THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
by
ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
Part 6 out of 18
INFLUENCE ON OTHER ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. In a preceding chapter (p.
152) we mentioned the founding of many English grammar schools after 1200.
At the time Saint Paul's School was refounded there were something like
three hundred of these, of all classes, in England. They existed in
connection with the old monasteries, cathedrals, collegiate churches,
guilds, and charity foundations in connection with parish churches, while
a few were due to private benevolence and had been founded independently
of either Church or State. The Sevenoaks Grammar School, founded by the
will of William Sevenoaks, in 1432 (R. 141), and for which he stated in
his will that he desired as master "an honest man, sufficiently advanced
and expert in the science of Grammar, B.A., by no means in holy orders,"
and the chantry grammar school founded by John Percyvall, in 1503 (R.
142), are examples of the parish type. The famous Winchester Public
School, founded by Bishop William of Wykeham, in 1382, to emphasize
grammar, religion, and manners, and to prepare seventy scholars for New
College, at Oxford, [14] where they were to be trained as priests; and
Eton College, founded by Henry VI, in 1440, to prepare students for King's
College, at Cambridge, are examples of the larger private foundations. A
few, such as the grammar school at Sandwich (1579), owed their origin (R.
143) to the initiative of the city authorities. Most of these grammar
schools were small, but a few were large and wealthy establishments.
These old foundations, with their mediaeval curriculum, after a time began
to feel the influence of Colet's school. Within a century, due to one
influence or another, practically all had been remodeled after the new
classical type set up by Colet. In the course of study given for Eton (R.
144), for 1560, we see the new learning fully established, and in the
course of study for a small country grammar school, in 1635 (R. 145), we
see how fully the new learning, with its emphasis on Latin as a living
language, had by this time extended to even the smallest of the English
grammar schools. The new foundations, after 1510, were almost entirely
new-learning grammar schools, with large emphasis on grammar, good Latin
and Greek, games and sports, and the religious spirit. One of the most
conspicuous of these later foundations was Merchant Taylor's School, [15]
founded in London in 1561, and of which Richard Mulcaster (1531-1611), the
author of two important books on educational theory, [16] was for long the
headmaster. The first American Latin grammar school (Boston, 1635) was a
direct descendant of these English influences and traditions.
[Illustration: PLATE 5. STRATFORD-ON-AVON GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Established by the Holy Cross Guild of Stratford-on-Avon, at the beginning
of the fifteenth century. The Grammar School was built in 1426, of wood,
and at a cost of L10, 5_s_., 3-1/2_d_. The school was held on the upper
floor, the lower being used as a guild-hall. Here Shakespeare went to
school, and saw companies of strolling players in the hall below. The
lower picture shows the grammar-school room after its "restoration," in
1892.]
THE REACTION AGAINST MEDIAEVALISM. Having traced the introduction of the
new learning by countries, it still remains to point out certain
significant educational features of the movement which were common in all
lands, and which profoundly modified subsequent educational practice. Both
the purpose and the method of education were permanently changed.
Up to about the middle of the fourth Christian century the aim of both
Greek and Roman education had been to prepare men to become good and
useful citizens in the State. Then the Church gained control of education,
and for a thousand years the chief object was to prepare for the world to
come. Success and good citizenship in this world counted for little,
religious devotion took the place of the old state patriotism, the
salvation of souls took the place of the promotion of the social welfare,
and the aim and end of life here was to attain everlasting bliss in the
world to come. To be able to appease the dread Judge at the Day of
Judgment, prayer, penance, and holy contemplation were the important
things here below. It was preeminently the age of the self-abasing monk,
and this mental attitude dominated all thinking and learning.
The spirit behind the Revival of Learning was a protest against this
mediaeval attitude, and the protest was vigorous and successful. The
Revival of Learning was a clear break with mediaeval traditions and with
mediaeval authority. It restored to the world the ideals of earlier
education--self-culture, and preparation for usefulness and success in the
world here. In Italy, France, Germany, and England the movement, too, met
with the most thorough approval from modern men--merchants, court
officials, and scholars who were ready to break with the mediaeval type of
thinking. The court and other types of secondary schools now established
were popular with the higher classes in society, and this aristocratic
stamp the humanistic schools and courses have ever since retained. These
schools restored to the world the practical education of the days of
Cicero, and preparation for intelligent service in the Church, State, and
the larger business life became one of their important purposes. Supported
as they were by the ruling classes, the new schools were close to the most
progressive forces in the national life of the different countries. They
represented an unmistakable reaction against the world of the mediaeval
monk and the Scholastic, and their early success was in large part because
of this.
MODIFICATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CURRICULUM. The mediaeval curriculum, as we
have seen (chap. VII), was based on instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts.
Grammar at first was the great subject, but later Dialectic became the
master science. Knowledge was regarded as an organic whole, capable of
being stated in a brief encyclopaedia, and each man could learn it all.
With the rise of university instruction some new knowledge was added,
chiefly from Moslem sources, and the old knowledge was minutely re-ground.
With the revival of the ancient learning there came, within a little more
than a century, an enormous increase in the world's sum of knowledge, and
the invention of printing came just in time to multiply and scatter this
new knowledge throughout western Europe. To all the old subjects a new
wealth of detail was added which made teaching encyclopaedias impossible.
New purposes in education now came to prevail, and the great mediaeval
teaching curriculum was changed in content and in relative importance.
Of the subjects in the old _Trivium_, Dialectic or Logic, which
Scholastics had raised to the place of first importance, was dethroned,
and relegated to a minor position in university instruction. In its place
Grammar, as Quintilian knew and used the term (R. 76) and as based on and
including Literature, was raised once more to the place of first
importance. Out of this, Literature--at first the classical and later the
modern--later came as a separate study, as did also the study of History
and Mythology. By the latter part of the sixteenth century technical
Grammar had been separated from Literature, and made a more elementary
subject, while Rhetoric had developed into a critical study of literary
art. Of the subjects of the _Quadrivium_, Arithmetic, Geometry, and
Astronomy were each greatly expanded, as a result of the introduction of
much new knowledge, and each was reduced to textbook form, while Algebra
and Trigonometry were now organized as teaching subjects. Due to their
newness and difficulty these subjects were taught chiefly in the
universities. There they remained for a long time before being passed down
to the secondary schools. Out of the very elemental instruction given in
Geography and Astronomy were in time evolved all the biological and
physical sciences, though this development belongs to a later chapter
(XVII), and these new subjects did not reach the secondary schools until
well into the nineteenth century. The last of the quadrivial subjects,
Music, experienced a different history in different countries. In the
Germanic countries it continued to receive its old emphasis, while in
England and France much less was made of it. After the setting-in of
Puritanism in England, when music was regarded with great disfavor, it in
large part passed out of the English curriculum. As a result the Germanic
and Scandinavian nations are to-day singing nations, while the English and
American are not. In early America, in particular, was the religious
reaction against music especially strong.
[Illustration: FIG. 85. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN STUDIES
The great study of each period is in CAPITALS; subjects in _italics_
indicate that they also were quite important. Least important subjects in
ordinary type.]
NEW TEACHING METHODS. Such important changes naturally called for a
progressively evolving series of printed textbooks, and these now came
fast from the presses. The day of one textbook, which could dominate all
instruction for hundreds of years, was over forever. A few books, such as
Lily's or Melanchthon's Latin grammars and the textbooks of Erasmus, were
still used for a long time, but throughout the sixteenth century, before
the schools became formalized and lost their earlier purpose, each
textbook issued was soon superseded by a better one. The invention of
printing, too, changed teaching from a reading-by-the-professor to a
textbook method, and tremendously shortened the time necessary to give
instruction in any subject. With the manufacture of paper the written
theme, too, displaced the disputation, with great gains in accuracy of
thinking and refinement in the use of words. It was still the Latin theme
or verse or oration, to be sure, and the object of the new instruction was
to teach Latin as a living language, but before long the time was to come
when the same methods would be transferred to instruction in the native
tongues and for national ends.
To make the instruction as practical as possible, and thus prepare the
pupils for service as Latin scholars in public or scholarly pursuits, the
ancient literature was studied in part as a storehouse of adequate and
elegant expression, and numerous phrase books [17] were written for use in
the schools. When we remember that Latin was still the language of all
learned literature, of the university classroom, of most diplomatic and
legal documents, and a practical necessity for travel or communication
abroad, we can realize why so much emphasis was placed on the constant use
of Latin as the language of the school. [18] As Leach [19] so well puts
it:
"The learned professions required a competent knowledge of Latin far
more directly then than now. A need for Latin was not confined to the
Church and the priest. The diplomatist, the lawyer, the civil servant,
the physician, the naturalist, the philosopher, wrote, read, and to a
large extent spoke and perhaps thought in Latin. Nor was Latin only
the language of the higher professions. A merchant, or a bailiff of a
manor, wanted it for his accounts; every town clerk or guild clerk
wanted it for his minute book. Columbus had to study for his voyages
in Latin; the general had to study tactics in it. The architect, the
musician, every one who was neither a mere soldier nor a mere
handicraftsman, wanted, not a smattering of grammar, but a living
acquaintance with the tongue, as a spoken as well as a written
language."
THE SCHOOLS BECOME FORMAL. After the new learning had obtained a firm
footing in the schools there happened what has often happened in the
history of new educational efforts--that is, the new learning became
narrow, formal, and fixed, and lost the liberal spirit which actuated its
earlier promoters. In the beginning the Italian humanists had aimed at
large personal self-culture and individual development, and the northern
humanists at moral and religious reform and preparation for useful
service, both using the classics as a means to these new ends. After about
1500 in Italy, and 1600 in the northern countries, when the new-learning
schools had become well established and thoroughly organized, the tendency
arose to make the means an end in itself. Instead of using the classical
literatures to impart a liberal education, give larger vision, and prepare
for useful public service, they came to be used largely for disciplinary
ends. The teaching of Campion at Prague (1574) well illustrates this
degeneracy (R. 146). This change alienated practical men from the schools.
French now in turn became the language of the court and of diplomacy, and
the work of the schools tended to be confined largely to preparing
students to enter the universities or the service of the Church. Men of
the world hence turned to a new type of schools which now arose (chapter
xvii), and which made preparation for social efficiency in a modern world
their aim.
In consequence the aim of the new humanistic education came in time to be
thought of in terms of languages and literatures, instead of in terms of
usefulness as a preparation for intelligent living, and educational effort
was transferred from the larger human point of view of the early
humanistic teachers to the narrower and much less important one of
mastering Greek and Latin, writing verses, and cultivating a good
(Ciceronian) Latin style. Sturm's school at Strassburg clearly shows the
beginnings of such a transformation (R. 137). As Latin came to be less and
less used by scholars in writing, passed out of use as the language of
government and of international communication, was replaced by French as
the language of polite society, and was gradually superseded in the
university lecture room by the vernaculars, the practical motive for
learning Latin died out, except for service in the Church, and the
disciplinary and cultural value of the study of the classics alone
remained. The disciplinary, being easier to give, and better within the
understanding of most teachers, gradually won over the cultural. As a
result, classical education gradually became narrow and formal, and drill
in composition and declamation and imitation of the style of ancient
authors--particularly Cicero, whence the term "Ciceronianism" which came
to be applied to it--grew to be the ruling motives in instruction. By the
end of the sixteenth century this change had taken place in both the
secondary schools and the universities, and this narrow linguistic
attitude continued to dominate classical education, in German lands until
the mid-eighteenth, and in all other western European countries and in
America until near the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not until
vigorously challenged by the enthusiasts for modern scientific studies
that the teachers of the classics awoke to the need of improving their
instruction and restoring something of the old cultural value to what they
were teaching.
