Chapter XXIV (9)

From this time Anscharius changed his conduct: he applied himself to his tasks, and spent his whole time in reading and meditation, and acquiring useful arts; so that his companions wondered at a change the cause of which was unknown to them. As he grew in years he was favoured with other heavenly visions, which I notice here, because it is often said, and doubtless with much truth, that the occupations of study and teaching have in them a direct tendency to dry up the sources of devotion. When, therefore, in studying the history of these ancient Christian schools we find among their teachers a succession of saints, and even of contemplatives, who enjoyed the most intimate communications with God, and were distinguished by the highest supernatural gifts, one cannot but ask wherein the difference lay; what divine secret they possessed enabling them to keep the sweet fountain of holy tears from drying up, so that they seem to have been wholly unconscious of the existence of any danger to the spiritual life in the occupations of study or teaching, and regarded such duties as in themselves spiritual. Possibly their safeguard lay in those happy _retinacula_ of religious life of which St. Bede speaks, and which, as we have seen, were regarded as their first object even by scholars like Rabanus and Paschasius, who devoted to study only the “furtive hours” not claimed by prayer and obedience. And hence they created a tradition which was kept up in the Christian schools down to a far later period, the grand principle of which was to interweave spiritual with intellectual employment, and by timely interruptions, prevent the whole nature from being poured out over its mental work. In what manner this was effected in the collegiate foundations of the Middle Ages we shall have occasion to show hereafter; it is sufficient here to remind the reader that such a system was naturally supplied by the discipline of religious life in those cloistered schools which were the nurseries of Christian education. And the result was that the monastic teachers were something very unlike the modern notion of schoolmasters; they were not mere men of the rod and the grammar; and it cannot but strike us as remarkable how almost universally they are spoken of as enjoying, in a very special degree, the gift of prayer. This was preeminently the case with St. Anscharius, and some of his visions are related by his biographer, Rembert, who had heard them in confidence from his own lips. He mentions one remarkable revelation received by the saint in the early part of his religious life, whence he understood that he was to be called to preach the faith to heathen nations. Some of these supernatural incidents are related as mixed up with ordinary details of his life in the schools. While he was scholasticus of Old Corby it was his invariable custom, says Rembert, when going to and returning from the school, to turn aside into a little oratory dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and there pray awhile in secret. On one such occasion when he rose from his knees he saw standing at the entrance One clothed after the Jewish fashion, beautiful in countenance, from whose eyes went forth a Divine light. Recognising it to be our Lord Anscharius prostrated at His feet, but in a sweet voice He bid him rise, saying, “Confess thy sins, Anscharius, that thou mayst receive pardon.” “What need is there, O Lord,” said Anscharius, “that I should tell them to Thee, seeing that Thou knowest them all?” But he replied, “I know them, indeed, nevertheless I would have thee confess them that thou mayst be justified.” Anscharius accordingly declared all the sins he had ever committed since his childhood, and was consoled by the assurance that he had received their full remission. About the same time, continues Rembert, it happened that one of his little scholars, named Fulbert, received a blow with a slate from another lad, of so serious a nature that within a few days he died. When the accident was made known to Anscharius, the good master was overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of such a mischance having befallen a child committed to his care. During the time that Fulbert continued to linger, Anscharius never left his bedside, till at last, wearied out with sorrow and long watching, they persuaded him to take some repose. He fell into a heavy slumber, in which he was consoled by a gracious vision. He seemed to see the dear child carried up to heaven by the hands of the angels, and placed in the company of the martyrs; and, wondering at the sight, it was explained to him that because Fulbert had borne his wound with great patience, and had heartily loved and forgiven him from whom he had received the injury, and had prayed much for him, accepting his own premature death with loving submission to the Divine will, his sweetness and resignation had deserved from the Divine compassion so great a reward as to be placed among the holy martyrs. Anscharius was still absorbed in the joy of this revelation when he was roused by Witmar, a younger monk associated with him in the government of the school, who came to tell him that even at that very moment Fulbert had expired. He found that Anscharius already knew it, and doubtless, adds Rembert, this comfort had been given him by God that he might not grieve overmuch for the death of the child, but might rather rejoice at the happy state of his soul.

