Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire

When we take all this into account we cannot fail to see a certain exaggeration in Kaufmann’s[1094] statement that the training of the monastic school was entirely religious and moral. These elements were doubtless predominant, but they were not all.

During the fifth century, however, subjects for reading and discussion came to be taken more and more from the Bible. The Bible, introduced as literature in the schools, started its career of enormous influence on the speech and writings, and so on the education, of all centuries. The hexameters into which Claudius Marius Victor of Marseilles (fifth century) turned the book of Genesis were meant for use in schools, and represented a sort of compromise: Christian matter and pagan form. Psalm singing and lessons in scripture and church ritual were naturally given a fairly prominent place. Exegesis became the main subject of study, as we may see, e.g. from Eucherius’s Formularum spiritualis intelligentiae, Instructionum libri, Dialogorum liber. Scripture, he says, is to be discussed and explained ‘secundum historiam, secundum tropologiam, secundum anagogen’.[1095] ‘Historia’ is given a wide definition: all that comes under ‘veritatem factorum ac fidem relationis’. ‘Tropologia’ is to lead to the improvement of life and of the mystic intellect, and ‘Anagoge’ leads ‘ad sacratiora caelestium figurarum’. These two sides, which are speculative and philosophical, are developed at the expense of ‘Historia’; and falsely developed by abundant reference to allegorical explanation, which becomes a regular solvent of obscure questions.[1096]

Stress is also laid on the etymological side, which is rather unfortunate. Greek and Hebrew are studied to some extent, though the answers which Eucherius, following the example of Jerome, wrote to the questions of his son Salonius on these subjects suggest rather a low standard. Curious as this catechism is, some of the theological questions indicate considerable thought:

‘Scribitur in Genesi tentavit Deus Abraham, quasi ignorabat Dominus an fidelis Abraham foret.’

‘Si Deus hominem immortalem fecerit, quemadmodum potuit mori?’

‘Quomodo accipiendum est quod legimus Regnum Dei intra vos est?’

‘Cum nulla esse ignorantia apud Deum possit, quomodo ipse in libro Geneseos in exordiis dicit Dominus: Adam, ubi es?’[1097]

This part of Christian education as reflected in the Books of Instruction stands in sharp contrast to the part which deals with language, and suggests that the theological training far overshadowed the rest. Even at Lérins the distinctly pagan education was given very little prominence. Ennodius, of all people, forgetting his debt to pagan letters, and all unconscious of his enslavement to rhetoric, pompously states the superiority of ‘religious’ over ‘secular’ studies, thus advising Camilla about the education of her son: ‘The Lord of salvation rejects not those who hasten to him from secular teachings, but he refuses to let any one leave his glory for these. If you have already withdrawn the child from the world, you would not seek a worldly style in him. I blush to resort to the polish of secular embellishments in the education of one who professes to serve the Church.’[1098]

That there were different grades of advancement in the Christian schools is implied in the words of Eucherius when he reminds his son that his education was begun by Hilary but finished off (consummatum) by Vincentius and Salvian.[1099] But the general standard was undoubtedly low. To the remark of Caesarius that many business-men in his time could not write, we may add the testimony of the inscriptions. On four monuments of Briord we read:

all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:

which proclaim the ignorance of the inscribers.[1100] This does not mean that these people would have been better educated under the pagan system: there are many instances of mistakes in pagan inscriptions too. It merely means that Christianity was beginning to reach the simple folk, who otherwise would probably not have had the ability or the ambition even to make a wrong copy of a line of verse. In the pagan schools it is the upper classes that are prominent: in the Christian schools it is the lower.

Higher education, therefore, hardly appears at all in the Christian writers. The former rhetorical school, with its declamations and its applause, fell away, though its influence survived. The rules of rhetoric may have been illustrated by examples which were applied in the pulpit, but there was no separate school for the art of speaking. Yet the germ of the modern university—as far as intellectual search for truth is concerned—was found in some of the monasteries, and there is at least one subject in which they had a contribution to make to higher education, philosophy.

The curious way in which the Christian and pagan schools supplement and oppose one another is evident throughout. The Christian elementary school developed further the pagan system for lower education: the monastic studies formed an antithesis to the social atmosphere of the Bordeaux University; and, in particular, the study of philosophy and theology supplemented that lack of thought which we have seen in Ausonius and the fourth century in general. For it is in the fifth century that the most flourishing period of Gallic theology begins. All the greatest minds of the day busied themselves with the philosophy of religion.

