5
Introduction
The period of European history covered in this chapter (roughly the fifth to the thirteenth centuries) was once neglected compared with the Renaissance, for example, but it is important for the history of educational ideas for two reasons. First, we need to know which ideas survived and developed; and, second, the new influences that emerged, such as monastic education, the rise of Islam, scholasticism and the development of universities.
Background
Rome fell to Barbarian invaders from the north in AD 410. Even earlier, as we saw in the last chapter, Constantine had taken the precaution of moving his capital city to the east - to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul). Christianity survived in the West, however, and some of the invaders were converted to Christianity. Meanwhile Constantinople and the Eastern Empire (Byzantium) continued to flourish. Monasticism also developed, preserving traditional religious values and developing new ones.
From the fifth century, Roman culture and education were disrupted by barbarian invasions but did not disappear, and in some cases Roman institutions were taken over by the invaders. For example, in Italy the Ostrogoths did not abolish the schools of grammar and rhetoric in Rome, Milan or Ravenna. In Spain and Gaul, schools virtually disappeared but the classical tradition and culture continued into the seventh century. Latin texts were now more likely to be used than Greek. The classical tradition was sufficiently alive in Italy to produce great scholars such as Boethius (AD 470-524), a Roman senator from an aristocratic family who was well versed in the Greek as well as the Latin writers and stimulated the continued study of the classics, not least by his own translations of Aristotle and others into Latin.
Monastic Education
The major educational development was, however, the monasteries. St Benedict (AD 480-547) founded the monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy and established the Benedictine monastic rule; he also converted Totilla, King of the Ostrogoths. The Benedictine rule became a model for other orders of monks. St Augustine of Canterbury (d. 605) brought the rule to England where it continued as an important religious and educational influence until the Reformation.
During the sixth century, monasteries developed as a major religious and educational influence, and by the seventh century individual Christian scholars such as the Venerable Bede (673-735) at a monastery in Jarrow devoted their lives to scholarship and teaching. Bede, for example, produced the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) which is probably the single most valuable source for early English history. In addition, Bede wrote homilies, lives of the saints, epigrams and his own commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. Not long before he died he translated St John's Gospel into Anglo-Saxon or Old English. He had a good knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. It would be foolish to pretend that Bede was a typical monk: he was certainly exceptionally able and devout; but it is true that the best of monasteries were excellent centres of scholarship and education. From the sixth to the eighth centuries, the Church was the main means of preserving continuity in education, although it was often education of an exclusively religious kind. The main purpose of education was to train future monks and priests. The extent to which the classics featured in the curriculum is not clear. Mention has already been made of Boethius; other scholars such as Isidore of Seville (c. 560-36) also helped to keep the classical tradition alive.
Cathedral Schools
The monasteries were, however, by no means the only providers of schools. Bishops often continued the tradition of Roman grammar schools in the form of cathedral schools, probably boarding schools for future clergy. In the case of these schools, as with the monastic schools, the purpose of education was clearly vocational: the first priority was to ensure that future priests and monks would be educated to a suitably high standard. The curriculum tended to be dominated by Bible studies and the Fathers of the Church but might also include carefully selected Latin authors.
The teacher in a cathedral school, as in a monastic school, was as much concerned with discipline and moral development as with academic achievement; they would very probably not have made any distinction between them. Some teaching manuals have survived which stress the importance of inculcating the four virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude (courage) and temperance. The instructional texts, religious and pagan, would not have been taught in isolation from the four virtues. Sometimes physical education was also mentioned, a healthy mind in a healthy body. Frequently the sacred text, the Bible was preferred to any other literary source.
For those not destined to be priests or monks education was usually very basic; just enough religious knowledge to understand the sacraments and the main aspects of the church services. The educational objectives were on two levels: elementary understanding of faith for the majority, with higher levels of understanding and knowledge for priests and monks, including some Latin. There were, nevertheless, constant complaints about the inadequate education of the clergy throughout the Middle Ages.
