In the 11th century Europe had settled down, after centuries of war and invasion, into a condition of comparative political stability, ecclesiastical discipline, and social tranquillity: the barbarians had been converted, and, as in The scholastic revival. the case of the Normans, had pressed to the forefront of civilization; civic life had developed in the fortified towns of Italy, raised as defences against the pressure of Saracen and Hungarian invasions. Soon, communication with the East by trade and in the Crusades, and with the highly cultivated Moors in Spain, further stimulated the new burst of intellectual life. Arabic renderings of some of the works of Aristotle and commentaries on them were translated into Latin and exercised a profound influence on the trend of culture. A new translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics appeared in 1167, and by the beginning of the 13th century all his physical, metaphysical and ethical treatises were available, and during the next half century the translations from Arabic versions were superseded by renderings direct from the original Greek. As expositions of the real doctrines of Aristotle the translations from the Arabic left much to be desired. Renan calls the medieval edition of the Commentaries of Averroës “a Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of a commentary made upon an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a Greek text.” The study of such works often led to the enunciation of doctrines held heretical by the theologians, and it was only when the real Aristotle was known that it was found possible to bring the Peripatetic philosophy into the service of theology.

There were thus two broad stages in the educational revival commonly known as scholasticism. In the first the controversies were essentially metaphysical, and centred round the question of the nature of universals; the orthodox theological party generally supporting realism, or the doctrine that the universal is the true reality, of which particulars and individuals are only appearances; while the opposite doctrine of nominalism—that universals are “mere sounds” and particulars the only true existences—showed a continual disposition to lapse into heresies on the most fundamental doctrines of the Church. The second stage was essentially constructive; the opposition of philosophy to theology was negated, and philosophy gave a systematic form to theology itself. The most characteristic figure of the former period was Abelard (1079-1142), of the latter St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The former knew little of Aristotle beyond the translations and adaptations of Boethius, but he was essentially a dialectician who applied his logic to investigating the fundamental doctrines of the Church and bringing everything to the bar of reason. This innate rationalism appeared to bring theology under the sway of philosophy, and led to frequent condemnations of his doctrines as heretical. With St Thomas, on the other hand, the essential dogmas of Christianity must be unquestioned. In his Summa theologiae he presents all the doctrines of the Church systematized in a mould derived from the Aristotelian philosophy.

It is evident, then, that during the period of the scholastic revival, men’s interests were specially occupied with questions concerning the spiritual and the unseen, and that the great instrument of thought was syllogistic logic, Scholastic education. by which consequences were deduced from premises received as unquestionably true. There was a general acceptance of the authority of the Church in matters of belief and conduct, and of that of Aristotle, as approved by the Church, in all that related to knowledge of this world.

Before the rediscovery of Aristotle exerted such a general influence on the form of education, there was a real revival of classical literary culture at Chartres and a few other schools, and John of Salisbury (d. 1182) in his Metalogicus advocated literature as an instrument of education and lamented the barrenness of a training confined to the subtleties of formal logic. But the recrudescence of Aristotle accelerated the movement in favour of dialectic, though at the same time it furnished topics on which logic could be exercised which only a bare materialism can esteem unimportant. The weaknesses of the general educational system which grew up within scholasticism were that haste to begin dialectic led to an undue curtailment of previous liberal culture, and that exclusive attention to philosophical and theological questions caused a neglect of the study of the physical world and a disregard of the critical functions of the intellect. Doubtless there were exceptions, of which perhaps the most striking is the work in physical science done at Oxford by Roger Bacon (1214-1294). But Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), the master of St Thomas, was also a student of nature and an authority for his day on both the natural and the physical sciences. And the work of Grosseteste (d. 1253), as chancellor of the university of Oxford, shows that care for a liberal literary culture was by no means unknown. Always there were such examples. But too often boys hastened to enter upon dialectic and philosophy as soon as they had acquired sufficient smattering of colloquial Latin to engage in the disputes of the schools. A deterioration of Latin was the unavoidable consequence of such premature specialization. The seven liberal arts were often not pursued in their entirety, and students remained satisfied with desiccated compendia of accepted opinions. Thus the encyclopaedias of general information which were in general use during the middle ages show little or no advance in positive knowledge upon the treatment of similar subjects in Isidore of Seville.

