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Title: Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

Author: Thomas Hughes

Editor: Nicholas Murray Butler

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOYOLA AND
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE JESUITS ***

LOYOLA.

The Great Educators
Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

LOYOLA
AND

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF
THE JESUITS
BY

THE REVEREND THOMAS HUGHES
Of the Society of Jesus

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1892

COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

PREFACE.
In the following work on the Educational System of the Jesuits, I have
endeavored to present a critical statement of the principles and method
adopted in the Society of Jesus. The effort to explain the sources, process of
development, and present influence of the system within and without the
Order, has made of the first part a biographical and historical sketch, having
for its chief subject the person of the Founder; while the details and the
pedagogical significance of the various elements in the method appear, in
the second part, as a critical analysis of the Ratio Studiorum.
The educational literature which treats of this system is very extensive.
Various estimates and conclusions have been arrived at, on the merits of
documents frequently referred to, for an exposition of the meaning and
philosophy of the system. Hence, with the view of facilitating a clear and
comprehensive judgment on the subject, I have thought it not inadvisable to
quote accurately from such documents, omitting none which bore upon the
matter, if only they were within reach. It so happens that, at present, a large
number of the sources, regulations, and commentaries, heretofore rare and
altogether out of reach, have been rendered easy of access, being embodied
in the great work, Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, which is already
beyond its tenth volume. Three of the volumes so far issued are upon the
Jesuit System; they have been compiled by the late Rev. G. M. Pachtler,
S. J. If the three or four volumes, which still remain to be issued by the Rev.
Bernard Duhr, S. J., had been available, they too could have been laid under
contribution for examples and illustrations. But perhaps the theme will
appear sufficiently illustrated as it is.
Besides the original documents, I have used no less authentic an
exponent than that which the maxim of law approves: Consuetudo, optima
legis interpres, "Custom, which is the best interpreter of law."
While all that is oldest and most authentic has thus been made use of in
explaining the Ratio Studiorum, the actual condition of pedagogics to-day is

new, and so is the state of the question involved. Hence, to satisfy the
requirements of the present, reference has been made not exclusively either
to the customs or the learned documents of a former age.
In a word, the object aimed at has been to indicate the chief traits which
are characteristic of the system, and which may be suggestive in the
development of pedagogical science. Whether such an object has been
attained, so as to meet many questions which may possibly arise, and to
satisfy the desire which actually exists, it will be for others to decide.
THOMAS HUGHES, S. J.
St. Louis University.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface v

PART I.

EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF THE ORDER.

CHAPTER I.
Introduction 3

CHAPTER II.
Knight, Pilgrim, and Scholar 19

CHAPTER III.
The University of Paris. Rome 30

CHAPTER IV.
Colleges as Proposed in the Jesuit Constitution 52

CHAPTER V.
Colleges Founded and Endowed 68

CHAPTER VI.
The Intellectual Scope and Method Proposed 82

CHAPTER VII.
The Moral Scope Proposed 98

CHAPTER VIII.
Ignatius Administering the Collegiate System. His
Death 109

CHAPTER IX.
Subsequent Administrations 124

PART II.

ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM OF STUDIES.

CHAPTER X.
Aquaviva. The Ratio Studiorum 141

CHAPTER XI.
Formation of the Master. His Courses of Literature
and Philosophy 156

CHAPTER XII.
Youthful Masters 175

CHAPTER XIII.
The Courses of Divinity and Allied Sciences.
Private Study. Repetition 191

CHAPTER XIV.
Disputation. Dictation 208

CHAPTER XV.
Formation of the Scholar. Symmetry of the Courses.
The Prelection. Books 225

CHAPTER XVI.
The Classical Literatures. School Management
and Control 248

CHAPTER XVII.
Examinations and Graduation. Schedule of Grades
and Courses 259

CHAPTER XVIII.
Conclusion 285

Bibliographical Appendix 297

Part I.
EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF THE ORDER

LOYOLA

AND

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE
JESUITS

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

A learned and elegant work, which narrates the rise and progress of
Christian Schools, from the sixtieth year of the Christian era onwards, ends
its long journey at the date of the Reformation, and takes leave of its varied
subject, and of its lines of Christian Scholars, in these words: "We leave
them at the moment when the episcopacy was recovering its ancient
jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical seminaries, and when a vast majority of
the secular schools of Catholic Christendom were passing into the hands of
a great Religious Order, raised up, as it would seem, with the special design
1
of consolidating anew a system of Christian education."
Two centuries and a half later, when the Society of Jesus had run a long
course, from the date of the Reformation which had seen it rise, up to the
eve of the Revolution which beheld it extinct, a General of the Order,
Ignatius Visconti, addressing the Provincial Superiors over the world, takes
note of a new stage in the process of educational development: "The taste
for letters now," he says, "is more keen and exquisite, and the number of
literary schools has increased so much, that ours may no longer appear so
necessary. For I may mention the fact that, besides our schools of polite
letters, there were, for a long while, either none or very few. So that parents
were forced to send their children to us, even if otherwise they did not want
2
it."
This refers in a quiet way to what Leopold von Ranke states with more
emphasis. Speaking of Grammar classes, the German historian says: "Here
also the Jesuits succeeded to admiration. It was found that young people
gained more with them in six months, than with other teachers in two years.

Even Protestants removed their children from distant gymnasia to confide
3
them to the care of the Jesuits." Ranke narrates in the same place how it
was "toward the universities above all that the efforts of the Jesuits were
directed." And he describes what the results were in Germany.
D'Alembert writes of their progress in France: "Hardly had the
Company of Jesus begun to show itself in France, than it met with
difficulties without number, in the endeavor to establish itself. The
universities especially made the greatest efforts to keep the new-comers out.
It is difficult to decide whether this opposition is a praise or a condemnation
of the Jesuits who stood it. They announced gratuitous teaching; they
counted among their number celebrated and learned men, superior perhaps
4
to those whom the universities could boast of," etc.
Speaking of the Protestants in the Netherlands, a chronicle, which
reviews the first century of the Order's existence, records that "the Jesuit
schools were expressly interdicted, under severe penalties, to all members
of the Protestant communities. Even in a twelve-year truce which the Order
partially enjoyed, a monthly fine of one hundred florins was still imposed
upon all delinquents, or on their parents, who persisted in patronizing the
Jesuit schools. To escape the fine, parents sent their children under an
5
assumed name.
In every country, the same drama of struggle and contest evolved itself
through two and a half centuries, till a momentous scene was witnessed. It
was a scene of such a kind as seldom has occurred in history; and never
certainly was any similar event thrown into such relief by the sequel. The
event which I refer to was a universal and instantaneous suppression of the
Order; with consequences following thereupon which were exceptional,
both in the world that witnessed it, and in the subject-body that suffered it.
The sequel in the world at large was that, a few years later, at the close
of the eighteenth century, there broke out the great Revolution under the
leadership of men, of whom scarcely one had been more than seven years of
6
age at the date of the Jesuits' expulsion. They represented in France the
first generation which had not been educated by the Society. The remote
causes which overwhelmed the Order were the same that ushered in the
Revolution. But, among the immediate causes, assigned by historians to

account for the precise form which the great convulsion assumed, and for
the date at which it occurred, is placed the dissolution of this Order.
According to the Count de Maistre, who speaks of the political sentiment of
his own times, all observers agreed that the revolution of Europe, still called
the French Revolution, was impossible without the preliminary destruction
of the Jesuits. And, in keeping with this, it was equally a subject of
observation, as being a palpable historical fact, that during two centuries the
Jesuits had formed in their College at Paris, the élite of the French nobility;
and that, only a few years after the expulsion of the Jesuit Masters, the same
college turned out the Robespierres, Camille Desmoulins, Tallien, Noël,
Fréron, Chénier, and other such demagogues. This College of Clermont, or
Louis-le-Grand, from which the Jesuits were expelled in 1762, had been
immediately occupied by the University of Paris. The Revolution broke out
twenty-seven years later.
Another sequel, not heard of before in history, affected the Society
itself. Europe, having gone through the violent commotions which changed
the old order of things into the new, reached the beginning of this nineteenth
century, and found the Society alive again. This was in defiance of a
political maxim, which we may admit with Baron von Hübner, that in
politics, in the affairs of states, in the life of all great social institutions,
when once death supervenes, there is no resurrection.
And now, at the end of the nineteenth century, the same forces of
repulsion and attraction, of devoted love on the part of friends, of intense
hatred on the part of enemies, have been seen operating as always before. It
has become a commonplace in the philosophy of history,—this hatred
which has been sworn against the Order of Jesus, and the multitude of
enemies whom it has made. One explanation suggests itself to the Viscount
de Bonald,—the presence in it, he thinks, of something good; of that good
which, as it alone is the object of the most ardent love, can alone become
the object of the intensest hate; and therefore has always made persecutors
and martyrs.
The purpose of this book is to give an historical sketch, with a
proportionate analysis, of the educational development effected through the
Society of Jesus. Others have taken different fields of Jesuit history to
survey, either general and comprehending all the paths of external and
internal activity, or particular and comprising only parts of the history.

Some of these particular views, especially in later years, are in the line of
studies, and are most valuable contributions to the history of pedagogic
development. None of them, however, happens to coincide with the scope,
purpose, and form which have been designated for this; as the Series to
which it belongs, the Editor in charge, and the country for which it is
intended, sufficiently indicate.
The subject then is the educational system of the Jesuits, that system
which technically is called the Ratio Studiorum. It requires no literary nor
historical ingenuity to centre all that has to be said about it in the
personality and character of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I shall draw upon Jesuit
sources of information, except when it will be necessary to state results, or
give estimates, which imply commendation. Then I shall quote freely from
sources outside of the Order. Otherwise, for the purpose of explaining and
analyzing domestic matters, these extraneous references would be imperfect
indeed.
The situation, which met the military view of the cavalier, lately the
knightly captain of Loyola, was a new one, on an old field of battle. The
demand, which it seemed to make upon tactical resources, was as intense as
the political and religious crisis which created the situation. From the year
1522 till 1540, while Ignatius was prospecting the scene in Europe, and
preparing to take an active part in it, he had time and the opportunities for
observing, what precisely, at that epoch, were the accumulated results of all
the Christian ages gone before; and why the results just then were only what
they were. The issue appeared fatally determined by social conditions
around, which more than neutralized the Christianity visible. Education, in
particular, was laboring under the action of causes, which had begun to
operate several centuries earlier, and which were then evidently working
themselves out to one final effort. That was the undermining of Christian
education.
In this respect, it was the same question which had confronted the
Augustines, the Basils, and Jeromes, of one thousand years before. But it
was a different state of the question. Augustine, the brilliant youth of Hippo
Regius in Africa, will serve as an instance of what the issue then had been.
He had made himself master of the very best results, which the public
schools of the time were able to accomplish in the most gifted of minds. But
he had lost his virtue. He lived to complain with bitterness, that it was

accounted a grievous error to pronounce homo "a man," without the "h," but
it was no error at all to hate a man, signified by the word, homo. The
consequence with him was that, when he became a Bishop of the Church,
he met the need of providing a Christian education, by instituting in his own
house a kind of school, for the moral and spiritual education of his clergy.
Thus arose the cathedral or canonical school. So too, the cloistral
schools came to flourish in the abbeys and the monasteries. And, even if
these two kinds of educational centres had not also been, as they really
were, in the Middle Ages, the preordained means for the salvation of
learning in Europe, they would still have had reason enough for their
existence, in the paramount necessity of continuing, for the tender age of
youth, the ministry of a virtuous education.
Events took a new turn with the rise and progress of the university
system. At first, the universities were mostly annexed to cathedral churches.
As they developed, the cloistral influence waned. And again, as they
developed still more, they presented phenomena which originated the
subsequent system of the Jesuits.
From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, as many as sixty-six of
these universities were in existence; sixteen of them are credited to
Germany; about as many to France; and the rest to Italy, Spain, and other
nations. It is not within my province to describe their formation, or the order
of their foundation. They received their charters from the Popes, who used
their power thus, and showed it under a form, which no age will be apt to
depreciate; least of all, our own. Addressing these habitations of "General
Studies" with the appellative, Universitas Vestra, the Sovereign Pontiffs
sent them on their course, and encouraged them in every line of Theology,
Law, or Medicine; whether all these lines were followed in each centre, or
respectively some here, some there. Orleans, Bourges, Bologna, Modena
professed Law, either as their specialty, or as their distinguishing faculty;
Montpellier, Salerno, Medicine; Padua, the Liberal Arts; Toledo,
Mathematics; Salamanca, and, above all, Paris, general culture, Philosophy,
and Theology.
These universities became such well-springs of learning, that for
Theology the Bishops' seminaries practically ceased to exist; and, to acquire
the general culture of the times, the children of the faithful no longer turned

to the monastic schools. Nay, in quite a contrary sense, the clergy and the
monks themselves, in pursuit of the best learning that the age could give,
left their cloisters for a while, and betook themselves to the universities.
They followed up that step by settling down there. Paris beheld the great old
orders of Augustinians, Benedictines, Carthusians, the Carmelites, the
Bernardines, all establishing monasteries or colleges; no otherwise than the
newest order of Trinitarians, which was chiefly made up of university men.
Two institutes arose, those of the Dominicans and Franciscans; who with
men at their head, like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, placed
themselves right in the heart of these intellectual centres; and they became
bulwarks of sound learning, as opposed to the inanities of a false
scholasticism. They kept the leaven of religion and virtue in the midst of
what was not quite a perverse generation, but was most certainly, from
whatever side we view it, a very dubious multitude, belonging, it is true, to
a Christian generation. Consider the 10,000 at Bologna, which was the
centre for Law studies; the 30,000 at Oxford; or the 40,000, all at one time
studying, or reckoned to be studying, in Paris, the acknowledged centre for
Theology.
An indiscriminate mass of humanity like this, pressed, thronged, and
crowded together, stimulated with all the ardor, and alive with all the
passions of youth, could not fail to be little better than a nursery for
indiscriminate license. Whatever might be the vigilance of the Church, or
however strenuous the exercise of legitimate authority, nothing in the usual
course of human society could prevent its becoming a prolific soil for the
propagation of every species of error. And, as during three hundred years
the intellectual and educational powers of Europe followed this course, the
law of evolution asserted itself in many directions.
On the one side, those tens of thousands of Christian youths, who were
aiming at all the posts of influence in Church and State, and who, entering
their native university, or journeying to foreign ones, began life there at as
early an age as twelve or fourteen years, to remain in this environment some
nine or twelve years more, became, as was natural, the living, swarming
members of a state of society so dissolute, that successive occupants of the
Papal See depicted the condition of things as one of moral contagion. In the
manner of thought and mind which prevailed, no form of theoretic error was
wanting. In philosophy, there was scepticism; in theology, heresy; while, in

politics, Cæsarism and absolutism became rife. Then, at the end of the
fifteenth century, the Renaissance came; and one of the first things, which it
expressly and formally did, was to renew in life, art, and politics, the same
old paganism, upon the ruins of which, so many centuries before,
Christianity had begun its upward and laborious ascent. Newly fashioning
then much of what was old, Christianity had augmented all this with so
much which was new, that in a thousand years it had made a Renaissance
possible. And now the form of this Renaissance threatened its own
ascendancy in morals and in life.
On the other hand, the old spirit of conservatism in religion, and of
preservation in the matter of morals, maintained itself for a time, through
those bodies of religious men and clergymen, who had left the cloister or
the seminary, to take up their abode in the secular seats of learning. It was
this spirit which originated the latest and best development of the
universities, that of the "college" system, established in their midst.
Salamanca had twenty colleges; Louvain, forty; Paris, fifty. Still, in the final
issue, there was now scarcely any reserve force of cloistral or episcopal
learning behind the universities, and outside of them. And the religious and
the clergy themselves, who at best were not a little out of their element from
the moment they migrated into the secular environment, conformed
insensibly to the conditions in which they found themselves, and so far
ceased to be the power they had been.
Witness, in the time of Ignatius, the Paris University, as described by
contemporary records. "It was fallen from its ancient splendor. The bonds of
discipline had been gradually relaxed; studies were abandoned; and with
masters, as with scholars, all love of letters, and respect for the rule, had
given place to sombre passions, to political hate, to religious fanaticism and
7
dissolute habits."
Here then we have two elements in the educational condition of
Europe, which explain the rise of the Jesuit system. One was the positive,
concrete fact, embodied in that great developed system of university
learning. The other was a negative element, the decline therein of the
essential moral life. These two factors are not mere antecedents in the order
of time, as being only prior to the method of Loyola. One of them, the
university system, supplied the very material out of which his method and

matter were taken; yes, and the men themselves, the Jesuits who applied the
principles of reform to education. The other factor, which I have called
negative, that decline of the essential moral life, was the adequate occasion,
which prompted Ignatius to approach the question of education at all. For
we may say with confidence that, if the universities of the sixteenth century
were still doing the work which originally they had been chartered to do,
the founder of the Society of Jesus would not only have omitted to draw out
his system as a substitute for them, and as an improvement upon them, but
he would have done, what he always did with anything good in existence;
he would have used what he found, and have turned his attention to other
things more urgent. He did use these university centres for his own young
men, until he had better educational institutions, and a better method of his
own in progress.
Hence the educational problem, when it falls under the notice of
Ignatius, presents itself as the identical one of old, that of moral
regeneration. But it is a different state of the same question. In
circumstances rendered acutely critical by the agitations of the epoch,
social, moral, and religious, it was a favorite contemplation of his to look
with compassion on men living like the blind, dying, and sinking into
eternal depths; on men talking, blaspheming, reviling one another; on their
assaulting, wounding, slaying one another; and all together going to eternal
8
perdition. It was from this moral point of view that he descended into the
arena of education.
But before he can teach men, or mould teachers of men, or even
conceive the first idea of legislating for the intellectual world, he must
himself first learn. There are two fundamental lessons which he does learn,
and they go to form him. One is that, among all pursuits, the study of virtue
is supreme; the other, that, supreme as virtue is, yet, without secular
learning, the highest virtue goes unarmed, and at best is profitable to oneself
alone. He learns these two lessons, not only in theory, but in practice. To
accomplish the purpose of the latter, he takes his seat upon the scholars'
bench, and begins to learn with little children. Though he may not meet
with brilliant success in the art of learning, still in the art of understanding
what learning is, and in the lessons of experience, he becomes a finished
scholar. He remains even then too much of a chevalier to give up a
cherished idea of his about a spiritual crusade in the East. And it is only

when thwarted in this project that, like a true knight, he simply turns to
another side of the field. He stays in the West. He is still the Captain of a
Company. But he becomes also a legislator among doctors; and, amid his
other works, he effects an educational reform.
In his whole campaign, we may discern two characteristics in the spirit
of his movements. One is that of defence, the other that of advance. His
method of defence showed itself in the reassertion of old principles, in the
conservatism of morals,—a plan of campaign, which determines the whole
frame of mind, and the social construction of the Company. It rests on the
principle of upholding what is, and not moving the ancient landmarks. On
the other hand, his advance is towards the solution of the highest questions
which can interest mankind. These formed part of the very object and
direction of the Order's march. And so it came to pass, that his Company
drew to itself that class of minds which are most powerfully arrested by the
prospect of solving such questions, especially when times are agitated. His
times were agitated, if any ever were, more so than our own, when the same
questions still must dominate. His were times of wars with Turks in the
East, and with Christians at home; of battles lost and won, with their effects
reaching into every household; of royal and imperial administrations
confused and overthrown; of new opinions without number; of the Church
losing ground along the whole line of the frontier, and withal new worlds
looming over an horizon, where from the beginning of time the unknown
had brooded in absolute darkness. At such a moment, "Defence and
Advance," or as the Papal authority expressed it in the solemn instrument
which chartered his Institute, Defensio ac propagatio fidei, were stirring
watchwords to men of parts, who felt restive under the inactivity and
inefficiency of older methods, on older lines.
I will not pause to say, that the personal poverty and exact obedience,
required in the new service, presented no obstacles to the minds and
characters which were otherwise attracted to his standard. The antecedents
of all antiquity seem to show that such conditions, to such minds, are rather
an inducement than a check. And if one takes notice that to this was added,
in the Order of Jesus, an absolute equality, whereby every formed member
binds himself to accept no dignity within or without, or, at least, to affect no
dignity at home or abroad, which will prejudice his full franchise as a
member, then, perhaps, the attractiveness of such a life, the conservatism

and intense concentration of the Order, as well as the alacrity and endurance
manifested in the service, will not appear inexplicable to the minds of this
age, in which, under a very different form, the same equality is called
liberty, is made to construct republics, to bring down monarchies, and
develop some of the most potent agencies for unfolding the energies of
men. Yet the liberty of this latter equality reflects but faintly, and as from a
broken surface, the freedom of him, who having liberated himself from the
shackles of the world, and from all solicitude as to his movements, office,
and place, finds in turn, as the German historian expresses it, "his own
9
personal development imposed upon him"; and, in the firm companionship
of one aim, formation, and life, enjoys the manifold support and ready
sympathy of individualities as developed as his own.
I shall narrate, in the first part, the facts of Ignatius' career, so far as to
indicate the stages of that magisterial art, by which he himself was formed,
and which then he reformed in the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. In the second
part, I shall sketch briefly the history of the Ratio itself, and analyze the
System as a theory and practice of education.

