Enthusiasts for the antiquity of one of the two acknowledged parents of all universities, indeed, do not hesitate to trace the origin of the "Studium Parisiense" up to that wonderful King of the Franks and Lombards, Karl, surnamed the Great, whom we all called Charlemagne, and believed to be a Frenchman, until a learned historian, by beneficent iteration, taught us better. Karl is said not to have been much of a scholar himself, but he had the wisdom of which knowledge is only the servitor. And that wisdom enabled him to see that ignorance is one of the roots of all evil.
In the "Capitulary" which enjoins the foundation of monasterial and cathedral schools, he says: "Right action is better than knowledge: but in order to do what is right we must know what is right."[1] An irrefragable truth, I fancy. Acting upon it, the king took pretty full compulsory powers, and carried into effect a really considerable and effectual scheme of elementary education through the length and breadth of his dominions.
No doubt, the idolators out by the Elbe, in what is now part of Prussia, objected to the Frankish king's measures; no doubt, the priests, who had never hesitated about sacrificing all unbelievers in their fantastic deities and futile conjurations, were the loudest in chanting the virtues of toleration; no doubt, they denounced as a cruel persecutor the man who would not allow them, however sincere they might be, to go on spreading delusions which debased the intellect, as much as they deadened the moral sense and undermined the bonds of civil allegiance; no doubt, if they had lived in these times, they would have been able to show, with ease, that the king's proceedings were totally contrary to the best liberal principles. But it may be said, in justification of the Teutonic ruler, first, that he was born before those principles, and did not suspect that the best way of getting disorder into order was to let it alone; and, secondly, that his rough and questionable proceedings did, more or less, bring about the end he had in view. For, in a couple of centuries, the schools he sowed broadcast produced their crop of men thirsting for knowledge and craving for culture. Such men, gravitating toward Paris, as a light amid the darkness of evil days, from Germany, from Spain, from Britain, and from Scandinavia, came together by natural affinity. By degrees they banded themselves into a society, which, as its end was the knowledge of all things knowable, called itself a "Studium Generale;" and, when it had grown into a recognized corporation, acquired the name of "Universitas Studii Generalis;" which, mark you, means not a "Useful Knowledge Society," but a "Knowledge-of-things-in-general Society."
- ↑ "Quamvis enim melius sit bene facere quam nosse, prius tamen est nosse quam facere."––"Karoli Magni Regis Constitutio de Scholis per singula Episcopia et Monasteria instituendis," addressed to the Abbot of Fulda. Baluzius, "Capitularia Regum. Francorum," tomus i., p. 202.