The services of scholasticism to the cause of education, however, cannot well be overestimated, and the content of scholastic studies was in fundamental harmony with the intellectual interests of the time. Above all other The foundation of universities. benefits owed by future ages to scholasticism is the foundation of the universities of western Europe. The intellectual activity of the 11th century led everywhere to a great increase in the number of scholars attending the monastic and cathedral schools. Round famous teachers, such as Abelard, gathered crowds of students from every country. In the 12th century the need for organizing such bodies of teachers and students was imperative, and thus the earlier universities arose in Italy, France and England, not by deliberate foundation of secular or ecclesiastical ruler, but as spontaneous manifestations of the characteristic medieval impulse to organize into institutions. Afterwards, charters conferring powers and privileges were sought from both Church and state, but these only confirmed the self-governing character the universities had borne from the first. Each of the early universities was a specialized school of higher study: Salerno was a school of medicine; Bologna was the centre of that revival of Roman law which wrought so profound an effect upon the legal systems of France and Germany towards the close of the medieval period. But the greatest of medieval universities was that of Paris, emphatically the home of philosophy and theology, which was the model upon which many other universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, were organized.

The German universities were of later origin, the earliest being Prague (1348) and Vienna (1365). They indicate the more recognized position the movement had attained; for nearly all were founded by the civic authority, and then obtained the recognition of the Church and charters from the emperor.

The concentration of higher instruction in universities was not antagonistic to the medieval conception of the Church as the teacher of mankind. University life was modelled on that of the cloister, though the monastic ideal could not University work and life. be fully realized, and the scholars not infrequently exhibited considerable licence in life. This was inevitable with the very large numbers of the scholars and the great variations of age among them. Moreover students, and to a less extent teachers, passed from university to university, so that the universities of medieval Europe formed a free confederacy of learning in close relation to the Church but untrammelled by state control. Nevertheless, they were less definitely ecclesiastical than the cathedral seminaries which they largely supplanted, and the introduction of studies derived from the Greeks through the Arabians led to an increased freedom of thought, at first within authorized limits, but prepared, when occasion served, to transcend those limits.

The scheme of instruction was arranged on the assumption that special studies should be based on a wide general culture. Thus of the four faculties into which university teaching was organized, that of arts, with its degrees of Baccalaureat and Magister, was regarded as propaedeutic to those of theology, law and medicine. It often included, indeed, quite young boys, for the distinction between grammar school and university was not clearly drawn. Attention was concentrated on those subjects which treat of man and his relations to his fellow-men and to God, and no attempt was made to extend the bounds of knowledge. The aim was to pass on a body of acquired knowledge regarded as embracing all that was possible of attainment, and the authority of Aristotle in physics as well as in philosophy, and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine was absolute. The methods of instruction—by lecture, or commentary on received texts; and by disputation, in which the scholars acquired dexterity in the use of the knowledge they had absorbed—were in harmony with this conception, and were undoubtedly thoroughly well suited to the requirements of an age in which the ideal of human thought was not discovery but order, and in which knowledge was regarded as a set of established propositions, the work of reason being to harmonize these propositions in subordination to the authoritative doctrines of the Church.

Such an extension of the means of higher education as was given by the universities was naturally accompanied by a corresponding increase in schools of lower rank. Not only were there grammar schools at cathedral and Medieval schools. collegiate churches, but many others were founded in connexion with chantries, and by some of the many gilds into which medieval middle-class life organized itself. The Dominican and Franciscan friars were enthusiastic promoters of learning both in universities and in schools, and in the Netherlands the Brethren of the Common Life, founded by Gerard Groote and approved by Eugenius IV. in 1431, regarded school teaching as one of their main functions, and the promotion of learning by the multiplication of manuscripts as another. The curriculum was represented broadly by the Trivium. The greatest attention was paid to grammar, which included very various amounts of reading of classical and Christian authors, the most commonly included being Virgil, parts of Ovid and Cicero, and Boethius. The text-books in grammar were the elementary catechism on the eight parts of speech by Donatus, a Roman of the 4th century, said to have been the tutor of St Jerome, and the more advanced treatise of Priscian, a schoolmaster of Constantinople about A.D. 500, which remained the standard text-book for over a thousand years. In rhetoric Cicero’s De oratore was read, and dialectic was practised, as in the universities, by means of disputations.

In addition to the grammar schools were writing and song schools of an elementary type, in which instruction was usually in the vernacular. Girls were taught in women’s monasteries and in the home, and those of the upper classes at least very generally learned to read, write and keep accounts, as well as fine needlework, household duties and management, and such elementary surgery and medicine as served in cases of slight daily accidents and illnesses. Even those boys and girls who did not receive formal scholastic instruction were instructed orally by the parish priests in the doctrines and duties of the Faith; while the pictures and statues with which the churches were adorned aided the direct teaching of sermons and catechizing in giving a general knowledge of Bible history and of the legends of the saints.