Chapter XI: Part IV: Certain Educational Ideas and Influences (2)

What, then, exactly was wrong with the teaching of the second language? Partly it undoubtedly was (as has been indicated) that stupid concentration on the dry bones of grammar which persists up to the present day in the teaching of a strange language. The assumption is that learning a language must necessarily be a synthetic process in which you pass from the details to the whole, instead of being rather analytic, a process in which you pass from an appreciation of the general rhythm and sense and structure to the details of construction, which only have a meaning in so far as they are related to the larger thing. But there was a deeper cause. Augustine gets the root of the matter when he says that it was _unnaturalness_. The reason why Latin was not to him the drudgery that Greek was lay in the fact that it came to him naturally and easily and pleasantly, ‘inter blandimenta nutricum et ioca arridentium et laetitias alludentium’. He learnt with an interest that was natural and delightful ‘not from lessons but from conversations with those in whose ears I longed to pour out all I felt’. It is interest and not force that produces the best results. ‘Hinc satis elucet’, he says, ‘maiorem habere vim ad discenda ista liberam curiositatem quam meticulosam necessitatem.’

Now naturalness means giving scope to the individuality, and developing that sane curiosity which can be elicited by proper methods from every child. Its practice in education, therefore, must mean a protest against the militaristic disciplinarian, and as such Augustine mainly intended it. But it contains, also, a reproof for the thoughtless and unscientific teacher who regards the child as a receptacle for external and ready-made ideas, a protest against the spiritual militarist who does not start with what there is in the child’s mind, but begins by introducing alien matter and perverting the natural resources.

This was exactly what Roman education had always done. It had taken the Latin-speaking child, and, instead of starting with his knowledge of Latin, it began as a rule by cramming in a foreign language, Greek. When Augustine speaks of the Greek studies ‘quibus puerulus imbuebar’,[1259] he is merely affirming that his school followed the ordinary Roman tendency to put Greek first. Greek influence had early captured the Roman schools, and had been widely spread at various times by Scipio and his circle,[1260] by Hadrian,[1261] and by Julian. That easy acceptance of the Greek example, especially in matters of culture, which Plutarch notices,[1262] called for the strong protest of patriots like Cicero on more than one occasion.[1263] But here, as in the matter of rhetoric, the protest was unavailing. We can trace the hellenizing influence as the Empire goes on. Pliny is quite ready to admit the charge of ‘egestas patrii sermonis’ which Cicero is always denying,[1264] and Seneca writes at length on the subject (_Quanta verborum nobis paupertas_).[1265] To a certain extent, of course, this was true, but it is the spirit of the writer that is significant. Whereas Cicero tried to coin philosophical terms[1266] to enrich his language, the later writers merely criticize, or advocate the substitution of Greek. Suetonius quotes Cicero’s letter to Titinius: ‘I remember how, in our boyhood, a certain Plotius was the first to teach Latin. He obtained numbers of pupils ... and I grieved that I could not go too. But I was restrained by the opinion of the experts who thought that the intellect could be better nourished by a Greek training.’[1267] How far national pride had declined is indicated by a comparison of Cicero’s _Dream of Scipio_ which Macrobius has preserved for us, and the notes of the commentator. In Cicero’s text the heaven depicted is pre-eminently for patriots; in Macrobius’s commentary entry into public life is a hindrance rather than a help.[1268] And the failure of patriotism meant increased readiness to adopt and ape the foreign thing simply because it was foreign. It meant that education came to be identified with a knowledge of Greek.

Pliny, in spite of his leaning to Hellenism, complained that in the legal profession young men begin with the civil suits of the centumviral court, just as in the schools they begin with Homer,[1269] and his comment is in the nature of a criticism: ‘For here, as there, they start with what is most difficult.’ Suetonius[1270] indicates the Greek tradition in Roman education when he says that grammar at first made no great progress, since the first teachers, who were at once poets and semi-Greeks, explained none but Greek authors to their pupils, merely reading out to them an occasional Latin composition of their own. And Julius Capitolinus in the life of Maximinus Junior[1271] mentions the Greek training and the Greek grammarian in such a way as to indicate that Greek was taught first. This is distinctly maintained by Petronius:

