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MEDIEVAL HISTORY.THE CONTEST EMPIRE AND PAPACY |
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CHAPTER XXII.
MEDIEVAL SCHOOLS TO c. 1300.
The schools of
medieval Europe owed their curriculum of secular studies to the imperial
rhetoric schools of Rome. For some centuries after the barbarian invasions
Christian bishops kept alight the lamp of learning: in schools where much
‘chant’ and ‘doctrine’ and but a meagre fragment of
the old Roman studies were afforded, but the whole curriculum was eventually
reclaimed for Christian schools. The imperial schools were 'public schools', in
the sense that access to them was open to all who could pay the fees, often
small through the subvention of the State, to the rhetor or grammarian; when the expression ‘scholae publicae’ is found, rarely enough, in early
medieval documents, it always looks back to a school of this type—either one
largely maintained by the State, or the school of a private master teaching for
fees—in distinction to episcopal schools, where the pupil might be maintained
and taught without payment, but where the bishop or his deputy settled
questions of admission.
The curriculum
of the imperial schools, viewed by medieval scholars through the writings of Martianus Capella,
consisted of the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry,
arithmetic, astronomy, music. The classification was retained by Boethius (ob.
524), who was the first to divide the subjects into two groups, the trivium and quadrivium.
Cassiodorus noted the appropriateness of the sevenfold distinction and its
connection with the perfect number of scripture, and Isidore of Seville preserved it in his Origines. The seven liberal arts
fell into line with the general predilection for seven divisions in the
medieval world, with the seven grades of the clerical militia, the seven articles of the creed, and the seven
deadly sins. Under grammar was included the study of the Latin classics, under
rhetoric the schemata, tropes, and figures so useful for the interpretation of
Christian scriptures, under dialectic the logic of Porphyry and, after the
twelfth-century renaissance, of Aristotle. Geometry included geography and such
slender conceptions of a Ptolemaic universe as survived; arithmetic was for
long represented chiefly by the computus,
or tables for establishing the date of Easter and the moveable feasts; and the
last two subjects found for some time few professors, the study of Greek music
not being necessary for the chant.
The question of
the persistence of the rhetoric schools is of great interest.In Britain they perished with the withdrawal of the legions, though the tradition
of classical learning survived in the British monasteries of Wales, Armorica,
and Ireland. In Gaul in the fourth 766 Schools of rhetoric century masters were
still numerous and schools flourishing, to judge from the information about his
colleagues given by the rhetor Ausonius, and from other evidence. The continuity of
schools in particular towns depended on the presence of celebrated professors;
but during the century the existence of schools of several masters is to be
inferred at Autun,
Marseilles (where Greek was taught as well as Latin), Lyons, Bordeaux, Besançon, Toulouse, Narbonne, Poitiers, Angouleme, Saintes, and Auch.
The fifth century brought to Gaul the shock of the Burgundian, Visigothic, and Frankish invasions, and the raid of Attila;
the public schools were no longer supported by the State, and Sidonius Apollinaris witnesses to
the willingness of the Roman provincial nobles to settle down under barbarian
rule. The schools were no longer assured of a clientele preparing for an
imperial career, and, except at Lyons, there were no longer groups of masters,
though individual rhetors are known to have taught at Marseilles, Aries, Agen, Perigueux,
Bordeaux, and possibly at Narbonne and Clermont. In the sixth century the ruin
of the schools was completed; the liberal arts were no longer taught; Gregory
of Tours wrote that "the culture of liberal letters is declining, or
rather perishing, in the towns of Gaul... one would not know how to find a
single man instructed in dialectic or grammar"; Fortunatus,
the great man of letters of the period, had been brought up in Ravenna. When
schools were again founded in Gaul, they were schools of a different type.
In Italy,
however, the rhetoric schools never perished—a fact vital to the survival of
European civilization, law, and politics. The Ostrogoths Theodoric (ob. 526) and Athalaric (ob. 534) protected them, and the generation which included Ennodius,
Boethius, and Cassiodorus profited by the brief spell of peace. Schools were
numerous, treatises on grammar were multiplied, and Cassiodorus planned with
Pope Agapetus the foundation of a Christian rhetoric
school at Rome for the teaching of the liberal arts—a scheme narrowed later to
the foundation of his learned monastery at Vivarium. The Lombard invasion
proved far more dangerous to the schools than that of the Ostrogoths;
but the strength of local tradition, the nearness of the vernacular language to
Latin, the contact with Byzantine learning by means of the Greek cities of the
South, prevented their disappearance, and produced important results. First, up
to and during the Carolingian renaissance, Italy supplied Europe, if not with
great scholars, at least with grammar masters trained on the old classical
lines. Bethar (ob. 623),
an early scholasticus and
Bishop of Chartres, who was for some time in charge of the Merovingian palace
school (where his teaching was no doubt more religious than literary) came from
Italy; as did Hadrian and Theodore, Paulus Diaconus and Peter of Pisa, Lanfranc and Anselm, and many others. Secondly, the
tradition of lay scholarship persisted in Italy. Whereas elsewhere in Europe
schools were maintained by ecclesiastics, and masters and scholars were clerks,
in Italy the rhetoric masters and their scholars were not clerks, though they
Clerkship and the tonsure irritated the bishops by claiming benefit of clergy.
