In order to understand this exclusive spirit we must remember the circumstances: the tenacity of paganism, which had taken its last stand in the public amusements,[988] the persecutions, the close connexion between the schools and the old religion. The Gallic panegyrists (most of them teachers) ostentatiously proclaim the gods of ancient Rome even to Christian emperors like Theodosius.[989] ‘Di boni’ and ‘Di immortales’ appear everywhere, the emperor is divine, and the school at Autun is ‘aedes Herculis atque Musarum’.[990] The rhetorical education had the immense advantage of being traditional. Then, as now, the argument carried great weight. Libanius in his defence of dancing asks indignantly (and the method of his protest is typical) whether the settled opinion of the ancients in this matter is to be upset: ἆρ’ οὖν πρᾶγμα ἀρχαῖον, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς οὕτω γενναίοις οὕτω γενναῖον καὶ καλὸν εἶναι δοκοῦν, εἰκῆ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἡμεῖς τῶν φαύλων εἶναι πιστεύσομεν;[991] Everything that was not cut according to the traditional pattern, according to the opinions handed down with hardly any criticism, from one teacher to another,[992] tended to be despised, and this was the attitude towards the Christians in the educational world of the day.[993] Moreover, the old system was properly organized, and Christians in being compelled to send their children to pagan masters felt the danger. For the subject-matter of both the grammatical and the rhetorical schools was largely the pagan mythology, which was next door to religion. Even contemporary literature proclaimed pagan ideas: the fourth-century comedy Querolus is permeated by the heathen conception of fate.
To all these causes of opposition and bitterness towards the pagan culture, there were added the desperate earnest of these early Christians to whom salvation and perdition were piercing and vivid realities, and the bitter scorn of pagans like Rutilius Namatianus. As he returned to his native country, Gaul, he saw in the growth of monachism one of the causes of Rome’s decline—Rome who had all his devotion, whose magistrate he was proud to have been.
he says of Capraria,[994] where a monastery had been started. Pride and prejudice make the monks an inexplicable problem to him:
Either they are really criminals forced to live this sort of life, or else the slaves of black bile. To him, too, the youth who becomes a monk is ‘impulsus furiis’.[996] Such was the temper towards the Christians even as late as the fifth century, and the counterpart of this bitterness is seen in the murder of Hypatia in Alexandria (A.D. 415).
The attitude of the ‘extreme’ Christians towards pagan literature is not, therefore, entirely inexplicable. But all were not extreme. The better spirits like Augustine, realizing that Christian education inevitably depended largely on the nobles who had come to the Church from the rhetorical schools, went on the principle of ‘spoiling the Egyptians’, of taking from pagan education and literature whatever was good and useful. Jerome protests against the narrow standpoint with considerable emphasis. He criticizes those who neglect style, and flares up at the suggestion that he is afraid of the pagan training of his opponents in controversy.[997] Ignorance, he says, is not holiness, and lack of culture is unfitting in a student of the Apostles. ‘Nec rusticus et tantum simplex frater ideo se sanctum putet si nil noverit, nec peritus et eloquens in lingua aestimet sanctitatem.’[998] He felt the need of rhetoric as a weapon against opponents. A holy ignorance, he argued, is a gain only to itself (he is curiously reluctant either to accept pagan learning entirely or to condemn it utterly), but all it builds up of the Church of Christ is lost if it does not meet its opponents.[999]
So, too, Paulinus of Nola and Prudentius ‘quidquid e paganis operibus novae fidei non adversabatur laudabant et servabant’.[1000] Sedulius, again, refused to draw the rigid line which the extremists drew: he wants to retain the culture of his time, but in a Christianized form. In the dedication of his Carmen Paschale to Macedonius he argues that he writes in verse because ‘there are many who, owing to their training in secular studies, are attracted rather by the delights of verse and the pleasures of poetry’; and that the Church must make use of this artistic tendency in people (horum mores non repudiandos aestimo). They will remember divine truths better if they are pleased with the form in which they are presented, and everybody must be freely won for God along the line of his particular bent (ut quisque suo magis ingenio voluntarius acquiratur Deo). The way in which you approach the faith does not matter so long as you get there and remain there.[1001] It is clear that he stands for liberalism in this matter and does not object to pagan literature if only the object in view is the right one.
