Gregory IX. who, according to Muratori, was profoundly skilled in the liberal arts, and whom he calls “a river of Tullian eloquence,” drew up five books of decretals, and was so firm a friend to the university of Paris, that, to use the expression of Crevier “it had no other support during the troubles with which it was vexed in the thirteenth century, than in this Pope.” Innocent IV. erected public schools of law at Rome, and founded the university of Piacenza, besides which, as Crevier acknowledges, he surpassed all his predecessors in the benefits which he heaped on the university of Paris, and the singular protection he afforded it. Such was the zeal of this pontiff in promoting learning, that wherever he was, he established in his palace a little university. Thus, being at Lyons in the second year of his pontificate, he opened a studium generale at his court for the study of theology and canon law; and did the same at Naples, where he died; and at the Council of Lyons in 1245, he enforced the decrees of previous pontiffs regarding the establishment of cathedral grammar schools for the gratuitous education of poor children.
It was Gregory X. who, among the other acts of his glorious pontificate, moved the King of Sicily to restore the schools which had fallen into decay in his dominions. His letter is printed in the collection of Martene. God, he says, has willed that man fallen into barbarism should be taught and civilised by the culture of the arts and sciences. It is study which confers on man the grace of a cultivated education, as a heavenly gift; and the king who uses his power to continue a generation of wise and learned men, and to provide the Church with worthy ministers, performs an act most honourable and pleasing to God.
To Urban IV. belongs the glory of having revived the study of philosophy in Italy. He is known to have commanded St. Thomas to comment on the works of Aristotle; and so great was his love of this branch of learning, that he always had at his table certain professors whom he would afterwards cause to sit at his feet and engage in erudite disputations among themselves, he himself presiding over their trial of wits, and deciding to whom the victory was due. It was to his noble encouragement that the world owed the mathematical works of Campano of Novara, whom he appointed his chaplain, and who wrote a learned commentary on Euclid. In one of the mathematical treatises of this philosopher, is to be found a dedication to Urban, in which he eulogises the magnificent support afforded by that pontiff to philosophical studies, which, owing to his encouragement, after having long languished in the dust, were once more loved and cultivated. The university of Montpellier was founded by Nicholas IV., and that of Cracow by Urban V.
We also find that, besides the universities, a vast number of public schools were opened in Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, most of them by authority of the Sovereign Pontiffs; those founded in Rome by Innocent IV. were at first exclusively intended for the study of law, but in 1303 Boniface VIII. erected these schools into a university for every faculty. Other schools of grammar, medicine, and law arose at Modena, Reggio and Parma, and at Milan there were no fewer than eighty schoolmasters instructing youth in the year 1288. The college of the Sapienza, at Perugia, was founded by Innocent IV. out of his private purse, for the education of forty boys, as the Gregorian college was raised somewhat later at Bologna by Pope Gregory XI. And of Urban V. we read that he supported more than a thousand scholars at different academies at his own expense, and supplied them with the books necessary for prosecuting their studies.
Enough has, perhaps, been said to show that the Roman Pontiffs of this period were not altogether indifferent to the interests of learning. Owing partly to their encouragement, and partly to the excessive popularity then attaching to the study of law, the number of universities continued, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to multiply in a manner which makes it difficult to conjecture how students could have been found to people so many academies. Thus, in France alone, we find the universities of Toulouse,[178] Montpellier, Orleans, Lyons, Avignon, Poictiers, Angers, Bourdeaux, Bourges, Cahors, Nantes, Rheims, Caen, Valence, and Grenoble; in Italy, there were those of Ravenna, Salerno, Arezzo, Ferrara, Perugia, Piacenza, Siena, Treviso, Vercelli, Pavia, and Vicenza; in Spain, the two great universities of Salamanca, and Valladolid, besides twenty-four smaller ones; in Poland, of Cracow; in Germany, of Vienna, Prague, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Erfurt, besides others of rather later date. Sixty-six such institutions altogether are reckoned as having been founded in various European countries before the period of the Reformation. The numbers of students who repaired to these academies was certainly very great. At Bologna, in the thirteenth century, we find mention of ten thousand scholars; at Paris, of forty thousand; at Bourdeaux, a single college boasted of upwards of two thousand scholars; and Oxford, in Henry III.’s time, is said to have contained thirty thousand. These universities had each their own distinctive character—Paris excelled in theology, Montpellier and Salerno in medicine, Pavia in the arts, Bologna, Bourges, and Orleans in jurisprudence. Caen, an English foundation was particularly favoured by the monastic students, and a great number of abbeys had here their own colleges, the abbots being accustomed to assemble and assist at the yearly opening of the schools. Of the English universities we will speak more at length in another chapter, but it remains for us to say a few words here on the general character and tendency of all these institutions, and of the revolution which their establishment brought about in the system of education.
