The interesting works of the Benedictines of St. Maur of the XVIIIth century, the Bollandists, and the collections of a few other Catholic scholars have preserved nearly all the material that is left from which to construct the history of the middle ages, so thorough was the work of destruction done on libraries by the Calvinists and Huguenots. The Bodleian library is but a fragment—a few torn leaves of the literature which was weeded out of England by the enlightened zeal of the much-married father of Anglicanism.
“What mad work this Dr. Coxe did in Oxon, while he sat chancellor, by being the chief man that worked a reformation there, I have elsewhere told you,” says Anthony Wood “To return at length to the royal delegates, some of whom yet remained in Oxford, doing such things as did not at all become those who professed to be learned and Christian men. For the principal ornaments, and at the same time supports, of the university—that is, the libraries, filled with innumerable works, both native and foreign—they permitted or directed to be despoiled.… Works of scholastic theology were sold off among those exercising the lowest description of arts; and those which contained circles or diagrams it was thought good to mutilate or burn, as containing certain proof of the magical nature of their contents.”
What was left undone by the royal delegates was thoroughly attended to by the Puritans, who never did their work by halves, and whose views with regard to the Bible and literature bore a close resemblance to those of the early Mohammedans in their comparative estimate of the Koran and secular writings.
For a full account of the effect of the revolution of the XVIth century on learning, people who may suspect Catholic writers of exaggeration can compare their statements with those of the learned Protestant Huber, in his exhaustive history of the universities. Even “honest Latimer,” who certainly was not a zealot for profane learning, lifted up his voice in complaint: “It would pity a man’s heart to hear that that I hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell.” How it was at Oxford we have already seen. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the monastic schools, which were asylums both of mercy and learning, were destroyed; the mere list of their names, as given by the Protestant historian Cobbett, occupies one hundred and forty-five pages of his work. The present condition of the lower classes in England, which is due to their being thus deprived of means of education and assistance in distress, is the Nemesis of the Reformation. In listening to the demand that the government shall dispossess the present landlords as it despoiled the churchmen of old, we hear arguments of fearful power as to the extent of eminent domain. When it is asked why the crown and people shall not exercise for the common good the prerogative which was conceded and exercised formerly for the benefit of the crown alone, the present holders of property acquired by sacrilege may well take alarm at the progress of revolutionary ideas. And the question as to how far the people were forcibly deprived of the benefits of a trust vested for them in the church, may be decided “without constitutional authority and through blood.” God avert such a calamity from England! May the prayers of Catholic martyrs, of More and Fisher, intercede in her behalf, and save her from the consequences of that act, to prevent which, these, her truest sons, did not hesitate to offer up their lives! However, with these facts in view, it is scarcely wise for English Protestantism to assume the position of a necessary and perpetual friend of popular education. It is best to wait until the ink has become dry which has scored from the statute book of that realm the law making it felony to teach the alphabet to Catholics.
It would be gratifying to us to contrast with the conduct of the authors of Protestantism that of the great educators of Europe who laid the foundations of our civilization. A fierce and violent revolution has turned that civilization aside, and introduced into it principles of anarchy and death. A shallow and ungrateful era has failed to perceive and to acknowledge its debts. It is only in the pages of scholars such as Montalembert, the Protestants Maitland and Huber, and the author of that recent modest but most charming book entitled Christian Schools and Scholars, that we begin to notice a thoughtful inquiry into the history of our intellectual development. The masters slumber in forgetfulness and oblivion. We know not the builders of the great structures of the middle ages; and people generally know almost as little of its great intellectual and social system. The history of the human race for a thousand years of most intense activity is summed up in a few unmeaning words.
Time and space fail for such a comparison. But the fact that the first Protestants found themselves educated, the fact that they found schools to denounce and to destroy, in the XVIth century, is sufficient to justify us with regard to history prior to that date.
It would also be a pleasure to describe the progress of those magnificent bodies of Catholic educators which rose, under divine inspiration, as a check to the wave of revolution, and whose successes first stimulated the action of Protestants by the wholesome influence of fear. But this also is beyond our compass. We are ready to discuss the charge that Catholics are opposed to education, independently of all reference to Protestantism, by the test of positive facts, and to stand or fall by the Catholic record in modern times.
It is not necessary to cross the ocean or to visit countries where the munificence of ages has endowed the universities of Catholic lands; as, for instance, the seven great universities of the Papal States—Ferrara, Bologna, Urbino, Macerata, Camerino, Perugia, and Rome, each containing thousands of students. Nor is it necessary to remind the reader that the great Protestant universities, and notably those of England, are, to use the expression of a distinguished Anglican prelate, “a legacy of Catholicism.” The charge that Catholics are opposed to university education is simply laughable, considering that the university is essentially a Catholic idea, and has never, even in Europe, been successfully counterfeited.
It is not necessary, although it may be instructive, to refer to the free schools of the city of Rome, which, according to the testimony of a Protestant traveller, thirty years ago surpassed even those of Berlin in efficiency and relative number. They were, before the recent seizure by the Piedmontese government, the most numerous in proportion to the population and the most varied in character of any city in the world. They presented to their scholars the choice of day or night with regard to time, and prepared them for every profession, art, and trade. This matchless variety was doubtless the result of centuries of growth; but it was also the spontaneous outcome of zeal for education, and laid not a penny of taxation upon the people. So high was the standard of gratuitous education that private schools, at the beginning of the reign of our Holy Father Pius IX., had to struggle hard in order to retain the patronage of the wealthy classes. At that time there were in Rome 27 institutions and 387 schools for free education. Of these last, 180 were for little children of both sexes. Of the remainder, 94 were devoted to males and 113 to females. The total number of pupils in elementary schools amounted to 14,157, of which number 3,790 were of the infant class. Of those more advanced, 5,544 were males and 4,823 females. In elementary schools, purely gratuitous, 7,579 received education—viz., 3,952 boys and 3,627 girls.
There appears, however, in Cardinal Morichini’s report, a feature which has never yet been introduced into the American system—to wit, in schools paying a small pension there were 1,592 boys and 1,196 girls; making a total in such schools of 2,788. This last item may furnish a hint to those who are anxious to secure the attendance of poor children in our own schools; although it is scarcely practicable where common education has to be provided by taxation alone. Of these 387 schools to which we have referred, 26 belonged to religious communities of men, and 23 to religious communities of women. The rest belonged to, or were conducted by, seculars. Besides these, 2,213 children of both sexes received free instruction in special conservatories.