CHAPTER II.

KNIGHT, PILGRIM, AND SCHOLAR.

The story of the cavalier wounded on the ramparts of Pampeluna has
often been told. Loyola was not at the moment governor of the city, nor in
any responsible charge. But official responsibility was not necessary for
him to see the path of duty and follow it. As one bound to the service of his
sovereign by the title of honor and nobility, he retired to the citadel, when
the town surrendered; and then, when the ramparts began to give way under
the cannonading, he stood in the breach. A ball shattering the rock laid him
low, maimed in both his limbs. At once the defence collapsed. Cared for
chivalrously by those whose arms had struck him down in battle, he was
transported with every delicate attention to his castle of Loyola. It was
found that one of his limbs had been ill set. He had it broken again, to be set
aright. Meanwhile, instinct with all the ambition of a knight, belonging to a
chivalrous nation in an age of chivalry, he was not insensible to the charms
of society and affection. And, out of a sensitive care for his personal
appearance, he must needs have a protruding bone, which still threatened to
mar his figure, sawed off while he looked on. In the loneliness and tedium
of a sick-room, he whiled away the hours by dreaming of his ambitions and
his aspirations, and he sought to feed them with suitable nourishment. He
wanted a romance to read. There was none to be had. So, instead of the
novel which was not forthcoming, he took what they gave him, the Life of
Christ, and the Lives of some who had served Christ faithfully. The soldier
of the field and of blood felt the objects of his ambition change; he became
a soldier of the spirit and eternal life. And, after the experiences of his bed
of pain, and the protracted communings with another world, he arose
another man; he went forth a knight as ever, but not on an expedition
terminating as before. An evening and night spent in the sanctuary of

Montserrat, as once before he had passed a vigil of arms, when dubbed a
chevalier by the King of Navarre; a morning begun with the Holy Sacrifice
attended and Holy Communion received, opened to him a new era; and he
went forth, bound now by a new oath of fealty to the service of the King of
Heaven.
At the side of the altar in this sanctuary of Montserrat, the Abbot of the
monastery, eighty-one years later, committed to a marble tablet the record of
this event, for the perpetual memory of the future: "Blessed Ignatius of
Loyola here, with many prayers and tears, devoted himself to God and the
Virgin. Here, as with spiritual arms, he fortified himself in sack-cloth, and
spent the vigil of the night. Hence he went forth to found the Society of
Jesus, in the year MDXXII."
He first looked about him to find a retreat, and immerse himself in the
contemplation of time and eternity. It was a Saturday. John Sacrista Pascual
tells us that his mother, a devout lady of Manresa, was in the church that
morning; and, accompanied by two young men and three women, she was
at her devotions in the chapel of the Apostles. A young stranger came up
and accosted them. His clothing was of very common serge; for Ignatius
had given away his knightly robes to a poor man. The youth looked like a
pilgrim. He was not tall; he was fair in complexion and ruddy in cheek. His
bare head was somewhat bald. Altogether he was of a fine and grave
presence, and most reserved in look. He scarcely raised his eyes from the
ground. Coming up, he asked if there were a hospital anywhere which
might serve him for shelter. Regarding his noble and fair features, the lady,
as became a Christian woman, offered her services; if he would follow her
company, she would provide for him, in the best way possible. Courteously
and thankfully he accepted her offer, and followed the party as they left the
sanctuary. They proceeded slowly; for they noticed that he was lame.
However much they urged him, they could not induce him to ride upon the
ass. Three leagues away from Montserrat, they arrived at the little town of
Manresa; and he took up his residence in the common hospital for the poor
and pilgrims. Whatever alms or food was henceforth sent him first went to
others, whom, in these matters, up to the end of his life, he always
considered to be more in need than himself.
He now entered on his probation of Christian virtue. In the mind of the
Catholic Church, the degree of virtue which he practised is that accounted

heroic. As it is not for me to dwell on it here, I will pass it over with one
remark. That which is accounted ordinary Christian virtue, resting as it does
on faith and hope, on principles not barely natural but supernatural, is not
very intelligible to the world at large. Still less the heroic degree of the
same. Both however claim to be estimated by their own proper motives and
principles. When they enter into the very subject, which the biographer
means to treat, it appertains to his art not to ignore the objective motives
and reasons of things, as they operated in his subject. In the shortest
monograph, like the present, we cannot separate from the work, which he
did, the man who did it. And the man is made by his motives. It were bad
literary art to describe feats, which are confessedly great, and not to find
motives which are proportionate.
Ignatius, after a year more or less spent at Manresa, took his pilgrim's
staff and journeyed on foot to Italy, and thence to the Holy Land. It was in
the spirit of the old Crusaders, whose chivalry had a charm for him up to the
day many years later, when, with his first associates of the Company, he
endeavored once more to cross over from Italy to Palestine. Had he
succeeded on this later occasion, he would most probably never have
known the others who attached themselves to him; nor might history have
busied itself with him or with them.
At the date of his return from the Holy Land, we find that he has
advanced already to the second lesson in the development of his future. It is,
that mature in years as he is, and full of desires for doing good to his
neighbors, yet neither does mere piety place in his hands the instruments for
such work; nor, if study alone can give the means of apostolic zeal, can he
consider himself exempt from the law, that he must labor to acquire what
are only the results of labor. He was thirty-one years of age, when he betook
himself, after his night's vigil, to the cave of Manresa. He is two years older
now. So, at the age of thirty-three, he sits down on the school-bench at
Barcelona, and begins his Latin declensions.
Begrudging his studies the time which they demand exclusively, he
mistakes the situation, and allows himself the exercises of an apostolic life.
At his age, even supposing his earlier pursuits to have been more in
harmony with his present life of letters, he is not an apt pupil. However, he
labors conscientiously. After two years spent at Grammar, he is judged by

his teacher, who takes a lenient view of the case, to be competent for
approaching his higher studies.
He himself was dubious. His friends recommended him to ascend. He
still hesitated. But, receiving the same favorable opinion from a theologian
whom he consulted, Ignatius acquiesced, in accordance with his unvarying
rule, to follow competent direction. How unfortunate this step was for the
happy progress of his studies, but how advantageous for his experience as a
future legislator, I shall proceed to show.
Leaving Barcelona for Alcalà, he meant to enjoy the best advantages
which a great university could afford. He lived on alms as ever; and others
lived on the alms which he received. It was the year 1626. He entered upon
the study of Logic, using the Summa of Di Soto; also the Physics of
Aristotle; and he pursued besides the Master of Sentences.
He had stayed only a year and a half in this rich variety of pursuits,
scholastic as well as apostolic, when the novelties apparent in his manner of
life ended by making him a suspected character to the ecclesiastical
authorities. To a few, among the population of the city, his fruitful zeal
made him distinctly odious. The result was a juridical process against him,
which issued in a complimentary verdict, the Vicar of the diocese
pronouncing him and his companions quite blameless. But restrictions were
imposed regarding his future ministrations, since Ignatius was not yet in
holy orders. During a term of four years he was not to preach. After that
time, his progress in studies would enable him to honor that important
ministry, without giving offence. This was a deathblow to the aspirations of
the student. He made up his mind to go elsewhere, to the famous university
of Salamanca; and he turned his back on Alcalà.
The time was soon to come for a pleasant revenge; and apparently he
knew of it long before it came. Just six years after the foundation of his
Order, when he sent Francis Villanova to open a house at Alcalà, not only
did he find men of the university embracing his Institute, but, two years
after that, the whilom persecuted pilgrim received, in a single twelvemonth,
thirty-four Doctors into the Society, all from that one seat of learning. The
mere passing by of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who had become an
humble follower of Ignatius, made the choicest spirits flock to his standard;
and, all over Spain, colleges sprang up as if from the soil.

In Salamanca, where likewise he and his were to figure in the future,
the personal history of Ignatius is briefly told. In ten or twelve days after his
arrival, he was thrown into chains. He spent twenty-two days in prison.
When released, with the same commendation for himself and his doctrine as
he had received at Alcalà, but with a similar restriction on his action, he
thought it was not worth his while to repeat the same experiences at the
same cost. So, in spite of all the eloquence of dissuasion brought to bear on
him by friends, he took a new departure, which seemed plausible to him,
and therefore feasible. He would try his fortunes in another land, and
continue his studies in the greatest philosophical and theological centre of
the world, the University of Paris.
To any one who judged of things by an ordinary standard, the project
was not feasible. War was raging between Spain and France; the roads were
infested with hostile soldiery; many murders and robberies, committed on
the persons of travellers, were recently reported. But these and other
considerations of the kind had no weight with Loyola, to stay him in a
course once deliberately adopted. Accepting some alms from friends at
Barcelona, to obtain on the way the necessaries of life, he accomplished on
foot the whole journey from Barcelona to the French capital; where he
arrived at the beginning of February, A.D. 1528.
He has now had experience of prisons and chains, on the charge of
teaching error, or of being a dangerous enthusiast. One of the calmest and
coolest of men, who never acted, but he first calculated, and who never
allowed himself to approach a conclusion, without first freeing himself from
all bias and impulse, he had suffered repeated arrest for setting people
beside themselves, for moving them to give up all they had in behalf of
piety, or charity, and inducing them to go and live on alms themselves; nay,
perhaps throw in their lives, talents and acquirements, to serve others gratis.
The founder of the Jesuits, himself the first of an Order which has the
reputation of being the staunchest upholder, as well of authority in every
rank of society, as of the truths taught by the Catholic Church, was put in
chains, or arraigned by the ecclesiastical authorities almost wherever he
appeared, though always acquitted as blameless.
In a letter written at a subsequent period of his life to King John III of
Portugal, Ignatius sums up his experiences, as including two
imprisonments, at Alcalà and Salamanca; three judicial investigations, at

Alcalà, Salamanca, and Paris; later on, another process at Paris; then one at
Venice; finally another at Rome;—eight investigations about this one man
10
in Spain, France, and Italy. Wherever he came, in after life, it passed as a
proverb among the Fathers, that his appearance was the sure harbinger of a
storm, soon to break out against them somewhere, in the social or religious
world. He braved all this fury in his own manner, weighing as deliberately
every word he spoke, and measuring every step he took, as when he had
stood in the breach of the ramparts at Pampeluna. But his personal
experience made him commit to the sacred keeping of the "Spiritual
Exercises" an important principle of liberal and humane prudence. It is
couched in the first words of his little book, to guide teacher and learner
alike. He says:—
"In the first place, it is to be supposed that every pious Christian man
should be more ready to interpret any obscure proposition of another in a
good rather than a bad sense. If, however, he cannot defend the proposition
in any way, let him inquire of the speaker himself; and, if then the speaker is
found to be mistaken in sentiment or understanding, let him correct the
same kindly. If this is not enough, let him employ all available means to
render him sound in principle and secure from error."
How far the personal experiences of its founder attached by a law of
heritage to his Order, I can hardly undertake to describe. But, just for the
sake of completing the family picture, I will mention the heads of a doleful
list, which an historian of the Society catalogues. He enumerates, as objects
of attack and misrepresentation, the founder himself, the name of the
Society of Jesus, the dress, rules, manners, books, doctrine, schools,
sermons; the poverty, obedience, gratuitous service of the Jesuits; that they
affected a kind of literary empire, under the spur of an intolerable ambition;
that they were lightly tinctured, and had just sipped of many things, of
which they had nothing solid to offer; yes, that they wanted to have it
believed there was no sanctuary of the Muses, no shrine of sacred or human
wisdom in existence, outside of their own colleges; that, from these offices
of theirs, all arts and sciences came forth, done up in the best style. "In fine,
whatever they do or don't do, granted that there are many false charges
which their enemies concoct against them,—things too extreme to be
believed,—granted that they are acquitted of many vices laid to their
account, never certainly will they escape the suspicion, at least, which these

11
charges excite." We believe it. There is a good homely English proverb
which expresses the very same idea—about the happy adhesiveness of a
clayey compound when cleverly thrown.
This retrospect of history was taken, exactly one hundred years after the
foundation of the Order. The story had begun some thirteen years before it
was founded. When Ignatius became a responsible leader with associates,
he had recourse more than once to the process of justice, to clear his
reputation in full form. But, beyond the cases which rendered such defence
prudent and necessary, his practical policy was expressed in a practical
maxim, which after him his successor, James Laynez, had often in his
mouth: Deus faxit ne unquam male loquantur et vera dicant! "God grant
they never talk ill of me and be saying the truth!" Indeed, as there is no use
in trying to change men, for they will never be born anew, Ignatius looked
rather in another direction for the solution of difficulties; expecting that
troubles, which defied other treatment, might still not survive their authors.
Speaking of a powerful adversary, who was raising a great storm at Toledo
and Alcalà, and whom it took the royal council and then a brief from the
Pope to quell, Ignatius said of him to Ribadeneira: "He is old, the Society is
young; naturally the Society will live longer than he will." The same
dignitary, suppressed though he was, rose again in violent opposition.
Whereupon Jouvancy makes the apt remark: "So difficult is it for even the
most eminent men, and so rare a thing, when once they have conceived a
12
notion, to get it out of their heads again!" No, men are not born anew.
It is time now to contemplate Ignatius of Loyola at Paris, where some
of the most precious elements in his educational experience are to be
acquired.

CHAPTER III.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. ROME.

Voluntary poverty, the austerest manner of life, the ungrateful labor of
studies, and the perpetual self-discipline of a mind like his, ever bent on
lofty thoughts and endeavoring to dominate the very first movements of his
soul, all these conditions, added to the climate and the nature of the
situation in which Ignatius found himself at Paris, brought such a strain to
bear on his broken-down constitution, that, to keep up his course at all, he
had to interrupt it awhile, and give some relief to his overtaxed body, or, as
he held it to be, his "beast of burden."
And what about the studies themselves? If they had been a brilliant
success thus far, they could scarcely have outlived such conditions of
existence. As it was, they were as good as if they had never begun; or
somewhat worse. He had gone about them the wrong way. Whatever
solidity of learning he had kept objectively in view, something else, equally
important with solidity, had been unwittingly omitted. That was a good
method. Logic, Philosophy, and Theology, all taken up together, and with
such compendious haste, now went together in his mind like a machine out
of joint; and his speed was nil! The Latin language itself, the indispensable
vehicle of all learning, was just so far possessed by him as to show him that,
to be of any real use, it had better be commenced all over again.
Here his character asserted itself. And in no particular of his life is he
more like himself, more thorough, more of a brave cavalier, "governing
himself, in great things and small, by reasons most high," than when, having
little facility for such pursuits, and less inclination, he makes up his mind,
after a short breathing spell, to sit down again at the age of thirty-seven
years, and resume his Latin declensions! In the college of Montague, he

spends about two years acquiring this tongue. Meanwhile, he tries various
plans to find wherewithal to live.
I need not dwell on the nature of this great centre into which Ignatius
had penetrated, an unknown stranger, just one of its tens of thousands of
scholars. It had more than two scores of colleges. To this, the queen of
universities, though she was going to be no kind alma mater to him and his
Order, still the recollections of Loyola in his future legislation would always
turn back with reverence. His first Professors for the Roman College, the
typical institution of the Society, would be taken from those of his men who
were Doctors of this university. And, whatever might be the moral condition
and the religious lassitude of the university men, as compared with this
penniless stranger, in 1529, occasions were to come in after times, when
they showed themselves not unworthy of the enemy whom they fought to
the death. When the plague of 1580 made a desert about them, the
university men and the Jesuits, otherwise never seen together, save in the
lists and face to face, now were everywhere, and fell fast, side by side on
the field of Christian charity.
For the understanding of the Jesuit system, in its origin and its form,
attention must always be paid, in the first place, to the kinship subsisting
between it and the Paris University. There are, besides, many other degrees
of relationship, which do not go unacknowledged, in the formation of the
Ratio Studiorum. The system of the English universities may be recognized
in the line of ancestry. Whatever was best anywhere enters the pedigree; as
Lord Bacon takes note, when delivering himself like a good philosopher,
but also like a good Protestant, he eulogizes and stigmatizes in the same
breath: "The ancient wisdom of the best times," he says, "did always make a
just complaint, that states were too busy with their laws, and too negligent
in point of education; which excellent part of the ancient discipline hath
been in some sort revived, of late times, by the colleges of the Jesuits; of
whom, although in regard of their superstition I may say, 'quo meliores, eo
deteriores'; yet in regard of this, and some other points concerning human
learning and moral matters, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy
13
Pharnabaus, 'Talis quum sis, utinam noster esses.'"
In the University of Paris, then, as his real alma mater, Ignatius
commenced his course of Philosophy in the year 1529. He finished it by

standing successfully the severe examination, called examen lapideum, "the
rocky test," considered the most searching of all in the Paris Academy. He
thus became a Master of Arts, after Easter, A.D. 1534; having become
Licentiate in the previous year. Particulars about his four examiners in the
"rocky test," his graduation, the degrees of his companions, with the dates,
14
as found in the Paris records, are given by the Bollandists.
He now entered on his theological studies. It was evident that the
obstructions, which had thwarted so many of his efforts heretofore, were
disappearing one by one. And more than that; the means were being placed
in his hands for the great work before him. These means were a company of
men. He was in the midst of a devoted little band, each one of whom he had
won individually. They were Peter Lefèvre and Francis Xavier; James
Lainez and Alphonsus Salmeron, both of them mere youths; there were
Claude Le Jay, John Coduri, Nicholas Bobadilla, Simon Rodriguez; and
lastly, the only one who at this time was a Priest among their number,
Pasquier Brouet. Among these, never at their head though considered a
father by all, never leading the way, though on that account showing
himself the more effectively a leader, Ignatius was all in all to each one of
them. He had previously acquired some valuable experience in selecting
and forming companions. But such as had gathered round him in Spain
were no longer with him. Each one of his present party was a picked man.
When six of them were sufficiently advanced, he and they held a
solemnity, which was the real birthday of the Society of Jesus. On the
fifteenth day of August, 1534, they took a vow, in the church of the Blessed
Virgin, at Montmartre in Paris. They bound themselves to renounce all their
goods by a given date, and betake themselves to the Holy Land; failing in
that, they would throw themselves at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff, and
offer him their absolute service. Meanwhile they pursued their studies; and,
as each of the two following years brought round the fifteenth day of
August, it found them in the same place, and with the same solemnity, and
with an enlarged number, renewing this vow. The legal birthday of the
Order came only with the Papal charter on September 27, 1540.
I shall pass over the movements of Loyola, when bidden to go and
recuperate in his native climate. He returned to Spain, in 1535, leaving his
companions to study till 1537; and he settled the affairs of his young

