Bernardo Gallegos
Bernardo Gallegos Resources
Gallegos Page 1
Gallegos Page 2
Gallegos Page 3
Gallegos Page 4
Gallegos Page 5
Gallegos Page 6
Sitemap
|
Bernardo Gallegos
Page 06 - Part B
Thus, before the
Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world
which were to form the foundations of our future western civilization had
been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature
of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic
ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system
of wonderful effectiveness--one that in its higher development in time
took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly modified all
later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient
world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are
especially indebted for out conceptions of law, order, and government, and
for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of
other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest
conceptions of God, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to
Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas
universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world.
All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down
to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part
of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the
Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into
an East and West, in 395; and the final division of the Christian Church
into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually
effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek
language from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the
West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more
tolerant of pagan learning than was the Western, and was better able to
withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had
done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become
sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it.
Hellenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through
the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning
which we know as the _Renaissance_. Of the Latin literature and learning
much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the
monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously
deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of
barbarism and general ignorance through which it passed, and only in
modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of
its founder.
Source: THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION, by ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
[ Part A ]
[ Part B ]
[ Part C ]
[ Part D ]
[ Part E ]
[ Part F ]
|
