No More Learning

Much of the subject-matter of the jurisdiction claimed by English
Church courts in the Middle Age was purely ecclesiastical and spiritual.
These matters were not claimed by the State as matters which fell within
the proper competence of the royal tribunals; they were left to the
Courts Christian. Apart from such matters, however, there was a wide
field of law which the courts of the Common Law, with the greatest
propriety, might well have occupied exclusively. It is, indeed, a striking
feature of English legal history that, from the middle of the twelfth
century onwards, the ecclesiastical courts exercised jurisdiction over many
matters which can hardly be termed ecclesiastical in any true sense?
Thus, the ecclesiastical courts claimed jurisdiction in matrimonial causes
-marriage, divorce, and legitimacy; and these claims neither Henry II
nor his successors disputed. The claim to exercise jurisdiction in testa-
mentary causes was likewise successfully asserted by the Church courts;
they pronounced on the validity of wills and interpreted them, they
regulated the acts of the Church's own creature, the testamentary execu-
tor, they decided all cases of succession to moveable property ab intestato.
Despite prohibitions issued by the royal courts, ecclesiastical tribunals
long enforced contractual promises made by oath or by pledge of faith.
The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts over most of these matters
was retained by them down to 1857.
In one direction the Civil Law exerted an influence on the growth of
English Law which is worthy of special notice. In the course of the four-
teenth century the Court of Admiralty acquired a jurisdiction to punish
crimes, including piracy, committed at sea, and it also assumed a civil
jurisdiction over shipping and commercial matters. While the law ad-
ministered by the Admiralty was embodied in the great maritime codes of
the Middle Age, as a supplementary law the Civil Law was also enforced;
and the procedure of the Court was modelled on that of the Civil Law
system. In the Admiralty, therefore, civilians found the opportunity to
practise and to sit as judges. Although the criminal jurisdiction of the
Court of Admiralty was transferred to the Common Law courts over three
hundred years ago, its civil jurisdiction was retained down to our own
1 See Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents, 1922, pp. 13-98, 357–374.
? It is not to be forgotten, however, that medieval views as to the nature of some
of these matters differed widely from modern views.
3 Compare the scope of the jurisdiction of French ecclesiastical courts in the
Middle Age. See Brissaud, History of French Public Law (in Continental Legal
History Series, edited by J. H. Wigmore and others, Boston), 1915, pp. 182–191.
CH. XXI.


## p. 762 (#808) ############################################

762
“Inner” history of the two laws
times. In the course of the centuries English maritime law lost much of
its international character. But it still retains, even to-day, certain
features which it derived from the Roman system.
XI.
Difficult as it is to sketch in outline the history of the general de-
velopment, the spread, and the sources of Roman and Canon Laws in the
Middle Age, it is more difficult still to give, in a short compass, any clear
conception of the medieval history of the rules and principles embodied
in those systems. This difficulty in sketching the “inner,” as distinct
from the “external,” history of Roman and Canon Laws arises in part
from the fact that the historian is concerned with the several branches
of each one of two extensive bodies of public and private law, and that
he must study the rules and principles of each system in their relation
to those of the other system. Nor is it sufficient to study these two
Romanic systems in isolation. Not only their relations to each other,
but also their relations to other bodies of law, such as the Greek and
Germanic systems, feudal custom, town laws, and territorial legislation,
must be taken into account. There are legal influences and counter-
influences, in all the many parts of Europe, which produce modifications
of older rules and doctrines and which lead to the introduction of new
ones, the general result being an almost infinite variety of legal types.
The difficulty of sketching the history of the rules and principles of the
Roman and Canon Laws is increased by the further fact that these laws
are never at rest; at all times and in all places they are subject to change
in response to the pressure of the many forces at work in society. The
words of Mr G. W. Cable, the novelist, are not inappropriate as an ex-
pression of legal change: for law is constantly "shifting like the fragments
of colored glass in the kaleidoscope. ” The true picture of the law in its
development is not obtained by methods similar to those of the older
photography; it is obtained only by using methods that produce the im-
pression of life and movement-methods comparable to those which now
create the living and moving picture shewn upon the screen.
To the student of the inner history of Roman and Canon Laws in the
Middle Age the vast range of the subject, both in time and place, is
forbidding. An evolution—or, rather, a whole complex of diverse but
related evolutions-extending through many centuries is spread over the
entire surface of the Eastern and Western parts of the European world;
and everywhere, in all the regions of the world, this evolution is
intertwined with the other features of the history of medieval civilisation.
How enlightening this inner history of the two laws may be made is
evident to any reader of Zachariä von Lingenthal's Geschichte des
griechisch-römischen Rechts and of the writings of other modern scholars
dealing with the rules and principles of Roman and Canon Laws in their


## p. 763 (#809) ############################################

Graeco-Roman and Romano-Germanic Law
763
medieval environments. The history of patria potestas in the East after the
time of Justinian may be taken as an illustration. This distinctive
feature of the older Roman Law, this power or bundle of powers so
intensive in the period of its full vigour that it was sometimes referred to
as patria maiestas, was slowly modified in the course of Roman legal
history, especially in the time of the Empire. Shorn of many of its
older and harsher features it was given a place in Justinian's system': and
as a part of his great codification it played a role in the development of
Graeco-Roman Law. Zachariä von Lingenthal has shewn? how the
fortunes of the Justinianean patria potestas fluctuated in later Eastern
history, how the rules of Justinian in regard to it were displaced,
modified, allowed to fall into disuse, or revised, in accordance with the
varying fortunes of Justinian's codification as a whole, two of the im-
portant stages in this development being marked by the appearance of
the 'Εκλογή των νόμων and Tα βασιλικά 3.
Many illustrations of the importance of studying the inner history
of the two laws in the Middle Age may be drawn from the leges romanae
and the leges barbarorum of the West. Rules of the ancient Roman
Law, either in their original form or in modifications adapted to the
needs of Germanic societies, were incorporated in these codes. The leges
barbarorum are even more interesting than the leges romanae as embodi-
ments of Roman legal rules; they are more interesting because they shew
us more clearly the inroads of Romanic rules upon Germanic custom.
Thus, the laws of Euric, the most ancient of all the written laws of the
Visigoths, contain rules of Roman Law, some of which run counter to
Visigothic custom. Sir Paul Vinogradoff has drawn special attention to
the declaration in Euric's laws that donations extorted by force or in-
timidation (vi aut metu) are to be null and void; and he cites this as a
rule which breaks through the purely formalistic treatment of obliga-
tions natural to barbaric law.
When the student of the inner history of the two laws reaches the
period of the revival of juristic studies in the West, he is appalled at the
mass of the materials which lie to his hand. The very bulk of the Corpus
iuris civilis and the Corpus iuris canonici is forbidding. Each one of
these bodies of law is an extensive and complicated system, in which
many branches are included; each system has its constitutional law, its
law of persons, property, inheritance, contracts, and delicts, its law of
procedure. In addition, each one of these two huge bodies of law is
enveloped by a vast medieval literature: there are the glosses, the
1 See Buckland, Roman Law from Augustus to Justinian, pp. 103-105.
2 Geschichte des griechisch-römischen Rechts, 2nd edn, $$ 17-24.
3 An instructive comparison of patria potestas in Byzantine law with its influence
on Western secular law may be made by reading the works of Brissaud, Brunner,
and other historians of European legal systems.
4 Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe, p. 20.
CH. XXI.


