Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/694

672 672 EDUCATION broken in to obedience and hardship, but the obedience was the willing service of a mistress whom he loved, and the hardship the permission to share the dangers of a leader whom he emulated. The seven arts of monkish training were Grammar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astro nomy, which together formed the trivium and quadrivium, the seven years course, the divisions of which have pro foundly affected our modern training. One of the earliest treatises based on this method was that of Martianus Capella, who in 470 published his Satyra, in nine books. The first two were devoted to the marriage between Philology and Mercury, the last seven were each devoted to the consideration of one of these liberal arts. Cassiodorus, who wrote De Septem Disciplines about 500, was also largely used as a text book in the schools. Astronomy was taught by the Cisio-Janus, a collection of doggrel hexameters like the Propria quce maribus, which contained the chief festivals in each month, with a memoria technica for recollecting when they occurred. The seven knightly accomplishments, as historians tell us, were to ride, to swim, to shoot with the bow, to box, to hawk, to play chess, and to make verses. The verses thus made were not in Latin, bald imitations of Ovid or Horace, whose pagan beauties were wrested into the service of religion, but sonnets, ballads, and canzonets in soft Provengal or melodious Italian. In nothing, perhaps, is the difference between these two forms of education more clearly shown than in their relations to women. A young monk was brought up to regard a woman as the worst among the many temptations of St Antony. His life knew no domestic tenderness or affection. He was surrounded and cared for by celibates, to be himself a celibate. A page was trained to receive his best reward and worst punish ment from the smile or frown of the lady of the castle, and as he grew to manhood to cherish an absorbing passion as the strongest stimulus to a noble life, and the contempla tion of female virtue, as embodied in an Isolde or a Beatrice, as the truest earnest of future immortality. Both these forms of education disappeared before the Renaissance and the Reformation. But we must not suppose that no efforts were made to improve upon the narrowness of the schoolmen or the idleness of chivalry. The schools of Charles the Great have lately been investi gated by Mr Mullinger, but we do not find that they materially advanced the science of education. Vincent of Beauvais has left us a very complete treatise on education, written about the year 1245. He was the friend and counsellor of St Louis, and we may discern his influence in the instructions which were left by that sainted king for the guidance of his son and daughter through life. The end of this period was marked by the rise of univer sities. Bologna devoted itself to law, and numbered 12,000 students at the end of the 12th century. Salerno adopted as its special province the study of medicine, and Paris was thronged with students from all parts of Europe, who were anxious to devote themselves to a theology which passed by indefinite gradations into philosophy. The 14th and 15th centuries witnessed the rise of universities and academies in almost every portion of Europe. Perhaps the most interesting among these precursors of a higher culture thren were the Brethren of the Common Life, who were domiciled he in the rich meadows of the Yssel, in the Northern Nether- omon lands. The metropolis of their organization was Deventer, the best known name among them that of Gerhard Groote. They devoted themselves with all humility and self-sacrifice to the education of children. Their schools were crowded. Bois-le-duc numbered 1200 pupils, Zwolle 1500. Fora hundred years no part of Europe shone with a brighter lustre. As the divine comedy of Dante represents for us the learning and piety of the Middle Ages in Italy, so the Imitation of Thomas a Kempis keeps alive for us the memory of the purity and sweetness of the Dutch com munity. But they had not sufficient strength to preserve their supremacy among the necessary developments of the age. They could not support the glare of the new Italian learning ; they obtained, and it may be feared deserved, the title of obscurantists. The Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, the wittiest squib of the Middle Ages, which was so true and so subtle in its satire that it was hailed as a blow struck in defence of the ancient learning, consists in great part of the lamentations of the brethren of Deventer over the new age, which they could not either comprehend or withstand. The education of the Renaissance is best represented by the Kenais name of Erasmus, that of the Reformation by the names of sauce - Luther and Melanchthon. We have no space to give an account of that marvellous resurrection of the mind and spirit of Europe when touched by the dead hand of an extinct civilization. The history of the revival of letters belongs rather to the general history of literature than to that of education. But there are two names whom we ought not to pass over. Vittorino da Feltre was summoned by the Gonzagas to Mantua in 1424 ; he was lodged in a spacious palace, with galleries, halls, and colonnades decorated with frescoes of playing children. In person he was small, quick, and lively a born schoolmaster, whose whole time was spent in devotion to his pupils. We are told of the children of his patron, how Prince Gonzaga recited 200 verses of his own composition at the age of fourteen, and how Princess Cecilia wrote elegant Greek at the age of ten. Vittorino died in 1477. He seems to have reached the highest point of excellence as a practical schoolmaster of the Italian Renaissance. Castiglione, on the other hand, has left us in his Cortigiano the sketch of a cultivated nobleman in those most cultivated days. He shows by what precepts and practice the golden youths of Verona and Venice were formed, who live for us in the plays of Shakespeare as models of knightly excellence. For our instruction, it is better to have recourse to the pages of Erasmus. He has written the most minute account of his method of teaching. The child is to be formed into a good Greek and Latin scholar and a pious man. He fully grasps the truth that improvement must be natural and gradual. Letters are to be taught playing. The rules of grammar are to be few and short. Every means of arousing interest in the work is to be fully employed. Erasmus is no Ciceronian. Latin is to be taught so as to be of use a living language adapted to modern wants, Children should learn an art painting, sculpture, or architecture. Idleness is above all things to be avoided. The education of girls is as necessary and important as that of boys. Much depends upon home influence ; obedience must be strict, but not too severe. We must take account of individual peculiarities, and not force children into cloisters against their will. We shall obtain the best result by following nature. It is easy to see what a contrast this scheme presented to the monkish training, to the routine of useless technicalities enforced amidst the shouts of teachers and the lamentations of the taught. Still this culture was but for the few. Luther brought lleform; the schoolmaster into the cottage, and laid the foundations tio11 - of the system which is the chief honour and strength of modern Germany, a system by which the child of the humblest peasant, by slow but certain gradations, receives the best education which the country can afford. The precepts of Luther found their way into the hearts of his countryman in short, pithy sentences, like the sayings of poor Richard. The purification and widening of education went hand in hand with the purification of religion, and these claims to affection are indissolubly united in the minds of his countrymen. Melanchthon, from his editions