ered. One can hardly estimate the extent and the value of their learning until the content of these liberal arts is noted. Geometry, for example, always included the rudiments of geography; astronomy included physics; grammar included literature; rhetoric included history. The actual extent to which the literature of the ancients found any place whatever under grammar and rhetoric is a question to which very diverse answers are given and which is very difficult to decide. Isidore and Cassiodorus knew Greek and possessed a small library of Greek classics; but during the following century the knowledge of the Greek language almost disappeared from Western Europe. It is believed that this knowledge was kept alive throughout the entire Middle Ages by the Celtic monks of the British Isles; but, while a general knowledge of Greek was undoubtedly preserved there much longer than on the continent, it only in rare instances survived these centuries of the dark ages. Alcuin had some knowledge of the language, but little of the literature; though some of his predecessors and successors had more. Even the indirect knowledge of Greek literature, through Latin translations or rather summaries or extended references by such writers as Boethius, was very meager, as, indeed, was that of Latin literature. Some of the writings of Virgil and of Cicero were well known. For the most part, however, monasteries possessed but very few of the works of classical authors. In the book list of the library of York, Alcuin mentions Boethius, Pliny, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Lactantius, Lucan, Donatus, Priscian, together with all of the important Church Fathers and several minor Latin authors. It is stated, moreover, that this catalogue shows the library at York in the eighth century to have been greater than that of any other in either France or England until as late as the twelfth century. The extensive use of the pagan literature in the monastic schools at St. Gall during the tenth and eleventh centuries has been mentioned (p. 256), and in many monastic records, the mention of their possession

of certain classical works, usually those of Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero, is to be found frequently.

Nevertheless, the general attitude toward this literature and its study was distinctly hostile. Alcuin tells his pupils at Tours, "The sacred poets are sufficient for you; there is no reason why you should sully your mind with the rank luxuriance of Virgil's verse." Showing a certain devotion to their studies on the part of some monks and the general attitude toward the classic writers, Peter the Venerable, head of the Clugny house (during the twelfth century), writes as follows: "See, now, without the study of Plato, without the disputations of the Academy, without the subtilties of Aristotle, without the teaching of philosophers, the place and the way of happiness are discovered. You run from school to school, and why are you laboring to teach and to be taught? Why is it that you are seeking through thousands of words, and multiplied labors, what you might, if you pleased, obtain in plain language with little labor? Why, vainly studious, are you reciting with the comedians, lamenting with the tragedians, trifling with the metricians, deceiving with the poets, and deceived with the philosophers? Why is it that you are now taking so much trouble about what is not in fact philosophy but should rather (if I may say it without offense) be called foolishness?"

One minor regulation in the rules of this same great house (Clugny) which dominated monasticism for two or three centuries possesses a similar significance. It was customary, as with all monastic organizations wherein silence was enjoined, to indicate one's wants by signs: thus the desire for a religious book was expressed by extending the palms of the hands and then making a movement to imitate the turning of the leaves of a book; but if a copy of one of the classical authors was wanted, the wish was indicated by imitating the motion of a dog scratching his ear, thus showing the proper disposi tion toward the work of the unbelieving. Significant also is

a very common attitude during the Middle Ages toward Vergil as the most prominent and most seductive of these ancient writers, wherein he is portrayed as a minion of the evil one, representative of all the temptations and wiles of this world. In fact, there arose during these centuries a very extensive Vergilian demonology that gives peculiar significance to the office of the poet as guide of the nether world, as portrayed by Dante at the close of this great historic period.

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING UNDER CHARLES THE GREAT (r. 771-814).-The one important aspect of educational history from the seventh to the twelfth centuries that was not wholly monastic was the revival of learning under the Emperor Charlemagne. The task of this great emperor was to unify the work of the Teuton and that of the Roman, to adjust the barbarian Frank to the Roman culture, to transfer to the German, who was hereafter to build upon it, the structure of modern society, the foundations of social organization. Through the Holy Catholic Church the transfer of the religious element had been made and the barbarians were now orthodox Christians; through the Holy Roman Empire, established by Charles in 800, the political and legal structure of society was finally accepted by the Teuton. There remained to be added to these forms of external unity that internal unity which consisted in a community of ideas, of language, and of the cultural elements of social life. To bring about this union, this adoption of the Latin language, and the learning of the Church and of such of the Roman culture as survived, was the ambition of Charles.

Naturally, he used as his instruments the only educational institutions of his times, the monasteries. The old Roman schools, if they survived at all in the chief centers of provin cial learning, were of the most rudimentary sort, and had been assimilated into the episcopal or monastic schools. But this movement instigated by Charles was of more than monastic sig.

nificance. It is practically the only one by a sovereign for the fostering of education among his people, between the last of the Roman emperors and the period of the universities. The work of Alfred of England and a few similarly inclined rulers was purely personal and local.

In 782 Charles called Alcuin from the cathedral school at York to the Continent, to assist him in his attempt to revive an interest in learning. For a century or more preceding this time Irish monks had been largely instrumental in missionary and educational activities on the Continent, and the chaplains of the court of the Merovingian kings had in a way attempted to foster learning. But by Alcuin this school of the palace was developed into a definite institution, patronized by Charles himself, by other members of the royal family, and by the youth of the nobility. From it Charles drew many of his assistants in the administration of his great empire. While the work of the school was very meager in its literary character, yet its importance was great from the influence which it exerted as an example. In 787 Charles issued his capitulary upon schools, which has been accounted by some, though in a somewhat figurative sense we believe, as the foundations of modern education, "the charter of modern thought." It commanded the study of letters both by the clergy and by the monks; by the former, since it had come to his notice that great numbers could not even read, and hence simply repeated the church services by rote, and since many of the educated showed through their correspondence with him that their education was most faulty; by the monks, that there might again be "a regular manner of life and one conformable to holy religion." Two years later, the first capitulary not having produced the desired effect, he issued another, prescribing in greater detail the study appropriate to the monks and the clergy. Several capitularies of the same year are devoted to raising the standard of character of the clergy, both morally and intellectually, and one directs the

bishops that clerics should be sought for, not only from among the servile class, but also from among the sons of freemen. One of these (that of 789) directs that "every monastery and every abbey have its school, where boys may be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing, arithmetic, grammar; and let the books which are given them be free from faults, and let care be taken that the boys do not spoil them either when reading or writing." Karl's officials, the missi dominici, were empowered to visit all monasteries, to enforce the provisions of these edicts, and to see that the monks lived according to their rules. At least in one bishopric, that of Orleans, there was an attempt to carry out similar provisions in regard to the parish churches, and thus to form a system of elementary schools. This gives basis to the extravagant claim that elementary education for the lower classes was more general in France in the eighth century than in the early half of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, Gibbon summarizes the whole movement by saying that "the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant now acquires in his infancy." That rapid advances in learning were made by the clergy and the monks during Karl's time is evident; that these efforts were not altogether satisfactory even to Alcuin is evidenced by his great desire to withdraw from the court on account of the corrupt life of the members and the rude, almost barbarian, character of society, whose constant occupation was warfare. In 794 this desire culminated in the withdrawal of Alcuin to the abbacy of the monastery at Tours. Meanwhile, the educational movement furthered from this and other monasteries, as well as from the court, continued to thrive under difficulties. Of quite as great importance as the edicts of Karl himself, was one by the successor of Karl, issued in 817. This reactionary edict restricted the work of monastic schools to those boys who were destined for the monastic life (oblati).