Ireland
A major centre of educational development was Ireland where Rome had never been very influential. Irish monks not only spent their lives copying and illuminating texts, such as the famous Book of Kells, but also preserved some non-religious books for study. Irish monks, acting as missionaries, brought their learning to England and to other parts of Europe such as St Gall where a very important monastic centre was established.
The celebrated saints of Ireland included Patrick (389-461) and Columcille (or Columba) (521-597) who founded schools at Armagh and Iona. There was also a prestigious school and what we would now call a university at Clonmacnoise which attracted students from all over Europe, and from the seventh to the tenth centuries Ireland sent monks to many parts of the continent to establish monasteries and schools. Although the major purpose was to convert the heathen and to strengthen the Church, the curricula of schools often included such subjects as mathematics, poetry and astronomy.
England and France
In time, England also became a centre of scholarship and missionary training. Northumbria, in particular, possessed notable monasteries such as Jarrow, which was mentioned above in connection with Bede. Slightly later, York produced Alcuin (735-804) who in 780 went to France to the school in the palace of Charlemagne at Aix, now Aachen. The motive was always the same: to spread the Gospel and save souls by means of education. Alcuin himself went on from the palace school at Aachen to become Abbot of Tours in 796. He was a powerful influence throughout Charlemagne's Empire and helped to encourage the Carolingian revival of education and Christian culture.
Charlemagne and the Carolingian Cultural Revival
Charlemagne, Charles the Great (742-814) was King of the Franks from 768, and was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope in 800. It has sometimes been said that the Holy Roman Empire (a term not used at the time but by historians and critics later) was neither holy, Roman, nor an Empire; but the title was greatly valued by some of the Emperors. It was 'holy' because it was Christian: one of Charlemagne's achievements was to conquer and Christianise most of Western Europe; it was 'Roman' because many regarded the Carolingian Empire as the successor to Roman central control in Europe.
In addition, Charlemagne has often been given the credit for reinvigorating education at the end of the eighth century. In reality his contribution built on the developments of the church which had taken place earlier in monasteries and cathedrals. Charlemagne was, however, a genuine enthusiast for education and was concerned when he became King of the Franks in 768 to find that Latin standards in the court and elsewhere, even among the bishops, were extremely low. Charlemagne ordered that the clergy be instructed more vigorously and standards be strictly enforced. He felt it necessary for all priests to have a good command of Latin so that they could be confident in their transmission of the Bible - the sacred text - to their congregations and pupils. Accuracy was essential. To accommodate the teachers of teachers, the school at Aachen was expanded to cater for advanced studies for true scholars.
The school at Aachen became what would now be called a university, as it was devoted to higher levels of learning. As well as having English scholars like Alcuin, there were refugees from Moorish Spain, monks from Ireland and many other learned men. A central feature of the university was its library, and a scriptorium where books could be copied. (The catalogue at Aachen still exists.) Charlemagne thought that every school should have a scriptorium; as Abbot of Tours, Alcuin instituted a school of calligraphy to ensure that scripts were copied clearly and beautifully. This revival of culture and education continued under Charlemagne's sons, especially Louis the Pious, and his grandsons.
King Alfred the Great and the Revival of Learning in England
In Wessex, Alfred became king in 871 and was, like Charlemagne a century earlier, disappointed with contemporary educational standards. Few priests really understood Latin well enough to translate the messages from the Bible into English in a way that their flock could understand them. Alfred's solution was to attract to his court scholars from England and the rest of Europe to promote higher standards of learning and also to translate some key texts into English. He was said to have translated the famous book by Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. Young monks were encouraged to be scholarly as well as pious; this was not seen as a distraction from their religious duties, but as an enrichment of their studies. At this time there was also a good deal of cross-fertilisation between English and French schools and monasteries.