The new learning in northern and western Europe was also much changed in
character by the violent religious dissensions, following the Protestant
Revolt, to a consideration of which we next turn.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Explain just what is meant by the statement that mediaeval education
was narrowly technical.
2. State the educational ideals of the new secondary schools evolved by
the Italian humanistic scholars, and show whether these ideals have been
best embodied in the German _gymnasium_ or the English grammar school.
3. How do you explain the merchants and bankers and princes of Italy being
more interested in the revival-of-learning movement than the Church and
university scholars? Do such classes to-day show the same type of interest
in aiding learning?
4. What was the particular importance of the recovery of Quintilian's
_Institutes_? Of Cicero's _Orations_ and _Letters_?
5. What better methods could the Italian court schools have used to enable
them to cover the university Arts course in shorter time? How would this
have advanced the character of the instruction in Arts in the university?
6. Show how the type of education developed in the Italian court schools
was superior to that of the best of the cathedral schools. To that
developed by Sturm.
7. Show how the new type of secondary schools was naturally associated
with court and nobility and men of large worldly affairs, and how in
consequence the new secondary education became and for long continued to
be considered as aristocratic education.
8. Explain how the terms _college_, _lycee_, _gymnasium_, _academy_, and
_grammar school_ all came to be employed, in different countries, to
designate about the same type of secondary school.
9. Had the purified Latin been restored, as the general international
language of learning and government, would it have helped materially in
bringing about the civilizing influences Erasmus saw in it?
10. Has the development of separate nationalities and different national
languages aided in advancing international peace and civilization? Why?
11. Why should the new humanistic studies have developed religious fervor
in Germany and England, in place of the patriotic fervor of the Italian
scholars?
12. Was the struggle against the introduction of the new learning into the
German universities parallel to the late struggle against the introduction
of science into American universities?
13. Contrast the aim of Sturm's school with that of the Italian court
schools, and the English grammar schools. Point out the new tendencies in
his work.
14. Does the sentence quoted from Elyot's _Governour_ express well the
changed conditions in England at the middle of the sixteenth century? Do
such changed conditions always demand educational reorganizations?
15. What basis, if any, did the opponents of Colet's school have for
denouncing it as a temple of idolatry and heathenism?
16. Show how it was natural that the first American school should have
been a Latin grammar school in type.
17. Show that the new conception as to education, as expressed by the new
humanism, found a public ready to support it. What was the nature of this
public?
18. Show how the new schools were "close to the most progressive forces in
the national life," and the influence of this, particularly in England and
America, in fixing classical training as the approved type of secondary
education.
19. Explain how the written theme of to-day is the successor of the
mediaeval disputation.
20. Show how the methods of instruction employed in the new Latin grammar
schools have been passed over to the native-language schools.
21. From the paragraph quoted from Leach (p. 282), explain why a knowledge
of Latin was for so long regarded as synonymous with being educated.
22. Show how instruction in Latin, by being changed from cultural to
disciplinary ends, made French the language of diplomacy and society,
tended to elevate all the vernacular tongues, and marked the beginnings of
the end of the importance of Latin as a school study except for the
purposes of the Roman Catholic Church.
23. What was the purpose of the Latin instruction, as you received it?
24. Does it require a higher quality of teaching to impart the cultural
aspect of a study than is required for the disciplinary?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
135. Guarino: On Teaching the Classical Authors.
136. Vinet: The College de Guyenne at Bordeaux.
137. Sturm: Course of Study at Strassburg.
138. Colet: Statutes for St. Paul's School, London.
(a) Religious Observances.
(b) Admission of Children.
(c) The Course of Study.
139. Ascham: On Queen Elizabeth's Learning.
140. Colet: Introduction to Lily's Latin Grammar.
141. William Sevenoaks: Foundation Bequest for Sevenoaks Grammar School.
142. John Percyvall: Foundation Bequest for a Chantry Grammar School.
143. Sandwich: A City Grammar School Foundation.
144. Eton: Course of Study in 1560.
145. Martindale: Course of Study in an English Country Grammar School.
146. Simpson: Degeneracy of Classical Instruction.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Show the large scope of Grammar, as outlined by Guarino (135).
2. How generally was his dictum that a knowledge of Latin and Greek were
essential for a well-educated gentleman (135) accepted?
3. Compare the course of study in Sturm's school (137) with that at
Bordeaux (136), and with that at Eton (144) a little later.
4. From Ascham's statements (139), what do you infer as to the reception
of the new learning at the English court?
5. Show how Colet (138 a) and William Sevenoaks (141) both aimed to
provide for real teachers, specialized for the service, and not for
teaching as an adjunct to priestly duties. What was the significance of
these provisions?
6. Show that Colet (138 b) desired to train leaders, rather than
followers.
7. Show that he clearly provided (138 c) for a humanistic school of the
reformed type.
8. Characterize Colet's Introduction to Lily's Grammar (140).
9. What was the educational significance of such a bequest as that of
William Sevenoaks (141)?
10. What did the founding of a chantry grammar school (142), instead of a
song school, indicate as to the progress of education?
11. Would the action taken by the authorities of the City of Sandwich
(143) indicate that the humanistic grammar school had taken a deep hold on
English thought, or not? The same with reference to the course given in a
small English country grammar school, as described by Martindale (145)?
12. Just what does the instruction described as given by Campion (146)
indicate?
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
Jebb, R. C. _Humanism in Education_.
Laurie, S. S. _Development of Educational Opinion since the
Renaissance_.
Laurie, S. S. "The Renaissance and the School, 1440-1580"; in _School
Review_, vol. 4, pp. 140-48, 202-14.
* Lupton, J. H. _A Life of John Colet_.
Palgrave, F. T. "The Oxford Movement in the Fifteenth Century"; in
_Nineteenth Century_, vol. 28, pp. 812-30. (Nov. 1890.)
Seebohm, F. _The Oxford Reformers of 1498; Colet, Erasmus, More_.
* Stowe, A. M. _English Grammar Schools in the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth_.
* Thurber, C. H. "Vittorino da Feltre"; in School _Review_, vol. 7,
pp. 295-300.
Watson, Foster. _English Grammar Schools to 1660_.
* Woodward, W. H. _Vittorino da Feltre, and other Humanistic
Educators_.
* Woodward, W. H. _Education during the Renaissance_.
Woodward, W. H. _Desiderius Erasmus, Concerning the Method and Aim of
Education_.
CHAPTER XII
THE REVOLT AGAINST AUTHORITY
THE NEW QUESTIONING ATTITUDE. The student can hardly have followed the
history of educational development thus far without realizing that a
serious questioning of the practices and of the dogmatic and repressive
attitude of the omnipresent mediaeval Church was certain to come, sooner
or later, unless the Church itself realized that the mediaeval conditions
which once demanded such an attitude were rapidly passing away, and that
the new life in Christendom now called for a progressive stand in
religious matters as in other affairs. The new life resulting from the
Crusades, the rise of commerce and industry, the organization of city
governments, the rise of lawyer and merchant classes, the formation of new
national States, the rise of a new "Estate" of tradesmen and workers, the
new knowledge, the evolution of the university organizations, and the
discovery of the art of printing--all these forces had united to develop a
new attitude toward the old problems and to prepare western Europe for a
rapid evolution out of the mediaeval conditions which had for so long
dominated all action and thinking. This the Church should have realized,
and it should have assumed toward the progressive tendencies of the time
the same intelligent attitude assumed earlier toward the rise of
scholastic inquiry. But it did not, and by the fifteenth century the
situation had been further aggravated by a marked decline in morality on
the part of both monks and clergy, which awakened deep and general
criticism in all lands, but particularly among the northern peoples.
The Revival of Learning was the first clear break with mediaevalism. In
the critical and constructive attitude developed by the scholars of the
movement, their renunciation of the old forms of thinking, the new craving
for truth for its own sake which they everywhere awakened, and their
continual appeal to the original sources of knowledge for guidance, we
have the definite beginnings of a modern scientific spirit which was
destined ultimately to question all things, and in time to usher in modern
conceptions and modern ways of thinking. The authority of the mediaeval
Church would be questioned, and out of this questioning would come in time
a religious freedom and a religious tolerance unknown in the mediaeval
world. The great world of scientific truth would be inquired into and the
facts of modern science established, regardless of what preconceived
ideas, popular or religious, might be upset thereby. The divine right of
kings to rule, and to dispose of the fortunes and happiness of their
peoples as they saw fit, was also destined to be questioned, and another
new "Estate" would in time arise and substitute, instead, in all
progressive lands, the divine right of the common people. Religious
freedom and toleration, scientific inquiry and scholarship, and the
ultimate rise of democracy were all involved in the critical, questioning,
and constructive attitude of the humanistic scholars of the Renaissance.
These came historically in the order just stated, and in this order we
shall consider them.
HUMANISM BECAME A RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENT IN THE NORTH. In Italy the
Revival of Learning was classical and scientific in its methods and
results, and awakened little or no tendency toward religious and moral
reform. Instead it resulted in something of a paganization of religion,
with the result that the Papacy and the Italian Church probably reached
their lowest religious levels at about the time the great religious
agitation took place in northern lands. In the latter, on the contrary,
the introduction of humanism awakened a new religious zeal, and religious
reform and classical learning there came to be associated almost as one
movement. In England, Germany, the Low Countries, and in large parts of
northern France, the new learning was at once directed to religious and
moral ends. The patriotic emotions roused in the Italians by the
humanistic movement were in the northern countries superseded by religious
and moral emotions, and the constant appeal to sources turned the northern
leaders almost at once back to the Church Fathers and the original Greek
and Hebrew Testaments for authority in religious matters.
Colet, from England, who had spent the years 1493-96 in Florence (p. 254),
during the period when Savonarola (1452-98) was preaching moral reform
there, returned home, not only a humanist, but a religious reformer as
well, and began to lecture at Oxford on the Epistles of Saint Paul in the
Greek. Linacre, Grocyn, Colet, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More (author of
_Utopia_), among others, formed a little group of humanists all of whom
were also deeply interested in a reform of the practices of the Church.
Erasmus, in particular, labored hard by his writings to remove religious
abuses. His _Colloquies_ (1519), a widely used Latin reading book, was
banned from the classrooms of the University of Paris (1528), and
forbidden to be used in Catholic lands by the Church Council of Trent
(1564), because of the way in which it held up to ridicule the abuses in
the Church, the superstitions of the age, and the immoralities in the
lives of the monks and clergy. His work as Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge, his numerous editions of the writings of the Church Fathers,
and his Latin-Greek edition (1516), of the New Testament [1] all alike
tended to turn theological scholars back to the original sources instead
of to the scholastics for the foundations of their religious faith. In
Germany such men as Hegius (p, 271), Reuchlin (p. 254), and Melanchthon
(p. 270) began, by similar methods, to go back to Greek and Hebrew sources
and to the Church Fathers for new interpretations as to religious
doctrines. In so doing they discovered that many practices and demands of
the Church, all of which had grown up during the long mediaeval period,
were not in harmony with the earlier teachings of Christ, the Apostles, or
the early Fathers. In France, Jacques Lefevre (c. 1455-1536), a humanist
and a pioneer Protestant, contended for the rule of the Scriptures and for
justification by faith, and translated the Bible into the French (New
Testament, 1523; complete, 1530) that the people might read it.
EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION. The reaction against the mediaeval dogmas of the
Church and the demand by the humanists of the North for a return to the
simpler religion of Christ gradually grew, and in time became more and
more insistent. This demand was not something which broke out all at once
and with Luther, as many seem to think. Had this been so he would soon
have been suppressed, and little more would have been heard of him.
Instead, the literature of the time clearly reveals that there had been,
for two centuries, an increasing criticism of the Church, and a number of
local and unsuccessful efforts at reform had been attempted. The demand
for reform was general, and of long standing, outside of Italy and
southern France. Had it been heeded probably much subsequent history might
have been different. A few of the more important attempts at reform may be
mentioned here, as a background for our study.
The first organized revolt against the Church occurred in southern France,
in the early thirteenth century, and the revolters (_Albigenses_) were so
fearfully punished by fire and sword that it was not attempted there
again.
[Illustration: FIG. 86. JOHN WYCLIFFE (1320?-84)
A popular English preacher (Drawn from an old print)]
In 1378 there was a disputed papal election, and for nearly forty years
there were two Popes, one at Rome, and one at Avignon in southern France,
each attempting to control the Church and each denouncing the other as
Antichrist. The discussions which accompanied this "Great Schism" did much
to weaken the authority of the Church in all Christian lands. In England a
popular preacher and Oxford divinity graduate by the name of John Wycliffe
was led, by the sad condition of the Church there, to a careful study of
the Bible. He came to the conclusion that many of the claims of the Popes
and many practices of the Church were wrong (R. 147) and he refused to
accept teachings of the Church for which he could not find sanction in the
Bible. His revolt was as direct and vigorous as that of Luther, in German
lands, a century and a half later (R. 148). So great was his zeal for
reform that he and his scholars attempted a translation of the Bible [2]
into English (see Figure 93), that the people might read it, and he and
his followers (called _Lollards_) went about the country teaching what
they believed to be the true Christianity. What had before in England been
a widespread but undefined feeling of disaffection for the rich and
careless clergy and monks, the work of Wycliffe organized into a political
and social force.
Due to the then close connection of the English and Bohemian courts,
through royal marriages, Wycliffe's teachings were carried to Bohemia,
where a popular preacher and university theologian by the name of John
Huss (1373-1415) expounded them. He denounced the evil conduct of the
clergy, and he and his followers tried to introduce several new customs
into the Church. For this Huss was first excommunicated, and then burned
at the stake as a dangerous heretic. [3] After a series of terrible
massacres his followers were forced, in large part, to accept once more
the old system.
[Illustration: FIG. 87. RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN BOHEMIA
Sacking a village in true German style (From a picture in the Germanic
Museum at Nuremberg)]
In 1414 a Council of the Church was called at Constance, in Switzerland,
to heal the papal schism, and this Council made a serious attempt at
church reform. After reuniting the Church under one Pope, it drew up a
list of abuses which it ordered remedied (R. 149). It also attempted to
establish a democratic form of organization for the government of the
Church, with Church Councils meeting from time to time to advise with the
Pope and formulate church policy, much like the government of a modern
parliament and king. Had this succeeded, much future history might have
been different [4] and the civilization of the world to-day much advanced.
But the attempt failed, and the absolutism of the reunited Papacy became
stronger than ever before. Protests of princes, actions of legislative
assemblies, [5] protests sometimes of bishops, [6] the failing allegiance
of men of affairs, the increasing condemnation and ridicule from laymen
and scholars--all signs of a strong undercurrent of public opinion--seemed
to have no effect on those responsible for the policy of the Church.
That the different rebellions and refusals of reform helped directly to
the ultimate break of Luther is not probable, as Luther seems to have
worked out his position by himself. Each of these earlier defiances of
authority and the later defiance of Luther were alike, though, in two
respects. Each demanded a return to the usages and beliefs and practices
of the earlier Christian Church, as derived from a study of the Bible and
of the writings of the early Christian Fathers; and each insisted that
Christians should be permitted to study the Bible for themselves, and
reach their own conclusions as to Christian duty. In this demand to be
allowed to go back to the original sources for authority, and the
assertion of the right to personal investigation and conclusions, we see
the new intellectual standards established by the Revival of Learning in
full force. After 1500 the rising demands for moral reform and the
recognition of individual judgment could not be put aside much longer.
Unless there could be evolution there would be revolution. Evolution was
refused, [7] and revolution was the result.
DISCONTENT IN GERMAN LANDS. It happened that the first revolt to be
successful in a large way broke out in Germany, and about the person of an
Augustinian monk and Professor of Theology in the University of Wittenberg
by the name of Martin Luther (1483-1546). Had it not centered about Luther
the revolt would have come about some one else; had it not come in Germany
it would have come in some other land. It was the modern scientific spirit
of inquiry and reason in conflict with the mediaeval spirit of dogmatic
authority, and two such forces are sooner or later destined to clash.
Whether we be Catholic or Protestant, and whether we approve or disapprove
of what Luther did or of his methods, makes little difference in this
study. Over a question involving so much religious partisanship we do not
need to take sides. All that we need concern ourselves with is that a
certain Martin Luther lived, did certain things, made certain stands for
what he believed to be right, and what he did, whether right or wrong,
whether beneficial to progress and civilization or not, stands as a great
historical fact with which the student of the history of education must
take account. That the same or even better results might have been arrived
at in time by other methods may be true, but what we are concerned with is
the course which history actually took. [8]
There were special reasons why the trouble, when once it broke, made such
rapid entry in German lands. The Germans had a long-standing grudge
against the Italian papal court, chiefly because it had for long been
draining Germany of money to support the Italian Church. Germany's
greatest minnesinger, Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1228), three
centuries before Luther had sung to the German people how the Pope made
merry over the stupid Germans.
"All their goods will be mine,
Their silver is flowing into my far-away chest;
Their priests are living on poultry and wine,
And leaving the silly layman to fast."
Many positions in the German Church had been filled by the Pope with
Italians, who not infrequently drew the perquisites, but did not reside in
Germany. The princely and feudal Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, Cologne,
and Salzburg, with their fortified castles and lands and troops and large
governmental powers, frequently proved to be serious sources of
irritation. The most widespread discontent, though, arose over the heavy
church taxation, which drained the money of the people to Italy. The whole
German people, from the princes down to the peasants, felt themselves
unjustly treated, that the German money which flowed to Rome should be
kept at home, and that the immoral and inefficient clergy should be
replaced by upright, earnest men who would attend better to their
religious duties (R. 150). It was these conditions which prepared the
Germans for revolt, and enabled Luther to rally so many of the princes and
people to his side when once he had defied authority.
THE GERMAN REVOLT. The crisis came over the sale of indulgences for sins
by the papal agent, Tetzel, who began the practice in the neighborhood of
Wittenberg, where Luther was a Professor of Theology, in 1516. There is
little doubt but that Tetzel, in his zeal to raise money for the
rebuilding of the church of Saint Peter's at Rome, a great undertaking
then under way, exceeded his instructions and made claims as to the nature
and efficacy of indulgences which were not warranted by church doctrines.
Such would be only human. The sale, however, irritated Luther, and he
appealed to the Archbishop of Magdeburg to prohibit it. Failing to obtain
any satisfaction, he followed the old university custom, made out ninety-
five theses, or reasons, why he did not believe the practice justifiable,
detailed the abuses, set forth what he conceived to be the true Christian
doctrine in the matter, and challenged all comers to a debate on the
theses (R. 151). Following true university custom, also, these theses were
made out in Latin, and in October, 1517, Luther followed still another
university custom and nailed them to the church door in Wittenberg. Luther
was probably as much surprised as any one to find that these were at once
translated into German, printed, and in two weeks had been scattered all
over Germany. Within a month they were known in all the important centers
of the Western Christian world. They had been carried everywhere on the
currents of discontent. Luther at first intended no revolt from the
Church, but only a protest against its practices. From one step to
another, though, he was gradually led into open rebellion, and finally, in
1520, was excommunicated from the Church. He then expressed his defiance
by publicly burning the bull of excommunication, together with a volume of
the canon law. This was open rebellion, and such heresy (R. 152) must
needs be stamped out. Luther took his stand on the authority of the
Scriptures, and the battle was now joined between the forces representing
the authority of the Church _versus_ the authority of the Bible, and
salvation through the Church _versus_ salvation through personal faith and
works. [9] Luther also forced the issue for freedom of thought in
religious matters. It was, to be sure, some three centuries before freedom
in religious thinking and worship became clearly recognized, but what the
early university masters and scholars had stood for in intellectual
matters, Luther now asserted in religious affairs as well.
[Illustration: FIG. 88. SHOWING THE RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS]
We do not need to follow the details of the conflict. Suffice it to know
that great portions of northern and western Germany followed Luther, as is
shown in Figure 88, and that the Western Church, which had remained one
for so many centuries and been the one great unifying force in western
Europe, was permanently split by the Protestant Revolt. The large success
of Luther is easily explained by the new life which now permeated western
Europe. The world was rapidly becoming modern, while the Church, with a
perversity almost unexplainable, insisted upon remaining mediaeval and
tried to force others to remain mediaeval with it. Adams expresses the
situation well when he says: [10]
A revolution had been wrought in the intellectual world in the century
between Huss and Luther. At the death of Huss the world had only just
begun the study of Greek. Since that date, the great body of classical
literature had been recovered, and the sciences of philology and
historical criticism thoroughly established. As a result Luther had at
his command a well-developed method ... impossible to any earlier
reformer.... The world also had become familiar with independent
investigation, and with the proclamation of new views and the
upsetting of old ones. By no means the least of the great services of
Erasmus to civilization had been to hold up before all the world so
conspicuous an example of the scholar following, as his inalienable
right, the truth as he found it and wherever it appeared to lead him,
and honest in his public utterances as to the results of his
studies.... His was the crowning work of a century which had produced
in the general public a greatly changed attitude of mind toward
intellectual independence since the days of Huss. The printing press
was of itself almost enough to account for Luther's success as
compared with his predecessors. Wycliffe made almost as direct and
vigorous an appeal to the public at large, and with "an amazing
industry he issued tract after tract in the tongue of the people," but
Luther had the advantage in the rapid multiplication of copies and in
their cheapness, and he covered Europe with the issues of his
press.... Luther spoke to a very different public from that which
Wycliffe or Huss had addressed,--a public European in extent, and one
not merely familiar with the assertion of new ideas, but tolerant, in
a certain way, of the innovator, and expectant of great things in the
future.
A revolution it undoubtedly was, but a revolution in thinking much more
than a political revolution. It was but a further manifestation of the
inquiring and questioning tendency awakened by the Revival of Learning. It
might in a sense be dated from Wycliffe and Huss, as well as from Erasmus
and Luther. Luther did not create the Reformation. He rather popularized
the work of preceding protesters, giving the impress of his powerful
personality to the movement, and directing and moulding its form.
