‘Quomodo accipiendum est quod legimus Regnum Dei intra vos est?’
‘Cum nulla esse ignorantia apud Deum possit, quomodo ipse in libro Geneseos in exordiis dicit Dominus: Adam, ubi es?’[1097]
This part of Christian education as reflected in the Books of Instruction stands in sharp contrast to the part which deals with language, and suggests that the theological training far overshadowed the rest. Even at Lérins the distinctly pagan education was given very little prominence. Ennodius, of all people, forgetting his debt to pagan letters, and all unconscious of his enslavement to rhetoric, pompously states the superiority of ‘religious’ over ‘secular’ studies, thus advising Camilla about the education of her son: ‘The Lord of salvation rejects not those who hasten to him from secular teachings, but he refuses to let any one leave his glory for these. If you have already withdrawn the child from the world, you would not seek a worldly style in him. I blush to resort to the polish of secular embellishments in the education of one who professes to serve the Church.’[1098]
That there were different grades of advancement in the Christian schools is implied in the words of Eucherius when he reminds his son that his education was begun by Hilary but finished off (consummatum) by Vincentius and Salvian.[1099] But the general standard was undoubtedly low. To the remark of Caesarius that many business-men in his time could not write, we may add the testimony of the inscriptions. On four monuments of Briord we read:
‘Abstuta passiens dulcissema apta’,
‘Abstutus argus dulcissimus artus’,
‘Abstuti passiens dulcissimi aptu’,
‘Abstutus passiius dulcissernus aptus’,
all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:
Aspicis augustum praecisa in rupe sepulcrum,