Spanish associates at their homes. All, when the time came, disposed of
their goods in a summary way. They gave to the poor, reserving nothing,
except what would pay their way to Venice, and thence to the East. Their
principle was, Dispersit, dedit pauperibus, "He hath distributed, he hath
given to the poor." Besides this, Xavier, at the date appointed, gave up the
last stage of his theological studies, and resigned the glory of receiving the
Doctor's cap in Paris; the brilliant young Professor sacrificed the one thing
which had appealed most powerfully to his ambition and imagination.
Laynez was recuperating from a severe illness, and could do scarcely more
than move. Nevertheless they are all in Venice, when the early spring of
1537 arrives.
Ignatius himself, meeting them there, has accomplished the work which
faced him thirteen years before, and which he had taken in hand with his
Latin grammar. He is now forty-six years of age.
There are three lines of activity, in which the ability and energy of
Ignatius Loyola stand out before the world. One is the capacity he showed
as a governor or leader of men; another is a similar competency to direct
souls in the spiritual life; the third is that, which we are considering at
present, his legislative genius in the intellectual order. Admitting the innate
talent which must have been the basis and foundation of his gift for
governing, we may affirm of all the rest, that the best part of his sagacity
and tact had been acquired by personal experience. He learnt how to act by
suffering. He perfected his natural gift of guiding and commanding by first
submitting to all the contingencies of human life.
We may develop the meaning of this in the present matter, pedagogy;
and the meaning of it will help to unfold the subject. In quest of the
necessaries of life, he spent intervals of his studious career in travelling
from Paris to a great distance. He found himself returning each year to
Belgium, always on foot: he visited Rouen, and even reached London, to
address the Spanish merchants there. It does not seem to have been
parsimony on their side that kept him in such straitened circumstances. It
was his principles which were not all in keeping with his conditions of life.
He was endeavoring to combine the life of a student with absolute poverty;
and he aggravated the inconveniences of such a state of dependence by
placing no limits to the exercise of his charity. It was his deliberate choice;
for he fed his mind continuously upon the life and example of the King, to

whom he had sworn his service, Christ poor and in labor from his youth. He
spoke afterwards from the wisdom of experience, when he said, that in
absolute penury the pursuit of science cannot easily subsist, and the culture
of the mind is impeded by the duties of providing for the body. Hence he
legislated that, though poverty was to be the basis of his Institute, still the
members, as long as they were engaged in studies, should be set free from
all care of seeking the means of subsistence.
He had endeavored to combine a life of apostolic ministrations, though
not yet a Priest, with that requisite absorption of mind, which alone can
warrant scholastic success. And he saw what it had come to. The very
esteem and love, which he entertained for the exercises of the higher
spiritual life, interrupted with intrusive thoughts that application to study,
which was the duty in hand. In order that no such intrusion of even the most
sacred pursuits should obstruct the onward progress of the members in
learning, he defined by rule the measure of such occupations, as long as
study was the main duty.
Diseases weakened him. Therefore he took the greatest pains to protect
the health of the members. While he lived, he did this with a personal and
paternal solicitude. In his Institute, he provided the same for the future.
On commencing his studies, he embraced many branches at the same
time; and he had suffered all the consequences of disorder. Grasping at too
many things, he lost all; and he had then to retrieve all with loss of time. To
obviate any recurrence of such costly experiences, he provided that the
courses followed in the Society should have nothing disordered in them,
nothing mutilated or curtailed; everything was to be in method and system;
until, system and method having been carried out in every line, and the
special good of each department having been secured sufficiently for the
general plan, specialized perfection should be consulted, after all that; and
this was to be the appointed life of individuals, while a rounded and
complete education remained the culture of all.
Once in later years he let fall these words, relative to his early
experience: "He would very much question whether another but himself,
having to struggle with so many difficulties and obstacles in the course of
his studies, would have given so long a time to the acquisition of the
15
sciences." Thus then was he oppressed with poverty, without the

satisfaction of acting under orders; suffering so many diseases, and yet
looking neither to honor, dignity, nor other human reward, such as is wont
to draw men on, and animate them under fatigue; finding no pleasure nor
satisfaction in the life of studies, an inducement which is so great an
alleviation to mortals in the work before them. And, in all these respects, he
was quite unlike the very men whom he singled out, and enlisted in the new
service of devotion; unlike Francis Xavier, who had seen with perfect
indifference all his brothers take to their ancestral profession of arms, or to a
courtier's life, while he himself, with the whole force of an ambitious soul,
ran on successfully and brilliantly in his chosen career, as a Professor;
unlike Laynez and Salmeron, whose extraordinary gifts had made them
Doctors of Philosophy and Divinity, while still, in age, little more than mere
youths; very unlike by nature to the gentle make of Lefèvre, who began life
as a shepherd boy, and ever retained a pastoral sweetness of character.
Unlike all of them, Loyola, a soldier born and bred, and still true to his
profession, discarded every consideration of taste, comfort, and
convenience, in view of one objective point to be reached: through thirteen
years he struggled towards it; and, when that time of probation was over, he
was a marked man. According to the law, that like attracts like, and like
begets like, he was surrounded by a company of marked men, few if you
count their number, many if you consider the type. His name was widely
known, and favorably so. When he had been paying five times over the
price of his daily bread, by travelling to Belgium, to Rouen, and London,
and collecting there some Spanish florins, the event seemed to show that he
had been but opening the door, here and there and everywhere, for his
colleges and universities in the future; albeit, if they came, adversaries came
too, in proportion. But clouds and storms purify the air. When they come
again, they will still leave the air the clearer for their coming. If the laws of
human conduct are consistent in one way, they are consistent in another.
The disturbance comes, but it does its work and goes.
M. Cretineau-Joly, the popular French historian in our own times,
speaking of events at a later juncture in the life of Loyola, makes the
following observation: "Loyola," he says, "could apply to himself admirably
well that proverb which says, 'When a Spaniard is driving a nail into the
wall, and his hammer breaks, the Spaniard will drive the nail in with his
head!'" Loyola would have his idea go through at any cost.

We shall now follow him to Italy and Rome.
In the year 1537, Rome was not quite the luxurious capital which had
fallen under the sword of the Constable of Bourbon. The eternal city, whose
Papal Sovereigns have left it on record from time immemorial, that in no
part of the world were they less recognized as lords than in their own city,
had undergone a purification, which differed, not substantially, but only in
its consequences, from what was called for, over half the countries of
Europe. The riches, the luxury, the idleness, which elsewhere resulted in a
complete change of religious history for many of the northern nations, had
here brought about a catastrophe which sobered minds. And no longer an
exclusive absorption in elaborate sloth prevented a large portion of the
influential element here from doing honor to the Queen of European
civilization, by doing good to the world.
All roads still led to Rome. Thence too all roads diverged. It was still
true, that whatever commanded this centre could reach out, if only by the
force of prestige, to the uttermost limits of the civilized domain. Whatever
this venerable source of authority chartered to go on its way, in strength and
benediction, had reason to behold, in the privilege so bestowed, the
auspicious opening of a useful career, intellectual or moral. It is so to-day,
though not in a temporal sense. The charter, or confirmation, or bull, which
conveys the recognition of the Church's Head to a project, a cause, or an
institute, bestows thereupon a moral power which naturally transcends
every franchise in the gift of the most powerful governments. Compared
with it, they are local. And, standing no comparison with it, under a moral
aspect, they do not pretend to such a power as touches the inner conscience
of nations.
When therefore Ignatius turned to the great Rome, he was like the
skilful commander whom he describes in a certain place; he was possessing
himself of the vantage-ground, taking the citadel. It would be more correct
to say, as all history avers, that he meant to defend that citadel, the See of
Rome. He had waited nearly a year at Venice, to carry out his project of
voyaging to Jerusalem. War made that impossible. Now, in accordance with
the express proviso in their vow, he and his companions repaired to Rome,
and offered their services to the spiritual head of Christendom.

To win approbation for a new religious institute was no easy matter;
then less than ever. The recent occurrences in the North had been due to
this, among other moral causes, that the later history of certain religious
orders, which centuries before had begun one way, latterly had taken a
novel and fatal turn. Still, in spite of criticism and hostility, chiefly in the
high places, Ignatius received at length the approving word of the Pope; and
his Institute was chartered with a bull of confirmation. Henceforth, the
evolution of events belongs to general history. What concerns us, in this
chartering of the plan and Institute of Ignatius Loyola, is the new character
it gave to education, and the epoch it made in the intellectual history of the
world. To explain this matter, we may follow briefly the deliberations which
the Fathers held, and in the course of which, among other conclusions, they
came to decide upon reëstablishing education.
It was the fourth of May, 1539, a year and a half before their services
were finally accepted by the Pope. Such of the ten members as were then in
Rome occupied themselves, after the labors of the day, in nightly
deliberations, which were protracted during three months. They decreed,
among other things, that they should teach boys and uncultured persons the
necessary points of Christian doctrine, at least once a year, and for a definite
time. This decree obviously is not about that secondary and superior
education of youth, which is our subject; neither does it concern primary
education, of which there is nowhere question in the Institute of the Jesuits.
But, as the Constitution subsequently drawn up says, "this work of charity,
in the Divine service, is more likely to be consigned to oblivion, and to pass
into disuse, than other duties more specious in their character, as
16
preaching," etc.
Teaching Christian doctrine pertains to the duty of those who have the
ordinary care of souls. No duty of this kind, as belonging to the ordinary
sphere of the Church's clergy, would Ignatius assume as characteristic of his
own Institute, except this one. He was, indeed, more than ready to throw in
his contribution of personal zeal and charity, for the furtherance of all kinds
of benevolence and beneficence. Personally, at the cost of untiring activity,
he sowed, as Genelli well observes, the first seeds of those ameliorations in
social life, and of those humane institutions, which are so marked a feature
17
of later ages. He was an original benefactor of humanity at the turning-

point of modern history, which has since become an era of social organized
beneficence. Urban VIII solemnly testifies, that Ignatius organized homes
for orphans, for catechumens, for unprovided women; that the poor and the
sick, that children and the ignorant and prisoners, were all objects of his
18
personal solicitude. These works of zeal and charity became, in
subsequent years, the specific reasons of existence for various other
communities, which rose in order and in number. But he did not adopt them
as specific in his Institute; nor did he assume as characteristic anything
within the province of the ordinary parochial clergy, except the teaching of
Christian doctrine to boys and uncultured persons. The rest he attended to,
while not provided for; ready to drop them, when provision should be made
for them.
But he did assume five works, which were outside of the ordinary lines;
19
and, among them, is the subject of our study, the Education of Youth. As
the selection of all these specialties for his Institute reveal the commander's
eye resting on a field, where many issues were being fought out, so, in
particular, his selection of education as a specialty betrayed the same
masterly thought, in the institutions he projected, in the scope he proposed,
and, above all, in the formation of his teachers.
There had been, among the Fathers deliberating, a difference of
opinion, with respect to Christian doctrine. Bobadilla had dissented from
making that work the subject of a special vow; and the others deferred to
him. But there was unanimity with regard to every other topic of
deliberation, including this one, "the education of youth, having colleges in
20
universities."
As defined by Jesuit authors, the education of youth means the
gratuitous teaching of Letters and Science, from almost the first beginnings
of Grammar up to the culminating science of Sacred Theology, and that for
21
boys and students of every kind, in schools open to all. Evidently these
university men, who were engaged in drawing up the Institute, considered
that, if the greatest Professor's talents are well spent in the exposition of the
gravest doctrines in Theology, Philosophy, and Science, neither he, nor any
one else, is too great to be a schoolmaster, a tutor, and a father, to the boy
passing from childhood on to the state of manhood,—that boyhood which,

as Clement of Alexandria says, furnishes the very milk of age, and from
which the constitution of the man receives its temper and complexion.
It is requisite here to observe, that there was no such thing in existence,
as State Education. Two reasons may briefly be mentioned for this, one of
them intrinsic to the question, the other an historical fact. The intrinsic and
essential reason was the sacred character of education, as being an original
function, belonging to the primary relations of parents and child. States, or
organized commonwealths, come only in the third or fourth degree of
human society. It was much later, in that short interval between the
extinction of the Society of Jesus and the outburst of the French Revolution,
that new theories came to be proclaimed, as La Chalotais did openly
proclaim them, of a bald and blank deism in social life, and therefore of
secularizing education. Between deism and secularization the connection
was reasonable. For, if the rights of God went by the board, there was no
reason why the rights of parents and children should remain. All alike, the
22
persons and "souls of men," fell back into the condition in which
Christianity had found them; they became chattels of the state, mannikins of
a bureau in peace, "food for powder" in war.
The other reason was an historical fact. For all the purposes of charity,
mercy, and philanthropy, there were powers in existence, as part of the
normal religious life of general Christian society. They were the same
powers that had made Christendom, and had carried it on so far as the
Christian world, the same to which we owe the civilization of to-day. More
than that. As there is not a single work of charity or mercy, say St. Thomas
Aquinas, which may not be made the object of an institution, religious men
or women devoting their lives as a service to God, in a special service
towards their neighbors; so, in point of fact, there were very few such
objects which had not originated some service of religious self-consecration
in their behalf.
Now, as operating on education in particular, the powers in the world
were, as they had been, almost entirely clerical or religious. In the
universities, there were clergymen and Religious. All the great institutions
had the religious cast about them. The old ones have it still. Traces of it
hang about Oxford and Cambridge. The Church founded them and
supervised them. Kings protected them. And the highest outcome of their

schools was Divinity in its widest sense; that is to say, the triple knowledge
of God, and of man as signed with the light of God's countenance, and of
nature as bearing the impress of God's footstep. As it was in the universities,
so, outside too, all pedagogic influence had rested with religious men.
But no one of all these religious powers was bound by its constitution
to this labor of education, which Loyola now, formally and expressly,
assumed as part of his work. It is at this stage of history, that education
enters into the fundamental plan of a Religious Order. This is a fact, and an
epoch, of prime importance in Pedagogics.
For, inasmuch as education entered thus into the plan of a Religious
Order, it became the vocation of a moral body, which, while incorporated
like other bodies, did not confine itself, like single universities, to limited
circumstances of place; it was a body diffusive. And so with regard to
conditions of time; though all corporations give an assurance of perpetuity,
a diffusive body like this does more; it multiplies the assurance, in
proportion to its own diffusiveness.
And again, inasmuch as the body which undertook the work of
education was a religious one, bound to poverty, it guaranteed that the
members would endow the work, at their own cost, with that which is the
first, the essential, and most expensive endowment, among all others,—the
labors, the attainments, and the lives of competent men, all gratuitously
given. This endowment, which is so substantial, is besides so far-reaching,
that no other temporal foundation would be needed, were it not that the
necessaries of life, and the apparatus for their work, are still necessary to
living men, even though they live in personal poverty.
Thus then it was that Ignatius took in charge the secondary and superior
education of the Christian world, as far as his services should be called for:
he threw into the work the endowment of a Religious Order. This, as the
sequel proved, meant the whole revival of learning. Lord Bacon bears
witness to it in a few words, when he says, that the Jesuits "partly in
themselves, and partly by the emulation and provocation of their example,
23
have much quickened and strengthened the state of learning." Father
Daniel gives some of the details in a summary way. He says: "The
exclusively University régime of the late centuries replaced, for a notable
portion of students, by a scholastic discipline much more complete;

Scholastic Philosophy and Theology renovated, through the care applied to
prevent young men from throwing themselves too early into the disputes of
the schools; in fine, Literature and Grammar resuming the place they had
lost in the twelfth century, and, over and above that, enjoying the new
resources created for their use by the Renaissance; all this I call a capital
fact in the history of the human mind, and even in the history of the
24
Church."
After the time of Ignatius, other religious congregations, fortified with
their own special means for respective departments of activity, entered upon
the same general field of work. They were the Oratorians, the Barnabites,
the Fathers of the Pious Schools, the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and
others whose names may occur in the course of this essay. And, for the
education of women, inferior and superior alike, congregations of devoted
religious women came into being, and opened their convents to supply the
best and highest culture.
For fear that, in the execution of this plan, and in their other enterprises
of devotion and zeal, any secondary intentions or results, with regard to
power and office, might mar the purity of the work and defeat the main
object, the same men, whose future under the generalship of such a leader
was about to open as one of transcendent influence in the civilized world,
bound themselves by vow never to accept any dignity or office in the
Church. Naturally they should keep aloof from affairs of state. In fact, it
would be incompatible with their own purposes of literary and scientific
competence, to leave themselves at the mercy of other men's views, and be
drafted into posts outside of the Institute, and be placed in an impossible
situation for working out the specific end intended. It would be suicidal too.
Just when a man was capable of continuing his kind, he would be lost to the
body, and be rendered incapable thereby of propagating his own type of
eminence. Besides, without touching upon the inner reasons of the spiritual
life, which made this resignation of all honors desirable, it is a fact standing
out in clear relief, as history sketches the marvellous fecundity of an Order
requiring such a high level of attainments, that many of the choicest souls
have felt specially attracted to a kind of life, which at one and the same time
satisfied their ideas of Christian perfection, and cut them off from all the
paths of worldly glory.

And now, to mention in the last place another point, which is equally
important for understanding the educational history of the Order, and to the
general mind is equally obscure with some of those mentioned already,
there was introduced the principle of religious obedience. It was sanctioned
25
by a unanimous vote. The Fathers had concluded the first deliberation,
whether they should form a society at all; and they had decided in the
26
affirmative sense. Then the question took this phase. If they were to found
a closely-knitted society, they could do so only by assuming a strict bond.
That was none other than a strict obedience.
On this head, as on all others that came in order, they began the
deliberation by reasoning, one day, in an adverse sense, all having prepared
their minds to emphasize every objection which they could find against it.
The day following, they argued in a positive sense. The motives in favor of
strict obedience won their unanimous assent. They were such as these:—
If this congregation undertook the charge of affairs, and the members
were not under orders, no one could be held responsible for an exact
administration of the charge. If the body were not bound together by
obedience, it could not long persevere; yet this was their first intention, to
remain associated in a permanent body. Whence they concluded that
scattered as they would be, and already had been, in assiduous and diverse
labors, they must be united by a strict principle of subordination, if they
were to remain such a body. Another argued thus: Obedience begets
heroism of virtue; since the truly obedient man is most prompt to execute
whatever duty is assigned him by one, whom, as by a religious act, he
regards as being in the place of God, and signifying to him God's will:
wherefore obedience and heroism go together.
This reasoning seems to be enforced by the history of all great nations,
in the crises of their military and other public affairs. But, as is clear, the
principles of religious obedience are of a different order; they are on a
higher plane; and they reach much farther in time and eternity, than those of
obedience elsewhere.
Here then we discern, sufficiently for present purposes, the meaning
and historical location of this Institute. The members have cut themselves
off from the possession of all private property, by the voluntary engagement

to poverty, and thereby they have prepared the endowment, on which
education will chiefly rest,—that is to say, the endowment consisting of the
men to teach, and their services tendered gratis. Position and dignity are
alike rendered inaccessible by an express vow of the members professed.
Obedience keeps the organization mobile as a company of trained soldiers.
And, if any observant mind, well acquainted with the course of human
affairs, detects in these principles some reasons for success, normal,
habitual, and regular, in the face of unnumbered obstacles, and of
unremitting hostility, his view will be singularly corroborated when he rises
to a plane higher, and regards the same principles as "religious," carrying
with them the sanction of divine worship; which I should be loath to call
"enthusiasm," much less "fanaticism." These sentiments are never very
prudent, nor enlightened, nor cool; they are either very natural or are short-
lived. A mild fever of fanaticism can scarcely produce high results; and a
high fever of the same can scarcely last three hundred and fifty years, with
perpetuity still threatening. But I would call this phenomenon, in its origin,
religious devotion; in its consequences, a supernatural efficiency; and,
taking it all in all, that which is called a grace of vocation.
On the 27th day of September, 1540, the Society of Jesus received from
the See of Rome its bull of confirmation, by which it became a chartered
body of the Church. While these pages were being penned, the 27th day of
September came by, 1890. It was the anniversary of that foundation, three
hundred and fifty years ago.

CHAPTER IV.

COLLEGES AS PROPOSED IN THE JESUIT
CONSTITUTION.