Thus the wiser among the Christians opposed the policy of exclusiveness. They foresaw that though bigoted zeal and a natural antipathy might keep out pagan letters for a time, in the end they could not do so; and they realized that it was one of the functions of the Church to hand down what was good in the old culture. So the two Apollinarii (fourth century), Christian teachers of Laodicea, turned the Old Testament into heroic verse and the New Testament into Platonic dialogues;[1002] Juvencus put the gospels into metre, and Nonnus wrote out St. John in hexameters. In order to appeal to the intellectual classes the Christian writers were bound to follow the pagan models, and so a virtue was made of necessity: for amid the distraction of the failing Empire it was the Church alone that could have saved the form and content of the ancient culture by providing scribes for the one and thinkers for the other. It would have been interesting to have Paulinus of Nola’s Panegyric on Theodosius. ‘Quid interfuerit tum inter Christianum oratorem, et oratorem, in scriptis saltem, paganum’ (says Monnard[1003]) ‘diiudicare liceret, nisi temporis invidia Panegyrico Theodosii, quem Paulinus scripserat, quemque cum Ausonii Panegyrico conferre potuissemus nos privavisset.’ We should also have been able to see how far he followed the pagan model, especially in view of his extreme statements to Ausonius[1004] on the subject of pagan literature. Probably he was just as rhetorical as Hilary in his Demosthenic denunciation of Constantine. This supposition is confirmed by the words of Jerome, who is enthusiastic in his praise of the speech. ‘If the author’, he says, ‘surpasses others in the beginning of his oration, towards the end he excels himself. His style is brilliant with Ciceronian purity, yet copious in thought.’[1005] There was a certain amount of hypocrisy in the railing of the Christian writers against the pagan authors.
In spite of her criticism and antipathy, therefore, the Church listened to her leaders in their wiser moods and saved pagan culture. She set her monks to copy the ancient authors.[1006] Augustine ‘brought Plato into the (Christian) schools under his bishop’s robe’, and even Jerome expounded lyric and comic poets to the children at Bethlehem.[1007] Vergil, in particular, was admitted on account of the prophecy supposed to be contained in the fourth Eclogue. Roman law, of which Bossuet said that good sense, the master of human life, reigned throughout it, was regarded by the Church as a reflection of divine justice, and studied more particularly on account of its supposed similarity to the law of Moses.[1008] Through the Church it passed to the barbarians, and so became a heritage of the civilized world.
This ultimate attitude of the Church is the determining factor of Christian education, and it forms the background without which that education cannot be rightly studied. Kaufmann maintains that towards the end of the fifth century the rhetorical school lost its pedagogic significance,[1009] but his statement needs modification. The number of the rhetorical schools in Gaul certainly decreased as Christianity advanced during the fifth century: their spirit, their importance and meaning for education survived and, to a large extent, still survives.
One of the ways in which Christianity supplemented paganism was the development of elementary schools. It began with the masses, where knowledge was small and opportunities few, but these common people it inspired with a desire to learn and made them potential scholars, who, though backward, were yet not decadent, and who shared their spiritual possessions with one another just as much as their material property.
In touching this kind of man Christian education did what the pagan schools had neglected to do, as we have seen, on account of the rigid class-distinctions. In paying particular attention to elementary education the Church followed her own needs and Christ’s example of sympathy with children. In so far as the Church applied the Pauline teaching of the essential brotherhood and equality of man these hard distinctions tended to disappear, and education became more generally diffused. There was a real democratization of letters, but the masses had so long been neglected that the diffusion was very slow. Caesarius knew prominent business men who could not even read or write.[1010] Their culture consisted largely in folk songs and tales handed down by word of mouth. And besides, the Church was not always true to her principles: the pagan influence, backed as it was by education, proved too strong when it came to organization. The old relation of simple sincerity between clergy and congregation had long passed away, and the fifth century was a time of ecclesiastical dissensions. The bishops were chosen more and more from the aristocracy, and the sort of church ‘cursus honorum’ which had been instituted soon created barriers. In theory the government of the Church was democratic, but Sidonius gives us a picture of the practice at the episcopal elections, which shows how unstable the democracy was. On one occasion there was a great tumult caused by the contending candidates: one boasts of his ancient see, one relies on the attractiveness of his kitchen, a third has a secret arrangement whereby he will allow his followers to pillage the church property if he is elected. Finally, the bishops, Euphranius and Patiens, take the matter into their own hands, nominate an obscure worthy man, a ‘reader’ called John, and proclaim him their colleague.[1011] So, too, at Bourges, Sidonius is asked by the faction-wearied people to nominate them a bishop.[1012] In fact, the general impression, derived from reading the account of bishops and their elections in Sidonius, is that they would have said with Horace, in exactly the same pagan spirit (though they might have resented being connected with a pagan name), ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo’. They go in for charities,[1013] but these are often only a form of patronage.