During the ninth and tenth centuries, although the first priority was still to educate the clergy, there was a growing tendency for some noble laymen (and women) to develop literary skills, extending the purpose of education from the purely religious towards the courtly accomplishments of the Christian knight which were later to become even more important (and which we shall discuss further in Chapter 6). The majority of the population, of course, remained totally illiterate. In some parts of Europe where a knightly tradition was beginning to develop, Latin texts of such classical moral writers as Cicero also became part of the curriculum, supplementing the scriptures.
During the twelfth century, there was a tendency in some European countries for the Church to become stronger and to want to reinforce this strength by restricting access to monastic schools to future monks. Monasteries became more exclusive and other groups, especially in cities, took on the responsibility for educating laymen and sometimes priests. The Church often wanted to retain control of education and reacted by saying that only those teachers licensed by bishops could be permitted to teach. The Lateran Council (1179) made this an official requirement for all Christendom. This ostensibly gave some credibility to the developing non-monastic schools and perhaps improved the quality of some of them. The schools adopted a 'liberal' curriculum of the classical trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music) which became the accepted advanced curriculum for the later Middle Ages. Philosophy and discussions about knowledge and how it should be structured into curricula were also beginning to be more common at this time, not least in the new universities.
The Universities
We have already used the word 'university' to refer loosely to post-school education, but 'university' has developed into a more precise meaning and form of organisation. It may be helpful now to clarify the concept of the university. By the end of the twelfth century in several places in Europe, it had been found expedient for a bishop, or cathedral chancellor, to license groups of teachers to organise higher level, post-school, studies for clerics. Such licensed teachers and their students would commonly have certain privileges as a group which would enable them to run their own affairs without interference from civil authorities or others. This concept of a university was very far reaching and highly significant. We shall return to the topic towards the end of this chapter, here we simply note that there was a need, perceived by the Church authorities, for improved methods of educating the future clergy at a higher level after they had passed through school; several of the universities emerged out of this need.
The division of educational stages into primary, secondary and higher is now taken for granted, but in the Middle Ages it was far from clear what was needed, it was felt that the future leaders of a Christian society should understand Christian beliefs and the scriptures and be able to pass them on to their less educated flock. The university was not suddenly invented: it emerged gradually to meet social needs. It was greatly stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle, initially by Islamic scholars. Aristotle became the philosopher for universities and virtually the curriculum for the Arts faculty, but not the Theology faculty. We shall return to this topic later in this chapter.
Islam
Mohammed (570-632), the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca and in about 610 he proclaimed himself a prophet and said that the divine word of God had been directly revealed to him. This set of religious ideas was later written down as the Koran. Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, became a religion based on a sacred text and this was to have important educational implications. In 622 Mohammed fled from his persecutors to Medina; this flight, or hegira, became a significant date in the Islamic calendar. In 623 Mohammed and his followers defeated the traditionalist heathens at the battle of Badr; this was followed by a series of victories and Mohammed re-entered Mecca in 630, acknowledged as the great prophet of Arabia.
Islam shares many of the beliefs of Judaism and Christianity: for example, the Old Testament version of the Creation and the fall of Adam, but Mohammedans believe that both the Old and New Testaments were superseded by the Koran which did not accept the divinity of Christ. Despite a disputed succession when Mohammed died in 632, the Islamic empire expanded across North Africa into Spain and southern Europe: the successors to Mohammed's authority were the Caliphs.
Muslim scholars have correctly been given credit for preserving and developing the classical heritage of Greece and Rome. This process of Islamic educational development began during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750): Greek science was encouraged in Syria; schools were patronised in Alexandria, Beirut and Antioch, and several other cities where the classical tradition had survived in schools. The encouragement of classical cultural traditions was intensified during the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1100): Greek texts, such as Plato and Aristotle as well as Galen's medical works were translated into Arabic, sometimes by Hebrew and Persian scholars. In addition, the famous ninth-century mathematician, al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850), developed Arabic numerals from the Hindu notation and recorded the earliest version of trigonometric tables. He was also responsible for a geographical encyclopaedia. Thus it was not only a question of passing on Greek texts to those in the West who had lost them; it also involved developing them in the context of Persian and Hindu scholarship and Islamic culture. In such an intellectual climate Islam produced its own group of original thinkers.
