TOWA

THE SCHOOL-MASTERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

upon the feudal period, it may appear that the strife of princes and barons is scarcely of more importance to us than the contests of kites and crows, and that the only object worthy of attention is the slow progress of the indestructible mind.

NOWARD the close of the eighth century we have the assurance in the mournful complaint of the chronicler of the age that there were no schools in all the transalpine realm of Charlemagne. But the empire of the Frankish ruler embraced nearly the whole of Western Europe. It comprised all Germany to the borders of Sclavonia, all France from Marseilles to the British seas. Over this vast region, once the seat of a gifted and progressive population, had settled the gloom of savage ignorance. Men had ceased to learn, and had sunk once more into brutal apathy. Nor was Italy apparently more fortunate. The priests of the Romish Church emulated the indolence of the laity. It was difficult to find a priest who could read his breviary, or a monk who could repeat his psal-highest traits of his gifted race, the first emter. The church had ceased to educate the people; the people to educate themselves.

From this dark and hopeless period of mental decay sprang up most of those political or religious superstitions that still embarrass the progressive intellect of nations. The Oriental theory of caste was impressed upon the institutions of Europe. The working-classes sank into slavery; the military caste ruled with despotic power.

For the first school and the most eminent of school-masters that break through the medieval gloom we turn to Aix-la-Chapelle. A more willing pupil, a more careful instructor, can nowhere be found than the savage Charles the Great and his preceptor, Alcuin. Charlemagne had inherited the martial genius of his ancestor, Charles Martel, the diplomatic skill of his father, Pepin. Huge in stature, vigorous in mental and physical health, Teutonic in all the

peror of Germany bound together all Middle Europe in a magnificent unity that has formed the wonder and the envy of the long series of his successors. Charles V. vainly aspired to a similar destiny; Napoleon for a moment believed himself the modern Charlemagne; a dream of empire like that realized by the docile pupil of Alcuin still awakes the ambition of European kings. But it is chiefly as the scholThe Roman conception of per-ar and the founder of schools that the great sonal independence and of self-respect, which German must live with posterity. He found had been illustrated in a long succession of vig- men ignorant and unwilling to learn; no schools orous political contests, was lost in Gothic bar- nor colleges existed in all Germany or Gaul; barism; the champions of popular freedom the European intellect had sunk into unwonted who had sustained the cause of the people in apathy. He filled his empire with seats of the Forum or the Campus Martius found no learning, and left behind him a throng of acsuccessors in the night of medieval ignorance; complished scholars-a generation of poets, their place was supplied by indolent barons historians, and progressive priests.2 and savage kings. The hapless serfs clustered Yet it is possible that it was to his famous around the castles of their robber lords, and school-master that Charlemagne owed his ruling learned to kiss the hand that alternately plun- | ideas, his love for letters, his plan of reviving dered and protected them. in all its ancient grandeur the empire of Au

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To rescue mankind from ignorance and deg-gustus or the Antonines. Alcuin was an Enradation, to plant the seeds of progress in the glishman, and had been the provost, or head ungenial soil of feudalism, was the almost hope- teacher, of a flourishing school at York. less aim of a band of gifted men-the school- gland still retained some traces of Roman civmasters of the Middle Ages. Yet history has ilization, and Ireland, and perhaps Scotland, seldom paused in its passion for martial glory possessed scholars who had not yet sunk beto notice their labors, their self-denial, or their neath the advancing barbarism of the age. At final success. Their names are almost lost York Alcuin had learned and imparted a degree amidst a throng of barbarous kings and chival- of classical knowledge that made him famous ric conquerors. The true benefactors of their among his contemporaries. Covered with rerace are almost forgotten, and few have cared nown, he had wandered away to Italy. Here to remember that Alcuin was greater than he met Charlemagne, and was tempted by the Charlemagne, or Erigena than Cœur de Lion; liberal offers of the eager king to accompany that he who founded a school or spread the him to Germany. He became the centre of a germs of knowledge was more useful to man- busy throng of teachers, scholars, and half-savkind than the most renowned crusader or the age pupils, the rector of a royal university, that most imperious of popes or kings. It is not was perhaps imitated at a later period in Paris, impossible that all this may yet be changed; Oxford, and Prague. that, as the light of history falls more vividly

