THE CHALLENGE OF CHRISTIANITY. Into a Roman world that had already passed the zenith of its greatness came this new Christian faith, challenging almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. In place of Roman citizenship and service to the State as the purpose of life, the Christians set up the importance of the life to come. Instead of pleasure and happiness and the satisfaction of the senses as personal ends, the Christians preached denial of all these things for the greater joy of a future life. In a society built on a huge basis of slavery and filled with social classes, the Christians proclaimed the equality of all men before God. To a nation in which family life had become corrupt, infidelity and divorce common, and infanticide a prevailing practice, the Christians proclaimed the sacredness of the marriage tie and the family life, and the exposure of infants as simple murder. In place of the subjection of the individual to the State, the Christians demanded the subjection of the individual only to God. In place of a union of State and religion, the Christians demanded the complete separation of the two and the subordination of the State to the Church. Unlike all other religions that Rome had absorbed, the Christians refused to be accepted on any other than exclusive terms. The worship of all other gods the Christians held to be sinful idol-worship, a deadly sin in the eyes of God, and they were willing to give up their lives rather than perform the simplest rite of what they termed pagan worship (R. 28). To the deified Emperor the Christians naturally could not bend the knee (Rs. 30 b, 31 a-b, 34).

At first the new faith attracted but little attention from anybody of education or influence. Its converts were few during the first century, and these largely from among the lowest social classes in the Empire. Workmen and slaves, and women rather than men, constituted the large majority of the early converts to the new faith. The character of its missionaries [8] also was against it, and its challenge of almost all that characterized the higher social and governmental life of Rome was certain to make its progress difficult, and in time to awaken powerful opposition [9] to it. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, its progress was relatively rapid.

THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. By the close of the first century there were Christian churches throughout most of Judea and Asia Minor, and in parts of Greece and Macedonia. During the second century other churches were established in Asia Minor, in Greece, and along the Black Sea, and at a few places in Italy and France; and before four centuries had elapsed from the crucifixion Christian churches had been established throughout almost all the Roman world. This is well shown by the map on the opposite page. The message of hope that Christianity had to offer to all; the simplicity of its organization and teachings; the great appeal which it made to the emotional side of human life; the hope of a future life of reward for the burdens of this which it extended to all who were weary and heavy laden; the positiveness of conviction of its apostles and followers; and the completeness with which it satisfied the religious need and longings of the time, first among the poor and among women and later among educated men—all helped the new faith to win its way. The unity in that Rome had everywhere established; [10] the Roman peace (pax Romana) that Rome had everywhere imposed; the spread of the Greek and Latin languages and ideas throughout the Mediterranean world; the right of freedom of travel and speech enjoyed by a Roman citizen, and of which Saint Paul and others on their travels took advantage; [11] the scatterment of Jews throughout the Empire, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.—all these elements also helped.



That Christianity made its headway unmolested must not be supposed. While at first the tendency of educated Romans and of the government was to ignore or tolerate it, its challenge was so direct and provocative that this attitude could not long continue. Under the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) "all the Jews who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus" were unsuccessfully ordered banished from Rome. In the reign of the Emperor Nero, in 64 A.D., many horrible tortures were inflicted on this as yet small sect. It was not, however, till later, when the continued refusal of the Christians to offer sacrifices to the Emperor brought them under the law as disloyal (R. 30 a) subjects, that they began to be much punished for their faith (R. 31 a-b). The times were bad and were going from bad to worse, and the feelings of many were that the adverse conditions in the Empire—war, famine, floods, pestilence, and barbarian inroads—were due to the neglect of the old state religion and to the tolerance extended the vast organized defiance of the law by the Christians. In the first century they had been largely ignored. In the second, in some places, they were punished. In the third century, impelled by the calamities of the State and the urging of those who would restore the national religion to its earlier position, the Emperors were gradually driven to a series of heavy persecutions of the sect (R. 30 a). But it had now become too late. The blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church (R. 35). The last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, in 303 (R. 33), ended in virtual failure. In 311 the Emperor Galerius placed Christianity on a plane of equality with other forms of worship (R. 36). In 313 Constantine made it in part the official religion of the State [12] and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors gradually extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important privileges (R. 38) and exemptions, [13] analogous to those formerly enjoyed by the teachers of rhetoric under the Empire (R. 26), and likewise began the policy, so liberally followed later, of endowing the Church. In 391 the Emperor Theodosius forbade all pagan worship, thus making the victory of Christianity complete. In less than four centuries from the birth of its founder the Christian faith had won control of the great Empire in which it originated. In 529 the Emperor Justinian ordered the closing of all pagan schools, and the University of Athens, which had remained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christianity, closed its doors. The victory was now complete.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. We have now before us the third great contribution upon which our modern civilization has been built. To the great contributions of Greece and Rome, which we have previously studied, there now was added, and added at a most opportune time, the contribution of Christianity. In taking the Jewish idea of one God and freeing it from the narrow tribal limitations to which it had before been subject, Christianity made possible its general acceptance, first in the Roman world, and later in the Mohammedan world. [14] With this was introduced the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and his love for man, the equality before God of all men and of the two sexes, and the sacredness of each individual in the eyes of the Father. An entirely new conception of the individual was proclaimed to the world, and an entirely new ethical code was promulgated. The duty of all to make their lives conform to these new conceptions was asserted. These ideas imparted to ancient society a new hopefulness and a new energy which were not only of great importance in dealing with the downfall of civilization and the deluge of barbarism which were impending, but which have been of prime importance during all succeeding centuries. In time the church organization which was developed gradually absorbed all other forms of government, and became virtually the State during the long period of darkness known as the Middle Ages.

It remains now to sketch briefly how the Church organized itself and became powerful enough to perform its great task during the Middle Ages, what educational agencies it developed, and to what extent these were useful.

II. EDUCATIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH

SCHOOLING OF THE EARLY CHURCH; CATECHUMENAL INSTRUCTION. The early churches were bound together by no formal bond of union, and felt little need for such. It was the belief of many that Christ would soon return and the world would end, hence there was little necessity for organization. There was also almost no system of belief. An acknowledgment of God as the Father, a repentance for past sins, a godly life, and a desire to be saved were about all that was expected of any one. [15] The chief concern was the moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of converts. To accomplish this, in face of the practices of Roman society, a process of instruction and a period of probation for those wishing to join the faith soon became necessary. Jews, pagans, and the children of believers were thereafter alike subjected to this before full acceptance into the Church. At stated times during the week the probationers met for instruction in morality and in the psalmody of the Church (R. 39). These two subjects constituted almost the entire instruction, the period of probation covering two or three years. The teachers were merely the older and abler members of the congregation.

This personal instruction became common everywhere in the early Church, and the training was known as catechumenal, that is, rudimentary, instruction. Two sets of catechumenal lectures have survived, which give an idea as to the nature of the instruction. They cover the essentials of church practice and the religious life (RS. 39, 40). It was dropped entirely in the conversion of the barbarian tribes. This instruction, and the preaching of the elders (presbyters, who later evolved into priests), constituted the formal schooling of the early converts to Christianity in Italy and the East. Such instruction was never known in England, and but little in Gaul.

