The Thirteenth, Greatest of CenturiesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Civilization, Medieval -- 13th century; Universities and colleges -- History
If the Thirteenth Century had done nothing else but put into shape
this great instrument for the training of the human mind, which has
maintained its effectiveness during seven centuries, it must be
accorded a place among the epoch-making periods of history. With all
our advances in modern education we have not found it necessary, or
even advisable, to change, in any essential way, this mold in which
the human intellect has been cast for all these years. If a man wants
knowledge for its own sake, or for some practical purpose in life,
then here are the faculties which will enable him to make a good
beginning on the road he wishes to travel. If he wants knowledge of
the liberal arts, or the consideration of man's duties to himself, to
his fellow-man and to his Creator, he will find in the faculties of
arts and philosophy and theology the great sources of knowledge in
these subjects. If, on the other hand, he wishes to apply his mind
either to the disputes of men about property, or to their injustices
toward one another and the correction of abuses, then the faculty of
law will {20} supply his wants, and finally the medical school enables
him, if he wishes, to learn all that can be known at a given time with
regard to man's ills and their healing. We have admitted the
practical-work subjects into university life, though not without
protest, but architecture, engineering, bridge-building and the like,
in which the men of the Thirteenth Century accomplished such wonders,
were relegated to the guilds whose technical schools, though they did
not call them by that name, were quite as effective practical
educators as even the most vaunted of our modern university mechanical
departments.
It is rather interesting to trace the course of the development of
schools in our modern sense of the term, because their evolution
recapitulates, to some degree at least, the history of the
individual's interest in life. The first school which acquired a
European reputation was that of Salernum, a little town not far from
Naples, which possessed a famous medical school as early as the ninth
century, perhaps earlier. This never became a university, though its
reputation as a great medical school was maintained for several
centuries. This first educational opportunity to attract a large body
of students from all over the world concerned mainly the needs of the
body. The next set of interests which man, in the course of evolution
develops, has to do with the acquisition and retention of property and
the maintenance of his rights as an individual. It is not surprising,
then, to find that the next school of world-wide reputation was that
of law at Bologna which became the nucleus of a great university. It
is only after man has looked out for his bodily needs and his property
rights, that he comes to think of his duties toward himself, his
fellow-men, and his Creator, and so the third of these great medieval
schools, in time, was that of philosophy and theology, at Paris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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