Monastic school
Primary centers of higher learning in the early medieval Latin West.
Monastic schools (Scholae monasticae) were, alongside cathedral schools, the leading institutions of higher learning in the Latin West from the early Middle Ages until the 12th century. Their standard curriculum, shaped by Cassiodorus's educational program, combined religious studies with the Trivium and Quadrivium. In some places these schools eventually evolved into medieval universities, which later largely superseded them as centers of advanced education.
Quick Facts
- Type
- Educational institution
- Curriculum
- Religious studies
- Trivium
- Quadrivium
- Key figure
- Cassiodorus
- Associated rule
- Rule of St. Benedict
Facts from the source article.
History
Monastic schools grew out of the requirement, established by Pachomius’s cenobitic rule and later by the Rule of the Master and the Rule of St. Benedict, that monks and nuns must read. This reading evolved into a form of schooling that included both religious and secular topics. From the 5th century onward, abbots began taking charge of educating children who joined the monastery young. The earliest such schools emphasized spiritual discipline and ascetic practice more than scripture or theology, though this focus may explain why many monks from the school at Lerins were later chosen as bishops.
After leaving politics in 537, Cassiodorus founded a monastery at Vivarium in southern Italy, where he insisted on study. He wrote the Institutiones as a guide, covering religious texts and the liberal arts. This curriculum replaced a Christian school he and Pope Agapetus had planned for Rome. In 7th-century Spain, learning flourished at major monasteries and bishoprics; at the monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian near Toledo, students studied medicine and basic astronomy.
The 9th and 10th centuries marked the peak of monastic schools, with scholars like Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, Heiric of Auxerre, and Notker Balbulus boosting their abbeys’ reputations and drawing students from far away. While some monastic schools helped lay the groundwork for medieval universities, the rise of universities faced opposition. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, saw scholastic knowledge-seeking as a threat to monastic simplicity. As universities and scholasticism spread during the 12th-century Renaissance, they offered students new options, gradually leading to the decline of monastic schools.
Contributions to science in the Middle Ages
Monasteries played a large role in preserving and continuing science throughout the Middle Ages, chiefly by keeping alive the textual traditions of philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato during the transition from Classical learning into the Middle Ages. In accordance with the Benedictine Rule, monks engaged in various labor activities between prayer, meals, and sleeping, ranging from gardening to copying texts. Through copying, monks became learned in Classical Greek texts and later contributed their own knowledge to practical and daily texts.
Much of the great libraries and scriptoria that grew in monasteries resulted from the obligation of monks to teach young boys committed to the monastic life by their parents. Cassiodorus wrote a handbook for his monastery recommending numerous pagan authors for study, though it is understood that he recommended studies that enhanced spiritual learning or served a sacred purpose; nonetheless, the study of classical and secular texts did exist in monasteries.
Medical practice was highly important in medieval monasteries, as caring for the sick was an important obligation. At Cassiodorus's monastery Vivarium, monks were instructed to read medical works by Greek writers such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides, and there is evidence for the use of secular medical texts. Through medical instruction in monasteries, Classical medical texts survived through the early part of the Middle Ages.
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