Latin school

“ IN the following pages I propose to offer a little picture of school-life four hundred years ago, culled from an old Latin dialogue book which was published anonymously in the fifteenth century under the title 'Es tu scholaris?' and went through many editions in different countries. All through the Middle Ages boys were supposed to speak Latin in school, and this with some reason, since if they meant to be scholars when they grew up, to be able to speak and write Latin fluently would be far more useful to them than the acquisition of any single modern language. ”

“ Let us bear in mind that we limit our disquisition to the Latin classics for the present. What we say about them will be equally applicable to the Greek, as well as to the authors of all nations.
It seems to us abundantly easy to prepare books for this department. Let a certain number of colleges, schools, and seminaries join together, and through their faculties make choice of a competent scholar. Set him apart for one year for the purpose of preparing a neat, cheap school edition of the Latin classics for our Catholic schools. ”

“ In the year 92 Crassus attempted with his colleague Domitius by censorial pronouncement to discourage the growth of Latin schools of rhetoric. It is difficult to take seriously the recent hypothesis that this was an aristocratic attack upon democratic schools. Cicero’s interpretation that the new Latin school was objectionable because it trained speakers without the cultural education in literature, philosophy, and history, which Greek rhetoricians usually required, seems adequate. Our own insistence that law schools require a college degree for entrance would then be analogous. ”

“ The Boston Latin School is one of our few classical glories. A series of Latin text-books, edited by its masters, will be an acquisition to be hailed by every teacher and pupil. This volume of the series is a gem in every respect—text, notes, glossary, and typographical form. What makes it very nice for a boy is its small size, and the placing of the notes at the bottom of the page. We trust that the other volumes of the series will follow in rapid succession, and that they will contain nothing which can be dangerous to the morals of the youthful scholars in whose hands they will be placed. ”

“ The old Latin school had only one main subject, the study of Latin style (combined with a modicum of Greek) . The new gymnasium aimed at a wider education, in which literature was represented by Latin, Greek and German, by the side of mathematics and natural science, history and religion. The uniform employment of the term Gymnasium for the highest type of a Prussian school dates from 1812. The leaving examination (Abgangsprüfung) , instituted in that year, required Greek translation at sight, with Greek prose composition, and ability to speak and to write Latin. ”

“ Now it was distinctly a feat for me to keep in school, and my schoolmates were socially so far superior to me that my poverty became conspicuous. The pupils of the Latin School, from the nature of the institution, are an aristocratic set. They come from refined homes, dress well, and spend the recess hour talking about parties, beaux, and the matinée. As students they are either very [294] quick or very hard-working; for the course of study, in the lingo of the school world, is considered "stiff." ”

“ Next let them intermingle with the vernacular what they have heard in Latin from their teacher, or what they themselves have learned. Thus, at first, their language should be a mixture of the mother-tongue and Latin. But outside the school they should speak the mother-tongue so that they should not become accustomed to a hotch-potch of languages.... Gradually the development advances and the scholars become Latinists in the narrower sense. ”

“ Cicero learned to declaim both in Greek and Latin, and the Gracchi had studied rhetoric under Greek teachers. Neither the gymnasium or palaestra, nor the music school, flourished at Rome. As at Athens, so at Rome the boys were sent to school in charge of a slave, a pedagogus, comes or custos. But it would seem that at Rome the pedagogus, generally a Greek slave, often himself gave elementary instruction. ”

“ If all the improvements in the mode of teaching languages which are already sanctioned by experience, were adopted into our classical schools, we should soon cease to hear of Latin and Greek as studies which must engross the school years, and render impossible any other acquirements. ”

“ In brief, some of the chief influences upon the writing of Latin in the Middle Ages were: the classical genius dead, leaving only its works for imitation; the school education in Latin grammar and rhetoric; endeavour to follow classic models and write correctly; inability to do so from lack of capacity and knowledge; conscious disregard of classicism; the spirit of the Teutonic tongues clogging Latinity, and that of the Romance tongues deflecting it from classical constructions ”

“ Latin will survive for a long time in the secondary school on the ground that its illogical constructions supply an intellectual gymnastic, or because its roots are useful in learning French, understanding law terms and naming new species; but its part in education is no longer leading or dignified. ”

“ We must not forget that for a long time there were almost no other Latin schools but ours, or at least very few; so that parents were forced to send their sons to us who otherwise would not have done so. But now in many places, many schools are competing with ours, and we are exposing ourselves to be regarded as not up to the mark, and thus losing both our reputation and our scholars. Hence, our pupils are not to be detained for too long a period by a multiplication of courses, and they must be more than moderately imbued with a knowledge of the Classics. ”

“ Vittorino da Feltre, the great teacher of the beginning Renaissance, had during the first half of the fifteenth century a school at Mantua, where on the border of the lake he was teaching a group of noble youths and maidens according to the high ideals of education which he has so well laid down. Their course of study included Latin, Greek, philosophy, mathematics, grammar, logic, music, singing and dancing. ”