The written rule about the system of education is found in a double
stage of development. The first is that in which Loyola left it: it gives us the
outline. The second is that in which Aquaviva completed it: this presents us
with the finished picture. Likewise in the historical course of administration
out in the world, the development is twofold. It runs its first course from
Loyola to Aquaviva, while experience was still tentative. Its second course
was subsequent to Aquaviva, when experience, having gathered in its
results, had only to apply the approved form. This was subject thenceforth
to none but incidental changes, as times and places change. And, for these
contingencies, the application remained expressly and always pliable.
Hence, whatever was embodied in the Ratio Studiorum, as completed,
had been the result of the most varied experience before legislating, an
experience in the life of the Order extending over fifty-nine years. Whatever
this universal experience had not yielded as a positive result, or as
applicable to all places, was not embodied. Teachers are different; national
customs vary; vernacular tongues are not the same. With regard to these
mutable elements, the maxim of the Order in studies, in teaching, in
conducting colleges, was the same as that which it proposed to itself in the
various other functions of practical life. An exponent of the Institute states
the maxim thus: "One should have a most exact knowledge of the country,
nation, city, manner of government, manners of the people, states of life,
27
inclinations, etc.; and this from histories, from intercourse, etc." General
indications alone are given with regard to these variable factors. The same
is done with respect to new sciences, which from the time of the

Renaissance were felt to be approaching and developing. Subsequent
legislation arises to meet them as they come.
While the Fathers were carrying on the same deliberations to which I
referred in the preceding chapter, a resolution was taken to leave the
drafting of a Constitution in the hands of those who should remain in Italy.
Circumscribing the task still more, they decided to appoint a committee of
two, who should address themselves to this work, and report to the rest. The
general assembly when convened would issue the final decree. Whatever
that should be, such of those present as might then be absent hereby
endorsed it beforehand.
Their small number of ten was already reduced to six members present,
the other four being scattered in divers countries. They designated as a
commission Fathers Ignatius and John Coduri. Soon afterwards Coduri
died, and the rest were distributed through the countries of Europe, Africa,
and the far East. During the following years, Laynez, who was for some
time Provincial of Italy, remained more regularly than the rest within the
reach of Ignatius. For this reason, therefore, besides several others, we may
understand why Ignatius paid such a high tribute to this eminent man, when
he said, as Ribadeneira tells us, that "to no one of the first Fathers did the
Society owe more than to Laynez." Whereupon the historian Sacchini
observes: "This, I believe, he said of Laynez, not only on account of the
other eminent merits of so great a man, and, in particular, for devising or
arranging the system of Colleges; but most especially because the
foundations, on which this Order largely rests, were new, and therefore
likely to excite astonishment; and Laynez, having at command the resources
of a vast erudition, was the person to confirm and commend them to public
opinion. And that this praise was deserved by Laynez will appear less
dubious to any one who considers that other period also, during which he
was himself General; if one reckons how many points, as yet unshaped and
inceptive, in the management of the Society, were reduced to form and
perfected by Laynez; how widely it was propagated and defended by
28
him."
But to return to Ignatius. After ten years of government, he gathered
together in Rome such of the first Fathers as could be had, besides
representatives from all the Provinces. Forty-seven members were present.

He submitted to them, in general assembly, the Constitution as now drawn
up, and as acted upon in practical life, during those ten years. The Jesuits
present did not exhaust the number of those whose express opinions were
desired. That not a single one of the principal Fathers might be omitted in
the deliberation, he sent copies of the proposed code of laws to such as were
absent. With the suggestions and approbations received from all these
representative men he was not yet content. Two more years had elapsed
when, having embodied the practical results of an ever-widening
experience, he undertook to promulgate the Constitution, by virtue of the
authority vested in him for that purpose. But he only promulgated the rule;
he did not yet exercise his authority to the full, and impose it as binding. He
desired that daily use might bring out still farther, how it felt under the test
of being tried, amid so many races and nations. Thus 1553 came and went;
and he waited, until the whole matter should be revised and approved once
more by the entire Society in conclave. His death intervened in 1556.
Two years later, representatives from the twelve provinces of the Order
met together, and elected James Laynez as successor to Father Ignatius.
Examining once more this Constitution in all its parts, receiving the whole
of it just as it stood with absolute unanimity, and with a degree of
veneration, they exercised the supreme authority of the Order, and
confirmed this as the written Constitution of the Society of Jesus. By this
act nothing was wanting to it, even from the side of Papal authority. Yet,
that every plenitude of solemnity might be added to it, they presented it to
the Sovereign Pontiff, Paul IV, who committed the code to four Cardinals
for accurate revision. The commission returned it, without having altered a
word, From that time, whatever general legislation has been added, has
entered into the corpus juris, or "Institute" at large, as supplementing or
explaining the "Constitution," which remains the fundamental instrument of
the Institute.
In the Constitution there are ten parts. The fourth is on studies. In
length, this fourth part alone fills up some twenty-eight out of one hundred
and eleven quarto pages in all, as it stands printed in the latest Roman
edition. The legislation about studies is thus seen to be one-fourth of the
whole. It has seventeen chapters. In one of them, on the Method and Order
to be observed in treating the Sciences, the founder observes that a number
of points "will be treated of separately, in some document approved by the

General Superior." This is the express warrant, contained in the
Constitution, for the future Ratio Studiorum, or System of Studies in the
Society of Jesus. In the meantime, he legislates in a more general way. And
he begins with a subject pre-eminently dear to him, the duty of gratitude.
Since corporations are notoriously forgetful, and therefore ungrateful, he
lays down in the first place the permanent duty of the Order towards
benefactors: then he continues with other topics. They stand thus:—
The Founders of Colleges; and Benefactors. The Temporalities of
Colleges. The Students or Scholastics, belonging to the Society. The Care to
be taken of them, during the time of their Studies. The Learning they are to
acquire. The Assistance to be rendered them in various ways, to ensure their
success in studies. The Schools attached to the Colleges of the Society, i.e.
for external Students not belonging to the Order. The Advancement of
Scholastics, belonging to the Order, in the Various Arts which can make
them useful to their Neighbor. The Withdrawal of them from Studies. The
Government of Colleges. On Admitting the Control of Universities into the
Society. The Sciences to be taught in Universities of the Society. The
Method and Order to be observed in treating the foregoing Sciences. The
Books to be selected as Standards. Courses and Degrees. What concerns
Good Morals. The Officials and Assistants in Universities.
Reserving the pedagogic explanation for the next part of this essay, I
shall here sketch some of the more general ideas running through the whole
legislation of Ignatius of Loyola; and, first, in the present chapter, I shall
begin with his idea of Colleges.
Choosing personal poverty as the basis on which to rest this vast
enterprise of education, he did not therefore mean to carry on expensive
works of zeal, without the means of meeting the expense. Obviously, it is
one thing not to have means, as a personal property, and therefore not to
consume them on self; it is quite another, to have them and to use them for
the good of others. The most self-denying men can use funds for the benefit
of others; and can do so the better, the more they deny themselves. It was in
this sense that, later on in the century, Cardinal Allen recognized the labors
and needs of the English Jesuit, Robert Parsons, who was the superior and
companion of Edmund Campian, the former a leading star of Oxford, the
latter, also an Oxford man, and, as Lord Burghley called him, "a diamond"
of England. Since Queen Elizabeth was not benign enough to lend the

Jesuits a little building-room on English soil, but preferred to lend them a
halter at Tyburn, Parsons was engaged in founding English houses of higher
studies in France and Spain, at Valladolid, Seville, Lisbon, Eu, and St.
Omer. Cardinal Allen sent a contribution to the constructive Jesuit, writing,
as he did so: "Apostolic men should not only despise money; they should
also have it." And just in this sense was Ignatius himself a philosopher of no
utopian school. So we may examine, with profit, the material and temporal
conditions required in his Institute, for the establishment of public schools
and universities. I shall endeavor to put these principles together and in
29
order.
First, there should be a location provided with buildings and revenues,
not merely sufficient for the present, but having reference to needful
development.
Secondly, these material conditions include a reference to the
maintenance of the faculty. The means must be provided to meet the daily
necessities of the actual Professors, with adequate assistance of lay brothers
belonging to the Order; also to support several substitute Professors;
besides, to carry on the formation of men, who will take the places of the
present Professors, and so maintain the faculty as perpetual; moreover, to
"provide for some more Scholastic Students of the Order, seeing that there
are so many occupied in the service and promotion of the common weal."
These conditions also include "a church for conducting spiritual
30
ministrations in the service of others."
Carrying out this idea, Laynez, in 1564, promulgated a rule or "Form
regarding the acceptance of Colleges." He laid down the conditions, on
which alone the Society would take in charge either a Latin School,
requiring a foundation for twenty Jesuits; or a Lyceum, with fifty persons;
31
or a University, with seventy. Twenty-four years later, Father Aquaviva
drew up a more complete and a final "Form," distributing colleges into the
three classes, the lowest, the medium, and the highest. The lowest must
have provision made for professing in the departments of Grammar,
Humanities, Rhetoric, Languages, and a course of Moral Theology;—fifty
Jesuits to be supported. The medium class of colleges consists of those
whose founders desire, in addition to all the foregoing departments, a

triennial course of Philosophy, which begins each year anew; eighty persons
to be supported. The highest class is that of the Studium Generale, or
University, in which, besides the above, there are professed Scholastic
Theology, Sacred Scripture, Hebrew; one hundred and twenty persons to be
provided for. However, the countries of the Indies, as well as the northern
countries of Europe, were not, for the present, brought under this
32
ordinance.
Thirdly, the locality is to be such that, in the ordinary course of events,
there should be no prospective likelihood of a deficiency in the concourse
of students, and those of the right kind. As, on the side of the Jesuit
Province, its educational forces are kept at least equal to the posts which it
has undertaken to fill, so, on the side of the population, the prospect should
correspond to this undertaking, and give assurance of filling the courses.
Hence it was only in larger cities or towns that Ignatius contemplated the
foundation of colleges; as the distich has it, contrasting the different fields
of activity chosen by different orders in the Church:—
Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat,
Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes.

That is to say, "The monks of Clairvaux loved their valleys; the
Benedictines their mountain-tops; the Franciscans the rural towns; Ignatius
the great cities."
This was the more obviously his idea, as we find him reluctantly
granting permission for ministerial excursions through a country, if thereby
the Fathers' influence in a great city be likely to suffer. He writes to Father
Kessel, the Rector at Cologne, where as yet the Society had no college of its
own, that "under the circumstances he approves of Kessel's making a short
excursion through the province, provided he and his companions are not
long absent from the city, and do not sacrifice the main thing to what is
accessory; but he does not give them permission to fix their abode out of the
town, because places of less importance afford fewer occasions of gathering
the desired fruit: and, besides, they must not leave so famous a university;
their exertions will be more useful for the good of religion, in forming
scholars to become priests and officers of the State, than all the pains they
33
may bestow on the small towns and villages." Again, when in 1547 he had

accepted the donation of a church, buildings, and gardens at Tivoli from
Louis Mendosa, he found the place not suited to the convenience of
scholars; it was too near Rome, and yet too far; subsequently, the institution
34
had to be transferred within the city."
Fourthly, in addition to these material and local conditions for the
normal conduct of colleges, it is supposed that the external relations of
political society are so far favorable, as at least to tolerate freedom of action
on the part of this educational Institute. Such toleration was, as a general
rule, not only the least that could be asked for, but the most that was
enjoyed.
These are the chief conditions, material and temporal, which Ignatius
requires. They give him a footing to commence his work, and allow the
animating principles of his Institute to come into play. The animating
principles, to which I refer, may be reduced to three brief heads: First, an
intellectual and moral scope, clearly defined, as I shall explain in the
following chapters. Secondly, the distinct intention to promote rather the
interests of public and universal order and enlightenment, than a mere local
good of any city, country, province. Thirdly, a tendency in the intellectual
institution itself to become rather a great one than a small one, with more
degrees of instruction, more and more eminent Professors, a greater number
35
of the right kind of scholars.
As to the forces available for all this, and the proportion of colleges to
be manned in perpetuity, the mind of Ignatius was most express, and
became more fixed from day to day. "Cut your cloak according to your
cloth," he said to Oliver Manare, when the latter, on going to establish a
college at Loretto, asked how he should distribute his men. Ignatius
preferred to refuse Princes and Bishops their requests, excusing himself on
the score of limited resources, than compromise the reputation of the
36
Society, by an ill-advised assent. And he said, as Polanco his secretary
tells us, that "if anything ought to make him wish to live a longer time, it
37
was that he might be severe in admitting men into the Order." He did not
want to have many members in the Society; still less, too many
engagements.

Having stated thus briefly the material conditions required by Ignatius,
and the animating principles or motives which determined him, we are in a
position to discern more distinctly the central object of his attention, that for
which the material conditions were provided, that by which the ultimate
objects were to be attained. It was the teaching body, the faculty, the
"College," properly so called. The "College" was the body of educators who
were sent to a place. For them the material conditions did but supply a local
habitation, subsistence, books, apparatus. The very first decree quoted by
Pachtler, from the first general assembly, uses the term "College" in this
38
sense: "No college is to be sent to any place," etc.
It is only by derivation from this meaning that the term is applied to the
buildings and appointments. It is the body of men that makes the institution.
It is this also which makes the institution perpetual; and therefore must
itself be so; and must have the material conditions provided for continuing
itself, by means of a constant stream of younger men under formation, who
will perpetuate the same work.
Now it would be an ideal conception of practical life to be looking for
virtuous and erudite men, viri boni simul et eruditi, as Ignatius calls them,
ever pouring into the Order, straight from the chairs of universities, from
benefices, and posts of leisured ease; and, armed already with the full
equipment of intellectual and moral endowments, presenting themselves
and their services thenceforth, under the title of absolute poverty, to cities,
provinces, and countries, which never had anything to do with their
formation. "These men," says Ignatius, "are found to be few in number, and
of these few the majority would prefer to rest, after so many labors already
undergone. We apprehend that it will be difficult for this Society to grow, on
the mere strength of those who are already both good and accomplished,
boni simul ac literati; and this for two reasons, the great labors which this
manner of life imposes, and the great self-abnegation needed. Therefore, ...
another way has seemed good to adopt, that of admitting young men, who,
by their good lives and their talents afford us ground to hope that they will
grow up into virtuous and learned men, in probos simul ac doctos viros; of
admitting also colleges, on those conditions which are expressed in the
Apostolic briefs, whether these colleges be within universities, or
independent: and, if within universities, whether these institutions

themselves are committed to the care of the Society, or not.... Wherefore,
39
we shall first speak of the colleges; then of the universities," etc.
There were never wanting men of the former kind, already
accomplished and of tried virtue, who offered themselves for this service of
a lifetime. A noteworthy testimony to their numbers may be found in a
dispute with Philip II of Spain, who objected to any moneys leaving the
Jesuit Provinces of his realm, for the service and maintenance of the great
central college in Rome; and this, notwithstanding the fact that Spanish
members were being maintained and formed there. The general assembly,
gathered in Rome, 1565, discussed the difficulty; and one of the
circumstances mentioned was this: "The Provinces of Spain did not need
the assistance of the Roman College as much as others; since many entered
the Society, already mature in age and accomplished in learning, so that
they could be employed at once in public positions; nor had they to be
taught, but they were able to teach others.... It was finally recommended
that, to lessen the burden of expense on the Roman College, and in order
that fewer scholastics need be called to Rome, each Province, as soon as
convenient, should organize a general university; especially as there was
already a sufficiency of students (members of the Order) and, besides, of
40
Professors." This was only twenty-six years after the foundation of the
Society.
But, even with all the advantages accruing from these large contingents
of learned men already formed, the idea of Ignatius, to train young men
within the Order, was more practical for the formation of faculties; and it
carried the general efficiency much further. Powerful and effective as the
most pronounced personalities may be, when each striking character goes
forward into the open field of battle and leads the way, they are not more
powerful than when also qualified to move in the steady and regular march
of the trained forces. Father Montmorency, referring to the strength which
comes of uniformity, sociability, and harmony, said, Homo unus, homo
nullus, "A man alone is as good as no man at all."
Ignatius then, having perpetuity and development in view, and therefore
the steady and trained development of talented and virtuous young men,
would not accept foundations, except on the basis of endowment, just
described. He had not learned in vain the lessons of Barcelona, Alcalà,

Salamanca, and Paris. How wisely he acted is shown by the troubles, which
later legislation reveals, upon this very point of inadequately endowed
colleges. The questions of ill-endowed colleges, small colleges, too many
colleges for the forces of a Province, are all excellently discussed and
settled in the general assembly, which, in 1565, elected Francis Borgia to
succeed Laynez. And "on the same day," says Sacchini, "the Fathers set the
example of observing the decree which they had just made, with the same
degree of severity with which they had made it; for, the letters of several
Bishops and municipalities being read, in which foundations for five
colleges were offered, they decided that no one of them should be admitted;
and, besides, they gave the new General full authority to dissolve certain
41
colleges already existing." In a similar vein, this was the theme of an
elegant apology delivered before King Stephen by Father Campano,
Provincial of Poland, who requested the King to desist from urging on the
42
Society the multiplication of its institutions.
A tuition-fee paid by the scholar to the Professor, or to the institution,
was nowhere contemplated. At Dijon, where Bossuet was afterwards a
pupil, the magistrates when offering a college, in 1603, desired to
supplement an inadequate endowment, by requiring a fee from the students.
In the name of the Order, Father Coton, the King's confessor, remonstrated;
and Henri IV himself wrote to the Parliament of Bourgogne, desiring
43
another arrangement to be made; which was accordingly done. The
foundation was always to be received as a gratuitous donation, for which
the Order owed permanent gratitude. In turn, thenceforward, it gave
gratuitously, and allowed of no recompense. "No obligations or conditions
are to be admitted that would impair the integrity of our principle, which is:
44
To give gratuitously, what we have received gratis."
Thus then the faculty, a competent and a permanent one, is installed. It
is not one conspicuous for leisured ease. Professors and Scholastics alike
are working for a purpose. They are a "college," in the sense of the Society
of Jesus. Yet, if there is not leisured ease, but a life of work and self-denial,
the system has been found to result in all the consequences which may be
looked for in literary "ease with dignity"; and perhaps in more, since no one
does more, than he who, in his own line, has as much as he can well do, and

do well. System and method, the great means for making time manifold,
become so absolutely necessary; and the singleness of intention in a
religious life intensifies results. Then, after the general formation has been
bestowed, in the consecutive higher studies of seven or nine years within
the Order, the plan of Ignatius leaves open to individual talents the whole
field of specialties, in Science and Literature. Hence, to speak of our own
day, Secchi or Perry devotes himself to astronomy, Garucci to archæology,
Strassmeyer to Oriental inscriptions, the De Backers and Sommervogel to
bibliography, others to philology, mathematics, and the natural sciences;
while five hundred and more writers follow the lines of their own
inclinations, either for some directly useful purpose, or because their pursuit
is in itself liberal.

CHAPTER V.

COLLEGES FOUNDED AND ENDOWED.

