The supplant schools. Within the walls of these institutions learning now found INTROD. its chief, and for a long period almost its only, refuge; while the municipal schools rapidly disappeared before the Frank- monastic ish advance. They exhibited a culture with which the con- episcopal queror had no sympathy, and the cities from which they had schools formerly derived their support were either laid in ruins, the crushed beneath overwhelming imposts, or impoverished by municipal the cessation of commerce. Trade revived and order was in some measure restored, but the Christian proscription continued to oppose an effectual barrier to the reestablishment of pagan education; and the rule of Cassian may be said, in a certain sense, to have seconded the destroying arm of the Frank. Yet, notwithstanding, whatever survived of education and letters undoubtedly owed its preservation to the monasteries and the episcopal schools. If, on the one hand, the Christian teacher suffered once large and fertile tracts in the domain of letters to lie neglected, on the other, he alone guarded and cultivated the narrow portion that still blossomed and bore fruit. education The monastic school now began to appear as an almost Character invariable adjunct to the monastery. Under the severe of the limitations indicated in the rule of Cassian, the education here imimparted was of the most elementary and narrowest kind, parted. designed as it was solely for those who were looking forward to the monastic life. The boys were taught to read that they might study the Bible and understand the services; to write, in order that they might multiply copies of the sacred books and of the psalter; to understand music, so that they might give with due effect the Ambrosian chant. Even arithmetic found a place in the course of instruction mainly on the plea that it enabled the learner to understand the Computus-that is, to calculate the return of Easter and of the different festivals. In those cities which represented the centres of the different dioceses, a similar system of instruction prevailed in the cathedral schools; but here again it was strictly subordinated to the direct requirements of the priestly office, and aimed at nothing more than to qualify the pupils for the performance of the services of the Church. INTROD. In this manner the great revolution was gradually effected. To the municipal school there succeeded the cathedral school; the grammaticus of the former was supplanted by the scholasticus of the latter; the Christian preacher occupied the place of the professor of rhetoric; the bishop of the Church was at once the head of his diocese, the chief magistrate of the city, the guardian of order, the protector of the defenceless and oppressed. Whatever still survived of moral force, of social influence, of capacity for organisation, when the Frank subjugated Gaul, was to be found sheltering in the monastic cloister, by the episcopal chair, or by the altar of the Church. The shrewdness of Clovis discerned the opportunity; the religious zeal of the Latin clergy hailed the prospect of a decisive triumph over their pagan or Arian antagonists. Hence the memorable compact, pregnant with momentous consequences, not only to Frankland but to all Europe, first ratified when the conqueror bent before the cross uplifted by St. Remy at Rheims -the compact between Teutonic might and the aims and theories of Christian Rome. Compact between the Teutonic conqueror and the Latin clergy. The traditions of the schools of Cassian unfavour able to the literary spirit. The sole surviving agencies of education were thus the school of the monastery and the school of the cathedral,2 and of these the former undoubtedly, at this period, included the more extended range of instruction. The monastery was still a lay institution and unsubject to the control of the bishop, and the transcription of manuscripts was a recognised occupation among its members. Yet even here the dominant conception, as interpreted by the followers of Cassian, was incompatible with a genuine devotion to letters. In the unreserved subjection of learning to exclusively religious ends and its absorption in an ulterior purpose, was proclaimed the divorce of the literary from the religious spirit. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, the dis 1 Avant l'arrivée des Barbares la puissance du clergé restait sule debout au milieu des ruines de l'empire.' Guizot, Essais (13me edit.), p. 185. 2 The evidence for a third class, écoles de campagne, as Guizot styles them, recommended by the Council of Vaison in 529, is too slight to admit of their being regarded as an appreciable element in the culture of the period. Guizot, ii 117; Ampère, ii 260-1. interested devotion of the intellectual powers to philosophy INTROD. and speculation, was no longer recognised as commendable or even permissible. Il n'y a plus de littérature désintéressée,' says Guizot, plus de littérature véritable.'1 6 The whole character of Cassian, together with the bold and lofty traditions of the school which reflected his influence at St. Honorat, forbid us to believe that he would have regarded with satisfaction the decline that waited upon theological learning in the institutions that professed his rule. But, unhappily for his fame, his precepts, like those of not a few other great reformers, were destined to receive at the hands of his successors a harsh, illiberal, and too literal interpretation. Theology, in the monasteries of Gaul, would thus seem to have degenerated to a condition closely resembling that of some more modern experiences. The monk and the priest learned, it is true, to read their Bibles, but no attempt appears to have been made to hand down, along with this elementary instruction, either a sound canon of criticism or an approved interpretation of the sacred writers' meaning, or to assist the student, in any way, in the intelligent study of