According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term 'dark ages' was originally applied to the Middle Ages, to denote the intellectual darkness of the times. Generations of historians have long ago pushed the dawn back from 1450 to I 050 or even to 800, and neither the age of Bede in North umbria nor that of Isidore in Spain deserves the epithet of gloom, but both these areas of light were in fact eclipsed before long and if we look only at the area bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine and the western sea there is little of educational and literary activity in the seventh and eighth centuries save in a few monasteries. Public schools had long since ceased to be, and the study of letters was preserved only in monasteries and a few bishops' households; the enlightened bishops were in most cases themselves monks. Gregory of Tours (538-94), though a voluminous historian, is frequently ungrammatical and uncouth, and apologizes for his lapses, and the language of St Benedict, the contemporary of Cassiodorus (c. 490-c. 583), shows equally the breakdown of classical grammar. Elementary education, where it existed at all, was almost entirely personal - that of the gifted priest teaching his clerk or a forward boy of his parish. In consequence, the legislation of King Charles the Great was epoch-making in this respect as in so many others. He announced his policy in general terms in a capitulary of uncertain date (c. 780-800):
It has seemed to us and our faithful counsellors that it would be of great profit and sovereign utility that the bishoprics and monasteries of which Christ has deigned to entrust to us the government should not be content with leading a regular and devout life, but should undertake the task of teaching those who have received from God the capacity to learn, each according to his abilities . . . . Doubtless [he continues] good
works are belter than great knowledge, but without knowledge it is impossible to do good. 1
A celebrated capitulary of 789 is more precise:
In every bishop's see, and in every monastery, instruction shall be given in the psalms, musical notation, chant, the computation of years and seasons, and in grammar; and all books used shall be carefully corrected. 2
This was reiterated by the Council of Chalon in 813:
As our emperor Charles . . . commanded, bishops shall set u p schools where leuers and the science of the Scriptures shall be taught; in these schools [the fathers add, somewhat sententiously] shall be brought up those to whom the Saviour says with justice: 'Ye are the salt of the earth. '3
We can see these instructions being passed down to a lower level by Alcuin's friend and successor Theodulf, bishop of Orleans and abbot of Fleury:
In the villages and townships the priests shall open schools. If any of the faithful entrust their children to them to learn letters, let them not refuse to instruct these children in all charity . . . when the priests undertake this task, let them ask no payment, and if they receive anything, let it be only the small gifts offered by the parents.4
These decrees have been cited at some length, in order to show the simplicity of the educational system of the empire, and thus to show also how impossible it was that anything that could be called higher education should come into being in the Europe of the Carolingian epoch. This simple framework was all that existed - and that only when wars, invasions and human inertia permitted - from 800 till well after A.D. l 000. Monks received what their elders in the monastery
had to give; children, whether children sent by their parents to the priest, or oblates taught by their master in the cloister, learnt grammar and psalmody; the fortunate might receive instruction in letters and elementary calculation in the schools of a monastery or a cathedral city; theology was the only 'advanced' study, either in the monastery or in the bishop's familia. There was no higher education north of the Alps, nor any professional class of teachers whether lay or clerical. Clearly, any kind of philosophical activity was out of the question.
1Capitularia regum francorum, i, ed. A. Boretius, Mon. Germ. Hist. ( 1 883), 29. 2Capitularia, i, 22, c. 72.
3Concilia aevi karolini, ed. A. Werminghoff, Mon. Germ. Hist. ( 1 906), pp. 274-5. 'Capitula ad presbiteros, 20 (Migne, P. L. cv. 1 96).
Nevertheless, it was from the Carolingian schools that the intellectual life of the middle ages developed, and it may be well to look for a moment at the pattern of education as they saw it, a ghost of the curriculum of the ancient world, yet a ghost which was in time to be a true revenant, a 'come-back' from the great days of Athens.
