Daily Life During The Reformation (35 page)

Understanding the advantages of a good education as a means
to power and prestige, the Jesuits approached the problem with zeal. They soon
bypassed the Protestant educational system in organization and discipline.
Their system was uncompromising. Every minute of every day was delegated to a
certain task, and students were encouraged to spy on one another and report any
infractions of the code. In attempting to monopolize education and for other
political interference, the Order has at one time or another been expelled from
most European countries but always found ways to return.

PROTESTANTS

Luther strongly advocated the compulsory education of both
boys and girls, and the churches did offer some free instruction in Sunday
Schools, while Bible study at home was encouraged. But in the main, he felt
children should be educated in public schools in order that the young be guided
in matters of religion and the arts by public officials. Elementary schooling of
at least one hour daily was also to be given to girls, some of whom would
become teachers, if not in the classroom, at least at home to their children.

In Strassburg Johann Sturm’s Humanistic gymnasium was a
model for the new Protestant persuasion (both Lutheran and Calvinist), and
primary schools in Nurnberg offered a very good education.

IMPROVEMENTS IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

Originally, all classes in England took place in a single
room, with the students divided into small groups and taught by a single
master. Low-ranking schools still had one master take care of several classes
at a time. For educators such as Erasmus it was obvious that bunching students
together hindered intellectual growth. The use of separate rooms came into
force showing a realization that there were various categories of children to
be considered, involving age development and learning capacity, and they should
not all be lumped together. As early as 1501, some cities such as Paris, Liege,
and Strassburg saw to it that each class had its own room.

MANNERS

One of the purposes of education was to teach children how
to take their place in life. Everyone was aware of the importance of good
manners. Students were made aware that they could move up and flourish within
society if they were well behaved; and part of everyone’s education came to
embody the knowledge of good manners and how to be courteous and refined.

Young men of high birth found they were no longer limited
to the king’s retinue, the civil service, or the military. Before, to be called
a gentleman, one had to have a coat of arms awarded to the family; but after
Henry VIII, the military and the medical profession were penetrated by the
ambitious, no matter what their class. Even children of low birth began to
realize that they could advance socially.

One respected educator, Richard Mulcaster, who had an
ambitious school program for the English middle-class, took into account a
child’s intelligence as well as his physical abilities. He advocated physical
and mental training and encouraged schools to have vocational programs to help
the children make use of their innate talents. Mulcaster wanted girls educated
by women, and believed that it was during the first three years in school that
the basic foundations were laid.

For people to rise and succeed within the social system,
then, education was the answer, and as parents’ hopes and expectations for
their children rose, more and more of the middle class Puritans began sending
their offspring off to higher education. If they had enough money, Puritans
preferred to send their sons to university, rather than putting them out to be
apprentices. Their daughters, too, attended public grammar schools.

There was sometimes a possibility for poor boys to be given
scholarships to the university, but they had to be exceedingly clever, for such
an education remained a privilege and was available to only a relative few.

PURITAN VIEW OF EDUCATION

Education for the masses was a goal of the Puritan
communities at least to the extent that everyone would be able to read the
Bible.

Puritan sects also wanted educated pastors who could read
and interpret the Bible in its ancient languages such as Greek and Hebrew and
scholarly treatises written in Latin. Young men, but not women, were encouraged
to attend a university.

Adhering to the teachings of St. Paul and Old Testament
prophets that a woman’s place was in the home, Puritans thought that it was
dangerous to educate women too much, or they would become harder to control.
Housewifery was still primary because most girls’ futures depended on their
getting married. In short, a little education was fine for girls, reading and
writing, but not beyond that.

AN ENGLISH BOY’S DAY AT SCHOOL

A schoolboy in Elizabethan England had a long, arduous day.
He left home around 6:00 a.m. and once he arrived, he studied until the
15-minute 9:00 recess, after which he returned to his desk for a further two
hours study. He was permitted a couple of hours for a meal, which he ate either
at school or at home. Another two hours of study followed, combined with
recitation, and then after a last recess, he worked until 5:00 p.m. Before
leaving for home, the master read the Bible to the class who then sang a psalm
if this was a Puritan school. A prayer for dismissal was said before leaving.
In winter, when going to the school and returning home, students often had to
carry lanterns to light their way. Elizabethan law required that the catechism
had to be learned by all young people under 20 and that they should be taught
this every holy day and Sunday both before and after evening prayers.

EDUCATION ON THE CONTINENT

Public schools took over education in many places in
Germany after Luther had urged magistrates to provide compulsory instruction
for both boys and girls. Lutheran children had at least one hour of formal
schooling daily.

Children from families with means completed their studies
at home under tutors or in the local public schools endowed by the city or a
patron by age 12 or 13, after which they entered service, apprenticeships, or
continued on to higher education. Young men pursuing university and
professional careers in law, medicine, or theology usually enrolled between the
ages of 13 and 17. A course of last resort was to enlist in the military.