## p. 764 (#810) ############################################

764
The two cosmopolitan legal systems
summae, and all the other writings of the medieval civilians and canonists.
The writing of a history of the rules and principles of these two great
legal systems involves the tracing of origins and development, the setting
forth of the relations of the several parts of each system one to another,
the statement and criticism of the doctrines elaborated by the civilians
and canonists', the recounting of the part played by each system in the
legal history of many countries of the world in later medieval and in
modern times? . It is clear that no adequate picture of the inner history
of these two cosmopolitan legal systems can be given in a few words; any
attempt to give such a picture at the end of the present chapter would be
a grandiose project destined to failure.
1 Gierke's Staats- und Korporationslehre des Alterthums und des Mittelalters und ihre
Aufnahme in Deutschland (Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, Vol. 1) is one of the
most brilliant of all the modern studies of the doctrines of medieval civilians and
canonists. See also Maitland's illuminating Introduction to his translation of a small
part of Gierke's volume (Political Theories of the Middle Age, pp. vii-xlv).
2 For the influence of Canon Law on the several branches of secular law, see
Brissaud's Histoire du Droit Français and Hinschius' essay on the history and sources
of Canon Law in Holtzendorff's Encyklopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, 5th edition, 1890.


## p. 765 (#811) ############################################

765
CHAPTER XXII.
MEDIEVAL SCHOOLS TO c. 1300.
The schools of medieval Europe owed their curriculum of secular
studies to the imperial rhetoric schools of Rome. For some centuries
after the barbarian invasions Christian bishops kept alight the lamp of
learning in schools where much “chant” and “doctrine” and but a meagre
fragment of the old Roman studies were afforded, but the whole cur-
riculum was eventually reclaimed for Christian schools. The imperial
schools were “public schools,” in the sense that access to them was open
to all who could pay the fees, often small through the subvention of the
State, to the rhetor or grammarian; when the expression "scholae publicae
is found, rarely enough, in early medieval documents, it always looks back
to a school of this type-either one largely maintained by the State, or
the school of a private master teaching for fees—in distinction to epis-
copal schools, where the pupil might be maintained and taught without
payment, but where the bishop or his deputy settled questions of admission.
The curriculum of the imperial schools, viewed by medieval scholars
through the writings of Martianus Capella, consisted of the seven liberal
arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music.
The classification was retained by Boethius (ob. 524), who was the first to
divide the subjects into two groups, the “trivium” and “quadrivium. ”
Cassiodorus noted the appropriateness of the sevenfold distinction and
its connexion with the perfect number of scripture, and Isidore of Seville
preserved it in his Origines. The seven liberal arts fell into line with the
general predilection for “seven” divisions in the medieval world, with
the seven grades of the clerical militia, the seven articles of the creed,
and the seven deadly sins. Under grammar was included the study of the
Latin classics, under rhetoric the schemata, tropes, and figures so useful
for the interpretation of Christian scriptures, under dialectic the logic
of Porphyry and, after the twelfth-century renaissance, of Aristotle.
Geometry included geography and such slender conceptions of a Ptolemaic
universe as survived; arithmetic was for long represented chiefly by the
“computus," or tables for establishing the date of Easter and the move-
able feasts; and the last two subjects found for some time few professors,
the study of Greek music not being necessary for the chant.
The question of the persistence of the rhetoric schools is of great
interest. In Britain they perished with the withdrawal of the legions,
though the tradition of classical learning survived in the British
monasteries of Wales, Armorica, and Ireland. In Gaul in the fourth
CH, XXII.


