‘At the time when the studies of the monastery of Lérins flourished in the regions of Gaul, the Christian religion ... began to grow everywhere and to commit itself to the study of letters. In this place there was an excellent abbot, a holy man, Caesarius, the servant of Christ, who afterwards became bishop of Arles.’ Amid the general flocking of people to Lérins for education or edification (‘cumque ad eum omnes unanimiter concurrerent pro salute animarum sive studiis litterarum’), there came an Italian soldier and his son Siffredus, earnestly craving admittance. The soldier became a monk, and his son was put to school (‘filius vero litterarum studiis traditur’), and in a short time he attained proficiency in ‘grammar’, rhetoric, and dialectic.
Similarly, Salvian sends a fellow countryman of his to be educated at Lérins,[1038] and we may judge from the Regula of Caesarius that many boys went there for instruction. Laymen were not excluded. In 480 St. Melanius attended a school at Rennes controlled by priests, yet apparently attached to no monastery.[1039] That such semi-theological schools existed in Gaul, at least from the beginning of the fifth century, we may judge from the fact that the sons of Eucherius, Veranius and Salonius, were taught at Lérins in subjects religious and profane[1040] during the first years of that century.[1041] Not unjustifiable, therefore, is the statement of Barralis that Lérins was ‘litterarum et virtutis emporium’.[1042]
But while the existence of Christian schools cannot be questioned, their extent and organization in Gaul during the fifth century are vague and undefined. St. Benedict’s example had not yet brought about an ordered system of monasteries, and there was still much that was erratic and irregular. Though the leaders of the Church in the main allowed the use of pagan studies in Christian teaching, yet in practice the methods employed must have depended on the sympathy and the inclination of the autonomous abbot. Now where an abbot had enjoyed a rhetorical training, we can hardly doubt that he imparted it to his pupils: for it requires a great deal of intellectual development in a master not to teach as he has been taught. But only a certain proportion of abbots could have had this training. There were many brilliant monks, many perhaps of whose distinction we do not know. But they could not have directed all the monasteries of fifth-century Gaul. The temper of the people, too, was all against literary studies. The number, therefore, of such schools as Lérins, in which secular and religious studies were simultaneously kept up, was probably not large. In the following century the division between secular and religious schools became progressively marked, chiefly owing to the influence of Cassiodorus. The division between one Christian school and another was naturally far from rigid; we read of Honoratus sending three of his scholars at Lérins to hear the lectures of Paulinus at Nola.[1043]
The children who came to the monastery schools were of two kinds: the oblati,[1044] who remained and became monks, and those who attended the schola exterior and lived a secular life after their education. The age at which they were admitted was an early one. Ennodius says that Epiphanius became a ‘lector’ at eight,[1045] and Sidonius that Bishop John of Châlons-sur-Marne was ‘lector ab infantia.’[1046] Nunneries, like the one at Arles, took children at six or seven—‘ab annis sex aut septem, quae iam litteras discere et obedientiae possit obtemperare’.[1047]
Classes were generally held in the body of the church (in inferiori Basilicae navi[1048]) and the twenty-fourth canon of the fourth Council of Toledo (seventh century) probably represents the regular practice of our period. It provides that the children of the clergy should all be kept in one room to be trained in the ways of the Church, and that they should be entrusted to a senior person of approved character who was to give them both moral and intellectual instruction.[1049]
We hear of a head master variously called in later times ‘Scholasticus’, ‘scholaster’, ‘capischola’ (caput scholae) ‘Decanus’, ‘Cancellarius’. ‘Cum igitur Levitas feceris’, wrote Remigius, ‘Archidiaconum institueris Primicerium scholae clarissimae.’[1050] A sixth-century inscription of Lyons[1051] reads: ‘In hoc tomolo requiescit famolus D̅I̅ Stefanus primicirius scolae lectorum....’
Private teaching, which had always gone side by side with the schools, increased in the fifth century among Christian parents for three reasons: the opposition of pagan to Christian education, which, amid the unorganized state of the monastery schools, often forced home-education upon parents; the fact that the pagan schools catered chiefly for the upper classes and that Christianity was now inspiring the masses with a desire for instruction; and the influence of the monastic ideal which shunned public contact for fear of contamination.
In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school, which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century, set up a school at Antinoe (Antinoopolis), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ ... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052] Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method, which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be the more profitable.
Reading was a specially important subject on account of the ‘lectores’ who read the lessons in church. Originally they were charged with the reading of Scriptures, but later their duties became more general. The ‘lectores’ formed the second of the minor orders, and the office demanded a certain amount of education, though sometimes the ‘lectores’ seem to have been no more than choir boys. Isidore of Seville states that any one who is promoted to this office must be trained in books and learning, and well equipped with a knowledge of words and their meanings.[1059] The eighth canon of the fourth Council of Carthage describes the solemn ordination of a ‘lector’.[1060] Sometimes qualifications of birth and rank added to the dignity of the office. Julian, the emperor, and his brother Gallus were admitted as readers into the church of Nicomedia, and Paulinus of Nola tells us that St. Felix was a ‘lector’.[1061] The readers stood, as has been indicated, under a ‘primicerius’, who was also the head of all the minor orders. ‘Ad primicerium’, said Gregory, ‘pertinent acolythi et exorcistae, psalmistae atque lectores.’[1062]
On the teaching of writing Jerome again follows Quintilian in recommending a tracing of the letters on the wax for the help of the pupil.[1063] ‘Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere, vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli, vel in tabella sculpantur elementa ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur vestigia....’[1064] These wax-tablets, dating from ancient Roman times, go on into the eleventh century.[1065] Copying was, of course, an important part in the monastic writing activities, and Sulpicius Severus says that it was assigned to the ‘brethren of younger years’.[1066] Such was the importance attached to it, that in the less advanced cloisters, like that of Martin, no other art was practised.[1067] Even the nuns practised it. We find Caesarius exhorting them to vary their reading and psalm singing with transcribing, under the supervision of the abbess,[1068] and it was so that Rusticula, abbess of Arles, trained her nuns.[1069]