and the purpose were almost identical with those of their English prototype. Such schools were to be found in all the colonies, with the exception of Georgia and North Carolina. They were most numerous in the New England colonies, where the religious motive was prominent and where colleges demanding the preparatory grammar train

ing were influential. In Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland systems of such schools existed. In Massachusetts alone such schools were established in considerable number. The first of these in America, the Boston Latin School, founded 1635, has existed continuously to the present

time. The illustration given is of the old schoolhouse in connection with King's Chapel, as it was during the early part of the eighteenth century, at the close of the long mastership of Ezekiel Cheever. Cheever, the most famous of colonial schoolmasters, came to the Boston school in 1670, after a teaching experience of thirty-two years in New Haven and in various Massachusetts towns. For thirty-eight years he served as master of the Boston school. Owing to the fact that social and educational traditions were far less binding in the new country, the humanistic school gave place to a new type in America sooner than in any of the European countries. By the close of the eighteenth century, the Latin schools were replaced by the academy, to be mentioned later (p. 250).

The Jesuit Schools, to be discussed under the Reformation (p. 202), were also important types of these schools.

The earlie of these

schools at

Boston

The most noted colo

nial school

master

SUMMARY

The Renaissance was primarily a movement in individualism. The characteristic features of the period were the attempts to overthrow the various forms of authority, in Church, State, industrial and social organizations, intellectual and educational life, dominant during the Middle Ages. In the earlier part of the movement and in the South of Europe, culture as the means of personal development was emphasized; later, and in the North, knowledge as a means of reforming those evils and injustices of society which were the outgrowth of ignorance was the chief interest. Two distinct types of educational thought and practice grew out of the Renaissance. The first was the revival of the liberal education of the Greeks, which aimed at the development of personality by means of a great variety of educational instruments. This aim of education was broad and included a variety of elements besides the intellectual, and used many means besides the literary. Soon, however, this became the exception, and survived only in various forms of protests or reform movements which sprang up against the dominant type of education. This dominant type of education was the second educational outgrowth of the Renaissance. It was the narrow humanistic education into which the broad humanistic or Greek liberal education soon degenerated. The classical languages and literatures were first studied as the source of all liberalizing ideas; then as a training in formal literary appreciation; then merely as a formal discipline of the individual. Each country produced a number of Renaissance educational leaders and appropriate types of schools. Among the leaders Erasmus was the most prominent. The German gymnasium, the English public school, the American colonial grammar school and college, were all types of the narrow humanistic schools. In all, the content of education was restricted to the Greek and Latin languages and literatures. This purely formal education became identified with the liberal education, and was the dominant type of education well into the nineteenth century. Any other conception or practice of education during the early modern period was wholly subordinate to this, and is of importance only as a protest or as a germ of subsequent development.

CHAPTER VII

THE REFORMATION, THE

COUNTER-REFORMATION

RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION

AND THE

WHAT THE REFORMATION WAS. -The Renaissance in Germany is distinguishable from the Reformation only in its spirit and in its outcome. The most fundamental features of this period have already been mentioned in stating the changed character of the Renaissance in the North. The Italian Renaissance was largely interested in classical and pagan literature; the Teutonic Renaissance, in patristic and Christian literature. The one was concerned in personal culture; the other, in social reform, in morals and in religion. One was individualistic and self-centered; the other was social and reformatory. One explanation of the difference is found in the fact that the civilization of the Latin countries was based directly upon the classical institutions, the traditions and influences of which were ever present; while the civilization of the Teutons had been a direct outgrowth of their Christianization. Another partial explanation is that the Teutonic mind had a moral and religious bent, while the Latin mind was predominantly secular in its interests. The interests of the fifteenth century were literary and æsthetic, and involved the recovery and appreciation of the classical literatures. Those of the sixteenth century were ethical and theological, and involved criticism and reconstruction rather than appreciation.

Relation of the Reforthe Renais

mation to

sance

Chief differ

ence was ir

the immedi

ate aim ano

interests

aspects of

This criticism and this reconstruction were directed toward The two two aspects of religion, one abstract and theological, the other the religiou practical and moral. The movement began with the prac- reformation tical effort to reform the many abuses within the Church. The theological

ethical anc

Need for

noral reform lone would ot have

aused a ermanent ivision

Different :mpera

ental atti

necessity for such a reform was admitted by the Church long before the actual break occurred, and was striven for by many sections of the Catholic Church both before and after the open break had taken place. This tendency toward moral reform within the Church, which culminated in the Council of Trent (1545-1562), would probably in itself have caused no permanent division. But by that time the abstract and theological differences, due to fundamental disagreement, had become so prominent that harmonization was no longer possible.

This fundamental divergence in the conception of religion is due to the nature of the human mind. It had appeared in ides toward the discussions of the later Middle Ages between realists and ligion nominalists. But so long as men's minds remained essentially uncritical and without the basis for forming positive judgments, the inherent incompatibility of the views did not cause open rupture. With the Renaissance this basis was furnished in the knowledge of ancient and patristic literature, and the critical spirit was consequently developed. Hence it was inevitable that the two fundamental views of religion should come in conflict. The one view looks upon religion as a completed truth, revealed in its entirety by divine providence and given into the hands of an institution, which, in its origin, constitution and authority, is as divine as the original revelation itself. To the other view, religion is a truth divine in its origin, but completed only with the growth and through the development of the spirit of man. It is not a completed truth, but one whose principles are perfected by progressive application through the lives of men. Its particular meaning, in time and place, is given by the apie Refor- plication of man's reason to the original revelation. Accepting the original revelation as the basis, the one finds the truth completed in the authority of the Church, the other in the reason of the individual. Hence the emphasis on reason, originatnaissance ing in the Renaissance, was continued by the Reformation and

ition emasis on son was continuan of the

itude

applied to religious beliefs and practices. The tendency to observation, comparison, criticism, that is, the appeal to

original sources and to experience which characterizes the humanistic Renaissance is the essential characteristic of the Protestant Reformation. From this grew the most important educational consequences.

ter-Reforma

movement

within the
Roman

Catholic
Church

The Refor

mation was

at first a

ton of the best educational influ

continuation of

The counter-Reformation was the reaction against this The counmovement toward separation. The inquisition was the chief tion was the negative or repressive means of this reactionary movement, reactionary and education its chief positive one. This education was controlled for the most part by the newly organized teaching congregations, chief among which was the Society of Jesus. INFLUENCE OF THIS PERIOD ON THE CONCEPTION AND SPIRIT OF EDUCATION. The logical outcome of the views of the reformers would have led, first, to a continuous development of the Renaissance emphasis upon the use of reason in the interpretation of secular life and of nature; second, to the restriction of the authority of the Scriptures to religious matters; and third, to the use of reason by the individual even in the interpretation of the Scriptures. But the tendencies in all of these lines were checked before the expiration of a single generation. Luther, in the early days at Wittenberg, wrote: "What is contrary to reason is certainly much more contrary to God. For how should not that be against divine truth which is against reason and human truth ?" And even later he said, "It is admitted that reason is the chief of all things, and among all A reaction that belongs to this life, the best, yea, a something divine." found even But before the close of his life he stated as his view that, "The more subtle and acute is reason, the more poisonous a beast, with many dragon's heads, is it against God, and all His works." This latter position is reiterated with characteristic vehemence and denotes not only an individual but a general change.

The Reformation leaders themselves recognized that the doctrine of the Reformation contained inherently the right of liberty of conscience and the duty of interpreting the Scriptures according to one's own reason. But they found it quite as

ences of the

Renaissance

in Luther's

views