The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

69. The New Spirit of Christianity.—By its dogmas, by the conception of the equality of all human creatures, by its spirit of charity, Christianity introduced new elements into the conscience, and seemed called to give a powerful impetus to the moral education of men. The doctrine of Christ was at first a reaction of free will and of personal dignity against the despotism of the State. “A full half of man henceforth escaped the action of the State. Christianity taught that man no longer belonged to society except in part; that he was under allegiance to it by his body and his material interests; that being subject to a tyrant, he must submit; that as a citizen of a republic, he ought to give his life for it; but that in respect of his soul, he was free, and owed allegiance only to God.”[60] Henceforth it was not simply a question of training citizens for the service of the State; but the conception of a disinterested development of the human person made its appearance in the world. On the other hand, in proclaiming that all men had the same destiny, and that they were all equal in the sight of God, Christianity raised the poor and the disinherited from their condition of misery, and promised them all the same instruction. To the idea of liberty was added that of equality; and equal justice for all, and participation in the same rights, were contained in germ in the doctrine of Christianity.

70. Poverty of the First Christian Centuries in Respect of Education.—Nevertheless, the germs contained in the doctrines of the new religion did not bear fruit at once. It is easy to analyze the causes which led to the poverty of educational thought during the first centuries of the Christian era.

In the first place, the Christian instruction was addressed to barbarous peoples who could not at once rise to a high intellectual and moral culture. According to the celebrated comparison of Jouffroy, the invasion of the barbarians into the midst of ancient society was like an armful of green wood thrown upon a blazing fire; at first there could issue from it only a mass of smoke.

Moreover, we must take into account the fact that the early Christians, in order to establish their faith, had to struggle against difficulties which were ever being renewed. The first centuries were a period of struggle, of conquest, and of organization, which left but little opportunity for the disinterested study of education. In their contests with the ancient world, the early Christians came to include in a common hatred classical literature and pagan religion. Could they receive with sympathy the literary and scientific inheritance of a society whose morals they repudiated, and whose beliefs they were bent on destroying?

On the other hand, the social condition of the men who first attached themselves to the new religion turned them aside from the studies which are a preparation for real life. Obliged to conceal themselves, to betake themselves to the desert, true Pariahs of the pagan world, they lived a life of contemplation; they were naturally led to conceive an ascetic and monastic existence as the ideal of education.

Moreover, by its mystical tendencies, Christianity at the first could not be a good school for a practical and humane system of education. The Christian was detached from the commonwealth of man, only to enter into the commonwealth of God. He must break with a corrupt and perverse world. By privations, and by the renunciation of every pleasure, he must react against the immorality of Græco-Roman society. Man must aspire to imitate God; and God is absolute holiness, the very negation of all the conditions of earthly life,—supreme perfection. The very disproportion between such an ideal and human weakness as an actual fact must have betrayed the early Christians into leading a mystical life which was but a preparation for death. And the consequence of these doctrines was to make of the Church the exclusive mistress of education and instruction. Individual initiative, if called into play, on the one hand, by the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, was stifled, on the other, under the domination of the Church.

71. The Fathers of the Church.—Of the celebrated doctors who, by their erudition and eloquence, if not by their taste, made illustrious the beginning of Christianity, some were jealous mystics and sectaries, in whose eyes philosophical curiosity was a sin, and the love of letters a heresy; and others were Christians of a conciliatory temperament, who, in a certain measure, allied religious faith and literary culture.

Tertullian rejected all pagan education. He saw in classical culture only a robbery from God; a road to the false and arrogant wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Even Saint Augustine, who in his youth could not read the fourth book of the Æneid without shedding tears, and who had been devotedly fond of ancient poetry and eloquence, renounced, after his conversion, his literary tastes as well as the mad passions of his early manhood. It was by his influence that the Council of Carthage forbade the bishops to read the pagan authors.