Nor were even the elementary schools neglected at the close of the Middle Ages in most parts of the German Empire. Fresh accounts of such schools, in both town and country, are constantly cropping up to-day in the local histories. Constant efforts for their improvement and multiplication were made at this time. About a hundred regulations and charters of schools either in German, or in Dutch, dating from 1400-1521 have been traced. The popular religious handbooks were zealous in advocating the education of the people.[111] Luther himself tells us it was the custom to stir up the schoolmasters to perform their duty by saying that “to neglect a scholar is as bad as to seduce a maid.”[112]
Luther’s Success
Did Luther, by means of the efforts described above, succeed in bringing about any real improvement in the schools, particularly the Latin schools? The affirmative cannot be maintained. At least it was a long time before the reform which he desiderated came, and what reform took place seems to have been the result less of Luther’s exhortations than of Melanchthon’s labours.
On the whole his hopes were disappointed. The famous saying of Erasmus: “Wherever Lutheranism prevails, there we see the downfall of learning,”[113] remained largely true throughout the 16th century, in spite of all Luther’s efforts.
Schiele says: Where Melanchthon’s school-regulations for the Saxon Electorate were enforced without alteration, Latin alone was taught, “but neither German nor Greek nor Hebrew,” that the pupils might not be overtaxed. Instruction in history and mathematics was not insisted on at all. Bugenhagen added the rudiments of Greek and mathematics. Only about twenty years after Luther’s “An die Radherrn” do we hear something of attempts being made to improve matters in the Lutheran districts. As a rule all that was done even in the large towns was to amalgamate several moribund schools and give them a new charter. “Even towns like Nuremberg and Frankfurt were unable, in spite of the greatest sacrifices, to introduce a well-ordered system into the schools. The two most eminent, practical pedagogues of the time, Camerarius and Micyllus, could not check the decline of their council schools.”[114]
Nuremberg, the highly praised home of culture, may here be taken as a case in point, because it was to the syndic of this city that Luther addressed his second writing, praising the new Protestant gymnasium which had been established there (above, p. 6). Yet, in 1530, after it had been in existence some years, this same syndic, Lazarus Spengler, sadly wrote: “Are there not any intelligent Christians who would not be highly distressed that in a few short years, not Latin only, but all other useful languages and studies have fallen into such contempt? Nobody, alas, will recognise the great misfortune which, as I fear, we shall soon suffer, and which even now looms in sight.”[115] In the Gymnasium, which he had so much at heart, instruction was given free owing to the rich foundations, nevertheless but very few pupils were found to attend it. Eobanus Hessus, who was to have lent his assistance to promoting the cause of Humanism, left the town again in 1533. When Hessus before this complained to Erasmus that he had given offence to the town by his complaints of the low standard to which the school had fallen (above, p. 32), the latter replied in 1531, that he had received his information from the learned Pirkheimer and other friends of the professors there. He had indeed written that learning seemed to be only half alive there, in fact, at its last gasp, but he had done so in order by publishing the truth to spur them on to renewed zeal. “This I know, that at Liège and Paris learning is flourishing as much as ever. Whence then comes this torpor? From the negligence of those who boast of being Evangelicals. Besides, you Nurembergers have no reason to think yourselves particularly offended by me, for such complaints are to be heard from the lips of every honest man of every town where the Evangelicals rule.”[116] Camerarius, whom Melanchthon wished to be the soul of the school, turned his back on it in 1535 on account of the hopeless state of things. J. Poliander said in 1540: In Nuremberg, that populous and well-built city, there are rich livings and famous professors, but owing to the lack of students the institution there has dwindled away. “The lecturers left it, which caused much disgrace and evil talk to the people of Nuremberg, as everybody knows.”[117] When Melanchthon stayed for a while at Nuremberg in 1552 by order of the Elector, the Gymnasium was a picture of desolation. In the school regulations issued by the magistrates the pupils were reproached with contempt of divine service, blasphemy, persistent defiance of school discipline, etc., and with being “barbarous, rude, wild, wanton, bestial and sinful.” Camerarius even wrote from Leipzig advising the town-council to break up the school.[118]
There is no doubt that in other districts where Lutheranism prevailed Latin schools were to be found where good discipline reigned and where masters and pupils alike worked with zeal; the records, however, have far more to say of the decline.
Many statements of contemporaries well acquainted with the facts speak most sadly of the then conditions. Melanchthon complained more and more that shortsighted Lutheran theologians stood in the way of the progress of the schools. Camerarius, in a letter to George Fabricius, rector of Meissen, said in 1555 that it was plain everything was conspiring for the destruction of Germany, that religion, learning, discipline and honesty were doomed. As one of the principal causes he instances “the neglect and disgust shown for that learning, which, in reality, is the glory and ornament of man.” “It is looked upon as tomfoolery and a thing fit only for children to play with.” “Education, and life in general, too, has become quite other from what we were accustomed to in our boyhood.” Of the Catholic times he speaks with enthusiasm: “What zeal at one time inspired the students and in what honour was learning held; what hardships men were ready to endure in order to acquire but a modicum of scholarship is still to-day a matter of tradition. Now, on the other hand, learned studies are so little thought of owing to civil disturbances and inward dissensions that it is only here and there that they have escaped complete destruction.”[119]
What he says is abundantly confirmed by the accounts of the failure of educational effort at Augsburg, Esslingen, Basle, Stuttgart, Tübingen, Ansbach, Heilbronn and many other towns.
The efforts made were, however, not seldom ill-advised. If it be really a fact that the Latin “Colloquia” of Erasmus, which Luther himself had condemned for its frivolity, “played a principal part in the education of the schoolboys,”[120] then, indeed, it is not surprising that the results did not reach expectations. The crude polemics against the olden Church and the theological controversies associated with the names of Luther and Melanchthon, which penetrated into the schools owing to the squabbles of the professors and preachers, also had a bad effect. Again education was hampered by being ever subordinated to the interests of a “pure faith” which was regarded as its mainstay, but which was itself ever changing its shape and doctrines.[121]