Chapter CVIII: Section 2 (13)

"Few of the Italian universities show themselves in their full
vigour till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the
increase of wealth rendered a more systematic care for
education possible. At first there were generally three sorts
of professorships—one for civil law, another for canonical
law, the third for medicine; in course of time professorships
of rhetoric, of philosophy, and of astronomy were added, the
last commonly, though not always, identical with astrology.
The salaries varied greatly in different cases. Sometimes a
capital sum was paid down. With the spread of culture
competition became so active that the different universities
tried to entice away distinguished teachers from one another,
under which circumstances Bologna is said to have sometimes
devoted the half of its public income (20,000 ducats) to the
university. The appointments were as a rule made only for a
certain time, sometimes for only half a year, so that the
teachers were forced to lead a wandering life, like actors.
Appointments for life were, however, not unknown. … Of the
chairs which have been mentioned, that of rhetoric was
especially sought by the humanist; yet it depended only on his
familiarity with the matter of ancient learning whether or no
he could aspire to those of law, medicine, philosophy, or
astronomy. The inward conditions of the science of the day
were as variable as the outward conditions of the teacher.
Certain jurists and physicians received by far the largest
salaries of all, the former chiefly as consulting lawyers for
the suits and claims of the state which employed them. …
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Personal intercourse between the teachers and the taught,
public disputations, the constant use of Latin and often of
Greek, the frequent changes of lecturers and the scarcity of
books, gave the studies of that time a colour which we cannot
represent to ourselves without effort. There were Latin
schools in every town of the least importance, not by any
means merely as preparatory to higher education, but because,
next to reading, writing, and arithmetic, the knowledge of
Latin was a necessity; and after Latin came logic. It is to be
noted particularly that these schools did not depend on the
Church, but on the municipality; some of them, too, were
merely private enterprises. This school system, directed by a
few distinguished humanists, not only attained a remarkable
perfection of organisation, but became an instrument of higher
education in the modern sense of the phrase."

_J. Burckhardt,
The Civilisation of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy,
volume 1, part 3, chapter 5._

EDUCATION: Germany.
Prague and its Offspring.

"The earliest university in Germany was that of Prague. It was
in 1348, under the Emperor Charles IV., when the taste for
letters had revived so signally in Europe, when England may be
said to have possessed her two old universities already for
three centuries, Paris her Sorbonne already for four, that
this university was erected as the first of German
Universities. The idea originated in the mind of the Emperor,
who was educated in Paris, at the university of that town, and
was eagerly taken up by the townspeople of that ancient and
wealthy city, for they foresaw that affluence would shower
upon them if they could induce a numerous crowd of students to
flock together within their walls. But the Pope and the
Emperor took an active part in favouring and authorizing the
institution; they willingly granted to it wide privileges, and
made it entirely independent of Church and State. The teaching
of the professors, and the studies of the students, were
submitted to no control whatever. After the model of the
University of Paris, they divided themselves into different
faculties, and made four such divisions—one for divinity,
another for medical science, a third for law, and a fourth for
philosophy. The last order comprised those who taught and
learned the fine arts and the sciences, which two departments
were separate at Sorbonne. All the German universities have
preserved this outward constitution, and in this, as in many
other circumstances, the precedent of Prague has had a
prevailing influence on her younger sister institutions. The
same thing may be said particularly of the disciplinary tone
of the university. In other countries, universities sprang
from rigid clerical and monastic institutions, or bore a more
or less ecclesiastical character which imposed upon them
certain more retired habits, and a severer kind of discipline.
Prague took from the beginning a course widely different. The
students, who were partly Germans, partly of Slavonian blood,
enjoyed a boundless liberty. They lodged in the houses of the
townspeople, and by their riches, their mental superiority,
and their number (they are recorded to have been as many as
twenty thousand in the year 1409), became the undisputed
masters of the city. The professors and the inhabitants of
Prague, far from checking them, rather protected the
prerogatives of the students, for they found out that all
their prosperity depended on them. … Not two generations had
passed since the erection of an institution thus constituted,
before Huss and Jerome of Prague began to teach the necessity
of an entire reformation of the Church. The phenomenon is
characteristic of the bold spirit of inquiry that must have
grown up at the new University. However, the political
consequences that attended the promulgation of such doctrines
led almost to the dissolution of the University itself. For,
the German part of the students broke up, in consequence of
repeated and serious quarrels that had taken place with the
Bohemian and Slavonic party, and went to Leipzig, where
straightway a new and purely German University was erected.
While Prague became the seat of a protracted and sanguinary
war, a great number of Universities rose into existence around
it, and attracted the crowds that had formerly flocked to the
Bohemian capital. It appeared as if Germany, though it had
received the impulse from abroad, would leave all other
countries behind itself in the erection and promotion of these
learned institutions, for all the districts of the land vied
with each other in creating universities. Thus arose those of
Rostock, Ingolstadt, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cologne, Erfurt,
Tübingen, Greifswalde, Trèves, Mayence and Bâles-schools which
have partly disappeared again during the political storms of
subsequent ages. The beginning of the sixteenth century added
to them one at Frankfort on the Oder, and another, the most
illustrious of all, Wittenberg. Everyone who is acquainted
with the history and origin of the Reformation, knows what an
important part the latter of these universities took in the
weighty transactions of those times. … Wittenberg remained
by no means the only champion of Protestantism. At Marburg,
Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstadt, universities of a professedly
Protestant character were erected. These schools became the
cradle and nurseries of the Reformation."

