Comments on: 0.04 Moralizing Pedagogy

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:12:07 +0000

political classes] Maybe “clerico-political classes”; in sXV-XVin “political” would extend to both secular and ecclesiastical politics for they were at once two distinct politico-legal spheres, but very often inextricably intermingled.

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:11:47 +0000

Not just the good citizen, but the good Christian, or so the exponents of these various disciplines would have claimed. In addition, although a providential origin might be claimed for these skills, they were, in fact, morally neutral, as also was, e.g., rhetoric. Schoolmasters had the dual and sometimes contradictory tasks of equipping their students with the instruments of agression, defense, and manipulation, the tools of power, and of inhibiting or, at least, channeling agression and imbuing the tools they provided with a moral aspect (rather like business colleges teaching “business ethics”).

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:10:56 +0000

A good argument could be made, I think, that the mores taught elementary & intermediate education, although often a matter of morality (in the modern sense), was as much or even more a matter of manners (> motto attributed to William of Wyckham (d1404): “Manners maketh man.”), and was not so much an education in moral decision making (an expression suggestive of casuistry), as an education in proper behavior. This education in proper behavior had, to be sure, a moral component, but it was very much concerned with correct behaviors and the astute management of social, political, and business relationships.

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:07:40 +0000

Yes, popularizations, but also propagation of humanist culture. There was a struggle at every level between humanism and what one might call traditional scholasticism (not limiting the term to philosophy/theology but to the whole cursus of late medieval education). Humanistic Latin, bonae litterae, and new or revived pedagogies were at once the emblems and the cultural capital of the humanists.

By: Dan Sheerin

Dan Sheerin — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:06:59 +0000

Yes, Latin was the international language of humanism, but also the international language of ecclesiastics and of the professions, whether they fit into the humanist paradigm or not. Knowledge of Latin was required for any upward mobility.

By: MQuinlan

MQuinlan — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:10:15 +0000

interesting– the more popular the more proper