medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

If Suger was educated at St Denis, then clearly St Denis was maintaining
some sort of school.  Barring evidence that they had stopped running the
school after Suger passed through it, the best thing is to assume that it
was there in the 1120s.  Well, that gets rid of the easy answer.  Do we know
if the French crown has already established a close relationship with St.
Denis?  (I don't know that much about St. Denis.)
    Cathedral schools did teach grammar.  Part of their original function
was to teach literacy to priests so they could perform the liturgy.  Oxford,
which I am much more familiar with than Paris, had an official who oversaw
the grammar schools that provided primary education for students destined
for the University.  So the cathedral school would have been just as
equipped as any school St Denis ran to provide primary education.
    Philip presumably expected Louis to stay in the school (since he was
hardly expecting his oldest son to die in a freak accident), so the
cathedral school might have offered better long-term prospects than St.
Denis.  
    The 1120s is 50-75 years too early for us to speak about the University
of Paris.  In the 1120s, the cathedral school is granting teaching licenses
to men like Peter Abelard, authorizing them to run small private schools in
Paris.  Subjects higher than grammar are increasingly being taught by these
masters. In later centuries, students will actually live with their masters,
often renting rooms from them in a suite that the master rents from the
owner of the property.  How early that arrangement began I don't know, but
it actually suggests an answer to your larger question.
    As a 10 year old, roughly, Louis was certainly too young to be living on
his own (regardless of whether he was a prince or not).  So any instruction
he received would probably have been through a private master hired to
supervise his education in the same fashion that Abelard was hired to
supervise Heloise' education.  That master, even if he's only teaching
grammar, would plausibly be operating under a teaching license, and
therefore part of the cathedral school, even if the instruction wasn't at
the cathedral (indeed, most of the teaching at the cathedral school in this
period isn't happening at the cathedral).  In contrast, since monks are at
least theoretically supposed to be cloistered, education at a monastic
school would generally have taken place at the monastery itself, acting as a
boarding school.
    So if Louis is going to be educated at St. Denis, that means placing him
in the monastery, which might look uncomfortably like oblation.  Even if
that isn't an issue, placing Louis there would probably mean endowing the
monastery to compensate it for educating him.  The other alternative is for
Philip to hirer a private tutor for Louis, which means paying a master from
the cathedral school to live with the royal family.  This is a less
expensive arrangement, with no risks that someone might misconstrue Louis'
status.
    Obviously with so little evidence, we can't be sure, but this at least
sounds like a plausible answer to me.

Andrew E. Larsen


On 4/9/08 9:33 AM, "Christopher Crockett" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> 
> From: Andrew Larsen <[log in to unmask]>
> 
>> Well, the cathedral school was the center of a growing body of scholars that
> would in a few generations coalesce into the University of Paris.  Some of the
> brightest scholars in Paris, such as Abelard, taught under the umbrella of the
> cathedral school (although Abelard was gone by 1131).
> 
> "under the umbrella"
> 
> do we know anything more about his teaching during that pre-rainstormy period
> than what he tells us in the H.C.? [Brenda?]
> 
> viz., that he was a *private tutor* to the adolescent daughter of a dignatary
> of the cathedral chapter.
> 
> Louis the Kid was...well, he was just a kid before his brother died and he was
> jerked out of whatever situation he was in, being prepared for whatever career
> he was destined for before Destiny took a Hand in his life and grabbed him by
> his hair.
> 
> Heloise was, presumably, somewhat older when tutored (and etc.) by Abelard,
> and i can't quite see him (or the other, relatively high-powered scholards of
> the cathedral school) as being an elementary school teacher.
> 
> *was* there a "grammer school" (in the sense of a primary school for quite
> young children) associated with the cathedral?
> 
>> Overall, Louis could have received a more cutting-edge education through the
> cathedral
> school, although it would have depended on who his masters were.
> 
> it's not the "higher" education that's at issue, only the "primary"  one.
> 
>> Did St. Denis maintain a monastery school at this time?
> 
> i don't know.
> 
>> I don't know, but many monasteries were doing away with schools for children
> because
> oblation was becoming less common during this period.
