The Monastic Schools

The survival of the liberal arts in the early Middle Ages was due to the fact that they were used in monasteries as an introductory teaching aide for the understanding of the Bible. They constituted therefore the nucleus of teaching inside the monastic schools that were flourishing inside monasteries following the model proposed by Cassiodorus; until the 12th c. these were the only institutions that offered a regular and complete education. The works of classical authors and Church Fathers, used for study and meditation, were copied in the monastic scriptoria; this textual reproduction was a real job which, according to the Benedictine rule, was as essential as prayer in the life of a monk. The diffusion of monasticism in northern Europe and the British isles, along with the activity of monks like Columbanus (c. 538-625) and his student Gallus, founders of the monasteries at Bobbio and St. Gallen, gave new life to this academic model. In England the Venerable Bede (673-753) assembled in his works various materials of the learned tradition with special attention to problems concerning the ecclesiastical and political life of the time: besides the Historia ecclesiastica gentium Anglorum, his most important writings deal with the ecclesiastical calendar (computus), a science in which arithmetic and astronomy are used to establish important dates in the liturgical year. The insular monasteries, and those in Ireland in particular, played a key role in conserving and transmitting texts during the most difficult period of the Middle Ages, from the fall of the Visigothic kingdom to the beginnings of the Carolingian state (8th-9th c.), when Charlemagne supported the founding of the Palatine school, organized by the English Alcuin. On the basis of this model, a network of schools were developed in the course of a few decades (Laon, Fulda, Tours, Reichenau, Ferrières), oriented toward the formation of imperial and ecclesiastical functionaries and in which more time was dedicated to teaching than in the traditional monastic schools. In some of these schools, thanks to the presence of prestigious masters, a tendency to specialize the various areas of teaching began to arise.