Anscharius was one of those chosen to colonise the monastery of New Corby, the mention of which requires a few words of explanation. The foundation of this daughter-house was the great work of St. Adalhard, who so soon as his young Saxons were sufficiently trained in learning and monastic discipline, consulted them on the possibility of their obtaining a suitable site for a foundation in their native land. After many difficulties had been raised and overcome, ground was procured, and the building of the abbey was begun. Adalhard repaired thither to superintend operations in company with Paschasius and his own brother Wala, who, brought up like himself as a soldier and a courtier, had in former years held military command in Saxony and won the affections of the people by his wise and gentle rule. When the Saxons saw their old governor among them again in the monastic habit, nothing could exceed their wonder and delight: they ran after him in crowds, looking at him, and feeling him with their hands to satisfy themselves that it was really he, paying no attention whatever to the presence of the abbot or any other of his companions. The first stone of the new abbey was laid on September 26, 822; Old Corby made over to the new colony all the lands held by the community in Saxony; the Emperor Louis gave them a charter, and some precious relics from his private chapel, and in a few years that great seminary was completed which was destined to carry the light of faith and science to the pagan natives of the farther North. It would be hard to say which of the two Corbies held the highest place in monastic history; a noble emulation existed between them, each trying to outstrip the other in the perfection of monastic discipline. New Corby, in her turn became the mother-house of a vast number of German colonies, over all of which she continued to maintain a certain superiority. A law was made obliging every abbot of these branch-houses to keep a chronicle of his monastery and send a copy of it to the Corby library; and by another law, every novice on the day of his profession was bound to present to the library some useful book. The library of new Corby grew to be one of great value and importance, and its catalogue, still preserved, exhibits the names of not a few Arabic and Hebrew works. It was here also that in the days of Leo X. was disinterred the famous manuscript of Tacitus, which may still be seen at Florence.

A monastery that cared so much for the formation of its library was not likely to be indifferent to its school. It was the boast of both Corbies in turns to possess Anscharius as their scholasticus, “that great preceptor,” as Mabillon calls him, for his reputation as a master was spread over all Germany. He was at the same time appointed to preach to the people, an office particularly agreeable to that apostolic spirit which he had never ceased to nurture in his heart. The time was approaching when the prophetic vision of former years, and the secret instincts of his own soul, were to be accomplished. In 826 Harold, king of Denmark, having embraced the faith, and been baptized with great pomp at Mentz, petitioned the Emperor Louis to give him some holy missionaries, who might accompany him home to Denmark, and plant the Church in that country. Wala, then abbot of New Corby, fixed on Anscharius, and he, mindful of the revelation which had long before assured to him the glory of an apostolic career, joyfully accepted the mission, heedless alike of the criticism of friends and enemies, who all found something to say against it. Anscharius turned a deaf ear to their reasonings and remonstrances, and withdrew to a certain vineyard in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he prepared for his new duties by a kind of spiritual retreat. Here he was sought out and discovered by a monk of Old Corby, named Aubert, and thinking that his visitor had only come to pester him with more advice, Anscharius bade him spare himself the trouble of arguing the question, as he had irrevocably made up his mind. “You have nothing to fear from me,” said Aubert, “my only reason for coming to you, is to beg you to accept me as your companion, if the abbot Wala can be brought to give his consent.” Anscharius joyfully welcomed him as a fellow labourer, and they soon after set out in company with the king. His majesty, however, was more than half a barbarian, and the equipment he provided for his missioners was not luxurious. The royal and ecclesiastical retinue embarked on board a very dirty boat, the only accommodation on board consisting of two miserable cabins in which king and missioners were packed together with very little ceremony. However, they arrived at last at their journey’s end, and began their labours by opening a little school in Friesland, where they received twelve children, among whom were the two sons of king Harold himself. A little later we find them passing on to Sweden, attacked on the way by pirates, and robbed of all their baggage, containing their library of forty books. Such were the humble beginnings of a great apostolate, which at its close found Anscharius Archbishop of Hamburgh, and papal legate, not only over the Scandinavian kingdoms, but also over Iceland and the distant shores of Greenland, which are expressly named in the Bull of Pope Gregory IV. One of the most successful means adopted by the saint for the propagation of the faith, was the purchase of young Danes who were offered for sale as slaves, and whom he then sent to Corby, whence, after receiving a Christian education, they returned to their own country as zealous missionaries.

