Result of universal language
Again it is well to remember that there was a deep design in making the Latin tongue universal. It was one of the ways by which the papacy kept its control of all nations and tongues. Draper explains it thus:—
“The unity of the church, and, therefore, its power, required the use of Latin as a sacred language. Through this Rome had stood in an attitude strictly European, and was enabled to maintain a general international relation. It gave her far more power than her asserted celestial authority.... Their officials could pass without difficulty into every nation, and communicate without embarrassment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scotland.”[87]
Fables and traditions of men
The character of the youth was formed, says Painter, from memorizing “the fables of Æsop and collections of maxims and proverbs. After this, Virgil was usually the text-book, and was handled in the same style.”
Studies of Monastic schools
Of the monastic schools Mosheim says: “In most of the schools, the so-called seven liberal arts were taught. The pupil commenced with grammar, then proceeded to rhetoric, and afterward to logic or dialectics. Having thus mastered the Trivium, as it was called, those who aspired to greater attainments proceeded with slow steps through the Quadrivium [88]
Says Painter: “Seven years were devoted to the completion of the course in liberal arts [the Trivium and the Quadrivium].... Dialectic or logic was based somewhat remotely on the writings of Aristotle. At a later period, logic was rigidly applied to the development of theology, and gave rise to a class of scholars called the schoolmen.... Arithmetic was imperfectly taught, importance being attached to the supposed secret properties of numbers. Geometry was taught in an abridged form, while astronomy did not differ materially from astrology. The study of music consisted chiefly in learning to chant the hymns of the church.”[89]
Greater emphasis on logic