To form something like an accurate judgment on this matter, we must glance back at some of the facts elicited in the foregoing pages. From what has been already said, it will appear that the germ of all Christian schools is to be found in the episcopal seminaries—those seminaries which, in ancient times, formed a part of the bishop’s own household, and in which he himself personally directed the studies of his younger clergy, and trained them to the duties of the ecclesiastical state. The cathedral or canonical schools were but the expansion of these early seminaries, over which the bishop still presided, the office of scholasticus being conferred on one of the canons, though, as we have seen, masters were often invited to direct the studies from other dioceses. The monastic schools were formed on the model of these episcopal schools, the abbot doing for his own monks what the bishop did for the clergy of his diocese. The constitution of all these schools was most strictly ecclesiastical, and though seculars were admitted to share in their advantages, they were primarily intended for the education of the clergy. The strong religious character that must have been impressed on the education given in such academies was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of the early ages, when, as Balmez remarks, the intellectual development of Europe had a distinctly theological bias. Religion in those days was the preponderating element, it ruled the family and the state, as well as the individual: and in days when the laws were drawn up in the spirit and the language of ecclesiastical canons, there was nothing at all out of place in the sons of knights and nobles being set to study church chant, the Psalter, and the Fathers. That their studies were by no means exclusively theological has, I think, been amply shown; nevertheless, it is undeniable that, in the ecclesiastical schools, the liberal arts were chiefly cultivated in their relation to the things of faith, and that every branch of learning was more or less tinged with the theological element.
It was not to be expected that such a state of things could continue without large modification. Nations, like individuals, pursue an inevitable course of mental development, and the time necessarily came when the human mind, growing from childhood into maturity, demanded a wider and freer expansion. Hence ensued that remarkable change observable at the opening of the eleventh century, when the European intellect seemed to be passing out of a long winter into a sudden spring, and burst into a vigorous activity, accompanied, naturally enough, by many excesses. Schools and teachers were indefinitely multiplied; the office of teaching was no longer confined to ecclesiastics, and, falling into the hands of lay professors, unavoidably assumed a new character. But it is remarkable that the main principles of the former system still remained in force. Education was recognised to be a religious work, and one which, as such, fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop. As chief pastor in his own diocese, he was supreme in all things appertaining to the spiritual interests of his flock, and the office of teaching was acknowledged to be one that fell under his pastoral charge.[179] The new scholastics, therefore, were not entirely exempted from episcopal jurisdiction; and in the eleventh century we find the system generally established, according to which the scholasticus of the cathedral, or bishop’s school, exercised a certain control over all the schools in the diocese, no professor being suffered to open any private school without a license from him.[180] I do not know whether we can affirm that there were episcopal inspectors, but there were certainly certificated masters in the days of St. Anselm. The office of cathedral scholasticus belonged properly to the archdeacon of the diocese, who might appoint a substitute to direct the school, but with whom the power of granting licenses always remained. In many churches it was also identical with the office of chancellor.[181]
And here one observation irresistibly presents itself. How striking a contrast does not this system offer to that which finds favour in our own times! Here we see it formally and distinctly recognised that the office of teacher was one of those that fell directly under episcopal supervision. The bishop of the diocese exercised jurisdiction over schools, as he did over churches, in virtue of his pastoral office, and his license was the necessary certificate of moral and intellectual fitness. But, according to the principles accepted by most countries which rejoice in a National system of education, the authority formerly exercised by the bishop is transferred to a Board. We make over to a minister of public instruction, or a committee of privy council, or some other secular organ of an unspiritual state, what our fathers regarded as an integral portion of the pastoral office, an incongruity which, little as it now startles us, is, we may say without exaggeration, scarcely less opposed to the Christian order than if the crown should assume the power of granting faculties to preach. What wonder that the result of such a change should be the gradual, but most sure, unchristianising of the popular mind, and that infidelity has found no more efficient allies than the multitudinous and plausible codes of state education which have sprung up since the destruction of the ancient system!