The life in the Church made a moral and emotional, rather than an intellectual appeal. In fact the early Christians felt but little need for the type of intellectual education provided by the Roman schools, and the character of the educated society about them, as they saw it, did not make them wish for the so-called pagan learning. Even if the parents of converts wished to provide additional educational advantages for their children, what could they do? A modern author states well the predicament of such Christian parents, when he says:

All the schools were pagan. Not only were all the ceremonies of the official faith—and more especially the festivals of Minerva, who was the patroness of masters and pupils—celebrated at regular intervals in the schools, but the children were taught reading out of books saturated with the old mythology. There the Christian child made his first acquaintance with the deities of Olympus. He ran the danger of imbibing ideas entirely contrary to those which he had received at home. The fables he had learned to detest in his own home were explained, elucidated, and held up to his admiration every day by his masters. Was it right to put him thus into two schools of thought? What could be done that he might be educated, like every one else, and yet not run the risk of losing his faith? [16]

CATECHETICAL SCHOOLS. After Christianity had begun to make converts among the more serious-minded and better-educated citizens of the Roman Empire, the need for more than rudimentary instruction in the principles of the church life began to be felt. Especially was this the case in the places where Christian workers came in contact with the best scholars of the Hellenic learning, and particularly at Alexandria, Athens, and the cities of Asia Minor. The speculative Greek would not be satisfied with the simple, unorganized faith of the early Christians. He wanted to understand it as a system of thought, and asked many questions that were hard to answer. To meet the critical inquiry of learned Greeks, it became desirable that the clergy of the Church, in the East at least, should be equipped with a training similar to that of their critics. As a result there was finally evolved, first at Alexandria, and later at other places in the Empire, training schools for the leaders of the Church.

These came to be known as catechetical schools, from their oral questioning method of instruction, and this term was later applied to elementary religious instruction (whence catechism) throughout western Europe. Pantaenus, a converted Greek Stoic, who became head of the catechumenal instruction at Alexandria, in 179 A.D., brought to the training of future Christian leaders the strength of Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought. He and his successors, Clement and Origen, developed here an important school of Christian theology where Greek learning was used to interpret the Scriptures and train leaders for the service of the Church. Similar schools were opened at Antioch, Edessa, Nisibis, and Caesarea (See Map, p. 89), and these developed into a rudimentary form of theological schools for the education of the eastern Christian clergy. In these schools Christian faith and doctrine were formulated into a sort of system, the whole being tinctured through and through with Greek philosophic thought. Out of these schools came some of the great Fathers of the early Church; men who strove to uphold the pagan learning and reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophic thinking. [17]

REJECTION OF PAGAN LEARNING IN THE WEST. In the West, where the leaders of the Church came from the less philosophic and more practical Roman stock, and where the contact with a decadent society wakened a greater reaction, the tendency was to reject the Hellenic learning, and to depend more upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the third century the hostility to the pagan schools and to the Hellenic learning had here become pronounced (R. 41). Even the Fathers of the Latin Church, the greatest of whom had been teachers of oratory or rhetoric in Roman schools before their conversion, [18] gradually came to reject the pagan learning as undesirable for Christians and in a large degree as a robbery from God. Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, hopes that God may forgive him for having enjoyed Vergil. Jerome's dream [19] was known and quoted throughout the Middle Ages. Tertullian, in his Prescription against Heresies, exclaims:

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?... Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition.

Gregory the Great, Pope of the Church from 590 to 604, and who had been well educated as a youth in the surviving Roman-type schools, turned bitterly against the whole of pagan learning. "I am strongly of the opinion," he says, "that it is an indignity that the words of the oracle of Heaven should be restrained by the rules of Donatus" (grammar). In a letter to the Bishop of Vienne he berates him for giving instruction in grammar, concluding with—"the praise of Christ cannot lie in one mouth with the praise of Jupiter. Consider yourself what a crime it is for bishops to recite what would be improper for religiously-minded laymen."

As a result Hellenic learning declined rapidly in importance in the West as the Church attained supremacy, and finally, in 401, the Council of Carthage, largely at the instigation of Saint Augustine, forbade the clergy to read any pagan author. In time Greek learning largely died out in the West, and was for a time almost entirely lost. Even the Greek language was forgotten, and was not known again in the West for nearly a thousand years. [20]

THE CHURCH PERFECTS A STRONG ORGANIZATION. As was previously stated (p. 92), but little need was felt during the first two centuries for a system of belief or church government. As the expected return of Christ did not take place, and as the need for a formulation of belief and a system of government began to be felt, the next step was the development of these features. The system of belief and the ceremonials of worship finally evolved are more the products of Greek thought and practices of the East, while the form of organization and government is derived more from Roman sources. In the second century the Old Testament was translated into Greek at Alexandria, and the "Apostles' Creed" was formulated. During the third century the writings deemed sacred were organized into the New Testament, also in Greek. In 325 the first General Council of the Church was held at Nicaea, in Asia Minor. It formulated the Nicene Creed (R. 42), and twenty canons or laws for the government of the Church. A second General Council, held at Constantinople in 381, revised the Nicene Creed and adopted additional canons.



The great organizing genius of the western branch of the Church was Saint Augustine (354-430). He gave to the Western or Latin Church, then beginning to take on its separate existence, the body of doctrine needed to enable it to put into shape the things for which it stood. The system of theology evolved before the separation of the eastern and western branches of the Church was not so finished and so finely speculative as that of the Greek branch, but was more practical, more clearly legal, and more systematically organized.

The influence of Rome was strong also in the organization of the system of government finally adopted for the Church. There being no other model, the Roman governmental system was copied. The bishop of a city corresponded to the Roman municipal officials; the archbishop of a territory to the governor of a province; and the patriarch to the ruler of a division of the Empire. As Rome had been a universal Empire, and as the city of Rome had been the chief governing city, [21] the idea of a universal Church was natural and the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was gradually asserted and determined. [22]

A STATE WITHIN A STATE. There was thus developed in the West, as it were a State within a State. That is, within the Roman Empire, with its Emperor, provincial governors, and municipal officials, governing the people and drawing their power from the Roman Senate and imperial authority, there was also gradually developed another State, consisting of those who had accepted the Christian faith, and who rendered their chief allegiance, through priest, bishop, and archbishop, to a central head of the Church who owed allegiance to no earthly ruler. That Christianity, viewed from the governmental point of view, was a serious element of weakness in the Roman State and helped its downfall, there can be no question. In the eastern part of the Empire the Church was always much more closely identified with the State. Fortunately for civilization, before the Roman Empire had fallen and the impending barbarian deluge had descended, the Christian Church had succeeded in formulating a unifying belief and a form of government capable of commanding respect and of enforcing authority, and was fast taking over the power of the State itself.

THE CATHEDRAL OR EPISCOPAL SCHOOLS. The first churches throughout the Empire were in the cities, and made their early converts there. [23] Gradually these important cities evolved into the residences of a supervising priest or bishop, the territory became known as a bishopric, and the church as a cathedral church. In time, also, some of the outlying territory was organized into parishes, and churches were established in these. These were made tributary to and placed under the direction of the bishop of the large central city. To supply clergy for these outlying parishes came to be one of the functions of the bishop, and, to insure properly trained clergy and to provide for promotions in the clerical ranks, schools of a rudimentary type were established in connection with the cathedral churches. These came to be known as cathedral, or episcopal schools. At first they were probably under the immediate charge of the bishop, but later, as his functions increased, the school was placed under a special teacher, known as a Scholasticus, or Magister Scholarum, who directed the cathedral school, assisted the bishop, and trained the future clergy. As the pagan secondary schools died out, these cathedral schools, together with the monastic schools which were later founded, gradually replaced the pagan schools as the important educational institutions of the western world. In these two types of schools the religious leaders of the early Middle Ages were trained.

THE MONASTIC ORGANIZATION. In the early days of Christianity, it will be remembered (p. 87), the Christian convert held himself apart from the wicked world all about him, and had little to do with the society or the government of his time. He regarded the Church as having no relationship to the State. As the Church grew stronger, however, and became a State within a State, the Christian took a larger and larger part in the world around him, and in time came to be distinguished from other men by his profession of the Christian religion rather than by any other mark. Many of the early bishops were men of great political sagacity, fully capable of realizing to the full the political opportunities, afforded by their position, to strengthen the power of the Church. It was the work of men of this type that created the temporal power of the Church, and made of it an institution capable of commanding respect and enforcing its decisions.

