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

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

Brawls of this sort make up a very large portion of early Oxford history. Here, as at Paris, the division of “nations” was a fruitful source of squabbling. Northerns and Southerns, Welshmen, Englishmen, and Irishmen, fought pitched battles, one with another, on all available opportunities; and the Jews, whose audacity reached an incredible height, did their best to add another element of discord by disturbing the scholars at their prayers. We need not enter into the history of these strange disturbances. The Irish seem to have exhibited the greatest pugnacity, and obliged the magistrates to pass many wholesome laws for their correction and conversion to “more civil walking,” though, as it would seem, with very small success. The chief occasions on which the king’s peace was wont to be broken were the national festivals celebrated in honour of St. George, St. Patrick, and St. David; and at length it became necessary to forbid popular demonstrations on these days, under pain of the greater excommunication.

In this early period of the university history, the schools frequented by the scholars were of two kinds,—the secular schools ruled by masters who rented rooms in the houses and over the shops of the burghers, and the claustral schools, held in the various religious houses. As a general rule, the students were expected to know grammar before matriculating at the university, but in case they entered very young, or that their early education had been neglected, they could make up their deficiencies in the grammar schools, some of which were afterwards attached to colleges, for the benefit of the clerks and choristers connected with those institutions. Wood gives some interesting particulars about these grammar schools. He says they were placed by the chancellor under the supervision of some master of arts, to whom the grammar master promised obedience. He moreover engaged to read nothing with his scholars without license from the chancellor, to instruct them in Latin authors, and make them construe in French as well as English, and not to read certain portions of the Latin poets, which might be considered injurious to good morals. Degrees were at that time granted in grammar, as in other faculties. Thus, in the reign of Edward I., we find Maurice Byrchensaw graduating as bachelor of grammar and rhetoric, and composing, as his customary exercise on that occasion, a hundred verses in praise of the university, and thereupon having his head solemnly crowned with laurel.

Some of the illustrations which Wood has collected as to the state of studies at Oxford in ancient times, are sufficiently amusing. It seems that Lent was generally a time unfavourable to peace, by reason of the unusual amount of logical disputation, indulged in at that season by the scholars who were preparing for their degrees. Hence the king’s peace was very often broken over the discussion of quiddities, and the grammar students showed themselves equally pugnacious over the niceties of Latin syntax. Musical degrees were very often granted, the candidates being required to read the musical books of Boëthius, and on the day of inception to present a mass of their own composition, which was to be sung on the occasion, together with certain antiphons. The masses and antiphons were generally composed in two parts, up to the time of Henry VIII., who, being exceedingly skilful in musical science, was able, not only to sing his part sure, but to compose masses in four, five, and even six parts, which more complicated style of composition thus came into fashion at the university.

The Oxford scholars often complained of the grievance of having to attend the schools on festival days, and presented more than one poetical petition to the ruling powers that they might have a little breathing space, at least on the greater feasts. And certainly, if we may take the account given us at a considerably later period as furnishing any notion of the life of a poor scholar of the thirteenth century, it was one of hard work and little comfort. It occurs in a sermon preached at Cambridge in the middle of the sixteenth century, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St John’s, and has been preserved by the historian Strype. There is every reason to suppose that the picture which he gives would apply as well to the reign of the First as to that of the Sixth Edward; substituting the hearing of Mass for the attendance of common prayer. “There be divers which rise daily about four or five of the clock in the morning, and from five to six use common prayer in a common chapel; and from six till ten of the clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereat they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the said beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender diet they be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in the evening; whereat they have a supper not much better than their dinner. Immediately after which they go either to reasoning in problems or to some other study until it be nine or ten o’clock; and then, being without fires, they are fain to walk, or run up and down half an hour, to get a heat on their feet when they go to bed.”

At the opening of the thirteenth century, then, we find England possessed of schools and universities, the value of which was felt both at home and abroad, and which had already produced several men of eminence. Among these was Giraldus Cambrensis, the Welsh historian, who received his early education in the school of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David’s; after which he passed on to Paris, which city he twice revisited and lectured there on polite literature. Giraldus was one of those who deeply deplored the preference then given to law and logic over classical studies, and laboured hard to keep alive a better taste among his contemporaries. The second time he went to Paris he assures us the doctors and scholars were never weary of listening to him, being thoroughly bewitched by the sweetness of his voice and the elegance of his language. Henry II. summoned him to court, and appointed him his chaplain and tutor to Prince John, with whom he travelled into Ireland, the result of which expedition was seen in his two works, the “Topography” and the “Conquest” of Ireland. Then he accompanied Archbishop Baldwin in his progress through Wales and the western counties of England, preaching the Crusade, and has given a description of this journey also in his “Itinerary.” It was performed on foot, and its difficulties are described with a graphic, and, sometimes, a poetic pen. We see the weary travellers making their way through the mountain ravines near Bangor, till the poor archbishop is forced at last to sit down and rest on an oak tree torn up by the winds and lying by the wayside. As he converses with his followers, the sweet notes of a bird are heard from an adjoining thicket. Is it a thrush or a nightingale? “The nightingale is never heard in Wales,” observes one. “Is she not? Then she has followed wise counsel never to come into Wales,” replies the archbishop, “whilst we, following unwise counsel, are going right through it.” What an exquisite picture is that which he gives of the Vale of Llanthony, where the monks, as they sit in the cloister of their abbey, have but to raise their eyes from their books in order to behold the pleasant prospect of mountains ascending on all sides to a great height, and may watch the deer peacefully grazing on the verdant slopes. In old times, he adds, a hermitage stood on this spot, with no other ornament than green moss and ivy. One sees in passages like these that artistic love of beauty which is one of the marked characteristics of our early writers.[244] In 1179 we find Giraldus at Oxford, where he recited his “Topography” before the university, dividing it into three parts and assigning a separate day to each. On each day there was a great feast—the first day for the poor, the second for the doctors, the third for the scholars and burghers. The entertainment, he says, was worthy of classic times, and its like had never before been seen in England.