Thus, in attempting to provide for plebeian education, Christianity had to contend with many difficulties. The first appearance of organized Christian education is represented by the catechumen schools which sprang up everywhere after the establishment of Christianity. The most prominent one was that of Alexandria,[1014] dating at least from the second century. The bishop, or, more frequently, a subordinate church official, following the Apostolic example,[1015] would go to some lecture-hall after the sermon and expound the doctrine of the Church to all who cared to come, or would gather his disciples round him in some private house. The school was therefore intended for adults. It had no formal organization nor was it of a permanent character. It was a kind of missionary movement that spread to all parts of the Empire. Among the first attempts in the direction of Christian elementary education, apparently, was the school at Edessa, where Lucian, a presbyter of the third century, who became famous as a teacher at Antioch,[1016] was educated.[1017] It was a place worthy of being a cradle of Christian education; its church was martyred in the second century, its teachers Protogenes and Eulogius were driven into banishment in the fourth, and in the fifth it became famous for its active share in the Nestorian controversy.
But in the West it was that ‘invasion from the South’, which Montalembert referred to, that was the instrument of Christian education. Tradition said that Athanasius introduced the idea of monasticism into Gaul (where it spread more rapidly than anywhere else in the West[1018]) during his exile at Trèves (336-7). This influence issued in action with Martin of Tours (the most popular saint of the Gallic Church), when he founded the monastery of Ligugé near Poitiers, and a second and larger one, Marmoutier (‘maius monasterium’) near Tours, about the middle of the fourth century. When he died, at the end of that century, there were numerous monasteries not only in the province of Tours but in Rouen and what afterwards became Normandy and Picardy.
The work of Martin influenced two men of Gaul, both of the upper classes, and both educated in all the learning of the day—Sulpicius Severus, ‘vir genere et litteris nobilis’,[1019] and Paulinus of Nola, the pupil of Ausonius. These men made monasticism fashionable—so much so that even Sidonius patronized it.[1020] At the beginning of the fifth century Cassian founded the monastery of St. Victor near Marseilles, and Honoratus the famous cloister of Lérins. About 450 Romanus established a monastery at Condat on the Jura, and around these centres there grew up a network of abbeys.
Now at this time there were no orders of monks, and the Rule of the Abbeys depended mainly on the choice of the abbot. The monasteries were merely groups of people who had come to live the common life (κοινόβιοι) and to discuss matters of common interest. Thus educational development was stimulated, and we find a much stronger intellectual life among the simple Christians than in the form-bound school of the rhetor. Whenever there was a dangerous heresy abroad in Gaul, Jerome or Augustine would write a refutation which was circulated throughout the country,[1021] and Sulpicius’s Life of Martin was eagerly read everywhere, and was much in demand at Rome.[1022]
This intellectual activity presently overflowed the boundaries of the monastery. Catechumens had to be trained for the Church, and it was found necessary to establish informal schools for them, where, besides religious training, they also received a smattering of the seven liberal arts. These were the forerunners of those cathedral schools which became, in the Middle Ages, the main intellectual support of the country.
