Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 39 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ...elementary education among the masses. Their cardinal tenet was that every one has an equal right to read the Bible and to preach. Hence from the start, in 1170, they had something of biblical translations, and directly drew up vernacular catechisms, as well as books of devotion. Their success in publishing these books was such that their first persecutors say: " Nothing has astonished us so much as that little girls, even of the poor, have learned the Gospels and Epistles."2 Nor were the Waldenses confined to a corner, as we often suppose. Their principles were thought by their adversaries in the year 1300 to be more widespread than those of any other heretics. The words of one inquisitor of that era were: " Fere nulla est terra in qua haec secta non sit." Other details in years somewhat later, though all within the pre-reformation era, bring to light schools in many other 1 Schmidt, Educational History, p. 159. Schmidt, Paedagogical Encyclopaedia, s.v., Vol. x. p. 266. places, and those very probably of no less antiquity than such as have been mentioned. Among these school-seats are Brunswick, Spires, Halle, Baden, Goch, Gerolshofen, Revel, Constance, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, Breslau, Wurzburg, Ulm, Worms, Hoxter, Heidelberg, Kaufbeuren, Oppenheim, Zittau, Ueberlingen, Bruchsal, Andernach, Griinberg, and so on. This list indicates not only that mediaeval Germany was sown broadcast with schools, but that some of them were maintained in insignificant places, unless towns largo of yore have now strangely dwindled. As a sign of flourishing schools, Herr Kriegk mentions that at Cleves, in 1419, the schoolmaster was paid more than both the city clerk and burgomaster, and that in the city records he had nowhere detected any complaint of the teacher's...