In the last century of the Roman Republic Varro ( 1 16-27 B.C.), 'the
most learned of the Romans', had written a lengthy description of the 'nine liberal arts' - grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine and architecture. These were to be the basis of the medieval education, but under the Roman Empire all save the first three fell out of the educational programme. Varro's classification was taken up, in the last century of the Empire, by Martianus Capella, who wrote, c . 41 0-39, an encyclopedia of
education destined to be the principal text-book of schools in the early Middle Ages. He has only seven liberal arts, i.e., Varro's nine less medicine and architecture, which had become professional subjects, and this new arrangement became classic, forming in later centuries the two groups of the trivium and quadrivium. Capella had sweetened his doctrine by presenting it in the form of an allegory, the marriage of Philosophy with Mercury, in which the bride was accompanied by seven maidens, the nurses of the liberal arts, each replete with symbolic attributes. His book was popular throughout the Middle Ages, and lent itself to illustration; the liberal arts soon passed into art, where they had a distinguished career in manuscript illuminations, in stone on the porches of Chartres and Laon, in stained glass and, finally, in Botticelli's frescoes at the Villa Lemmi. Alcuin, taking things seriously, endeavoured in his dialogues on Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic to de-allegorize and make practical the traditional scheme. He was followed by Theodulf of Orleans who, while remaining allegorical, simplified Capella, and by Hrabanus Maurus who, in his work on the Instruction of Clerks, gave a short practical instruction for those who wished to cover all the ground. For all the various parts of the scheme time-honoured text-books were classic. Thus for Grammar Priscian and Donatus were learnt, and their instructions applied to reading and composition in Latin prose and verse. For Rhetoric the text-books were the De oratore of Cicero and the lnstitutio Oratoria of Quintilian. For Dialectic were used the Isagoge or Introduction of Porphyry, the Categories and De interpretatione of Aristotle, with the commentary of Boethius. Arithmetic began with simple multiplication and division, which included in their higher reaches the manipulation of the abacus or counting-board, rendered necessary by the impracticability of the
Greek and Roman numerals; it continued with chronology, of which a large part consisted in the computation of the indictions and of the date of Easter; finally the allegorical interpretation of numbers, highly developed by Augustine and others, had a part here. The text-books were Bede's Liber de temporibus and Liber de ratione temporum. Geometry consisted of a certain amount of Euclid, eked out by Gerbert of Aurillac, and for Astronomy Pliny augmented by Bede. Finally came Music which, we must remember, was musica as -opposed to cantus. Plainchant and its neums, when they developed! were taught until the eleventh century, when the stave and written music became more common, almost entirely by practice and memory to the choir or schola cantorum by the cantor or precentor. Music as a part of education consisted in a study of the relation of the notes of the scale to numbers and arithmetic, and ultimately to the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres, a distant legacy from Pythagoras. Here the text-books were Boethius and Bede. In addition to all these parts of the trivium and quadrivium there was the parallel encyclopedic literature, reaching back by way of Varro to Alexandria. Here the text-books were Isidore of Seville in the more recent editions of Bede, Alcuin and others.
All this apparatus of learning was intended to lead up to the crown of all, the study of Scripture and the greater Latin Fathers. Actually, however, between 600 and 1000 the quadrivium was in eclipse as an educational syllabus, and was either omitted altogether or treated simply in a brief, factual way. Of the trivium likewise one element, dialectic, was omitted or treated rather as a piece of memory work than as an intellectual discipline. This left Grammar and Rhetoric that is, a purely literary education - in possession of the field, and consequently we find that most of the notable writers and teachers of the dark ages devoted all their talents to history or versifying or grammatical writing, and that those who wrote theological works did so in a literary way. It is also possible to see in the current treatment of the trivium and quadrivium how and whence the principal trends of the eleventh and twelfth centuries developed from this curriculum. The literary background of the historians, poets and humanists comes from the fully developed grammar and rhetoric; philosophy and speculative theology rose in due time from revived dialectic; and medieval science was in a development of the encyclopedic learning of Isidore and Bede and their continuators, later augmented by Arabic and Aristotelian treatises. Finally we may note that in the Carolingian age dialectic was so little prized that it was transposed from its true place to a position between grammar and rhetoric, as 68
something to be got over quickly. In the revival of the eleventh century it was restored to its rightful place, developed enormously, and then augmented by the whole Aristotelian corpus of philosophy and its accompanying commentaries. The change from rhetoric to logic as the piece de resistance of the curriculum is the index of a cultural revolution.
Seen from a distance in the perspective of history, the Carolingian revival is only one of the many revivals, Irish, English, continental, that occurred during the early Middle Ages; a patch of sunlight rather brighter than the others which in its turn disappeared in a swirl of mist. Historically, however, it is more important and had more permanent results than any of its predecessors for a number of reasons.
In the first place, the legislation of Charles and his immediate successors was something new. Even if it rested in part on practice or ancient decrees, it was novel in its crisp precision and universal application. Though soon neglected in practice it remained, like much else in Carolingian legislation, as a memory, a precedent and a basis for future action and law. Secondly, and in this unlike the previous insular or German centres of light, the Carolingian revival did not wholly vanish from Europe. Like a fire in dry grass it passed here and there, always alive at this monastic centre or that. And finally, the teaching and example of Alcuin,5 who insisted on the necessity of good copies of all the best models in the field of text books, and who had himself set up excellent scriptoria in many places, had given a new impetus and technique to the copying of manuscripts; this continued without abatement at very many monasteries, more methodically and with a wider scope than before; and in the so-called Carolingian minuscule, which actually owed much to the script of Ireland and Northumbria, it had an instrument of great power. With Alcuin began the great age of the copying of Latin manuscripts, both patristic and classical, and this gradual accumulation of clearly (and more correctly) written books was of inestimable value when the more comprehensive revival came two centuries later.