_The Universities of Germany
(Dublin University Magazine,
volume 46, pages 83-85)._

"The German universities of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries were founded in the following order: Prague, 1348;
Vienna, 1388; Erfurt, 1392; Leipsic, 1409; Rostock, 1419;
Greifswald, 1456; Freiburg, 1457; Ingolstadt, 1472; Tübingen,
1477; and Mayence, 1477. Thus, it will be seen that they were
established in quick succession—an unmistakable proof of the
growing scientific interest of the age."

_F. V. N. Painter,
History of Education,
chapter 3, section 5 (k)._

EDUCATION: Netherlands.

"Tradition reports that a school had … been founded at
Utrecht, by some zealous missionary, in the time of Charles
Martel, at which his son Pepin received his education. However
this may have been, the renown of the Utrecht School of St.
Martin is of very ancient date. … During the invasion by the
Normans, this school at Utrecht was suppressed, but was
reëstablished in 917, and regained its former renown. The
Emperor, Henry the Fowler, placed here his three sons, Otto,
Henry and Bruno, to be educated, of whom the last became
afterward archbishop of Cologne and archduke of Lottringen,
and was noted for his extraordinary learning and friendship
for the poet Prudentius. At the beginning of the 12th century,
Utrecht possessed no less than five flourishing schools,
several of which had each a 'rector' in addition to the
priests who had the general control. At about the same time,
several convents became distinguished as educational
institutions, especially those of Egmond, Nymwegen,
Middleburg, in Zealand, and Aduwert, near Gröningen.
{699}
In Holland, as in Belgium, in addition to the schools that
were attached to the cathedrals, convents, and chapters, there
were established in the course of the twelfth century, by the
more wealthy communities, public schools especially designed
for the instruction of the citizens and laity. It is also
worthy of notice that the authority to open such schools was
always derived from the counts—by whom it was conferred,
sometimes upon the cities as an especial privilege, and
sometimes upon merely private persons as a mark of particular
favor. The jurisdiction of the feudal lords was the same here
as in Belgium; but while in the latter country, with the
exception perhaps of the elementary schools in some of the
cities, the right of supervision everywhere devolved upon the
chapters, instruction in these public schools of Holland was
wholly withdrawn from the clergy, and they were made
essentially secular in their character. The privilege of thus
establishing schools was conferred upon some of the cities at
the following dates:

Dort, by Count Floris V., A. D. 1290;
the Hague, 1322;
Leyden, 1324;
and Rotterdam in 1328, by William III.;
Delft and Amsterdam, in 1334, by William IV.;
Leyden again, 1357;
Haarlem, 1389;
Alkmar, 1398;
Hoorn, 1358 and 1390;
the Hague, 1393;
Schiedam and Ondewater, 1394;
and Rotterdam, in 1402, by Albert of Bavaria.

These schools, adds Stallaert, on the authority of Buddingh,
were generally styled 'School en Schryfambacht,' 'Schoole en
Kostern,' (school and writing offices, schools and clerks'
houses,) and the 'Schoolmijsters' (school-masters) were looked
upon as professional men or craftsmen—as was the case also in
Belgium, where they formed distinct guilds and fraternities.
These public schools of Holland were divided into 'large' and
'small' schools, (groote en bijschoolen,) Latin being taught
in the first division. The institution at Zwolle, attained
special notoriety in the fourteenth century, under the
direction of the celebrated Johan Cele. According to Thomas à
Kempis and Ten Bussche, its pupils numbered about a thousand,
gathered from Holland, Belgium, and the principal provinces of
Germany."

_Public Instruction in Holland
(Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 14)._

EDUCATION: England.
Early Oxford.

"The University of Oxford did not spring into being in any
particular year, or at the bidding of any particular founder:
it was not established by any formal charter of incorporation.
Taking its rise in a small and obscure association of teachers
and learners, it developed spontaneously into a large and
important body, long before its existence was recognised by
prince or by prelate. There were certainly schools at Oxford
in the reign of Henry I., but the previous history of the
place does not throw much light on their origin, or explain
the causes of their popularity. The town seems to have grown
up under the shadow of a nunnery, which is said to have been
founded by St. Frideswyde as far back as the eighth century.
Its authentic annals, however, begin with the year 912, when
it was occupied and annexed by Edward the Elder, King of the
West Saxons. … Oxford was considered a place of great
strategical importance in the eleventh century. Its position
on the borders of Mercia and Wessex rendered it also,
particularly convenient for parleys between Englishmen and
Danes, and for great national assemblies. … Retaining for a
while its rank as one of the chief centres of political life
in the south of England, and as a suitable meeting-place for
parliaments and synods, Oxford became thenceforward more and
more distinctively known as a seat of learning and a nursery
of clerks. The schools which existed at Oxford before the
reign of King John, are so seldom and so briefly noticed in
contemporary records, that it would be difficult to show how
they developed into a great university, if it were not for the
analogy of kindred institutions in other countries. There can
be little doubt, however, that the idea of a university, the
systems of degrees and faculties, and the nomenclature of the
chief academical officers, were alike imported into England
from abroad. … In the earliest and broadest sense of the
term, a university had no necessary connexion with schools or
literature, being merely a community of individuals bound
together by some more or less acknowledged tie. Regarded
collectively in this light, the inhabitants of any particular
town might be said to constitute a university, and in point of
fact the Commonalty of the townsmen of Oxford was sometimes
described as a university in formal documents of the middle
ages. The term was, however, specially applied to the whole
body of persons frequenting the schools of a large studium.
Ultimately it came to be employed in a technical sense as
synonymous with studium, to denote the institution itself.
This last use of the term seems to be of English origin, for
the University of Oxford is mentioned as such in writs and
ordinances of the years 1238, 1240, and 1253, whereas the
greater seat of learning on the banks of the Seine was, until
the year 1263, styled 'the University of the Masters,' or 'the
University of the Scholars,' of Paris. The system of
academical degrees dates from the second half of the twelfth
century."

