Medieval Education

Chapter 1: Bishops, Barbarians, and the ‘‘Dark Ages’’:The Fate of Late Roman EducationalInstitutionsin Late Antique Gaul

        Bishops, Barbarians, and the ‘‘Dark Ages’’: The Fate of Late Roman Educational Institutions in Late Antique Gaul  . * D uring the late Roman period public schools enjoyed imperial patronage resulting to a great degree from a need for educated persons to fill posts in the expanding imperial bureaucracy (MacMullen ; Jones ; Pedersen ; Nellen ; Kaster ). In , for example , the emperor Gratian issued legislation providing for the establishment of grammarians and rhetors ‘‘throughout each diocese in the most populated cities’’ (Codex Theodosianus ..). Gaul was one of the primary beneficiaries of such policies (Haarhoff ; van Sickle ). In cities that did not enjoy this imperial largess, other public schools operated that were dependent on municipal support and student tuitions (Jones , ; Kaster , –). Even professors who received public stipends obtained a good deal of income from student fees (Jones , ). In addition, only schools of grammar and rhetoric received state support; elementary education was left to ‘‘private enterprise’’ (Jones , –). Moreover, the public schools functioned alongside the long-standing tradition of ‘‘home schooling,’’ carried out either by private tutors or by the students’ own parents (Kaster , –). As of the early fifth century A.D., Gaul had a reputation as a center of education. For example, St. Jerome wrote to Rusticus, a young man of Marseilles, noting that his mother ‘‘sent you to Rome, sparing no expense . . . so that Roman solemnity would restrain the sumptuousness and elegance of Gallic speech’’ (Epist. .; cf. Chron. *This study is dedicated to the memory of Fannie J. LeMoine. PAGE 3 ................. 11150$ $CH1 02-02-05 07:57:41 PS Medieval Education  s. a. ). The poet Claudian spoke of the ‘‘learned citizens’’ of Gaul, and the Roman senator Symmachus referred to ‘‘Gallic eloquence’’ (Claud. De quart. cons. Hon. –; Symm. Epist. ., .). Gallic education also bore fruit, for a number of the late Roman writers had their origin in Gaul,1 and the rhetor Ausonius of Bordeaux not only rose to high imperial office, but also authored a poem on ‘‘The Professors of Bordeaux.’’ This comfortable situation was interrupted in the early fifth century , when various barbarian peoples began to arrive in Gaul to stay. The Visigoths were settled in Aquitania in , and the Burgundians in Sapaudia in . In the north, the Franks intruded across the Rhine, and the Alamanni occupied the east. The imperial government collapsed, and Gaul was partitioned among various barbarian kingdoms . The barbarian settlement, coupled with the process of Christianization that had accelerated during the fourth century, brought great political, social, and cultural changes. The barbarian incursions generally are assumed to have had a disastrous effect upon secular educational institutions. It has been presumed that they of necessity meant the end of the secular, publicly supported school system (Cameron , ; Marrou , ; Boyd , ). Indeed, the image of the uncouth and unlettered barbarian who destroyed classical culture and was the direct cause of the ‘‘Dark Ages’’ (Goffart , ; Cameron , ) still is common in modern historiography (Dill , ; Stevens , ; Chadwick , ; Riché , ; Mathisen , –). Many scholars portray the barbarians as having no interest in classical culture: Riché, for example, asserted, ‘‘We find no trace of any interest in Latin letters among the Visigoths, the Burgundians, or even the Ostrogoths . . .’’ (, ). Modern writers, generally presenting arguments from silence, suppose that all or nearly all the secular schools teaching the classical subjects of grammar and rhetoric in Gaul were closed by ca. – (Roger , , , ; Haarhoff , ; Stroheker , ; Marrou , –, ; Cameron , –; Boyd , ; Matthews , ) and were succeeded by ecclesiastical schools that often taught little more than basic literacy (Haarhoff , ; Marrou , ; Matthews ). This scenario has the advantage of simplicity : the barbarians came, the secular schools disappeared, and rudiPAGE 4 ................. 11150$ $CH1 02-02-05 07:57:41 PS Bishops, Barbarians, and the “Dark Ages”  mentary ecclesiastical schools picked up and continued on into the Middle Ages. But this reconstruction has a problem. Some modern writers cite several secular teachers of grammar and rhetoric—six or seven of them—in Gaul after the s. What is one to do with them? Some dismiss them as isolated anomalies or postpone the date of the ‘‘last known public rhetor’’ until the late fifth or very early sixth century (Dill , ; Raby , ; Riché , –, and , –; Lot , ; Kaster , –). Secular teachers who seem to be attested at even later dates (Pirenne , –; Thompson , , ) are explained away by some as representing various kinds of ‘‘home schooling’’ (Boyd , ), such as private tutoring (Roger , ; Marrou , ; Riché , ) or parental instruction (Sid. Apoll. Epist. ..–; Vita Boniti ; Vita Desiderii ). Others propose that teachers of secular material after ca.  were in fact clerics and consequently...