The most famous episcopal school was at Arles, where Hilary taught a large number of students.[1023] Among his pupils were Cyprian, Bishop of Toulouse, Firminius, Bishop of Usez (Ucetia), and Bishop Vivencius. The interest of the Fathers in education may be illustrated from the life of Caesarius.[1024] ‘Who can describe how great and pleasing was the zeal that shone forth from him, when he discussed the Scriptures and expounded difficulties? His greatest delight was to be challenged to discuss a problem, and he himself very often urged his class, saying to us: “I know you don’t understand everything: why don’t you ask, that you may know?”’ Whatever may be said as to the extent of their teaching, it must be admitted that they showed the proper spirit of education in thus stimulating knowledge. At Arles, also, taught Pomerius, ‘scientia rhetor, Afer genere’,[1025] whose interest in literature and rhetoric was great,[1026] and whose lectures Caesarius attended. Another famous Christian teacher of the fifth century, versed particularly in ecclesiastical matters, was Victorius of Marseilles.[1027]
The monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles,[1028] built in the woods over the grotto where the martyr Victor, a Roman legionary, had been buried at the end of the third century, became a school for training the clergy, though not at once, for the motto of its founder was to flee all bishops and women.[1029] It did good work, but its fame is almost entirely eclipsed by that of the older monastery at Lérins, the nursery of bishops. Vincent the theologian,[1030] Patrick of Ireland, Cassian the founder of St. Victor, Hilary of Arles, Faustus the bishop of the via media in theological controversy,[1031] Lupus, called by Sidonius ‘episcopus episcoporum’,[1032] Eucherius, and many other celebrities were sons of Lérins. From Lérins and St. Victor were drawn almost all the educated clergy of Gaul during the fifth century. ‘En général’, says Fauriel,[1033] ‘ce furent ces évêques ou ces prêtres, sortis des cloîtres de Lérins ou de Saint-Victor, qui formèrent la partie érudite et savante du clergé ou de l’épiscopat gallo-romain....’ The Chronologia Lerinensis[1034] likens Lérins to a trailing vine which fills the earth with its fruits and extends, by the grace of God, beyond the rest. Among the many other references to the monastery in the Chronicle, there are numerous verse panegyrics extolling its congenial surroundings and indicating a real love of learning. Sidonius, too, is enthusiastic in its praise;[1035] and his commendation, imbued as he was with rhetorical culture and prejudiced in its favour, says much for the educational standard reached by Lérins. So famous was its school that Lupus, ‘the prince of prelates’, came to study there for a year, before he went to spread its spirit of study and piety. For, like most of these monks from the aristocracy, ‘he had ... a cultivated mind and took an active interest in intellectual development. He was anxious about schools and educational facilities in his diocese, and gave protection to all who encouraged learning.’[1036] Indeed, we may say that all the most literary and philosophic men of the time, as well as the most religious, flocked to the island-quiet of Lérins. It is no wonder that Mamertus, in describing the failing culture of the fifth century, mentions Lérins as an exception.
In the Chronologia sacrae insulae Lerinensis[1037] we find a concrete example of a monastic school.
‘At the time when the studies of the monastery of Lérins flourished in the regions of Gaul, the Christian religion ... began to grow everywhere and to commit itself to the study of letters. In this place there was an excellent abbot, a holy man, Caesarius, the servant of Christ, who afterwards became bishop of Arles.’ Amid the general flocking of people to Lérins for education or edification (‘cumque ad eum omnes unanimiter concurrerent pro salute animarum sive studiis litterarum’), there came an Italian soldier and his son Siffredus, earnestly craving admittance. The soldier became a monk, and his son was put to school (‘filius vero litterarum studiis traditur’), and in a short time he attained proficiency in ‘grammar’, rhetoric, and dialectic.
Similarly, Salvian sends a fellow countryman of his to be educated at Lérins,[1038] and we may judge from the Regula of Caesarius that many boys went there for instruction. Laymen were not excluded. In 480 St. Melanius attended a school at Rennes controlled by priests, yet apparently attached to no monastery.[1039] That such semi-theological schools existed in Gaul, at least from the beginning of the fifth century, we may judge from the fact that the sons of Eucherius, Veranius and Salonius, were taught at Lérins in subjects religious and profane[1040] during the first years of that century.[1041] Not unjustifiable, therefore, is the statement of Barralis that Lérins was ‘litterarum et virtutis emporium’.[1042]
But while the existence of Christian schools cannot be questioned, their extent and organization in Gaul during the fifth century are vague and undefined. St. Benedict’s example had not yet brought about an ordered system of monasteries, and there was still much that was erratic and irregular. Though the leaders of the Church in the main allowed the use of pagan studies in Christian teaching, yet in practice the methods employed must have depended on the sympathy and the inclination of the autonomous abbot. Now where an abbot had enjoyed a rhetorical training, we can hardly doubt that he imparted it to his pupils: for it requires a great deal of intellectual development in a master not to teach as he has been taught. But only a certain proportion of abbots could have had this training. There were many brilliant monks, many perhaps of whose distinction we do not know. But they could not have directed all the monasteries of fifth-century Gaul. The temper of the people, too, was all against literary studies. The number, therefore, of such schools as Lérins, in which secular and religious studies were simultaneously kept up, was probably not large. In the following century the division between secular and religious schools became progressively marked, chiefly owing to the influence of Cassiodorus. The division between one Christian school and another was naturally far from rigid; we read of Honoratus sending three of his scholars at Lérins to hear the lectures of Paulinus at Nola.[1043]