To some of the early Christians this life did not appeal. To them holiness was associated with a complete withdrawal from contact with this sinful world and all its activities. Some betook themselves to the desert, others to the forests or mountains, and others shut themselves up alone that they might be undisturbed in their religious meditations. To such devoted souls monasticism, a scheme of living brought into the Christian world from the East, made a strong appeal. It provided that such men should live together in brotherhoods, renouncing the world, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and devoting their lives to hard labor and the mortification of the flesh that the soul might be exalted and made beautiful. The members lived alone in individual cells, but came together for meals, prayer, and religious service.

As early as 330 a monastery had been organized on the island of Tebernae, in the Nile. About 350 Saint Basil introduced monasticism into Asia Minor, where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The monastic idea was soon transferred to the West, a monastery being established at Rome probably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint Victor, at Marseilles, was founded by Cassian in 404, and this type of monastery and monastic rule was introduced into Gaul, about 415. The monastery of Lerins (off Cannes, in southern France) was established in 405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of monastic foundations took place in western Europe, particularly along the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire in Gaul.



In 529 Saint Benedict, a Roman of wealth who fled from the corruption of his city, founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, south of Rome, and established a form of government, or rule of daily life, which was gradually adopted by nearly all the monasteries of the West. In time Europe came to be dotted with thousands of these establishments, many of which were large and expensive institutions both to found and to maintain. [24] By the time the barbarian invasions were in full swing monasticism had become an established institution of the Christian Church. Nunneries for women also were established early. A letter from Saint Jerome to Marcella, a Roman matron, in 382, in which he says that "no high-born lady at Rome had made profession of the monastic life ... or had ventured ... publicly to call herself a nun," would seem to imply that such institutions had already been established in Rome.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS. Poverty, chastity, obedience, labor, and religious devotion were the essential features of a monastic life. The Rule of Saint Benedict (R. 43) organized in a practical way the efforts of those who took the vows. In a series of seventy-three rules which he laid down, covering all phases of monastic life, the most important from the standpoint of posterity was the forty-eighth, prescribing at least seven hours of daily labor and two hours of reading "for all able to bear the load." From that part of the rule requiring regular manual labor the monks became the most expert farmers and craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, while to the requirement of daily reading we owe in large part the development of the school and the preservation of learning in the West during the long intellectual night of the mediaeval period (R. 44).

Into these monastic institutions the oblati, that is, those who wished to become monks, were received as early as the age of twelve, and occasionally earlier (R. 53 a). The final vows (R. 53 b) could not be taken until eighteen, so during this period the novice was taught to work and to read and write, given instruction in church music, and taught to calculate the church festivals and to do simple reckoning. In time some condensed and carefully edited compendium of the elements of classical learning was also studied, and still later a more elaborate type of instruction was developed in some of the monasteries. This, however, belongs to a later division of this history, and further description of church and monastic education will be deferred until we study the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. Aside from the general instruction in the practices of the church and home instruction in the work of a woman, there was but little provision made for the education of girls not desiring to join a convent or nunnery. A few, however, obtained a limited amount of intellectual training. The letter of Saint Jerome to the Roman lady Paula (R. 45), regarding the education of her daughter, is a very important document in the history of early Christian education for girls. Dating from 403, it outlines the type of training a young girl should be given who was to be properly educated in Christian faith and properly consecrated to God. What he outlined was education for nunneries, a number of which had been founded in the East and a few in the West. In the West these institutions later experienced an extensive development, and offered the chief opportunity for any intellectual education for women during the whole of the Middle Ages.

III. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH

WHAT THE CHURCH BROUGHT TO THE MIDDLE AGES. From a small and purely spiritual organization, devoting its energies to exhortation and to the moral regeneration of mankind, and without creed or form of government, as the Christian Church was in the first two centuries of its development, we have traced the organization of a body of doctrine, the perfection of a strong system of church government, and the development of a very limited educational system designed merely to train leaders for its service. We have also shown how it added to its early ecclesiastical organization a strong governmental organization, became a State within a State, and gradually came to direct the State itself. It was thus ready, when the virtual separation of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western division took place, in 395, and when the western division finally fell before the barbarian onslaughts, to take up in a way the work of the State, force the barbarian hordes to acknowledge its power, and begin the process of civilizing these new tribes and building up once more a civilization in the western world. In addition to its spiritual and political power, the Church also had developed, in its catechumenal instruction and in the cathedral and monastic schools, a very meager form of an educational system for the training of its future leaders and servants. A great change had now taken place in the nature of education as a preparation for life, and intellectual education, in the sense that it was known and understood in Greece and Rome, was not to be known again in the western world for almost a thousand years. The distinguishing characteristic of the centuries which follow, up to the Revival of Learning, are, first, a struggle against very adverse odds to prevent civilization from disappearing entirely, and later a struggle to build up new foundations upon which world civilization might begin once more where it had left off in Greece and Rome.

THE THREE GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. Thus, before the Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world which were to form the foundations of our future western civilization had been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system of wonderful effectiveness—one that in its higher development in time took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly modified all later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are especially indebted for out conceptions of law, order, and government, and for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest conceptions of God, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world.

All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into an East and West, in 395; and the final division of the Christian Church into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek language from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more tolerant of pagan learning than was the Western, and was better able to withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it. Hellenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning which we know as the Renaissance. Of the Latin literature and learning much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of barbarism and general ignorance through which it passed, and only in modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of its founder.

[Illustration: FIG. 30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE CHURCH

The map also shows conditions as they were in Europe at the end of the fourth century A.D. Syria, Egypt, Africa, and a portion of Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the Saracens in the seventh century and became Mohammedan, but Constantinople held out until 1453. The eastern division eventually gave rise to the Greek Catholic Church of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia, while the western division became the Roman Catholic Church of western Europe. At Constantinople Greek learning was preserved until the West was again ready to receive it. The Eastern Empire for a time retained control of Sicily and southern Italy (the old Magna Graecia), but eventually these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity.]

THE FUTURE STORY. For the long period of intellectual stagnation which now followed, the educational story is briefly told. But little formal education was needed, and that of but one main type. It was only after the Church had won its victory over the barbarian hordes, and had built up the foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that education in any broad and liberal sense was again needed. This required nearly a thousand years of laborious and painful effort. Then, when schools again became possible and learning again began to be demanded, education had to begin again with the few at the top, and the contributions of Greece and Rome had to be recovered and put into usable form as a basis upon which to build. It is only very recently that it has become possible to extend education to all.

In Part II we shall next trace briefly the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and the reawakening, and in Part III we shall, among other things, point out the deep and lasting influence of the work of these ancient civilizations on our modern educational thoughts and practices.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Point out the many advantages of a universal religion for such a universal Empire as Rome developed, and the advantages of Emperor worship for such an Empire.

2. What do modern nations have that is much akin to Emperor worship?

3. Explain why Stoicism made such an appeal to the better-educated classes at Rome.

4. Why is an emotional faith better adapted to the mass of people than an intellectual one?

5. Explain how the Hebrew scribes, administering such a mixed body of laws, naturally came to be both teachers and judges for the people.

6. Illustrate how the Hebrew tradition that the moral and spiritual unity of a people is stronger than armed force has been shown to be true in history.

7. What great lessons may we draw from the work of the Hebrews in maintaining a national unity through compulsory education?

8. Why was Jesus' idea as to the importance of the individual destined to make such slow headway in the world? What is the status of the idea to-day (a) in China? (b) in Germany? (c) in England? (d) in the United States? Is the idea necessarily opposed to nationality or even to a strong state government?

9. Show how the political Church, itself the State, was the natural outcome during the Middle Ages of the teachings of the early Christians as to the relationship of Church and State.