That the control thus recognised as belonging to the bishop through his officers was not merely nominal is quite clear. In 1132, we find Stephen de Senlis, Bishop of Paris, through his chancellor, interdicting a certain professor, named Galon, from continuing to teach. Galon persisted, in defiance of the bishop; and, his pupils deserting his school through fear of incurring ecclesiastical censures, he was at last put to silence. However, he appealed to the Pope, and this, says Crevier, “is the first occasion in which the authority of the Court of Rome appears as interfering in the affairs of the university.” He adds that it was also the beginning of those disputes which the university of Paris maintained for long years against the bishop and chancellor of Notre Dame, arising out of the claims of the latter to exercise jurisdiction over the schools, and the vigorous resistance of the academic authorities. It is clear that the episcopal rights were never totally and completely revoked; nevertheless, they were reduced to a minimum, and the universities, to all practical purposes, established their independence. And the change thus introduced was the more portentous from the fact that, with the rise of the universities, we date the disappearance of the episcopal seminaries. “The institution of seminaries,” says Theiner, “disappeared throughout Christendom after the twelfth century.” The universities became the great seats of learning, human and divine, and though the cathedral schools continued to exist, their students passed from them at an early age to finish their education in theology and canon law in Paris, Oxford, and Bologna; whilst, in many cases, the cathedral schools themselves were absorbed in the new universities of which they formed the nucleus. The bishops, unable to stem the tide, were forced to yield to it, and to witness the education of their clergy passing out of their own control into the hands of newly-constituted bodies which jealously disputed their authority, which were often enough infected with an infidel philosophy, which did not at first supply their members with any spiritual or moral discipline, and which were not necessarily impressed with an ecclesiastical character. For, what is a university? “It consists,” says a writer in the “Analecta Juris Pontificii,”[182] “of an aggregation of schools, governed by a body of doctors, who divide among themselves the several branches of instruction which, in the public schools, are united under one master.” “A university,” says Crevier, “is a body composed of masters teaching and disciples who are taught.” And the writer first quoted goes on to examine whether it would have been possible or desirable for the universities to have established the collegiate discipline of the ancient schools with a view to protect the piety and morals of the students, and decides that such an attempt would have been a chimera. The universities, he says, were intended for seculars as well as clerics, and it was, therefore, unfitting that the rule of clerical schools should be enforced in them. But it is at least obvious that a prodigious and calamitous revolution was being effected in the education of the clergy when young clerics were trained in academies wherein such rules were avowedly not enforced. The difference was this, that in old time they had received secular students into their seminaries, and then the education of laymen was tinged with an ecclesiastical character. Now the world received clerics into her academies, and the education of the future clergy of Europe became necessarily, in a certain sense, secularised. Nor is this said as in any way depreciating the universities, or representing them in an unfavourable light. They will lose nothing by being represented as what they truly are, academies of science, schools of worldly training, learned corporations in which degrees are granted for intellectual proficiency in liberal studies, and in which a man acquires knowledge, refinement, and all that can fit him for taking his place in society, and filling it with credit. Yet, all this does not make them substitutes for ecclesiastical seminaries. They are doubtless capable of being employed in the service of religion, and have often been so employed: they have been established and encouraged by the bulls of Popes, and, in more than one instance, founded with the direct view of furnishing bulwarks against the spread of heresy. Yet, it is evident that, as places of education for the clergy, the universities were at a disadvantage. They could not give the young clerics that training in the ecclesiastical spirit which they had hitherto enjoyed. Even granting that the establishment of colleges afforded the benefits of regular life to their students, it could not give them the watchful protection of their bishop’s eye. That close and paternal tie which had grown up between the chief pastor and his future clergy was altogether lost, except, indeed, in so far as the evil results of the system were counteracted by the personal efforts of the bishop. And here, happily, some of the habits of feudal society came to his aid, and enabled him to receive into the enormous household then maintained by every lord, whether spiritual or temporal, a number of young clerks, who, after their university career was over, thus passed under the immediate rule of their bishop, and received a certain sort of ecclesiastical training at his hands.
Fleury speaks of this custom as universal throughout the Church in the Middle Ages; and says that each bishop took special care of the instruction of his clergy, particularly of those young clerics who were continually about his person, serving him in the capacity of lectors or secretaries, carrying his letters and transmitting his orders. These episcopal households, however, could not do the work of a seminary, still less could they undo the work of a university in the souls of those who had been subjected for a course of years to its social and intellectual training. The idea of the seminary, and the episcopal or monastic school, is pre-eminently that of preservation; it takes the soul in the freshness of youth, and hedges round with thorns the garden that is to be consecrated to God. But according to the mediæval university system, a lad began his studies at Oxford or Paris at the age of twelve or fourteen, and seldom spent less than nine, sometimes twelve, years in native or foreign academies, so that the whole of his most impressible years were spent in the midst of secular fellow-students, thus opening upon him a flood of evils that scarcely require to be pointed out. The dissolute manners which prevailed, specially in the Italian universities, which were, perhaps, next to that of Paris, the most frequented, are depicted by successive Pontiffs as a sort of moral contagion. In many there prevailed a tone of philosophic scepticism, even yet more gravely injurious. False opinions were supported by the example and eloquence of fine scholars and great intellects, and few could enter such an atmosphere, and be subjected to such an influence, without at least losing some of the instincts of faith. The habits of expense, rendered fashionable by wealthy students, brought poverty, the scholar’s ancient and honourable badge, into disrepute, and encouraged an eagerness for offices and benefices. The office of teaching itself lost something of its ancient nobility when made a means of ministering to cupidity and ambition; for it must be owned there were few Wolfgangs to be found at Paris or Bologna. And as avarice and sensuality became the predominant vices of those out of whose ranks the future clergy were to be formed, what wonder that the two centuries which followed the rise of these brilliant and captivating academies should be filled with complaints of clerical corruption; that the salt of the earth should have lost its savour, and that abuses accumulated which cried loudly for reform?