If one moves on from the educational system itself to the courses and curricula offered, one finds a similar mixture of sound, but occasionally hidebound, traditions, and innovations still in need of perfecting.
Obviously we are best informed about universities — they have left an abundance of detailed statutes, syllabuses and manuscripts used in teaching. In essence education remained faithful to its roots, which are to be found in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, themselves heirs in large measure of the earlier Middle Ages and late Antiquity. The classification of knowledge, the hierarchy and division of disciplines, which was mirrored in the hierarchy and division of faculties, the list of ancient and modern authorities, all remained those of an earlier age.
The teaching of grammar was based on Donatus and Priscian, on occasion complemented by Evrard de Bethune and Alexandre de Villedieu. Aristotle continued to reign supreme in the study of logic and philosophy, not so much in the form of a coherent body of doctrine, but rather as a sort of universal vocabulary imposing on all and sundry its terminology, intellectual categories and the concepts, either implicit or explicit, of its psychology, physics and cosmology.
Likewise, in the superior faculties, teaching methods as well as curricula were in direct line of descent from those of previous centuries. The gloss and the question were still the two basic intellectual procedures, of which the lectio and the disputation were the practical application. Scholasticism, that strict, even inflexible combining of authority with reason, which operated within the imperious framework of the syllogism, reigned supreme over nascent intellectual curiosity. It was Aristotle’s Organon, sometimes improved upon by Peter of Spain’s Summulae (of the thirteenth century), that was thought to provide everyone with the master-key to the definition and explanation of all knowledge.
As for the actual subject matter of this knowledge, it was still thought to be enshrined in a sacrosanct list of authorities: in the faculty of medicine, Galen and his Arab commentators; in the faculties of civil and canon law, the Corpus iuris civilis (i.e. the codification of Justinian, sometimes in the thirteenth century modestly complemented by the Libri feudorum) and the Corpus iuris canonici (definitively concluded at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the incorporation of John XXII’s Extravagantes); and in theology, the Bible and four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard. The list of ‘authorised’ modern commentators, whose treatises, summaries and apparatus complemented the authorities themselves and constituted a more or less indispensable means of access to them, was a little more flexible: doctors of the Salernitan and Montpellier schools, glossators and commentators of Bologna, Parisian logicians and theologians; almost all of them, though, dated back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or at best to the first decades of the fourteenth.
Yet it would be a mistake to conclude on the basis of the strength of this traditional apparatus that at the end of the Middle Ages university teaching was atrophied and utterly opposed to progress. In philosophy and theology, for instance, the revival which had started in the fourteenth century around what one may term (to use a convenient, if controversial, word) ‘nominalism’ continued to have an impact on numerous arts and theology faculties — in Paris and Oxford naturally, but also in the new German universities, particularly Tubingen, where Gabriel Biel taught between 1484 and 1495. This via moderna had its opponents in the advocates of the via antiqua, who were themselves split into Thomists and Scotists. Lively debates sprang from this antagonism. Some universities (Heidelberg, Freiburg, Ingolstadt) organised the co-existence of both schools of thought — students could choose their degree course in one or the other. Elsewhere hostilities broke out: ‘nominalist’ authors were banned in Paris from 1474 to 1481, but by the end of the century the ‘modernists’ had regained the ascendancy. All this goes to show that university life in the fifteenth century had not necessarily sunk into arid eclecticism and routine. In the same way Averroism, which formerly had been banned in Paris, maintained its standing in various universities on the Italian peninsula, especially at Padua where Pietro Pomponazzi (1462—1525) taught.
Law and medical faculties, too, enjoyed in the fifteenth century a late flowering of scholasticism. On the Italian peninsula the jurist Paolo di Castro and the canon lawyer Nicholas de Tudeschis finished the standard work begun by the fourteenth-century commentators. Output in the medical field continued unabated: ninety-seven authors of medical treatises have been identified in fifteenth-century France, scarcely fewer than in the fourteenth (107); among them several reveal decided originality, Jacques Despars in Paris, for example, and Jacques Angeli in Montpellier. However, this comparative vigour was far from being ubiquitous and, it must be stressed, remained confined by the strait-jacket of the scholastic method, which conspicuously limited its scope. The fifteenth century, however, was to break new ground by casting doubts upon these traditional constraints.