Det primos versibus annos
Maeoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem.
mox et Socratico plenus grege mutet habenas
liber et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma.
_hinc_ Romana manus circumfluat, et modo Graio
exonerata sono mutet suffusa saporem.[1272]

Homer and Socrates and Demosthenes come first: then Latin literature adds the final flavour. Finally, it was Quintilian’s injunction that the orator must begin his education with Homer.[1273] Jung thinks that Latin and Greek were probably taught together; but he bases his argument on the slender proof that Crispus and Urbicus are called ‘Grammatici Latini et Graeci’.[1274]

This strong tradition was adopted in Gaul, largely, no doubt, on the authority of Quintilian. Paulinus, who went through the regular school-course at Bordeaux, started with ‘dogmata Socratus (Σωκράτους) et bellica plasmata Homeri’.[1275] In Ausonius’s scheme of studies for his grandson, Homer and Menander came first.[1276] And Jerome advises this order for the education of Laeta’s little daughter: ‘ediscat Graecorum versuum (of the Bible) numerum: sequatur statim Latina eruditio.’[1277] ‘L’Hellénisme’, says Jullian[1278] of the Bordeaux schools, ‘est la sauvegarde des esprits et le salut des âmes. C’est l’idéal de l’École,’ and again, ‘les œuvres d’Homère étaient les premières livres qu’on mettait aux mains d’un enfant, qu’il fût Grec ou Romain.’

This is the point, ‘Greek _or_ Roman’. Educational experience has shown that a school-system must be elastic and accommodate itself to the psychology and the needs of the child. Wherever there have been bilingual countries the problem has arisen. What is educationally the soundest principle of manipulating the language question? At first it was thought that the language of the higher culture should be enforced on all. It would save time and expense and trouble; moreover (so men argued), it would be in the interest of the child whose mother-tongue was thus disregarded, for he would have so much more time to learn the language of the ‘superior culture’. Your own language, they told the other party, you know already and your children need not spend time on it at school. Better, therefore, to have a uniform language throughout.

Now such a course (looking at it from the educational point of view) has been proved over and over again to be utterly unsound. The verdict of history has been to uphold, even at the cost of money and time and trouble, the principle of mother-tongue instruction. You must, as Augustine implied, start with what is natural to the child. If you begin with what is strange and has no connexion with his thoughts and speech, you are merely delaying his progress. You will, no doubt, develop his memory, but his thought will remain untouched. Inspectors in the schools of South Africa have reported repeatedly the case of Dutch children who have been started on English, that they read and spell perfectly, but are quite unable to explain the meaning of an English sentence. The consequence is that they take twice as long to pass the elementary standards as they normally would. The same has been found in Quebec and in India and Burma. Teachers and missionaries everywhere have discovered that the mother-tongue principle is the only fruitful one. They have found that where it is applied progress follows in an unexpected way. Once the child has learned to use, to analyse, to understand his own language, once his thought has been set going, he will learn the second language more quickly than the child who started with the second language. He is therefore ahead in three respects: his thought has been stimulated, he has learned his own language, he has learned another language, whereas the other has not been induced to think, knows his own language superficially and the second language imperfectly. This can be substantiated by many cases from the experience of teachers in bilingual countries.

May we not, then, find the ultimate cause of the failure of Greek in the schools of our period, in this mistaken policy of starting with the second language? At a time when Latin was becoming more and more the household tongue of Gaul, and Greek proportionately strange, the effect of beginning with the latter could not but lead to sterile results. There seems to have been an idea, which we find also in Jung,[1279] that they should clear the second language out of the way first, ‘quo postea linguam suam plenius ac melius ... ediscerent’. They seem to have thought that whatever you learn last has the strongest influence, and therefore, if you _must_ learn Greek, do so first, lest it mar your Latin. How far this peculiarly Roman and unpsychological attitude failed is a question which needs no further comment.

4. ART

In a survey of Gallic education art must be mentioned, but the space given to it must of necessity be very limited. Only in its possible effect on education can it be briefly touched on, and even then not as a school-subject, but rather as an influence behind official teaching.