## p. 766 (#812) ############################################

766
Schools of rhetoric
century masters were still numerous and schools flourishing, to judge from
the information about his colleagues given by the rhetor Ausonius, and
from other evidence. The continuity of schools in particular towns de-
pended on the presence of celebrated professors; but during the century
the existence of schools of several masters is to be inferred at Autun,
Marseilles (where Greek was taught as well as Latin), Lyons, Bordeaux,
Besançon, Toulouse, Narbonne, Poitiers, Angoulême, Saintes, and Auch.
The fifth century brought to Gaul the shock of the Burgundian, Visi-
gothic, and Frankish invasions, and the raid of Attila; the public schools
were no longer supported by the State, and Sidonius Apollinaris witnesses
to the willingness of the Roman provincial nobles to settle down under
barbarian rule. The schools were no longer assured of a clientèle pre-
paring for an imperial career, and, except at Lyons, there were no
longer groups of masters, though individual rhetors are known to have
taught at Marseilles, Arles, Agen, Perigueux, Bordeaux, and possibly at
Narbonne and Clermont. In the sixth century the ruin of the schools
was completed; the liberal arts were no longer taught; Gregory of Tours
wrote that “the culture of liberal letters is declining, or rather perishing,
in the towns of Gaul. . . one would not know how to find a single man
instructed in dialectic or grammar"; Fortunatus, the great man of letters
of the period, had been brought up in Ravenna. When schools were
again founded in Gaul, they were schools of a different type.
In Italy, however, the rhetoric schools never perished--a fact vital
to the survival of European civilisation, law, and politics. The Ostrogoths
Theodoric (ob. 526) and Athalaric (ob. 534)protected them, and the genera-
tion which included Ennodius, Boethius, and Cassiodorus profited by the
brief spell of peace. Schools were numerous, treatises on grammar were
multiplied, and Cassiodorus planned with Pope Agapetus the foundation
of a Christian rhetoric school at Rome for the teaching of the liberal
arts--a scheme narrowed later to the foundation of his learned monastery
at Vivarium. The Lombard invasion proved far more dangerous to the
schools than that of the Ostrogoths; but the strength of local tradition,
the nearness of the vernacular language to Latin, the contact with By-
zantine learning by means of the Greek cities of the South, prevented
their disappearance, and produced important results. First, up to and
during the Carolingian renaissance, Italy supplied Europe, if not with
great scholars, at least with grammar masters trained on the old classical
lines. Bethar (ob. 623), an early scholasticus and Bishop of Chartres, who
was for some time in charge of the Merovingian palace school (where his
teaching was no doubt more religious than literary) came from Italy;
as did Hadrian and Theodore, Paulus Diaconus and Peter of Pisa, Lan-
franc and Anselm, and many others. Secondly, the tradition of lay
scholarship persisted in Italy. Whereas elsewhere in Europe schools were
maintained by ecclesiastics, and masters and scholars were clerks, in Italy
the rhetoric masters and their scholars were not clerks, though they


## p. 767 (#813) ############################################

Clerkship and the tonsure
767
irritated the bishops by claiming benefit of clergy. Thirdly, the lay
character of the Italian rhetoric schools, and the ecclesiastical character
of other European schools, account for the fact that when, later, groups
of schools Howered into universities, Italy took the lead in the secular
studies of law and medicine, while Paris was mistress of theology.
The connexion between the other type of early medieval school, the
episcopal or monastic school, and the minor orders of the clergy, was
so close that some reference must be made to it. Those who taught in
such schools before 1300, and, with the few exceptions of the children of
princes and nobles, those who attended them also, were either clerks or
probationers for the “clericatus”: they received the tonsure and wore
the clerical dress. The shearing of the hair (not at first the shaving of
the top of the head, leaving a corona or fringe of hair all round) was a
sacred rite administered by the abbot to the postulant whom he received,
and who did not necessarily proceed afterwards to any of the seven orders
of the Church; or by the bishop! before the administration of the first
minor order. The idea in each case was the same-adoption into the
abbot's or bishop's familia. The non-monastic tonsure was not an order,
but (according to John de Burgh in the Pupilla Oculi of 1385) “a dis-
position towards an order. ” The seven orders (ostiarius, exorcista, lector,
acolita, sub- (or hypo-) diaconus, diaconus, presbyter) were all, at first,
given separately, but by the sixth century the first and second, or the
first, second, and third, were conferred on the same day, and the candidate
was ordained exorcist, or, more usually, lector. In England in Archbishop
Ecgbert's time candidates would still seem to have been ordained to each
order separately; but Peckham allowed the first three minor orders to
be conferred together, and the Pupilla Oculi states that all four might
be so conferred. The non-monastic tonsure (it is inexact to call it the
"clerical tonsure" since monks were clerks) has always, in the Greek
Church, accompanied ordination to the first minor order. In the Latin
Church it was first allowed to be given separately, to those who had no
intention of proceeding to orders, by Gregory the Great, in the case of
the Sicilian actionarii employed in administering the papal patrimony.
It was also given separately, after the Carolingian renaissance, to children
of seven or over who were received into bishops' households to be trained
as their diocesan clergy; before this, such children appear to have been
ordained lectors at once. •In pre-Conquest England, evidence that the
(non-monastic) tonsure was given separately from the conferment of a
minor order is lacking. In any case, in Europe generally, the number of
those who received the (non-monastic) tonsure without proceeding then
or later to minor orders was not great before the rise of the universities
in the late twelfth century; afterwards, it was considerable. The recep-
tion of the tonsure, like the admission to minor orders, did not entail
celibacy, though those who received them usually practised it for a time
Cardinal-priests and a few others had also the right to administer it.
1
CH. XXII.


## p. 768 (#814) ############################################

768
Child lectors
as living a community life, either, in the earlier centuries, in some bishop's
familia, or, later, in some college of the university or provincial hostel.
Episcopal statutes frequently reiterated that none could claim benefit of
clergy who scorned to wear the tonsure and the clerical dress. Clerkship
was proved by the production of letters of clerkship granted by the bishop
at the time of conferment, or failing this, in France, by the production
of barbers to swear that the tonsure had been properly made. It was
only later than 1300 that English law allowed clerkship to be proved by the
reading of certain psalm verses; and even then the verses usually chosen
were from the sixteenth psalm: “The Lord himself is the portion of mine
inheritance. . . thou shalt maintain my lot. The lot is fallen unto me in a
fair ground” (lot, klñpos, clerk), which the candidate would have recited in
alternate verses with the bishop who was shearing him. Clerkship before
1300 implied a definite ecclesiastical status and duties, and not merely
ability to read or write; nor should clerks be confounded with those who
were, for various reasons, entitled to benefit of clergy-a larger number.
By far the most important pre-Carolingian schools were the bishops
schools-small groups of lectors living in their households. The bishops
formed the "ordo doctorum,” and in this conception the teaching of the
diocesan clergy personally in their own household seems to have been an
equally important element with the teaching of the laity by means of
sermons. Throughout the middle ages, “cathedra,” of course, meant
equally a “cathedral” or a professor's “chair. ” In the early Middle Ages,
except for periods of confusion due to the barbarian invasions, bishops
were ideally supposed to live a communal life with the clergy of their
familia. References to this familia, and the ecclesiastical training afforded
in it, are frequent in papal letters and conciliar decrees, and shew that
the adoption of children of seven into it preceded even the fall of the
public rhetoric schools. It was the disappearance of these, however, which
made such episcopal schools vital. As long as the rhetoric schools existed,
the lives of the more learned bishops shew them to have been taught in
such schools; but, after their disappearance, the biographies of even the
most learned bishops shew them to have been received (usually as children)
and trained in some bishop's household. Pope Siricius wrote in 385 to
Bishop Himerius of Tarragona that “Whoever vows himself to the service
of the Church from his infancy (i. e. seven years old) ought to be baptized
. . . and joined to the ministry of the lectors. ”. Certain Statuta Antiqua!
mentioned these child lectors, who read in church, and laid down interesting
rules for the regulation of the bishop's familia of clerks, “widows," and
pilgrims. Pope Zosimus wrote (c. 418) to Esychius of these lectors: “If he
shall have given his name from infancy to ecclesiastical ministries, let him
remain until his twentieth year with continual observance among the
lectors. ” Leo I wrote to the African bishops about the choice of suitable
candidates for the priesthood: “The venerable sanctions of the holy
1 Used by Caesarius of Arles, see Hefele, 11, i, 104.