[Illustration: FIG. 89. HULDREICH ZWINGLI (1487-1531)]
REVOLTS IN OTHER LANDS. The outbreak in Germany soon spread to other
lands. Lutheranism made rapid headway in Denmark, where the German
grievances against Italian rule were equally familiar, and in 1537 the
Danish Diet severed all connection with Rome and established Lutheranism
as the religion of the country. Norway, being then a part of Denmark, was
carried for Lutheranism also. In Sweden the Church was shorn of some of
its powers and property in 1527, and in 1592 Lutheranism was definitely
adopted as the religion for the nation. This included Finland, then a part
of Sweden. An independent reform movement, closely akin to Lutheranism in
its aims, made considerable headway in German Switzerland
contemporaneously with the reform work of Luther in Germany. This was
under the leadership of a popular humanist preacher in Zurich by the name
of Huldreich Zwingli. In 1519 he began a series of sermons on real
religion, as he had learned it from a study of the New Testament writings.
Zwingli, being supported by the people, made many changes in church
practices and worship, eventually even abolishing the mass. Many other
towns took up this reform movement, and civil war was the result. Zwingli
was killed in battle between Swiss partisans of the old regime and
reformers, in 1531, but his work though checked persisted, and German
Switzerland became mixed Catholic and Protestant. [11]
In England the struggle came nominally over the divorce (1533) of Henry
VIII from Catherine of Aragon, though the independence of the English
Church had been asserted from time to time for two centuries, and a free
National Church had for long been a growing ideal with English statesmen.
In 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy (R. 153) which severed
England from Rome. By it the King was made head of the English National
Church. The change was in no sense a profound one, such as had taken place
in Lutheran Germany. The priests who took the new oath of allegiance to
the King instead of the Pope as the head of the Church, as most of them
did, continued in the churches, the service was changed to English, some
reforms were instituted, but the people did not experience any great
change in religious feeling or ideas. This new National Church became
known as the English or Anglican Church.
So far as the early history of America is concerned, the most important
reform movement was neither Lutheranism nor Anglicanism, but Calvinism. In
1537 John Calvin, a French Protestant who had fled to Switzerland, [12]
was invited to submit a plan for the educational and religious
reorganization of the city of Geneva, and in 1541 he was entrusted with
the task of organizing there a little religious City-Republic. For this he
established a combined church and city government, in which religious
affairs and the civil government were as closely connected as they had
ever been in any Catholic country. During the twenty-three years that
Calvin dominated Geneva it became the Rome of Protestantism. Calvin's _The
Institutes of Christianity_, published in Latin in 1536, and in French in
1541, was the first orderly presentation of the principles of Christian
faith from the Protestant standpoint, [13] while his French _Catechism_
(1537) was extensively used [14] in Calvinistic lands as a basis for
elementary religious instruction.
[Illustration: FIG. 90. JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564)
(Drawn from a contemporary painting)]
From Geneva a reformed Calvinistic religion spread over northern France,
[15] where its followers became known as _Huguenots_; to Scotland (1560),
where they were known as _Scotch Presbyterians_; to the Netherlands
(1572), where originated the Dutch Reformed Church; and to portions of
central England, where those who embraced it became known as _Puritans_.
Through the Puritans who settled New England, and later through the
Huguenots in the Carolinas, the Scotch Presbyterians in the central
colonies, and the Dutch in New York, Calvinism was carried to America, was
for long the dominant religious belief, and profoundly colored all early
American education. Lutheranism also came in through the Swedes along the
Delaware and the Germans in Pennsylvania, while the Anglican Church, known
in America as the _Episcopalian_, came in through the landed aristocracy
in Virginia and the later settlers in New York. The early settlement of
America was thus a Protestant settlement, while the migration to America
of large numbers of peoples from Catholic lands is a relatively recent
movement.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND RELIGIOUS WARFARE. Of course the revolt against the
authority of the Church, once inaugurated, could not be stopped. The same
right to freedom in religious belief which Luther claimed for himself and
his followers had of course to be extended to others. This the Protestants
were not much more willing to grant than had been the Catholics before
them. The world was not as yet ready for such rapid advances, and
religious toleration, [16] though established in principle by the revolt,
was an idea to which the world has required a long time to become
accustomed. It took two centuries of intermittent religious warfare,
during which Catholic and Protestant waged war on one another, plundered
and pillaged lands, and murdered one another for the salvation of their
respective souls, before the people of western Europe were willing to stop
fighting and begin to recognize for others that which they were fighting
for for themselves. When religious tolerance finally became established by
law, civilization had made a tremendous advance.
The religious wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were waged
with greatest intensity in Spain, France, and the German States, though no
land wholly escaped. The result of this religious strife was to check the
progress of the higher civilization of the people for nearly three
centuries, and to delay greatly the coming of the great blessing of
freedom in matters of religious belief, while the poverty and misery
resulting from the devastation of these religious wars left neither the
energy for nor the interest in educational or political progress.
The struggle to suppress Lutheranism in Germany was postponed for twenty-
five years--due to outside pressure, chiefly that of the Turks in
southeastern Europe--from the time that the Diet of Worms decided against
Luther (1521). Finally, in 1546, the German-Spanish Emperor Charles V felt
at last free to proceed against the Lutheran heresy, and from the
breaking-out in that year of the struggle between Charles and the German
princes who sided with Luther, to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648,
represents a century of almost continual religious warfare in the German
States. The worst of the period was the last thirty years, when religious
ferocity and hatred reached its climax in the period known as the _Thirty
Years' War_ (1618-48). Though fought on German soil, France, Spain, and
Sweden were deeply involved in the struggle. It left Germany a ruin. From
the most prosperous State in Europe, in 1550, Germany was so reduced that
it was not until the second third of the nineteenth century that central
and southern Germany had fully recovered. More than half the population
and two thirds of the movable property were swept away. The people were so
reduced by starvation that cannibalism was openly practiced. But one tenth
of the inhabitants of the Duchy of Wuertemberg were left alive. Land tilled
for centuries became a wilderness, thousands of towns were destroyed,
whole trades were swept away, and the generation which survived the war
came to manhood without knowing education, religion, law and order, or
organized industry. Not until the end of the eighteenth century was
Germany again able to make any significant contribution to education or
civilization, and not until the middle of the nineteenth century did parts
of Germany come to have as many people or cattle as before this
devastating religious war broke out.
[Illustration: FIG. 91. A FRENCH PROTESTANT (c. 1600)
A restoration, Musee d'Artillerie, Paris]
From 1560 to 1629 in France, also, a period of carnage and devastation
prevailed, due to an attempt to exterminate the Calvinistic Huguenots. In
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's eve, in 1572, ten thousand Protestants
are said to have perished in Paris alone, and forty-five thousand
additional outside the city. Though the Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted
religious toleration, this never was fully accomplished, and in 1685 the
Edict was revoked. The Huguenots were now given fifteen days to become
Catholics or leave France. The demands were enforced with great severity,
and the sect, which embraced one tenth of the population of France, was
stamped out and France became once more a Catholic country. In a short
time four hundred thousand thrifty and highly intelligent Huguenots had
left France for other lands. In Southern German lands, Holland, England,
and America many found a new home.
CHANGED ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OLD PROBLEMS. The Peace of Westphalia (1648),
which ended the bloody Thirty Years' War, itself the culmination of a
century of bitter and vindictive religious strife, has often been regarded
as both an end and a beginning. Though the persecution of minorities for a
time continued, especially in France, this treaty marked the end of the
attempt of the Church and the Catholic States to stamp out Protestantism
on the continent of Europe. The religious independence of the Protestant
States was now acknowledged, and the beginnings of religious freedom were
established by treaty. This new freedom of conscience, once definitely
begun for the ruling princes, was certain in time to be extended further.
Ultimately the day must come, though it might be centuries away, when
individual as well as national freedom in religious matters must be
granted as a right, and one of the greatest blessings of mankind finally
be firmly established by law. [17]
The end of the period of bitter religious warfare, too, was followed by a
reaction against religious intolerance which contained within itself the
germs of much future liberty and human progress. Paulsen has well
expressed the change, in the following words: [18]
The long and terrible wars to which the ecclesiastical schism had
everywhere given rise--the wars of the Huguenots in France, the Thirty
Years War, and the Civil War in England--had, in the end, created a
feeling of indifference toward religious and theological problems. Did
it really pay, people asked themselves, to kill each other and
devastate each other's countries for the sake of such questions? Could
these problems ever be decided at all? If not, was it not much more
reasonable to let everyone believe what he could, and, instead of
wasting breath and arguments, convincing to nobody, on
transubstantiation, predestination, and real presence, to cultivate
sciences which really placed lasting and verifiable truths within the
reach of the understanding, such as mathematics and natural
philosophy, geography and astronomy? Here were sciences which offered
knowledge to the mind that could be turned to account in this earthly
life, whereas those transcendental speculations were of no use at
all.... Toward the end of the seventeenth century this spirit of
indifference and scepticism toward theology, and sometimes even toward
religion in general and the future world, formed a most important
factor in the changing intellectual attitude of the times. [19]
Physically exhausted, and recognizing at last the futility of fire and
sword as means for stamping out opposing religious convictions, but still
thoroughly convinced as to the correctness of their respective points of
view, both sides now settled down to another century and more of religious
hatred, suspicion, and intolerance, and to a close supervision of both
preaching and teaching as safeguards to orthodoxy. During the century
following the Peace of Westphalia greater reliance than ever before was
placed on the school as a means for protecting the faith, and the pulpit
and the school now took the place of the sword and the torch as converting
and holding agents.
RELIGIOUS REFORM. The effect of the Protestant Revolts on the Church was
good. For the first time in history Catholic churchmen learned that they
could not rely on the general acceptance of any teachings they
promulgated, or any practices they saw fit to approve. The spirit of
inquiry which had been aroused by the methods of the humanists would in
the future force them to explain and to defend. If they were to make
headway against this great rebellion they must reform abuses, purify
church practices, and see that monks and clergy led upright Christian
lives. Unless the mass of the people could be made loyal to the Church by
reverence for it, further revolts and the ultimate break-up of the
institution were in prospect. The Council of Trent (1545-63) at last
undertook the reform which should have come at least a century before.
Better men were selected for the church offices, and bishops and clergy
were ordered to reside in their proper places and to preach regularly. New
religious orders arose, whose purpose was to prepare priests better for
the service of the Church and for ministry to the needs of the people.
Irritating practices were abandoned. The laws and doctrines of the Church
were restated, in new and better form. Moral reforms were instituted. In
most particulars the reforms forced by the work of Luther were thorough
and complete, and since the middle of the sixteenth century the Catholic
Church, in morals and government, has been a reformed Church. Above all,
attention was turned to education rather than force as a means of winning
and holding territory. A rigid quarantine was, however, established in
Catholic lands against the further spread of heretical text books and
literature. Especially was the reading of the Bible, which had been the
cause of all the trouble, for a time rigidly prohibited. [20]
Such, in brief, are the historical facts connected with the various
revolts against authority which split the Roman Catholic Church in the
sixteenth century. These have been stated, as briefly and as impartially
as possible, because so much of future educational history arose out of
the conditions resulting from these revolts. The early educational history
of America is hardly understandable without some knowledge of the
religious forces awakened by the work of the Protestants. To the
educational significance and consequences of these revolts we next turn.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How do you explain the difference in the effect, on the scholars of the
time, of the Revival of Learning in Italy and in northern lands?
