With the opening of the eleventh century we begin to perceive the gradual decay of the monastic schools, the rise of scholasticism and the university system, and the consequent evils resulting from the teachings of irresponsible and sceptical professors. Heretofore Christian education went hand in hand with religion; the priest who celebrated the divine mysteries in the morning taught his assembled pupils during the day; religion became more beautiful, clothed, as she was, in the garments of science and art; and education was ennobled by losing its selfishness and pride in its contact with the faith; humility, order, and obedience marked the scholar, and disinterestedness and a deep sense of the greatness of his calling distinguished the master. Teaching with the monks was a sacred duty, a means by which they might gain salvation and "shine like stars for all eternity;" with the scholastics of the eleventh and succeeding centuries it became a profession like that of law or medicine, in the exercise of which money and notoriety could be gained, opponents silenced, and, as was too often the case, vanity gratified and senseless applause won from the unthinking multitude. The school ceased to be a holy retreat, and the professor's chair was converted into a rostrum from which the most absurd and illogical dogmas were fulminated, alike dangerous to religion, morals, and good government. In the statement of abuses presented to the Council of Trent in 1537-63 by the commission appointed by Paul III., it is declared that "it is a great and pernicious abuse that, in the public schools, especially in Italy, many philosophers teach impiety;" and it is a well-recognized fact in history that, from the time the universities adopted the study of the Roman civil law, to the exclusion almost of ecclesiastical and common law, they became the strongest bulwarks of despotic power, and the pliant tools of absolute princes.
It is true that the change was gradual and almost imperceptible to its friends and enemies; but, when we come to compare the wild vagaries of Berengarius, the eloquent but empty harangues of Abelard, the scepticism of Erasmus, and the revelries which disgraced such universities as Oxford and Paris, with the moral spirit and peaceful calm that brooded over the monasteries of St. Gall, Fulda, and Glastenbury, we can at once perceive to what monstrous excesses the mind of man is prone when unrestrained by religion. Many of the old-established monastic schools continued to flourish, and new ones, like that of Bec and the college of St. Victor's at Paris, became celebrated. Men distinguished for piety and learning were numerous during the middle ages, notwithstanding the growing tendency toward irreligion and heresy; among whom may be mentioned such theologians as St. Thomas and Anselm, scholars like Lanfranc and Thomas à Kempis, great doctors like St. Bernard and John Duns Scotus, devotees of science such as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, authors of the calibre of William of Malmsbury, and the almost inspired writer of the Following of Christ, St. Bonaventure, and Peter the Venerable.
But the schools of Europe, notwithstanding the examples and exhortations of those illustrious divines, continued in their downward tendency toward materialism. The introduction of Eastern books of philosophy, due to the returned crusaders, the Arabic symbolism and pretended magic of some of the Spanish schools, and, finally, the fall of Constantinople and the dispersion of Greek scholars over Europe: all had their peculiar and decided influence on the manners and views of the generations which immediately preceded the Council of Trent. Seminaries had entirely disappeared, so that ecclesiastical education could only be obtained in the dissolute and noisy universities, and it became the fashion with the dilettanti of the great cities to ridicule and underrate the quiet teachings of the country monasteries.
The Council of Trent, mindful of the welfare of the children of the church, took the first great step toward the correction of those abuses. By its eighteenth chapter, twenty-seventh sessions, it reestablished the seminaries in every diocese in Christendom, giving to each bishop authority over the professors, and making the expense of educating ecclesiastics a charge on the faithful. In accordance with this decree, an unwonted degree of activity was observable in Europe. Provincial councils took steps to enforce it in their special localities; saints, like Charles of Borromeo, became champions of genuine Christian education, and the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the illustrious order of the Jesuits vied with each other in their devotion to its interests, and became the inheritors of the glories of the monks of Saints Benedict and Columbanus.
In looking back for fifteen centuries, and perusing the long and brilliant catalogue of those holy teachers who, through danger, degradation, and defeat, never allowed their minds to swerve from the even tenor of their way; who cared as tenderly for the soul and intellect of the poor young barbarian as for the nursling of a palace; who despised death, and braved alike the fury of the savage and the wrath of princes, that they might win souls to God and develop the God-given gift of human genius; we are lost in astonishment at the ignorance or mendacity, or both, of some modern writers who unblushingly repeat and exaggerate the slander of the post-"Reformation" writers against the monks of the middle ages. With a history like that of the Christian Schools and Scholars before us, so fruitful in incidents and so suggestive of moral lessons, we are equally at a loss to account for the tenacity with which people, otherwise sensible, cling to the idea of education divorced from moral instruction. Whatever is great in the past, personally or nationally considered—whatever was pure, unselfish, and heroic, is due, and only due, to the monk-teachers of the Christian church. They were not only the custodians of the books which we now prize so much, but they were the conservators of arts, science, and literature, and the originators and discoverers of most of the useful inventions which now adorn life and make men more civilized, and bring them nearer to their Creator. They were not only all this, but they were, as soldiers of the church, the guardians of civilization itself, and without them the darkness that enshrouded the world would have been as perpetual as the causes which produced it were active, and, against any other power, irresistible.
Our Lady.
"Ancilla Domini."
The Crown of creatures, first in place,
Was most a creature; is such still:
Naught, naught by nature—all by grace—
The Elect one of the Eternal Will.
She was a Nothing that in Him
A creature's sole perfection found;
She was the great Rock's shadow dim;
She was the Silence, not the Sound.
She was the Hand of Earth forthheld
In adoration's self-less suit;
A hushed Dependence, tranced and spelled,
Still yearning toward the Absolute.
Before the Power Eternal bowed
She hung, a soft Subjection mute,
As when a rainbow breasts the cloud
That mists some mountain cataract's foot.
She was a sea-shell from the deep
Of God—her function this alone—
Of Him to whisper, as in sleep,
In everlasting undertone.
This hour her eyes on Him are set:
And they who tread the earth she trod
With nearest heart to hers, forget
Themselves in her, and her in God.
II.
MATER FILII.
He was no Conqueror, borne abroad
On all the fiery winds of fame,
That overstrides a world o'erawed
To write in desert sands his name.
No act triumphant, no conquering blow
Redeemed mankind from Satan's thrall:
By suffering He prevailed, that so
His Father might be all in all.
His Godhead, veiled from mortal eye,
Showed forth that Father's Godhead still,
As calm seas mirror starry skies
Because themselves invisible.
Thus Mary in "the Son" was hid:
Her motherhood her only boast,
She nothing said, she nothing did:
Her light in His was merged and lost.
III.
Nazareth; or, The Hidden Greatness
Ever before his eyes unsealed
The Beatific Vision stood:
If God from her that splendor veiled
Awhile, in Him she looked on God.
The Eternal Spirit o'er them hung
Like air: like leaves on Eden trees
Around them thrilled the viewless throng
Of archangelic Hierarchies.
Yet neither He Who said of yore,
"Let there be light!" and all was Day,
Nor she that, still a creature, wore
Creation's Crown, and wears for aye,
To mortal insight wondrous seemed:
The wanderer smote their lowly door,
Partook their broken bread, and deemed
The donors kindly—nothing more.
In Eden thus that primal Pair
(Undimmed as yet their first estate)
Sat, side by side, in silent prayer—
Their first of sunsets fronting, sat.
And now the lion, now the pard,
Piercing the Cassia bowers, drew nigh,
Fixed on the Pair a mute regard,
Half-pleased, half-vacant; then passed by.
Aubrey De Vere.
Feast Of The Assumption, 1867.