THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION.
I. History.
Before the Rise of Monasticism (§ 1). Monastic Schools (§2). The Middle Ages (§ 3). Lutheran Methods (§4). The Reformed Church (§5). Effects of Pietism and Rationalism (§6). Present Lutheran Requirements (§ 7). Practical and Advanced Training (§ 8). Theological Seminaries (§ 9). Types of Seminaries (§ 10). Roman Catholic Training in Germany (§ 11). II. Supplementary.
Ante-Nicene Practise (§ 1). The Middle Ages (§ 2). The Renaissance and Reformation (§ 3). America (§4). III. Roman Catholic Teaching Orders.
I. History: The rise of theological education in the early Church was slow, even being excluded so long as the heads of congregations were chosen simply for their spiritual gifts. Up to the end of the second century religious teachers seem
i. Before to have been self-appointed, laymen the Rise of speaking in divine worship and also
Monasti- promulgating their teachings elsewhere, cism. The first official required to possess a modicum of learning appears to have been the reader. This neglect of theological training, due to confidence in the divine choice of suitable men to teach the churches and in their spiritual equipment with the requisite gifts and knowledge, would doubtless have been otherwise had the bishop been considered, from the first, the proper and necessary teacher of bis people. Though he was generally so regarded, he did not actually acquire this dignity generally until the third century, and he was not necessarily a learned man. Christian schools appear after the close of the second century, such as the catechetical school at Alexandria; yet even they were devoted rather to apologetics than to the education of clergy, nor were those intending to enter clerical ranks either required or accustomed to attend such institutions. The first conscious beginnings of a regular clerical training were connected with the rise of the clerical orders (see Apostolic Constitutions) in the third century, wherein the lower orders became schools of preparation for the higher. Zosimus (Epist., xi.) required five years
Theological Education
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
for the lower orders, four years for the sub-deacon, and five for the deacon; and the African Church, following Cyprian (Epist., xxix.), advanced no one from one order to another without examination. The practical training thus afforded was supplemented, doubtless even at an earlier date, by the diatribe, or close personal association with the bishop for the instruction of the younger clergy. By the end of the fourth century this practise had become more definitely organized, especially in Africa, where, with the help of monasticism, Augustine formed a sort of clerical school, though designed for the further perfection of clergy already officiating rather than for the training of candidates for the priesthood. The school of Augustine was the model for the schools of his pupils, bishops Alypius of Tagaste, Evodius of Uzalis, Profuturus of Cirta, Severus of Mileve, and Urbanus of Sicca, as well as for similar institutions in Spain and southern Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries, such as Lerinum and Aries.
These institutions, of whose courses, organization, and history little is known, which must, however, have varied greatly according to local conditions, were in great part destroyed by the inroads of the barbarians; and what prepara- 2. Monastic tions were still made for clerical train- Schools, ing harked back to older usages. A radical change, however, came about through the monasteries, whether primarily from the Benedictines or from Cassiodorus (qq.v.), when the cloisters came to consider as a part of their duties the training of recruits for the Church, and began the foundation of monastic schools for boys. While sporadic beginnings may have been made here and there, especially as the reception of oblates, or children brought to the monasteries in tender years, presupposed religious training, the first certain traces of systematic monastic schools are to be found in the English Church, whence Boniface and Alcuin (qq.v.) transplanted the plan to Germany and France, thus leading Charlemagne, about 790, to issue his Constitutio de scholis per singula episcopia et monasteria instituendis. Instruction began with the Psalter, which was committed to memory, as were the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. This was followed by the Athanasian Creed, the exorcism, penitential office, etc., as well as by the evangelary and the homilies for Sundays and holy days. Instruction in reading was supplemented by a knowledge of writing, church music, calculation of religious festivals, and Latin grammar. Those more advanced studied the Regula pastoralis of Gregory the Great, the De officiis ecclesiasticis of Isidore, and the pastoral epistle of Gelasius, canons being required also to study the Regula de vita canonica and monks the Benedictine rule. Such was the chief ecclesiastical training, which might be acquired, if need be, in the parish schools. Those who desired still further knowledge might study the " seven liberal arts," which were divided into the trivium of grammar (including the reading of the " Distichs " of Cato and t lie poems of Vergil and Ovid, or of the Christian Juvencus and Sedulius), rhetoric (based chiefly on Cicero's De inventione, but little used except in law), and dialectics;
and into the quadrivium of arithmetic (including the reckoning of the church calendar), geometry (which would now rather be termed geography), music, and astronomy (often including the mystic properties of numbers). Side by side with these arts, which individually were reckoned un-C'hristian except in so far as they bore directly upon theology, were patristic, canonical, and (above all) exegetical studies, Augustine, the Canones conciliorum, and the Decreta pontificum being widely read.
After the rise of Universities (q.v.) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it became more and more customary to seek theological training in them. The
monastic orders were rivals in their 3. The desire for learning, and many princes Middle and cities made certain benefices de- Ages, pend upon the possession of academic
degrees. Thus, although the highest offices were filled rather by the influence of personal favor or money, the chief officials and counselors of bishops and other prelates were mostly men trained in theology and canon law. Attempts to rectify a tendency to neglect the practical requirements of pastoral care through absorption in theoretical scholastic studies appear in homiletic aids and compends for the sacrament of confession, and in such works on pastoral theology as the Manipulus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rotherii (written in 1330) and the writings of Ulrich Surgant of Basel (about 1500). In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, through the influence of humanism, theological education was endowed with new life, and the study of the Bible increasingly supplanted scholasticism.
With the rise of a new church system after the Reformation came the demand that pastors should submit to an examination to prove their fitness. Thus the Lutheran Unterricht der Visitatoren (1527)
required each candidate for the minis-
4. Lutheran try to be examined by the superin-
Methods. tendent. This provision, however,
was only temporary, and the articles of visitation of the electorate of Saxony (1520; 1533) directed that the prospective pastor be examined at the court, while the Reformatio Wittebergensis (1545) entrusted the examination to the theological faculty. The church order of the Saxon electorate (1580) made the chief ecclesiastical authorities the examining board, a system adopted by the majority of the Lutheran national churches. Both Luther and Melanchthon, themselves university men and teachers in universities, desired the clergy to have university training. In the first decades of the Reformation this often proved impractical, owing to the lack of a sufficient number of educated candidates for ordination, so that it became necessary to employ those possessed of but meager attainments. In the earliest period, indeed, the examination seems to have been essentially the exaction of a promise to preach pure Evangelical doctrine. But the insistence on a trained clergy soon became more pressing, and in 1544 Leipsic required all candidates for the ministry to study at least for a time at a university, except in rare cases where practical training had been received. The least training of the average pastor was