The first elementary schools were those of the monasteries. Later on there were established after their pattern the cathedral and chapter schools, then the parish schools. Still later there came the town and village schools—all of ecclesiastical origin, or at least under the direction of the Church and in close connection with her. As early as 774 we find an ecclesiastical school law, to the effect that each Bishop should found an ecclesiastical school in his episcopal town and appoint a competent teacher to instruct “according to the tradition of the Romans.” _Eugene II._ ordained in 826 anew that efficient teachers should be provided for the cathedral schools wherever needed, who were “to lecture on the sciences and the liberal arts with zeal.” “All Bishops should have the liberal arts taught at their churches,” was a resolution of the Council held in Rome in 1079 by _Gregory VII._ We read in the acts of the Lateran Synod of 1179: “Inasmuch as it behooves the Church, like a loving mother, to see to it that poor children who cannot count upon the support of their parents should not lack opportunity of learning to read and make progress, there should at every cathedral church be given an adequate prebend to the teacher—who is to teach the clerics of this church and the poor pupils gratuitously” (_E. Michael_, Gesch. des Deutschen Volkes II, 1899, 370). School education flourished more and more; in the thirteenth century it was in full bloom. In Germany even many unimportant places, market towns, boroughs, and villages had their schools at that time. In Mayence and its immediate neighbourhood there were, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seven chapter schools; at Muenster at least four schools; the clerical schools at Erfurt had an attendance of no less than 1,000 pupils. About the year 1400 the diocese of Prague alone had 460 schools. In the middle Rhine district, about the year 1500, many counties had an elementary school for every radius of two leagues; even rural communities with 500 to 600 inhabitants, like Weisenau near Mainz, and Michaelstadt in Odenwald, did not lack schools. (_J. Janssen_, Gesch. des Deutschen Volkes, 15th ed., 1890, 26; cf. Michael, 1. c. 402, 417-419; _Palacky_, Gesch. v. Boehmen, III, 1, p. 186). Even in far-off Transylvania there was, as early as the fourteenth century, no village without a church and a school (_K. Th. Becker_, Die Volksschule der Siebenbuerger Sachsen, 1894, y; Michael, 430). There is no doubt that this flourishing state of schools was due in the first place to the stimulus, support, and unselfish effort of the Church.