Thirdly, the lay character of the Italian rhetoric schools, and the
ecclesiastical character of other European schools, account for the fact that
when, later, groups of schools flowered into universities, Italy took the lead
in the secular studies of law and medicine, while Paris was mistress of
theology.
Clerkship and the tonsure
The connection between the other type of early medieval school, the
episcopal or monastic school, and the minor orders of the clergy, was so close
that some reference must be made to it. Those who taught in such schools before
1300, and, with the few exceptions of the children of princes and nobles, those
who attended them also, were either clerks or probationers for the clericatus : they received
the tonsure and wore the clerical dress. The shearing of the hair (not at first
the shaving of the top of the head, leaving a corona or fringe of hair all
round) was a sacred rite administered by the abbot to the postulant whom he
received, and who did not necessarily proceed afterwards to any of the seven
orders of the Church; or by the bishop before the administration of the first
minor order. The idea in each case was the same — adoption into the abbot’s or
bishop’s familia. The non-monastic
tonsure was not an order, but (according to John de Burgh in the Pupilla Oculi of 1385) “a disposition towards an order”. The seven
orders (ostiarius, exorcista, lector, acolita, sub- (or hypo-) diaconus, diaconus, presbyter) were all, at first, given
separately, but by the sixth century the first and second, or the first,
second, and third, were conferred on the same day, and the candidate was
ordained exorcist, or, more usually, lector. In England in Archbishop Ecgbert’s time candidates would
still seem to have been ordained to each order separately; but Peckham allowed the first three
minor orders to be conferred together, and the Pupilla Oculi states that
all four might be so conferred. The non-monastic tonsure (it is inexact to call
it the “clerical tonsure” since monks were clerks) has always, in the Greek
Church, accompanied ordination to the first minor order. In the Latin Church it
was first allowed to be given separately, to those who had no intention of
proceeding to orders, by Gregory the Great, in the case of the Sicilian actionarii employed in
administering the papal patrimony. It was also given separately, after the
Carolingian renaissance, to children of seven or over who were received into
bishops' households to be trained as their diocesan clergy; before this, such
children appear to have been ordained lectors at once. In pre-Conquest England,
evidence that the (non-monastic) tonsure was given separately from the
conferment of a minor order is lacking. In any case, in Europe generally, the
number of those who received the (non-monastic) tonsure without proceeding then
or later to minor orders was not great before the rise of the universities in
the late twelfth century; afterwards, it was considerable. The reception of the
tonsure, like the admission to minor orders, did not entail celibacy, though
those who received them usually practised it for a time as living a community life, either, in the earlier centuries, in
some bishop’s familia, or, later, in
some college of the university or provincial hostel. Episcopal statutes frequently
reiterated that none could claim benefit of clergy who scorned to wear the
tonsure and the clerical dress. Clerkship was proved by the production of
letters of clerkship granted by the bishop at the time of conferment, or
failing this, in France, by the production of barbers to swear that the tonsure
had been properly made. It was only later than 1300 that English law allowed
clerkship to be proved by the reading of certain psalm verses; and even then
the verses usually chosen were from the sixteenth psalm: “The Lord himself is
the portion of mine inheritance... thou shalt maintain my lot. The lot is
fallen unto me in a fair ground”, which the candidate would have recited in
alternate verses with the bishop who was shearing him. Clerkship before 1300 implied
a definite ecclesiastical status and duties, and not merely ability to read or
write; nor should clerks be confounded with those who were, for various
reasons, entitled to benefit of clergy — a larger number.