One should not overstate the case. The success enjoyed by education, the obvious signs of which have been indicated above (the founding of new schools and universities, the general increase in student numbers), shows that those with political powers and, more broadly, society’s dominant classes still had faith in it. We will return to this point. Criticisms were frequently merely implied: the historian believes he can detect them, observing as he does the increasing number of flaws in the system; one cannot be certain that contemporaries were as clearly aware of them. These flaws are, however, indisputable, and it does appear that they became worse during the course of the century. Degree courses became disorganised; whereas many students left university without even obtaining the first degree, others achieved one without completing the requisite length of study as prescribed by statute. In consequence of this, and because of the absenteeism endemic among teaching staff, curricula were often only partially covered, and the practice of disputation fell into disuse. Examination fees and costs escalated, yet examiners were frequently accused of culpable bias towards wealthy candidates. In some cases the qualifications awarded no longer appeared to accredit any genuine study what-soever.
The causes of these abuses were manifold, but it seems evident that all testified, among other things, to a failure on the part of courses offered to adapt to the actual aspirations of students. In short they appear as evidence of the intellectual dissatisfaction felt towards the existing system by many students and even teaching masters (including some who were gaining advantages from it on a social level).
As well as these significant reactions, the fifteenth century also witnessed the expression of formal criticisms of scholastic and university institutions. Those of religious reformers and popular preachers were relatively traditional: they denounced the arrogance of teaching doctors, the greed of jurists, the pointless subtleties of a too-theoretical theology. Princely counsellors, from their more political standpoint, condemned the disorderly behaviour attributed to students, at the same time deprecating the undue length of courses and their excessively theoretical nature. Lastly, humanists deplored the barbarity of scholastic Latin and the neglect of Greek, the contempt of universities for classical texts and the humanities, and their indifference towards the moral education of their students. As an example one thinks of the sarcastic remarks which Lorenzo Valla, who had been invited to the University of Pavia in 1431 as professor in rhetoric, directed at his colleagues of the superior faculties — remarks soon resulting in his expulsion.
Various individuals proposed reforms. In Paris as early as 1400 the chancellor, Jean Gerson, drew up a plan of reform for the faculty of theology. Committees of the Council of Basle examined several schemes of a similar nature. In France, Charles VII’s counsellors were continually urging the king at the end of the Hundred Years War not to neglect, in his task of re-organising the kingdom, the reform of the university.
Actual attempts at reform did occur. In France, for instance, it was rare for a university to escape: Angers underwent two reforms, in 1398 and 1494; Toulouse had two series of reform statutes, between 1394 and 1425 and between 1470 and 1499; in Orleans and Paris two ‘general reforms’ were imposed, in 1447 and 1452 respectively; at Avignon, however, a similar attempt in 1459 remained a dead letter. Mention should also be made of the reform of Bologna University by the cardinal-legate, Bessarion, in the 1450s. These various attempts were, however, of limited scope. The reformers, principally preoccupied with the problems of university privileges and public order, and hamstrung by conservatism among teaching staff, achieved only minor adjustments to degree courses and syllabuses.
It would be wrong to conclude that there were no genuine innovations in the educational sphere in fifteenth-century western Christendom. There were, but they were limited, localised, and often occurred in institutions and areas of marginal importance. The pillars of the system — the old universities and superior faculties — did not exactly welcome them.
Some of the vehicles of educational revival have already been mentioned. The schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, the Italian humanists’ contubernia, some university colleges (at least as far as optional courses were concerned) introduced new concepts of the master—pupil relationship. For the tedious repetition, year in year out, of the same lectiones, often but irregularly delivered, they substituted, above all in the teaching of grammar and the arts, a system of graded classes, where pupils were streamed according to their age and standard. The pleasure of free discussion in small groups replaced, or rather complemented, inflexible formal lectures or scholastic disputations. Apart from drilling in the prescribed syllabus, more emphasis was now placed on moral and religious education. In some institutions authorised games began to feature; some schools put on plays.
