A CULTURAL HISTORY

OF EDUCATION
VOLUME 2
A Cultural History of Education
General Editor: Gary McCulloch

Volume 1
A Cultural History of Education in Antiquity
Edited by Christian Laes

Volume 2
A Cultural History of Education in the Medieval Age
Edited by Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz

Volume 3
A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance
Edited by Jeroen J.H. Dekker

Volume 4
A Cultural History of Education in the Age of Enlightenment
Edited by Daniel Tröhler

Volume 5
A Cultural History of Education in the Age of Empire
Edited by Heather Ellis

Volume 6
A Cultural History of Education in the Modern Age
Edited by Judith Harford and Tom O’Donoghue
A CULTURAL HISTORY
OF EDUCATION

IN THE
MEDIEVAL
AGE
VOLUME 2

Edited by Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz

 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moran Cruz, Jo Ann Hoeppner, editor.
Title: A cultural history of education in the medieval age / edited by Jo
Ann Moran Cruz.
Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Series: A
cultural history of education; volume 2 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020030642 | ISBN 9781350035034 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Education, Medieval. | Education–Europe–History–To 1500.
| Learning and scholarship–Europe–History–To 1500
Classification: LCC LA91 .C85 2020 | DDC 379.94/0902–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030642

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-3503-4

Set: 978-1-3500-3556-0

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 CONTENTS

L ist of F igures  vii

G eneral E ditor ’ s P reface  x

Introduction 1
Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz

1 Church, Religion, and Morality 9

W. Martin Bloomer and Andrew J.M. Irving

2 Knowledge, Media, and Communication 31

John J. Contreni

3 Children and Childhoods 57

Daniel T. Kline

4 Family, Community, and Sociability 83

Jeremy Goldberg and Rob Grout

5 Learners and Learning 105

Elizabeth P. Archibald

6 Teachers and Teaching 125

Sarah B. Lynch and Mark Lewis Tizzoni

7 Literacies 145
Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz and David Sheffler
vi CONTENTS

8 Life Histories 169

Joel T. Rosenthal

N otes  195
B ibliography  214
G lossary  236
L ist of C ontributors  239
Index 242
 FIGURES

1.1 Opening of the Distichs of Cato (“Si deus est animus nobis ut
carmina dicunt …”) scribbled presumably from memory (by a
student?) in Visigothic minuscule in the foot margin of a
seventh-century copy of Augustine’s Sermones super psalmos 12

1.2 “Cantus.” Musical education depicted in a fourteenth-century copy

of the Tacuinum Sanitatis 20

1.3 Fragment of a Psalter with Old Alemanic interlinear glosses in red

ink, probably intended for schoolroom use, mid-ninth century 22

1.4 The “Hartker Antiphonary,” c. 990–1000, showing the lists of

neumed invitatory antiphons in the summer volume 24

2.1 Wooden wax writing tablet, c. 500 ce 48

2.2 Chirograph of Bishop Ealdred of Worcester, 1058 ce 49

2.3 A papyrus scroll from Theadelphia (Arsinoites; Batn el-Harit),

Faiyum, Egypt, written in the Greek language, 196–98 ce 50

2.4 Open view—Silver Book of the Land 51

2.5 Merovingian minuscule. An early homiletic manuscript collection

from the monastery of St. Gall, overwritten in the first half
of the eighth century with the sermons of Caesarius of Arles
and the Synonyma of Isidore of Seville. Underlying script
(Merovingian): a significant copy of the Old Testament Books of
Wisdom, written in about 700 in southern France or Spain 53
viii FIGURES

2.6 Sulpicius Severus (c. 363–420), Vita of Saint Martin of Tours 54

3.1 “The Surgeon Guy de Chauliac Teaching with Galien [sic],

Avicenna and Hippocrates,” miniature 64

3.2 “Young cleric teaching,” stained glass window in the cathedral at

Strasbourg, c. 1320–30 70

3.3 “Jesus teaching in the temple,” miniature 72

3.4 A cross, an alphabet, “In the name of the father,” “Fadir oure that
art in hevenes hallowed be thi name,” “Hayle mari full of grace the
lord be with the.” The basics for learning to read and to pray for
a middle-class child in fifteenth-century England. Small medieval
“Dick-and-Jane” with only the rudiments of red decoration; in the
local vernacular 73

3.5 Detail of a miniature of a scribe demonstrating to his pupils 80

3.6 The Guidonian Hand 82

4.1 Lady Byron and daughter praying, The Neville of Hornby Hours,
second quarter of the fourteenth century 91

4.2 The seven ages of man from infancy to old age. Woodcut from
Bartholomeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 93

4.3 Two women, perhaps household servants, prepare offal from

animal intestines in a kitchen. Late fourteenth-century illumination
from the Tacuinum Sanitatis. 101

4.4 Master of the Codex Manesse, “The Schoolmaster of Esslingen,”

c. 1305–40 102

5.1 Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?) (active c. 1450–85),

Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius, c. 1460–70 113

5.2 Inflection of the Latin verb lego, legere, to read. Pen and ink on paper 115

5.3 “Self-portrait” of Onfim from Novgorod 118

5.4 Grammatica. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 7900a,

fol. 127v Paris  119

5.5 Master and student marginalia 121

5.6 St. Cassian illustration in Prudentius, Peristephanon 122

6.1 “Chariot Mount with Three Figures,” c. 300–500 ce 127

FIGURES ix

6.2 “Letters of the Anonymous Professor” 131

6.3 St. Felix killed by his pupils: Legenda Aurea, c. 1445–60 135

6.4 “Personification of Grammar,” Chartres Cathedral c. 1145–55 138

6.5 Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morocco. The original madrasa,

founded in 859, is now the University of al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest,
continually operating higher education institution in the world 141

6.6 Jewish community. Teacher and student. Miniature 143

7.1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora II 148

7.2 Tomb effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) in Fontevraud Abbey 150

7.3 The Hours of Jeanne D’Evreux—a gift from Charles IV to Jeanne

D’Evreux (1310–71) when he married her in 1325 156

7.4 Raoul le Petit, L’Histoire de Fauvain/Le Dit de Foveyne 159

7.5 The Yale “Girdle-Book” 161

8.1 In Saint Jerome’s famous dream, he was brought before a heavenly

tribunal, accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian, and
severely flogged by angels. Detail from Sano Di Pietro, The Stories
of St. Jerome 171

8.2 “Henricus de Alemannia in Front of His Students.” Illustration

from Laurentius de Voltolina, Liber ethicorum des Henricus de
Alemannia, 1350s 177

8.3 Balliol College, Oxford University, founded c. 1263 178

8.4 Portrait of Bede writing, from a twelfth-century copy of his

Life of St Cuthbert 181

8.5 Master of Cardinal Bourbon (c. 1480–1500), Anna Teaching the Virgin
Reading, c. 1500 185

8.6 “Abelard and Heloise,” from the Bible moralisée, thirteenth century 186
 GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE

Bloomsbury Cultural History of Education

Education has not always been well recognized as being central to cultural
history. Even the leading British cultural historian, Peter Burke, could omit
education from his own list of the inner circle of neighboring forms of history
and related disciplines, despite its importance in much of his own work.
According to Burke, this inner circle of neighbors included intellectual history,
social history, political history, history of science, history of art, history of
literature, history of the book, history of language, history of religion, classics,
archaeology, and cultural studies.1 Yet education has a strong claim to be
integrally involved in all of these areas. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz
was perhaps more alert to this when he noted in The Interpretation of Cultures
that education was indeed fundamental when attempting to match “assumed
universals” with “postulated underlying necessities.” On a social level, Geertz
continued, this was because “all societies, in order to persist, must reproduce
their membership.” In psychological terms, moreover, “recourse is had to basic
needs like personal growth—hence the ubiquity of educational institutions.”2
Even earlier, Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution pointed out the
“organic relation” between the cultural choices involved in the selection of
educational content and the social choices involved in its practical organization,
and demonstrated how these links could be traced and analyzed historically.3
This six-volume series, the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Education, seeks to
build expansively on these essential insights.
After the Second World War, there were a number of historical texts that
sought to explain educational changes since Greek and Roman times.4 Since
the 1970s, such a broad chronological sweep has become increasingly rare.
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE xi

An international infrastructure for research in the history of education has

grown, with its own societies, journals, and conferences now well established.5
Internationally, for example, the International Standing Conference for the
History of Education (ISCHE) supports an annual conference and a journal,
Paedagogica Historica. There are national societies around the world with their
own conferences and journals, including the USA, the UK, France, Australia,
and many others. However, these have often tended to promote specialist
research in particular areas rather than broad synthesis.
Indeed, this process of increased specialization has tended to be both
horizontal and vertical in nature. Horizontally or laterally, as it were, journal
articles often are only able to engage with relatively narrow aspects or historical
contexts in a detailed manner. They have tended also to be largely confined to
study of the local or national picture, although recent “transnational” research
has provided a significant corrective to this.6 Vertically, they largely eschew a
long-term framework for the field conceptualizing continuity and change since
ancient times. They have also increasingly concentrated on the most recent
periods, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rather than on earlier ages.
The current project offers a form of coherence and indeed synthesis in the
history of education. Perspectives based on the cultural history of education
promise to highlight continuity over time, and the resilience of practices,
values, and ideas. As one collection of articles based on an international
historical conference has concluded, “There may be remarkable periods of
stability for cultural and educational formations and the role they play in the
making of particular ethno-national-religious communities,” even though
there is also “seemingly inevitable challenge, reform, sometimes regression—
always change.”7 In this respect, the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Education
series offers both a general synthesis of recent international research and an
overall conceptual framework linking together different epochs, to inform and
stimulate further work in the field.
Early work in the cultural history of education arose from a new approach to
the history of education that fought against its traditional preoccupation with
the growth of national systems of modern schooling, while embarking on a
wholesale revision of its key aims and aspirations.8 In a landmark publication in
1960, Education in the Forming of American Society, Bernard Bailyn called for
a widening of the scope and definition of “education” in educational history.
According to Bailyn, it should be concerned rather less with the rise of modern
schooling and much more with educational processes as they have occurred
in many different kinds of institutions and milieux, pervading individual lives
and collective social experiences. Topics and problems in a “new” educational
history would not be restricted to “those bearing on schools, teachers and
formal instruction,” and it would consider nothing less than the “process and
content of cultural transfer.”9 Bailyn hoped, indeed, that education itself might
xii GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE

be reappraised “not only as a formal pedagogy but as the entire process by

which a culture transmits itself across the generations.”10
Following the earlier works of R. Freeman Butts,11 it was Lawrence Cremin
who did the most to define and explore the cultural history of education.
Cremin proposed that “education” should not be regarded either as age-related
or as being confined to schools, but that it constitutes, far more broadly, “the
deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire
knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, or sensibilities, as well as any outcomes
of that effort.”12 This was a set of processes more limited than terms such as
“socialization” or “enculturation” might imply.
Nevertheless, it undoubtedly takes the idea and practice of education, in
Cremin’s words, “beyond schools and colleges to the multiplicity of individuals
and institutions that educate—parents, peers, siblings, and friends, as well as
families, churches, synagogues, libraries, museums, summer camps, benevolent
societies, agricultural fairs, settlement houses, factories, radio stations, and
television networks.”13 Cremin himself embarked on a three-volume history
of American education based on this central premiss.14 The organization of
chapters in the current serial production owes more than a little to Cremin’s
classic design.
Cremin’s approach to the cultural history of education has often been
criticized, both for its practical limitations and for its extensive vision. For some,
he appeared so preoccupied with the many informal educational institutions of
modern society that he allowed too little space to accommodate the growth of
modern schooling.15 For others, such as Harold Silver, the project was itself a
perilous pursuit:
The attraction and importance of extending the history of education into
such fields as the history of the press and the modern media, church activities
and popular culture, are obvious. So are the dangers, with the possibility
of the emergence of an amorphous history which fails to locate discrete
educational institutions in a clear relationship with other processes, and
also fails to establish acceptable and understandable definitions of wider
educational territories.16
Its application to the United States since the late eighteenth century was itself
an ambitious undertaking. In the current volumes, such a project must be
scrutinized against the widest possible canvas of time and space, from ancient
times to the present.
The past generation has witnessed the rise of cultural history in its many
forms and variations.17 At the same time, an extensive literature has developed
the cultural history of education further in a number of areas, including the
emergence of a “new” cultural history of education.18 Lynn Fendler emphasizes
language as the “material stuff” of new cultural history, and insists that such
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE xiii

history is generally oriented to be critical of “mainstream histories,” but

concludes that “new cultural history opens up many more possibilities for history
of education: more topics, more perspectives, more analytical possibilities,
more directions, and more interdisciplinary collaborations.”19
Key examples of research on the cultural history of education in the past
two decades include that of Harvey Graff and others, who have understood the
history of literacy in terms of its social and cultural practices.20 Peter Burke has
produced a detailed social history of knowledge, including changes in media
and communications, in two volumes.21 Other work has explored religion and
morality in society, with the church as a key defining educative agency alongside
the family, which has also attracted extensive interest.22 Children and childhood
have been the focus of much historical interest since the early work of Philippe
Ariès.23 Teaching and learning have been widely discussed for their longer term
historical characteristics, not only in schools and other formal educational
institutions but throughout life and society.24 The notion of learning lives, or
of learning throughout the lifespan, also introduces the aspect of individual
agency that can be examined through case studies of life histories.25 In more
global terms, cases of cross-cultural encounters and their consequences have
been documented in depth and detail.26
These key themes are explored in depth in the six volumes of the Bloomsbury
Cultural History of Education series. My warmest thanks go to the volume
editors who have each produced excellent collections of original essays by
leading researchers in this burgeoning field, to the contributors of these essays
that navigate and interpret such broad areas of territory, and to the publishers
for their patience and support as this project has developed.
Gary McCulloch
Brian Simon Professor of History of Education
UCL Institute of Education London
December 2019
xiv
 Introduction
JO ANN H. MORAN CRUZ

Although the history of education has been something of a stepchild within

the historical profession, it has nonetheless experienced a renaissance in the
past fifty years, due in large part to a turn from an institutional focus toward
multidisciplinary perspectives that integrate education with religious, moral,
psychological, sociological, functional, and cultural approaches and a more
refined sense of the continuities and changes over time and across regions.
The history of medieval education carries with it the burden of being
medieval—the time period largely covered in this volume (500–1450).
Distorted and generally negative views of the Middle Ages and a belief in a
sharp division between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have persistently
plagued European scholarship and popular understanding—one result of which
has been to downplay the extent and vitality of education and the experience
of childhood prior to the Renaissance and modernity. Feeding into this negative
evaluation of medieval education was the publication and subsequent wide
acceptance of the paradigm offered by Philippe Ariès (historian, demographer,
and geographer), whose 1960 study L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien
régime1 argues that Europeans prior to the end of the sixteenth century made no
distinction between children and adults in dress, work, or play.2 Looking for the
most part through art historical, demographic, and cultural educational lenses,
Ariès argues that, while the discovery of childhood as an autonomous stage of
life may have begun by the thirteenth century, any significant understanding
of children as separate from adults had to wait until the seventeenth century
and later. He argues that prior to this, and certainly in the medieval period,
children—perhaps largely because of high death rates—were viewed either as
2 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

little adults (literally in the art of the period) or were largely ignored so as not to
emotionally attach to them in the face of their too fragile mortality. There was,
then, a lack of interest in children and a feeling of indifference toward them.
Ariès devotes half of his study to the evolution of education from medieval
to modern, but, given his modernist agenda, medieval education comes off
rather poorly as confined to clerics and the religious, with an emphasis on rote
memorization and no clear progression from elementary to advanced learning.
Consistent with Ariès’s claim that there was little emphasis on childhood, once
in school, Ariès suggests, the medieval child entered the world of adults. This
sense of a confusing and clerically guided education offers a pejorative view of
medieval education that has gradually given way to a greater appreciation of
medieval children and youths and their educational trajectory. More recently
and as a result of the cumulative work of medievalists since Ariès’s publications
Albrecht Classen has documented a paradigm shift among medievalists in the
history of emotions and mentalities relating to children, remarking in decisive
prose that the paradigm popularized by Ariès “now can be discarded.”3
Literary, art historical, and archaeological evidence (for example, from
burials) now argues for a Middle Ages in which “Care for and love of family
members in all different stages prove to be hallmarks of medieval society all
over Europe, even though the mortality rate of young children was very high.”4
Through collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary research in a great
variety of sources, there is currently a more complex, more defensible, and
more appreciative understanding of medieval childhood, of the emotional and
cultural environment surrounding childhood, and the role of education in the
lives of medieval children and youths.
From an entirely different perspective, but equally damaging to our
understanding of medieval education and culture, is the massive multivolume
study of English philanthropy and social aspirations for the period 1480–1660
by W.K. Jordan, published between 1959 and 1969; some of his volumes
have been republished many times and recently.5 This impressive production,
seriously flawed from an evidential perspective, nonetheless proved crucial
for the argument that evidence from gifts and bequests after 1480 is proof of
an educational revolution in the sixteenth century. Jordan’s studies seriously
underrated and misunderstood the evidence for, and the extent of, charitable
giving in the medieval period and, for our purposes, the extent to which
individuals bequeathed, gave gifts for, and supported education. Underlying
Jordan’s study was his purpose to provide proof of the charitable impulses
of English Protestantism; he therefore presented a diminished perspective on
medieval and Catholic forms of charity and, again for our purposes, offered a
substantially negative view of medieval educational charity. Lawrence Stone,
in a 1964 Past & Present article on “The Educational Revolution in England,
1560–1640,” began by citing Jordan, quoting without questioning his conclusion
INTRODUCTION 3

that there were “at most thirty-four schools open to the laity [in England] in
1480”6 —a low bar—after which Stone documents an impressive expansion of
educational possibilities, particularly at the university level.
Overall, several negative stereotypes have dominated visions of medieval
education—that a concept of medieval childhood scarcely existed, that a lack
of preuniversity schooling resulted in low literacy levels, and—a common
perception among more popular treatments—that there was a stultifying
intellectual culture, dominated by a top-down church and the discipline of
religious unity, with education focused on the training of clergy. Over time
this static model has broken down, with mounting evidence of lay literacy,
Brian Stock’s emphasis on textual communities by the eleventh century,7 and an
outpouring of studies on medieval schooling and styles of learning.
The history of medieval universities was anchored by the 1895 publications
of Hastings Rashdall, whose three-volume history of The Universities of Europe
in the Middle Ages drew upon mostly printed, mainly constitutional documents
and had as its focus the legal and constitutional developments of medieval
universities. Rashdall’s work, corrected and updated by F.M. Powicke and
A.B. Emden, has resulted in its continuing usefulness. Subsequently, however,
there have been impressive advances in the intellectual, social, and cultural
contexts of medieval universities. This history has been expanded by looking
at, among other concerns, the intellectual environment, curricula, the role of
colleges and “nations,” the experiences of the students there (largely through
their letters and the rules and regulations that governed them), and town–gown
relations, as well as by gathering lists of attendees and graduates, examining
biographical and matriculation registers and lists of promotions, tracing the
social and regional origins of students, examining professional training in law,
medicine, and theology, and following the careers of graduates. More recently
William Courtenay has looked at the collegiate devotional, charitable, and
liturgical life of students and teachers in Paris, as well as the burials and bequests
of donors, making the university and its environs something of a sacred space.8
It is impossible to begin to summarize the advances in our understanding of
the masters and intellectuals associated with medieval universities, beginning
with those teaching and learning at Bologna and Salerno and moving to Paris,
with Peter Abelard and his crucial role in the growth of Paris as an intellectual
center. Medieval universities nurtured a thriving intellectualism even as the
church sought to exert some control over the most intellectually adventuresome.
There was an ongoing dialectic between Rome’s understanding of theological
and religious orthodoxy and the ideas and teaching of any number of scholars.
An intellectually impressive but orthodox scholar—the reforming bishop of
Lincoln, Franciscan Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175–1253)—provides an example
of the kind of scholarship that can inform future studies. Since 2010 an
interdisciplinary team, involved with the “Ordered Universe” project, has been
4 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

studying his writings.9 The project involves faculty from the fields of medieval
history, history of science, philosophy, physics, engineering, vision science,
experimental psychology, and medieval Latin. As Powicke and Emden wrote, in
1936, “The intense intellectual life of the Middle Ages is no longer presented as
a long and weary orgy of barren chatter.”10
The study of schooling within monasteries and friaries, as well as cathedral
schools, has much improved our understanding of educational continuities
and change. Research has provided added richness regarding libraries available
in cathedral schools and the provincial houses of friars. We also now better
understand the role of liturgical training in educating boys and, within convents,
educating girls.
By the 1940s and 1950s scholarly attention turned to the study of
elementary and grammar schools, spearheaded by Lynn Thorndike11 and
A.L. Gabriel.12 Since then major surveys by Pierre Riché, Nicholas Orme,
Jacques Verger, and, more recently, Annemarieke Willemsen,13 along with
articles and monographs on regional and urban educational developments
(in Champagne, Brittany, the west and north of England, the Low Countries,
towns in Spain, Scandinavia, Russia, and Eastern Europe, Paris, Lyons,
Regensburg, and a number of Italian cities and their countrysides, among
others) have much informed our understanding. There are also increasingly
thick descriptions of medieval schooling and literacy in Islamic regions and
among European Jewish communities; the chapters in this volume attend to
this expanding literature.
How much our understanding of medieval education has evolved is
evident by looking at the historiography of medieval preuniversity education
and the attendant debates in the English context. The modern history of
English medieval education was focused primarily on Oxford and Cambridge
until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when a small number
of medievalists began debating, over several decades, the numbers of pre-
Reformation grammar schools, the extent of their continuity since Anglo-Saxon
times, their institutional homes (monasteries, collegiate churches, cathedrals),
what a free grammar school meant, the numbers educated, and so forth. This
debate, sometimes too energetically argued given the availability of sources,
did ascertain that preuniversity educational institutions had existed in larger
numbers than previously recognized, a point that was argued with determination
by A.F. Leach (1851–1915) in his many publications and in his final book, The
Schools of Medieval England, published in 1915.14 Leach focused on grammar
education and minimally on elementary teaching or curricular matters. It
was A.W. Parry who, in 1920, first suggested that there were a number of
separate kinds of instruction—song, reading, writing, and grammar.15 The
issues attending the history of preuniversity schooling in England then failed
to receive scholarly attention from the post-First World War period until the
INTRODUCTION 5

1950s when Joan Simon launched a broadside against A.F. Leach,16 thereby
initiating a string of studies on medieval education and the role of the church.
Primarily a Tudor historian, Simon could not agree that pre-Reformation
England, and particularly the church in pre-Reformation England, had invested
in an increase in schooling. While pointing out that laity were increasingly
sponsoring education, she emphasized the decline of the church and argued
that the church effectively policed a monopoly on education, thereby limiting
the availability of teachers and teaching. A fearsome controversialist, Simon
attacked anyone whom she thought might be defending Leach’s arguments.
The study of medieval education moved onto more solid foundations with the
1973 publication of English Schools in the Middle Ages by Nicholas Orme, who
not only substantiated the growth of grammar and elementary education from
the twelfth century forward but also expanded our understanding of curricular
developments, the experience of the scholars themselves, and the widening
social interest, especially among the laity, in patronizing schools and scholars.
Following this were more detailed regional studies by Orme and by the editor
of this volume, which have found many more medieval schooling opportunities
in a large variety of settings. While, at least in the English case, the history of
medieval education still needs to be integrated into the broader histories of
medieval England, those scholars interested in medieval education have now
moved beyond the institutional concerns of earlier generations, integrating the
educational experience into social, political, religious, cultural, and economic
history; much of this more fulsome and integrated picture is illustrated in the
chapters in this volume.
At the other end of Europe, looking at medieval Italy, the picture is very
different but even more compelling with regard to the vitality of medieval
education. In parts of Italy classical schooling continued, however sparsely,
during the decline of Rome in the west. Education in Italy may have faltered
in the wake of Lombard invasions and settlement in the sixth and seventh
centuries, but with the rebuilding of towns, Latin education revived, first in
clerical and monastic schools, with an occasional scholar learning Greek.
Students could travel to Rome to learn chants and sacred poetry as well as to
gain religious (largely scriptural and patristic) knowledge and administrative
training. Education in law, which emerged in the tenth century in Pavia
(Lombard Law) and then produced the first recognized university at Bologna
and the revival of Roman law, focused on the practical knowledge needed for
governing both church and state. Other forms of practical training emerged
in Italy—medicine at Salerno, elementary reading,17 commercial mathematics,
writing (the ars dictaminis—the art of letter writing), and grammar (both Latin
and, by the thirteenth century, vernacular) much of which was needed in an
increasingly mercantile and legalistic culture. As a result, scholars of Italian
education have fully embraced the study of education within a social and
6 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

economic milieu. The educational environment in some Italian cities has been
well studied, for example, in Venice, Arezzo, Milan, Genoa, and, more recently,
Florence. Taking the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani at face value with
his claim in the 1320s that 10,000 boys and girls were learning to read, this
would give Florence the highest literacy rate in premodern Europe.18 Few
studies have examined rural schooling in medieval Italy, although the regions
around Florence and Genoa are exceptions.
Debate has swirled around the transition from medieval to Renaissance
schooling, with scholars such as Eugene Garin and Paul Grendler arguing for a
break by the early fifteenth century from a scholastic to a humanist curriculum.19
Whether this was a good or a bad thing has been debated. Lisa Jardine and
Anthony Grafton have forcefully come down on the side of medieval education
as less elitist, more open to social mobility, and have offered a less than flattering
portrait of some of the early humanist educators drilling their students in Greek
and Latin, imbuing the students in the end with an ability to write and speak in
Ciceronian and Virgilian Latin.20 More recently Robert Black has argued for a
great deal of continuity between the medieval and early Renaissance periods,
while Paul Gehl has documented a loss of moral training, at least in Florence, as
humanist teachers moved away from a conservative, functional, and moralizing
medieval curriculum, informed by mendicant values in the city.21 In all cases,
however, whether looking at England, Italy, or elsewhere in Europe, medieval
education was localized and texts differed over time and according to the choice
of individual teachers while, at the same time, the training remained remarkably
the same, beginning with prayers, the Psalter, and beginning grammar texts
(usually known by the name of Donatus), involving memorization, recitation,
and discipline.
Those scholars studying English and those studying Italian medieval
education have both had to grapple with scholars positing sharp breaks,
indeed, rejecting the value of medieval education, privileging the humanist
Renaissance in Italy or the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism in
trans-alpine Europe, where the growing humanist curriculum soon blended
with the rise of Protestantism such that it is difficult to disentangle them.
As we conclude our history in 1450, we find, in addition to the growing
interest in a humanist education in Italy, many types of schooling available—
in friaries, monasteries, cathedrals, and collegiate churches, through guilds
and confraternities, private tutors and schoolmasters, traveling teachers and
scholars, in urban and rural areas—along with a growing interest in endowing
education, an increase in civic and public schools and libraries, vast numbers
of manuscripts from the princely to the commonplace, education for girls
(albeit largely at the elementary level), medieval rulers (both early and late)
promoting education and literacy, heretics steeped in texts, emerging textual
communities, functional literacies for parish and cathedral chanters and for
INTRODUCTION 7

parish priests, a need for mercantile and legal literacy, administrative demands
for written texts, and an emerging vernacular readership.
This volume brings together historians and literary scholars who view
medieval education through different lenses, and yet the result is an internally
cohesive composite story. As John Contreni and Joel Rosenthal argue, and
other contributions reinforce, schooling in medieval Europe tested boundaries
and privileged debate. The chapters emphasize the extent to which medieval
education and the texts for schooling absorbed classical texts; rather than a
controversy between the secular and the sacred, or between the classical and
the medieval, there was a process of integration of classical, biblical, and
patristic writings in elementary and grammar education, feeding the emerging
dialectical approach and integral to training in philosophy. Equally true and
emphasized by Archibald on learners in school, Lynch and Tizzoni on teacher
training, and Bloomer in his discussion of the elementary text Cato’s Distichs,
is the continuity in the curriculum, even with the introduction of new texts.
Although medieval education saw a marked decline in Roman classical
education, it also saw a persistent presence of classical, Latin influences within
a fundamentally Christian environment but one open to new influences and
controversies.
Scholars are also increasingly attentive to the role of women in medieval
education and as literate members of society. A woman, for example, was the
first founder of an endowed grammar school in England; many founders of
colleges at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris were women. Women were patrons of
scholars, participated in scholarly debates, and taught, commonly in convents
and increasingly at the primary level in what would later be called Dame schools.
As mothers and governesses in a household, they also attended to early religious
education and elementary reading instruction.
Many of these chapters bring to the fore particular classes of documents—
the writings of schoolmasters, school texts, correspondence between scholars,
books of manners, literary texts, and education-minded regulations. Other
chapters (those by Goldberg and Grout, and Bloomer and Irving) embed
the educational experience within the family, social networks, and liturgical
training, drawing upon an even wider circle of sources. While many of these
texts and much of the training can be described as functional, there was a moral
stratum that the chapter by Bloomer and Irving addresses, and an awareness of
psychological stages attended by rituals that Kline details. Finally, the chapter
by Moran Cruz and Sheffler documents the state of our knowledge of medieval
literacy and the methodologies for learning more. We leave the volume with many
questions still to be addressed and a strong sense of the lively life of medieval
schooling and its expansive impact by the middle of the fifteenth century.
This volume is part of a six-volume series, and some readers will begin
with Volume 1 and read through Volume 6 topically, focusing, for example,
8 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

on the evolution of literacies from antiquity to modernity. For those readers

who may wish to read this volume from beginning to end, however, Chapter 2
provides an overview of medieval education, knowledge, and communication,
offering a contextual basis and entrée into Chapter 1 on church, religion, and
morality, while the focus on religion and morality in Chapter 1 links well
with the discussion in Chapter 3 on Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions
of childhood. I would recommend this way of approaching the volume. The
final chapter, which attends to the topic of life histories (both individually and
collectively) also provides a concluding summary of the cultural aspects of
medieval education.
 CHAPTER ONE

Church, Religion,
and Morality
W. MARTIN BLOOMER AND ANDREW J.M. IRVING

INTRODUCTION
The moral formation of the young in the medieval world was communicated
and theorized in an ecclesiastical and literary context.1 In this chapter, we
examine the basic texts employed in medieval moral education, inherited as
they were from the ancients and adapted to Christianity, as well as some selected
newer texts and modes of moralization. By moralization we mean the pedagogical
processes by which a society, an institution, or a group communicates approved
and disapproved behavior, as well as elementary criteria of moral judgment, to
younger generations.2
After some initial methodological caveats, we focus on two texts with the
longest durée and broadest influence in formal moral instruction, namely the
Distichs of Cato, and its reception in several periods, and the singing of psalms
in liturgical celebrations. In most traditions of medieval education the reading
of the Distichs generally followed the rote learning of the psalms as chants. Both
were part of the same educational project that has often been considered chiefly
as a training in literacy, and both the singing of the Psalter and the use of biblical
proverbs and profane proverb collections (such as the Distichs) in later school
forms as well as in later compositions (including florilegia and sermons3) were
meditations on and performance of the language of the moralized self.
Whether the educated medieval child was indeed a better moral agent than
the uneducated, and whether medieval education was at all successful in thus
10 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

forming a child (in comparison to other pedagogical approaches), is beyond our

scope. We think it useful to study the medieval modes of moralization because
of their long influence on the education of Western people and because they are
of interest in themselves as a moral and social praxis. Given this, however, many
essential and many accidental elements of moral education remain invisible
to the historian (for instance, the actual harangues of parents, schoolmasters,
or novice-masters when chastising the child on both religious and profane
grounds; the internal disposition of the infant; and on a more philosophical
ground, the cogency and coherence of moral prescriptions). A thick description
of moral action would observe the shaping of the child’s (even adult’s?)
behavior beginning from verbal prescription, pass through the presentation of
role models and anti-types, and consider the environmental influence broadly
conceived. For our purpose, we must be content with delimiting some major
modes of moralization: prescriptions, tasks, and evaluations (that is, criticism
and praise).
We understand as prescriptions of moral action the adult- and very often
clergy-authored textual media that sought to instill criteria of moral judgment
and action into the child, youth, or even the laity as a whole. The textual media
of this moralization, at the most formal level, included treatises, sermons and
speeches, manuals, and educational pictures. Frequently, prescriptive texts
wielded a religiously infused language and moral criteria so as to guide moralizing
tasks. The tasks could range from practicing proper singing to performing
appropriately more mundane tasks. The mundane is a feature of moralization
that acquired salience once the young accepted the idea that their behavior
constituted a connected spectrum. According to such prescriptions and tasks,
the child can learn that it is morally praiseworthy or even religiously prescribed
to wipe one’s shoes before entering another person’s house, for instance.
Monastic and liturgical rules, preserved in diverse historical documentation,
come close to such detail.4
The medieval moralizer also disregards, or at least ignores, the Hegelian
distinction between ethics and morality—Moralität, namely, the individualistic
reflection on morality, is impossible without Sittlichkeit, specifically, respect for
the laws sanctioned by the established social order.5 The Distichs continuously
insert exhortations for individual moral examination (putato, videto, vis, etc.)
in its heteronomous, that is externalized and directive, teaching of morality.
This reflection is a call from the past to discern and reapply, not to challenge,
the inherited rules of behavior.
Our approach also eschews a definition of religion as primarily concerned with
“moods motivations.”6 Such an individualized and interiorized understanding
of religion, which has been shown to be profoundly shaped by Western, post-
Reformation, and post-Enlightenment presuppositions,7 tends both to ignore
the social, economic, and political institutions that are intrinsic to the discourse
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 11

and practices by which premodern religion is lived, and to misconstrue

rituals and symbols as ultimately optional expressions of what are considered
fundamentally private beliefs. It is to be stressed that in the various Christian
religious cultures of the long Middle Ages, in the multiplicity of manners and
contexts in which it was performed, worship was simply taken for granted
as an essential and intrinsic element of social, political, and economic life.
Training in the performance of and participation in such worship was integral
to the maintenance of the social world and negotiation within it. Instruction in
worship therefore formed an essential element in the education of both children
and adults, not least in how human beings should behave in the world.
Moral formation is no doubt an ongoing, lifelong process, but we want to
consider here only the inaugural, intensive, pedagogical, and chiefly textual
(but also pictorial) efforts to shape the child, the adolescent, or more broadly
the human being as a moral apprentice. Our primary focus lies on the systems
of prescriptions that directed the student to understand certain actions as either
morally commendable or reprehensible. Prescriptions guided pedagogical
practices that involved both physical and mental (literary, aural, and visual)
disciplines. While we are indeed interested in the history of moral ideas (for
example, what charity meant to Paul or what it meant to Erasmus), we examine
rather how textual, aural, and visual media were used to tell children they were
right or wrong to perform a certain action.8

THE DISTICHS OF CATO AND MEDIEVAL

MORAL INSTRUCTION
The moral and educational character of the text
After learning to sing the Psalter, the overwhelming majority of medieval
students encountered the Distichs of Cato as their first reading exercise
(Figure 1.1).9 Who the author was, when it was written, the fact that it was
a Roman version of a gnomology as well as a collection of wisdom literature
in the general form of enthymemes (partial syllogisms employed above all
in rhetorical compositions), were fundamentally unimportant aspects of the
work for the medieval student. For us, however, it is important to know that
the Distichs was a rather modest book composed of two-verse poems (hence
distichs) written in hexameters probably about the year 100 ce for use in
the Roman schools.10 In origin it was a gnomology, namely a collection of
wisdom sayings meant for early reading and writing practice as well as rote
learning.
Already in late antiquity, the Distichs was the object of commentaries and
notes that made it a full-fledged educational textbook, complete with book
divisions and a dedicatory letter, together with an imaginarily assigned author,
12 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 1.1 Opening of the Distichs of Cato (“Si deus est animus nobis ut carmina
dicunt …”) scribbled presumably from memory (by a student?) in Visigothic minuscule
in the foot margin of a seventh-century copy of Augustine’s Sermones super psalmos.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAL 1629, fol. 16v (detail).

Cato—whether the Elder or the Younger was not specified. In the Carolingian
world it continued to be augmented with glosses and commentaries before
serving in the high Middle Ages as a prompt or substructure of sorts for major
theological, philosophical, and even political “commentaries,” closer in fact
to digests, encyclopedias, or theoretical treatises.11 Thus, the classroom use of
the Distichs stretched from late antiquity well into early modernity, and from
Iceland and England to Hungary and Croatia.12
Gnomologies, used in schools of any period in many literate cultures, are
a species of wisdom literature with a special context—the education of the
young—and concomitant practices. In the ancient world, students learned how
to read and write by performing a series of exercises, called progymnasmata,
that went from the simple sentence (the gnome or sententia) to the chreia (the
sentence embedded in a little drama where an imaginary or historical sage
delivers a one-liner that resolves or evades a conflict), arriving at the fable and
finally at larger prose compositions.13 The medieval curricula, in contrast, seem
to have been more varied. Customarily, boys learned to sing the Psalter and
might then start to read and write with the Distichs of Cato. With both sets of
texts as moral springboards, children allegedly received wisdom for life since
both were rote-memorized and would be reused in several contexts of liturgical,
literary, and everyday behavior.
As descendants of ancient Mediterranean sapiential literature and as the
more direct descendant of late ancient school practices, the Distichs brought
with it ideas and terms from a vanished world. The sententiae encapsulated
wisdom (pray to god, love your parents, walk with the good, don’t contend with
the garrulous) and communicated a plan for achieving wisdom and maturity.
Sapiential literature also presented children with a social and moral universe
where they could find their place assigned by the text itself.
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 13

As with many works of sapiential literature, the Distichs conceives of itself

as a communication of wisdom grounded in the alienation of the individual
from a prior good order, a moral golden age. The Book of Job, as an example
of sapiential literature, presents the reader with the image of an entire moral
universe and the competing moral discourses existing within its logic (Job,
his wife, Bildad, Eliphaz, Zophar, Elihu, and God himself each proposing
a different moral outlook). The Book of Job also places the reader into the
network of wretched losses brought upon humankind in this world, where he,
as someone being trained in morality, must come to understand his new place
and that of his maker.14
Sapiential literature may censure or even repudiate the system of customs in
place; nonetheless, it communicates a distinct moral universe with an account
of the moral development of humankind. For the medieval student, the Distichs
presented a world of attainable morality and of worldly achievement. Like
Job or the book of Proverbs, the Distichs set its little man (it always refers to
its imaginary reader using masculine-gendered adjectives and pronouns) in a
perilous world, for moral formation is necessarily perilous. The prospective
universe that the Distichs held out for the schoolchild is depicted in the context
and situations imagined by the text. Further, the Distichs’ explicit and implicit
lessons set the child on the course of maturity—that is, the Distichs imagine
their reader as a boy becoming a man. Imperatives direct the child explicitly
to certain actions and values. Implicitly, the child learns habits of mind and
of daily practice. The goal of a Distichs-based education is to become an
eloquent, learned, and worldly man; the process is a series of exercises that
serve to internalize the directives expressed by the text (which included rote
memorizing, learning to write, and learning to deduce general moral principles
from specific circumstances).
Thus, despite being a collection of short sayings with shifting settings, the
Distichs possesses a certain inherent consistency—not, it is true, the consistency
of a full-fledged philosophical ethics but a pedagogical coherence nonetheless,
which aimed to form the moral conscience and actions of the child according
to a specific model. The short poems present a series of promises important for
the schoolboy’s life and future: since you want to be educated with the aim of
becoming a good man or to have the wherewithal to raise your own children or
avoid poverty, do as the distich says.
And what the poems in their entirety said was, summarily, to attend to
your schoolwork or, more grandly, to the program of composing your mind
and soul.15 The Distichs thus presents the image of a world directed to moral
purpose and yet under the agency of the young learner—that is, the poems as
enthymemes are composed of moral propositions that go beyond the general
rhetorical type by calling for the performance of concrete tasks and the adoption
of a moral worldview.
14 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Certainly, the author wants the learner to adopt a moral (or even sometimes
metaphysical) proposition q to assert a second proposition p like all rhetorical
enthymemes, but the sets of q’s and p’s in the Distichs revolve solely around
moral education and the young man’s social prospects and behavior. For
example, “Never condemn a friend of long standing; he has changed
character, but you remember your original bonds.”16 According to this distich,
maintaining friendship is certainly an ageless moral proposition q, that is, the
desired behavior that the moralist wants the young learner to follow, couched
as an imperative to the self. The various ethical duties and ethical heuristics are
somewhat affectedly presented after the imperative “memento” (remember!):
remembering not to change one’s customs, remembering to bear with a difficult
friend, remembering this distich, and remembering to apply it are all part
of the ongoing process of the composition of the self (the animus). Coupled
with the cultivation of morality, the student also had to remember the correct
morphology, phonology, rhythm, and syntax of the Latin verse as taught by
the instructor. It is easy and modern to object that these (the moral and the
literary) are separate skills and processes. However, the Distichs present them
as a consistent and integrated whole.
After our short discussion on the moral and pedagogical outlook of the
Distichs, let us now discuss its contents. As already mentioned, the Distichs
open with a dedicatory or introductory letter, after which come a set of short
three- to five-word precepts (also called the Breves) and four books of distichs
(two-line dactylic hexameters), the first one having forty, the second thirty-one,
the third twenty-four, and the fourth forty-nine two-line poems, that is, distichs
proper.
The opening letter prepares the reader for the learning of the coming
text.17 The writer of the letter presents himself as a father writing to his son,
communicating to him the way to avoid the errors of the masses so as to attain
the singularity of fama (distinction, renown). The father-sage realizes that
most men err in their everyday conduct and promises his son that his teachings
can compose his mind: “I shall teach you how to compose the custom of your
mind” (docebo quo pacto morem animi tui componas). The task expected of
the son is simple: to read and understand the precepts. Understanding, of
course, is not simply a hermeneutic exercise as the closing sententia reveals: “to
read and not to understand is to be negligent” (legere enim et non intellegere
neglegere est). Neglect of the precepts is the opposite of composition of the
mind.
Here in concentrated form is the essential idea of the Distichs’ method of
moralization: understanding precepts is an exercise in self-composition. The
Distichs did not propose a philosophical method or even a defined set of virtues.
Certainly, temperance of various kinds, friendship, and studiosity are presented
as the chief virtues; anger, envy, and sloth as the vices. Neither virtues nor
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 15

vices receive a systematic conceptual exposition; rather, the individual distich

presents social micro-settings where the rules are embedded. A hermeneutical
key to their analogical application in real-life situations is not offered by the
author. In other terms, the teaching of general morality based on situational
ethics seems not to have been in any way problematic to medieval instructors
and learners.18 Perhaps it was presupposed that once the learner understood
and memorized the precept, the general principle apt for any particular life
situation was automatically derived. The almost naive pedagogical certainty
behind this mixture of morality and literacy skills is part of the great appeal of
the early exercises of morality teaching in the Middle Ages.
This confidence lies behind the opening epistle’s insistence on the efficacy
of learning the proverbs in moral education. The acceptance of this protreptic
cum explanation can be seen again in a twelfth-century accessus ad auctorem
(introduction to a schooltext, which was the written report of what a student
would have heard from his teacher in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages).19
This accessus, authored by Conrad of Hirsau, repeats five times in its total of
204 words that the Distichs can serve as a formula for the ethical life:
But since Cato the censor saw that boys and girls were conducting their lives
in great error, he wrote this little book to his son, weaving in the theory of
the philosophical life and by means of this book teaching all men how to live
justly and moderately […]. The subject of the book is the precepts for living
justly and moderately. Its purpose is to show us the course which will bring
us to true salvation […]. The utility for readers of this book is that they may
recognize how to found their lives on philosophical principles.20
Conrad, or his source, seems to have interpreted the introductory letter’s use of
masculine-gendered adjectives as referring to both schoolboys and schoolgirls.
Medieval boys and girls have thus been told earnestly, by both the epistle and
the accessus, that they were embarking on the road not to error, like those who
cannot read or readers who do not understand, but to the art of living well.
After such an introduction, the young learners come to a set of short and a set
of long precepts, where they enter a world that promises their moral and social
development. As already discussed, it is also a whole world in its way, for the
text presents a consistent imaginary through a limited economy of characters,
roles, situations, and solutions.
In this whole world, imaginary life settings occur as examples of moral
dilemmas for the reader to reflect upon. The goal of maturity, which is the coming
of age, the entry into social repute, and the initiation into cultural competence,
accompanies the young student in his oftentimes difficult educational process
(we revert to “his” because all the activities and roles imagined are male; there
is no allowance for a markedly female subjectivity or status of ability in the text
of the Distichs itself).
16 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

From the original point of view of the text, the reader is a young boy in a
Roman city. The medieval student, of course, was neither Roman nor urban, at
least in the ancient sense of the terms, and therefore some written or spoken
commentary might have been necessary to explain away the cultural divide
between the medieval and the ancient world. The ancient urban setting is
revealed indirectly by the very goal of education, namely, to be a learned,
socially prominent, and urbane speaker: disertus, bonus, and urbanus. More
concretely, the learner is called to the forum, to the law courts (iudicium), and
to the governor’s house (praetorium). The young must learn to respect the
magistrate. He must be ready to be a witness (testis). He is to converse with the
good and learn how to greet properly. He is to avoid gambling, the services of
prostitutes, and the company of the garrulous.
All of these city elements, naturally, could be easily translated to later cities
or communities in unforeseen cultural, political, and religious contexts. More
typically Roman, however, is the convivium, the dinner party where the boy was
expected to play a restrained role. The world of the Distichs is still a world with
slaves and with gods (though this plural form of the word was early put into the
singular in medieval manuscript transmission). Animal sacrifice is reprehended.
The implied reader’s range of economic and social activity stems clearly from
the Roman city: he is to be ready to loan, to preserve his patrimony, but to be
ready to spend as necessary, to gain and keep friends by reason of his “kindness”
(gratia) and lack of “ill will” (invidia). Again, these socially specific attributes
of the Roman urban elite (often couched in a Stoic idiom taken from Seneca)
could easily be generalized, which is to say, moralized. Though a historical
philologist may prize the isolated element that reveals the ancient moment of
composition,21 the more common patterns of the text easily allow themselves to
be moralized outside of a specific time and cultural frame.
We, as well as the young medieval reader, need not have access to the more
philosophical sources of the ideas presented in the Distichs, namely, Horace’s
Satires and Seneca’s De ira and De beneficiis, to feel the general pull of the text:
be moderate now, young man, moderate in spending, loving, drinking, dress,
censuring, sleeping, and especially in speaking. The negative is also important:
do not be cupidus, avarus, iratus, verbosus, timidus, and especially, don’t fear
death. The positive ideal lies in the future, when the student will become a
pater familias. Individual distichs counsel the student’s future self to educate
his children in the same manner and, among other things, to disbelieve his wife
when she complains of the slaves.
Adaptation to medieval educational needs
The pagan qualities of the text of the Distichs of Cato have bothered modern
scholars more than medieval readers.22 One famous medieval critic, however,
Othlo of St. Emmeram (eleventh century), wrote a Christian replacement for
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 17

the Distichs, a Libellus Proverbiorum, but this was an exceptional reaction.

The Distichs survived all sorts of schools and religious movements. Still, the
medieval schoolmasters and commentators certainly Christianized the text.23
The qualities of this Christianization need to be specified. Overtly pagan
references to polytheism were replaced by a unique deity (as mentioned above).
The disparate qualities of the text could be subsumed, not as we have here into a
picture of the intratextual contexts and tendencies but into a moral treatise. The
retheorization and rationalization of the text mirrored its Christianization. The
most overt manifestation of this tendency was to reassign the text’s genre, as
when a medieval commentator asserted that the Distichs was an ethical treatise
on the four principal virtues: justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance.24
Medieval students were therefore encouraged to believe that this was a text
consonant with philosophical and theological doctrine. The disposition to see
a latent deep order to the text, one consonant with the dominant, explicit
discourses of Christianity, arose from and reestablished the essentials of late
antique and medieval exegesis. Further, the adducing of scriptural parallels
easily brought the text into the Christian orbit. More specifically, the text could
be theorized as a species of wisdom literature that impelled the reader to seek
parallel knowledge especially from the Book of Proverbs but also from the vast
sea of scriptural and patristic precepts.
Christianization, or rather the teaching of the text as reinforcing Christian
ideas, was very rarely achieved by the smallest emendation or, as we shall see
with Othlo, by wholesale replacement, but most often by a kind of generic
reassignment. The medieval accessus asks of every school text to what part of
philosophy does it belong. The answer for what we would call literary texts is
invariably ethics. Now for the circular thinking: since it is a moralizing text, it
must be mirrored by Christian texts. It is, as it were, an additional proof of the
Christian moral life and thus need not be discarded.
It was also retained, no doubt for reason of its authority, as an ancient
sapiential text and from customary educational inertia and conservatism. A
kinder way to put the latter: it was believed to be an effective moralizing agent. As
an anticipation of Christianity, it could easily be inaugurating of the (Christian)
moral life. In the hands of teachers and no doubt students, the composition of
the self had come to entail a series of textual practices that brought the Distichs
into contact with Christian texts and Christian exegetical ideas.
An important moment in the history of the Distichs is Conrad of Hirsau’s mid-
twelfth-century Dialogus super auctores, which amplified the spare introductions
to the text from the accessus. For the present purposes he is important as proof
that Othlo had failed to dislodge the Distichs from its educational preeminence.
Conrad was a German Benedictine, born about two years before the death of
his fellow German Benedictine, Othlo of St. Emmeram (c. 1010–c. 1072). For
all his importance as a teacher and intellectual, Othlo’s reform did not hold, and
18 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Cato remained in the schools and minds of the German educationalists. Conrad
introduces Cato in the same order as the earlier accessus and has no doubts
about the educational utility and moral seriousness of the Distichs. Othlo, on
the other hand, had begun his Book of Proverbs by remarking that he had been
reading Seneca’s proverbs and admired their wisdom (the text he read was in
fact excerpts from the mimes of Publilius Syrus, understood in the Middle Ages
as the work of Seneca). This first half of Othlo’s introduction serves to praise
the efficacy of proverbs and to introduce Christian proverbs. His statement of
purpose perhaps echoes the epistle of the Distichs in its call for shaping the
animus of the reader, but he has a second purpose:
But I expounded in the prologue the above-mentioned little saying not only
to stimulate the mind of the reader to read those things which I have collected
but to read all the precepts of sacred scripture.25
In his second paragraph, Othlo characterizes the coming work—his proverbs
will be more useful than a certain text of Cato (utiliora quam quaedam Catonis
verba)—and then returns to his purpose. The young need to be prepared for
Scripture from the start. The children’s future lies in the hands of their teacher
who must decide whether they should teach them to desire to obtain secular or
spiritual glory (utrum eos doceant pro appetenda et obtinenda gloria saeculari,
an pro spirituali). Here we have an acute reader of the Distichs, especially the
epistle in which Cato had taken thought for the fama and opinio of the young.
Othlo’s alphabetized list of proverbs is one of those well-conceived educational
reforms that fails to sway tradition. It is an easier reference work; it anticipates
scriptural thoughts and scriptural language, a useful steppingstone to a clerical
education. But it never gained widespread traction in the education of the
young.
Instead, the Distichs kept being used in tandem with its commentaries. At
the most fundamental level, the young student learns that he is a self in need
of instruction and capable of moral development. His agency lies not simply in
self-composition, as if tranquility of temperament were the sole goal. Rather,
the composition of the self springs from a transmitted wisdom of the text that
is always in need of supplement. The base text supplemented by (often overtly
Christianizing) commentary mirrored the supplementing process by which the
boy’s uneducated self was to be shaped by texts. Further and more particularly,
the teaching of the Distichs had provided a template and lexicon for moral
action. Moral crisis was in fact a challenge to the precepts that the precepts
had anticipated: when p happens, remember to do q, but it was also a scheme
for the analysis of one’s own and of others’ actions. People act from a limited
set of desires (love of fame, money, friends, sex, but also envy for these goods),
and action is to be evaluated in the terms of praise and blame that the precepts
present.
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 19

One could of course frame ethics far more strongly in terms of human
relations, in communitarian values and attitudes. The medieval student inherited
from the late ancient world the emphasis on individual ambition and singular,
rivalrous achievement.26 Individual distinction in moral character as in literary
and cultural capital derived from the faithful remembering of the old text and
the master’s interpretation, now put to some present, persuasive purpose. The
moral imperative in this mode of sapiential training is learned and expressed
in terms of memory. The remembering of Distichs cum scripture, which both
the commentaries and the mature writer and speaker in later compositions
performed, was in fact a complex process of analogical thinking and literary
composition. It was also proof and demonstration of moralization.

EDUCATION FOR AND BY LITURGY

This section of the chapter addresses the subject of education in psalmody
and more broadly liturgical education in the Middle Ages through the lens of
two related questions. First, it asks how people were trained to participate in
or to lead Christian worship in the Middle Ages; secondly, it asks how such
worship was understood to educate the moral behavior of the worshipper. A
comprehensive study of both questions has yet to be written. What is offered
here aims more modestly to sketch some preliminary answers to those questions
through the use of a variety of sources that illustrate differing periods and
contexts.
Education for the liturgy
The profound connection between public and political life and liturgical
training is neatly illustrated in what constitutes the earliest reference to the
schola cantorum in Rome. The Liber pontificalis records that when the future
pontiff Sergius I (687–701) arrived in Rome during the pontificate of Pope
Adeodatus II (672–76), he was handed over to the choirmaster (prior cantorum)
for teaching—pro doctrina—because he was found to be both “studious, and
competent in the task of chanting.”27 It is not known precisely how old Sergius
was when he arrived in Rome, but it is clear, even from the rather matter-of-fact
allusion in the text, that he had already received education in singing as a youth
before he arrived, perhaps in the city of his birth, Palermo. Groups of cantors
with a designated leader who may have functioned as an instructor are attested
in Naples as early as around 510, and in Mértola, in present-day southern
Portugal, in 525.28 Regrettably, the Liber does not specify the qualities of that
doctrina in Rome. Perhaps it consisted of learning a new chant repertory: the
early eighth-century description of the papal liturgy on Easter Sunday, Ordo
Romanus I, describes an extensive role for the schola in the liturgy, though
children (infantes) are singled out for attention only once, in the description of
20 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 1.2 “Cantus.” Musical education depicted in a late fourteenth-century copy

of the Tacuinum Sanitatis. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ms. cod. Ser. n.
2644, fol. 103r.

the arrangement of singers in two rows on either side of the path of the papal
entrance procession.29 Another possibility is that, as Joseph Dyer has suggested,
Sergius, the young probably Greek-speaking son of a Syrian émigré, had yet to
master Latin.30 In any case, this early Roman witness, with a succinctness that
suggests it was unexceptional at this time, draws a tight connection between
Sergius’s education at the hands of a choirmaster and his rapid rise through
the clerical orders: he was ordained presbyter in Rome in 682/3 and bishop of
Rome only four years later.
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 21

Some evidence suggests that the origins of an institution for the education
of young choristers at Rome lay in connection with a charitable foundation
for orphans. A privilegium preserved in the Liber diurnus, a collection of
legal formulae of the papal chancery, orders the restitution to a certain
“orphanotrophium” of property that had been misappropriated years earlier
by the former director, which had led to a shortfall in the foundation’s means
to provide food for the children. The document, of uncertain date, orders
restoration of the property to the orphanage “lest the order of singers disappear,
and blame thereby be incurred by the holy church of God.”31 The name of
the orphanage, which seems to have been located near the beginning of the
Via Merulana not far from the Lateran Basilica,32 betrays inspiration from the
orphanotropheion of Constantinople, a large orphanage founded in the fourth
century, which in the later fifth century developed a strong and long-lived
musical tradition of some prominence in that city.33
The association of the Roman orphanage with chant and the education
of young children is further strengthened by evidence that the future pope
Sergius II (844–7), when orphaned by his noble parents at the age of twelve,
was entrusted by Leo III to the schola cantorum “for general education and to
be instructed in the sweet melodies of chant.”34 The pious alumnus would later
see to the restoration and endowment of his alma mater,35 which continued
to be connected with the name of orphanotrophium as late as the end of the
twelfth century.36
Though we have no direct evidence of what was taught to the children of
the Roman schola, Christopher Page has argued it can hardly have been very
different, in the early period at least, from what is described in the Greek life
of Gregory of Agrigento in Sicily (d.638), written by the presbyter Leontius
of S. Saba in Rome around 800.37 According to Leontius, Gregory’s parents
had commended him to the local bishop for schooling when he was aged
eight. The bishop entrusted the boy’s education to a certain Damianos, who
had a reputation “among both rich and poor” for being a good teacher. In the
following four years, Gregory learned “arithmetic, the yearly cycles [computus],
astronomy, and the psalter. He was also eager and willing in the daily hymns of
the church, the morning and evening praises.”38
Hagiographical amplification aside, what is clear from these examples is the
path that such an education offered within the offices of the church. Leontius
portrays Gregory’s parents returning to the bishop when the child turned
twelve in order to request explicitly that he tonsure the boy and make him
a cleric.39 Even if one did not have the good fortune of high birth, learning
to read Scripture, mastering the memorization and singing of the Psalter and
hymnody, and the rudiments of arithmetic and computus, afforded the (male)
child the possibility of career advancement as a lector or acolyte, who might be
attached to a local titular church, irrespective of whether the former chorister
22 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

went on to assume higher clerical orders (Figure 1.3). Later the impetus
inherent in the clerical cursus honorum, and the significance of the benefit of
such primary liturgical education, would become still clearer. Ordo romanus 36
(De gradibus romanae ecclesiae), which seems to be the product of a Frankish
liturgist reporting on Roman practice sometime in the second half of the ninth
century,40 opens with an explicit reference to the Roman choir-school career
path: “First in whatever school (scola) are found boys who sing the psalms well,
let them be taken and reared in the scola cantorum; and later let them become
cubicularii [members of the papal household].”41 The fleeting reference indicates
both a multiplicity of contemporary locations at which boys might first learn

FIGURE 1.3 Fragment of a Psalter with Old Alemanic interlinear glosses in

red ink, probably intended for schoolroom use, mid-ninth century. Dillingen,
Studienbibliothek, XV Fragm. 3 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek digitale Sammlungen).
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 23

to sing the psalms (in qualicumque scola) and the benefits of this preliminary
instruction for further education in the papal schola and advancement within
ecclesio-political institutions.
The content, timing, location, and division of responsibilities in the liturgical
education of child oblates to Western monasteries in the early and central
Middle Ages is now much more completely understood thanks, in particular,
to a series of studies of surviving monastic legislation and customaries, notably
by Susan Boynton.42 An early witness of the fundamental importance of the
memorization and competent recitation of psalms and other liturgical texts
and chant in the primary education of children in the monastery is contained
in the famous meeting notes, now known as the Statutes of Murbach, which
appear to have been compiled by a participant in the Aachen reform councils
of 816.43 The second capitulum of the statutes, concerned primarily with the
memorization of the Rule (rules governing a monastery) according to the
various abilities of the monks, adds that no monk is to be left out of these
obligations:
for example: the scolastici, after committing the psalms, canticles, and hymns
to memory, should, in the hearing of their teachers, go through reading the
Rule, and after the text of the Rule, the mass lectionary, and at the same time
the history of divine authority [specifically, Old Testament readings] and
commentaries upon it, the Collationes patrum, and the lives of the saints.44
Only after mastering these texts, which were sung or read in the offices or in
chapter, are the young monks to proceed with learning the ars litterarum—the
art of letters or grammar.45
The Customary of Bernard of Cluny, composed in the 1080s, provides
a particularly rich example of the extensive range of liturgical duties to be
performed by the young oblates (pueri) for which they needed to be educated.
At the regular hours of the monastic office, the boys were to say all of the
psalm verses, on non-festal days (in diebus privatis) intone the antiphon,
intone the chants for the morning Mass (unless it was a major feast), chant
the responsory and the versicles at lauds and vespers, read the single short
reading in the summertime night office, read in chapter (but not in the
refectory), and read the martyrology and necrology daily and thereby know
and inform designated monks of the anniversaries of deceased brethren. The
performance of these liturgical duties was carefully supervised in choir, not
only by the boys’ teachers but also by the entire monastic community. In
Bernard’s customary, as in many others, the children’s location in choir—
facing west in front of the altar—is perhaps intended not only to separate
the boys from the older brothers, who face north and south, but to instill a
sense of liturgical responsibility in the children and to enable their confreres
to keep their eyes and ears on them.46
24 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 1.4 The “Hartker Antiphonary,” c. 990–1000, showing the lists of neumed
invitatory antiphons in the summer volume. Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang.
391, p. 245.

