1070, and applied himself to make his monks as learned and as indefatigable in all useful labours as he was himself. He had about 250 monks at Hirschau, and founded no fewer than fifteen other religious houses, for the government of which he drew up a body of excellent statutes. These new foundations he carefully supplied with books, which necessitated constant work in the scriptorium. And a most stately and noble place was the scriptorium of Hirschau, wherein each one was employed according to his talent, binding, painting, gilding, writing, or correcting. The twelve best writers were reserved for transcribing the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers, and one of the twelve, most learned in the sciences, presided over the tasks of the others, chose the books to be copied, and corrected the faults of the younger scribes. The art of painting was studied in a separate school, and here, among others, was trained the good monk Thiemon, who, after decorating half the monasteries of Germany with the productions of his pencil, became archbishop of Saltzburg, and died in odour of sanctity. The statutes with which abbot William provided his monasteries, were chiefly drawn up from those in use at St. Emmeran’s, but he was desirous of yet further improving them, and in particular of assimilating them to those of Cluny, which was then at the height of its renown. It was at his request that St. Ulric of Cluny wrote out his “Customary,” in which, among other things, he gives a description of the manner in which the Holy Scriptures were read through in the refectory in the course of the year. This “Customary” is one of the most valuable monuments of monastic times which remains to us; it shows us the interior of the monastery, painted by the hand of one of its inmates, taking us through each office, the library, the infirmary, the sacristy, the bakehouse, the kitchen, and the school. How beautiful is the order which it displays, as observed in choir, where, on solemn days, all the singers stood vested in copes, the very seats being covered with embroidered tapestry! Three days in the week the right side of the choir communicated, and the other three the left; during Holy Week they washed the feet of as many poor as there were brethren in the house, and the abbot added others also to represent absent friends. When the Passion was sung, they had a custom of tearing a piece of stuff at the words “they parted my garments;” and the new fire of Holy Saturday was struck, not from a flint, but a precious beryl. There were numberless beautiful rites of benediction observed, as that of the ripe grapes, which were blessed on the altar during mass, on the 6th of August, and afterwards distributed in the refectory, of new beans, and of the freshly-pressed juice of the grape. The ceremonies observed in making the altar breads were also most worthy of note. The grains of wheat were chosen one by one, were carefully washed and put aside in a sack, which was carried by one known to be pure in life and conversation to the mill. There they were ground and sifted, he who performed this duty being clothed in alb and amice. Two priests and two deacons clothed in like manner prepared the breads, and a lay brother, having gloves on his hands, held the irons in which they were baked. The very wood of the fire was chosen of the best and driest. And whilst these processes were being gone through, the brethren engaged ceased not to sing psalms, or sometimes recited Our Lady’s office. A separate chapter in the “Customary” is devoted to the children and their master, and the discipline under which they were trained is minutely described. We seem to see them seated in their cloister with the vigilant eye of the master presiding over their work. An open space is left between the two rows of scholars, but there is no one in the monastery who dare pass through their ranks. They go to confession twice a week, and always to the abbot or the prior. And such is the scrupulous care bestowed on their education, and the vigilance to which they are subjected, both by day and night, that, says Ulric, “I think it would be difficult for a king’s son to be brought up in a palace with greater care than the humblest boy enjoys at Cluny.”
This “Customary” was drawn up during the government of St. Hugh of Cluny, whose letter to William the Conqueror displays something of the independence of mind with which abbots of those days treated the great ones of the earth. William had written to him requesting him to send some of his monks to England, and offering him a hundred pounds for every monk he would send. This method of buying up his monks at so much a head offended the good abbot, who wrote back to the king declining to part with any of his community at such a price, and adding that he would himself give an equal sum for every good monk whom he could draw to Cluny. During the sixty-two years that he governed his abbey, he is said to have professed more than 10,000 subjects. Enough has been said to show that the monastic institute was still strong and vigorous in the eleventh century. Cluny, indeed, represented monasticism rather in its magnificence than in the more evangelic aspect of poverty and abasement, yet in the midst of all her lordly splendour, she continued fruitful in saints. Even the austere St. Peter Damian, whilst he disapproved of the wealth of the monks, was edified at their sanctity, and left them, marvelling how men so rich could live so holily. Their revenues were not spent on luxury; they went to feed 17,000 poor people, and to collect a library of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew authors, such as had not its equal in Europe. It contained among other treasures a certain Bible, called in the chronicle, “great, wonderful, and precious for its writing, correctness, and rich binding, adorned with beryl stones,” which had been written by the single hand of the monk Albert. The following inscription inserted in the volume attests the piety as well as the industry of the writer. “This book was written by a certain monk of Cluny, named Albert, formerly of Treves. It was done by the order and at the expense of the venerable abbot Pontius, Peter being at that time the librarian, and providing all things necessary with joy and diligence. And the aforesaid monk, in company with a certain brother named Opizo, diligently read through the whole book, that he might be able to improve it according to the authority of other books; and he twice corrected it. Therefore Brother Albert a sinner, prostrating himself at the feet of the brethren of Cluny, humbly begs of them to pray to God for himself and for his father, that they may obtain the forgiveness of their sins.”[158]