2. How do you explain the serious church opposition to the different
attempts of northern scholars to try to turn the Church back to the
simpler religious ideals and practices of early Christianity?
3. Explain how opposition to the practices of the Church could be
organized into a political force.
4. Explain the analogy of a heretic in the fifteenth century and an
anarchist of to-day.
5. Assuming that the Church had encouraged progressive evolution as a
policy, and thus warded off revolution and disruption, in what ways might
history have been different?
6. How can the bitter opposition to the reading and study of the Bible be
explained?
7. Show the analogy between the freedom of thinking demanded by Luther,
and that obtained three centuries earlier by the scholars in the rising
universities. Why were the universities not opposed?
8. Enumerate the changes which had taken place in western Europe between
the days of Wycliffe and Huss and the time of Luther, which enabled him to
succeed where they had failed.
9. Explain in what ways the Protestant Revolt was essentially a revolution
in thinking, and that, once started, certain other consequences must
inevitably follow in time.
10. Was it perfectly natural that the reformers should refuse to their
followers the same right to revolt, and separate off into smaller and
still different sects, which they had contended for for themselves? Why?
11. On what basis could Catholic and Protestant wage war on one another to
try to enforce their own particular belief?
12. Compare the individualism of the Greek Sophists with that of the
Protestant reformers. Did Greece attempt to deal with them in the same
way?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections are
reproduced:
147. Wycliffe: On the Enemies of Christ.
148. Wycliffites: Attack the Pope and the Practice of Indulgences.
149. Council of Constance: List of Church Abuses demanding Reform.
150. Geiler: A German Priest's View as to Coming Reform.
151. Luther: Illustrations from his Ninety-Five Theses.
152. Saint Thomas Aquinas: On the Treatment of Heresy.
153. Henry VIII: The English Act of Supremacy.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Was Wycliffe's attack (147) as direct and fierce as Luther's (151)?
2. Explain the difference in the results attained by the two attacks?
3. Was the challenge of Wycliffe's followers on indulgences (148) any less
direct than that of Luther (151)?
4. Does the list of items drawn up by the Church Council of Constance
(149) indicate a general recognition of the need for extensive Church
reform?
5. Try to state the possible change in the progress of human history and
civilization, had the demands of the Council of Constance (149) been
carried out in good faith.
6. Considering the nature of heresy at the time, does the extract from
Thomas Aquinas (152) indicate a narrow or a liberal attitude?
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_.
Beard, Charles. _Martin Luther and the Reformation_.
Beard, Charles. _The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its
Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge_. (Hibbert Lectures,
1883.)
Fisher, George P. _History of the Reformation_.
Gasquet, F. A. _Eve of the Reformation_.
Johnson, A. H. _Europe in the Sixteenth Century_.
Perry, George G. _History of the Reformation in England_.
CHAPTER XIII
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
I. AMONG LUTHERANS AND ANGLICANS
ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE BREAK WITH AUTHORITY. That the Protestant
Revolts in the different lands produced large immediate and permanent
changes in the character of the education provided in the revolting States
is no longer accepted as being the case. In every phase of educational
history growth has proceeded by evolution rather than by revolution, and
this applies to the Protestant Revolts as well as to other revolutions.
Many changes naturally resulted at once, some of which were good and some
of which were not, while others which were enthusiastically attempted
failed of results because they involved too great advances for the time.
Much, too, of the progress that was inaugurated was lost in the more than
a century of religious strife which followed, and the additional century
and more of suspicion, hatred, religious formalism, and strict religious
conformity which followed the period of religious strife. The educational
significance of the reformation movement, though, lies in the far-reaching
nature of its larger results and ultimate consequences rather than in its
immediate accomplishments, and because of this the importance of the
immediate changes effected have been overestimated by Protestants and
underestimated by Catholics.
The dominant idea underlying Luther's break with authority, and for that
matter the revolts of Wycliffe, Huss, Zwingli, and Calvin as well, was
that of substituting the authority of the Bible in religious matters for
the authority of the Church; of substituting individual judgment in the
interpretation of the Scriptures and in formulating decisions as to
Christian duty for the collective judgment of the Church; and of
substituting individual responsibility for salvation, in Luther's
conception of justification through personal faith and prayer, for the
collective responsibility for salvation of the Church. [1] Whether one
believes that the Protestant position was sound or not depends almost
entirely upon one's religious training and beliefs, and need not concern
us here, as it makes no difference with the course of history. We can
believe either way, and the course that history took remains the same. The
educational consequences of the position taken by the Protestants, though,
are important.
Under the older theory of collective judgment and collective
responsibility for salvation--that is, the judgment of the Church rather
than that of individuals--it was not important that more than a few be
educated. Under the new theory of individual judgment and individual
responsibility promulgated by the Protestants it became very important, in
theory at least, that every one should be able to read the word of God,
participate intelligently in the church services, and shape his life as he
understood was in accordance with the commandments of the Heavenly Father.
This undoubtedly called for the education of all. Still more, from
individual participation in the services of the Church, with freedom of
judgment and personal responsibility in religious matters, to individual
participation in and responsibility for the conduct of government was not
a long step, and the rise of democratic governments and the provision of
universal education were the natural and ultimate corollaries, though not
immediately attained of the Protestant position regarding the
interpretation of the Scriptures and the place and authority of the
Church. This was soon seen and acted upon. The great struggle of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in consequence, became one for
religious freedom and toleration; the great struggle of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries has been for political freedom and political rights;
to supply universal education has been left to the nineteenth and the
twentieth centuries.
SCHOOLS AND LEARNING BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. After the rise of the
universities, as we have seen, many Latin secondary schools were founded
in western Europe, and a more extensive development of the cathedral and
other larger church schools took place. Rashdall (R. 154) thinks that by
1400 the opportunity to attend a Latin grammar school was rather common,
an opinion in which Leach and Nohle concur. After the humanistic learning
had spread to northern lands these opportunities were increased and
improved. In England, for example, some two hundred and fifty Latin
grammar schools are known to have been in existence by 1500. In Germany,
as we have seen (chapter xi), many such schools were founded before the
time of Luther. These offered a form of advanced education, in the
language of the educated classes of the time, for those intending to go to
the universities to prepare for service in either Church or State, and for
teaching. The Church had also for long maintained or exercised control
over a number of types of more elementary schools--parish, song, chantry,
hospital (chapter VII)--the chief purpose of which was to prepare for
certain phases of the church service, or to enter the secondary schools.
These schools, too, were taught partly or wholly in Latin. In consequence,
while Latin schools came to be rather widely diffused, schools in the
vernacular hardly existed outside of a few of the larger commercial cities
of the north. Even the burgh and guild schools (p. 205), established in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were essentially Latin schools.
[Illustration: PLATE 6. EDUCATIONAL LEADERS IN PROTESTANT GERMANY
(From a painting dated 1543, by Lucas Cranach, a German contemporary of
both men, and now in the Uffizi Gallery, at Florence)
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)
Professor of Theology at Wittenberg
PHILIPP MELANCHTHON (1497-1560)
Professor of Greek at Wittenberg]
In the commercial cities of the North, however, though often only after
quite a struggle with the local church authorities, which throughout the
Middle Ages had maintained a monopoly of all instruction as a protection
to orthodoxy, different types of elementary vernacular schools had been
developed to meet local commercial needs, such as writing-schools to train
writers, [2] and reckoning-schools to train young men to handle accounts.
[3] Reading, manners, and religion were also taught in these schools.
Other city schools, largely Latin in type, but containing some vernacular
instruction to meet local business needs not met by the cathedral or
parish schools of the city, were also developed. Up to the time of the
Protestant Revolts, however, there was almost no instruction in the
vernacular outside of the commercial cities, nor was there any particular
demand for such instruction elsewhere. If one wished to be a scholar, a
statesman, a diplomat, a teacher, a churchman, or to join a religious
brotherhood, he needed to study the learned language of the time,--Latin.
With this he could be at home with people of his kind anywhere in western
Europe. The vernacular he could leave to tradesmen, craftsmen, soldiers,
laborers, and the servant classes.
[Illustration: FIG. 92. TWO EARLY VERNACULAR SCHOOLS
GERMAN (From a woodcut, printed at Nuremberg, 1505)
FRENCH (After a drawing by Soquand, 1528)]
These people, on the other hand, had practically no need for a written
language, aside from a very small amount for business needs. Even here the
sign of the cross would do. There were but few books written in the
vernacular tongues, and these had to be copied by hand and, in
consequence, were scarce and expensive. There were no newspapers (first
newspaper, Venice, 1563) or magazines. Spectacles for reading were not
known until the end of the thirteenth century, and were not common for two
centuries after that. There was little knowledge that could not pass from
mouth to mouth. Such little vernacular literature as did exist was
transmitted orally, and no great issue which appealed to the imagination
of the masses had as yet come to the front to create any strong desire for
the ability to read. As a result, the education of the masses was in hand
labor, the trades, and religion, and not in books, and the need for book
education was scarcely felt.
A NEW DEMAND FOR VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. The invention of printing and the
Protestant Revolts were in a sense two revolutionary forces, which in
combination soon produced vast and far-reaching changes. The discovery of
the process of making paper and the invention of the printing press
changed the whole situation as to books. These could now be reproduced
rapidly and in large numbers, and could be sold at but a small fraction of
their former cost. The printing of the Bible in the common tongue did far
more to stimulate a desire to be able to read than did the Revival of
Learning (Rs. 155, 170). Then came the religious discussions of the
Reformation period, which stirred intellectually the masses of the people
in northern lands as nothing before in history had ever done. In an effort
to reach the people the reformers originated small and cheap pamphlets,
written in the vernacular, and these, sold for a penny or two, were
peddled in the market-places and from house to house. While there had been
imperfect translations of the Bible in German before Luther's, his
translation (New Testament, 1522) was direct from the original Greek and
so carefully done that it virtually fixed the character of the German
language. [4] Calvin's _Institutes of Christianity_ (French edition, 1541)
in a similar manner fixed the character of the French language, [5] and
Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (1526) was into such simple and
homely language [6] that it fixed the character of the English tongue, and
was made the basis for the later Authorized translation.
[Illustration: FIG. 93. THE FIRST PAGE OF WYCLIFFE'S BIBLE
Translated between 1382 and 1384. Facsimile of the first verses of
Genesis]
The leaders of the Protestant Revolts, too, in asserting that each person
should be able to read and study the Scriptures as a means to personal
salvation, created an entirely new demand, in Protestant lands, for
elementary schools in the vernacular. Heretofore the demand had been for
schools only for those who expected to become scholars or leaders in
Church or State, while the masses of the people had little or no interest
in learning. Now a new class became desirous of learning to read, not
Latin, but the language which they had already learned to speak. Wycliffe,
Huss, Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, and Knox alike insisted on the importance
of the study of the Bible as a primary necessity in the religious life. In
an effort to bring the Bible within reach of the people Wycliffe's
followers had attempted the laborious and impossible task of multiplying
by hand (p. 290) copies of his translation. Zwingli had written a pamphlet
on _The Manner of Instruction and Bringing up Boys in a Christian Way_
(1524), in which he urged the importance of religious education. Luther,
besides translating the Bible, had prepared two general Catechisms, one
for adults and one for children, had written hymns [7] and issued numerous
letters and sermons in behalf of religious education. All these were
printed in the vernacular and scattered broadcast. Luther thought that
"every human being, by the time he has reached his tenth year, should be
familiar with the Holy Gospels, in which the very core and marrow of his
life is bound." In his sermons and addresses he urged a study of the Bible
and the duty of sending children to school. Calvin's Catechism similarly
was extensively used in Protestant lands.