1 Ante ipsum dominum Carolum regem in Gallia nullum fuit studium liberalium artium. Perhaps an exaggerated statement.

The most industrious of all Alcuin's pupils

Haureau, Charlemagne et sa Cour, has produced a brief and pleasant narrative. See Eginhard, Vita Caroli Imp. 2 Eginhard, c. xxxiii.

Charlemagne, when the examination was over, turned with a gracious smile to the industrious children of the poor. "You have done well," he cried, "and deserved my favor. For you I design the richest abbeys and the fairest offices of my kingdom." He next turned to the children of the nobles. His majestic form was erect with indignation, his terrible eyes flashed out rage and contempt. "But for you," he exclaimed, "unworthy offspring of my court, you have wasted your time in follies and effeminacy, and disobeyed my express commands. By Heaven, unless you change your conduct, you shall receive no promotion from me!"" It is plain that in the colleges founded by Charlemagne no one obtained a degree unless he deserved it.

was Charlemagne.' Master of Europe, engaged | tion, instead of learning to write a fair round in endless wars and ceaseless labors, the ruler hand or studying the seven branches of knowlupon whose prudence and valor hung the des- edge. tiny of mankind-the half-savage emperor never paused in his effort to civilize himself. He was all his life the most diligent of students. He heard lectures on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy. He labored, perhaps in vain, to acquire the art of writing, and every night his tablets and his stylus were placed at his bedside and employed his hours of wakefulness; he learned to read and dictate Latin readily, and knew something of Greek; he commented on the Scriptures, and wrote vigorous essays against image-worship; and his eager intellect strove to grasp the whole field of knowledge that lay open to the scholars of his age. In every town and every monastery he planted a free school, and, taught perhaps by the generous example of his friend Haroun-al-Raschid, strove to cultivate letters and educate his people.

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tus.

On the borders of Germany and Gaul arose the fair city of Aix-la-Chapelle, the chief capiIn the earlier period of his reign, it is relat-tal and the favorite residence of the new Augused, two school-masters from Ireland appeared on the borders of Gaul-men of incomparable skill in letters. They landed in company with some British merchants, but the only wares they had to dispose of were the products of the school. Daily they cried out to the ignorant people, "Whoever desires wisdom, let him come to us and buy." But no purchaser came forward. The naives looked upon them with stupid wo der, and at last, as they persisted in their vain attempt, began to think them mad. No one cared to purchase wisdom; no one knew what learning was. The strange conduct of the Irish teachers was told to Charlemagne, and he sent for them to visit his court.

"Have you," he cried, "learning to sell ?" "We have it," they replied, "for those who receive it worthily."

They were at once entertained with high favor in the family of the king, and were endowed with a liberal support. One of them, Clement, opened a school, at which great numbers of the young nobility, as well as of the poorer classes, attended. It was no doubt a free school under the especial care of the king. Charlemagne went off to his Saxon wars, and after a long interval returned. Almost his first care was to examine into the progress of his favorite scholars. Noble and plebeian, rich or poor, they were all assembled in the presence of the king, who proceeded to inquire into their attainments. He found that the poorer pupils had been singularly industrious, and Clement was able to speak with pleasure of their diligence and zeal. But the children of the nobility had neglected all their advantages. They had passed their time in arranging their hair and putting on fine clothes, in sport and dissipa

1 Annal. Carol. Mag., a poetical narrative. Horum doctores magnifice coluit, p. 73.

2 Alcuin, Migne, Pat., 100, p. 51. Charles calls Alcuin Clarissimi in Christo præceptoris. Epist. 124, p. 50. The argument against images unites ridicule with reason. See Migne, vol. 98.