10. Is it to be wondered that the Romans were finally led to persecute "the vast organized defiance of law by the Christians"?

11. Show how the Christian idea of the equality and responsibility of all gave the citizen a new place in the State.

12. State the reasons for the gradually increasing lack of sympathy and understanding between the eastern and western Fathers of the Church, and which finally led to the division of the Church.

13. Explain what is meant by "a State within a State" as applied to the Church of the third and fourth centuries. Did this prove to be a good thing for the future of civilization? Why?

14. Would Rome probably have been better able to withstand the barbarian invasions if Christianity had not arisen, or not? Why?

15. Show how the Christian attitude toward pagan learning tended to stop schools and destroy the accumulated learning.

16. What was the effect of the Christian attitude toward the care of the body, on scientific and medical knowledge, and on education? Was the Christian or the pagan attitude more nearly like that of modern times?

17. Why did the emphasis on form of belief, in the third and fourth centuries, come to supersede the emphasis on personal virtues and simple faith of the first and second centuries?

18. Compare the work of the Sunday School of to-day with the catechumenal instruction of the early Christians.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

27. The Talmud: Educational Maxims from. 28. Saint Paul: Epistle to the Romans. 29. Saint Paul: To the Athenians. 30. The Crimes of the Christians. (a) Minucius Felix: The Roman Point of View. (b) Tertullian: The Christian Point of View. 31. Persecution of the Christians as Disloyal Subjects of the Empire. (a) Pliny to Trajan. (b) Trajan to Pliny. 32. Tertullian: Effect of the Persecutions. 33. Eusebius: Edicts of Diocletian against the Christians. 34. Workman: Certificate of having Sacrificed to the Pagan Gods. 35. Kingsley: The Empire and Christianity in Conflict. 36. Lactantius: The Edict of Toleration by Galerius. 37. Theodosian Code: The Faith of Catholic Christians. 38. Theodosian Code: Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy. 39. Apostolic Constitutions: How the Catechumens are to be instructed. 40. Leach: Catechumenal Schools of the Early Church. 41. Apostolic Constitutions: Christians should abstain from all Heathen Books. 42. The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. 43. Saint Benedict: Extracts from the Rule of. 44. Lanfranc: Enforcing Lenten Reading in the Monasteries. 45. Saint Jerome: Letter on the Education of Girls.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Characterize the type of education to be provided and the status of the teacher, as shown in the selections from the Talmud (27). Compare with Rome. With Athens.

2. Characterize the attitude of Saint Paul toward the Romans (28). Does his description of Athens (29) tally with the description of the Athenians given in the text?

3. Was it possible for the Roman and the Christian to understand one another, thinking as they did in such different terms (30 a-b)?

4. Considering Pliny and Trajan (31 a-b) as Roman officials, with the Roman point of view, and taking into account the time in the history of world civilization, would you say that they were quite tolerant of rebels within the State?

5. Compare the privileges and immunities granted the clergy (38) with the privileges previously given by Constantine to physicians and teachers (26).

6. Characterize the irrepressible conflict as pictured by Kingsley (35). Name a few other somewhat similar conflicts in world history.

7. Outline the type of instruction for catechumens as directed in the Apostolic Constitutions (39).

8. What would have been the effect of the continued rejection of secular books called for in the Apostolic Constitutions (41)?

9. What was the governmental advantage of the adoption of the Nicene Creed (42)?

10. Why did the rule of Saint Benedict (43) requiring readings and study lead to the copying and preservation of manuscripts?

11. What does the selection from Lanfranc (44) indicate as to the state of monastic learning?

12. Was there anything pedagogically sound about the letter of Saint Jerome (45) on the education of girls? Discuss.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Dill, Sam'l. Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. Fisher, Geo. P. Beginnings of Christianity. * Fisher, Geo. P. History of the Christian Church. * Hatch, Edw. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church. (Hibbert Lectures, 1888.) Hodgson, Geraldine. Primitive Church Education. Kretzmann, P. E. Education among the Jews. MacCabe, Joseph. Saint Augustine. * Monro, D. C. and Sellery, G. E. Mediaeval Civilization. * Swift, F. H. Education in Ancient Israel to 70 A.D. Taylor, H. O. Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. Wishart, A. W. Short History of Monks and Monasticism.



PART II

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD

THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION



CHAPTER V

NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE

THE WEAKENED EMPIRE. Though the first and second centuries A.D. have often been called one of the happiest ages in all human history, due to a succession of good Emperors and peace and quiet throughout the Roman world, [1] the reign of the last of the good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.), may be regarded as clearly marking a turning-point in the history of Roman society. Before his reign Rome was ascendant, prosperous, powerful; during his reign the Empire was beset by many difficulties— pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German inroads—to which it had not before been accustomed; and after his reign the Empire was distinctly on the defensive and the decline. Though the elements contributing to this change in national destiny had their origin in the changes in the character of the national life at least two centuries earlier, it was not until now that the Empire began to feel seriously the effects of these changes in a lowered vitality and a weakened power of resistance.

The virtues of the citizens of the early days of the Republic, trained according to the old ideas, had gradually given way in the face of the vices and corruption which beset and sapped the life of the upper and ruling classes in the later Empire. The failure of Rome to put its provincial government on any honest and efficient civil-service basis, the failure of the State to establish and direct an educational system capable of serving as a corrective of dangerous national tendencies, the lack of a guiding national faith, the gradual admission of so many Germans into the Empire, the great extent and demoralizing influence of slavery [2]—all contributed to that loss of national strength and resisting power which was now becoming increasingly evident. Other contributing elements of importance were the almost complete obliteration of the peasantry by the creation of great landed estates and cattle ranches worked by slaves, in place of the small farms of earlier days; the increase of the poor in the cities, and the declining birth-rate; the introduction of large numbers of barbarians as farmers and soldiers; and the demoralization of the city rabble by political leaders in need of votes. Captured slaves performed almost every service, and a lavish display of wealth on the part of a few came to be a characteristic feature of city life. [3] The great middle, commercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and contented, but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corruption, and new ideals [4] had gradually sapped the old national vitality and destroyed the resisting power of the State in the face of a great national calamity. Rome now stood, much like the shell of a fine old tree, apparently in good condition, but in reality ready to fall before the blast because it had been allowed to become rotten at the heart. Sooner or later the boundaries of the Empire, which had held against the pressure from without for so long, were destined to be broken and the barbarian deluge from the north and east would pour over the Empire.



THE BOUNDARIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE BROKEN. While temporary extensions of territory had at times been made beyond the Rhine and the Danube, these rivers had finally come to be the established boundaries of the Empire on the north, and behind these rivers the Teutonic barbarians, or Germani, as the Romans called them, had by force been kept. To do even this the Romans had been obliged to admit bands of Germans into the Empire, and had taken them into the Roman army as "allies," making use of their great love for fighting to hold other German tribes in check. In 166 A.D. the plague, brought back by soldiers returning from the East, carried off approximately half the population of Italy. This same year the Marcomanni (see Figure 18), a former friendly tribe, invaded the Empire as far as the head of the Adriatic Sea, and it required thirteen years of warfare to put them back behind the Danube. Even this was accomplished only by the aid of friendly German tribes. From this time on the Empire was more or less on the defensive, with the barbarian tribes to the north casting increasingly longing eyes toward "a place in the sun" and the rich plunder that lay to the south, and frequently breaking over the boundaries. Rome, though, was still strong enough to put them back again.