The Gauls were by nature fond of art. That eager curiosity and excitability which Caesar noticed[1280] in them were the basis of an artistic temperament. Ausonius, in his epigrams, refers frequently to works of art,[1281] and his enthusiasm over the sculptured calf of Myron is remarkable.[1282] He maintains the advanced doctrine that art is greater than nature. Of Myron’s heifer he says:

Fingere nam similem vivae, quam vivere, plus est;
nec sunt facta dei mira, sed artificis.[1283]

In the ‘poems added by Thaddaeus Ugoletus to the epigrams of Ausonius’ the same statue is referred to in three epigrams,[1284] and we have one ‘on the marble statue of Niobe’, expressing a certain amount of artistic appreciation. We hear of one of Sidonius’s friends who was a student of Vitruvius,[1285] and Patiens was much interested in the adornment of the churches of Lyons.

But there were two considerations that affected this natural love of art in the Gauls: the Roman element in them, and the fact that art, like literature, was becoming a matter of form. Just as beauty of style had once been a living and inspiring thing to the Greeks, but became in our period a juggling with phrase and rule, so art had lost its true and inner meaning. And just as the Greek influence of Massilia had encouraged the artistic instinct of the Gauls, so the harder Roman spirit proved an impediment. Sidonius illustrates this fact admirably. Surrounded by all the luxury of his time, he felt bound to include art products among his possessions, and liked to talk about them, with the comfortable assurance that it was a respectable and cultured thing to do. But he shows little real appreciation. Purgold has shown[1286] that most of the descriptions in his poems referring to art are borrowed from Claudian and other Roman poets. In his account of the castle of Pontius Leontius we have a list of artistic productions[1287] in the usual Roman encyclopaedic style, and similarly his acquaintance with sculpture is merely conventional. He knows the stock attitudes that sculptors give to philosophers,[1288] and this is the order of his artistic attainments. In describing the churches of Patiens at Lyons[1289] and of Perpetuus at Tours,[1290] he is much more interested in the inscriptions[1291] he wrote for them than in the architecture. And this in spite of the fact that Perpetuus had employed a style in rebuilding the church at Tours in 470 which was new to Gaul, and had introduced a form of choir which was the point of departure from which the ‘chevet’ of French, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture developed.[1292] This lack of appreciation was part of the general decline in art at this time. In the triumphal arch of Constantine (early fourth century) part of the design is inserted from the arch of Trajan, and has, therefore, little original artistic value, while the other part, which is contemporary, illustrates the decay of aesthetic taste. Similarly, the contemporary part of the discus of Theodosius is merely profuse and conventional.[1293]

Art in Gaul, as at Rome, was largely produced by foreigners. The great statue of Mercury of Auvergne, the only Gallic piece of sculpture we know, was executed by the Greek Zenodorus, who sold his work for 400,000 sesterces, and was then called to Rome to make a statue of Nero. Of the statues found at Martres, near Toulouse, the oldest belonged to the first century, the more recent to the third and fourth. Why is it that so many were found in the same place? Lavisse thinks that the Christians, in the height of their anti-pagan fury, collected, mutilated, and threw them together in some out-of-the-way spot. Now it is commonly held, as we have seen,[1294] that the sort of marble of which they were made is the same as that of the neighbouring quarries, especially that of Saint-Béat on the Upper Garonne. It is therefore probable that they were produced in the neighbourhood, and the thought is suggested that perhaps, for all we know, they may represent some school of sculptors which flourished during our period. Of Gallic sculpture and its relation to Greek art, the influence of Alexandria, the centre of Hellenistic art in the first century, the industrial art of Gaul and its relation to Greece, a sound and recent summary will be found in Lavisse.[1295]

