§1. Schools at the Close of the Middle Ages.
The intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages has been long a favorite theme for popular writing. Many have had the fixed notion that the Church, afraid of progress, ever set her face against the enlightenment of the people, but that at length her opposition was beaten down by the craving for knowledge aroused by the principles of the Reformation, and that, in consequence of the break with Rome, various schools at once arose in Protestant countries. Such popular declamations have been disavowed by all honest Protestant historians.[1] They admit that, what may be called the darkness of these centuries, was owing to the political and social conditions of the nations after the Northern barbarians had nearly annihilated ancient civilization, but not to any hostility of the Church against learning and education. "The grossest ignorance of the Dark Ages," says an English historian, "was not due to the strength of the ecclesiastical system, but to its weakness. The improvement of education formed a prominent object with every zealous churchman and every ecclesiastical reformer from the days of Gregory the Great to the days when the darkness passed away under the influence of the
- ↑ See Maitland, The Dark Ages.
alters bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig 1885. Specht, Geschichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland bis zur Mitte des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, Cotta, 1885. Janssen, History of the German People, London, Kegan Paul, 1896, vol. I. — Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation, New York, Putnam's Sons, 1900. — Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 2 vols. Oxford 1895. — See also West, Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools. New York, Scribner's Sons, 1892. (The Great Educators Series.)