In 275 A.D., after a five years' struggle, the Eastern Emperor gave the province of Dacia, to the south of the Danube, to the Visigoths, in an effort to buy them off from further invasion and warfare. This eased the pressure for another century. In 378 A.D., now pressed on by the terrible Huns from behind, the Visigoths, as a body, invaded the Eastern Empire, and in the Battle of Adrianople, near Constantinople, defeated the Roman army, slew the Roman Emperor, definitely broke the boundaries of the Empire, and they and the Ostrogoths now moved southward and settled in Moesia and Thrace. The Germans at Adrianople learned that they could beat the Roman legions, and from this time on it was they, and not the Romans, who named the terms of ransom and the price of peace. A few years later, under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Greece, then turned westward through Illyria to the valley of the Po, in northern Italy, which they reached in the year 400. In 410 the great calamity came when they captured and sacked Rome. The effect produced on the Roman world by the fall of the Eternal City, as the news of the almost incredible disaster penetrated to the remote provinces, was profound (R. 48). For eight hundred years Rome had not been touched by foreign hands, and now it had been captured and plundered by barbarian hordes. It seemed to many as though the end of the world were approaching. The Visigoths now turned west once more, carrying with them the beautiful sister of the Emperor as a captive bride of the chief, and finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul, which provinces were thenceforth lost to Rome. This was the first of the great permanent inroads into the Empire, and from now on Roman resistance seemed powerless to stop the flood.



A PERIOD OF TRIBAL MOVEMENTS. The Hunnish pressure also started the Vandals and Suevi, and within fifty years they had been able to move across Germany, France, and Spain, plundering the cities on their way. Finally they crossed to the northern coast of Africa, where they became noted as the great sea pirates of the Mediterranean. In 455 they crossed back to Italy, and Rome was sacked for the second time by barbarian hordes. The Huns, under the leadership of Attila, the so-called "Scourge of God," now moved in and ravaged Gaul (451) and northern Italy (452), and then, at the intercession of the Roman Pope Leo, were induced by a ransom price to return to the lower Danube, where they have since remained. In 476 the barbarian soldiers of the Empire, tired of camp life and demanding land on which they too might settle, rose in revolt, displaced the last of the Western Emperors, and elevated Odovacar, a tribesman from the north, as ruler in his stead. The Western Roman Empire was now at an end. In 493 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, became king of Italy.

Between 443 and 485 the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes left their earlier homes in what is now Denmark and northwestern Germany, and overran eastern and southern Britain. In 486 the Franks, a great nation living along the lower Rhine, began to move, and within two generations had overrun almost all of Gaul. In 586 the Lombards invaded and settled the valleys of northern Italy, displacing the Ostrogoths there. Slavic tribes now moved into the Eastern Empire—Serbs and Bulgars—and settled in Moesia and Thrace. Southeastern Europe thus became Slavic-Greek, as western Europe had become Teutonic-Latin. Figure 32 shows the results of these different migrations up to about 500 A.D.

EUROPE TO BE TEUTONIC-LATIN. In the seventh century another great wave of people, of a different racial stock and religion—Semitic and Mohammedan— starting from Arabia and along the shores of the Red Sea, swept rapidly through Egypt and Africa and across into Spain and France. For a time it looked as though they might overrun all western Europe and bring the German tribes under subjection. Fortunately they were definitely stopped and decisively defeated by the Franks, in the great Battle of Tours, in 732. They also overran Syria and Persia, but were held in check in Asia Minor by the Eastern Empire, which did not completely succumb to barbarian inroads until Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453.

The importance of the result, to the future of our western civilization, of this battle in the West can hardly be overestimated. The future of European government, law, education, and civilization was settled on that Saturday afternoon in October, on the battle plains of Tours. [5] It was a struggle for mastery and dominion between the Aryan and Semitic races, between the Christian and Mohammedan religions, between the forces representing order on the one side and destruction on the other, and between races destined to succeed to the civilization of Greece and Rome and a race representing oriental despotism and static conditions.



Driven back across the Pyrenees by the Franks, these people settled in Spain; later developed there, for a short period, a for-the-time remarkable civilization, but one that only slightly influenced the current of European development; and then disappeared as a force in our western development and progress. We shall meet them again a little later, but only for a little while, and then they concern our western development no more.

Our interest from now on lies with the Teutonic-Latin peoples of western Europe, for it is through them that our western civilization has been worked out and has come down to us.

WHO THESE INVADERS WERE. A long-continued series of tribal migrations, unsurpassed before in history, had brought a large number of new peoples within the boundaries of the old Empire. They finally came so fast that they could not have been assimilated even in the best days of Rome, and now the assimilative and digestive powers of Rome were gone. Tall, huge of limb, white-skinned, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue eyes, and clad in skins and rude cloths, they seemed like giants to the short, small, dark- skinned people of the Italian peninsula. Quarrelsome; delighting in fighting and gambling; given to drunkenness and gluttonous eating; possessed of a rude polytheistic religion in which Woden, the war god, held the first place, and Valhalla was a heaven for those killed in battle; living in rude villages in the forest, and maintaining themselves by hunting and fishing—it is not to be wondered that Rome dreaded the coming of these forest barbarians (R. 46).



The tribes nearest the Rhine and the Danube had taken on a little civilization from long contact with the Romans, but those farther away were savage and unorganized (Rs. 46, 47). In general they represented a degree of civilization not particularly different from that of the better American Indians in our colonial period, [6] though possessing a much larger ability to learn. The "two terrible centuries" which brought these new peoples into the Empire were marked by unspeakable disorder and frightful destruction. It was the most complete catastrophe that had ever befallen civilized society.



THEY SETTLE DOWN WITHIN THE EMPIRE. Finally, after a period of wandering and plundering, each of these new peoples settled down within the Empire as rulers over the numerically larger native Roman population, and slowly began to turn from hunting to a rude type of farming. For three or four centuries after the invasions ceased, though, Europe presented a dreary spectacle of ignorance, lawlessness, and violence. Force reigned where law and order had once been supreme. Work largely ceased, because there was no security for the results of labor. The Roman schools gradually died out, in part because of pagan hostility (all pagan schools were closed by imperial edict in 529 A.D.), and in part because they no longer ministered to any real need. The church and the monastery schools alone remained, the instruction in these was meager indeed, and they served almost entirely the special needs of the priestly and monastic classes. The Latin language was corrupted and modified into spoken dialects, and the written language died out except with the monks and the clergy. Even here it became greatly corrupted. Art perished, and science disappeared. The former Roman skill in handicrafts was largely lost. Roads and bridges were left without repair. Commerce and intercourse almost ceased. The cities decayed, and many were entirely destroyed (R. 49).

The new ruling class was ignorant—few could read or write their names— and they cared little for the learning of Greece and Rome. Much of what was excellent in the ancient civilizations died out because these new peoples were as yet too ignorant to understand or use it, and what was preserved was due to the work of others than themselves. It was with such people and on such a basis that it was necessary for whatever constructive forces still remained to begin again the task of building up new foundations for a future European civilization. This was the work of centuries, and during the period the lamp of learning almost went out.

BARBARIAN AND ROMAN IN CONTACT. Civilization was saved from almost complete destruction chiefly by reason of the long and substantial work which Rome had done in organizing and governing and unifying the Empire; by the relatively slow and gradual coming of the different tribes; and by the thorough organization of the governing side of the Christian Church, which had been effected before the Empire was finally overrun and Roman government ceased. In unifying the government of the Empire and establishing a common law, language, and traditions, and in early beginning the process of receiving barbarians into the Empire and educating them in her ways and her schools, [7] Rome rendered the western world a service of inestimable importance and one which did much to prepare the way for the reception and assimilation of the invaders. [8] In the cities, which remained Roman in spirit even after their rulers had changed, and where the Roman population greatly preponderated even after the invaders had come, some of the old culture and handicrafts were kept up, and in the cities of southern Europe the municipal form of city government was retained. Roman law still applied to trials of Roman citizens, and many Roman governmental forms passed over to the invader chiefly because he knew no other. The old Roman population for long continued to furnish the clergy, and these, because of their ability to read and write, also became the secretaries and advisers of their rude Teutonic overlords. In one capacity or another they persuaded the leaders of the tribes to adopt, not only Christianity, but many of the customs and practices of the old civilization as well. These various influences helped to assimilate and educate the newcomers, and to save something of the old civilization for the future. Being strong, sturdy, and full of youthful energy, and with a large capacity for learning, the civilizing process, though long and difficult, was easier than it might otherwise have been, and because of their strength and vigor these new races in time infused new life and energy into every land from Spain to eastern Europe (R. 50).