## p. 769 (#815) ############################################

Episcopal schools
769
fathers justly adjudged those to be suitable for sacred functions whose
whole life, from childhood to more advanced (provectior) age, has been
passed by means of the stipends of ecclesiastical discipline. ” A stipend,
an allowance sufficient to support life, could hardly have been made to
children otherwise than by maintenance in the bishop's familia: and this
is actually stated by the Council of Toledo in 531.
The first conciliar decree expressly dealing with familial schools
came from sixth century Gaul, where the rhetoric schools had just perished.
The Council of Vaison in 529 enacted that “all priests (presbyteri) who
are appointed to parochiae shall, according to the custom which we have
learned is wisely observed throughout all Italy, receive to live with
them, in their house where they themselves dwell, young lectors (as many
as have taken no wife); and, spiritually nourishing them like good fathers,
they shall strive to prepare psalms, to persist in readings of Scripture
(divinae lectiones), and in teaching the law of the Lord; so that they may
provide for themselves worthy successors, and receive from the Lord the
reward of eternal life. But when they shall come to full age, if any of
them through the frailty of the flesh wishes to marry, he shall not be denied
power to marry. ” The school of a “mater ecclesia” in a “rural diocese”
is clearly here indicated; no chaplain of a rural “oratorium” could have
nourished an indefinite number of young lectors. The cost of the main-
tenance and education of these ordinands is clearly the cause of the
frequent enactments that no bishop should ordain the scholar of another.
The Council of Toledo in 531 said expressly that it was unfair to the
bishop who had taken the child “from rustic and mean surroundings. ”
that he should later, "when imbued with such an education,” transfer
himself to another church. This council also echoed the decree of Vaison,
applying it to bishops' schools: “Of those whom the will of their parents
sets free from the years of their first infancy for the clerical office, we
decree that immediately they have received the tonsure they shall be
handed over to the ministry of the lectors; they ought to be taught in
1 This decree has sometimes been taken to refer to “parish schools” in the
modern sense, though this “parochia” actually corresponded far more to a modern
archdeaconry or rural deanery than to a modern parish: the bishop had usually no
more than two or three in his “rus” or “territorium. ” “Parochia,” till post-
Carolingian times, meant the sphere of a “mater ecclesia,” metropolitan, epis-
copal, or collegiate. There were besides priests and clerks serving chapels or oratories,
but these had no "parochia”; the Rule of Chrodegang of Metz, as revised by the
Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, enacted that both the laity and priests who
served such oratories were to attend Sunday mass in the mater ecclesia. The spheres
of such rural, presbyteral-collegiate, churches as existed in Gaul between c. 450 and
c. 600 are referred to as “ dioceses,” and rarely, as at this council of Vaison, as
“ parochiae. ” While these rural dioceses, or rural parishes, were few, and served
by a comparatively large familia, councils provided that the presbyter in charge
should nourish lectors like a bishop; but when they became more numerous, smaller,
and poorer, the requirement was dropped as impossible: the maintenance of a single
clerk only was required from the ninth century.
49
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXII.


## p. 770 (#816) ############################################

770
The Dark Ages
the house of the church, in the bishop's presence, by his deputy. But,
when they shall have completed their eighteenth year, their wishes con-
cerning the taking of a wife ought to be scrutinised by the bishop in the
presence of clerks and laity. ” It was doubtless to this formal choice of
the young lectors trained in the familia of Augustine at Christ Church,
Canterbury, that Gregory the Great looked forward, when he advised
Augustine to live the apostolic (communal) life with his clergy, allowing
such lectors as wished at this stage to marry to do so, and to receive their
stipends (maintenance) outside the community, while attending its offices.
The training of the Canterbury (and Rochester) child lectors by “masters
and pedagogues” is independently attested. Gregory the Great himself
founded a “schola cantorum” at Rome of a similar nature: he built, that
is, two new houses for the school in the papal household which had
already existed. The functions of “lectors" and "cantors” run into one
another in medieval documents; the cantor or psalmista was not neces-
sarily episcopally “blessed,” the cantorate not being one of the seven
orders in the Western Church, although it was in the Eastern. In St
Ambrose's church at Milan (and in other instances), we find that it was
the lectors who did the singing (“Lectores ecclesiae pondus portantes,
docti cantu, lectioni. . . ").
In these episcopal schools the teaching depended on the learning of the
bishop, or after the seventh century his deputy, the magister scholarum,
scholasticus, or capischola. Latin and the computus were taught as
necessary for ecclesiastical equipment, but the seven liberal arts were not
usually so taught before the Carolingian renaissance. Paganism was still
too real a danger in Italy for ecclesiastics, even those who like Gregory
the Great had been taught in rhetoric schools themselves, to wish that
classical learning should be sought for its own sake by clerks; hence
Ireland, where Roman paganism had never been a danger, became for a
time the nursery of classical scholarship. The Irish schools, however, were
rather monastic than episcopal. The teaching of Hadrian and Theodore
at Canterbury included the liberal arts and the study of Roman Law;
but this far surpassed the teaching given in an average episcopal household
between 529 and 800. Grammar masters were hard to obtain, as is shewn
by the story told of Bishop Aitherius of Lisieux by Gregory of Tours.
Aitherius rescued from prison, he says, a clerk, from the city of Sens, of
extremely bad character.
But the clerk “professed himself to be a doctor
of letters, and promised the priest that, if he would commend the children
to him, he would make them perfect in letters. ” Aitherius already had
a “praeceptor,” presumably for his household lectors, but he at once
“rejoiced, and collected the children of the city, and commended them to
him to teach. ” The clerk was presented with a vineyard by way of
salary, and invited to the homes of the boys he taught. He tried to
seduce one of the mothers, and complaints were made; but the bishop
could not believe evil of a man so learned, and dismissed them. The


