THE STORY OF ENGLISH EDUCATION. 263 



century of our era, a complete and organized British church, holding the : 

 catholic faith, represented at the great church councils, and in inter- ' 

 course with Palestine and Eome. This early church undoubtedly i 

 possessed and disseminated some measure of culture in the Isle, and : 

 when the first contact with the See of Eome came, that culture was | 

 certainly broadened, though from first to last during the Saxon period ^ 

 the spiritual control of Eome was specifically rejected. Augustine, the j 

 first Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Britain in 596 A. D., and to 

 him in the year 601 A. D. Pope Gregory committed the charge of 

 'the Bishops of the British.' The church as reorganized by Augus- 

 tine and his followers maintained the old independence, and when 1 

 Theodore of Tarsus, a successor of Augustine in the See of Canter- 

 bury, deposed Wilfrid, Bishop of York, Pope Agatho was unable ■ 

 to compel either king or archbishop to restore him to his seat. 

 This Theodore of Tarsus is one of the earliest names in English ! 

 education. He and the Abbot Adrian, about the year 668 A. D., \ 

 brought to England new means and methods of education. They ^^ 

 made each of the greater monasteries an educational center, and it /w^"'' 

 is certain that in this dark age Greek itself was taught to those who/^;^^' ''j^t 

 would learn. Indeed, the first important period of English culturaf^^-; '.a ^ 

 was at hand. Bede tells us in his 'Ecclesiastical History' (Vol. IV.', 

 C. II.) that in the year 732 A. D. there were living in England 

 disciples of Theodore and Adrian, who knew the Greek and Latin 

 tongues as well as their own language. The use of Latin became 

 indeed so usual that Bede speaks of it as 'the vernacular': 'The • 

 Creed and the Our Father I have myself translated into English for 

 the benefit of those priests who are not familiar with the vernacular.' 

 He himself taught in the monastery school at Jarrow, and wrote , 

 small treatises on the Trivium and Quadrivium for use in monastic 

 schools. Alcuin was born into this first spring of learning in the { 

 year 735 A. D., and he boasts of the learned men and noble libraries of ! 

 England. Charlemagne did all that he could to benefit by the scholar- | 

 ship that existed in our island, and in securing the services of Alcuin , 

 he initiated that earliest movement of Gallic culture which resulted i 

 in the creation later of the University of Paris. The first English i 

 period died away all too soon. "The sloth of the priesthood, the ] 

 unrest of the land, the red ruin of the Dane, killed it south to north, j 

 and when Alfred came all that was left were some stray vestiges of j 

 scholarship in far Northumbria. " The age was dark indeed, and j 

 despite the remarkable efforts made by the church of Eome in the ' 

 ninth century for the extension of learning and the founding of \ 

 schools,* little could be done. Alfred did what could be done. He j 



* See the Canon de scholis reparandis pro studio literarum promulgated at 

 the Concilium Romanum in 826 A. D., in the time of Pope Eugenius II. This 

 canon appears to be little kno^\Ti to educationists. It should be read in connec- 