> 
> knowing nothing whatever about it in any detail, i can venture the Firm
> Opinion that "this period" was one of Transition, and that it might be a wee
> bit early to assume that the Benedictines at St. Denis (or anywhere else) had
> given up their centuries-old tradition of providing primary educations for the
> sons of the local aristocracy. (what's the evidence that those guys *ever*
> gave up their primary schools, in the M.A.?)
> 
> after all,
> 
> 1) providing this service certainly paid well, both Karmically (i.e., putting
> a keen edge on their Do Good for Humanity blade) and in more tangible terms,
> garnering donations from families which formed ties to the institution lasting
> generations, Time out of Mind;
> 
> b)such a school would have been a pretty good recruitment tool;
> 
> iii) Suger was (i'm told, presumably ultimately based on a Vita) educated at
> the St. Denis school, just a generation before Louis' time.
> 
>> Apart from the cathedral school, the other two 12th century schools at Paris
> that I know of were St Victor and St Genevieve, and I haven't been able to
> find any reference to a school at St Denis in the materials I have at hand
> about the University of Paris.
> 
> well, the St. Denis school wouldn't have been part of that particular
> development, would it?
> 
> certainly not in the same way that St. Victor's was (i know not from St.
> Genevieve).
> 
> can't we assume that St. D.'s would have been a dull-edged, quite
> traditionally-based institution, specializing in the most primary of
> educations?
> 
> the kids would graduate and go to the Big City, for the advanced stuff.
> 
>> Assuming it did have a monastery school, Philip might have worried that
> sending Louis to St. Denis might have been mistaken as oblation.
> 
> that's a thought.
> 
> it could certainly have been a temptation --esp. considering that Louis seems
> to have been of a rather pious Disposition anyway.
> 
> Louis is not my Real Interest --his younger brother, Henry, is.
> 
> and he succumbed (in the end) to the Temptations of Monasticism, Big Time.
> 
> on Philip's death, Henry took (what was apparently) Louis' place as Family
> Cleric, accumulating, through the '30s and '40s, quite a few abbacies in the
> _abbas regalium abbatiarum_ (the royal collegials at Etampes, Melun, Corbeil,
> etc., directly under the King's thumb) and numerious prebends and dignities in
> various other institutions of political significance (e.g., canon of Paris,
> Treasurer of St. Martin of Tours).
> 
> he apparently led a life befitting a Prince in the Church, until he ran into
> St. Bernie in 1146 and was "converted", becomming a simple monk at Clairvaux.
> 
>> (In England two decades earlier, there was a fierce debate over whether Henry
> I's intended bride, Edith, had been veiled as a nun or whether she was simply
> placed at a convent as a boarding house.  Edith insisted she had not been
> veiled, but there was clearly uncertainty about what might to us seem a very
> cut and dried issue.)
> 
> an interesting case.
> 
> it's *so* easy for us to forget how "ad hoc" everything was, and that such a
> seemingly continuous and wet situation could have been otherwise.
> 
>> Any school St. Denis maintained would have offered a rather traditional sort
> of education, whereas the cathedral school was being to be the place where
> 'professional' education was pursued, since its members went on to serve as
> bureaucrats, lawyers, and theologians.
>> Philip may have felt that Louis would get a more intellectually-challenging
> education at the cathedral school, although that's a rather modern way to
> think about the situation, and to my mind a less likely explanation than that
> there simply wasn't a school at St Denis.
> 
> 
> again, i have little problem with his going to "high school" at the cathedral
> --it's just the "grammar school" work that concerns me.
> 
> he was only 10 or 11 when Philip was killed.
> 
> apparently nothing is known about Henry's education, save for the fact that we
> have a multi-volume, glossed Bible which was made for him, perhaps in a
> "secular" scriptorium at Chartres, in the 1130s.
> 
> he gave them to Clairvaux when he entered, and they are now in the dreadfully
> named "Médiathèque de l'agglomération Troyenne" (formerly just the
> "Bibliotheque municipale").
> 
> these are quite magnificent, absolutely De Lux manuscripts, beautifully
> written and laid out on their white pages,
> 
> http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_048354-p.jpg
> 
> with fine decorations (no real illuminations, alas)
> 
> http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_048361-p.jpg
> 
> http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_048369-p.jpg
> 
> http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_048374-p.jpg
> 
> http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_048380-p.jpg
> 
> this is ms. 0512.
