The Story of Classical Education - Part 2
Tracing its threads through England (and elsewhere)
Hello there, in case you missed the first part, here’s the link to the beginning of this series which discusses the introduction of classical education to the sons of English chieftains in the 1st century AD:
16th Century English Grammar Schools
As with the rest of Europe, in the 16th century English education is influenced quite significantly by the spirit of ad fontes. This intellectual emphasis, finds the conditions of its birth being formed in the previous century in which Mehmet II (1432 - 1481) conquered Constantinople, setting off a great intellectual migration of scholars of the ancient texts. Masters of Attic and Koine Greek, Hebrew and other Semitic texts fled the Ottoman imperialist.
These men took refuge and made their home in places like Florence, Italy, in Toledo Spain, where translation of texts from Arabic and Greek to Latin took place. And in Evora, Portugal, where Hebrew scholars settled and taught. They brought with them ancient manuscripts and taught the scholars and teachers of the West how to read these ancient languages. In doing so, they highlighted the significance of original sources and transmitted knowledge from the Arabic and historic ancient world.
Eventually, England too would also partake in this feast of knowledge from the East. In 1509 John Colet (1467 - 1519) a theologian and friend of Erasmus (1466 - 1536) founded St Paul’s School in London for young boys. These ‘schoolers’, or young scholars as the word evolved to become, read an assortment of Greek and Roman authors that included the likes of Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Caesar and Sallust. The scholars of Cardinal Wolsey’s (1473 - 1530) Ipswich School read a near identical canon.
When beginning to read a particular author, the teacher gives a prelection (praelectio), very much like a Roman grammaticus:
“The master begins with a brief account of the author’s circumstances, character and stylistic virtues; then he explains how pleasant and useful is the reading of comedies and what is the meaning and derivation of the word ‘comedy’. He summarises the plot and explains the metre, reads the lines in grammatical order, and points out archaisms, coinages, Greek words and various grammatical and rhetorical figures, calling attention to beauties of style and features worthy of imitation.” - Classical Education in Britain 1500 - 1900 by M.L Clarke
The use of Grammar books
A key contribution of the Christian Humanists in this century was the rescue of Latin grammar from the muddied obscurity of the Middle Ages, so as to render it a means for learning the language. To this end, William Lily (1468 - 1522) the first high master of St Paul’s school, with the aid of Colet and Erasmus developed a grammar. This grammar would in due course become the text-book ordained for use throughout the kingdom of England by King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
The method of using the grammar book, was to learn declensions and conjugations using plenty of examples in order to understand the purpose of the rules. The learning of the syntax was done through reading eloquent and wholesome texts. The scholars would then proceed to translate English text into Latin. This would etch into their minds a greater depth in understanding of the rules of syntax as they were encountered. Grammar was also taught by way of getting the scholars to ask each other questions, also referred to as ‘appositions’. At Bury St Edmund’s School as well as Friars School in Bangor, Wales, the scholars were to appose each other for half an hour before leaving school for supper, focusing on inflections, cases, conjugations, tenses and moods.
And in London, grammatical disputations were conducted publicly, a practice that dates back to the Middle Ages. In these exercises, scholars debate the right use of grammatical rules, the ‘respondent’ would defend a position on a given grammar rule or its usage and an opponent would attempt to refute it. Scholars would examine texts to provide evidence in support of their position. For example, they might debate grammatical cases or the rules for forming plurals. This combative exercise in the right usage of language, helped to establish and reinforce the definitions and usage of words. It provided a kind of linguistic stability which today is hollowing out having been unscrewed by postmodern and post-truth schools of thought.
Shrewsbury School had their scholars supplement reading with the acting out of whole plays and the performance of declamations. By going through the exercise of reading, learning by heart and embodying the texts through public performance, the scholars applied more of their faculties in the pursuit of the mastery of rhetoric. It drew some of the scholars out of their zones of comfort. And they were perhaps more successful for it.
The statutes of Sandwich School also known as the King’s School, Canterbury lays out its instruction for scholars:
“Everie lesson shall be said without booke and construed into Englishe by every scholler reading that author; the words shall first be Englished severallie as the grammaticall construccion lieth and afterwards the hole sentence or lesson rehersed in Englishe as it lieth together.’ - The Statutes of Sandwich School (in original archaic English)
What is construing? To construe was to analyse and interpret a text in its original language. The purpose was to get a more profound understanding of the meaning and structure of the text as well as to build proficiency in the language. In practice, the scholar would work through a text line by line, parsing each sentence and identifying structures of grammar and the words used and then translate it. Doing this helped to develop both strong critical thinking and analytical skills.