What was the response of the Christian world, when it had become
alive to the nature of this new power in its midst, and to the proposal which
the new power made? What did the answer come to, in the way of providing
temporalities, necessary and sufficient? Strange enough! Loyola's own short
official lifetime of fifteen years does not appear to have been too short, for
the purpose of awakening the world with his idea; which, like a two-edged
sword of his own make, not only aroused the keenest opposition at every
thrust, and at his every onward step, but opened numberless resources in the
apostolic, the charitable, and educational reserves of human nature.
This man, who had inserted in the authentic formula and charter of his
Institute that watchword of his movements, "Defence and Advance"; who
had taken the whole world for the field of his operations, in defending and
advancing; this cavalier of a new military type, who had only to show
himself upon the field to gather around him the flower of youth as well as
mature age, from college and university, from doctor's chair and prince's
throne, left behind him, as the work of fifteen years from the foundation of
the Order, about one hundred colleges and houses, distributed into twelve
Provinces. The territorial divisions were named, after their chief centres, the
Provinces of Portugal, Castile, Andalusia, Aragon, Italy, Naples, Sicily,
Upper Germany, Lower Germany, France, Brazil, and the East Indies.
Individuals under his orders had overrun Ireland, penetrated into Scotland,
into Congo, Abyssinia, and Ethiopia. The East Indies, first traversed by
Francis Xavier either on foot, or in unseaworthy vessels, signified the whole
stretch of countries from Goa and Ceylon on the West, to Malacca, Japan,
and the coast of China on the East. Some of this activity might be credited
to apostolic zeal alone, were it not that, wherever the leaders advanced into

the heart of a new country, it was always with the purpose, and generally
with the result, that the country was to be occupied with educational
institutions. De Backer notes this in another connection, when, in the
preface to his great work of bibliography, "The Library of Writers of the
Company of Jesus," he says: "Wherever a Jesuit set his foot, wherever there
was founded a house, a college, a mission, there too arose apostles of
45
another class, who labored, who taught, who wrote."
What this means, with regard to its strategic value, there is no need of
our being told. The Duke of Parma, writing, in 1580, from the seat of war in
the Netherlands to Philip II of Spain, said: "Your Majesty desired that I
should build a citadel in Maestricht; I thought that a college of the Jesuits
would be a fortress more likely to protect the inhabitants against the
46
enemies of the Altar and the Throne. I have built it."
Sixty years later, after the long generalship of Aquaviva, who during 34
years governed the Order with the ability of another Ignatius, the number of
colleges was 372. Well might his immediate successor, Mutius Vitelleschi,
writing to the whole Society about the Education of Youth, speak of the
"beautiful and precious mass of gold, which we have in our hands to form
47
and finish."
One hundred and fifty years after the death of Ignatius, the collegiate
and university houses of education numbered 769. Two hundred years after
the same date, when the Order was on the verge of universal suppression,
under the action of University men, Parliamentarians, Jansenists,
Philosophers, and of that new movement which was preparing the
Revolution, the Jesuit educational institutions stood at the figure, 728. The
colleges covered almost the whole world, distributed into 39 Provinces,
48
besides 172 Missions in the less organized regions of the globe.
If we look at these 700 institutions of secondary and superior education,
under the aspect of their constitution, that is to say, of their scope, their
system, the supreme legislative and executive power which characterized
them, we find that they were not so much a plurality of institutions, as a
49
single one. Take the 92 colleges of France alone. In one sense, these may
be considered as less united than the 50 colleges of the Paris University, for

the Paris University was in one quarter of a city, which offers a material
unity; these, on the contrary, were spread over the whole of France,
presenting the characteristics of "national" education; just as the 700 were
over the whole world, a cosmopolitan system. But, regarded in their formal
and essential bond, they were vastly more of a unit, as an identical
educational power, than any faculty existing. No faculty, whether at Paris or
Salamanca, Rome or Oxford, ever possessed that control over its 50, 20, or
even 8 colleges, which each Provincial Superior exercised over his 10, 20,
or 30, and the General over more than 700, with 22,126 members in the
Order. In the one General lay the power of an active headship; from him the
facultative power of conferring degrees emanated; and he had one system of
studies and discipline in his charge to administer, with a latitude of
discretion according to times, places, and circumstances.
As to the numbers of students, and the general estimate to be formed of
them, I will record such data as fall under the eye, while passing rapidly
over the literature of the subject.
In Rome, the 20 colleges attending the classes of the Roman College
numbered, in 1584, 2108 students. Father Argento, in his apology to the
States at Klausenburg, in 1607, mentions that the schools in Transylvania
were frequented by the flower of the nobility; and, in his "History of the
Affairs in Poland," dedicated to Sigismund III, he attests that from 8000 to
10,000 youths, chiefly of the nobility and gentry, frequented the gymnasia
of the Order in Poland. At Rouen, in France, there were regularly 2000. At
La Flèche there were 1700 during a century; 300 being boarders, the other
1400 finding accommodation in the village, but always remaining under the
supervision of the faculty. Throughout the seventeenth century, the numbers
at the College of Louis-le-Grand, in Paris, varied between 2000, 1827, and
3000; including, in the latter number, 550 boarders. In 1627, only a few
years after the restoration of the Society by Henri IV, the one Province of
Paris had, in its 14 colleges, 13,195 students; which would give an average
of nearly 1000 to a college. Cologne almost began with 800 students,—its
roll in 1558. Dilingen in 1607 had 760; in its convictus, 110 of the boarders
were Religious, besides other Ecclesiastics; the next year, out of 250
convictores or boarders, 118 were Religious of various Orders, the secular
Priesthood being represented among the students generally. At Utrecht,
during the first century of the Order's existence, there were 1000 scholars;

at Antwerp and Brussels each, 600; in most of the Belgian colleges, 300. As
to Spain and Italy, which first saw the Society rise in their midst, and
expand with immense vigor all over them, I consider it superfluous to dwell
particularly upon them.
In many of the capitals and important centres throughout Europe, there
were separate colleges for nobles. Elsewhere the nobility were mixed with
the rest; thus 400 nobles and more were attending the Jesuit schools in
Paris. It was studiously aimed at by the Order to eliminate, in matters of
education, all distinguishing marks or privileges. Thus Father Buys
endeavors, in 1610, to reduce the practice at Dilingen to the custom of the
50
other colleges in the upper German Province.
Most of the Papal Seminaries founded by Gregory XIII, at Vienna,
Dilingen, Fulda, Prague, Gratz, Olmütz, Wilna, as well as in Japan and
other countries, were put under the direction of the Society; as Pius IV did
with his Roman Seminary; and St. Charles Borromeo with that of Milan.
Not knowing what the absolute average really was in these 700
institutions, we may still form some idea of what the sum total of students
must have been at its lowest figure. For this purpose, we can take an
average which seems about the lowest possible. I have not met with any
distinct mention of a college having less than 300 scholars. There are indeed
frequent complaints in the general assemblies, regarding what are
denounced as "small" colleges. However, it seems clear from numerous
indications, as, for instance, from the Encyclical letter of the General Paul
51
Oliva, that these colleges were called small, not primarily on account of
an insufficient number of students, but because of insufficient foundations,
which did not support the Professors actually employed. A document for the
Rectors notes that "thus far almost all the colleges, even such as have
received endowments, suffer want regularly, and have frequently to borrow
52
money."
Hence we may be allowed to take, as a tentative average, 300 students
to a college. At once, we rise to a sum total of more than 200,000 students
in these collegiate and university grades, all being formed at a given date
under one system of studies and of government, intellectual and moral.

If statistics, in that nicely tabulated form which delights modern
bureaus, have failed us as we run over the whole world to decipher the
indications, there is yet another view which we may catch of the same
subject, and one that is equally valuable. It is the multitude of nations into
which this educational growth ramified. At Goa, in Hindustan, the seminary,
which was inferior to none in Europe, had for its students, Brahmins,
Persians, Arabians, Ethiopians, Armenians, Chaldeans, Malabari, Cananorii,
Guzarates, Dacanii, and others from the countries beyond the Ganges. Japan
had its colleges at Funai, Arima, Anzuchzana, and Nangasaki. China had a
college at Macao; and later on many more, reaching into the interior, where
the Fathers became the highest mandarins in the service of the Emperor, and
built his observatory. Towards the close of the eighteenth century a large
number of colleges were flourishing in Central and South America. All of
these disappeared, when the Order was suppressed. The youth, who could
afford to obtain the education needed, went over to Europe, whence they
returned, a generation quite different from what had been known of before.
They returned with the principles of the Revolution. And the whole history
of Central and South America has changed, from that date onwards, into a
series of revolutions, which are the standing marvel of political scientists to
our day.
To consult a graphic representation of how this educational Order
looked on the map of the world, one may glance into the ninth volume of
the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica. There Father Pachtler, as in his
other volumes of the series, sketches only the German "Assistency" of the
Society of Jesus. The five Assistencies of the Order served the purposes of
government, by grouping many Provinces together into larger divisions. In
1725, the German Assistency comprised nine out of thirty-two Provinces.
The nine in question are those of Flandro-Belgium, French Belgium, the
Lower Rhine, the Upper Rhine, Upper Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Poland,
Lithuania. The map at the end of Father Pachtler's volume represents all this
country, with the towns marked differently, according as they contained
either universities of the Order, or colleges, or convictus, that is, boarding-
colleges, or seminaries, or residences. The chronological order of their rise
is presented in a table at the beginning of the same volume, with a note to
indicate more in particular the grade or amplitude of each, as being a
Studium Generale, otherwise called University or Academy, a College or a
Gymnasium, as well as the annexes of each, in the shape of one or more

convictus, one or more Episcopal or Papal Seminaries, a college of nobles, a
convictus for poor scholars. By means of this map, a graphic presentation is
afforded of one Assistency, from which, by a proper extension, the whole
world may be portrayed to the imagination. In 1750, within the limits of this
map, there were 217 colleges, 55 seminaries, 73 residences, 24 novitiates,
53
160 missions, 6 professed houses.
The universities here spoken of, otherwise called Studia Generalia, or
Academies, are quite typical, a special Jesuit development of the mediæval
style. An exact and official form, drawn up for the University of Gratz, may
54
be found in the same Monumenta. As Father Pachtler remarks, it shows at
a glance the inner working of a Jesuit university, and the general system
prevailing over the whole Society. He entitles the document: "Ordnung
einer ausschlieschlich von Jesuiten geleiteten Universität," or "Einer
selbständige Universität, 1658." The Latin title is: "Forma et Ratio
Gubernandi Academias et Studia Generalia S. J." It was the compilation of
Father John Argento.
Upon this basis of the amount of work done, as well as its intrinsic
character, shown by the results, I was going to draw some inferences with
regard to the amount of the temporal endowments, which must have been
required to support such a vast organization, and must have been vested in
the Order by the Christian world. One might compare the work done with
what Oxford accomplishes; and, seeing that the latter university supplies the
facilities for higher education, and that far from gratuitously, to only a
couple of thousands among the nobility and gentry, then, since it spends
upon this an annual revenue of $2,500,000, how much would be required to
conduct the education of a quarter of a million of students? Our arithmetic
would feel oppressed by the calculation.
But the calculation is not necessary. It is quite evident that religious
poverty gave the key to the situation,—poverty, self-abnegation, the
resignation of all temporal considerations in life, by men who had no
families to provide for, no station to acquire; who had themselves given up
every station, from that of the clerical benefice, or the liberal and martial
careers, to ducal coronets, princedoms, and even royalty; men therefore,
who were bestowing with themselves, and in themselves, the essential
endowment of education upon the world, and who needed only to have that

supplemented with the few temporal necessities still remaining. And the
conclusion to be drawn seems to be this. The Christian world, whether ruler
or people, republic or municipality, was making a safe and lucrative
investment, whether at home or abroad, in the midst of civilization or of
barbarism, when it consigned the absolute use of sufficient temporalities to
a world-wide faculty, inspired by the sentiment of religious devotion.
For what is the object of any religious society whatsoever? It is to
complete in each of its members the duties of the man, the citizen and the
Christian, with other duties called "religious," which, correlative with the
former, are nevertheless distinct from them. They are duties which
presuppose the moral virtues, the civil and Christian virtues, and tend to
complete them with the highest qualities to which perfect Christianity
aspires, those of self-devotion and religious self-consecration.
Hence the experiences, making a drama and a tragedy, when the
Society abruptly disappeared. Supposing even that enough of competent
men, with all personal requirements, could have been found to fill the void,
what of their salaries and support? Take an instance. The revenues, which at
Bourges had been enough for the support of thirty Jesuits, were found, after
the Suppression of the Order, not to afford an adequate compensation for
55
ten secular Professors. Frederic II of Prussia, sending an agent to
negotiate with Pius VI about retaining the Order in his States, expresses
himself thus in a letter to Voltaire: "The surest means (to perpetuate a series
of Professors) is to preserve a seminary of men destined to teach. In
studying the sciences, they fit themselves for the office of instructing. It
would be no easy task to fill instantaneously a vacancy left by a skilful
professor. If the education of ordinary citizens be necessary, the training up
of instructors must be no less so." And then, coming to the point before us,
the King continues: "Besides, there are reasons of economy for preferring
such a body of men to mere secular individuals. The professor taken from
the latter class will cost more, because he has a greater number of wants. It
is needless to remark that the property of the Jesuits would not be sufficient
to remunerate their successors; and that revenues, which pass over to the
56
administration of the government, always suffer diminution." Speaking of
Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIII, who was under pressure from various
quarters to make him suppress the Order, Frederic writes to Voltaire in

1770: "For my own part, I have no reason to complain of him; he leaves me
my dear Jesuits, whom they are persecuting everywhere. I will save the
precious seed, to give some of it, one day, to those who should wish to
57
cultivate a plant so rare."
The testimony of documents is uniform upon the poverty of these men,
whom Protestant historians like Grotius, Robertson, and others marvel at,
for the authority they possessed in the world, for the purity of their lives,
their success in teaching, and their art of commanding with wisdom as they
themselves obeyed with fidelity. Their life was one of straitened
58
circumstances and self-abnegation. We may see it illustrated in Dilingen.
Or again, at the great royal college, founded by Henri IV at La Flèche,
where three hundred boarders were supposed to be paying their own
expenses, as pensionnaires, we find Louis XIII issuing a royal decree that
his magistrates are to prosecute "les rétardataires et les récalcitrants par
toutes les voyes raisonnables," persons who did not pay the expenses of
their own children, but left that interesting occupation to the college. With
all that, says Rochemonteix, nothing came of it, neither of the royal
injunctions, nor of judicial suits; things went on the same way, "the parents
59
paying badly, and the treasurers lamenting."
I will close this chapter with one case, because it serves to emphasize a
particular sequel of the Suppression; that is, the revival of a tuition-fee. A
recent author, writing in 1890, tells the history of the College of Saint-Yves
at Vannes, in Brittany. He sums up its revenues at 6000 livres. Placed in the
hands of the Order, this college, in 1636, that is, seven years after the
Society had assumed charge, directed 400 students; later on, 900; and then
1200. In 1762, the faculty consisted of thirteen members, besides the four
Fathers engaged in the adjoining house of retreats. All rendered various
services, as is usual in a college of Jesuit instructors. To these we must add
the requisite complement of the faculty, at least half as many more lay
assistants, belonging to the Order, and to the same local community. Here
then are twenty-two at the least, subsisting on 6000 livres a year; and
meanwhile providing their house, their library, their physical cabinet, which
60
was fully fitted up with all necessary instruments, and their observatory.
"The moment after the Suppression," he goes on to say, "it was quite

another affair! Ten secular professors cost 11,000 livres for their salaries
alone!" The author gives the list of their salaries. "To reëstablish
equilibrium, one of the first acts of the parliament was to exact from each
scholar a tuition-fee of twelve livres; and yet they complained, they could
not make ends meet."
Observe, a tuition-fee! On the day after the Suppression, they begin to
undo the very work, which, two hundred and thirty years before, the Order
had begun to do at its birth, spreading education gratuitously, without
drawing on pupils, or drawing on the public treasury.
Well might the General Vincent Caraffa say, in the time of the Thirty
Years' War, "We abound rather in men than in revenues." And he says so, in
the same breath and in the same sentence, in which he is asking Priests to
offer themselves for life to the work of teaching the lower branches, a work
which he calls laborious, in times which he specifies as disastrous, and in
circumstances which he describes as having no provision made for the
61
means of living.
This brief sketch will go to show how the Christian world did, indeed,
meet the proposal of the Order, and found seven hundred colleges. But it
also shows how the Order endowed the world, and had even to make good,
with its personal heroism, the defects in many of the foundations.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INTELLECTUAL SCOPE AND METHOD
PROPOSED.

As the second part of this book is intended to be a pedagogic analysis
of the mental culture imparted, I need not sketch here, save in a general
way, the intellectual scope proposed by Ignatius of Loyola, and the method
which he originated. Both scope and method vary somewhat, according as
the students contemplated are respectively external to the Order, or
members of it. The latter are to be qualified for becoming future Professors,
even though, in point of fact, only a certain proportion of them become so.
Studious youth in general, including Ecclesiastics and Religious of the
various Orders, are considered by Ignatius as distributed amid two kinds of
educational institutions. One of these he calls the Public School; the other, a
University. The first is that which extends, in its courses, from the
rudiments of literature up to the lower level of university education. He
says: "Where it can conveniently be done, let Public Schools be opened, at
62
least in the departments of Humane Letters." In a note, he explains that
Moral Theology may be treated in a gymnasium of this kind. Father
Aquaviva, in 1588, puts this kind of school down as the lowest of three
ranks of colleges; and sums up the courses as being those of Grammar,
63
Humanities, Rhetoric, Languages, and Moral Theology. He also explains
why the lowest Jesuit curriculum must fill these requirements, "in order that
the Society be not defrauded of the end it has in view, which is, to carry the
students on at least as far as mediocrity in learning, so that they may go
forth into their respective vocations, Ecclesiastics to their ministry, lay
students to their own work in life, qualified in some degree with a

64
sufficiency of literary culture." This curriculum served also the purpose of
those, who, while members of the Order, were for some reason dispensed
65
from the full course of studies. If any grades are wanting in a college, it
66
must be the lower ones which are omitted, the higher being retained.
Ignatius goes on to limit the courses in a gymnasium of this kind: "Let not
higher sciences be treated here; but, to pursue them, the students who have
made due progress in literature are to be sent from these colleges to the
67
universities.
Passing on to universities of the Order, he defines for their scope, first,
in behalf of those who are to be Ecclesiastics, Scholastic Theology, Holy
Scripture, and Positive Theology; secondly, for all students, Humane
Letters, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other such languages as Chaldaic,
Arabic, and Indian, subject to the demands of necessity or utility; moreover,
Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, and Mathematics. All these
departments are to be provided for by Professors of the Order. If the
departments of Civil Law and Medicine are added, they will be conducted
68
by Professors not of the Society.
As to the Scholastic members of the Society, their mental culture in the
Order begins, of course, where their collegiate curriculum had closed, that
is, at the end of their classical course. Their studies henceforth are defined
by two objects; one, that of professing, as formed Jesuits in the future, what
they are studying now; the other, that of being differentiated, according to
talent and circumstance, into preachers, writers, directors of consciences, or
managers of affairs.
In view of this two-fold object, all the examinations, arranged for
members of the Order in the advanced courses, are regulated by one
standard, that the Jesuit Scholastics must be found competent, at each stage,
to teach the course in which they are being tested. Accordingly, they review
their previous literary acquirements, in all the lines which the Society
regularly professes; then, during three years, they apply exclusively to
Philosophy and Natural Sciences; and, four years more, to Divinity and
69
allied Sciences.

