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

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

The university, in fact, presented the spectacle, at that time new in Christendom, of a system of education which aimed at informing the intellect without disciplining the soul. Its work was done in the lecture room, where alone the master exercised any authority, and the only tie existing between him and his disciples was the salary paid by one party and received by the other. In addition to the dangers incident to this state of uncontrolled liberty, were the more subtle temptations to pride and presumption which beset a man in the schools. Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position. “The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions; and plentiful occasions were thus ministered of quarrel and dispute.” And he proceeds to notice the contrast between such a system and that of earlier ages, when the teachers of the Church were for the most part bishops, engaged in the duties of their pastoral charge, and able to support their doctrines with the weight of practical experience. The character of the new professors is drawn severely enough in the curious poem of Architrenius,[170] which was written towards the close of the twelfth century by John de Hauteville, an English monk of St. Albans. Architrenius, the hero, is supposed to travel through the world, trying various states and conditions, and finding vanity and emptiness in all of them; at last he comes to Paris, and devotes a whole book to describing the vanity of the masters, and the miseries of their disciples. He depicts the negligent and squalid appearance of the poor scholars, their ragged dress, uncombed hair, bad lodging and hard beds. After spending half the night in study, he says, they are roused at daybreak and forced to hurry to the school, where the master treats them rudely, and where they have to endure the mortification of seeing others of less merit rewarded, and themselves passed over with neglect. He goes on to describe the hill of presumption which he peoples with doctors and scholastics, gifted with far less learning than conceit, and concludes, that the schools are as full of vanity and disappointment as the rest of the world.

The sufferings of the poor scholars, which Architrenius so graphically describes, were destined, however, to bring about a most beneficial change in the university system, by being the chief occasion of the foundation of hospices and colleges, the multiplication of which, and their organisation under regular discipline, in time applied a remedy to the worst of the existing evils. From a very early date, the relief and support of poor scholars had been recognised as a meritorious work of charity; it formed one of the favourite devotions of the two kings, Robert the Pious and Lewis the Young, the former of whom attempted something in the shape of a hospital to receive them. How miserable their condition was, we may gather from the benefaction of the good knight Jocius de Londonne, who, returning from the Holy Land in 1171, found some poor scholars miserably lodged in the Hôtel-Dieu, and gave money to provide them with beds, and a small monthly alms, on condition of their carrying the Cross and Holy-water at the funeral of those who died in the hospital, and repeating the Penitential Psalms for the repose of their souls. The earliest establishment actually made for their reception appears to have been the Hospice of St. Thomas of Canterbury, founded in the twelfth century by Robert Dreux. It embraced a number of other charitable works, and was administered by canons who were under religious vows, the scholars being governed by a provost of their own. Other colleges gradually arose, some for scholars of particular nations, as those of the Danes and Swedes; others for separate dioceses. One of the earliest foundations was the College of Constantinople, founded by Baldwin of Flanders, shortly after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, for the education of young Greeks in the orthodox faith. Chapels were opened in connection with these colleges so early as 1248, in which year we find Pope Innocent IV. granting permission for such a chapel to be attached to the college des Bons Enfants. But the collegiate system became more thoroughly established by the influence of the Religious Orders, who very soon found themselves obliged to open religious houses in connection with the university, for the education of their own students. These houses of studies afforded the young religious the regular discipline of the old monastic schools, combined with the advantages of university education; and their example made it a necessity to provide similar protection for the secular students.

