Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

education in the roman empire 867
upper classes who were the bearers of that culture, and the leading role
which members of this class began to play in the church hierarchy, led, particularly
in the Greek east, to a kind of fusion of Hellenic and Christian
culture. John Chrysostom, himself a pupil of Libanius, urged the citizens
of Antioch to send their sons to be educated by hermits in the wilderness.
It was a utopian project, and he did not press the point for long. What he
expected from the monks was religious education, not literary and rhetorical
training. Neither in the Greek east nor in the Latin west did the church
attempt to set up its own schools in opposition to existing traditional
schools. Specifically Christian education was to be given in the family or in
the church, while teaching pupils to read with understanding the scriptures
and other Christian texts was left to the grammarian. It would have called
for an extraordinary effort to do otherwise. How could the church in a brief
space of time replace the system of select texts, commentaries, paraphrases,
lexica, technical manuals, model speeches, etc., elaborated over the
course of centuries, together with the concepts and values which they
embodied and perpetuated? And where were the teachers to be found? The
church never followed the example of the Jewish communities, who set up
their own schools, because, unlike the Jews, it did not see itself as a perpetually
marginalized minority. Of course, pagan literature had to be read with
discretion. A distinction had sometimes to be made between form and
content. Awkward passages had sometimes to be dealt with by allegorical
interpretation. St Basil’s Address to Young Men on the Value of Greek Literature,
twice translated into Syriac in the fifth and the seventh century, and into
Latin by Leonardo Bruni in Florence in 1403, provided a balanced statement
of the attitude of the church in the east: ‘We must seek from poets
and prose writers and rhetoricians and all men whatever will be advantageous
for the care of the soul.’ 38 His friend and fellow bishop Gregory of
Nazianzus repeatedly emphasized the importance and value of logoi, both
literature and the culture which it reflected. Choricius in the sixth century
puts the matter thus: ‘We need a Christian and a pagan schooling; from the
one we gain profit for the soul, from the other we learn the witchery of
words.’ 39 Classical education was even accorded the approval of saints.
Among the Miracles of St Thecla was the healing of Alypios, a grammatikos.
The account relates that the saint was philologos and philomousos, and always
took pleasure in those who praised her logikōteron. 40 In the sixth century St
Cyril of Scythopolis in Palestine emphasizes the utility of classical education,
which he himself lacked, in his Life of Euthymius. 41 St Gregory of
Nyssa sent a copy of his polemic against the heretic Eunomius to Libanius
for a verdict on its stylistic merits.
38 Wilson (1975) 2, 37–9. 39 Choricius, Laudatio Marciani Secunda 9.
40 Dagron (1978) Miracle 38.2. 41 PG cxiv.596.
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