A Study Of The Western European Monastic Education In The Middle Ages

Owing to the development of the monastic movement the monks became the main missionaries of Christianity in the western Europe in the early stage of the Middle Ages. The missionary work requires the monks to be trained in reading and writing,which had brought about the special pattern of schooling. By being a important part of Christian education, it had defined its one goal as converting the students into devout Christian believers, which was the common characteristics shared by all Christian schools. Since the schooling was subordinate to monasticism,it requires the monks to live in obedience,chastity and poverty, so another goal or the main goal of the monastic education is to serve God. In spite of the disadvantages, the contribution of the monastic education to Christendom is evident, because the monasteries had changed into the distinctive institutions of schooling with double function, which consists of two parts——the interior and the exterior school. The interior school received only oblati who were offered for the monastic life. The exterior school were attended by boys who were not to be monks. The monk-teachers had not only carried out educational activities enthusiastically, but also had erected the distinctive educational theories. In the period of over seven hundred years of the Middle Ages the monastic schools not only had trained innumerable talents for Church, but also had taught as many lay students as they could. Above all, thanks to the monastic schools Greco-Roman culture had been safeguarded from dying out and had been spread effectively and the monastic schools acted as the bridge connecting ancient times with Renaissance and modern times.The history of monastic education discussed in this paper is divided into three stages. The first stage is from the 6th century to the early 9th centry, in which the monastic schools had developed into the major centers of learning and education in the western Europe. The second stage is from the late 9th century to the early 11th century, in which the alien invasion had inflicted heavy losses on the monasteries, the some monastic schools continued to exist and others had been recovered following the peace came. The two stages roughly make up the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The third stage is from the late 11th centrury to 14th century,in which the monastic schools coexisted with the secular schools and some monastic schools were able to retain their high level of learning and education; but the great differences exsited among different countries. It is spectacular that conventual schools of Mendicant Orders had reached a high level, and their monks had exerted great influence over the earlier universities. The third stage is about equal to later period of the Middle Ages.