_H. C. M. Lyte,
A History of the University of Oxford,
chapter 1._

"In the early Oxford … of the twelfth and most of the
thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were
unknown. The University was the only corporation of the
learned, and she struggled into existence after hard fights
with the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The
history of the University begins with the thirteenth century.
She may be said to have come into being as soon as she
possessed common funds and rents, as soon as fines were
assigned, or benefactions contributed to the maintenance of
scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of
fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the
compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year
1214 the Papal Legate, in a letter to his 'beloved sons in
Christ, the burgesses of Oxford,' bade them excuse the
'scholars studying in Oxford' half the rent of their halls, or
hospitia, for the space of ten years. The burghers were also
to do penance, and to feast the poorer students once a year;
but the important point is, that they had to pay that large
yearly fine 'propter suspendium clericorum'—all for the
hanging of the clerks. Twenty-six years after this decision of
the Legate, Robert Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln,
organized the payment and distribution of the fine, and
founded the first of the chests, the chest of St. Frideswyde.
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These chests were a kind of Mont de Piété, and to found them
was at first the favourite form of benefaction. Money was left
in this or that chest, from which students and masters would
borrow, on the security of pledges, which were generally
books, cups, daggers, and so forth. Now, in this affair of
1214 we have a strange passage of history, which happily
illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the
whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which in 1209, had
hanged two clerks, 'in contempt of clerical liberty.' The
matter was taken up by the Legate—in those bad years of King
John, the Pope's viceroy in England—and out of the
humiliation of the town the University gained money,
privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the
things that the University wanted. About these matters there
was a constant strife, in which the Kings as a rule, took part
with the University. … Thus gradually the University got the
command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the
city, and became masters where they had once been despised,
starveling scholars. … The result, in the long run, was that
the University received from Edward III. 'a most large
charter, containing many liberties, some that they had before,
and others that he had taken away from the town.' Thus Edward
granted to the University 'the custody of the assize of bread,
wine, and ale,' the supervising of measures and weights, the
sole power of clearing the streets of the town and suburbs.
Moreover, the Mayor and the chief Burghers were condemned
yearly to a sort of public penance and humiliation on St.
Scholastica's Day. Thus, by the middle of the fourteenth
century, the strife of Town and Gown had ended in the complete
victory of the latter."

_A. Lang,
Oxford,
chapter 2._

"To mark off the Middle Age from the Modern Period of the
University is certainly very difficult. Indeed the earlier
times do not form a homogeneous whole, but appear perpetually
shifting and preparing for a new state. The main transition
however was undoubtedly about the middle of the fourteenth
century; and the Reformation, a remarkable crisis, did but
confirm what had been in progress for more than a century and
a half: so that the Middle Age of the University contained the
thirteenth century, and barely the former half of the
fourteenth. … There is no question, that during this Middle
Age the English Universities were distinguished far more than
ever afterwards by energy and variety of intellect. Later
times cannot produce a concentration of men eminent in all the
learning and science of the age, such as Oxford and Cambridge
then poured forth, mightily influencing the intellectual
development of all Western Christendom. Their names indeed may
warn us against an undiscriminating disparagement of the
Monasteries, as 'hotbeds of ignorance and stupidity'; when so
many of those worthies were monks of the Benedictine,
Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, or reformed Augustinian
order. But in consequence of this surpassing celebrity, Oxford
became the focus of a prodigious congregation of students, to
which nothing afterwards bore comparison. The same was
probably true of Cambridge in relative proportion. … A
tolerably well authenticated account, attacked of late by
undue scepticism, fixes [the number of] those of Oxford at
thirty thousand, in the middle of the thirteenth century. The
want indeed of contemporary evidence must make us cautious of
yielding absolute belief to this: in fact we have no document
on this matter even as old as the Reformation. … Not only
did the Church and the new orders of Monks draw great numbers
thither, but the Universities themselves were vast High
Schools, comprising boys and even children. It is not
extravagant, if Cambridge was not yet in great repute, to
imagine fifteen thousand students of all ages at Oxford, and
as many more attendants. Nor was it at all difficult to
accommodate them in the town, when Oxford contained three
hundred Halls and Inns: and as several students dwelt in one
room, and were not careful for luxury, each building on an
average might easily hold one hundred persons. The style of
Architecture was of the simplest and cheapest kind, and might
have been easily run up on a sudden demand: and a rich flat
country, with abundant water carriage, needed not to want
provisions. That the numbers were vast, is implied by the
highly respectable evidence which we have, that as many as
three thousand migrated from Oxford on the riots of 1209;
although the Chronicler expressly states that not all joined
in the secession. In the reign of Henry III. the reduced
numbers are reckoned at fifteen thousand. After the middle of
the fourteenth century, they were still as many as from three
to four thousand; and after the Reformation they mount again
to five thousand. On the whole therefore the computation of
thirty thousand, as the maximum, may seem, if not positively
true, yet the nearest approximation which we can expect. Of
Cambridge we know no more than that the numbers were much
lower than at Oxford. … While in the general, there was a
substantial identity between the scholastic learning of Oxford
and of Paris, yet Oxford was more eager in following positive
science:—and this, although such studies were disparaged by
the Church, and therefore by the public. Indeed originally the
Church had been on the opposite side; but the speculative
tendency of the times had carried her over, so that
speculation and theology went hand in hand. In the middle of
the thirteenth century we may name Robert Grosseteste and John
Basingstock, as cultivating physical science, and (more
remarkable still) the Franciscan Roger Bacon: a man whom the
vulgar held to be equal to Merlin and Michael Scott as a
magician, and whom posterity ranks by the noblest spirits of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in all branches of
positive science,—except theology. A biography of Roger Bacon
should surely be written! Unfortunately, we know nothing as to
the influence of these men on their times, nor can we even
learn whether the University itself was at all interested in
their studies. … We have … a strange testimony to the
interest which in the beginning of the fourteenth century the
mass of the students took in the speculation of their elders;
for the street rows were carried on under the banners of
Nominalists and Realists. … The coarse and ferocious manners
prevalent in the Universities of the Middle Ages are every
where in singular contrast to their intellectual pretensions:
but the Universities of the Continent were peaceful, decorous,
dignified,—compared with those of England. The storms which
were elsewhere occasional, were at Oxford the permanent
atmosphere. For nearly two centuries our 'Foster Mother' of
Oxford lived in a din of uninterrupted furious warfare; nation
against nation, school against school, faculty against
faculty. Halls, and finally Colleges, came forward as
combatants; and the University, as a whole, against the Town;
or against the Bishop of Lincoln; or against the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Nor was Cambridge much less pugnacious."