It would take us too long, and probably prove but wearisome to the reader, were we to examine in detail the foundation and history of all the monastic schools of this period. Glance where we will, we shall find indications of the same intellectual activity struggling to make head against the darkness of a semi-barbarous age. The schools of Hirschau, Hirsfield, Fleury, and Prom, might all be made to furnish illustrations of the ardour with which scientific and literary pursuits were carried on by their scholars. But while passing over these and others, which have almost equal claims on our interest, it is impossible to leave without notice two houses whose prëeminent importance in the history of monastic studies has made their names especially venerable: I mean the abbeys of Reichnau, and St. Gall. The first foundation of St. Gall’s belongs indeed to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus, who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan population. Under the famous abbot St. Othmar, who flourished in the time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that in the ninth century it was regarded as the first religious house north of the Alps. It is with a sigh of that irrepressible regret called forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone for ever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness, an oasis of piety and civilisation. Looking down from the craggy mountains, the passes of which open upon the southern extremity of the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters, the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and the mill, or rather mills, for there were ten of them, all in such active operation, that they every year required ten new millstones; and then the house occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and workmen attached to the monastery gardens too, and vineyards creeping up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and sheep speckling the green meadows, and far away boats busily plying on the lake and carrying goods and passengers--what a world it was of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It was, in fact, not a town, but a house,--a family presided over by a father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or the social side of such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention. Descend into the valley, and visit all these nurseries of useful toil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite modulations of those chants and sequences peculiar to the abbey which boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch to his wonderful copper images, and his fine altar frontals of gold and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred monks who form the community at their midnight office and you will forget everything, save the saintly aspect of those servants of God who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odour of Christ, and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway. You may quit the circuit of the abbey and plunge once more into the mountain region which rises beyond, but you will have to wander far before you find yourself beyond the reach of its softening, humanising influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they sing so sweetly,[96] going up and down among the hills into the thick forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks carrying their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you may have been listening to lectures in the learned, and even in the Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains, you will hear these fine classical scholars preaching plain truths, in barbarous idioms, to a rude race, who before the monks came among them sacrificed to the Evil One, and worshipped stocks and stones.

Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of St. Gall’s was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens--at least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found here not monks alone and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state; it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate in the exterior school. Not only were the Sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained; Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but the very little boys presumed to speak in any tongue but Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly taken from Scripture and Church history, and having written their exercises they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets, others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world. They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex, now of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the Sacred Books and sometimes of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. They were Greek students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of the “Cecropian Muse” were denominated the “fratres Ellenici.” The beauty of their early manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the names of their best transcribers find honourable mention in their annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with the original text, this duty being generally discharged during the interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood cramped with ivory or iron, the Sacred Volumes being covered with plates of gold and adorned with jewels.

In such a school it was no wonder that the pupils of St. Gall, like those of Eton, became famous for their good writing. Ekhehard I. had a method in this as in everything else; if he found a boy dull over his grammar he set him to copy; arguing that nature was an economist in her gifts, and did not dispense all to all; and that often where the head was somewhat slow in learning, the deficiency was made up by an extra dexterity with the fingers. But boys were never employed on the Gospels, or Church service books, these being reserved for men of perfect age, who would bring greater care to their responsible task. We have even the copy ordinarily set for beginners in the monastic scriptorium, a doggerel line, introducing every letter of the alphabet:

“Adnexique globum Zephyrique Kanna secabant.”

That the labour of transcription was often exceedingly irksome, is evident from sundry notes scattered over these manuscripts. “As the sick man desireth health,” writes one, “even so doth the transcriber desire the end of his volume.” Another contents himself with the laconic observation, “written with great trouble;” but a third, who may be supposed to have been employed over a very tough copy, breaks out into verse, and exclaims at his last page:

“Libro completo
Saltat scriptor pede læto.”

The monks of St. Gall were no less famous for their music than for their painting. Their musical tastes were inherited probably from their Irish founders, and were further improved by the teaching of those Roman cantors, whom we have seen in a former page sent into France, at Charlemagne’s request, to civilise the barbarous singing of his Frankish cantors. On their way back into Italy, one of them, to whom the St. Gall historians give the name of Romanus, was attacked by fever, and stopping at the Swiss monastery, was there charitably entertained and nursed by the brethren, who had excellent doctors among them. In return, he taught them the Roman chant, and bestowed on them the identical antiphonarium he had brought from Rome, making a certain case or instrument to contain it. “And to this day,” writes Ekhehard, “if there is any dispute about the singing, the error may be detected by consulting this book.” Moreover, this Romanus was the first who thought of assigning the letters of the alphabet to the musical notes, a system which Notker Balbulus afterwards explained, and which, being further elucidated by a certain friend of his named Lambert, was adopted throughout Germany.[97]