Chant appears to have been learnt primarily through listening and repeating
the example of the teacher, often in the chapterhouse, perhaps because of
the acoustic qualities and noise control offered by the enclosed space. It was
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 25

undertaken between the monastic offices, often in the early morning between
the night office and lauds, though teaching times and locations varied between
houses and according to the time of year.47 Provision was even made for
children to practice reading silently during Mass when the amount of reading
to be prepared could not easily be fit in between the offices.48 The roles of
armarius (librarian-sacristan) and cantor, distinct in early medieval customaries,
seem to have been gradually combined into a single, hierarchically disposed role
(sometimes called armarius, sometimes cantor) in the eleventh and early twelfth
centuries.49 In some larger communities an assistant cantor was responsible for
the practical business of instructing and rehearsing the children, while the direct
involvement of the cantor or armarius in education was limited to a final daily
check of the boys’ liturgical competencies.
The detailed description of the duties of the cantor in the versions of the
Fruttuarian customary of St. Blasien possessed by the Cluniac monasteries
of Ochsenhausen and Garsten (dependencies of St. Blasien and Göttweig
respectively)50 provide exceptional insight into what might in contemporary
pedagogy be called the “active learning” model of Cluniac liturgical education.51
Not only was the cantor ultimately responsible for the boys’ education in reading,
chant, writing, and notating (notare) but also in the scraping, pumicing, and
ruling of parchment, the binding of books, and the preparation of the brevis,
a record of liturgical and singing assignments for the day to be read out in
chapter by the boy who prepared it.52 The drafting of the brevis, which was to
be scrupulously checked in advance by the cantor, required active knowledge
not only of the liturgical year, the offices, and house customs but also of
the names, skills, and roles of older brothers. The entrusting to pueri of the
responsibility for the preparation and oral delivery of this critical instrument of
daily communication of liturgical duties seems intended to compel a supervised
mastery at a young age not only of the monastery’s liturgical custom but also of
social relations within the community in which the boy lived.
While the exercise of delivering the brevis to the assembled monastic
community in chapter seems to have been understood as part of a shared primary
education, being entrusted even to boys as yet unable to write it themselves,53
it is possible to distinguish degrees of liturgical education that not all members
of the monastery were expected to attain. Anne Yardley’s study of the musical
education of young girls in English nunneries provides a helpful framework
of four degrees of musical education, responsibility, and competence: (1) the
ability to sing psalms (texts, tones, and the application of cadential formulae),
antiphons, and litanies from memory, deemed a basic competence for entrance
into the novitiate; (2) the ability to remember (with the use of chant notation)
the chant repertory, and to identify and select appropriate chants for liturgical
celebrations, an education that may take some years, and whose successful
outcome was most fully expressed in the ability to perform competently the
26 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

role of ebdomodaria/us; (3) an understanding of aspects of musical theory (for

example, hexachords, mutation), and the ability to teach music and compose
and set to music new chants, a skill expected of a smaller group of talented young
women or men; and (4) competence to perform and/or compose polyphonic
settings.54
Even at the first two basic levels of education, girls and boys in the monastery
were expected to attain a remarkably detailed and active understanding of the
complex liturgy and music that it was their principal task to perform. Though,
in itself, such an education may not necessarily imply or have led to the kind
of grammatical literacy that would enable the young girl or boy to read or
compose nonliturgical texts, the sophistication of this “liturgical literacy,”55
oriented to liturgical performance, ought not to be underestimated. As Katherine
Zieman has noted with respect to later medieval song schools in England,56
the presupposition that education in such liturgical literacy amounted to “non-
complex skill transmission” that should be qualified as “vocational training”
rather than “general education,” rests on a distinction in what we might term
“programme learning goals” that is foreign to a culture “in which all education
was arguably considered ‘vocational’.”57
The intersection in practice between education for competent performance
of a liturgical office, education for adequate understanding of and reflection
on that office, and other, nonliturgical facets of primary education is
clearly demonstrated by the type of manuscript that Susan Keefe styled
“schoolbooks” in her groundbreaking study of baptismal education for clergy
in the Carolingian realms.58 The “schoolbook” manuscripts, which constitute
nearly half of Keefe’s manuscript witnesses,59 betray a clear connection with
education in their inclusion of excerpts from pagan literature, vocabulary lists,
glosses, alphabets, catalogs of names, and pen trials (probationes pennae),
alongside interrogationes sacerdotales (corresponding to mandates that priests
be examined before ordination and thereafter annually by their bishop or his
representative),60 baptismal instructions, computus, penitential material, glosses
on liturgical texts, baptismal ordines, and commentaries on the ecclesiastical
orders, the Apostles Creed, the Our Father, and the Canon of the Mass.
The clear monastic origin of some of the “schoolbooks” that contain texts
originally intended for secular clergy raises the question of the role of the
monastic school in relation to the liturgical education of Carolingian clergy.
Keefe considers diverse possibilities: the schoolbooks may represent surviving
evidence of clerical education in an “external school,” that is, a building on
the monastery grounds but outside the cloister; another possibility is that they
were used in schools run by monks in rural parish churches; or alternatively
secular clergy may have trained in the monastery school itself. Certainly,
monastic schools “served more areas than a cathedral school could reach.”61 In
any case, the schoolbooks’ integration of liturgical with other school material
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 27

bears important witness to a lack of separation between liturgical education

of varying levels of complexity and other forms of primary education in the
schooling of parish clergy prompted by Carolingian reform initiatives.62
Education by the liturgy
The liturgy is an act, and its repeated performance itself educates the worshipper
in the necessary skills, behaviors, and aptitudes needed for its execution.
Beyond the text, the music and the gestures themselves as well as the regular
participation in carefully orchestrated liturgical performances may have been
intended to instill, even at a young age, behavioral and social instincts that could
have had a profound effect on the child’s understanding of their relationship to
others and to God.
Isabelle Cochelin’s detailed study of shifting patterns of hierarchy at Cluny in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries (from age-based seniority, to ranks based on
divisions in the ordo clericalis and its distinction from the laity, to a hierarchy
based on seniority within the orders of priests, clerics, and lay brethren) has
revealed how these power relations were programmed into the motor memory
of both children and adults in the Cluniac monastery. Monks walked in
procession, walked inside and outside the monastic enclosure, sat in chapter,
ate in the refectory, sang in choir, washed the feet of the poor, all according to
a precisely performed (if shifting) hierarchy.63 In a very real sense, liturgy and
prescribed custom in the monastery taught children their place in the social
order.
Such ritualized instruction of social roles was not, of course, limited to the
monastic setting. Commenting on the reading of the Gospel during the Mass,
the late fourteenth-century vernacular text known as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book,
explains that there are distinct types of aural liturgical instruction for laity
and clergy: “Clerkes here on a manere / bot lewed [lay] men bos [behooves]
anoþer lere.”64 Accordingly, the priest’s liturgical gestures that precede the
proclamation of the Gospel are not only something to be explained (the priest
“has mikel need of grace”) but also serve as an instructive cue to the lay hearer
to make a large sign of the cross, to stand, and pray a prayer of welcome to the
divine Word: “Bi gods word welcome to me / Ioy & louying, lord, be to þe.”65
While the Gospel is being read, the lay worshipper should, the text admonishes,
avoid speaking and instead continuously meditate on the Redeemer, praying for
time for amendment of life and the grace “þi word to kepe & do þi wille, / þo
gode to chese & leeue þo ille.”
Late medieval vernacular reflection on the teaching power of liturgical
performance as a visual and aural prompt for moral reflection had deep
roots in earlier liturgical commentaries. While the allegorical hermeneutic
employed by liturgical commentators is well known, the moral aspects of
this commentary have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. The
28 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Carolingian theologian and bishop Amalar of Metz (c. 775–c. 850) opens
his “Brief Preface” to his extensive commentary on the liturgy, the Liber
officialis,66 with a surprising discussion of Augustine’s distinction between the
will and desire that will ultimately underpin his entire exegetical endeavor.67
Amalar compares the will to a tree trunk given by God to the human intellect,
whose appetites cling to the trunk like little branches. As shoots turn to the
sunlight, so the appetites are turned to God “the true sun,” by means of the
ratio that God has conjoined to the will, for, Amalar argues, citing Augustine,
“Nobody wants [vult] something if he is completely unaware of what it is,
or of what sort of thing it is.”68 For Amalar, the ratio for liturgical song,
rites, seasons, and objects shapes the will-to-good with the ineluctable force
of sunlight.
Amalar’s elucidation of the liturgical ratio, and in particular of the intention
of the rites’ authors, serves then an important moral purpose—whether that be
in drawing an elaborate parallel between the role of the cantor and schola in
the singing of the gradual psalm and the act of an oxen driver who calls on the
team of oxen to plough hearts “with the plough of compunction,”69 or in the
development of a liturgical theology of rememorative similitude that broadly
interprets ritual objects, persons, and actions as obedient, through similarity,
to the dominical command to “do this in memory of me.”70 While, as Amalar
acknowledges, it can be very difficult to determine what the composers of the
rites had in mind, the interpreter can find consolation in the application to
the liturgy of Augustine’s biblical hermeneutic of love: “If […] you have made
judgements about [the passages] that are helpful for building up this love, but
for all that have not said what the author you have been reading actually meant
in that place, then your mistake is not pernicious, and you certainly cannot be
accused of lying.”71
Though Amalar’s work can be argued to represent the “most deep-seated
interests and concerns of his time,”72 and certainly was influential and widely
copied,73 it might be asked to what extent such a sophisticated analysis of
liturgical ratio was imparted in the education of children. This question is, of
course, difficult to answer, though the preoccupation with moral reflection in
the late medieval Lay Folks’ Mass Book does suggest that it did not remain a
purely intellectual concern of the clerical elite.
If, however, we broaden our view of liturgy to include the decoration of
the spaces in which these songs and rituals were performed, we may gain some
insight into the ways in which children (and adults) were regularly exposed
to carefully orchestrated visual instruction on how to make progress in the
moral life through what we might think of as a kind of multimedia liturgical
schoolroom. One common example of such visual instruction may serve as
a conclusion to our reflections on iterative moralization by the liturgy: the
CHURCH, RELIGION, AND MORALITY 29

placement of Last Judgment scenes on the inner wall of the western façade in
large numbers of Romanesque churches.
The common placement of scenes of the divine division of the wicked from
the elect at the Last Judgment corresponds well to the architectural function
of the west end doors as a zone of threshold and separation—between good
and evil, interior and exterior. Moreover, the placement aligns the gate of
heaven with the door of the church and thereby relates the act of entering the
liturgical space with that of following the elect into paradise. The placement
also serves to activate the “axial dynamics” of the liturgical space.74 The left
(north) side of the building, at Christ’s left hand (the side of the damned),
tends to be adorned with “less positive” narrative cycles than the right (south)
side at Christ’s right hand (the side of the elect).75 Further, and perhaps more
fundamentally, the depiction of a large-scale and dramatic image of the divine
separation of good and evil at the Last Day at the west end, and of an image of
a temporal divine glory at the east end of the building, makes of the nave an
orienting path in the individual’s moral and spiritual journey. The scriptural or
hagiographic narrative cycles that frequently adorn the walls of the nave may
be so arranged in accordance with the longitudinal axis of the building, to align
eastward movement with progress through time and with the soul’s journey
to the heavenly patria. But even in spaces where the arrangement of narrative
cycles on the nave walls does not proceed in a linear fashion from west to
east,76 the moral message of basic movement from trial and decision in repeated
oppositions between good and evil in this life in the nave to eternal felicity in
the choir and sanctuary was, we might say, child’s play to learn.
30
 CHAPTER TWO

Knowledge, Media,
and Communication
JOHN J. CONTRENI

INTRODUCTION
Medieval people created, amassed, communicated, and preserved knowledge in
myriad forms.1 They began their intellectual journey in the worst of times when
ancient Roman civilization was unraveling. With the gradual transformation
of the western Roman Empire into patchwork kingdoms led by Germanic
warlords, ancient forms of knowledge acquisition and dissemination—libraries,
schools, elite literary society, international mercantile activity—withered. The
veneer of Roman institutions such as law, army, and language that held together
many different peoples across a wide and varied European landscape peeled
away to lay bare a Europe that was not yet Europe but a collection of highly
fragmented and localized communities. A thousand years later Europe launched
itself across the world, first in the Americas in 1492 and then in south Asia in
1498. Although its politics remained fractious, Europe had by then acquired a
knowledge-based common culture, institutions of learning, a common language
of learning, and systems of analyzing knowledge, all supported by innovations
in communication that have endured to our own digital age.

CONSTRUCTING NEW KNOWLEDGE

AND A NEW CULTURE, 400–750
Early medieval Europeans did not begin their journey toward establishing a new
intellectual culture with empty saddlebags. From the rich storehouse of ancient
32 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Roman learning they brought along the art of writing, the Latin language, and
texts on grammar and the other arts as well as histories and literature they
deemed important for communicating and understanding the world. From the
ancient Jewish and early Christian traditions, they knew an alternate body of
knowledge grounded in their sacred writings. These two inheritances from the
past, Roman and Judeo-Christian, are often cast in adversarial terms. When
Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240 ce), an early Christian apologist, famously asked
“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and answered, “After Jesus Christ we
have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research,” he pitted
the rationalist, inquiry-based learning of the Greco-Roman world against the
authoritative, faith-based wisdom of the scriptures.2 Many would follow him
in opposing secular and sacred learning, but in the long run even more saw
that the two learning systems were complementary and worked to make them
compatible despite their inherent differences.
In the west, access to Christian wisdom required mastery of the Latin language,
which required knowledge of Latin grammar and literature. Understanding the
facts of the Bible required broad secular learning. Understanding the submerged
mysteries of the Bible called on the same analytical tools pagan philosophers
applied to their texts. This continuous interaction between secular and sacred
learning provided one of the hallmarks of the new European culture. It would
be a culture of debate and controversy. The debate began almost immediately as
Christians during the late antique period divided into two camps. As Romans,
many used Roman culture for new religious ends. They adopted Roman
institutions such as their diocesan organization and in the west the Latin
language, and gradually even began to look upon the city of Rome as their
center of spiritual authority. Others, desert radicals who inspired the monastic
movement, sought solitude and fled organization and civilization. For them,
Roman culture was a curse. Both groups grounded their notions of Christianity
in the same Bible, demonstrating how fertile that collection of texts could be in
authorizing different viewpoints. Christians trained in Roman schools saw the
Bible as another text to be commented on and studied. “What does this mean?”
they asked of biblical passages. “Why does this mean that and not something
else?” The Bible, rather than closing off discussion on account of its assumed
divine origins, proved to be a tremendously fertile stimulus for discussion,
exploration, disagreement, and debate given the vagueness of its texts on key
questions such as the nature of God, the nature of humans, and how Christians
should live.3
One place Christians found answers to these questions was in the works of
late antique intellectuals who were both scholars and religious leaders and later
called church fathers and saints. Privy to aristocratic upbringings and educated in
the schools of the late empire, their thinking on myriad issues was so influential
for centuries that they might be considered Christianity’s second founders.
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 33

Interestingly, Ambrose of Milan (c. 335–97), Jerome of Stridon (341–420),

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), and Gregory of Rome (c. 564–604) were all
accidental church fathers who started out on different paths before their choices
and historical circumstance made them bishops, translator and editor of the
Latin Bible, and pope. They all were thinking, arguing, and writing at a critical
time of widespread questioning of old values and attempts to justify new values
and a new culture. Their engaged works gave intellectual respectability and
direction to Christianity, and formed a major component of the knowledge base
of the emergent European culture. And this, just at a time when the culture and
civilization that nurtured them was disappearing. Augustine died as Vandals
besieged Hippo. Gregory died in plague- and war-ravaged Italy.4
Everywhere the cosmopolitan, urban civilization of the Roman world
transformed into severely reduced urban and trading centers and the localized
agricultural world of the nascent Middle Ages. It was in this new world that
the classical, biblical, and patristic traditions would pass through the sieve of
Europe’s monasteries. It might at first seem oxymoronic to speak of “monastic
culture,” for, after all, the early monks fled civilization and schools in an
effort to obliterate the intellect and save the soul. It is one of the great cultural
phenomena of history that a movement that began out of the mainstream as a
rejection of the stream itself came to influence everything in the Middle Ages.
How did this happen?
The Germanic invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries spelled the end of
the Roman political structure in the west and the slow demise of its municipal
schools.5 The once vibrant classical culture was now accessible only in ancient
books, books that waited to be discovered in Europe’s monastic and cathedral
schools. By the fifth century, monasteries began to proliferate in Europe and so
did guidelines for regulating the lives of monastic communities. These regulae,
or rules, offer precious insight into the ideals, goals, and aspirations of monastic
culture. The Rule that Benedict (d. c. 543), a Roman from Nursia in Italy, wrote
for his little community was destined to become the template for European
monastic life in later centuries. Benedict called his monastery a schola, which
is usually translated as “school” but actually could refer to any organized,
corporate group dedicated to a common purpose, such as a squad of soldiers
or a choir of singers. Built into Benedict’s Rule are the elements of a reading
program that made monasteries the only institutions that required regular,
systematic interaction with book learning. Monks were expected to read at
least twenty hours each week and during Lent at least twenty-six hours.6 They
called the reading program the lectio divina, divine reading. For Benedict and
his companions, brought up in literate households and converted to monastic
life as adults, it was sufficient. But as monasteries admitted monks who were less
well schooled and unschooled children, monastic teachers had to start from the
beginning, teaching them to recognize the shapes of and to pronounce letters,
34 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

syllables, and words. Cassiodorus (c. 485–c. 585) composed a guidebook for his
community at Vivarium with the telling title, Institutes of Divine and Secular
Learning.7 The divine would be coupled with the secular forevermore.

THE CULTURE OF EARLY EUROPE, 750–1050

By the middle of the eighth century, large parts of Europe began to cohere
around a dynasty of Frankish warlords known collectively as the Carolingians.
European unification was destined to be ephemeral for them, but while the
Carolingians ruled over much of Europe they thought purposefully about
what society should look like and how rulers should govern. The work they
accomplished set the parameters for how people thought about knowledge
and education for centuries to come. Their patterns of thought and intellectual
behavior proved to be foundational in the building of medieval Europe.
Einhard (c. 775–840), Charlemagne’s (742–814) protégé and biographer,
recorded that the great man’s favorite book was Augustine’s City of God.8 It
would be wonderful to know what parts of Augustine’s masterpiece spoke to
Charlemagne. From his actions and policies, Charlemagne evidently learned
the lesson that the City of Man (his own kingdom, later empire) was but a
waystation to the City of God. How kingdoms functioned determined how their
people would succeed in making their way to the eternal city. It was not enough
for rulers only to rule, they had also to shape society to Christian contours and
to reform, correct, and renew it when those contours were bent out of shape.
And since what it meant to be Christian could only be found in books, biblical
texts and the many writings of the church fathers, this meant that shaping a
society worthy of the City of God required teaching, learning, and reading.
The significance of Charlemagne’s vision cannot be overemphasized. For the
first time since the Roman Empire, public authority on a grand scale focused on
education and linked education to the health of its society. The linkage between
reform and education stimulated research, reflection, writing, and controversy
across a wide front. In a fractious world where local allegiances lay just below
the surface of imperial government, Carolingian political and religious leaders
stood for unity, organization, and standardization. Their policies and patronage
promoted Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible as normative and Benedict’s Rule as
the standard for Carolingian monasteries. It would require generations for the
Vulgate and the Rule to overcome entrenched rivals, but they would in the end.
The broad outlines of the Carolingian educational program come into
focus in three programmatic royal documents. In a letter sent around to the
kingdom’s monasteries, Letter on the Study of Literature, Charlemagne chided
monks for their poor Latin. But Charlemagne was interested much more in
errors of understanding that shaky command of the language implied. Monks
had to know and to recognize embedded figures of speech and metaphors in the
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 35

sacred texts, for only then could they grasp hidden spiritual meanings. Grammar
and Latin prose, in Carolingian thinking, were not mere fields of study but
doorways to holiness and spiritual wisdom. The General Instruction of 789 laid
out in one of its chapters a progression of studies for boys training to be priests
that centered on reading the psalms, tironian notes (a system of stenography),
chant, computus (calendar reckoning and calculation), grammar, and corrected
religious books. Significantly, the program was mandated for every monastery
and cathedral school. This was a very practical curriculum oriented toward
knowledge of skills. In his General Letter (786–800) the king alluded to the
general reform of learning for which he took responsibility and then widened
the lens to “invite” the clergy to expand their knowledge base by following “our
example and to master the study of the liberal arts.”
The liberal arts were an ancient scheme of apportioning wisdom among
seven arts, the three language-based arts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric,
dialectic) and the four numerical-based arts of the quadrivium (astronomy,
arithmetic, geometry, music). Signaling mastery of the liberal arts as key to
learning considerably broadened and deepened the knowledge base. Grammar,
for example, encompassed not only the rules of grammar but all of literature.
Arithmetic was, as Christians knew, much more than addition and subtraction,
since as the biblical book of Wisdom (11:16–21) states, God “ordered all
things by measure, number, weight.” To study number offered another way
to know God.
Putting this ambitious vision into effect required three things: resources,
people, and books. The Carolingian world was fueled by conquest and resource
rich. Hundreds of new buildings went up in the ninth century. Royal and
aristocratic patronage enriched monasteries and cathedrals with productive
lands, providing them with the means, not all evenly distributed to be sure,
to support teachers and libraries. The first generations of the Carolingian
experiment are remarkable for the number of international scholars attracted
to the Frankish kingdom, individuals such as Peter of Pisa (744–99), Alcuin
of York (c. 735–804), Theodulf of Orléans (c. 750/60–821) of Spanish
Visigothic heritage, and Clement Scottus (early ninth century) from Ireland
among many scotti from that land. Soon scholars and teachers of Frankish
heritage began to teach and write alongside the foreigners. The books they
needed were churned out by monastic and cathedral scriptoria, writing centers
organized to turn sheep hides into repositories of knowledge. Each book, like
a modern magazine or journal, could house several individual texts between
its covers.9 The books that crowded library cupboards were of all types. The
church fathers, for example, wrote at a time when readership was in decline.
The Carolingian age provided a new audience not only for the fathers but for
other Christian authors such as Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636),
and Bede (672/3–735) of Northumbria. The works of classical authors—Virgil
36 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

(70 bce–19 bce) especially, but a host of others as well—were copied, read,
and annotated. The old saw that our knowledge of some classical authors
hangs by a single Carolingian book is true, as long as we remember that
scriptoria copied classical works not to save them for us but to use them. Old
learning—for example, Martianus Capella’s fantastical fifth-century allegory
of the liberal arts, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and Priscian’s
sixth-century advanced speculative grammar, The Principles of Grammar—
found new, avid audiences in Carolingian schools.
The consequence of elevating the status of the liberal arts was to foster
specialization of knowledge, learning, and wisdom. The overall purpose
remained to understand God’s words preserved in the Bible. Alcuin simply,
yet eloquently, emphasized the integration of the arts into Christian learning
when he compared the liberal arts to seven columns that support the house of
wisdom, that is, divine wisdom that built its house, the body of Christ, in the
womb of the Virgin. In teaching that perfect wisdom cannot be approached
except through the seven columns, Alcuin essentially Christianized the arts by
linking them intimately to the body of Christ, to the church, and to the steps
to perfect wisdom. Others would claim that knowledge of the liberal arts was
inherent in human nature but had been obscured by sin. Advancing in knowledge
of the arts amounted to a journey of self-discovery. The arts were not just a
convenient division of learning or an element of the temple of wisdom, but a
constituent part of human nature. They were humanity’s link with the divine,
their cultivation a return to the state humans shared before the fall. Never had
learning and knowledge been so exalted. As John Scottus (c. 810–c. 875) wrote,
“true philosophy is true religion and true religion is true philosophy.”10 Book
learning had become a means to salvation, the antithesis of the holy ignorance
of the desert monks.
It would be anachronistic to think of the liberal arts as a set curriculum
applied schematically and universally in cathedral and monastic schools,
although the evidence of manuscripts and commentaries proves that the arts
formed the bedrock of the Carolingian knowledge system. It was once thought
that the language arts, the “three ways” or trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and
dialectic—dominated Carolingian education. But the evidence is abundant that
Carolingian scholars and schools were equally conversant with the numeric
arts, the “four ways” of the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy.11 Computus, a thoroughly modern-sounding word, was listed in
Charlemagne’s General Instruction of 789 as one of the disciplines priests
were expected to master. Computus meant calculation, primarily the ability
to calculate the date of Easter, a religious date fixed in the Jewish lunar
calendar, which in a world governed by the Roman solar calendar required
subtle mathematical manipulation to determine. Calculation embraced all
kinds of numeric mental gymnastics. The collection of tithes and its division
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 37

into fourths, the calculation of harvests from fields and rents from farmers,
and the increased minting and use of coins in the early medieval economy all
presupposed a culture of counting and numeric literacy.
The pinnacle of the Carolingian knowledge pyramid was knowledge of
the Bible. The texts of the Bible underwent at least four revisions during the
Carolingian period to purge them of accumulated scribal errors. This work
required scholars such as Alcuin and Theodulf of Orléans to engage in textual
criticism. The culture of this one book inspired many other books. Glossaries of
difficult biblical terminology proliferated to explain words and concepts from
the ancient world of Jewish life and practice that were foreign to European
readers in the ninth and tenth centuries. Then, there were the commentaries on
individual books of the Bible that complemented commentaries passed down
from the patristic age. Some thirty-five commentaries were composed between
500 and 750 compared to some 150 in the Carolingian age between 750 and
900. What readers wanted most were literal commentaries that explained things.
The arts were helpful here. They also wanted the best content, grounded in the
patristic giants. Authors obliged by combining excerpts from the church fathers
in their works, leaving to the side allegorical discussions and explanations of
Greek words prepared for Mediterranean audiences of the fifth century. They
justified their works of scissors and paste compilation by comparing them to
bouquets gathered from many flowers or to the sonorous melody different
pipes of an organ produced when played together. They also downplayed
their originality in the shadows of the patristic giants, but they were innovative
despite themselves. Excerpting meant taking content out of context and
juxtaposing meant creating new patterns. Their work required deep familiarity
with the patristic tradition and a flair for manipulating words and concepts
for new audiences. Alcuin of York exemplifies the Carolingian knowledge
network, which he particularly cultivated after Charlemagne appointed him
abbot of the monastery of St. Martin of Tours in 796. His extensive writings
(liturgical, homiletic, exegetical, educational, literary, epistolary, hagiographic,
theological, and polemical) were transmitted throughout the Carolingian and
later medieval world and required a scriptorium with significant resources.12
Alcuin crafted a plantation-style monastic powerhouse (on the backs of some
20,000 serfs)13 that focused on generating student-disciples and texts. He
nurtured this network by traveling extensively and corresponding widely with
both clergy and laity, and by extending access to the monastic library, the shrine
of St. Martin, and to himself, attracting “a plague of visitors.”14
The legacy of what sometimes has been called the “Carolingian
experiment” endured after the Carolingian dynasty was replaced in the late
ninth and tenth centuries by new dynasties that worked hard to burnish
their connections to the family of Charlemagne. In intellectual and cultural
realms schools continued to operate, although inconsistently in the absence of
38 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

central guidance and resources. Literate culture was now an integral element
of medieval Europe with far-flung applications from biblical exegesis to
government administration. Patristic and classical culture were constituent
elements of the new European knowledge base. The Bible provided the
animating core of the emerging European worldview, affecting not only
religion and spirituality, but also statecraft, science, and history. The most
important legacy of the Carolingian period, however, was the culture of
controversy, disunity, and debate that it spawned. Carolingian knowledge-
makers were divided over the appropriate use of images in Christian worship
and the nature of the Eucharist. They wondered if they were predestined to
salvation or damnation. Nothing, seemingly, was sacred as they questioned the
Trinity, the soul, and Christ’s relation to the Father.15 Competing authorities
and competing interpretations of texts dismayed those confidant that there
was but one truth.16

THE CHALLENGE OF THE TWELFTH-CENTURY

RENAISSANCE
In 1927 Charles Homer Haskins invented the “Twelfth-Century Renaissance”
when he published his classic book by that title.17 Roman classical culture was
Haskins’s litmus test for a renaissance. We now know that Europeans began
creatively appropriating the Roman classics long before the twelfth century.
Still, there was enough that was new and enough change in the familiar to
justify the label. Europeans came to know more and more of classical literature,
including Greek works, often through contact with Muslim Spain. Cathedral
schools thrived during an impressive uptick in urban life; these schools would
provide the launching pad for an educational institution new to Europe, the
university. Europe was politically dynamic, having survived triple invasions by
Magyars, Vikings, and Saracens and having converted the first two to European
religion and politics. Innovations in agricultural practice, a warmer climate, and
a reduction in plague deaths produced tremendous wealth, spurred extension
of arable land, and sustained population growth. All of this enabled overseas
projects such as the Crusades and expensive projects at home such as gigantic
cathedrals we now call Gothic.
The new dynamism of the post-Carolingian world affected the production
of knowledge and accelerated intellectual change. Controversy and debate
were still very much in the air. Berengar of Tours (c. 1000–88), a cathedral
school teacher, investigated an age-old topic—the question of what truly
happened to the bread and wine when the priest consecrated them during the
Mass. Using logic, he argued that it was contrary to the Gospel and natural
reason to believe that the substance of the bread and wine disappeared.18 Bread
and wine symbolically, not actually, represented Christ’s body and blood.
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 39

The controversy that followed Berengar’s teaching took place largely within
ecclesiastical circles, as such knotty theological debates always had, first among
his former student friends, then in correspondences, at church councils, and
in major treatises that attacked Berengar. When the debate expanded from a
literate core to a wider unlettered audience it created what Brian Stock has
called “a textual community.”19
Beginning in the eleventh century and continuing into the twelfth, Europe
was racked by another controversy, but this time it engaged a much larger
audience to become Europe’s first great public controversy, the so-called
Investiture Conflict. The major issue centered on who had the authority to
select and to invest church officials such as bishops and abbots. Secular lords,
including kings, had customarily done so, but now church reformers questioned
the status quo, arguing that the church should control its own personnel. In the
event, after fifty years of intellectual and legal warfare, the controversy ended
in compromise in 1122, but not before an enormous body of literature was
produced and disseminated by both sides. Ancient law, both civil and canon,
was scoured for precedents. Logic, which had served advanced Carolingian
thinkers in the past and Berengar in the eleventh century, now was trained
on jurisprudence to bolster the authenticity of proof cases and their proper
interpretation. What began in the political realm spurred an intellectual
revolution and broadened the audience.
The new way of thinking was fueled by growing familiarity with ancient
Greek and more modern Arabic learning that entered European schoolrooms
through the agency of Muslim and Jewish scholars in Sicily and Spain, whose
translations from or via Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew introduced European
teachers and their students to a body of knowledge whose vague contours their
predecessors could only have glimpsed. It was crucial that Greek, Hebrew,
and Arabic learning entered the European mainstream when Europeans were
confident of the Latin Christian superstructure built up in earlier centuries. The
cultural and intellectual atmosphere of the twelfth century was not like that of
the fourth and fifth centuries when Christians of the patristic age worried about
pagan influences. Twelfth-century intellectuals might have disputed pagan
doctrines, but they did not worry about a resurgence of Greco-Roman paganism
as did Augustine or Jerome. Also, Greek thought did not come into European
schools unvarnished. It had already been scrutinized by Jewish and Muslim
scholars who, as monotheists sharing a revealed, book-based religion, had many
of the same concerns Christians would encounter when reading Aristotle. In
the twelfth century, Christian intellectuals approached Greek learning after it
had passed through the sieves of Avicenna (980–1037), Averroes (1126–98),
Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021–69), and Moses Maimonides (1135/8–1204), the
title of whose influential Guide for the Perplexed suggests the tensions between
revealed religion and Greek rationalism.
40 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Greek thought, of course, was not a monolithic block. Well might someone
be perplexed by Plato’s (fifth century bce) doctrines that what humans
experience is transitory and that reality exists in a transcendent sphere beyond
nature, and by Aristotle’s (fourth century bce) contrasting view that knowledge
derives from our sense perceptions and that reality arises from human parsing
of experiential data. It must have thrilled Europeans to read Aristotle’s four
causes and to recognize in them proofs for the existence of their God. Here,
rational argument supported scriptural truth. But they must have been dismayed
to find that Aristotle believed the world eternal, clearly contradicting the truth
of Genesis. With Plato they would have agreed that humans possess a soul as
well as a body and that the soul lives on after the death of the body. But Plato’s
ambiguity about the continued existence of the individual soul after death
must have challenged readers expecting a system of individual rewards and
punishment in the afterlife.
Rather than stymying intellectual inquiry, such challenges propelled
thinkers to use dialectic in their investigations to establish truth. Peter Abelard
(1079–1142) was not the first to do so, but he certainly was the most famous—
or infamous—in his own day. His historical reputation was further burnished
by his autobiographical account of his battles against old ways. The Story of
My Misfortunes says it all in its title.20 His trajectory went from the height of
dizzying fame to disgrace and humiliation to quiet teaching and writing. More
than any other contemporary, this brash practitioner of the new way popularized
rational inquiry. His Yes and No21 listed numerous contradictions and puzzling
passages in the Bible, not to challenge biblical truth but to highlight that it
was incumbent on contemporary scholars to unravel theological conundrums.
Logic was the key. One episode in his autobiography illustrates the turning
point between old knowledge and new knowledge. Young Abelard had little
reverence for the esteemed masters of his day, teachers, such as Anselm of Laon
(d.1117), whose reputations were based on impressive mastery of texts and
authorities and who could marshal numerous citations and references to bolster
their teaching. When Abelard criticized Anselm, Anselm’s students gave Abelard
a difficult passage in the biblical book of Ezechiel to interpret and challenged
him to do better. The young man did so the very next day in a performance
that drew students to him from all over Europe and would continue to do so
throughout his life. This is Abelard’s significance in this history of medieval
knowledge and communication: he was an intellectual celebrity, not a monastic
or cathedral master. He was the harbinger of a new social order about to enter
the European scene.
Others helped prepare the way. Peter Lombard (c. 1096–1160) in his
Four Books of Sentences systematically compiled biblical texts and relevant
authorities on a wide variety of theological topics to become the regnant
theological textbook for centuries.22 What took a career of reading to achieve,
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 41

now became available in a new, accessible format. Gratian’s Concordance of

Discordant Canons (mid-twelfth century) similarly synthesized the jumbled and
contradictory mass of canon law that had developed since the early centuries
of Christianity and harmonized “discordant canons” through dialectical
reasoning.23 Packaging old learning in new formats accelerated legal studies.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY AND BEYOND:

DYNAMISM AND DIVERSITY
Historians have always treated the thirteenth century as the high point of
the Middle Ages, the time when the various competing strands of the early
medieval experience culminated in a synthesis.24 This was the century of Gothic
cathedrals and of Thomas Aquinas, whose blending of the Bible and Aristotle
has been compared to the architectural features of cathedrals that brought
together stone, glass, and soaring space into something marvelous and new.25
Dante’s early fourteenth-century masterpiece, his vision of heaven, hell, and
purgatory portrayed in the Divine Comedy, has also stood as an avatar for
the age.26 As enticing as these cultural monuments are, do they speak for the
entire age? Or is the great thirteenth-century synthesis a projection of modern
notions of what medieval civilization was all about before the putative synthesis
was shattered in later centuries? Put another way, knowing what came later—
the Black Death, the Avignonese Papacy, the Hundred Years War, and the
Reformation—may have led historians to project a fictive unity where none
really existed. To understand the thirteenth century’s enduring contribution
to knowledge and communication in medieval Europe, we must listen to other
voices even at the risk of hearing static, not harmony, of finding disunity, not
unity.
We can start with the knowledge producers and communicators, Europe’s
intellectuals. Among these, none is more prominent than Thomas Aquinas
(1225–74), an Italian who joined the Dominicans, a new order of mendicant
preachers, and who taught at the University of Paris. Dominic Guzman
(1170–1221) founded his new monastic community of Dominican friars not to
retreat from the world but to engage heresy and, by preaching, to unmask and
defeat it. Thus, education was important to the Dominicans who fought to place
their teachers in the universities, often against the resistance of Franciscans,
another mendicant order, and the secular clergy. The friars created their own
studia, where boys were educated in philosophy and theology before entering
a university, while other boys entered university when approximately fourteen
years old, after grammar schooling. They all studied the liberal arts, including
grammar as needed and dialectic; they also studied natural philosophy for four
to six years and in the process learned how to dispute, a form of study known
as scholasticism. When they completed the program and earned a master of
42 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

arts degree, they could advance to the more specialized study of medicine, law
(either Roman, canon, or both), or theology. Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the
basic text for the study of theology, collected and systematized theological
questions and offered Peter’s own solutions while still leaving much open to
debate. Masters and students composed an elite of professional intellectuals
who inhabited a world of books, words, and disputations.
It was this world that Aquinas entered when he joined the theology faculty
at Paris and applied his prodigious intellect to the elucidation of biblical
truths with the aid of “the Philosopher,” as he reverentially dubbed the pagan
Aristotle. Aquinas’s writings belong to a genre known as summa, suggesting
that they are encyclopedic rather than addressing one topic or another. His
writings have all the literary appeal of an instruction manual. But what they
lack in style, they more than compensate for by their method, rigor, and
intellectual honesty. His method was schematic. He posed a question, then
listed objections to the question, followed by a statement contrary to the
objections, and then his own response to the question. Where some might
have been content to have arrived at an answer, Aquinas was not. He circled
back to the objections and closed the loop by explaining why the objections
were invalid. In the Summa Theologiae, for example, before he even began his
exploration of God and God’s creation, his first question considered whether
it is even possible to conduct such an investigation.27 Arguing that it was
possible, he next investigated the existence of God in the second question in
three articles or steps. Of course, Aquinas and his students already believed
in the existence of God. Here was their opportunity to prove it in a rational,
sophisticated way. First, he considered whether the existence of God was self-
evident and concluded that it is not self-evident to us. Before jumping directly
to the question of God’s existence, Aquinas interposed a second step: whether
it was possible to demonstrate God’s existence. Three objections stated that it
was not possible, but Aquinas replied on biblical authority that it is possible to
demonstrate the existence of God. After responding to the three objections, he
finally arrived at the key question: “Whether God exists?” The two objections
to this question cited the existence of evil and the possibility that everything in
the world could be attributed to principles other than God. On the contrary,
Aquinas cited God’s own statement, “I am who am” (Exodus 3:14) in favor of
God’s existence. Given these opposing views, Aquinas responded that God did
exist and proceeded to prove it with his Aristotelian-inspired five proofs for the
existence of God.
And thus he proceeded, question by question, objection by objection, contrary
by contrary, response by response, resolution of objections by resolution of
objections. There is, as some have seen, an architectonic framework to how
Aquinas presented and communicated knowledge, in his case the truths of
scripture proven by reason.
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 43

Aquinas’s deft synthesis of faith and reason was endorsed and offered as
a model of modern Catholic education in the papal encyclical Aeterni Patris
(Pope Leo XIII 1879).28 Back in the thirteenth century, however, Aquinas’s
work was controversial and challenged from three different directions. Scholars
influenced by Plato and Neoplatonism thought that the fundamental conceit of
Aristotelian philosophy—that sense data leads to truth—was wrong-headed.
Human senses cannot lead to knowledge of the transcendent, to knowledge of
God. The way to ultimate reality, they argued, lay through contemplation rather
than reason, thereby injecting new energy into the old dichotomy between an
active or contemplative life. This camp took its cue from Plato’s account of
creation in the Timaeus,29 which suggested that one could know the creator not
by feats of intellect but rather by studying the creator’s effects, that is, by seeing
the creator through its ordered creation.
The second development in an age that increasingly separated philosophy
from theology was greater emphasis on the academic study of science or natural
philosophy. Scholars and their students had been interested in the natural world
in the early medieval centuries. Bede studied tides. Everyone studied time-
reckoning,30 which required mathematics and knowledge of the heavenly bodies.
But once introduced to the culture of thirteenth-century universities, scientific
topics were investigated with an intensity that led to new understandings.
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175–1253) was a theologian and philosopher who
also explored scientific topics in a sustained, rigorous way, influencing a new
generation of thinkers, such as Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20–c. 1292).31 Inspired
by the Gospel of John’s description of Christ as “the true light that enlightens
every man” (Jn 1:9), Grosseteste undertook to study physical light, including
rainbows. He developed theories of light refraction and reflection. He also
studied motion, sound, astronomy, and tides, among other subjects. Perhaps
most important was his methodology, which stressed empirical observation and
the importance of mathematics.
Grosseteste was an Aristotelian who took the Philosopher’s work in a
different direction. Europe’s knowledge base was by now wide enough to
accommodate a range of approaches, applying theology, reason, mysticism,
and science to knowledge and learning. It could also accommodate those who
did not feel compelled to reconcile Aristotle with Scripture at all and were
willing to accept two truths—one reached by reason, the other prescribed in
scripture. As masters of arts, teachers such as Siger of Brabant (c. 1240–c. 1284)
and Boetius of Denmark (active c. 1275) took their cue from the Spanish
Islamic thinker Averroes (1126–98) and are sometimes called Latin Averroists,
although “radical Aristotelians” would also fit them. They claimed the freedom
in the University of Paris to unpack Aristotle’s thought no matter where it led.
Their willingness to acknowledge both philosophical truth and scriptural truth,
as Averroes had and as Jewish philosophers would, struck at the heart of the
44 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Thomistic synthesis of Aristotle and Scripture. If Aristotle taught that the world
is eternal, the masters of arts would also without debunking such a heretical
notion.
The third challenge to the notion of a regnant Thomistic synthesis in the
thirteenth century came from Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris from 1268
to 1279. Tempier, a master of theology, rose to become chancellor of the
university. When Pope John XXI asked him to look into allegations of heresy in
the university, Tempier was well positioned to do so. In March 1277 he issued
a list of 219 condemned propositions (including the eternity of the world) that
he forbade masters of arts to teach in the university. He also banned masters
of arts from broaching theological topics. Implicit in his condemnation is a
renunciation of the origin of the condemned propositions, which led from
the arts school to the theological faculty and included propositions that have
been traced to Aquinas’s teaching. Tempier’s was but one attempt by bishops
to rein in what they perceived as heretical rationalist strains inspired by pagan
philosophy in the universities under their jurisdictions.32
Just as significant as the roiling debates over the proper content of knowledge
was the foundation and expansion of the institution in which those debates took
place. The university is one of the great legacies of the Middle Ages and remains
in many ways controversial in the modern world. Unknown to the world of
classical antiquity and to the early centuries of medieval Europe, universities,
despite their often tumultuous histories, combined education and knowledge
creation and dissemination with institutional stability and professional standards
that earlier monastic and cathedral schools lacked. Universities, patterned on
urban guilds, were associations of masters or students established for a common
purpose, just as guilds of bakers or cobblers were. Their structure, rules,
regulations, and bureaucracy sustained them as generations of masters and
students came and went in marked contrast to the episodic histories of earlier
schools so dependent on individual masters. Universities also benefited from
the wealth of the urban centers in which they were located and the support of
patrons and fee-paying students. Schoolmen wore distinctive garb and were
entitled to certain “rights and privileges” that set them apart from other societal
groups, such as operating under ecclesiastical jurisdictions rather than the civil
law that governed their urban neighbors.33
The origins of the European university system are obscure. A universitas
incorporated by students (middle-aged law students!) is attested at Bologna in
Italy as early as 1088. In 1200, King Philip II (1165–1223) granted a charter
to an already functioning university in Paris. By 1300 some twenty universities
were up and running, including Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, Siena, and
Montpellier, and by 1450 there were perhaps forty more, including Kraków,
Vienna, Pisa, and Cologne. Their institutional histories were as contentious as
their doctrinal disputes. Students formed “nations” of compatriots within some
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 45

universities. The University of Paris initially had four nations, French, English,
Norman, and Picard. Regional differences and tensions were thus concentrated
in the university community and sometimes led to conflict. Struggles over control
of teaching positions among different religious orders such as the Dominicans
and Franciscans also broke out. Friction between towns and privileged gowns
also flared up. When the University of Paris threatened to pick up and leave in
1200, Philip II issued his charter reaffirming the special status of the masters and
students in the city. As Stephen Tempier’s intervention suggests, the work of
university scholars and masters was scrutinized by authorities. Despite internal
and external turmoil, universities thrived, offering a structured framework
for absorbing, debating, and creating knowledge. In retrospect, one major
weakness was that they banned participation by women for the next 600 years,
thus depriving European culture of the benefit of at least half of its intellectual
resources.34
As the European knowledge-based educational system neared the end of
the Middle Ages, universities preserved what by now had become a hallmark
of European education—debate and controversy. Theirs was only the latest
chapter of the centuries-old search for what it is Europeans should know and
how they can know it.
Duns Scotus (1266–1308), a Scot who became a Franciscan and lectured
at Oxford and Paris before his sudden death in Cologne, exemplifies the pan-
European careers of many intellectual and educational leaders. Scotus lectured
on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, but he used the Sentences as the jumping-off point
for his own, original philosophizing. He denied Aquinas’s notion that evidence
from the physical realm, from motion for example, could lead to knowledge
of God, a metaphysical (beyond physical) being. In claiming separate realms
of thinking and arguing for philosophy and theology, Scotus affirmed a divide
between reason and faith. William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), an English
Franciscan who trained at Oxford and London, widened that divide when
he claimed that God was knowable only through faith and direct revelation
(Scripture). Sensory perception yields knowledge only of the sensory world.
Thus, he was able to deny the existence of universal concepts such as Man,
because we can only know individuals such as Tom, Dick, or Harriet and not
the universal quality of Humanity in which some believed everyone participates.
Ockham also critiqued the complicated intellectual structures that earlier
thinkers had erected to explain reality and championed what has come to be
called “efficient reasoning” or, more colloquially, “Ockham’s razor.” Generally,
the explanation with the fewest assumptions is the preferred explanation.
Nicholas of Oresme (c. 1320–82) can stand for a wide group of scholars
who asked searching, original questions of the traditions they had inherited.
Born into humble circumstances in Normandy, Nicholas studied at Paris and
became a master of theology. He was also attached to the royal French court
46 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

where he translated some of Aristotle’s major works from Latin into French,
thereby significantly enlarging the philosopher’s audience. Nicholas of Oresme
represented a generation that began to question some of Aristotle’s basic
teachings such as his concepts of space, place, time, and motion. Nicholas
also was not convinced of the Aristotelian doctrine that the earth is stationary,
but instead argued that the earth spins on its axis. He challenged biblical,
Aristotelian, and commonsense notions to understand the world on a rational
basis. Although as a churchman (he ended his life as bishop of Lisieux) he always
deferred to his religion, his philosophical and mathematical inquiries became
part of the mainstream and pointed the way for Galileo (1564–1642), Descartes
(1596–1650), and other early modern thinkers.35

COMMUNICATING LEARNING: MEANS AND MEDIA

It would have astounded a European intellectual living in the immediate
aftermath of the transformation of the Roman Empire to witness the bustling
environment of the many university communities of the year 1450. The time-
traveling European of the year 500 would doubtless have been amazed at how
ubiquitous writing had become. Only the most prescient observer in 1450
would have been aware of the full range of Europe’s innovations in knowledge
communication, most of which have endured down to our own digital age.
The uses of writing
As in the modern world, the vast majority of human communication was oral and
therefore ephemeral and lost to later generations. Yet, Europe’s use of written
communication was consistent and wide-ranging. The evidence that survives is
just the tip of an enormous iceberg. E.A. Lowe’s census of surviving manuscripts
from before the Carolingian age stops at 800 ce and includes some 1,800
manuscripts and manuscript fragments that have stood the tests of destruction
and neglect. Bernhard Bischoff’s roster of ninth-century Carolingian books
counted some 9,000 surviving manuscripts out of an estimated total production
of 50,000.36 No comparative counts for the tenth to fifteenth centuries exist,
but the number must be correspondingly substantial. A single author’s work
from the high and later Middle Ages has sometimes survived in hundreds of
copies. Bundles of documents in municipal archives throughout Europe from
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that record business transactions, wills,
property conveyances, births, deaths, and other prosaic matters have yet to be
systematically catalogued.
Most written documents surviving from the early centuries are religious,
consisting of Bibles and books used in religious services. Their survival
reflects the stability of the monasteries and cathedrals that produced, owned,
and protected them. Their collections also included school texts, glossaries,
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 47

grammars, and texts on the other liberal arts used to introduce learners to the
culture of reading Latin. Room was also made on library shelves for literary
works, especially by Roman classical authors such as Julius Caesar, Cicero, and
Virgil. While some objected to these textual links to the Roman past in the new
Christian order, the majority cherished organic links between the Roman past
and their own times. Christianity, after all, was invented and developed in the
empire. Einhard, when he came to write his life of Charlemagne, his patron and
friend, did not think twice about patterning his description of the great man
after those he read in Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars.37
The uses of writing also included legal documents, copies of Roman civil law
as well as church, or canon, law. Charters both royal and ecclesiastical recorded
the grants of privileges, such as freedom from paying tolls and the leasing and
ownership of property. Monasteries that owned vast parcels of land and the
people attached to them compiled inventories of their possessions in special
documents called polyptychs that carefully recorded the names even of peasants
and their families and the rent they owed for the patch of monastic land they
cultivated. William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book (1086) did the same thing,
but from a royal and kingdom-wide perspective.38 One sign of the significance
of written culture in European life is the compilations of formularies, books
that provided writers with samples of how letters and other documents should
be written. It mattered that they be done up in the proper form.39
Writing also entered the public sphere when, for example, epitaphs carved
in stone recorded the qualities of the deceased and requested prayers from
passersby. One popular message reminded viewers, “what thou art now, famous
in the world, I have been, traveler, / and what I now am, thou wilt be in the
future.”40 Poems relevant for specific locations, such as scriptoria, taverns, and
latrines, were also posted in public view. Not all writing was momentous and
meant for preservation. Records from Roman military camps were written on
tree bark and subsequently discarded. Authors and students often wrote first
drafts on wax tablets that could be erased (think the Etch A Sketch drawing toy)
and reused (Figure 2.1). Scraps of parchment were used for messages or to label
relics held in a church’s treasury.
Europeans realized that writing had the power of preserving fleeting
speech. Many sermons, for instance, were written down and sermon exempla
were passed on to be copied and imitated by others, including parish priests.
But writing could also be used to create a past that never existed. Where the
modern world values an idea or transaction that is “put into writing,” early
Europeans were suspicious of written documents because of the prevalence of
forgeries and trusted more to the testimony of witnesses. Grand forgeries such
as the eighth-century Donation of Constantine or the ninth-century Pseudo-
Isidorian Decretals attempted to justify power relationships to the advantage
of one party over another. Minor forgeries stipulating the payment of rents or
48 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 2.1 Wooden wax writing tablet, c. 500 ce. The recessed areas of these
tablets were filled with wax and employed for writing and record-keeping. A stylus, or
pointed wooden pen, would have been used to write in the wax. Joined pairs of tablets
such as these were made in many materials, including ivory. Image courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

property ownership abounded. If a document were proven to have been forged

on the testimony of witnesses, it was literally killed by stabbing and tearing.
The chirograph (from the Greek meaning “written by hand”) evolved as a
means to ensure the authenticity of documents by having the same document
copied two or more times on a single sheet of parchment (Figure 2.2). The
word CHIROGRAPHUM was inscribed between each copy of the document.
When the parties agreed that the copies were identical, the parchment was cut
into sections across the word chirographum. If anyone later questioned the
authenticity of another’s copy of the document, the sections were rejoined to
determine if they matched.41
Initially European writing was overwhelmingly in the Latin language with
only a few documents preserved in the vernacular. Although Ulfilas (c. 311–83)
translated the Bible into the Gothic language of the early Germanic peoples, the
vast body of Germanic literature was preserved and transmitted by their oral
traditions. The Hildebrandslied and Beowulf, two moving and sophisticated
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 49

FIGURE 2.2 Chirograph of Bishop Ealdred of Worcester, 1058 ce. Courtesy of the
British Library.

vernacular accounts of heroes from the Germanic past, remind us how much
has been lost.42 But the pendulum was swinging slowly in the direction of the
vernacular. The stories of El Cid and of Roland, warrior heroes from Christian
Spain and the Carolingian world, crusading accounts, legends of Charlemagne,
of King Arthur and of the Nibelungs, sermons, saints’ lives, histories,
chronicles, vulgar urban stories critical of aristocrats and churchmen, Nicholas
of Oresme’s translations of Aristotle, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Dante’s
Divine Comedy hint at the richness of pan-European writing in languages other
than Latin.43
The how of writing
Written communication required technique and materials. Before the
manuscript book of late antiquity, there was the papyrus roll of the ancient
Mediterranean world (Figure 2.3). Papyrus, a plant product, had much to
recommend it. It was abundantly available in the wetlands of the ancient world,
especially in Egypt. Sheets made of papyrus were stitched together to form rolls
that, when wound, could easily be stored in pigeonholes. But they were fragile
and papyrus became less accessible as the unity of the Mediterranean lands
fragmented with the transformation of the Roman world. Necessity forced
Europeans to innovate and to experiment with other writing media. The skins
of animals—sheep, goats, and cattle—were laboriously prepared in a multistage
process of skinning, softening, stretching, scraping, cutting to size, and ruling
50 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 2.3 A papyrus scroll from Theadelphia (Arsinoites; Batn el-Harit), Faiyum,
Egypt, written in the Greek language, Roman period of Egypt, 196–98 ce. It includes
a list of farmers with the number and size of land given to them as well as listing
fishermen, flute players, threshers, millers, sheep breeders, shepherds, and fruit
merchants. Neues Museum, Berlin.

to become writing surfaces. Thicker than papyrus and difficult to roll, animal
skins were formed into sheets that were folded into booklet format. In the most
conventional practice, four sheets were laid on top of each other and folded in
the middle to make a booklet, or quire, of eight folios whose recto and verso
sides made up sixteen pages. Once a text was copied, its multiple quires would
be sewn together along its folds, or spine, to form a book, or codex, protected
by thick leather or wooden covers (Figure 2.4). The book format caught on
rapidly (“Bible” derives from the Greek for “book”) and is only now, in the
twenty-first century, challenged by texts in electronic format.44
Manuscripts represented substantial investments, beginning with the
raising of the animals who provided their skins (each Bible, for example,
required the skins of over 200 sheep45), to the transformation of skins into
parchment leaves suitable to accept writing, followed by the actual writing
of the texts. Old, obsolete manuscripts, especially of outdated liturgical
books, were scraped of their original texts and “recycled” to be reused for
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 51

FIGURE 2.4 Open view—Silver Book of the Land. E.10.02.01.01, Appenzell,

Landesarchiv Appenzell Innerrhoden.

new texts. Initially scribes were trained members of the communities that
produced the manuscripts. Often, young members of the community would
be entrusted with the slow, tedious task of copying text from one manuscript
to another. Inattentive and perhaps not sufficiently fluent in Latin, they
often made mistakes. Charlemagne mandated that only men of mature age
be entrusted with copying, especially of religious books where mistakes
were more dangerous. A single scribe might copy an entire text; more often
teams of scribes were assigned the task, each scribe responsible for a quire.
In the thirteenth century and beyond, the demand for books by university
students and the laity increased dramatically and book-copying became
professionalized. With the introduction of paper manufacturing in Spain and
Italy in the thirteenth century, and France in the fourteenth century, more
and more books and documents were written on paper, which was cheaper
and lighter, but also less durable. Booksellers would take an authorized copy
of a text and divide it into pieces (pecia in Latin) so that it could be copied
many times by scribes for hire in a kind of assembly-line process. By the
fifteenth century the growing demand for texts provided the impetus for the
introduction of the printing press.
52 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

The second great innovation in written communication of knowledge

was the script scribes used to record and disseminate learning in book form.
The ancient Roman world passed on two writing forms to medieval Europe.
An everyday cursive script, used for documents that were not meant to be
preserved, achieved economy of space and rapidity of execution by linking
letter forms together. But legibility was sacrificed in the process. For higher
register documents such as law codes and literature that were put into codex
form, scribes used a monumental script that emulated epigraphy. Clarity and
legibility were achieved, but copying was slow and required more space.
Western scribes in the post-Roman world maintained both script forms,
but increasingly used cursive elements in codices. Writing in lower case, using
abbreviations and contractions, and linking individual letters together into
“ligatures” was much more economical than formal script in terms of words
per inch of parchment space, but it sacrificed legibility and increased the risk of
error in copying (Figure 2.5).
Thus, the second innovation: the invention and proliferation of Carolingian
minuscule, which is often credited to Charlemagne though no evidence links
the new script to his court. But the king did shine a lens on legibility when he
insisted on scribal competency. Copying became a self-reflective act, a form
of prayer. What ensued was a script that was basically lower case, reserving
capitals for titles and for initial letters, but which emphasized well-formed
letters, separation between words, and fewer abbreviations and ligatures. If a
page of Carolingian minuscule looks like a modern printed page, it is because
typesetters in the age of print reached back to Carolingian models when they
designed their script (Figure 2.6). Their own contemporary script, which
paleographers today call Gothic, had been in use since the twelfth century and
coincided with the rise of universities and the increased demand for rapidly
and cheaply produced books. Words were crammed together in smaller spaces,
ligatures and abbreviations multiplied with the result that these rapid cursive
letterforms were not suitable for metal type.46
Communicating knowledge in other forms
As important as writing and books were as vehicles for communicating
knowledge, Europeans found myriad other ways to communicate knowledge,
values, and beliefs. Coins were meant for commerce, but they also carried
messages and images pointing to the authorities who minted them. Works of
art conveyed messages in powerful ways. The Gothic cathedral was an awe-
inspiring structure whose stone, glass, and liturgy represented Christianity to
thousands of worshippers for centuries. An object as fragile as the beautiful
Lothar Crystal crafted for a Carolingian king conveyed a message about a queen
falsely accused of adultery by using words and images to depict the biblical
precedent of Susanna who was famously falsely accused in the biblical book of
Daniel.47
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 53

FIGURE 2.5 Merovingian minuscule. An early homiletic manuscript collection

from the monastery of St. Gall, written on stiff, poorly smoothed, unevenly cut, and
damaged parchment, already previously used, overwritten in the first half of the eighth
century with the sermons of Caesarius of Arles and the Synonyma of Isidore of Seville.
Underlying script (Merovingian): a significant copy of the Old Testament Books of
Wisdom, written in about 700 in southern France or Spain. Cod. Sang. 194, p. 1,
St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek.
54 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 2.6 Sulpicius Severus (c. 363–420), Vita of Saint Martin of Tours. One of the
most elaborate hagiographic texts in the St. Gallen library. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek,
Cod. Sang. 557: Vita sancti Martini, Dialogi de orientalibus patribus (http://dx.doi.
org/10.5076/e-codices-csg-0557), fol. 116.