Child lectors
By far the most important pre-Carolingian schools were the bishops'
schools—small groups of lectors living in their households. The bishops formed
the “ordo doctorum”,
and in this conception the teaching of the diocesan clergy personally in their
own household seems to have been an equally important element with the teaching
of the laity by means of sermons. Throughout the middle ages, “cathedra”, of
course, meant equally a “cathedral” or a professor’s “chair”. In the early
Middle Ages, except for periods of confusion due to the barbarian invasions,
bishops were ideally supposed to live a communal life with the clergy of their familia. References to
this familia, and the
ecclesiastical training afforded in it, are frequent in papal letters and
conciliar decrees, and show that the adoption of children of seven into it
preceded even the fail of the public rhetoric
schools. It was the disappearance of these, however, which made such episcopal
schools vital. As long as the rhetoric schools existed, the lives of the more
learned bishops show them to have been taught in such schools; but, after their
disappearance, the biographies of even the most learned bishops show them to
have been received (usually as children) and trained in some bishop's
household. Pope Siricius wrote in 385 to Bishop Himerius of Tarragona that
“Whoever vows himself to the service of the Church from his infancy (i.e. seven years old) ought to be baptized and joined to the ministry of the
lectors”. Certain Statuta Antigua mentioned these child lectors, who read in church,
and laid down interesting rules for the regulation of the bishop’s familia of clerks, “widows”, and pilgrims. Pope Zosimus wrote (c. 418) to Esychius of these lectors: “If he shall have given
his name from infancy to ecclesiastical ministries, let him remain until his
twentieth year with continual observance among the lectors”. Leo I wrote to the
African bishops about the choice of suitable candidates for the priesthood:
“The venerable sanctions of the holy fathers justly adjudged those to be
suitable for sacred functions whose whole life, from childhood to more advanced
age, has been passed by means of the stipends of ecclesiastical discipline”. A
stipend, an allowance sufficient to support life, could hardly have been made
to children otherwise than by maintenance in the bishop’s familia: and this is actually stated by the Council of Toledo in 531.
The first conciliar decree expressly dealing with familial schools came
from sixth century Gaul, where the rhetoric schools had just perished. The
Council of Vaison in 529
enacted that “all priests (presbyteri)
who are appointed to parochiae shall, according to the custom which we have learned is wisely observed
throughout all Italy, receive to live with them, in their house where they
themselves dwell, young lectors (as many as have taken no wife); and,
spiritually nourishing them like good fathers, they shall strive to prepare
psalms, to persist in readings of Scripture (divinae lectiones), and in teaching the law of the Lord;
so that they may provide for themselves worthy successors, and receive from the
Lord the reward of eternal life. But when they shall come to full age, if any
of them through the frailty of the fiesh wishes to marrry, he
shall not be denied power to marry”. The school of a “mater ecclesia” in a
“rural diocese” is clearly here indicated; no chaplain of a rural “oratorium” could have nourished
an indefinite number of young lectors. The cost of the maintenance and
education of these ordinands is clearly the cause of the frequent enactments that no bishop should ordain
the scholar of another. The Council of Toledo in 531 said expressly that it was
unfair to the bishop who had taken the child “from rustic and mean
surroundings” that he should later, “when imbued with such an education”,
transfer himself to another church. This council also echoed the decree of Vaison, applying it to bishops’
schools: “Of those whom the will of their parents sets free from the years of
their first infancy for the clerical office, we decree that immediately they
have received the tonsure they shall be handed over to the ministry of the
lectors; they ought to be taught in the house of the church, in the bishop’s
presence, by his deputy. But, when they shall have completed their eighteenth
year, their wishes concerning the taking of a wife ought to be scrutinized by
the bishop in the presence of clerks and laity”. It was doubtless to this
formal choice of the young lectors trained in the familia of Augustine at
Christ Church, Canterbury, that Gregory the Great looked forward, when he
advised Augustine to live the apostolic (communal) life with his clergy,
allowing such lectors as wished at this stage to marry to do so, and to receive
their stipends (maintenance) outside the community, while attending its
offices. The training of the Canterbury (and Rochester) child lectors by
“masters and pedagogues” is independently attested. Gregory the Great himself
founded a “schola cantorum” at Rome of a similar
nature: he built, that is, two new houses for the school in the papal household
which had already existed. The functions of “lectors” and “cantors” run into
one another in medieval documents; the cantor or psalmista was not necessarily episcopally “blessed”, the cantorate not being one of
the seven orders in the Western Church, although it was in the Eastern. In St
Ambrose's church at Milan (and in other instances), we find that it was the
lectors who did the singing.
In these episcopal schools the teaching depended on the learning of the
bishop, or after the seventh century his deputy, the magister scholarum, scholasticus, or capischola. Latin and the computus were taught as necessary for
ecclesiastical equipment, but the seven liberal arts were not usually so taught
before the Carolingian renaissance. Paganism was still too real a danger in
Italy for ecclesiastics, even those who like Gregory the Great had been taught
in rhetoric schools themselves, to wish that classical learning should be
sought for its own sake by clerks; hence Ireland, where Roman paganism had
never been a danger, became for a time the nursery of classical scholarship.
