Fifth Form Ovid's Metamorphoses. Horace. Cicero's Epistles. Valerius Maximus. Lucius Florus. Justin. Epitome Troporum of Susenbrotus. Sixth and Seventh Forms Cæsar's Commentaries. Cicero de Officiis and de Amicitia. Vergil. Lucan. Greek Grammar. The lower boys had to decline and conjugate words, and their seniors had to repeat rules of grammar, for the illustration of which short phrases, called 'Vulgaria' were composed and committed to memory. Some sort of Latin composition, however brief, was a necessary portion of the daily work of every Eton scholar. In the lower forms it was confined to the literal translation of an English sentence or passage, while in the Fifth Form it consisted of a theme on a subject set by the schoolmaster. The boys in the Sixth and Seventh Forms wrote verses. 145. Course of Study in a Country Grammar School (Free School of Saint Helens, England, as related by Adam Martindale. Watson, F., English Grammar Schools to 1660, p. 486. Cambridge, 1908) This description of an English country grammar school of about 1635 is by a former pupil of the school. As for the proficience I made under my master 'twas this: He received me when I was learning in As in præsenti and Cato, and instructed me for prose in Corderius, Æsop's Fables, Tullie's Offices, epistles, and orations, together with Aphthonius for Latin in prose, and the Greek Grammars of Camden first, and Clenard afterwards, together with a Greek Catechism, and lastly the Greek Testament (for I proceeded no further with him); and for poetry in Mantuan, Terence, Ovid's Epistles and Metamorphoses, Virgil, and Horace. The rhetorics he read to us were Susenbrotus first and Talæus afterwards. Mine exercises were usually A piece of Latin (of which he himself dictated the English) every day of the week, save Thursdays and Saturdays; and besides somewhat weekly as I rose in ability, first a dialogue in imitation of Corderius, or Pueriles Confabulatiunculæ, then an epistle wherein I was to follow Cicero, though (alas!) at a great distance. Then themes (as we called them) in the way of Aphthonius, consisting of many parts and taking up one side of half a sheet pretty thick written, and (towards the latter end) good store of verses on the back side, most hexameters and pentameters, but some sapphics and adonics. All that were presumed by their standing able to discourse in Latin were under a penalty if they either spoke English or broke Priscian's head; but barbarous language, if not incongruous for grammar, had no punishing but derision. These were the orders we were subject to at teaching hours; yea, though we had liberty by twos to go forth of the school upon our necessary occasions, real or pretended, and sometimes (when the hu mour took him) he would tie us to them at our times for play. 146. The Degeneracy of Classical Instruction The following selection describes the teaching of Edward Campion, a Jesuit teacher of rhetoric at Prague, and relates to the year 1574. It illustrates well how the early humanistic spirit, under the Ciceronian-style impulse, had given place to a narrow formalism and a minute dissection of the classical authors. In class, he first made his scholars repeat a passage they had learned out of school-hours; then the monitors collected the written exercises, which he looked over and corrected. While he was thus occupied, the boys were trying to imitate a passage of a poet or an orator, which he had set them, or to write a brief account of a garden, a church, a storm, or any other visible object; to vary a sentence in all possible ways; to translate it from one language into another; to write Greek or Latin verses; to convert verses from one metre into another; to write epigrams, inscriptions, epitaphs; to colle phrases from good authors; to apply the figures of rhetoric to a given subject; or to collect all the topics or commonplaces that are applicable to it. After this came a summary of the former day's lesson, and then the lecture of the day, on one of Cicero's speeches, was read, and the boys were examined upon it. The composition was to be on a given pattern. First, he was to explain his text, and to discriminate the various interpretations of it. Next, he was to elucidate the writer's art, and to display his tricks of composition, invention, disposition and style; the reasons of his dignity, his persuasiveness, or his power, and the rules of verisimilitude and illustration which he followed. Thirdly, the professor had to produce parallel or illustrative passages from other authors. Fourthly, he was to confirm the author's facts or sentiments by other testimony, or by the saws of the wise. Fifthly, he was to illustrate the passage in any other way he could