1. _Lutheran School Organization_
EDUCATIONAL IDEAS OF LUTHER. Luther enunciated the most progressive ideas
on education of all the German Protestant reformers. In his _Letter to the
Mayors and Aldermen of all the Cities of Germany in behalf of Christian
Schools_ (1524) (R. 156), and in his _Sermon on the Duty of Sending
Children to School_ (1530), we find these set forth. That his ideas could
be but partially carried out is not surprising. There were but few among
his followers who could understand such progressive proposals, they were
entirely too advanced for the time, there was no body of vernacular
teachers [8] or means to prepare them, the importance of such training was
not understood, and the religious wars which followed made such
educational advantages impossible, for a long time to come. The sad
condition of the schools, which he said were "deteriorating throughout
Germany," awakened his deep regret, and he begged of those in authority
"not to think of the subject lightly, for the instruction of youth is a
matter in which Christ and all the world are concerned." All towns had to
spend money for roads, defense, bridges, and the like, and why not some
for schools? This they now could easily afford, "since Divine Grace has
released them from the exaction and robbery of the Roman Church." Parents
continually neglected their educational duty, yet there must be civil
government. "Were there neither soul, heaven, nor hell," he declared, "it
would still be necessary to have schools for the sake of affairs here
below.... The world has need of educated men and women to the end that men
may govern the country properly and women may properly bring up their
children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their
households." "The welfare of the State depends upon the intelligence and
virtue of its citizens," he said, "and it is therefore the duty of mayors
and aldermen in all cities to see that Christian schools are founded and
maintained" (R. 156).
[Illustration: FIG. 94. LUTHER GIVING INSTRUCTION
An ideal drawing, though representative of early Protestant popular
instruction]
The parents of children he held responsible for their Christian and civic
education. This must be free, and equally open to all--boys and girls,
high and low, rich and poor. It was the inherent right of each child to be
educated, and the State must not only see that the means are provided, but
also require attendance at the schools (R. 158). At the basis of all
education lay Christian education. The importance of the services of the
teacher was beyond ordinary comprehension (R. 157). Teachers should be
trained for their work, and clergymen should have had experience as
teachers. A school system for German people should be a state system,
divided into:
1. _Vernacular Primary Schools._ Schools for the common people,
to be taught in the vernacular, to be open to both sexes, to include
reading, writing, physical training, singing, and religion, and to
give practical instruction in a trade or in household duties. Upon
this attendance should be compulsory. "It is my opinion," he said,
"that we should send boys to school for one or two hours a day, and
have them learn a trade at home the rest of the time. It is desirable
that these two occupations march side by side."
2. _Latin Secondary Schools._ Upon these he placed great emphasis
(R. 156) as preparatory schools by means of which a learned clergy was
to be perpetuated for the instruction of the people. In these he would
teach Latin, Greek, Hebrew, rhetoric, dialectic, history, science,
mathematics, music, and gymnastics.
3. _The Universities._ For training for the higher service in
Church and State.
[Illustration: FIG. 95. JOHANNES BUGENHAGEN (1485-1558)
Father of the Lutheran _Volksschule_ in northern Germany]
THE ORGANIZING WORK OF BUGENHAGEN. Luther assisted in reorganizing the
churches at Wittenberg (1523), Leipzig (1523), and Magdeburg (1524), in
connection with all of which he provided for Lutheran-type schools. [9]
Luther, though, was not essentially an organizer. The organizing genius of
the Reformation, in central and southern Germany, was Luther's colleague,
Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), Professor of Greek at the University of
Wittenberg. In northern Germany it was Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558),
another of Luther's colleagues at Wittenberg. More than any other Germans
these two directed the necessary reorganization of religion and education
in those parts of Germany which changed from Roman Catholicism to German
Lutheranism. The churches, of course, had to be reorganized as Lutheran
churches, and the schools connected with them refounded as Lutheran
schools. For the reorganization of each of these a more or less detailed
_Ordnung_ had to be written out (Rs. 159, 160). In this change cathedral
and other large church schools became Latin secondary schools, while the
song, chantry, and other types of parish elementary schools were
transformed into Lutheran vernacular parish schools.
Bugenhagen was sent to reorganize the churches of northern Germany. Being
in close sympathy with Luther's ideas, he made good provision for Lutheran
parish schools in connection with each of the churches he reorganized. At
Brunswick (1528), Hamburg (1529) (R. 159), Luebeck (1530), for his native
State of Pomerania (1534), for Schleswig-Holstein (1537), and elsewhere in
northern Germany, he drew up church and school plans (_Kirchen und Schule-
Ordnungen_) which formed models (Rs. 159, 160) for many northern German
cities and towns. Besides providing for a Latin school for the city, he
organized elementary vernacular schools in each parish, for both boys and
girls, in which instruction in reading, writing, and religion was to be
given in the German tongue. He has been called the father of the German
_Volksschule_, though probably much of what he did was merely the
redirection of existing schools. In 1537 he was called to Denmark, by the
Danish King, to reorganize the University of Copenhagen and the Danish
Church and schools as Lutheran institutions.
Efforts were also made to create Protestant schools in the Scandinavian
countries. In Denmark writing-schools for both boys and girls were
organized, and the sexton of each parish was ordered to gather the
children together once a week for instruction in the Catechism. In Sweden
little was done before 1686, when Charles XI ordained that the sacristan
of each parish should instruct the children in reading, while the
religious instruction should be conducted by the clergy, and carried on by
means of sermons, the Catechism, and a yearly public examination. The
ability to read and a knowledge of the Catechism was made necessary for
communion. A Swedish law of this same time also ordered that, "No one
should enter the married state without knowing the lesser Catechism of
Luther by heart and having received the sacrament." This latter regulation
drove the peasants to request the erection of children's schools in the
parishes, to be supported by the State, though it was not for more than a
century that this was generally brought about. The general result of this
legislation was that the Scandinavian countries, then including Finland,
early became literate nations.
THE REORGANIZING WORK OF MELANCHTHON. Melanchthon, unlike Bugenhagen, was
essentially a humanistic scholar, and his interest lay chiefly In the
Latin secondary schools. He prepared plans for schools in many cities and
smaller States of central and southern Germany, among which were Luther's
native town, Eisleben (1525), and for Nuremberg (1526), Herzeberg (1538),
Cologne (1543), and Wittenberg (1545) among cities; and Saxony (1528),
Mecklenberg (1552), and the Palatinate (1556) among States. The schools he
provided for Saxony may be described as typical of his work.
In 1527 he was asked by the Elector of Saxony to head a commission of
three to travel over the kingdom and report on its needs as to schools. In
his _Report, or Book of Visitation_, which was probably the first school
survey report in history, he outlined in detail plans for school
organization for the State (R. 161), of which the following is an
abstract:
Each school was to consist of three classes. In the first class there
was to be taught the beginnings of reading and writing, in both the
vernacular and in Latin, Latin grammar (Donatus), the Creed, the
Lord's prayer, and the prayers and hymns of the church service. In the
second class Latin became the language of instruction, and Latin
grammar was thoroughly learned. Latin authors were read, and religious
instruction was continued. In the third class more advanced work in
reading Latin (Livy, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, and Cicero) was given,
and rhetoric and dialectic were studied.
These were essentially humanistic schools with but a little preparatory
work in the vernacular, and their purpose was to prepare those likely to
become the future leaders of the State for entrance to the universities.
How different was Melanchthon's conception as to the needs for education
from the conceptions of Luther and Bugenhagen may easily be seen. Yet, so
great were his services in organizing and advising, and so well did such
schools meet the great demand of the time for educational leaders that he
has, very properly, been called "the Preceptor of Germany." His work was
copied by other leaders, and the result was the organization of a large
number of humanistic _gymnasia_ throughout northern Germany, in which the
new learning and the Protestant faith were combined. Sturm's school at
Strassburg (p. 272) was one of the more important and better organized of
this type, many of which have had a continuous existence up to the
present. By 1540 the process was begun of endowing such schools from the
proceeds of old monasteries, confiscated by the State, and many German
_gymnasia_ of to-day trace their origin back to some old monastic
foundation, altered by state authority to meet modern needs and purposes.
EARLY GERMAN STATE SCHOOL SYSTEMS. Melanchthon's Saxony plan was put into
partial operation as a Lutheran Church school system, but the first German
State to organize a complete system of schools was Wuertemberg (R. 162), in
southwestern Germany, in 1559. This marks the real beginning of the German
state school systems. Three classes of schools were provided for:
(1) Elementary schools, for both sexes, in which were to be taught
reading, writing, reckoning, singing, and religion, all in the
vernacular. These were to be provided in every village in the Duchy.
(2) Latin schools (_Particularschulen_), with five or six
classes, in which the ability to read, write, and speak Latin,
together with the elements of mathematics and Greek in the last year,
were to be taught.
(3) The universities or colleges of the State, of which the University
of Tuebingen (f. 1476) and the higher school at Stuttgart were declared
to be constituent parts.
Acting through the church authorities, these schools were to be under the
supervision of the State.
The example of Wuertemberg was followed by a number of the smaller German
States. Ten years later Brunswick followed the same plan, and in 1580
Saxony revised its school organization after the state-system plan thus
established. In 1619 the Duchy of Weimar added compulsory education in the
vernacular for all children from six to twelve years of age. In 1642, the
same date as the first Massachusetts school law (chapter XV), Duke Ernest
the Pious of little Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg established the first school
system of a modern type in German lands. An intelligent and ardent
Protestant, he attempted to elevate his miserable peasants, after the
ravages of the Thirty Years' War, by a wise economic administration and
universal education. With the help of a disciple of the greatest
educational thinker of the period, John Amos Comenius (chapter XVII), he
worked out a School Code (_Schulmethode_, 1642) which was the pedagogic
masterpiece of the seventeenth century (R. 163). In it he provided for
compulsory school attendance, and regulated the details of method,
grading, and courses of study. Teachers were paid salaries which for the
time were large, pensions for their widows and children were provided, and
textbooks were prepared and supplied free. So successful were his efforts
that Gotha became one of the most prosperous little spots in Europe, and
it was said that "Duke Ernest's peasants were better educated than
noblemen anywhere else."
By the middle of the seventeenth century most of the German States had
followed the Wuertemberg plan of organization. Even Duke Albrecht V of
Bavaria, which was a Catholic State, ordered the establishment of "German
schools" throughout his realm, with instruction in reading, writing, and
the Catholic creed, the schools to be responsible through the Church to
the State.
