University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD included Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and Orientals. The Eng- lish, Scotch, Irish Germans Polish and Scandinavean students. Each nation had its own teachers and accommoda- tions. Teaching was almost exclusively carried on by lecture, owing to the scar- city of books. The course consisted of a trivium, of Latin grammar, rhetoric and logic, and a quadrivium of arith- metic, geometry, astronomy and music. After these studies came the higher courses in law, philosophy, theology and medicine. Modern times have been ac- customed to sneer at the old school- men, as they are called, as eccentric and breath-wasting disputers on the number of angels that could rest on a pin-point, and similar foibles. This is mainly because pains to investigate have not been taken. Another popular idea is that they studied only theology and philosophy. It is true that these studies were given prominence and reached a high degree of perfection. But it can be seen from the Trivium and Quadrivium mentioned above, that the other subjects were studied. The great scholars of that day were not wholly devoted to theology. Albertus Magnus was an astute student of nature, and has received praise from such a great naturalist as Humboldt. Roger Bacon, one of the most brilliant minds of the thirteenth century, had an idea of gun- powder, predicted that vehicles would be propelled by explosives and that men would some day fly. Bacon and Albert emphasized the ne- cessity of experience and observation to acquire sound knowledge. Yet we find numerous volumes, purporting to be histories, declaring that the Mediae- val schoolmen distrusted observation and thought it possible to derive all knowledge from their syllogisms. What they have accomplished is, however, a sufficient refutation for this charge. Had they not observed very keenly, neither Bacon nor Albertus Magnus could have learned what they did. Without keen and accurate observation St. Thomas Aquinas would never have gained his great knowledge of human passions, nature and motives, revealed in his works. The schoolmen cultivated and re- quired a precision of thought which characterized their work. Their preci- sion led to the much criticized hair- splitting at the end of the Middle Ages and later, but generally they discussed important theological and social prob- lems with an exactness unknown to the ancients themselves. This precision had a salutary effect on the modern languages then in form- ation. Had they been shaped exclus- ively by the masses we would have had fewer words of Latin and Greek deriv- ation. The modes, tenses and cases would have been increased greatly, as philogists notice is the result of doing little writing, and exact thought in a language. On the whole the Modern languages, without the schoolmen, would have been quite inferior to what they are now. Condorcet, an eminent French scholar says: It is to the schoolmen that the vulgar langi

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THE REDWOOD So education was advancing at a fair rate when the universities appeared, Then it went forward by leaps and bounds. Many of the first universities were established very early. King Al- fred founded a school in 886, which de- veloped into Oxford University. Cam- bridge was founded in 915. Paris took the proportion of a university in 1100, though it Avas founded three centuries earlier. The universities started, not as the result of any definite movement, or of a purpose of individuals, but they came into existence gradually and grew to suit the needs of the times. They v ere generally the monastic or cathedral schools spoken of, which having in- creased to a great size, were granted Papal or Royal Charters. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, schools having reputations for proficiency in certain lines, or for a distinguished faculty drew students from very distant re- gions. In the eleventh century, Abe- lard ' s fame attracted immense num- bers to Paris. Salerno, a century later, acquired prestige in medicine ; and Bo- logna, Pisa, and Padua in law. In the latter part of the twelfth and during the thirteenth centuries, these schools acquired an immense size. Oxford is known to have had thirty thousand stu- dents. Paris had as many. The size of the universities show how great the interest in education must have been. It is an established fact that in the thir- teenth century, the number of those at- tending the universities was in propor- tion to the population, far greater than at present. This seems unbelievable, but it is quite the truth. The rolls of the University of Oxford alone, had thirty thousand names on the annual register during the thirteenth century. At that time there were less than three million people in England, which is far less than the population of Greater New York, or rather it more nearly ap- proximates the population of Chicago. Yet no one would claim that there are at present thirty thousand university students from either of these two most prosperous American cities. It might be supposed that the ex- penses to attend at these universities were very high, nothing could be more untrue. Money matters prevented no one from receiving an education. Those who had means were expected to pay tuition and to supply themselves with the necessities of life. Poor students, however, were charged nothing for tui- tion and had their wants cared for by students ' associations or charitable in- dividuals. The management of the Mediaeval Universities was not widely different from that of Modern times. The chief executive office was that of the Rector, to which great dignity was attached. There is one thing, however, that dif- fers widely from Modern methods. In- somuch as the students were from many different countries they were divided into nations. There was not a nation for each nationality, but several nations were usually grouped together. Paris had its French, Piccardie, Norman and English nations. The French nation

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10 THE REDWOOD are indebted for what precision and an- alytical subtlety they possess. The Universities developed a well proportioned intellect. The studies of Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, arith- metic, astronomy, and music i resented as broad a course as is given by any Modern University. It should be not- ed that music included besides what the term implies, history, literature and similar things. When the student had finished this course it was a safe con- clusion that he was quite capable of undertaldng professional studies. This is a significant utterance by such an eminent man as Huxley, The scholars of the Mediaeval Universities seem to have studied grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, theol- ogy and music. Thus their work, how- ever imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all lead- ing aspects of the many-sided mind of man. And I doubt if the curriculum of any Modern University shows so clear and generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does. What have these old Universities contributed to man ' s store of knowl- edge? Without doubt their greatest and most important contribution is scho- lastic philosophy, much despised by those who are ignorant of it. But it is slowly coming into its own. Whom- soever reads St. Thomas changes his ideas concerning scholasticism. His works have been for years the stand- ard philosophical writings of the Church. Scholastic philosophy is distinctly a product of the old Universities ; Albert- us Magnus, the first of the great school- men, did much to shape it. But the largest part of the work was done by his pupil St. Thomas Aquinas. His great achievement was the demonstra- tion of the reasonableness of the Church ' s doctrines, and to do it, he called to his aid Aristotlean philosophy and supplied proofs of his own. Father Vaughn says of him, ' ' He had the intel- lectual honesty of Socrates, the keen- ness of Aristotle, the yearning after wisdom of Plato. The amount of work he accomplished was incredible. Though he died at the age of forty-two, his works would fill twenty large folio volumes of matter so deep that it would take a lifetime to comprehend it; and all this was accomplished in spite of his sacerdotal duties, incessant teaching, and physical ailments. What Professor Saintsbury of Edin- borough University writes of Scholasti- cism will prove a revelation to many, And there have been in these latter days certain graceless ones who have asked whether the Science of the nine- teenth century after an equal interval, will be of any more positive value, whether it will not have even less com- parative interest than that Avhieh ap- pertains to the scholasticism of the thir- teenth century? It is quite certain that in time to come improvements mil render the in- ventions of the nineteenth century and