Leaving a more particular notice of the studies and students of this great abbey for a future chapter, I must here add a few words on another religious house, the history of which is closely associated with that of St. Gall, and where the sciences flourished in equal perfection under the shelter of those lofty mountains which shut out the tumult of the world and the incursions of the barbarians. At the western extremity of the lake of Constance, just where it narrows towards the outlet of the Rhine, lies a green island sparkling like an emerald gem on the unruffled surface of the waters. There, half hidden amid the luxuriant foliage, you may still see the grey minster of that famous abbey called Augia by its Latin historians, but better known by its German name of Reichnau. Walafrid Strabo, the pupil of Rabanus and the chief chronicler of his time, was abbot of Reichnau in the ninth century, and in one of his poems has painted its situation in very exact terms. He gives the succession of abbots from St. Pirminius, who first established himself in the island in the reign of Pepin, and shows that the school was one of the very earliest which had at that time attained celebrity. I have already spoken of Walafrid’s fame as a master, but I cannot here omit mentioning his pupil and biographer, Ermenric, who has made himself known to us by a letter which he wrote after paying what seems to have been a very pleasant visit at St. Gall’s. Walafrid had sent him there for a holiday, and on his return he expressed the enjoyment it had given him, in an epistle addressed to abbot Grimoald. As soon as he crossed the lake, he says, he found himself welcomed by a group of illustrious men. “There,” he continues, “I found each one humbler and more patient than his fellow. I saw neither envy nor jealousy, but all were bound together with the triple chord of charity, simplicity, and concord. How shall I speak of the generosity of Engilbert, or the kindness of that most clever brother Hartmod? It would be impossible for me to do justice to the excellence which these servants of God had attained in so many of the arts, but you may judge of the birds by looking at the nests which they inhabit. Examine their cloister and you will agree with what I say. What else can I call Winhart but a second Dædalus? or Isenric but another Beseleel? for indeed the graving tool is never out of his hand, save when he stands at the altar to exercise his sacred ministry. And yet there is such humility among them that no one disdains the humblest employment, remembering those words of Scripture, ‘the prayer of the humble shall pierce the clouds.’”

Reichnau, however, had its own line of great masters, among whom Ermenric, who could do such generous justice to the excellence of others, was himself worthy to be reckoned. The most illustrious was, perhaps, the cripple Hermann Contractus, originally a pupil of St. Gall’s, who is said to have prayed that he might not regain the use of his limbs, but that he might receive instead a knowledge of the Scriptures. He was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic; he wrote treatises on history, poetry, ethics, astronomy, and mathematics; he calculated eclipses, and explained Aristotle, and, in spite of an impediment in his speech, his lectures were so learned that he had pupils from the most distant provinces of Italy. He set his own poems to music, made clocks and organs, and was as much revered for his sanctity as his universal genius. Many hymns and antiphons used by the Church are attributed to his pen, among others the _Alma Redemptoris_. But if Hermann was the most famous scholar of Reichnau, a yet greater celebrity, though of a different kind, attaches to the name of Meinrad. The story of his vocation to the eremitical life affords an apt illustration of the contemplative character already noticed as so frequently belonging to the early pedagogues: and as it presents us with an agreeable picture of a “whole play-day” in the Dark Ages, we will give it as it stands in the pages of the monk Berno. Meinrad was the son of a Swabian nobleman of the house of Hollenzollern, and had studied in the monastic school under abbot Hatto and his own uncle Erlebald. When the latter became abbot he appointed Meinrad to the care of the school which was attached to a smaller house dependent on Reichnau, and situated at a spot called Bollingen, on the lake of Zurich. He accordingly removed thither, and had singular success with his scholars, whom he inspired with great affection by reason of his gentle discipline. He used to take them out for walking parties and fishing parties, into what Berno, his biographer, calls “the wilderness,” a wilderness, however, which was adorned with a majestic beauty to which Meinrad was not insensible. One day he and his boys crossed the lake in a small boat, and landing on the opposite shore sought for some quiet spot where they might cast their fishing lines. Finding a little stream which flowed into the lake and gave good promise of trout, Meinrad left them to pursue their sport and strolled about, meditating on the joys of that solitary life after which he secretly pined. After a while, returning to his scholars, he found that their fishing had been unusually successful, and taking up their baskets, they retraced their steps to the village of Altendorf, where they entered the house of a certain matron to rest and refresh themselves with food. Whilst the boys ate and drank, and enjoyed themselves in their own way, Meinrad and their hostess engaged in conversation, and Meinrad, who was full of the thoughts to which his mountain walk had given rise, opened his whole heart to her. “Beyond all riches,” he said, “I desire to dwell alone in this solitude that so I might wholly give myself to prayer, could I but find some one who would minister to me in temporal things.” The good lady immediately offered to provide him with whatever he wanted, in order to carry out his design; and the result of that day’s fishing-party was the establishment of the former scholasticus of Bollingen in a little hermitage which he constructed for himself out of the wattled boughs of trees. But he found himself in one way disappointed; he had sought the desert to fly from the world, and the world followed him thither in greater throngs than he had ever encountered at Reichnau. The saints possess a strange power of attraction, and neither mountains nor forests are able to hide them. In his own day men compared St. Meinrad to the Baptist, because the multitudes went out into the wilderness to hear him preach penance and remission of sins. For seven years he continued to dispense the Word of Life to the pilgrims who gathered about him from all parts of Europe. But one day unable to resist his longing for retreat, he took his image of Our Lady, a missal, a copy of St. Benedict’s rule, and the works of Cassian, and laden with these, his only treasures, he plunged into the forest, and choosing a remote and secluded spot erected a rude chapel which he dedicated to Our Lady, and a yet ruder dwelling for himself. There he lived for thirty years, and at the end of that time he was assassinated in his hermitage by some ruffians who hoped to find some hidden treasure in his cell. His body was carried back to Reichnau, and in after years the great sanctuary of Einsidlen rose over the site of his hermitage, where is still venerated the image of Our Lady which he had formerly carried thither with his own hands.

