Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/40

 28 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE the benefactress of the whole neighbourhood. In 1436 this institution was solemnly consecrated under the name of the ' Marienschule.' The abbess ordained that three boys from the citizen or peasant classes should also be admitted, and that if they distinguished them- selves by talent, industry, or good conduct, they should be placed on an equal footing with the other scholars. The knight Hans von Schoenstaett and Herr von Behan bequeathed their estates to this institution, and a priest named Meingot Gulden, who had been its director for years, left it the half of a farmstead at Eosphe. We may judge how deeply learning was appreciated, and how highly the position of the teachers was respected, by the high salaries which the latter com- manded. Up to the end of the Middle Ages we find nowhere any complaints from teachers of insufficient pay. At a time when a florin would buy from ninety to one hundred pounds of beef or from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five pounds of pork, the school- master of a small hamlet near Goch received the follow- ing remuneration : From the parish four florins, twelve bushels of barley, eight bushels of wheat, eight bushels of oats and sixty bundles of straw, besides house and kitchen-garden and the use of one-third of an acre of meadow land. Also from each pupil a monthly school fee of five stivers in winter and three in summer ; and for services in the church, a yearly sum of about two to three florins. In the archives of Capellan, in 1510, we find it decreed that each peasant who wished his children taught should pay the teacher three stivers, four bushels of corn, and, if he owned a waggon, a load of wood. In Goch the head teacher had been receiving since 1450, in addition to his house