CATHEDRAL AND HIGHER MONASTIC SCHOOLS. As the song schools developed the cathedral schools were of course freed from the necessity of teaching reading and writing, and could then develop more advanced instruction. This they did, as did many of the monasteries, and to these advanced schools those who felt the need for more training went. As grammar was, throughout all the early part of the Middle Ages, the first and most important subject of instruction, the advanced schools came to be known as grammar schools, as well as cathedral or episcopal schools (R. 72). The cathedral churches and monasteries of England and France early became celebrated for the high character of their instruction (R. 71) and the type of scholars they produced. All these schools, though, suffered a serious set-back during the period of the Danish and Norman invasions, many being totally destroyed. On the continent, due to the greater deluge of barbarism and the more unsettled condition of society, more difficulty was experienced in getting cathedral schools established, as the following decree of the Lateran Church Council of 826 indicates:
Complaints have been made that in some places no masters nor endowment for a grammar school is found. Therefore all bishops shall bestow all care and diligence, both for their subjects and for other places in which it shall be found necessary, to establish masters and teachers who shall assiduously teach grammar schools and the principles of the liberal arts, because in these chiefly the commandments of God are manifest and declared.
These two types of advanced schools—the cathedral or episcopal and the monastic—formed what might be called the secondary-school system of the early Middle Ages (Rs. 70, 71). They were for at least six hundred years the only advanced teaching institutions in western Europe, and out of one or the other of these two types of advanced schools came practically all those who attained to leadership in the service of the Church in either of its two great branches. Still more, out of the impetus given to advanced study by the more important of these schools, the universities of a later period developed; and numerous private gifts of lands and money were made to establish grammar schools to supplement the work done by the cathedral and other large church schools.
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS. The advanced studies which were offered in the more important monastery and cathedral schools comprised what came to be known as The Seven Liberal Arts [2] of the Middle Ages. The knowledge contained in these studies, taught as the advanced instruction of the period, represents the amount of secular learning which was intentionally preserved by the Church from neglect and destruction during the period of the barbarian deluges and the reconstruction of society.
These Seven Liberal Arts were comprised of two divisions, known as:
I. THE TRIVIUM: (1) Grammar; (2) Rhetoric; (3) Dialectic (Logic).
II. THE QUADRIVIUM: (4) Arithmetic; (5) Geometry; (6) Astronomy; (7) Music.
[Illustration: FIG. 44. THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED
Allegorical representation of the progress and degrees of education, from
an illuminated picture in the 1508 (Basel) edition of the Margarita
Philosophica of Gregory de Reisch.
The youth, having mastered the Hornbook (ABC's) and the rudiments of learning (reading, writing, and the beginnings of music and numbers), advances toward the temple of knowledge. Wisdom is about to place the key in the lock of the door of the temple. On the door is written the word congruitas, signifying Grammar. ("Gramaire first hath for to teche to speke upon congruite.") On the first and second floors of the temple he studies the Grammar of Donatus, and of Priscian, and at the first stage at the left on the third floor he studies the Logic of Aristotle, followed by the Rhetoric and Poetry of Tully, thus completing the Trivium. The Arithmetic of Boethius also appears on the third floor. On the fourth floor he completes the studies of the Quadrivium, taking in order the Music of Pythagoras, Euclid's Geometry, and Ptolemy's Astronomy. The student now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying successively Physics, Seneca's Morals, and the Theology (or Metaphysics) of Peter Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been directed.]
Beyond these came Ethics or Metaphysics, and the greatest of all studies, Theology. This last represented the one professional study of the early middle-age period, and was the goal toward which all the preceding studies had tended. This mediaeval system of education is well summarized in the drawing given on the opposite page, taken from an illuminated picture inserted in a famous mediaeval manuscript, recopied at Basle, Switzerland, in 1508.