think of. Each lecture did not necessarily include all these points; but such was the range and the order prescribed for the points that were adopted. CHAPTER XII THE REVOLT AGAINST AUTHORITY THE few Readings contained in this chapter have been selected to illustrate first, the demands for church reform and the necessity for evolution to avoid revolution, and second, in case the reforms were refused, the natural consequences both to the reformer and to the Church. One marked effect of the Revival of Learning in northern lands was the deepening of an impulse, already under way, for moral and religious reform. In France, England, and in German lands there had been many before Luther who objected to the practices of the Church. One of the earliest and most influential of these was John Wycliffe, in England. A hundred and fifty years before the Protestant Revolt broke in Germany he had attacked the methods of the Church in no uncertain terms. For this Pope Gregory XI had addressed Bulls to the King of England and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1377 had ordered the Chancellor of the University of Oxford to arrest Wycliffe and deliver him for trial. Selection 147 is illustrative of Wycliffe's attacks, attacks which found much sympathy among the English people. That the Pope was aware of this is evident from the closing injunction of his Bull to the Chancellor, where he says: Besides, if there should be, which God forbid, in your university, subject to your jurisdiction, opponents stained with these [Wycliffe's] errors, and if they should obstinately persist in them, proceed vigorously and earnestly to a similar arrest and removal of them, and otherwise as shall seem good to you. Be vigilant to repair your negligence which you have hitherto shown in the premises, and so obtain our gratitude and favor. Gregory's successor, Pope Urban VI, continued unsuccessfully to try to stop Wycliffe. Shortly after Wycliffe's death (1384) his followers replied to the charges against him, stating that they regarded Pope Urban as Antichrist and as bearing no resemblance to "Seint Petur in erthe," and attacked his life and doctrines. In particular they condemned the church theory of "indulgences," as may be seen from selection 148. Wycliffe's work was deeply influential in England, and through court influences was carried to Bohemia, where it led to the martyrdom of John Huss, in 1415. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the demand for church reform had become general. From 1378 to 1417 there were two Popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon, in France, each claiming to be the rightful successor, and the contest which took place between the two injured the Papacy greatly throughout Christendom. In 1414 a Council of the Church met at Constance, in Switzerland, to heal the breach, and, among other things, drew up a list of eighteen important reforms in church practices and procedure which it demanded, but unsuccessfully. These are enumerated in selection 149. Princes, legislative assemblies, citizens, priests, and sometimes even bishops protested in vain. Extracts from the protests of the Cathedral preacher at Strassburg, and his prediction of a religious revolt if matters were not remedied, are contained in selection 150, as typical of many of the time. Selection 151 reproduces fourteen of the ninety-five theses of Luther, as illustrating his point of view and the nature of the academic protests he at first made. Gradually led from protest to open revolt, Luther was finally excommunicated from the Church, in 1520, and the Diet of Worms, in 1521, ordered him arrested and confined, his writings burned, and his sympathizers treated as he was to be. We can understand this attitude better if we remember that the heretic was the anarchist of the Middle Ages, and was virtually guilty of treason to the State. The selection from Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica (152) will serve to make clearer the dangerous position of Luther and his followers, as viewed by the Church. The final selection (153) reproduces the English Act of Supremacy, which severed England from the Church of Rome and erected the King as head of the English Church and the defender of the faith in England. 147. Wycliffe on the Enemies of Christ (Arnold, Thomas, Select English Works of John Wycliffe, vol. 1, p. 208. Oxford, 1869) John Wycliffe (1320?-84), a popular English preacher and Oxford divinity graduate, was led by a study of the Bible to attack many of the claims and practices of the Church. His revolt against authority was as direct and vigorous as the later revolt of Luther, but he lacked the printing-press which Luther had to |