Education in the Middle Ages

In A.D. 476 the Roman Empire, as universal state of the Hellenic Civilization, collapsed. This date is considered to be the beginning of the European Middle Ages. The Middle Ages covers the period from the fifth century till the sixteenth century. Middle Ages are divided into the early Middle Ages (V-IX centuries), the Middle Ages (X-XIII centuries), and Renaissance (XIV-XVI centuries).
Education in the Orthodox Christian Civilization
Although the stages in the history of the Orthodox Christian Civil­ization can be identified and dated, the scanty materials about educa­tion do not permit a comparable division in the development thereof. There were scholars in plenty in the society at many different stages, but education is rarely described either by them or by the historians, and the allusions to curricula, methods, and personnel are for the most part vague and ambiguous. There is little direct evidence about schools; what indirect evidence there is must be derived almost en­tirely from biographies of a relatively few individuals.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Orthodox Christian Civilization was the close relationship between church and state, in antithesis to the separation of church and state in the Western world. The whole outlook and orien­tation of the society was grounded in religion so that the church, as the official institution of religion, exerted an incalculably great in­fluence on all aspects of life including the "secular every-day educa­tion" and the affairs of the state supported university.…