Words were meant to be read and spoken. Preaching, for example, of the
friars was heard by clerics and laity throughout Europe, often in public squares,
attracting audiences from all levels of society. Most of the surviving sermons
are in Latin, although it is probable that they were preached in the vernacular.
Franciscans, in particular, reached out with their messages of poverty, imitation
of Christ, repentance and moral reform to the laity, some of whom became
members of the tertiary order of the Friars Minor. These lay communities
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIA, AND COMMUNICATION 55

discussed and expounded biblical texts, articles of faith, legends of saints, and
the sermons they heard.48 Women, at times, proclaimed the Gospel and, in the
dramatic case of the Beguins of Languedoc in the early fourteenth century,
the apocalyptic writings of the Franciscan theologian Peter Olivi (1248–98)
inspired an underground network of believers who preached, assembled in
homes to read and discuss his writings, and passed around the testimonies
and relics of perhaps as many as 100 of their martyrs whom the Inquisition
burned.49
Words could also be sung. From its earliest centuries medieval chant
conveyed wisdom about Christian truths when song accompanied the liturgy as
well as women working at their looms. In the highly localized world of the early
centuries, melodies differed from place to place as local practice and preferences
shaped melodic performance of the same chants. Attempts to standardize
performance depended on memory, which could be unreliable. Gradually, in
the ninth and tenth centuries, musicians invented graphic forms of notation to
impose order on performance. Melody thereafter was not only remembered but
also could be read in musical notations.50
Graphic forms also assisted knowledge acquisition when medieval teachers
devised diagrams to put into visual form teaching initially conveyed by words.
The diagrams of the winds and of the heavens, particularly of the movement of
the planets and their relationship to each other, conveyed in a glance more and
deeper information than verbal descriptions. In realizing the potency of graphic
forms of knowledge, medieval teachers activated what one scholar has called
the “geometry of the mind.”51 Diagrams could even be employed to make plain
the structure of an author’s argument and the relationship of its parts to each
other. Medieval teachers put Cicero’s words into diagrammatic form to make
his teaching more evident to their students.52
Structuring knowledge
When modern readers pick up a book they expect a table of contents, chapters,
and chapter titles, and, if the book is a work of scholarship, they expect
citations of authorities and indices to help guide them to special content. All
these finding aids were invented and refined in the schools and universities
of medieval Europe. Page numbers had to await the age of printing, since
copying books by hand in different formats meant that the text of the same
work might occupy more or less physical space, depending on the practices of
each scriptorium and each copyist. Tables of contents, usually headed by “this
body (corpus) contains” written on a flyleaf, and chapter divisions came first.
Chapters and chapter headings divided long works into topical subdivisions,
sometimes called “books,” for better understanding and easier consultation.53
Absent page numbers, authors would steer their readers, for example, to
“Book 15 of Augustine’s City of God” for additional explanation. Scrupulous
56 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

authors mentioned their sources by way of providing guidance and validating

the merit of their own work. They also identified their sources in the margins
of their works with abbreviations. Augustine might be “Aug” or even “Au”;
Jerome (Hieronymus in Latin) could be “Hier” or just “Hi.” The marginal space
surrounding a text on all four sides could be a busy place, where copyists and
generations of later readers left notes recording their thoughts and queries.
Marginal annotations became such a feature of reading and learning that a
suite of technical signs developed as a kind of shorthand to indicate what was
important, what was missing in a text, what had special religious significance,
or what was obscure. Cassiodorus in his Exposition on the Psalms used a special
series of marginal signs to indicate specific themes in his work, from the use of
etymologies to the use of each of the liberal arts. In a way, he was providing
knowledge-seekers with a proto-indexing system. If a reader were interested in
arithmetic in the Psalms, all they needed to do was to flip the folios until they
came to the relevant sign.54
As the knowledge base grew both quantitatively and in complexity, especially
in the theological and legal faculties in twelfth- and thirteenth-century schools
and universities, indexing systems grew more innovative and sophisticated.
Robert Grosseteste created an indexing system that used all the letters of the
Greek and Roman alphabets, conventional signs, mathematical figures, and
dots and dashes. This amounted to some 400 unique symbols that constituted
“a topical concordance of the Bible and the Fathers.” In the thirteenth
century an alphabetized concordance of some 10,000 biblical words recorded
approximately 100,000 of their occurrences, an obvious boon to researchers.55
Other systems indicated, through cross-references, similar or opposed teachings
in different works to form a chain of knowledge that reached from one book to
another. These indexing systems functioned as a kind of database that, though
undoubtedly laborious to construct, vastly improved research efficiency and
cross-comparisons.

CONCLUSION
As Europe was about to launch itself into the wider world during the age of
discovery that brought Europeans to the Americas and India, its knowledge
and educational system had matured to the point that it had created a class of
people whose job it was to question, question, and question and had developed
a dynamic institution, the university, in which that could happen. Knowledge
acquisition and creation in medieval Europe had come of age. It was an age that
Tertullian more than a millennium earlier could not have anticipated. Athens
and Jerusalem coexisted comfortably, even as the axis of European attention
began to shift to new continents and new challenges. Sophisticated speculation
and research on Scripture and on much more was thriving on the cusp of
troubling encounters with new worlds and new knowledge.
 CHAPTER THREE

Children and Childhoods

DANIEL T. KLINE

INTRODUCTION
Over the last 150 years, the Western world has constructed a developmental
model of human maturation in which normality is defined by the personal
achievement of an orderly series of normalized steps, marked by physical
and psychological milestones, which open to greater capability, maturity, and
integration. The ultimate goal of developmental psychology is to understand
what creates a normal, healthy individual; to identify errors or deviations in
that process; and to generate instruments to objectively measure deviations
from the norm, to intervene in those deviations when discovered, and to correct
those factors that hamper “normal” or “average” development. “Average,” of
course, is itself a scientific construct that does not correspond to any individual
person. Based upon population studies, psychological investigations, and policy
initiatives, contemporary childhood is thoroughly mediated by the social
sciences (graphs, charts, measurements, statistics, generalized descriptions) and
the attendant public policy investments. Infancy and childhood have become a
privileged site of investigation and intervention. It is a way to give structure to
the otherwise messy, complicated, and uncertain dimensions of the life course.
The cultures of the medieval period found other ways to give shape to the
difficult realities of human existence where intervention meant rudimentary
education, often particularized, local practices, and religious instruction.
Because it does not share post-Enlightenment assumptions, the medieval
period has been accused, most notably by Philippe Ariès, of not having a clear
sense of childhood as a phase of life or an adequate understanding of children as
different from older persons.1 Based upon an analysis of medieval portraiture in
58 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

which children appeared to be “little adults” and an unsympathetic understanding

of the effects of high infant mortality, Ariès claimed that medieval parents did
not invest emotionally in their children’s lives—a view that held sway for
decades in the academic literature and unfortunately persists in popular culture
even today.2 Medieval culture, however, proffered many models of the human
lifespan—often derived from ancient authorities—that clearly delineated
pre-adults. Although the life course was parsed out in “stages,” the medieval
understanding was not developmental in the modern scientific sense. Instead,
human aging was understood in relation to gendered social roles, particularly
marriage, and based upon recuperation of ancient authorities, biblical precepts,
and moral injunctions.

MEDIEVAL LIFE COURSE

The simplest model, based upon biological observation, followed a tripartite
structure (youth, maturity, and old age); moralists tended to identify three
stages as well, as in the late fourteenth-century Parlement of the Thre Ages.3
The physiologists, like those in the Galenic tradition, posited four ages
(childhood, youth, maturity, and old age), corresponding to the four humors,
seasons, and elements, and the astrologers identified seven ages (infancy,
childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age, decrepitude) paralleling the
celestial spheres beginning with the Moon and progressing through Saturn.4 As
a theologian and polemicist, Augustine created his own widely disseminated
model matching the six eschatological ages of the world with the six ages of
humanity:
The world, Augustine explains, passes through six ages corresponding to
those of the individual: an infantia [infancy] from Adam to Noah, a pueritia
[childhood] from Noah to Abraham, an adolescentia [adolescence] from
Abraham to David, a juventus [youth] from David until the Babylonian
captivity, a gravitas [dignity, maturity] from the captivity until the coming
of the Lord, and the present senectus [old age] which will last until the end
of time.5
Augustine’s delineation illustrates what might be termed a typical medieval
view of children and childhood, for its coordinates are generally theological
and historical. The human life course therefore replicates salvation history.
Judaic and Islamic sources posit similar historical-theological coordinates. In
short, cultures develop a view of children and childhood that both confirms
and extends their dominant sociopolitical discourses, and it was no different in
the Middle Ages.
By the later Middle Ages there was general agreement that the earliest
stages, infancy and childhood, were divided into seven-year segments, while
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 59

adolescence and youth offered less agreement. Adolescence generally started

at age twelve (girls) to fourteen (boys), and an unmarried person could be
called adolescent well into middle age, while youth began at about twenty
or twenty-one and extended into the forties. These phases considered an
individual’s age but also were affected by social, emotional, psychological,
and behavioral factors. Children younger than seven were considered infantes
(infans or “not speaking”) because they were not fully rational or responsible
agents. Those aged seven to twelve (for girls) or fourteen (for boys) were
considered children; they were not physically or sexually mature but were
recognized to have limited rights and responsibilities. The movement from
childhood to adolescence was marked by the onset of menarche for girls and
the accession of secondary sexual characteristics for boys and girls.6 Parents
could contract their seven-year-old children to be married, and adolescents
could be legally joined according to canon law or could break a previously
arranged marriage contract by paying a fine.
Key here are the social dimensions of individual identity, for children were
seen in relation to their families and community networks rather than as
isolated individuals. At the same time, religious traditions across the medieval
world proved a primary influence in creating individual identity and group
coherence while their ritual processes both responded to and distinguished one
from another. At each point, these rituals, ceremonies, and traditions served a
didactic function while often incorporating formal and informal educational
practices, but it is important to note that—like today—the didactic and
educational dimensions of childhood learning were two-way streets: the child
incorporated and internalized the lessons while the community reinforced its
values. It is a continually dynamic process that begins at birth, if not before, and
continues throughout life.

CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD ACCORDING TO

BARTHOLOMEUS ANGLICUS
Around 1245 at Magdeburg in Saxony, the Franciscan Bartholomeus Anglicus
(Bartholomew the Englishman) compiled a textbook for his students, an
encyclopedic treatise on the natural sciences and a distillation of biblical
commentary derived from the Aristotelian tradition and incorporating
Christian, Jewish, and some Islamic material.7 A nineteen-book compilation
structured hierarchically according to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the
seven planets, De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things), circulated
widely throughout Europe and was translated into English by John of Trevisa in
the late fourteenth century. De proprietatibus served as a practical handbook of
anatomy and health, a storehouse of information for preaching, and a textbook
of theology and science “in an age when a knowledge of the individual parts of
60 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

things was equated with a total knowledge of the whole.”8 Book Six describes
the human life cycle and its immediate social context—“touchinge ƥe diuersite
of ages and of sexus […] [and] alle ƥese duers and contrarye [pro]pirtees of
man,” including the status and function of members of the extended household.9
The “stages” or generalized descriptions are intermixed with characteristic roles
played by the sexes in the household. The gender distinctions are revealing.
After describing infancy, Bartholomeus turns to puella (young girl); females are
then represented as mater (mother), filia (daughter), nutrix (nurse), obstetrix
(midwife), and ancilla (female servant), while males are represented as puer
(young boy) in addition to masculus (male), vir (a man), pater (father), seruus
(male servant).10
In describing the ages of life, Bartholomeus begins with a quick sketch of the
seven-year divisions, covering each aspect of the life cycle from conception and
parturition to death. The mother and father’s fluids, nurtured by the mother’s
heat, yield a male if the seed implants in the right side of the womb or a female in
the left, so even at conception, medieval children faced an asymmetrical world
where femininity was regarded to be lesser than masculinity. The fetus develops
through four stages of pregnancy: milk, bloody fluid, a lump of blood, and fully
shaped (infans). Section 4, “De infantulo,” notes that “a newborn child’s flesh is
sensitive, tender, flabby, and soft. Therefore, a variety of potions and foods are
necessary for the child,” including a rubdown with salted rosewater to cleanse
the skin and a finger daubed in honey for the roof of the mouth to stimulate
feeding.11 Bartholomeus also advocates gently rocking and singing softly to the
child to comfort her.
Section 5, “De puero,” and section 6, “De puella,” cover the “second
childhood” from ages seven to fourteen; each of the stages begins with an
etymology. Bartholomeus follows Isidore of Seville and ties puer to puritas,
particularly “purenes of kynde innocence”;12 the child enters this phase when
s/he is weaned, knows good from evil, and is able to receive both learning
and punishment. Gender differences make themselves known once again in
the differing descriptions of boys and girls, and Bartholomeus’s account of
boyhood is filled with recognizable, even if stereotypical, anecdotes, probably
from his own observations.13 Boys are flexible, mobile, witty, love an apple
more than gold, and don’t mind running around naked. Their heated flesh and
blustery humors mean they quickly get angry but just as quickly let it pass,
though their tender bodies cannot endure hard work for long. They “dreden
no perile more ƥan betinge wiƥa 3erde” and when “preised or schamed ƥay
sette litil ƥerby.”14 The psychological insights ring true. They have no sense of
time, for they “ƥinken onlih on ƥinges ƥat beƥ and recchiƥ nou3t of ƥingis ƥat
schall be,”15 and they “desiren ƥat is to hem contrarye and greuous.” They want
everything they see, are constantly hungry, and the only time they are “stille
[is] while ƥey slepe.” One charming line reads: “Whanne ƥey bene iwassche of
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 61

filthe and hore [foulness] anon ƥey defoulen himself eft [immediately]. When
ƥe modir wasschiƥ and kembiƥ [combs] hem ƥey kyken and praunsen and putte
with feet and hondis, and wiƥstonde with al here myȝt and strengƥe.”16
While boys are depicted as changeable, spontaneous, willful, and heedless,
a “maiden child and a wenche” is named “puella, as it were clene and pure
as ƥe blake of ƥe yȝe (eye), as seiƥ Isidre. For among all ƥat is iloued in a
wench chastite and clennes is iloued most.”17 A girl’s sexuality is immediately
at issue, unlike a boy’s, for young girls are clean and uncorrupted, without
a woman’s passion or sexual experience with a man. Following Aristotle,
Bartholomeus notes that women are generally softer, more pliant, paler, with
smaller bodies and brighter countenance. The implied comparison is to men,
of course, rather than youths. Emotionally women fare poorly, for they are
“merciable, and also enuyous, bittir, gileful, and abil to lerne, and hasty in
likinge of Venus.” Women are feebler, slower, and weaker, “and more busy
about norischinge and fedinge and kepinge of children.”18 Bartholomeus then
moves from “De puella,” where an account of girls from seven to fourteen
silently slips into a stereotypical discourse of femininity to an explanation of
different roles undertaken by women.19 In each case, the woman’s identity
is figured in relation to marriage, childbirth, and childrearing. The daughter
assists in feeding the household and supporting the mother; the nurse takes
the mother’s place in feeding, caring for, and teaching the child; the midwife
assists the mother in childbirth and tends to the child immediately after; and
the female servant “is ordained to serue ƥe wifes rule and is iput to offis
and work of trauaile and of defoule.”20 Thus, sexual experience and married
status more often affected the terms used to identify younger women than
younger men.

GIVING SHAPE TO LIFE: RITES OF PASSAGE

AND INITIATING EDUCATION IN CHRISTIANITY,
JUDAISM, AND ISLAM
The relationship between individual identity and social relationships begins at
birth, if not before, within medieval cultures. The Abrahamic religions during
the medieval period marked the transitions between life stages with rituals that
ushered a child into the community, providing social coherence, individual
identity, and rudimentary instruction in the tenets of faith. Within Western
Christianity, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, written c. 1150, helped establish the
traditional seven sacraments that became canonical with the Fourth Lateran
Council in 1215: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, marriage,
ordination, and extreme unction (or last rites). Baptism was performed as quickly
as possible after birth, initiating the newborn into the church and local social
network. As Barbara Hanawalt describes the baptismal ritual in late medieval
62 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

London, the child, having been brought to the church, first was anointed with
oil or salt, immersed in the baptismal font, and given its Christian names. Then
the “godparents raised the newly named Christian from the font and wrapped
it in a christening robe. This gown or chrisom was white and could be made
elaborate with embroidery of pearls.”21 In extreme cases, particularly when the
child’s life was in danger at birth, midwives were empowered to intone the
baptismal formula over the nascent child. Suspending conventional patriarchal
authority momentarily, Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests, written c. 1400,
gave midwives authority and instruction for administering baptism in cases of
emergency at birth, for example if “þe chylde bote half be bore / Hed and necke
and no more.”22 Midwives were instructed both to carry consecrated water with
them and to repeat the baptismal formula in either Latin or English,23 though
the intent was as important as the exact recitation. In effect, no child was to die
unbaptized; even parents could christen the child if no one else was available.24
Baptism and confirmation often occurred together or within the year. In England
prior to the thirteenth century, children received the Eucharist,25 but the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 determined that children must first reach “the age of
discernment,” usually, but not always, twelve for girls and fourteen for boys.
At that first Communion, after confession, the “young Christian would then be
regarded as an adult.”26
While Judaic practices varied by time and place (as did Christian customs),
according to Ivan Marcus, “the most popular ages-of-man schema in the rabbinic
literature” comes from Mishnah Avot 5:23, called “The Fathers,” which reads:

He used to say:
At five years of age the study of scripture;
At ten, the study of the Mishnah;
At thirteen, subject to the commandments;
At fifteen, the study of Talmud;
At eighteen, marriage.27

Birth in medieval Judaism included salting the mouth and swaddling, but most
important was the male child’s bris, traditionally performed on the eighth
day after birth at which time the boy received his name.28 In some areas, a
second ceremony arose to mark the moment a boy, often at the age of five,
“entered into the Torah” or began formal study. He would be brought to the
synagogue wrapped in a tallit (prayer shawl) and set upon the teacher’s lap;
he would read the Hebrew alphabet and lick honey off the slate upon which
the letters were written. It is the symbolic enactment of Ezekiel 3:1–3, where
the scroll containing God’s words “tasted as sweet as honey.”29 He would
then be fed cakes and eggs upon which biblical verses were inscribed and
given treats such as fruits and nuts to eat. According to Simha Goldin, the
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 63

ritual of “entering into the Torah” or “entering into education” at Shavuot

(Pentecost) reenacts Moses’s receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai in Exodus.
Traditionally, the boy began his study with the first words of Leviticus, not
Genesis, “because children are pure they should study the sacrifices, which
are performed in purity.”30 Simha Goldin writes that both ceremonies—the
bris and “entering into the Torah”—are simultaneously mythic and communal,
recreating “a certain behavior with the collective memory of the group” and
delineating the community’s internal identity against external society.31 A third
ceremony fundamental to male Jewish children, which began in Germany in
the eleventh century, is probably the most well known—the bar mitzvah.
When a boy reached thirteen years and one day, the bar mitzvah marked his
initiation into keeping formal religious observances as an adult “such as [to]
put on teffilin [phylactery], get called to the Torah for an ‘aliyah’ [reading], be
counted in a prayer quorum,” and other such obligations of an adult male.32
Evan Marcus is careful to note the youthful ceremony of “entering into Torah”
at times served “as a mock Eucharist in polemical confrontation with Christian
sanctities”33 and that the development of the bar mitzvah is itself a diffused and
multilayered tradition that did not reach its traditional form until relatively
recently.
Medieval Islam also marked important childhood milestones from birth to
youth and marriage. By the eleventh century, Islamic authorities had compiled
an impressive range of materials dealing with birth and the proper care of
newborns and infants as well as treatises on the educational, practical, and
spiritual development of children, often reaching back to classical authors such
as Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen (Figure 3.1).34 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya of
Damascus (1292–1350) compiled the Tuḥfat al-mawdūd, a treatise concerned
with infants and children, including childhood rites, childrearing, and child
education drawn from Hellenistic sources with an added Islamic concern for the
afterlife.35 Ibn Qayyim divided childhood into two phases: the first marker at
about seven years old is tamyiz, or the ability to distinguish good from evil, and
the second is puberty (around fifteen years old). In looking at the developing
infant, Ibn Qayyim noted the effects of “birth shock” upon the newborn, the
significance of the first smile as a key to developing self-awareness, and the
occurrence of dreaming at two months.36 Throughout the Tuḥfat al-mawdūd,
Ibn Qayyim is sensitive to how the child’s early development and treatment
affects moral education, religious life, and social relationships in later life,
including close attention to diet, the environment for feeding, weaning, and
teething, and the careful support provided in swaddling and first steps. The
child’s first words initiate the start of informal religious education and should be
shaped around a name, such as Abdallah (God’s servant); parents and caregivers
are encouraged to recite prayers and religious creeds to the developing child.
Ibn Qayyim’s text continually counters the idea that medieval persons were
64 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 3.1 “The Surgeon Guy de Chauliac Teaching with Galien [sic], Avicenna
and Hippocrates,” miniature. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photograph by
Christophel Fine Art/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

not emotionally invested in their children, counseling the prompt comforting

of a child who has been excessively frightened by a sight or sound, “for such
a shock can damage the intellectual capacities even years later, when the child
becomes an adult.”37 Here, Ibn Qayyim follows Ibn SSīnā (Avicenna), who
shows “how psychological states are expressed by physical phenomena, [and
who] declares that the psychological and physical aspects of health alike are
conditioned by keeping moral character balanced,”38 a via media firmly rooted
in the Aristotelian tradition.
An early Islamic ritual associated with birth, the Taḥnīk, included several
elements: reciting the adhan (the call to prayer) in the infant’s ears, naming
the child (tasmiya), rubbing the palate with a date, bestowing the first haircut,
and concluding with circumcision.39 The Taḥnīk traces its origin back to the
Prophet Muhammad, in which the Prophet rubbed the infant’s “palate—
hanak—with dates the Prophet had previously chewed […] [ending with a]
blessing.”40 Some early traditions describe the Prophet branding or feeding
animals while children are brought for the Taḥnīk, symbolizing “the curbing
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 65

of the child’s natural desires and harnessing and directing his energies, for it
clearly parallels the practice of putting the rope in the horse’s mouth for the
first time.”41 In fact, Arabic provides a cluster of terms dealing with educating
and disciplining children whose roots are tied to the vocabulary “of raising,
domesticating, and training animals.” Rada, the term for breaking a colt,
is seen in riyadat al-nafs (training the soul) and riyadat al-sibyan (training
children).42 Like animals, children in medieval Islam were perceived as high-
spirited beings prone to excess who required careful discipline and balanced
practices for a successful life.
In a seminal study from 1909, Rites of Passage, Arnold van Gennep
identified three phases that mark an individual’s transition from one biological,
psychological, or social status to another at moments such as childbirth,
childhood, puberty, work/apprenticeship, marriage, and death: (1) separation,
(2) transition, and (3) incorporation. In the first stage, the individual is
physically or symbolically separated from the group or identity in which s/he
was situated. Next, the individual enters a transitional (or liminal) stage in which
identity and identifications are fluid and often marked by symbolic testing or
a physical trial. Finally, after moving through the transitional or liminal stage
(from the Latin limen or threshold), the individual is (re)incorporated into a
new social identity.43 Victor Turner rethought Gennep’s ideas, particularly the
liminal stage, to consider not only its function as a passage from one social
state to another but also its ability to structure difficult human contingencies,
particularly in times of social stress and change, and to create new possibilities
for the individuals and cultures involved.44 The ceremonies associated with
birth, education, and childhood in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are marked
by this three-phase ritual process in two ways: first, to mark children (often
just the boys) with the characteristics of their faith communities and, second,
to distinguish each faith community from the other during a time when the
three Abrahamic religions coexisted in the West and elsewhere. At the same
time, it is important to understand that lessons aimed at boys do in fact also
indirectly educate girls, so while the formal ritual and educational practices
across medieval cultures may skew toward creating masculinity, these processes
reverberate across the entire community and likewise guide girls into their
proper roles as well.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
The social rituals initiating medieval children, particularly medieval boys, into
their social and religious communities are extended didactically into formal
educational programs for Islamic, Jewish, and Christian children, again primarily
for boys. The educational approaches inculcated the community’s social and
religious values into the child and reinforced the community’s identity.
66 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Islam
Sebastian Günther writes,
A lifelong pursuit of learning is a characteristic ideal of Islamic piety and
underlies the concept of “Islamic” education. While the primary focus of
this concept was the nurturing of religious belief in the individual, its scope
broadened to incorporate various secular disciplines, literary and scientific,
as it aimed at developing within the Muslim community fully integrated
personalities, grounded in the virtues of Islam.45
Throughout the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars developed theoretical and
practical materials designed to educate believers and train instructors in proper
pedagogical practices; the depth and richness of the materials provides a glimpse
into a vigorous educational program. Muhammad ibn Saḥnūn (817–870), a
chief judge of the Malikites (one of four legal schools in the Sunni tradition)
in what is now Tunisia, wrote the Adab al-mu’allimin or Rules of Conduct for
Teachers.46 Composed of ten chapters, the first four focus on the benefits of
teaching and learning the Qur’an and delineate a teacher’s fair treatment of
students; the remaining six, in the form of a dialogue between Ibn Saḥnūn and his
father, outline the details of a proper curriculum, the teacher’s responsibilities
for the student (including their interpersonal relations and safe arrival home),
and the instructions for the correct management of a school (including teaching
materials, classroom necessities, teachers’ pay, and graduation requirements).47
The required elements for medieval Islamic elementary school (for students six
to seven years old) include “the precise articulation and memorization of the
Qur’an; the duties of worship; knowledge of reading and writing; and good
manners, since these are obligations toward God.”48 Recommended elements
included “the basics of Arabic language and grammar; good handwriting;
arithmetic; poetry, provided the verses are morally decent; and proverbs,
historical reports and legends (of the ancient Arabs), and speeches.”49 Corporal
punishment, carefully measured so as not to inflict permanent harm, was a
component of the pedagogy.
Al-Jāḥiẓ (c. 776–868), an important and prominent classical Arabic writer
of nearly 200 treatises (of which thirty have been preserved), seems to have
written a treatise “The Teachers,” now fragmentary, based upon his experience
of teachers being treated unfairly.50 Taking a tone of wit and seriousness,
Al-Jāḥiẓ’s manual includes two types of instruction for children: “(a) the
formal, curricular kind of teaching, as conducted by the schoolteachers at the
elementary and the more advanced levels and (b) the informal, non-curricular
kind of teaching, which could take place at various locations, including ‘on the
shop floor,’ for example.”51 As in Ibn Saḥnūn, the curriculum is divided into
required subjects and recommended topics. Required subjects are reading and
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 67

writing (including grammar, style, and rhetoric), arithmetic and geometry, the
essentials of religion, literature and literary techniques, logic and disputation,
and accounting (for government bureaucrats).52 Recommended topics (often
for more advanced students) include sports and hunting; music, astronomy, and
medicine; training animals; and the trades (for lower-class children) including
farming; commerce; smithing; and weaving, dyeing, and sewing (suggesting
education for girls). Al-Jāḥiẓ’s curriculum is paired with pedagogical advice
addressing an individual student’s ability and the importance of substance over
style in reading and writing—poor manners in writing may translate into poor
manners in life.53
As Islam progressed into the high Middle Ages (the tenth and eleventh
centuries), approaches to pedagogical theory and practice began to diverge.
Two figures represent the developing complexity of Islamic thought concerning
childhood education and the response of Islamic thinkers to cultural change.
One of the great medieval intellects, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, 980–1037) developed
a coherent educational philosophy throughout his writings. Adapting an
Aristotelian approach to melding thought and action, Ibn Sīnā “envisaged
a world resting on two pillars: (a) Greek philosophy and (b) the Qur’anic
revelation and the virtues of Islam.”54 For Ibn Sīnā, knowledge begins with the
five senses, whose acuity separates humans from animals and whose practical
application involves “young children in sensory experiences, for these help to
stimulate children to identify, compare, and classify items as they explore the
world around them.”55 In his encyclopedic compendium Canon of Medicine
(al-Qanun fi’l-Tibb), Ibn Sīnā discusses the relationship of a child’s physical,
emotional, and intellectual development to learning, allowing that most
children are ready for education at age six and enjoining teachers to attend
to a student’s natural abilities and predilections, shaping lessons to the child’s
abilities. Curricularly, Ibn Sīnā notes three priorities in The Book of Regimen
(Kitab al-Siyasa): teaching the Qur’an, the basic principles of faith, and reading
and writing together. These form a coherent whole: focusing upon the Qur’an
provides a “great source for teaching children ethics, exemplary traditions,
morals, and good behavior. All this is beneficial for helping youth to become
eventually fully integrated members of the community and to find their place
in society.”56
Ibn Sīnā’s more theoretically informed approach to elementary pedagogy
was critiqued by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), teacher at the new
Nizamiyya College in Baghdad. Al-Ghazali’s The Revival of the Sciences of
Religion (Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn), whose influence persists today, reflects his “deep
conviction that religious knowledge and education are a means for humans
in this world to attain salvation in the world to come” in which a child is “a
precious jewel, neutral, free of all impressions, susceptible to every impression
and every inclination to which it is brought near. If one accustoms it to good,
68 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

the child will grow into a happy state in this world and the next, and his parents
and educators will have part of this reward.”57 Al-Ghazali’s Revival identifies
ten precepts for students and eight for teachers.58 Primary for students is ridding
oneself of bad habits and worldly affairs, attending to the teacher above all,
allowing knowledge to build upon knowledge, and using all to develop virtue
and to draw closer to God. In turn, the teacher is enjoined to treat his students
as his own children, address students at their developmental level, concentrate
upon his own specialty and not denigrate other subjects, practice the piety he
advocates (including working for free), and adjure students that the continued
purpose of education is to draw closer to God.
Judaism
Judaic educational practices across the medieval period concentrated upon
teaching boys the Torah and preparing them for public roles and domestic
responsibilities. Jewish educational institutions are recorded in Paris, Sens, and
Troyes (among other places); those in Ashkenazic areas in northern France and
Germany grew out of the flourishing of Talmudic commentary and biblical
exegesis in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,59 with small learning groups
clustered in towns, fostered by privately hired tutors in private rooms, or taught at
home or in synagogue. Kanarfogel argues that the key figure in the development
of the Tosafist education was the melammed—tutor or, sometimes, skilled
artisan.60 A collection of teachings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
in northern Germany, the Sefer Hasidim or Book of the Pious, is devoted, in
part, to elementary education and practice. It shows, contra Ariès, that Jewish
parents, families, and communities were not indifferent to the needs of infants
and children nor unconcerned with their developmental requirements. At the
same time it suggests improvements to the curriculum and teaching, attending
to the different needs of stronger and weaker students and noting the innate
ability of children to question and to learn; above all, “all students should be
taught first and foremost to see the moral and ethical values of the text,”61 even
if not all students will rise to the highest levels of Talmudic study.
Another key text for understanding Jewish elementary education is the
Sefer Huqqei ha-Torah that, like the Islamic pedagogical manuals, “strives, by
a variety of stipulations and suggestions, to achieve maximum learning on the
part of the student and maximum dedication on the part of the teacher […]
determining the occupational aptitude of students, arranging small groups […]
to enable individual attention, [and] grading classes […] not to stifle individual
progress.”62 Using the vernacular to increase comprehension, the teacher is
“urged to encourage free debate and discussion among students” along with
“periodic reviews” to correct and support students. The Preamble to the Sefer
Huqqei ha-Torah is dedicated to the rabbinic students and teachers who follow
the practices of the early scholars. Statute One calls upon those who study to
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 69

be consecrated and set apart for the study of Torah, and the second and third
statutes call upon the students (perushim) to be sequestered in a study hall near
the synagogue for seven years of study. Statute Four asks the community to
donate “twelve deniers a year”63 to buy books and to support the study hall, the
students, and the tutors. Statute Five calls for a supervisor to be appointed over
the students to evaluate their learning and to assist the tutors, while Statute Six
limits class size to ten students. Statute Seven requires tutors to teach from the
written Torah, and not by heart, so that students will debate among themselves.
Statute Eight calls for instruction in the vernacular to engage students in
discussion of the halakhah (religious law) and the sugya (legal passage). Statute
Nine calls for the tutor to “accustom the young men to ask questions of each
other every day toward evening, to sharpen them and make them intellectual
agile, and to increase their knowledge,”64 and Statute Ten calls for a weekly
review on Friday and for additional reviews on holy days. The accumulated
import is, as the “rabbis also said [Avot 1:17], ‘the main thing is not study but
deeds.’”65 In fact, Kanarfogel argues that Sefer Huqqei ha-Torah “represents an
attempt to recast the discipline and devotion of Christian monastic education,
which was certainly known to, and perhaps admired by, Jews, in a form
compatible with Jewish practices and values.”66
Christianity
In much the same way that elementary education in Judaic and Islamic culture
prepared boys for their personal and social duties, so too elementary education
developed in the Christian west to give boys a foundation in reading Latin,
preparing them for Latin grammar study and for literate professions. The more
skilled students might go on to additional training in law, theology, or medicine
(Figure 3.2). The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) promoted an improved
educational program for the clergy.67 Canon 11 reads in part:
Since there are some who, on account of the lack of necessary means, are
unable to acquire an education or to meet opportunities for perfecting
themselves, the Third Lateran Council in a salutary decree provided that in
every cathedral church a suitable benefice be assigned to a master who shall
instruct gratis the clerics of that church and other poor students, by means of
which benefice the material needs of the master might be relieved and to the
students a way opened to knowledge.68
The canon continues to say that churches of sufficient means, and particularly
cathedral churches, should appoint a master to instruct local clerics in grammar
and other disciplines.69
Writers and moralists of the time criticized the parish priest’s basic learning,
and so in 1298 Pope Boniface VIII issued a decretal (Cum ex eo) that allowed
parish rectors, using parish income, to support themselves at a university for up to
70 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 3.2 “Young cleric teaching,” stained glass window in the cathedral at
Strasbourg, c. 1320–30. Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg. Photograph by
adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images.

seven years. In addition, as Andrew Reeves writes, “synodal statutes required that
parish priests should diligently see to it that their lay flocks knew how to make
the sign of the cross and could recite the Apostles’ Creed, the Hail Mary, and the
Lord’s Prayer” and when possible the Creed “at least in the mother tongue.”70
The 1281 Council of Lambeth’s Ninth Canon, Ignorantia Sacerdotum, shaped
English practice even further, requiring “parish priests to give their parishioners
a quarterly exposition on the Ten Commandments, the works of mercy, the vices
and virtues, and the articles of faith.”71 To address the educational needs of the
laity, including children, writers of all types developed a wide range of often
vernacular materials, loosely termed pastoralia, to provide the rudiments of faith.
As a result, increasing numbers of parish clergy taught children elementary
reading and singing. Elementary reading normally began with the Psalter or,
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 71

increasingly, a primer. The Ave, the Pater Noster, and the Apostles’ Creed
became a staple of late medieval school primers, which often began with a
symbol of the cross (indicating the sign of the cross and prompting the statement
“Christ’s cross me speed”), before proceeding on to the ABCs. According to
Nicholas Orme, “The alphabet, by the twelfth century, was no longer a mere
list of letters. It had become Christianised. Saying it was a kind of devotion,
beginning with the act of crossing yourself and ending, as all prayers did, with
‘amen’.”72 As I have argued elsewhere, the simple reference to the Ave or Pater
Noster can suggest a thematic concern with children or childhood not otherwise
acknowledged. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1400–25) illustrates the
point. To keep his vow to find the Green Knight, Sir Gawain battles fierce
creatures as well as the elements until, at the end of his strength, he implores
Mary’s assistance to find shelter where,

I myȝt here masse [might hear]

And þy matynez [matins] tomorne, mekely I ask,
And þereto prestly I pray my Pater and Aue
And Crede.73

The narrator immediately adds that Gawain concludes his prayer with “Cros
Kryste me spede.”74 At a moment of great duress, Gawain reverts almost ritually
to a childhood practice to orient himself to the challenge he now faces, and his
prayer is rewarded with the sudden appearance of Bertilak’s castle. On one hand,
this ritualistic impulse indicates Gawain’s youthful naivete and—for the Green
Knight at least—his untested virtue. On the other hand, Gawain’s reversion to
his boyhood lessons highlight the Arthurian court’s reckless childishness and
the Green Knight’s ethical maturity.
For another example, in an episode from Luke 2:41–52, the only New
Testament account of Jesus’s youth, dramatized in the medieval cycle play,
“Jesus and the Doctors,” the youthful savior is seen at age twelve engaging the
religious leaders in a debate over the merits of the law (the old law vs. the new
law), including a recitation of the Ten Commandments75 in a form that may
reflect contemporary elementary educational content and practices derived from
memorizing a primer (Figure 3.3). In the many medieval apocryphal infancy
Gospels and other texts depicting a youthful Jesus, he is portrayed as the perfect
student or, even more commonly, declares that he does not need instruction at
all. In texts such as Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 108 “Infancy of Jesus”, however,
the god-child’s education is behavioral. His youthful rashness, coupled with
his power over life and death, must be curbed as when he strikes a bullying
playmate dead, causing consternation in the community. Jesus’s education here
is also social, and the apocryphal infancy Gospels that supplement the New
Testament accounts attempt to answer the question, how does an omnipotent
72 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 3.3 “Jesus teaching in the temple,” miniature. Photograph by Leemage/

Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

and omniscient god-child become a productive human?76 The answer reflects

the patterns we have seen so far: He answers only to his mother. Mothers
are charged with shaping their children’s behavior, while fathers educate or
train their children, primarily their boys, for their vocations.77 Both medieval
romance and hagiography provide ample evidence for both the educational
details of medieval children and the lifelong effects of elementary education
on both genders, a pattern found not only in Europe but also in north Africa.78
Primers often included other prayers and religious dicta as well as additional
moral, theological, or exemplary material.79 A rare surviving late medieval
primer, about the size of a Penguin paperback, is Plimpton MS 258 (Figure 3.4).
It begins with the alphabet and continues with the In nomine Patris, the Lord’s
Prayer, Hail Mary, Apostle’s Creed, Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins,
Seven Principal Virtues, Seven Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, the
v. bodili wittes, the v. gostily wittis, the iiij cardinall vertues, the vij giftes
of þe holi gost, the xvj condicions of charite that paule writith ad corinthios
xiijo capitulo, the blessinges of god (the beatitudes from Mt. 5:1–12), and a
concluding admonition. Instruction included copying, reciting, and memorizing
the sections of the primer. By the dawn of the print era, English schoolbooks
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 73

FIGURE 3.4 A cross, an alphabet, “In the name of the father,” “Fadir oure that art
in hevenes hallowed be thi name,” “Hayle mari full of grace the lord be with the.”
The basics for learning to read and to pray for a middle-class child in fifteenth-century
England. Small medieval “Dick-and-Jane” with only the rudiments of red decoration;
in the local vernacular. Plimpton MS 258 “Abecedarium,” Columbia University
Libraries Online Exhibitions (accessed November 28, 2019).

became much more sophisticated, teaching the finer points of Latin and English
grammar, syntax, usage, and translation as elementary education became more
highly organized.80 After these basics were mastered, a student might move on
to a number of different “school texts” that show up in many sources.
In addition to elementary reading schools, students attended song schools or
combined reading and song schools. Song schools in England and elsewhere on
the continent taught boys the skills necessary to perform the office of the Mass
and other liturgical activities (plainsong). Education in singing or chanting the
Mass extends back into late antiquity,81 for example, in fourth-century Milan
under Ambrose, and even as important a scholar as Bede “likely acquired oral
74 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Latin proficiency by learning to perform the liturgy, but he probably learned

to read and write the language by studying individual letters, syllables, and
then words, writing them on wax tablets to memorize them.”82 The Murbach
Statutes of 816, which emerged out of the Synods of Aachen and the educational
reforms of Abbot Atto of Reichenau, “stipulated that students should begin by
learning the psalms, hymns, and canticles, then proceed to the Benedictine
Rule, and from there to Scripture and patristic writings.”83 The Statutes require
that:
after the psalms, canticles and hymns will have been memorized, students
should go through the rule, with their teachers listening to them; after the
rule, the text of the lectionary, and meanwhile the history of divine authority
and its exegetes as well as the sermons of the fathers and their lives.84
Although the early curriculum is difficult to reconstruct (and the examples
represent later institutions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), Boynton
and Rice further argue that the later curriculum “was fairly standardized: most
schools employed De octo partibus orationis of Aelius Donatus, a Latin primer
dating from the fourth century, and subsequently Alexander of Villedieu’s
Doctrinale puerorum, written in Paris in 1199,” and the choristers “generally
learned the texts of the entire Psalter, the canticles for the Divine Office
(Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, Benedictus) and the Little Hours of the Virgin,
as well as the recitation formulae used to sing them, by rote.”85 In this case
grammar was taught alongside the memorized texts of the divine service “to aid
in comprehension and thus correct pronunciation of [memorized] texts, with
the “alphabet and the notes of the scale […] usually taught simultaneously”
according to the six-tone Guidonian scale.86
Girls were also educated to perform the divine offices, particularly in
nunneries. Drawing upon Katherine Zieman’s argument that nuns inhabited
a space between the literate clergy and the often illiterate laity, which she
designates “liturgical literacy,” Anne Bagnall Yardley argues convincingly
that medieval nuns taught music required by their institutional practice (the
Ordinary of the Mass) to children and youths in their care and novices within
the nunnery. Like the material taught to boys, girls learned to memorize the
Psalter, sing with their peers, and internalize the repertoire of the Ordinary:
The teaching of music to English girls and young women in medieval nunneries
relied upon the traditional oral pedagogy of the time […]. Novices absorbed
the tradition through their presence at services and through opportunities
to intone chants, lead litanies, and sing solo verses. In some houses, novices
learned to name the medieval gamut and memorized the Guidonian hand. By
the time of their profession, most nuns had an extensive store of memorized
chants ready to be called into use on an appropriate liturgical occasion.87
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 75

Barking Abbey, for example, taught a number of young women divided into
scolares (novices), juvenculae (youths, eight to fourteen years old), and infantes
(children, up to the age of seven). Girls were not allowed to remain in the abbey
after age fourteen unless they wished to become a professed nun, but the abbey
Ordinal provides for the children and youths to participate actively in some
services.88 Yardley reminds us that “Reading in the medieval period was much
more an oral/aural experience than a visual one and relied on the individual’s
development of great stores of memorized material.”89 Thus, the standard
academic categories that usually define literacy in terms of written texts must
be reconsidered in the distinction between reading, grammar, and song schools.
This is especially the case for the education of girls. Formal education was
generally limited to boys; girls in medieval society received different forms of
training and instructions, which, like that for boys, prepared them for the lives
they would lead. From at least the seventh century and into the twelfth century,
girls just like boys could be offered as oblates—essentially donated at a young
age—to nunneries and monasteries. Abbess Hild of Hartlepool (c. 614–80),
who later went on to found Whitby Abbey, was said “to have supervised the
studies even of the male clergy attached to her house,” and Aelfric of Eynsham’s
“Grammar [written c. 998] contains the phrase ‘This nun is vigilant in teaching
girls’,”90 indicating the likelihood that many nuns and lay noblewomen possessed
basic Latin literacy. The Saxon abbess Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (fl. 950–60),
the first dramatist in the Christian west, composed six Terentian comedies
in which young girls display advanced erudition. The abbey at Gandersheim
took on the education of noble girls and women, and the allegorical drama
Sapientia (Wisdom) depicts the persecution of virginity during Hadrian’s reign.
Sapientia and her three daughters Fides, Spes, and Karitas (Faith, age eight;
Hope, age ten; and Love/Charity, age twelve) stand in opposition to the pagan
patriarchal hierarchy of Hadrian, Antiochus, and their henchmen. The girls’
ages are crucial to understanding Sapientia’s unrelenting critique of the Roman
emperor through a mathematical disquisition based upon Boethian arithmetic
principles: “O, Emperor, you wish to know my children’s ages; Karitas has
completed a diminished, evenly even number of years; / Spes, on the other hand,
a diminished evenly uneven number; and Karitas an augmented unevenly even
number of years.”91 Although there is some question whether Hrotsvit’s dramas
were ever performed or possibly simply read, numerous details throughout her
works indicate a highly developed educational program for the girls within
Gandersheim Abbey. In another example, in response to a request from Queen
Marguerite of Provence (d.1295) and her husband King Louis IX of France
(d.1270) for a guide to educate their children, the Dominican encyclopedist
Vincent of Beauvais (d.1264) wrote De eruditione filiorum nobilium (Concerning
the Education of Noble Children), a compilation of ancient authorities with
commentary. With forty-one chapters devoted to boys and ten to girls, it is one
76 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

of the first treatises to concern itself with the education of girls, and like many
Christian moralists Vincent emphasized reading and understanding the Bible,
modesty and virtue to preserve female chastity, and the creation of a worthy
bride by defining five areas in which a married woman had to display proper
behavior: “to honor her parents-in-law, to love her husband, to rule her family,
to govern her house, and to show herself blameless.”92 The focus is upon the
girl’s affective and familial deportment more than her intellectual development.

CONDUCT AND COURTESY BOOKS

Another less formal educational development from the later Middle Ages took
the form of courtesy and conduct books.93 Reaching back to the Distichs of
Cato, a common school text in late antiquity,94 developing through the facetus
tradition (courteous, polite, witty), and culminating in Urbanus magnus, a Latin
compendium concerning proper behavior and speech, this didactic literature
spread through Europe in numerous vernacular extensions.95 A literature whose
purpose was to systematize “a society’s codes of behavior,”96 it comprised texts
like the Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry, the Ménagier de Paris, the Libro
de Buen Amor, and much of Christine de Pizan’s writing. Courtesy literature
generally “refers to prose treaties or poems inculcating the etiquette of court”97
and includes texts such as the Book of Courtesy or The Babees Book (both
composed in the mid-fifteenth century), which detail proper behavior for pages
serving at noble tables and children attending aristocratic households:

A, Bele Babees, herkne [hearken] now to my lore!

Whenne yee entre into your lordis place,
Say first, “god spede;” And all that ben byfore
Yow in this stede [place], salue [salute] withe humble Face;
Stert [Start] nat Rudely; komme Inne an esy pace;
Holde vp youre heede, and knele but on oone kne
To youre sovereyn or lorde, whedir he be.98

While not limited to instructing children, this literature often focused upon
childhood behavior, morals, and instruction and extended even into treatises on
chivalric conduct, courtly love, and the Mirror for Princes tradition (instruction
on proper rulership) common across the medieval world.99
Finally, although most types of formal education were unavailable to
lower class and rural children, vocational training, household service, and
apprenticeship comprised another form of vocational instruction for both
boys and girls.100 Boys and girls in rural settings learned the skills necessary to
carry on the household or farm work by learning chores and activities related
to their day-to-day interactions, often beginning as five or six year olds and
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 77

completing simple tasks appropriate to their age. In fact, coroners’ records

reveal that children were unfortunately sometimes killed in carrying out simple
tasks such as taking animals to pasture, fetching water, or collecting firewood.101
Household service comprised another educational avenue, and a family could
raise its socio-economic profile by placing a child—either a boy or girl—in the
household of a family of higher station. Children could be contracted as young
as age seven to serve another household,102 at the beginning of childhood,
but more often at the end of childhood and into adolescence, at age twelve
for girls and fourteen for boys. Girls who entered into service often pursued
textile-related (thread-, lace-, and dress-making) and food- and child-rearing
efforts.103 Apprenticeship, often through guilds, formed another educational
channel; apprenticeships, like many forms of service, were governed by formal
contracts and payment. Guilds had a responsibility to enforce quality standards
for their goods and services and to maintain legal and social standing, and so
they created uniform standards for the qualifications and training of prospective
members.104 Orphans were often taken into apprenticeships, and children and
youths learned the trade or craft through observation, practice, and increasingly
demanding roles in the production of goods.105

PLAY AND INFORMAL INSTRUCTION

In addition to the religious rituals, formal programs of elementary education,
and vocational training, children almost from birth were immersed in
educational and didactic activities through play, broadly construed, to shape
their abilities to function within their particular environments, and these were
often shaped by class and station, occupation or trade, and familial opportunities
or requirements. The following is a selective account of a wide range of play
that had educational resonance for medieval children.
Play, which is too often denigrated as just kids’ stuff, is essential to developing
physical and intellectual skills as well as advancing social and interpersonal
aptitude, and as we have seen, a wide variety of medieval cultures recognized the
distinctive needs of infants and children. Manuscript illuminations throughout
the era show a variety of games and pastimes including chess, backgammon, and
cards; cherry stones, knuckle bones, and blindman’s buff; wrestling, tumbling,
and dancing; and all sorts of throwing, running, and ball games. Archaeological
excavations have found a number of children’s toys, mostly from the later
Middle Ages,106 including rattles, dolls, tops, tin figures, hobby horses, marbles,
and cherry stones. Then as now it is safe to assume that with these toys children
imitated adult activities in limited but meaningful ways in the same way that
children did chores, performed domestic and trade-related activities, and
sometimes unfortunately were injured or killed as a result. Upper-class children
might be given music lessons or participate in plays and other forms of theater,
78 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

and the boys might play games to develop their martial skills, such as practicing
with a quintain—a post with a rotating cross-beam for jousting or striking with
a sword or lance.107 Finally, though it is from the sixteenth century, Pieter
Bruegel’s well-known Children’s Games (1559) “depicts over 200 children
and adolescents, playing with toys or taking part in games,” functioning as a
veritable “encyclopdaedia of games and, because of their number and variety,
a celebration of childhood and its ingenuity.”108 While some have interpreted
Bruegel’s painting allegorically as the transformation of the meaning of
childhood “from that of innocence to that of folly,”109 Amy Orrock has recently
argued that “Bruegel rejected the ‘game of the month’ tradition found in the
[medieval] calendar borders and instead amalgamated a variety of children’s
games and festive customs to create a humanistic encyclopedia of children’s
culture,” including knucklebones, dolls, pop gun, swinging, blowing bubbles,
blindman’s buff, tug-of-war, leap frog, mumbly peg, rolling a hoop, calling into
a barrel, hitting with an inflated pig’s bladder, making pigment from bricks,
playing follow the leader, imitating a wedding procession, pretending to be a
baptismal party, performing a play, or acting out a trade.110 Childhood games
varied seasonally and, at least in England, might be said to culminate in the
serious carnivalesque play of the Boy Bishop celebration. On St. Nicholas’s
Day (December 6) or Holy Innocents’ Day (December 28) in places such as
Salisbury and York, the choristers chose from among themselves a child bishop
and other clerical officials who led services, were feted at the households of the
dean and canons, and rode throughout town blessing the people and collecting
gifts. The statutes of Winchester College in 1400 “allow that on the Feast
of Innocents the boys may say and perform vespers, matins and other divine
service to be read or sung, according to the use and custom of the church of
Sarum [Salisbury].”111

CASE STUDY: CHAUCER’S PRIORESS

AND THE PRIORESS’S TALE
Serving as a case study, Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, as well as the Prioress’s
depiction in the “General Prologue,” incorporates reading/grammar school,
song school, and conduct literature as well as their critique. The Prioress’s
portrait in the “General Prologue,” except for the last few lines, focuses on
her conduct—on her face and its social, emotive, linguistic, and biological
functions,112 as in courtesy and conduct literature. At the outset, the “Prologue”
notes the Prioress’s mouth and then moves toward her use of language—her
hardly-an-expletive usage, her mellifluous name, her tasteful singing, and
her colloquial French.113 The Prioress’s portrait emphasizes that modicum
of expression and style, a social via media, found in courtesy texts such as
“The ABC of Aristotle,” which declares that “a mesurable meen is euere ƥe
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 79

beste of alle”114 and associates each letter of the alphabet with excessive social,
moral, or behavioral characteristics that a cultured youth should avoid:

A to amerose, to aunterose, ne argue not to myche.

B to bolde, ne to bisi, ne boorde not to large.
C to curteis, to cruel, ne care not to sore.
D to dul, ne to dreedful, ne drinke not to ofte.
E to elenge, ne to excellent, ne to eernestful neiƥer.
F to fers, ne to famuler, but freendli of chere.115

The Prioress’s “ful symple and coy” smile is less the pretension of an aristocratic
wannabe or an indication of emotional shallowness and more an indication of
domestic training and disciplined courtesy. Like the Prioress’s prologue, which
associates the Angel Gabriel with the Virgin Mary, “The Lytylle Childrenes
Lytil Boke,” another courtesy text, explicitly declares that

curtesy from hevyn come

Whan Gabryelle oure lady grette,
And Eliȝabeth with mary mette.
Alle vertues arne closide yn curtesye,
And all vices yn vylonye.116

Although dated somewhat later than Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, this passage
indicates that instruction in courteous etiquette was linked to salvation;
the Blessed Virgin is the Prioress’s archetype of gentilesse and piety. The
combination was not unknown to Chaucer, for in “An ABC” he likewise
combines the domesticating effects of the abecedarium with praise of the Virgin
Mary, herself an exemplary child to her mother St. Anne.117 Alfred David insists
that the “most artificial thing about the poem [Chaucer’s ABC] is, of course,
the arbitrary structure imposed by the letters of the alphabet.”118 A text like
“The ABC of Aristotle” instead “mapped on to the very elements of literacy a
strategy for the production of individuals who would themselves bear a certain
resemblance to alphabetical characters. Socially legible and well-wrought, the
‘lettered’ children and adults who knew Aristotle’s ‘ABC’ would know their
place in the world.”119 Put simply, the ABCs provide a discursive superstructure
upon which much of life can later be structured.
While the Prioress’s own education may have been the object of satire in the
“General Prologue," the Prioress’s Tale presents two forms of schooling open to
medieval youths, particularly boys, the reading and the song school. At seven
years of age, Chaucer’s Litel Clergeon is precisely at the age where such training
of the mouth and the hands becomes socially necessary, as in conduct literature,
and when a boy could expect to begin formal schooling:
80 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

A litel scole of Cristen folk ther stood

Doun at the ferther end, in which ther were
Children an heep, ycomen of Cristen blood,
That lerned in that scole yeer by yere
Swich manere doctrine as men used there,
This is to seyn, to syngen and to rede,
As smale children doon in hire childhede.120

“A heap of children” is a comical, sprightly image for the bustling mass of children
attending to their studies in reading and song. Christian children learned religious
doctrine at both types of schools, which could be attached to cathedrals, parish
churches, monasteries, chantries, and other ecclesiastical institutions. Reading
schools, such as the one attended by the Litel Clergeon, taught the fundamentals
of Latin reading, often in the vernacular, before students could begin learning
Latin grammar (Figure 3.5). Their Latin primers, as has been described above
with regard to the Plimpton manuscript, were really prayer books, devotional
treatises, often organized around The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin and

FIGURE 3.5 Detail of a miniature of a scribe demonstrating to his pupils. Bartholomaeus

Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (Livre des proprietez des choses), BL Royal 17 E III, fol.
209. Public domain.
CHILDREN AND CHILDHOODS 81

The Office of the Dead, and they contained an assortment of related scriptural
passages and ecclesiastical texts. One of Wynkyn de Worde’s quarto editions of
the Latin primer offers the following table of contents, which differs from that
of the Plimpton manuscript in its concentrated focus on prayers, for example,
“to the Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist, the Trinity, the Three Kings of
Cologne, and to the Crucified Lord and Five Wounds.”121
The Litel Clergeon’s education in reading consists in rote memorization,
dependent upon the continuous practice of Latin forms, biblical texts, standard
prayers, and liturgical texts, a repetitive practice punctuated and reinforced
by corporal punishment. As the persona in “The Birched School Boy” laments
when he lies about committing an error:

My master pepered my ars with well good spede:

hit was worse than ffynkll sede [fennel seed];
he wold not leve till it did blede.
myche sorow haue be for his dede!
what vaylith it me thowgh I say nay?122

Song schools, such as the one attended by the Litel Clergeon’s older companion,
trained boys for service in the church, singing and chanting the elements of the
Mass and other religious ceremonies. The song school’s curriculum focused upon
developing the musical skills necessary to the medieval church service and, like
the reading school curriculum, depended largely upon rote memorization. Bruce
Holsinger has deftly uncovered the persistent connection of musical instruction
to physical violence through instruction via the “Guidonian Hand,” in which
the finger joints and regions of the palm represented a particular musical syllable
(like the contemporary do, re, mi, fa, so la, ti, do). The teacher then instructed
the students in song by pointing to a specific part of his hand, indicating the
proper musical tone, at the appropriate moment. The corporal rhetoric of
the master’s Guidonian Hand (Figure 3.6) could then be violently applied to the
student’s body as an educational technique, as evidenced by “The Chorister’s
Lament” (c. 1350) in which a chorister is beaten for not singing his antiphon
properly.123 The same corporal punishment occurred in the reading school; the
symbol in medieval imagery is the schoolmaster holding a birch branch.
The Prioress’s Tale’s colocation of devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the
sanctification of the dead through ecclesiastical ritual is thus presaged by the
contents of the Litel Clergeon’s primer itself, and rather than personally learning
and thus internalizing the basic rudiments of the faith through the primer, the
Litel Clergeon becomes the socially externalized, bodily demonstration of the
power of the Virgin to overcome death. In a terrible irony attributed to senseless
anti-Semitism, an inattentive boy is miraculously transformed into an eloquent
theologian.
82 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 3.6 The Guidonian Hand. MS 1087, Music Library, University of California,
Berkeley. Album/Alamy

CONCLUSION
Throughout this brief essay my focus has been upon both childhood education
narrowly focused, through examples from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic practice
across the medieval world, and broadly construed, for nearly any activity
undertaken by or on behalf of children carries didactic force, whether it be the
socializing rituals of infancy, participation in childhood play, or undertaking
informal household chores and vocational activities. Medieval childhood
education, like our own era, attempted to shape boys and girls for the needs
of the community, to present them as suitable for work and marriage, and to
mark them with the distinctive cultural and religious characteristics necessary
for social cohesion. In these senses, although the details differ, the education of
medieval children might be said to resemble our own.
 CHAPTER FOUR

Family, Community,
and Sociability
JEREMY GOLDBERG AND ROB GROUT

INTRODUCTION
In so far as children are born into families and spend a large portion of their
formative years there, home and family are in many ways the principal loci for
early learning, for socialization, and for training. The meaning and experience
of home and family, however, varied profoundly between social levels, between
males and females, across cultural regions, and over time. These learning
processes, moreover, are not confined to childhood. They are integral to the
acquisition of an adult identity. This is reflected in a thirteenth-century English
law guide known as “Bracton,” whose author wrote that:
the son of a burgess […] is taken to be of full age when he knows how
properly to count money, measure cloths and perform other similar paternal
business. […] A woman may be of full age whenever she can and knows how
to order her house and do the things that belong to the arrangement and
management of a house, provided she understands what pertains to “cove
and keye,” which cannot be before her fourteenth or fifteenth year since such
things require discretion and understanding.1
Here status and gender both impinge upon what skills a child was required to
have learned to be thought sufficiently mature to no longer legally need adult
supervision, but in this instance the learning required is inherently pragmatic
rather than academic and may well have been passed from mother to daughter
84 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

or father to son. As well as these practical skills required to survive and earn a
living, family education—whether by the natal family or a family in a fosterage
role—was an apprenticeship in social and cultural adulthood. Learning to
maintain, support, and run one’s own household as part of a married couple
was integral to progression through the medieval life course. Indeed, as the
“Bracton” author makes clear, it is the graduation from household member to
household manager that defined the completion of the formative years and the
assumption of a mature identity in community and society. This chapter will
examine these key learning experiences in the medieval family and highlight
the ways in which medieval young people were educated—and educated
themselves—out of childhood and into the adult social world.