The most powerful force with which the barbarians came in contact, though, and the one which did most to reduce them to civilization, was the Christian Church. Organized, as we have seen, after the Roman governmental model, and as a State within a State, the Church gained in strength as the Roman government grew weaker, and was ready to assume governmental authority when Rome could no longer exert it. The barbarians here encountered an organization stronger than force and greater than kings, [9] which they must either accept and make terms with or absolutely destroy. As all the tribes, though heathen, possessed some form of spirit or nature worship or heathen gods, which served as a basis for understanding the appeal of the Church, the result was the ultimate victory, and the Christianizing, in name at least, of all the barbarian tribes. This was the first step in the long process of civilizing and educating them.

THE IMPRESS OF CHRISTIANITY UPON THEM. The importance of the services rendered by bishops, priests, and monks during what are known as the Dark Ages can hardly be overestimated. In the face of might they upheld the right of the Church and its representatives to command obedience and respect. [10] The Christian priest gradually forced the barbarian chief to do his will, though at times he refused to be awed into submission, murdered the priest, and sacked the sacred edifice. That the Church lost much of its early purity of worship, and adopted many practices fitted to the needs of the time, but not consistent with real religion, there can be no question. In time the Church gained much from the mixture of these new peoples among the old, as they infused new vigor and energy into the blood of the old races, but the immediate effect was quite otherwise. The Church itself was paganized, but the barbarians were in time Christianized.

Priests and missionaries went among the heathen tribes and labored for their conversion. Of course the leaders were sought out first, and often the conversion of a chieftain was made by first converting his wife. After the chieftain had been won the minor leaders in time followed. The lesson of the cross was proclaimed, and the softening and restraining influences of the Christian faith were exerted on the barbarian. It was, however, a long and weary road to restore even a semblance of the order and respect for life and property which had prevailed under Roman rule.

One of the most interesting of all the conversions was that made by the Bishop Ulphilas (c. 313-383) among the Visigoths, before they moved westward from their original home north of the Danube, in what is now southwestern Russia. Ulphilas was made bishop and sent among them in 343, and spent the remainder of his life in laboring with them. He devised an alphabet for them, based on the Greek, and gave them a written language into which he translated for them the Bible, or rather large portions of it. In the translation he omitted the two books of Kings and the two Samuels, that the people might not find in them a further stimulus to their great warlike activity.



Christianity had been carried early to Great Britain by Roman missionaries, and in 440 Saint Patrick converted the Irish. In 563 Saint Columba crossed to Scotland, founded the monastery at Iona, and began the conversion of the Scots. After the Angles and Saxons and Jutes had overrun eastern and southern Britain there was a period of several generations during which this portion of the island was given over to Teutonic heathenism. In 597 Saint Augustine, "the Apostle to the English," landed in Kent and began the conversion of the people, that year succeeding in converting Ethelbert, King of Kent. In 626 Edwin, King of Northumbria, was converted, and in 635 the English of Wessex accepted Christianity. The English at once became strong supporters of the Christian faith, and in 878 they forced the invading Danes to accept Christianity as one of the conditions of the Peace of Wedmore. (See Map, Figure 42.)

In 496 Clovis, King of the Franks, and three thousand of his followers were baptized, following a vow and a victory in battle; [11] in 587 Recarred, King of the Goths in Spain, was won over; and in 681 the South Saxons accepted Christianity. The Germans of Bavaria and Thuringia were finally won over by about 740. Charlemagne repeatedly forced the northern Saxons to accept Christianity, between 772 and 804, when the final submission of this German tribe took place. Finally, in the tenth century, Rollo, Duke of the Normans, was won (912); Boleslav II, King of the Bohemians, in 967; and the Hungarians in 972. In the tenth century the Slavs were converted to the Eastern or Greek type of Christianity, and Poland, Norway, and Sweden to the Western or Roman type. The last people to be converted were the Prussians, a half-Slavic tribe inhabiting East Prussia and Lithuania, along the eastern Baltic, who were not brought to accept Christianity, in name, until near the middle of the thirteenth century, though efforts were begun with them as early as 900. As late as 1230 they were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods to secure their favor, but soon after this date they were forced to a nominal acceptance of Christianity as a result of conquest by the "Teutonic Knights." It was thus a thousand years after its foundation before Europe had accepted in name the Christian faith. To change a nominal acceptance to some semblance of a reality has been the work of the succeeding centuries.

WORK OF THE CHURCH DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. Everywhere throughout the old Empire, and far into the forest depths of barbarian lands, went bishops, priests, and missionaries, and there parishes were organized, rude churches arose, and the process of educating the fighting tribesmen in the ways of civilized life was carried out. It was not by schools of learning, but by faith and ceremonial that the Church educated and guided her children into the type she approved. Schools for other than monks and clergy for a time were not needed, and such practically died out. The Church and its offices took the place of education and exercised a wholesome and restraining influence over both young and old throughout the long period of the Middle Ages. These the Church in time taught the barbarian to respect. The great educational work of the Church during this period of insecurity and ignorance has seldom been better stated than in the following words by Draper:

Of the great ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be the inflexible supporters of right against might. Eventually coming to be the depositaries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed intellect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and by the example of the organization of the Church, which was essentially republican, they showed how representative systems may be introduced into the State. Nor was it over communities and nations that the Church displayed her chief power. Never in the world before was there such a system. From her central seat at Rome, her all-seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his reliance on God, or strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of the holy and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to give repose to the souls of his dead. When, even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an offense, in the name of God she received it into her consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great reckoning-day. From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be his equal, and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recompense for those noble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside. Discountenancing all impure love, she put round that fireside the children of one mother, and made that mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her precincts against the hand of power, and made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the despairing and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in many a weary land. [12.]

THE CIVILIZING WORK OF THE MONASTERIES. No less important than the Church and its clergy was the work of the monasteries and their monks in building up a basis for a new civilization. These, too, were founded all over Europe. To make a map of western Europe showing the monasteries established by 800 A.D. would be to cover the map with a series of dots. [13] The importance of their work is better understood when we remember that the Germans had never lived in cities, and did not settle in them on entering the Empire. The monasteries, too, were seldom established in towns. Their sites were in the river valleys and in the forests (R. 69), and the monks became the pioneers in clearing the land and preparing the way for agriculture and civilization. Not infrequently a swamp was taken and drained. The Middle-Age period was essentially a period of settlement of the land and of agricultural development, and the monks lived on the land and among a people just passing through the earliest stages of settled and civilized life. In a way the inheritors of the agricultural and handicraft knowledge of the Romans, the monks became the most skillful artisans and farmers to be found, and from them these arts in time reached the developing peasantry around them. Their work and services have been well summed up by the same author just quoted, as follows:

It was mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal; their meager clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived; their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch on his brother; the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of the monastery, which had its own mill, its own bakehouse, and whatever was needed in an abstemious domestic economy (Figure 38); their silent hospitality to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice to heaven—these were the things that arrested the attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. [14]

THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MIDDLE AGES. That the lamp of learning burned low during this period of assimilation is no cause for wonder. Recovery from such a deluge of barbarism on a weakened society is not easy. In fact the recovery was a long and slow process, occupying nearly the whole of a thousand years. The problem which faced the Church, as the sole surviving force capable of exerting any constructive influence, was that of changing the barbarism and anarchy of the sixth century, with its low standards of living and lack of humane ideals, into the intelligent, progressive civilization of the fifteenth century. This was the work of the Middle Ages, and largely the work of the Christian Church. It was not a period of progress, but one of assimilation, so that a common western civilization might in time be developed out of the diverse and hostile elements mixed together by the rude force of circumstances. The enfeebled Roman race was to be reinvigorated by mixture with the youthful and vigorous Germans (R. 50); to the institutions of ancient society were to be added certain social and political institutions of the Germanic peoples; all were to be brought under the rule of a common Christian Church; and finally, when these people had become sufficiently civilized and educated to enable them to understand and appreciate, "nearly every achievement of the Greeks and the Romans in thought, science, law, and the practical arts" was to be recovered and made a part of our western civilization.

