[173] Post, Chapter XXXVI., I.
[174] For a successor or friendly rival to Chartres, in the interest taken in grammar and classical literature, one should properly look to Orleans, where apparently those studies continued to flourish. Cf. L. Delisle, “Les Écoles d’Orléans au douzième siècle,” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Societé de l’Histoire de France, t. vii. (1869), p. 139 sqq. In a Bataille des septs arts, by Henri d’Andeli, of the first half of the thirteenth century, Logic, from its stronghold of Paris, vanquishes Grammar, whose stronghold is Orleans. In the conflict, with much symbolic truth, Aristotle overthrows Priscian, Histoire littéraire de la France, t. xxiii. p. 225.
[175] Post, Chapter XXXVII.
[176] See post, Chapter XLI. and XLII. for the work of Grosseteste.
[177] Cf. post, Chapter XXXIII. and XXXVII.
[178] Cf. Specht, Geschichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland, etc. (Stuttgard, 1885), p. 75 and passim.
Yet how soon and with what childish prattle youths might begin to speak and write Latin is touchingly shown by a boy’s letter, written from a monastic school, to his parents. It just asks for various little things, and its superscription is: “Parentibus suis A. agnus ablactatus pium balatum”: which seems to mean: “To his parents, A, a weaned lamb, sends a loving bah.” This and other curious little letters are ascribed to one Robertus Metensis (cir. A.D. 900) (Migne 132, col. 533).
[179] See Thurot, Histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge; Notices et extraits des MSS. vol. 22, part 2, p. 85. For what is said in the preceding and following pages the writer’s obligations are deep to this well-known work of Thurot, and to Reichling’s edition of the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villa-Dei (Mon. Germ. paedagogica, XII., Berlin, 1893). Paetow’s Arts Course at Medieval Universities (University of Illinois, 1910) treats learnedly of these matters.
[180] See Thurot, o.c. p. 204 sqq.
[181] Regere, a mediaeval term not used in this sense by Priscian.