FAMILY FORMS
The family context into which children might be born varies greatly over time
and place in ways that are only partially apparent to modern scholars. Indeed,
the best evidence and hence clearest picture we possess, namely the Tuscan
catasto or tax record of 1427, dates only from the very end of our period. For the
earlier and even the high Middle Ages the evidence available to us is both slight
and problematic. A speculative and broad brushstroke overview is to suggest
that nuclear families—that is, where children leave home at or before marriage
and, other than for servants, it is only parents and children who normally co-
reside—were the cultural norm by the time of the Black Death (1347–50) in
England and other parts of northwestern Europe, particularly in urban contexts.
Nuclear families, numbers of them employing live-in servants, are recorded for
example in Reims in 1422. Poor life expectations and a cultural acceptance of
remarriage meant, however, that many children might spend a part of their
formative years with a stepparent and with older or younger half-siblings or
stepsiblings. These then were cultures in which children were socialized to leave
home and make their own way in the world, and in which, again particularly in
an urban context, adolescents and young adults might come to live and work
as servants or apprentices with families other than their natal families. It is
not at all clear, however, how far the roots of such a pattern go back before
the plague. English evidence may suggest that stem-families were the norm in
the thirteenth century, but the extant evidence becomes increasingly exiguous
before the fourteenth century; others have argued that nuclear families and a
tendency to recognize kin as much on the mother’s side as the father’s may have
very deep roots.
The family forms reflected in the Tuscan catasto of 1427 show a strong
tendency for children, but especially boys, to remain with the natal home for
extended periods and for (usually) one of the sons to bring his spouse to live with
him in the natal home, a model that might be characterized as a stem-family. It
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 85

follows that grandparents might sometimes co-reside with grandchildren and

so have a more immediate role in their socialization. Sometimes older women
were taken in as servants, and it is probable that they had a particular role in
supervising young children. Generally the Tuscan catasto suggests that parents
tended to be more dependent on the labor of their children and less dependent
on the labor of servants. Such a pattern, that emphasizes the patriline and the
authority of the father, may well have had deep historical roots. The more
southerly or Mediterranean parts of Europe tend also to be characterized by
an understanding that fathers—and to lesser extent brothers—had a particular
responsibility to protect the honor of their womenfolk, which produced
restrictions on the movement of at least postpubescent girls. This was also true
of Muslim culture. That girls were socialized to keep busy at home and to
be circumspect around unrelated males was, however, a more general cultural
practice.
Family forms in central and eastern Europe are still less well understood,
though to a lesser or greater degree extended and complex family forms, not
much associated with the keeping of servants, were common after our period
and may often have had long historical roots. We may surmise that childrearing
involved a larger group of kin rather than falling almost entirely on mothers and
fathers. Girls would have been socialized to expect to leave home to be married
at the father’s behest, but sons need not necessarily have expected ever to leave
the family home and land. The further back in the past we look, however,
the fuzzier is our understanding and the more capable is the slight evidence—
such as the Carolingian polyptychs or registers—of bearing a multiplicity of
interpretations.

SOCIALIZATION IN THE NATAL FAMILY

Royal and aristocratic households regularly employed servants such as wet
nurses and other nursery staff to act as the primary providers for young children,
though tutors might be employed for boys and sometimes girls from about
seven years old. More well-to-do bourgeois families within the Mediterranean
region might send babies out to be nursed, usually by married village women,
such that their offspring were initially socialized by their nurses, only returning,
if they survived, around the age of two years to their biological parents. Others
employed live-in nurses. Such women could have lasting emotional meaning
for their charges. Both Edward II and Richard II of England were particularly
conscientious about providing for their former nurses, which may suggest
they had a big influence on them as small children. On her deathbed in 1345
Nicolosa di Guisolfo of Genoa remembered her own nurses as well as her
children’s. In most families, however, it is likely that it was biological parents
who most usually or most immediately took responsibility for their children, and
86 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

mothers who were seen to have the primary nurturing role in respect of young
children. Indeed, in Jewish law mothers had primary care for all their children
before their sixth birthday and for their daughters even after that age. Fathers,
however, had overall responsibility, and their duty to exercise discipline over
their dependents meant it was they who often administered chastisement. The
eleventh-century Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali understood the father to be the
decision-maker in terms of the child’s education and welfare. Mothers were
required to ensure their children were obedient to their fathers.2
The socialization and training of children by their parents is something
we may readily surmise, but it is almost invisible in documentary sources. So
much of a child’s socialization in the family home would be by spoken word,
by gesture, by example, and by slaps and beatings, none of which generates
documentation. In the absence of letters, diaries, or autobiographical accounts
for most of the population and for nearly the entirety of our period, the way
children were instructed or the guidance they may have been given consequently
went almost entirely undocumented. Where such sources do exist, they can
offer particular insights. Giovanni Morelli, writing in early fifteenth-century
Florence, reproached himself after his son’s death that:
you loved him and yet you never made him happy with your love; you didn’t
treat him like a son but a stranger; you never kissed him even once when
he was good; you consumed him […] with too many transactions and harsh
beatings.3
What the “Bracton” author, with whom we began, alerts us to is that by
their earlier to mid-teens, boys and girls—at least those of middling status in
England in the high Middle Ages—were expected to have learnt certain skills
that presumably they would have acquired from their parents. The boy’s
skills are particularly pertinent to the needs of trade, viz. basic numeracy, the
capacity to count money or measure cloth, which might have been gained from
spending time in and helping out in his father’s shop or stall. The girl’s skills
are a little more general and opaque. She had to be capable of running a house,
which might have been gained by helping her mother around the house and
on occasion taking charge when her mother was incapacitated by illness or
childbirth. Her knowledge of “key and cove” was simply an extension of her
capacity to manage. It was her responsibility to see that linen, napery, and items
of value were properly looked after and kept secure. The keys were indeed
the symbol of the housewife’s office and are evidenced even in Anglo-Saxon
women’s burials. Girls probably also learned to spin from an early age, though
medieval proverbs presented this not as a learned skill but an inherent capacity.
Much the same was perhaps true of sewing and needlework.
Conduct or courtesy literature, otherwise known as didactic or normative
literature, offered guidance as to how young people from the middling and
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 87

upper ranks of society should be raised or should behave. This ranges from so-
called mirrors for princes to aristocratic texts, such as the late thirteenth-century
Occitan Instructions for a Squire or The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry
that circulated from the later fourteenth century in French and in German and
English translations, to slightly more plebeian conduct texts such as Francesco da
Barberino’s Conduct and Manners of a Lady of the early years of the fourteenth
century or the somewhat later Middle English “How the Wise Man Taught
his Son.” These are generally aimed at adolescents rather than children and
may sometimes, as Felicity Riddy has argued for the mid-fourteenth-century
English poem “How the Goodwife Taught her Daughter,” have been intended
for, or at least used in respect of, youngsters who had left home and were
under the tutelage of adults other than their parents. They might also address
the aspirations of parents who wanted to enhance the social standing of their
offspring since their guidance supplied knowledge parents may not themselves
have been socialized in.4
Such works often mirror a model of familial training by claiming to represent
the instruction of a father or a mother to a same-sex child. The thirteenth-century
German Der Winsbecke thus commences:

A wise man had a son

whom he loved, as is often the case.
He wished to teach him the right way to live in the world,
and so he spoke as follows: “My son …”5

Much the same is true of “How the Goodwife Taught her Daughter” or
the probably slightly later “How the Wise Man Taught his Son.” Two later
fourteenth-century French texts, Le Ménagier de Paris (or Goodman of Paris)
and The Knight of La Tour-Landry, claim to be written specifically by a husband
for his young wife and by the eponymous knight for his three daughters, but
the subsequent dissemination of these books—The Knight was something of
a publishing phenomenon—makes them little different from other conduct
literature. Much the same can be said of the Liber Manualis written in the mid-
ninth century by Dhuoda for her fifteen-year-old son who had been sent to the
court of Charles the Bald at Aachen. Such writings play on and gain authority
from a universal understanding of the acculturating role of parents toward their
children, but they also indirectly reflect that such cultural norms or ideals did
not necessarily last—parents die, children move away.
Although the concerns of such conduct texts vary somewhat, certain themes
crop up reliably and may perhaps give a flavor of the kinds of lessons children
received in medieval households. Restraint in speech is commonly urged:
injunctions such as “keep your tongue” and “don’t tell tales” appear across a
range of texts. Girls in particular are urged to be humble and demure in their
88 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

speech and actions in order to avoid any appearance of bad character. The Book
of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, noting that all fathers and mothers ought to
teach their children, instructs its purported young female readership not to turn
their heads around here and there like a crane, nor to speak much or go to
feasts and sports. Similarly, the rather earlier Conduct and Manners of a Lady
urged modesty, restraint of speech, “with her hands and limbs steady, / because
motions and gestures in a girl / are a sign of affectation.”6
Control of bodily functions, particularly at table, is another major concern of
such literature, with the fourteenth-century Middle English poem “Urbanitatis”
being a typical example:

Foot and hand thou keep full still

From scratching or tripping, it is discretion;
From spitting and snotting keep thee also;
Be discreet when expelling wind, and let it go7

While such sources are useful guides to the concerns of medieval householders,
we should probably not imagine that medieval children diligently studied them in
order to discover how to behave in polite company. Instruction by example was
the cultural norm. Table manners, after all, are most easily taught at the table,
not in the library. It is hardly likely that reading a poem would have prevented
a child desirous of picking their nose, belching, or dipping their fingers in the
sauce from acting upon that desire. A stern word and the ever-present threat of
violent repercussions were likely both more effective and more usual.
Whether or not instructional manuals ever functioned as practical guides
to behavior, Mary Shaner’s suggestion that “instructional manuals, although
entertaining to the twentieth-century adult, would have been of little interest
to medieval grown-ups except, possibly, in their roles as parents or mentors,”
is unconvincing.8 Household conduct texts likely provided entertainment
to readers both old and young and may suggest something of their use in a
household context where it was usual to read texts aloud. Some display a turn
of phrase and a gift for the construction of mental images that makes them a
delight to read. In the cultural context in which Chaucer wrote The Miller’s
Tale, images of flatulence and other bodily emissions likely amused household
audiences young and old. The Little Children’s Little Book is particularly
forthcoming: “Don’t belch as if you had a bee in your throat / Like a churl
that comes out of a hovel.”9 It is difficult to see what mocking reference to the
“churl” in a hovel and the imagery of the child’s belch sounding like the buzzing
of a bee are intended to add to the text if not an injection of humor. Humor
functioned to communicate the underlying message more effectively, and shared
humor is a clue to the use of such literature in a household or familial context
where reading aloud was a social activity.
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 89

The role that such texts fulfilled in the context of family education may then
have been primarily ideological rather than practical. They help to construct an
image of the essentially rude, insolent and insubordinate child, which maintains
children’s subordination within the household and justifies the need for adult
intervention in order to correct their deviant tendencies. They suggest that right
conduct was inculcated in the household in part via the threat of ridicule: in
order to be respected in mature society, one must avoid the faux pas of children
and churls.
A similar role may have been played by popular proverbs. These probably
circulated more widely, being less dependent on the transmission of texts,
and so perhaps take us to instruction and learning across a much wider social
spectrum. Proverbs, vernacular tags of pithy wisdom, were probably made
memorable by their brevity but also their repeated iteration. As such they seem
to have played an important role in verbal instruction, though we can glean this
only tangentially. “How the Goodwife,” a text noted above that mimics, as the
title suggests, verbal instruction from mother to daughter, ends each stanza with
a proverb in order to make its didactic message more memorable. For example
the daughter is cautioned:

And when thou goest on thy way, go thou not too fast,
Brandish not with thy head, nor with thy shoulders cast,
Have not too many words, from swearing keep aloof,
For all such manners come to an evil proof.
For he that catcheth to him an evil name,
It is to him a foul fame,
My lief child.10

The text, as is seen here, is obsessed with how the daughter will appear when in
public. Reputation, constructed in terms of the perception of others, required
circumspection and vigilance. It is a quality, young women in particular were
warned, hard to acquire but easily lost.
Collections of proverbs circulated in a number of vernacular languages
including a short French compilation c. 1400 by Christine de Pizan or the so-
called Proverbs of Alfred (late twelfth century) and the Proverbs of Hendyng,
which dates to the late thirteenth century. Man that will of Wisdom Hear, a
later version of this last, similarly concludes each stanza with such proverbs
as “good beginning makes good ending,” “what one learns in youth, he does
not lose in old age,” “better is apple given than eaten,” “tongue breaks bone
though itself has none,” or “drink again less and go home by daylight.”11 As
a text implicitly directed at boys, it does not share quite the same concern
with public appearance that we find in the “Goodwife,” The Knight, or other
texts addressed to girls.
90 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

There is good evidence that householders took an active interest in collecting

proverbs. For example, household compilation manuscripts, which are only
rarely found before the later Middle Ages when vernacular literacy spread to
larger sections of the population, sometimes contain collections of proverbs.
“What youth grows accustomed to, age remembers,” a variant on the proverb
just cited from Man that will of Wisdom Hear, is one such example pertinent
to the topic of household education.12 More sinister perhaps is the common
adage that “better were a child unborn than unbeaten,” variations on which
appear ubiquitously in conduct texts, in proverb collections such as the Proverbs
of Alfred, and in schoolroom exercises. Indeed, the overlap in proverbial
material between schools and households suggests that the entrenchment of
such commonly held knowledge was an aspect of education common to both
contexts.
Alongside proverbial wisdom, household education appears often to have
included religious instruction, though this is perhaps most conspicuous in high-
status family contexts. Aristocratic Carolingian women, for example, might
teach their children to sing the psalms. Mothers in particular seem to have
played a key role in transmitting a knowledge of the Psalter. Richeza of Lorraine,
for example, took her Psalter with her when she married King Mieszko of
Poland around 1013 and presumably used it to instruct her daughter Gertrude,
who in turn carried it into her marriage with Prince Iziaslav of Kiev. Gertrude
subsequently had prayers added to the text for her own son, Jaropolk.13 From
as early as the eleventh century church leaders urged fathers and mothers to
teach basic prayers such as the Paternoster and the Creed to their children. As
early as 1345 women in Tournai were using booklets containing these prayers
in French as teaching aids. In the 1350s Archbishop John Thoresby of York,
in his “Lay Folks’ Catechism,” bid parents teach their children the religious
knowledge they learned from their priests.14 One simple English poem offering
a rudimentary exposition of the Ten Commandments begins with the injunction
that “Every man should teach this law / To his children with good intent.”15
Learning to read might go hand in hand with religious instruction. The
common later medieval image of the Virgin Mary being taught to read (and to
pray) by her mother, St. Anne, may reflect that it was mothers in particular who
provided children with devotional and literary instruction. This image is found,
for example, in the book of hours made before 1340 for Isabel de Byron, which
was clearly intended by her for use with her daughter: an illuminated initial
shows Isobel leading her daughter in prayer (Figure 4.1).
Books of hours, which circulated very widely in better-off households
during the latter part of our period, often contain alphabets alongside prayers,
suggesting that they were used for teaching children to read. In late medieval
Italy well-to-do women were commonly given such books of hours as marriage
gifts with the implicit understanding that they would use them with the
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 91

FIGURE 4.1 Lady Byron and daughter praying, The Neville of Hornby Hours, second
quarter of the fourteenth century. Egerton MS 2768, fol. 122v, British Library.

children their marriage would bring. Such instruction was the case with a
thirteenth-century French hours belonging to one Marie. The French queen,
Isabeau of Bavaria, likewise commissioned a book of hours in 1398 to instruct
her daughter Jeanne and a few years later an “ABC of Psalms” to use with her
daughter Michelle.
Instruction in literacy was not solely understood as an aid to devotion. The
fifteenth-century Scottish poem Ratis Raving, which takes the form of a father
addressing his son, offers practical advice on conduct as well as a detailed
exposition of the seven Christian Virtues. Acquisition of basic vernacular
literacy in the household is suggested by the survival of texts such as “The ABC
of Aristotle,” in which each line begins with a letter of the alphabet that is then
used as a basis for instructional precepts. The letter “D” for example urges
the reader to eschew dullness and excessive drinking, and the letter “F” to be
“friendly of cheer.”16 In Italy at the end of our period mothers were encouraged
to make sweets in the shape of letters of the alphabet so as to make learning
literally more appetizing. Furthermore, Denise de Montchensey’s wish to teach
92 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

her children French lies behind Walter of Bibbesworth’s composition of his

Treatise around 1250.
Such evidence from elite households may be suggestive of practice at
lower social levels. A brewer’s widow in later fourteenth-century Ghent made
provision for her eldest son to be taught French, but subject to the approval of
other family members.17 Levels of literacy grew during the later Middle Ages,
especially in urban society, and so moved down the social hierarchy,18 but as we
have seen, instruction was by word and example at least as much as through
the use of texts. What today might be construed separately as the practical,
the theoretical, the religious, and the personal went hand in hand. Indeed, the
common Middle English verb “techen” was used variously of religious and
moral instruction, formal education such as in reading and writing, the training
of a young man of gentle birth in horsemanship and the use of arms, or the
instruction given by a craftsman to one learning the trade.19 Such instruction
was part of the work of character formation and the inculcation of moral and
spiritual values. It also went hand in hand with the acquisition of gender identity.
Gender and gender identity were probably learned from an early age in
the home but also increasingly from peers. As we have seen, normative texts
imagine fathers teaching their sons and mothers their daughters. Social practice
may to a degree have mirrored this model. A girl would learn how to spin
because her mother taught her from a young age. A boy would learn how to use
a plough or a scythe because when he was a youth his father showed him how.
Further up the social scale, a father might teach his son estate management
or the use of weaponry. Barbara Hanawalt uses English coroners’ records
concerning accidental deaths, dating mostly from the century before the Black
Death, to argue that small girls imitated their mothers around the house and
so sometimes died in accidents involving cooking pots and open fires, whereas
small boys would follow their fathers as they went out into the fields and so
sometimes fell unseen into ditches.20 Whilst it is eminently likely that children
modeled their gender identity in part by reenacting aspects of same-sex adult
behavior, it is less than apparent that inquests into accidental deaths reported to
the coroner in fact show this. The evidence is more treacherous than Hanawalt
allows and many small girls drowned outdoors and many small boys died in
the home. The same source can alternatively be read to show that children may
have often been subject to a degree of benign neglect whereby they were left to
play outdoors for much of the day. Play was indeed the cultural expectation in
respect of children who are invariably depicted in art at play. Older children,
however, and girls a little sooner than boys, seem to have moved from play to
work activities.21
Much children’s play probably involved group activity and found toys, but
depictions of toy windmills and hobby horses alert us to the provision that
parents might make in the form of manufactured toys (Figure 4.2). Indeed,
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 93

FIGURE 4.2 The seven ages of man from infancy to old age. Woodcut from
Bartholomeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum. Library of Congress.

in recent years archaeology has begun to draw attention to manufactured

toys, particularly in later medieval urban contexts. Some toys, such as ceramic
spinning tops and balls, were probably comparatively gender neutral, but
others were intended to reinforce gender identity such as the lead or ceramic
model mounted knights as have been found in Bamberg and London, or lead
and ceramic miniature cooking pots. Likewise we can presume that the later
medieval Kruselerpuppen ceramic dolls widely found around Nuremberg were
bought by parents for their small daughters. The coroners’ rolls noted above
often relate merely that children played, but they also offer some evidence
that children may have tended to play together in same-sex groups. This
would suggest that gender identity was constructed or reinforced through the
peer group.
The fact that nearly all of our sources for medieval education were written
by adults creates something of an optical illusion that tends to privilege their
role in children’s lives. Children also likely learned a huge amount from each
other within their peer groups, which formed an important but sometimes
overlooked part of the wider medieval community. In the Middle English
romance Emaré, the young female protagonist is depicted being educated in
94 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

gentle nurture “among other maidens” in the bower of a noble lady called Abro.
Emaré herself later becomes the teacher of courtesy (and embroidery) to the
children of a king’s steward. Although the ultimate responsibility for maidens’
socialization may have lain with older women such as Abro and Emaré, girls may
in fact have learned much of what they needed to know from other members
of their peer group, particularly perhaps those who were slightly older. Girls
and older women regularly gathered at communal fountains to collect water
in Mediterranean towns and more generally at communal washing places. The
same is likely to have been true of boys who may have socialized collectively,
for example, playing football or wrestling. In later medieval France, England,
and Scotland laws were enacted requiring males regularly to practice archery,
and these gatherings almost certainly included boys as well as youths.
In respect of the socialization of adolescents there was a tension between,
on the one hand, a desire for the company of their peers and a need to learn
about relationships and their sexuality and, on the other hand, the conservative
and controlling ethos found in conduct literature. Daughters were particularly
likely to be the subject of surveillance by parents, by other women within the
community, who were the arbiters of reputation, and no doubt by peers. In
much of Mediterranean Europe most adolescent girls were sheltered at home
before they married. The conduct text “How the Goodwife,” as we have seen,
was concerned with how young women might deport themselves in the street,
discouraged conversation with the opposite sex, and warned them against
drunkenness or being alone with a man. Of course, the concerns of preachers
and moralists suggest that at least some young women did chat to boys in the
street or drink too much. In contrast, though moralists railed against the bad
behavior of male youths, we can detect a tone of “boys will be boys.” Male
youths might spend the night out, get involved in fights, chase women, and visit
sex workers. This is not to say that parents tolerated such behavior. Colard Van
den Gardine of Ghent was likely unimpressed when he learned that his son had
accidentally blinded his classmate when sitting in school, for which Colard had
to pay a fine in 1377.22
In the context of medieval society in general and the home in particular,
instruction and learning went hand in hand with discipline. Just as it was
culturally expected that husbands might strike their wives for supposed
wrongdoing, so parents, but particularly fathers, were expected to beat their
children for the purposes of correction. The biblical injunction that “he that
spareth the rod, hateth his son”—a phrase that has been implicated in much
human misery over the centuries—was widely and vociferously articulated.23 It
is found, for example, in friars’ sermons and the writings of the German poets of
the high Middle Ages, Walter von der Vogelweide and Rudolf von Ems. Beating
was commonly presented as a spiritual, moral, and social duty that parents had
to perform. Muslim religious authorities similarly instructed that from age ten
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 95

children should be beaten as a suitable pedagogical device in teaching prayer

or more generally for reasons of discipline, but not out of anger and not more
than ten strokes of the whip. It was a common trope in medieval discourse that
the (usually male) child who grew up without being beaten sufficiently would
come to curse his parents’ lack of diligence on his way to the gallows. Walter
von der Vogelweide observed simply that “whoever spares the rod neglects his
son, lets him go to bad.”24
It is difficult to know how far parents took such injunctions to heart and
construed beating as a necessary part of their children’s social, moral, and spiritual
development and education. Because fathers lawfully exercised authority over
their children, the beaten child usually had no redress and so is almost invisible
in the record. An exception is the 1381 case of Isold Kirkby, a girl of “tender
age,” who was allegedly beaten beyond reason, not by her father but by her
kinsman and guardian John Raven. In response he claimed his chastisement
was both reasonable and necessary. Isold had “desired to spend her time among
boys and company improper to her rank.” As a result, he said, he “reproved the
same Isold by way of chastisement and instruction and to draw her away from
such company,” and that he did so “at various times” only with “small rods.”25
In general, however, it was boys who were thought to be more prone to deviant
behavior and therefore in need of more assiduous “correction.” They were
also seen as physically more robust and so able to withstand greater violence.
We might go on to speculate how far the experience of beatings helped shape
masculine identity, normalized violence, and encouraged boys to grow up to
use physical violence against their own wives, children, or servants.
The parent-shaped hole in the surviving legal record is telling; children
had little recourse through the courts in situations where they were being
victimized in their natal homes. It would however be a mistake to extrapolate
from these few cases of excessive cruelty and assume that children were
routinely abused in the process of household education. One possible reason
for the ubiquitous demands for pedagogical violence from medieval moralists
was that parents were in fact reluctant to subject their offspring to the stringent
course of treatment they prescribed. Indeed, the regularity with which moral
and religious authorities urged the need may suggest the message was thought
not to have been adequately heeded. Schoolmasters sometimes had occasion to
complain bitterly of mothers and fathers who would not suffer their sons to
be beaten. One Oxford schoolmaster described wealthy parents who spoiled
their offspring by lavishing them with care and affection, allowing them to “lie
still in bed until it was late in the day” and bringing them breakfast in bed. He
draws an invidious comparison between this, as he sees it, deficient regime of
household education and the strict discipline of the grammar school, implying
that the latter was apt to produce fine, upstanding young citizens from the
slothful layabouts with whom he was initially presented.26
96 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

SOCIALIZATION OUTSIDE THE NATAL HOME:

SCHOOLS, SERVANTS, AND SERVICE
Not all children were socialized in the natal home. Sometimes even quite young
children were sent away. In the earlier Middle Ages well-born children might
be sent as oblates intended for the religious life in a monastic house as a way
of strengthening ties between secular families and the houses they patronized.
As such, religious houses had to make formal provision for their welfare and
education as is reflected, for example, in Archbishop Lanfranc’s Constitutions of
the late eleventh century. By the later Middle Ages numbers of boys—and some
girls—attended schools, which were increasingly common in urban centers.27
In later medieval Flanders boys often attended school before going on to learn
a trade.
In Italy secular schools can be found as early as the tenth century, but civic
schools are noticed from the thirteenth century. Schools were established in
other major urban communities from the later thirteenth century, as at Lübeck
in 1262, but they became most widespread after the plague. A south German
Psalter from the 1230s depicts the Virgin, who holds a birch rod, taking Jesus to
school equipped with his writing tablet, an image that gives divine and normative
authority to parents to send their offspring to school. In the Low Countries and
Paris, schooling became a common childhood experience and some girls even
received elementary instruction: in late fourteenth-century Cologne boys were
schooled from about six to fourteen years, but their sisters only to age ten.
Comparatively few older girls were given formal schooling though we can find
evidence of schoolmistresses running schools for girls in Paris and London, and
one Callekin was sent to school in Ghent for two years when she was about
eleven.28 Sometimes children boarded—girls at a convent school and boys at
a grammar school. A school for poor Jewish children in Lérida in 1328, for
example, contained a dormitory. In 1416 Alexander de la Pole boarded with a
schoolmaster whilst attending school in Ipswich.
In aristocratic families both boys and girls might be given private tuition.
Older sons would be trained from before their teens in the art of fighting as well
as in aristocratic etiquette, which could include singing and dancing or games
such as chess along with dress and manners. This often required them to enter
service in the household of another, perhaps related, lord. It was common for
some younger sons to be intended for careers in the church, presumably from
well before they might otherwise marry, in which case they might be sent for
training in an episcopal household. For example, within the male line of the
counts of Wirtheim over six generations in the fourteenth century all twenty-
two younger sons who survived childhood went on to clerical careers. Similar
examples could be found in earlier centuries, but unlike the boy oblates sent
to religious houses in the first centuries of our period, their clerical training
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 97

would only start in their teens since ordination to the priesthood could not be
achieved before a man was twenty-five. Daughters destined for marriage would
learn household management at their mother’s side, but aristocratic and, by
the later Middle Ages, bourgeois daughters were also frequently destined to
become nuns. Unlike their brothers, however, they might be sent from their
natal homes as young as seven with a view to being first educated and, from the
age of twelve, professed within the nunnery. Hagiographical accounts of boys
who played at being priests and of small girls likewise engaging in devotional
play, such as little Marie d’Oignies treading in the footprints left by monks
or, more alarmingly, Catharine of Siena and her playmates self-flagellating,
probably offer a window into a culture of imitative play of which parents may
often have approved.
Older children may often have been under the tutelage of someone other
than their father or mother for a variety of reasons. Children might outlive
one or both parents and so need some other guardian. Donato Velluti brought
his ten-year-old illegitimate niece Agnola from Sicily to his home in Florence
after she was orphaned “so that she will not fall upon evil ways.” Subsequently
in 1355 “when she reached the age of matrimony” he provided a dowry and
arranged her marriage.29 A widowed parent might remarry and so a stepfather
or stepmother might displace the child’s biological father or mother. Children
might also be sent to be fostered away from the natal home either with kin
or persons unrelated to them. The orphan children of London citizens, for
example, were liable to be placed by the civic authorities in households of
like status. Thus in 1370 John Wryghte, a twelve-year-old orphan, was given
into the guardianship of William Bys, a stockfishmonger, and his wife Alianor.
Rather less typical was the case from some forty years earlier of another orphan,
Robert, son of William Huberd, who had been assigned to the care of John
Spray but was subsequently supposedly abducted from his house and made to
marry the daughter of one of his abductors. The mayor and aldermen of London
subsequently asked the boy whether he wished to remain with the parents of
his bride or return to John Spray. He chose the former. This practice of sending
children from their natal family to live with, and invariably work for, others,
which anthropologists call fosterage and historians call service, constituted
an important means by which young people were educated in large parts of
Europe. This was particularly true of artisanal and mercantile households in
towns and of aristocratic households, but especially in northwestern Europe
and especially after the Black Death.
Servants lived in their employers’ homes and were fed, clothed, and instructed
by them. As such they formed part of their employer’s household or, to use
the contemporary Latin term, familia. They are found in the early Middle
Ages in royal, aristocratic, and episcopal households and from at least the high
medieval era in many homes. Maids were employed in Jewish households in
98 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

eleventh-century Mainz, for example, and servants of both sexes, but largely
females, are commonly noticed in Genoese wills in the century after 1150. Of
146 servants noted in extant wills, all bar six were female.30 Servants are more
conspicuous by the later Middle Ages, but to some degree this is a product
of better documentation. Quite often they were also related. William Belot,
for example, is recorded in 1433 as servant to his uncle, William Forster of
Scarborough.31 Katherine Blayke, servant to John Dene, merchant of York in
1449, was niece to his wife Joan, and Isabella and Christine Flemyng were nieces
to their mistress Lady Christine Harryngton.32 Sometimes siblings might serve
together. Thus in 1273 Ponç and his sister Boneta were apprenticed together
to a Perpignan glover.33 Across later medieval, northwestern Europe servants
tended to be young, unmarried males and females, usually in their teens or early
twenties. In southern Europe servanthood tended to be much more feminized
and socially restricted. Some girls entered well before their teens. In Florence
and Barcelona, for example, young orphan girls were taken in by kin as servants
against the promise of a dowry when they reached their teens, though they did
not necessarily fare as well in a culture that saw young women who lacked the
protection of a father or brother as fair game.
Many servants were contracted by the year and might change employers at
the end of their term so as to secure new responsibilities and gain new skills and
experiences as they grew older, although some stayed for several years. Once
contracted the servant or apprentice was bound: in Lübeck at the end of the
fourteenth century, for example, it was agreed servants who left their service
before their contract had been completed were to be exiled from the city. A
plural number of years of service was the norm with apprentices. The most usual
term in Marseilles before the plague was three years, but some specified periods
between eight and twelve years: the glover’s apprentice Ponç noted above was
to serve three years, but his sister eight. In the post-plague era terms tended
to stabilize, seven years being commonplace in later medieval England. When
at the very end of the fifteenth century a Venetian visitor to London, shocked
at the readiness of English parents to send their children—girls as much as
boys—away, asked the reason for the custom, he was told “they did it in order
that their children might learn better manners.”34 Service was seen as a way of
training the young for their own advancement and in later medieval English
towns most boys and girls achieving adolescence would have experienced time
in service.
Whereas the training in craft activities of children and adolescents, but
particularly boys and some girls who were apprenticed, may readily be
surmised, other aspects of socialization and learning implicit in service are
somewhat more opaque. Apprentices likely learned functional numeracy and,
increasingly, literacy as far as was required to participate in their masters’
business. Some of the conduct texts noted earlier may have been used to help
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 99

provide literacy training whilst at the same time imparting social and moral
instruction. For those apprenticed to international traders, the household may
also have provided some basic language instruction. The manuscript of one
London grocer from the very end of the Middle Ages contains the template of
a business letter transcribed in both French and English, as well as the prices
for different grades of wool at Calais and a table for converting pounds Troy in
England and Flanders.35 Apprentices might also spend time in other countries
to learn local customs and develop language skills. Such knowledge was likely
passed on to their own children or apprentices.
Good manners no doubt were also expected. Like Ponç and Boneta, many
servants were migrants from the countryside to the city and so learning urban
mores and customs would have been integral to their education. Again, texts
such as “How the Goodwife” may have helped in this process. Sometimes
servants would have to adapt to the demands of different faith employers. This
was true in Jewish households of the non-Jewish servants, who, unlike their
employers, could work on the Shabbat, as we see in Vienna at the end of the
twelfth century or in Lincoln before the later thirteenth century. It was also true
of Muslim women servants employed in Christian households in Reconquest
Spain. In both instances we know of this cross-faith employment because it
generated comment from religious teachers, but for the adolescent employees
it was part of the process of adaptation and learning that was integral to their
status as servants.
Female servants likely gained knowledge of how to wash and care for
clothing, bedding, and napery while working alongside their mistresses. A later
fourteenth-century Franco-Flemish vocabulary, The Book of Trades (Livre des
Mestiers), contains a conversation between a servant and her mistress that gives
an indication of some of her tasks and hence the skills she would need to have
acquired. The servant declares:
I am making the beds, setting straight the cushions on the forms, chairs,
benches, tuffets and stools, and I am cleaning the solar, the chamber, the
house [namely, the hall] and the kitchen.
After further conversation the mistress then instructs her:
Come down and bring towels and linen and coal, and take the bellows and
blow up the fire, and take the tongs and mend it so that it burns, boil the pots,
fry some fat, lay the table and bring the long cloth, put water in the hand-
basin […]. Thou has still to wash and scour the pewter bottles, the quart and
pint pots.36
The lengthy list is determined by the needs of vocabulary learning, but the tasks
are real and partially echoed in the advice given to his wife about the duties
of the chambermaids given by the eponymous Goodman of Paris. In the fifth
100 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

joy of The Fifteen Joys of Marriage, a French comic text of c. 1400, the wife
deliberately sends away her servants to thwart her husband when he brings
home dinner guests. They arrive to find the fire unlit and no napery available
because it is in the wash, no food to be found, and no fresh sheets for the guests’
beds. At the end of our period a York husband was furious because his wife had
allowed their servants to retire for the night before the best pewter had been
washed.37
Female servants were sent on errands to buy foodstuffs; Caxton’s Dialogues
in French and English narrate a conversation in which the servant Margaret
is sent to the butcher’s and to the poulterer’s. Female servants also assisted
with the preparation of meals as the late fourteenth-century Lombard images
from the Tacuinum Sanitatis show (Figure 4.3). They likely helped to care for
small children since only very high-status households engaged nurses. Female
servants would thus have learned precisely the kinds of skills that the “Bracton”
author looked for in a young woman about to shoulder the responsibilities
of running a household, but also perhaps about the care of the children they
would themselves be likely to raise once married. But as the example of Boneta,
mentioned above, suggests, maidservants may have assisted in craft activities
just as wives were expected to assist their husbands. In rural society female
servants likely learned dairying skills but may also have assisted in brewing and
the ubiquitous female tasks of carding and spinning.
As we have seen in the natal home, so in the schoolroom and the employer’s
home young people were liable to be physically chastised as part of the learning
process. The birch became the schoolmaster’s symbol of office and was used
regularly as a supposed aid to instruction. Robert Buck, testifying as a juror in a
proof of age, recalled how as a child in the 1280s “he was so badly beaten that
he had to leave school for a time” (Figure 4.4).38 Schoolmasters stood in loco
parentis over students just as masters stood in loco parentis over servants. This
cultural practice received official sanction. For example, as early as 1083 the
archbishop of Cologne ordained that a servant might lawfully be chastised with
the birch or a rod, while in 1204 the right of masters to correct apprentices—
as well as wives and children—without recourse to the courts was written
into the customs of Montpellier. The thirteenth-century Castilian law code,
Las Siete Partidas, provides for shipmasters and owners to chastise servants on
board “for faults they may commit, always being careful not to kill or maim
them.”39 Apprenticeship contracts, such as are found in Genoa from as early as
1180, which bound both apprentice and employer, became fairly universal and
regularly included as a clause to the effect that the master might chastise the
apprentice, but not beyond reason. It follows that chastisement other than for
good cause or which might be considered excessive was liable to be challenged
in the courts. In late fifteenth-century England, for example, an apprentice
named John Webbe made an appeal to the Chancellor on behalf of his brother,
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 101

FIGURE 4.3 Two women, perhaps household servants, prepare offal from animal
intestines in a kitchen. Late fourteenth-century illumination from the Tacuinum
Sanitatis. Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photograph by Alinari/Alinari Archives,
Florence/Alinari via Getty Images.

whom he alleged had been beaten with “great fury and cruelty” by his master
in a way that went beyond “lawful punishment.”40 In another English case from
1380, one Joan, who was kept “as their servant” by her mother and stepfather,
Adam, was allegedly wounded as a result of a beating at Adam’s hands. He
102 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 4.4 Master of the Codex Manesse, “The Schoolmaster of Esslingen,”

c. 1305–40. A schoolmaster and his assistant wield birch rods, a common symbol
of a schoolteacher. Note that two of the students are sharing a book. Cod. Pal. Germ.
848, fol. 292v, UB Heidelberg.

defended himself, however, claiming that he only struck her with a rod to stop
her from further hurting Cecily, his wife. When she had reprimanded Joan for
spoiling malt when brewing, Joan had allegedly taken Cecily’s thumb between
her teeth and bitten “almost to the middle of the same” such that she “thought
herself to be dying there and lost consciousness.”41 Similarly in 1364 a London
court ordered that Agnes Cotiller provide her apprentice Juseana with food,
drink, and proper instruction in her craft and refrain from beating her with
FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIABILITY 103

either a stick or a knife. In comparison to girls, however, boys appear much

more often in the sources as victims of violent beatings. This may mean simply
that girls had less access to legal restitution, but it might also reflect cultural
gender expectations.

CONCLUSION
The home was the primary location for the socialization and training of the child,
so much so that the idea of the home as the locus of instruction, particularly by
the same-sex parent, was incorporated into conduct literature. When the late
thirteenth-century Aragonese author, Amanieu de Sescás, wrote his Instructions
for a Squire, he began his narrative “comfortably” at home:

At Christmastime,
when the wind blows with rain
and snow and ice appear
and the cold frozen winter,
I recall how it was
that I was in my home,
comfortably with my squires.42

Mothers seem to have played a particular role in the socialization of very young
children, though in better-off families they were probably assisted by female
servants who would thus also learn practical childcare themselves. Slightly
older children seem to have been left to play outdoors for much of the day and
so no doubt were socialized by their peers, perhaps particularly slightly older
children, and likely formed a sense of their gender identity as much through
such peer interaction as from their immediate family. During the course of the
later Middle Ages, numbers of older boys, particularly in towns, but few girls,
received formal instruction in schools, and a few would have boarded. Rather
more adolescents of both sexes went to live as servants or apprentices in the
homes of others, both kin and nonkin, to gain knowledge and experience of
householding or of a trade, or both. In later medieval northwestern Europe
in particular, spending time in service, and so becoming temporary members
of other people’s families, was a common experience and extended through
the social hierarchy. The young Geoffrey Chaucer, for example, served as a
page in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, countess of Ulster. The majority
experience for adolescents, however, was to remain within the natal home. It is
this majority experience that is the least documented and so the most invisible,
but it was here that most girls grew up to learn how to run a household and
“what pertains to ‘cove and keye’,” before they embarked upon marriage. Boys
likewise learned how to work their father’s land or to practise their father’s
104 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

trade. Living at home does not, however, mean that they were only exposed
to family influence. The peers they socialized with when at leisure, whom they
drank with in the alehouse or tavern, whom they might encounter at the well
or the washing place, or whom they might work alongside in the fields or the
workshop, these people were part of their lives too. It was these people who
taught them about friendship and hostility, trust and betrayal, camaraderie,
desire, sex, and what a woman or a man was supposed to be.
 CHAPTER FIVE

Learners and Learning

ELIZABETH P. ARCHIBALD

INTRODUCTION
I come (I go) to school. First I greet the teacher, who returned my greeting.
“Hello, teacher. Hello, fellow students (students). Fellow students, give me
my place!” (bench, stool, seat)
“Squash yourself together!”
“Go over there: [this] is my place, I got it first.”1

So the learning experience begins, with greetings and a bit of jostling, in a

dialogue preserved in a ninth-century manuscript. But who are the students?
Amidst the competition over seating, the helpful vocabulary suggestions
(“bench, stool, seat”), provided in both Latin and Greek, reveal that this is an
instructional text, for use in elementary language education. It seems to have
originated with a core of material designed to teach Latin and Greek as second
languages in the second century ce, but the form in which it is preserved is more
reflective of medieval teaching environments than ancient pedagogical practices;
in early medieval Europe these colloquies were repurposed for use by Romance
and Germanic speakers, and they remained in circulation as school texts for
more than a millennium.2 The conversations make reference to the trappings
of classical education, but both their linguistic doctrine and the narratives they
sketch have a timeless quality.
The colloquies raise important questions central to the process of learning
in Europe during the Middle Ages. How did the learning experience transform
over this thousand-year period? And how do we reach into the available sources
to observe the experience of the learner and the process of learning? Learners
106 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

are, of course, the constituents of education, but in many sources they are only
present in outline. We read about what they are supposed to do, or are alleged
to have done, but direct testimonies of learners’ experiences are fewer. We
are able in many contexts to trace the activities of teachers, but their pupils
are more difficult to locate in the historical record. In most medieval contexts,
many people received a whiff of education and very few attained high levels of
educational achievement. But the higher the educational attainment level, the
more historical sources it generated. The large numbers of learners working
toward basic literacy and numeracy, therefore, are elusive.

GOALS AND CONTEXTS OF LEARNING

In early medieval Europe, the process of reformulating education in a post-
Roman, Christianizing society resulted in changes to both goals and practices of
education. Older narratives implying that medieval education began as a shabby
collage of salvaged scraps from Roman education have been adjusted to recognize
that there was both more continuity and more creativity at work in early medieval
education.3 Christianization did not imply that education immediately became
the exclusive territory of Christian clergy, or that its content shifted seismically,
but at the beginning of the Middle Ages the landscape of education became more
diverse. In Europe between the fifth and seventh centuries students could learn
the basics of literacy in their families; from private schoolmasters who might or
might not be clerics; in schools administered by local bishops; and particularly
in less urbanized areas, in monasteries.4 All of these possible points of access to
learning evolved in different ways over the course of the Middle Ages.
The profile of learners depends on cultural attitudes toward learning, and
these varied in medieval European contexts. There are scattered articulations
of hostility toward education, as we find in Procopius’s sixth-century account
of the Ostrogoths’ protests against educating the young prince Athalaric on
the grounds that the company of aged teachers would render him unfit for a
military life.5 A few centuries later, in Carolingian circles, rhetoric promoting
education was so commonplace that Charlemagne himself was described in
panegyric poetry as “a brilliant teacher of the art of grammar,” though more
sober sources suggest that he was really more student than sage.6
Part of the reason for describing Charlemagne as a grammar teacher was that,
for the Carolingians, the project of creating a learning landscape concomitant
with ideals of Christian society entailed efforts to make sure that the Christian
populace was adequately educated.7 Carolingian legislation expressed bold
policy goals affecting both populations of learners and the content of learning.
Capitularies aimed at universal knowledge of the Creed and Paternoster, and
episcopal legislation such as that issued by Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, at the
end of the eighth century, encouraged parish clergy to teach local children:
“if any of the faithful want to entrust their small children to them for learning
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 107

letters, they should receive them and not refuse to teach them, but teach them
with the greatest caritas […] and they should require no fee from them.”8 By
the time that the monk Notker the Stammerer wrote his semi-legendary life
of Charlemagne (De Carolo Magno) in the 880s, this aspect of Charlemagne’s
educational initiatives became indicative of Charlemagne’s search for justice
and exaltation of the humble.
As urbanization increased in Europe and monastic orders underwent
reforms limiting their role in society, cathedral schools in urban areas gained
momentum, beginning around the ninth century and particularly taking off
in the eleventh.9 Episcopal schools, within the bishop’s quarters and run by a
canon (scholasticus), taught children starting at about age nine. Although the
distinctive role of cathedral schools was the training of staff for divine service—
and particularly the training of young noblemen for roles as administrators and
bishops—they continued to offer basic education to external students, in some
places offering a long menu of learning possibilities from song instruction to
grammar to canon law and natural sciences.10 When the Third Lateran Council
in 1179 addressed the goal of educating the populace, such schools were the
focus of programming energies:
Since the church of God as a kindly mother is held to provide for those
needs which pertain to physical welfare and those which contribute to the
progress of souls, lest the opportunity of reading and education be denied
poor children who cannot be aided by the resources of their parents, let some
sufficient benefice be set aside in every cathedral church for a master who
shall teach the clergy of the same church and poor scholars gratis, whereby
the need for a teacher shall be met and the way to knowledge opened to
learners.11
When studia generalia began to develop the characteristic structures of
universities in the later twelfth century, they introduced several new elements
into students’ experience: legal privileges protecting students, the right to
strike under adverse conditions, the practical necessity of academic travel, and
systematized training in both the artes and higher disciplines such as civil and
canon law, theology, and medicine. For historians, the increasingly intricate
structures of the universities also generated a wealth of sources about learners’
experiences, often filtered through a bureaucratic lens. By the end of the
Middle Ages, university statutes were precise about not only how students were
supposed to study (in fifteenth-century Leipzig, “two or three students at the
most” could share books during a lecture, and missing more than two lectures
resulted in penalties) but also how they were supposed to behave outside of
class (for example, the prohibition against “horrible clamors at nighttime in the
manner of wild asses”).12
In the later Middle Ages, in urban areas, in addition to the established options
for training, there were some new possibilities. Both boys and girls could receive
108 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

some education in the context of an apprenticeship. In the pre-teen or teenage

years, they would go to the home of a master craftsperson to live, and the
details of this arrangement often involved a stipulation that apprentices learn
at least basic literacy and numeracy. In addition, some urban areas offered the
possibility of contracting with a nonclerical instructor for children’s education.13
Such schools emerged early in highly urbanized Italy, and Italian cities were also
early to contract with instructors to provide subsidized education for citizens;
learners paid set amounts for achieving specific educational objectives (such as
learning the alphabet). Both women and men taught, and both boys and girls
learned; girls’ educational opportunities, however, waned after the level of basic
literacy, though they could continue at a convent or with a tutor. After learning
to read in the vernacular, boys might go on to learn abaco (not merely the use
of the abacus but commercial numeracy) and a few went on to study Latin
grammar.14 Giovanni Villani’s reckoning of Florentine students in the early
fourteenth century provides a sense of the scope and scale of such training:
“We find that the boys and girls learning to read are from eight to ten thousand.
The boys learning abbaco and arithmetic, in six schools, from one thousand to
twelve hundred. And those who are learning grammar and logic, in four large
schools, from 550 to 600.”15
Villani’s account of girls studying is somewhat unusual, not in that they were
studying but in that their presence was noted. In general, the more ad hoc the
system of education, the more likely it was to be accessible to women, and the
less likely it was to generate historical records. Programmatic statements about
women’s education are highly dependent on context, following the broader
preoccupations of medieval European commentators. In the writings of the
early fourteenth-century lawyer Pierre Dubois, who proposed a far-reaching
crusade scheme in De recuperatione terrae sanctae, the education of women was
intended to be deployed as a tactic in a colonial enterprise. Dubois proposed
founding provincial schools for boys and girls, selecting promising learners at
the age of four or five, and preparing them to be sent abroad by teaching them
Latin, Greek, Arabic, and other vernacular languages of the Holy Land as well
as grammar, logic, and articles of faith. Girls in particular, he suggests, should
learn medicine and surgery, and prepare themselves to marry infidels and direct
their future families toward Catholic beliefs.16 Although the scheme did not
take off, it provides a sense of how women’s education in particular could be
imagined as a means to a specific religious and political end.

PERSPECTIVES ON THE LEARNER

The learning process, for better or for worse, is strongly conditioned by the
attitudes of teachers and society toward the learner and the enterprise of learning,
so it is worth considering how medieval commentators perceived learners.
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 109

Though in practice learning might begin at any age, commentators on pedagogy

in many medieval contexts recommended beginning in early childhood, when
the intellect and character were most receptive. References to adult learning—
for instance, Einhard’s assessment that Charlemagne began learning to write too
late in life—reinforce this perception.17 Discussions of the learner brought to
bear theories of child development, grounded in practical ideas and experiences
of health and childrearing. At the earliest phase of language acquisition, for
instance, medical and dietetic texts recommended rubbing babies’ mouths with
various foods (rock salt, honey, butter, barley milk) and repeating easy words
to them to encourage speech.18
Theories of human development influenced ideas about learning for school-
aged children, first by defining what school-aged meant. Isidore of Seville in
the seventh century identified age seven as the end of infancy, an appropriate
moment to begin formal learning, and this scheme was particularly influential.
The medically contextualized argument of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) in the eleventh
century proposed that children are ready to attend school when they have
achieved sufficient linguistic and cognitive development and focus, usually at
age six.19 Other medieval Islamic commentators identified seven as the “age
of discernment,” and many proverbs reinforced the notion that youthful
minds were receptive and retentive.20 In his thirteenth-century health treatise,
Aldobrandino of Siena suggests that at age seven children can be sent to
school, away from home, but to a master who knows how to teach without
beating.21 Medieval Jewish students approaching the study of Hebrew were
encouraged to begin at the age of six or seven by various authorities including
Maimonides.22
Even outside of health literature, many medieval writers approached
education with a sensitivity to children’s developmental stages. In the fifth
century, Jerome, writing to Gaudentius about the education of his baby daughter
Pacatula, recognized that young learners required particular pedagogical
approaches, asking reasonably, “How can you urge self-control on a child who
still craves after cakes, who babbles softly in her mother’s arms, and finds honey
sweeter than words?”23 He prescribes a course of study that will eventually
include the “alphabet, spelling, grammar, and syntax,” but also recommends
various enticements for learning: “To get her to repeat her lessons in her little
shrill voice she must have a prize of a honey cake offered to her. She will do
her work quickly if she is going to receive as reward some sweetmeat, or bright
flower or glittering bauble, or pretty doll.”24 The contexts in which medieval
students learned, and the directions of their education, varied widely across
the Middle Ages. But there was broad agreement about when learning should
begin, and how education should be calibrated for the development of the early
learner.
110 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIRST STEPS IN LEARNING

To this the master said: And first, explain where you think you
should most appropriately begin your discussion?
Student: Where else, master, but from the letter?25

This excerpt from the grammatical dialogue attributed to Alcuin of York around
the turn of the ninth century demonstrates a widespread perspective in medieval
European commentaries on education: the letters of the alphabet are the point
of entry into all learning. Jerome’s enumeration of the “alphabet, spelling,
grammar, and syntax” as the opening moves in formal education is typical. Even
less programmatic texts reveal that a progression from letters to syllables to words
to discourse was the expected learning trajectory. In a miracle story recounted
by Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of
the English People) (c. 731), John of Inderauuda (Beverley) is placed in the
unusual pedagogical position of healing a mute boy and teaching him language.
After making the sign of the cross on the learner’s tongue and instructing him
to say the word gæ (yes), the bishop proceeds to teach the names and sounds of
the letters, syllables, and words until the boy is finally able to communicate his
thoughts.26 For most learners, of course, the process was not nearly so efficient,
but the general trajectory seems to have been widespread. Medieval school
texts emphasize the centrality of the letters, citing evidence such as the pseudo-
etymological derivation of littera from “legentibus iter” (path for readers).27 As
one commentary put it, “The letters are the foundation of wisdom […] without
letters, the arts are not able to exist.”28 The letters were treated not merely as
instrumental or propaedeutic but as a topic worthy of study and contemplation,
integrated with religious, moral, and philosophical doctrine.
If the letters were somewhat abstract, the process of mastering them was less
so. Learners studied alphabets on tablets of various formats and sang alphabet
songs.29 Some learning environments featured alphabets on walls, and learners
might even internalize their lessons with the assistance of letter-shaped biscuits.30
In northern European (Ashkenazic) Jewish communities, a tradition of educational
acculturation dictated that a child of five or six years old, on the occasion of
beginning formal schooling, receive a tablet with the letters of the alphabet covered
in honey for the child to lick off, as well as cake and eggs with inscribed letters
and Bible verses.31 Having mastered the alphabet, students in formal educational
contexts accessed literacy by first learning to read (and later write) combinations
of letters. Medieval accounts of elementary education outline this path to literacy.
As a commentary attributed to Remigius of Auxerre in the ninth century put it:
students are first instructed to recognize letters and syllables, then to
assemble the parts of those, then to have expertise in the parts; when he
has learned these things, the dedicated student should learn the names of
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 111

syllables and accents and the rest, so that he comes to the point where he
knows how to avoid barbarism and other errors.32
In the late fourteenth century John Wycliffe alluded to a similar program: “a child
first learns the alphabet, secondly how to form syllables, thirdly how to read,
and fourthly how to understand.”33 In other words, it was expected that learners
would practice decoding essentially meaningless syllables before approaching
short words, longer words, and phrases. This system was widespread. Among
the thousands of manuscripts stored by the Jewish community of Fustat
(Old Cairo) over centuries in the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, because
they included names of God or the Hebrew alphabet, numerous ephemeral
documents survive that shed light on the process of acquiring literacy. Such
sources suggest that learners in medieval Jewish communities were tasked with
learning letters in pairs—combinations of consonants, and then consonants
with vowel points—before progressing to the decoding of language.34
The sources that give us a sense of how medieval learners became literate
come mostly from the official end of the educational spectrum: commentaries,
pedagogical treatises, and descriptions of learning processes. It is likely that
much literacy acquisition, especially in domestic settings, flew under the radar,
and whereas official methods of training emphasized the orderliness of the
alphabet and syllables, learners in more casual contexts may have gained literacy
more holistically, by learning to recognize entire words visually and “cracking
the code” of writing. Scattered accounts of medieval autodidacts suggest that
this was the case.35
In many medieval European contexts, particularly before the twelfth century
when vernacular literacy became more widespread, literacy acquisition was
concurrent with the acquisition of Latin as a foreign language. The process
of acquiring literacy as well as basic Latin relied heavily on the reading,
memorization, and recitation of the Psalter, to such an extent that the word
psalteratus could refer to a reader in a generalized way. The extent to which
students actually acquired Latin comprehension or fluency through the process
of learning the alphabet, syllables, and the Psalter is difficult to assess; in any
case, literacy was no guarantee of foreign-language competence. Chaucer, in
his Prioress’s Tale, imagines a young chorister who has learned the liturgy but
cannot, as yet, understand what he is singing.36 A similar situation existed in
medieval Jewish learning contexts, where “it is likely that there was a time-span
in the learning process during which the child was able to read [Hebrew] with
some fluency, without understanding a word of what he was reading.”37
Learners reached the threshold of literacy in many different settings, with
assistance from many different guides, but mastery of the Psalter forms a
common thread in basic literacy instruction. This was also an inflection point
where learners’ paths diverged; across the Middle Ages, it was certainly the
112 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

point of maximum educational attrition, the end of the road for many who
set out on it. Hildegard of Bingen, despite being both eclectic and prolific as
an author, was said to have “learned only to read the Psalter, according to the
custom of noble girls.”38 Sometimes an actual miracle was required to enable a
learner to continue past this point, as we find in Odo of Cluny’s tenth-century
Vita of Gerald of Aurillac:
By the grace of divine providence [the child Gerald] applied himself to the
study of letters, but by the will of his parents only to the extent of going
through his psalter; after that he was instructed in the worldly exercises
customary for the sons of the nobility: to ride to hounds, become an archer,
learn to fly falcons and hawks as was customary. But lest given over to
useless pursuits, the time suitable for learning letters should pass without
profit, divine will ordained that he should be sick for a long time with such a
listlessness from weakness that he should be diverted from worldly pursuits
but not hindered in his desire for learning.39

LEARNING MATERIALS
For students who managed to continue in their studies beyond the point of
basic literacy, the materials they encountered reveal surprising consistencies
across time and place. Medieval classroom texts and materials reflect several
influences: the auctoritas of ancient authors and the perspectives of medieval
instructors about students’ intellects and needs. To say that learning became
Christianized at the beginning of the Middle Ages is an oversimplification,
but the changes that learning practices underwent had implications for both
populations of learners and the ways they studied. One significant development
(at least theoretically) at the beginning of the Middle Ages was the codification
of the curriculum into seven liberal arts (Figure 5.1), a concept with classical
roots but organized influentially by Martianus Capella in his fifth-century
work De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology and
Mercury). Martianus remains a profoundly puzzling author but was probably
not a Christian; in any case, De nuptiis is not a Christian-inflected text. And
despite the neat prominence of the seven liberal arts as a scheme of knowledge
organization, they were not always studied equally or in orderly fashion.40 In
medieval schoolbooks, the subject of grammar looms particularly large, since it
occupied an expansive terrain of linguistic training.41
For Latin grammar, students in early medieval Europe inherited a wealth
of late antique grammatical manuals that had some shortcomings in medieval
educational contexts. Some educators worried their materials were not Christian
enough and weighed the pros and cons of continuity, for instance, by evaluating
the credentials of the mid-fourth-century Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus;
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 113

FIGURE 5.1 Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcop?) (active c. 1450–85), Philosophy

Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius, c. 1460–70. Tempera colors, gold leaf,
and gold paint on parchment. J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 42, f. 2v, Los Angeles.

on the one hand, they noted, he was pagan, but on the other hand he was
St. Jerome’s teacher and quite good at Latin.42 Furthermore, Donatus’s Ars minor
had pedagogical shortcomings for second-language Latinists as well, offering only
a third-conjugation verb and categorizing nouns somewhat uselessly by gender
rather than declension. Despite these shortcomings, the works of Donatus (both
his Ars minor and Ars maior) remained the go-to textbooks for centuries, such
that Donatus became a byword for basic education and gave his name to other
elementary grammars not of his composition, an example of which is the main
elementary reader in Italian schools beginning in the thirteenth century, known
in modern scholarship as Ianua (Gateway) from the first word of its prologue.43
The longevity of Donatus and other apparently ill-suited materials in
medieval education was primarily due to their auctoritas: as hard as it might be
to learn from Donatus, it was harder still to presume to improve on his Latin.
Carolingian teachers recognized that the sixth-century grammarian Priscian,
writing Latin grammar for native Greek speakers in Constantinople, was more
useful for second-language Latin instruction, and his abridged De nomine et
pronomine et verbo (On the Noun, Pronoun, and Verb) became a long-standing
handbook (while his Institutiones grammaticae [Principles of Grammar] was
a reference classic). Especially in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, learners
also encountered the first book of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae as a stand-
alone grammar manual. Short texts sprouted up alongside these materials in
schoolbooks, supplementing ancient materials with tables of morphology, lists
of vocabulary, and dialogue texts that approximate “frequently asked questions”
as lifelines to non-native speakers. Furthermore, while in antiquity the standard
arrangement of the educational dialogue was a sort of review session or drill,
with educators posing questions about the material and learners responding,
114 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

this format was inverted in medieval European texts so that the student asked
questions and the master responded—in keeping with pedagogical arguments
that prioritized inquisitiveness on the part of students.44 The same interrogative
spirit is evident in early Islamic pedagogical works, including the Kitāb al-
ʿālim wa-l-mutaʿallim (The Book of the One Who Knows and the One Who
Wants to Know), compiled around the early ninth century ce.45 In Europe, new
learner-oriented grammatical materials came into circulation at the end of the
twelfth century, including the surprisingly popular verse grammar Doctrinale
of Alexander of Villedieu, whose mnemonic utility is attested by the more than
400 manuscripts that survive.46
Sensitivity to learners’ needs clearly entailed an appreciation of principles of
language acquisition and second-language acquisition. The Colloquies of Ælfric
Bata, for instance, composed around 1000 for English-speaking Benedictine
students learning Latin, demonstrate recognition that second-language learners
needed grammar paradigms and memorable dialogues. The colloquies modeled
the Latin needed for students to profess their innocence in an array of tenses:
“I’m not doing anything wrong, I did nothing, I have done nothing, I will do
nothing that might be wrong, God willing!” To help students learn every case of
a rare fourth-declension neuter noun, cornu (horn), the colloquies provide the
following absurd soliloquy: “I want to drink from the horn. I ought to have the
horn, to hold the horn. I am called horn! Horn is my name! I want to live with
the horn, lie with the horn and sleep, to sail, ride, walk, work, and play with the
horn […] and I want to die with the horn!”47
These pedagogical principles also informed second-language instruction in
the later part of the Middle Ages. Walter of Bibbesworth’s thirteenth-century
Tretiz demonstrates similarly playful, memorable, and interactive approaches
to the learning of French as a second language.48 Riddles were part of students’
learning experience from the beginning of the Middle Ages (and before), as
evidenced by the fact that the late antique riddles of Symphosius appear in
schoolbook contexts; among the pedagogical works attributed to Alcuin of York
are riddles as well as amusing problems of logic and mathematics (“A certain
man had to take a wolf, a goat, and a bundle of cabbage across a river, and
wasn’t able to find a boat that could take more than two of them”).49 A richer
body of material intended for learners survives from the late Middle Ages,
making it possible to assess instructional techniques more closely—and there is
ample evidence for dynamic and playful pedagogy. In a late fifteenth-century
manuscript of Latin grammar from the Benedictine cloister of Seligenstadt,
grammatical doctrine is fortified with vernacular explanations, intricate visual
apparatus to show morphology, and whimsical illustrations. “Coniunctio” is
shown memorably by two figures whose beards are tied together, and “ego
lego” (I read) by a short, stout figure engrossed in a book (Figure 5.2).50
Other ludic forms of pedagogy also appear in late medieval school exercises.
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 115

FIGURE 5.2 Inflection of the Latin verb lego, legere, to read. Pen and ink on paper.
Seligenstädter Lateinpädagogik. Universitetsbibliotek MS C 678, fol. 131v. Uppsala.

