Question

How was education impacted as a result of the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
a. Roman ideas had to be reintroduced centuries later after being lost by Europeans.
b. Roman ideas, once lost at the fall of the empire, were replaced with humanist ones.

Answer 1

Answer: (a) is closer to correct — with important nuance.

- After the fall of the Western Empire (5th century) formal Roman schooling and the urban, bureaucratic culture that supported wide literacy declined in the West. Literacy and classical learning became much less widespread; monasteries, cathedrals and a few courts preserved education rather than the old Roman system.
- That learning was not entirely lost: monasteries, Irish and Byzantine scholars, and later Islamic scholars preserved and transmitted many classical texts.
- Over the next centuries there were partial revivals (e.g., the Carolingian Renaissance, 8th–9th c.; the 11th–12th c. intellectual revival; the rise of universities) and then the Renaissance humanists (14th–16th c.) who consciously recovered, studied and popularized Roman and Greek ideas.
- So Roman ideas were not simply replaced by humanism (b is misleading). Renaissance humanism was largely a revival and reinterpretation of classical ideas, not an entirely new substitute.