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EDUCATION 413 of the civil law, and attracted lawyers and stu- dents in large numbers to northern Italy from remote parts of Europe. Paris was unrivalled in the department of theology, and Montpellier in that of medicine. During the period pre- ceding the revival of learning female educa- tion declined. Only a few schools were main- tained in the large cities for the instruction of girls in reading, and the inmates of convents were taught hardly more than to repeat their prayers and to practise embroidery and other needlework. When the Byzantine empire ap- proached its fall, the Greek scholars who had there preserved some acquaintance with an- cient learning took refuge in Italy, where the love of letters had been already awakened by the genius of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and where industrious scholars under the pat- ronage of princes were devoting their lives to the recovery of manuscripts and the revival of philology. From Italy the more profound study of classical authors passed to the other countries of Europe, and a contest was long maintained between the scholastic and the anti- scholastic studies ; between the Aristotelians, who included the most learned ecclesiastics, and the Platonists, to whom were attached most of the cultivators of polite literature. Agricola in Germany, Valla in Italy, and above all Ramus in France, wrote against scholasticism. It was assailed by the reformers and defended by the Jesuits, and is still in honor in some of the Span- ish universities. Purbach, Regiomontanus, and Nicholas Cusanus were the first to promote the study of the higher mathematics. Nicholas de Clemangis and Gregorius Tifernas revived the classical taste in France, Vitelli and Ooilet in England, Lebrixain Spain, and Reuchlin in Ger- many. The pious "Brethren of the Common Life," whose first school was founded by Gerard Groot at Deventer in 1376, also exerted a wide influence. Their schools were extended throughout the Netherlands and Germany, were distinguished alike for piety and solid acquire- ments, and attracted students even from Italy. In Brabant the university of Louvain was the centre of a wide intellectual culture, and the alma mater of many celebrities. Its European reputation increased till in 1570 it had 8,000 students. The golden age of the literature of the Spanish Netherlands was that of Albert and Isabella in the first quarter of the 17th century, in which the triumph of the renais- sance was completed. Education and the doc- trines concerning it played an important part in the movements of the Protestant refor- mers, and also in the reaction in favor of the papacy under the Jesuits. The revival of intellectual culture among the people was associated in the mind of Luther with re- ligious reform, and in 1528 with the aid of Melanchthon he drew up the plan of studies which was followed in the Protestant common schools of Germany till the close of the centu- ry. The first class learned to read, to repeat from memory a few distichs, to write, and to sing, and began the study of Latin. The sec- ond class studied Latin, grammar, and music for an hour daily, read and interpreted the fables of ^Esop, the Pcedologia of Mosellanus, and the colloquies of Erasmus, and committed to memory parts of Terence and Plautus, and some of the psalms and other portions of Scrip- ture. The third class advanced to the Latin poets, and to exercises in dialectics and rhet- oric, and were required to speak in Latin, and to write an exercise in that language weekly. Luther also assailed the Aristotelianism and scholastic methods which prevailed in the uni- versities, and recommended the establishment of libraries in every town. Education was in like manner encouraged by Zwingli and Cal- vin, the latter of whom caused the erection of a splendid edifice for the gymnasium of Gene- va, to which eight distinguished professors of Hebrew, Greek, philosophy, and theology were invited. About this time the gymnasium of Strasburg under Johann Sturm became the most flourishing of the age, and in 1578 it had. more than 1,000 students, 300 of whom were of noble or princely birth. The Protestants having awakened a zeal for learning, the Jesu- its determined to avail themselves of this zeal in the interest of the Catholic church, and to combat the reformation with its own weapon. They cultivated to the highest possible degree all departments of science, and employed the authority of learning in favor of the pontifical power. From Cologne, Ingolstadt, and Vi- enna they spread between 1550 and 1560 throughout Germany. Opposed in France by the Sorbonne, the university, and the parlia- ments, they did not establish their first school in Paris till 1665; but in 1750 they had won from the ancient Benedictines their pedagogic laurels, and possessed in France 669 schools, which were attended by the children of the princes and nobles. Between the latter part of the 17th and the close of the 18th century, four distinct theories and methods of the ped- agogic art arose, which are usually named the pietistic school, the humanistic school, the philanthropic school, and the eclectic school. Jansenius in the Netherlands, the Wesleys in England, and especially Spener and Francke in Germany, were the first representatives of the pietistic tendency. Spener was the teacher of Francke, who established a school at Halle for children of both sexes, and another for teach- ers, on the principle that religious and moral instruction should be made more prominent than intellectual acquirements, that the end of education should be a living knowledge of God and of pure Christianity. It was succeeded by similar schools in many other cities. In Greek the New Testament was the only text book. Hebrew was one of the studies of the regular course, and a change of heart was declared es- sential to successful scholarship. The human- istic school maintained the principle that the ancient languages and literature, especially the Greek and Latin (which were termed the