New ideas surfaced in the curricula. Here the superior faculties were the sector least affected: conservatism among the doctors and political constraints had the combined effect of preserving old syllabuses and stifling innovation. The latter scarcely found a toe-hold, except in the informal fringe activities of those small groups sympathetic to fresh ideas. Arts faculties, which were more diversified and less structured, were far more accommodating, as were some non-university establishments and others in the process of breaking away. In these cases educational revival went hand in hand with the realisation that what today would be labelled ‘secondary’ education was a specialised area, totally different from the university field proper, that is to say the superior faculties.
Clearly this development was a gradual process and was not to reach its full potential until the sixteenth century. The first signs, however, were already visible in the fifteenth. Italian universities seemed the most progressive: after 1450 practically all arts faculties on the peninsula offered a complete cycle of studia humanitatis. North of the Alps, too, there was an increase, at least spasmodically, in courses in rhetoric, Greek and Hebrew, often thanks to Italian teaching masters, or teaching masters educated on the peninsula. Indeed, the humanists’ peregrinatio academica was then gathering momentum, and many were those from north of the Alps who journeyed to the Italian peninsula, especially Padua, to be initiated into the new ideas.
A few examples will suffice. In 1458 Lilio Tifernate started a Greek course in Paris; a little later on the Savoyard Guillaume Fichet added lessons in rhetoric within the Sorbonne college itself to the fairly traditional courses he gave as a theology regent. In Cambridge it was the Franciscan Lorenzo Traversagni di Savona who inaugurated a course of study in humanistic rhetoric. Yet the new German, Hungarian and Polish universities were those most receptive to Italian influences, thanks to courses subsidised by the patronage of princes and prelates. In 1447 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II) gave courses on classical poetry in Vienna; after him came the humanist astronomers, Georg Peurbach and Johannes Muller (Regiomontanus), later to be found at the Hungarian University of Pozsony. From 1440 onwards Gregory of Sanok and other lecturers educated in Padua fostered the humanistic environment at Cracow from which Copernicus would emerge — he studied arts there from 1491 to 1495.
Progress was not confined to courses in the humanities. Linked to them, philosophy, the sciences (mathematics and astronomy), law, theology and biblical exegesis began in their turn to bow to the philological demands brought into favour by the humanistic revival of grammar and rhetoric. Angelo Poliziano (1454—94) embarked on a new edition of the Corpus iuris civilis, while giving distinguished courses on Greek poetry in Florence. In Paris Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples (c. 1450—1537) undertook humanistic editions of Aristotle and the Bible. New texts, new doctrines too. From the beginning of the century Jean Gerson had been preaching mystical theology in reaction to the dry-as-dust excesses of scholasticism — it found a sympathetic response among humanists; John Doket, destined to become provost of King’s College, introduced Florentine neoplatonist doctrines (Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino) to Cambridge by way of his commentary on the Phaedo (c. 1470).
One final question needs to be asked. How far did the invention and spread of printing influence university and scholastic education before 1500? In truth, though the university libraries of France and the Italian peninsula seem to have been stagnating in the fifteenth century, German and English universities and colleges did not wait for the arrival of the printed book: even before 1450, frequently thanks to princely generosity, they enlarged considerably their collections of manuscripts, including classical texts or recent works of Italian humanists. One of the best examples is Erfurt, where in 1433 a former rector, Amplonius Ratingk, bequeathed his magnificent library of 637 volumes to the college he had recently founded (the university itself already possessed more than 800). University towns usually did not lack either manuscripts or the necessary means to produce copies at relatively modest expense. While early printers were not exactly scornful of university and scholastic clients, they did prefer to set up business in large, commercial towns without universities (Nuremberg, Augsburg, Milan, Venice, Lyons, London). Though not entirely neglected, university towns were in the second division: the first workshop in Paris was established near the Sorbonne in 1470; Louvain had one in 1473, Cracow in 1479, whereas Cambridge, for example, had to wait until 1520. The textbooks produced by these early presses were above all elementary grammar books with some classical authors and manuals by Italian humanists; they were therefore aimed principally at pupils of pre-university schools and those attending arts faculties. It was only more gradually that the ‘authorities’ and summae in use in the superior faculties had the distinction of getting into print. It cannot be claimed that before 1500 printing genuinely revolutionised the conventions of university teaching.