Christian Schools and Scholars: or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of TrentDrane, Augusta Theodosia
History
Christian Schools and Scholars: or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent
Drane, Augusta Theodosia
Church and education; Education -- Europe -- History; Renaissance; Scholasticism
Another of the most constant correspondents and advisers of Boniface
was his old diocesan, Daniel of Winchester, whom he frequently
consulted in the difficulties with which he was beset. Ozanam
observes that the former grammarian and scholasticus peeps out in one
of the questions he sends for solution; namely, if the baptism were
valid, administered by a certain priest who was in the habit of using
the form, _In nomine Patria et Filia, et Spiritui Sancta_?[66] But
we may, I think, acquit our great apostle of the charge of pedantry,
founded on this passage. He was engaged in planting the Church on a
new soil, and a scrupulous exactness, in preserving the sacramental
forms of words from corruption, need not be taken as a sign of
scholastic priggishness. There is no saying where the “Patria et
Filia” might have ended, or what more extensive variations might not
have been added by the _il_-literati of Thuringia. Bishop Daniel gave
him a great deal of excellent advice, and was of considerable service
to Boniface by supplying him with books. On one occasion we find the
missionary writing to his good friend, begging him to send the book
of the Prophets “which the abbot Wimbert, my master, left at his
death. It is written in large and very distinct letters; I could not
have a greater consolation in my old age, for there is no book like
it in this country, and as my sight grows weak I cannot distinguish
the small letters which run together in the volumes I now have.”
In 732, Boniface received the pallium from the hands of Pope Gregory
III., together with the authority of Papal Legate and Vicar over the
bishops of France and Germany. This office empowered him to take
every step necessary for the firm establishment of the faith in
the newly converted countries, and at the same time he was charged
with the far more difficult task of restoring Church discipline in
the Gallican provinces, where, owing to the barbarism of the times,
a frightful state of anarchy prevailed. We shall chiefly follow him
in his apostolic career in Germany, where his first care was to
provide for the necessities of the infant Church by the erection of
several new sees. Burchard was consecrated Bishop of Wurtzburg, and
Wilibald was appointed to the see of Eichstadt, a woody district
overspread with oaks, which as yet contained but one small church.
Other prelates were named to fill the sees of Erfurt, Ratisbon, and
Friesingen. The care of the Archbishop was next directed to providing
a succession of clergy for the new dioceses, and with this view he
founded several monasteries, one of which became in after-times the
greatest monastic school in Germany. In the year 730, when Boniface
travelled into Bavaria, to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline
in that country, many Bavarian nobles committed their sons to his
care, and among these was Sturm, who was offered by his parents to
the service of God. Boniface placed him in the monastery he had
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