This protracted course, therefore, as given more in detail by the
subsequent Ratio, consists of Poetry, Rhetoric, and Literature; Mathematics,
Physics, and Chemistry; Logic, Ontology, Cosmology, Psychology, and
Natural Theology; Ethics, Natural, Social and Public Right, Moral
Theology, Canon Law, Ecclesiastical History, Scholastic Theology, Hebrew,
Sacred Scripture. The courses are to be pursued either in the same classes
which external students attend, or, in their own university classes, when a
general house of studies is formed as a "Scholasticate." In both cases, they
have Seminary exercises of their own, beyond what is required in the most
condensed university courses.
Those whom health and excellence have approved at every step are
ordinarily to be withdrawn from studies, "when the course of Arts has been
70
finished, and when four years have been spent on Theology." Specialties
71
are to be cultivated. Subsequent legislation places these specialties in the
interval between the Arts and Theology; and, again, after the latter.
This, in brief, is the practical idea of the Professorial Seminaries,
philological, philosophical, scientific, and theological, through which the
stream of future Professors is continually passing. Each one is subject, at
every stage, to examination tests which include the most distinct reference
to professorial capacity. The technical standard in the examinations is that
of "surpassing mediocrity," which term is accurately defined, as we shall
72
see later, when analyzing the Ratio.
While the depleted ranks of the professorial body are thus regularly
supplied, it is clear that more services remain available in the Order at large,
than the single purpose of education would at any time require. But this
only serves the wider scope which the Society has in view, much wider than
education taken alone. And Ignatius makes mention of this expressly when
he says, that the Scholastic students "may never come to profess the
learning which they have acquired"; still "they are to consider that labor of
73
studies as a work of great merit in the sight of God."
So much for the widest and highest intellectual objects aimed at in
these studies. Looking down now to its lowest limit, we perceive that
education, as imparted by the Society to the external world, is to begin not
below "the rudiments of grammar, in which boys must already be versed;

they must know how to read and write; nor is any allowance to be made in
favor of any one, whatever be his condition of life; but those who press
these petitions upon us are to be answered, that we are not permitted" to
teach the elements. This is the ordinance of Aquaviva, in 1592, and he
74
simply refers to the Constitution. He also notes, in the same document,
that the new Ratio Studiorum elevates every grade, as it stood at that date,
one year higher than it had been before. The document is from the German
archives. Pachtler observes that most of the Latin schools, particularly in
75
Protestant Germany, took children up from the alphabet. The effect of the
Jesuit system was that of a constant upward trend to what was higher, more
systematic, and complete.
This brings us to the question of method. Here a number of elements
occur, some of them essential, many of them subordinate. These latter, at
least, were the products of ingenuity and industry on the part of the teaching
body, and were productive of industry and life on the part of scholars. To
illustrate the whole matter, I will refer to authors who were addressing the
world, soon after the Society had taken its stand as an educational power,
and when its institutions were conspicuous to the eyes of all.
First comes classification, which was an essential feature of the Jesuit
system. Ribadeneira, the intimate friend of Ignatius, when writing the life of
Loyola, in the year 1584, and describing the work of the Order, now forty-
fours years old, observes: "Elsewhere one Professor has many grades of
scholars before him; he addresses himself at one and the same time to
scholars who are at the bottom, midway, and at the top; and he can scarcely
meet the demands of each. But, in the Society, we distinguish one rank of
scholars from another, dividing them into their own classes and orders; and
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separate Professors are placed over each."
The division of classes, a thing so natural to us, was in those times a
novelty. There were practically only two degrees of teaching; one superior,
embracing Theology, Law, and Medicine; the other preparatory. The
preparatory instruction had already been tending towards the later system of
grading; the term "class" was an expression of the Renaissance. Father
Rochemonteix, speaking of the Paris University, notes that the first
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authentic act, in which the term is used, dates from 1539. From 1535, the

division of studies, by means of classes, was already being accomplished.
Still there was no definite number of grades. The study of literary models
was defective. Grammar was beclouded with the subtleties of dialectics, to
the great prejudice of written composition, as well as of the reading and
78
imitation of models.
Now it will be observed that Ignatius was studying in the University of
Paris from 1528 to 1535; and his companions remained till 1536. By the
time he published the Constitution as a rule of guidance, he had become
surrounded by men, who were not merely graduates of universities, but had
been Doctors, Professors, and Rectors in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy,
Belgium, Germany. One consequence was that Ignatius, from the very
beginning, formulated a complete system of graded classes. He relegated
dialectics to its proper field, Philosophy and Theology. And, bringing into
prominence the reading of authors, and the practice of style in imitation of
the best models, he defined a method. This, after being elaborated during
forty years, was then found to be not only new, but complete, and good for
centuries to come. It arranged courses in a series, having reference to one
another; it coördinated definite stages of the courses with definite matter to
be seen; and, in the lower branches it distributed the students, with their
respective portions of the matter, into five grades, classifying precepts,
authors, and exercises, as proportioned to each successive grade. Nothing
more familiar to ourselves now; nothing newer to the world then! This was
the Ratio Studiorum.
The grades of the gymnasium may include several divisions, according
to the number of students; but the grading itself remains fixed, and leaves
no element, either of actual culture, or of future developments, unprovided
for, or without a location. Nor do these grades mean five years. They mean
a work to be done in each grade, before the next is taken up. On this, the
mind of Ignatius was most explicit. As an almost universal rule, they never
mean less than five years. And, for one of them, the grade of Rhetoric, in
which all literary perfection is to be acquired, the system contemplates two
and even three years. In this point, too, we may note a characteristic view of
Ignatius. It is that the longer term, whenever provided, whenever
prescribed, urged, and insisted upon, is always for the talented student, the
one who is to become eminent. To use his own words, when laying down
the rules in this matter for the Rector of a University, his full idea will be

carried out, when "those who are of the proper age, and have the aptitude of
genius, endeavor to succeed in every branch and to be conspicuous
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therein."
To enumerate now some of the subordinate elements in the Jesuit
method, I will quote from the same author, Ribadeneira. He says, speaking
of young scholars: "Many means are devised, and exercises employed, to
stimulate the minds of the young—assiduous disputation, various trials of
genius, prizes offered for excellence in talent and industry. These
prerogatives and testimonies of virtue vehemently arouse the minds of
students, awake them even when sleeping, and, when they are aroused and
are running on with a good will, impel them and spur them on faster. For, as
penalty and disgrace bridle the will and check it from pursuing evil, so
honor and praise quicken the sense wonderfully, to attain the dignity and
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glory of virtue." He quotes Cicero and Quintilian to the same effect.
This was not to develop a false self-love in young hearts; which would
have been little to the purpose with religious teachers. "Let them root out
from themselves, in every possible way, self-love and the craving for vain
glory," says the oldest code of school rules in the Society, probably from the
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pen of Father Peter Canisius himself. What is appealed to, is the spirit of
emulation, and that by a world of industries; which, disguising the aridity of
the work to be gone through, spurs young students on to excellence in
whatever they undertake, and rewards the development of natural energies
with the natural luxury of confessedly doing well. In the dry course of
virtue and learning, satisfaction of this kind is not excited in the young,
without a sign, a token, a badge, a prize. Then they feel happy in having
done well, however little they enjoyed the labor before. Honorable
distinctions well managed, sometimes a share in the unimportant direction
of the class, brilliancy of success in single combat on the field of
knowledge, of memory, or of intellectual self-reliance, the ordered
discrimination of habitual merit, all these means and many others keep the
little army in a condition of mental activity, and sometimes of suspense;
"and if not all are victorious, all at least have traversed the strengthening
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probation of struggle."

In all the courses of Belles-lettres, Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Theology,
the institutions called "Academies" gather into select bodies the most
talented and exemplary of the students. The young littérateurs, or
philosophers, having their own officials, special reunions, and archives,
hold their public sessions in presence of the other students, the Masters, and
illustrious personages invited for the occasion. In their poems, speeches,
dialogues, they discuss, declaim, and rise to great thoughts, and to the
conception of great deeds.
Civil discords are not the subject of their debates, but the glories of
their native country, its success in arms, all that is congenial to the young
mind and fosters the sentiment of love of country. Among the students of
Rhetoric, forensic debates and judicial trials are organized; "and when the
advocates of both sides have pleaded their cause in one or two sessions of
the court, then," says a document I am quoting from, dated 1580, "the
judge, who has been elected for the purpose, will pronounce his judgment in
an oration of his own; this will be the brilliant performance; and, to hear it,
friends will be invited, and the Doctors of the University and all the
83
students will be in attendance." In the programme for the distribution of
rewards, there is described an interesting element, puer lepidus, "a bright
young lad," and what he is to do and how he is to bring out the name of the
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victor, "whereupon the music will strike up a sweet symphony." At
another time, a set of published theses are defended against all comers by
some philosopher or theologian. And, while games and manly exercises
outside develop physical strength, gentility of demeanor and elegance of
deportment have the stage at their service inside, for the exhibition of
refined manners.
In all this, princes and nobles, future men of letters and of action, are
mingling in daily life, in contest and emulation, with sons of the simplest
85
burghers. Descartes notes these points sagaciously, when he recommends
to a friend the College of La Flèche: "Young people are there," he says,
"from all parts of France; there is a mingling of characters; their mutual
intercourse effects almost the same good results as if they were actually
travelling; and, in fine, the equality which the Jesuits establish among all,

by treating just in the same way those who are most illustrious and those
86
who are not so, is an extremely good invention."
As the new sciences came into vogue, they received at once the
freedom of this city of intellect; and here they received it first. It has been
said, indeed, that the Society of Jesus, "obstinately bound to its formalism,
refused to admit anything modern, real, and actual, and that the national
languages and literatures, as well as the new developing sciences, fared ill
at its hands." This statement, as far as it concerns France, is examined by
Father Charles Daniel, who to other valuable works of his own has added
the neat little essay called, Les Jésuites Instituteurs de la Jeunesse
87
Française, au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle. As to Germany, we shall see
indications enough on all these subjects in the Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica. For all countries there is a sufficiency of information, in the
mere text of the Ratio Studiorum, in Jouvancy's classic commentary
thereupon, De Ratione Discendi et Docendi, and other authentic documents,
besides the actual practice visible in the colleges. But the whole question
about the vernacular tongues, as if they were kept out of the colleges by
Latin and Greek, is so far an anachronism for the dates and epochs,
regarding which some moderns have agitated the question, that I shall tell a
little anecdote, which will not be so much of a digression, but that it will
place us back just where we are at present.
In 1605, Lord Bacon published his two books on the Advancement of
Learning. The work is considered the first part of his "Novum Organum."
He undertakes to "make a small Globe," as he says, "of the Intellectual
88
World, as truly and faithfully as he can discover. His subject is identical,
as far as it goes, with the much more extensive and exhaustive work of
Father Anthony Possevino, a famous Jesuit, who had published, twelve
years before, the results of twenty years' travel and observation, while
fulfilling, in many countries, the important duties of Apostolic Legate,
Preacher, Professor. I have two editions of his great tomes before me. The
first is that of Rome, 1593; the other that of Venice, 1603; this latter is
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called "the most recent edition." The only indication which I discern of
Bacon's not having profited by Possevino is this, that he says: "No man hath
propounded to himself the general state of learning to be described and

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represented from age to age." Now, as this is saying too much, for it just
indicates what Possevino's labors had been showing to the world during
twelve years, I must conclude that there is no assurance whatever, but that
Bacon profited by Possevino: he seems merely to have gone over the same
ground in English, and done justice to the subject, in his own peculiar way.
Accordingly, he did it what justice he could, in English. Three years later he
writes to Dr. Playfer, Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of
Cambridge, requesting that the Doctor would be pleased to translate the
work into Latin; and his lordship promises eternal gratitude. What reasons
does the noble author urge for this request? Two reasons, of which the first
is very noteworthy for our purpose:—"the privateness of the language,
wherein it is written, excluding so many readers!" And the second is almost
as worthy of note:—"the obscurity of the argument, in many parts of it,
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excluding many others!" Here we have our domestic classic author, in the
year 1608, endeavoring to get out of his narrow cell, the "privateness of the
English language," into the broad world of the literary public, where the
Jesuit with his tomes was enjoying to the full his literary franchise. This
does not look as if the colleges, at that time, kept the languages down, but
rather that they had in their gift the full freedom of the literary world, and
sent students forth to walk abroad at their ease there, where Bacon humbly
sued for admission!
I was going to quote from Possevino, describing in a graphic way the
daily intellectual life of the great Roman College, with its two thousand and
more students, besides the great body of Professors. But my limits forbid
92
me to do more than refer to it.
There are two views which may be taken of a coin, and its stamp. One
is taken direct, looking at it in itself; the other is indirect, observing the
impression it leaves in the mould. It leaves a defined vacancy there. What
kind of vacancy was left in the intellectual culture of Europe, when this
intellectual system was suddenly swept away? Before the Suppression of
the Society, some of the institutions, which had thriven at all, had been
inspired by a healthful rivalry. They found, when the Society was gone, that
part of their life decayed. And, while they themselves began to languish, the
place of the Jesuits they could not fill. Of some others, who lived a life

barely discernible, we are given to understand, that their vitality consisted in
the effort to keep the Jesuits out. I will take an instance from Bayonne.
A work has just been published on the municipal college of Bayonne,
93
by the Censor of Studies, in the Lyceum of Agen. In seventy pages, which
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concern transactions with the Jesuits, the author, in no friendly tone,
narrates the entire history from the documents of the Jansenist party. I will
imitate this example of his so far as to narrate the following entirely in his
own words.
Beginning his last chapter, entitled "Reform and Conclusion," he says
95
in a tone somewhat subdued, but not more so than his subject: "This then
was the College of Bayonne, which, for a few years more, prolonged an
existence ever more and more precarious; and it was finally closed in 1792,
in spite of several generous efforts at restoring it.
"But already," he continues, "for thirty years, a great literary event had
been accomplished in secondary education. A decree of the Parliament of
Paris, dated the 16th of August, 1762, had pronounced the expulsion of the
'ci-devant soi-disants Jésuites'; which decree was this time definitively
executed. Now the Jesuits, in their five Provinces of France, possessed then
nearly a hundred colleges. Judge of the immense void which was suddenly
created in the secondary instruction of the Province, ill prepared for so
abrupt a departure! There was a general confusion, and a concert, as it were,
of complaints and recriminations. Where get the new masters?... The
disciplinary and financial administration of the colleges, left vacant by the
Jesuits, was confided to the bureaus, that is to say, assemblies composed of
the Archbishop or Bishop, the Lieutenant General, the King's Proctor, and
the senior Alderman.... Every one soon felt the inconveniences of this
system. The municipal officers of the cities, the bureaus themselves
hastened to petition the King, that their colleges might be confided to
religious communities. Thus it was that the greater part of the old Jesuit
colleges fell into the hands of the Benedictines and Bernardines, of the
Carmelites and Minims, of Jacobins and Cordeliers, of Capuchins and
Recollects, of Doctrinaires and Barnabites, and above all, of the Oratorians.
But all these Religious, except the Oratorians, fell far short of the Jesuits.
The greater part had not even any idea of teaching, etc." Then the author

devotes a heavy page to the novel systems which were introduced. He
closes the paragraph sadly: "All this agitation," he says, "was unfortunately
sterile; and, as I have just said, secondary instruction, on the eve of the
French Revolution, had not taken a step forward during fifty years."

CHAPTER VII.

THE MORAL SCOPE PROPOSED.

Sweet is the holiness of youth, says Chaucer. Nor less grateful to the
eye are those gentle manners of youth, which another bard portrays as
impersonated in his "celestial lights," who say:—

We all
Are ready at thy pleasure, well disposed
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To do thee gentle service.

Christian morals and Christian manners make the perfect gentleman.
Plato had put it down that "he who hath a good soul is good"; and he
insisted that no youth, who has had a personal acquaintance with evil, can
have a good soul. He did not mean that a youth must be ignorant of what
temptation is. There is no hot-house raising in this world which will keep
off that blast. Every child, while keeping on the royal road of innocence,
has enough in himself, and in the choicest of surroundings, to know the
realities of life and its warfare. But Plato refers to a personal experience of
the by-ways, which are not virtue, and which it is not necessary to travel by,
in order to know enough about them. The educational means, the industry,
the vigilance, which have for a result the preservation of youth in the
freshness of innocence, signify a medium of respiration which is kept pure,
and a moral nutriment which is good and is kept constantly supplied, until
tender virtue has risen steadily into a well-knit rectitude, and is able
thenceforth to brave manfully the incidental storms of life.
For this moral strengthening of character, no less than for the
invigorating of mental energies, the system of Ignatius Loyola prescribes an
education which is public,—public, as being that of many students together,
public as opposed to private tutorism, public, in fine, as requiring a
sufficiency of the open, fearless exercise both of practical morality and of
religion. Since the time of Ignatius, Dupanloup has observed on this
subject:—
"I have heard a man of great sense utter this remarkable word. 'If a
usurping and able government wanted to get rid of great races in the
country, and root them out, it need only come down to this, that it require of
them, out of respect for themselves, to bring up their children at home,
alone, far from their equals, shut up in the narrow horizon of a private
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education and a private tutor.'"
The youthful material, on which the Jesuit system had to work, may be
described from two points of view. There were home conditions; and there

were conditions too of the educational system, which was commonly
prevalent in those centuries.
As to the circumstances of polite society at the boys' homes, Charles
Lenormant, speaking of those times, tells us that "it was the privilege of a
gentleman to have from his infancy the responsibility of his own actions.
The fathers of families were the first to launch their sons into the midst of
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the perils of the world, even before the age of discernment had begun."
Even when boys' homes effect no positive harm, still, only too often, they
answer this description, that they undo the best of what the school training
is endeavoring to effect, by the discipline of subordination and the practice
of obedience.
It was this state of things which made the German Jesuits, in spite of
themselves, petition for the requisite authorization to open boarding
colleges in the north, as had already been done in Portugal and elsewhere.
99
Reluctantly the authorization was given by the general assembly. These
convictus, or pensionnats, were known to make great inroads on the time of
the Fathers, on their study, their religious retirement, and especially on that
immunity of theirs from financial transactions, which they enjoyed as
Religious. The Constitution of Ignatius offers no more than a bare foothold
100
for the introduction of these colleges. Yet they have proved to be the
most prolific nurseries of the eminent men, whom the Society has sent forth
into all the walks of life.
Not at home alone were effeminacy and dissoluteness to be feared.
There were conditions of life in the university system of the sixteenth
century, which seemed considerably worse than those already described in
the first chapter of this book. Possevino, who had spent ten years in the
midst of the religious turmoils of France, and ten more in Papal legations to
Germany, Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, Russia, Muscovy, Sweden, and
Gothia, and, after that, four more years in visiting the universities
throughout Europe, notices that there were five ways, whereby a general
corruption of society had come about. First, he mentions the dissemination
of bad books. Secondly, "the omission of lectures; or, when lectures were
held, such disturbances during them, with noise and yells, that there scarce
remained an appearance of human, let alone of Christian, society. Thirdly,

factions. Fourthly, sensuality, to which cause must be referred that atrocious
kind of iniquity, whereby the very walls of the schools were defiled with
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writing and the vilest pictures; so that the tender age, which had come
innocent, must go away more polluted with crime, than imbued with
learning, becoming hateful to God himself. Fifthly, an aversion for Divine
worship, inasmuch as disputations and graduating festivities and lectures
have constantly been transferred to those days and those hours, when by
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Divine precept public worship is due."
The means organized by Ignatius into a method of moral education I
will sketch in the words of his contemporaries. Ribadeneira, his biographer,
says: "Those means are employed by our Masters, whereby virtue is
conceived in the hearts of the pupils, is preserved and augmented. They are
morning prayer, for obtaining grace from God not to fall into sin; night
prayer and a diligent reflection on all the thoughts, words, and actions of the
day, to do away by contrition of heart with all the faults committed; the
attentive and devout hearing of Mass every day; frequent and humble
confession of sins to a Priest; and if they are old enough, and great devotion
recommends it, and their confessor approves of it, the reverent and pious
reception of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ; teaching and explaining the
rudiments of the Christian faith, whereby the boys are animated to live well
and happily. Besides, great pains are taken to know and root out the vices of
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boyhood, especially such as are somehow inborn and native to that age."
Here, by the way, the reader may advert to the fact that the
confessional, of which mention is made, never comes in as part of the
external means of moral development; nor is a superior ever the confessor
of those under his charge, except when desired to be so by the free choice of
the subordinate himself. A general law of the Catholic Church ordains it
thus.
Loyola's biographer goes on to the various means, whereby, in such a
multitude of young persons, the bad element, which unfortunately will
never die, is either suppressed and kept at its lowest stage of a struggling
vitality, or else, if it happens to shoot up, is weeded out. The garden will be
none the poorer for that.

Nil dabit inde minus!

There are, moreover, the division of students into categories and ranks,
with their own officers from among the boys themselves; the degrees of
honor and preëminence assigned to good conduct and virtue; especially the
pious societies or Sodalities, into which none are admitted save the most
studious and virtuous among the youths; and that with a discrimination in
favor of superior merit, even among such as answer the general description.
The Sodalities of the Society of Jesus, as the subject of a study upon the
management of youth, and indeed upon the cultivation of all ranks in
Christian society, from Peer and Field Marshal and Viceroy, down to the
little boy beginning his career at school, would deserve a special discourse
for themselves.
I will continue now from Possevino, describing the Roman College,
which was an object of daily observation to the capital of the Christian
104
world. "Here," he says, "you have two thousand youths, among whom
reigns a deep silence; there is no commotion. In the classes there is no
reading of profane author or poet, who might inoculate the mind with
defilement." I may remark that Ignatius had, from the very first, begun the
method of expurgating authors, a task which was then carried on with
diligence by the literary men of the Society. Our author resumes: "A
hundred daily occasions of sin and idleness are precluded; a continuous
series is going on of lectures, repetitions, disputations, conferences." Then
he portrays, as visible there in every-day life, many of the features which
Ribadeneira has mentioned.
While idleness was under a ban, vacation was not debarred. Its
principles, however, were defined on new lines. There was a sufficiency of
rest to be provided; but then no new intermissions were to be granted. The
105
"sufficiency" would appear spare luxury to our looser times. "One week
of doing nothing," say the Fathers of Upper Germany to the General
Aquaviva, "is more hurtful to students, than four weeks in which some
literary exercise is kept up"; and "parents take very much amiss this state of
106
idleness, if the boys remain on our hands."