_V. A. Huber,
The English Universities,
volume 1, chapter 3._

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EDUCATION:
Cambridge.

"Various facts and circumstances … lend probability to the
belief that, long before the time when we have certain
evidence of the existence of Cambridge as a university, the
work of instruction was there going on. The Camboritum of the
Roman period, the Grantebrycgr of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
the Grentebrige of Domesday, must always have been a place of
some importance. It was the meeting-place of two great Roman
roads,—Akeman Street, running east and west, and the Via
Devana, traversing the north and the south. … Confined at
first to the rising ground on the left bank of the river, it
numbered at the time of the Norman Conquest as many as four
hundred houses, of which twenty-seven were pulled down to make
way for the castle erected by William the Conqueror. … Under
the castle walls, with the view, it would seem, of making some
atonement for many a deed of violence and wrong, the Norman
sheriff, Picot by name, founded the Church of St. Giles, and
instituted in connection with it a small body of secular
canons. … The year 1112 was marked by the occurrence of an
event of considerable importance in connection with the
subsequent history of the university. The canons of St. Giles,
attended by a large concourse of the clergy and laity, crossed
the river, and took up their abode in a new and spacious
priory at Barnwell. … The priory at Barnwell, which always
ranked among the wealthiest of the Cambridge foundations,
seems from the first to have been closely associated with the
university; and the earliest university exhibitions were those
founded by William de Kilkenny, bishop of Ely from 1254 to
1257, for two students of divinity, who were to receive
annually the sum of two marks from the priory. In the year
1133 was founded the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, which, in the
reign of Henry VII., was converted into Jesus College; and in
1135 a hospital of Augustinian canons, dedicated to St. John
the Evangelist, was founded by Henry Frost, a burgess of the
town. … It was … a very important foundation, inasmuch as
it not only became by conversion in the sixteenth century the
College of St. John the Evangelist, but was also … the
foundation of which Peterhouse, the earliest Cambridge
college, may be said to have been in a certain sense the
offshoot. … In the year 1229 there broke out at Paris a feud
of more than ordinary gravity between the students and the
citizens. Large numbers of the former migrated to the English
shores; and Cambridge, from its proximity to the eastern
coast, and as the centre where Prince Louis, but a few years
before, had raised the royal standard, seems to have attracted
the great majority. … The university of Cambridge, like that
of Oxford, was modelled mainly on the university of Paris. Its
constitution was consequently oligarchic rather than
democratic, the government being entirely in the hands of the
teaching body, while the bachelors and undergraduates had no
share in the passing of new laws and regulations."