In this chapter we have dealt largely with the great fundamental movements which have so deeply influenced the course of human history. In the chapters which immediately follow we shall tell how learning was preserved during the period and what facilities for education actually existed; trace the more important efforts made to reestablish schools and learning; and finally describe the culmination of the process of absorbing and educating the Germans in the civilization they had conquered that came in the great period of recovery of the ancient learning and civilization—the age of the Renaissance.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Do the peculiar problems of assimilation of the foreign-born, revealed to us by the World War, put us in a somewhat similar position to Rome under the Empire as relates to the need of a guiding national faith?

2. Outline how Rome might have been helped and strengthened by a national school system under state control.

3. Outline how our state school systems could be made much more effective as national instruments by the infusion into their instruction of a strong national faith.

4. Try to picture the results upon our civilization had western Europe become Mohammedan.

5. The movement of new peoples into the Roman Empire was much slower than has been the immigration of foreign peoples into the United States, since 1840. Why the difference in assimilative power?

6. How do you think the Roman provinces and Italy, after the tribes from the North had settled down within the Empire, compared with Mexico after the years of revolution with peons and brigands in control? With Russia, after the destruction wrought by the Bolshevists?

7. Explain the importance of the long civilizing and educating work of Rome among the German tribes, in preparing the means for the preservation of Roman institutions after the downfall of the Roman government.

8. What does the fact that Roman institutions and Roman thinking continued and profoundly modified mediaeval life indicate as to the nature of Roman government and the Roman power of assimilation?

9. Though Rome never instituted a state school system, was there not after all large educational work done by the government through its intelligent administration?

10. Show how the breakdown of Roman government and Roman institutions was naturally more complete in Gaul than in northern Italy, and more complete in northern than in central or southern Italy, and hence how Roman civilization was naturally preserved in larger measure in the cities of Italy than elsewhere.

11. Show how the Christian Church, too, could not have completely dispensed with Roman letters and Roman civilization, had it desired to do so, but was forced of necessity to preserve and pass on important portions of the civilization of Rome.

12. What do you think would have been the effect on the future of civilization had the barbarian tribes overrun Spain, Italy, and Greece during the Age of Pericles?

13. What modern analogies do we have to the civilizing work of the monks and clergy during the Middle Ages?

14. Picture the work of the monasteries in handing on to western Europe the arts and handicrafts and skilled occupations of Rome. Cite some examples.

15. What civilizing problem, somewhat comparable to that of barbarian Europe, have we faced in our national history? Why have we been able to obtain results so much more rapidly?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

46. Caesar: The Hunting Germans and their Fighting Ways. 47. Tacitus: The Germans and their Domestic Habits. 48. Dill: Effect on the Roman World of the News of the Sacking of Rome by Alaric. 49. Giry and Reville: Fate of the Old Roman Towns. 50. Kingsley: The Invaders, and what they brought. 51. General Form for a Grant of Immunity to a Bishop. 52. Charlemagne: Powers and Immunities granted to the Monastery of Saint Marcellus.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. State the differences in character Caesar observes (46) between the Gauls to the west of the Rhine and the Germans to the east.

2. What German characteristics that Tacitus describes (47) would prove good additions to Roman life?

3. Do the emotions of Saint Jerome on hearing of the sacking of Rome (48) reveal anything as to the extent to which the Roman had become a Churchman and the Churchman a Roman? Illustrate.

4. Is it probable that a quarter-century of Bolsheviki rule in Russia would produce results comparable to those described by Giry and Reville (49)?

5. Is Kingsley right in stating (50) that the best elements of all the modern European peoples came from the barbarian invaders? State what seem to you to be the important contributions of barbarian invader, Roman, and Churchman.

6. Do the grants of privileges and immunities shown in the general form (51)and the specific form (52) seem to follow naturally from the earlier grants to physicians and teachers (26) and to the clergy (38)? Point out the relationship.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. Church, R. W. The Beginnings of the Middle Ages. Kingsley, Chas. The Roman and Teuton. * Thorndike, Lynn. History of Mediaeval Europe.



CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES [1]

I. CONDITION AND PRESERVATION OF LEARNING

THE LOW INTELLECTUAL LEVEL. As was stated in the preceding chapter, the lamp of learning burned low throughout the most of western Europe during the period of assimilation and partial civilization of the barbarian tribes. The western portion of the Roman Empire had been overrun, and rude Germanic chieftains were establishing, by the law of might, new kingdoms on the ruins of the old. The Germanic tribes had no intellectual life of their own to contribute, and no intellectual tastes to be ministered unto. With the destruction of cities and towns and country villas, with their artistic and literary collections, much that represented the old culture was obliterated, [2] and books became more and more scarce. [3] The destruction was gradual, but by the beginning of the seventh century the loss had become great. The Roman schools also gradually died out as the need for an education which prepared for government and gave a knowledge of Roman law passed away, and the type of education approved by the Church was left in complete control of the field. As the security and leisure needed for study disappeared, and as the only use for learning was now in the service of the Church, education became limited to the narrow lines which offered such preparation and to the few who needed it. Amid the ruins of the ancient civilization the Church stood as the only conservative and regenerative force, and naturally what learning remained passed into its hands and under its control.

The result of all these influences and happenings was that by the beginning of the seventh century Christian Europe had reached a very low intellectual level, and during the seventh and eighth centuries conditions grew worse instead of better. Only in England and Ireland, as will be pointed out a little later, and in a few Italian cities, was there anything of consequence of the old Roman learning preserved. On the Continent there was little general learning, even among the clergy (R. 64 a). Many of the priests were woefully ignorant, [4] and the Latin writings of the time contain many inaccuracies and corruptions which reveal the low standard of learning even among the better educated of the clerical class. The Church itself was seriously affected by the prevailing ignorance of the period, and incorporated into its system of government and worship many barbarous customs and practices of which it was a long time in ridding itself. So great had become the ignorance and superstition of the time, among priests, monks, and the people; so much had religion taken on the worship of saints and relics and shrines; and so much had the Church developed the sensuous and symbolic, that religion had in reality become a crude polytheism instead of the simple monotheistic faith of the early Church. Along scientific lines especially the loss was very great. Scientific ideas as to natural phenomena disappeared, and crude and childish ideas as to natural forces came to prevail. As if barbarian chiefs and robber bands were not enough, popular imagination peopled the world with demons, goblins, and dragons, and all sorts of superstitions and supernatural happenings were recorded. Intercommunication largely ceased; trade and commerce died out; the accumulated wealth of the past was destroyed; and the old knowledge of the known world became badly distorted, as is evidenced by the many crude mediaeval maps. (See Figure 46.) The only scholarship of the time, if such it might be called, was the little needed by the Church to provide for and maintain its government and worship. Almost everything that we to-day mean by civilization in that age was found within the protecting walls of monastery or church, and these institutions were at first too busy building up the foundations upon which a future culture might rest to spend much time in preserving learning, much less in advancing it.



