[138] The basis on which the canon of the seven liberal arts was formed is indicated by a passage in Martianus Capella, who makes Apollo say in regard to the exclusion of medicine and architecture from it that “their attention and skill is given to mortal and earthly things, and they have nothing in common with the ether and the gods; it is not unseemly to reject them with loathing.” (Ed. Eyssenhardt, IV, 13). The Christian Isidore held much the same notion as the pagan Capella. He believed that the order of the seven liberal arts terminating in astronomy was one whose object was “to free souls entangled by secular wisdom from earthly matters and set them at meditation upon the things on high” (3, 71, 41). See also pp. 65, 77. It is plain enough that education in both the pagan and Christian spheres was strongly affected by the mystical tendency of the time, and it is not too much to say that the seven liberal arts stand not so much for the impracticality of a “gentleman’s” education as for that desirable in the education of a mystic. Upon their disappearance the whole burden of maintaining education fell upon the church. In the church organization the effective bodies for such an activity were the groups of clergy attached to cathedrals and to monasteries. There was no system established by a central authority and enforced by public opinion to guide the efforts made by these bodies, and it is plain that in each case educational facilities for the training of priests would be provided in accordance with the intelligence and character of the different bishops and abbots. Where the ecclesiastical authorities were ignorant or careless, the training of the priest or monk must have degenerated to a sort of apprenticeship. The evidence which we possess of the illiteracy[139] of the clergy would lead us to infer that in the dark ages education, in any sense worthy of the name, was sporadic, the product of the happy coincidence of opportunity and an ecclesiastic intelligent enough to realize it.[140] [139] _Cf._ Cañal, _San Isidoro_ (Sevilla, 1897), p. 23. [140] _Cf._ Roger, _L’Enseignement des lettres classiques d’Ausone à Alcuin_ (Paris, 1905), pp. 126–129. The first comprehensive effort[141] to deal with the educational situation from the Christian standpoint was made by Cassiodorus and was designed expressly to meet the needs of the inmates of a monastery in Southern Italy. Naturally he put forth his main endeavor on the side of what may be called theology, but, in addition, he felt impelled to give very brief and vague accounts of the seven liberal arts, which he was reluctantly forced to consider as an indispensable preparation for the former study.[142]