_J. B. Mullinger,
A History of the University of Cambridge,
chapters 1-2._

"The earliest existing college at Cambridge is St. Peter's,
generally called Peterhouse, historically founded A. D. 1257,
in the reign of Henry III. The Universities are known merely
by their situation; as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St.
Andrews'; but each college has a name, according to the taste
of its founder or first members. These names may be divided
into two classes, those named from the founder, as Pembroke,
Clare, Gonville and Caius (this had two founders, the restorer
being Dr. Kaye, who Latinized his name into Caius, always
pronounced Keys), King's (from King Henry VI.),—Queens' (from
the queens both of Henry VI. and Edward IV.), Sidney Sussex,
and Downing;—and those named for beatified persons and
objects of worship,—St. Peter's, St. John's, St. Catharine's,
St. Mary Magdalene, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ's,
Trinity and Trinity Hall. The apparent impiety of these names,
which in one case of an ancient name now changed, was
absolutely revolting, entirely passes off with a few days'
use. St. Catharine's soon becomes Cats, and St. Mary Magdalene
is always called Maudlin. You readily admit the superiority of
Trinity over Corpus ale; go to see a friend who lives on
Christ's piece; and hear with regret, that in the boat races
Emmanuel has been bumped by Jesus; an epithet being probably
prefixed to the last name. These names of course were given in
monkish times,—Trinity by Henry VIII., but all the colleges
except one were founded before the reign of James I. … The
seventeen colleges … are distinct corporations. Their
foundations, resources, buildings, governing authorities and
students, are entirely separate from each other. Nor has any
one college the least control in any other. The plan, however,
is much the same in all. The presiding authority is in most
cases called the Master, or speaking more generally, the Head;
while the net proceeds of all the college funds—for the vast
wealth supposed to belong to the University really is in the
hands of the separate colleges—are distributed among certain
of the graduates, called Fellows, who with the Head constitute
the corporation. These corporations give board and lodging on
various terms to such students as choose to enter the college
and comply with its rules, in order to receive its assistance
in obtaining the honors of the University; and each college
offers its own peculiar inducements to students. … The whole
body of the colleges, taken together, constitutes the
University. All those who after residing seven years at some
college, have taken the degree of Master of Arts, or a higher
one, and keep their name on the college lists by a small
payment, vote at the University elections for members of
Parliament and all other officers, and manage its affairs. …
The colleges, at certain intervals; present such students as
comply with their conditions to University authorities for
matriculation, for certain examinations, and for the reception
of degrees; and until one receives the degree of Master of
Arts, he must remain a member of some college, not necessarily
one and the same, to hold any University privileges. After
this stage, he may, under certain conditions, break up all his
college connections, and yet remain in the University."

_W. Everett,
On the Cam.,
lecture 1._

{702}

EDUCATION:
Spain and Portugal.

"Salamanca was founded in the 13th-century, and received its
statutes in the year 1422, out of which was developed the
following constitution. The rector, with eight 'consiliarii,'
all students, who could appoint their successors, administered
the university. The doctors render the oath of obedience to
the rector. The 'domscholaster' is the proper judge of the
school; but he swears obedience to the rector. A bachelor of
law must have studied six years, and after five years more he
could become licentiate. In filling a paid teachership, the
doctor was chosen next in age of those holding the diploma,
unless a great majority of the scholars objected, in which
case the rector and council decided. This liberal constitution
for the scholars is in harmony with the code of Alphonzo X.,
soon after 1250, in which the liberty of instruction was made
a general principle of law. This constitution continued in
Salamanca into the 17th century, for Retes speaks of a
disputation which the rector held at that time under his
presidency. Alcala university was established by cardinal
Ximenes, in 1510, for the promotion of the study of theology
and philosophy, for which reason it contained a faculty of
canon, but not of civil law. The center of the university was
the college of St. Ildefons, consisting of thirty-three
prebendaries, who could be teachers or scholars, since for
admission were required only poverty, the age of twenty, and
the completion of the course of the preparatory colleges.
These thirty-three members elected annually a rector and three
councilors, who controlled the entire university. Salaried
teachers were elected, not by the rector and council alone,
but by all the students. It had wide reputation. When visited
by Francis I., while a prisoner of Spain, he was welcomed by
11,000 students. The Coimbra university, in Portugal, received
statutes in 1309, from king Dionysius, with a constitution
similar to those just mentioned."

_F. C. Savigny,
The Universities of the Middle Ages
(Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 22, page 324)._

EDUCATION:
Renaissance.

"Modern education begins with the Renaissance. The educational
methods that we then begin to discern will doubtless not be
developed and perfected till a later period; the new doctrines
will pass into practice only gradually, and with the general
progress of the times. But from the sixteenth century
education is in possession of its essential principles. …
The men of the sixteenth century having renewed with classical
antiquity an intercourse that had been too long interrupted,
it was natural that they should propose to the young the study
of the Greeks and the Romans. What is called secondary
instruction really dates from the sixteenth century. The crude
works of the Middle Age are succeeded by the elegant
compositions of Athens and Rome, henceforth made accessible to
all through the art of printing; and, with the reading of the
ancient authors, there reappear through the fruitful effect of
imitation, their qualities of correctness in thought, of
literary taste, and of elegance in form. In France, as in
Italy, the national tongues, moulded, and, as it were,
consecrated by writers of genius, become the instruments of an
intellectual propaganda. Artistic taste, revived by the rich
products of a race of incomparable artists, gives an extension
to the horizon of life, and creates a new class of emotions.
Finally, the Protestant Reform develops individual thought and
free inquiry, and at the same time, by its success, it imposes
still greater efforts on the Catholic Church. This is not
saying that everything is faultless in the educational efforts
of the sixteenth century. First, as is natural for innovators,
the thought of the teachers of this period is marked by
enthusiasm rather than by precision. They are more zealous in
pointing out the end to be attained, than exact in determining
the means to be employed. Besides, some of them are content to
emancipate the mind, but forget to give it proper direction.
Finally, others make a wrong use of the ancients; they are too
much preoccupied with the form and the purity of language;
they fall into Ciceromania, and it is not their fault if a new
superstition, that of rhetoric, does not succeed the old
superstition, that of the Syllogism."

