THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
has left a treatise on catechetical instruction that has made him famous as a teacher. Other renowned schools of that day were Edessa and Nisibis in the East, and the Patriarchum at Rome in the West. The germs of episcopal schools for prospective clerics are also found in the instruction given by leading presbyters or bishops to young men of promise.
The disorders of the fourth and fifth centuries altered many established customs. Theological students of the Middle Ages came to depend for their education on the cloister schools of the 2. The monasteries and the episcopal schools Middle of the bishops. Cassiodorus in Italy, Ages. Cassian and others in Gaul, and unknown founders in England and Ireland established monastic schools in the fifth and sixth centuries; the Benedictine order made famous such schools as St. Gall (q.v.) and Bobbio on the continent, and Iona and Lindisfarne in Great Britain; and the missionaries of the period, both Irish and Saxon, accomplished for learning by the founding of monasteries what modern missionaries achieve by the founding of schools. It became customary for each cathedral also to have its episcopal school, and in 814 this was made compulsory. Education was on the decline in the seventh and eighth centuries, but Charlemagne encouraged both episcopal and monastic schools, and at his own palace school set an example which inspired others. The episcopal schools of Orleans and Reims became far-famed in the ninth century. In the tenth century Liege was the most renowned school; in the eleventh century Le Bee in Normandy held that position. In such schools as these the few great scholars of that era, such as Alcuin, Bede, Lanfranc, and Anselm (qq.v.), studied and taught. None of these institutions did much more than give elementary instruction; higher education, when there was any, was directed to the Scriptures and the Fathers. Many pupils were so poor that they were forced to receive aid. The rationalistic tendency stimulated learning in the twelfth century, and resulted in the disputations of the Schoolmen and the establishment of the universities. Theological schools became a part of the university system from the thirteenth century. The Universities (q.v.) sprang up independently of the monastic and cathedral schools, but they became the centers of all learning, and theological faculties took their place in them beside the faculties of medicine and law. Several of the greatest universities, like Paris and Oxford, became most renowned for their theological instruction. At Paris in the twelfth century ten years were required for the completion of the theological course. Biblical interpretation and dogmatics made up the bulk of the instruction, and the methods used included lectures and disputations. Among other famous theological schools founded before 1500 were Rome (1303), Prague (1347), Padua (1363), Erfurt (1379), Heidelberg (1385), Leipsic (1409), Louvain (1431), Freiburg (1457), and Tubingen (1477).
The Renaissance and the Reformation had a great influence on theological education. The revival of the classical Latin and Greek, the new knowledge of the Fast, especially of the Semites, and the expansion of the realms of science and philosophy,
all quickened and broadened men's minds; and when the spiritual awakening liberated thought
from its time-worn channels theology
3. The received a new impulse that has not
Renaissance ceased to be felt. After the Roman
and Refor- Catholic Church saved itself by the
mation. Counter- Reformation, the education of
its priesthood passed largely into the hands of the Jesuits, and they established numerous seminaries all over Europe. Its educational system of to-day includes both theological faculties in the universities and separate theological seminaries. Scores of these seminaries are to be found all over Europe, and even in England there are nearly thirty. German humanism became transformed into a spiritual reform, and it was natural that most of the German universities should proceed to teach Lutheran theology. Melanchthon at Wittenberg impressed his ideas upon all Germany. The study of Biblical interpretation in the original languages formed the basis of educational work. Time brought a decline in spirituality, and philosophy assumed a larger place in the universities. The Pietist movement and the founding of the University of Halle (1694) were a protest against this. Unfortunately the influence of the Pietists was not in favor of a scientific theology, and it is not strange that the reaction against them went to the extreme of rationalism. Gottingen (1731) is a representative of the latter tendency. Nineteenth-century theology in Germany has been dominated by modern scientific thought. Ferdinand Christian Baur (q.v.) at Tubingen, Eduard Reuss (q.v.) at Strasburg, and Albrecht Ritschl (q.v.) at Bonn have each made a marked impress upon the theological education of their time. All departments of instruction have felt the new force; church history has had to be rewritten; dogma has been thoroughly reviewed and in some measure recast. Thorough and scientific investigation is constantly demanded of students. Not alone among Germans has this influence gone forth, but to the other Protestant countries of Europe and to America the ideas and expressions of the German lecture-rooms have made their way. All northern Europe felt the impulse of the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, and everywhere Protestant universities are to be found in the sixteenth with their theological faculties. Among the older universities are Upsala in Sweden (1477), Copenhagen in Denmark (1479), Basel in Switzerland (1460), Groningen (1614) and Utrecht (1634) in the Netherlands, Glasgow (1451) and Edinburgh (1583) in Scotland, and Oxford and Cambridge in England, both dating back to the twelfth century. Theological strife has more than once stamped itself upon their history. Calvin made Geneva the center of French Protestant education; Calvinism maintained itself in the Netherlands at Groningen and Utrecht against Arminianism at Ley den; in Scotland, St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen have clung to the same Calvinism, while Edinburgh has been more open to liberal influences. In England Oxford and Cambridge have regularly offered theological instruction, but they have no separate theological department. Cambridge has been more progressive, feeling the influence of Puritan and