The Trinitarian Order, founded by one of the most illustrious of the Parisian doctors, and largely recruited from the ranks of his co-professors, was naturally the first to associate itself to the university, out of whose bosom it had sprung; and so early as the year 1209, we find the friars in possession of the Church of St. Maturin, which was ordinarily used by the university as their place of assembly. Next to them came the Dominicans and Franciscans, the former of whom owed their establishment in Paris to the good will of the university authorities, who made over to them certain claims they possessed on the Hospital of St. James, which had been granted to the new comers by the good doctor, John of St. Quentin. A little later, the College of the Bernardines was founded by Stephen of Lexington, an Englishman who had been a pupil of St. Edmund, and who in 1242 became abbot of Clairvaux. Strictly contemplative as was the rule of the Cistercians, it did not exclude the cultivation of sacred studies. It aimed rather at restoring monastic life to the ancient Benedictine type, in which, as we have seen, the homely labours of husbandry were mingled with those of the scriptorium. The Cistercians, whilst they laboured to bring back religious poverty and simplicity into the cloister, always showed themselves hearty encouragers of learning. St. Stephen Harding had himself set on foot that great copy of the Bible, long preserved at Citeaux, which was corrected with the utmost precision after being collated with a vast number of manuscripts, several learned Jews being consulted by the abbot on the Hebrew text. To procure a correct version of the Gregorian Antiphonary, he sent all the way to Metz, trusting to obtain a sight of the copy laid up there by Charlemagne. The library at Citeaux was rich in the works of the Fathers, though the outside of the books exhibited nothing of that costly ornament on which the skill of monastic binders and jewellers was elsewhere expended. The early Cistercians were connected very closely with some of the best Paris scholars, such as William of Champeaux, the friend of St. Stephen, and after his elevation to the episcopate, the diocesan of St Bernard. In England their ranks had been largely recruited from the University of Oxford, and their monastery of Rievaux was famous at home and abroad for its school of learning. Stephen of Lexington was not, therefore, departing from the traditions of his order in considering that the maintenance of sacred studies was a necessity of the times. Two years after his election he obtained permission from Pope Innocent IV. to begin the erection of a college at Paris for the young monks of his order; but the proposal was very unfavourably received by the other Benedictine houses who saw in it the break-up of the old monastic system of studies. The conservative spirit which was roused among them is discernible in the complaints of Matthew Paris, who laments over the contempt with which a proud world is beginning to regard the old Benedictine monks. “This new institution of colleges,” he says, “is not, that we can see, derived from the rule of St. Benedict; on the contrary, we read that he quitted the schools to retire into the desert.”

Stephen, however, persevered in his design; he was aware that the contempt with which the monks were so frequently treated, both by the secular doctors and the new orders of friars, was grounded on the charge of their illiteracy, and he therefore believed it essential to provide his monks with better means of education than, under the altered state of things, they were now able to command in their claustral schools. His design was crowned with perfect success. Not only did the College of the Bernardines become illustrious for its good scholarship, but the conduct of its religious shed a good odour of edification over the whole university, and ten years after its foundation, Matthew Paris himself bore honourable witness to the holy example of the monks, which, he said, “gave pleasure to God and man.” For Stephen there was reserved the reward of disgrace and humiliation. The Chapter-General of Citeaux deposed him from his office in 1255, instigated, says Matthew Paris, by envy for the superior merits of an Englishman. Whatever were the cause of his disgrace, it gave him an opportunity of proving that his adoption of what had seemed an innovation on established customs, sprang out of no defect in the religious spirit. He refused to accept of the protection offered him by the Pope, in favour of which he might have been reinstated in his dignity, and preferred spending the rest of his days as a private religious, entirely occupied with his own sanctification.

The example of the Bernardines was quickly followed by other religious orders. The Carmelites took up their station at the foot of Mt. St. Geneviève, the Augustinians in the Quartier Montmartre. The old Benedictines, or Black Monks, had their college near the abbey of St. Germain, and the Carthusians received from St. Louis a grant of the royal Chateau de Vauverd. The monks of the latter order were indeed prohibited by their rule from attending in the schools, but the object of their establishment so near the capital is expressly stated to have been, that they might profit by the salutary streams of doctrine which flowed forth from the city of letters. To these must be added the monks of Cluny and Marmoutier, the former of whom provided their students with lecturers within their own cloisters; and a new Institute originally founded by four doctors of theology, who in 1201 gave up their academic honours and pursuits, and, smitten with that desire of poverty and obscurity which not unfrequently overtakes men in the very zenith of their popularity and success, retired to a wild valley in the diocese of Langres, and assumed the religious habit of the Canons Regular of St. Victor. Here they were soon joined by other professors and scholars, till their numbers rendered it impossible for them to find subsistence in the desolate wildness they had chosen, exposed to the fury of the mountain torrents, and the falling of precipitous rocks. They, therefore, removed in 1224 to a more fertile valley, which obtained the name of the Val d’Ecoliers, a title afterwards bestowed on the new order itself. Five years later they opened a house of studies in Paris, and the Church of St. Catherine was built for them at the charge of a certain knight, in fulfilment of a vow he had taken at the battle of Bouvines, the young St. Louis laying the first stone with his own hand.