## p. 771 (#817) ############################################

Early Frankish schools
771
wicked clerk then tried to induce the archdeacon to conspire to murder
the bishop, and, failing, crept after the bishop, who was walking in a
wood, with an axe. The bishop, however, turned and saw him; whereat he
explained that the archdeacon had hired him to murder his benefactor, but
that he had never intended to do the deed. The good bishop believed him,
wept, and made himn promise silence. Aitherius then returned to his house
for supper, and afterwards “he rested upon his couch, having around his
bed the many little beds of his clerks. ” The clerk approached in the
night and raised an alarm, saying that he had seen a woman coming
from the bishop; but the slander was apparent to all, for the bishop was
over seventy, and was sleeping surrounded by his clerks. Aitherius' eyes
were opened, and he got rid of him.
The lives of pre-Carolingian bishops and abbots refer frequently to
these household schools, and shew that pupils were also taken for training
by other priests; though in some cases the priest was probably, though it
is not directly stated, the scholasticus of a bishop. Thus St Lomer (ob. 590),
born of noble parents near Chartres, was confided by them to live with
a priest Chirmirus and be imbued with sacred letters. Chirmirus, who
was also the master of another Chartrain priest, Lancegesil, lived within
the city of Chartres, “Domino militans": a member, that is, of the
“clerical militia” or bishop's household, and probably his deputy in
training the young lectors. St Rigomer was thus “trained from infancy
by a certain religious priest"; many others, like Gregory of Tours, were
thus “nutriti" by some bishop. St Germain de Granval (ob. 667) was
delivered as an “infantulus” to Bishop Modoald of Tours; St Leger,
Bishop of Autun, was confided to the Bishop of Poitiers and was “strenue
enutritus. ” Acca was “nutritus atque eruditus” by Archbishop Bosa, the
predecessor of John of Beverley at York; Headda (ob. 790) left a bequest
to the cathedral of Worcester, “quia alumnus sum illius familiae, et iuxta
limites ecclesiae disciplinatus et nutritus fui. "
Even when, after the Frankish settlements in Gaul and during the
fighting of the early Merovingian kings, the practice of the communal
life of bishops with their households was relaxed, the familia still lived
normally near the cathedra, and in the society of the bishop. The Council
of Tours in 567 wrote: “Let the bishop have his wife as his sister, and
so let him govern all his house, both his ecclesiastical and his own house,
in holy conversation, that no suspicion. . . arise. And although by God's
help he shall live chastely by the testimony of his clerks, because they
dwell with him both in his cella and wherever he is, and thus the
priests and deacons, or at least the crowd of young clerks, keep him safe:
yet nevertheless, for zeal to God, let them be divided and sufficiently
distant from his mansio, that those who are being nourished in the hope
of being received into the clerical servitude be not polluted by the near
contagion of the women (famulae). ” When the reform of the Frankish
Church was in progress under the influence of Boniface, the chief instru-
CH. XXII.
4942


## p. 772 (#818) ############################################

772
Early monastic schools
ment of reform was the rule drawn up by Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz,
in 754, to ensure a return to communal life on the part of the bishop and
his familia. His own edition of the rule has no reference to the cathedral
school, though young clerks were no doubt in his day received for training.
Monastic schools before the Carolingian renaissance were internal
schools, and dealt almost solely with the training of oblate children, who
might be received from seven years old, or even younger, like the young
lectors in bishops' households. The children of princes and nobles
were received for training by abbots both Benedictine and Celtic, but
naturally not in large numbers; they would seem to have been received
rather as pages into the abbots' households than strictly into the monastic
school, though they were no doubt taught letters. In addition, where
missionary houses, Benedictine or Celtic, occupied the whole ground, two
other needs seem to have been met: that of teaching the outside peasantry
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments by heart,
and that of training internally boys for the clerical militia. The latter
would only have been taught reading, writing, singing, and Latin. The
monastic schools were intended for monks, and the great monastic schools,
mainly post-Carolingian, were for adult monks; the practice of receiving
monks from other monasteries, sent to complete their studies, was common.
The greatest service to general education which the monks rendered was
that of supplying learned monks who, as bishops, were competent to teach
the young clerks of their household.
Educational activities which had been partial and sporadic before
Charlemagne became normal or compulsory through the renaissance he
inspired. The personal curiosity for learning, which made him attract
learned clerks to his court, had immediate effects on the palace school, and
on episcopal and monastic schools. He collected from Italy, at one time
and another, Peter of Pisa, Paul the Deacon, Leidrad, probably Theodulf
the Visigoth, and cantors from the Roman school, to teach the cathedral
schools of Metz and Soissons; from England and Ireland he obtained
Alcuin, the pupil of Aethelbert and the school of York, and some of his
English students, and later Clement the Scot. The court became an
“academia,” where Charles himself learned classics from Peter of Pisa and
the liberal arts from Alcuin—by way of question and answer. In this
scholarly circle, Frankish names were too dull; Charles became “king
David," Alcuin “Flaccus” (Horace), Theodulf “Pindar,” Angilbert
“ Homer," Arno of Salzburg“ Aquila,” Eppin the cup-bearer“Nehemiah,"
and Charles' daughters “Lucia” and “Columba. ”
The palace school, to be distinguished from this “academia” of cour-
tiers, had dated back to the days of St Leger (ob. 678), but not as a school
where the liberal arts were taught. It had consisted of the young clerks
under the archchaplain, and the sons of the nobility in training as pages
and squires; young children do not seem to have been received, for the
school was, like the court, ambulatory, and there are references to several