The importance of learning by heart
So Sandwich scholars would construe and translate into English word by word. The scholar would then sow the text to his heart, memorising it systematically. The evening was for memorising and the morning at 7AM was for the recital of passages learnt by heart the previous day. Much evidence attests to John Wesley (1703 - 1791) knowing biblical scripture by heart in its original tongue better than in English. One wonders if this same level of rigor for the pursuit of mastery was adopted by him a couple centuries later to accompany whatever talents he had already been gifted with.
Today, the term “learning by rote” is a derogative smear implicitly cast upon those who advocate “learning by heart”. At its core, the rise in popularity of the disparaging phrase is at odds with the mental acquisition of beautiful texts of poetry and historical facts about the world, things which provide a sense of belonging to place and time and in doing so they are a means of transmitting cultural identity. These are things which pin you down to earth. It’s an attack on the beauty and structure of reality. And leaves one exposed and susceptible to radically absurd ideas and propositions, which is something we increasingly observe in the early 21st century.
An assortment of methods to teach one how to think
In 1560 at Eton, scholars were put through “the making of Latins”, where they translated English sentences or ‘vulgars’ into Latin. This was however not universally viewed with complete affection as the scholar and writer Roger Ascham (1515 - 1568) thought that this dulled the young scholar’s mind, because they would have to work on forgetting it when it came to composing original Latin or Greek under the influence of the great canon of literature rather than the contrived sentences of English educators.
At Rivington Grammar School, composition in Latin was prescribed for scholars to do:
“The elder sort must be exercised in devising and writing sundry epistles to sundry men, of sundry matters, as of chiding, exhorting, comforting, counselling, praying, lamenting, some to friends, some to foes, some to strangers; of weighty matters, or merry…of adversity, or prosperity, of war, and peace, divine and profane, of all sciences and occupations, some long and some short.”
With such a range of types of letters, one wonders what they would have used as a template. But ancient literature was filled with examples of letters to model. Cicero’s letters were used for example, alongside commentaries or treatises on writing letters such as Johannes Sturm’s (1509 - 1589) Sturm’s selection and Erasmus’ De Conscribendis Epistolis.
The progymnasmata was an area of training in the Roman Empire’s grammar school course which comprised themes and declamations. The declamation, in contradistinction to the theme was concerned with something controversial, taking on an affirmative or negative stance and was delivered orally, wherein one scholar upheld a thesis, and another sought to refute that thesis, and there was also the option of a third scholar providing a summary of the first two. Latin theme writing may be described as a form of prose-writing in which “exercises in variation” are wrought viz, stating the same thing in multiple different ways. In Erasmus’ De Copia he demonstrates over a hundred unique ways to vary a short text. The De Copia has two sections, Copia Veborum and Copia Rerum. That latter describes a different form of variation, whereby the sentence is not just paraphrased but is expanded upon.
An example would be:
Erasmus' De Copia Verborum method uses synonyms, metaphors, and other forms of wordplay to create different versions of the same sentence
Original sentence: “The dog barked at the mailman.”
Variation by wordplay: “The canine let out a loud woof at the postal carrier, whose presence had apparently roused the pooch's protective instincts.”
Erasmus' De Copia Rerum method involves adding more details, while maintaining the same essential meaning
Original sentence: “The dog barked at the mailman.”
Variation by expansion: “The large and furry dog barked loudly and persistently at the mailman, who was delivering a package to our front porch.”
Since poetry was commonly used in expressions of triumph and rejoicing, but also on solemn occasions such as funerals of the renowned, “versifying”, the art of writing poetry about a given theme **was commonly required although it was done in the more senior years of education. Additionally, prosody - the study of how to properly apply stress, intonation and rhythm when speaking was learnt in order to bolster the pupil’s speech when it came to persuasiveness and force.
Toward the end of the 16th century, Greek took a more notable part in grammar school education with the reading of The New Testament. Although at this time, Greek was more of a reading language whereas Latin was still a language of speech. Yet in contradiction to this general intellectual atmosphere, Erasmus does suggest that there were some boys in England as well as Holland that did amuse themselves in Greek interlocution as early as 1528.
With one hundred years of a rejuvenated classical grammar tradition covered (insufficiently), in the next part of this series I shall delve into the following centuries to see how these foundations were built upon, and to note what steady progress in classical school education occurred.
Key Data 2:
Key Educators: Colet, Erasmus, Wolsey, Lily, Ascham, Sturm
Key Institutions: St Paul’s School, Ipswich School, Friars School in Bangor, Shrewsbury School, Bury St Edmund’s School, Sandwich School, Rivington Grammar School
Methods of interest: Learning by Heart, Daily appositions, Declamation & Acting, Exercises in Construing and Translating, Grammatical Disputations, The Making of Latins, Theme Writing, Exercises in Variation, Prosody
Texts: The New Testament, Lily’s Latin Grammar, De Copia (rhetoric book), Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Caesar, Sallust
References:
2000 years of Christ’s Power Volume 3, by Nick Needham
Classical Education in Britain 1500 to 1900, by M.L Clarke