Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/769

Rh became necessary to provide instruction for those scholars who were not devoting themselves to the monkish life. In keeping with this demand, the cloister schools were established: there were also so called nunneries of this order, the first at Bischofsheim, in France, being widely celebrated. These cloister schools for girls did the work of elementary schools, and concerned themselves especially with household duties. The supreme importance of this Benedictine order ceased in the twelfth century. Then the Dominicans and Franciscans took up the work, and, though they did not accomplish so much as the other orders, their results were marked in providing better school-books. They taught mostly the Lord's Prayer, church melodies, and Latin.

A word as to the origin of the cathedral schools. While the Benedictine order was becoming powerful, the parochial schools suffered greatly from the ignorance and incapacity of the parish priests. This disturbed Chrodegang (Bishop of Metz, 742) so greatly that he took the priests who were connected with his own cathedral and bound them together in a cloister-like seclusion for the instruction of the youth according to the Benedictine rules. Their life was ordered by strictest regulations, their duties were accurately written down for them, and their chief instruction consisted of the Holy Scriptures and song. The life in these cathedral schools was a modified monkish life—the good work they did for education is justly said to be this, that they made it freer, bringing it out of the cloisters and more into general view.

What did the young people study in the middle-age schools? First and most essential was religion; after that, the following: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The first three of these were called the trivium (as suggested, probably, because in Rome it was customary to give elementary instruction in some public place where three or more roads came together). The four other studies were called the quadrivium. In North Africa the trivium and quadrivium came together for the first time and formed what was known as the seven liberal arts; seven, being a sacred number, gave great value to this circle of study. Any one making the least pretension to education must pass through the trivium; the quadrivium was for those who had finished the first course and desired further training.

We inquire as to the meaning of these seven studies of the middle ages:

—This consisted of instruction in the Latin language. First, the scholar learned to pronounce, then he mastered the quantity of the syllables, the forms of the declensions and conjugations; then he took up some productions of the easier Latin writers; and, finally, went on to the more difficult prose authors and poets. After this, he learned accent, the number of feet in the verse, analogy, etymology, and foreign words. Then the Latin author was explained critically;