## p. 773 (#819) ############################################

Charlemagne's palace school
773
“adolescentuli” who attended it after receiving training elsewhere. It is
significant that Pepin the Short, by whom so many of the Carolingian
reforms were begun, was educated, not in the palace school, but in the
monastery of St Denis. In Charles' own time, when Peter of Pisa and
Alcuin taught the school, the majority of boys and youths who attended
it would seem to have been clerks, the future bishops and abbots of the
kingdom, and to these the old classical education of the liberal arts was
again afforded; but the point of great interest about the school is that
some young lay nobles, like Einhard the historian, also received similar
instruction, and this was a new departure. Bishop Wilfrid of York
had received young nobles to train either as clerks or squires, according
to their own wish when they were old enough to decide; but it was the
greatness and magnificence of his household, his “innumerus sodalium
exercitus," which procured his banishment. His successor, John of Beverley,
also had young laymen in his train when travelling, and apparently living
with him “in clero"; but if the tonsure was not yet given separately from
a minor order in England, they may have been probationers for such
orders. Certainly, the Carolingian palace school was the first to give
classical (as distinct from religious) teaching to lay boys in any number,
a feature in which it was copied by Alfred's palace school later. The
account of Charlemagne's visit to his scholars, after they had been left
behind for a time in Gaul under Clement the Scot, during one of his
campaigns, would seem to shew that even his scholars were mainly clerks;
for he rebuked the idle, and promised to the industrious “bishoprics and
abbeys"—not lay offices. The sort of instruction conferred on the lay
boys may have been of the nature of the “propositio” found in a manu-
script contemporary with Alcuin and headed "Ad acuendos iuvenes. ” A
certain man had a herd of 100 pigs, it begins; he wished to have them
slaughtered in equal numbers on three days; how many should he have
slaughtered each day? When time has been given for meditation, the
“magister" should say, “quasi increpando iuvenes,” “Now this is a fable
and it can be solved by nobody. "
From the accession of Charlemagne till c. 1170 episcopal schools were
the most important organ of education, and were frequent subjects of
legislation; after c. 1170 the universities, which grew out of them, replaced
them as centres of the teaching of the liberal arts; though they, with the
grammar schools of the diocese, continued to teach grammar and rhetoric
to schoolboys, and theology to the greater part of the diocesan clergy.
Monastic schools from about 800 to 1000 probably produced greater
scholars, but these were monks who gave their whole lives to scholarship.
From c. 1000 to c. 1170 the cathedral schools-Tours, Orleans, Utrecht,
Liège, Rheims, Chartres, Paris—eclipsed the monastic schools even in
the production of scholars ; during this period they were the international
centres of adult scholarship, as well as training-schools for the diocesan
clergy.
CH. XXII.


## p. 774 (#820) ############################################

774
Alcuin
Charlemagne's capitulary of 787, addressed to the Abbot of Fulda,
ordered that in all the monasteries and bishops' houses under his rule
there should be study, “ litterarum meditationes,” and “those who can
shall teach,” for grammar and rhetoric were indispensable for under-
standing the figures of scripture. In 789 he issued another more precise :
“Let the ministers of God's altar. . . collect and associate with themselves
(i. e. maintain in their houses) children, not only of servile condition but
also free-born (ingenui). ” Some bishops are known to have redeemed
slaves for this purpose. “ And that there may be schools of reading-boys
(i. e. lectors), let them learn psalms, notes, chants, the computus, and
grammar in each monastery and bishop's house. ” In these internal
schools bishops were to train young clerks, and abbots were to train
monks. The capitulary of 805 referred to such schools and ordered that
all should learn truly about the computus, that children should be sent
to learn the art of medicine (presumably, boarded in some school in
South Italy), and that the Roman chant, as used at Metz, should be
followed. Alcuin, exhausted with the perambulations of the court, retired
in 796 to teach the liberal arts to the canons of the cathedral monastery
of St Martin of Tours, and to such scholars as resorted to him?
He wrote in that year to Eanbald of York about the conduct of his
familia, advising that his clerks should be separated according to their
occupation, reading, the chant, or writing, and that a master should be
provided for each“ order. ” Possibly the scholastic classes coincided with
the reception of some minor order, as a comparison with the clerks of
Milanº suggests; or perhaps the use of the word is merely accidental.
Alcuin wrote to Arno, later Archbishop of Salzburg, in 799, advising
that he and his suffragans should have scholars, and make them diligently
learn psalms and church melodies, that the daily course of the praises of
God might be performed in each (mother) church ; and to another bishop
in Germany, advising him to hasten home and set in order the boys'
lessons: who should learn grammar, who read epistles and small books,
and who Holy Scripture.
Bishop Theodulf of Orleans carried the provision for education within
his diocese a stage further. “If any priest wishes to send his nephew or
his relation to school in the cathedral) church of Ste Croix, or in the
monastery of St Aignan, or St Benoît, or St Liphard, or in other of the
monastic comm, unities which it is granted us to govern: we give him
leave to do this. " The concession is here financial : the cathedral school
shall receive their relations for nothing (and board them, probably); and
the bishop will see that abbots also receive, board, and teach them for
1 Cf. for an apparent reference to the reception and boarding of such scholars
“quantum possibilitas sinit” in the monastery of Murbach, Pez, B. , Thesaurus
anecdotorum novissimus, Augsburg, 1721, tom. II, pt. iii, col. 378.
2 For an account of the Milanese episcopal household and schools, see Landulf
Junior, Historia Mediolanensis, in MGH, Script. vii, p. 40; pp. 70–71.


