1. Theological. Elementary instruction in the Psalms and church music, but no systematic training in theology,—just enough training to enable the priest to understand the Bible and the Church Fathers.
2. Secular training. Knowledge in the “Seven Liberal Arts,” i. e. the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and the more advanced quadrivium,—music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. These names are suggestive of a vast amount of knowledge, while, in truth, very little was known or taught in these subjects. Astronomy and arithmetic were employed to find the time of Easter. Geometry included some propositions of Euclid without demonstrations. Music included plain song and a mystic doctrine of number. More was made of grammar, the study of rhetoric from Latin classics, and dialectics. Dialectics was logic in the Middle Ages, and its mysteries fascinated the mediæval man. But even in logic there were only some remnants of the Aristotelian logic known.
A Mediæval Library. Here again is an interestingquestion: What did this mediæval churchman read? But we must make a distinction between books most commonly read, books that the scholars might use, and books most influential upon thought.
1. Books most commonly read. These would be the text-books used in instruction. They are as follows:—
The Psalms.
The Grammar of Donatus.
The Christian poets: Prudentius, Psychomachia; Juvencus, Gospels in Verse; Sedulius, Easter Hymn.
Dionysius Cato, Disticha de Moribus, a collection of proverbs (moral maxims) in rhyming couplets.
Virgil, Ovid, and the rhetorical works of Cicero.
Æsop’s Fables (in Latin).