Is the fatal law of mysticism, is that Saint Jerome, after

having proscribed letters, arts, and necessary and legitimate

pleasures, even brings hfs condemnation to bear on the most

honorable sentiments of the heart. The heart is human

also, and everything human is evil and full of danger :

' ' Do not allow Paula to feel more affection for one of her

companions than for others ; do not allow her to speak with

such a one in an undertone." And as he held in suspicion

even the affections of the family, the Doctor of the Church

concludes thus : —

" Let her be educated in a cloister, where she will not

know the world, where she will live as an angel, having a

body but not knowing it, and where, in a word, you will be

spared the care of watching over her. ... If you will send us

Paula, I will charge myself with being her master and nurse ;

I will give her my tenderest care ; my old age will not pre-

vent me from untying her tongue, and I shall be more re-

nowned than the philosopher Aristotle, since I shall instruct,

not a mortal and perishable king, but an immortal spouse of

the Heavenly King."

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 67

75. Permanent Truths. — The pious exaggerations of

Saint Jerome only throw into sharper relief the justice and

the excellence of some of his practical suggestions, — upon

the teaching of reading, for example, or upon the necessity

of emulation : —

" Put into the hands of Paula letters in wood or in ivory,

and teach her the names of them. She will thus learn while

playing. But it will not suffice to have her merely memorize

the names of the letters, and call them in succession as they

stand in the alphabet. You should often mix them, putting

the last first, and the first in the middle.

"Induce her to construct words by offering her a prize,

or by giving her, as a reward, what ordinarily pleases chil-

dren of her age. . . . Let her have companions, so that the

commendation she may receive may excite in her the feeling

of emulation. Do not chide her for the difficulty she may

have in learning. On the contrary, encourage her by com-

mendation, and proceed in such a way that she shall be

equally sensible to the pleasure of having done well, and to

the pain of not having been successful. . . . Especially lake

care that she do not conceive a dislike for study that might

follow her into a more advanced age." 1

76. Intellectual Feebleness of the Middle Age. —

If the early doctors of the Church occasionally expressed

some sympathy for profane letters, it is because, in their

youth, before having received baptism, they had themselves

attended the pagan schools. But these schools once closed,

Christianity did not open others, and, after the fourth cen-

tury, a profound night enveloped humanity.. The labor of

the Greeks and the Romans was as though it never had

1 For writing, Saint Jerome, like Quintilian, recommends thai children

first practise on tablets of wood on which letters have been engraved.

68 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

been. The past no longer existed. Humanity began anew.

In the fifth century, Apollinaris Sidonius declares that

"the young no longer study, that teachers no longer have

pupils, and that learning languishes and dies." Later, Lupus

of Ferrieres, the favorite of Louis the Pious and Charles the

Bald, writes that the study of letters had almost ceased. In

the early part of the eleventh century, the Bishop of Laon,

Adalberic, asserts that " there is more than one bishop who

cannot count the letters of the alphabet on his fingers." In

1291, of all the monks in the convent of Saint Gall, there

was not one who could read and write. It was so difficult

to find notaries public, that acts had to be passed verbally.

The barons took pride in their ignorance. Even after the

efforts of the twelfth century, instruction remained a luxury

for the common people ; it was the privilege of the ecclesias-

tics, and even they did not carry it very far. The Benedic-

tines confess that the mathematics were studied only for the

purpose of calculating the date of Easter.

77. Causes of the Ignorance of the Middle Age. —

What were the permanent causes of that situation which

lasted for ten centuries? The Catholic Church has some-

times been held responsible for this. Doubtless the Chris-

tian doctors did not always profess a very warm sympathy

for intellectual culture. Saint Augustine had said: "It is

the ignorant who gain possession of heaven (^indocti caelum

rapiurit)." Saint Gregory the Great, a pope of the sixth

century, declared that he would blush to have the holy word

conform to the rules of grammar. Too many Christians, in*

a word, confounded ignorance with holiness. Doubtless,

towards the seventh century, the darkness still hung thick

over the Christian Church. Barbarians invaded the Episco-

pate, and carried with them their rude manners. Doubtless,

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 69

also, during the feudal period the priest often became

soldier, and remained ignorant. Jt would, however, be un-

just to bring a constructive charge against the Church of the

Middle Age, and to represent it as systematically hostile to.

instruction. Directly to the contrary, it is the clergy who,

in the midst of the general barbarism, preserved some ves-

tiges of the ancient culture. The only schools of that period

are the episcopal and claustral schools, the first annexed to

the bishops' palaces, the second to the monasteries. The

religious orders voluntarily associated manual labor with

mental labor. As far back as 530, Saint Benedict founded

the convent of Monte Cassino, and drew up statutes which

made reading and intellectual labor a part of the daily life

of the monks.

