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Theological Edneation THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

for the lower orders, four years for the sub-deacon, and five for the deacon; and the African Church, following Cyprian (Epist., xxix.), advanced no one from one order to another without examination. The practical training thus afforded was supplemented, doubtless even at an earlier date, by the diatribe, or close personal association with the bishop for the instruction of the younger clergy. By the end of the fourth century this practise had become more definitely organized, especially in Africa, where, with the help of monasticism, Augustine formed a sort of clerical school, though designed for the further perfection of clergy already officiating rather than for the training of candidates for the priesthood. The school of Augustine was the model for the schools of his pupils, bishops Alypius of Tagaste, Evodius of Uzalis, Profuturus of Cirta, Severus of Mileve, and Urbanus of Sicca, as well as for similar institutions in Spain and southern Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries, such as Lerinum and Arles.

These institutions, of whose courses, organization, and history little is known, which must, however, have varied greatly according to local conditions, were in great part destroyed by the inroads of the barbarians; and what preparaz. Monastic dons were still made for clerical train-

Schools. ing harked back to older usages. A radical change, however, came about through the monasteries, whether primarily from the Benedictines or from Cassiodorus (qq.v.), when the cloisters came to consider as a part of their duties the training of recruits for the Church, and began the foundation of monastic schools for boys. While sporadic beginnings may have been made here and there, especially as the reception of ob lates, or children brought to the monasteries in tender years, presupposed religious training, the first certain traces of systematic monastic schools are to be found in the English Church, whence Boniface and Alcuin (qq.v.) transplanted the plan to Germany and France, thus leading Charlemagne, about 790, to issue his Constitutio de scholis per sin guta episcopia et monasteria instituendis. Instruc tion began with the Psalter, which was committed to memory, as were the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. This was followed by the Athana sian Creed, the exorcism, penitential office, etc., as well as by the evangelary and the homilies for Sun days and holy days. Instruction in reading was supplemented by a knowledge of writing, church music, calculation of religious festivals, and Latin grammar. Those more advanced studied the Regina pastoralis of Gregory the Great, the De officiis eccle siasticis of Isidore, and the pastoral epistle of Ge lasius, canons being required also to study the Reg ula de vita canonica and monks the Benedictine rule. Such was the chief ecclesiastical training, which might be acquired, if need be, in the parish schools. Those who desired still further knowledge might study the " seven liberal arts," which were divided into the trivium of grammar (including the reading of the " Distichs " of Cato and the poems of Vergil and Ovid, or of the Christian Juvencus and Sedu- I lius), rhetoric (based chiefly on Cicero's De inve-n tione, but little used except in law), and dialectics;

and into the quadrivium of arithmetic (including the reckoning of the church calendar), geometry (which would now rather be termed geography), music, and astronomy (often including the mystic properties of numbers). Side by side with these arts, which individually were reckoned un-Christian except in so far as they bore directly upon theology, were patristic, canonical, and (above all) exegetical studies, Augustine, the Canones couciliorum, and the Decreta pontificum being widely read.

After the rise of Universities (q.v.) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it became more and more customary to seek theological training in them. The

monastic orders were rivals in their 3. The desire for learning, and many princes Middle and cities made certain benefices de Ages. pend upon the possession of academic degrees. Thus, although the highest offices were filled rather by the influence of personal favor or money, the chief officials and counselors of bishops and other prelates were mostly men trained in theology and canon law. Attempts to rectify a tendency to neglect the practical require ments of pastoral care through absorption in theo retical scholastic studies appear in homiletic aids and compends for the sacrament of confession, and in such works on pastoral theology as the hlanipto lus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rotherii (written in 1330) and the writings of Ulrich Surgant of Basel (about 1500). In the fifteenth and sixteenth cen turies, through the influence of humanism, theolog ical education was endowed with new life, and the study of the Bible increasingly supplanted scholas ticism.

With the rise of a new church system after the Reformation came the demand that pastors should submit to an examination to prove their fitness. Thus the Lutheran Unterricht der Visitatoren (1527)

required each candidate for the minis. Lutheran try to be examined by the superin-

Methods. tendent. This provision, however,

was only temporary, and the articles of visitation of the electorate of Saxony (1529; 1533) directed that the prospective pastor be examined at the court, while the Reformatio Wittebergensis (1545) entrusted the examination to the theological faculty. The church order of the Saxon electorate (1580) made the chief ecclesiastical authorities the examining board, a system adopted by the majority of the Lutheran national churches. Both Luther and Melanchthon, themselves university men and teachers in universities,. -desired the clergy to have university training. In the first decades of the Reformation this often proved impractical, owing to the lack of a sufficient number of educated candidates for ordination, so that it became necessary to employ those possessed of but meager attainments. In the earliest period, indeed, the examination seems to have been essentially the exaction of a promise to preach pure Evangelical doctrine. But the insistence on a trained clergy soon became more pressing, and in 1544 Leipsic required all candidates for the ministry to study at least for a time at a university, except in rare cases where practical training had been received. The least training of the average pastor was