In order that man may aspire to this sublime end, he must be made free—cui liber, est liber—must be enlightened, that he may comprehend the Supreme Intelligence that created him. Christianity breathes into man "that ardent love of knowledge" [Footnote 179] which buoys up his wings: it lights up before him a perspective extending to the very confines of heaven. "The more fully man comprehends in what way God has established everything in number, weight, and measure, the more ardent is his love for him," says a simple nun [Footnote 180] of the middle ages, beautifully expressing the idea of the church. This is the reason why Christianity has patronized science, and diffused and cultivated it.
[Footnote 179: J. de Maistre, Du Pape, iv. 3.]
[Footnote 180: Roswitha, Paphnuce.]
As soon as Christianity had a foothold in the world, instead of turning toward a few, like the philosophers, it addresses all—the poor who had been despised, the lowly who had been made use of, and the slaves who had not been counted. The door of knowledge was opened wide to plebeians. "We teach philosophy to fullers and shoemakers," says St. Chrysostom. From the depths of the catacombs, where they were obliged to conceal themselves, the first pontiffs, whose lives for three centuries terminated by martyrdom, founded schools in every parish of Rome, and ordered the priests to assemble the children of the country in order to instruct them. What, then, was the result when Christianity, issuing from the bowels of the earth, bloomed forth in freedom? There were schools everywhere, monastic schools, schools in the priests' houses, [Footnote 181] episcopal schools, established by Gregory the Great, and schools at the entrance of churches, (as in the portico of the cathedral of Lucca, in the eighth century.)
[Footnote 181: A council of the sixteenth century speaks of schools in the priests' houses.]
The decrees of councils, the decretals of popes, attest the desire of distributing to all the food of the mind, and of multiplying schools. [Footnote 182] And who were their first masters? The priests, bishops, and doctors of the church. "It is our duty," (it is a pope who speaks,) "to endeavor to dispel ignorance." [Footnote 183] Ulphidas, a bishop of the fifth century, translated the Bible into the language of the Goths, for the instruction of the barbarians; and at a later period, Albertus Magnus and St. Bonaventura composed abridgments of the Scriptures for the poor, called the Bible of the Poor, Biblia Pauperum. "If the important knowledge of reading and writing was spread among the people, it was owing to the church," says St. Simon the Reformer. [Footnote 184]
[Footnote 182: Report of the Minister of Public Instruction, M. Duruy, 1865.]
[Footnote 183: Innocent III. at the Council of 1215.]
[Footnote 184: La Science de l'Histoire.]