We are now in a position to form some idea of the real character of these early monastic schools, and of the teaching which they conveyed. From the eighth to the twelfth century, the scholastic system underwent so little change, that we may select our illustrations indifferently from any part of that period, without risk of inaccuracy.

First, then, as to the schoolroom itself. In most cases the interior or claustral schools of monasteries and cathedrals were held in the cloisters. A strange contrast, indeed, to the luxurious requirements of modern times; but boarded floors, patent stoves, and easy-backed forms were luxuries undreamt of by the hardy Frankish or Gothic students who studied under Walafrid or Rabanus. It is not until the fifteenth century that we meet with a document hinting at the novelty of providing schoolrooms with boarded floors.[98] The cloisters of York and Worcester, now so desolate and deserted, were once peopled with a busy race of scholars, who probably suffered often enough, like the pupils of Bede, from stiffened fingers and bleeding cracks. Even so late as the twelfth century, the schools of Paris were held in the cloisters of Nôtre Dame, and only removed thence when the repose of the canons was disturbed by the unruly crowds who rushed to listen to the lectures of Abelard. The number of scholars received into a monastery varied according to its size. At St. Riquier, where there were 300 monks, abbot Angilbert wished never to have less than a hundred children, the sons of dukes, counts, and kings.[99] They were seldom or never left alone, and in the cloister or schoolroom the master’s seat was so arranged, that all were under his eye. It does not seem, however, that the surveillance in school-hours was carried out with any excessive rigidity, for we find frequent notice of the pranks and surreptitious consumption of good things perpetrated by the school boys in the temporary absence of their masters. In the dormitories, however, the discipline was more strict; there the lamp was kept constantly burning, and though there are no traces of an odious espionage, there is evidence of a constant, ever present vigilance. Awaked in the morning by the wooden signal board of the master, the children were conducted to the lavatory by the “pedagogues” or junior assistants of the school. These pedagogues were very numerous, and their duties were various. Among other things it belonged to them to see to the cleanliness and neatness of dress and person, a thing not at all despised in the Dark Ages. At Cluny, where in the twelfth century all the older monastic traditions of school discipline were resumed and perfected, it was not permitted for the children to sit together on benches, but each one had his own little box, in which he kept his writing materials, and which also served him for a seat. A midday siesta was allowed at Cluny, but no one was permitted to read or write on his bed.[100] In all these regulations may plainly be seen a solicitude for order and good morals, together with a certain tone of refinement, which is more than we should expect, and which satisfies us how profoundly the whole subject of education had been studied by the medieval masters. Their ideas on the subject of punishment were in more simple accordance with those of Solomon than our fastidious age would approve. The rod, in fact, was so very generally used, that under the form of the ferule it afterwards became the badge of the bachelor in arts, and was solemnly delivered to him when he took his degree. Medieval schoolboys were not more fond of a flogging than those of later growth, and to escape it the scholars of St. Gall once adopted the extraordinary expedient of setting fire to the monastery. Yet with all this austerity of discipline, nothing is more certain than that the monastic masters possessed the secret of making themselves beloved, and that the love which they inspired was not the less familiar because mingled with respect. I may add, that at Cluny, though flogging was permitted, boxing on the ears was strictly prohibited, apparently with the view of allowing no indulgence to the irritated feelings of the master. Punishment, like everything else at Cluny, was administered in an orderly and methodical manner; in fact, the peculiar excellence of the Cluniacs lay in their manner of systematising everything, whether homely or sublime.

The masters in most large schools were very numerous, but none were allowed to hold any office until of mature age. At Fulda there were twelve professors and a principal (_Principalis_), besides assistants.[101] In the cathedral schools, in like manner, there was the _Archischolus_ and his assistants, and the _Proscholus_, or prefect of discipline.[102] The reader will perhaps smile when he hears that one of the duties of the _Proscholus_ was to teach the children how to walk, bow, and behave in presence of superiors. This, however, was a speciality of the Canons Regular. Learning was not the only qualification required in a master. He was to be of tried virtue. The office of teacher was a cure of souls, and so great was the honour in which it was held, that bishops even, who had formerly filled the post of scholasticus, not unfrequently affixed their old to their new title, when signing their names.