Around 1445, a student named Walter Pollard who attended a grammar school
in Exeter compiled a set of exercises that included linguistically targeted
“riddles” requiring the learner, for example, to unscramble the syllables “Et
cum bis vo tu ri cum do spi minus o tu” into the more edifying “Dominus
vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.”51
Beginning learners of Latin also encountered a menu of simple reading
material that remained relatively consistent in its contours over many centuries,
particularly the core content of proverbs and fables. By the mid-eleventh
century, Otloh of St. Emmeram noted that the Distichs of Cato and the
fables of Avianus were the works that “almost all masters are accustomed to
read as the first instruction of children.”52 Both of these works seem to have
been composed as elementary school texts. Evidence for their use in the pre-
Carolingian period is sparse, but they were both known to Carolingian masters
and circulated together in some of the earliest manuscripts. The proverbs-and-
fables diet, which had roots in ancient schools, was particularly promoted by
medieval educators on the basis of the moral fiber content it provided. The
famous classical concept of the virtuous orator (“vir bonus, dicendi peritus”: a
good man, skilled in speaking) was endorsed by medieval commentators as the
ideal product of education by the Carolingian period.53
116 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

By the thirteenth century, in medieval European learning environments

the proverbs and fables coalesced into a concrete curriculum, the “Liber
Catonianus” (or sex auctores, “six authors”): the Distichs of Cato,
Theodulus’s Ecloga or Aethiopum terras, Avianus’s Fabulae, Maximianus’s
elegies, Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae, and Statius’s Achilleis.54 This menu,
which survives in many manuscripts, accords with programmatic statements
about learners’ courses of study, like the anonymous note in one manuscript
that directs, “After [the child] has learned the alphabet and been imbued
with the rest of the childish rudiments, he should learn Donatus and that
useful compendium of morality which is popularly thought to be Cato’s, and
should move on from the eclogue of Theodulus […], with all the necessary
little books of basic information already read.”55 By the fourteenth century
the curriculum was morphing into the “Eight Moral Authors” (auctores
octo morales), which circulated together until the sixteenth century, still
emphasizing training in morals alongside correct language but with less
reliance on classical texts.56
Ideas about learners and their individual needs are also apparent in
pedagogical writings. A central current in medieval Christian pedagogical
thought flowed from the psychologically sensitive approach to pastoral care
advocated by Pope Gregory the Great in the Regula pastoralis (commonly
called, in English, Pastoral Care) (c. 590). In the eighth century, Bede applied
this approach to education:
There are a number of ways one ought to address himself to a group with
varying capacities for listening. For not one and the same teaching is suitable
for all: the wise ought to be taught in one way, the unwise in another; the
rich in one way, and poor in another; the healthy in one way, the sick in
another; the old in one way, the young in another.57
Such recommendations were central to many works dealing with education;
Hrabanus Maurus’s ninth-century treatise on the instruction of clerics cites
Gregory in discussing the need to tailor instruction for men and women, those
who are happy and sad, servants and lords, and so forth.58 In educational contexts,
this philosophy meant taking into account the specific intellectual strengths
and weaknesses of students, a sensitive approach shared by commentators in
the Islamic educational tradition.59 At the end of the tenth century, Rather of
Verona enumerated various types of learner:
For there are some so slow of intellect and forgetful that the letters of the
alphabet are difficult, let alone the more difficult subjects of study. Some,
as Augustine says, are so slow that they are not much different from beasts,
others have such a quick mind and wit that they perceive more than they learn
from their masters. Some grasp things with difficulty and lose them easily.
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 117

Others understand with difficulty but retain well what they have understood.
Some understand easily and forget more easily. Some understand easily and
retain well.60
Rather was not the only one to map learners’ capacities along the axes of
understanding and retention; in the 1120s, Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon,
written during his career at the Abbey of St. Victor, also identified the two
necessary qualities for study as sharpness of the mind and a good memory:
“Aptitude gathers wisdom, memory preserves it.”61 For Hugh, a student’s
aptitude was natural but required careful handling on the part of an educator:
he explains that it could be extinguished by excessive work. After all, the other
ingredient of successful learning was inquisitiveness, and in this “the student
needs encouragement rather than instruction.”62
How did learners process the training they received? Given that student
writing was mostly limited to ephemeral materials, most of the sources
that would help us to answer this question have not survived; the problem
is tantalizingly summarized by a line of marginalia that was copied in two
tenth-century manuscripts: “Learn, child, on tablets, so that you may be able
to write on parchments.”63 The learning itself, in other words, happened on
tablets that are mostly lost to us. The most direct evidence of learners and their
early educational experiences therefore comes from the occasional, accidental
survival of ephemera, such as the fragments from the Cairo genizah. Among the
remarkable wooden and birchbark documents that survived in the waterlogged
soil of medieval Novgorod are seventeen birchbarks from the 1220s and
1230s associated with a student named Onfim, who may have been seven or
so at the time of writing.64 The birchbarks allow a hypothetical reconstruction
of Onfim’s learning experience, since they include fragmentary alphabets,
syllables, and excerpts from the Psalter and perhaps a troparion,65 in addition
to fantastical drawings of people and beasts (one bearing the sentence “I am
a beast”).66 One document includes what appears to be a self-portrait labeled
“Onfim” depicting a figure standing on a horse and trampling (spearing?) an
enemy (Figure 5.3).67 These ephemera do not amount to a full reckoning of
Onfim’s student experience, of course, and they leave many questions about
education unanswered, but they suggest the contours of the educational and
mental landscape of a learner in medieval Rus’.

STUDENTS AND DISCIPLINE

What sort of discipline could medieval learners expect to encounter, or endure,
in the course of formal studies? Discourse on medieval scholastic discipline is
a long tradition of intertwined paradigms: on the one hand, the assumption
that harsh physical punishment of learners was required for creating focused,
118 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 5.3 “Self-portrait” of Onfim from Novgorod. Birchbark document no. 200.
State History Museum, Moscow.

disciplined scholars, and on the other hand, concern that such treatment would
turn learners into fearful wretches unfit for study. Classical traditions played a
role in these strands of thought; though in general ancient discourse assumed
bodily discipline held a productive role in the development of students, some
authors such as Quintilian and Plutarch were critical of such practices. This was
a complex tradition, and it remained so in medieval Europe.68
We find a hint of the complexities of medieval thinking about disciplinary
practices for young students in allegorical depictions of the figure Grammatica.
As the first phase of formal education in medieval Europe, grammar has
an interestingly complex valence. In iconography Grammatica is often
identifiable by the broom or paddle she brandishes, sometimes using it on the
naked bottom of a student. But she is also a nurturing figure: whereas other
liberal arts are depicted with tools of their craft (a musical instrument, an
astrolabe), grammar is often shown with a small child as her accessory, whom
she nourishes with her milk (Figure 5.4).69
Commentary traditions on young learners and discipline were also bifurcated.
Some thinkers expressed fear that a shift away from physical punishment would
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 119

FIGURE 5.4 Grammatica. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 7900a, fol. 127v
Paris.

lead to ruin: learners “freed from the fear of scholarly servitude,” as Philip of
Harveng warned in the twelfth century, “because they see that they are kept in
line by no master’s stick, rejoice at roaming through the planes of pleasure.”70
Another perspective is offered by the eleventh-century theologian Anselm of
Canterbury, whose biographer Eadmer recounts that Anselm chastised “a certain
abbot” for relying on harsh physical punishment. Anselm allegedly argued that
such pedagogy is ineffective because it causes students to “think everything you
do to them is provoked by hate and anger,” and proposed instead the model of
a goldsmith who uses his tools in a controlled and productive fashion.71 The
tradition of Islamic educational thought on the issue of discipline is complex as
well. Though physical discipline is discussed in detail in various treatises—Ibn
Saḥnūn (d.256 ah/870 ce) even opined that the teacher is “obliged to obtain [at
120 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

his own expense] the scourge and the device to hold the legs of the delinquent”
rather than making students pay for them72— most authors (including Ibn Saḥnūn)
urge restraint. Ibn Khaldūn (d.808 ah/1406 ce), an influential commentator in
the late Middle Ages, expressed hesitance about the idea of bodily punishment
based on the notion that children are impressionistic and absorb whatever
treatment they are exposed to, and the fear of punishment turns them dishonest
and lethargic; he suggested alternative methods of correction.73
These traditions of thought expressed themselves in complex ways. A pair of
poems by the Carolingian court poet known as “Hibernicus Exul” explores two
perspectives on the learning experience. The first encourages young learners
to apply themselves “while your minds happen to be receptive, my friends,”
because “the age for learning passes swiftly […] the pliant tip of the twig curves
beneath an easy pressure but no one can bend the stiff boughs.”74 The second
poem brandishes the stick: “no boy will go unpunished whether he is younger
or older. The older ones will suffer by being deprived of sweet wine, but lazy
infantes shall be given a thrashing with the whip.”75 The threats are tempered
slightly by a disclaimer that “those who win favour by good conduct will not
be punished.”76
The natural animosity between learners and teachers is a persistent trope
in medieval European texts. In his fourteenth-century Philobiblon, the bishop
and bibliophile Richard de Bury observes that the only masters who “instruct
us without rod or ferule, without angry words […] do not chide if you make
mistakes […] do not laugh at you if you are ignorant” are books—a clear
argument in favor of do-it-yourself learning.77 A twelfth-century schoolbook
with an ownership mark of the bishop and Crusade historian Jacques de Vitry
also includes various marginalia, including an illustration of what appears to
be a student preparing to hit an oblivious-looking master on the head with a
club (Figure 5.5).78 The animosity between learners and educators could also be
deployed for pedagogical purposes. In the colloquies of Ælfric Bata, students
both spy on the master who spies on them as they shirk their schoolwork
(“Look, now he’s standing behind the door and listening to see if we’re reading
or singing anything. Look, now he’s here!”) and suffer the consequences when
the master beats them. One beating-themed colloquy is partly a masterclass
in the rhetorical technique of paraphrase and partly what amounts to a
comedy sketch. To the pupil being beaten for stealing, the master announces
“You’re not dead yet—you’re still alive,” inspiring the hapless student to an
overdramatic aria of lamentation: “I’ve been deserted by all my friends, family,
acquaintances and kin […] Woe, that day when I was born and the day when
man was conceived. Why do I not die? Oh! Poor me! Unlucky me! Oh, I’m in
pain! Ooh, the pain!”79 The colloquies, composed to assist students with Latin
fluency, are not classroom transcripts but clever and memorable manipulations
of school stereotypes.80
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 121

FIGURE 5.5 Master and student marginalia. Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book
Library, Marston, MS 67, fol. 54v. New Haven, Connecticut.

This is not to say that bodily abuse of medieval students was merely a literary
convention. In the eleventh century, Guibert de Nogent’s early education
certainly left a mark, to the extent that his mother hoped he would forgo the
bodily peril posed by clerical training in favor of the apparently more gentle
training for knighthood.81 Some students sought revenge for masters’ misdeeds.
According to Ekkehard of St. Gall, the abbey burned down in 937 because
of a student’s revenge mission gone wrong: “One of the beaten was sent to
the upper part of the building to bring down the sticks stored there. But in
order to liberate himself and his comrades, he took a coal from some oven and
very quickly taking up the dry wood, it burned.”82 Legends from throughout
the Middle Ages tell of students who murdered their instructors with school
122 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

supplies. Of these the most striking is Prudentius’s description of St. Cassian

of Imola in the Peristephanon, so rich in detail that it is a useful source for the
material environment of the late antique classroom:
Some hurl and break on his face their frail tablets; the wood splits as it
crashes against his brow, the waxed boxwood rings out as it strikes against
his bloody cheeks […] from another side others brandish as goads iron styli,
both the end with which the wax is inscribed with the impression of furrows
and that with which strokes already cut are erased and the gleaming level
surface is again restored in place of the rough expanse.83
The poetry of Prudentius formed an important part of the more advanced literary
curriculum in early medieval Europe, so generations of students encountered
this narrative—sometimes with arresting illustrations (Figure 5.6)—as part of

FIGURE 5.6 St. Cassian illustration in Prudentius, Peristephanon. Burgerbibliothek

Cod. 264, fol. 121. Bern. Students murdering their schoolmaster.
LEARNERS AND LEARNING 123

their training. Articulations of desire for learners’ revenge extend to the end
of the Middle Ages. A poem from around 1500 expresses the perspective of a
student: “I wold my master were an hare / & all his bookis howndis were / &
I my self a joly hontere: / to blow my horn I wold not spare! / ffor if he were
dede I would not care.”84

CONCLUSION
Tracing the experiences of learners in medieval Europe entails looking far and
wide: in any given time and place, even the relatively well-defined process of
learning to read could look very different for, say, an adult craftsperson, a
monastic oblate, and a noble girl. When we look more broadly at the experiences
of learners in medieval Europe across time and place, the categories of learner
and the context of the learning experience are even more multifaceted. Even
the relatively tidy-seeming educational structures that appear in programmatic
sources (monastic schools, cathedral schools, song schools, reading schools,
grammar schools, etc.) had more complicated boundaries in reality.
Given the variety of institutional and extra-institutional contexts in which
learning might occur, and the many kinds of learner who encountered them,
it is perhaps surprising to find stable trends in learning materials (especially
at the earliest levels) across time and place. The needs of second-language
learners of Latin remained relatively consistent, so the materials they used
continued to have relevance; a sixth-century student and a fifteenth-century
student could have commiserated about their study of Donatus and compared
notes on beast fables. Although theories about the learner and the process of
knowledge acquisition were not a unified tradition in medieval Europe, strands
of thought—for instance about a learner’s aptitude and the role of bodily
discipline—remained in circulation for many centuries, and in many regions.
Although the majority of medieval writers do not discuss in detail how they
acquired their learning, and the majority of medieval learners left us nothing
at all, the learning we can reconstruct from the sources is thoughtful, complex,
and surprisingly coherent over time.
124
 CHAPTER SIX

Teachers and Teaching

SARAH B. LYNCH AND MARK LEWIS TIZZONI

INTRODUCTION
The teacher was the critical figure in medieval education. He or she was the
guardian and purveyor of knowledge, a link to past masters and the achievements
of future generations. This chapter serves as a broad consideration of the
complex identity of the teacher, formed not just by teachers themselves but
also projected upon them by the societies in which they lived. They could be
respected or despised, comfortable or destitute, brilliant or ignorant, friend
or foe; labels that shifted continuously depending on the place, time, and
individual.1 We will focus on what it meant to be a teacher: how they were
trained, their roles in the classroom, and their position in medieval societies.

HOW TO BECOME A TEACHER

For most teachers during the Middle Ages, there was no specific way to train as a
teacher. Teachers taught what they themselves had learned to a new generation
of pupils and, with the exception of the Islamic tradition and some degrees in
grammar conferred by a handful of universities in the later Middle Ages, there
was no official teaching qualification. A teacher’s success depended not on their
credentials but on their ability in the classroom, or rather ability to attract and
retain pupils. Their preparation was no different than classmates who might
have gone on to become merchants or craftsmen or housewives. It was what
they did with their education that made them teachers.
126 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

There was no real difference between the preparation of “classical” and

“medieval” teachers. As the late Roman Empire fragmented, pupils in schools
from Frankish Gaul to Vandal North Africa and across to the eastern Roman
Empire adopted the profession of teacher without specialized training. Augustine
of Hippo (d.430) attended the same classes in grammar and rhetoric as did
his counterparts who did not later become teachers of grammar and rhetoric
as he did. Indeed, it was Augustine who best expressed the aim of classical
education: “to learn the art of words, to acquire the elegance that is essential
to persuade men of your case, to unroll your opinions before them.”2 Such an
aim was exceptionally broad but it was also exceptionally flexible and useful in
many careers, including teaching. Such an approach to education easily became
the bedrock of Christian education with minimal adjustment. This is why late
antique teachers, when they reflected on their own school days, did not discuss
any kind of special stream for would-be professors. This is particularly striking
in the Anthologia Latina (c. 530), a compilation of poetry assembled mostly by
the grammar and rhetoric teachers of Carthage over a century after the death of
Augustine.3 Much like Augustine, they reminisced about what texts they read at
school in the Forum or their youthful forays into composition. Indeed, several
of the poems in the Anthologia Latina may well have been school exercises;
these would have been excellent preparation for the future teacher but could
likewise appeal to future functionaries, clerics, military commanders, and other
professionals. While the contributors to the Anthologia Latina often express
their identity as teachers, they provide no real clues as to how they acquired
those roles.
This informal approach to teacher training endured in more intentional
Christian contexts, such as schools attached to the households of bishops
and early monastic communities. Although the teacher was a central figure
in cathedrals and monasteries, there was still no explicit path to becoming a
teacher. Early talent and interest in the material being taught appears to have
been the most important qualification, alongside a strong moral character.
Pupils were thus identified as prospective teachers and given encouragement and
support, becoming their teachers’ protégés and then future replacements. The
difficulty for the historian in, for example, studying the ecclesiastical schools of
sixth- and seventh-century Spain is that people who acted as teachers were not
always identified explicitly as teachers, especially within their own lifetimes.
Eugenius II of Toledo, bishop of Toledo (r.647–57), was first sent to school
at the cathedral school of Toledo (likely the household of the then bishop) to
prepare for a secular career but “fled” to the monastery of Abbot Braulio at
Zaragoza at the age of twelve in order to become a monk. He appears to have
been a favored subordinate of Braulio who was himself a prodigious talent-
spotter, having encouraged Isidore of Seville in his work. Eugenius, in turn,
became a mentor to other young clerics and monastics, and his published verse,
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 127

FIGURE 6.1 “Chariot Mount with Three Figures,” c. 300–500 ce. The men who
adorn this chariot mount are probably two orators and a grammarian, as suggested by
their gestures and by the scrolls and writing tablets they hold. The piece may have been
used to decorate the chariot of a distinguished orator in Gaul. Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York.

consisting of dozens of short pieces on everything from salt to the toughness

of peacock’s flesh, possess a clear connection to the teaching of Latin at an
introductory level. Both his successors, Ildefonsus of Toledo (r.657–67) and
Julian II of Toledo (r.680–90), referred to him as their teacher.4 In turn,
Ildefonsus set up a school modeled on Eugenius’s, and Julian worked as a
teacher at one point in his career and went on to write a textbook on grammar.5
Eugenius, therefore, trained to be a teacher simply through the mentorship of
his teachers and proceeded to produce teachers from his household/school in
Toledo. There does not appear to have been any special instruction.
128 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Indeed, being bishop or abbot meant being a teacher. This pattern is replicated
across Christianized areas of Europe in the early Middle Ages. The first step in
this career was to become part of a bishop’s household. At the beginning of the
ninth century, a young noble called Aldric was raised in a bishop’s household,
clearly with the view of becoming a cleric. At the age of twelve, however, his
father sent him to the Carolingian court in order to become a soldierly retainer.
This was not to the liking of young Aldric who, in his mid-teens, managed to
persuade Louis the Pious to release him to the cathedral at Metz to continue his
studies. He was made cantor and master of the schools there after his ordination
in 819 and later became bishop of Le Mans.6 Aldric became a teacher because
he was considered particularly intelligent and disciplined, not because he had
received a different education than his peers or any sort of specialized teacher
training. Nevertheless, the teacher still had to be exceptional since so much
of the reputation of a cathedral or monastery was based on the eminence and
ability of its school.
Becoming a teacher in the Islamic world was much the same as in the
Christian world, with one notable exception. When a pupil finished each level
of religious studies (the Qur’an, the hadith, specific texts, etc.), they received
a certificate of completion, or an ijāza.7 Only when a person had received
such a license could they teach that subject or text. This was more formal a
qualification than what was on offer from Christian teachers before the advent
of European universities in the twelfth century. The focus was on memorization
in the case of elementary texts, meaning that ijāzat were sometimes awarded to
children as young as two.8 Then again, receiving an ijāza did not mean a person
was automatically a teacher. Everyone who completed that particular course of
study was awarded the certificate, not just those who intended to teach. Those
who wished to become important scholars and teachers sought to travel widely
and study with several teachers, receiving multiple diplomas along the way.
For adult students, a convenient way to access a selection of teachers was to
join the many pilgrim caravans as they wound their way across the Middle East
and Central Asia. One scholar, Ibn ‘Asākir, made two “study trips” between
1126 and 1141 from Baghdad to Transoxiana and onto Herat, claiming to have
studied with 1,300 male teachers and eighty female teachers.9 Such travels were
not required, however. What was valued in the medieval Islamic world (and
beyond) was who taught whom, the descent of knowledge from one generation
to the next. Sources from the Islamicate world emphasized three aspects of
education: “numbers, names, and titles, i.e. the numbers of teachers and studied
texts and the names of teachers and texts.”10 It was the act of passing this on
that made someone a teacher.
The advent of the university in twelfth-century Europe did not lead to
specific training for elementary and grammar teachers, but it did gradually
result in the emergence of requirements in order to become a teacher. This
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 129

development, however, was uneven, and by the end of the Middle Ages most
teachers did not have degrees and would not have been expected to have them.
Although Oxford University began to offer master’s and bachelor’s degrees
in grammar in the late Middle Ages, only a few individuals received them;
by the beginning of the sixteenth century these degrees were being conferred
on experienced grammar teachers with no university education.11 Only in
the universities were officially awarded diplomas required to teach, and each
university developed its own regulations in order to decide who had a right
to do so.12 In most universities and across most disciplines, students who
had completed a certain number of courses and had been in attendance for a
certain number of years could be presented by a professor to a committee made
up of administrators such as the rector and chancellor. If candidates met the
requirements, they would then undergo a “private examination” by a similarly
illustrious committee in their field. At this point, they would receive a license in
their subject but not the right to teach. That privilege was only endowed after
a “public examination,” which was not really an exam at all but a ceremony
(usually in a church) where the successful candidates were invested with their
status, followed by a public display of their academic prowess. Despite the
apparent formalization of the process, these professors did not undergo any
special training in order to teach: they had simply demonstrated a mastery of
their subject and received the title master (for arts) or doctor (for theology).
Furthermore, most teachers at medieval universities were not masters or
doctors. Most such duties were carried out by those who had completed fewer
courses, such as baccalarii (bachelors) or licentiati (those who had passed their
private exams but did not have the financial means or connections to achieve
a public examination).13
University training did not necessarily give someone an edge in becoming a
teacher—or rather a respected teacher—in elementary and grammar schools.
According to Conrad von Megenberg, the author of a fourteenth-century
educational treatise, there were four kinds of teacher: “For one man is master
in title and reality, another in reality but not in title, a third in title but not in
reality, a fourth neither in title nor reality but in name only.”14 This statement
underscored what was really valued in a medieval school teacher: effectiveness
and results. It did not matter whether a teacher had the “right” degrees from a
prestigious university, what mattered was that they were able to do the job of
imparting knowledge and skills to the next generation. The same author goes
on to praise the teacher without official title in particular:
The master in reality but not in title is he who has the treasure of science
and the heritage of virtue but does not have a privileged title. And he is
like a noble[man], strong and praiseworthy in arms, who has not yet been
knighted.15
130 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Even when would-be employers sought “masters in arts” (that is, university
graduates), effectiveness and the personal attributes of the teacher appear to
have taken precedence. As towns and cities grew in the later Middle Ages,
municipal governments sought to augment the prestige of their hometowns and
help train the next generation of leaders and functionaries by attracting good
teachers with sometimes lucrative contracts. The central Italian city of Pistoia,
for example, recorded their search for a communal schoolmaster in the 1360s
and we can see clearly what they wanted in a master.16 Degrees were all well
and good but what they really wanted was competence along with willingness
to move, willingness to accept the agreed-upon salary, and decent health.
They were far more interested in the healthy 35-year-old master from Colle
di Valdelsa who “taught Vergil, Lucan, and all other authors, even Dante, plus
rhetoric, to those who cared to listen” than the poorly 60-year-old master from
Siena with his “degrees in grammar, philosophy, and rhetoric.”17 It helped that
the first teacher was also happy to be paid 40 percent less than the second.
In the later Middle Ages, even with the substantial rise in schooling and
literacy, most teachers were still without title and their training did not
differ from those who went on to other professions and careers. Like many
professions in the Middle Ages, teachers were often following in the footsteps
of their parents. In 1449, the schoolmistress Raulina was given a license to
teach in the parish of Saint-Eustache in Paris. She appears to have taken over
the position from her mother.18 Career trajectories such as these suggest that
teaching was much like any other job in the Middle Ages—a position that could
be inherited. Would-be instructors did not undergo teacher training as much as
become apprentices to their elders, educated by them and ultimately taking over
the role of teacher from them. This familial approach to becoming a teacher
was not limited by blood or claims of kinship; as we will see below, teachers
and their pupils—especially those pupils who were seen as potential intellectual
successors—frequently developed intense relationships.
Teaching was sometimes a profession that one fell into out of necessity. For
people ranging from those who could read and write to university graduates,
becoming a teacher could be accidental, a means to earn money in a difficult
moment or when all other avenues had been closed. For many masters of arts
from English universities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, teaching
represented only one (early) stage in their careers before they received a parish
or other employment.19 An example of an accidental teacher is Abū Ja’far al-
Khāzin (d.c. 971). He was a functionary at the court of the emirs of Samarkand
who sent him as an envoy to the emir of Rayy, Rukn al-Dawla. Al-Khāzin clearly
impressed Rukn al-Dawla as the emir persuaded him to remain at his court to
teach his children.20 This was a respectable position and there is no sense that
al-Khāzin felt he had diminished himself by accepting such a role. Teaching
was more of a comedown for the twelfth-century Byzantine teacher, John
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 131

Tzetzes.21 He was a career civil servant under one Issac Komnenos (possibly
the son of Alexios I Komnenos), governor of the city of Berroia in northern
Greece, but had to leave in disgrace after an alleged affair with the governor’s
wife. He ended up in Constantinople where he “resorted to teaching.”22 Despite
his scandalous entry into the profession, Tzetzes did well as a teacher, but he
never managed to enter the upper echelons of the city’s intellectuals, much to
his chagrin.

FIGURE 6.2 “Letters of the Anonymous Professor.” The sole surviving copy of the
correspondence of a struggling and under-appreciated teacher based in tenth-century
Constantinople. Additional MS 36749, British Library.
132 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

THE NATURE OF A TEACHER

Teachers in the Middle Ages developed relationships with their students
in order to achieve their primary goal: the effective transmission of their
knowledge and skills. These relationships took many—often unexpected—
forms and so the teacher had to play many roles, even within the same
classroom. With some pupils, they were authoritarian; with others, they
adopted the language of friendship and even love. More extreme methods
were sometimes adopted, all in pursuit of learning or, at the very least, good
behavior. The ability to establish manifold relationships with their charges—
and to be adaptable based on the nature of the pupil—was considered by
contemporaries as a sign of being a good teacher. “The Commendation of
the Clerk” was clear that what worked for one pupil might be a catastrophic
tactic for another: “Therefore let the teacher of boys so direct them that he
corrects the timid by words, masters the frivolous with rods, and bestows
upon each according to his exigencies the gift of letters.”23 The medieval
teacher, therefore, was urged to create strong bonds with their pupils and
students in order to lead them through their studies. As a result, it is inaccurate
to ascribe one nature or one method to the medieval teacher. Nevertheless,
certain trends emerge, such as teachers casting themselves as disciplinarian,
parent, master, friend, and even antihero.
The continuity of many aspects of classical education in late antiquity
included the employment of corporal punishment. An eternal feature of
childhood reminiscences before the mid-twentieth century, how teachers
corrected their pupils was key in creating the atmosphere of the classroom and
the relationships that flourished within it. It was also pedagogically important;
too strict or too lax could impede learning. These concerns were played out
in the early sixth-century verse of Luxorius, who was himself most likely a
grammar teacher in or around Carthage. Two of his poems from the Anthologia
Latina serve as critiques of these extremes. In poem 96, the teacher does not
use any corporeal punishment, allowing the boys to discard their writing tablets
and take to playing the games of the Floralia festival, which involved throwing
beans and lentils around.24 In poem 294, the teacher had the opposite problem,
descending into a rage at any transgression. Luxorius denounced him: “You are
not worthy to be named among the grammarians but rather among evildoers
such as Orestes.”25 Both poems show the difficulties arising when teachers do
not master their own nature, comparing a teacher who did not have a handle
on his classroom to a teacher who did not have a handle on himself. Such
chaotic scenes, however, were not the only reality. Luxorius himself had fond
memories of his schooldays—though given his later career, he was probably a
motivated and bright pupil.26 The nature and actions of teacher and pupil were
key to a successful educational experience.
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 133

The spread of Christianity throughout Europe did not, in itself, change the
nature of the teacher or the relationships teachers had, and could have, with their
pupils. Certain innovations within Christianity, however, such as monasticism,
did result in a shift of emphasis. The schools of late antiquity that operated in
the cities of the western empire in particular appear to have declined, while
the church and the courts of the successor states still needed literate men.27
For both clerical and lay rulers, fosterage emerged and this impacted the role
teachers now played in these new structures. The king’s household became a
school, where the sons of his retainers were sent to train but also be acculturated
as loyal servants and warriors. The bishop’s household served the same role for
those intended for the clergy, and the bishop often took on the dual role of
bishop, teacher, and even father. Nicetius, archbishop of Lyon (d.573), was
responsible for the education of boys in his household.28 Many entered under
the guardianship of bishops as young as age three, thus substantially changing
the dynamic of the pupil-teacher relationship.29 For example, Gregory of Tours
(c. 538–94) recalled the following from his time under the tutelage of Nicetius:
I remember in my youth, when I was beginning to learn how to read, and
was in my eighth year, that he ordered my unworthy self to come to his
bed, where he took me in his arms with the sweetness of paternal affection,
holding his fingers on the edges of his garment he covered himself with it so
well that my body was never touched by his blessed limbs.30
This was not seen as inappropriate but as the act of a caring parent, building
bonds between the teacher and their pupil.31
Close relationships between masters and pupils were a feature of schools
in the central Middle Ages. For example, in monastic and clerical schools of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and despite being outwardly stoic, teachers
often focused on establishing intimate emotional bonds with their students.32
Many of the examples of these deeply paternal, fraternal, and even amorous
relationships are those that took place between teachers and older students
where the age gap may not have been marked, but there is no indication that
there was a lower limit. Indeed, the manipulation and performance of emotion
was considered a viable pedagogical tool.33 Students who came through this
emotional education often became attached to their masters, creating links that
endured beyond their schooldays. When master Constant of Luxueil died in
the early eleventh century, his ex-student Gudius wrote a flowery yet sincere
elegy for his old teacher, recollecting that he “taught through kindness not fear”
and that he “lived up to his own name as the most constant.”34 Through this
“charismatic pedagogy” the teacher became a template for students to copy.35
In another example, Goswin of Mainz (eleventh century) heaped praise on
his student, Walcher, for becoming his teacher: “While others present at my
instruction were hardly able to reproduce their teacher’s words in speech or
134 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

writing, you seemed to transform yourself altogether into your master.”36 In

order to achieve this transformation, a close relationship had to be formed.
Admiration would breed emulation, and the student would subsume the
knowledge that the teacher wished to convey.
These loving bonds were not, however, standard, even in the monastic and
cathedral schools of the ninth to twelfth centuries. In fact, some surviving texts
suggest that teachers faced a combative atmosphere in the classroom. Certain
teachers sought to harness this negative energy, using the pent-up frustrations
of their pupils as a pedagogical tool. A possible example of this method comes
from a late tenth-century text from Winchester, the Altercatio magistri et
discipuli (The Dispute of Master and Student). Here, an anonymous student
eviscerated his teacher, a Welshman named Iorvert.
The cunning and unsavory rascal bears a resemblance to such a monstrosity,
the monster, the foolish slanderer, the crazy buffoon […] accustomed in his
own country to caring for pigs or to carrying goats back to the house at night
on his shoulders.37
This vicious invective, which included obvious xenophobia toward the Welsh,
might appear to be another case of a teacher losing control of their pupils
(Figure 6.3). The brutal attack, however, was written in adonic meter, a
poetic convention originating in Sapphic verse, used by Roman writers such
as Catullus and for composing hymns in the Middle Ages. In other words,
this poem was no mean feat, and scholars now think these student ragings
were encouraged by—and even conducted by—teachers.38 The teachers in
these cases seem to have cast themselves in the role of stooge, understanding
the natural tensions of the classroom and harnessing them in order to teach
more effectively. These were fun exercises that allowed pupils to vent their
frustrations and still learn what the teacher needed them to learn. This
approach may not have been an innovation of the central Middle Ages,
considering Luxorius, the sixth-century grammarian discussed above, was an
enthusiastic producer of invective.
The Islamic world also privileged the relationship between teacher and
student. Firstly, a custom developed from the ninth century onwards for
teaching the Qur’an and hadith—which traditionally took place in mosques
and later madrasas. The teacher would sit with his back against a pillar, facing
in the direction of Mecca, and his students would arrange themselves in a circle
in front of him.39 While there was no Qur’anic basis for this format, custom
held that this was the way the Prophet Muhammad instructed his companions,
in order to “reproduce the experience of virtuous Muslims in the past, […] to
establish oneself at the end of a chain of virtuous Muslims reaching back to the
Prophet.”40 The teacher was not Muhammad—that would be sacrilege—but
he (or she) was urged to model themselves on him as the perfect teacher. This
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 135

FIGURE 6.3 St. Felix killed by his pupils: Legenda Aurea, c. 1445–60. M. 672, fol.
87r, Morgan Library.

focus on authority, on the handing on of knowledge through the generations,

was also found in Christian and Jewish education.
Secondly, warm master/disciple affiliations were as much a marker of the
medieval Islamicate world as the teacher/student relations in Christendom.
Under the Abbasids and Buyids in the tenth and eleventh centuries, stories of the
master-student/father-son relationship between Aristotle and Alexander were
widely circulated.41 Indeed, this interpersonal connection was valued over the
institution or classmates.42 Once this relationship was established, students often
136 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

continued to praise and defend their teacher(s) long afterwards, since their own
reputations depended on that of their instructor. For instance, Muhammad bin
Ahmed al-Shanni (late tenth century) wrote an entire treatise on determining
the area of a triangle because his old teacher had been challenged on this
point.43 Since individual teachers were the ones who certified students’ ijāzat or
diplomas of completion for each text studied, this created a documented link
between the two.
Growing class sizes could radically change the relationship between teachers
and their pupils and students. There was high demand for schooling in larger
urban areas (such as Constantinople) and in cities and towns in Western Europe
after the eleventh century.44 As a result, the number of teachers grew too,
especially where regulation did not exist or was applied unevenly. Furthermore,
“corporate” educational structures, such as universities and madrasas, witnessed
a proliferation of professors teaching hordes of students. At times, this affected
the bond between teacher and pupil. Higher numbers of students, sometimes
numbering more than one hundred, required more assistants, and these were
usually drawn from the older/more-advanced students, leaving to the teacher
the role of examiner (simply checking the work was completed) and punisher.
Such discipline was needed, if only to control the multitude. This change in role
could also lead to accusations of poor instruction. An anonymous teacher from
tenth-century Constantinople, who appears to have run a busy academy, had to
defend this method to an irate guardian: “I entrust the care of the young to my
senior pupils, and I am sure they have not been remiss (see Figure 6.2).”45 The
fatherly teacher could become quite distant at times, with “teaching” conveyed
through intermediaries. In the cathedral schools of later medieval Europe, the
master often transitioned to an administrative role, a kind of principal who
usually did not teach the boys in his charge. At the cathedral of Saint-Jean in
Lyon, the titular schoolmaster had no apparent contact with the pupils there,
with a vice-master managing the school. Teaching was done by masters of
grammar and song, and the vice-master then examined the boys every evening
to check on their progress and disciplined them for any misdemeanors they may
have committed during the day.46
Despite these challenges, the relationship between teachers and pupils and
the nature of their role in the minds of those pupils was still important. The
teacher still had to be a moral person, whether they were instructing the sons of
merchant princes in Italian city-states or would-be clerics and monastics.47 He or
she still had to act as a template, a person whose thoughts and actions should be
mirrored. This continuance of “charismatic pedagogy” is evident in the writings
of Jean Gerson (d.1429), particularly in his recommendations for the choirboys
at the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. The master of the boys had to be
“untainted” or “most incorrupt […] because what will the student do if not that
which he sees the master doing.”48 Quoting Juvenal, Gerson stated that “no one
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 137

should sin before [a boy’s] eyes, neither by repulsive and obscene word, nor by a
deceitful and dissolute gesture or touch, nor by a wanton and evil deed.”49 The
masters were not only meant to be living illustrations of the highest standards of
morality and learning, but also they had to constantly exhibit these standards to
their pupils. This was considered the true nature of the teacher and the purest
form of teaching: to be wholly present, to demonstrate erudition and right
behavior, and to play whatever role necessary—be it father or friend or even
villain—to teach their pupils.
While the teacher could play the role of parent, many parents did teach
their own children. Both mothers and fathers were expected to teach their
children prayers if they were able to do so. Medieval luminaries such
as Guibert, abbot of Nogent (d.1124), and Louis IX of France (d.1270)
were instructed by their mothers on topics ranging from basic literacy to
statecraft.50 Dhuoda (ninth century) and Christine de Pizan (d.1429) wrote
treatises for the benefit of their own children. Indeed, the iconography of
Grammar herself is motherly in nature, wielding a rod or bundle of twigs but
also nurturing and supporting her charges. As Annemarieke Willemsen has
pointed out, Grammar is the only personification of the liberal arts depicted
with her pupils, underlining her—and other women’s—position as instructor
(Figure 6.4).51 While most mothers who taught their children are hidden to
history, since their activities took place within the home, images of women as
teachers—from Grammar herself to scenes of Saint Anne teaching the Virgin
Mary how to read—filled the public buildings of later medieval Europe.52
When the Franciscan Alexander of Hales (c. 1185–1245) described various
teaching levels, he noted that even an old woman could instruct children
in the simple elements of the faith.53 A female teacher, therefore, was not a
strange concept to the medieval mind.

THE TEACHER IN SOCIETY

Just as the teacher had many guises they could employ in the classroom,
the medieval teacher could occupy varied positions in social and economic
hierarchies.54 Position was based on a set of factors, such as the value their
own community and culture placed on education, the educational and social
background of the teacher, what they were teaching, the type of pupil(s), etc. In
all of this, how teachers were perceived by society was crucial to what role they
were assigned in it, sometimes independent of wealth or status. Furthermore,
teachers of all ranks played a vital part in cultural and scholarly production
throughout the Middle Ages. These contributions, especially by those not
associated with universities and prestigious religious institutions, are sometimes
overlooked.
138 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 6.4 “Personification of Grammar,” Chartres Cathedral c. 1145–55. Public

domain.
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 139

The classical tradition, at least in sociopolitical terms, cherished teachers. In

the cities of the fourth to sixth centuries, being a schoolmaster was a respectable
career choice. By 500, even in the face of declining urban areas, teachers of
grammar and of rhetoric were still able to claim their right to senatorial rank
after twenty years of teaching.55 Nowhere were they more celebrated than in
Vandal North Africa, leading the poet Florentinus to proclaim: “Carthage,
richly adorned with studies, Carthage, well equipped with teachers.”56 Even
though Luxorius painted a grim vision of inept teachers in some of his poems
mentioned above, he himself was a teacher of grammar and circulated amongst
the Romano-African and Vandal elites. Indeed, the entire Anthologia Latina
seems to revolve around teachers and schools. Furthermore, the project appears
to have been an effort to create an expression of a cohesive Vandal/Romano-
African cultural identity at a time of political crisis and increasing external
threats. These teachers were considered influential enough—both by themselves
and their society—to attempt to encourage a sort of “group feeling” that would
lead ultimately to a stronger, more united, state.57
The role of the teacher continued to be one of importance in early medieval
Europe. As noted above, the role of bishop or abbot was regularly combined
with that of teacher. There is also no suggestion that these ecclesiastical masters
limited their pedagogical activities to older students and advanced topics. Saint
Jerome himself, after all, had stated that there was no shame in teaching the
very young, and bishops such as Nicetius followed his example.58 The bishops
of Toledo in the seventh century (Eugenius II, Ildefonsus, Julian) taught and/or
wrote substantially for the classroom. The practice of clerical fosterage in the
households of senior priests and child oblation in monasteries made this even
more likely.59 Even when religious institutions became larger and more complex
and bishops and abbots turned toward more political and administrative roles,
the teacher was still considered vital to the health of the church. After all,
poorly educated pastors with a tenuous grasp on Latin and Scripture might
result in heresy and apostasy, and the reputation of monasteries and convents
as centers of piety and learning rested on the reputation of their instructors.
Furthermore, the connection between teachers and high ecclesiastical office was
not completely broken. Both Bishop Aldric of Le Mans (ninth century) and
Bishop Lietbert of Cambrai (eleventh century) had served as teachers before
their elevation to the episcopacy.60 Gerbert of Aurillac (d.1003), onetime
imperial tutor and teacher at the cathedral of Reims, became Pope Sylvester II.
Even in the order of precedence in cathedrals in the thirteenth century, the
master of the schools was given a place of honor in the choir.61 Many who
succeeded to the role of teacher came from elite backgrounds.62
Not all teachers found themselves in such comfortable situations.
A tenth-century schoolmaster in Constantinople, who left behind dozens of
140 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

letters, devoted many of them complaining about his position in society and his
financial woes. Many of his letters outline disputes he was having with fellow
teachers over the theft of students.63 Others are concerned with unpaid fees.64
Others bemoan his poverty. In one, he dramatically declares that he was “worse
off than a watercarrier.”65 At times, it is difficult to tell if this anonymous
teacher was truly degraded socially and economically. On the one hand,
opportunities for advancement—to positions such as professor of rhetoric—had
shrunk drastically in the Byzantine Empire, so perhaps he was the victim of a
constricted job market.66 Nevertheless, he appears to have instructed the sons of
many prominent families and often wrote to his former pupils, recommending
a bright youth for employ in the imperial administration.67 In fact, he himself
felt he had overplayed the “starving teacher” topos at one point, writing to
one former pupil: “I was glad to receive your letter, but sorry that you should
have thought it necessary to send a bed-cover.”68 Yet despite the quarrels with
colleagues and the complaints (real or performed), the anonymous teacher was
certain of the value of his work and the importance of teachers to a society: “I
know that I am writing to a man of learning, who realizes that affairs of state
will be mismanaged if men like me are neglected.”69 While this statement is
presented in the author’s habitually dissatisfied tone, it is a reminder that the
functions of religion, administration, and culture could not continue without
teachers (see Figure 6.2).
The centrality of literacy and learning in Judaism and Islam required teachers,
as did the daily functions of government and business. Since teachers of Islamic
texts modeled themselves on Muhammad, they were often respected members
of their communities. With the emergence of waqf—religious foundations or
trusts—from the eighth century onwards, many teachers could find endowed
positions.70 The waqf sometimes morphed into a prestigious madrasa, such
as the present-day university of Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, founded by Fatima
al-Fihri in 859 (Figure 6.5).71 Many prominent teachers in the Islamic world
also had other skills and careers, such as the envoy-turned-tutor Abū Ja’far al-
Khāzin (tenth-century, Samarkand and Rayy), and royal physician and teacher
of logic Sinān bin Thābit (tenth-century, Baghdad). Even Ibn Khaldūn, the
fourteenth-century Tunisian politician, judge, and historian, taught at several
madrasas in Cairo, including a possible stint teaching sand divination.72 Indeed,
teaching was often part of the activities of important civic and religious
figures. Across Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, the official
municipal timekeepers (muwaqqit), who maintained public sundials, managed
the calendars, and predicted eclipses, frequently taught geometry, astronomy,
and instrument-making at madrasas.73 No doubt there were poor and socially
insignificant teachers in the Islamic world, but those we have evidence for were
highly respected members of their communities.
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 141

FIGURE 6.5 Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morocco. The original madrasa, founded
in 859, is now the University of al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest, continually operating higher
education institution in the world.

Much like in Christian communities, Jewish teachers were usually ranked

based on what they taught. There were strong exhortations for Jewish families
to educate their children, providing plenty of opportunities for employment.
The most common type of teacher in Jewish communities was the melamed
who taught younger children the Torah. Evidence from the twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Rhineland and Northern France shows that some were paid
using communal funds but most were employed directly by families.74 One of
the few references to Jewish education in medieval England is that of a man
named Issac, a resident of Essex, who kept a schoolmaster for his children in
1101/2.75 The melamedim were generally not highly esteemed, because they often
accepted payment and there were many complex prohibitions surrounding the
charging of fees for religious instruction.76 Melamedim were usually presented
as low earners, needing tax relief and often found themselves teaching in return
for board and lodgings. This was complicated by an overabundance of available
tutors, which decreased their earning potential.77 Their perceived social status
was a different issue and contemporary scholars could rank them anywhere
142 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

from lowly wage laborers—liable to be ignorant or even gamblers—to skilled

artisans vital in preparing children for their future roles in the community.78
Teachers of the Talmud, on the other hand, were highly regarded in medieval
Jewish communities. Many Talmudic teachers were revered scholars and
rabbis, equated to the ancient teachers of temple rites.79 They did not accept
payment for teaching—they often had alternative revenue streams like their
Muslim counterparts—and their pupils were older (customarily over the age
of fifteen).80 They also counted among their numbers highly significant Jewish
scholars, such as Rabbi Rashi (1040–1105).81 In such cases, the exalted position
of the teacher was the same as eminent masters of Islamic jurisprudence and
Christian theology (Figure 6.6).
The social and economic status of teachers in later medieval Europe was
equally convoluted, depending on their own education, subject taught, official
sanction, and income. Since most surviving fee information from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries shows that learning the rudiments cost the least amount
of money, it is fair to surmise that teachers who offered elementary instruction
could be relatively poor. Some schoolmasters, especially those operating in the
Italian communes, drew up detailed pricing lists.82 One from Colle di Valdelsa
in 1380 had mounting prices for pupils beginning with “reading from the chart”
(alphabet and syllabi), then reading the Psalms, reading from Donatus’s work
(an elementary adaptation of Donatus’s Ars grammatical), actually being taught
the meaning of Donatus’s text, and lastly those studying Latin texts in more
depth.83 One of the best barometers of which masters were comfortable and
which were respected were those who were official—those who were employed
directly by municipal councils (especially the case in Italy and parts of France,
the Low Countries, and Germany) or attached to religious institutions or
endowed schools. In Chioggia, the communal schoolmasters could expect an
annual income of between 75 and 100 ducats, about the same as a craftsman
with a supervisory role but substantially less than lawyers and university
professors in Italy at the time.84 These positions were also more permanent.
While teachers associated with cathedrals, churches, chantries, monasteries,
and convents, etc. appear to have been paid less than their peers with communal
connections, they had far fewer expenses and could use their position to climb
the hierarchy within their institution.85 The forty schoolmasters and twenty-one
schoolmistresses who were licensed to teach by the provost of Notre-Dame in
Paris in 1381 may not have earned equal fees but they could depend on the
cathedral to protect their pupils from being lured away by unofficial teachers.86
Furthermore, what a teacher taught could dictate their economic (and possibly
social) standing. In tax records from Lyon in the 1420s, one Master Drogo,
master of schools, paid a large amount, greater than all his neighbors. In the
same set of records, Master Henri, scribe and master of schools (meaning he
was likely a writing master), paid significantly less than most of his neighbors.87
TEACHERS AND TEACHING 143

FIGURE 6.6 Jewish community. Teacher and student, miniature. Jewish Museum
Berlin, Germany.

This is likely because teachers of writing were seen as less prestigious than those
who taught Latin and so charged less. Some scholars suggest that writing was
seen as a mechanical skill and was thus ascribed a lower value.88
Private tutors were found in aristocratic households throughout the Middle
Ages, and successful merchants and craftsmen began to employ them from the
thirteenth century onwards. This subset of teachers was sometimes not as highly
remunerated as their municipal counterparts and, limited to a handful of pupils
from their employer’s household, they could not profit from additional pupils.
They could, however, benefit from their contact with the elites that surrounded
them, especially in acquiring new positions. In the eleventh century, the
childhood tutor of Henry II of England appears to have become the chancellor
of Henry’s queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in later life.89 Vittorino da Feltre (d. c.
1446) used his position at the court of Mantua to establish an academy, teaching
not only the children of the ruling Gonzaga family but also a constellation of
other noble children, future prelates, and nascent humanist scholars. Guarino
Guarini (d.1460) leveraged his tutelage of the heir of the duchy of Ferrara,
becoming the principal professor at the university there on the young man’s
succession in 1441.90 Most tutors, such as the melamedim, were much more
humble and might have hoped to exchange their itinerant careers for steadier
employment in an employer’s business or household.
Teachers, therefore, could range from effectively destitute to quite
comfortable. How they were perceived by society varied too. Francesco
144 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Petrarch (d.1374) had little time for grammarians, at one time blaming them
for the lax morals of his age.91 Despite his genuine affection for his own
grammar master, Convenevole da Prato, he did not think highly of him and
claimed he understood the classics better than Convenevole, even as a child.92
Furthermore, he encouraged some of his correspondents, such as Zanobi da
Strada of Florence, to abandon teaching, describing those who taught children
as having “a plodding diligence, a rather dull mind [and] a muddled intellect.”93
Similar attitudes are found elsewhere. Low social status was associated with
those who taught for a living, even for those who had attended or were graduates
of faculties of arts. In England, masters of arts might teach for a short while but
would move on quickly to better positions.94 And yet we should not see teachers
as being wholly dismissed as contributors to their societies in later medieval
Europe. After all, churches, municipal councils, and individuals expended a
great deal of time and money on employing teachers, with authorities sometimes
entering into legal disputes over who had the right to appoint teachers in a city.
Many teachers were talented scholars and writers; and what were professors at
the burgeoning universities but teachers? Even Petrarch, with all his apparent
distaste for teachers of Latin grammar, breathlessly recalled Bologna years later:
“Remember the great gathering of students, the order, the alertness, the majesty
of the teachers. You would have thought that the ancient jurists had come
back to life.”95 For all the great humanist’s disdain, there would have been no
students, no learned faculty, no university without the vital contributions of the
teachers of children and youths.