From the ninth to the eleventh centuries, there was an interesting tension within Islam between the orthodox religious idea that the Koran was the ultimate source of all wisdom and a secular pressure to take advantage of other kinds of knowledge, including foreign knowledge, past and present. There were good social and economic reasons for the development of non-religious knowledge: the expansion of Islam encouraged such technical innovations as irrigation, for which the Arabs became famous in Sicily and elsewhere, architecture, ironwork, gunpowder, textiles and leather, as well as shipping. Although many of those technical and commercial developments took place independently of education, there were clear education and training needs if the Arabs were to be able to exploit these developments. The traditional forms of Arabic schools needed to be modified.
Prior to this era there had been many types of schools in the Arabian peninsula: circle schools, writing schools, palace and mosque schools as well as schools of public instruction. Their names indicate their functions. Some universities also emerged between the ninth and the eleventh centuries: not only in Baghdad but also in Spain there were many that were to become significant in the history of European education, including Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Cadiz and Valencia. The curriculum was wide and geared to some extent to practical requirements such as medicine, mathematics, science and technology.
From the tenth to the twelfth centuries there was a golden age of Islamic scholarship which included the poetry of Omah Khayyam, as well as the writings of Avicenna (979-1037), a philosopher, scientist and writer of the standard text on medicine. Slightly later, Averroes (1126-98) flourished in Cordoba. He was a philosopher who wrote appreciations of, and commentaries on, Plato and especially on Aristotle and did much to reconcile Greek and Islamic thinking. He was also a physician who was determined to keep science separate from religious dogma. This was seen as dangerous and he was exiled for heresy in 1195, but later rehabilitated, perhaps because his medical skills were so important. The teachings of Averroes were difficult to reconcile with the Koran and the Bible and led to later heresies.
The Development of the Idea of the Medieval University
The first university in Europe was possibly Salerno in the ninth century but there are problems of retrospective definition. Bologna, founded in the twelfth century, may be less controversial since it is closer to what came to be regarded as a university structure in the Middle Ages. The University at Bologna was soon followed, and possibly copied, by such places as Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. At first the term in use was not university, but studium generale. The first use of the term universitas magistrum et scholarum (university of teachers and scholars) was at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in Paris. Early studia were developed as a response to the need for institutions to educate priests and monks when it was considered by the Church authorities or other leaders that the monastic or cathedral schools were not providing education at a sufficiently high standard for future clerics and administrators.
It was thought that the schools were adequate up to a certain level but that some students should be encouraged to continue their studies. Since such studia were few and far between, it became common for students to travel long distances, even to other countries. Studia were then regarded as universal rather than local institutions. It was necessary for the groups of teachers and students to organise themselves partly for protection and partly for social and academic purposes. As the students were all clerics they were entitled to immunity from civil courts but were subject to ecclesiastical legal authority. It became convenient for universities to have their own courts: the first example may have been when the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, in 1158 granted the students of Bologna protection against civil arrest and the right to trial by their peers.
Other privileges gradually followed, and eventually developed into the important concept of 'academic freedom' which is still interpreted as the right to work in a university without being subject to State censorship or control. That idea took a long time to develop fully, and is still subject to dispute, but by the fourteenth century a university certainly meant that there was a community of scholars, but not necessarily a building, that was recognised by the local civil and ecclesiastical authorities as possessing autonomy of some kind. Originally the Chancellor of the local cathedral granted licences to teach, and, somewhat later, his authority was partly delegated to a Vice-Chancellor who tended to be the elected head of the teachers (in much the same way as an abbot was elected to be first among equals of the monks in a monastery). By the thirteenth century, a bishop's authority was often not enough: it became necessary to have authority granted by the Pope or the Emperor.
