Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction ‘One Whip Drives Them All’: Starting School in the ‘Violent’ Middle Ages
- 1 ‘Beginning with Anger’: The Classical and Early Medieval Background
- 2 The Rules of the Rod: Discipline in Practice
- 3 ‘Lore and Chastising’: The Functions of Classroom Discipline
- 4 ‘I Was Beaten and I Beat’: Responding to Discipline
- Conclusion Mindful Violence: Classroom Discipline and Its Lessons
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - ‘Beginning with Anger’: The Classical and Early Medieval Background
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction ‘One Whip Drives Them All’: Starting School in the ‘Violent’ Middle Ages
- 1 ‘Beginning with Anger’: The Classical and Early Medieval Background
- 2 The Rules of the Rod: Discipline in Practice
- 3 ‘Lore and Chastising’: The Functions of Classroom Discipline
- 4 ‘I Was Beaten and I Beat’: Responding to Discipline
- Conclusion Mindful Violence: Classroom Discipline and Its Lessons
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the 1260s, the radical Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi issued some suggestive thoughts on the place of classical philosophy in contemporary education. In a series of remarks that anticipate the critiques of Bishop Tempier and John XXI a decade later, Olivi levels a sustained attack against the influence of pre-Christian authors in academia, delivered from ‘a particularly stubborn stance of superiority toward pagan philosophy’. What makes his comments noteworthy is that Olivi also glances towards earlier stages of instruction during his denunciations, raising some interesting points about the training of boys (pueri) as well as older undergraduates. As might be expected, punishment emerges as a central concern in the course of his arguments:
The principles of truth are indeed the most spiritual and abstract, which the natural man is not able to perceive, because the consideration or experience of them is not sensory but rather spiritual: and this is the reason why even a word of the cross is foolishness to those that perish … because the cross by mortifying the senses of this life has in itself truth most spiritual and incomprehensible to every natural philosopher. For this reason, in Proverbs 22.15 it is very aptly said, ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away’. For they are children indeed who idle in the senses alone; furthermore, according to the testimony of Aristotle at the end of the Posterior Analytics, and in a good many other places, principles were accepted among them from perception and experience of the senses; hence he says that ‘we know the principles insofar as we know their terms, but we cannot grasp the terms unless by the senses’. On the contrary, the rod of the cross puts stupidity to flight, to obtain for us the principles of faith, which are higher than the senses.
One of the most remarkable features of this statement is the emphatic line Olivi draws between the schooling of his own day and education in ancient society, which in his eyes is much less rigorous. Unpicking the metaphors with which Olivi frames his dismissal of Aristotle, what emerges are two parallel arguments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Punishment and Medieval Education , pp. 19 - 50Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018