HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL STUDIES.*

THE Greek and Latin tongues, with the literature to which these tongues are the keys, obtained their foothold in the schools of Christian nations, not because the study of a dead language was the best mental discipline for young students, or the only means of their acquiring a masterly freedom in the use of their own tongue, but because at the time they were introduced into schools, as branches of study, they were the languages of educated men, and were employed for public business, literature, philosophy, science and religion. Once introduced, they have retained their position partly for the same reasons, and partly by the influence of endowments and the force of habit.

Greek Language.

It arose from the relations in which the Greek and Latin languages have stood, in the past, to the whole higher life, intellectual and moral, literary and scientific, civil and religious, of Western Europe. Greeks and Romans, as well as Jews, are our spiritual ancestors. They left treasures of recorded thought, word, and deed, by the timely and judicious use of which their heirs have become the leaders of mankind. But they left them in custody of their native tongues.

After Alexander, the Greek tongue spread widely through the East, and became the means of blending Oriental with Western modes of thought. Commerce prepared the way for liberal intercourse. Ideas were exchanged freely with reciprocal advantage. But the Greek, offering new philosophy for old religion, obtained for Europe the more precious gift

Χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι ἐννεηβαίων.

No faith attracted more attention than that of the Jews. Their sacred books were carefully translated into the Greek language, and afterwards, by fanciful adaptation, and by real insight, expressed in terms of Greek thought. Greek philosophy, meanwhile, embracing with reverence the long-sought wisdom of the East, went beyond the measure of Pythagoras, Socrates, or Plato, and often beyond the guidance of sober reason, in ascetic abstraction from the things of sense, and ardent longing after spiritual truth.

Christianity itself had Greek for its mother-tongue. St. Paul, a Roman citizen, writes in Greek to the Christians of Rome. The Epistle to the Hebrews is Greek, and so is that of St. James "to the twelve tribes scattered abroad."

For great part of three centuries, the churches of the West were mostly “Greek religious colonies." Their language, their organization, their liturgy,‡ their Scriptures, were Greek. The Apostolic Fathers, the apologists and historians of the early church, the great theologians, orthodox and heretic, wrote and spoke Greek. The proceedings of the first seven Councils were carried on, and the speculative form of the Christian faith defined, in that language. It

This article is mainly from an "Essay on the History of Classical Education," in McMillan's Essays on Liberal Studies. 1867, by Charles Stuart Parker. The author refers to Von Raumer, and Schmidt, for his material.

† Milman's Latin Christianity, i. 27.

It is significant that the word liturgy is Greek, as are hymn, psalm, homily, and catechism, baptism and eucharist, priest, bishop, and pope.

was hardly possible to handle the profounder questions in any other. Augustine is at a loss for words to speak of them in Latin. Seven centuries later Anselm undertakes the task with diffidence; nor is it clear whether in his own judgment he succeeds or fails.

Thus, when Christianity became the State religion, and the emperor, in such broken language as he could command, took a modest part in the discussions of Nicæa, it was a last and signal spiritual triumph of captive Greece over Rome.

The ancient Church encouraged the study of heathen literature, but with a paramount regard to morality and Christian truth. Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian had pointed out the danger of using the poets indiscriminately as schoolbooks; and the Father who slept with Aristophanes under his pillow would not have placed him in the hands of boys. But even Tertullian allowed Christian boys to attend the public schools under pagan masters.

Origen made the study of heathen poets and moralists preparatory to that of higher Christian truth. His master, Clement, taught that philosophy was the testament or dispensation given to the Greeks, the schoolmaster to bring them, as the Mosaic law brought the Jews, to Christ. And his teaching was generally accepted. To this day "along the porticoes of Eastern churches, both in Greece and Russia, are to be seen portrayed on the walls the figures of Homer, Thucydides, Pythagoras, and Plato, as pioneers preparing the way for Christianity." When Julian forbade the Christians to institute public schools of rhetoric and literature, in which pagan authors might be read, the bishops protested.

During this first Christian age, Greek was the common language of literature, while Latin, after Tacitus and Pliny, rapidly declined. The "Meditations" of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius are composed in the vernacular of the freedman Epictetus. No Latin names can be placed beside those of Lucian and Plutarch, Arrian and Dion Cassius, Ptolemy and Galen. At Athens and Alexandria, the great conservative and liberal universities, studies in grammar and criticism were conducted side by side with philosophy and science. In both alike the Greek tongue was employed. Of all the considerable intellectual production which went on throughout the Roman world, jurisprudence alone was Latin.

Latin Language.

If Greek was the chosen language which carried literature, science, and wisdom, Christian, as well as heathen, to the highest pitch in the ancient world, Latin also was an appointed means of transferring them to Western Europe.