In 1179, the third Lateran Council promulgated the follow-

ing decree : —

" The Church of God, being obliged like a good and ten-

der mother to provide for the bodily and spiritual wants of

the poor, desirous to procure for poor children the oppor-

tunity for learning to read, and for making advancement in

study, orders that each cathedral shall have a teacher charged

with the gratuitous instruction of the clergy of that church,

and also of the indigent scholars, and that he be assigned a

benefice, which, sufficient for his subsistence, may thus open

the door of the school to the studious youth. A tutor ! shall

be installed in the other churches and in the monasteries

where formerly there were funds set apart for this purpose."

It is not, then, to the Church that we must ascribe the

1 Ecoldtre. The history of this word, as given by Littre, is instructive.

"There was no cathedral church (sixteenth century) iu which a sum was

not appropriated for the salary of one who taught the ordinary subjects,

and another for one who had leisure for teaching Theology. The first was

called escolastre (dcoldtre), the second theologal." Pasquier. (P.)

70 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

general intellectual torpor of the Middle Age. Other causes

explain that long slumber of the human mind. The first is

the social condition of the people. Security and leisure, the

indispensable conditions for stud}', were completely lacking

to people always at war, overwhelmed in succession by the

barbarians, the Normans, the English, and by the endless

struggles of feudal times. The gentlemen of the time

aspired only to ride, to hunt, and to figure in tournaments

and feats of arms. Physical education was above all else

befitting men whose favorite vocation, both by habit and

necessity, was war. On the other hand, the enslaved peo-

ple did not suspect the utility of instruction. In order to

comprehend the need of study, that great liberator, one

must already have tasted liberty. In a society where the

need of instruction had not yet been felt, who could have

taken the initiative in the work of instructing the people ?

Let us add that the Middle Age presented still other con-

ditions unfavorable for the propagation of instruction, in

particular, the lack of national languages, those necessary

vehicles of education. The vernacular languages are the in-

struments of intellectual emancipation. Among a people

where a dead language is supreme, a language of the learned,

accessible only to the select few, the lower classes necessarily

remain buried in ignorance. Moreover, Latin books them-

selves were rare. Lupus of Ferrieres was obliged to write

to Rome, and to address himself to the Pope in person, in

order to procure for his use a work of Cicero's. Without

books, without schools, without any of the indispensable

implements of intellectual labor, what could be done for the

mental life ? It took refuge in certain monasteries ; erudi-

tion flourished only in narrow circles, with a privileged few,

and the rest of the nation remained buried in an obscure

night.

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE. 71

78. The Three Renascences. — It has been truly said

that there were three Renascences : the first, which owed its

beginning to Charlemagne, and whose brilliancy did not last ;

the second, that of the twelfth century, the issue of which

was Scholasticism ; and the third, the great Renaissance of

the sixteenth century, which still lasts, and which the French

Revolution has completed.

79. Charlemagne. — Charlemagne undoubtedly formed the

purpose of diffusing instruction about him. He ardently

sought it for himself, drilled himself in writing, and learned

Latin and Greek, rhetoric and astrononry. He would have

communicated to all who were about him the same ardor for

study. " Ah ! that I had twelve clerics," he exclaimed, " as

perfectly instructed as were Jerome and Augustine ! " It

was naturally upon the clergy that he counted, to make of

them the instruments of his plans ; but, as one of his

capitularies of 788 shows, there was need that the clergy

themselves should be reminded of the need of instruction :

k - We have thought it useful that, in the bishops' residences,

and in the monasteries, care be taken not only to live accord-