The Irish schools, however, were rather monastic than episcopal. The teaching
of Hadrian and Theodore at Canterbury included the liberal arts and the study
of Roman Law; but this far surpassed the teaching given in an average episcopal
household between 529 and 800. Grammar masters were hard to obtain, as is shown
by the story told of Bishop Aitherius of Lisieux by Gregory of
Tours. Aitherius rescued
from prison, he says, a clerk, from the city of Sens, of extremely bad
character. But the clerk “professed himself to be a doctor of letters, and
promised the priest that, if he would commend the children to him, he would
make them perfect in letters”. Aitherius already had a “praeceptor”,
presumably for his household lectors, but he at once “rejoiced, and collected
the children of the city, and commended them to him to teach”. The clerk was
presented with a vineyard by way of salary, and invited to the homes of the
boys he taught. He tried to seduce one of the mothers, and complaints were
made; but the bishop could not believe evil of a man so learned, and dismissed
them. The wicked clerk then tried to induce the archdeacon to conspire to
murder the bishop, and, failing, crept after the bishop, who was walking in a
wood, with an axe. The bishop, however, turned and saw him; whereat he
explained that the archdeacon had hired him to murder his benefactor, but that
he had never intended to do the deed. The good bishop believed him, wept, and
made him promise silence. Aitherius then returned to his house for supper, and afterwards "he rested upon his
couch, having around his bed the many little beds of his clerks". The
clerk approached in the night and raised an alarm, saying that he had seen a
woman coming from the bishop; but the slander was apparent to all, for the
bishop was over seventy, and was sleeping surrounded by his clerks. Aitherius’ eyes were opened, and
he got rid of him.
Early Frankish schools
The lives of pre-Carolingian bishops and abbots refer frequently to
these household schools, and show that pupils were also taken for training by
other priests; though in some cases the priest was probably, though it is not
directly stated, the scholasticus of a bishop. Thus St Lomer (ob. 590), born of noble parents near Chartres, was confided
by them to live with a priest Chirmirus and be imbued with sacred letters. Chirmirus,
who was also the master of another Chartrain priest, Lancegesil, lived
within the city of Chartres, “Domino militans”:
a member, that is, of the “clerical militia” or bishop’s household, and
probably his deputy in training the young lectors. St Rigomer was thus “trained from infancy by a certain
religious priest”; many others, like Gregory of Tours, were thus “nutriti” by some bishop. St Germain de Granval (ob. 667) was
delivered as an “infantulus”
to Bishop Modoald of
Tours; St Leger, Bishop of Autun,
was confided to the Bishop of Poitiers and was “strenue enutritus”. Acca was “nutritus atque eruditus”
by Archbishop Bosa, the
predecessor of John of Beverley at York; Headda (ob. 790) left a
bequest to the cathedral of Worcester.
Even when, after the Frankish settlements in Gaul and during the
fighting of the early Merovingian kings, the practice of the communal life of
bishops with their households was relaxed, the familia still lived
normally near the cathedra, and in the society of the bishop. The Council of
Tours in 567 wrote: “Let the bishop have his wife as his sister, and so let him
govern all his house, both his ecclesiastical and his own house, in holy
conversation, that no suspicion... arise. And although by God’s help he shall
live chastely by the testimony of his clerks, because they dwell with him both
in his cella and
wherever he is, and thus the priests and deacons, or at least the crowd of
young clerks, keep him safe: yet nevertheless, for zeal to God, let them be
divided and sufficiently distant from his mansio, that those who are being nomished in the hope of being received into the
clerical servitude be not polluted by the near contagion of the women”. When
the reform of the Frankish Church was in progress under the influence of
Boniface, the chief instrument of reform was the rule drawn up by Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, in
754, to ensure a return to communal life on the part of the bishop and his familia. His own edition
of the rule has no reference to the cathedral school, though young clerks were
no doubt in his day received for training.