In all this, there was no question of making religious men of the
students. It was a question only of Religious making men of them. Father
George Bader, Provincial of Upper Germany in 1585, left it in his
instructions for the management of the convictus, at Dilingen, that "the
Prefects were not to despair or despond, if they did not see at once, or in all,
the improvement desired; nor were they to require the perfection of
Religious from them, nor introduce among them such practices of life, as
elsewhere the students could not keep up in their calling; but the directors
should be content with having a manner of life followed, which was
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ordinary, virtuous, and pious."
According to this idea, the religious teacher being a man, a citizen, and
an ecclesiastic, his educational industry has produced its effect, when it has
made accomplished men, worthy citizens, competent Ecclesiastics, or
Religious; "when in the school," says Ribadeneira, "as in an arena, the
students, foreshadowing the future, practise already, in their own way, those
same virtues and duties, which in maturer years they will exhibit, in the
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management of the republic." The rich material of the youthful mind and
soul receives the manifold influence which the teacher's mind and heart
possess; and receives it after the manner of the recipient, according to his
future vocation.
What the Jesuit professors, in fact, were like, those who in after years
showed themselves but little friendly to the Order did not omit to testify.
"During the seven years," says Voltaire, "that I lived in the house of the
Jesuits, what did I see among them? The most laborious, frugal, and regular
life, all their hours divided between the care they spent on us and the
exercises of their austere profession. I attest the same as thousands of others
brought up by them, like myself; not one will be found to contradict me.
Hence I never cease wondering how any one can accuse them of teaching
corrupt morality.... Let any one place side by side the 'Provincial Letters'
and the Sermons of Father Bourdaloue; he will learn in the former the art of
raillery, the art of presenting things, indifferent in themselves, under aspects
which make them appear criminal, the art of insulting with eloquence; he
will learn from Father Bourdaloue, that of being severe to oneself, and
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indulgent toward others."

History is uniform in bearing witness that the general effects of their
teaching corresponded to the example of these Professors, in spite of the
fact, as Cretineau-Joly puts it, that even from the hands of religious men the
impious can still come forth, as, in the school of the wise, dunces and dolts
110
may still be found. Man is still and always free. However, if it follows
thence, that not only a positive, but a negative result may always be
expected; such a double result may be set off by two consoling reflections,
which I will mention, in order to complete the picture of this education in
practice.
The first is, that since, from the school of virtue and religiousness, vice
can still issue forth, and, as the General Vitelleschi says, a good education,
though almost omnipotent, may, like the morning dew, evaporate and be
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lost in the first heat of manhood's passions, what would be the results of
the system, if it had less piety to enlighten, or less of an organized practice
of virtue to confirm, the minds and hearts of the young?
Another reflection is this: that human nature, however erratic by defect
of will, still remains beautiful, thanks to the original gift of God. Whence it
comes, that impiety is found beautifully inconsistent; and, in its lucid
intervals, it makes the due acknowledgment, as he did, who once said:—
O thou, that with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion ...
To thee I call....
To tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
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I fell.

The Society of Jesus has many a time been elegantly blessed and
cursed by the same eloquent lips and pens.
The secret of this magisterial ascendency, as Ignatius of Loyola
projected it, was to be found in the Masters' intellectual attainments, which
naturally impressed youthful minds; and also in a paternal affection which,
of course, won youthful hearts. Does anything more seem necessary for the
full idea of authority? The committee appointed by the canton of Fribourg,
for restoring the Fathers to their old college in 1818, mention as one reason

for having done so, that "the will cannot be chained; it will not submit to
restraint. You can win it, but not subjugate it." And they speak of that "most
lively attachment" ever abiding in the hearts of students towards members
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of the Order, which they have known as the cradle of their youth. The
same Father Bader, whom I have quoted before, defines where authority
lies, when he says: "Let not the Prefects consider their authority to consist
in this, that the students are on hand in obedience to their nod, their every
word, or their very look; but in this, that the boys love them, approach with
confidence, and make their difficulties known." Speaking of penalties, he
goes on: "The pupils should be led to understand that such reprehensions
are necessary and are prompted by affection; and let it be the most grievous
rebuke or penalty for them to know that they have offended their
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Prefect."
Thus, in the education of the sixteenth century, there came into play a
gradual reaction against the harshness and brusquer manners of earlier
times. Speaking of conversation with the students, the General Vitelleschi,
in 1639, gives characteristic directions: "It will be very useful if from time
to time the Professors treat with their auditors, and converse with them, not
about vain rumors and other affairs that are not to the purpose, but about
those which appertain most to their well-being and education; going down
to particulars that seem most to meet their wants; and showing them, in a
familiar way, how they ought to conduct themselves in studies and piety.
Let the Professors be persuaded that a single talk in private, animated with
true zeal and prudence on their part, will penetrate the heart more and work
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more powerfully, than many lectures and sermons given in common."
Here then I have touched on the secrets of success, those principles
which commanded esteem, and shed about the Order an unmistakable halo
of educational prestige.

CHAPTER VIII.

IGNATIUS ADMINISTERING THE
COLLEGIATE SYSTEM. HIS DEATH.

The first two colleges were established in the same year, 1542,—one of
them in the royal university at Coimbra in Portugal, the other at Goa in
Hindustan. Though they were organized at an early date, only two years
after the foundation of the Order, when as yet no system had been formally
adopted, nevertheless these two first colleges, a good many thousands of
miles apart, were found to have been established in precisely the same way.
Francis Xavier, having been assigned to the apostolic ministry in the East,
began a university there, in which all the sciences and branches were
professed, just as in the European colleges. This became the base of
operations for Japan, China, Persia, Ethiopia, and the other nations of the
East. Forty years later, there were as many as one hundred and twenty
Jesuits in the college.
In 1542, Ignatius had a select body of fifteen or sixteen young men
studying in Paris; others he had placed in Padua or elsewhere. He availed
himself of the actual universities until such time as he should have his own.
War breaking out between the Emperor Charles V and the French King
Francis, all Spaniards and Belgians were ordered out of France. Such as
were Italians remaining in Paris, the other young Jesuits crossed the frontier
to Louvain, under the charge of Father Jerome Domenech. There the Latin
oratory of the youth, Francis Strada, whom Lefèvre, on his way through
116
Belgium, supplied with matter for his orations, helped to build up the
Order rapidly with two kinds of men, talented youths, who were captivated
by the things they saw and heard, and men already eminent, who were

equally attracted by the scope of the new Institute. In the young Strada
preaching and the eminent Lefèvre going out of his way to subsidize him
with matter, we catch a family glimpse of that intensified force which can
be developed in a closely bound organization.
Conspicuously wanting in gifts of presence and of learning, Francis
Villanova, sent by Ignatius to the university seat of Alcalà, won such an
ascendency there by his other qualities as a Priest, that a commodious and
flourishing college was soon founded. Father Jerome Domenech endowed
one in his native city of Valentia, 1543. Lefèvre and Araoz, following
awhile by royal request in the suite of the Princess Mary, daughter of the
Portuguese King, and queen of the Spanish King, founded a college at
Valladolid. In Gandia, his own duchy, Francis Borgia erected and richly
equipped a university, which was the first placed in the hands of the
Society.
Colleges at Barcelona, Bologna, Saragossa, arose within the next two
or three years; also at Messina, Palermo, Venice, and Tivoli. It is evident
that Ignatius had a world of administration already on his hands. As early as
March 16, 1540, he had excused himself from granting an application,
because of "much pains he was taking in sending some to the Indies, others
to Ireland and to parts of Italy." Now, though his forces were increasing, yet
he was husbanding them; and even so, while refusing many applications, he
seemed to be everywhere. But this need not be so much a matter of wonder,
if we consider that it is the right place, and the right move at the proper
time, that commands other places, movements, and times.
At the death of Lefèvre, in 1546, the onward movement of these select
men, coming in contact, either friendly or adverse, with every actual power
in Europe, was so impressive for its strategic completeness, and so far-
reaching in its results, that, as an historian remarks, "These ten men, so ably
chosen, had accomplished to their entire satisfaction, in less than six years,
what the most absolute monarch would not have ventured to exact of the
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most blind devotedness."
Hardly had Lefèvre departed this life, when his place was taken by the
last man whom he had dealt with, Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, the
friend and cousin of the Emperor Charles V. Still wearing his ducal robes,
until his temporal affairs could be settled, he came to Rome in 1550. He

founds the Roman College, which is the centre and type of all Jesuit
colleges.
It was begun on February 18th, 1551, at the foot of the Capitol, with
fourteen members of the Order, and Father John Peltier, a Frenchman, at
their head. Doubling this number in the following September, the College
moved to a larger building. The Professors taught Rhetoric, and three
languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In 1553, the entire course of
Philosophy and Theology was added. The number of Jesuit students among
the auditory amounted, in this year, to sixty, and, in the following year, to
one hundred. A few years later, Vittoria Toffia, niece of Paul IV, and wife of
Camillo Orsini, provided the institution with a splendid property.
Thenceforth, the number of Jesuit students alone was as high as 220,
brought together from sixteen or more different nations, most of them
familiar with many languages, all speaking by rule the tongue of the
country in which they were residing, and all competent to speak and teach
in the one universal and learned language of the time, the Latin tongue.
Of students not belonging to the Order, nearly twenty colleges are
enumerated, at some periods, as following the courses of this central Roman
College. They included the colleges of the English, the Greeks, the Scotch,
the Maronites, the Irish, and the Neophytes; the Colleges named Capranica,
Fuccioli, Mattei, Pamfili, Salviati, Ghislieri; the German College and the
College Gymnasio; also the Roman Seminary. Of the 2107 students
counted, as following the courses at a given time, 300 were in theology. The
most eminent professors filled the chairs, in successive generations;
theologians like Suarez and Vasquez, commentators like Cornelius a Lapide
and Maldonado, founders or leaders in the schools of national history like
Mariana and Pallavicini; Clavius, reformer of the Gregorian calendar;
Kircher, universal in all exact sciences; and so of the rest; while the cycle of
colleges over the world remained provided with their requisite forces, and
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maintained their own prestige.
The emblem of this institution was Theology, enthroned, as it were, in a
temple of imposing proportions. At her right and left two Maids of Honor
stand; they are the Natural Sciences. One of them, representing
Mathematics, is placing the celestial sphere under the feet of the august
goddess seated; the other, representing Physics, is subjecting, in like

manner, the orb of the earth. The legend attached reads: Leges impone
subactis.
In forty or fifty years such an investment of talent, character, and
virtue, had been made, by management within the Order, and by that power
to which Ignatius always appealed, Divine Providence, that Rome had seen
pass through this house the most distinguished men of the age, in every line
of intellectual life, of moral eminence, and of all that could elevate the
thoughts of noble and generous minds. For the young, in particular, three
characters came, figures that were to fill the niches and terminate the aisles
of contemplation, as the ideal choice of the bloom of youth—Stanislaus
Kostka, a young Polish noble of seventeen, Aloysius Gonzaga, an Italian
prince of twenty-three, and John Berchmans, a Flemish burgher of twenty-
two. Being what they were, and leaving this life at such an age, they have
appropriated in the Catholic Church the honors of the young.
With regard to Germany, it is with a classic touch, as of Cæsar's style,
that an historian introduces the subject thus: Germania, quo gravius
119
laboravit, hoc studiosius adjuta est; Ignatio nulla regio commendatior.
Nor will the association be considered far-fetched, if, substituting for
Cæsar's pen and Cæsar's sword, Loyola's legislation for letters and his
strategic tactics, one catches a suggestive idea, on the present topic, from
that statue of the same Roman General, which represents him as holding in
one hand a sword, and in the other a pen, with the words inscribed
underneath, Ex utroque Cæsar.
Of the services of those nine men, with whom he founded the Order, he
spent a large part upon Germany. Lefèvre was there, Le Jay, Bobadilla,
Salmeron, Laynez; not to mention the great Canisius (de Hondt), a young
man already in the field, who was to stay there for half a century. It is of
these men and their work that Ranke writes: "Of what country were these,
the first of their Order amongst us? They were natives of Spain, Italy, the
Netherlands. For a long time, even the name of their Society was unknown,
and they were styled the Spanish Priests. They filled the chairs of the
universities, and there met with disciples willing to embrace their faith.
Germany has no part in them; their doctrine, their constitution, had been
completed and reduced to form, before they appeared in our midst. We may
then regard the progress of their Institute here, as a new participation of

Latin Europe in German Europe. They have defeated us upon our own soil,
120
and wrested from us a share of our fatherland."
In concert with the Duke of Bavaria and the Emperor Ferdinand,
Ingolstadt and Vienna became the two first centres of operations. Ingolstadt
was indeed destined to become soon one of the most representative
universities of the Company, and the German centre of what has been called
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the "Counter-Reformation." But Ignatius would not accept it, without the
clearest enunciation of some fundamental principles in the educational work
of his Institute. I will mention them.
First, the condition of all higher studies, and of lower studies as well,
was such, that, as Ignatius said, it was useless to begin with the top, which
without a good foundation will never stand. The disappointment of
individual hopes and of general expectation would be the only result, with
demoralization for the future. Let Literature, he said, and Philosophy be
gone through satisfactorily; then Theology may be approached. Literature
must come first of all. Hence Polanco, the secretary of Ignatius, writes to
the Duke of Bavaria, in 1551, that the "Jesuits must begin by undertaking
preparatory teaching, with Professors capable of inspiring their young
122
students, little by little, with a taste for Theology."
123
Secondly, we may recall to mind what was mentioned before, that
Ignatius provides for Law and Medicine in his universities, but the
professors of these departments are to be taken from without the Order.
Now, quite as a counterpart to this, we find him declaring to the Duke of
Bavaria, that it is at variance with his plan to lend any Professors or
Lecturers of the Order for work outside of Jesuit institutions. Therefore a
college must be founded for them, or the Duke cannot have them.
The reason for this reserve is not hard to discern. In an organization
like his, there are no men at large to lend. And, were the most eminent men
assigned for work outside of the Jesuit colleges and universities, the
younger generation of the Order would practically be debarred from the
influence of their type of eminence. And again, if there were eminent men
laboring in a country, without the stable abode of a Jesuit college in the
same place, there would be no propagating the distinctive work of the Order

itself, by means of the men of that country. Yet, as he projected a native
clergy for Germany, so he intended native Jesuits for the Germans. Besides,
it does not seem possible to accept of a chair outside, except on the basis of
some pecuniary consideration for the individual Professor. Now this is a
situation which he does not accept. A Professed Father is not to sacrifice his
religious life and independence, bound to a work outside of the Order's own
houses, and that for a valuable consideration. Ignatius accepts of no
obligations to fill chairs, save as accepting universities, which contain those
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chairs. And, as to pecuniary considerations, his principle is, Gratis
accepistis, gratis date; "Give freely what you have freely received." To this
cardinal principle the statutes of so many universities, if not of all, in which
a Jesuit College conducted any of the faculties, distinctly refer, as the
ground for exempting Religious of the Society from all pecuniary charges,
125
incidental to university affairs. No ingenious compromise was admitted
126
which tended to relax this principle, regarding a pecuniary consideration.
On the contrary, the most legitimate and ample revenues offered were not
accepted as a recommendation for a university, if there were any conditions
127
whatever not in keeping with the Institute.
The German College in Rome was founded by Ignatius, to form
German ecclesiastics for the Germans. At that time benefices and parochial
cures, in the German Emperor's dominions, were generally vacant for want
of Priests. It soon came to pass that Priests were found to be in waiting, for
want of benefices. It was not merely for the ordinary cure of souls that this
college received so much attention from Loyola. True to himself, ever
contemplating something eminent,—rarum et eximium facinus, as he said
once to the Scholastics of Coimbra, "that rare and excellent achievement;
which is worth more than six hundred common ones,"—he was founding a
seminary for preachers, professors, prelates. If the students sent from
Germany, to be admitted and supported on this foundation, are not
noblemen, "at all events," writes Ignatius in 1552, "let nobility of soul not
128
be wanting to them." This is the institution which caused so much
vexation to non-Catholic Germany. It renovated the priesthood.
Thus, then, in a short official career of sixteen years, Ignatius had the
gratification of seeing a new and vast educational policy crowned with

success. In spite of the active opposition which powerful interests in Rome
led against him—and a vigorous siege from the side of the schoolmasters
was not to be despised, nor should it fail to be recorded,—in spite of the
desperate hostility of the Sorbonne, which was but beginning its war upon
the Society in France, with storms at Toledo and Saragossa flanking his
movements in Spain; in spite of the open war with heresy in Protestant
Germany, where acrimony, distilled to its last degree of concentration, was
to embitter history, till the days of Ranke and Janssen should come, and
begin to vindicate the truth of history; thanks to the labors of Ignatius, the
monopoly of education was being broken down; the old universities were
no longer either the sole depositories of superior instruction, or the arbiters
of the intellectual life of Europe; and all the best learning, which the most
accomplished men could impart, was now being given gratuitously, and in
as many centres of educational activity as the Society was allowed to create.
And, whereas it is put down to the credit of Germany, that sixteen of the old
universities had arisen on its soil, now, in the German Assistency of the
Society, there arose more than sixteen Jesuit universities, besides two
hundred colleges. And, in virtue of Papal charters, it was already an
accomplished fact, that all the powers of universities, with regard to the
degrees of Bachelor, Master, Licentiate, and Doctor, were vested in the head
129
of the Order, who could delegate the same to subordinate Superiors.
No wonder all the faculties of Christendom considered the Order an
intruder and an aggressor. It might be considered so to-day. Free and
universal education was at the doors of all. We, men of the nineteenth
century, may flatter ourselves that it was the spirit of our age which
breathed upon the Order of Jesus, three centuries before the time. Perhaps
so. But we shall have to wait a few centuries more, even beyond the
nineteenth century, before we come to such education given universally and
given gratuitously. For it is one of the most palpable characteristics of all
educational and other philanthropy which we know of, that it is an
extremely expensive thing.
Let us now close our sketch of the great educator, Saint Ignatius of
Loyola. All the particulars of his death have been preserved for us by those
who were with him at the last. They were not his first companions. Of
these, the few who survived at the present date, sixteen years after the
foundation of the Society, were scattered in various climes. The members

with him were John Polanco, his polished secretary, André Frusis, a
Frenchman, one of the most gifted of linguists and of littérateurs,
Christopher Madrizi, a university Doctor of Alcalà, and Jerome Nadal,
whom in Paris, long before, Ignatius had endeavored to enlist in the service
of his Institute; but Nadal had rejected all overtures, pointing to the Bible
under his arm, and saying he wanted no other institute save that. He was a
man of the first quality in judgment and the governing cast of mind. Later
on, when the exploits of Saint Francis Xavier in India and Japan had
become the talk and admiration of Europe, Nadal entered the Order, so
cautiously that one might say he did it reluctantly; yet he did it. His
subsequent career showed that he had made a mistake, when he missed a
place in the very first ranks.
Others were close by. Laynez lay in a sick-room; as was thought, on his
death-bed; Mendoza too, and Martin Olave. The latter, some thirty years
before, was a boy whom Ignatius met, when as a poor pilgrim he reached
Alcalà from Barcelona, to take up his university studies. The boy gave him
an alms, the first received by Ignatius in that city. Time had passed since
then. The boy had become a Master of Arts, and, in 1543, a Doctor of the
Paris University, remarkable in many ways for virtue and learning. Now, a
man of mature age and great authority, he had embraced the Institute of
Ignatius. He alone of the invalids died immediately after his master in
religion.
The latter, on July the 30th, told them he was about to die. But, diseases
having preyed upon him for years, the physicians did not confirm what he
said; and Father Ignatius made no more statements on the subject. He spent
the evening in his usual manner, transacted some business with perfect
serenity of mind, and then was left alone till the morrow.
The morrow is just dawning, when they find him breathing his last. He
declines to accept any potion. Joining his hands together, with his eyes
fixed heavenward, and pronouncing the name of "Jesus," the founder of the
Society of Jesus passes away from this life, in the Professed House at
Rome.
It was the thirty-first day of July, 1556. He was sixty-five years of age.
Thirty-five years had passed, since the Knight of the King of Navarre had,
with such solemnity, changed his garb, hung up his sword and poniard in

the sanctuary of Montserrat, and vowed himself to be a Knight in the
Kingdom of Christ.
All the time since then he had spent in extreme poverty, in the practice
of austerity, in the laborious travels of a pilgrim, in the more laborious
pursuit of letters, under the stress of persecution, prisons, and chains, and
under the relentless fatigue of a universal foresight, vigilance, and
administration. He had proved himself a leader and commander of men, as
nature had made him to be, and as history shows that he was.
In an especial manner, he is famous for his prudence. Approaching
every enterprise with the most varied and exhaustive deliberation, spending
forty days of meditation on determining a single point of the Constitution,
throwing upon his premises every kind of light from consultation and
advice, and having habitually in his room, for reference, only two books,
the New Testament, and the Imitation of Christ, he thought out every plan
to the last degree of definiteness and consistency. Having once reached such
a definite conclusion, he was not easy to move thenceforth out of the
direction taken. Quite otherwise. With the utmost vigilance, he applied
himself and he applied all the means, whether they were persons available
or measures necessary, to the execution of his purpose. Even when, as often
seemed to be the case, he was starting from principles other than those of
ordinary human foresight, apparently from a pure trust in Divine
Providence, he did not exempt himself from applying, with the same
circumspection and diligence as ever, the means adequate to execute what
he had begun. Waiting fourteen hours, and fasting withal, in the ante-
chamber of a prince, lest the propitious occasion should slip, writing out the
same letter twice, thrice, and oftener, lest the right thing should not be said
in the right way, and sending out thirty letters in one night, he exhibited, in
the administration of great things and small, what had marked all his
previous deliberation, the highest degree of consummate prudence and of
practical perfection.
If, in all this, there are many eminent qualities to admire, there is a
resultant fact more marvellous still. He did his work so that it went on
without him. And hence, if, whenever he happened to be anywhere on the
field of action, account had to be taken of such a man, it will not perhaps
appear singular that his Order too, even when ostracized and expatriated, is
taken into account, if it is anywhere visible on the social horizon. While I

am writing this, three hundred and fifty years after his time, the Bundesrath,
on closing the Kulturkampf, and admitting all the exiled Orders of the
Catholic Church back into the Empire of Germany, makes an exception of
the Jesuits. It bans the Order of Jesus, and gives no reason, beyond the
palpable fact that the Order is what it is. Evidently, Ignatius of Loyola did
his work so as to make it go on without him; and go on just as he made it.

