Throughout the Middle Ages, great intellectuals from Jerome to Jean Gerson all commented on education. What was its purpose? What practices best achieved the intended aims? This volume introduces the central themes that ran through literature on education, from its fixation on moral instruction to recommendations on playtime. It explores writing from the first century to the educational treatises of Renaissance Italy and discusses the important place that education, even of small children, held in medieval thought.

Contents: Introduction; 1) Authors and Works; 2) The Beginning and End of Elementary and Grammar Education; 3) Organising the School Day and Schoolroom; 4) Corporal Punishment; 5) Natural Ability; 6) Morals and Religion; 7) Being a Teacher; 8) Education of Women; 9) Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography

Dr Sarah B. Lynch is an assistant professor at Angelo State University, Texas. A graduate of University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, and the University of Leeds, she specializes in the history of elementary and grammar education in the later Middle Ages. Her doctoral thesis, concentrating on schools, teachers, and pupils in late medieval Lyon, was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2017. She received the Olivia Remie Constable Award from the Medieval Academy of America in 2018 for her ongoing project on educational legacies in medieval French wills.