The education of the scholars began at a very early age, sometimes at five or six. The first task consisted in learning by heart certain portions of Holy Scripture, and specially of the Psalter. Even those who very early abandoned their books for the more congenial exercises of the tilt-yard, seldom did so till they had run through their Psalter: “_decurso psalterio_,” is a common expression used in speaking of a youth who had left school with the least possible smattering of an education. As for those who stayed a more reasonable time at school, they acquired, besides their profane learning, a familiarity with the Church office and with the words of Holy Writ, not certainly possessed by all scholars of the present day. This is abundantly illustrated by the histories of the times. Thus Einold of Toul, sitting at the window of his cell, hears a voice chanting the words, “I will give you the heritage of your father Jacob,” and at once concludes that it must be a schoolboy conning his morning’s task. How beautiful is that story which we find in the chronicle of Monte Cassino, of the monk Levitius, who, returning from Jerusalem, came to Mount Albaneta, where he proposed to build a monastery. As he was inspecting the site of his new foundation, he saw approaching him a little school boy, carrying his bag of books on his shoulders, and the thought came into his head that he would ask him if he could sing. The boy replying that he could, Levitius told him to sing the first thing he could remember, secretly resolving that he would place the church under the dedication of any saint the boy might happen to name. The little scholar thought a moment, and then intoned the Antiphon, _Veni electa mea_, which he sang with much sweetness. Levitius listened with delight, and the monastery which afterwards rose on the spot was dedicated to the Ever Blessed Virgin. Scholars of all ages were very largely exercised in what one old monk calls “the holy memory.” Learning by rote was used more generally than among ourselves, partly because books were rare, and all could not enjoy the luxury of a Psalter or Breviary for private use; and partly, because the teachers of old time sought to sanctify this power of the soul, by thoroughly informing it with holy words. Besides the Psalter, the novices of a religious house were expected to know the New Testament at least by heart, half-an-hour a day being assigned for the purpose.

The liberal arts were, as is well known, classed under two heads, the _trivium_, which included grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the _quadrivium_, which embraced arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This division is expressed in the well-known distich:--

Gram: loquitur. Dia. vera docet. Rhet. verba colorat.
Mus. canit. Ar. numerat. Geo. ponderat. Ast. colit astra.

The trivium, with the Ecclesiastical chant, and so much of arithmetic as was required for the computation of the calendar, was taught in all schools; the quadrivium only in those which embraced the higher studies. Music was divided into two kinds, the _cantus_, which formed part of the routine of studies even in the lower schools, and _musica_, properly so called, which included the theory of music, a knowledge of the laws of sound, and the connection of harmony with numbers. And this explains how it was that a knowledge of music was in those days considered a proof that its possessor was a well-educated man: it evidenced that he had not only gone through the elementary studies of the trivium, but that he had completed his education in one of those higher schools in which the quadrivium also was taught. And these higher schools were frequented not only by ecclesiastics but by laics, whose inferiority to the clergy in point of mental culture has been greatly overstated, and where it existed, was the effect of accident rather than of system. Men who by force of necessity were called into the field at a very early age, and engaged in active military service during the greater part of their lives, had seldom much time to devote to study; but there was no sort of prejudice against their becoming as learned as they chose. Abbot Philip, of Good Hope, who lived in the time of St. Bernard, when the institution of Chivalry had certainly not tended to render the lay-nobles more studious, protests against the notion that learning is the exclusive apanage of the clergy. “Many laymen,” he says, “are well instructed in letters. When a prince can withdraw from the tumult of arms and business he should study himself in books just as he contemplates his face in a mirror.” And he proceeds to speak in commendation of the noble Count Charles who was “as prompt in meditating the Psalms as in drawing the sword to avenge outraged justice,” and Count Adolph “who ceased not to bless his parents for the good education they had given him.” Of Henry, Count of Champagne, it is said that between his warlike expeditions, when not engaged in the judicial duties of his rank, he delighted in withdrawing to some retired part of his castle and entertaining himself with a classic author or a volume of the Fathers. And in the Imperial library is still to be seen a fine copy of Valerius Maximus, written out for him by the monks of Provins. Every one is familiar with the name of Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, against whose learning Hallam has directed so uncourteous a sneer. The story, threadbare as it is, affords too good an illustration of the subject to be omitted. He was accustomed to sing in choir with the canons of St. Martin’s of Tours, and when ridiculed by king Louis IV. of France, for the habit, sent to that monarch a pithy epistle to the following effect: “Know, sir, that an illiterate king is a crowned ass.” “It seems, then,” observes Hallam, “that with the monkish historians a knowledge of music passed for literature. The same writer calls Geoffrey Plantagenet _optime literatus_, which perhaps imports little more learning than was possessed by his ancestor, Fulk.”[103] The monkish biographer here alluded to meant nothing of the kind, but he knew, as both Fulk and Louis also knew, that at that time a knowledge of music might be taken as a tolerably satisfactory token that the musician had studied at one of the higher schools, and completed the full course of the quadrivium. And such, indeed, was the case with Fulk, who, as the same biographer tells us a few pages further on, was well read in Cicero and Aristotle.