that meaning for himself. He was con- Decline of sequently at the mercy of every pretender to especial spiritual theological discernment, however arrogant or unlearned. Cassian him- in these self, we can readily understand, had been, like other eminent schools. contemners of traditional culture, only half conscious how much his judgement was still guided and his fancy controlled by the learning of his youth. The observers of his rule, in the next century, however, were liberated from such restraints; and the scornful prediction of Julian, that the man who exchanged the study of the ancients for that of the Evangelists would sink to the intellectual condition of the slave, was almost verified by the state of many of the monasteries in the period succeeding upon the Frankish conquest. The undisciplined fancy, seizing upon that feature in Cassian's teaching which assigned to nearly every passage a metaphorical as well as a literal or historical sense, distinguished itself by fantastic vagaries and unwarrantable inventions, to parallel which we 1 ii 122. learning INTROD. must turn to the wildest extravagancies of the most fanatical and illiterate sects of modern times. If, as can hardly be denied, the attempts to construct a formal system of theology have often proved a perilous task to both teacher and learner, it must also be admitted that the assumed right of individual interpretation, on the part of the unlettered and ignorant, has been attended with yet more deplorable results. But, unfortunately, while the errors into which endeavours of the former kind have fallen are perpetuated in the memory by the ingenuity and ability with which they have been associated, the warning afforded by the irreverent exposition of the illiterate enthusiast is forgotten in the oblivion to which his memory has been consigned. Gregory of Tours b. 544; d. 595. It would be difficult and of but little interest to trace out the gradual extinction of letters during the period when Austrasia and Neustria, the Frank and the Gallo-Roman, contended for the superiority. Within less than a century after the death of Sidonius Apollinaris, Gregory of Tours compiled his Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum. The invidious comparison between the two writers, instituted by Gibbon, is familiar to most scholars. Each of them,' he says, 'was a native of Auvergne, a senator, and a bishop. The difference of their style and sentiments may, therefore, express the decay of Gaul, and clearly ascertain how much, in so short a space, the human mind had lost of its energy and refinement.'1 That Gregory's early training probably included whatever of classic education still lingered in southern Gaul will scarcely be called in question. His writings sufficiently prove that he had acquired some familiarity with Latin authors his Vergilian quotations are frequent; and, admitting what is perhaps somewhat questionable proof, he would appear, by like evidence, to have been acquainted with Sallust, Pliny, and Aulus Gellius. But the fatal influences of his time are clearly reflected in his own style of Latinity : 1 iv 380. So Ampère: entre ces deux hommes, que sépare un espace de quarante années, il y a un abîme. On pourrait dire qu'ils appartiennent à deux âges du monde.' Hist. Litt. ii 257. -in his candid avowal that he is not solicitous to avoid a INTROD. solecism-in his deferential appeal to the student of the compend of Martianus Capella, as one who might be regarded as learned in the learning of the age-and in his melancholy statement of the motives which have led him to compile his History. Inasmuch as,' says the poor bishop, 'the cultivation of letters is disappearing or rather perishing His testimony in the cities of Gaul, while good deeds and evil are com- to the mitted with equal impunity, and the ferocity of the bar- decay of learning. barians and the passion of kings rage alike unchecked, so that not a single grammarian skilled in narration can be found to describe the general course of events, whether in prose or in verse, the greater number lament over this state of affairs, saying, "Alas for our age! for the study of letters has perished from our midst, and the man is no longer to be found who can commit to writing the events of the time!" -- these and like complaints, repeated day from day, have determined me to hand down to the future the record of the past; and, although of unlettered tongue, I have nevertheless been unable to remain silent respecting either the deeds of the wicked or the life of the good. That which has more especially impelled me to do this is, that I have often heard it said that few people understand a rhetorician who uses philosophical language, but nearly all understand one speaking in the vulgar fashion."1 With this dismal strain Gregory ushers in his work; and, His reprenotwithstanding the efforts of some writers2 to prove that sentations confirmed by the internal 1 Migne, lxxi 161. There can be no better comment on this passage than the words of Loebell:-'In der That hatte Gregor Grund genug, die evidence Nachsicht des Lesers für seine Schreibart in Anspruch zu nehmen. Wie afforded sehr sie deren bedarf, bezeugt jede Seite, ja fast jede Zeile seiner Werke. by his Sie ermangelt nicht nur jeder Freiheit und jeder Feinheit, sondern ist roh, writings. holperig und unbeholfen, bald matt, breit und zerflossen, bald durch das Ungeschick, Worte und Sätze zusammenzufügen, so dunkel, dass man den Sinn mehr errathen als mit Sicherheit bestimmen kann.' Gregor von Tours, p. 307. The use of the accusative for the ablative absolute is perhaps the most glaring of Gregory's barbarisms. 2 Among these Ozanam is one of the most prominent. He contends, notwithstanding Gregory's declarations, that there is good reason for supposing that the condition of letters was far less discouraging than the bishop of Tours would fain represent it to be. He asks (p. 404), 'Comment les |