_G. Compayré,
The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 5 (sections 92-93)._

EDUCATION:
Rabelais' Gargantua.

Rabelais' description of the imaginary education of Gargantua
gives us the educational ideas of a man of genius in the 16th
century: "Gargantua," he writes, "awaked, then, about four
o'clock in the morning. Whilst they were rubbing him, there
was read unto him some chapter of the Holy Scripture aloud and
clearly, with a pronunciation fit for the matter, and hereunto
was appointed a young page born in Basché, named Anagnostes.
According to the purpose and argument of that lesson, he
oftentimes gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up
his supplications to that good God whose word did show His
majesty and marvellous judgments. Then his master repeated
what had been read, expounding unto him the most obscure and
difficult points. They then considered the face of the sky, if
it was such as they had observed it the night before, and into
what signs the sun was entering, as also the moon for that
day. This done, he was appareled, combed, curled, trimmed and
perfumed, during which time they repeated to him the lessons
of the day before. He himself said them by heart, and upon
them grounded practical cases concerning the estate of man,
which he would prosecute sometimes two or three hours, but
ordinarily they ceased as soon as he was fully clothed. Then
for three good hours there was reading. This done, they went
forth, still conferring of the substance of the reading, and
disported themselves at ball, tennis, or the 'pile trigone,'
gallantly exercising their bodies, as before they had done
their minds. All their play was but in liberty, for they left
off when they pleased, and that was commonly when they did
sweat, or were otherwise weary. Then were they very well dried
and rubbed, shifted their shirts, and walking soberly, went to
see if dinner was ready. Whilst they stayed for that, they did
clearly and eloquently recite some sentences that they had
retained of the lecture. In the mean time Master Appetite
came, and then very orderly sat they down at table. At the
beginning of the meal there was read some pleasant history of
ancient prowess, until he had taken his wine. Then, if they
thought good, they continued reading, or began to discourse
merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety,
efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table;
of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits,
herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof, he
learned in a little time all the passages that on these
subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, Dioscorides,
Julius, Pollux, Galen, Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius,
Heliodorus, Aristotle, Œlian, and others.
{703}
Whilst they talked of these things, many times, to be the more
certain, they caused the very books to be brought to the
table, and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain
the things above said, that in that time there was not a
physician that knew half so much as he did. Afterwards they
conferred of the lessons read in the morning, and ending their
repast with some conserve of quince, he washed his hands and
eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in some
fine canticle, made in praise of the divine bounty and
munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to play,
but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and new inventions,
which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By this means he fell
in love with that numerical science, and every day after
dinner and supper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he
was wont to do at cards and dice. … After this they
recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or five
parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter
of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the
spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes,
the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook
himself to his principal study for three hours together, or
more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed
in the book wherein he was, as also to write handsomely, to
draw and form the antique and Roman letters. This being done,
they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman
of Touraine, named Gymnast, who taught the art of riding.
Changing then his clothes, he mounted on any kind of horse,
which he made to bound in the air, to jump the ditch, to leap
the palisade, and to turn short in a ring both to the right
and left hand. … The time being thus bestowed, and himself
rubbed, cleansed, and refreshed with other clothes, they
returned fair and softly; and passing through certain meadows,
or other grassy places, beheld the trees and plants: comparing
them with what is written of them in the books of the
ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny,
Nicander, Macer, and Galen, and carried home to the house
great handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rhizotomos
had charge—together with hoes, picks, spuds, pruning-knives,
and other instruments requisite for herborising. Being come to
their lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated
certain passages of that which had been read, and then sat
down at table. … During that repast was continued the lesson
read at dinner as long as they thought good: the rest was
spent in good discourse, learned and profitable. After that
they had given thanks, they set themselves to sing musically,
and play upon harmonious instruments, or at those pretty
sports made with cards, dice or cups,—thus made merry till it
was time to go to bed; and sometimes they would go make visits
unto learned men, or to such as had been travellers in strange
countries. At full night they went into the most open place of
the house to see the face of the sky, and there beheld the
comets, if any were, as likewise the figures, situations,
aspects, oppositions, and conjunctions of the stars. Then with
his master did he briefly recapitulate, after the manner of
the Pythagoreans, that which he had read, seen, learned, done,
and understood in the whole course of that day. Then they
prayed unto God the Creator, falling down before Him, and
strengthening their faith towards Him, and glorifying Him for
His boundless bounty; and, giving thanks unto Him for the time
that was past, they recommended themselves to His divine
clemency for the future. Which being done, they entered upon
their repose."

_W. Besant,
Readings in Rabelais,
pages 20-29._

EDUCATION:
Germany.

