19. The teachers in the universities were at first paid for their services by the students. At a later period, the magistrates of the town or city where the institution was located, made presents to eminent scholars, to induce them to remain. This practice finally led to the payment of regular salaries. From and after the fourteenth century, universities were not left to grow up of themselves as formerly, but were expressly established by public authorities or by the popes.
20. The inactivity and luxury of the clergy, had led to the neglect of the old seminaries of learning. The universities were therefore necessary, not only to revive the taste for science and literature, but also to form a new body of teachers. These institutions, however, at length became subject to undue clerical influence, since the monks obtained admission into them as teachers, and then labored to increase the importance of their several orders, as well as the power of the Roman pontiff.
21. The monks, also, connected, with their convents, popular schools, and undertook the education of the children in the cities. But their method of instruction was exceedingly defective, since the intelligent investigation of the subjects studied was little encouraged, and since the memory of the pupils was brought into requisition to the almost entire exclusion of the other faculties of the mind.
22. In the lower parish schools, the children were not permitted to learn to write, the monks being desirous of confining to the clergy the practice of this art, which was very lucrative before the invention of printing. The art was called ars clericalis; and, for a long time, the privilege of establishing writing schools for the children of citizens, was a matter of negotiation between the magistrates and the clergy.
23. But the citizens becoming, at length, more independent, the magistrates themselves began to superintend the education of youth. Trivial schools were established, in which the trivium, and reading and writing, were taught; but for these, as well as for the cathedral and parish schools, which had been neglected for some time by the higher clergy, itinerant monks and students were employed as teachers.
24. The elder pupils of the highest class frequently wandered from one school to another, under the pretence of pursuing their studies, sometimes taking with them younger scholars, whom they compelled to beg or steal, in order to supply their wants. As late as the sixteenth century, Luther complains that these vacantivi (or idlers) were the persons chiefly employed as schoolmasters in Germany.
25. A pious fraternity, called Jeronymites, consisting of clergymen and laymen, who lived together, and occupied themselves partly in mechanic arts, and partly in the instruction of youth, exerted considerable influence on education in general. They first established themselves in Italy, and afterwards in the Netherlands, on the Rhine, and in Northern Germany.
26. Much was done during the last half of the fourteenth century, and in the one hundred years that followed, to encourage the study of the ancient classics. The attention of literary men was turned to these interesting remains of antiquity by the arrival of many learned Greeks, who had fled from Turkish oppression, and who had brought with them the ancient writings.
27. These treasures of former civilization were unfolded to the modern world by the art of printing, which was invented in 1441; and the reformation, which commenced in 1517, also aided the advancement of education. The corporations of the German cities in which the reformed religion was received, founded seminaries, called gymnasia, and lyceums, with permanent professorships. A vast amount of property, belonging to the convents and the Church, was confiscated by the governments, and appropriated chiefly to the promotion of education.
28. The schools in the countries which adhered to the Roman Catholic religion, however, continued in nearly the same state, until the Jesuit schools arose, towards the end of the sixteenth century. These, on account of the ability with which they were conducted, soon gained the ascendency, and for a long time maintained their reputation; but they, at length, degenerated, and finally became extinct, on the suppression of the order of Jesuits in 1773.