After Rome, the church takes over teaching
In the Roman world, schools of grammar and rhetoric were maintained by cities and private teachers. As the western empire broke up, many of these disappeared, especially in the north and west, though some survived longer in Italy, Spain and southern Gaul. In the centuries that followed, the church became the institution most committed to teaching, because it needed clergy who could read the liturgy and the scriptures in Latin. Two kinds of church school carried most of the load: those attached to monasteries and those attached to bishops’ churches.
This article is about the pairing of these two and how the balance between them changed. The daily life of the cloister and its book copying are a separate subject.
Two kinds of school
Monastery schools served the needs of the community. They trained novices and oblates for a life of prayer, and a few took outside pupils. The curriculum was practical: reading, singing and Latin. Because monasteries were often in the countryside and sometimes isolated, their schools were less visible to the public, though some became widely known for their scholars.
Cathedral schools were run by a cleric of the bishop’s household, often called the master of the school or the scholasticus. They were intended to train the priests, deacons and clerks who would serve the diocese. Because bishops usually sat in towns, these schools were more accessible to a mixed group of boys, including some from families of knights or townsmen who did not become clergy. In practice the border was blurry, and a student might move between a monastic and a cathedral setting.
The Carolingian push
A turning point came in the late eighth and ninth centuries under the Frankish ruler Charlemagne and his successors. Dissatisfied with clergy who read poorly and copied texts carelessly, the court issued directives calling on bishops and abbots to maintain schools and to teach reading, singing and grammar. Scholars from the British Isles and Italy, including Alcuin of York, were brought to the court to lead the effort. The result is often called the Carolingian renewal.
The reforms did not create a mass school system, and their reach is debated. What they did was set expectations that churches should teach, and that texts should be copied accurately and in a clear script. Evidence of schools for a few lay boys also appears, but most pupils were headed for the church. The empire later fragmented, and the pace of the reforms slowed, but the pattern endured in the major churches of the Frankish lands.
Changing balance, tenth to twelfth century
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, learning was uneven. Some monasteries remained notable, while some cathedral schools began to attract students beyond their own diocese because of the reputation of a particular master. Over time, towns grew, trade expanded and rulers and churchmen needed more trained administrators. In this setting, cathedral schools in northern France became prominent, with places such as Chartres, Laon and Reims named in many accounts. There teachers lectured on grammar and logic, on classical authors and on theology, and students traveled to hear them.
Several features marked the change:
- Teaching moved from the countryside to towns, where students could find lodging and books.
- Independent masters, who taught in return for fees, began to compete with school officials.
- Logic and other advanced subjects became more important, along with discussion of how reason and faith relate.
- Students were often drawn from further afield, and wandering scholars became a familiar type.
Some monastic reformers viewed this development with suspicion, worrying that the pursuit of argument and fame was at odds with humility. Others saw the new schools as complementary.
Church efforts to widen access
The church sometimes tried to ensure that teaching was available at modest cost. A council in 1179 is traditionally cited as asking that cathedrals provide a teacher to instruct poor pupils without charge, and a later council extended the idea to other churches. How widely these rules were followed is unclear, but they point to a recognized expectation that churches had a duty to teach.
The coming of universities
By the later twelfth century, the crowd of students around celebrated masters in cities such as Paris was outgrowing the old cathedral-school framework. Masters and students organized themselves into corporations, which received privileges and developed into the first universities. Cathedral and monastic schools did not vanish. They continued to give basic instruction and to prepare students for advanced study, and a good many bishops’ schools remained important in their own regions. But the highest level of teaching was taken over by the new institutions.
What to keep in mind
Describing these schools as a system can mislead. There was no central authority, and quality depended on the resources of a house or diocese and the skill of its teacher. A school could flourish under a gifted master and decline when he left. The overall story is nonetheless clear: for several centuries, the main places of formal teaching in western Europe were run by the church, and the shift from monastery to cathedral to university reflects the growth of towns and of the demand for educated men.