"The schools of France and Italy owed little to the great
modern movement of the Renaissance. In both these countries
that movement operated, in both it produced mighty results;
but of the official establishments for instruction it did not
get hold. In Italy the mediæval routine in those
establishments at first opposed a passive resistance to it;
presently came the Catholic reaction, and sedulously shut it
out from them. In France the Renaissance did not become a
power in the State, and the routine of the schools sufficed to
exclude the new influence till it took for itself other
channels than the schools. But in Germany the Renaissance
became a power in the State; allied with the Reformation,
where the Reformation triumphed in German countries the
Renaissance triumphed with it, and entered with it, into the
public schools. Melancthon and Erasmus were not merely enemies
and subverters of the dominion of the Church of Rome, they
were eminent humanists; and with the great but single
exception of Luther, the chief German reformers were all of
them distinguished friends of the new classical learning, as
well as of Protestantism. The Romish party was in German
countries the ignorant party also, the party untouched by the
humanities and by culture. Perhaps one reason why in England
our schools have not had the life and growth of the schools of
Germany and Holland is to be found in the separation, with us,
of the power of the Reformation and the power of the
Renaissance. With us, too, the Reformation triumphed and got
possession of our schools; but our leading reformers were not
at the same time, like those of Germany, the nation's leading
spirits in intellect and culture. In Germany the best spirits
of the nation were then the reformers; in England our best
spirits,—Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser,—were men of the
Renaissance, not men of the Reformation, and our reformers
were men of the second order. The Reformation, therefore,
getting hold of the schools in England was a very different
force, a force far inferior in light, resources, and
prospects, to the Reformation getting hold of the schools in
Germany. But in Germany, nevertheless, as Protestant orthodoxy
grew petrified like Catholic orthodoxy, and as, in
consequence, Protestantism flagged and lost the powerful
impulse with which it started, the school flagged also, and in
the middle of the last century the classical teaching of
Germany, in spite of a few honourable names like Gesner's,
Ernesti's, and Heyne's, seems to have lost all the spirit and
power of the 16th century humanists, to have been sinking into
a mere church appendage, and fast becoming torpid. A
theological student, making his livelihood by teaching till he
could get appointed to a parish, was the usual school-master.
'The schools will never be better,' said their great
renovator, Friedrich August Wolf, the well-known critic of
Homer, 'so long as the school-masters are theologians by
profession.
{704}
A theological course in a university, with its smattering of
classics, is about as good a preparation for a classical
master as a course of feudal law would be.' Wolf's coming to
Halle in 1783, invited by Von Zedlitz, the minister for public
worship under Frederick the Great, a sovereign whose civil
projects and labours were not less active and remarkable than
his military, marks an era from which the classical schools of
Germany, reviving the dormant spark planted in them by the
Renaissance, awoke to a new life."

_M. Arnold,
Schools and Universities on the Continent,
chapter 14._

It is surprising to learn "how much was left untaught, in the
sixteenth century, in the schools. Geography and history were
entirely omitted in every scheme of instruction, mathematics
played but a subordinate part, while not a thought was
bestowed either upon natural philosophy or natural history.
Every moment and every effort were given to the classical
languages, chiefly to the Latin. But we should be overhasty,
should we conclude, without further inquiry, that these
branches, thus neglected in the schools, were therefore every
where untaught. Perhaps they were reserved for the university
alone, and there, too, for the professors of the philosophical
faculty, as is the case even at the present day with natural
philosophy and natural history; nay, logic, which was a
regular school study in the sixteenth century, is, in our day,
widely cultivated at the university. We must, therefore, in
order to form a just judgment upon the range of subjects
taught in the sixteenth century, as well as upon the methods
of instruction, first cast a glance at the state of the
universities of that period, especially in the philosophical
faculties. A prominent source of information on this point is
to be found in the statutes of the University of Wittenberg,
revised by Melancthon, in the year 1545. The theological
faculty appears, by these statutes, to have consisted of four
professors, who read lectures on the Old and New
Testaments,—chiefly on the Psalms, Genesis, Isaiah, the
Gospel of John, and the Epistle to the Romans. They also
taught dogmatics, commenting upon the Nicene creed and
Augustine's book, 'De spiritu et litera.' The Wittenberg
lecture schedule for the year 1561, is to the same effect;
only we have here, besides exegesis and dogmatics, catechetics
likewise. According to the statutes, the philosophical faculty
was composed of ten professors. The first was to read upon
logic and rhetoric; the second, upon physics, and the second
book of Pliny's natural history; the third, upon arithmetic
and the 'Sphere' of John de Sacro Busto; the fourth, upon
Euclid, the 'Theoriæ Planetarum' of Burbach, and Ptolemy's'
Almagest'; the fifth and sixth, upon the Latin poets and
Cicero; the seventh, who was the 'Pedagogus,' explained to the
younger class, Latin Grammar, Linacer 'de emendata structura
Latini sermonis,' Terence, and some of Plautus; the eighth,
who was the 'Physicus,' explained Aristotle's 'Physics and
Dioscorides'; the ninth gave instruction in Hebrew; and the
tenth reviewed the Greek Grammar, read lectures on Greek
Classics at intervals, also on one of St. Paul's Epistles,
and, at the same time, on ethics. … Thus the philosophical
faculty appears to have been the most fully represented at
Wittenberg, as it included ten professors, while the
theological had but four, the medical but three. … We have a
… criterion by which to judge of the limited nature of the
studies of that period, as compared with the wide field which
they cover at the present day, in the then almost total lack
of academical apparatus and equipments. The only exception was
to be found in the case of libraries; but, how meager and
insufficient all collections of books must have been at that
time, when books were few in number and very costly, will
appear from the fund, for example, which was assigned to the
Wittenberg library; it yielded annually but one hundred
gulden, (about $63,) with which, 'for the profit of the
university and chiefly of the poorer students therein, the
library may be adorned and enriched with books in all the
faculties and in every art, as well in the Hebrew and Greek
tongues.' Of other apparatus, such as collections in natural
history, anatomical museums, botanical gardens, and the like,
we find no mention; and the less, inasmuch as there was no
need of them in elucidation of such lectures as the professors
ordinarily gave. When Paul Eber, the theologian, read lectures
upon anatomy, he made no use of dissection."