The bishops were not slow to follow the example set them by the monastics; and indeed they, more than others, felt the necessity of providing in some way or other for the training of their clerks. It was vain to think of competing with the university in the cathedral schools; and, on the other hand, what was to be hoped from a secular clergy, formed in no higher school of discipline than that which James of Vitry has described? Colleges, therefore, where the young clerics might be reared in ecclesiastical habits, were, strictly speaking, essential; and, accordingly, we find them established for the clergy of different dioceses, as those of Laon, Narbonne, and Bayeux. In these the scholars lived in common, celebrated the Divine Office, had appointed hours of study and recreation, and were governed and watched over by regents. In fact, says Fleury, “they were so many little seminaries;” differing in many respects, and doubtless, far inferior to those old ecclesiastical schools which had been established in the bishop’s house, wherein the young clerks grew up under the eye, and were trained by the lips of their chief pastor; yet still schools of discipline, the good results of which were so apparent that, erelong, every country which followed the Latin rite adopted the system which had begun in France and Italy. The most famous of all the secular colleges was that of the Sorbonne, the founder of which, Robert of Sorbonne, was chaplain to St. Louis. Crevier calls it the greatest ornament of the university, and from very humble beginnings it came at last to be regarded as the first theological school in the Christian world. In it were afterwards founded no fewer than seven Chairs of Theology; namely, those of the Reader, of Contemplative, and Positive Theology, of the Holy Scriptures, of Casuistry, of Controversial Divinity, and of the Interpretation of the Hebrew Text.

Gradually, but surely, the university freed itself from the chaotic disorder of its first beginnings, and assumed the form of a great institution, governed by regular laws and invested with vast powers and privileges. At the period of its complete development, it was composed of seven companies; namely, the Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine, and the four nations of France, Picardy, Normandy, and England. These four nations together formed the Faculty of Arts, but each had a separate vote in the affairs of the university. The Rector was chosen by the nations out of the Faculty of Arts, the other faculties being governed by their deans.

An immense benefit was conferred on the University by Innocent III., who had himself studied at Paris at a time when the want of discipline was most severely felt. He was the first to supply his Alma Mater with a body of academic statutes; which were promulgated in 1215 by his legate, Robert de Courçon, an Englishman by birth, and a man of piety and learning. They embraced the whole discipline of the schools, regulating the conditions on which everyone was to be admitted to teach, the books that were to be read and those that were prohibited. No one was to profess arts before the age of twenty-one, or without having previously studied for six years under some approved master. He must bear a good reputation, and before commencing his lectures, was to undergo an examination according to certain rules. The books he was to read were to be the “Dialectics” and “Topics” of Aristotle, Priscian, and certain others, the authors of which are not named, but which seem to have been well-known popular treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, and mathematics. The physics and metaphysics of Aristotle were forbidden, together with the writings of certain heretics, such as Amauri de Bene, who had drawn their errors from the teaching of the Greek Philosopher.[171]

