ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 37, 13 September 1900, Page 6

ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

Thb Right Rev. Mgr. Conaty, in opering a tipw winjr of the Catholic University of Washington, TT.S.A , said, in the course of a brilliant address, that in the early Church the school was a part of its organisation. The catechetical schools gave way to the Bishops' schools, which acquired great prominence St. Mark's School, at Alexandria, had famous teachers, Mark, Pantaemus, Clement, and Origen. Smyrna, Odessa, and Antioch had their schools. Christian doctrine and secular learning were the objects of the master's care. The monastic development gave rise to the monastic system of schools, and for several centuries the monastic school supplied the education to clergy and people. Monte Cassino, St. Gall, Bobbio, Glastonbury, lona, were great centres of learned monks and earnest ■tndents.

From the Bixth to the tenth century Ireland was the refuge of scholars, who sought at the feet of saintly monk 1 * and nuns the education which they were consecrated to give. With the decline of monasticism came the rise of the universities, which sprang from the Cathedral and monastic schools. The development of the great universities of the Middle Ages began in the twelfth century. Bologna, Paris, Salerno, and Padua were famous for law, theology, medicine, and art, and the masters of learning taught the students •who flocked to them from all parts of the world. Bologna was known as the l Mothpr of Stndiesof Italy,' and Paris was recognised M the Mother of Universities. Oxford and Cambridge were in great repute from the middle of the thirteenth century ; Oxford was famous for theology, and Cambridge for mathematics. It is well recognised that these great universities owe their origin and their influence to the action and support of Popes and Churchmen. Russell, in his history of the Heroes of Medicine, says that ' before the year 1500 Italy had 16 universities, France six, Germany, with Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary, eight : Great Britain, two." Italy had as many as all the others combined. Huber, in his work on English Universities, says that ' later times cannot produce a concentration of men eminent in all the learning and science of the age such as Oxford and Cambridge then put forth, mightily influencing the intellectual development of Western Christendom.' Their names, indeed, may warn us against an indiscriminate disparagement of the monasteries as ' hotbeds of ignorance and stupidity,' when so many of thobe men were monks of the Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican and Carmelite Orders, or reformed Augustmians Since the Reformation, or rather since the Council of Trent, 30 universities were established by the Church in Europe from l.V>2. and since 1831 we have as prominent ones Lille, Paris, Lyons, Angere, Friburg, Ottawa, Laval, and Washington. Mgr. Conaty ■poke of the action of the Reformation, by which ho many universities were taken by the State and changed into instruments of State policy, and the foundations made by Cathc lie devotion to educate wero used to foster error- of the reformer*. He referred particularly to Oxford and Cambridge, in which the colleges, famous even to-day aa centres of learning, are enjoying the ehuritv <>t Catholic bishops and laytutn, whose piety gave the means by which they have been sustained. Referring to the charge of inactivity in educational ma'tcri among the English and German spewing Catholics from the sixteenth to the nineteenth cenUiry, Mgr. Conaty recalled the penal ■tatutes of the Reformation by which the tsrablit-hed Churches deprived Catholics of a right to education, except at the sacrifice of their conscience. He detailed the efforts of the present century, especially in America, and said that the sacrifices made were evidences of love for conscience and for education. Up spoke of the development of school, college, and university during the past 100 years, and paid a glowing tribute to the devoted monks and nuns, who had consecrated their lives after the example of the ages of faith in order that Christianity might be preberved by Christian ■chools.