PROTESTANT STATE SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. We see here in German lands a new,
and, for the future, a very important tendency. Throughout all the long
Middle Ages the Church had absolutely controlled all education. From the
suppression of the pagan schools, in 529 A.D., to the time of the
Reformation there had been no one to dispute with the Church its complete
monopoly of education. Even Charlemagne's attempt at the stimulation of
educational activity had been clearly within the lines of church control.
Until the beginnings of the modern States, following the Crusades, the
Church had been the State as well, and for long humbled any ruler who
dared dispute its power. In the later Middle Ages nobles and rising
parliaments had at times sided with the king against the Church--warnings
of a changing Europe that the Church should have heeded--but there had
been no serious trouble with the rising nationalities before the sixteenth
century. Now, in Protestant lands, all was changed. The authority of the
Church was overthrown. By the Peace of Augsburg (1555) each German prince
and town and knight were to be permitted to make choice between the
Catholic and Lutheran faith, and all subjects were to accept the faith of
their ruler or emigrate.
This established freedom of conscience for the rulers, but for no one
else. It also gave them control of both religious and secular affairs,
thus uniting in the person of the ruler, large or small, control of both
Church and State. This was as much progress toward religious freedom as
the world was then ready for, as Church and State had been united for so
many centuries that a complete separation of the two was almost
inconceivable. It was left for the United States (1787) to completely
divorce Church and State, and to reduce the churches to the control of
purely spiritual affairs.
The German rulers, however, were now free to develop schools as they saw
fit, and, through their headship of the Church in their principality or
duchy or city, to control education therein. We have here the beginnings
of the transfer of educational control from the Church to the State, the
ultimate fruition of which came first in German lands, and which was to be
the great work of the nineteenth century. It was through the kingly or
ducal headship of the Church, and through it of the educational system of
the kingdom or duchy, that the great educational development in
Wuertemberg, Saxony, and Gotha was brought about by their rulers, and it
was through the ruling princes that the German Universities were reformed
[10] and the new Protestant universities established. [11] Even in
Catholic States, as Bavaria, the German state-control idea took root
early. Many of the important features of the modern German school systems
are to be seen in their beginnings in these Lutheran state-church schools.
[Illustration: FIG. 96. EVOLUTION OF GERMAN STATE SCHOOL CONTROL]
2. _Anglican foundations_
THE REFORMATION AND EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. The Reformation in England took
a very different direction from what it did in Germany, and its
educational results in consequence were very different. In England the
reform movement was much more political in character than in German lands.
Henry VIII was no Protestant, in the sense that Luther or Calvin or
Zwingli or Knox was. He distrusted their teachings, and was always anxious
to explain objections to the old faith. The people of England as a body,
too, had been much less antagonized by the exactions of the Roman Church
and the immoral lives of the monks and Roman clergy; the new learning had
awakened there somewhat less of a spirit of moral and religious reform;
and the reformation movement of Luther, after a decade and a half, had
roused no general interest. The change from the Roman Catholic faith to an
independent English Church, when made, was in consequence much more
nominal than had been the case in German lands. As a result the severance
from Rome was largely carried out by the ruling classes, and the masses of
the people were in no way deeply interested in it. The English National
Church merely took over most of the functions formerly exercised by the
Roman Church, in general the same priests remained in charge of the parish
churches, and the church doctrines and church practices were not greatly
altered by the change in allegiance. The changing of the service from
Latin to English was perhaps the most important change. The English
Church, in spirit and service, has in consequence retained the greatest
resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church of any Protestant denomination.
In particular, the Lutheran idea of personal responsibility for salvation,
and hence the need of all being taught to read, made scarcely any
impression in England.
By the time of Elizabeth (1558-1603) it had become a settled conviction
with the English as a people that the provision of education was a matter
for the Church, and was no business of the State, and this attitude
continued until well into the nineteenth century. The English Church
merely succeeded the Roman Church in the control of education, and now
licensed the teachers (R. 168), took their oath of allegiance (R. 167),
supervised prayers (R. 169) and the instruction, and became very strict as
to conformity to the new faith (Rs. 164-166), while the schools, aside
from the private tuition and endowed schools, continued to be maintained
chiefly from religious sources, charitable funds, and tuition fees.
Private tuition schools in time flourished, and the tutor in the home
became the rule with families of means. The poorer people largely did
without schooling, as they had done for centuries before. As a
consequence, the educational results of the change in the headship of the
Church relate almost entirely to grammar schools and to the universities,
and not to elementary education. The development of anything approaching a
system of elementary schools for England was consequently left for the
educational awakening of the latter half of the nineteenth century. When
this finally came the development was due to political and economic, and
not to religious causes.
The English Act of Supremacy (R. 153), which severed England from Rome,
had been passed by parliament in 1534. In 1536 an English Bible was issued
to the churches, [12] the services were ordered conducted in English, and
in 1549 the English Prayer Book, Psalter, and Catechism were put into use.
In 1538 the English Bible was ordered chained in the churches, [13] that
the people might read it (R. 170), and the people were ordered instructed
in English in the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. The
change of the service to English was perhaps the largest educational gain
the masses of the people obtained as the result of the Reformation in
England. [14]
[Illustration: FIG. 97. A CHAINED BIBLE
(Redrawn from an old print showing a chained Bible in a church in York,
England)]
SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES AND THE FOUNDING OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
Between 1536 and 1539 the most striking result of the Reformation in
England took place,--the dissolution of the monasteries. Their doubtful
reputation enabled Henry and Parliament to confiscate their property, and
"the dead hand of monasticism was removed from a third of the lands of
England." There were precedents for this in pre-Reformation times, the
church authorities themselves having converted several monastic
foundations into grammar schools. At one blow Parliament now suppressed
the monasteries of all England, some eight thousand monks and nuns were
driven out, many of the monasteries, nunneries, and abbey churches were
destroyed, and the monastic lands were forfeited to the Crown. It was a
ruthless proceeding, though in the long course of history beneficial to
the nation. Much of the land was given to influential followers of the
king in return for their support, and a large part of the proceeds from
sales was spent on coast defenses and a navy, though more than was
formerly thought to be the case was used in refounding grammar schools. A
number of the monasteries were converted into collegiate churches, with
schools attached. Some of the alms-houses and hospitals confiscated at the
same time were similarly used, and the cathedral churches in nine English
cities were taken from the monks (R. 171), who had driven out the regular
clergy during the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and were refounded as
cathedral church schools. The cathedral church school at Canterbury, which
Henry refounded in 1541 as a humanistic grammar school, with a song school
attached, and for the government of which he made detailed provisions (R.
172), is typical of a school which had fallen into bad repute (R. 171),
and was later refounded as a result of the confiscation of the monastic
property. The College of Christ Church at Oxford, and Trinity College at
Cambridge, were also richly endowed from the monastic proceeds.
In 1546 another Act of Parliament vested the title of all chantry
foundations, some two hundred in number, in the Crown that they might be
"altered, changed, and amended to convert them to good and godly uses as
in the erecting of grammar schools," but so pressing became the royal need
for money that, after their sale, the intended endowments were never made.
As the song schools had been established originally to train a few boys
"to help a priest sing mass," and as the service was now to be read rather
than sung, the need for choristers largely disappeared. Being regarded as
nurseries of superstition, they were abandoned without regret.
[Illustration: PLATE 7. THE FREE SCHOOL AT HARROW
One of the "Great Public" Grammar Schools of England. Founded in 1571, in
the reign of Elizabeth; building finished in 1593. The names of famous
"old boys" are seen lettered on the wall at the back. Pupils are seen
seated in "forms," reciting to the masters. (From a picture published by
Ackermann, in his illustrated _History of the Colleges of Winchester,
Eton, Westminster_, etc. London, 1816.)]
RESULT OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. The result of the change in
religious allegiance in England was a material decrease in the number of
places offering grammar-school advantages, though with a material
improvement in the quality of the instruction provided, and a consequent
decrease in the number of boys given free education in the refounded
grammar schools. As for elementary education, the abolition of the song,
chantry, and hospital schools took away most of the elementary schools
which had once existed. The clerk of the parish usually replaced them by
teaching a certain number of boys "to read English intelligently instead
of Latin unintelligently," many new parish elementary schools were
created, especially during the reign of Elizabeth, and in time the dame
school, the charity school, the writing school, and apprenticeship
training arose (chapter XVIII) and became regular English institutions.
These types of schooling constituted almost all the elementary-school
advantages provided in England until well into the eighteenth century.
The post-Reformation educational energy of England was given to the
founding of grammar schools, and during the century and a half before the
outbreak of the struggle with James II (1688) to put an end in England for
all time to the late-mediaeval theory of the divine right of kings, a
total of 558 grammar schools were founded or refounded. [15]
The grammar schools thus founded were, one and all, grammar schools of the
reformed humanistic type. What was to be taught in them was seldom
mentioned in the foundation articles, as it was assumed that every one
knew what a grammar school was, so well by this time had the humanistic
type become established. They were one and all modeled after the
instruction first provided in Saint Paul's School (p. 275) in London, and
such modifications as had been sanctioned with time, and this continued to
be the type of English secondary school instruction until well into the
nineteenth century.
THE DOMINATING RELIGIOUS PURPOSE. The religious conflicts following the
reformation movement everywhere intensified religious prejudices and
stimulated religious bigotry. This was soon reflected in the schools of
all lands. In England, after the restoration under Catholic Mary (1553-58)
and the final reestablishment of the English Church under Elizabeth
(1558), all school instruction became narrowly religious and English
Protestant in type. By the middle of the seventeenth century the grammar
schools had become nurseries of the faith, as well as very formal and
disciplinary in character. In England, perhaps more than in any other
Protestant country, Christianity came to be identified with a strict
conformity to the teachings and practices of the Established Church, and
to teach that particular faith became one of the particular missions of
all types of schools. Bishops were instructed to hunt out schoolmasters
who were unsound in the faith (R. 164 a), and teachers were deprived of
their positions for nonconformity (R. 164 b). More effectively to handle
the problem a series of laws were enacted, the result of which was to
institute such an inquisitorial policy that the position of schoolmaster
became almost intolerable. In 1580 a law (R. 165) imposed a fine of L10 on
any one employing a schoolmaster of unsound faith, with disability and
imprisonment for the schoolmaster so offending; in 1603 another law
required a license from the bishop on the part of all schoolmasters as a
condition precedent to teaching; in 1662 the obnoxious Act of Uniformity
(R. 166) required every schoolmaster in any type of school, and all
private tutors, to subscribe to a declaration that they would conform to
the liturgy of the Church, as established by law, with fine and
imprisonment for breaking the law; in 1665 the so-called "Five-Mile Act"
forbade Dissenters to teach in any school, under penalty of a fine of L40;
and in that same year bishops were instructed to see that
the said schoolmasters, ushers, schoolmistresses, and instructors, or
teachers of youth, publicly or privately, do themselves frequent the
public prayers of the Church, and cause their scholars to do the same;
and whether they appear well affected to the Government of his
Majesty, and the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.
This attitude also extended upward to the universities as well, where
nonconformists were prohibited by law (1558) from receiving degrees, a
condition not remedied until 1871 (R. 305). The great purpose of
instruction came to be to support the authority and the rule of the
Established Church, and the almost complete purpose of elementary
instruction came to be to train pupils to read the Catechism, the Prayer
Book, and the Bible. This intense religious attitude in England was
reflected in early colonial America, as we shall see in a following
chapter.
