Schoolmasters taught young people not only the ways of God, but also officiated over their initiation rites into the classics, making the classical inheritance a living presence in the lives of their charges. As the classical scholar R. M. Ogilvie once observed, in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy, "the merchant class was seeking a new ideal: the ideal of a cultivated lay-man independent of Church or noble birth." To be fed were not clerical scholars only, nor even just the sons and daughters of the nobility, but eventually the children of the burgeoning commercial class. One could begin to escape the disadvantages of lower birth with a thoroughgoing classical education.
~Tracy Lee Simmons, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin, p.92
3 comments:
I really enjoyed this book, but it's been over a year since I read it. I'm looking forward to more quotes.
Amy- I'm chipping away at this a little at a time, but enjoying it. Have you ever read Norms and Nobility by David Hicks? It is a tough read, but transformed how I viewed education.
No, I haven't read that one, but if you're recommending it I better add it to the list!
I appreciate your insights,
Amy
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