Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

theology had in 431 been proscribed by the Church at the Council of Ephesus, very greatly increased the importance of these cities as intellectual centers. In addition to the translations already there, the Nestorian Christians accumulated a larger range of the original Greek treatises on philosophy, science, and medicine.

Hellenic

their clergy.

But before this, higher training of the Hellenic type came to be regularly used by the bishops in training Bishops start their clergy, and promotion in the Church began to schools for depend upon having had this education. So higher schools of this sort were gradually instituted in every bishopric at the see city, and became known eventually as 'episcopal' or 'bishop's' schools, or, from their location at the bishop's church, as 'cathedral' schools. These cathedral schools became the most important educational institutions of the Middle Ages. From them were derived all the schools of Western Europe, but the bishop soon became too busy to attend to them himself and was forced to commit them to various officials. Thus they developed in time into at least three types,-the 'grammar' school, taught by one of the cathedral canons, known as the scholasticus; the 'song' or music school, taught by the cantor or precentor; and the 'chorister's' school, which offered a combination of the training in the two other schools. Thus the cathedral schools virtually took the place of the old pagan schools supported by the Roman emperors.

Influence of Græco-Roman Culture upon Christianity. However, by the century after the foundation of the catechetical school at Alexandria, the Christians had begun to grow suspicious of Græco-Roman culture position to the and the 'worldly' ideal in education. Even the Eastern culture.

Growth of op

Græco-Roman

or Greek Fathers of the Church appear to have cooled considerably in their attitude toward philosophy, and the Western or Latin Fathers were more pronounced in their opposition. Roman Christians could not forget the immorality of those who had been connected with this culture, nor the abuse and insults that these pagans had heaped upon them. They felt, too, that the one great mission of the Church was ethical, and that Christ's second coming was at hand, and that all philosophy and learning were somewhat impertinent.

Nevertheless, despite this growth of opposition to pagan philosophy, primitive Christianity could not endure in its simplicity after it had been in contact with the advanced intellectual concepts of the Greeks, as modified by the organizing genius of the Romans. Both Greece and Rome left a permanent impress upon Christianity; and, though dead, they yet live in the Christian Church. The influence of Greek philosophy is seen in the formulation of a system of Christian doctrine. This appears in the development of the Apostles' Creed during the second century, in the selection of a Christian doc- canon of sacred writings or New Testament during the third century, and still more in the Nicene Creed (325), organization. which was not formulated until Christianity had been

But great in-
fluence of

Greece and
Rome upon

trine and

Church

largely Hellenized. Similarly, the Greek tendency to attribute universal validity to their sacred writings, and the pomp, ceremonies, and mysteries of the Hellenic worship, are more or less apparent in the various ecclesiastical tenets and usages. On the other hand, the Roman concepts of administration appear in the organization of the Church, which seems to have closely paralleled the Roman civil polity. By the third cen

tury priests and bishops had largely come to be similarly located, and to correspond in control, to the Roman district and city magistrates respectively. And in 445 the recognition of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome established a visible head of the entire Church, corresponding to the position of the emperor on the civic side.

Rise of the Monastic Schools. Thus it has been seen how the two great movements of Græco-Roman culture and Christian teaching arose independently, in time united and later separated, although, after separation, the Christian doctrines were somewhat affected by their long association with pagan philosophy. Eventually the pagan schools were suppressed by the edict of Justinian in 529 A. D., and the Christian education was left alone in the field. It then found an additional means of expression in the 'monastic' schools, in which Reversion to there was naturally a tendency to revert to an ascetic ness. or 'otherworldly' ideal, and to leave intellectual attainments largely out of consideration. But these monastic institutions are to be grouped with medievalism and belong more distinctly to the next chapter.

otherworldli

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 221-243. For the moral effect of Christianity, see Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals (Appleton, 1869), vol. II, pp. 1-100. Other places in the chapter will be illumined by reading Ayer, J. C., Jr., Catechumenal Schools and Catechetical Schools (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vol. I); Dill, D., Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (Macmillan, 1899), especially book V; Hatch,

E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures, 1888, Williams, London, 1891); Hodgson, G., Primitive Christian Education (Clark, Edinburgh, 1906); and Leach, A. F., Bishop's Schools and Cathedral Schools (Monroe Cyclopædia of Education, vol. I).

PART II

THE MIDDLE AGES

« ForrigeFortsæt »