By far the greater number of the literary men, however, who flourished in England at this time were monks, and the pupils of monks. Such were the historians William of Malmsbury, Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, Roger Wendover, Matthew of Westminster, Eadmer of Canterbury, and many more. Some of them indeed had graduated at the universities before assuming the monk’s cowl, like Simeon of Durham, who lectured on natural philosophy at Oxford, “diving into the hidden recesses of nature,” during the reign of Stephen. In England, as elsewhere, not a few of those who in early life had won their doctor’s cap in the schools, grew weary of the vanity which they found there, and took refuge in the cloister. It seems idle to speak of men whose names are now known only to the curious, yet, in their own day, who was more thought of than Robert de Bertune, “the Oxford clerk,” as Gervase calls him, who died Bishop of Hereford, and whose sanctity of life caused some steps to be taken to procure his canonisation? Or Thomas of Marleberg, who, after teaching canon law at Oxford, Paris, and Exeter, retired to Evesham, bringing with him all the books he had used in the schools, and became first prior and then abbot of his monastery. His doctor’s library included one book of Democritus, the Gradual of Constantine, St. Isidore’s Offices, several of the works of Cicero, Lucan, and Juvenal, together with a valuable collection of MS. notes, sermons, and questions on theology. There were, besides, other notes and rules on the art of grammar, and a book concerning accents. During his government he caused a great number of useful books to be copied out and bound, and bought a fine collection of the books of Scripture, with their accompanying gloss. Evesham always retained its character for learning, and there, as well as at Reading, St. Alban’s, Ramsey, and Glastonbury, a great number of excellent scholars were reared. There can be no doubt that the monastic schools of England continued to cultivate humane letters long after they had fallen into neglect at the universities. The Latin poets who flourished in England in the twelfth century are noticed with respect by all critics; and the epic poem of “Antiocheis,” composed by Joseph of Exeter, after his return from the Holy Land, whither he accompanied King Richard I., is declared by Warton to be “a miracle of classic composition.” He also praises the elegant versification of Henry of Huntingdon, Robert of Dunstable, Lawrence of Durham, and others, all of whom were monks. None of these English Latinists condescended to the barbarism of Leonine rhymes, which they probably regarded with much the same feeling that Bede expressed for the “songs of vulgar poets.” One and all did their utmost to uphold the rules of prosody, and rejoiced in the solemn protest put forth by their countryman, Geoffrey de Vinsauf, against the corruption of pure Latinity.

Henry of Huntingdon, named above among our Latin poets, and equally distinguished as an historian, was altogether a scholar of monastic training. He received his education in the school of Ramsey, a monastery which enjoyed the reputation of having none but learned men for its abbots. The library collected by them was the richest in the kingdom. The catalogue may still be seen among the Cottonian MSS., and contains, besides books of more ordinary occurrence, the works of Aristotle, Plato, Sallust, Terrence, Martial, Ovid, Lucan, Horace, Virgil, and Prudentius. There was also a Hebrew Bible, and Hebraic literature was cultivated by many of the monks. When the Jews were banished from England, a great number of their books were sold, and the monks largely possessed themselves of these treasures. A great sale of Rabbinical MSS. took place at Huntingdon and Stamford, when Geoffrey, prior of Ramsey, made large purchases, and used the books he thus procured to such good purpose as to become a great adept in the Hebrew language, and communicate similar tastes to many of his brethren. Even down to the middle of the thirteenth century, notices occur of Hebrew scholars among the monks and librarians of Ramsey, and one of them, Lawrence Holbech by name, is spoken of as compiling a Hebrew Lexicon.

Great work at this time went on in the English scriptoria, and a pleasant sort of barter was practised among the different abbeys, by means of which each was supplied with the goods most to their liking. Thus brother Henry, of Hyde Abbey, wrote out with his own hand the works of Boëthius, Suetonius, Terence, and Claudian, which he exchanged with a prior of St Swithin’s, who had a more classical taste than himself, for four missals and a copy of St. Gregory on the pastoral care. All the monks of Hyde Abbey were good writers and illuminators, and were taught to bind their books with much care. In 1240 the library of Glastonbury contained four hundred books, and among them were the chief Latin classics. At Edmondsbury the scriptorium was endowed with two mills, and at Ely the revenues of two churches were granted to the monks “for the making of books.” At Peterborough Abbey the library at the time of the dissolution contained 1700 manuscripts. And at Tavistock, besides the ordinary school and library, there existed another school in which the Anglo Saxon language was taught, for the purpose of enabling the monks to decipher their own ancient charters. But Tavistock was not the only religious house in which the old English tongue continued to be studied. In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is still preserved a Latin Psalter after two versions, each version written in a separate column. Over the lines of one column runs an Anglo-Saxon translation, and over those of the other one in Anglo-Norman. The writing is exquisite, and the whole manuscript is richly illuminated, containing several historical paintings, together with the portrait of Eadmer, the monk of Canterbury, who wrote it out in the reign of Stephen. He holds in his hand a metal pen, and an inscription over his head records his caligraphic skill. He is, moreover, found worthy to be noted in the library catalogue as mighty in the art of transcription, and from his name is considered to have been of Saxon lineage.