> 
> more here:
> 
> http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/documentation/enlumine/fr/rechexperte_00.htm
> 
> though trying to find the damned thing in that wretched frog db interface is
> challenging.
> 
> 
> my point is that a Prince would have been given, well, a Princely education,
> from beginning to as far as he wanted to go.
> 
> this applied to Henry and it would have applied to Louis.
> 
> would this have meant, in its primary phase, the quiet, contemplative setting
> of St. Denis, or the raucus hurly-burly of Centre Ville Paris?
> 
> Louis' exact words
> 
> "Nos ecclesiam parisiensem, in cujus claustra, quasi in quodam maternali
> gremio, incipientis vitae et pueritiae nostrae exegimus tempora" (Rec. des
> hist. des Gaules, t. XII p. 90)
> 
> 
> leave the question open, it seems to me --he doesn't actually *say* that he
> was educated at the "cathedral school", just in the "claustra", which
> basically meant in the area around the cathedral.
> 
> and, perhaps, at age 10-11 he would have graduated from St. Denis and gone
> UpTown for further study??
>  
>> Those at least are my thoughts.
> 
> and, i must say, pretty good ones (since i had most of them myself as well).
> 
> Thanks, Andrew.
> 
> and Brenda.
> 
> c
> 
>> On 4/8/08 12:49 PM, "Christopher Crockett" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>>> 
>>> perhaps someone morebetter equiped than i can answer me a small riddle.
>>> 
>>> the future Louis VII (Junioris) was born in 1121, second son of Louis VI
>>> (Crassus).
>>> 
>>> the Recieved Wisdom is that the young Louis was destined for a career in
> the
>>> (secular) clergy.
>>> 
>>> but in 1131 his older brother and co-king with his father, Philip (named
> after
>>> his grandfather) died in a freak accident** and, shortly thereafter, Louis
> the
>>> Kid was taken to a council at Reims where he was crowned co-king by
> Innocent
>>> II (who happened to be conveniently in Northern France at the time).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> the author of the best book on his reign, Marcel Pacaut (_Louis VII et
> son
>>> royaume_. Paris, 1964) cites, as the only evidence that Louis was destined
> for
>>> the clericature a passage in a charter which he issued in favor of St.
> Mary of
>>> Paris : "Nos ecclesiam parisiensem, in cujus claustra, quasi in quodam
>>> maternali gremio, incipientis vitae et pueritiae nostrae exegimus
> tempora"
>>> (Rec. des hist. des Gaules, t. XII p. 90).
>>> 
>>> and concludes --rightly, i suppose (does anyone disagree?)-- that it was
> at
>>> the cathedral school that Louis was being educated.
>>> 
>>> my question is: why not at St. Denis?
>>> 
>>> political considerations aside (e.g., the King's friend Suger, himself
>>> educated at St. Denis, was abbot there from about 1122; Fat Louis had
> just
>>> come through several years of rather heated "reforming" disputes with the
>>> Bishop and chapter of St. Mary's, which nearly resulted in a near-civil
> war),
>>> would not an ancient Benedictine house offer a better education to a
> young
>>> prince, certainly on the Primary level??
>>> 
>>> 
>>> could it have been that Fat Louis wanted his second son to get some
> educating,
>>> but not *too* much --and certainly not so much that he would want to
> become a
>>> monk (rather than a secular canon/archdeacon/abbot of the "royal
> monasteries"
>>> like his younger brother, Henry, who suceeded him in that role)?
>>> 
>>> (that latter, off-the-top-of-my-head thought probably approaches
>>> unanswerability, so can just be ignored.)
>>> 
>>> any thoughts would be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> best,
>>> 
>>> c
>>> 
>>> **he was riding through a street in (or near)Paris, when a pig suddenly
>>> appeared, freightening the animal and causing it to throw the young prince
> and
>>> crush him. 
>>> at least one source (Ordericus?) notes that the obviously diabolical pig
> was
>>> "black" and immediately ran off and disappeared into the Seine.
>>> 
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