moral life was exacted from all its membership, and since during this time, the body of church membership was sharply marked off from the rest of society, delinquent members could readily be returned in disgrace into the body of popu lation whence drawn. Since it was neither honorable, popular, nor profitable in the worldly sense to live this Christian life, those adhering to the new ideal were more genuinely devoted to its teachings than was true in a later age when the whole Roman world became Christian. In this sense early Christianity was a schooling.

Catechumenal Schools. In the early Church there grew up, as a matter of necessity, a process of instruction for those who desired to become members of the Christian community but who lacked the requisite knowledge of doctrine and the requisite moral stability. In general these were divided into two groups, those who had merely expressed a desire to become members of the Church, and those who were thought by the Church to be worthy of full admission. Only after candidates had undergone some instruction and discipline were they received into full communion through the sacrament of baptism. The tendency in this early period was to postpone this rite of baptism for a longer and longer time until eventually the custom gave origin to great evils. These catechumens included children of believers, Jewish converts, and the adult converts of the heathen population. Though to a certain extent the discipline entailed was intellectual, in that it had to do with doctrines, it was for the most part a moral discipline and a moral oversight. In one other respect, in music, this instruction possessed significance. The psalmody of the early Church, especially in the East, was of conspicuous importance. In regard to moral training, this use of music was probably of an importance comparable with the function of music in Greek education. At stated periods in the week, in some places every day, the catechumens met in the porch or in some other specific

portion of the church for instruction and moral training. This custom of catechumenal instruction was universal and through it, supplemented by the oversight of the home which was far more rigid than that of the contemporary Roman or Grecian home, the children of the Christian popu lation received whatever education they obtained.

Catechetical Schools. - From their method, and from their use of the catechism as the basis of their instruction in subject-matter, the catechumenal schools were also called catechetical schools. But by way of distinction this term is better applied to a development of these schools in a few localities into institutions carrying on a higher grade of work. As the Christian leaders at Alexandria and other Eastern centers came in conflict with the Greek schools of thought, it became more and more necessary to equip the leaders and the ministers of the Church with a training similar to that of the Greeks. For some centuries Alexandria was the center of this intellectual and theological activity. In 179 A.D. Pantænus, a converted Stoic philosopher, became head of the school for catechumens at Alexandria. Bringing to the service of Christian instruction the learning of the Greek philosopher and the eloquence of a rhetorician, through him and his successors both philosophy and rhetoric-in fact all the Grecian learning-was brought to the service of the Church. Pantænus was succeeded in turn by the two most noted of the Greek Church Fathers, Clement and Origen, from whom came the earliest formulation of Christian theology. Such schools, though of less importance, grew from the catechumenal schools elsewhere. In 231 Origen, compelled to leave Alexandria, established a similar school in Asia where he taught philosophy, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, and practically the entire round of Grecian learning. Here literature, history, and science were studied as in Grecian schools, though from a different point of view. Though to this school came scholars of all classes, it became

a school especially for the training of the clergy under the direction of the local bishop.

Episcopal and Cathedral Schools. Thus there grew from this rather indefinite institution, termed the catechetical school, the very definite type, that developed all over Europe, constituting throughout the Middle Ages a class of schools as important in some respects as those of the monasteries, and persisting until the present time. Other schools, such as that of Origen at Cæsarea, though less thorough, were established throughout the East by other bishops for the training of their clergy and for the general instruction of converts. It was but natural that in a population well educated and much given to philosophical and theological discussion such schools should flourish. Calixtus, Bishop of Rome, during the opening year of the third century established there a similar institution, which developed rapidly into a flourishing school patronized by emperors and possessing a large library under the charge of skilled librarians whose names are preserved to us from the fifth century. Promotion in the ranks of the clergy soon came to depend somewhat upon studies carried on in this or similar institutions. Such schools developed rapidly because, as the identity of the words pagan and countryman indicates, the spread of the gospel occurred through the large cities. As the life of the priests gathered in these central places was brought into subjection to regular rules or canons, as was done first in 354, it became possible to regulate the work of such schools more definitely. During the fifth and sixth centuries the Church councils legislated that children destined for the priesthood should early be placed in these training places under the charge of the bishop. As the result of this and similar legislation, of the growth of powerful episcopal estates, of the need for the erection of appropriate buildings, and of the need for a larger body of clergy under the direction of the bishop, such schools became attached to practically every bishopric

in the West.

In the West they were more commonly called cathedral schools from the building where located. With the overthrow of Roman culture by the barbarians, when education fell into the hands of the Church completely, these schools with those of the monasteries remained the only ones of the West. From the eighth to the twelfth centuries it is probable that the monastic schools were of far greater importance than the cathedral schools; but with the expansion of knowledge and the greater tolerance of inquiry, the rigidity and the narrowness of the monastic schools resulted in the renewed growth and revived importance of the schools under the immediate direction of the bishops.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN REACTION AGAINST THE WORLD OF THOUGHT. - Opinions concerning the relation between Christianity and pagan learning and culture divided the leaders of the early Church into two quite well-defined groups. One held that this ancient learning contained much that was valuable for Christians and for the Church; that much of it confirmed the teachings of the Bible; that philosophy was a search for truth as Christianity was; that all philosophies contained some valuable truth, though not the highest and not complete; and that Christianity should include all this ancient learning and should build upon it. The other group, recalling the scorn of the Greek philosophers, the insults and the atrocities heaped upon them by the representatives of this heathen culture, and the immoralities contained in their literature and sanctioned by their religions, held that there could be no compromise between the truth and the world; that philosophies when connected with Christianity produced only heresies; that literature and culture in general represented merely the seductions and the pleasures. of the world; that those who were instructed in the legends of Homer, in the myths of Zeus and the gods, got from them nothing but lessons of impurity and, hence, that such litera

ture was unworthy of acceptance by the Christian Church; and consequently that the Church should reject all of this ancient learning as hostile to the interests and the purposes of Christianity.

In general the view friendly to this learning prevailed in the earlier history of the Church and especially in the East among the Greeks; the view hostile to this learning became more general in the West and, even before the overthrow of the old social structure by the barbarians, prevailed among the Christians of those parts. And it was but natural that the Christians of the West should identify heathenism with this ancient culture, for the chief hold which the old religion retained upon the people was through this literature; the most forcible opposition to the progress of the Church came from the class most conversant with this literature, and the chief stronghold of the pagan régime was, as we have seen, in the schools. On the grounds that a Christian could not appreciate, certainly could not teach Homer, Virgil and similar works, the apostate emperor, Julian, forbade all Christians teaching in the rhetorical and grammatical schools. While this proscription implies the presence of many Christians in these schools, it is probable that they were merely nominal Christians, as was Augustine in his earlier years. That this attitude was fully reciprocated is indicated by the action of one of the synods of Carthage. In 398, long after the Church was completely triumphant in the empire, even long after there was any specific danger to be apprehended from this pagan influence hiding in the old learning, this synod forbade all bishops to read any of the pagan literature. This had come to be the attitude typical of the Church. With such a hostility it is not to be wondered that learning almost ceased to exist, and that there followed for some centuries the period commonly termed "the dark ages."

Since this attitude of the Church explains to a large extent the condition of education for a thousand years, some further