A few extracts will give the best idea of this very useful little book on a most important subject. He makes great account of the study of languages, and skillfully refutes the objections. He wisely recommended that a portion of the property of churches and convents be devoted to this purpose, instead of being wasted on secular objects, or on avaricious princes and noblemen. In 1524 he wrote a special book in which he urged the civil magistrates of all the cities of Germany to improve their schools, or to establish new ones for boys and girls this all the more since the zeal for monastic institutions had declined, and the convents were fast getting empty. Luther discussed this subject first in his Address to the German Nobility (1520). Every man should be trained to a position of Christian freedom and self-government. It elevates the laity, emancipates private judgment, and stimulates the sense of personal responsibility. The genius of Protestantism favors the general diffusion of knowledge. The Reformation first utilized the press on a large scale, and gave a powerful impulse to common schools.
The invention of the printing-press prepared the way for popular education. Even noblemen signed their name with a cross. The common people were ignorant and superstitious, and could neither read nor write.
But education in the middle ages was aristocratic, and confined to the clergy and a very few laymen of the higher classes.
The medieval church was the civilizer and instructor of the barbarians, founded the convent and cathedral schools, and the great universities of Paris (1209), Bologna, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge, St. Every Christian church is a school of piety and virtue for old and young. The book appeared in the same year in Latin (De constituendis scholis), with a preface of Melanchthon, the probable translator, at Hagenau. Luther: An die Rathsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes, dass sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen.
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