Education

SAMUEL NEDELSKY

Education has played a central role in con­veying the tradition of the Orthodox Church throughout its history, from the catechizing activities of the first generations of Christian teachers to the theological seminaries and parish schools of the present day. Jesus Christ himself was the Teacher (didaskalos) of his disciples, who in turn became the first generation of Christian teachers (didaskaloi), instructing catechumens and the newly baptized in the principles offaith.

The 2nd century saw the formation of centers of catechetical and theological edu­cation gathered around learned private teachers. The most famous such “school” was that of Alexandria, home to both Clement and Origen, two of the first Chris­tian theorists of education. Clement laid out his program of study in his trilogy on educa­tion: Protrepikos pros Hellenas (Hortatory Discourse to the Greeks), Pedagogos (The Tutor), and Stromateis (Miscellanies). Origen later founded a Christian schola in Caesarea in the mid-3rd century; his curriculum began with grammatical stud­ies, progressed through the natural sciences and rhetoric, and culminated in theology (Letter of Thanksgiving of Theodore).

The early church inherited the Greco- Roman system of education (paideia) for the young, heavily based on Homer and other poets, omitting only reference to the pagan cults and the “immoral stories” of the old gods. Emperor Julian’s edict of 362, which briefly banned Christians from teaching the pagan classics, prompted a number of prominent 4th-century theo­logians to reconsider the relationship between Hellenic paideia and Christian education, such as the two Apollinarii of Laodicea (father and son) and Gregory of Nazianzus, who each began a process of preparing refined Christian texts for use in schools. Basil of Caesarea, in his “Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature,” treated the study of Greek learning as preparatory training for Chris­tians, advising young men to take whatever was beneficial from the pagan Greeks and pass over the rest, an approach that was widely adapted thereafter and became known as “despoiling the Egyptians” (from the Exodus story detail where the liberated Israelites took gold and silver from their Egyptian captors).

In the Byzantine Empire boys and girls received religious instruction primarily from their parents (although clergy or “grammarians” sometimes performed this task) through listening to and reading Scripture and church prayers and often by learning the Psalter by heart. Secular educa­tion for boys normally involved three stages: (a) preliminary education in orthography (reading and writing); (b) secondary educa­tion in grammar, based largely on the study of Homer; and (c) higher learning, which involved studying rhetoric and philosophy along strictly classical lines. While all classi­cal literature tended to be interpreted theologically, theology itself had no defined place as a separate discipline. Monastery schools existed, but generally admitted only aspiring monastics, and instruction was limited to the study of Scripture.

The Byzantine Empire had no organized theological schools, nor was theology taught as a subject in schools of higher learning. Theology was viewed as the highest form of knowledge, but not as a “science” to be studied among others at school. The Patriarchal Academy in Constantinople, which is first heard of in the 7th century and best known from the 12th, trained primarily ecclesiastical admin­istrators and canonists, although the gospels were taught by the academy’s rector. The primary locus of theological education was the liturgy, in which people of all classes could participate.

Education among Greeks suffered as a result of the fall of Constantinople. Young Greeks frequently traveled to West­ern Europe, especially to Venice, to pursue higher studies, although the Patriarchal Academy continued to operate.

The first Orthodox theological school employing the methods of western acade­mia was the Kiev-Moghila Academy, which evolved out of the Kiev Brotherhood School (1615–32) and the Kiev-Moghila Collegium (1632–58); it obtained the status of an acad­emy in 1658, and in 1819 was renamed the Kiev Theological Academy. A similar insti­tution, the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, was organized in Moscow in 1685–7; in 1814 it was relocated to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and renamed the Moscow Theological Academy. These institutions were initially directly based on contemporary Jesuit models and offered instruction in Latin. The system of theological education begun under Peter the Great and continuing until the Revolution of 1917 included three levels: elementary (spiritual schools), undergraduate (seminaries), and graduate (theological academies). By the end of the 19th century there were 158 elementary ecclesiastical schools, fifty-eight seminaries, and four theological academies (in Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan).

The University of Athens was founded by royal decree in 1837 with faculties of theo­logy, law, medicine, and philosophy. The theological faculty was outside direct super­vision by the Greek Church and based chiefly on the Protestant German model. In 1844 the patriarchate of Constantinople founded the Theological School at Halki; in 1853 the patriarchate of Jerusalem founded the Theological School of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. A second state theological fac­ulty in Greece was founded at the University of Thessalonica in 1925, although it did not become operational until 1941–2.

The most significant Orthodox theologi­cal institution in Western Europe is the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, founded by Russian emigres in 1925. After World War II a group of professors from the St. Sergius Institute joined the faculty of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, which had been founded in New York in 1938. Other prominent seminaries in North America include the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Boston, founded in 1937, and St. Tikhon’s Seminary. Orthodox seminaries and theo­logical faculties now exist throughout the world. Many, such as the Bucharest or Iasi Theological Academies, or Moscow Theo­logical Academy, are now enjoying dramatic recoveries after decades of state oppression.

Today, it is the local parish school that serves as the primary vehicle for the forma­tion of both religious and ethnic identity in the young.

SEE ALSO: Cappadocian Fathers; Cate­chumens; Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Moghila, Peter (1596–1646); Ottoman Yoke; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Alfeyev, H. (1998) “Problems of Orthodox Theological Education in Russia.” Sourozh 71: 4–28.

Alfeyev, H. (2003) “Theological Education in the Christian East, First to Sixth Centuries,” in J. Behr, A. Louth, and D. Conomos (eds.) Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, pp. 43–64. Browning, R. (1962, 1963) “The Patriarchal School at Constantinople in the Twelfth Century,” Byzantion 32: 167–202; 33: 11–40.

Buckler. G. (1948) “Byzantine Education,” in N. Baynes and H. Moss (eds.) Byzantium: An Introduction to Eastern Roman Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 200–20. Hussey, J. M. (1937) Church and Learning in the Byzantine Empire, 867–1185. Oxford: Blackwell.