The children who came to the monastery schools were of two kinds: the oblati,[1044] who remained and became monks, and those who attended the schola exterior and lived a secular life after their education. The age at which they were admitted was an early one. Ennodius says that Epiphanius became a ‘lector’ at eight,[1045] and Sidonius that Bishop John of Châlons-sur-Marne was ‘lector ab infantia.’[1046] Nunneries, like the one at Arles, took children at six or seven—‘ab annis sex aut septem, quae iam litteras discere et obedientiae possit obtemperare’.[1047]
Classes were generally held in the body of the church (in inferiori Basilicae navi[1048]) and the twenty-fourth canon of the fourth Council of Toledo (seventh century) probably represents the regular practice of our period. It provides that the children of the clergy should all be kept in one room to be trained in the ways of the Church, and that they should be entrusted to a senior person of approved character who was to give them both moral and intellectual instruction.[1049]
We hear of a head master variously called in later times ‘Scholasticus’, ‘scholaster’, ‘capischola’ (caput scholae) ‘Decanus’, ‘Cancellarius’. ‘Cum igitur Levitas feceris’, wrote Remigius, ‘Archidiaconum institueris Primicerium scholae clarissimae.’[1050] A sixth-century inscription of Lyons[1051] reads: ‘In hoc tomolo requiescit famolus D̅I̅ Stefanus primicirius scolae lectorum....’
Private teaching, which had always gone side by side with the schools, increased in the fifth century among Christian parents for three reasons: the opposition of pagan to Christian education, which, amid the unorganized state of the monastery schools, often forced home-education upon parents; the fact that the pagan schools catered chiefly for the upper classes and that Christianity was now inspiring the masses with a desire for instruction; and the influence of the monastic ideal which shunned public contact for fear of contamination.
In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school, which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century, set up a school at Antinoe (Antinoopolis), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ ... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052] Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method, which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be the more profitable.
Reading was a specially important subject on account of the ‘lectores’ who read the lessons in church. Originally they were charged with the reading of Scriptures, but later their duties became more general. The ‘lectores’ formed the second of the minor orders, and the office demanded a certain amount of education, though sometimes the ‘lectores’ seem to have been no more than choir boys. Isidore of Seville states that any one who is promoted to this office must be trained in books and learning, and well equipped with a knowledge of words and their meanings.[1059] The eighth canon of the fourth Council of Carthage describes the solemn ordination of a ‘lector’.[1060] Sometimes qualifications of birth and rank added to the dignity of the office. Julian, the emperor, and his brother Gallus were admitted as readers into the church of Nicomedia, and Paulinus of Nola tells us that St. Felix was a ‘lector’.[1061] The readers stood, as has been indicated, under a ‘primicerius’, who was also the head of all the minor orders. ‘Ad primicerium’, said Gregory, ‘pertinent acolythi et exorcistae, psalmistae atque lectores.’[1062]
On the teaching of writing Jerome again follows Quintilian in recommending a tracing of the letters on the wax for the help of the pupil.[1063] ‘Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere, vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli, vel in tabella sculpantur elementa ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur vestigia....’[1064] These wax-tablets, dating from ancient Roman times, go on into the eleventh century.[1065] Copying was, of course, an important part in the monastic writing activities, and Sulpicius Severus says that it was assigned to the ‘brethren of younger years’.[1066] Such was the importance attached to it, that in the less advanced cloisters, like that of Martin, no other art was practised.[1067] Even the nuns practised it. We find Caesarius exhorting them to vary their reading and psalm singing with transcribing, under the supervision of the abbess,[1068] and it was so that Rusticula, abbess of Arles, trained her nuns.[1069]
One of the borrowings from the pagan schools which the Church found most useful was shorthand. The bishops had their ‘notarii’ just as much as the officials of the imperial Civil Service. They were employed to take down the proceedings of the Councils, the acta of the martyrs,[1070] and the speeches and sermons of the prominent clergy. Their prevalence has been the plague of commentators, and has contributed much to the formlessness of Christian writing. For the scribe would take down the bishop’s speech verbatim and copy it out as it stood. There was no revision or rearrangement, and many errors and much diffuseness was the result, as in the Homilies of Hilary of Poitiers.[1071] Hilary of Arles, Honoratus tells us, used to have a ‘notarius’. ‘Sedili mensaque apposita liber ingerebatur et retia,[1072] adstante notario. Liber praebebat animo cibum, manus nectendi velocitate currebant, notarii simul ferebantur articuli et oculus paginam percurrebat.’[1073] Evidently the possession of a ‘notarius’ did not mean a decrease in activity, mental or otherwise. Similarly, Jerome on a certain occasion was compelled by his friend Ausonius to send for his secretary and dictate a letter to the bereaved Julian, and ‘as the words fell swiftly from his lips, they were swiftly overtaken by the hand of the writer’.[1074] Again, he describes the vigour of his secretarial department in terms of martial ardour and excitement: ‘ecce noster Ausonius coepit schedulas flagitare, urgere notarios, et hinnitu ferventis equi, ingenioli mei festinus arguere tarditatem’.[1075] That shorthand was connected with the schools is clear enough from Prudentius.[1076] He tells us of a tablet in a church at Forum Cornelii representing the martyr Cassianus who had been a teacher of stenography.
