Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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The intellectual condition of the average 16th century student is even harder to ascertain, and I have sought in vain for adequate materials. It does, indeed, appear that the Irish New Testament and Prayer Book had been printed. Sir H. Sidney’s Irish Articles of Religion were brought out in 1566. John Ussher had promoted Kearney’s Irish Alphabet and Catechism, produced in Dublin from type supplied by the Queen in 1571.ssss1 William Ussher had produced the New Testament in Francke’s printing, 1602. This printer is probably the man mentioned as the “King’s printer” in 1615 (for proclamations?). But though there is extant a proposed arrangement with the very printer of one of these books (Kearney) to live and work in the College,ssss1 there is no trace of his having done any real service. Even the Statutes were in MS., copied out by the hand of the Provost or Vice-Provost. The annals of Dublin show, I believe, none but isolated printing till about 1627;ssss1 it was in 1641, both in Kilkenny and Waterford, as well as in Dublin, that printing began to be used for disseminating political views. But the earliest students must have found it very difficult to obtain books, and there is no trace that any printing press started up to meet this urgent want. I am now speaking only of text-books for students, by which I mean such small and handy editions as the Latin Isagoge of Porphyry, printed at Paris in 1535, of which copies are often found in Dublin, as the work was diligently taught in the 17th century course. Dudley Loftus’ Logic and Introduction, printed in 1657 (Dublin), seem to me the earliest books likely to have been used as text-books in Trinity College. Strange to say, there is no copy of either in our College Library. But the official teaching was strictly oral, and the students were merely required to write out in theses or reproduce in disputations what their tutors had told them. The College course, as laid down by Laud (or Ussher?) in the Caroline Statutes, is plainly not a course in books, but in subjects. Not a single text-book, unless it be the Isagoge of Porphyry, is specified, and this rather for the lecturer than the students. Whatever practical relaxations the course then laid down may have undergone, it was chiefly in the post-graduate studies; for the officers of the College had no power to alter or emend the programme of Laud till the year 1760, when a special King’s Letter gave them authority to do so. This accounts for the great quantity of lecturing which went on, each tutor giving three hours every day, not to speak of the efforts of the College Schoolmaster, who undertook those that were raw in Latin and Greek. Archbishop Loftus, indeed, in his parting address to the College (Armagh Library MS.), exhorts the new Provost (Travers)—“See that the younger sort be well catechised, and that you prescribe to the rest a catalogue of approved books to be read by them as foundations of learning, both human and divine.” But this alludes to post-graduate studies, for which the Library was then established,ssss1 and not to the daily studies of the undergraduates. Logic was the chief subject, the system of Ramus being brought into fashion by the Cambridge Puritans, and especially by Provost Temple, who had written a book on the subject. Chappel was also a famous Ramist logician. Very little mathematics was taught, but, on the other hand, Hebrew was regarded as of equal importance with Greek; and in every subject we find the student’s knowledge tested, not by reproduction of his reading, but by disputations, which showed that he had so far grasped a subject that he could attack an adversary or defend himself when attacked.