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Rh past can raise any doubts about the merits of the Church in the field of education. We cannot narrate what the Church has done to advance popular education in the earlier Middle Ages. Numerous councils, – for instance, those of Orange in France (529), Constantinople (680), Aix-la-Chapelle (802), Mentz (813), Rome (826 and 1179), – exhorted the clergy to instruct the children, "without accepting anything beyond a compensation the parents should offer freely," as Bishop Arbyton of Basle (died in 821) writes. From the twelfth century on the number of schools increased considerably.

Much more evidence is available about the schools of the closing Middle Ages. A great deal of it is published in the well-known History of the German People by Janssen. Although compulsory education was unknown, we learn from many records, preserved in towns and villages, that the schools were well attended. In the little town of Wesel there were, in 1444, five teachers employed to instruct the children in reading, writing, arithmetic, and choir-singing. In the district of the Middle Rhine, in the year 1500,