ITINERANT STUDENTS

Schools were established by Church organizations, by
private individuals, and by the municipality through charitable endowments. In
the countryside, the village priest or the sacristan sometimes provided some
rudimentary education like reading, writing, catechism and arithmetic. Many
hamlets did not concern themselves with children’s education. Such was the case
of Thomas Platter. Born into a large family in a village of the Valais,
Switzerland, the family was left penniless after the death of his father. By
the age of eight Thomas was an experienced goatherd living in the mountain
heights with animals in his charge. Hoping he would become a clergyman, his
mother sent him off to live with a relative, a priest, who was to give him the
rudiments of education. Thomas was not willing to endure the priest’s
brutality, remarking that he was beaten horribly and lifted off the ground by
his ears. Realizing he had learned nothing useful when a cousin of his, an
itinerant student, passed through the village by chance, Thomas left with him.
Together they traveled around Europe from city to city attending classes and
living by their wits. Like many itinerant young men of the age, half would be
students and half would be vagabonds; they worked odd jobs, sang in the streets
for money, stole geese or raided chicken houses, and begged. In Munich, at 16
years of age, Thomas slept on grain sacks in the market, snatching bones from
dogs in the street to survive. He then made the decision to leave his cousin,
setting off on his own and finally reaching Zurich where he tried in vain to
persuade established students to give him lessons. His time on the road had
taught him little; at 18 he still could not read. Leaving the city, he ended up
in Schlestadt, Alsace, where he stayed for awhile and acquired a little
education, courtesy of a schoolmaster who allowed him into a class of about 900
students where he was placed with the small children. In class he felt like a
mother hen surrounded by his brood. Soon he had to leave for lack of money.
Returning to his native Valais, he received some rudiments of learning at a
small local school established there as well as from relatives, and by age 19
he could read and write.

In 1522, after hearing a dynamic sermon by Zwingli, Thomas
became a zealous partisan of the Reformation. He returned to Zurich where he
boarded with the schoolmaster Friedrich Myconius, a friend of Zwingli and
Luther. Not unlike many young men of the time, upon hearing a persuasive,
energetic speaker on the Reformation, Thomas became convinced of the inherent
iniquities of the Catholic Church. He became a dedicated disciple, and in just
a few years learned Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew. He earned a living by giving
private lessons. Returning to Valais, he opened a school. Travel from place to
place always searching for greener pastures and someone to teach them and often
living off the land, was typical of many impecunious students of the time.
Others with a better start in life and unencumbered by lack of money did not
undergo these privations.

A
Boy from Nurnberg

Lucas, a young boy from Nurnberg, went to live in Altdorf
at ten years of age, in order to embark on his formal education. He spent 10
years there, from 1597 to 1607, attending a gymnasium studying (in Latin)
philosophy, ethics, law, politics, history, and the classics. Interested in
music, he became an accomplished musician by the time he graduated. Altdorf was
close enough to Nurnberg that he was able to remain in touch with his family,
sending his laundry home weekly to his stepmother who washed and returned it,
usually accompanied by a treat of some kind. By 1608 he had left home again,
this time to study at the universities of Poitiers and Anges with a view to
learning French.

Sons of wealthy families in Nurnberg frequently traveled to
Venice where they stayed in the German House, an entry into Italy for students,
apprentices, and merchants. Others went for their legal education to Louvain in
Belgium. Travel to other countries was a rite of passage for burghers’ sons
before they were ready to begin adult life. Daughters were not permitted such a
privilege.

UNIVERSITIES

Students criss-crossed Europe, some from well-off families,
riding horses or in carriages; others of less means walking or hitching rides
on merchants’ wagons, all on the way to their chosen university.

As traveling scholars, many earned a precarious living by
begging or ‘professing’ medicine, assisting the illiterate for a small fee, or
reading horoscopes.

The rapid spread of the Reformation in a given region
depended on whether or not it was under the jurisdiction of a free city ruled
by city councilmen, a territory ruled by a nobleman, or one under the authority
of a bishop. The presence of a university was important since religious reform
was often propagated by university teachers.

German
Universities

There were abundant universities in the German-speaking
lands and with the waning of imperial and papal power, most princes and free
cities founded one. There were generally professors of divinity, medicine,
civil law, and one or two of mathematics, physics, history, rhetoric, logic,
natural philosophy, astrology, and sometimes, one of Hebrew. When a space fell
vacant it was filled by someone who was recommended by the professors and
approved by the prince of the realm.

Professors also chose the deans of the different faculties
and the rector. Both teachers and students wore cloaks and hats. Professors,
rector, deans, and assistants and a public notary made up the university senate
that ran the institution and punished students for breaking the rules by fines
or, in the worst cases, with banishment. Students swore an oath to be observant
of their superiors, to show favor toward the university, promote religion, and
to be thankful to the college of their faculty. They promised to obey the statutes,
not to resist lawful arrest or banishment and refrain from seeking revenge by
violence for any wrong done them.

Professors worked year round without vacations and their
pay could increase or decrease depending on merit. Lectures were read slowly and
clearly and the students wrote them down word for word. If something was said
that was not intelligible, the students pounded on their desks until the
professor repeated it in a clearer manner.

Examinations

Examinations for a degree might last three days. Two
professors and two assistants were chosen to examine a student, but anyone
could participate and ask questions. Moryson discusses the German custom
whereby both the examiner and the examined drank to each other with nearly
every question from pots set beside them. In at least one instance, the session
degenerated until both dropped off to sleep.

Conferring of Degrees

Solemn speeches and great festivities, music, and pomp
accompanied the conferring of a doctor, masters, or bachelors degree.

Physicians gave an oath to practice with knowledge and not
with old wives’ recipes, not to destroy any children in the mother’s womb, and
not to give any deadly poison or bad medicine to a sick person. During the
ceremony, those who earned the doctor of philosophy degree moved to upper seats
and were given a purple hat (to distinguish them), along with a ring to
indicate their marriage to philosophy. They were given an open book as an
invitation to read and a closed book signifying contemplation with reading. The
doctors of civil law in some universities were given a military belt to
indicate their obligation to defend the law.

Ceremonies took place in a church and upon their
conclusion, the graduates were led up to the high altar by the chief professor
of divinity and the vice chancellor where they fell on their knees and prayed.
Each received a pair of gloves; and other gloves were tossed to the audience
who snatched them if they were able. At the end, graduates and professors
retired in a specific order to the public house of the city to enjoy a feast.