The main thought-currents need here only be named. First and foremost there was Pelagianism, with its questions of grace and free will, which raised the central problem of personality. More directly connected with Gaul (for its leaders were Cassian and Faustus) was Semi-Pelagianism, which sought a middle way between the predestination implied in Augustine and the free will of Pelagius. Then there were the questions about the nature of the soul—whether it was corporeal, as Faustus argued, or spiritual as Mamertus Claudianus maintained. There was also Neoplatonism, which was never strong in the West, but appears here and there in Hilary of Poitiers.[1101] How prevalent its incidental accompaniments of Daemonology and Divination were appears from the decree of Valens and Valentinian against magicians.[1102] Finally, there were minor theological questions and points of worship and church discipline, for example in the controversy between Vigilantius and Jerome.

Philosophy was divided by Eucherius into three parts: ‘Sapientia mundi huius philosophiam suam in tres partes divisit: Physicam, Ethicam, Logicam’,[1103] which includes metaphysics and theology. This was the traditional division alluded to by Seneca: ‘Philosophiae tres partes esse dixerunt et maximi et plurimi actores: moralem, naturalem, rationalem.’[1104] Of these, the part called ‘ethica’ or ‘moralis’ was naturally most popular, but the sort of theological discussion that came under ‘Logica’ was most developed by the thinkers of the time. Foremost in this department stands Claudianus, Bishop of Vienne, whose work De Statu animae was a real contribution to the thought of his age. ‘These ideas’, says Guizot, referring to this work, ‘are deficient neither in elevation nor in profundity: they would do honour to the philosophers of any period; seldom have the nature of the soul and its unity been investigated more clearly or described with greater precision.’[1105] This is high praise, but it is justified in the main. Claudianus was at least no mere compiler. He draws largely on Augustine and the Pythagorean authors like Philolaus, Architas, and Hippo Metapontinus (known to him, perhaps, only in extracts), whose works are now lost.[1106] Plato and the later Platonists, too, are extensively quoted. We feel that there is a great deal of vague metaphysics in his work, ‘purement négative, impuissante à pénétrer dans la nature intime des phénomènes’.[1107] As an example of this sort of thing we may quote the passage[1108] where he is referring to the work of Philolaus περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ μέτρων, and talks about the mystic number and the spiritual law according to which the soul enters the body, using this thesis as a satisfactory basis for argument. He is content to quote the ‘ipse dixit’ of Philolaus alone. ‘Memet’ (he declares) ‘causa auctoritatis in medium tanti testimonium philosophi iecisse sufficiet.’ There was an idea (not unnaturally) that the study of philosophy was prejudicial to religion, but Claudianus was one, says Sidonius, ‘qui ... indesinenter salva religione philosopharetur’.[1109] Plato was the main inspiration. Most of the Gallic Platonists were Christians, though Sidonius says that those who attack Faustus for his mystic philosophy will find ‘ecclesiae Christi Platonis academiam militare’.[1110] From Sidonius and Claudianus we should judge that Aristotle—especially the Ethics and the Categories—was fairly prevalent in Gaul.[1111]

Methods and Masters.

Ennodius in his lines on ‘Grammatica’[1112] maintains that even in teaching philosophy a joke with the class is permissible, and that strict discipline must not always imply terror, and Sulpicius Severus writes to Bishop Paul[1113] commending his success in dealing with pupils without threats or force. But, on the whole, the pagan tradition of discipline was not mellowed by Christianity. It was rather reinforced by the ascetic spirit of the monasteries, and intensified by the added religious motive of mortification. The text ‘Quem enim diligit Dominus, increpat: flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit’, was literally and extensively applied. Jerome talks quite naturally of education as equivalent to ‘manum ferulae subducere’,[1114] and the severe training of Lérins is indicated by the phrase of Sidonius; ‘post desudatas militiae Lerinensis excubias’ (the sweated vigils of your campaign at Lérins).[1115] Valerianus, in his homily ‘De bono disciplinae’,[1116] illustrates the ideas of the time on this subject, and strengthens the impression that we get from reading the various ‘Regulae’ for the cloisters. He expatiates on the disciplined order of nature, and everywhere thinks of ‘disciplina’ as equivalent to ‘castigatio’, which is always assumed to be the corner-stone of teaching and the condition of progress on the part of the pupil. The militarism of the Roman Empire lingers on in seemingly uncongenial surroundings. Great stress is laid on fear. Fear has the great virtue of always obeying. It therefore knows how to avoid threatening dangers, or the wrath of judgement. Because of this estimable quality it has the power of keeping you safe. ‘All vices are prostrate before fear.’ He appeals to the word of the Prophet: ‘servite Domino in timore et exultate ei cum tremore’. The Old Testament harshness suits the temper of these disciplinarians very well, and appears far more frequently than the gentleness of Christ or the humanity of common sense.