The imperial art of Rome laid the solid foundations on which, when the flood of barbarism began to subside, much of the old fabric was laboriously reconstructed, before the thoughts of man took a wider range. In Spain and Gaul Latin became the mother tongue. But in uneducated mouths it resumed that process of decay and regeneration, the natural life of a language spoken and not written, which only literature can arrest. Hence in time, Italians, as well as Spaniards and French, had to learn book-Latin as a foreign language. It was to them what the writings of our forefathers would be to us, if "Englisc" literature excelled English as Roman did "Romance." But other than literary interests maintained the old Latin as a common language beside the provincial dialects of the new.

The laws of the Western Empire, the last and greatest product of the ancient Roman mind, were adopted by the Gothic, Lombard, and Carlovingian dynasties, and in the twelfth century the first great European school at Bologna was thronged by students of Roman law. At one time there were twenty thousand, from different countries, dividing their attention between civil and canon law, the Pandects and the Decretals. Both were studied with a view to advancement in life, but especially to Church preferment.

Indeed it may be said, with as much truth as is required in metaphor, that the ark which carried through the darkest age, together with its own sacred treasures, the living use of ancient Latin, and some tradition of ancient learning, was the Christian Church.

What at first had been everywhere a Greek became in Western Europe a Latin religion. The discipline of Rome maintained the body of doctrine which the thought of Greece had defined. A new Latin version, superseding alike the venerable Greek translation of the Old Testament and the original words of Evangelists and Apostles, became the received text of Holy Scripture. The Latin Fathers acquired an authority scarcely less binding. The ritual, lessons, and hymns of the Church were Latin. Ecclesiastics transacted the business of civil departments requiring education. Libraries were armories of the Church: grammar was part of her drill. The humblest scholar was enlisted in her service: she recruited her ranks by founding Latin schools. "Education in the rudiments of Latin," says Hallam, "was imparted to a greater number of individuals than at present;" and, as they had more use for it than at present, it was longer retained. If a boy of humble birth had a taste for letters, or if a boy of high birth had a distaste for arms, the first step was to learn Latin. His foot was then on the ladder. He might rise by the good offices of his family to a bishopric, or to the papacy itself by merit and the grace of God. Latin enabled a Greek from Tarsus (Theodore) to become the founder of learning in the English church; and a Yorkshireman (Alcuin) to organize the schools of Charlemagne. Without Latin, our English Winfrid (St. Boniface) could not have been apostle of Germany and reformer of the Frankish Church; or the German Albert, master at Paris of Thomas Aquinas; or Nicholas Breakspeare, Pope of Rome. With it, Western Christendom was one vast field of labor: calls for self-sacrifice, or offers of promotion, might come from north or south, from east or west.

Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was made the groundwork of education; not for the beauty of its classical literature, nor because the study of a dead language was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of acquiring a mas terly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because it was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe, employed for public business, literature, philosophy, and science; above all, in God's providence, essential to the unity, and therefore enforced by the authority, of the Western Church.

But the Latin of the Middle Ages was not classical, and in the West Greek became an unknown tongue. Cicero did less to form style than Jerome; Plato was forgotten in favor of Augustine; Aristotle alone, translated out of Greek into Syriac, out of Syriac into Arabic, out of Arabic into Latin, and in Latin purged of every thing offensive to the medieval mind, had become in the folios of Thomas Aquinas a buttress, if not a pillar, of the Christian Church.

CIVILIZATION AND EDUCATION IN THE BRITISH ISLES.

High up in the North, above the continent of Europe, lay two sister islands, ample in size, happy in soil and climate, and beautiful in the face of the country. Alas! that the passions of man should alienate from one another, those whom nature and religion had bound together! So far away were they from foreign foes, that one of them the barbarians had never reached, and though a solitary wave of their invasion has passed over the other, it was not destined to be followed by a second for some centuries. In those days the larger of the two was called Britannia, the lesser Hibernia. The latter was early the scat of a flourishing church, abounding in the fruits of sanctity, learning, and zeal; the former, at least its southern half, had formed part of the Empire, had partaken both of its civilization and its Christianity, but had lately been occupied, with the extermination of its population, by the right wing of the great barbaric host which was overrunning Europe.