Early monastic schools
Monastic schools before the Carolingian renaissance were internal
schools, and dealt almost solely with the training of oblate children, who
might be received from seven years old, or even younger, like the young lectors
in bishops' households. The children of princes and nobles were received for
training by abbots both Benedictine and Celtic, but naturally not in large
numbers; they would seem to have been received rather as pages into the abbots'
households than strictly into the monastic school, though they were no doubt
taught letters. In addition, where missionary houses, Benedictine or Celtic,
occupied the whole ground, two other needs seem to have been met: that of
teaching the outside peasantry the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments by heart, and that of training internally boys for the clerical
militia. The latter would only have been taught reading, writing, singing, and
Latin. The monastic schools were intended for monks, and the great monastic
schools, mainly post-Carolingian, were for adult monks; the practice of
receiving monks from other monasteries, sent to complete their studies, was
common. The greatest service to general education which the monks rendered was
that of supplying learned monks who, as bishops, were competent to teach the
young clerks of their household. Educational activities which had been partial
and sporadic before Charlemagne became normal or compulsory through the
renaissance he inspired. The personal curiosity for learning, which made him
attract learned clerks to his court, had immediate effects on the palace
school, and on episcopal and monastic schools. He collected from Italy, at one
time and another, Peter of Pisa, Paul the Deacon, Leidrad, probably Theodulf the Visigoth, and cantors from the Roman
school, to teach the cathedral schools of Metz and Soissons; from England and
Ireland he obtained Alcuin, the pupil of Aethelbert and the school of York, and some of his
English students, and later Clement the Scot. The court became an "academia,"
where Charles himself learned classics from Peter of Pisa and the liberal arts
from Alcuin—by way of question and answer. In this scholarly circle, Frankish
names were too dull; Charles became “king David”,' Alcuin “Flaccus”
(Horace), Theodulf “Pindar”, Angilbert “Homer”, Arno of Salzburg
“Aquila”, Eppin the
cup-bearer “Nehemiah”, and Charles’ daughters “Lucia” and “Columba”.
The palace school, to be distinguished from this “academia” of
courtiers, had dated back to the days of St Leger (ob.
678), but not as a school where the liberal arts were taught. It had consisted
of the young clerks under the archchaplain,
and the sons of the nobility in training as pages and squires; young children
do not seem to have been received, for the school was, like the court,
ambulatory, and there are references to several “adolescentuli” who attended it after receiving
training elsewhere. It is significant that Pepin the Short, by whom so many of
the Carolingian reforms were begun, was educated, not in the palace school, but
in the monastery of St Denis. In Charles' own time, when Peter of Pisa and
Alcuin taught the school, the majority of boys and youths who attended it would
seem to have been clerks, the future bishops and abbots of the kingdom, and to
these the old classical education of the liberal arts was again afforded; but
the point of great interest about the school is that some young lay nobles,
like Einhard the historian, also received similar
instruction, and this was a new departure. Bishop Wilfrid of York had received young nobles to train either as clerks or squires,
according to their own wish when they were old enough to decide; but it was the
greatness and magnificence of his household, his “innumerus sodalium exercitus” which procured
his banishment. His successor, John of Beverley, also had young laymen in his
train when travelling, and apparently living with him “in clero”; but if the tonsure was not yet given
separately from a minor order in England, they may have been probationers for
such orders. Certainly, the Carolingian palace school was the first to give
classical (as distinct from religious) teaching to lay boys in any number, a
feature in which it was copied by Alfred's palace school later. The account of
Charlemagne's visit to his scholars, after they had been left behind for a time
in Gaul under Clement the Scot, during one of his campaigns, would seem to show
that even his scholars were mainly clerks; for he rebuked the idle, and
promised to the industrious "bishoprics and abbeys"—not lay offices.
The sort of instruction conferred on the lay boys may have been of the nature
of the “proposition” found in a manuscript contemporary with Alcuin and headed
“Ad acuendos iuvenes”. A certain man had a
herd of 100 pigs, it begins; he wished to have them slaughtered in equal
numbers on three days; how many should he have slaughtered each day? When time
has been given for meditation, the “magister” should say, “quasi increpando iuvenes”, “Now this is a fable and it can be
solved by nobody."
From the accession of Charlemagne till c. 1170 episcopal schools were
the most important organ of education, and were frequent subjects of
legislation; after c. 1170 the universities, which grew out of them, replaced
them as centres of the
teaching of the liberal arts; though they, with the grammar schools of the
diocese, continued to teach grammar and rhetoric to schoolboys, and theology to
the greater part of the diocesan clergy. Monastic schools from about 800 to
1000 probably produced greater scholars, but these were monks who gave their
whole lives to scholarship. From c. 1000 to c. 1170 the cathedral schools —
Tours, Orleans, Utrecht, Liege, Rheims, Chartres, Paris — eclipsed the monastic
schools even in the production of scholars; during this period they were the
international centres of
adult scholarship, as well as training-schools for the diocesan clergy.