“ Latin and religion were taught throughout the secondary school, and Greek, mathematics, rhetoric, and declamation could be taken in the last three or four classes. The pupils were introduced to the rudiments of Latin through the vernacular, and developmental methods and enlivening disputations were used. Probably the general conditions here were typical of the French humanistic schools everywhere during the sixteenth century.
Humanism in the German Universities.—Before humanism was well established in France, however, it had also spread through the Teutonic countries. ”

“ Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature furnished, to instruction in Latin. ”

“ When we find Rome tenaciously keeping for herself the teaching of law, and standardizing education by connecting the teachers directly with the emperor, it is because she realizes that the Latin language is the medium through which she rules, and that uniform obedience depends on her subjects uniformly understanding her commands. ”

“ Did it seem to be practicable, we should strongly favor making the study of Latin a part of the education of all who go beyond the common rudiments, as well girls as boys, to such an extent that they could understand the divine offices of the church. For all other uses or advantages, we are inclined to think that many pupils who occupy a great deal of time in gaining a very imperfect smattering of Latin and Greek, might better spare it for other studies. ”

“ REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN ITALY THE CLASSICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES The literature of Greece and Rome did not entirely disappear in western Europe after the Germanic invasions. The monastery and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages had nourished devoted students of ancient books. The Benedictine monks labored zealously in copying the works of pagan as well as Christian authors. The rise of universities made it possible for the student to pursue a fairly extended course in Latin literature at more than one institution of learning. ”

“ As Latin came to be less and less used by scholars in writing, passed out of use as the language of government and of international communication, was replaced by French as the language of polite society, and was gradually superseded in the university lecture room by the vernaculars, the practical motive for learning Latin died out, except for service in the Church, and the disciplinary and cultural value of the study of the classics alone remained. The disciplinary, being easier to give, and better within the understanding of most teachers, gradually won over the cultural. ”

“ For English pupils learning Latin the reconciliation ought to present little difficulty; but nearly every great nation of Europe has its points of contact with Rome, and therefore its opportunities of constructing Latin Readers which are national in more senses than one. On the modern side they may be patriotic in tone, and inspired by that love of nature which appeals so directly to the youthful mind ”

“ Towards the close of the fifteenth century begins in Italy the age of academies, associations of scholars and littérateurs for the furthering of scholarly pursuits and of literary undertakings. One of the earlier of these Academies was instituted in Rome, in 1468, by Julius Pomponius Lætus (a pupil of Valla) , for the special purpose of promoting the study of Latin literature and Latin antiquities. Comedies of Plautus and of other Latin dramatists were revived, and the attempt was made to make Latin, at least for the scholarly circle, again a living language. ”

“ If the study of Latin must be excluded from the education of so many of our intelligent and cultured young men, or so superficially pursued as to be practically useless, it cannot be too earnestly recommended to them to learn the French, German, and Italian languages, or at least one or two of them, that they may have access to their rich and abundant stores of Catholic literature, contained not only in books, but in the periodicals, which are conducted with an ability and extended over a range of subjects far beyond what our own have yet attained. ”

“ The Latinizing of northern Italy, Spain, and Gaul was part of the expansion of Roman dominion. Throughout these lands, alien peoples submitted to the Roman order and acquired new traits from the training of its discipline. Voluntarily or under compulsion they exchanged their institutions and customs for those of Roman Italy, and their native tongues for Latin. The education and culture of the upper classes became identical with that gained in the schools about the Forum, and Roman literature was the literature which they studied and produced. ”

“ Latin is no longer necessary as a medium for the interchange of thought, and the increasing number of arts and sciences restricts the prominence of any one study. On the other hand it is no less true that almost every considerable writer and speaker of the century had received that more recent form of Latin education which consists in an accurate and tasteful study of the words, styles and thoughts of the best, or most classic, of the Roman writers—Catullus, Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid—rather than Lucan or Statius. ”

“ Rome turned instinctively to the external, Greece to the inner world as a vehicle for the expression of her impulses. And just as ‘learning’ for the Roman gradually came to mean ‘learning to be a soldier’, so the ordinary Latin word for ‘teacher’ (doctor) is now applied most commonly to a teacher of physical health. ”

“ There is hardly any prose in Latin fit for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often affords little more than small-talk on abstract topics; Tacitus a brilliant but affected prosateur, Caesar a dull and uninspiring author. But to many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot lie through Latin, or even Greek, because the old language hangs like a veil between them and the thought within. To some boys the enkindling of the intellectual soul comes through English literature, to some through history, to some through a knowledge of other lands, which can be approached by geography. ”

“ The clever boys are, as a rule, well provided for; but, even for them, the methods of this book have been found to be the shortest road to accuracy and style in translation. Moreover by this means they have gained a firsthand acquaintance with Latin literature and the sources of Roman history.
It is impossible here to enter into ‘the question of the close and striking correspondence between the history, the literature, and the language of Rome. It was not until the history of Rome threw its mantle over her poetry that the dignity of the poet was recognised and acknowledged. ”

“ The Latin teacher—the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and girls of the Latin class—was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person really could be, and be allowed to go about without a keeper. ”