236 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
in mixing colors and in drawing forms ; but a clergyman mav be found witli perfect ease, not tlioroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants.' We form the saints in a day, and enjoii' them to be wise, though they possess no wisdom at all, and bring nothing to their spiritual office, except at best a good will."" If such complaints were raised so early as the end of the Nicene age, while the theological activit}^ of tlie Greek church was in its bloom, there was far more reason for them after the middle of the iifth century and in tlie sixth, especially in the Latin church, where, even among the most eminent cle]'gymen, a knowledge of the original languages of the Holy Scriptures was a rare exception.
The opportunities which this period offered for literary and theological ])reparation for the ministry, were the following:
1. The East had four or five tlieological schools, which, however, were far from supplying its wants.
The oldest and most celebrated was the catechetical school of Alexandria. Favored by the great literary treasures, the extensive commercial relations, and the ecclesiastical importance of the Egyptian metropolis, as well as by a succession of distinguished teachers, it flourished from the middle of the second century to the end of the fourth, when, amidst the Origenisiic, Nestorian, and Monophysite confusion, it withered and died. Its last ornament was the blind, but learned and pious Didymus (340-395).
From the Alexandrian school proceeded the smaller institution of Coesarea in Palestine, which was founded by Origen, after his banishment from Alexandria, and received a new but temporary impulse in the beginning of the fourth century from his admirer, the presbyter Pami)hilus, and from his friend Eusebius. It possessed the theological library which Eusebius used in the preparation of his learned works.
Far more important was the theological school of Antioch,
' 'fls 4 fxv^oi TTOifl Tous yiyavrai.
* Greg. Oral, xliii. c. 2G (Opera omiiiu, ed. Boned., Paris, 1842, 'oin. i. p. 791 eq.), and similar pa.s.sages in his other orations, and his Carmen do se ips - et advcrs. EpiBQ Comp. Ullmann: Greg. v. Naz. p. 511 aqq.
§ 48. SCHOOLS OF THE CLERGY. 237
founded about 290 by the presbyters Dorotbeus and Lucian. It developed in the course of the fourth century a severe gram matico-historical exegesis, counter to the Origenistic allegorical method of the Alexandrians ; now in connection with the church doctrine, as in Chrysostom ; now in a rationalizing spirit, as in Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius
The seminary at Edessa, a daughter of the Antiochian school, was started by the learned deacon, Ephraim Syrus (f 378), furnished ministers for Mesopotamia and Persia, and stood for about a hundred years.
The ISTestorians, at the close of the fifth century, founded a seminary at Nisibis in Mesopotamia, which was organized into several classes and based upon a definite plan of instruction.
The West had no such institutions for theological instruction, but supplied itself chiefly from cloisters and private schools of the bishops. Cassiodorus endeavored to engage Pope Agapetus in founding a learned institntion in Rome, but was discouraged by the warlike disquietude of Italy. Jerome spent some time at the Alexandrian school under the direction of Didymus.
2. Many priests and bishops, as we have already observed, emanated from the monasteries, where they enjoyed the advantages of retirement from the world, undisturbed meditation, the intercourse of kindred earnest minds, and a large spiritual experience ; but, on the other hand, easily sank into a monkish narrowness, and rarely attained that social culture and comprehensive knowledge of the world and of men, which is necessary, especially in large cities, for a wide field of labor.
3. In the West there were smaller diocesan seminaries, under the direction of the bishops, who trained their own clergy, both in theory and in practice, as they passed through the subordinate classes of reader, sub-deacon, and deacon.
Augustine set a good example of this sort, having at Hippo a '' monasterium clericorum," which sent forth many good presbyters and bishops for the various dioceses ci North Africa. Similar clerical monasteries or episcopal seminaries arose gradually in the southern countries of Europe, and ire very common in the Roman Catholic church to this day.