A methodical idea of the system of education which prevailed in the higher monastic schools, is given in a little manual called the “Doctrinale Puerorum,” the authority of which is beyond dispute. Though the production of the twelfth century, so little change took place in the system of studies from the time of Charlemagne to that of Lanfranc that it may be taken as equally descriptive of the method followed in the ninth and tenth. According to the writer of this manual a child as soon as he had learnt to read and write, set to work on the Latin Grammar of Donatus or Priscian, if he were so fortunate as to be able to provide himself with a book. The larger number of pupils probably had to depend on the oral instructions dictated by their master, and their own notes of his lessons. We know for certain that not only grammar, but rhetoric and the explanation of classic authors were taught orally, rules and examples being thus dictated and learnt by frequent repetition. From their ninth to their twelfth year the boys studied elementary Latin books, specially the Fables of Esop, and the poems of Christian authors, such as Theodulus, who, in the tenth century, wrote in verse the miracles of the Old and New Testaments, with the view of providing young children with suitable class-books. The _Distichia Moralia_, commonly attributed to Cato, a very old class-book, was probably the authorship of some Christian writer of the seventh century; and has found a home even in the Eastern languages. As the boys advanced in years, select portions from the works of Seneca, Ovid, Virgil, Persius, and Horace, but specially of Lucan and Statius were placed in their hands, explained and committed to memory, and these were followed by Cicero, Quinctilian, and the Latin version of Aristotle.[104]

Some readers will, doubtless, be tempted to regard such an account of the ancient course of classical studies as a work of the imagination. They will call to mind the scruples of Alcuin and the condemnation passed by Paschasius on those who spent their time in the explanation of the profane poets. But it may be observed, that the very examples so often quoted to prove that the monks disapproved of the study of the classics, show us that at any rate they knew a good deal about them. Alcuin had studied Virgil himself before he forbade Sigulf to do so, and so had St. Odo, who prohibited the reading of the Mantuan bard, after he had seen in a vision a vessel full of serpents, which he understood to represent his works. And the strictures of Paschasius on those who neglected the Scriptures, while they weighed every line and syllable of Pagan authors, shows at least how extensively those authors were read. But it must strike every impartial reader that these prohibitions do, in fact, prove nothing at all as to the state of school studies. They apply entirely to the use of the classics, not among students, but among the monks themselves. Because it was thought undesirable that young ecclesiastics should spend their time in the study of the profane poets, and because their attention was rather directed by their superiors to the cultivation of sacred science, we must not, certainly, conclude in the face of evidence that the classics were excluded from the schools. Teachers in the ninth century were no less solicitous than those of the nineteenth to form the mind and the style of their scholars; their compositions are perhaps not quite so full of the _membra disjecta_ of Tully as a scholar of the Renaissance might have desired, yet he was certainly read, and though the imitations of Virgil and Ovid attempted by these obscure writers may be very indifferent, they could only have been produced by men who were perfectly familiar with the original writings of the Latin poets. Mabillon has not failed to draw the distinction between the studies pursued by monks and bishops, and those of masters and scholars.[105] He quotes two passages very much to the point, in one of which Lanfranc declines entering into certain questions appertaining to secular literature, submitted to him by the monk Domnoald, because he says, “though in my youth I delighted in such things, I determined wholly to renounce them when I accepted the pastoral charge.” In the other passage St. Anselm writes to his old pupil, Maurice, and advises him to read Virgil, and the other good Latin authors, as much as he can, excepting always such passages as offend good morals.

This last condition is often insisted on; nor was it until the period of the classic Renaissance that the _indiscriminate_ use of the classics by the young was tolerated. Rabanus in his book _De Institutione Clericorum_, while permitting the study of profane literature, even to clerics, stipulates that it be read for edification, and that whatever has a contrary tendency be put aside. The monastic scholars even recognised that reflection of primeval tradition which gleams through the pagan authors, and which, as Ozanam says, opened to Virgil the schools of the Middle Ages. What they did not allow was that the exclusive study of these models should be suffered to paganise the Christian mind, and they contrived, therefore, in explaining the works of Cicero or Plato to weave a Christian tone into the lessons by connecting them or comparing them with passages from the Holy Scriptures.