## p. 775 (#821) ############################################

Theodulf of Orleans
775
nothing, as oblates, or possibly as candidates for the secular clergy also.
The next canon probably refers to the teaching of day scholars : “ Let
priests in towns and villages have schools, and if any of the faithful
wishes to commend his little ones to them to learn letters, they ought to
receive them . . . and teach them with the greatest affection. . . . They shall
demand nothing in this matter by way of price, nor shall they receive
anything from them, except what the parents. . . shall bestow upon them
voluntarily. ". This canon shews the high-water mark of Carolingian
advance, and shews the ideal of one of the greatest scholars of Charles?
court--of one also acquainted with conditions in Italy, where grammar
masters were fairly plentiful. The whole set of canons are rather counsels
of perfection than ecclesiastical laws; the laity were equally canonically
bound to say their prayers at least twice a day, and priests to confess
their sins with groans and tears, reciting the fifty-first psalm, once or
twice a day, or as much oftener as possible. Theodulf was at one time
Abbot of St Benoît (Fleury), and energetic in the reform movement
connected with St Benedict of Aniane, and hence his capitulary was read
and copied by monastic reformers. Dunstan and the English reformers
were closely in touch with Fleury, and this probably explains the presence
of different parts of the capitulary in two English manuscripts, both in
Latin with English translations. The part of the capitulary dealing with
schools occurs in a manuscript following some “statuta” collected by
Abbot Aelfric of Eynsham; but there is no evidence that it was ever
“lecta et publicata” in any English synod, or even that the translator
was Aelfric. Another copy in a monastery at Ghent attributed it
explicitly, but certainly wrongly, to the Council of Constantinople, 680,
causing confusion to later writers. The canon about schools is not drawn
from any Eastern council, but was Theodulf's own work.
Charlemagne’s capitularies were not universally obeyed. In 813 the
Council of Chalon reiterated that schools must be set up; and in 817
the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle dealt with both monastic and cathedral
schools. In monasteries there were to be schools only of oblates; a few,
like Fulda and St Gall, continued for a time to have "scholae exteriores
seu canonicae” for training secular clerks. Chrodegang's rule, revised
and enlarged by some chapters, was to be observed, as the “regula
Aquisgranensis,” by all the cathedrals of the Empire. A chapter of the
rule regulated the provisions for the cathedral school. As earlier, it was
to be an internal school, in which the young clerks were maintained by
the chapter; the boys slept and worked together, in charge of an aged
and discreet canon, though they might have a younger one to teach them.
The rule was influential in reforms carried out by Dunstan in England,
1 The teaching may have been intended to include Latin: it was certainly
different from the learning by heart of the Creed and Lord's Prayer, in Latin or
German, by the newly-converted Saxons, as ordered by the Council of Mayence.
(Mansi, xiv, col. 74, cap. xlv. )
CH. XXII.


## p. 776 (#822) ############################################

776
Post-Carolingian episcopal schools
and was forinally adopted by Leofric of Exeter c. 1050. The chapter
describing the school must be taken as descriptive of the normal cathedral
school in the Carolingian Empire from this time forward, apart from
evidence to the contrary in particular cases, and till the communal life
of chapters lapsed. Alcuin's teaching at Tours made the school so famous
that conditions were perhaps abnormal there in his day. External scholars,
boarding in the town, may have been taught by him ; certainly in 843
Amalric, canon and scholasticus, left a bequest to the future preceptors
in the school, to prevent the abominable custom, which had sprung up
in his predecessors' day, of taking a price for instruction, “as from any
other worldly business. ” Whether the endowment was to recompense
the preceptors for renouncing the fees of external scholars, or to enable
them to board these scholars gratis in their house, is not clear. There
was certainly an internal and an external school at Rheims later; and,
from about 900 onwards, the general practice of the cathedrals seems to
have been for the chapter to maintain a number of “clericuli," while
others were taken into the school as a private bargain with their relatives,
and yet others were boarded by individual canons, who made a special
bargain with relatives for “introducing them into the clerical order. ”
Generally speaking, and theoretically, no fees, or very small fees, were
charged for teaching only in the cathedral grammar or theology school,
the masters being maintained by the chapter; but unless they had a
prebend the maintenance was sometimes insufficient, and practice varied.
The ninth century brought difficulties to the schools. Louis the
Pious, in 822, desired that schools should be amended : the parents or
lords of scholars (no longer, significantly, the bishop) must help to provide
for them ; if the diocese (parochia) were very large, two or three places of
study must be founded. The Council of Paris, in 824, ordered each bishop
to shew more zeal to have a school to educate the militia of Christ; to
encourage this, let each bishop bring his scholasticus to the provincial
council. In 824 Lothar, as co-regent with his father, ordered that, since
instruction was lacking in Italy, schools of “ doctrina” should be main-
tained in certain towns, which he specified. In 826 Pope Eugenius II
enacted that, since in some places there were neither masters nor care for
the study of letters, each bishopric, and other places where there was
need, should have masters and doctors to teach letters and the “dogmas
of the liberal arts. " The Council of Paris, in 829, repeated the provisions
of 822, and the bishops petitioned the Emperor Louis that, lest his
father's work should be lost, three “public schools” should be set up in
his Empire; which three schools of Charlemagne they referred to is not
clear, though a subsequent canon shews that they were including Italy
in the Empire. The Council of Meaux, in 845, declared all the capitularies
of Charles and Louis the Pious to be still in force, and ordered all bishops
to build a cloister near their church for the regular training of their
clerks (as Eugenius II had also ordered in 826). In 852 Archbishop


