Читать книгу The History of Education - Ellwood Patterson Cubberley - Страница 43

To some of the early Christians this life did not appeal. To them holiness was associated with a complete withdrawal from contact with this sinful world and all its activities. Some betook themselves to the desert, others to the forests or mountains, and others shut themselves up alone that they might be undisturbed in their religious meditations. To such devoted souls monasticism, a scheme of living brought into the Christian world from the East, made a strong appeal. It provided that such men should live together in brotherhoods, renouncing the world, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and devoting their lives to hard labor and the mortification of the flesh that the soul might be exalted and made beautiful. The members lived alone in individual cells, but came together for meals, prayer, and religious service.

As early as 330 a monastery had been organized on the island of Tebernae, in the Nile. About 350 Saint Basil introduced monasticism into Asia Minor, where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The monastic idea was soon transferred to the West, a monastery being established at Rome probably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint Victor, at Marseilles, was founded by Cassian in 404, and this type of monastery and monastic rule was introduced into Gaul, about 415. The monastery of Lerins (off Cannes, in southern France) was established in 405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of monastic foundations took place in western Europe, particularly along the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire in Gaul.

[Illustration: FIG. 29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS

(From a thirteenth-century manuscript)]

In 529 Saint Benedict, a Roman of wealth who fled from the corruption of his city, founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, south of Rome, and established a form of government, or rule of daily life, which was gradually adopted by nearly all the monasteries of the West. In time Europe came to be dotted with thousands of these establishments, many of which were large and expensive institutions both to found and to maintain. [24] By the time the barbarian invasions were in full swing monasticism had become an established institution of the Christian Church. Nunneries for women also were established early. A letter from Saint Jerome to Marcella, a Roman matron, in 382, in which he says that "no high-born lady at Rome had made profession of the monastic life … or had ventured … publicly to call herself a nun," would seem to imply that such institutions had already been established in Rome.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS. Poverty, chastity, obedience, labor, and religious devotion were the essential features of a monastic life. The Rule of Saint Benedict (R. 43) organized in a practical way the efforts of those who took the vows. In a series of seventy-three rules which he laid down, covering all phases of monastic life, the most important from the standpoint of posterity was the forty-eighth, prescribing at least seven hours of daily labor and two hours of reading "for all able to bear the load." From that part of the rule requiring regular manual labor the monks became the most expert farmers and craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, while to the requirement of daily reading we owe in large part the development of the school and the preservation of learning in the West during the long intellectual night of the mediaeval period (R. 44).

Into these monastic institutions the oblati, that is, those who wished to become monks, were received as early as the age of twelve, and occasionally earlier (R. 53 a). The final vows (R. 53 b) could not be taken until eighteen, so during this period the novice was taught to work and to read and write, given instruction in church music, and taught to calculate the church festivals and to do simple reckoning. In time some condensed and carefully edited compendium of the elements of classical learning was also studied, and still later a more elaborate type of instruction was developed in some of the monasteries. This, however, belongs to a later division of this history, and further description of church and monastic education will be deferred until we study the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. Aside from the general instruction in the practices of the church and home instruction in the work of a woman, there was but little provision made for the education of girls not desiring to join a convent or nunnery. A few, however, obtained a limited amount of intellectual training. The letter of Saint Jerome to the Roman lady Paula (R. 45), regarding the education of her daughter, is a very important document in the history of early Christian education for girls. Dating from 403, it outlines the type of training a young girl should be given who was to be properly educated in Christian faith and properly consecrated to God. What he outlined was education for nunneries, a number of which had been founded in the East and a few in the West. In the West these institutions later experienced an extensive development, and offered the chief opportunity for any intellectual education for women during the whole of the Middle Ages.