Here he had. built a church of rare splendor, adorned with pillars of marble ravished from the cities of Italy, and gleaming with profuse ornaments of gems and gold. No images were adored in the cathedral of the iconoclastic emperor; but its heavy arches resounded with the plain Gregorian chants, intoned by singers who had been cultivated with assiduous care, and who wer; sometimes fed in their musical services by Charlemagne himself. A few fragments are still shown of the rude architecture of the ninth century-the substructions of the Church of St. Mary. Here, too, was his favorite palace, where, surrounded by his sons and daughters, his authors and school-masters, he abandoned himself to his studies, and endeavored to inculcate democratic simplicity in the rude minds of his German subjects. Yet the palace at Aix was a magnificent attempt to revive the luxury and the grandeur of imperial Rome. Its mosaic floors and marble columns; its halls and corridors, adorned by the most skillful artists; its furniture of gold and silver; its costly hangings; its decorations, gathered from the farthest limits of the world; its water-clock, the gift of the magnificent Haroun-al-Raschid; and an immense elephant, the offering of the same bountiful hand, are dwelt upon by the annalists as among the wonders of the age. In his domestic affairs Charlemagne does not seem to have been fortunate. From his first wife he was separated in anger. Four others succeeded. The German Fastrade followed the Suevic Hildegarde. Both died, and he married Luitgarde. He was once more a widower; and nine wives in all are said to have won the affections of the Henry VIII. of the Middle Ages. Yet his palace was filled with a fair array of sons and daughters; and the latter, at least, seem to have inherited the literary taste of

their studious father.

1 Michelet, Hist. Fran., i. The legend is rather illustrative than trustworthy. Haureau, 194.

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Alcuin presided over the studies of the palace, | Alcuin, an Irishman or a Scot, the famous and within its gilded halls was formed a litera- teacher came to the court of Charles the Bald, ry club-one of the most fruitful that has ever and taught princes and nobles the elements of existed. Each member bore an assumed name, learning. He stood almost alone in that dark indicative of his peculiar tastes. Alcuin, who and dreadful period, the assertor of the dignity wrote bad verses and was an inferior poet, was of the intellect. Around him existed a corrupknown as Flaccus or Horatius; the emperor tion of manners of which the modern can took the name of David; the poetical young scarcely conceive, a tendency to mental decay Engilbert was Homer; and each of the school- which even his wonderful powers were incapable masters, princes, or princesses who made up the of arresting. Yet tradition rather than hisprogressive circle was known to the associates tory attests the vigor of his intellectual strugonly by a classical or biblical title. They cor- gle. He evidently delayed for a moment the responded and composed, disputed, taught, and final fall of the intellect. He was theologian read each other's verses; they united in gather- and philosopher, poet, heretic, and wit. He ing up the early songs of the Germans, and had traveled in distant lands, and by a strange perhaps saved the Nibelungenlied. Love some- anachronism was said to have studied at Athens. times shot his arrows among the docile schol- With the King of France he lived in close ars, and the impassioned Engilbert won the friendship for many years, and wrote at his heart of Princess Bertha, and they were mar-suggestion his most important works. He ried amidst the general applause of the whole school. Yet for literary activity the club of Aix-la-Chapelle may well be envied by many of its modern rivals. A hundred authors sprang up in the reign of Charlemagne. Alcuin produced profusely letters, poems, hymns, and dissertations; Eginhard, a favorite scholar, wrote useful histories and a vivid life of his royal friend; Engilbert composed spirited verses; Paul the Deacon left behind him grammatical works that still exist. Even the princesses were agreeable writers; and Charles himself composed a German grammar that served to preserve the purity of the Gothic tongue. In fine, Charlemagne, who had begun his reign without a school or a school-master in all his barbarous realm, saw before he died a wide system of free education spring up in Gaul or Germany, and planted in the heart of Europe the germs of modern civilization.

