Middle Ages and Renaissance 215
America inherited the ecclesiastical tradition of the medi-
eval universities. Since the Church had saved all that could
be saved of learning from the wreck of the Roman Empire,
she naturally took charge of education in the middle ages ;
universities grew up under her patronage; all masters and
Scholarswere clerici, potential priests. Moreover, the Church
fostered the universities in order to provide herself with a
learned clergy, and to reconcile philosophy with theology.
Medieval universities were distinctly “purposeful” ; they did
not cultivate the Arts for their own sake, as possibly the
Ancients did (I am cynical enough to doubt whether the
thought of a “teaching job” was wholly absent from the
thoughts of Plato’s disciples in the academic groves of
Athens). The medieval universities taught the Arts as a
means of acquiring that philosophical culture considered the
necessary background for a lawyer, physician, or divine.
There was no special vocational training for the priesthood
until after the Reformation: the ecclesiastical seminary is
a child of the Council of Trent. Theological faculties were
intended to train doctors of the Church, the “research
scholars” of that age; one did not require a divinity degree
to obtain even the highest ecclesiastical offices—nobody ever
said to an ambitious priest, “Go get a doctor’s degree, and
maybe you will become a bishop.” And the Protestant re-
formers had no new ideas in this respect; they merely wished
to recall universities to their proper functions.
A college or university may be religious in purpose, yet
not a theological school. In our colonial colleges, the entire
curriculum was imbued with religion. It was fortunate in-
deed for the United States that religion was so strong a force
in the Colonies and the early Republic; for without the
religious motive, the passionate desire of New England
Puritans, Scotch Presbyterians, and others to gain greater