THE MONASTERIES DEVELOP SCHOOLS. In this age of perpetual lawlessness and disorder the one opportunity for a life of repose and scholarly contemplation lay in the monasteries. Here the rule of might and force was absent (R. 52), and the timid, the devout, and the studiously inclined here found a refuge from the turbulence and brutality of a rude civilization. The early monasteries, and especially the monastery of Saint Victor, at Marseilles, founded by Cassian in 404, had represented a culmination of the western feeling of antagonism to all ancient learning, but with the founding of Monte Cassino by Saint Benedict, in 529 A.D., and the promulgation of the Benedictine rule (R. 43), a more liberal attitude was shown. [5] This rule was adopted generally by the monasteries throughout what is now Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, and the Benedictine became the type for the monks of the early Middle Ages. To this order we are largely indebted for the copying of books and the preservation of learning throughout the mediaeval period.

The 48th rule of Saint Benedict, it will be remembered (R. 43), had imposed reading and study as a part of the daily duty of every monk, but had said nothing about schools. Subsequent regulations issued by superiors had aimed at the better enforcement of this rule (R. 44), that the monks might lead devout lives and know the Bible and the sacred writings of the Church. Imposed at first as a matter of education and discipline for the monks, this rule ultimately led to the establishment of schools and the development of a system of monastic instruction. As youths were received at an early age [6] into the monasteries to prepare for a monastic life, it was necessary that they be taught to read if they were later to use the sacred books. This led to the duty of instructing novices, which marks the beginning of monastic instruction for those within the walls. As books were scarce and at the same time necessary, and the only way to get new ones was to copy from old ones, the monasteries were soon led to take up the work once carried on by the publishing houses of ancient Rome, and in much the same way. This made writing necessary, and the novices had to be instructed carefully in this, as well as in reading. [7] The chants and music of the Church called for instruction of the novices in music, and the celebration of Easter and the fast and festival days of the Church called for some rudimentary instruction in numbers and calculation.

Out of these needs rose the monastery school, the copying of manuscripts, and the preservation of books. Due to their greater security and quiet the monasteries became the leading teaching institutions of the early part of the Middle-Age period, and those who wished their children trained for the service of the Church gave them to the monasteries (R. 53 a). The development of the monastic schools was largely voluntary, though from an early date bishops and rulers began urging the monasteries to open schools for boys in connection with their houses, and schools became in time a regular feature of the monastic organization. From schools only for those intending to take the vows (oblati), the instruction was gradually opened, after the ninth century, to others (externi) not intending to take the vows, and what came to be known as "outer" monastic schools were in time developed.

[Illustration: FIG. 38. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A MEDIAEVAL MONASTERY (From an engraving by Viollet-le-Duc, dated 1718, of the Cistercian Abbey of Citeaux, in France) This monastery was founded in the forests of what is now northeastern France, in 1198 A.D., and was the first of a reformed Benedictine order, known as Cistercians. For an explanation of the monastery, see the opposite page. (Note: explanation follows.)

Explanation of the Monastery opposite: The cross, by the roadside, indicates the entrance gate. Passing through the orchards and fields, the traveler reached the outer gate-house. At the almonry (C) food and drink were given out; on the second floor rooms for the night could be had; in the little chapel (D) prayers could be said; and in the stable (F) the traveler's horse could be cared for for the night. An inner gate through (E) opened into an inner court, around which were the barns, chicken- yards, cow-sheds, etc. The Abbot lived at H. G was a dormitory for the lay brothers who did the heavy work of the monastery, and who entered the church (N) at the rear through a special doorway (S). All of these buildings were considered as outside the monastery proper.

Inside were the great church (N), with the library (P) in the rear. Seven scriptoria are shown on the side of the library building. M was the large dormitory for the monks, and R the infirmary for old and sick brothers. I was the kitchen, K was the dining-hall (refectory), and L the stairs to the upper dormitory rooms. C and E are two cloisters with corridors on the four sides, somewhat similar to the cloisters shown for the monastery on Plate I. The copying of books often took place in these cloisters, though a scriptorium was usually found under the library, the library proper, as in Plate 2, being on the second floor (P) and reached by a winding stair. A wall surrounded the monastery grounds, and a stream of running water passed through them.]

The monasteries became the preservers of learning. Another need developed the copying of pagan books, and incidentally the preservation of some of the best of Roman literature. The language of the Church very naturally was Latin, as it was a direct descendant of Roman life, governmental organization, citizenship, and education. The writings of the Fathers of the Western Church had all been in Latin, and in the fourth century the Bible had been translated from the Greek into the Latin. This edition, known as the Vulgate [8] Bible, became the standard for western Europe for ten centuries to come. The German tribes which had invaded the Empire had no written languages of their own, and their spoken dialects differed much from the Latin speech of those whom they had conquered. Latin was thus the language of all those of education, and naturally continued as the language of the Church and the monastery for both speech and writing. All books were, of course, written in Latin.

Under the rude influences and the general ignorance of the period, though, the language was easily and rapidly corrupted, and it became necessary for the monasteries and the churches to have good models of Latin prose and verse to refer to. These were best found in the old Latin literary authors—particularly Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil. To have these, due to the great destruction of old books which had taken place during the intervening centuries, it was necessary to copy these authors, [9] as well as the Psalter, the Missal, [10] the sacred books, and the writings of the Fathers of the Church (Rs. 55, 56). It thus happened that the monasteries unintentionally began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their literary activity and for the character of their instruction. The monasteries thus in time became the storehouses of learning, the publishing houses of the Middle Ages (Rs. 54, 55, 56), teaching institutions of first importance, and centers of literary activity and religious thought, as well as centers for agricultural development, work in the arts and crafts, and Christian hospitality. Many developed into large and important institutions (R. 69).

THE COPYING OF MANUSCRIPTS. [11] The work of the more important monasteries and the monastic churches in copying books was a service to learning of large future significance. While many of the books copied were for the promotion of the religious service, such as Missals and Psalters (R. 55), and many others were tales of saints and wearisome comments on the sacred writings, a few were old classical texts representing the best of Roman literary work. A few monastic chronicles and histories of importance were composed by the brothers, and also preserved for us by the copying process.

The production of a single book was a task of large proportions, and explains in part the small number of volumes the monasteries accumulated. After the raids of the Mohammedans across Egypt, in the seventh century, the supply of Egyptian papyrus stopped because of the interruption of communications, and the only writing material during the Middle Ages was the skin of sheep or goats or calves. Sheepskins were chiefly used, and a book of size might require a hundred or more skins. These were first soaked in limewater to loosen the hair, then scraped clean of hair and flesh, and then carefully stretched on board frames to dry. After they had dried they were again scraped with sharp knives to secure an even thickness, and then rubbed smooth with pumice and chalk. When finished, the clean, shining, cream-colored skin was known as vellum, [12] or parchment. This was next cut into pages of the desired size and arranged ready for writing. The larger pieces were used for large books, such as are shown in Plate 2, and the remnants to produce small books. The inks, too, had to be prepared, and the pages ruled.

The main writing was done with black, but the page was frequently bordered with red, gold, or some other bright color, while many beautiful illustrations were inserted by artistic monks. Sometimes an initial letter was beautifully embellished, as is shown in Figure 39; sometimes illustrations were introduced in the body of the page, of which Figures 39 and 40 are types; and sometimes a colored illustration was painted on a sheet of vellum and inserted in the book. Figure 44 represents such an illustrated page in an old manuscript. Finally, when completed, the lettered and illustrated parchment sheets were arranged in order, sewed together with a deerskin or pigskin string, bound together between oaken boards and covered with pigskin, properly lettered in gold, fitted with metal corners and clasps (R. 57), as shown in Plate 2, and often chained to their bookrack in the library with heavy iron chains as well. (See Figure 71 and Plate 2.) Still further to protect the volume from theft, an anathema against the thief was usually lettered in the volume (R. 58).