During the sixth and seventh centuries," says Dr. Döllinger, "the Church of Ireland stood in the full beauty of its bloom. The spirit of the gospel operated amongst the people with a vigorous and vivifying power; troops of holy men, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, obeyed the counsel of Christ, and forsook all things, that they might follow Him. There was not a country of the world, during this period, which could boast of pious foundations or of religious communities equal to those that adorned this far distant island. Among the Irish, the doctrines of the Christian Religion were preserved pure and entire; the names of heresy or of schism were not known to them; and in the Bishop of Romé they acknowledged and venerated the Supreme Head of the Church on earth, and continued with him, and through him with the whole Church, in a never interrupted communion. The schools in the Irish cloisters were at this time the most celebrated in all the West; and in addition to those which have been already mentioned, there flourished the Schools of St. Finian of Clonard, founded in 530, and those of Cataldus, founded in 640. Whilst almost the whole of Europe was desolated by war, peaceful Ireland, free from the invasions of external foes, opened to the lovers of learning and piety a welcome asylum. The strangers, who visited the island, not only from the neighboring shores of Britain, but also from the most remote nations of the Continent, received from the Irish people the most hospitable reception, a gratuitous entertainment, free instruction, and even the books that were necessary for their studies. Thus in the year 536, in the time of St. Senanus, there arrived at Cork, from the Continent, fifteen monks, who were led thither by their desire to perfect themselves in the practices of an ascetic life under Irish directors, and to study the Sacred Scriptures in the school established near that city. At a later period, after the year 650, the Anglo-Saxons in particular passed over to Ireland in great numbers for the same laudable purposes. On the other hand, many holy and learned Irishmen left their own country to proclaim the faith, to establish or to reform monasteries in distant lands, and thus to become the benefactors of almost every nation in Europe."

Such was St. Columba, who is the Apostle of the Northern Picts in the sixth century; such St. Fridolin in the beginning of the same century, who, after long labors in France, established himself on the Rhine; such the far-famed Columbanus, who, at its end, was sent with twelve of his brethren to preach in France, Burgundy, Switzerland, and Lombardy, where he died. All these

great acts and encouraging events had taken place, ere yet the Anglo-Saxon race was converted to the faith, or at least while it was still under education for its own part in extending it; and thus in the contemporary or previous labors of the Irish, the Pope found an encouragement, as time went on, boldly to prosecute that conversion and education of the English, which was beginning with such good promise, in the labors of the Irish missionaries.

"The foundation of many English sees," says Döllinger, "is due to Irish men; the Northumbrian diocese was for many years governed by them, and the abbey of Lindisfarne, which was peopled by Irish monks and their Saxon disciples, spread far around it its all-blessing influence. These holy men served God and not the world; they possessed neither gold nor silver, and all that they received from the rich, passed through their hands into the hands of the poor. Kings and nobles visited them from time to time, only to pray in their churches, or to listen to their sermons; and as long as they remained in the cloisters, they were content with the humble food of the brethren. Wherever one of these ecclesiastics or monks came, he was received by all with joy; and whenever he was seen journeying across the country, the people streamed around him to implore his benediction and to hearken to his words. The priests entered the villages only to preach or to administer the sacraments; and so free were they from avarice, that it was only when compelled by the rich and noble, that they would accept lands for the erection of monasteries. Thus has Bede described the Irish bishops, priests, and monks of Northumbria, although so displeased with their custom of celebrating Easter. Many AngloSaxons passed over to Ireland, where they received a most hospitable reception in the monasteries and schools. In crowds, numerous as bees, as Aldhelm writes, the English went to Ireland, or the Irish visited England, where the Archbishop Theodore was surrounded by Irish scholars. Of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon scholars and saints, many had studied in Ireland; among these were St. Egbert, the author of the first Anglo-Saxon mission to the pagan continent, and the blessed Willebrod, the Apostle of the Frieslanders, who had resided twelve years in Ireland. From the same abode of virtue and of learning, came forth two English priests, both named Ewald, who in 690, went as messengers of the gospel to the German Saxons, and received from them the crown of martyrdom. An Irishman, Mailduf, founded, in the year 670, a school, which afterwards grew into the famed Abbey of Malmesbury; among his scholars was St. Aldhelm, afterwards Abbot of Malmesbury, and first bishop of Sherburne or Salisbury, and whom, after two centuries, Alfred pronounced to be the best of the Anglo-Saxon poets."

The seventh and eighth centuries are the glory of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as are the sixth and seventh of the Irish. As the Irish missionaries traveled down through England, France, and Switzerland, to lower Italy, and attempted Germany at the peril of their lives, converting the barbarian, restoring the lapsed, encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding churches, schools, and monasteries, as they went along; so, amid the deep pagan woods of Germany and round about, the English Benedictine plied his axe and drove his plough, planted his rude dwelling, and raised his rustic altar upon the ruins of idolatry, and then settling down as a colonist upon the soil, began to sing his chants and to copy his old volumes, and thus to lay the slow but sure foundations of the new civilization.