Alcuin
Charlemagne's capitulary of 787, addressed to the Abbot of Fulda,
ordered that in all the monasteries and bishops' houses under his rule there
should be study, “litterarum raeditationes”, and
“those who can shall teach”, for grammar and rhetoric were indispensable for
understanding the figures of scripture. In 789 he issued another more precise:
“Let the ministers of God’s altar... collect and associate with themselves (i.e. maintain in their houses) children, not only of servile condition but also
free-born (ingenui)”. Some bishops are known to have redeemed
slaves for this purpose. “And that there may be schools of reading-boys (i.e.
lectors), let them learn psalms, notes, chants, the computus, and grammar in each monastery and
bishop’s house”. In these internal schools bishops were to train young clerks,
and abbots were to train monks. The capitulary of 805 referred to such schools
and ordered that all should learn truly about the computus,
that children should be sent to learn the art of medicine (presumably, boarded
in some school in South Italy), and that the Roman chant, as used at Metz,
should be followed. Alcuin, exhausted with the perambulations of the court,
retired in 796 to teach the liberal arts to the canons of the cathedral
monastery of St Martin of Tours, and to such scholars as resorted to him. He
wrote in that year to Eanbald of York about the
conduct of his familia, advising that his clerks should be
separated according to their occupation, reading, the chant, or writing, and
that a master should be provided for each “order”. Possibly the scholastic
classes coincided with the reception of some minor order, as a comparison with
the clerks of Milan suggests; or perhaps the use of the word is merely
accidental. Alcuin wrote to Arno, later Archbishop of Salzburg, in 799,
advising that he and his suffragans should have scholars, and make them diligently learn psalms and church
melodies, that the daily course of the praises of God might be performed in
each (mother) church; and to another bishop in Germany, advising him to hasten
home and set in order the boys' lessons: who should learn grammar, who read
epistles and small books, and who Holy Scripture.
Theodulf of Orleans
Bishop Theodulf of Orleans carried the provision for education within his diocese a stage
further. "If any priest wishes to send his nephew or his relation to
school in the (cathedral) church of Ste Croix, or in the monastery of St Aignan,
or St Benoit, or St Liphard,
or in other of the monastic communities which it is granted us to govern: we
give him leave to do this". The concession is here financial: the
cathedral school shall receive their relations for nothing (and board them,
probably); and the bishop will see that abbots also receive, board, and teach
them for nothing, as oblates, or possibly as candidates for the secular clergy
also. The next canon probably refers to the teaching of day scholars : “Let
priests in towns and villages have schools, and if any of the faithful wishes
to commend his little ones to them to learn letters, they ought to receive
them... and teach them with the greatest affection — They shall demand nothing
in this matter by way of price, nor shall they receive anything from them,
except what the parents... shall bestow upon them voluntarily”. This canon
shows the high-water mark of Carolingian advance, and shows the ideal of one of
the greatest scholars of Charles’ court—of one also acquainted with conditions
in Italy, where grammar masters were fairly plentiful. The whole set of canons
are rather counsels of perfection than ecclesiastical laws; the laity were
equally canonically bound to say their prayers at least twice a day, and
priests to confess their sins with groans and tears, reciting the fifty-first
psalm, once or twice a day, or as much oftener as possible. Theodulf was at one time Abbot of St Benoit (Fleury), and energetic in the reform movement connected
with St Benedict of Aniane,
and hence his capitulary was read and copied by monastic reformers. Dunstan and
the English reformers were closely in touch with Fleury,
and this probably explains the presence of different parts of the capitulary in
two English manuscripts, both in Latin with English translations. The part of
the capitulary dealing with schools occurs in a manuscript following some
“statute” collected by Abbot Aelfric of Evnsham; but there is no evidence that it was ever
“lecta et publicata” in any English
synod, or even that the translator was Aelfric. Another copy in a monastery at
Ghent attributed it explicitly, but certainly wrongly, to the Council of
Constantinople, 680, causing confusion to later writers. The canon about
schools is not drawn from any Eastern council, but was Theodulf’s own work.
Charlemagne’s capitularies were not universally obeyed. In 813 the
Council of Chalon reiterated that schools must be
set up; and in 817 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle dealt with both monastic and
cathedral schools. In monasteries there were to be schools only of oblates; a
few, like Fulda and St Gall, continued for a time to have “scholae exteriores seu canonicae” for training secular clerks. Chrodegang’s rule, revised and
enlarged by some chapters, was to be observed, as the “regula Aquisgranensis”,
by all the cathedrals of the Empire. A chapter of the rule regulated the
provisions for the cathedral school. As earlier, it was to be an internal
school, in which the young clerks were maintained by the chapter; the boys
slept and worked together, in charge of an aged and discreet canon, though they
might have a younger one to teach them. The rule was influential in reforms
earned out by Dunstan in England and was formally adopted by Leofric of Exeter c. 1050. The
chapter describing the school must be taken as descriptive of the normal cathedral
school in the Carolingian Empire from this time forward, apart from evidence to
the contrary in particular cases, and till the communal life of chapters
lapsed. Alcuin's teaching at Tours made the school so famous that conditions
were perhaps abnormal there in his day. External scholars, boarding in the
town, may have been taught by him; certainly in 843 Amalric, canon and scholasticus, left a bequest to the future
preceptors in the school, to prevent the abominable custom, which had sprung up
in his predecessors’ day, of taking a price for instruction, “as from any other
worldly business”. Whether the endowment was to recompense the preceptors for
renouncing the fees of external scholars, or to enable them to board these
scholars gratis in their house, is not clear. There was certainly an internal
and an external school at Rheims later; and, from about 900 onwards, the
general practice of the cathedrals seems to have been for the chapter to
maintain a number of “clericuli”,
while others were taken into the school as a private bargain with their
relatives, and yet others were boarded by individual canons, who made a special
bargain with relatives for “introducing them into the clerical order”.