gave jest for jest to his royal patron, and smiled as a philosopher at the barbarism of his master. Once they sat together at table. "What is the distance," said the merry king, over his flowing cups, “between a sot and a Scot?" "Only this table," replied the ready wit. Here Erigena composed his laborious productions-a translation of Dionysius the Areopagite, a work on predestination, and a metaphysical treatise on Nature. Unhappily for the teacher, he assailed the doctrine of transubstantiation, and was a skeptic as to the infallibility of the pope. The monks pursued him with bitter reproaches; the pope strove to bind him to the stake. He fled from France to Oxford, and was professor in the college said to have been founded by Alfred. But he was soon driven from his professorship, and next opened a school at Malmesbury, where his scholars, enraged at his severe discipline, are said to have put him to death by stabbing him with their iron pens; or, as others state, he fell a victim to the hatred of the monks.

At length, in 814, the emperor died, and night once more settled upon the advancing mind. Wars, crusades, savage barons, and Few of the particulars of his life have any feudal violence overspread the fair fields of historical value, and so barbarous was the age Germany. One by one the authors and the that no one cared to give an account of its school-masters who had nearly conquered Eu- greatest scholar. He lives only in his writings : rope passed away; books were forgotten, teach- a bold and powerful genius that cast aside the ers despised. The feudal system began its war superstitions of his contemporaries; that scoffagainst the intellect, and robber castles and ed at the follies of feudalism and chivalry; that brutal chiefs took the place of the school-house sounded, amidst the coarse revelries and cruel and the busy school. Ignorance became the wars of knights and kings, the praises of intelinsignia of noble birth, and princes and barons lectual supremacy. Had the voice of the gifthad long ceased to read or write. The tenth ed school-master been heard with attention, the and eleventh centuries are noted for a wide in-world might have been reformed, and the school tellectual decay, and for the terrible woes that and the college have saved mankind centuries fell upon the working-classes. It is knowledge of woe. But he fell in the vain struggle, the alone that can elevate the people. martyr of science.

fidels he had learned their magical arts, and had made a compact with Satan.' Gerbert had begged from the fiend perpetual life. He had been promised that he should never die until he should celebrate mass in the church of Jerusalem. Confident of immortality, he now resolved never to visit the Holy City; but one day the pope happened to perform mass in the Church of the Holy Cross, forgetting that it was also called the Church of Jerusalem. The fiend seized the opportunity, and, snatching a golden candlestick from the altar, struck the schoolmaster a mortal blow. Gerbert died, and was buried in a stately tomb; but for six centuries afterward his bones were heard to rattle in his coffin, and strange and inexplicable sounds were ever haunting the last resting-place of the papal magician. They only ceased when, in the seventeenth century, the tomb was opened. For a moment its inmate was seen lying perfect as if alive, and then disappeared forever in a wild burst of satanic flames.

traced along the shores of the Mediterranean, | hours at Cordova and among the polished inand the gifted Arabs from Bagdad to Cordova had filled Persia, Africa, and Spain with brilliant centres of mental progress.1 From the ninth to the twelfth centuries the schools and colleges of the cultivated Saracens gave forth a constant succession of poets, philosophers, men of science, and men of thought. Vast throngs of students filled the universities of Bagdad or Cordova, and the speculations of Rome or Alexandria inspired the keen intellects of the followers of Mohammed. While all Christendom bowed before graven images, and forgot the teachings of its ancient faith, the smallest towns of Africa had their free schools; and the virtues that Mohammed had borrowed from Christianity were inculcated in the mosques of Cairo or Algiers. Learning had fled from the cold North to find its home in the burning South; and the children of the desert, educated to the highest pitch of civilization, looked with generous scorn from their fair cities, their smiling gardens, and their cultivated homes upon the coarse revelries of the| baronial castle and the savage manners of the feudal courts.

