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Page 334

 

Theological Education THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 334

has left a treatise on catechetical instruction that has made him famous as a teacher. Other renowned schools of that day were Edessa and Nisibis in the East, and the Patriarchum at Rome in the West. The germs of episcopal schools for prospective clerics are also found in the instruction given by leading presbyters or bishops to young men of promise.

The disorders of the fourth and fifth centuries altered many established customs. Theological students of the Middle Ages came to depend for their

education on the cloister schools of the z. The monasteries and the episcopal schools Middle of the bishops. Cassiodorus in Italy, Ages. Cassian and others in Gaul, and un known founders in England and Ire- land established monastic schools in the fifth and sixth centuries; the Benedictine order made famous such schools as St. Gall (q.v.) and Bobbio on the continent, and Ions and Lindisfarne in Great Brit ain; and the missionaries of the period, both Irish and Saxon, accomplished for learning by the found ing of monasteries what modern missionaries achieve by the founding of schools. It became customary for each cathedral also to have its episcopal school, and in 814 this was made compulsory. Education was on the decline in the seventh and eighth cen turies, but Charlemagne encouraged both episcopal and monastic schools, and at his own palace school set an example which inspired others. The episco pal schools of Orleans and Reims became far-famed in the ninth century. In the tenth century Liege was the most renowned school; in. the eleventh cen tury Le Bee in Normandy held that position. In such schools as these the few great scholars of that era, such as Alcuin, Bede, Lanfranc, and Anselm (qq.v.), studied and taught. None of these institu tions did much more than give elementary instruc tion; higher education, when there was any, was directed to the Scriptures and the Fathers. Many pupils were so poor that they were forced to receive aid. The rationalistic tendency stimulated learn ing in the twelfth century, and resulted in the dis putations of the Schoolmen and the establishment of the universities. Theological schools became a part of the university system from the thirteenth century. The Universities (q.v.) sprang up inde pendently of the monastic and cathedral schools, but they became the centers of all learning, and theological faculties took their place in them beside the faculties of medicine and law. Several of the greatest universities, like Paris and Oxford, became most renowned for their theological instruction. At Paris in the twelfth century ten years were required for the completion of the theological course. Bib lical interpretation and dogmatics made up the bulk of the instruction, and the methods used included lectures and disputations. Among other famous theological schools founded before 1500 were Rome (1303), Prague (1347), Padua (1363), Erfurt (1379), Heidelberg (1385), Leipsic (1409), Louvain (1431), Freiburg (1457), and Tiibingen (1477).

The Renaissance and the Reformation had a great ~I influence on theological education. The revival of the classical Latin and Greek, the new knowledge of the East, especially of i,he Semites, and the expansion of the realms of science and philosophy,

all quickened and broadened men's minds; and when the spiritual awakening liberated thought from its time-worn channels theology

3. The received a new impulse that has not Renaissance ceased to be felt. After the Roman and Refor- Catholic Church saved itself by the