One version of the history of Cambridge University is that in about 1209 a group of scholars in dispute with the Oxford University authorities simply left and set up a new establishment in the cathedral city of Cambridge. The issue at stake may well have been autonomy of teachers and students, an early example of a dispute about academic freedom. Tension was inevitable because universities often wanted freedom from interference from the Church itself, which was its licensing authority. Part of the story of the Reformation was a desire by universities to gain freedom from ecclesiastical control. For similar reasons, Protestant states, such as Marburg (1527) created new universities. Later one aspect of the Counter-Reformation was the action by Jesuits to gain control over existing universities or to establish new ones.
Scholasticism and the Universities
'Scholasticism' is the term used by later historians to describe the dominant approach to education between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. Scholasticism arose in reaction to a considerable problem: how to resolve the apparent contradictions between different authorities, for example, in theology the authorities were the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by the Church fathers; these might seem to contradict the legal authority of an emperor or the philosophy of Aristotle. The task of scholasticism was to harmonise these authorities; the method which developed was derived from Aristotle's system of logic.
Some writers place the origins of scholasticism earlier than the eleventh century. Pieper,1 one of the great authorities on scholasticism, has suggested that we should attach great importance to the year 529, when the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian, closed the Platonic Academy in Athens, thus signalling disapproval of pagan writers and providing an impetus for the development of a philosophy which would be distinctively Christian. In that same year, 529, the first Benedictine Abbey was founded at Monte Cassino which provided a suitable location for the development of Christian scholastic thinking and writing, the search for the 'whole of attainable truth'. An even earlier date suggested by Pieper is 524 when Boethius, awaiting execution, produced his masterpiece The Consolation of Philosophy which referred to the pursuit of wisdom and the love of God as the two sources of happiness. Some have noted that this book is not specifically Christian, although Boethius himself was a Christian, and his work became widely read by Christians for several centuries. Boethius had also translated Aristotle's Organon and other texts into Latin. Cassiodorus, the first biographer of Boethius, founded a monastery and established in it his Roman library which included the works of Boethius. Aristotle, as translated by Boethius, became part of the monastic heritage and kept alive a limited view of Aristotelian philosophy until further works were, much later, made available by Islamic scholars.
The pedagogy of scholasticism was based on the study of authoritative texts as well as mastery of the techniques of formal logic. In this way any inconsistencies could be argued away. At university a master would read a chosen text out loud and slowly. Books were, of course, in very short supply prior to the invention of printing. This reading or lectio, the origin of the modern lecture, was followed by explanation of the meanings of any difficult words and discussion of obscure passages. The master would then pose questions about the text and resolve any difficulties that arose: this was the method known as quaestio which was followed by the disputio, a carefully conducted argument during which the rules of logic had to be scrupulously obeyed. University students thus carefully internalised the texts corporately chosen by the masters and became confident in the art of argument. This process had something in common with Greek and Roman rhetoric training, except that in scholasticism supreme attention was paid to the idea of truth as represented by authorities and tested by logic. No other kind of test was permitted or perhaps even contemplated: for example, Aristotle's work on biology might be tested 'logically' against the Bible, but not empirically. The world of words and ideas was much more important than things.
The High Point of Scholasticism: St Thomas Aquinas (1224-74)
Thomas Aquinas was not only a philosopher and theologian but a poet. Born in Italy he spent some time as a boy at the monastery of Monte Cassino, but was later sent to the University of Naples and then to the University of Paris. At Naples, he found the philosophical and scientific texts of Aristotle that were being translated from Greek and Arabic. He became a Dominican and went to the University of Paris in 1245 where he studied under the famous scholar Albertus Magnus. He began teaching in Paris in 1256, and after a period as advisor to the Papal Curia, he returned to Paris to develop his thesis concerning faith and reason, namely, that reason is able to operate within faith yet according to its own principles. He was at first opposed not only by traditional theologians but also by those influenced by Averroes who saw faith and reason as completely independent of each other. Siger of Brabant was a notable opponent of Aquinas, who claimed that Siger's over-rational views were not only wrong but compromised the Christian interpretation of Aristotle.