The splendour of public buildings both at Trèves and at Autun is often expatiated on by the panegyrists.[1296] The descriptions show considerable interest in architecture, and this interest when presented externally in a building like the Maeniana must have had an educative value for those who attended the institution. But it was Christianity that accomplished most in this field. When Christian art began to develop it took for its first church model the basilica which was already seen in the chapels of the catacombs. We hear of bishops of Gaul who got workmen to come over from Italy in order to build churches after this style. The basilicas of Constantine and Theodosius, the sepulchral bas-reliefs at Rome, Ravenna, and Arles, and at many other places, are well known. ‘Before the fall of the Empire’, says Ozanam, ‘there was to be seen that Romanesque and Byzantine architecture which was soon to cover with monuments the shores of the Loire, Seine and Rhine, and which, from the broken arch of its vault, was to produce all the beauties of the pointed Gothic.’[1297] That the interest which Sidonius and his friends showed (though superficially) in architecture did not die with them is proved by the letter of Cassiodorus (at the beginning of the sixth century) to the prefect of Rome.[1298] He is anxious to have a competent man in charge of the public architecture. ‘Romanae fabricae decus convenit peritum habere custodem’, who must be an expert and a student: ‘Det operam libris antiquorum, instructionibus vacet.’ There were within the church a large number of narrow and uneducated zealots, who, like Martin of Tours, banished all art. ‘Ars ibi’, says Sulpicius Severus of Martin’s monastery, ‘exceptis scriptoribus, nulla habebatur.’[1299] Even the books were assigned only to the younger brethren: ‘maiores orationi vacabant’. In his theory of education Augustine allows pictures and statues and such-like to be used for instruction. But, except for strictly scientific purposes, they must be looked on as otiose: ‘hoc totum genus inter superflua hominum instituta numerandum est, nisi cum interest quid eorum, qua de causa, et ubi et quando et cuius auctoritate fiat.’ Cassiodorus expresses the view of the more liberal and enlightened Christian teachers when he sees that art may be used to improve the works of the ancients by avoiding their mistakes, to clothe the new in the glory of the old.[1300] Similarly in Paulinus of Nola we find the motto of ‘Spoiling the Egyptians’ in regard to art, and the note of ‘Soli Deo gloria’. To art conceived in this way he has no objection; rather, he seeks it out with enthusiastic eagerness. ‘Videamus autem aedificantes quid de nostra fragili terrenaque substantia dignum divino fundamento superaedificare possimus, ut ipso principali lapide unificati lapides in fabricam templi caelestis optemur.’[1301] Thus, while there was much in the conception of Christianity at the time which made for a philistinism in art, there were also encouraging elements.

In the catacombs, too, we find traces of other artistic developments. Ignorant and untrained as those early Christians were, they had within them a strong emotion based on sincere conviction, and this emotion found an outlet in verse and painting, sculpture and mosaic, which, though often of the most rudimentary order, represented the beginnings of new artistic movements. A glass patera found at Cologne has gold figures on a white background, representing the vision of Ezekiel, and it belongs to the first few centuries of our era.[1302] Gilt glasses, frequently produced at Cologne, and decorated with the heads of Christ and the apostles, have come down to us from the early Christian centuries. There are also finely wrought and figured lamps and linens. But most striking are the ivories, of which a large number is now in the British museums. They are extremely beautiful and belong to a school of the fourth and fifth centuries. Pilate washing his hands, Peter’s denial, Judas hanging himself, Christ bearing the Cross—such are the themes portrayed on them, possibly by Eastern carvers.[1303] At Arles there is a large collection of paintings which show that the passage of the Red Sea was a favourite subject. And Paulinus of Nola, in his long letter to Severus,[1304] shows clearly that it was a common thing to have paintings in the churches. He describes the prominent picture of Martin, ‘qui etiam in splendoribus sanctorum conspicua claritate praefulget’, and mentions another of himself on an adjoining wall. Numerous verses are addressed to Severus on the subjects of his pictures, and his skill is praised as worthy of his themes:

Digna sacramentis gemina sub imagine pinxit.

He describes various church pictures representing the Trinity, the Good Shepherd, the Baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion,[1305] and so on, in the church of Nola. Similarly the pictures in the church of Fundana are described. The elaboration of the scene strikes us as a harbinger of mediaeval art. In a single picture we have the themes of God in paradise, Christ and the Cross, the Spirit and the Father crowning Him, and the Day of Judgement.[1306]

This elaboration is found, too, in the architecture and in the general adornment of the churches. Paulinus describes arches, chambers, fonts, &c., in detail, as, for instance, those of the church at Nola.[1307]

Similarly the church at Fundana is described.[1308] Now the church was the place where the mass of the people met, and if we must recognize it at this time as the religious, the moral, and the intellectual teacher of the people, we must also recognize in its training, to some extent, an element of artistic education.