Generally speaking, and theoretically, no fees, or very small fees, were
charged for teaching only in the cathedral grammar or theology school, the
masters being maintained by the chapter; but unless they had a prebend the maintenance was
sometimes insufficient, and practice varied.
The ninth century brought difficulties to the schools. Louis the Pious,
in 822, desired that schools should be amended: the parents or lords of
scholars (no longer, significantly, the bishop) must help to provide for them;
if the diocese (parochia)
were very large, two or three places of study must be founded. The Council of
Paris, in 824, ordered each bishop to show more zeal to have a school to
educate the militia of Christ; to encourage this, let each bishop bring his scholasticus to the provincial
council. In 824 Lothar, as co-regent with his father,
ordered that, since instruction was lacking in Italy, schools of “doctrina” should be maintained
in certain towns, which he specified. In 826 Pope Eugenius II enacted that,
since in some places there were neither masters nor care for the study of
letters, each bishopric, and other places where there was need, should have
masters and doctors to teach letters and the “dogmas of the liberal arts”. The
Council of Paris, in 829, repeated the provisions of 822, and the bishops
petitioned the Emperor Louis that, lest his father’s work should be lost, three
“public schools” should be set up in his Empire; which three schools of
Charlemagne they referred to is not clear, though a subsequent canon shows that
they were including Italy in the Empire. The Council of Meaux,
in 845, declared all the capitularies of Charles and Louis the Pious to be
still in force, and ordered all bishops to build a cloister near their church
for the regular training of their clerks (as Eugenius II had also ordered in
826). In 852 Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims enjoined in
a synod that answers should be made to certain questions, to be propounded by
the magister and the dean “in each mother-church, and in each chapel of our parochia (archbishopric)”;
among others: “Had the priest a clerk who could keep school, or read the
epistle and sing, according as was necessary”—the one, probably, in a
mother-church (ecclesia), the other in a chapel (capella). This provision
was perhaps due to a clause in the homilies of the contemporary Pope Leo IV
that “each priest should have a scholar clerk, who could read the epistle or
lesson and respond at mass, and with whom he could sing psalms”. The same Pope,
in 853, practically repealed Eugenius' canon about the schools of liberal arts,
by acknowledging that grammar masters were scarce, and ordering that, in lack
of them, masters of divine scriptures and teachers of the office should be
provided.
The ravages of the Northmen and internecine
wars had half consumed learning by the mid-century, and the Council of Valence,
summoned in 855 for the provinces of Lyons, Vienne, and Arles, could only order
that “something should be discussed, and if possible decreed and ordained,
about schools both of divine and secular literature and church chant, since, from
the long intermission of this study, ignorance of the faith and of all
knowledge has overtaken many bishoprics”. Archbishop Herard of Tours, in 858, ordered that “priests
should have schools as much as they can, and corrected books”; and Bishop
Walter of Orleans in the same year interpreted this by enacting that “every
priest must have a clerk, whom he must have religiously educated; and, if it is
possible for him, he must have a school in his church, and wisely take heed
that those whom he receives to teach he may chastely and sincerely nourish”.
This seems an interesting attempt to extend the system of training lectors from
episcopal and collegiate churches to those of single priests; each priest must
train or have trained one clerk (the ancestor, of course, of the later parish
clerk), and, if it be possible, let him nourish more. In 859 the Council of Savonnières urged that “scholae publicae” (apparently implying, at the date,
royally endowed schools) should be set up, so that fruit both of divine and
human learning might accrue to the Church.