## p. 777 (#823) ############################################

Their difficulties
777
Hincmar of Rheims enjoined in a synod that answers should be made to
certain questions, to be propounded by the magister and the dean “in
each mother-church, and in each chapel of our parochia (archbishopric)" ;
among others: “Had the priest a clerk who could keep school, or read
the epistle and sing, according as was necessary”—the one, probably, in
a mother-church (ecclesia), the other in a chapel (capella). This provision
was perhaps due to a clause in the bomilies of the contemporary Pope
Leo IV that “each priest should have a scholar clerk, who could read
the epistle or lesson and respond at mass, and with whom he could sing
psalms. ” The same Pope, in 853, practically repealed Eugenius' canon
about the schools of liberal arts, by acknowledging that grammar masters
were scarce, and ordering that, in lack of them, masters of divine scriptures
and teachers of the office should be provided.
The ravages of the Northmen and internecine wars had half consumed
learning by the mid-century, and the Council of Valence, summoned in
855 for the provinces of Lyons, Vienne, and Arles, could only order that
“ something should be discussed, and if possible decreed and ordained,
about schools both of divine and secular literature and church chant,
since, from the long intermission of this study, ignorance of the faith
and of all knowledge has overtaken many bishoprics. ” Archbishop Herard
of Tours, in 858, ordered that “priests should have schools as much as
they can, and corrected books”; and Bishop Walter of Orleans in the
same year interpreted this by enacting that “every priest must have
a clerk, whom he must have religiously educated ; and, if it is possible
for him, he must have a school in his church, and wisely take heed that
those whom he receives to teach he may chastely and sincerely nourish. "
This seems an interesting attempt to extend the system of training
lectors from episcopal and collegiate churches to those of single priests;
each priest must train or have trained (procuret educare) one clerk (the
ancestor, of course, of the later parish clerk), and, if it be possible, let
him nourish more. In 859 the Council of Savonnières urged that “scholae
publicae” (apparently implying, at the date, royally-endowed schools)
should be set up, so that fruit both of divine and human learning might
accrue to the Church.
After these enactments, however, the schools gradually recovered and
became flourishing; the records of individual cathedrals indicate greater
prosperity and scholarship. Bishop Ratherius of Verona in 966 decreed
that he would in future promote no ordinands who had not lived in his
own city, or in some monastery, or “ apud quemlibet sapientem," and to
some extent learned letters. The clause about private teaching is char-
acteristic of Italian conditions ; north of the Alps ordinands would have
attached themselves to some cathedral school (unless ordained without
preparation in deference to the wish of some layman). Gregory VII in
1078 ordered that “all bishops were to have the arts of letters taught
1 The Old Testament passage sometimes read in place of the Epistle.
CH. XXII.


## p. 778 (#824) ############################################

778
Chartres
in their churches," i. e. not merely “divine learning” but secular. The
growth of the schools is marked by increase of masters. Fulbert (ob. 1028),
the scholar-Bishop of Chartres, who raised the schools to the pitch of
fame, gave Hildegaire both the birch of the grammaticus and the tablets
of the chancellor as symbols of authority ; in addition, Hildegaire held
the position of sub-dean. Fluctuations still occurred at Chartres between
the work and functions of the chancellor, vice-chancellor, and gram-
maticus ; but by c. 1150 the chancellor as such had a prebend, taught
only theology, and had under him a scholasticus now usually termed the
“magister scholarum. ” The latter had no prebend as such, but was some-
times a canon ; in any case, he received the usual distributions of food
and
money for attendance at offices. Development at other cathedrals
was roughly parallel, the magister scholarum of the earlier centuries
becoming the chancellor in the twelfth century, and teaching only
theology, with a grammar master under him. In all dioceses other
granımar schools were now fairly frequent, the right of teaching, however,
remaining a strict monopoly, guarded by the chancellor of the diocese.
After the rise of the universities (c. 1170), the best scholars were drawn
away from the cathedral schools as such, and the teaching of the liberal
arts in these dwindled to the teaching of grammar and rhetoric.
The decline of diocesan teaching roused the anxiety of the Church.
In the lesser cathedrals there was difficulty even in obtaining a grammar
master, since no benefice was provided for him, and there was more
lucrative employment elsewhere. The Third Lateran Council, in 1179,
ordered that a competent benefice should be given in every cathedral to
a master, who should teach the clerks of the church and
poor
scholars
for nothing ; nor was the ecclesiastical authority to charge for the license
to teach, nor deny it to any suitable candidate. The Fourth Lateran
Council, in 1215, asserted that this provision had remained widely unful-
filled; it ordered each cathedral church, and other (collegiate) churches
which had the means, to provide a prebend for a grammar master, and
each metropolitan church one for a theology master. The provisions still
remained largely unfulfilled, the difficulty being to get the chapter to
give up a prebend for the purpose, especially as so many prebends were
anticipated by papal provision. The friars, however, set up in this
century their own hierarchy of schools, in some of which the presence of
seculars was allowed. St Thomas Aquinas wrote in 1257 that the decree
for the provision of a theology master in each metropolitan church had
not been observed “through lack of letters," but now it had been more
than fulfilled by the religious.
The monastic schools saw their two most flourishing centuries after
the Carolingian renaissance. The external schools about which most is
known were those of Fulda, St Gall, and Bec. Raban Maur of Fulda
was sent by his abbot to study under Alcuin at Tours, and was afterwards
given the direction of the monks' school at Fulda, with orders to preserve


## p. 779 (#825) ############################################

External monastic schools
779
Alcuin's method of teaching. He then ruled both schools (for oblates
and clerks) “with piety and doctrine,” and appointed two masters to
teach under him. The schools of St Gall were famous in the ninth
century, when Notker the Stammerer and other scholars were trained
there. « The cloister school with blessed Notker and other children of
the monastic habit was handed over to Marcellus, and the external school,
that is the canonical school, to Iso. " In 937 one of the scholars of this
school started a serious fire in the monastery, to save himself a beating.
The external school started at Bec by Lanfranc was somewhat of a new
departure; it was not maintained to fill the place of a non-existent
canonical, or cathedral, school, but to aid the poverty of the newly-
founded house with fees; it was, in fact, a continuation of Lanfranc's
work as a private rhetoric teacher in Italy. On the other hand, when
St William of Dijon (ob. 1031) was called by Duke Richard to Normandy
to introduce the Cluniac reforms, he substituted monks for clerks in the
abbey of Fécamps, and started an external school there of the old,
canonical type. “For when he saw that knowledge of singing and reading
among the rural clerks was. . . almost perished, not only in that place but
throughout the whole province,. . . he founded a school of the sacred
ministry where the brothers skilled in this office taught freely, for the
love of God. ”
The teaching of laymen in this period has been passed over, for there
were no schools for laymen as such, even the little A. B. C. schools being
mainly intended to teach “song” to little clerks.