From the time of Alcuin onwards there were in north-western continental Europe two types of school, in accordance with Charlemagne's legislation, viz., the cathedral or episcopal school and the monastic school. The cathedral school, theoretically existent in every bishopric, but in fact by no means common, was conducted either by the bishop himself or (more frequently) by a school master
known as the scholarius, capiscola or magister scholarum. His pupils were boys and young clerks of every age, destined for the priesthood and often living with the canons, at cathedrals where the chapter followed a rule;- very much on the same terms as the children of the cloister lived with the monks. The monastic school was, in the intention of both Charlemagne and Alcuin, made up of two branches, the one consisting of the children and young monks of the house, including those sent from less well-equipped monasteries, and the other an extern school for clerks conducted by the monks. Outside the two classes of clerks and monks few at this period would have received any schooling in letters.
Of these three schools only one was permanent and ubiquitous, the internal monastic school, which was a sine qua non for a community's prosperous existence. Of the other two, the bishop's school often disappears, and in the monasteries either a lack of pupils or motives of reform often led to the suspension of the extern school. For the two centuries after Charlemagne, therefore, the monasteries and the monks were the chief seats and agents of culture on the Continent, and these are the centuries known with some justice as the monastic or Benedictine centuries. Famous among a host of abbeys were Tours, the home of Alcuin, Fulda, where Hrabanus Maurus, the pupil of Alcuin, became 'the schoolmaster of Germany', and Reichenau, home of Walafrid Strabo. Hrabanus Maurus, encylo pedistand theologian, Lupus of Ferrieres, the indefatigable borrower and copier of manuscripts and humanist writer of letters, Walafrid the poet, who describes in detail the plants in the garden at Reichenau - these are, with Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, the greatest figures of the generation after Alcuin. All are; in their way, literary humanists; lovers, that is, of ancient poetry and learning for its own sake; nor can we wholly despise the muse of those who have given us some of the finest of the Latin hymns, the Gloria, Laus of Palm Sunday, the majestic Ut queant laxis of the Baptist, and the incomparable Veni Creator. None of them was, however, an original thinker. Indeed, the only writer to deserve such a title between Boethius and Anselm was John the Scot (i.e., the Irishman, as his surname, Erigena, implies), who lived from c. 810 to c. 877. Erigena is a voice in the wilderness; he knew Greek, and in this respect was superior to any of the Carolingian scholars, he had read many of the Greek Fathers, including Origen, and he had translated the pseudo Denis into Latin and developed a whole system of theology based on later Neoplatonism. He was the head of the palace school under Charles the Bald (c. 852) and disappears from history c. 877, to 70
reappear later both in myth and as a wandering star of thought. Erigena's system is a difficult one to grasp and is certainly unorthodox in implication, though not in intention, but it had so little direct influence on the scholastics that it need not detain us here. Soon after the end of Erigena's career the Carolingian renaissance foundered under the stress of dynastic and feudal wars and invasions of the Northmen, and a century (880-980) began which, save in England under Alfred, Athelstan and Dunstan, was as dark as any that had gone before it. 'A century of iron, lead, and darkness', was the severe judgement of the unsympathetic Italian historian Baroni us in the sixteenth century, and Mabillon, while pointing to the birth of Cluny, did not do much to lighten the picture. It was indeed a dark time, save for England, yet in a number of monasteries in inland districts untouched by war or by the Northmen the fire of learning smouldered on under the ashes. The tide turned about 970, though so little material is as yet available for the history of education, especially in Italy, that it is not possible to say when or by what agency the decisive change began. In north Italy the urban schools of grammar and perhaps also of law had never wholly ceased to function, and it is notable that the great figures born in the early part of the eleventh century - Peter Damian, Lanfranc, Cardinal Humbert - whatever their views on literature and learning, show themselves to be possessed either of a wide and accurate literary culture, or of a technical knowledge of law, Roman or Canon, or of all these accomplishments. Henceforth, and especially after the first decade of the eleventh century, there is a real change, slow at first but unmistakable. Henceforward, there is such a thing as European education and thought, and though technique and framework change, there is a steady passage from one phase to another, and, generally speaking, from the superficial to the deeper, and from the narrow to the broader. Now, though both in thought and literature the ancients remain authorities to be imitated or followed, until l 200 at least in literature and for a century after that in thought, yet the writers, and above all the thinkers, consciously criticize and innovate and, what is more significant, move boldly forward on uncharted seas of metaphysics and theology. Henceforward, therefore, both thought and its technique, and the institutions which harboured it, become topics susceptible of detailed examination and criticism.