To teach Theology, the statutes required that a man should be at least thirty-five years of age, and that he should have studied under some approved master. We see here the germ of the system of graduation, which was perfected before the close of the century. The rule, as then established, was for a bachelor to begin by explaining the Sentences in the school of some doctor for the space of a year. At the end of that time he was presented to the Chancellor of the Cathedral of Paris, and if, on examination, he was judged worthy, he received a license and became licentiate, until he was received as doctor, when he opened a school of his own, in which he explained the Sentences for another year. At the end of that time he was allowed to receive some bachelor under him. The whole doctor’s course lasted three years; nor could any one take a degree unless he had taught according to these regulations. It was supposed that before beginning his theological studies the doctor must have passed through his course of arts, the various stages in which were distinguished by the names of grammar, poetry, philosophy, &c., in each of which, according to the theory of the ancient schools, a student had to study successively for an appointed time. The plan was excellent, says Fleury, had its execution been possible; but life was too short to allow of a man’s perfecting himself in every known branch of learning before entering on his theological studies. It implied that his whole life was to be spent in the schools; and, indeed, no inconsiderable portion of it was so spent, as we have seen in the case of John of Salisbury, whose academical career spread itself over the space of twelve years. But, in estimating the exact value of these statements, we must bear in mind that the university course at this time began at a very early age, and included those more elementary studies which occupy a schoolboy of our day for several years before his matriculation.

The statutes of Paris University, first promulgated by Innocent III., and enlarged under subsequent pontiffs, not only regulated all matters of study and discipline, but provided for the preservation of that religious element which must always find a place in any system of education sanctioned by the Church. The Christian schools, as we have seen, found their cradle in the monastic and episcopal seminaries, in which, as a matter of course, religious exercises were intermingled with intellectual ones, to a very large degree. The Catholic universities, in their complete form, adapted this system to their own needs, and required of their students daily attendance, not only in the lecture rooms, but also in the church or the collegiate chapel. The weekly “chapels” exacted from our Oxford and Cambridge students are fragments of the old rules, which, at Paris as in the English universities, required daily attendance at Mass and Vespers, and, at certain times also, at the Office of the Dead; and appointed public processions at different seasons of the year, and days when the public studies were suspended in order to give more time for the due celebration of feasts, and preparation for the reception of the Sacraments. If any reader be disposed to think that these demands on the time of the students must have proved an interruption to their studies, the fact is at once, and readily, admitted. But it may be suggested whether, in this interruption, there does not manifest itself a grand principle on which the Church acts wherever there is question of the exercise of the human intelligence. The problem she had to resolve was, not how to convey the greatest possible amount of knowledge with the greatest possible saving of time; but rather, how to provide that a certain amount of intellectual labour should be gone through in such a way as not to interfere injuriously with the spiritual well-being of the soul. In cases where the intellect is brought into exercise and stimulated to extraordinary activity, there is danger lest what is in itself a wholesome and necessary exercise may become vitiated by a certain natural impetuosity, which disposes a man to pour himself out into the occupation in which he is engaged; an impetuosity which opens the door to the human spirit, and which brings in along with it a host of bad company, such as pride, envy, ambition, contention, and the like. If this be allowed, study, instead of being an instrument of our sanctification, degenerates into its enemy; and hence the object aimed at in the Catholic system has ever been to supply checks and safeguards to nature, and to sanctify intellectual labour by a large admixture of prayer. Among the monastic students the regular duties of religious life supplied these necessary checks, the “retinacula,” as they were called by Bede, who fully understood their value and importance; and the Catholic universities, to a certain degree, imitated the monastic system, by requiring fixed religious duties to be complied with by their students, as a part of their academic course. Nor need we suppose that these interruptions, so salutary in a spiritual sense, were at all injurious in an intellectual point of view. The discipline of the Church, by a beautiful harmony, provides for the well-being of our nature, at the very time that she mortifies it. Her rules of fasting and abstinence, when observed, often prove the best preservatives of health; and, in the same way, her checks on study were not always hindrances. The truest economy of time does not, obviously, consist in cramming the twelve hours of the day with excessive work, but in laying them out to the best advantage. It is possible to tax the mental powers beyond their strength, in which case nature revenges herself on those who violate her laws, and the mind itself weakens under the pressure of excessive labour. Could we compare the horarium of an Oxford or Paris student of the thirteenth century, with that of a modern Rugby schoolboy, and obtain an accurate statistical table, showing the proportion of exhausted brains to be found among an equal number of either class, it might appear that the Church legislated even for the mental well-being of her children when she interposed so often between them and their studies, by requiring of them the fulfilment of solemn offices at stated times.