Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/770

750 every verse was taken to pieces and looked at grammatically, meterically, and historically. (They had rules for the position of the mouth in pronunciation.) Greek was, after some time, introduced into the Western schools and taught in the same general manner as the Latin. Hebrew was seldom an object of study. The modern languages were not taught.

—This represented philosophy in general. In the lower schools it was a mere collection of phrases. The boy learned the categories, the moods and figures of the syllogism and practiced definitions and disputations. There was a partial translation of Plato's "Timæus," which prevailed to the thirteenth century. In the higher schools, especially from the tenth to the twelfth century, religion was taught in connection with philosophy, and this latter study was in every way made to defend the faith.

—This was taught, at first, according to Quintilian and Cicero; later the text-books of Capella and Bede took their place; in the tenth century Quintilian became again the leader. The rules of rhetoric were applied to sermon-writing, and the first treatise on this subject was composed about the year 1300.

—This study received special attention. Ambrose of Milan originated the church songs, and Charlemagne summoned teachers of song from Rome, and laid great stress upon musical training. Instruction in this department was based upon the text-books of Boethius, and the notes were marked by the letters of the alphabet until Benedict of Pomposa and Guido of Arezzo (1030) introduced the system of lines. The marking of the notes according to their continuance and length was devised in the fourteenth century by Johns of Myris, while before this the higher and lower notes were expressed by ascending and lowering lines.

—This was next to music in importance as an object of study. To express numbers the hands and feet were used. The left hand upon the breast signified 10,000 and both hands 100,000. In business and housekeeping accounts a reckoning-board was used. This was a table upon which upright parallel lines were cut, that represented values of units, tens, hundreds, etc. These lines were filled with stones to express numbers: thus, for 4,576 we should have on the first line at the right, six stones, then seven, and so on.

—This was taught in the higher and lower schools after selections from Euclid. Lines, figures, and solids were defined, and chief examples of them given. There was generally associated with this study a kind of geography, and it is said that the cloister of St. Gallen had a map as early as the seventh century.

—This study, which had been pursued long before among the Greeks, and which was a principal concern with the Arabians, received no attention in the Western Church until Charlemagne had some correspondence with Rabanus respecting it. The schools