In his Summa Theologiae and Summit Contra Gentiles, Aquinas produced the definitive systematisation of theology in the form of a synthesis of reason and faith, philosophy and theology, university and monastery. In 1272 Aquinas returned to the University of Naples to establish a Dominican House. At this point, once again, he had to face the opposition of the traditionalist followers of Augustine who stressed the idea of Man as fallen. Aquinas saw Man situated at the juncture of two different universes: the corporeal and the spiritual (the body and the soul; matter and form).
Aquinas died in 1274, and three years later the theology masters of Paris University, in a zealous outburst of 'reform', condemned 219 propositions, including 12 of Aquinas'. Ultimately, however, Aquinas was reinstated and canonised in 1323. Meanwhile, orthodox scholasticism was dominated by discussions of the spiritual without the benefit of Aquinas' resolution of the problem of the two universes.
Aquinas is important in the history of educational ideas not least because he saw the learner as being at the centre of the educational process - the learner capable of self-education but within the context of faith and authority. Aquinas' interpretation of Aristotle was to have a far-reaching influence on Roman Catholic thought: he accepted Aristotle's dictum that Man was by nature a political animal and rejected the pessimistic view of political authority as a necessary means of restraining Man's sinful tendencies derived from original sin. Instead, Aquinas emphasised Man's social nature and saw government as a means of promoting Man's social well-being. This view had enormous educational implications.
The world of scholasticism was eventually threatened by a number of factors including the beginning of empirical enquiry by early scientists such as Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92) and, later, the scepticism of fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Renaissance ideas. It is easy to criticise scholastic education in retrospect, but for about 400 years the logical training involved was useful and productive in what was the most efficient higher education available. Minds were trained by this linguistic and logical set of exercises; in addition the young were taught to respect authorities and to regard logical argument as a high priority. Above all, it was open-ended education: sacred texts were central but not exclusively important.
Conclusion
It has sometimes been argued that the period covered in this chapter included the Dark Ages, a kind of cultural vacuum in between the splendours of ancient Greece and Rome and the revival of civilised ideas in the Renaissance. This is an over-simplification which underestimates the continuing intellectual activity in Europe and the progress made from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries, despite the havoc caused by the Barbarian invasions. One scholar has expressed the problem in this way:
Adventurousness and dogmatism certainly exists in every age, even if the balance between them shifts, and in the long run one no doubt spurs the other. In any case, a more general psychological comparison between the medieval and the classical ages would be more just and perhaps show less disparity.2
It may also be the case that outside influences have been underestimated. So strong was the Islamic influence on Western ideas that some modern historians have wanted to date the origins of the Renaissance much earlier than the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is certainly true that the eleventh and twelfth centuries should not be regarded as uncivilised: Romanesque architecture, Gregorian chant, chivalry, poetry, monasteries, universities and such enlightened figures as St Francis of Assisi all indicate the development of civilisation.
There were, of course, other factors: around the year 1000 there were many technological developments. In agriculture, the heavy-wheeled plough as well as windmills and water wheels appeared; and even the efficiency of the horse was greatly improved by the invention of the stirrup and the horse collar. All this helped to support an expanding population, which in turn encouraged the revival of urban life, eventually providing, as we shall see in Chapter 6, an alternative world view to that of the Church in Rome. It also encouraged the eventual breakdown of a rigid feudal social structure by the growth of a prosperous merchant class eager for the education of their children.
References
1. J. Pieper, Scholasticism (trans. R. and C. Winston) (Faber & Faber, 1961), p. 29.
2. R. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World View (Random House, 1991), p. 168.
Further Reading
Huyghe, R. (ed.), Byzantine and Medieval Art (Paul Hamlyn, 1958).
Keen, M., Medieval Europe ( Penguin, 1968).