THE POOR-LAW LEGISLATION, AND ITS EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE. After the
thirteenth century, due in part to the rise of the wool industry in
Flanders, England began to change from a farming to a sheep-raising
country. Accompanying this decline in the importance of farming there had
been a slow but gradual growth of trade and manufacturing in the cities,
and to the cities the surplus of rural peasantry began to drift. The cost
of living also increased rapidly after the fifteenth century. As a result
there was a marked shifting of occupations, much unemployment, and a
constantly increasing number of persons in need of poor-relief. In the
time of Elizabeth (1558-1603) it has been estimated that one half the
population of England did not have an income sufficient for sustenance,
and great numbers of children were running about without proper food or
care, and growing up in idleness and vice.
The situation, which had been growing worse for two centuries, culminated
at the time of the Reformation when the religious houses, which had
previously provided alms, were confiscated as a result of the reformation
activities. The groundwork of the old system of religious charity was thus
swept away, and the relation which had for so long existed between prayer
and penance and almsgiving and charity was altered. The nation was thus
forced to deal with the problem of poor-relief, and with the care of the
children of the poor. In the place of the old system the people were
forced, by circumstances, to develop a new conception of the State as a
community of peoples bound together by community interest, good feeling,
charity, and service.
As this new conception dawned on the English people, a series of laws were
enacted which attempted to provide for the situation which had been
created. These were progressive in character, and ranged over much of the
sixteenth century. First the poor were restricted from begging, outside of
certain specified limits. Next church collections and parish support for
the poor were ordered (1553), and the people were to be urged to give.
Then workhouses for the poor and their children, and materials with which
to work, were ordered provided, and those persons of means who would not
give freely were to be cited before the bishop first (R. 173), and the
justices later, and if necessary forcibly assessed (1563). The next step
was to permit the local authorities to raise needed funds by strictly
local taxation (1572). In 1601 the last step was taken, when the
compulsory taxation of all persons of property was ordered to provide the
necessary poor-relief, and the excessive burdens of one parish were to be
shared by neighboring parishes. Thus, after a long period of slowly
evolving legislation (R. 173), the English Poor-Law of 1601 (R. 174)
finally gave expression to the following principles:
1. The compulsory care of the poor, as an obligation of the State.
2. The compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, male and
female, to learn a useful trade.
3. The obligation of the master to train his apprentices in a trade.
4. The obligation of the overseers of the poor to supply, where
necessary, the opportunity and the materials for such training of
the children of the poor.
5. The compulsory taxation of all persons of property to provide the
necessary funds for such a purpose, and without reference to any
benefits derived from the taxation.
6. The excessive burdens of any one parish to be pooled throughout the
hundred or county.
In this compulsory apprenticeship of the children of the poor, with the
obligation imposed that such children must be trained in a trade and in
proper living, with general taxation of those of property to provide
workhouses and materials for such a purpose, we have the germ, among
English-speaking peoples, of the idea of the general taxation of all
persons by the State to provide schools for the children of the State. The
apprenticing of the children of the poor to labor and the requirement that
they be taught the elements of religion soon became a fixed English
practice (R. 217), and in the seventeenth century this idea was carried to
the American colonies and firmly established there. It was on the
foundations of the English Poor-Law of 1601, above stated, that the first
Massachusetts law relating to the schooling of all children (1642) was
framed (R. 190), but with the significant Calvinistic addition that:
7. "In euery towne ye chosen men" shall see that parents and masters
not only train their children in learning and labor, but also "to
read & understand the principles of religion & the capitall lawes
of this country," with power to impose fines on such as refuse to
render accounts concerning their children.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why is progress that is substantial nearly always a product of slow
rather than rapid evolution?
2. Show why the evolution of many Protestant sects was a natural
consequence of the position assumed by Luther. What is the ultimate
outcome of the process?
3. Why was it not important that more than a few be educated under the
older theory of salvation?
4. Show how modern democratic government was a natural consequence of the
Protestant position.
5. Why was universal education involved as a later but ultimate
consequence of the position taken by the Protestants?
6. Explain why the local Church authorities, before 1520, tried so hard to
prevent the establishment of vernacular schools.
7. Explain why the religious discussions of the Reformation should have so
strongly stimulated a desire to read.
8. Explain the fixing in character of the German, French, and English
languages by a single book. What had fixed the Italian?
9. Was Luther probably right when he wrote, in 1524, that the schools
"were deteriorating throughout Germany"? Why?
10. Give reasons why Luther's appeals for schools were not more fruitful.
11. What was the significance of the position of Luther for the future
education of girls?
12. Was Luther's idea that a clergyman should have had some experience as
a teacher a good one, or not? Why?
13. How do you explain Luther's ideas as to coupling up elementary and
trade education in his primary schools?
14. Point out the similarity of Luther's scheme for a school system with
the German school system as finally evolved (Figure 96).
15. Show how Melanchthon's Saxony Plan differed from Luther's ideas. For
the times was it a more practical plan? Why?
16. Explain why the Lutheran idea of personal responsibility for salvation
made so little headway in England, and show that the natural educational
consequences of this resulted.
17. Show what different conditions were likely to follow, in later
centuries, from the different stands taken as to the relation of the State
and Church to education by the German people by the middle of the
sixteenth century, and by the English at the time of Elizabeth.
18. Compare the origin of the vernacular elementary-school teacher in
Germany and England.
19. Leach estimates that, in 1546, there were approximately three hundred
grammar schools in England for a total population of approximately two and
one half millions. About what opportunities for grammar-school education
did this afford?
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are
reproduced:
154. Rashdall: Diffusion of Education in Mediaeval Times.
155. Times: The Vernacular Style of the Translation of the Bible.
156. Luther: To the Mayors and Magistrates of Germany.
157. Luther: Dignity and Importance of the Teacher's Work.
158. Luther: On the Duty of Compelling School Attendance.
159. Hamburg: An Example of a Lutheran _Kirchenordnung_.
160. Brieg: An Example of a Lutheran _Schuleordnung_.
161. Melanchthon: The Saxony School Plan.
162. Raumer: The School System Established in Wuertemberg.
163. Duke Ernest: The _Schulemethodus_ for Gotha.
164. Strype: The Supervision of a Teacher's Acts and Religious Beliefs
in England.
(a) Letter of Queen's Council on.
(b) Dismissal of a Teacher for non-conformity.
165. Elizabeth: Penalties on Non-conforming Schoolmasters.
166. Statutes: English Act of Uniformity of 1662.
167. Carlisle: Oath of a Grammar School Master.
168. Strype: An English Elementary-School Teacher's License.
169. Cowper: Grammar School Statutes regarding Prayers.
170. Green: Effect of the Translation of the Bible into English.
171. Old MS.: Ignorance of the Monks at Canterbury and Messenden.
172. Parker: Refounding of the Cathedral School at Canterbury.
173. Nicholls: Origin of the English Poor-Law of 1601.
174. Statutes: The English Poor Law of 1601.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. From the selection from Rashdall (154), what do you infer as to the
effect of the Reformation on the schools? What kind of schools does
Rashdall describe as existing?
2. Contrast the vernacular style of the Bible (155) with the Ciceronian.
3. Characterize the three extracts (156-58) from Luther.
4. How advanced was the ground taken by Luther (158)? Would we accept the
logic of his argument to-day?
5. Just what do the Hamburg (159) and Brieg (160) _Ordnungen_ indicate?
6. Compare Melanchthon's Saxony Plan (161) with Sturm's (137) and the
French College de Guyenne (136), and grade the three in order of
importance.
7. Show the close similarity of the Wuertemberg plan of 1559-65 (162) and a
modern German state school system.
8. How advanced for the time was the work of Duke Ernest of Gotha (163)?
9. What kind of a school attitude is indicated by the close supervision of
English teachers, as described in 164 and 165?
10. What would be the natural effect on the teaching occupation of such
legislation as the Act of Uniformity (166)?
11. Compare the form of license of an elementary teacher (168) with a
modern form. What have we added and omitted?
12. What do the statutes regarding prayers (169) indicate as to the nature
of the grammar schools of the time?
13. Characterize the educational importance of the translations of the
Bible into the native tongues (170).
14. What are the marked features of the refounding act (172) for
Canterbury cathedral school? What improvements are indicated?
15. State the steps in the development (173) of the English Poor-Law of
1601, just what the law provided for (174), and just what elements
necessary to the creation of a state school system were incorporated into
it.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Adams, G. B. _Civilization during the Middle Ages_
Barnard, Henry. _German Teachers and Educators_.
Francke, Kuno. _Social Forces in German Literature_.
* Good, Harry E. "The Position of Luther upon Education," in _School and
Society_, vol. 6, pp. 511-18 (Nov. 3, 1917).
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _State Intervention in English
Education_.
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. _The Progress of Education in England_.
Painter, F. V. N. _Luther on Education_.
Paulsen, Fr. _German Education_.
Richard, J. W. _Philipp Melanchthon, the Protestant Preceptor of
Germany_.
Woodward, W. H. _Education during the Renaissance_.
CHAPTER XIV
EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLTS
II. AMONG CALVINISTS AND CATHOLICS
3. _Educational work of the Calvinisms_
THE ORGANIZING WORK OF CALVIN. From the point of view of American
educational history the most important developments in connection with the
Reformation were those arising from Calvinism. While the Calvinistic faith
was rather grim and forbidding, viewed from the modern standpoint, the
Calvinists everywhere had a program for political, economic, and social
progress which has left a deep impress on the history of mankind. This
program demanded the education of all, and in the countries where
Calvinism became dominant the leaders included general education in their
scheme of religious, political, and social reform. [1] In the governmental
program which Calvin drew up (1537) for the religious republic at Geneva
(p. 298), he held that learning was "a public necessity to secure good
political administration, sustain the Church unharmed, and maintain
humanity among men."
In his plan for the schools of Geneva, published in 1538, he outlined a
system of elementary education in the vernacular for all, which involved
instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, careful grammatical
drill, and training for civil as well as for ecclesiastical leadership. In
his plan of 1541 he upholds the principle, as had Luther, that "the
liberal arts and good training are aids to a full knowledge of the Word."
This involved the organization of secondary schools, or _colleges_ as he
called them, following the French nomenclature, to prepare leaders for the
ministry and the civil government through "instruction in the languages
and humane science." In the colleges (secondary schools) which he
organized at Geneva and in neighboring places to give such training, and
which became models of their kind which were widely copied, the usual
humanistic curriculum was combined with intensive religious instruction.
These colleges became famous as institutions from which learned men came
forth. The course of study in the seven classes of one of the Geneva
colleges, which has been preserved for us, reveals the nature of the
instruction (R. 175). The lowest class began with the letters, reading was
taught from a French-Latin Catechism, and the usual Latin authors were
read. Greek was begun in the fourth class, and, in addition to the usual
Greek authors, the New Testament was read in Greek. In the higher classes,
as was common also in German _gymnasia_, logic and rhetoric were taught to
prepare pupils to analyze, argue, and defend the faith. Elocution was also
given much importance in the upper classes as preparation for the
ministry, two original orations being required each month. Psalms were
sung, prayers offered, sermons preached and questioned on, and the Bible
carefully studied. The men who went forth from the colleges of Geneva to
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