nly schools. Through
them the Church kept up whatever educational interest survived during
the Middle Ages, and her work then conserved the energies employed in
later educational enterprise.

4. They originated a great course of study by giving to the world the
seven liberal arts.

5. They furnished places of refuge for the oppressed.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Laurie thinks that these names were first appropriately used about
the end of the fourth century.

CHAPTER XIX

SCHOLASTICISM

=Literature.=--_Fisher_, History of the Reformation; _Lord_, Beacon
Lights; _Thalheimer_, Mediaeval and Modern History; _Schwegler_, History
of Philosophy; _Seebohm_, Era of the Protestant Revolution; _Hegel_,
Philosophy of History; _Azarias_, Philosophy of Literature; _Azarias_,
Essays Philosophical; _Schwickerath_, Jesuit Education, its History and
Principles.

Compayre remarks, "It has been truly said that there were three
Renascences: the first, which owed its beginning to Charlemagne, and
whose brilliancy did not last; the second, that of the twelfth century,
the issue of which was Scholasticism; and the third, the great
Renaissance of the sixteenth century, which still lasts, and which the
French Revolution has completed."[32]

As scholasticism, in a sense, was the rival of monasticism, and as it
covered a large part of the Middle Ages, we shall discuss it at this
point. Scholasticism was a movement having for its object the
harmonizing of ancient philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, with
the doctrines of Christianity. It covered a period reaching from the
ninth to the fifteenth century, and displayed its greatest activity
between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It is called the
philosophy of the Middle Ages. The term _scholastic_ is also applied
generally to forms of reasoning which abound in subtleties.
Scholasticism was a dissent from the teachings of St. Augustine and the
ascetics. It laid chief stress upon _reason_ instead of _authority_,
thus asserting a vitally different principle, which would tend to
change the whole spirit of education.

The first prominent leader of this movement was Erigena, who lived
during the ninth century, and was the most interesting writer of the
Middle Ages. He was also a great teacher, and was called to give
instruction at the court of Charles the Bald, and afterward at Oxford.
He opposed the prevailing tendencies of the monasteries to base all
teaching on authority, and