_K. von Raumer,
Universities in the Sixteenth Century
(Barnard's American Journal of Education,
volume 5, pages 535-540)._

EDUCATION:
Luther and the Schools.

"Luther … felt that, to strengthen the Reformation, it was
requisite to work on the young, to improve the schools, and to
propagate throughout Christendom the knowledge necessary for a
profound study of the holy Scriptures. This, accordingly, was
one of the objects of his life. He saw it in particular at the
period which we have reached, and wrote to the councillors of
all the cities of Germany, calling upon them to found
Christian schools. 'Dear sirs,' said he, 'we annually expend
so much money on arquebuses, roads, and dikes; why should we
not spend a little to give one or two schoolmasters to our
poor children? God stands at the door, and knocks; blessed are
we if we open to him. Now the word of God abounds. O my dear
Germans, buy, buy, while the market is open before your
houses. … Busy yourselves with the children,' continues
Luther, still addressing the magistrates; 'for many parents
are like ostriches; they are hardened towards their little
ones, and satisfied with having laid the egg, they care
nothing for it afterwards. The prosperity of a city does not
consist merely in heaping up great treasures, in building
strong walls, in erecting splendid mansions, in possessing
glittering arms. If madmen fall upon it, its ruin will only be
the greater. The true wealth of a city, its safety, and its
strength, is to have many learned, serious, worthy,
well-educated citizens. And whom must we blame because there
are so few at present, except you magistrates, who have
allowed our youth to grow up like trees in a forest?' Luther
particularly insisted on the necessity of studying literature
and languages: 'What use is there, it may be asked, in
learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? We can read the Bible very
well in German. Without languages,' replies he, 'we could not
have received the gospel. … Languages are the scabbard that
contains the sword of the Spirit; they are the casket that
guards the jewels; they are the vessel that holds the wine;
and as the gospel says, they are the baskets in which the
loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude. If we
neglect the languages, we shall not only eventually lose the
gospel, but be unable to speak or write in Latin or in German.
{705}
No sooner did men cease to cultivate them than Christendom
declined, even until it fell under the power of the pope. But
now that languages are again honored, they shed such light
that all the world is astonished, and everyone is forced to
acknowledge that our gospel is almost as pure as that of the
apostles themselves. In former times the holy fathers were
frequently mistaken, because they were ignorant of languages.
… If the languages had not made me positive as to the
meaning of the word, I might have been a pious monk, and
quietly preached the truth in the obscurity of the cloister;
but I should have left the pope, the sophists, and their
antichristian empire still unshaken."

_J. H. Merle d' Aubigné,
History of the Reformation of the 16th Century,
book 10, chapter 9 (volume 3)._

Luther, in his appeal to the municipal magistrates of Germany,
calls for the organization of common schools to be supported
at public cost. "Finally, he gives his thought to the means of
recruiting the teaching service. 'Since the greatest evil in
every place is the lack of teachers, we must not wait till
they come forward of themselves; we must take the trouble to
educate them and prepare them.' To this end Luther keeps the
best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in
school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries
for their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women
teachers from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well
as for boys. Only, not to burden parents and divert children
from their daily labor, he requires but little time for school
duties. … 'My opinion is [he says] that we must send the
boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a
trade at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that
these two occupations march side by side.' … Luther gives
the first place to the teaching of religion: 'Is it not
reasonable that every Christian should know the Gospel at the
age of nine or ten?' Then come the languages, not, as might be
hoped, the mother tongue, but the learned languages, Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had not yet been sufficiently rid of
the old spirit to comprehend that the language of the people
ought to be the basis of universal instruction. He left to
Comenius the glory of making the final separation of the
primary school from the Latin school. … Physical exercises
are not forgotten in Luther's pedagogical regulations. But he
attaches an especial importance to singing. 'Unless a
school-master know how to sing, I think him of no account.'
'Music,' he says again, 'is a half discipline which makes men
more indulgent and more mild.' At the same time that he
extends the programme of studies, Luther introduces a new
spirit into methods. He wishes more liberty and more joy in
the school. 'Solomon,' he says, 'is a truly royal
schoolmaster. He does not, like the monks, forbid the young to
go into the world and be happy. Even as Anselm said: "A young
man turned aside from the world is like a young tree made to
grow in a vase." The monks have imprisoned young men like
birds in their cage. It is dangerous to isolate the young.'
… Do not let ourselves imagine, however, that Luther at once
exercised a decisive influence on the current education of his
day. A few schools were founded, called writing schools; but
the Thirty Years' War, and other events, interrupted the
movement of which Luther has the honor of having been the
originator. … In the first half of the seventeenth century,
Ratich, a German, and Comenius, a Slave, were, with very
different degrees of merit, the heirs of the educational
thought of Luther. With something of the charlatan and the
demagogue, Ratich devoted his life to propagating a novel art
of teaching, which be called didactics, and to which he
attributed marvels. He pretended, by his method of languages,
to teach Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in six months. But
nevertheless, out of many strange performances and lofty
promises, there issue some thoughts of practical value. The
first merit of Ratich was to give the mother tongue, the
German language, the precedence over the ancient languages."

_G. Compayré,
The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 6 (sections 130-134)._

EDUCATION:
Netherlands.