VI. SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES IN THE "DARK" AGES.

Protestant boasting-Light and darkness-Revival of letters and the Reformation-Early and recent persecution of slander compared-Gibbon-Protestant theory-Lame argument-Early Christian Schools Plato and Aristotle Irish Schools-And Irish Scholars-Cathedral Schools-Charlemagne and Alfred-Councils ordering the erection of Schools-The monasteries - And monastio Schools-What was therein taught-Schools for the nobility-Signing in cipher-Female Academies - Literary ladies-Universities-In Italy-England-And France-Statement of Danielo examined-Curious incident in the history of the University of Paris-Three qualities of mediæval Schools and Universities stated and established-Who first founded Free Schools?-Glance at modern Universities.

Of all the puffs of this puffing age, none has been louder or of longer continuance, than that which has vaunted the triumphs of Protestantism in the matter of education. By dint of constant boasting, Protestant writers have almost persuaded the world, that its rise from barbarism, its enlightenment in literature, its progress in science and art, its present civilization, are all ascribable to the revolution, called by its friends the reformation; and that before that blessed event, all was darkness and wide-spread desolation. The Church sat down in the midst of this darkness, quite at home and at her ease: she made no effort to dissipate the gloom; she fostered it rather, as the thing above all others most suited to her wicked purpose,. of infusing into the minds of men the deadly poison of error and super

stition!

Such is the proudly boasting theory, which Protestant writers have sought to establish, rather by bold and reckless assertion, than by calm and solid argument. Verily, if history did not inform us, that a Catholic first invented steam navigation,' we should be greatly tempted to ascribe that invention also to the reformation! Since this religious revolution,. there has been in the world one continual puff! puff!! puff!!!-and, amidst the accompanying noise and smoke, men's minds have been scarcely calm enough to form a correct judgment on the true facts of history. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, has boasted little, and done much; without vaunting her literary triumphs, she has really been the foundress of Schools and Universities, the fosterer of arts and sciences, and the mother of inventions; as will abundantly appear, we think, from the fact embo-

1 Blasco de Garay, a Spaniard, first constructed a Steam Engine for purposes of navigation, and in the year 1543, he made a successful experiment with it in the harbor of Barcelona, before Charles. V. and all his court, and in presence of the whole city. The vessel with which he tried his experi ment was of 200 barrels [tons?] burden. See Naverette--"Colleccion de Viages," and "A year in Spain," vol. i, p. 47.

died in this Essay. Before Protestantism was ever heard of, she had struggled single-handed for centuries against ignorance and barbarism. She had already achieved a splendid triumph over these evils, some time before the dawn of the reformation. The brilliant literary age of Leo X., which was at its meridian of glory when Luther began his revolt, has never been surpassed, if even rivaled,-by Protestants at any subsequent epoch.

Were this the place for such an investigation, facts might be accumulated to show, that the reformation, instead of advancing, retarded the progress of learning for a whole century. Amidst the confusion, angry polemics, and bloody civil wars, to which that revolution gave rise, men had neither time nor inclination to apply to the cultivation of letters. Great minds which, during "Leo's golden days," had directed all their energies to literary pursuits, were then destined to consume their strength in acrimonious religious controversy. Instead of drinking at the pure fountains of Helicon, they were doomed to slake their thirst at the troubled waters of controversial debate. The history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, remarkably sterile in literary improvement and invention, compared with the two previous ones, affords a striking demonstration of this position.

In more modern times, in our own age and country, the course pursued by Protestant writers towards the Catholic Church, on the subject of education, has been singularly unjust and inconsistent. Sometimes they accuse her of fostering ignorance, and at others, of monopolizing education. These two charges are also not unfrequently made in the same breath, and in reference to the same time and place! In proof of this assertion, we confidently appeal to the line of argument adopted by the Protestant religious press in the United States, during the last quarter of a century. Whatever rule of conduct she pursues, the Catholic Church cannot please these fastidious gentry of the Protestant press and pulpit. Does she rear Schools and Colleges all over the land, going even beyond her means to bring education to the door of the humblest citizen? The cry is at once raised, that she wishes to monoplize education, and to use the influence thus obtained in order to make proselytes to her creed. Does she make no extraordinary efforts in behalf of learning? The old stereotype charge is rung in our ears, that she means to foster ignorance. Placed in a dilemma, analogous to that of her divine Founder and Spouse, while He was laboring for the redemption of mankind in the land of Israel, she may apply His language, in addressing the people of this age of boasted enlightenment: " But whereunto shall I esteem this generation to be alike? It is like children sitting in the market place, who cry out to their companions and say, 'We have piped to you, and you have not danced; we have lamented, and you have not mourned. '''1