But the form of art that was most commonly cultivated by the men of this time was music. There is an epitaph of Vienne to one Nicias a citharoedus,[1309] and another of Nemausum to Avidius Secundus, a maker of musical instruments (_musicarius_).[1310] Gaul had inherited all the musical devices and appliances of Rome, and like Rome had used them chiefly for frivolous pleasures. But Sidonius notes that Theodoric II cared only for serious music. Hydraulic organs and dancing girls he dispensed with.[1311] Still more did the Christians dispense with such things. But if they would not and could not develop the instrumental side, they certainly made a speciality of singing. There is a doubtful but interesting legend which says that when the Empress Justina threatened to deliver the basilica of Milan to the Arians, Ambrose and his congregation spent a day and a night in the building. To pass the time he introduced hymn-tunes, already adopted by the Eastern Church. Augustine testifies to the impression which these hymns made on him at Milan. They were the means of bringing the truth home to him. ‘Quantum flevi in hymnis et cantibus tuis, suave sonantis ecclesiae tuae vocibus commotus acriter! Voces illae influebant auribus meis et eliquabatur veritas in cor meum, et exaestuabat inde affectus pietatis, et currebant lacrimae, et bene mihi erat cum eis.’[1312] He had doubts at first as to the propriety of such sense-seducing music, but his scruples did not long survive. He himself showed considerable interest in the art and wrote six books _De Musica_ in a didactic strain.

Nor was the interest confined to him. Everywhere in the Christian schools choristers were trained. Jerome speaks of hymn-singing or chants in the schools, where the little ones sing of Pharaoh’s disaster in the Red Sea and the triumph of the just.[1313] Claudianus Mamertus trained a choir for his brother, the Bishop of Vienne[1314] (_instructas docuit sonare classes_). Antiphonal singing (i.e. the older practice of the alternate singing of psalms) is often mentioned. Sidonius speaks of the monks and priests who chant psalms with alternating sweetness,[1315] and we have seen how Caesarius, when he became bishop, made his congregation sing in this way. In the clerical training singing came to be very important. It was forbidden by Gregory to take orders without it. Columban complains of the harsh discipline which accompanied it.[1316]

The beginnings of hymn-singing in this period have a particular interest for Gaul because they are connected with Hilary of Poitiers. We have Jerome’s statement ‘Hilarius in hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles vocat’,[1317] which seems to mean more than the remark he makes elsewhere[1318] that among the works of Hilary was _Liber hymnorum et mysteriorum_. For it suggests that Hilary tried to introduce hymn-singing into Gaul and did not meet with great success. This is supported by the definite statement of Isidore of Seville ‘Hymnorum carmine (Hilarius) floruit _primus_’.[1319] With Ambrose, Hilary shares the distinction of being a pioneer in this department. So important was their work that the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) in its Thirteenth Canon referred to their hymns (‘quos beatissimi doctores Hilarius atque Ambrosius ediderunt’). These hymns were regarded as having a sort of direct spiritual influence which effected the routing of a personal devil[1320]—a conception which appears throughout the Middle Ages and in _Faust_. But they had their value for literature as well. Apart from the beauty of some of Ambrose’s hymns, the metres which they popularized formed a point from which the development of specifically modern metres can be traced. The influence of these hymns which the mass of the people, unprejudiced by an elaborate training in classical metres, daily heard and sang, must have been enormous in forming a public opinion on the technique of poetry. For there are few things that grip the popular imagination more than tunes of this kind.

Bulaeus[1321] states that Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons in the latter half of the sixth century, was the first to introduce hymn-singing into the church at Lyons. He refers to the epitaph which we find in the Bollandist records:[1322]

Psallere praecepit, normamque tenere canendi
_primus_ et alterutrum tendere voce chorum.

But the reference of Sidonius, quoted above,[1323] to the choir-singing in the church of Lyons in the fifth century, makes it probable that what is here referred to is either a revival of the old part-singing which had become usual in Hilary’s time, or else some specialized form of chant which was slightly different from the ordinary style. In any case we may safely conclude that Gaul played no unimportant part in the development of church-singing during the fourth century.