[Footnote 244: Boutaric, Vie et OEuvres de Pierre du Bois, in the memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, 1864.]
"Children of both sexes, from five to twelve years of age: reading, (in the Psalter,) singing, grammar, moral distichs, (of Cato,) and, a little later, Latin, which they will learn to speak. Young girls: natural history, surgery, medicine, logic, Latin, and the oriental languages"—a plan drawn up in the dark and ignorant middle ages, which could not be easily pursued even in this age, distinguished and enlightened by the romances of so many women of genius!
We need not wait till the time of Clemence Isaure (fourteenth century) to find a woman whom Christianity had imbued with taste and a delicate poetical nature. History, chronicles, and ballads have opened to us the chateaux where, whilst the mail-clad baron and his armed followers fought without, his wife, seated in some deep embrasure, would cast a glance from time to time through the narrow window upon the varied landscape, and then resume, in the large, open volume before her, the fabulous and heroic exploits of knights and brave men among the paynim and giants; where, at nightfall, in the midst of her servants and followers, she listened smilingly and thoughtfully to some wandering troubadour singing of war, of love, and of tournaments, and relating his adventures—a charming picture which allies the romantic chatelaine—passing by the elegant and trifling ladies of the court of the Restoration—with the strong-minded women of the seventeenth century, so captivating and so learned, who read philosophical treatises, spoke several languages, studied the doctors and fathers of the church, and who are considered by the world as models of wit, taste, elegance, and grace: Longueville, Montausier, Lafayette, Rambouillet, Jacqueline Pascal, Maintenon, and Sévigné!
V.
The Nobility.
But it is necessary to make a painful avowal. In the midst of the general diffusion of knowledge in monasteries, schools, universities, towns, boroughs, and villages, and even among the poor and lowly, there is one class of society which remained during all the middle ages in shameful ignorance—the nobility.
The kings, however, who issued from its ranks, and who in all ages prided themselves on the name of gentleman, were an exception. The sons of Clovis were the first pupils of the school established in his palace and directed by his chaplain. This example was perpetuated. The princes of the Merovingian dynasty pursued their studies in the monasteries, and literary habits became so congenial to them that, in some instances, they were carried to excess and became a kind of mania, as in the case of the prince called the Clerc couronné. (Chilperic.) As to Charlemagne, who spoke the Latin language, understood Greek, made astronomical calculations, brought professors from Italy, (Peter of Pisa and Paul the Hellenist deacon,) and founded the first academy and the first university, it is useless to insist on him, for he is universally acknowledged to be at once a hero, a learned man, and a saint. Nor are the literary tastes of the most eminent sovereigns denied, as Alfred the Great, the translator of AEsop and commentator of Bede; Charles le Chauve, who had Aristotle and Plato explained to him by masters from Constantinople; Alfonso the Wise, astronomer, legislator, and historian; Robert the Pious; Otto II., who appointed Gerbert, the wisest man of the age, tutor to his son; Frederick II., who spoke German, French, Arabic, Latin, and Greek; and Philip Augustus, the patron of literature and the arts, "who, for that age, was as magnificent as Louis XIV." [Footnote 245]
[Footnote 245: Villemain, ibid.]
And later than the twelfth century, is it astonishing that St. Louis admitted St. Thomas of Aquin to his table, where, in his presence, were discussed the highest questions of philosophy? That the rule of study drawn up for John, son of Philip of Valois, included Latin and several languages? [Footnote 246] That Charles V. collected at the Louvre a library of considerable size, and that his brothers, the dukes of Burgundy and Berri, carried away by love for the arts, ordered miniatures, which are admirable paintings, from the celebrated painters, Memling, Van Eyck, and Jean Fouquet? But we are approaching the time of the Restoration, and consequently all these facts prove nothing.