Part of this idea of mortification and discipline was worked out in the manual labour which the monasteries made, and consistently have made, of considerable importance in their educational scheme. Partly, too, it was a reaction against the extreme artificiality of the rhetorical schools, and it was also undoubtedly an attempt to follow Christ and his Apostles in their adoption of some craft or trade. Mabillon shows[1117] how much this practical side was insisted on, and he speaks of a tradition which started in Gaul during our period. The correspondence between word and deed was made a vital point—a fact which proved a healthy corrective to the attitude apt to be produced by the rhetoric of the pagan schools. ‘Qui si volunt lectioni vacare ut non operentur, ipsi lectioni contumaces existunt, quia non faciant quod ibi legunt’,[1118] said Isidore of Seville, and his ‘Rule’, like that of Caesarius, expressed the thought of the fifth century as well as of the seventh. We find that at Lérins Hilary of Arles worked in the fields, and that it was the duty of Caesarius when he first entered that monastery to provide for the bodily needs of the brethren.[1119] Cassian made a strong point of manual labour. It prevents many faults,[1120] and we have the example of St. Paul[1121] and the precept of Solomon.[1122] The East, which gave the impulse to monasticism, emphasized this point, for example in Egypt,[1123] and there is the story of the Abbot Paul who burnt every year the work of his hands lest he should ever lack work.[1124]

Thus in its development of elementary education, in its ‘rusticitas’, in its greater concentration on thought, and in its emphasis on practical work, Christian education in fifth-century Gaul was in reaction against the brilliant but superficial schools of the previous century. That this was so, and that the movement was strong enough to make itself felt against the whole weight of the traditional education, was partly due to skilful leadership. How far was this effective leadership general in the Christian schools?

Eucherius in a letter to Valerianus[1125] gives a list of men who have become monks. Clemens, ‘omni scientia refertus, omniumque liberalium artium peritissimus’; Gregorius, ‘philosophia primus apud mundum et eloquentia praestans’; another Gregorius, ‘litteris et philosophiae deditus’; Paulinus of Nola, ‘peculiare et beatum Galliae nostrae exemplum—uberrimo eloquentiae fonte’; Basilius, a rhetor and a learned man; and many others. Of Eucherius himself Claudianus says: ‘ingenio subtilissimus, scientia plenus, eloquii profluens’.[1126] There was, therefore, considerable learning in the monasteries towards the end of the fourth century. We have seen how many of the aristocracy brought pagan culture into the cloisters; we have also seen that the Christians were not without their rhetors (and rhetorical ability implied the liberal education of the day), nor without their theologians and philosophers. Of Hilary of Arles, whose eloquence Honoratus praises, Gennadius says: ‘Ingenio vero immortali aliqua et parva edidit, quae eruditae animae et fidelis linguae indicio sunt’.[1127] Even where a man did not have the initial advantage of education and birth, he often had the ambition and the opportunity to remedy his ignorance in the cloister. Vincentius, who had come to Lérins after having been a soldier, studied with such zeal that he became one of the tutors of Eucherius’s sons and wrote in a style praised by Gennadius.[1128]

Now all these men became the teachers of the Christian schools. They taught unceasingly and with great eagerness. They had within them the joy of the pioneer, and the inspiration of a great ideal. And if one does not agree entirely with their theory of education, it must be admitted that intellectually they were in most cases better equipped than the professors of Ausonius, and that they did more to inspire a true love of education and to preserve the triumphs of culture. When Gaul was separated from the Empire, it was the schools, and mostly the Christian schools (for imperial protection of education failed with the failing Empire), that saved civilization in Gaul and helped to perpetuate Rome’s great contribution to the world—her Law. Dull and uninteresting as their educational labours often were, they were often, like Browning’s Grammarian, possessed by a real love of learning. The pedestrian quality of the work—the jealous watching over the text of Vergil, the copying of manuscripts, the relentless monastic routine—was perhaps the best service that could have been rendered to humanity. What the world wanted, in view of the dark times that were to follow, was a tenacious watch-dog type of loyalty to letters, not the brilliant genius who needs somebody to look after his manuscripts. Not only books but garden art, architecture, wood- and stone-carving, and pottery were preserved by these watch-dogs. The dull lack of appreciation with which we sometimes think of their work, forgetting its true perspective, is well expressed by Kaufmann:[1129]