It was the year 1000, an epoch of singular interest, when the great scholar, the wisest and purest of his countrymen, sat in the chair of St. To the Arabs Gerbert, the next great school- Peter. In that year the majority of Christians master-the witch, the sorcerer, the terror of had believed that the world was to dissolve in his contemporaries-probably owed his mental fiery convulsions. The heavens were to roll training. He was confidently believed by many away; the judgment-day was near at hand. to have dealings with the Evil One; and when A general consternation hung over Europe as he ascended the papal chair and became head the last years of the century passed on; and of the church, cardinals and priests shrank from amidst the universal barbarism and decay evhim in horror, and asserted that Satan had suc-ery shrine was thronged with eager penitents, ceeded in placing one of his own imps in the hallowed seat of St. Peter. He was born in poverty and obscurity, but a kind patron had taken him from his native Auvergne, and educated him in Spain. He had perhaps studied at the magnificent University of Cordova, and had learned from the Arabs, then in the splendor of their renown, the deepest secrets of their science and the wonders of algebra and geometry. Gerbert, enriched with Arabic learning, came back to France and taught school for many years at Rheims. His genius soon won attention; he became the chief school-master of his age, and had formed a close intimacy with the royal family that sat on the imperial throne. He was the friend, too, of Hugh Capet, the founder of the new dynasty of France; and through various fortunes, often persecuted and ever scoffing at the ignorance or venality of Rome, the gifted teacher lived on a studious career; now shunned as a heretic or a witch, now raised by his friend Otho III. to the papal chair, Gerbert seems to have stirred the minds of his contemporaries with a strange impulse that startled and amazed.

The wildest stories were told of his early career; and it was believed that in his studious

Renan describes the literary condition of Cordova under Hakem. Averroes, chap. i. Averroes ruled in the University of Padua, chap. iii.

2 Migne, Pat., vol. 139, p. 56. Patria Aquitanus, humili gente natus, etc.

and all Germany and France, struck with a sudden dread, bowed assiduously before their images, and invoked the pity of Mary and the saints. From his papal throne the acute Gerbert, now Pope Sylvester II., must have watched with compassionate skepticism the folly of his contemporaries, and have inspired with his own hopefulness his patron the Emperor Otho. It is said that the intelligent school-master aided in dispelling the gloom that rested upon the European intellect; that he introduced into the schools of his country the sciences taught at Cordova; that he brought into use the Arabic numerals; that he taught algebra and geometry; that his vigorous mind awoke anew the taste for letters that had died with Charlemagne. His influence, indeed, can scarcely have been small. He ruled the emperors of Germany, and possibly guided the taste of the new dynasty of France. But with his death barbarism once more returned, and men learned to look upon their intellectual leader as an emissary from the infernal world.❜

A century rolled away, and about the year 1100 a fair and graceful young man, gifted with marvelous eloquence, and adorned with every

1 Ipsum Hispali artes magicas et necromantiam didicisse, 139, p. 56.

2 Milman, Lat. Christ., ii. p. 487. Cormenin, Lives of Popes, p. 321.

3 Homagium diabolo fecit. His health seems to have been feeble. See Epist. 210.

accomplishment of intellect or manners, opened a school near Paris. He was scarcely twentytwo, yet his precocious genius had already made him renowned as the most subtile and the most ingenious of dialecticians. An unprecedented union of mental and physical attractions—a tall and stately form, an eye brilliant with intellectual vigor, an undying faith in the supremacy of mental culture, a fatal passion that clouded his grand career with an unchanging gloom, a mournful life, a holy death-have made the story of Abelard the most touching in the annals of letters. Generations have wept with him in his self-abasement, and rejoiced in his final humility; have pardoned his error or condoned his selfish love; and still, in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, the sweetest flowers are yearly scat-nal's hat or even the papal crown; the chiltered by unknown hands upon the tomb that enshrines the ashes of Abelard and Heloise, and tender lovers renew their vows before the marble forms that lie sculptured side by side on the stately mausoleum.