The charge preferred against the Church,-of encouraging ignorance,— is as old as Christianity. The Christians of the first three centuries were

1 St. Math. xi, 16. seq.

sneered at for their poverty and their want of learning. This calumnious accusation is repeated over and over again, with singular gusto, by that heartless and sneering infidel, Gibbon; whose grandiloquent style and well rounded periods have contributed, perhaps more than the writings of any other enemy of Christianity, to poison the minds of youth, and to foster real ignorance, under the pretext of promoting philosophy. The greediness with which this and similar works are sought for and devoured in Protestant communities, is one out of many proofs, that all errorists sympathize with one another. Such works meet with very little sympathy in Catholic countries. In fact, the best refutation of the insidious history of "the Decline and Downfall of the Roman Empire," is the production of an Italian Catholic.'

In the fourth century, that arch enemy of Christianity, Julian the apostate, by legal enactments against the education of Christians in the Colleges and Schools of the Roman empire, sought to perpetuate this stigma of ignorance. The imperial persecutor had the heartlessness to sneer at the ignorance of Christians, and to prohibit their education in the same breath !2

It is a singular coincidence in the history of mankind, that England, after the reformation, adopted precisely the same iniquitous course towards Catholic Ireland. By her statutes, it was penal for a Catholic to teach school in Ireland; and yet, as if exulting with fiendish delight at the mischief which this iniquitous law was calculated to produce, you might hear her loud and long protracted notes of triumph over the ignorance and debasement of the Irish;-a triumph not justified, however, by the facts, notwithstanding every English Protestant effort to foster ignorance!

The usual device of Protestant writers is, to accuse the Catholic Church of promoting ignorance, especially during the middle ages, in order that, availing herself of the general darkness of that period, she might the more easily establish her erroneous principles. This theory has been so often and so boldly stated, that it has almost passed current as truth in our enlightened age. Does the Catholic ask the Protestant to inform him, when even one of the Catholic doctrines, against which he protests, had its origin at any period subsequent to the Apostolic age? Perhaps some other response may at first be hazarded: but when driven from every other position, the answer will probably be, that the doctrine in question originated in the Dark Ages! And when asked further, when and where it was first broached during that period, the respondent shrouds himself triumphantly in the darkness of these ages, as in a panoply of strength, and thinks himself clad in a mail of proof! We have more than once been amused at such exhibitions of polemical skill.

And yet this argument, or rather subterfuge, has not even the merit of

1 Spedalieri-" Rifutazione di Gibbon," 5 Vols. 12mo. An abridgment, at least, of this work should be given to the English community.

2 And yet Gibbon, Tytler, and other historians much in favor among Protestants, are in the habit of eulogizing this apostate, as the greatest philosopher and legislator of his age; while they have little but reproach and sneers to bestow on such men as Constantine and Theodosius! Another proof this of the tender kindred feeling existing amongst errorists of different shades of opinion.

speciousness or plausibility. To borrow an expressive figure from the schoolmen of the Dark Ages, it is lame of both feetutroque claudicat pede: the premises are not true, and if they were, the conclusion would not follow. In other words, it is not true, that the epoch in question was so dark as it is often represented; and even if it had been tenfold more so, it would not thence follow that Christianity could then have been more easily corrupted, than at any other more enlightened period.

To begin with this last position; did Christ any where say, that literature was intended to be a distinctive mark of His Church? Or that His promises to the Church were to depend for their fulfillment on the literary qualifications of His followers? Was the promotion of human learning a principal object of His divine mission? Had it been so, would He not have selected, as the heralds of His kingdom, men of talents and gifted with human learning, rather than poor illiterate fishermen? Would He not have sought out and commissioned, to found His religion, the philosophers and rhetoricians of Greece and Rome, in preference to twelve unlearned men selected for this from the lowest walks of life in Judea? The truth is, that "He purpose chose the foolish things of the world, that He might confound the wise, and the weak things of the world, that He might confound the strong: and the mean things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, and things that are not, that He might destroy the things that are; that no flesh should glory in His sight." It was a leading maxim of His kingdom, that "knowledge puffeth up; but charity edifieth." He promised, that the "gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church," built upon a rock; without even once intimating that the fulfillment of this solemn pledge was to depend on the encouragement of human learning by His Church.

