The History of Education; educational practice and progress considered as a phase of the development and spread of western civilization by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley
page 285 of 1184 (24%)
page 285 of 1184 (24%)
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were not infrequently called upon to pass upon questions of doctrine or
heresy. "Kings and princes," says Rashdall, in an excellent summary as to the value and influence of the mediaeval university instruction (R. 124), "found their statesmen and men of business in the universities, most often, no doubt, among those trained in the practical science of Law." Talleyrand is said to have asserted that "their theologians made the best diplomats." For the first time since the downfall of Rome the administration of human affairs was now placed once more in the hands of educated men. By the interchange of students from all lands and their hospitality, such as it was, to the stranger, the universities tended to break down barriers and to prepare Europe for larger intercourse and for more of a common life. On the masses of the people, of course, they had little or no influence, and could not have for centuries to come. Their greatest work, as has been the case with universities ever since their foundation, was that of drawing to their classrooms the brightest minds of the times, the most capable and the most industrious, and out of this young raw material training the leaders of the future in Church and State. Educationally, one of their most important services was in creating a surplus of teachers in the Arts who had to find a market for their abilities in the rising secondary schools. These developed rapidly after 1200, and to these we owe a somewhat more general diffusion of the little learning and the intellectual training of the time. In preparing future leaders for State and Church in law, theology, and teaching, the universities, though sometimes opposed and their opinions ignored, nevertheless contributed materially to the making and moulding of national history. The first great result of their work in training leaders we see in the Renaissance movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to which we next turn. In this movement for a revival of the ancient learning, and the subsequent |
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