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
in spite of themselves. In all these good works he was assisted
by the learning and martial valour of Ansfrid, count of Lorraine,
who was well read both in law and Scripture, and who used his sword
exclusively to repress pillage and defend the helpless. This feudal
noble of the Iron Age spent all his leisure hours in study, and when
at last he embraced the ecclesiastical state, and at the entreaties
of the emperor accepted a bishopric, he was able to lay his sword
on the altar and render witness that it had never been drawn in an
unjust cause.
Bruno’s example made a great stir in Germany, and moved many
bishops to exert themselves in the work of reform. Poppo, Bishop
of Wurtzburg, sent to Rome for a celebrated master named Stephen,
and with his help the episcopal seminary was restored, and soon
boasted of a “crowd of students, and a great store of books.”
Among other pupils educated under Master Stephen were two friends,
named Wolfgang and Henry. Wolfgang was a student of Bruno’s type,
possessing an avidity for all sorts of learning; and though he began
his school-life at seven, he is said in a few years not only to have
acquired an extensive acquaintance with the letter of the Scriptures,
but to have penetrated into the pith and marrow of their mystical
sense. His father had thought it sufficient to place him under a
certain priest, to receive a very scanty elementary education, but
Wolfgang entreated that he might be sent to Reichnau, which then
enjoyed a high reputation; and here he first met with his friend
Henry. Henry was the younger brother of Bishop Poppo, and easily
persuaded Wolfgang to migrate with him to Wurtzburg, for the sake of
studying under the famous Master Stephen. It soon appeared, however,
that the disciple was more learned than the master, and when the
Wurtzburg students found Master Stephen’s lectures very dull, or
very obscure, they were in the habit of applying to Wolfgang, who
possessed that peculiar gift of perspicacity which marked him from
his boyhood as called to the functions of teaching. Moreover, he was
so kind and so willing to impart his knowledge, that his companions
declared he made daylight out of the darkest matters; when Stephen’s
prosy abstruseness had fairly mystified them, five words from
Wolfgang seemed like the “Fiat lux,” and these observations reaching
the ears of Stephen, had the proverbial fate of all comparisons.
At last, one day when Wolfgang was surrounded by a knot of his
schoolfellows, who entreated him to expound a passage in Marcian
Capella, Master Stephen, moved to jealous anger, forbade Wolfgang any
longer to attend the lectures. This ungenerous command obliged him
to continue his studies alone, but he seems to have lost little by
being deprived of the benefit of an instructor whom he had already
far outstripped in learning.
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