The other foot of the argument is equally lame. The Church has, in fact, always promoted learning, even in the most calamitous periods of her history. Men of every shade of opinion are beginning to pay this homage to truth. In Germany, in France, in Italy, and in England, writers of distinguished ability, without distinction of creed, have applied themselves with singular industry and success to exploring the hitherto neglected treasures of medieval literature. And the man who, with the result of all these literary labors spread out before the world, will still persist in calling the middle ages dark, only exhibits the darkness of his own mind

2 1. Corinth. viii, 1.

8 Math. xvi. 18.

1 1. Corinth. I. 27, seq. 4 The principal writers on this subject are in Italy, Muratori Dissertationes de Antiquitatibus Medii Evi 6 vols. folio - Tiraboschi - Storia Della Letteratura Italiana, 28 vols. 32 mo. - Bettinelli, Risorgimento, della Letteratura Italiana, 2 vols. 8 vo. - Andres, Storia di ogni Letteratura, 6 vols. 4 to. Battini Apologia dei Secoli Barbai 8 vols. 12 mo.,- besides many others. In Germany, Heeren Geschichte des studiums der classischen Litteratur im Mittelalter; Voigt - Geschichte Preussens, etc. etc. In England, Hallam, Maitland, and others. In France, Guizot, and, not to mention a host of others, a learned writer, who, over the signature "Achery," has lately written a series of very learned and able articles on this subject, published in the Annales de la Philosophie Chretienne, upon the treasures contained in which we shall draw copiously in this Essay. We shall also occasionally avail ourselves of Digby's great work, "The Ages of Faith," in which the reader will find every thing on this, and almost every other subject, "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble," put together with at least as much learning as order. This work is, in truth, an abyss of learning — abyssus multa.

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on the subject, and resembles one who, blindfolded at mid-day, should persevere in declaring against all evidence that it was as dark as midnight!

We have elsewhere spoken in some detail of the services rendered to learning by the Catholic clergy, as well as of the condition of literature and the arts in the middle ages. What we purpose to do, at present, is, to furnish a summary sketch of the Schools and Universities founded by the Church during that period.

From the earliest ages, Schools and Colleges grew up under the fostering care of the Church. The most celebrated were those of Rome, Alexandria, Milan, Carthage, and Nisibis. Who has not read of the brilliant Christian Schools of Alexandria in the third century, where Christian youths, even amidst the darkening storm of persecution, were seen eagerly thronging the academic halls, to drink in the teaching which fell from the eloquent lips of the great Origen? Their ardor for learning could not be quenched, even by the blood of the almost numberless victims, who fell under the sword of a Decius and a Valerian. Who has not heard of the

glory shed upon the Schools of Carthage and Rome by the great St. Augustine, in the beginning of the fifth century? Though Africa was his country, yet this illustrious man preferred the Schools of Rome, and he determined to reflect on this city the luster of his splendid talents. "The chief cause of my going to Rome," says he, "was my hearing that young men studied there more quietly, and that they were kept in order by a better discipline."

In these earliest models of Christian Schools, sacred was justly preferred to profane learning; because the objects of the former were so much higher and nobler. Yet the latter was also cultivated, but was made to shine with light borrowed chiefly from the former. Great men then thought, that human learning had attained its highest standard of excellence, when its teachings were most conformable to the heavenly wisdom; when it reflected most the light of divine Truth-of God. But to meet, on his own ground, the votary of mere human learning, the Christian scholar was compelled occasionally to descend from his lofty eminence, into the arena of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies. The result of this condescension was, however, rather to elevate pagan philosophy, than to lower the loftier standard of Christian wisdom. At that period, Plato had the ascendant over the Stagyrite, particularly in the School of Alexandria; the latter, however, almost entirely eclipsed his more brilliant rival during many subsequent centuries. The famous Medicean School of Florence, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, restored Plato to his pre-eminence; and F. Schlegel greatly prefers him to Aristotle. The Christian Schools borrowed from both what seemed best to suit their purposes; and though exclusive partiality for Plato betrayed Origen and other professors into some errors and extravagances, yet the influence of the ancient philosophy, thus moulded to the Christian standard, was generally highly beneficial. 1 Confessions, B. v.

2 In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History."