Читать книгу The History of Education - Ellwood Patterson Cubberley - Страница 44

WHAT THE CHURCH BROUGHT TO THE MIDDLE AGES. From a small and purely spiritual organization, devoting its energies to exhortation and to the moral regeneration of mankind, and without creed or form of government, as the Christian Church was in the first two centuries of its development, we have traced the organization of a body of doctrine, the perfection of a strong system of church government, and the development of a very limited educational system designed merely to train leaders for its service. We have also shown how it added to its early ecclesiastical organization a strong governmental organization, became a State within a State, and gradually came to direct the State itself. It was thus ready, when the virtual separation of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western division took place, in 395, and when the western division finally fell before the barbarian onslaughts, to take up in a way the work of the State, force the barbarian hordes to acknowledge its power, and begin the process of civilizing these new tribes and building up once more a civilization in the western world. In addition to its spiritual and political power, the Church also had developed, in its catechumenal instruction and in the cathedral and monastic schools, a very meager form of an educational system for the training of its future leaders and servants. A great change had now taken place in the nature of education as a preparation for life, and intellectual education, in the sense that it was known and understood in Greece and Rome, was not to be known again in the western world for almost a thousand years. The distinguishing characteristic of the centuries which follow, up to the Revival of Learning, are, first, a struggle against very adverse odds to prevent civilization from disappearing entirely, and later a struggle to build up new foundations upon which world civilization might begin once more where it had left off in Greece and Rome.

THE THREE GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD. Thus, before the Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world which were to form the foundations of our future western civilization had been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system of wonderful effectiveness—one that in its higher development in time took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly modified all later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are especially indebted for out conceptions of law, order, and government, and for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest conceptions of God, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world.

All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into an East and West, in 395; and the final division of the Christian Church into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek language from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more tolerant of pagan learning than was the Western, and was better able to withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it. Hellenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning which we know as the Renaissance. Of the Latin literature and learning much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of barbarism and general ignorance through which it passed, and only in modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of its founder.

[Illustration: FIG. 30. SHOWING THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AND THE

CHURCH

The map also shows conditions as they were in Europe at the end of the fourth century A.D. Syria, Egypt, Africa, and a portion of Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the Saracens in the seventh century and became Mohammedan, but Constantinople held out until 1453. The eastern division eventually gave rise to the Greek Catholic Church of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia, while the western division became the Roman Catholic Church of western Europe. At Constantinople Greek learning was preserved until the West was again ready to receive it. The Eastern Empire for a time retained control of Sicily and southern Italy (the old Magna Graecia), but eventually these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity.]

THE FUTURE STORY. For the long period of intellectual stagnation which now followed, the educational story is briefly told. But little formal education was needed, and that of but one main type. It was only after the Church had won its victory over the barbarian hordes, and had built up the foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that education in any broad and liberal sense was again needed. This required nearly a thousand years of laborious and painful effort. Then, when schools again became possible and learning again began to be demanded, education had to begin again with the few at the top, and the contributions of Greece and Rome had to be recovered and put into usable form as a basis upon which to build. It is only very recently that it has become possible to extend education to all.

In Part II we shall next trace briefly the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and the reawakening, and in Part III we shall, among other things, point out the deep and lasting influence of the work of these ancient civilizations on our modern educational thoughts and practices.