The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

77. Causes of the Ignorance of the Middle Age.—What were the permanent causes of that situation which lasted for ten centuries? The Catholic Church has sometimes been held responsible for this. Doubtless the Christian doctors did not always profess a very warm sympathy for intellectual culture. Saint Augustine had said: “It is the ignorant who gain possession of heaven (indocti cœlum rapiunt).” Saint Gregory the Great, a pope of the sixth century, declared that he would blush to have the holy word conform to the rules of grammar. Too many Christians, in a word, confounded ignorance with holiness. Doubtless, towards the seventh century, the darkness still hung thick over the Christian Church. Barbarians invaded the Episcopate, and carried with them their rude manners. Doubtless, also, during the feudal period the priest often became soldier, and remained ignorant. It would, however, be unjust to bring a constructive charge against the Church of the Middle Age, and to represent it as systematically hostile to instruction. Directly to the contrary, it is the clergy who, in the midst of the general barbarism, preserved some vestiges of the ancient culture. The only schools of that period are the episcopal and claustral schools, the first annexed to the bishops’ palaces, the second to the monasteries. The religious orders voluntarily associated manual labor with mental labor. As far back as 530, Saint Benedict founded the convent of Monte Cassino, and drew up statutes which made reading and intellectual labor a part of the daily life of the monks.

In 1179, the third Lateran Council promulgated the following decree:—

“The Church of God, being obliged like a good and tender mother to provide for the bodily and spiritual wants of the poor, desirous to procure for poor children the opportunity for learning to read, and for making advancement in study, orders that each cathedral shall have a teacher charged with the gratuitous instruction of the clergy of that church, and also of the indigent scholars, and that he be assigned a benefice, which, sufficient for his subsistence, may thus open the door of the school to the studious youth. A tutor[64] shall be installed in the other churches and in the monasteries where formerly there were funds set apart for this purpose.”

It is not, then, to the Church that we must ascribe the general intellectual torpor of the Middle Age. Other causes explain that long slumber of the human mind. The first is the social condition of the people. Security and leisure, the indispensable conditions for study, were completely lacking to people always at war, overwhelmed in succession by the barbarians, the Normans, the English, and by the endless struggles of feudal times. The gentlemen of the time aspired only to ride, to hunt, and to figure in tournaments and feats of arms. Physical education was above all else befitting men whose favorite vocation, both by habit and necessity, was war. On the other hand, the enslaved people did not suspect the utility of instruction. In order to comprehend the need of study, that great liberator, one must already have tasted liberty. In a society where the need of instruction had not yet been felt, who could have taken the initiative in the work of instructing the people?

Let us add that the Middle Age presented still other conditions unfavorable for the propagation of instruction, in particular, the lack of national languages, those necessary vehicles of education. The vernacular languages are the instruments of intellectual emancipation. Among a people where a dead language is supreme, a language of the learned, accessible only to the select few, the lower classes necessarily remain buried in ignorance. Moreover, Latin books themselves were rare. Lupus of Ferrières was obliged to write to Rome, and to address himself to the Pope in person, in order to procure for his use a work of Cicero’s. Without books, without schools, without any of the indispensable implements of intellectual labor, what could be done for the mental life? It took refuge in certain monasteries; erudition flourished only in narrow circles, with a privileged few, and the rest of the nation remained buried in an obscure night.

78. The Three Renascences.—It has been truly said that there were three Renascences: the first, which owed its beginning to Charlemagne, and whose brilliancy did not last; the second, that of the twelfth century, the issue of which was Scholasticism; and the third, the great Renaissance of the sixteenth century, which still lasts, and which the French Revolution has completed.

79. Charlemagne.—Charlemagne undoubtedly formed the purpose of diffusing instruction about him. He ardently sought it for himself, drilled himself in writing, and learned Latin and Greek, rhetoric and astronomy. He would have communicated to all who were about him the same ardor for study. “Ah! that I had twelve clerics,” he exclaimed, “as perfectly instructed as were Jerome and Augustine!” It was naturally upon the clergy that he counted, to make of them the instruments of his plans; but, as one of his capitularies of 788 shows, there was need that the clergy themselves should be reminded of the need of instruction: “We have thought it useful that, in the bishops’ residences, and in the monasteries, care be taken not only to live according to the rules of our holy religion, but, in addition, to teach the knowledge of letters to those who are capable of learning them by the aid of our Lord. Although it avails more to practise the law than to know it, it must be known before it can be practised. Several monasteries having sent us manuscripts, we have observed that, in the most of them, the sentiments were good, but the language bad. We exhort you, then, not only not to neglect the study of letters, but to devote yourselves to them with all your power.”

On the other hand, the nobles did not make any great effort to justify their social rank by the degree of their knowledge. One day, as Charlemagne entered a school, displeased with the indolence and the ignorance of the young barons who attended it, he addressed them in these severe terms: “Do you count upon your birth, and do you feel a pride in it? Take notice that you shall have neither government nor bishoprics, if you are not better instructed than others.”

80. Alcuin (735-804).—Charlemagne was seconded in his efforts by Alcuin of England, of whom it might be said, that he was the first minister of public instruction in France. It is he who founded the Palatine school, a sort of imperial and itinerant academy which followed the court on its travels. It was a model school, where Alcuin had for his pupils the four sons and two daughters of Charlemagne, and Charlemagne himself, always eager to be instructed.