CONCLUSION
It did not matter how maligned the medieval teacher might be, their role in
medieval society was essential. And even at their most despised and destitute,
hoping for a bed in return for tuition, they could look to greater masters that
everyone revered. The medieval teacher was, in every sense, a man (or woman)
for all seasons, confident that their contribution and place in society would
endure and be fruitful.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Literacies
JO ANN HOEPPNER MORAN CRUZ AND DAVID SHEFFLER

INTRODUCTON
Literacy has traditionally meant the ability to read and write. For medieval
Europe, this definition does not work well, as writing was a specialized skill, and
many people could read but could not write.1 Today, scholars recognize many
kinds of literacies besides writing and reading literacies. Modern definitions
focus on competencies, mastering skills along a continuum, sometimes described
as functional or pragmatic literacy. The memorization of texts is a form of
preliteracy that can acquaint one with written signs. There are also visual
literacies (for example, “reading” a landscape for what it can tell us or “reading”
the quipus of the Incas for the information they conveyed). This chapter will
focus on many literacies, those that are functionally derived (for example, for
religious purposes), mediated by the language used, pushed by changing social
and political needs, constrained by the technologies and materials available,
imaginatively developed, or culturally appreciated. The focus is on written
texts,2 whether memorized, heard, read, or copied, but with an understanding
that oral and visual literacies are crucial aspects of medieval functionality and
creativity. In general, we will say that literacy is some level of acquaintance
with the written word. Although the varieties of literacies present challenges
for investigating literacy, it is essential to try to capture some of its medieval
complexities.3
The word “literatus” (literate), in a medieval context, means something quite
different from what we mean today when we characterize someone as literate.
“Literatus” generally described an individual who was fluent in Latin and was
146 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

often considered equivalent to “clericus.”4 For the early medieval period,

where Latin literacy was most commonly found in monasteries and episcopal
households, it included the interpretation of texts, particularly Christian texts,
as well as writing. Those who had no or little Latin were described as “illiterati”
or, also commonly, “rustici,” “idiotae,” or “laici.” These definitions, however,
do not allow for the various gradations and types of literacy that were common
in the Middle Ages. For example, it does not differentiate between “legere” (to
read) and “intellegere” (to understand), when reading did not necessarily include
full comprehension or a deeper understanding that enabled an explication or
exegesis of the text. Nor does it encapsulate the literacy of those who read and
wrote in the vernacular, or capture the literacy of very many who could read,
particularly in the vernacular and perhaps also in Latin, but could not write.
Nor does it cover some of the initial stages of gaining literacy, for example,
memorization of the liturgy, the Psalter, or a primer (the first texts students
encountered in learning Latin). In addition, some medieval men and women
possessed only “signature literacy”—the ability to write his or her name—but
lacked the ability to read.
Beyond consideration of degrees of literacy, it is also important to examine
the types and functions of these literacies. Michael Clanchy, one of the most
influential scholars of literacy in the Latin West, has divided medieval “literacy”
into four types, the first three of which describe types of Latin literacy:
1. Sacred literacy, the study of biblical and liturgical texts.
2. Learned literacy, including grammatical, scholastic, chronicle and literary
works.
3. Bureaucratic literacy concerning the reading and use of ecclesiastical and
secular documents.
4. Vernacular literacy.5
These forms of literacy were not exclusive and worked to reinforce each other.
Throughout Latin Christendom some level of sacred Latin literacy shaped and
informed other literacies. Bureaucratic literacy relied on the mastery of Latin
grammatical texts. And, by the later Middle Ages, as access to literacy deepened
and broadened, Latin learning increasingly presumed vernacular literacy.
While it is tempting to view this deepening and broadening of textual
engagement in Whiggish terms of cultural progress—indeed, there is a long
tradition of seeing the expansion or contraction of literacy as evidence of
progress or decline, and medieval writers themselves placed a high value on
literacy, often equating it with rationality—the research of the last several
generations of scholars has complicated the story substantially. Although the
technology of literacy, in so far as it brings a growing number of minds together
to focus on a problem or an idea, can speed up the rate of discovery in a society,
these developments can be constructive or destructive. For literacy is not only
LITERACIES 147

a functional technology but also a cultural means of preserving memory and

transmitting the values of a community. As such, as Denise Murray recently
observed, “as a stock of cultural knowledge within a given tradition, literacy
can constrain or liberate, instruct or entertain, discipline or disaffect people.”6

VARIETIES OF LITERACIES
As noted above, the study of literacies in the Middle Ages is a complicated
and multilayered topic of inquiry. There is a basic form of literacy, common
in the Middle Ages, consisting of a certain limited familiarity with written
language. Examples of this kind of literacy would include familiarity with the
language on coins or seals, with masons’ marks and notarial signs, the sign of
a cross signifying an oath taken before God, and simple phrases, such as the
Anglo-Saxon written on the Alfred Jewel (“Alfred made me”) or the words Saul
and Paul on two early seventh-century silver spoons uncovered at Sutton Hoo
in East Anglia. It would not, however, enable a person to read; nor would it
suggest any level of education beyond the day-to-day task of making a living.
Nonetheless, these very basic writings (signs) all signify something,
communicating a larger message to a recipient that requires knowledge of the
context. In these cases, oral communication envelopes and explains; there is
no sense in which information conveyed by oral communication is of lesser
value than written words or signs. Fluidity between orality and literacy, between
images and words, between seeing and hearing a text, is a powerful tool that
enhanced comprehension in the Middle Ages (Figure 7.1).
Oral expression, in particular, can signal high cultural value, such as the
story of Beowulf prior to its written form, or the traditions of the Goths
prior to Jordanes’ effort c. 550 to construct a sense of Gothic identity, or
the deeds of the Franks in oral form that Charlemagne requested be written
down, or the long-standing and high-value oral traditions of the Germans.
Even as medieval society became increasingly engaged with written texts, oral
testimony and public memory remained essential.7 Written documents retained
oral formularies that served as reminders of the public event—the real proof
of a transaction. Many documents included lists of witnesses who could, at
least for a generation, provide oral confirmation of their contents. The oaths of
such witnesses, marked perhaps only by the memory of the act itself, sustained
cultural validity. Oral testimony might, for example, offer evidence of the age of
an heir or testimony of a civil wrong, all of it based on local memory.
Medieval men and women were also acutely aware that documents could be
forged. A written forgery, when not crafted out of whole cloth, could be an effort
to recapture a poorly remembered (or perhaps intentionally misremembered)
transaction that was never written down, to rewrite a lost or otherwise illegible
document, or to express what people believed to be the case. To prevent
148 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 7.1 Matthew Paris (d.1259), Chronica Maiora II. MS 16, fol. 152v, Parker
Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The ceremonial entry of Richard of
Cornwall into the city of Cremona, 1241.

forgeries and ensure that documents represented a legitimate memory of an

event, medieval document preparers employed a variety of technologies and
techniques. These included chirographs (in which a document is duplicated
on a single sheet of parchment and then separated with a distinctive cutting
pattern),8 seals, names of witnesses, and official registers that preserved a record
of the date and summary of the content of specific documents. Seals and witness
lists had the added benefit of communicating the status of the individuals
issuing and confirming the documents and, to an extent, of promoting trust in
the content.9
While the volume of extant written materials from the high and late Middle
Ages (and, presumably, the total amount produced, even if no longer extant)
speaks to the expansion of literacy, this does not mean that orality was in decline
or carried less cultural significance. Indeed, in some sense the written word
served as a simulacrum of speech that needed to be dressed as much as possible
in the trappings of actual presence through appended seals and signatures
and expertly drawn letters to ensure its efficacy. What it does suggest is the
growing richness and extensiveness of the means of communication. As Adam
Fox has argued, “there was no necessary antithesis between oral and literate
LITERACIES 149

forms of communication and preservation; the one did not have to destroy
or undermine the other. If anything, the written word tended to augment the
spoken, reinventing it and making it anew, propagating its contents, heightening
its exposure and ensuring its continued vitality, albeit sometimes in different
forms.”10
In medieval educational practice, the acquisition of textual literacy was
often oral, relying heavily on recitation, memorization, and aural reception.
These activities were especially critical in the study of sacred languages such
as Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, serving to familiarize students with the sounds
and structures of the language. Indeed such approaches persisted well into the
twentieth century in Europe, where both Protestants and Catholics memorized
and recited catechisms as essential components of their education. This is not
dissimilar to the educational practice of memorizing the Qur’an in Islamic
societies—a far more formidable enterprise. In the case of medieval Latin, it
meant memorizing vocabulary, grammar rules, prayers, short scriptural passages,
liturgical responses, even entire colloquies. A similar sort of education might be
conducted by a mother at home or by a parish priest teaching a young clerk.
Just as with the memorization of a catechism, learning within a medieval school
involved recitation based on memorization, often spurred by the schoolmaster’s
switch. In one of the colloquies from his tenth-century schoolmaster’s manual,
Ælfric Bata urges his scholars to “Memorize it well so tomorrow you can recite it
as fast as possible and that way keep your hides in one piece.”11 Four hundred years
later, Chaucer’s fictional prioress tells the story of the Litel Clergeon who vows to
memorize the hymn Alma redemptoris “al er Cristemasse be went. Though that
I for my prymer shal be shent [shamed, scolded], and shal be beten thries in an
houre.”12 Similar exercises were common across the European continent. Es tu
Scholaris, a widely disseminated pedagogical text originating in southern Germany
during the fifteenth century, taught Latin using a call and response technique.
Although text-based, the instruction relied heavily on oral/aural techniques and
included a series of questions and scripted answers intended to develop Latin
literacy and provide instruction in the Christian faith.13 In this way, “legere” (to
read) a text and “audire” (to hear) a text remained intimately connected.
Prayer books, perhaps intended for use by women within the household,
often served as a child’s first encounter with the written word. Before heading
off to formal schooling, Chaucer’s young clergeon had learned “his Ave Marie,”
just as “this wydwe hir litel sone ytaught.”14 Chaucer’s story illustrates the
key role played by many women in literacy acquisition.15 Indeed, already by
the twelfth century, prayer books, Psalters, and books of hours were strongly
associated with women, and a wide array of images depict women engaged
in reading. The gisant (tomb effigy) of Eleanor of Aquitaine famously depicts
the Queen holding an open book (Figure 7.2). Although the book itself is not
explicitly identified as a prayer book, its size and context strongly suggest that
150 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 7.2 Tomb effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) in Fontevraud Abbey.

it is. The perception of the prayer book as a feminine object is reinforced in

countless other manuscript illuminations and literary depictions.16 Devotional
texts as feminine objects are also increasingly evidenced in wills, where Psalters
and prayer books, sometimes with vernacular translations, were frequently
bequeathed to women.

QUANTIFYING LITERACY
Efforts to quantify reading and writing literacy—the literacies most often
privileged by scholars—rely on disparate often ambiguous evidence that
frequently yields only tentative estimates. Nevertheless, the volume and variety
of written sources surviving from the twelfth century onward clearly attest to
a growing number of individuals (both male and female, clerical and lay) with
access to texts and the skills to employ them. Indeed, the written word impinged
on every aspect of medieval society at every level. Secular and ecclesiastical courts
issued capitularies and decrees. Learned networks, including both men and
women, exchanged letters, poems, and other literary productions. Contracts,
ranging from complex commenda and bills of exchange to apprenticeships and
labor contracts, survive in large number. Private prayer books and liturgical
texts frequently appear as bequests in the wills and testaments of elite and
nonelite families. Other religious works, both orthodox and heterodox, speak
to the variety of ways communities and individuals marshaled the power of the
LITERACIES 151

written word. School textbooks, written statutes, and foundation deeds provide
further evidence of literacy, with many founders stipulating special scholarships
to support poor scholars. In many municipalities, professional salaried
scribes produced city chronicles, recorded court proceedings, documented
expenditures, and drafted official correspondence. In addition, freelance scribes
of varying degrees of proficiency copied, amended, and fabricated documents
for customers of more limited means. Finally, works of art, library catalogs,
and extensive archeological evidence, including book clasps, reading glasses,
styluses, and portable writing kits and tablets further attest to the ubiquity of
the written word.17
At one time, signature literacy was considered a researchable and reliable way
of determining literacy levels. While this may be an enlightening exercise in the
eighteenth century, for example, with signatures of military recruits in France,
it is wholly inadequate for the Middle Ages. Signatures are rare except among
the elite, and even elites who could write might deem it more appropriate to
assign the task to a secretary or other proxy.18 Lists of names of witnesses on
a document may not be written by the individuals themselves. A cross rather
than a signature may signal the taking of an oath and not the inability of an
individual to write their name. The culture of authenticating documents may
require a seal or a sign rather than a signature. Nor can a signature tell us
whether the individual read the document or had heard it read aloud.
Schooling provides another potential index of literacy. But even here,
uncertainty and ambiguity remain. Educational records, which might serve
as a proxy measure for certain types of literacy, were never centralized; few
matriculation records survive, and many pedagogical texts were ephemeral,
produced on cheap paper or parchment repurposed for other uses. Schooling
in the Middle Ages could be in reading but not in the more specialized skill of
writing. It might be a song school that required extensive memorization, but not
reading or grammar. Historians of literacy have illustrated this last distinction
by quoting from Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale (referenced above) in which the “litel
clergeon” asks his older fellow to explain the meaning of the Alma redemptoris.
The “felawe” offers a vague explication before concluding that “I kan namoore
expounde in this mateere. I lerne song; I kan but smal grammeere.”19 Although
Katherine Zieman has argued for a more nuanced reading of this passage
by highlighting the dynamic relationship between literacy and liturgical
performance, reading in the context of a choir cannot be taken as clear evidence
of an ability to independently construe unfamiliar texts.20 At the same time,
a scribe or a copyist might have been taught to write but they may not have
been able to understand what they were copying. Schools themselves were often
loosely organized and informal. Nor are surviving documents always helpful
in telling us what level of schooling was involved—or the numbers of student
scholars—or the duration of a school or learning opportunity. One of the most
152 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

common sites of education, the home, is especially poorly documented. While

impossible to quantify, autobiographical details, the chance survival of psalters,
writing materials, and contemporary images, all attest to the importance of
education within the household, particularly for the elementary stages of
learning to read.21 Although extremely ephemeral, such “schools,” in which
mothers often played a leading role, frequently provided the rudiments of
literacy and in some cases much more.22 Even where some degree of schooling
can be documented, to what extent can we assume that the skills learned were
retained? To what extent do literate skills decay if they are not practiced and
perhaps not needed in one’s adult life? As one of Ælfric Bata’s colloquies goes:
“Dearest brother, can you speak Latin? Actually no, just a little, very few words.
I don’t understand as much as I read and learned, since I forgot a lot.”23

PREUNIVERSITY SCHOOLING
We know a great deal more about elementary education for the late medieval
period than we do for earlier times, although much of what we know can be
safely projected backwards. Indeed, fragmentary evidence from sixth- and
seventh-century Iberian slates, many incised with common prayers and the
ABCs, attest to the surprising tenacity of the basic pedagogical practices.24
Throughout the Middle Ages, children began to learn their letters on wax tablets,
which were so intimately associated with education that they served, along with
the master’s switch, as a visual shorthand for schooling. This pervasiveness led
Mary and Richard Rouse to label the Middle Ages “a wax-tablet culture.”25
Examples of wax tablets have been recovered from across Europe and beyond,
in some cases with the lessons and childish doodles still legibly incised in the
wooden surface of the tablet.26 Nor were these tablets exclusive to Christian
schools. A schoolteacher’s note from the Genizah archives in the Ben Ezra
Synagogue in Old Cairo tells us that a young scholar’s writing tablet was broken
by another student,27 while in Muslim schools, wooden tablets were ubiquitous.28
Whether in Europe or across the Mediterranean, the fundamental elements
of elementary education remained generally stable across much of the Middle
Ages. Otloh of St. Emmeram, a twelfth-century scholar and educator in southern
Germany, described his own educational experiences, “When I had quickly
mastered the letters and songs, which I learned with the letters, I also began to
learn the art of writing without the direction of a master, and long before the
accustomed time for learning it.”29 Although Otloh, at least by his own account,
was precocious, other sources attest to a similar progression of skills. Some two
hundred years later, the university-trained schoolmaster and scholar, Konrad
von Megenberg, recommended a curriculum that moved from recognition of
letters, to the formation of syllables and words, and finally to an etymological
understanding of individual words.30 The skills gained ideally inculcated faith,
LITERACIES 153

morals, and knowledge—salvific for all, including serfs and maids according
to William of Tournai’s De instructione puerorum (On the Education of Boys/
Children), written c. 1250.31
By the fourteenth century, vernacular schools that also taught reading, and
in some cases writing, increased in number and popularity. The number of
vernacular property transactions, wills, and even bequests to religious houses
rose precipitously. Although Latin remained the language of prestige and
power, business transactions, family and civic histories, and even elite culture
increasingly used the vernacular. First in Italy, but increasingly throughout
Europe, schools focused specifically on numerical literacy also emerged. Abbaco
schools, well documented in Florence by the fourteenth century, educated large
numbers of students in accounting and mathematics and in some cases reading
and writing in the vernacular as well.32 In addition, parents might contract
with private schoolmasters to provide specialized training. For example, in
Regensburg at the end of the thirteenth century, a certain widow, Ava, used the
proceeds from the sale of her property to pay for her children to be trained in
the mathematical arts so that they might be able to support themselves.33
Writing, particularly the practiced book hands used in luxury manuscripts,
was another specialized skill that was not necessarily part of the standard
curriculum; this was as characteristic of Jewish and Islamic cultures as it
was for Christians. Learning to write was a complicated task; in Europe it
was sometimes taught in a monastery, or by a schoolmaster, or perhaps by a
specialized writing master. Elites, even those who had achieved a high degree
of literacy, often relied on scribes or other writing specialists. Einhard, who
praised Charlemagne’s ability to read Latin and understand Greek, noted that
he never learned to write. By the end of the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon
to find writing masters who traveled from school to school teaching writing a
few weeks at a time.
Writing required a writing surface. Archaeological evidence from Roman
northern England proves that both men and women wrote on birch bark as they
also did later in Russia34 where 1,200 mid-eleventh- to mid-fifteenth-century
birchbark documents, mostly written by laity, have been discovered. The
Vikings used wood for notching runes and carved their runes on bone and
commemorative stones. During much of the early Middle Ages papyrus was the
dominant writing surface throughout Europe and the broader Mediterranean,
to be replaced by the more durable parchment (prepared animal skins) and
vellum (usually calfskin). By the thirteenth century paper manufacture was
making its way from Islamic lands to Christian Europe.
Writing, especially writing on parchment, required specialized equipment:
reed or quill pens that had to be prepared and sharpened often; razors and
knives for sharpening the pens and for cutting parchment; scrapers [knives]
and pumice for smoothing the parchment and for erasures; chalk for whitening
154 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

the parchment; awls for punching holes; rulers for ruling lines on pages; wax
tablets for practicing writing or for writing drafts with a stylus; and ink (made
from a variety of recipes and in various colors) and inkpots.35

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
By the end of the thirteenth century, some twenty universities, understood as a
sworn society of masters and students where students could pursue an education
beyond Latin grammar, operated across Europe, including three in the Iberian
Peninsula, eight in the Italian Peninsula, five in the Kingdom of France, and two
in England.36 Although the German Empire had important centers of higher
education, most notably Cologne, it lacked a true corporate university until
the foundation of the University of Prague in the middle of the fourteenth
century.37 The international scope of many of these universities meant that
the students spoke a range of vernaculars, but the language of instruction,
and in many cases basic communication, was Latin. As a result, students were
expected to possess the ability to read and compose effective Latin prose; issues
of style were generally secondary. Since the basic pedagogical mode was oral,
depending on lectures delivered by the teaching masters, the ability to write
notes quickly and efficiently was an increasingly essential skill. Indeed, the
content of many university courses is known only through the chance survival
of student notes. Works produced for university use were often copied rapidly,
heavily abbreviated, and written on inexpensive materials. In addition, students
who could not afford to hire the labor would be expected to produce their own
textbooks by laboriously copying works from rented exemplars. By the end
of the Middle Ages, thousands of students matriculated at universities across
the European continent, making the universities one of the most important
nodes for the production, transmission, and copying of texts. Many of the
students, of course, returned to their home regions bringing their texts with
them, often seeding public and private libraries. The example of Konrad Duvel
von Hildesheim is instructive in this regard. After studying at Heidelberg and
Vienna, Konrad took up residence in Regensburg to serve as syndic for the
city (the city had supported his legal studies at Vienna in exchange for future
service). At his death in 1432, he left works to both the University of Heidelberg
and Vienna as well as a sizable collection to the Regensburg city library.38

TEXTUAL CULTURES
The major ecclesiastical councils of the late Middle Ages, particularly Constance
and Basle, also became centers for the production and dissemination of new
texts and the rediscovery of older ones. Because the councils lasted years and
drew large numbers of highly literate participants from across Europe, councils
LITERACIES 155

became fertile ground for intellectual exchange and even the development of
new scripts. Syndics and other legal proxies wrote letters reporting events and
progress to their clients back home, and their clients sent back questions and
instructions.39 The councils authorized a wide array of publications including
conciliar sermons and decrees. And ambitious authors took advantage of the
rich market and extensive networks the councils offered.40
Royal and aristocratic courts constituted other centers of textual culture.
The Carolingian court, dominated by Charlemagne’s push for religious and
educational reform, focused on religious discipline inculcated through revived
Latin learning. Texts, such as Alcuin’s grammatical and rhetorical works, were
widely distributed but generally within ecclesiastical circles. When, c. 842,
Dhuoda, duchess of Septimania in southern France, dictated a Manual for her
son William, who was at the imperial court of Charles the Bald, she expected
her book to be read by others at court.41 Her further description of her teaching
William, as well as a reference to her copyist and her many books, suggests
that she oversaw literate activities at home. By the twelfth century the Angevin
court, with the patronage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a center
of textual culture, as was the thirteenth-century French royal court, facilitated
by the vigorous book culture in Paris. Chanceries, whether royal, baronial, or
attached to the households of the higher clergy, promoted a textual culture.
Michael Clanchy has documented the growth of bureaucratic record-keeping
in medieval England and has made the argument that literacy arose largely
due to bureaucratic needs.42 By the end of the Middle Ages, a network around
the Londoner John Shirley (c. 1366–1456), who copied and then lent books
extensively to noble, gentry, and mercantile households, suggests the degree to
which a textual culture was forming around the less socially elevated.43
Within this textual culture the importance of the book can hardly be
overstated. Michael Clanchy has written, “The Middle Ages had invented the
book in its Latinate Western form and created its readership, clerical and lay,
and male and female.”44 The form of the book itself, which was much more
readily indexed and referenced than earlier scrolls, shaped both the production
and consumption of textual output. As a first step, the writer composed a draft
on a wax tablet, “the universal drafting medium of the Middle Ages,”45 which
was either a single leaf or several leaves laced together. Most medieval texts
were then written on parchment or vellum. After scraping, preparing, and
lining the parchment (or vellum for a richer book), either the author or, more
likely, a scribe would write the fair copy. A scribe might also take down a text
from dictation. As early as the eighth century there is evidence of several scribes
parceling out the copying of quires of a manuscript for rapid reproduction.
Such work was common in some monastic centers, as for example, when nine
female scribes, most likely nuns, copied Augustine’s three-volume treatise on
the psalms.46 By the thirteenth century, in book-making centers such as Paris,
156 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

Bologna, London, and Oxford, scribes might write one pecia (piece or section)
of a manuscript while other scribes added more peciae. Using the pecia system,
texts could be written up fairly quickly. Bibles, however, were almost never
written using this system. As a result, the copying of an entire Bible could take
up to a year.47 By the thirteenth century, particularly in and around universities,
stationers and booksellers were increasingly common. In his work Philobiblon,
completed in 1345, Richard de Bury (1281–1345) mentioned networks of
stationers and booksellers across England, France, Germany, and Italy.48
Bookmakers often worked with illuminators, usually specialists brought in
after the scribes had completed their work. Many of the earliest medieval books
were heavily illuminated, which endowed early sacred texts such as the Book
of Kells and the Lindsfarne Gospels with great prestige. In the later Middle
Ages, as books became increasingly available, readers valued smaller volumes,
more suitable for individual reading and personal devotions. Nevertheless,
the medieval book market still demanded illuminations. It was such a book
that the Lady of Landuc was reading, in Chrétien de Troyes’ romance Yvain
(1180s), when the lady “began to moan and wring her hands, and beat her
palms, and in her Psalter read her psalms. Its letters were illuminated in gold.”49
Beginning in the thirteenth century there was growing demand among the
wealthier classes for decorated copies of Psalters and books of hours, many
of which were especially tailored for women (Figure 7.3).50 Secular texts,

FIGURE 7.3 The Hours of Jeanne D’Evreux—a gift from Charles IV to Jeanne D’Evreux
(1310–71) when he married her in 1325. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
LITERACIES 157

particularly presentation books such as Christine de Pizan’s works (c. 1400) on

chivalry, politics, peace, and women, were also illuminated. Indeed, Christine
de Pizan praises the work of one female illuminator who worked on her books
as unmatched “in the whole of Paris.”51
Beginning in the twelfth century, vernacular works (Gesta such as the Song
of Roland; lives of the saints such as Garnier’s Life of Becket, or romances such
as those of Chrétien de Troyes, Wace’s translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
History of the Kings of Britain, or the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose)
as well as translations of classical texts were intended for an expanding lay
audience.52 These works might be read aloud, as was described by Chrétien de
Troyes in Yvain at the Castle of Evil Adventure:
A rich man lay there at his ease on a silk cloth beneath the trees. His hand and
elbow propped his head. Before him was a maid who read a long romance
[…]. A lady, too, came in the orchard, and she lay upon the cloth to listen.
They were the maid’s parents, and indeed, they liked to see and hear her
read.53
By the thirteenth century, both clergy and laity were using books, often
called commonplace books, for personal purposes. Some books were passed on,
as a group, to others. Such an arrangement, called a “common profit library,”54
multiplied readers. A good example is that of William Wilmyncote, a chantry
priest who died in York in 1402, leaving his library of over a dozen books
to a poor, unbeneficed priest, to be passed on to other indigent clergy until
they acquired a benefice, as long as the books lasted.55 Common-profit books
were also being shared in fifteenth-century London, passing among men and
women.56 In comparison to these private libraries, the library at the Sorbonne
had between 1,000 and 2,000 codices by 1338; the papal library had from 485
to 645 by 1300 and over 2,000 by 1369; Christ Church, Canterbury contained
1,850 codices in 1331.57 Although the Black Death and the Hundred Years War
had a negative impact on manuscript production, numbers grew dramatically
again in the years before the advent of the printing press. By 1450 manuscript
production in Italy and the German Empire nearly doubled its pre-plague peak.
This growth was made possible by the increasing availability of paper and the
use of rapidly written cursive scripts, technologies that significantly reduced the
costs associated with manuscript production.58
What, however, does this increase in the number of books tell us about
literacy? It is essential to understand that a book (one codex as a physical object)
could include numerous treatises. For example, a manuscript wedding gift from
Philippa of Hainault to Edward III in 1326 included the Trésor of Brunetto
Latini, a French translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum,
prayers in Latin and French, a tale by Raoul le Petit called Le Dit de Foveyne
(Fauvain), with at least four other texts that are listed in the index but are no
158 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

longer part of the extant text.59 As a result, the number of codices in any library
can tell us little with regard to how many works there actually were. In addition,
we do not know whether private owners (and others) read them, displayed
them, lent them, or sold them. In some cases, especially in monastic, cathedral,
and university libraries, evidence of wear, marginal notes, and catalogs that
facilitated and regulated the circulation of books, speak to their heavy use.
Monastic and mendicant libraries were, at least in some cases, available for
the use of others,60 and monk copyists also produced books for use outside
the monastery. The Carthusians, in particular, produced and lent vernacular
spiritual and religious texts, often to laymen and women, while the Brethren of
the Common Life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries focused on correcting,
writing, and producing religious and liturgical books on commission and for
sale. Chained volumes in parish churches provided easy access to clerics of
otherwise modest means and possibly to the laity, although there are references
to keeping these books out of the hands of schoolboys. Strongly indicative of
rising literacy was the growth of public libraries, for example, the public library
at the London guildhall founded c. 1425, to be followed by public libraries in
Bristol and Worcester.61 Similar public library foundations can be found on the
continent as well.62
The increasing availability of texts and the growth of literacy meant that
by the later Middle Ages nearly everyone, regardless of wealth or social
standing, had access to someone who could read. This pervasiveness of literacy
and texts allowed for the formation of what Brian Stock has termed “textual
communities.”63 These communities had access indirectly to written texts
through individuals who had mastered those texts. In the twelfth century,
such indirect access to the products of literacy through literate teachers
and preachers contributed to the rise of heretical Catharism and the textual
dispersal of heterodox ideas and practices. The Lollards in England in the late
fourteenth century provide another example of such a textual community and
seem to have had communal ownership of books.64 Textual communities often
formed around preaching and can be documented as early as the notaries who
wrote down the sermons of Augustine and Jerome.65 This practice, continuing
through the Middle Ages, is perhaps best documented in the case of Meister
Eckhart (1260–1327), where some transcribers of his sermons seem to have
circulated the transcriptions in heterodox communities.
Textual communities could pop up unexpectedly; anonymous posted
grievances were read to gathering crowds in 1405 related to rebellion in
England;66 in 1306 a “read-in” of one of Ibn-Taymīyya’s works was held in the
Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to protest his arrest.67 At a geographical remove
from Damascus and a century later is a remarkable stained glass portrait in
All Saints, North Street, York, of St. Anne teaching the Virgin Mary to read
from a prayer book, while nearby is a portrait of Margaret Blackburn, wife of
LITERACIES 159

the mayor of York, reading her prayer book. This public portrait of readers
suggests that reading (and a mother teaching reading to her daughter) was a
holy activity, backed by mayoral authority.68 For a youthful audience, cartoons
with explanatory words could be an effective use of a text. For example, the
abovementioned manuscript that was composed for the marriage of Philippa
of Hainault to Edward III of England, when Edward was fifteen and Philippa
somewhat younger, includes the cartoon story of Fauvain based on a Romance
de Fauvel (written by c. 1310–16), which seeks through cartoon characters to
represent the hypocrisy of the clergy, and even the pope (Figure 7.4).69

FIGURE 7.4 Raoul le Petit, L’Histoire de Fauvain/Le Dit de Foveyne, Fr. 571, fol. 146,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
160 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

THE TECHNOLOGY OF READING

Late antique Roman texts were notable for the absence of intratextual signs that
would allow for faster reading.70 This served the reading populations of late
antiquity because they could depend upon literate scribes, often slaves, to write
texts and read them orally. Reading texts with no punctuation, especially no
spaces between words, enabled the reader to pay more attention to the inflections
of the language and the ambiguity of the grammar than to reading more quickly
and extensively. Classical Latin texts used inflections rather than word order to
convey meaning, but medieval Latin lost many declensional endings, increased
the use of the definite article and of prepositions, added helping verbs, and
used pronouns indiscriminately. With these changes, along with changes in
the word order, spaces between words, punctuation, and shorter sentences,
meaning emerged more as a result of syntax than of noun and verb inflections.
Abbreviated endings and/or the declining tendency to pronounce endings,
indicated that they were less and less needed for an adequate understanding of
the text.
In addition, codices rather than rolls aided the ability to write glosses in texts
and to search a text with greater facility, although rolls continued to be used,
especially for administrative purposes, at least in England. The introduction
of word spacing, punctuation such as capitalization, paragraphing, chapter
headings, foliation or pagination with Arabic numbering, alphabetized
concordances, indices and lists, subheadings, divisions and subdivisions,
tables of contents, cross-references, accents, and word continuation signs
at the end of a line all facilitated faster reading and an enhanced ability to
rationally, often alphabetically, search for information in a more ordered
fashion.71 The importance of Jerome’s Vulgate Bible cannot be overstated
in introducing shorter sentences broken up by clauses and lines of text. The
influence of the study of logic in grammar education and at universities by the
twelfth century turned attention away from literary polish toward concern
for clarity of argument. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, as readership
grew, writers paid increasing attention to the accessibility of the written text,
thereby facilitating easier reading. Books became portable, carried in leather
pouches and attached to one’s girdle. In wealthier homes and in libraries, the
construction of writing desks, cupboards for codices, and eventually desks
with chained or unchained books and book cradles or even book carousels,
allowing for several books to be opened and consulted, created a better
physical environment for reading.
LITERACIES 161

FIGURE 7.5 The Yale “Girdle-Book.” MS 84, Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae,

England [?], s. xv. Beinecke Library, Yale University.

TRAJECTORIES OF LITERACY
By the later Middle Ages, the vast majority of texts produced and consumed in
Europe and around the Mediterranean were written in one of five writing systems:
Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, or Hebrew. And although alternative systems
such as runes in Scandinavian areas survived into the later Middle Ages, writing
systems were increasingly standardized. As noted above, this is not a simple story
of “inexorable progress” but one of contested and fitful change as local literacies,
162 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

at least those that did not retain their status as literacies of power, lost prestige
or shifted function. For example, in tenth-century Norway commemorative
runic inscriptions enjoyed a renaissance in response to missionary pressure, while
in Sweden carved runes grew in numbers in the eleventh century, with some
expressing brief Christian prayers and others retaining older, non-Christian
forms.72 Later, as Christian priests and the Latin alphabet gained prestige, runes
took on new administrative functions as well as magical overtones, surviving
beyond the end of the Middle Ages. New topographies of power and prestige
wrought similar changes in the use and function of Northumbrian runes as they
were increasingly used for Christian memorial inscriptions.73 Similarly, ogam,
an alphabet developed for Irish and already in use by the fourth century, was
primarily employed for epitaphs of Irish-speaking elites. It was developed in
response to Latin and in emulation of Latin practices. Like runes, ogam was
adapted to Christian purposes, surviving in Scotland into the tenth century.74 In the
Balkans, galgolitic, first developed in the ninth century by the missionary brothers
Constantine and Methodius, was pushed to the margins. In Pannonia, it was
supplanted by German missionaries who imported Latin script, while Bulgar and
Rus elites increasingly favored Cyrillic script.75 In addition to illustrating the
contested and uneven processes that shaped and defined medieval literacy, these
examples reveal another truth. Outside of those regions that continued to speak
some version of Latin, Greek, or Arabic as their native tongue, the acquisition of
literacy was almost always mediated through a foreign language, frequently using
a script that was poorly adapted to indigenous sounds.
A good example of this is early medieval Ireland. Unlike their contemporaries
in Gaul and the Italian Peninsula, the Irish acquired Latin as a foreign language,76
a fact that contributed to a more formal antiquated Latin. By the year 600,
Irish clerics had mastered Latin and Irish scholars (filid), who produced a large
number of vernacular legal treatises, poems, and genealogies, were working
to adapt Latin script to Irish sounds. The Irish were, in fact, “the first western
European people to develop a full-scale vernacular written literature,”77 one
result of which is that vernacular texts survive in much larger numbers from
Ireland from this time than on the continent.78 Literate Irish monks and clerics
increasingly produced original religious compositions in Latin and developed a
distinctive script that included punctuation and word spacing that the famously
itinerant Irish monks carried with them to the continent. Most significant
among these was St. Columban (d.615), credited with founding continental
monasteries at both Luxeuil and Bobbio, who developed a system of formal
schooling for clerics that mirrored Roman education and included training in
the arts and classical rhetoric.79 Luxeuil and Bobbio both became renowned
scriptoria and their products became models for the development of later
scripts, most notably Carolingian minuscule.
LITERACIES 163

Anglo-Saxon England had, initially, very little experience with literacy

beyond some familiarity with runes when the Christianization of England,
based on Latin, expanded in the eighth century. Latin, effectively a foreign
language, required schooling and benefited from the educational reforms of
King Alfred (c. 847–99). For the most part, however, Anglo-Saxon remained
a dominant language, and education in the vernacular was common. Because
so few documents survive, it is not possible to estimate the extent of literacy,
although it clearly expanded by the tenth century. Surviving texts include
perhaps 2,000 charters, most of which were generated by the royal court, as
well as leases, writs, and wills. We cannot know how many documents have
been lost, perhaps destroyed by the Normans or simply cast aside when Old
English texts became less useful or less easy to decipher, but it is intriguing
to find a surviving early eleventh-century text recording the sale of herrings
and eels and prices of animals, agricultural equipment, and boats.80 We have,
in place of sufficient evidence, aspirational initiatives. It is significant, for
example, that Bede translated many of his texts into English, that King Alfred
himself promoted the translation of texts into English, and that Aelfric, abbot
of Eynsham (d. c. 1010), translated texts into English for both clergy and laity.
Alfred’s goal, even in the midst of Viking destruction and settlements, was quite
clear: “all young free men who have the means to apply themselves should learn
to read English.”81
On the continent, Merovingian Gaul has long been portrayed as something
of a literary desert. In support of this one can quote Gregory of Tours’ famous
lament that “liberal learning was declining, or rather perishing” in the cities
of Gaul. While some traditional Roman schools that had provided secular
education in many Roman Gallic cities were in decline by the later fifth
century, others, however, continued to operate into the sixth and even seventh
centuries.82 Moreover, Ian Wood and others have recently pushed for a more
optimistic assessment of Merovingian literary production and engagement with
textual culture. The clergy, secular administrators, and members of royal and
aristocratic households were expected to be literate. Surviving formularies
(which served as models for wills, charters, and other administrative documents)
attest to a society still heavily dependent on the written word.83 Stylized letters of
friendship that drew on classical models of literary style and ideals of friendship
survive from the sixth and seventh centuries, as do letters and texts composed by
female authors.84 While the extant sources from Merovingian Gaul do suggest a
period of relative decline in literary activity—especially when compared to the
literary production of late antiquity—literacy still carried prestige and exerted
power.
In the eighth and ninth centuries the Carolingians saw the promotion of
literacy, at least among certain classes, as particularly congenial to their exercise
of power. Although, as D.H. Green notes, the goal of the Carolingian renaissance
164 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

was literacy rather than literature, a series of ecclesiastical reforms and royal
initiatives promoting literacy gave rise to a significant increase in textual
production and learning.85 Charlemagne’s admonitio generalis (789) required
that education be available even to the children of the unfree. Education took
place in monasteries, within episcopal households, at aristocratic and royal
courts, and to an unknown extent at the parish level, allowing a select group to
develop a pragmatic literacy that enabled them to hold administrative positions
within the empire. It has been estimated, for example, that there were as many
as 100 writing centers in Carolingian Europe.86 Within aristocratic households
and female convents, women also had access to education. The best-known
and singular surviving example of Latin writing by an educated laywoman is
Dhuoda’s Liber Manualis, mentioned above. Surviving book manuscripts,
library catalogs, and the evidence for borrowing books argue for a literate
readership mainly interested in devotional, biblical, and practical matters. In
addition to books, there are surviving written materials from the Carolingian
period that indicate reading capacities down the social scale, including letters
of protection for merchants, toll lists, grants of markets, requisitions, legal
documents, charters of manumission, inventories, written reports from counts
and from royal administrative agents in the field (missi), and royal instructions
for those officials.87 How far down the social scale this level of literacy extended
is impossible to gauge, but there are indications that, in some parishes, children
were receiving instruction.88
Despite the expansion of literacy during the Carolingian Renaissance,
Latin literacy in the eleventh century was restricted, for the most part, to
the clergy and some aristocratic elites, who were often suspicious of signs of
literacy among the lower classes. The growing authority of the church through
its reform movements and its reformulation of hierarchy (placing spiritual
authority over secular authorities) did not mean that the written word was
inaccessible to the general population. Texts could gain authority among the
unlearned who listened to the preaching and reading of texts by others through
textual communities.
In 1179, the Third Lateran Council declared that “in order that the opportunity
of learning to read and progress in study is not withdrawn from poor children
[…] in every cathedral church a master is to be assigned some proper benefice
so that he may teach the clerics of that church and the poor scholars.”89 By the
beginning of the thirteenth century the church, promoting a better educated
clergy and the teaching of the elements of the faith to the laity (in part to
combat heresy), pushed for an expansion of education in cathedral schools and
at the parish level.90 The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that “not only
in every cathedral church but also in other churches with sufficient resources, a
suitable master […] shall be appointed […] to teach grammar and other branches
of study, as far as is possible, to the clerics of those and other churches.”91 This
LITERACIES 165

expansion of educational initiatives was accompanied by a growth in the use

of vernacular languages, the result of which was dramatic increases in literacy
throughout medieval Europe. Nicholas Orme has concluded, “English society
was collectively literate by the thirteenth century and perhaps much earlier.
Everyone knew someone who could read, and everyone’s life depended to some
extent on reading and writing.”92
Indicative of the growth of literacy among both clergy and laity is the
church’s assessment of heretics in the early eleventh century as illiterate,
whereas by the late twelfth and into the later medieval centuries, church
leaders began to recognize that many of those considered heretical (for
example, the Cathars) were using texts, preaching and memorizing them,
often in the vernacular. By the early fourteenth century Bernard Gui,
inquisitor in southern France, could document the dissemination of books
and pamphlets among heretical communities.93 The impact is discernible in
the use of vernacular propaganda among the Beguins of Languedoc94 and
then the Waldensians, the Lollards in England (for whom, as Anne Hudson
writes, “access to the written word [both Latin and English] was crucial”).95
and finally, the Hussites, whose unorthodox ideas were transmitted in “small-
size books.”96
Jewish communities placed a high value on literacy,97 and all male children
appear to have learned to read, if not to write. Fathers would often pursue
evening studies after work, and would teach their children at home, including,
at times, the daughters of the family.98 Hebrew was, for the most part, not the
mother tongue and was learned, much like Latin, as a second language and
mainly for liturgical purposes. Students learned basic writing skills and then to
recite and to read, if not at first to understand, the Torah and the psalms. Older
students would have studied the Talmud with the possible goal of becoming
Talmudic scholars.
Most of the evidence for Jewish literacy from 500–1000 ce comes from
areas outside of Christian Europe where edited texts of religious works, textual
exegeses, and rabbinical questions and responsive texts circulated among Jewish
communities within Islam around the Mediterranean; these texts circulated
in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic within a still largely oral culture. In North
Africa there were, however, extensive libraries, and the surviving documents
from the Genizah archives provide evidence for an active mercantile, legal, and
community-based culture of writing.99
By the late tenth and eleventh centuries the Jewish (Ashkenaz) communities
of northern France and of Germany emerge from the records supporting
teachers and rabbis and producing a highly literate laity. Ephraim Kanarfogel,
who has examined Ashkenazic education in Europe in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, draws a portrait of expansive learning, ranging from
elementary education to the more sophisticated training in the Torah, Talmud,
166 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

and Rabbinical exegesis. This commitment to learning was confirmed by a

student of Peter Abelard’s in the twelfth century: “A Jew, however poor, even
if he had ten sons would put them all to letters, not for gain as Christians
do, but for the understanding of God’s law, and not only his sons but his
daughters.”100 Jewish children were educated within their families by tutors
or family members or with a teacher outside the home, at the synagogue or
elsewhere, the education being paid for by the family or through charitable
contributions. More advanced education took place in academies or study
halls. The Jewish communities in Spain and southern France had somewhat
more institutionalized forms of schooling.101
Our knowledge of the extent of literacy in Byzantine territories is problematic
as few sources have survived. Although there was documented book ownership
among both clerical and administrative elites, this tells us very little about
literacy at large. During the so-called Dark Ages of Byzantium from the 630s
to the 790s, the extreme dearth of evidence suggests reduced literacy rates; any
revival of literacy in the ninth and tenth centuries (the period of the Macedonian
golden age), however, appears to have been limited to bureaucratic functions
and a relatively elite literary culture. There is very little one can say about
literacy in the provinces.102
Much more robust are the sources for evaluating literacy in the Arab world.
Learning, in the early centuries of Islam, was often a process of recitation; the
terms “audire” and “legere” were interchangeable. Throughout the Middle
Ages, the spoken word carried great authority, especially in sermons, the
recitation of hadith (the traditions of the Prophet), and reading the Qur’an.
By the eleventh century, however, schools and libraries multiplied and teachers
used books more frequently. Islam, a religion that functioned without a church
or clergy, placed the very highest value on learning, but learning was more
informal and less institutionalized than in the west. Madrasas, where the study
of higher education in religious and legal sciences took place, also normally
housed librarians, primary school teachers, Qur’an readers, prayer leaders,
and preachers. As a result, instruction at various levels reached the broader
community, including storytellers reciting or reading popular epics in public
spaces. By the fourteenth century learning was closely tied to a book culture and
the active readers of texts included traders and craftsmen. In medieval Cairo,
where the documentation is especially rich, there were growing numbers of
elementary schools, free places for poor scholars in endowed madrasas, and
tutors in wealthier households. Women were also able to learn in mosques,
homes, and informal circles, and some of them became renowned reciters of
hadith. While memorization of the Qur’an remained central to education,
children also learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. By the later Middle
Ages, texts intended for reading by the common people, some even written in
colloquial Arabic, were increasingly available.103
LITERACIES 167

In Europe also by the later Middle Ages indicators of literacy abound. An

increasingly crowded educational landscape ranged from small, fleeting schools
with only a handful of students to parish, guild, and chantry schools, to large well-
funded city grammar schools where the schoolmaster might well be a layman. In
some towns and regions older cathedral and monastic schools jealously guarded
their privileges and sought to limit or exclude competition. Success or failure
in this effort often depended on the ability of the existing schools to meet the
growing educational demands of their immediate communities. In newer towns
lacking established ecclesiastical schools, city schools grew up with limited
resistance. In the town of Gouda in the Netherlands, 50 percent of boys from
seven to fourteen years old attended the city grammar school.104 At least half
(and probably more) of the male population was being educated in fourteenth-
century Florence, while in Paris in 1380, over sixty primary schoolteachers
took oaths and received licenses;105 if each licensed teacher taught thirty pupils,
perhaps one-third to one-half of all children in Paris received an elementary
education.106
Late medieval wills provide evidence of literacy and learning below
aristocratic levels. A fourteenth-century German patrician, for example, left
a Psalter written in both Latin and German to three female relatives.107 Late
medieval wills from northern England show female testators leaving books,
for the most part, to other women.108 Further, one can extrapolate from the
witnesses to wills in the fifteenth century where no priest is present and all
witnesses were laity, suggesting that the writing up of wills was increasingly the
province of laity from the local community.109
The late Middle Ages also saw the extension and thickening of textual
networks. Even before the advent of the printing press these networks carried
new works great distances at surprising speed. Recognizing the power of these
networks, Boccaccio dedicated several of his works to friends, asking them to
“read it […] share it with friends, and finally send it forth to the public.”110
Petrarch made the mistake of sharing verses from his Latin epic Africanus with
a friend and then discovered that the verses had been copied and had passed
the Po, the Apennines, the Alps, and the Danube.111 Dante’s Divine Comedy
was read widely (over 100 manuscript copies from the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries are still extant) and commented on extensively. Christine de Pizan’s
books (written in French) were read around Europe.

CONCLUSION
It is sobering to realize that, as late as the 1960s, someone of the stature of
Lawrence Stone could characterize Thomas More’s estimate, in 1533, that over
half the population of London could read an English translation of the Bible as
“alarmist nonsense,”112 and that not only the writings of Christine de Pizan but
168 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

also those of dozens of other literate medieval women were only beginning to
be introduced to the scholarly community in the 1970s. As late as the 1980s,
scholars could still conclude that in the Middle Ages only priests, scholars,
and some elites (all men) were literate. What one finds, however, on close
examination, is a vibrant, questioning, diverse, and increasingly literate culture.
And there is still so much more to do. Many schools and places of learning
have escaped our attention. Writings have disappeared, and there are medieval
authors as well as academic and literary productions still to be discovered. The
archives that remain to us, many of which have yet to be fully explored, are
intimidating and attest to the scope of medieval literacy: 300,000 manuscript
fragments from the Genizah archive, 500 account books and 150,000 papers
from the fourteenth-century merchant house of Francisco Datini, and the
unenumerated late medieval ledgers, legal proceedings, histories, and personal
letters and diaries that crowd the shelves of archives, libraries, and private
collectors. To slightly reword Michael Clanchy’s conclusion, “A vigorous text-
using culture was the precursor to the invention of printing.”113
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Life Histories
JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

INTRODUCTION
This account of the cultural history of education in medieval Europe will be
told through case studies, some individualized and others looking at a group
of people with a collective identity. But to set the case studies into a context
that takes time and status into account we begin with some general reflections,
working from the basic idea that the purpose of education is to impart the skills
that come with literacy and numeracy, a crucial conduit whereby culture is
transmitted across time.

MEDIEVAL LIFE HISTORIES IN CONTEXT

The cultural history of education brings home the basic unity of medieval
culture in the Christian west. There is a striking degree of uniformity in the
major intellectual and educational developments and institutions, attesting to
the unifying (or leveling) influence of late classical culture, Christian civilization,
and the Roman Catholic Church in a world in which ideas readily crossed
boundaries and people were often quite mobile. Wandering scholars share the
spotlight with cloistered monks and local schoolmasters. Unifying factors, such
as the widespread use of Latin and the limited number of basic texts as well
as the similarity of careers open for the educated, all worked in favor of that
uniformity. Moreover, education in an institutional sense, at least until the later
Middle Ages, was mainly for the few and the few were almost always male.
The basic educational foundation—reading and writing—rested on
such classical authors as Donatus (his Ars Minor and Ars Maior), Cicero,
170 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

pseudo-Cicero’s Rhetorica ad Herennium, Priscian, Horace, Sallust, Ovid,

Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and of course, Virgil, alongside the ever-growing
body of Christian learning focused primarily on the Bible. As Charlemagne was
to urge an eighth-century bishop, “study earnestly in order that you may be able
easily and more correctly to penetrate the mysteries of the divine Scriptures.”1
This emphasis on divine scripture as the ultimate goal of education was
supported and amplified by the fathers of the early church. As such, literacy was
a basic part of the message of Christianity, a religion of the book.
This focus on the written word does little justice, however, to the rich oral
culture of the pre-Christian Germanic and Celtic worlds; by good fortune some
of their lore has been preserved if only in fragments. For example, though we
have but one manuscript of Beowulf, the Old English heroic poem, it revels in
its detailed knowledge of the various Germanic peoples and kingdoms, told in
a complex wordplay that bespeaks a history-minded culture. In one passage the
“Beowulf poet” narrates a paean to the hero’s victory:

Then old and young rejoiced […] retelling Beowulf’s bravery as they jogged
along […] And sometimes a proud old soldier
Who had heard songs of the ancient heroes
And could sing them all through, story after story
would weave a net of words of Beowulf’s
victory […] singing his new song aloud
While he shaped it, and the old songs as well
Siegmund’s adventure, familiar battles fought by the glorious son of Vels.2

These poetic and historical traditions would have been passed down by word
of mouth in a world where trained memory was capable of astounding feats.
But it is also important to remember that the Christianization of Roman
classical and of Germanic and Celtic cultures and the building of a new world
view were not accomplished without obstacles and in-house controversies.
Foundational fathers of the church, such as Jerome (d.420) and Augustine
(d.430), both well trained in the pagan classics, struggled over what to use,
what to adopt, and what to reject of the classical heritage. The pull of classical
texts was beguiling; Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was now read as a prophecy about
the virgin birth. Jerome, who translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate of
medieval Europe, told of flogging himself over the difficulty of choosing
between the glories of Rome and of Jerusalem. Augustine–-the most influential
of the western fathers—had begun life as a teacher of (pagan) rhetoric before his
much-publicized conversion. And in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when
long-lost treatises of Aristotle were coming into the west by way of translations
and commentaries from Arabic and Greek, they in turn brought new challenges
to philosophical and theological thought. Basically much of the learning of the
LIFE HISTORIES 171

FIGURE 8.1 In Saint Jerome's famous dream, he was brought before a heavenly
tribunal, accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian, and severely flogged by
angels. Detail from Sano Di Pietro (1406–81), The Stories of St. Jerome. Paris, Musée
du Louvre. Photograph by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

ancient world was successfully integrated into Christian culture and men (and
women) of letters learned to straddle both traditions, while much of the pre-
Christian Germanic and Celtic culture was lost.

EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN EDUCATION

The Roman Empire, though emphasizing a secular education with a focus on
rhetoric and public service, did not offer institutions of “higher education” to
match the philosophical academies of Greece. Then, in the early Middle Ages,
with the woes of Germanic invasions and the breakup of the western Roman
Empire, relatively few secular schools survived into the sixth century.3 Even
basic schooling was apt to be limited to what could be offered at a local level,
usually by monks or the parish priest, but also in more elite episcopal and secular
households. Although some laity were educated, the main educational concern
was to preserve and transmit the new faith and to prepare a body of priests with
at least a basic level of literacy, though the great monastic centers had higher
ambitions. Ecclesiastical reform movements invariably called for an educated
clergy, and parish priests were held to a standard of sufficient literacy so they
172 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

could read the prayer service, preach a sermon, and lead the flock through the
Creed, a Hail Mary, and the Lord’s Prayer. Given the harsh economic and
social circumstances of Europe in the early Middle Ages (declining populations,
local disorder, and decaying urban life), it seems commendable that so much
intellectual material was preserved and transmitted, both at the local and elite
levels.
As the vanguard of spiritual Christianity for both men and women,
monasteries played a vital role in this tale of preservation, transmission, and
scholarship; particularly important was their emphasis on the written word (and
the education on which it rested). In his monastic rule, which became the basic
code for monastic life in the west, St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547) assumed
a bedrock of literacy. In discussing the purpose of a cloistered community, he
talks of “intend[ing] to establish a school for the lord’s service.” And in his
emphasis on common activity he enjoined that “as they have risen from the
table, all shall sit together and one shall read selections or lives of the Fathers,
or indeed anything that will edify the hearers. But not the Pentateuch or Kings,
for, to weak intellects, it will be of no use at that hour […] but they shall be read
at other times.”4 Nor was this just a male preserve, for an early rule for women
(nuns) ran along similar lines: “they shall be silent while sitting at the table and
they shall direct their attention to the reading.”5
So while the call to a life under vows may have focused on spirituality, the
hundreds of monasteries across Europe nevertheless came to play a critical
role in the preservation and transmission of literary culture. In their confines
men and women copied manuscripts, borrowed and loaned books, wrote
chronicles and histories, produced theological and practical treatises, trained
preachers, and taught the novices and sometimes other children.
Though hardly typical, the library of the great Benedictine monastery
at Cluny in Burgundy gives an idea of how many texts and authors were in
circulation by the twelfth or thirteenth century. At Cluny one could find works
by a long string of fathers of the church—St. John Chrysostom (c. 345–407),
a father of the eastern church; Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–339/40), the first
historian of the church; Hrabanus Maurus (c. 776–856), archbishop of Mainz
and a leading voice of the Carolingian Renaissance; and many other spiritual
heroes of the medieval church. The monastic rules, such as that of Basil of
Caesarea (330–79), written for eastern monasticism, and that of Pachomius
(292–348), an early eastern advocate of the common life, were but some of those
on the shelves (and probably chained in). Pliny (23–79) was just one of many
authors who represented the classical world, and Vitruvius’s (first century bce)
De architectura was a useful text for medieval builders.
The Carolingian Renaissance of the eighth and ninth centuries was a
major factor in the revival of monastic and intellectual life under the aegis
of Charlemagne (r.768–814), king of the Franks and (in 800) emperor in the
LIFE HISTORIES 173

west. His edict of 789, the “general admonition” (admonitio generalis) spelled
this out: “let schools be established in which boys may learn to read, correct
carefully the psalms, the signs in writing, the calendar.”6 Charlemagne’s zeal led
him to order that his bishops and monasteries “be zealous also in the cultivation
of letters, teaching those who by the gift of God are able to learn, according to
the capacity of each individual.”7 Charlemagne brought scholars from all over
Europe to his court at Aachen, with a focus on better versions of the Bible, an
improved script, a more unified liturgy, and a considerable body of history
and biography. Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, reported that, in addition,
“he directed that the age-old narrative poems […] in which were celebrated
the warlike deeds of the kings of ancient time, should be written out and so
preserved,”8 though his son Louis had them destroyed as too pagan.
As an insular counterpart to Charlemagne and the Carolingians, we can turn to
Alfred the Great (d.899), king of Wessex. When he had a respite from the Viking
invasions he fostered a revival of monastic life and of education. In this enterprise
writings in both Old English—some de novo works, such as The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, and some in translation, such as Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy
or Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care—and in Latin were to play a part. Alfred’s
lament for the old days is a poignant indication of how seriously a warrior king
could take the world of written culture: “I recalled how the knowledge of Latin,
had previously decayed through England, and yet many could still read things
written in English.”9 Alfred and others, following the lead of the Carolingians,
endowed monasteries (for both men and women) with a special focus on their
role as centers of teaching and of bookish culture. Rulers would gather men of
letters from afar, as Charlemagne had done; being the center of cultural and
literary activity came to be a hallmark of an ambitious prince.

EDUCATION AFTER THE MILLENNIUM:

CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES
A fairly upward line on the graph covers the growth or evolution of major
educational institutions across medieval Europe. By the twelfth century the
European population was growing with urban life on the up-swing. We find
significant clusters of students and scholars—monks, aspiring churchmen, and
even a few secular figures—being attracted by a more advanced curriculum
offered by learned men in the cathedral precincts—which generally meant in a
city. These cathedral schools were under the supervision of the bishop, though
as numbers grew and reputations spread, the teachers (known as masters) were
eager to assert some independence regarding what and where they taught;
flourishing schools sprang up all over France (and elsewhere): Paris, Reims,
Laon, Orléans, and Chartres, to name the most prominent. Men such as Abelard
(1079–1142), Bernard of Chartres (twelfth century), and Anselm of Bec
174 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

(1033–1109) were intellectual and pedagogical magnets. At these centers the

masters’ lectures on theology, philosophy, and logic drew young men such as
John of Salisbury (d.1180), who would make up the next generation of masters.
The twelfth century has been labeled the century of translation. Long-lost texts
of Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, and others—some coming into Europe by way
of Islamic scholars such as Avicenna (980–1037) and Averroes (1126–98)—
were basic to new efforts to yoke logic and dialectic to theology. Scholars turned
from glossing to analyzing, to sum up a complicated story in a few words.
Much of the excitement and the competitive nature of the cathedral schools
is captured in the autobiographical writing of Peter Abelard—illustrating the
competitive nature of the masters as they vied with each other for students,
fees, and fame. With growing numbers and mostly in urban settings we can spot
the early stages of the infrastructure that was to accompany a large scholarly
enterprise: scriveners and booksellers, inns and taverns, rooming and boarding
houses, rented halls for lectures, prostitutes, dropouts, etc. To a considerable
degree, higher education had come out of the cloister and would be associated
with cities and with teaching masters—who were free to come and go. The
new logic and what we might consider a new critical spirit is best captured
in Abelard’s famous treatise Sic et Non (Yes and No) in which he played
havoc with centuries of authority and scholarship. He set out his provocative
propositions in the style of a formal debate. “That the Son is without beginning,
and the opposite,” or “That Joseph did not suspect Mary of adultery, and the
opposite,” or “That small children are not affected by original sin and the
opposite.” Furthermore, both the “yes” and the “no” of each proposition was
well supported by scriptural and patristic authority.10
Having recognized the cathedral schools and the vital role they played in the
development of higher education, the next step up the ladder of institutional
development was the creation, growth, and spread of the university. This was
a new phenomenon in Europe and mainly a development of the thirteenth
century, though Bologna—generally recognized as the first university in the
European west—dates its origins from 1088. The university was usually an
aggregation of masters, set down in one place, developing an internal structure
and a degree of self-government, and with an academic cursus honorum still
much in place today in the form of a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts and
then specialized graduate work. The masters of the fledgling university were
roughly analogous to the masters of a craft guild; they were guilds of teachers
with apprentices (assistants) and journeymen (students) tagging along. In Italy
universities grew largely from the municipal need for lawyers now able to build
on the recovery of Roman law, though it was often the (graduate) students who
became the recognized guild, whereas in the north it was always the teaching
masters who, in a legal sense, were the university and who profited from the
granting of special privileges.
LIFE HISTORIES 175

That unity of Christian culture, mentioned above, is borne out by the common
intellectual life and structure of the universities, even given differences between
those in Italy and others. A roughly common curriculum and course of study,
largely based on lectures on a relatively small number of basic texts, became
the accepted teaching method. Early in their collective history the universities
successfully lobbied for the idea that a degree from one bona fide university was
accepted at all the others; one studium generale was much like another. What
we would call the undergraduate curriculum focused on the liberal arts, divided
into the trivium, the basic fields of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and then the
quadrivium, the more advanced subjects (theoretical rather than empirical) of
music, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, with varying degrees of emphasis
in different universities. For students who moved on to advanced study the
graduate faculties were theology, law, and medicine, with southern universities
such as Salerno and Montpellier focused more on medicine and northern
universities leaning toward theology. Law as an academic subject was tilted
toward the law of the church (canon law) alongside Roman civil law, as both
ecclesiastical and secular bureaucracies had a need for lawyers of both kinds.
In terms of numbers and power within the academy, the arts faculties were
dominant, with their internal divisions (nations) based on regions of origin as
well as on disciplines.
It was a world of authority—though often questioned and debated—with
a heavy reliance on basic texts. Some of these texts had been basic since late
Roman days and they continued to hold pride of place for centuries. Priscian’s
Institutiones Grammaticae (c. 500) was a basic text for grammar, which meant
language and literature. So was Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and
Mercury (fifth century), a major entry point for classical philosophy as well
as literature. Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (late fourth or
early fifth century), another much revered work of late antiquity, was also a key
text for grammar and philosophy. These works, along with writings of Boethius
(d.524), the Institutiones (Part ii) of Cassiodorus (writing around 550), and
Isidore of Seville (560–636), constituted a basic curriculum, one also well
sprinkled with writings of Jerome, Augustine, and some later church fathers
such as Bede (d.735).
That great twelfth-century explosion of texts resulted in a large body of
Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian writings becoming available. University
masters were increasingly conversant with classical writings unknown in the
west for many centuries. A couple of years at the university—with Paris and
Oxford being typical examples—would introduce the student to Aristotle’s
Prior and Posterior Analytics and Physics, Metaphysics as well as Ethics and
Politics (often taught together as complementary treatises), including texts we
now reject as not authentically Aristotelian. And if the tilt was heavily toward
Aristotle in the recovery and use of classical or early medieval texts, there was
176 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

still room for Euclid’s geometry (c. 300 bce), Boethius’s Ars metrice and his
Consolation of Philosophy, Cassiodorus’s Institutiones (c. 540), and Porphyry’s
Isagoge (c. 304).
For the “graduate” faculties, there were newer authorities, such as the now-
recovered Roman law. Irnerius’s late eleventh- or twelfth-century gloss on the
Corpus Juris Civilis was the basic text across much of Europe. The student of
canon law turned to Gratian’s Concordance of Discordant Canons (early twelfth
century), influenced in its method of posing opposing views by Abelard’s Sic
et Non. Peter Lombard’s mid-twelfth-century Sentences was the entry into
theology, summarizing and organizing many of the basic tenets of the faith. The
similarities of curricula across the continent were but another indication of the
common intellectual and spiritual heritage of that world.
University teaching can roughly be divided into lectures and disputations.
The lectures, given the heavy reliance on a smallish number of basic texts, were
fairly formulaic. As with a course syllabus today, it was laid out week by week,
text by text. Odofredus told his law students at Bologna: “I will begin the Old
Digest on the eighth day after the feast of St. Michael […] The Code I will
always begin within about a fortnight of the feast of St. Michael […] First, I
shall give you the summaries of each title before I come to the text.”11 Student
responses to professorial wisdom seem unchanged, for in engravings in the
museum of that city we have the depiction of those lectures. Students in the
front row are attentive, those in the middle row whisper to each other and look
around, those in the back row are nodding off, perhaps recovering from a late
night out (Figure 8.2).
Whatever their focus, their relations with their host cities, or their own
internal rivalries, in a world of ever-growing bureaucracies the university came
into its own. Already by 1150 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was extending
special protections to masters and students in Italy, and in the thirteenth century
both secular and ecclesiastical princes issued decrees giving students and masters
protection from local authorities. In 1300 there were some twenty universities, all
in Western or Southern Europe. By 1500 there were nearly eighty, many of them
now in Northern and Eastern Europe: Prague (1347), Vienna (1365), Kraków
(1364), Pécs in Hungary (1367), and St. Andrews in Scotland (1413), to name but
a few. And while most of the early universities just grew, perhaps, from a cathedral
school, most later ones had an individual founder and a precise foundation date.
Of the entire list, only the two English universities were not in a major city,
though Oxford and Cambridge were full-fledged members of the club. Housing a
university was a mark of urban distinction, despite the problems young students
and privileged masters might pose regarding jurisdictions and late-night drinking.
An important aspect of the medieval university was the college, which
only made its appearance in the thirteenth century. It combined a residential
unit and a relatively self-contained educational institution. Usually founded
LIFE HISTORIES 177

FIGURE 8.2 “Henricus de Alemannia in Front of His Students.” Illustration from

Laurentius de Voltolina, Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Alemannia, 1350s.

by a wealthy and/or pious benefactor, it provided a fixed residence that the

corporation of the university itself—usually with little by way of any permanent
physical structure—lacked. Though the most famous medieval college was
(and still is) the Sorbonne, at Paris—founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon,
chaplain to Louis IX—it was but one of many such institutions and it was not
the first. A college’s endowment was meant to cover one or more masters,
various chaplains and students, many of whom were but in their mid-teens. It
was modeled on a chantry chapel or a college of priests or choristers attached
to a cathedral; it was a religious or quasi-religious foundation as well as an
academic one, with preference often given to students from the founder’s own
diocese or home region. Like the university itself, the college was a popular
target for philanthropy and by 1500 there were scores of colleges at Paris,
some long-lived, some faded away, and some—such as the College of Donjon
(1412)—folded into the College of Tréguier (1325). Oxford, long famed for its
colleges (Figure 8.3), began to attract public-spirited patrons (for whose souls
college members were to pray12) beginning with Merton in 1263, Exeter in
178 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

FIGURE 8.3 Balliol College, Oxford University, founded c. 1263. Getty Images.

