CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS.
CHRISTIAN
SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS
OR
SKETCHES OF EDUCATION FROM
THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE
COUNCIL OF TRENT
BY
AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DRANE
AUTHOR OF “THE THREE CHANCELLORS,” “KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN,”
“THE HISTORY OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA,” ETC.
Anastatic Reprint of the Second Edition
Published in London 1881.
NEW YORK
G. E. STECHERT & Co.
1910.
PREFACE.
The following pages have been written with the viewof presenting a general and connected sketch of thehistory of Christian Education down to the periodof the Council of Trent, illustrated from the lives ofthose who have, in successive ages, taken part in thatgreat work. A subject extending over so wide a fieldcould of necessity be only partially treated, and itseems desirable, therefore, to explain certain omissionswhich might otherwise cause disappointment. It wasbelieved that the object aimed at would, in most cases,be better accomplished by introducing the reader tothe teachers themselves, than by undertaking to givea complete account and critical examination of theirwritings. Such an examination would properly enterinto a history of Christian Literature, a grand desideratumindeed, but one which the present volumesmakes no pretensions to supply. Again, for obviousreasons, the philosophical and theological controversiesconnected with the lives of the great menwho form the subjects of the following studies, have[Pg vi]been designedly touched on with the greatest possiblebrevity: the history of such controversies seeming tobelong to Ecclesiastical History, and to be unsuitablein a work like the present.
It has been the wish of the writer to treat thesubject from a purely historical point of view, andto increase the value of the narrative by, as far aspossible, preserving the colouring, and sometimeseven the very language, of the original historians.
The notes appended to the text will give a generalidea of the authorities whence the matter has beenderived. The Ecclesiastical Histories of Fleury andRohrbacher have furnished the groundwork of thegeneral narrative. In the account of the Irish schools,the chronology and the main facts have been drawnfrom Lanigan’s Ecclesiastical History of Ireland.The sketch of the restoration of letters underCharlemagne has been chiefly taken from Crevier’sHistoire de l’Université de Paris, Launoy’s TreatiseDe Scholis Celebrioribus, and the various lives, bothancient and modern, of Charlemagne. In the chaptersreferring to the subsequent history of the Dark Ages,constant use has been made of the Acta SanctorumOrd. S. Benedicti, by D’Achery and Mabillon, and ofthe collections of the Lives of the Saints by Suriusand the Bollandists; also of the Vetera Analecta ofMabillon, the Spicilegium of D’Achery, the AmplissimaCollectio of Martene, and the Histoire Litteraire de laFrance, by the Benedicti