Transcribers of books were patronized by wealthy families, and apparently sent from one house to another. Sidonius[1077] recommends to Ruricus one who had copied out the Heptateuch, and had on sale also a copy of the Prophets, which he had edited. The man was evidently of low social standing, for Sidonius leaves it to Ruricus to fix the price of the work; yet he must have had a considerable education to have been able to edit the Prophets. We hear also of a citizen of Clermont who had wormed out of the copyist or bookseller (scriba sive bibliopola) of Remigius at Rheims a copy of the latter’s Declamations,[1078] which shows that the scribe was sometimes also the librarian.
In arithmetic, the strict monastic rules for silence, which made it necessary, for example, to ask for things at meals by signs,[1079] increased the Roman tendency to finger-computation. How elaborate a system was thus worked out we may see from Bede’s work on the subject.[1080] Great stress was laid on the ‘Computus’, a set of tables for calculating astronomical events and the movable dates of the calendar. It was regarded by Cassiodorus as indispensable for the clergy.[1081] The ‘calculus’ of Victorinus of Aquitaine, who invented a new Paschal calendar about the middle of the fifth century, was frequently used.[1082] The idea of mystical numbers, derived from Pythagoras, led to much fanciful nonsense in the Middle Ages, as we may see from Alcuin’s letter to his pupil Gallicellulus,[1083] in which he compared the numbers mentioned in the Old Testament with those of the New.
We have seen that monastic education, where, as at Lérins, the abbot was sympathetic, extended beyond the range of theological or church subjects. The Chronicle of Lérins insists on this,[1084] and its statements are borne out to a certain extent by the inscriptions, which show how strongly Vergil’s influence survived among the Christians. Several times we find on the tombstones:
and the words ‘Subiectasque videt nubes et sidera caeli’[1085] in an inscription on a Bishop of Arles recall the verse describing the apotheosis of Daphnis. An inscription of Narbonne, belonging, probably, to the fifth century, has the phrase ‘summi rector Olimpi’.[1086] As for the Fathers, they are constantly bursting forth into Vergilian language. Paulinus, in the midst of his tirade against the pagan Muses, in the heat of his appeal to turn to the Christian God, slips into ‘inania murmura miscent’,[1087] and Jerome, while urging Julianus to become a monk, ends with a Vergilian quotation: he must follow the example of the Holy Vera, ‘et sit tibi tanti dux femina facti’.[1088] Thus the Christian writers by their own words prove the folly of the extreme anti-pagan point of view, even when they themselves have held it.
We may take it, then, that Vergil was read. We hear also of the fables of Avianus, who lived under the Antonines,[1089] and the fourth-century Disticha Catonis, a collection of moral rules. The former work remained in the schools till the tenth century, while the latter was among the commonest of elementary school-books as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth century.[1090] The text-books of the grammarians were no doubt freely used. Sidonius praises the ‘discipline’ of Agroecius[1091] (fifth century), who wrote a famous work on Orthography, intended to supplement a book on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It is significant that the work is dedicated to Bishop Eucherius. As we go into the sixth century the traces of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium begin to appear.[1092] The fifth century was a transition period, in which the doctrine of the extreme monastic party (if we may speak of a party when so many eminent men spoke now on the one side and now on the other), and the teaching of the liberals, were represented in the schools in fluctuating and uncertain proportions. By the time of Gregory of Tours (sixth century) the extremists had so far given way that he allowed his theological students to pass through the seven arts of Capella, and to write poetry, which, however, was still suspect, and had fallen from its previous prominence to a precarious place at the end of the list.