The Seven Liberal Arts
When Rome dissolved in the sixth century, Roman genius emerged as the Universal
Christian Church, an inspired religious sect grown spontaneously into a vehicle which
invested ultimate responsibility for personal salvation in the sovereign individual. The
Roman Church hit upon schooling as a useful adjunct, and so what few schools could be
found after the fall of Rome were in ecclesiastical hands, remaining there for the next
eleven or twelve centuries. Promotion inside the Church began to depend on having first
received training of the Hellenic type. Thus a brotherhood of thoughtful men was created
from the demise of the Empire and from the necessity of intellectually defining the new
mission.
As the Church experimented with schooling, students met originally at the teacher's
house, but gradually some church space was dedicated for the purpose. Thanks to
competition among Church officials, each Bishop strove to offer a school and these, in
time to be called Cathedral schools, attracted attention and some important sponsorship,
each being a showcase of the Bishop's own educational taste.
When the Germanic tribes evacuated northern Europe, overrunning the south, cathedral
schools and monastic schools trained the invading leadership — a precedent of
disregarding local interests which has continued ever after. Cathedral schools were the
important educational institutions of the Middle Ages; from them derived all the schools
of western Europe, at least in principle.
In practice, however, few forms of later schooling would be the intense intellectual
centers these were. The Seven Liberal Arts made up the main curriculum: lower studies
were composed of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Grammar was an introduction to
literature, rhetoric an introduction to law and history, dialectic the path to philosophical
and metaphysical disputation. Higher studies included arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy. Arithmetic was well beyond simple calculation, entering into descriptive and
analytical capacities of numbers and their prophetic use (which became modern
statistics); geometry embraced geography and surveying; music covered a broad course
in theory; astronomy prepared entry into physics and advanced mathematics.
Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, an attempt to reduce the influence of
emotionality in religion took command of church policy. Presenting the teachings of the
Church in scientific form became the main ecclesiastical purpose of school, a tendency
called scholasticism. This shift from emotion to intellect resulted in great skill in analysis,
in comparison and contrasts, in classifications and abstraction, as well as famous verbal
hairsplitting — like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Scholasticism
became the basis for future upper-class schooling.
The Platonic Ideal
No comments:
Post a Comment