1314–16, Queen’s in 1341, and numerous others up to Magdalen in 1448, the

last medieval foundation. As the universities were rather inchoate corporations,
the sense of identity given by a college was attractive.

EDUCATION BEYOND MONASTIC, CATHEDRAL,

AND UNIVERSITY WALLS: THE TWELFTH CENTURY
AND BEYOND
This contextual discussion has focused on the formal structure of education,
resting on basic texts, relying exclusively on Latin for lectures and readings, in
an all-male setting (and mostly men who were at some level of clerical orders).
Formal education as offered at and represented by the universities remained
much the same, either in institutional or social terms, throughout the Middle
Ages. At the grammar level Donatus’s late classical text remained key into the
sixteenth century. The universities might keep their focus on scholasticism, as
we label the Aristotelian and Thomistic emphasis on philosophy and theology,
and the grammar schools on their Donatus, but underneath their feet, change
was occurring. If we turn to the “great vernacular impulse” that was sweeping
across Europe in the twelfth century we are simultaneously flooded with waves
LIFE HISTORIES 179

of writing of all sorts and genres coming from all directions: practical writing on
the law or estate management, “how to do it” manuals of many sorts, conduct
books, bawdy short stories, travel guides for pilgrims, saints’ lives, epic cycles
(for example, about Charlemagne and King Arthur), love poetry, Icelandic
sagas, and more. Behind this explosion lies the growing presence of other forms
of schooling outside the official structures of monasteries, cathedral schools,
and universities. A lay and secular interest in and need for literacy was growing
exponentially, especially in the towns and, in many cases, including women.
Some of this demand was practical—double entry bookkeeping for merchants,
manorial records for administrators, financial records for church and state—and
some of it was for pleasure or leisure, along with an interest in private prayer
and meditation. Personal as well as practical and public matters produced such
items as newsletters and diplomatic, family, and private correspondence. Books
of hours with prayers to the Virgin—many wholly or partially in the vernacular
and aimed in good part at female readers—soon became “the best seller of
the Middle Ages.” The laity were crossing what had once been a well-guarded
border, aided in part by the growing use of paper over parchment.
However, the winds of change were not overwhelming. The steady growth
of lay literacy, starting at the top and trickling down, meant that by the time the
printed book appeared in the 1450s there was a large consumer-audience ready
to buy, to read, and to write. People such as William Caxton, who brought the
printing press to England in the 1470s, he being a businessman rather than a
scholar or a cleric, turned out such vernacular best-sellers as Chaucer’s various
works, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, and The Game of Chess for an eager
public. Obviously, there had to be a significant educational infrastructure, one
capable of providing primary and perhaps a fair amount of secondary education
to larger and larger numbers of lay men and also to lay women (though in lesser
numbers).

LIFE HISTORIES
To describe medieval education at the ground level we now move on to case
studies. Though we rarely know much about the early training of medieval
individuals, we will work from a “by their works you shall know them”
approach—making inferences about early education from later literary
production and/or their patronage and legacy.
Four of our case studies are of individuals—three men and a woman. All
were able to profit from having received what must have been a high-quality
education. Each of our individuals became a writer and scholar of distinction.
We will look at Bede (d.735), a monk of Anglo-Saxon England; Gerbert of
Aurillac (d.1003), who became Pope Sylvester II; Heloise (d.1162), a woman
of renown and impressive authority in twelfth-century France; and Petrarch
180 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

(d.1374), probably the most influential literary figure of the early Renaissance.
Then, in a more speculative fashion, we will try to assess the educational level
and cultural interests of the Capetian kings and queens of France, tracking them
from the late tenth to the early fourteenth century. After the Capetians we look
at the academic records of the English bishops during the reign of Edward II
(1307–27). Lastly, we look at the education and the bookishness of the Pastons,
a gentry family in fifteenth-century England. Our course of action crosses the
barrier between clerical and lay, though it roughly adheres to the large contours
of institutional development, from monastery to the cathedral schools (by way
of Abelard’s star pupil) to the university and finally to the upper-class laity.
When we pose questions about the education and training of men and women
whose writings have been preserved, we have two possible paths of inquiry. It
might be that the author in question explicitly tells us, somewhere in his or her
writing, about their early days and of being led to the world of letters. Beyond
this, and more commonly, we follow a path of inference, working from what
they wrote to inferring something about their education.

INDIVIDUAL LIFE HISTORIES

Bede
The earliest of the case studies is that of Bede (672/73–735), a man easily set
into a biographical and intellectual framework (Figure 8.4). He tells us about his
early days as a monk in the north of England, a man who never went far from
his home base at Jarrow. He was, nevertheless, heir to a rich scholarly tradition,
Celtic as well as Roman, and as an author stands as the greatest intellectual
figure of the early Middle Ages (with Isidore of Seville his only serious rival).
The men who had carried out the missionary efforts to Anglo-Saxon England
in the seventh century saw scholarly work—primarily focused on biblical
exegesis—as a basic ingredient of the Christianity they were teaching. As such,
they brought (or had sent) a rich library for what became a tradition of learning
in the pre-Viking church of the North.
As heir to this tradition, Bede talks in his Ecclesiastical History of the English
People about himself and his own training:
When I was seven years of age I was […] put into the charge of the reverend
Abbot Benedict [Biscop] and then of Ceolfrith, to be educated. From then
on I have spent all my life in this monastery applying myself entirely to the
study of the Scriptures […] it has always been my delight to learn or to teach
or to write […] I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of
my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers
on the holy Scripture, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and
interpretation. These are the books.13
LIFE HISTORIES 181

FIGURE 8.4 Portrait of Bede writing, from a twelfth-century copy of his Life of
St Cuthbert. MS 26, fol. 2r, British Library, Yates Thompson.

And then he gives, as an amazing résumé, a list of what he had written.

Early medieval scholarship was largely focused on biblical exegesis and on
supplementing or glossing what earlier writers had offered about the sacred
texts. Thus Bede’s long list of his books is mostly devoted to writings such as
“On the Proverbs of Solomon: three books” or “On the book of the blessed
father Tobias, an allegorical explanation concerning Christ and the Church:
one book”; these and many others being much in the mainstream of monastic
scholarship. Nor, despite their titles, were his writings on “the six ages of the
182 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

world” or “a book of epigrams in heroic and elegiac metre,” very far from his
main agenda, as is also the case for “On the nature of things.” There was also “a
longer book on chronology,” plus one “about orthography, arranged according
to the order of the alphabet.” One book, now lost, may hint at a touch of
scholarly pique: “a book on the life and passion of St. Anastasius which was badly
translated from the Greek by some ignorant person, which I have corrected as
best I could.”14 In a letter to Egbert, newly installed bishop of York (r.732–66),
Bede, nearing the end of his life in 734, wrote a scathing report on the failings
of church leaders. One of his main concerns, in addition to his lifelong concern
for monastic learning, was the education, through preaching and teaching, of
the populace: “thus priests should be ordained and teachers established who
may preach the word of God […] in every small village.” Further in the same
letter he notes, “It is well known that there are many of the villages and hamlets
of our people […] [who do not] have any teacher to instruct them in the truth
of our faith.”15 Bede’s last work was a translation of the Gospel of John into
Old English. We know from the number of early manuscripts of and references
to Bede that he was quickly and indisputably held to be one of the great pillars
of Christian learning.
Gerbert of Aurillac
For a second case study we turn to Gerbert of Aurillac (945–1003). He offers
a striking example of great learning and scholarship, starting with a monastic
education much like that given to the young Bede. But it was the three years he
spent in Christian Spain that introduced him to the study of science, particularly
arithmetic and astronomy, that had come by way of Arabic scholarship and
drew on the scholarship of Greece, Persia, and India. When Gerbert returned to
France he attracted students of note to his cathedral school of Reims and soon
established himself as a major theological scholar and the foremost scientist
of Western Europe. His students included the future king of France, Robert
the Pious, and Fulbert, the founder of what became the cathedral school of
Chartres. Gerbert’s learning and wide range of abilities drew the attention of
both the French and the imperial royal family and he became both a kingmaker
and the protégé of these royal lines.
So great was his reputation or his mystique that Gerbert become a figure of
legend—a sorcerer and the supposed inventor of a talking machine with yes
or no answers. But his contributions to the science of the day were genuine
and widely recognized. He wrote a treatise on the abacus that improved and
expanded its use in arithmetic (though without the zero). He recognized the
value of Arabic numerals over Roman numerals. In the field of astronomy he
developed and explained the making, use, and value of various instruments—
the armillary sphere, a horologium, and a sighting tube. While he was not an
original or an empirical scientist, he was a bridge between ancient and modern
LIFE HISTORIES 183

and between the backward western and much more sophisticated eastern
methods of exploring and explaining the universe.
Though Gerbert abandoned monastic life to become bishop of Reims,
and then archbishop of Ravenna, and finally Pope Sylvester II in 999, his
correspondence shows both his scientific and his pastoral persona. In a modern
translation no fewer than 264 letters from his extensive correspondence are
available. He was a man of many skills and with a wide circle of correspondents;
a letter from 978 gives instructions about the construction of a hemisphere;
another of c. 980 explains Boethius’s treatise on music; another of 983 asks
to receive Demosthenes’ treatise on diseases of the eye; one of 984 asks to
borrow a book on astrology that reflected the Arabic thinking; in one of 989 he
gives instructions for the construction of a horologium. Nor do these references
touch on his active correspondence with kings and popes and queens, nor his
involvement in decisions about heresy and monastic discipline.
Gerbert was not only an active correspondent with both secular and spiritual
recipients, but his letters helped expand the canon of “how to do it” for letter
writing. As we have seen with Bede’s letter to Bishop Egbert, and as we will
also see below, letter writing—whether for private or public consumption (and
many a seemingly “private” letter was really meant for a wide circulation)—
was a serious part of the culture of education. The ars dictaminis, following
classical models, demanded the proper style in every section of a letter, from
the opening address through the signing-off. Gerbert’s letters met these stylistic
expectations—a running display of his erudition. Beyond his literary activity,
there are indications that, had he lived longer as pope, he would have launched
a series of ecclesiastical reforms from the top down. And, of passing interest, he
was the first French pope.
As we follow the chronological evolution of the institutions of medieval
education, we move from the monastic schools to the cathedral schools
springing up in European cities by the twelfth century. While Peter Abelard
(1079–1142) is one of the most learned and best known, and certainly among
the most engaging of those who taught and wrote in this setting, we will look not
at him but rather at his most famous student and then long-time correspondent
Heloise, whom he took on for private tutoring, then seduced and impregnated
(their love letters suggest a passionate affair), then married, then deserted after
her relatives had him castrated, and finally with whom he corresponded in a
series of frank letters during their long years apart.
Heloise
In choosing Heloise (1090/1100–1164) as a case study we open a narrow
window in order to shed some light on the education and literary productivity of
(at least a few) women. Only the nunnery (monastery) of the major institutions
that delivered education and intellectual training took women into serious
184 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

account, as against their total exclusion from cathedral schools and universities.
This discriminatory treatment was but one aspect of the misogyny that ran
through so much of medieval society and thought, reflecting the ambivalence of
the church and of many secular institutions and practices. Hostility, fear, and
suspicion of women—considered inferior in mind, body, and moral stature—
was hardly compensated for by widespread veneration of the Virgin and the
popularity of many female saints. Though the Virgin was often depicted as
reading a book (probably a prophetic passage in the Old Testament, at the
moment of Gabriel’s Annunciation), and her mother St. Anne, teaching Mary
to read, was also frequently shown, such images hardly made an impact on the
institutional structures of education (Figure 8.5).16 Learned women, however,
could occasionally be accorded fame and a positive reception, and we have
a handful of major authors from their ranks, well educated and at ease with
the pen. A short list would certainly include Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, a
gifted nun who in the tenth century wrote Latin comedies and poetry plus a
chronicle of the Emperor Otto I; Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), a mystic
of considerable fame and influence; Christine de Pizan (1363–1431), the first
professional woman writer in the modern sense and one boldly proclaiming
the equality of women with men in her widely read Book of the City of Ladies
(1405); and Marie de France, writing popular short stories in the late twelfth
century. The list is now a growing one, and it contains women such as Dhuoda,
who in the ninth century wrote a Handbook for William in which she advised
her son how to live a virtuous Christian life; Heilke of Staufenberg, with a
fourteenth-century spiritual autobiography; and Margery Kempe (1371–after
1438), credited for having dictated the first such work in English.
But all these women, even the best known and most prolific, are noteworthy
in part because they were unusual, able to buck the main currents of literary
creation. However, if famous names such as these are relatively few, there were
thousands of women who received the basics of education, and sometimes more
than this, in nunneries, from parochial clergy, eventually from grammar schools
in towns and villages, or as a part of their training in great households where
chaplains and tutors worked with both girls and boys. By the thirteenth century,
conduct books and instructional manuals were being produced with women as
their intended users, and we have much production in vernacular languages in
part so that a female readership could profit from their wisdom. While records
of educational institutions and methods for teaching women are few, both what
was being written by, for, and about women are all arguments for a picture of
increasing female literacy.
In this context, Heloise offers us an individual whose biography we can follow
with some precision and who—in her correspondence with Abelard after being
pushed suddenly into life as a nun—speaks for herself with dignity, erudition,
and literary polish. Granted that she was unusual for her learning, and was so
recognized from an early age (certainly by her late teens or early twenties), and
LIFE HISTORIES 185

FIGURE 8.5 Master of Cardinal Bourbon (c. 1480–1500), Anna Teaching the Virgin
Reading, c. 1500. Tempera colors, ink and gold on parchment. J. Paul Getty Museum,
MS 109 (2011.40), fol. 123, Los Angeles.

therefore was of intellectual as well as sexual interest to her famous tutor, her
basic education was probably much like that offered to her peers. The nuns
at Argenteuil had presumably given her the best education that was available.
Whatever Abelard’s motives for offering his services as her tutor—and he says
at first it was mainly lust, if he can be believed—Heloise came to him with an
impressive educational background.
186 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

After the calamities that befell the couple, Heloise entered into the life of
a nun, rising to become abbess of the Paraclete and its network of convents,
and a recognized leader of vowed and educated women. After their enforced
separation she and Abelard embarked on their famous correspondence
(Figure 8.6). In her letters she displays an impressive ability to use and to quote
many of the major sources of literary riches: the Bible, the church fathers,
and classical authorities. Though there is a pupil-to-teacher cast in the letters,
Heloise held her own against one of the most impressive intellectuals of the
twelfth century. This is also evident in a fifteenth-century manuscript copy of
anonymous love letters, now generally agreed to be lost letters of Abelard and
Heloise that were penned prior to Abelard’s castration. Heloise writes about
the value of exchanging letters, “it is not unreasonable if sometimes now, for
example, we alternate between visiting each other and having a letter take the

FIGURE 8.6 “Abelard and Heloise,” from the Bible moralisée, thirteenth century.
Found in the collection of the University of Edinburgh. Getty Images.
LIFE HISTORIES 187

place of physical presence.” Abelard, meanwhile, writes her, “I admire your

talent, you who discuss the rules of friendship so subtly that you seem not to
have read Tully [Marcus Tullius Cicero] but to have given those precepts to
Tully himself.”17 If we then look at one of Heloise’s letters written from the
convent, one dealing with the historical and spiritual foundations of cloistered
women, we see how she weaves her scholarly credentials into her text, posing
questions and offering sophisticated arguments that Abelard would be expected
to match when he responded. In a recent translation this letter runs for almost
twenty pages, indicating a facility with the technology of writing as well as
knowledge of those rules that guided epistolary communication.
In this letter, the fifth of Heloise’s letters from the convent to Abelard, she
sets out her views on the subject of cloistered women, quoting from nine books
of the Old Testament, all four Gospels, and twelve other books of the New
Testament. The Psalms, of course, figure prominently, as they were part of
a monastic house’s daily reading, but she also brings in quotations from Job,
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. New Testament books include Acts and the letters to
the Ephesians, the Corinthians, the Hebrews, and the Galatians, among others.
She not only shows a detailed knowledge of the Benedictine code, as we would
expect of a vowed nun, but in her inquiries about women under the veil she refers
to St. Augustine’s rule for communities of canons. Her knowledge of church
history extended to canon law, with a reference to the Council of Chalcedon
(451 ce). There are further quotations from or direct references to St. Benedict
and St. Jerome (without whose wisdom no text seemed properly authoritative).
And since the other great stream of literary modeling was the pagan classics,
she also rolled off bits of Cicero, Ovid (with a six-line quotation from his Art of
Love!), Macrobius, Persius, and Boethius.18 Given ability, education, and social
acceptance, a woman could match the intellectual and literary accomplishments
of her male contemporaries and rivals.
Petrarch
Petrarch (Francesco Petracco, 1304–74) is our last individual case study. He
self-consciously pushed the idea that between the glories of classical times and
his own age, highlighted by his own efforts to revive a classical level of Latin,
there had been a “dark age.” Given the force of his literary personality, a truly
prodigious amount of writing in many genres, and friendship with many of
the powers of fourteenth-century Europe, he stands as the most influential
intellectual figure, perhaps, of those considered here. He made himself into a
pan-European intellectual, at home in many courts, universities, and homes
of patronage. He is regularly linked to Dante and Boccaccio, who became
a good friend (with thirty-two extant letters); they were the Tre Corone of
Italian literature whose use of Tuscan vernacular did much to make it a major
literary vehicle. But unlike Dante, most famous for his Divine Comedy, or
Boccaccio, best known for the Decameron, with Petrarch it was the volume
188 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

and general high quality of many decades of work both in verse (notably his
Italian sonnets and his epic Latin poem Africa) and in Latin prose that made
him so influential.
Petrarch’s father had been a lawyer or notary, forced to leave Florence due
to factional strife in the early fourteenth century, after which he followed
the papal court to Avignon. He wanted his sons to become lawyers, but after
a very good basic education Francesco found legal studies uncongenial and
turned to a life of letters and literary scholarship. In the course of his long
career Petrarch produced an impressive body of work in both Latin and Italian:
history, personal or autobiographical writings, a great deal of very influential
lyric poetry, various religious works, and a correspondence that is staggering
in number of (extant) letters and correspondents. He neither married nor took
major religious orders, and his presence was sought by many, including some
fairly autocratic Italian city-state rulers. It has been said that no other writer
in European history ever had such rapid and far-reaching influence. He taught
by example and influence, with legions eager to follow. We have remarked on
the power of letters, and Petrarch is one of the most prolific and influential of
all the famous letter writers—with 150 different recipients, including classical
authors long past such as Virgil, Livy, Cicero, and Seneca. His histories of
Rome glorified the “good old days,” especially the life of Scipio Africanus;
and his sonnets to Laura, both in her life and after her death, were among the
most powerful lyric poems of the age. That he was crowned poet laureate in
Rome in 1341 is an indication of how ancient glories and contemporary Italian
self-consciousness merged in a spiritual and cultural world that he helped
create. Unlike his hero, St. Jerome, for him there was no schism between Rome
and Galilee.

COLLECTIVE LIFE HISTORIES

If we turn to what we can infer about the education of some men and women
collectively in the High or later Middle Ages we find ourselves entering a world
of increasing literacy where both literary production and practical uses for this
skill were much to be seen. Business records, the widespread use of charters,
notarial documents and registers, the writing of histories and chronicles by
laymen and clerics, and the flood of practical manuals and advice literature, plus
poetry and prose beyond counting, all testify to these changes. The collective
studies we offer below reflect this change, indicating the growth of literacy and
the role of written materials in both public and private life.
The Capetians
The education of the Capetian kings and queens of France, the dynasty that
held the crown from 987 into the 1320s, is an intriguing topic, not least because
LIFE HISTORIES 189

education was hardly their first priority. Though Robert the Pious (d.1031), the
second Capetian king, had studied with Gerbert at Reims and a royal biographer
(Suger, abbot of St. Denis) talks of being at school with Louis VI (d.1137),
the Capetians as a dynasty or family were in no striking way a collection of
crowned intellectuals. Rather, literacy was, by their day, just an accepted part
of rulership, as was the patronage of artists and authors and support for the
new University of Paris; France’s rulers were simply moving with the times. But
to give them credit, because they stood atop the pyramid, the manuscripts they
commissioned were better, their grants of privilege more far-reaching, and their
patronage more generous and more widely noted. Their achievements—even if
exaggerated—were more apt to draw biographers. And their growing power,
coinciding with the growing importance of Paris, was a factor that worked in
favor of both kings and city.
The Capetians came to the throne as middle-level nobility, at best, and from
the early days of their reign seemed to recognize that literate skills and the
patronage of educated churchmen could be to their advantage. If few others
of the line could boast of Robert II’s educational credentials, the large volume
of royal biographies generated around and about them argues that they were
friends to and patrons of men of letters. Suger (d.1151), abbot of St. Denis,
where chronicle writing with a strong royal flavor was encouraged, wrote a life
of Louis VI and the beginning of one on Louis VII. At or under the influence
of St. Denis, a number of pro-royal historical projects were launched and long
maintained: the Grandes Chroniques and the Historia Regum Francorum.
Favorable propaganda was a powerful tool, then as now, and in addition to the
familiar life of Louis IX (St. Louis, r.1226–70) by Joinville, we have lives of the
king by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and a memoir by William of Chartres. The king
himself supposedly wrote a treatise to guide the education of his daughters.
Rigord wrote the Gesta Philippi I and William of Nangis did a biography of
Louis IX and Philip III. Being well chronicled by sympathetic writers would
have emphasized the value of friendly words on parchment.
Many of the most lavish illuminated manuscripts produced in thirteenth-
and early fourteenth-century France were commissioned for—and presumably
read or at least looked at by—members of the royal family. The great Psalter
of Queen Ingeborg, or that of Blanche of Castile, or the Bible moralisée were
produced for royal ladies (and sometimes for their husbands as well). Blanche
of Castile, St. Louis’s mother, had been well educated in Spain on the chance
that she might have been destined to rule at home. The fourteenth-century
Psalter of Jeanne of Navarre has an illumination of Blanche teaching her young
son to read, reminiscent of St. Anne teaching the Virgin. The family record of
being slightly “bookish” seems fair by the standards of the day, and support for
the University of Paris, where one of the royal chaplains founded the Sorbonne,
adds another feather to the Capetian’s cap.
190 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

English bishops under Edward II (1307–27)

The English bishops in the years of Edward II (r.1307–27) offer a collective case
study whereby we can assess the extent to which university training had become
fairly regular in the training and career paths for men who would reach the top
rungs of the ecclesiastical career ladder. During Edward’s reign thirty-seven
men held the seventeen English sees. Of these, only twelve had no discernable
university ties—six of whom were monks and presumably educated within
the cloister. Of the other twenty-five, their higher education had been spread
around—mostly Oxford, Cambridge for Segrave of London, and a number
with some continental exposure (mostly at Paris). And since the records are less
than perfect, it is possible that some of the nonacademic twelve actually had
university experience, albeit short of a degree. Twelve bishops had a doctor’s
degree, mostly in canon and/or civil law rather than in theology, this befitting
men steering themselves toward high administrative office and a likely career
path of service for king and church.
Given this sort of collective academic profile, we can generalize about a
well-educated episcopate. Of interest is that a number of these twenty-five
maintained academic ties, often as useful friends of the university, long after their
own student days and at a time when they might wield considerable influence.
Several alumni-bishops were asked to speak for Oxford in quarrels with the
mendicants. Some men became generous donors, and one loan chest was so
well endowed that it was named for its founder, John Langton of Chichester.
Walter de Stapeldon of Exeter, coming from a family of means, cofounded
Stapledon Hall, to evolve into Exeter College, Oxford. The hall was endowed
so as to support a rector and twelve scholars (eight from Devon and Cornwall).
Not quite at that level, Swinfield of Hereford gave ten marks in response to an
appeal on behalf of impoverished students. Several bishops bequeathed books,
while several others were authors in their own right (if hardly major figures).
Some were to be friends of education. Dalderby of Lincoln, reluctant to appoint
unlearned men to parish churches, was generous in granting leaves of absence
for men who wished to attend university. One odd light on this: Lewis de
Beaumont of Durham and Reynolds of Canterbury were openly ridiculed for
their lack of education. Beaumont was considered to be semi-literate, and there
was speculation about whether Reynolds could write his own name. At the
other extreme, Winchelsey of Canterbury, while a student at Paris, may have
heard Thomas Aquinas lecture.
The Paston family in the fifteenth century
The Paston family of fifteenth-century England is our last collective case study
and by now we are well into a world where literacy was taken for granted,
books a common currency for use and pleasure, and the education of the well
born a matter of course. In one generation the Pastons made the leap from
LIFE HISTORIES 191

marginal status to the higher ranks of the gentry, and they managed this at a
time of serious local violence, the Wars of the Roses, and their own litigious
and aggressive style. William Paston (1378–1444) rose from obscure roots to
become a judge, and his sons continued his climb. By the end of the fifteenth
century they could boast of a family record that included members of parliament,
justices of the peace, a knighthood, battlefield experience, appointments as
sheriffs, being in the court party for a royal wedding, and marriage into the
fringes of the high nobility. Three aspects of the family’s history are grist for
our mill: their collective educational profile, the volume of their vernacular
correspondence, and their ownership of and familiarity with books.
For a gentleman it was now accepted that some sort of serious education
was a regular step along the road to becoming lord of the manor, a courtier,
and an office holder. William I’s legal training in English common law has left
no records and whether he was trained (and made his contacts) at the Inns of
Court in London or in the local legal circles of East Anglia, he was ultimately
able to buy his way into a prestigious burial site within Norwich Cathedral.
For the succeeding generations of Paston men, now raised as gentlemen, it
was Cambridge for some and Oxford for the youngest son of John I, who was
probably destined for the clergy but for his untimely death. John I, eldest son
of William, was at both Trinity Hall and Peterhouse, Cambridge, and then—as
we know from letters from his young wife—at the Inner Temple in London.
His brother Clement also went to Cambridge, though he probably left short
of a degree, and his son Walter seems to have earned his bachelor’s degree at
Oxford before he succumbed to the plague. John I’s grandson William III went
to Cambridge, though his early departure was probably due to the sweating
sickness. One of the boys had been at Eton, a fairly new royal foundation.
Though hardly a family with a striking record of great intellectual or scholarly
commitment, a university experience was now a useful route to follow. The
women, from when we pick them up in the 1440s through the end of the century,
probably learned their letters from family chaplains or stewards, though there
were grammar schools in Norwich that might also have played a role in this.
The sheer volume of the extant Paston letters indicates that they were all at
home with pen and paper (and it usually was paper). In the modern edition of
the letters, we have 36 written by John I, 20 by William II, 103 by Margaret
(wife of John I), 71 by John II (eldest son of John I), 70 by John III (next
son), and 61 by various other men and women of the family.19 The women’s
letters were all dictated; the men alternated between putting pen to paper and
dictation. Some letters were quite lengthy, running to over 100 printed lines.
Modes of expression vary, of course, but we clearly have a group of upper-
class people who had been schooled—literally—in how to express themselves in
written communication. An occasional letter tells us something about the actual
process of letter writing: continued over the course of two days, or begun late
at night, or now finished and in need of a courier, or written in direct and quick
192 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

response, or in recognition that “paper is dainty,” as Margaret notes at the end

of one to her husband.
The letters also touch on the Paston’s ownership and use of books. The
evidence is scattered through many letters, often just a casual mention among
other topics. Such a passing reference could be to “the book of vij sagys” that
John III wanted to get hold of, or “my book of the metyng of the Dwke and
of the Emperour,” or “a book of my syster Annys of the Sege of thebes […]
[and] lete Portlond brynge the book hom wyth hym,” as the request ran. In
an inventory of losses after their manor house at Hellesden had been sacked,
Margaret includes their chaplain’s “boke of Frensh, price iij s. iiij d.” as well
as her son’s “boke of Freynsh price xv d.” John III was interested in acquiring
the library of the family’s chaplain, though he never seems to have done so. His
brother left an inventory (“The Inventory off Englysshe bookis”) and this covered
chivalric tales, Chaucer-like items (“the parlement off byrdys”), translations of
classical authors, religious items, “A boke had off myn ostesse at the George”
with the “Death of Arthur,” and a tale of “Kyng Richard Cure delyon,” among
its contents. Still preserved is Sir John Paston’s “Grete Boke,”20 with that mix
of chivalric, religious, and practical texts all bound together in what was the
kind of “put together” volume that was popular reading among the laity. So
for a family of conventional piety and a casual concern for intellectual matters,
the combination of serious education, practical literacy, a great deal of letter
writing, and the ownership of books, argues for an educated laity that took all
of this much for granted. When Margaret Paston told her husband to send to his
brother at Cambridge “a nomynale and a bok of sofystry,” it reads like another
item, perhaps inserted just before or after a request to send a warm sweater to
a boy off at college. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing in need of further
elaboration.

CONCLUSION
This brief survey of the course of educational institutions and developments
over the course of almost 1,000 years can hardly do more than hint at major
themes, let alone at more than a few of the great figures. Famous and influential
scholars such as Isidore of Seville or Alcuin of York have barely been mentioned,
and the most famous of the theologians—Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, among them—are but spear carriers in the wings.
However, to set against these omissions and with many topics cut short, a
survey of the cultural history of education through the ten medieval centuries
suggests that, in a crude sense, things got better over the years: a higher
literacy rate, more schools, more books (eventually), more readers, and more
opportunities for women and those lower down the socio-economic scale. By
the end of the Middle Ages we have fair numbers about the various schools
that now served both clergy and laity, and daughters as well as sons. In the
LIFE HISTORIES 193

north of England we can figure about thirty-five song and reading schools in
the diocese of York around 1450, or—by a different count—about thirty-three
schools in the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, and York (not counting the city
of York). Literacy had become a necessity for more and more people and for
more purposes. The major universities of Europe could count the numbers of
teachers and students in the thousands, a strong indication that education had
indeed become big business.
A “big business” metaphor also reminds us that it was not always free.
Monasteries might educate their own acolytes as part of the cost of and procedure
for preserving the communal life, as Jarrow had done so well for the young Bede.
But if they served the lads of the village who would go back into the world, a
payment in pennies or in kind or in labor was, no doubt, an expected part of
the exchange. The parish priest who ran the village primary school as part of
his duties was not expected to do so as an act of Christian charity, although in
England by the fourteenth century the endowment of some chantry chapels at the
parish level supported teaching as well as prayer. Beyond this, we can go up the
scale, looking at the masters of the cathedral schools, as well as the civil lawyers
of Bologna and the theologians of Paris. Begging letters from students to home,
often claiming frugality amidst a world of inflation and unexpected expenses, are
preserved in large numbers. Student debt is not a creation of the modern university,
though—then as now—the end product is generally deemed to be worth the cost.
And similar to today, benefactors might support a scholar financially or set up a
foundation in support of students and teachers at a grammar school or university.
This survey emphasizes the extent to which the church shaped education,
provided the majority of students, and produced the texts on which so much
of the curriculum was centered. As such, no attention has been paid to a body
of outsiders who were to be found across much of Europe and whose own
traditions emphasized education and the role of the book. These were the
scattered Jewish communities. Because for the most part the Jews were engaged
in business, and in cities and villages rather than in the countryside, literacy
was vital to their lives, apart from the role that a knowledge of Hebrew and/
or of the Old Testament played in preserving their identity in the midst of
Christendom. For the prayer services, if for no other reason, boys were taught
to read, and though it is easy to exaggerate, there were also certain domestic
prayers and blessings that fell to Jewish women and, thus, some element of
literacy was more common among them than among Christian women.
Higher learning, studying the Talmud and more advanced biblical glosses and
commentaries, was quite parallel to the scholasticism of the universities: basic
texts, commentaries, dialectic presentations of the various sides of a proposition,
or a line of analysis. The wisdom of the Talmud and the rabbis of late classical
and medieval times was very much the counterpart of those church fathers
discussed above, and the methods in the schools were not dissimilar—dialectic,
logic, and an elaborate focus on hidden or allegorical meanings. We have less
194 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE MEDIEVAL AGE

record of secular Jewish literature than we do of such work in Christian society;

pogroms and diaspora have worked against preservation. But when printing
came into Europe in the fifteenth century, Jewish texts and Christian attention
to Jewish texts were both part of the world of reading and writing. And despite
biblical injunctions against depicting people in favor of nonrepresentational art,
we have illuminated prayer books and apocryphal books of the Old Testament
that reveal an aesthetic as well as a spiritual commitment to maintaining the
faith in what was very often a hostile cultural and social environment.
This chapter concludes with a final consideration about education and reading
and writing. We have talked about the importance of letters as a method of
communication and a way of displaying one’s erudition regarding proper forms
of expression. Of our case studies, it is no accident that Gerbert of Aurillac,
Heloise, and the Paston family are best known by their epistolary activity, with
Petrarch probably topping them all in both productivity and influence. In each
case, what is readily accessible today is the letters. Letters were how both men
and women could show their citizenship in the nation of the literate.
Furthermore, if we focus on the letters of famous individuals (or of a
family)—a precise and specific document from sender to recipient—we fail to
pick up the way in which the developing bureaucracies of Europe conducted
much of their business. Those hundreds and thousands of university men who
served the bureaucracies of church and state were turning out “patent letters”
and “close letters” that the English kings sent, day in and day out, to order,
appoint, instruct, or permit—formulaic letters by the thousands and penned by
men trained in the ars dictaminis. The letter was a multipurpose document in
a world of literate recipients and correspondents. Recent scholarly interest in
medieval letters has given us a collection of the letters of the queens of England,
or of some 600 letters from various authors in Merovingian times, or those
we have from Anglo-Saxon England, or the Columbia University website that
houses a collection of Latin letters written to and from medieval women,21
among other collections and editions of interest. They span a wide arc. At a
more casual or personal side, we can look at a Paston letter that is really a
Valentine’s Day card between young lovers or at a letter of Alessandra Strozzi
telling her sons to choose brides who were comely, rich, and (hopefully) fertile.
But a patent letter of Edward IV of England, written on April 11, 1463, was
an open document, an official document for all to read for a very practical
purpose: “pardon to Laurence Ruzelay, late of London, ‘merchaunt,’ […] late
merchant of Florence, of all murders and felonies committed by him before
the purification.”22 The power of the written word was sufficient. By the late
fifteenth century Laurence Ruzelay was moving in a world of reading and
writing so those he dealt with would understand the gist of the pardon. As a
Florentine merchant with English connections, he himself may well have been
literate in several languages and perhaps in accounting and the arithmetic of
currency exchange as well, and maybe in his travels he even ran across that
brand new invention of the mid-1450s, a book now printed by moveable type.
 NOTES

General Editors Preface

1. Burke 2019.
2. Geertz 1973: 42.
3. Williams 1961: 145.
4. See, for example, Boyd 1947; Bowen 1972.
5. McCulloch 2011.
6. See, for example, Goodman, McCulloch, and Richardson 2009; McCulloch,
Goodson, and Gonzalez-Delgado 2020.
7. Giorgetti, Campbell, and Arslan 2017: 1.
8. See also McCulloch 2019.
9. Bailyn 1960: 53.
10. Ibid.: 14.
11. For example, Butts 1947; 1953.
12. Cremin 1976: 27.
13. Ibid.: 29.
14. Cremin 1970, 1980, 1988.
15. Church, Zatz, and Silver 1989: 419–20; Veysey 1990: 285; see also
Cohen 1998.
16. Silver 1983: xxiv.
17. See, for example, Burke 1997, 2019.
18. For example, Cohen 1999; Popkewitz, Peyrera, and Franklin 2001; Fendler 2019.
19. Fendler 2019: 15.
20. Graff 1995.
21. Burke 2000, 2011.
22. For example, O’Neill 2014.
23. Ariès 1962; see, for example, Foyster and Marten 2010.
24. In relation to learners and learning, see, for example, McCulloch and Woodin
2010; on teachers and teaching, see Tyack and Cuban 1995.
25. For example, Godfrey et al. 2017.
26. See, for example, Said 1993; Davidann and Gilbert 2019.
196 NOTES

Introduction
1. Translated and published in English as Centuries of Childhood (1962).
2. Ariès 1962: 61.
3. Classen 2005: 46.
4. Ibid.: 49–50.
5. Jordan (1959) and additional volumes on London, Lancashire, Bristol and Somerset,
Kent, and rural society.
6. Stone 1964: 44.
7. Stock 1983.
8. Courtenay 2019.
9. Ordered Universe, n.d.; for additional information on Robert Grosseteste,
see Chapter 2, in this volume.
10. Rashdall 1936: 1:xxxvii.
11. Thorndike 1940.
12. Gabriel 1951.
13. Verger 1999; Willemsen 2008.
14. Leach approached the primary sources (many of which he edited) with a bias against
the role of monasteries and a crusading fervor against those who accepted the
commonly held opinion that English grammar schools were primarily the result of
the Reformation and the foundations of Edward VI and Elizabeth I.
15. Parry 1920.
16. Simon 1954–6.
17. Cornelius 2010.
18. Gehl 1993: 21.
19. Garin 1957; Grendler 1989; Black 1991.
20. Jardine and Grafton 1982, 1986.
21. Black 1991; Black 2001; Gehl 1993.

Chapter 1
1. Classics on the history of some aspects of medieval education (and its relationship
to the church) are, among many others, Parry 1920; Riché 1976; Black 2001; and
Orme 2006.
2. Moral education of the child is a topic already investigated by many disciplines,
including philosophy (Barrow 2007; Bayer 2017), psychology (Piaget 1932; Bull
1971), sociology (Durkheim [1925] 1973; Halstead and Pike 2006), and history.
Although their approaches differ, most if not all post-Kantian studies on morality
acknowledge the decisive role of society and educational institutions in the formation
of the moral conscience of the child.
3. Taylor 1992.
4. Most famously, the Rule of Saint Benedict. See chapter 55 for regulations on
clothing.
5. Modern and contemporary studies on the development of moral conscience
underscore the role of what Kant would call heteronomy in the moralization of the
child. No longer conceived of as the construct of an abstract subject, Kant’s concept
of moral autonomy was adopted, for instance, by Piaget, who makes autonomous
morality a stage in the moral education of the child shaped by its understanding that
morality has a sense only within a specific social order. Moral autonomy rests upon
NOTES 197

psychological negotiation with heteronomy, that is, with parents as moral educators,
teachers, educational institutions, and so on (Piaget 1932). See also Wood 1990.
6. Geertz 1973: 94.
7. Asad 1993; Fitzgerald 1997.
8. In addition to literary prescriptions and tasks, the employment of physical punishment
in moral education left a greater historical record than the caress of approval (see
Parsons 2018). For late antique school practice of corporal punishment (and the
continuity with early medieval practice), see Bloomer 2015c.
9. The sequence of Psalter followed by Distichs is commonly and rightly cited in
accounts of education, but it is not clear whether, in practice, the children even
started to learn the Psalter before the Distichs. The immediate purpose of memorizing
the Psalter was, after all, for a choir of children (almost always boys) to sing. We
suspect they were taught to read the Psalter after already having memorized it in its
musical setting, but there were also reading schools that did not include liturgical
training.
10. Bloomer 2011; Connolly 2012.
11. Baldzuhn 2009; Bloomer 2015b.
12. The reception of the text is sketched briefly in the only modern edition of the text
(Boas 1952). The present authors are preparing the entry on the Disticha Catonis
for the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum (Brown 1960–). We have
identified more than 1,200 manuscripts and prepared an electronic catalog with
information on each of them (Digital School Book 2016).
13. See Barns 1950; Butts 1986; Kennedy 2003; Bloomer 2015a.
14. For the Book of Job as “a contest of moral imaginations” that share the same basic
moral foundation, see Newsom 2009.
15. A typical example is 3.1: “Instrue praeceptis animum, ne discere cessa, / Nam sine
doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago” (Fortify your mind with precepts; do not stop
learning / For the unlettered life is a likeness of death).
16. 4.42: “Damnaris nunquam post longum tempus amicum, / Mutavit mores, sed
pignora prima memento.”
17. Nothing in the letter adverts to the presence of two distinct texts, namely the
Breves and the Distichs proper. Furthermore, nothing in the short prose sentences
is inconsistent with the situation and purpose declared by the letter nor with the
matter and style of the coming hexameter distichs.
18. Proponents of situational ethics, most notably existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre
and liberal theologians such as Joseph Fletcher, among others, argue that the only
way to evaluate a situation ethically is to take into account the particular context of
an action, with only partial recourse (or none at all) to general moral principles. Bull
(1969) and Santor (2000) are examples of the ambiguous reputation that situational
ethics have in theories of moral education: while Bull considers situational ethics
to be useful in conjunction with the teaching of general prescriptions, Santor,
judging from the Canadian case, considers situational ethics to be equal to moral
relativism. Perhaps one of the most valuable lessons of medieval education is that
situational ethics does not imply or entail moral relativism—the Distichs are far
from a relativistic worldview.
19. See Quain 1954; Huygens 1970; Minnis 1984.
198 NOTES

20. “Sed Censorinus Cato cum videret iuvenes et puellas in magno errore versari,
scripsit hunc libellum ad filium suum, insinuans ei rationem bene vivendi et per eum
docens cunctos homines ut iuste et caste vivant […]. Materia eius sunt precepta bene
et caste vivendi. Intentio eius est representare nobis qua via tendamus ad veram
salutem […]. Utilitas est hunc librum legentibus ut vitam suam sapienter instituere
agnoscant” (Huygens 1970: 21–2; our translation).
21. The abovementioned praetorium, apparently the governor’s palace in a provincial
city, is one such example. More generally, the mention of passing through streets
and knowing whom to greet describes an urban world shared with some of the
ancient colloquies, which include also characters such as the slave minder, the
pedagogue. See Dionisotti 1982; Bloomer 2011.
22. For possible medieval objections to Catonian morality, which did not harm its
popularity, see Hazelton 1960: 160. The patently pagan 2.2, “An di sint caelumque
regant, ne quaere doceri” (Whether the gods exist or rule heaven, do not attempt
to discover), was replaced in Carolingian times with “Mitte arcana dei caelumque
inquirere quid sit” (Avoid inquiring what the mysteries of god and heaven are). See
Hazelton (1960: 161n20), who cites Skutsch (1905: 361). For various commentaries’
assimilation of the Distichs to Christian virtues, see Hazelton 1957.
23. Hazelton (1957) demonstrated this over sixty years ago.
24. Thirteenth-century manuscript, MS Canon. Class. 72, fol. 60r, Bodleian Library,
Oxford—the general position of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentators
(Hazelton 1957: 165, 167n41).
25. “Sed praedictam sententiolam in hoc prologo ideo exposui ut lectoris animum ad
legenda non solum ista quae hic collegi, sed etiam ad omnia sacrae scripturae dicta
incitarem” (Othlo 1936).
26. This attitude and approach are still current in pedagogical theory, sometimes
labeled as neo-Aristotelian, since they place an emphasis on practicing virtues for
a single self in a relatively fixed world of social roles, in contrast to a more social
understanding (and an understanding of the moral experience or attitudes of others)
(Edmiston 2000).
27. Liber pontificalis 86: “et quia studiosus erat et capax in officio cantelenae, priori
cantorum pro doctrina est traditus” (Duchesne 1955–7: 1:371; Davis 2000: 85).
28. Page 2010: 216–17.
29. Ordo 1.43: “Tunc illi, elevantes per ordinem, vadunt ante altare; statuuntur per
ordinem acies duae tantum iuxta ordinem, parafonistae quidem hinc inde a foris,
infantes ab utroque latere infra per ordinem” (Andrieu 1931–61: 2:81).
30. Dyer 2008: 27.
31. Liber diurnus no. 97: “ne ergo cantorum deficeret ordo atque hinc dei ecclesia
contumelia irrogaretur” (Von Sickel 1889: 127–9).
32. Dyer 2008: 29.
33. Miller 1994.
34. Liber pontificalis 104: “Tunc praesul eum scolae cantorum ad erudiendum
communes tradidit litteras et ut mellifluis instruetur cantilenae melodiis” (Duchesne
1955–57: 2:86).
35. Liber pontificalis 104 (Duchesne 1955–7: 2:92).
36. In the lists of chapels and churches in the Liber censuum, compiled by the papal
camerarius Cencio Savelli (later Pope Honorius III) (Fabre and Duchesne 1889–1905:
1:303). For further references to the schola cantorum as orphanotrophium, see
Duchesne 1955–7: 2:102n18, 195; Allodi and Levi 1885: 159.
NOTES 199

37. Page 2010: 259.

38. Berger 2018: 145–6, 274.
39. For a detailed treatment of education in hagiographical sources from late antique
Gaul and Merovingian Francia, see Heinzelmann 1990. For the use of the Psalter in
Merovingian primary education, see Riché 1953.
40. Andrieu 1931–61: 4:111–205; Vogel 1986: 177.
41. Ordo 36.1: “Primum in qualicumque scola reperti fuerit pueri bene psallentes,
tolluntur et nutriuntur in scola cantorum, et postea fiunt cubicularii. Si autem
nobelium filii fuerint, statim in cubiculo nutriuntur” (Andrieu 1931–61: 4:195). As
Dyer notes, the ordo’s distinction between the paths for noble-born children and
those not of noble parentage is significant (2008: 26).
42. Lahaye-Geusen 1991; Cochelin 1996; Boynton 1998; Boynton 2000, 2008, 2010.
43. Compiled on the basis of draft versions of council documents (Semmler 1960:
322–4, 1963; McKitterick 1989: 34).
44. “Statuta Murbacensia 2: […] Ubi etiam addendum est, ut nullus fratrum pretermittatur
qui in aliqua meditatione lectionis diuinae tempore ordinato occupatus non sit:
uerbi gratia, ut scolastici, postquam psalmi, cantica et hymni memoriae commendata
fuerint, regula, post regulae textum liber comitis, interim uero historiam diuinae
auctoritatis et expositores eius necnon et conlationes partum et uitas eorum legendo
magistris eorum audientibus percurrant” (Semmler 1963: 442).
45. A similar order is found in Anglo-Saxon sources, see Lendinara 1999: 20; for the
vernacular glossed Psalter, see Blom 2017.
46. Herrgott 1776: 208–9; Boynton 1998: 197.
47. Boynton 2000: 8.
48. Herrgott 1776: 204.
49. Boynton 2000: 9.
50. Dependencies of St. Blasien and Göttweig respectively.
51. Spätling and Dinter (1987): 2:101–266.
52. Consuetudines Fructuarienses 792: “Quicquid cantor pueris precipit pertinens ad
suam obedientiam, sine magistri licentia agit, ut est legere, cantare, scribere, notare,
cartas radere, pumicare, regulare, librum ligare, breuem de capitulo scribere, quia
hec omnia ipse debet eis monstrare” (Spätling and Dinter 1987: 2:138).
53. Spätling and Dinter 1987: 2:139.
54. Yardley 2008. See also Chapter Three in this volume.
55. Zieman 2003: 106.
56. For song schools, see Zieman 2008: 1–39; Bowers 1975; Kintzinger 1996; Gambassi
1997.
57. Zieman 2008: 10.
58. Keefe 2002: 1:28–38.
59. See “Table 1” in Keefe 2002: 1:160–3. Of the sixty-three manuscripts listed, thirty
are labeled “schoolbook,” of which six are explicitly linked with an episcopal
context and five with a monastic context.
60. See Vykoukal 1913.
61. Keefe 2002: 1:35.
62. The corpus of Latin glosses on hymns studied by Boynton (2001) provides further
evidence of the use of “liturgical” books for teaching purposes.
63. Cochelin 2000; Boynton and Cochelin 2006: 12–13.
64. Simmons 1879: 16; Jasper and Smith 2019.
65. Simmons 1879: 18.
200 NOTES

66. Citations are from Hanssen’s Studi e Testi edition (1948–50); for an English
translation, see Eric Knibb’s translation in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Latin
Library (2014).
67. Liber officialis 1, praefatiuncula 1–2; translated by Knibbs 2014: 1:25. Amalar’s
auctoritas is Augustine’s reading of Christ’s commandment “All things therefore
whatsoever you would [vultis] that men should do to you, do you also to them”
(Mt. 7:12). The argument is that since the Lord could not have meant to say that
evil actions are permissible so long as one wishes evil to be done to oneself, the verb
vultis, must be here intended to refer to voluntas for good, not cupiditas for evil.
The relevant passages of Augustine are De civitate dei 14.8.23–50 (see Dombart and
Kalb 1955: 423–4) and De sermone domini in monte 2.22.74–5 (see Mutzenbecher
1967: 171–4). Amalar does not directly quote Augustine so it is difficult to establish
whether he has a particular source in mind.
68. Augustine, De trinitate 15.27; see the edition of W.J. Mountain (1968).
69. Liber officialis 3.11.18 (translated by Knibbs 2014: 2:81).
70. Ibid., prooemium 6 (translated by Knibbs 2014: 1:5).
71. Ibid., praefatio 5 (translated by Knibbs 2014: 1:5), citing Augustine, De doctrina
christiana 1.36.
72. Kolping 1989: 107.
73. The work’s modern editor, Jean Michel Hanssens, identified more than seventy
manuscript copies (Amalar 1948–50: 1:120–31).
74. Baschet 2010: 210–12.
75. Where the Last Judgment scene is placed not on the inner wall of the façade but on
the inner longitudinal walls of the nave, it nearly always appears on south wall, in
order to orient the liturgical choir and apse at Christ’s right hand (Baschet 2010:
212).
76. See Voyer and Boscani Leoni 2015.

Chapter 2
1. For an overview, see Contreni and Casciani 2002.
2. Tertullian 1956: 36.
3. Marsden and Matter 2012.
4. Marrou 1956: 314–50; Brown 1997: 3–232.
5. Only a remnant of classical municipal schools of grammar and rhetoric remained
in towns such as Carthage, Rome, Ravenna, and southern Gaul into the sixth and
possibly seventh century.
6. Contreni 2020a.
7. Riché 1976; Cassiodorus 2004.
8. Einhard 1998: 31.
9. See Chapter 7, in this volume.
10. Contreni 2020b.
11. Contreni 2002.
12. In one of his letters, Alcuin asked that it be copied for common reading (Dales
2012: 142).
13. Dales 2012: 127.
14. Ibid.: 130.
15. Ganz 1995.
16. Contreni 1995.
NOTES 201

17. Haskins 1927.

18. Stock 1983: 274.
19. Ibid.: 273–325, esp. 281–2.
20. Peter Abelard 2015.
21. Abelard 1978.
22. Lombard 2007–10.
23. Winroth 2008.
24. Still available in print and electronic formats.
25. Panofsky 1951.
26. Aligheri 2013.
27. Thomas Aquinas 1964–81.
28. Aeterni Patris 1879.
29. Plato 1997.
30. See computus above, p. 36.
31. Lewis 2019. See also the Introduction, p. 3.
32. Thijssen 2008.
33. Haskins ([1923] 1955) is still useful.
34. Ironically, wealthy women often helped endow the universities.
35. Kirschner 2017.
36. Lowe 1934–71; Bischoff 1968–2017.
37. Einhard 1998.
38. Williams and Martin 2003.
39. Camargo 1991; Rio 2009.
40. A frequent sentiment; this one by Alcuin. See Wallach 1955.
41. Fälschungen im Mittelalter 1988.
42. Edwards 1994.
43. Ziolkowski 2004.
44. Roberts and Skeat 1983.
45. Dales 2012: 131.
46. Bischoff 1990.
47. Grierson 1991; Kornbluth 1995: 31–48.
48. On Franciscan preaching, see Roest 2015.
49. Burnham 2008.
50. Rankin (2018). See Chapter 1, in this volume, on liturgical learning.
51. Evans 1980; Wallis 1988; Eastwood and Grasshoff 2004.
52. O’Daly 2015.
53. See Chapter 7, in this volume, for more on this.
54. Teeuwen and Van Renswoude 2017; Steinová 2019.
55. I owe this information and these references to Dr. Susan L’Engle’s paper, “Readers
and the Art of Classification,” 46th St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies,
June 18, 2019.