After these enactments, however, the schools gradually recovered and
became flourishing; the records of individual cathedrals indicate greater
prosperity and scholarship. Bishop Ratherius of Verona in 966 decreed that he would in future promote no ordinands who had not lived in his own city, or in
some monastery, and to some extent learned letters. The clause about private
teaching is characteristic of Italian conditions; north of the Alps ordinands would have attached
themselves to some cathedral school (unless ordained without preparation in
deference to the wish of some layman). Gregory VII in 1078 ordered that “all
bishops were to have the arts of letters taught in their churches”, i.e. not merely “divine learning” but secular. The growth of the schools is marked
by increase of masters. Fulbert (ob. 1028), the scholar-Bishop of Chartres, who raised the
schools to the pitch of fame, gave Hildegaire both the birch of the grammaticus and the tablets of the chancellor as symbols of authority; in addition, Hildegaire held the position of
sub-dean. Fluctuations still occurred at Chartres between the work and
functions of the chancellor, vice-chancellor, and grammaticus; but by c. 1150 the chancellor as such
had a prebend, taught
only theology, and had under him a scholasticus now usually termed the “magister scholarum”.
The latter had no prebend as such, but was some- times a canon; in any case, he received the usual
distributions of food and money for attendance at offices. Development at other
cathedrals "was roughly parallel, the magister scholarum of the earlier centuries becoming the chancellor in the twelfth century, and
teaching only theology, with a grammar master under him. In all dioceses other
grammar schools were now fairly frequent, the right of teaching, however,
remaining a strict monopoly, guarded by the chancellor of the diocese. After
the rise of the universities (c. 1170), the best scholars were drawn away from
the cathedral schools as such, and the teaching of the liberal arts in these
dwindled to the teaching of grammar and rhetoric.
The decline of diocesan teaching roused the anxiety of the Church. In
the lesser cathedrals there was difficulty even in obtaining a grammar master,
since no benefice was provided for him, and there was more lucrative employment
elsewhere. The Third Lateran Council, in 1179, ordered that a competent
benefice should be given in every cathedral to a master, who should teach the
clerks of the church and poor scholars for nothing; nor was the ecclesiastical
authority to charge for the license to teach, nor deny it to any suitable
candidate. The Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, asserted that this provision
had remained widely unfulfilled; it ordered each cathedral church, and other
(collegiate) churches which had the means, to provide a prebend for a grammar master, and each
metropolitan church one for a theology master. The provisions still remained
largely unfulfilled, the difficulty being to get the chapter to give up a prebend for the purpose,
especially as so many prebends were anticipated by papal provision. The friars, however, set up in this
century their own hierarchy of schools, in some of which the presence of seculars
was allowed. St Thomas Aquinas wrote in 1257 that the decree for the provision
of a theology master in each metropolitan church had not been observed through
lack of letters, but now it had been more than fulfilled by the religious.
External monastic schools
The monastic schools saw their two most flourishing centuries after the
Carolingian renaissance. The external schools about which most is known were
those of Fulda, St Gall, and Bec. Raban Maur of Fulda was sent by his abbot to study under
Alcuin at Tours, and was afterwards given the direction of the monks' school at
Fulda, with orders to preserve Alcuin's method of teaching. He then ruled both
schools (for oblates and clerks) "with piety and doctrine", and
appointed two masters to teach under him. The schools of St Gall were famous in
the ninth century, when Notker the Stammerer and other scholars were trained there.
“The cloister school with blessed Notker and other children of the monastic habit was handed over to Marcellus, and the
external school, that is the canonical school, to Iso”. In 937 one of the scholars of this school
started a serious fire in the monastery, to save himself a beating. The
external school started at Bec by Lanfranc was somewhat of a new departure; it was not maintained to fill the
place of a non-existent canonical, or cathedral, school, but to aid the poverty
of the newly-founded house with fees; it was, in fact, a continuation of
Lanfranc’s work as a private rhetoric teacher in Italy. On the other hand, when
St William of Dijon (ob. 1031) was called by Duke
Richard to Normandy to introduce the Cluniac reforms, he substituted monks for clerks in the abbey of Fécamps, and started an external school there of
the old, canonical type. “For when he saw that knowledge of singing and reading
among the rural clerks was... almost perished, not only in that place but
throughout the whole province... he founded a school of the sacred ministry
where the brothers skilled in this office taught freely, for the love of God”.
The teaching of laymen in this period has been passed over, for there
were no schools for laymen as such, even the little A. B.C. schools being
mainly intended to teach “song” to little clerks. The sons of the nobility were
more frequently taught reading, writing, and such Latin as they were considered
to need, by their father's chaplain, or the chaplain of the lay noble, bishop,
or abbot to whom they were sent for “nurture”. Learned laywomen were similarly
taught, though the nunneries, being poorer than the men’s houses, more often
received little “prebendinants”
(boarders), boys as well as girls, for education. But as a rule the teaching of
laymen and laywomen before 1300 was individuals.
CHAPTER XXIII.
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