Latin was the only language universally cultivated, though the other learned tongues were not entirely neglected. Bede and Alcuin certainly possessed a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and, no doubt, communicated their learning to some of their pupils. Greek, as we have seen, was studied at St. Gaul’s, and Charlemagne, who himself had some knowledge of that tongue, founded a Greek college at Osnaburgh, chiefly with a view to providing ecclesiastics whose familiarity with the language of the Eastern empire might be of service to him in his constant intercourse with Constantinople. Some writers whose aim it is to represent the learning of these centuries as altogether unworthy of notice, affect to doubt whether the Greek college, if proposed, were ever really founded; but the evidence of contemporary historians is positive on the point. “Do not wonder,” writes the chronicler of Ottberg, “that the abbot of Hermann should always have carried with him a Greek Testament, that learned man was well skilled in the Greek tongue, which he had learnt in the Caroline college at Osnaburgh, for in that foundation all the clergy were skilled in Greek as well as in Latin.” Louis the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald were both Greek scholars, and the latter monarch had a Greek and Latin glossary compiled for the use of the Church of Laon, which he would hardly have had done had there been none capable of using it. Florus, the learned deacon of the Church of Lyons, was well versed not only in Greek but Hebrew, as we learn from the following circumstance. A certain abbot, Hyldrade, sent him a Latin Psalter, begging him to correct it carefully, that it might serve as a copy for his monks to transcribe from. Among the many curious and valuable monuments of antiquity discovered by the late Cardinal Mai, is the reply of Florus to this request. From it we find that he had compared the Latin version of St. Jerome with the Septuagint, and suspecting that the text of St. Jerome had itself become corrupted by careless copying, had likewise collated it with the original Hebrew. He quotes what he calls “the well-known” letter of St. Jerome to two learned Celts, pointing out the errors in the vulgar copies; but Rohrbacher remarks that this letter was well-known only in the ninth century, for in ours it no longer exists. The whole letter of Floras is exceedingly valuable as evidence of the extraordinary learning and diligence bestowed on the correction of the Sacred Text.[106]

Nevertheless, an examination of the catalogues of early monastic libraries, makes it clear that the study of Greek, if not wholly neglected, was exceptional, and certainly did not include any extensive acquaintance with ancient Greek literature. Among the books named as the favourites of St. Paschasius, we find the works of St. John Chrysostom; but in general the book collections are only rich in the Latin Fathers. Scotus Erigena evidently introduced a novelty when he translated the works of St. Denys the Areopagite, and the eagerness displayed by Louis the Debonnaire to possess a Latin version of the works of this author arose, perhaps, less from an interest in Greek letters, than from the opinion, then finding favour with Gallican scholars, which identified him with the Apostle of France.[107] The mention, however, of any Greek poets or philosophers is exceedingly rare. Homer, as has been said, had been brought into England by Archbishop Theodore, and the St. Gall library contained the works of Sophocles, but these are certainly exceptions, and we may conclude that a knowledge of the Greek language was a rare accomplishment, from the extreme complacency with which the possession of a very superficial smattering of it was often regarded. Hincmar, of Rheims, warns his nephew to avoid the foolish affectation of some, who pick a handful of Greek words out of their glossaries to adorn their pages and give them a learned look; a folly too common also with our native scholars.

The sciences of arithmetic and geometry were probably taught in rather a meagre form, until the genius of Gerbert, in the tenth century, gave fresh impulse to these branches of learning. We have seen what difficulties attended their study in the days of St. Aldhelm; nevertheless the path of the young student was somewhat smoothed by pleasant devices, and the Anglo-Saxon masters quickened the brains of their pupils by problems and questions, some of which, such is the power of tradition, have kept their places in our own school-books. Arithmetical problems, such as the following, were propounded to the schoolboys of Alcuin and Rabanus: “The swallow once invited the snail to dinner; he lived just a league from the spot, and the snail travelled at the rate of one inch a day: how long was he before he dined?” Or, again: “An old man met a child; ‘Good day, my son,’ he said, ‘may you live as long as you have lived and as much more, and thrice as much as all that put together, and then if God give you one year more, you will be just a century old;’ how old was the boy?”

Besides the sciences above enumerated, some schools, and particularly those of England, taught a certain amount of natural philosophy, very imperfect, if compared with our own larger and more accurate knowledge of these subjects, yet valuable in its way, as directing the mind to a branch of learning where improvement could only be hoped for by patient and persevering observation. Geography, again, though in its infancy, was a favourite study with the Anglo-Saxons, and from none did it receive greater extension than from king Alfred, who added whole chapters to the science as it existed before his time. This, in common with a great many other branches of knowledge, was sometimes taught to tardy scholars by the help of verses. Several versified summaries of grammatical rules and geographical definitions are in existence in very early English, but for the credit of the geographers, I will not say in what quarter of the globe they place the land of Egypt.