Monastic school
In some places monastic schools evolved into medieval universities which eventually largely superseded both institutions as centers of higher learning.
[4] The Roman statesman Cassiodorus had abandoned politics in 537 and later in the century established a monastery on his own lands at Vivarium in southern Italy.
Cassiodorus set out this program of study as a substitute for the Christian school he and Pope Agapetus had hoped to establish in Rome.
[5] In any event, the curriculum that Cassiodorus set out involved the literary study of well-established texts that he had listed in his Institutiones, following the rules that he laid out in his De orthographia.
Students at the monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian, at Agali near Toledo, learned such scientific subjects as medicine and the rudiments of astronomy.
[7] In the heyday of the monastic schools in the 9th and 10th centuries, the teachings of important scholars such as Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, Heiric of Auxerre and Notker Balbulus raised the prestige of their abbeys and attracted pupils from afar to attend their courses.
[8] The rise of medieval universities and scholasticism in the Renaissance of the 12th century offered alternative venues and new learning opportunities to the students and thus led to a gradual decline of the monastic schools.
The largest part of their contribution was keeping the textual traditions of philosophers the likes of Aristotle and Plato alive in the transition from the height of Classical learning into the Middle Ages.
Much of the great libraries and scriptoria that grew in monasteries were due to obligation of the monks to teach the young boys who came to them having been committed to the monastic life by their parents.
[12] Despite the monastery school's obvious focus on theological instruction, they did hold a place for Classical and secular medical texts.
[13] Herbals are one of the largest and most well-known contributions of monastic schools to science, offering some of the most comprehensive amounts of historical evidence.