Chapter 3
1. Ariès 1962. See the Introduction, in this volume.
2. “In the Middle Ages there Was No Such Thing as Childhood,” 2019; answered by
Gabriele 2019.
3. Offord 1959.
4. Burrow 1986: 1–54.
202 NOTES

5. Ibid.: 80.
6. Bullough and Campbell 1980; Wood 1981.
7. Seymour 1992: 2–3.
8. Ibid.: 13.
9. Trevisa 1988: 1:290.
10. For a 1486 woodcut that represents the seven stages of life from a print version of
Bartholomeus Anglicus’s text, see Figure 4.2, in this volume.
11. Trevisa 1988: 1:298.
12. Ibid.: 1:300.
13. Seymour 1992: 80.
14. Trevisa 1988: 1:300.
15. Ibid.: 1:301.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.: 1:301–2.
18. Ibid.: 1:302.
19. Ibid.: 1:303–6.
20. Ibid.: 1:305.
21. Hanawalt 1993: 45.
22. Myrc 1902: 2:91–2.
23. Ibid.: 108–30.
24. Ibid.: 136–40.
25. Orme 2001: 214–15.
26. Ibid.: 220.
27. Marcus 2004: 15–16.
28. Ibid.: 30–57. The traditional form of the ceremony developed throughout the
medieval and early modern period (Marcus 2004: 47).
29. Ibid.: 68–70.
30. Goldin 1996: 174.
31. Ibid.
32. Marcus 2004: 84. The parallel rite for girls, the bat mitzvah, is a nineteenth-century
innovation.
33. Marcus 2004: 72.
34. Gil’adi 1992: 3–12.
35. Ibid.: 19–34
36. Ibid.: 23.
37. Ibid.: 31.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.: 35–6.
40. Ibid.: 37.
41. Ibid.: 39.
42. Ibid.: 40.
43. Gennep 1960.
44. Turner 1960.
45. Günther 2006: 368.
46. Günther 2005. See Chapter 6, in this volume.
47. Khatma is “the technical term used in Islamic education for a child’s recitation of
the entire Qur’an and his/her graduation” (Günther 2005: 97n25).
48. Günther 2006: 370.
49. Ibid.
NOTES 203

50. Günther 2005: 111.

51. Ibid.: 117.
52. Ibid.: 117–18.
53. Ibid.: 119–20.
54. Günther 2006: 376.
55. Ibid.: 377.
56. Ibid.: 379.
57. Ibid.: 381–2.
58. Ibid.: 383–4.
59. Kanarfogel 1992: 15.
60. Ibid.: 17–19, 29.
61. Ibid.: 41.
62. Cited in Kanarfogel 1992: 102–3.
63. Ibid.: 196.
64. Ibid.: 197.
65. Ibid.: 202.
66. Ibid.: 194.
67. Woods and Copeland 1999: 405.
68. Canons 2019.
69. See Chapter 7, in this volume, for the specific language.
70. Reeves 2009: 104–5.
71. Ibid.: 108.
72. Orme 2006: 56.
73. Andrew and Waldron 1996: 2:755–8.
74. Ibid.: 1:762.
75. Kline 1992.
76. Kline 2011; Dzon 2017.
77. See Chapter 4, in this volume, for more details.
78. Mecca 2006.
79. Acker 2003: 143–53.
80. See Orme 2013.
81. See Chapter 1, in this volume.
82. Dumitrescu 2018: 21.
83. Boynton 2008: 38.
84. Cited in Boynton 2008: 38.
85. Boynton and Rice 2008: 9–10.
86. Ibid.
87. Yardley 2008: 66–7. See also Chapter One, in this volume.
88. Ibid.: 54.
89. Ibid.: 49.
90. Orme 2006: 24, 46.
91. Wilson 2000: 84.
92. Cited in Jacobs-Pollez 2010: 21.
93. See also Chapter 4, in this volume, on courtesy literature.
94. See Chapter 1, in this volume.
95. Whelan 2017: 42.
96. Ashley and Clark 2001: x.
97. Ibid.: ix.
98. Furnivall 1868: 2:57–63.
204 NOTES

99. Forster and Yavari 2015.

100. See Chapter 4, in this volume.
101. Hanawalt 1986: 176–84.
102. Hanawalt 1993: 7.
103. Phillips 2003: 108–34.
104. Newman 2007: 179.
105. For more on this, see Chapter 4, in this volume.
106. Orme 1995.
107. Ibid.: 183.
108. Orme 2001: 196–7.
109. Lewis 2014: 150.
110. Orrock 2010: 4:238–46.
111. Leach 1915: 153, see also Boynton 2012: 46–7.
112. Chaucer 1987b: 25–6; I (A) 118–62.
113. Ibid.: 118–26.
114. Furnivall 1868: 12.
115. Ibid.: 11.
116. Furnivall 1868: 16.
117. David 1982: 147.
118. Ibid.
119. Rust 2003: 166–7.
120. Chaucer 1987c: 209–10; VII.495–501/B2. 1685–91.
121. “The Primer” 2019.
122. Furnivall 1868: 404.
123. Holsinger 2001: 259–94; Utley 1946.

Chapter 4
   1. “Bracton” 1968: 2:250–1. “Bracton” argues that young men of aristocratic rank
only came of age at twenty-one because they required “greater strength, and greater
understanding and discretion, that the heir in military service be of sufficient vigour
to bear the arms appropriate to his military duty.”
   2. Gil’adi 1992: 139n39.
   3. Vitullo 2005: 184.
   4. Riddy 1996: 66–86.
   5. Rasmussen and Trokhimenko 2009: 70.
   6. Stoppino 2009: 133.
   7. “Urbanitatis,” in Furnivall 1868: 13, ll. 17–20; our translation.
   8. Shaner 1992: 14.
   9. Furnivall 1868: 18, ll. 47–8; our translation.
10. Rickert 1908: 34.
11. Fein 2015: ll. 13–14, 49–50, 112–13, 159–60, 330–1.
12. Furnivall 1901: 244, ll. 7672–3.
13. Griffiths 2017: 210.
14. Moran 1985: 173–4.
NOTES 205

15. Furnivall 1867: 104.

16. “The ABC of Aristotle,” in Furnivall 1868: 11–12; our translation.
17. Nicholas 1985: 127.
18. See Chapter 7, in this volume.
19. Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “tēchen,” online: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/
middle-english-dictionary/dictionary (accessed May 5, 2020).
20. Hanawalt 1986: esp. 176 ff.
21. Goldberg 2008: 249–62.
22. Nicholas 1985: 127.
23. Douay-Rheims Bible, Prov. 13:24.
24. Trokhimenko 2009: 223n9.
25. Goldberg 1995: 84.
26. Nelson 1956: 1–2.
27. For details on schooling at the parish level, see Chapter 3, in this volume.
28. Nicholas 1985: 128.
29. Brucker 1971: 40–1.
30. Epstein 1984: 127.
31. CP.F.113, Borthwick Institute for Archives, York.
32. CP.F.184; CP.F.263 (1443), Borthwick Institute for Archives, York.
33. Winer 2006: 66.
34. Sneyd 1847: 25.
35. Parker 1998: 42–4.
36. Power 1928: 16–17.
37. CP.F.371 (1409), Borthwick Institute for Archives, York.
38. Bedell 1999: 24
39. Scott 2001: 1077.
40. London, The National Archives, C1/66/236.
41. Goldberg 1995: 83–4.
42. Johnston 2009: 27.

Chapter 5
1. Dickey 2015: 1:198–9.
2. Dionisotti 1982; Gwara 2002; Dickey 2015: 1:44–52.
3. See Contreni 1995; Mathisen 2005.
4. Riché 1976: 69–75; Mathisen 2005.
5. The Wars of Justinian 5.2.8 (Prokopios 2014: 255).
6. Godman 1995: 201.
7. Contreni 2014: 89.
8. Capitula ad presbyteros parochiae suae, Patrologia Latina (hereafter PL) 105: col. 196.
9. Jaeger 1994; Barrow 2015: 170–207.
10. Barrow 2015: 198–200.
11. Thorndike 1944: 21.
12. For a glimpse of students at the late medieval University of Paris, see Courtenay
1999.
13. For two studies of late medieval urban schools, see Sheffler 2008 and Lynch 2017.
14. Grendler 1989.
15. Villani 1990: 1:94.
16. Dubois 1891.
206 NOTES

17. Dutton (1994) contextualizes the claim.

18. For instance the Trotula; see Green 2001: 109; Rhazes (al-Rāzī) had suggested
similar treatment.
19. Günther 2006: 377–9.
20. Gil’adi 1992: 52–4; Günther 2006: 379.
21. Aldobrandino 1911: 80.
22. For more on the stages of infancy and childhood, see Chapter 3, in this volume.
23. Letter 128 (Jerome 1933: 467).
24. Ibid.: 469.
25. Alcuin, De grammatica, PL 101:854.
26. See Dumitrescu 2018: 17–21.
27. Isidore of Seville 1.3.3 (2006: 39).
28. Irvine 1994: 461.
29. Orme 2001: 254–7.
30. Alexandre-Bidon 1989; Orme 2001: 270–1.
31. Marcus 1996.
32. Hagen 1870: CXI.
33. De veritate sacrae scripturae 1:44.
34. These techniques correspond to those used in ancient schools, see Johnson
2015.
35. Olszowy-Schlanger cites an objection to reports of a twelfth-century teacher “who
instructs children without the alphabet and the vowels. Such a thing is forbidden,
because the basis of all knowledge is the alphabet and the vowels” (2003: 63).
36. See Chapter 3, in this volume, for discussion of this passage.
37. Olszowy-Schlanger 2003: 68.
38. MGH SS 23:834 [=Monumenta Germaniae historia inde ab a. C. 500 usque ad a.
1500, Scriptores, vols. 1–32 (Hannover, 1826–1934), vol. 23, p. 834].
39. Garver 2005: 67.
40. For more on the seven liberal arts, see Chapter 2, in this volume, pp. 35–6.
41. Irvine 1994.
42. Law 1994: 100.
43. Grendler 1989: 174–82; Gehl 1993: ch. 3. Ianua sum rudibus (I am the gateway for
the ignorant).
44. Archibald 2013.
45. Günther 2016: 72–3.
46. Law 1999.
47. Gwara 1997: 111, 103.
48. Jambeck 2005: 167.
49. Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenes 18 (Folkerts 1978: 54–5).
50. Seligenstädter Lateinpädagogik Universitetsbibliotek, MS C 678, fol. 131v. Uppsala.
51. Orme 2013: s. 4.
52. Liber proverbiorum, PL 146: col. 300–1.
53. On the moral aspects of medieval education, see Chapter 2, in this volume.
54. Hunt 1991.
55. Ibid.: 1:79.
56. The Auctores octo morales retained the Distichs of Cato and Ecloga of Theodulus
from the Liber Catonianus, adding a group of twelfth-century works: the Facetus
(a book of manners); the Chartula contemptus mundi; the Tobias of Matthew of
Vendôme; the proverbs of Alan of Lille; the fables ascribed to “Walter of England”;
NOTES 207

and the Floretus (a compendium of Christian teaching). For the auctores octo in
fourteenth-century Florence, see Gehl 1993.
57. Corpus Christianorum (hereafter CC) 119A, 26.
58. De institutione clericorum 2006: 503.
59. Günther 2006.
60. Rather of Verona 1984: 32.
61. Hugh of St. Victor 1961: 91.
62. Ibid.: 97.
63. Bischoff 1966: 86.
64. Franklin 2004: 203; Schaeken 2019.
65. Most likely a six-o’clock hymn sequence (Schaeken 2017: 131–2).
66. Schaeken 2019: 111.
67. Ibid.
68. Bloomer 2015; Parsons 2018.
69. Sometimes, grammatica is a male figure—and he, too, can be either cruel or
nurturing.
70. De dignitate clericorum, PL 203: col. 700. See Parsons 2018: 130.
71. Vita Sancti Anselmi, PL 158: col. 67–8.
72. Günther 2012: 108.
73. Gil’adi 1992: 65.
74. Godman 1995: 179.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. De Bury 1960: 11.
78. Priscian Institutiones grammaticae. Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book Library,
Marston MS 67, fol. 54v. New Haven, Connecticut.
79. Gwara 1997: 167–9.
80. Dumitrescu 2018: 60–89.
81. Monodiae 1.6.40.
82. MGH SS 2:111–12.
83. In addition to St. Cassian of Imola, those reported to have succumbed to such
negative student evaluations include Marcus Arethusius (Gregory of Nazianzen,
fourth century), Bishop Stephen of Antioch (Evagrius Scholasticus, sixth century),
the ninth-century scholar John Scottus Eriugena (in Williiam of Malmesbury’s
twelfth-century recounting), and St. Felix “in Pincis” in the Golden Legend.
84. Orme 1973: 141; Gray 1985: 173.

Chapter 6
1. For a discussion of teacher titles, see Lynch 2017: 67–76.
2. Brown 1967: 8.
3. Rosenblum 1961: 28–9.
4. Julian of Toledo 2010: 3.17, 24.
5. Aherne 1966: 442–3.
6. Barrow 2015: 55.
7. Lindsay 2005: 195; Brentjes 2018: 69. See also Berkey 1992: 22–43.
8. Berkey 1992: 32.
9. Lindsay 2005: 196.
10. Brentjes 2018: 72.
208 NOTES

11. Moran 1985, 71–2.

12. Verger 1992b: I, 145–6.
13. Ibid., 148.
14. Anonymous 1944: 216; once considered anonymous, “The Commendation of the
Clerk” is an excerpt from the Yconomica of Conrad von Megenberg.
15. Ibid.
16. Grendler 1989: 19.
17. Ibid.
18. Guyotjeannin 1999: 125.
19. Kintzinger 2000: 175.
20. Brentjes 2018: 39.
21. Grünbart 2014: 27–9.
22. Ibid.: 27.
23. Anonymous 1944: 225.
24. Anthologia Latina 1894: 1:96.
25. Ibid.: 294.
26. Ibid.: 287.
27. Mathisen 2005: 3–13.
28. Riché 1976: 463n113.
29. Barrow 2015: 158–60, 166.
30. Gregory of Tours 1988: 51.
31. Monastic regulations, however, often stressed the need for physical separation
between religious, including between teachers and other adult members of the
community and the children who resided there, see Riché 1976: 454–6. For later
medieval approaches, see Lynch 2013: 44–61.
32. Münster-Swendsen 2014: 161.
33. Ibid.: 163–4.
34. Ibid.: 177–8.
35. Jaeger 1994: 76–83.
36. Ibid.: 79.
37. Münster-Swendsen 2014: 170.
38. Ibid.: 69; Otter 2015: 107–24.
39. Melchert 2004: 35–6.
40. Ibid.: 42.
41. Brentjes 2018: 33.
42. Ibid.: 72.
43. Ibid.: 40–1.
44. Moran Cruz 2000: 182–207.
45. Browning 1954: 418.
46. Lynch 2017: 80–5.
47. Kintzinger 2000: 173.
48. Gerson 1960–73: 9:686.
49. Ibid.
50. Clanchy 2018c: 165–70.
51. Willemsen 2008: 214–19.
52. Willemsen 2008: 148–50; Clanchy 2018c: 176–81.
53. Cited in Johnson 2012: 6–7, 77.
54. Moran Cruz 2000; Lynch 2015: 207–28.
55. Rosenblum 1961: 39–41; Mathisen 2005: 3–17.
NOTES 209

56. Anthologia Latina 1894: 376, l. 32.

57. Miles 2005: 305–20.
58. Jerome 1933: 371; Gregory of Tours 1988: 51.
59. de Jong 1996; Barrow 2015: 158–69.
60. Barrow 2015: 55, 64.
61. Ibid.: 284.
62. Lynch 2017: 79–90.
63. Browning 1954: 409, 411.
64. Ibid.: 403–4.
65. Ibid.: 413.
66. Grünbart 2014: 24.
67. Ibid.: 416.
68. Ibid.: 415.
69. Ibid.: 410.
70. Brentjes 2018: 68; Lindsay 2005: 197.
71. Naylor 2009: 70.
72. Brentjes 2018: 110.
73. Ibid.: 72–3.
74. Kanarfogel 1992: 19–24.
75. Orme 2006: 79.
76. Kanarfogel 1992: 25.
77. Ibid.: 26–7.
78. Ibid.: 25, 28–31.
79. Ibid.: 25–6.
80. Marcus 1996: 43.
81. Kanarfogel 1992: 70.
82. Grendler 1989: 18–19.
83. See Chapter 5, section on “Learning Materials,” in this volume. Gehl 1993: 31–2.
84. Grendler 1989: 18.
85. Lynch 2015: 223–4.
86. Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis 1889–97: 3:51–53; Lynch 2017: 69, n. 5.
87. Lynch 2017: 163–4.
88. Hajnal 1959: 96–7.
89. Orme 2006: 168.
90. Grendler 1989: 127–30.
91. Witt 2000: 239.
92. Petrarch 1982: 3:308.
93. Ibid.: 2:143.
94. Kintzinger 2000: 167, 175.
95. Petrarch 1992: 362.

Chapter 7
1. See, for example, Wendehorst 1986: 19–25.
2. The chapter will not cover music and musical notation or numeracy (another form
of literacy). For numeracy, see Chapter 2, in this volume.
3. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO
2006) provides the following definition: “Literacy is the ability to identify,
210 NOTES

understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written
materials associated with varying contexts.”
4. The word “clericus” generally describes a member of the secular clergy. As early as
the Council of Tours (Council of Tours, cap. 13) in 567, “clericus” also encompassed
schoolboys. Eventually the word mainly described those in minor orders and literate
laity who managed bureaucratic tasks. See Grundmann 1958: 1–65.
5. Clanchy 2018c: 41–2.
6. Murray 2000: 39–53.
7. Clanchy 2013: 295–9.
8. See Figure 2.2. of a chirograph in Chapter 2, in this volume.
9. Clanchy 2013: 315–16.
10. Fox 2000: 4.
11. Gwara 1997: 83, Colloquy 3.
12. Chaucer 1987c: 210. For more on this tale, see Chapter 3, in this volume.
13. Sheffler 2008: 100.
14. Chaucer 1987c: 210.
15. Clanchy 2018c: 139–40.
16. Clanchy 2018a, b.
17. See, for example, Krüger 2002.
18. Bäuml 1980: 240.
19. Moran 1985; Chaucer 1987c: 210. For a critique of the ways historians have used
this passage, particularly their tendency to see song schools as fundamentally distinct
from the study of grammar, see Zieman 2008: 1–10.
20. Ibid.: 1–5. See also Moran 1985: 56–62.
21. Orme 2006: 61. See Chapter 4, in this volume.
22. Clanchy 2018b: 163–91.
23. Gwara 1997: 117, Colloquy 16.
24. Soriano 2000: 76–7 and passim.
25. Rouse 2013: 20.
26. Willemsen 2008: 102.
27. Goitein, Mediterranean Society: 2:183–5, 220–1, 235, cited in Reif 1990: 152.
28. Hirschler 2012: 86.
29. Otloh von St. Emmeram, Liber de Temptatione, 352, translated in Sheffler 2008:
102.
30. Konrad von Megenberg, Ökonomik, Bk 3, 38, partially translated in Thorndike
1975: 225.
31. Corbett 1955.
32. Grendler 1989: 309.
33. Sheffler 2008: 77.
34. Gippius 2012: 225–50; Schaeken 2012: 201–23.
35. For detailed descriptions of late medieval writing instruments and carrying cases,
see Willemsen 2008: 76–8.
36. For more on universities, see Chapters 1 and 8, in this volume.
37. Verger 1992a: 55.
38. Sheffler 2008: 280–1.
39. See, for example, Heimpel 1959: 43–74.
40. Hobbins 2009: 193–7.
41. Dhuoda 1991: xx–xxi, 7.
42. Clanchy 2013.
NOTES 211

43. Connelly 1998.

44. Clanchy 2018c: 61.
45. Rouse 2013: 13. See Chapter 2, in this volume, and Figure 2.1.
46. Rouse 1991: 263. Parkes dates the volume on the psalms from the late eighth
century (Parkes 2008: 8).
47. Rouse 2013: 440.
48. Richard de Bury 1907.
49. Chrétien de Troyes 1975: 40, ll. 1308–12.
50. Clanchy 2018a: 85–109.
51. Christine de Pizan 1999: 76–7, pt. 1, 42.
52. Vegetius’s fourth-century De re militari was the first translated classical Latin
text.
53. Chrétien de Troyes 1975: 152, ll. 5119–30.
54. For the Common place books, see Parkes 2008: 26, 42.
55. Moran 1984: 17–25.
56. Scase 1992: 261–74.
57. Rouse 1991: 342n1.
58. Hobbins 2009: 7.
59. Manuscript, wedding gift from Philippa of Hainault to Edward III, 1326, Fr. 571,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
60. Although there were complaints among the secular clerks and scholars in England
that the mendicants kept their libraries to themselves.
61. On Bristol and Worcester, see Orme 1989: chs. 3, 12.
62. Ineichen-Eder 1977: 471–2.
63. Stock 1983: 90–1.
64. Hudson 1988: 206.
65. Parkes 2008: 4.
66. Moran 1985: 174.
67. Hirschler 2012: 20.
68. Clanchy 2018b: 183–6.
69. “Fauvain” was a horse or a mule (assinus) representing falsity, avarice, and greed.
70. Saenger 1997: ch. 1.
71. For a study of the introduction of reference tools, see Rouse 1991: 221–55.
72. Källström 2012: 27–62.
73. Smith 2005: 32.
74. Ibid.: 33; Pryce 1988: 62–3.
75. Smith 2005: 38.
76. Ibid.: 34; Johnston 2013.
77. Johnston 2013: 15.
78. Charles-Edwards 1998: 62.
79. Ibid.: 66.
80. Clanchy 2013: 32.
81. Pratt 2007: 122, 178.
82. Mathison 2005: 10.
83. Ian Wood 1990: 65.
84. Ibid.: 72.
85. Green 1994: 43; McKitterick 1989.
86. B. Bischoff quoted in Parkes 2008: 8.
87. Nelson 1990: 258–96.
212 NOTES

88. This paragraph is slightly revised from a forthcoming article by Moran Cruz on
“Literacy and Reading: Vernacular” in The Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia Online.
89. Tanner 1990: 220, canon 18.
90. Reeves 2015.
91. Tanner 1990: 240, canon 11.
92. Orme 2001: 240.
93. Biller 1994.
94. Lerner 1994; Burnham 2008.
95. Hudson 1994: 231.
96. Ŝmahel 1994: 238.
97. One estimate of the number of books in Hebrew produced in Europe and the Near
East between 900 and 1450 is one million, “a striking argument for the exceptionally
high level of literacy among medieval Jews […] we can readly imagine a society
permeated and governed by reading and writing” (Olszowy-Schlanger 2003: 47).
98. Ibid.: 53–6.
99. Reif 1990: 134–55, esp. 147.
100. Quoted in Kanarfogel 2006: 16. Quoted in full in Smalley 1964: 78.
101. Kanarfogel 2006: chs. 1, 3. For more details, see Chapter 3, in this volume.
102. Mullett 1990.
103. This paragraph is based on Hirschler 2012 and Berkey 1992.
104. Willemsen 2008: 15.
105. Grendler 1989: 70–1; Guyotjeannin 1999: 115.
106. Moran Cruz forthcoming.
107. Widemann and Bastian 1950: 328.
108. Moran 1985: 152–3.
109. Moran 1981: 1–23.
110. Root 1913: 419.
111. Ibid.: 420.
112. Stone 1964: 42.
113. Clanchy 2018c: 61.

Chapter 8
   1. Munro 1900: 12–14. This letter (“de litteris colendis”), ostensibly sent to a bishop,
with copies to be sent to suffragans and fellow-bishops, is addressed to Abbot Baugulf
of Fulda and is dated c. 885–800.
   2. Beowulf 1963: ll. 853–76.
   3. Although sources are limited, secular teachers continued to teach the classical
curriculum in Carthage, Ravenna, Rome, and throughout much of southern Gaul
(for example, Arles, Bordeaux, and Clermont). For Gaul, see Mathesen 2005: 3–19.
   4. Regular Life: Monastic, Canonical, and Mendicant Rules 2004.
   5. Ibid.: 60.
   6. Carolingian Civilization: A Reader 2004: 79.
   7. Munro 1900: 12.
   8. Einhard 1969: 82.
   9. Keynes and Lapidge 1983: 126.
NOTES 213

10. Wieruszowski 1966: 133–4.

11. University Records and Life in the Middle Ages 1975: 66–7.
12. For an extended study of the role of one university community in praying for the
dead, see Courtenay 2019.
13. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History 1969: 566–7.
14. Ibid.: 566–71.
15. Whitelock 1968: 735–45.
16. Clanchy 2018b.
17. Mews 1999: 233, 237.
18. Radice 2003: 93–111. See Clanchy (1997), passim.
19. Davis 1971.
20. MS Lansdowne 285, British Library.
21. For translations of Latin letters from and to medieval women, including many letters
to and from Heloise, see https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/ and http://inpress.lib.
uiowa.edu/feminae
22. Kraus 1971: Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1461–7 (Public Record Office 1897,
Nendeln, Liechtenstein, Kraus reprint, 1971), p. 270 (April 11, 1463).
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 GLOSSARY

Catharism from the Greek: καθαροί, katharoi, “the pure [ones]”)

was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement
between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in
Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern
Italy and southern France.
Chirograph A document reproduced twice on the same piece of
parchment with the word CHIROGRAPHUM (“written
by hand”) inscribed between both copies. The document
was separated through the word permitting the copies to
be authenticated if the two halves joined up seamlessly.
Chrisom/Chrysom The “chrism-robe” put on a child at baptism, as a symbol
of the cleansing of its sin.
Commenda A form of partnership in which one partner entrusts
investment capital and the other partner acts as the
business agent.
computus The arithmetical and astronomical discipline of
determining calendar dates, especially the date of Easter
and the liturgical observances that depended on its date.
Ebdomodaria/us The person responsible for the performance of the more
important religious offices for the week.
Florilegia Collections of selected passages from the writings of
previous authors.
GLOSSARY 237

Fosterage  practice whereby families bring up a child who is not

A
their own.
Genizah/Geniza A storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery
designated for the temporary storage of worn-out
Hebrew-language books and papers.
Gesta The Latin word for “deeds” or “acts”; Latin titles,
especially of medieval chronicles, frequently begin with
the word
Gnomology A collection of wisdom sayings, maxims, or reflections.
Guidonian hand A mnemonic device used to assist singers in learning to
sight-sing.
Hadith The collective body of customs, traditions, and sayings
relating to Muhammad and his companions.
Ijāzah/ijaza In Islam, a license authorizing its holder to transmit
a certain text or subject, which is issued by someone
already possessing such authority.
Lollards Late medieval followers of John Wycliffe, a University
of Oxford philosopher and theologian whose
unorthodox religious views were declared heretical and
whose doctrines in some ways anticipated those of the
Protestant Reformation.
Madrasa The Arabic word for any type of educational institution,
secular or religious, whether for elementary instruction
or higher learning.
Oblates Children dedicated to a monastery by their parents and
placed there to be brought up.
Ordinal A manual that acquaints the priest with the Office to
be recited—that shows the order of church services and
ceremonies.
Ordinary of the The invariable or almost invariable part of the Mass,
Mass as distinguished from the parts that vary with the
ecclesiastical calendar.
Orphanotrophium An orphanage in which children were trained in the rites
of the church.
Paraclete Traditionally translated as “Comforter,” it is ordinarily
applied to the Holy Spirit.
238 GLOSSARY

Rule From the Latin regula. It came to describe documents

that laid out guidelines or “rules” for proper observance
of monastic life.
Studium generale The customary name for the European medieval
university, where students were welcomed from
everywhere, not merely from the local district or region.
summae In scholasticism, encyclopedic philosophical or
theological compendia that attempted to sum up
learning on a topic.
Sutton Hoo A site in East Anglia near Woodbridge in Suffolk,
England of two early medieval Anglo-Saxon cemeteries
from the sixth to the seventh centuries
Talmud A collection of writings that covers Jewish law and
tradition, compiled and edited between the third and
sixth centuries.
Tosafist A Tosafist education was an education in the Tosafot,
the medieval commentaries on the Talmud.
universitas Latin term used to describe a group of individuals
engaged in the same pursuit in medieval guilds. It was
applied to students and masters in universities.
 CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth P. Archibald is a lecturer in the Department of History of the

University of Pittsburgh. She holds a PhD in History from Yale University, and
her research focuses on the history of education and literacy in early medieval
Europe. She has published on topics including school texts in the medieval
curriculum, women’s book ownership, and the use of dialogues in early
pedagogy. She is coeditor of Learning Me Your Language: Latin and Greek from
Antiquity to the Present (2015).

W. Martin Bloomer is Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. He

specializes in Latin literature, ancient rhetoric, and the history of education. His
recent books on education include The School of Rome (2011) and A Companion
to Ancient Education (2015). He is the past recipient of fellowships from the
Stanford Humanities Center; the American Council of Learned Societies;
the Spencer Foundation; the Newberry Library; the Wölfenbuttel Library; and
the Delmas Foundation.

John J. Contreni is Professor Emeritus of History at Purdue University (West

Lafayette, Indiana) where he also served as Department Head, Dean of the
Graduate School, and Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His
research centers on education and intellectual culture during the Carolingian
age. His recent work includes “John Scottus, nutritor, and the Liberal Arts,”
in A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena, edited by Adrian Guiu (2020), and
“Learning for God in the Carolingian Age,” in The Journal of Medieval Latin
(2014). He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.

Jeremy Goldberg is a cultural and social historian of the English later Middle
Ages. He has written extensively about gender and family, including about
240 CONTRIBUTORS

youth and servanthood. His publications include Women, Work, and Life Cycle
in a Medieval Economy (1992), Medieval England: A Social History 1250–1550
(2004), and Communal Discord, Child Abduction, and Rape in the Later Middle
Ages (2008). He teaches in the Department of History and the Centre for
Medieval Studies at the University of York.

Robert Grout is a research associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the
University of York where he completed his PhD in 2020. His doctoral research
investigated child abuse and gender in late medieval England.

Andrew J.M. Irving is tenured Assistant Professor of Religion and Cultural

Heritage at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on medieval
liturgy and manuscript studies. He currently serves on the editorial boards
of Scrineum Rivista and the Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies, and is
coeditor of Medieval Latin Liturgy: A Research Guide (in preparation).

Daniel T. Kline is Professor of English and Director of General Education at

the University of Alaska Anchorage. He specializes in medieval literature and
culture, literary theory, religion and literature, and digital medievalism. Widely
published in many venues, his formal research concerns children, violence, and
ethics in late medieval England and contemporary digital neo-medievalism.
Recent publications include Digital Gaming Re-Imagines the Middle Ages (2014),
and chapters in Fragments for a History of Vanishing Humanisms (2016) and
The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2017). He is also a coeditor of
the recently launched Open Access Companion to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
(https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/).

Sarah B. Lynch is an assistant professor of history at Angelo State University,

Texas. She is a graduate of University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin,
and the University of Leeds. She works on late medieval education, especially
in France, where she focuses on the social, cultural, and economic roles played
by nonuniversity education in families and communities. Her publications
include Elementary and Grammar Education in Late Medieval France: Lyon
1285–1530 (2017) and Medieval Pedagogical Writings: An Epitome (2018).
In 2018, she received the Olivia Remie Constable Award from the Medieval
Academy of America.

Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz is Associate Professor of History and former

department chair at Georgetown University and former Dean of Humanities
and Natural Sciences, Loyola University, New Orleans. She is author of The
Growth of English Schooling 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in
Pre-Reformation York Diocese (1985, 2014), coauthor of Medieval Worlds: An
CONTRIBUTORS 241

Introduction to European History, 300–1492 (2005), editor of An Account of

an Elizabethan Family: The Willoughbys of Wollaton by Cassandra Willoughby,
1670–1735 (2019), and has published articles on Dante, medieval views on
Islam, medieval education and literacy, late medieval social mobility, and E.M.
Forster.

Joel T. Rosenthal is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Stony Brook University.

He is coeditor of Medieval Prosopography and Studies in Medieval & Renaissance
History. He has published on old age, families, widows, children, the episcopacy,
and popular piety and is coeditor (2019) of a collection of papers on T.F.
Tout, the Manchester medievalist. He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of
America.

David Sheffler is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History

at the University of North Florida. His publications include Schools and
Schooling in Late Medieval Germany: Regensburg, 1250–1500 (2008) and
“Education and Schooling,” which appeared as part of The Handbook of
Medieval Culture (2015), edited by Albrecht Classen.

Mark Lewis Tizzoni is Assistant Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies

at Bates College. He researches the intellectual cultures of late antique
North Africa and Visigothic Iberia. His most recent publications are
“Isidore of Seville’s Early Influence and Dissemination,” in A Companion
to Isidore of Seville, edited by Andrew Fear and Jamie Wood (2019), and
“(De-)Constructing the Visigothic Poet: Regional, Cultural, & Religious
Identity in Eugenius II of Toledo,” in Visigothic Symposium 2 (2017–18).
 INDEX

Abecedarium 73 Al-Jāh. iz. , “The Teachers,” 66–7

Abelard and Heloise 186 al-Karaouine/al-Qarawiyyin mosque 141
Abelard, Peter 3, 40, 166, 173, 174, 176, alphabet
183, 185–7 Greek 56
The Story of My Misfortunes 40 Hebrew 62, 111
Yes and No 40, 174, 176 Latin 56, 162
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali 67–8, 86 Altercatio magistri et discipuli 134
The Revival of the Sciences of Amalar of Metz, Liber officialis 27–8
Religion 67 Ambrose of Milan 33, 73
Abū Ja’far al-Khāzin 130, 140 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 173
accessus ad auctorem 15, 17–18 animal skins 49–50, 153
Adab al-mu’allimin (Rules of Conduct for Anna Teaching the Virgin Reading 184
Teachers) 66 Anselm of Canterbury (Archbishop)
adhan (the call to prayer) 64 119, 173
Admonitio Generalis 35–36, 164, 173 Anselm of Laon 40
adolescence; see also: childhood 59, 78, Anthologia Latina 126, 132, 139
84, 87, 98, 103 Antiphon/antiphonary 23–25, 81, 24
socialization in 94 Anne, Saint 79, 90, 158, 184, 189
Ælfric Bata, Colloquies 114, 120, 149, Apostles’ Creed 70, 71, 72, 90, 106, 171
151 apprenticeship 76–7, 98–9, 100, 108
Aelfric of Eynsham 75, 163 Aquinas, Thomas; see: Thomas Aquinas
Grammar 75 Arabic
Aeterni Patris (encyclical) 43 grammar 66
Albertus Magnus 192 language 39, 65, 66, 108, 149, 161,
Alcuin of York 35, 36, 37, 110, 114, 155, 162, 165, 166, 170
192 learning 39
Aldric of Le Mans (Bishop) 128, 139 numerals 160, 170
Alexander of Villedieu, Doctrinale scholarship 182
puerorum 74, 114 Ariès, Phillipe xiii, 1–2, 57–58, 68
Alfred (King) 163, 173 Aristotle 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 49, 63,
Alfred Jewel, the 147 174, 175
INDEX 243

armarius 25 Proverbs, Book of 13, 17, 187

Ars dictaminis 5, 183, 194 Ten Commandments 71, 72, 90
ars litterarum 23 Bible moralisée 186
Ars maior 113, 169 Bischoff, Bernhard 46
Ars minor 113, 169 Black Death 84, 92, 97, 157
Arthur (King) 49, 179 Black, Robert 6
astronomy; see also: natural philosophy 41, Blanche of Castile (Queen) 189
43, 140, 175, 182 Blasien, Saint 25
Atto of Reichenau (Abbot) 74 Boccaccio 167, 187
Averroes 39, 43, 174 Decameron 187
Avianus, Fabulae 115–16 Boethius 175, 176, 183, 187
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) 39, 64, 67, 109, 174 Ars metrice 176
The Book of Regimen 67 Consolation of Philisophy 176, 161
Canon of Medicine 67 Boetius of Denmark 43
Augustine, Saint 27, 28, 33, 34, 39, 58, Boniface VIII (Pope) 69
126, 158, 170, 175, 187 book of hours 90–1, 149, 156
Book of Kells 156
Baccalarii (bachelors) 129 Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry 76,
Bacon, Roger 43, 192 87, 88, 89
baptism 61–2 Book of Trades (Livre des Mestiers) 99
Bailyn, Bernard xi bookmakers 156
bar mitzvah 63 Boy Bishop celebration 78
Barking Abbey 75 Boynton, Susan 23, 74
Bartholomeus Anglicus 59–61, 93 Bracton 83–4, 85, 100
De proprietatibus rerum (On the Brethren of the Common Life 158
Properties of Things) 59, 80, 93 Breves 14
Basil of Caesarea 172 brevis 25
Bede 35, 43, 73, 110, 116, 163, 175, 179, bris 62
180–2 Bruegel, Pieter, Children’s Games 78
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum Burke, Peter x, xiii
(Ecclesiastical History of the English Butts, R. Freeman xii
People) 110, 180
Portrait, Life of St. Cuthbert 181 Cairo 111, 117, 140, 152, 166
Beguins (of Languedoc) 55, 165 canon law 107, 175, 176, 190
Benedict of Nursia, Saint 33, 34, 172, 187 canticles 23, 74
Beowulf 48, 147, 170 cantor; see also: song school, chant, scola
Berengar of Tours 38, 39 cantorum 25
Bernard of Chartres 173 Capetians 180, 188–9
Bernard of Cluny 23 Carolingian and Carolingian era
Bible 32, 34, 36–38, 40–41, 48, 50, 56, 76, dynasty 37
110, 156, 160, 167, 170, 173, 186 education 26–7, 34–8
Ecclesiastes, Book of 187 experiment 35, 37
Exodus, Book of 63 literacy 163–4
Genesis, Book of 63 minuscule 52, 162
Gospel 27, 32, 38, 187 polyptych 47, 85
of John 43, 182 renaissance 163–4, 172–3
of Luke 71 stories 49
Job 13, 187 teachers 113
Leviticus, Book of 63 Carthusians 158
New Testament 71, 187 Cassiodorus 34, 35, 56, 175, 176
244 INDEX

Exposition on the Psalms 56 Queen’s (Oxford) 178

Institutiones 175, 176 Sorbonne (Paris) 177, 189
Cato 7, 12, 18 of Trégiuer (Paris) 177
Distichs 7, 9, 10, 11–19, 76, 115, Columban, Saint 162
116, 12 Communion 62
Caxton, William 179 computus 21, 26, 35–36, 43
chancery 155 confirmation 61, 62
chant; see also: song school, scola Conrad of Hirsau 15, 17–18
cantorum 5, 9, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, Dialogus super auctores 17
55, 20 Conrad von Megenberg 129, 152
Chariot Mount with Three Figures 127 convivium 16
Charlemagne 34, 37, 47, 49, 51, 52, Corpus Juris Civilis; see also law:
106–7, 109, 147, 153, 164, 170, Roman 176
172–3, 179 Council of Chalcedon 187
admonitio generalis (General Council of Lambeth 70
Instruction) 35, 36, 164, 173 Courtenay, William 3
educational initiatives of 34–38, 106–7, courtesy/conduct literature 76, 86–9, 94,
155, 164, 172–3 103, 179
Chaucer, Geoffrey 49, 78–81, 88, 103, Cremin, Lawrence xii
111, 179 cultural history of education x–xiii
Canterbury Tales 49 Cyrillic script, texts in 161, 162
The Miller’s Tale 88
Prioress’s Tale 78–81, 111, 149, 151 Dalderby of Lincoln 190
childhood; see also: adolescence 1–2, Dante Alighieri 41, 49, 167, 187
57–65, 83–5, 109 Divine Comedy 41, 49, 167, 187
orphanhood 97–8 Datini, Francesco 168
toys 92–3 David, Alfred 79
chirograph 48, 148 Demosthenes 182
of Bishop Ealdred of Worcester 49 Descartes, René 46
chreia 12 developmental stages (of childhood) 58–60
Chrétien de Troyes 156–7 Dhuoda 155, 164, 184
Yvain 156–7 Liber Manualis 164, 184
Christine de Pizan 76, 89, 137, 157, diagrams 55
167, 184 discipline; see also: punishment 65, 66, 86,
Book of the City of Ladies 184 94–95, 100–3, 117–22, 132, 136
Cicero 47, 55, 169, 187, 188 Dominic Guzman 41
Clanchy, Michael 146, 155, 168 Dominicans 41, 45
Classen, Albrecht 2 Donation of Constantine 47
Claudian, De raptu Proserpinae 116 Donatus, Aelius 6, 74, 112–13, 142,
Clement Scottus 35 169, 178
Cochelin, Isabelle 27 De octo partibus orationis 74
Codex Manesse 102 Donatus (the text) 6, 113, 116, 123, 142,
College and colleges; see also: University 178 See also : Ars minor, Ars maior
and universities 7, 176–7 Dubois, Pierre, De recuperatione terrae
Balliol (Oxford) 178 sanctae 108
of Donjon (Paris) 177 Duns Scotus 45, 192
Exeter (Oxford) 177, 190
female founders of 7 education; see also: schools, colleges,
Magdalen (Oxford) 178 universities, liberal arts
Merton (Oxford) 177 baptismal 26
INDEX 245

Carolingian 26–7, 34–8 Franciscans/Friars Minor 41, 45, 54

elementary 5, 65–73, 109–11, 152 Frederick Barbarossa (Emperor) 176
girls’ 75–6, 108, 184 French language 46, 78, 87, 90, 92, 99,
household 7, 22, 33, 60, 76–8, 82, 114, 157, 167
87–92, 95–100, 125–28, 133, 139,
143, 146, 149, 152, 163–64, 166, Gabriel, A.L. 4
171, 184 Galen 58, 63, 174
legal 5, 42, 69, 175 galgolitic 162
liturgical 19, 21, 23, 25 Galileo 46
medical 5, 42, 69, 108, 175 Garin, Eugene 6
moral 9–16, 63, 92 Geertz, Clifford x
musical 19–26, 70, 73 Gehl, Paul 6
reading 11, 25, 33–5, 66–7, 70–3, 75, gender 92
78, 80–1, 111, 115, 142, 145–59, differences 60–1
166, 184 identity 92–3, 103
Roman 7 genizah 165, 168
women in 7, 74, 97, 138, 172, 183–5, of the Ben Ezra Synagogue 111
187 Cairo 117
writing 11, 25, 67, 74, 92, 111, 117, geometry; see also: natural philosophy 35,
143, 145–7, 151–4, 165 41, 43, 67, 140, 175, 176
Edward II (King) 85, 190 Gerbert of Aurillac/Pope Sylvester II 139,
Edward III (King) 159 179, 182–3, 189, 194
Edward IV (King) 194 Germanic invasions 33, 171
Egbert of York (Bishop) 182 Lombard 5
Einhard 34, 47, 109, 153, 173 Gerson, Jean 136
Ekkehard of St. Gall 121 Girdle Book 161
El Cid 49 gnomology 11
Eleanor of Aquitaine (Queen) 143, 149–50, God 12–13, 16, 27–28, 32, 35–36, 40,
155 42–43, 45, 62–63, 66, 68, 111, 147,
gisant of 149–50 166, 173, 182
Emaré 93–4 Goldin, Simha 62, 63
Emden, A.B. 3, 4 Goths/Ostrogoths 106, 147
enthymeme 11 Graff, Harvey xiii
Es tu scholaris 149 Grafton, Anthony 6
Eucharist 61, 62, 63 Grammatica 118, 138
Euclid 176 Grandes Chroniques 189
Eugenius II of Toledo (Bishop) Gratian, Concordance of Discordant
126–7, 139 Canons 41, 176
Eusebius of Caesarea (Bishop) 172 Greek
instruction 105, 108
fables 115–16 language 5, 6, 37–38, 161
family forms 84–5 rationalism 39
florilegia 9 thought 38–40
Felix, Saint killed by his pupils 135 Green, D.H. 163
forgery 47–8, 147–8 Gregory of Agrigento 21
fosterage 84, 97, 133, 139 Gregory of Rome/Pope Gregory the Great
Fox, Adam 148 33, 116, 173
Francesco da Barberino, Conduct and Gregory of Tours (Bishop) 133, 163
Manners of a Lady 87, 88 Grendler, Paul 6
246 INDEX

Grosseteste, Robert (Bishop) 3, 43, 56 indexing systems 56

Gui, Bernard 165 Inquisition 55
Guidonian Hand 74, 81, 82 Instructions for a Squire 87
guilds 6, 44, 77, 167, 174 International Standing Conference for the
Günther, Sebastian 66 History of Education xi
Investiture Conflict 39
Hadith; see also: Qur’an 66, 67, 128, 134, Ireland and Irish
149, 166 language 162
Hadrian (Emperor) 75 scholars 35, 162
Hail Mary 70, 72, 171 Isabeau of Bavaria (Queen) 91
Halakhah: see also law, Jewish 69 Isabel de Byron 90–1
Hanawalt, Barbara 61, 92 Isidore of Seville 35, 60, 109, 113, 126,
Hartker Antiphonary 24 180, 192
Haskins, Charles Homer 38 Islam 63–8, 140, 166
Hebrew language 39, 109, 149, 161,
165, 193 Jardine, Lisa 6
Heilke of Staufenberg 184 Jerome, Saint 33, 34, 39, 109, 110, 113,
Heloise 179, 183–7, 194 138, 158, 170, 175, 187, 188
Henry II (King) 143, 155 Vulgate 160, 170
heretics 165 St Jerome’s Famous Dream 171
Cathars and Catharism 158, 165 Jesus Christ 32, 36, 38, 43, 71, 72, 96
Hussites 165 Jesus teaching in the temple 72
Lollards 158, 165 Jewish teacher and student 143
Waldensians 165 John Chrysostom, Saint 172
Hibernicus Exul 120 John Langton of Chichester (Bishop) 190
Hild of Hartlepool (Abbess) 75 John of Salisbury 174
Hildebrandslied 48 John of Trevisa 59
Hildegard of Bingen (Abbess) 184 John Scottus 36
Hippocrates 63, 174 John XXI (Pope) 44
Historia Regum Francorum 189 Jordan, W.K. 2
Holsinger, Bruce 81 Judaism; see also: Torah, Talmud 62–3,
Horace 16, 170 65, 68–9, 140, 165, 193
Satires 16 Julius Caesar 47
Hours of Jeanne D’Evreux 156
How the Goodwife 89, 94, 99 Kanarfogel, Ephraim 68, 69, 165
Hrabanus Maurus (Archbishop) 116, 172 Keefe, Susan 26
Hrotsvit of Gandersheim 75, 184 Kempe, Margery 184
Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon 117 Kirkby, Isold 95
humors 58, 60 Kitāb al-ʿālim wa-l-mutaʿallim (The Book
Hundred Years’ War 157 of the One Who Knows and the One
Who Wants to Know) 114
Ibn ‘Asākir 128 knowledge, organization of 55–56
Ibn Khaldūn 120, 140 Konrad Duvel von Hildesheim 154
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 63–4 Koran; see: Qur’an
Tufḥat al mawdūd 63–4 Kruselerpuppen 93
Ibn-Taymīyya 158
ijāza 128, 136 laity 3, 5, 27, 51, 54, 74, 153, 157, 158,
illuminated manuscripts; see: manuscripts, 165, 167, 171, 179
illumination of Lanfranc (Archbishop) 96
INDEX 247

Las Siete Partidas 100 in Ashkenaz communities 68, 100, 165–6

Lateran Council in Byzantine territories 166
Third 107, 164 Carolingian era 163–4
Fourth 61, 62, 69, 164 clerical 171–2
Latin elementary 152
Bible 33 in Hebrew 111
grammar 69, 73, 80, 108, 112 in Latin 146
inflection 115 lay 3, 179
instruction 105, 208, 111, 112–5 liturgical 25–6, 74
language 32, 33, 34, 48, 51, 149 in Merovingian Gaul 163
literacy 146 numerical 86, 98, 108, 152
Latin Averroists 43 vernacular 90–2, 108, 146
Laurentius de Voltolina, Liber ethicorum literature, Germanic 48
des Henricus de Alemannia 177 Little Children’s Little Book 88
Law 3, 5, 10, 175, 179 Little Office of the Blessed Virgin 80
Canon 39, 41, 42, 47, 59, 107, 175–6, liturgy 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 23, 25, 26, 28, 74
187, 190 Livy 188
Civil 5, 16, 31, 42, 44, 47, 83, 94, 100, logic 39, 40, 67, 108, 160, 174, 175
107, 174–6, 190 Lombard, Peter 40, 42, 45, 61, 176
students 44, 69 Four Books of Sentences 40, 42, 45, 61,
codes 52 176
Jewish 69, 86, 166 Lothar Crystal 52
Scriptural (Old Law/New Law) 71 Louis IX (King) 75, 189
Common Law : see also Bracton 191 Louis VI (King) 189
Lombard 5 Louis VII (King) 189
Le dit de Fauvain 157, 159 Lowe, E.A. 46
Leach, A.F. 4, 5 Luxorius 132, 134, 139
learning process 108–12
lectio divina 33 Macrobius 175, 187
lecture 176 Commentary on the Dream of
Legenda Aurea 135 Scipio 175
Leontius of S. Saba 21 madrasas 134, 136, 141, 166
Letters of the Anonymous Professor 131 Maimonides 39, 109
Lewis de Beaumont of Durham Man that will of Wisdom Hear 89, 90
(Bishop) 190 manners 88, 96, 98, 99
Liber Catonianus/Six Authors 116 table 88
Liber diurnus 21 manuscripts, illumination of 156–7, 189
Liber Pontificalis 19 manuscripts, number of 6, 46, 111, 114,
liberal arts: see also quadrivium, trivium 157–58
35, 36, 41, 47, 112, 113, 137, 174 Marcus, Ivan 62
libraries 154, 157, 158, 165, 166 Marginalia 56, 117, 120–21
public 158 Marguerite of Provence (Queen) 75
licentiate 129 Marie de France 184
Liebert of Cambrai (Bishop) 139 Martin of Tours, Saint 37
Lindisfarne Gospels 156 marriage 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65
literacy 9, 37, 75, 91, 92, 106, 110–11, Martianus Capella 36, 112, 170, 175
145–54 De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii
in Anglo-Saxon England 163 (On the Marriage of Philology and
in the Arab world 166 Mercury) 36, 112, 175
248 INDEX

Master of the Codex Manesse 102 Oral/oral culture/oral pedagogy/orality 25,

mathematics; see also: natural philosophy 46, 48, 73–5, 145, 147–9, 154, 160,
5, 41, 43, 153 165, 170
Matthew of Paris Matthaei Paris Chronica Ordinary of the Mass 74
Maiora II, 148 Ordo Romanus I, 19
Maximianus 116 Orme, Nicholas 4, 5, 71, 165
melamed 68, 141, 143 Orrock, Amy 78
memorization 2, 21, 23, 81, 128, 145, 146, Othlo/Otloh of St. Emmeram 16, 17–18,
149, 151 115, 152
Merovingian minuscule 53 Ovid 170, 187
Miezko of Poland (King) 90 Oxford, University and colleges of; see
minuscule 12, 52–53, 162 also: University and universities 4,
Mirror for Princes literature 76, 87 7, 44, 45, 95, 129, 175, 176, 177–8,
Monastery/monasteries 4, 5, 23, 25–7, 33, 190, 191
35, 37, 46, 47, 75, 80, 106, 126,
128, 139, 132, 146, 158, 162, Pachomius 172
164, 172, 173, 179, 180, 183, Paedagogica Historica xi
193 Page, Christopher 21
monasticis 133 papyrus 49–50, 153
More, Thomas 167 Parlement of the Thre Ages 58
Morelli, Giovanni 86 Parry, A.W. 4
Moses 63 Paston family 180, 190–2, 194
Mount Sinai 63 Clement 191
Muhammad bin Ahmed al-Shanni 136 John 191
Muhammad ibn Sah.nūn 66, 120 letters 191–2
Muhammad (Prophet) 64, 140 Margaret 191–2
Murbach, Statutes of 23, 74 Walter 191
Murray, Denise 147 William I 190–1
muwaqqit 140 William III 191
Myrc, John, Instructions for Parish Priests Pater Noster 71, 90, 106
62 pecia system 51, 156
Persius 187
natural philosophy; see also: astronomy, Peter of Pisa 35
mathematics, geometry 5, 35, 41, Petrarch 143–4, 167, 179–80, 187–8
43, 67, 140, 153, 175, 176, 182 Africanus 167, 188
Neville of Hornby Hours 91 philanthropy 2, 177
Nicetius of Lyon (Bishop) 133 Philip II of France (King) 44
Nicholas of Oresme 45–6, 49 Philip III of France (King) 189
Nicolosa di Guisolfo 85 Philip of Harveng 119
Nizamiyya College 67 Philippa of Hainault (Queen) 159
numeracy 36–37, 86, 98, 106, 108, 169 Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts
nunneries 25, 74 to Boethius 113
nuns 74, 97, 172, 187 Plato 40, 43
Timaeus 43
Odo of Cluny, Vita sancti Geraldi Pliny 172
Auriliacensis 112 Porphyry, Isagoge 176
Odofredus 176 Powicke, F.M. 3, 4
ogam 162 Prayer and prayers; see also: Hail Mary,
Olivi, Peter 55 Pater Noster, Apostle’s Creed,
Onfim 117, 118 Lord’s Prayer 70–2, 90, 106, 171–2
INDEX 249

primer 71–2, 74, 80, 81, 146 Roman and Roman Empire 31, 171
printing press 51, 157, 167, 179 education 7
Priscian 36, 113, 170, 175 law 5, 47, 174, 175, 176
The Principles of Grammar 36, 113 schools 11
De nomine et pronomine et verbo (On Roman Catholic Church; see also:
the Noun, Pronoun, and Verb 113 Reformation 169
progymnasmata 12 Rouse, Mary 152
Proverbs of Alfred 89, 90 Rouse, Richard 152
Proverbs of Hendyng 89 royal charters 44, 45, 47, 163
proverbs 9, 15, 66, 89–90, 115–16 Rules, monastic 23, 33–34, 74, 172, 187
Prudentius, Peristephanon 122 Ruzelay, Laurence 194
Psalter 6, 9, 11, 12, 21, 22, 70, 74, 90, runes 161–63
111, 117, 146, 149, 156, 167
of Blanche of Castile 189 Sallust 170
of Ingeborg (Queen 189 Sano di Pietro, The Stories of St. Jerome 171
of Jeanne of Navarre (Queen regnant) 189 scholasticism 41, 178, 193
Pseudo-Isodorian Decretals 47 schoolmasters 7, 17, 95, 102, 106, 121,
punishment, corporal; see also: discipline 122, 130, 136, 139, 141, 142,
65, 66, 86, 94–95, 100–3, 117–22, 169, 177
132, 136 schools; see also: education 4
abacus 153
quadrivium 35, 36, 175 cathedral 4, 26, 33, 35, 38, 44, 106,
quires 50, 51 123, 134, 136, 167, 173–4, 179,
Qur’an; see also: hadith 66, 67, 128, 134, 183, 193
149, 166 chantry 167
civic 96
Rabbi Rashi 142 convent 4, 96, 108, 164
Rashdall, Hastings 3 Dame 7
Rather of Verona 116 elementary 4, 73, 129
Recuyell of the Histories of Troy 179 episcopal 106
Reeves, Andrew 70 free 4
Reformation; see also: Roman Catholic friary 4
Church 6, 10, 41 grammar 4, 41, 95, 96, 123, 129,
Remigius of Auxerre 110 167 191
Rice, Eric 74 monastic 4, 23, 25–6, 33, 35, 44, 123,
Richard de Bury (Bishop), Philobiblon 120, 133, 134, 167, 183
156 parish 167
Richard de Swinfield of Hereford (Bishop) Roman municipal 33
190 secular 96
Richard II (King) 85 song 26, 73, 75, 81, 107, 123, 151
Riché, Pierre 4 scola cantorum; see also: song school chant
Richeza of Lotharingia (Queen) 90 22, 26, 73, 75, 81, 123, 151
Riddy, Felicity 87 scribes 51, 52, 80, 151, 155
riyadat al-nafs 65 scriptorium 35, 37, 47, 55, 162
riyadat al-sibyan 65 Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious) 68
Robert de Sorbonne 177 Sefer Huqqei ha-Torah 68–9
Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury Seneca 16, 18, 188
(Archbishop) 190 De beneficiis 16
Robert II of France (King) 182, 189 De ira 16
250 INDEX

sententiae 12 Talmud; see also: Judaism, Torah 62–3,

Sergius I (Pope) 19, 20 65, 68–9, 140, 165, 193
Sergius II (Pope) 21 teachers of 141
sermons 47, 54–5 tamyiz 63
service and servants 97–100 teachers
female servants 99–100, 103 female 137
Seven Deadly Sins 72 relationships with students 131–7
Shaner, Mary 88 social position of 137–44
Shavuot 63 training of 125–30
Shirley, John 155 temperance 14, 17
Siger of Brabant 43 Tempier Stephen 44, 45
Silver Book of the Land 51 Tertullian 32
Silver, Harold xii textual communities 3, 6, 158, 164
Simon, Joan 5 textual culture 154–9
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 71 The Fifteen Joys of Marriage 100
socialization xii, 83, 85, 86, 94, 96, 98, 103 The Game of Chess 179
Solomon ibn Gabirol 39 The Lay Folks’ Catechism 90
Song of Roland 49, 157 The Lay Folks’ Mass Book 27, 28
Stapledon Hall (Oxford) 190 The Lord’s Prayer 70, 72, 172
Statius, Achilleis 116 The Surgeon Guy de Chauliac Teaching
Stock, Brian 39, 158 with Galien [sic.], Avicenna and
Stone, Lawrence 2, 167 Hippocrates 64
Strozzi, Alessandra 194 Theodulus, Ecloga 116
students Theodulf of Orléans (Bishop) 35, 37, 106
adult 128 theology 3, 28, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 69, 107,
advanced (graduate) 174–5 175, 176
discipline of 117–22 Thomas Aquinas 41, 42, 44, 45, 192
elementary 66 Summa Theologiae 42
in accounting and mathematics 153 Thoresby, John (Archbishop), Lay Folk’s
in the Christian tradition 70 Catechism 90
in the Islamic tradition 66–8 Thorndike, Lynn 4
in the Jewish tradition 68–9, 109, 165 Torah, see also: Judaism, Talmud 62–3, 65,
law 44, 69, 176 68–9, 140, 141, 165, 193
of Latin 70, 114 Tosafists 68
relationships with teachers 132–8 Tre Corone of Italian literature
university 3, 44–5, 51, 107, 129, 154 187
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars 47 trivium 35, 36, 175
Suger of St. Denis 189 troparion 117
sugya 69 Turner, Victor 65
Sulpicius Severus, Vita of Saint Martin of Tuscany, catasto of 1427, 84
Tours 54 Tzetzes, John 130–1
Sylvester II (Pope) 139, 179, 182–3,
188, 194 Ulfilas 48
synagogue; see also: Judaism 62, 65, 68, University and universities: see also College
69, 140 and colleges 3, 38, 41, 44–5, 107,
Synods of Aachen 74 128–9, 154, 174–8
Bologna 3, 44, 174
Tacuinum Sanitatis 20, 100, 101 Cambridge 4, 7, 44, 176, 190, 191
Tahnīk 64 Cologne 44, 154
INDEX 251

Heidelberg 154 Walter de Stapledon of Exeter (Bishop)

Kraków 44, 176 190
Montpelier 44 Walter of Bibbesworth, The Treatise 92,
Oxford 4, 7, 44, 45, 95, 129, 175, 176, 114
190, 191 Walter Reynolds of Canterbury
Paris 3, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 175, 189 (Archbishop) 190
Pisa 44 Walter von der Vogelweide 95
Prague 154, 176 waqf 140
Pécs 176 Wars of the Roses 191
Salamanca 44 wax tablet 47, 48, 74, 152, 154, 155
Salerno 3 Willemsen, Annemarieke 4, 137
Siena 44 William of Chartres 189
St. Andrews 176 William of Ockham 45
Vienna 44, 154, 176 Ockham’s razor 45
Urbanitatus 88 William of Tournai, De instructione
Urbanus magnus 76 puerorum (On the education of boys/
children) 153
van Gennep, Arnold Rites of Passage, 65 William the Conqueror 47
vellum 153, 155 Domesday Book 47
Verger, Jacques 4 Williams, Raymond x
vernacular (languages) 7, 27, 48, 49, 54, Wilmyncote, William 157
68, 69, 108, 146 Winchester College, Statutes of 78
Vikings 153, 163, 173 wisdom literature 11–12, 17
Villani, Giovanni 6, 108 Wood, Ian 163
Vincent of Beauvais, De eruditione filiorum writing systems, standardization of 161–2
nobilium (Concerning the Education Wycliffe, John 111
of Noble Children) 75–6
Virgil 35–6, 47, 170, 188 Yardley, Anne 25, 74, 75
Virgin Mary 79, 81, 90, 158, 174, 184, 189 Young cleric teaching 70
Vitruvius, De architectura 172
vocational training 76–7 Zieman, Katherine 26, 74, 151
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