CHAPTER IX.

SUBSEQUENT ADMINISTRATIONS.

According to a contemporary chronicle for the year 1556, the first
announcement of the death of Ignatius caused such a profound sentiment of
grief in all members of the Order, that a degree of stupor seemed for the
moment to possess them. But this was only temporary. It was followed by a
marked alacrity of spirit appearing everywhere. The Society was beginning
130
its course.
In the first general assembly, Father James Laynez was elected to
succeed the founder, in the office of General Superior. The matters which
concerned the assembly in its legislation, and the new General in his
administration, were the proper temporal foundation of colleges, the
admission of convictus or boarding-colleges, and other questions, which
131
may be noted in the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica. Laynez
governed the Order during nine years, till 1565.
Father Francis Borgia, who had resigned his dukedom, and by this
example led Charles V to seek repose in the monastery of St. Yuste, was
elected third General. His virtues and his presence, wherever he appeared,
exercised such a magic influence that, when he had merely passed through
Spain, colleges had sprung up as from the soil. Three Provinces had been
formed in that country alone, within thirteen years from the foundation of
the Society. But this multiplication of colleges, often not sufficiently
endowed for their future development, was already seen to be one of the
threatened weaknesses of the Company. The special legislation passed at
the time of his election regarded the proper establishment, in every
Province, of philological, philosophical, and theological seminaries, for the

132
formation of Professors. Instead of the proportionate number of Jesuit
students being supported on each collegiate foundation, this legislation, and
much more that followed later, ordained a system of concentration in
seminaries of humane letters, philosophy, science, and divinity, which were
conducted respectively by corps of eminent Professors selected for the
purpose, and were maintained either on some munificent foundation
specially made for this object, or by a due proportion of the other collegiate
foundations. At this date it was that colleges for the formation of diocesan
clergy, or "Bishops' Seminaries," as they are commonly called, were
coming into existence, in accordance with the decrees of the Council of
Trent. The manner of admitting them, as annexed to colleges of the Society,
and thereby availing themselves of the Jesuit courses, was regulated by this
assembly. In no case were they to be provided with a corps of Professors
distinct from the faculty of the college.
In 1573 Father Everard Mercurian, a Belgian, was elected to succeed
Saint Francis Borgia. He was sixty-eight years old at the time of his
election, and lived eight years after. He drew out of the Constitution various
summaries of rules for the guidance of the chief officers in the Society.
133
Those which concern studies are given in a few pages of the Monumenta.
At his death, a young man thirty-seven years old, who had entered the
Order only about twelve years before, was elected to succeed him. This was
Claudius Aquaviva, son of Prince John Aquaviva, Duke of Atri. He was a
man who, for his superior executive abilities and his services rendered to
the Order in times most critical, has been regarded as a second founder. As
to what his administration saw effected in the matter of education, the Ratio
Studiorum bears witness. He governed the Society during thirty-four years.
Mutius Vitelleschi, one of the mildest and gentlest of men, but not on
that account ineffective in his government, succeeded Aquaviva, filling a
term of thirty-one years, from 1615 to 1646. Various pedagogic interests
occupied the attention of the general assembly, by which he was elected; in
particular, the promotion of Humane Letters, the means of supplying
Professors, and the searching character of the examinations ordained, at
every step in their studies, for the members of the Society.

The farther the Society advanced in history, the less there was of new
legislation. The tension grew on the side of administration; and the urgency
shown by general assemblies evinces this. The philological seminary was
developed for the junior scholastics; and a classic form drawn up for it by
Jouvancy. As distinguished talents for preaching and governing were treated
with the special favor of being allowed to compensate for some
deficiencies, in the qualifications requisite for the degree of Profession in
the Order, so special legislation provided for similar eminence in literature,
in Oriental languages, in Greek and Hebrew.
Mathematics had, from the first, been a department of activity native to
the energies of the Company. The schools of Geography and History
developed in the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth
centuries. The school of modern Physics then asserting itself, and running
so close upon the field of Metaphysics, was subjected to regulations in the
assemblies of 1730 and 1751.
After the restoration of the Order, social and educational circumstances
being so immensely altered, the whole ground had to be surveyed again,
with a view to adaptation; the curriculum had to be expanded, and, where
necessary, prolonged to meet the growing demands of the exact sciences;
and an indefinite number of specialties to be provided for, by the selection
and fostering of special talents. These special lines are, in the terms of the
latest general assembly, "Ancient Languages, Philology, Ethnology,
Archæology, History, Higher Mathematics, and all the Natural Sciences."
We are thus brought down, in the history of general legislation, to the very
recent date, 1883, less than ten years ago.
Meanwhile the Generals, on whom rested the burden of supervising all
this, discharged the functions of administration. Father Vincent Caraffa
promoted and urged on the pursuit of Belles Lettres, and defined positions
in Mathematics. Father Francis Piccolomini, in a general ordinance for all
the higher studies, defined the stand to be taken by Professors, as
representing the Society itself in their chairs; so, too, Father Goswin Nickel,
with reference to certain new issues. Both he and his successor, Paul Oliva,
had to face the new contingencies which arose from the charges of the
Jansenists against what they called the loose moral teachings of the Jesuits.
Father Oliva stimulated the pursuit of excellence in Humane Letters, in the
Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic languages. Positions of Descartes,

Leibnitz, as well as of certain others in Philosophy and Theology, were
animadverted upon by the Generals Tamburini and Retz. Father Ignatius
Visconti urged again the pursuit of perfection in literary matters, and in the
manner of conducting the schools of literature. And the General Aloysius
Centurione, shortly before the Suppression, laid down the clearest
principles with respect to the study of Moral Theology, and the
examinations therein. Since the restoration of the Order, Fathers Roothaan,
Beckx, and the actual General, Anthony M. Anderledy, have devoted their
own attention and directed that of the Society to the ways of accepting, with
undiminished energy, the altered and unfavorable situation, in which the
present century has placed the Order, and hampers the revived Institute.
For this immense organization had been almost entirely destroyed by
the stroke of a pen—the signature of Clement XIV given in pencil. They
dispute whether he gave it at all; or, at least, whether he meant it.
Howsoever that be, the Order, which had been erected on the principle of
obedience, received the word and disappeared. The rock on which it had set
its foot became the altar of a sacrifice; and that a sacrifice offered without a
struggle or a remonstrance, to betray any change in the spirit, with which
Ignatius, two hundred and thirty-three years before, had vowed obedience
to the Vicar of Christ. An epigram had been written, on the occasion of the
first centenary, under a picture of Archimedes and his lever; Archimedes is
getting a foothold for his lever to move the world; and beneath is the
epigram:—
Fac pedem figat, et terram movebit.

Its footing was now taken away, and it vanished from the world.
While the Catholic Bourbon courts were thus successful in
accomplishing a manœuvre, which at fitful intervals they had essayed
heretofore, the schismatical Empress, Catherine II of Russia, denounced it
and endeavored to counteract it. She wrote to the Pope in 1783, "that she
was resolved to maintain these Priests against any power, whatsoever it
was"; and she was good to her word; the Society remained unsuppressed in
White Russia. The Protestant King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, without
exhibiting all the temper of the irascible lady, manipulated things as best he
could to preserve the Society.

To sum up the Order's experiences, it may well be said that in public
life there is no resurrection; and the State which dies is dead forever. From
infancy on through maturity it goes its way decrepit to the grave. Yet
Balmez observes, "the Society of Jesus did not follow the common course
of others, either in its foundation, its development, or its fall; that Order, of
which it is truly and correctly said, that it had neither infancy nor old
134
age." It rose again; and the flag of the Knight of Loyola, though worn
and torn, was none the less fair for that:—
Jam se ipso formosius est.

For neither the violence of endurance, nor the vehemence of energy,
although begetting intensest fatigue, is to be confounded with decay.
It was not decay, a century ago, when expropriation and exile were the
confessed policy of the courts in Europe; when, as an American writer
states it, in Portugal "Pombal cut the Gordian knot.... He commenced by the
expulsion of the Jesuits and the expropriation of their property." Nor is it
decay in the Order, when a liberal confederation in Switzerland, on
obtaining the political ascendency in 1848, suppresses the Jesuit University
at Fribourg, and provides in this wise, as an American writer records: "No
religious society shall be allowed to teach; and persons hereafter educated
by the Jesuits, or by any of the Orders affiliated to the Jesuits, shall be
135
incapable of holding office in Church or State." Policy like this, whether
in the countries "expurgated," or in countries thereunto "affiliated," proves
no decay in the Order.
But where decay may come in has been clearly pointed out by one of
its Generals. Speaking of the Education of Youth and the Promotion of
Humane Letters, Mutius Vitelleschi wrote, in 1639, "If ever the Society
were to decline from that lofty position which it holds with so many
provinces and peoples, such an event could come about in no other way
than by failing to walk in the same steps, by which, with the Divine Grace,
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it has acquired that high esteem."
Those steps had been taken in various paths, of which only two have
concerned us here. For its men of action were largely identified with the
general history of Europe; and its men of the word, who toiled in apostolic

work, at home or abroad, have entwined their memories in the history of
souls, often ungrateful, yet always worthy of the toil. But its men of the
school did a work which we have sketched in a general way, and which we
shall analyze in the second part of this essay; while its men of the pen
deserve a passing word of notice here.
They concern us from a pedagogic point of view, in many ways. They
wrote text-books, many of which are the basis of manuals in almost every
line of education to-day, sometimes without the change of a word, and
generally without acknowledgment. Besides that, their literary productions
were, as a rule, the offspring of their labors in the schools. It might not be
safe to estimate their standing as littérateurs, by the process which a Scotch
Professor uses, who, in the course of forty-seven elegant lectures on
Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, sees little occasion to recognize the existence
of this Jesuit school of literature, except when he goes out of his way to
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salute Père Rapin in a somewhat questionable manner. Many of those
whom the Scottish Professor himself does honor to, in his pages, were
Jesuit scholars,—Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Tasso, Fontenelle, Didérot,
Voltaire, Bourdaloue, himself a Jesuit. It would be safer then to determine
the standing of these Professors, who were in control of a great literary age,
by looking at the golden age itself, that of Louis XIV. The majority of the
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brilliant figures, whom Dr. Blair names as illustrating the epoch, were all
Jesuit scholars. Naturally, then, the fifty Professors of the Jesuit College at
Paris were, as Cardinal Maury affirmed, a permanent tribunal of literature
for all men of letters, a high court of judicature, a focus of public attention
from which radiated the public opinion of the capital; in short, as Piron had
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emphatically said, "the Star-chamber of literary reputations."
Devoted as they were to an austere profession, we may say of many
among them, that they were not themselves romancers of a lively fancy or
great poets; and so far agree with Voltaire, who made this very remark
about his old Professor, Père Porée. Yet also, without inconsistency I
believe, we may agree with the spirit of Père Porée's rejoiner, when the
remark was reported to him, that "he was not one of the great poets." The
Jesuit replied, "At least you may grant that I have been able to make some
of them."

And, should results be gauged on a wider basis than mere poetry, not a
few of the most prominent men in European history would seem to have
been the outcome of this system, men, too, who represented every possible
school and tendency, in their subsequent literary and public life. A few
names show this. There are those of Descartes, Buffon, Justus Lipsius,
Muratori, Calderon, Vico, the jurisconsult, founder of the philosophical
school of history. There are Richelieu, Tilly, Malesherbes, Don John of
Austria, Luxembourg, Esterhazy, Choiseul, with those of Saint Francis de
Sales, founder of a religious Order, Lambertini, afterwards the most learned
of Popes, under the name of Benedict XIV, and the present Pontiff, Leo
XIII, also most erudite. These certainly represent many schools and
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tendencies, and they come, with many others, from the same schools.
As authors of every kind, and in departments even far remote from the
regular courses of the schools, Jesuit writers were, at the very least, so far
related to Jesuit teachers, that, as we see in the bibliographical dictionary of
the Society, all had been Professors, with scarcely an exception; and almost
all had professed Humanities, Belles Lettres, Rhetoric.
When Father Nathaniel Southwell of Norfolk endeavored, in 1676, to
compile a dictionary of these authors, he recorded those whose works had
the qualification of a respectable bulk to recommend them. He entered the
names and works of 2240 authors who answered this description. This was
136 years after the foundation of the Order. The enterprise was repeatedly
taken in hand afterwards. The possibility of ever accomplishing it was much
jeopardized by the Suppression. But at length the two Fathers De Backer
published a series of seven quarto volumes, in the years 1853–1861; and
this first step they followed up, in the years 1869–1876, with a new edition,
in three immense folios, containing the names of 11,100 authors. This
number does not include the supplements, with the names of writers in the
present century, and of the anonymous and pseudonymous authors. Of this
last category, Father Sommervogel's researches, up to 1884, enabled him to
publish a catalogue, which fills a full octavo volume of 600 pages, with
double columns. The writers of this century, whom the De Backers
catalogued in their supplement, fill 647 columns, folio, very small print.
Altogether, the three folios contain 7086 columns, compressed with every
art of typographical condensation.

Suarez of course is to be seen there, and Cornelius à Lapide, Petau, and
the Bollandists. A single name, like that of Zaccaria, has 117 works
recorded under it, whereof the 116th is in 13 volumes quarto, and the 117th
in 22 volumes octavo. The Catechism of Canisius fills nearly 11 columns
with the notices of its principal editions, translations, abridgments; the
commentaries upon it, and critiques. Rossignol has 66 works to his name.
The list of productions about Edmund Campian, for or against him, chiefly
in English, fills, in De Backers' folio, two and a half columns of minutest
print. Bellarmine, in Father Sommervogel's new edition, fills 50 pages,
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double column.
Under each work are recorded the editions, translations, sometimes
made into every language, including Arabic, Chinese, Indian; also the
critiques, and the works published in refutation—a controversial enterprise
which largely built up the Protestant theological literature of the times, and,
in Bellarmine's case alone, meant the theological Protestant literature for 40
or 50 years afterwards. Oxford founded an anti-Bellarmine chair. The
editions of one of this great man's works are catalogued by Sommervogel
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under the distinct heads of 54 languages.
In the methodical or synoptic table, at the end of the De Backers' work,
not only are the subjects well-nigh innumerable, which have their
catalogues of authors' names attached to them, but such subjects too are
here as might not be expected. Thus "Military Art" has 32 authors' names
under it; "Agriculture" 11; "Navy" 12; "Music" 45; "Medicine" 28.
To conclude then our History of this Educational Order, we have one
synoptical view of it in these twelve or thirteen thousand authors, all of one
family. We have much more. This one work "attesting," as De Backer says
in his preface, "at one and the same time a prodigious activity and often an
indisputable merit," whereof three and a half centuries have been the course
in time, and the whole world the place and theatre, is a general record of
religion, letters, science, and education, in every country, civilized or
barbarous, where the Society of Jesus labored and travelled. And where has
it not done so? In many parts of the world it was the first to occupy the field
with literary men, who then sent communications to their superiors, or to
learned societies, about the manners of different countries, the state of
religion there, of letters, science, and education, including reports of their

own observations in geography, meteorology, botany, astronomy,
mineralogy, etc. Original sources, from which later history in North, South,
and Central America is drawing materials, are seen described here as they
appeared; so too with regard to Japan, China, Thibet, the Philippine Islands,
Hindustan, Syria, as also to-day with respect to the native tongues of the
North American Indians. Here the record of published literature, described
and catalogued according to date, marks the stages of mathematical and
physical science, from the end of the sixteenth century onwards, and of
magnetic and electrical researches all through last century; as well as the
relationship between the books of Jesuit authors and similar or kindred
ones, by persons outside the Society, in different countries and of divers
religions.
In short, works composed in most of the tongues of the world exhibit
the chief periods in universal culture, and the developments elaborated in
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the civilization of mankind.

Part II.
ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM OF STUDIES

CHAPTER X.

AQUAVIVA. THE RATIO STUDIORUM.

So centralized an Order as the Society of Jesus, which formed its
Professors for every country, and sent them from one place to another,
undertook, in doing so, to exhibit a definite system of education, of courses,
of method. Besides such a unity of method, it professed also a consistent
uniformity of doctrine.
Before its time there was no one method which could be considered
universal; because there was no teaching body itself universal. The Order,
as it branched out into the world, found a variety of systems in vogue; and
the Jesuit Professors conformed, as best they could, to the local traditions of
populations very diverse, in universities which were distinct and mutually
independent. But, while they endeavored to better such systems, in
accordance with the plan of their own Constitution, it was clear that they
fell short of realizing the idea of their founder. Hence variations and
dispensations were part of the usual order of the day.
Yet there is a best way of doing everything; and, not least, in education.
In such a best way, some elements are essential at all times, while others are
accidental, and vary with time, place, and circumstance. The ideal system
will preserve in its integrity all that is essential, and then will adapt the
general principles with the closest adjustment to the particular environment.
Besides the unity of method desired, which I may define to be the best
way best adjusted to circumstance, there was need, as I have just said, of a
consistent uniformity of doctrine; lest, in the same chair of philosophy, of
divinity, or of science, or in chairs placed side by side, one Professor should
say Yea to a question, and another Nay to the same question, with no more
material a reason evident for the difference, save that one taught here and

the other there, one spoke yesterday, the other speaks to-day. The
educational effects, however, are far from being immaterial; for,
contradictory statements eliding one another, it is quite possible that the
students understand less the next day than the day before. And, as to the
Professors themselves, nothing can imperil more the harmony and
efficiency of an educational organization, than disagreement of opinion in
the function and act of teaching. In philosophy, the occasions for dispute
spring off at every turn. Theology, as every one knows, is made to bristle
with them. And, among men who are themselves educated to the highest
degree of mental culture, interests and questions like these are far more
absorbing than money, place, or power elsewhere. If anywhere ideas rule, it
is among men of profound thought; as the intense intellectuality of the
mediæval universities had shown, with all the consequences of unlimited
vagaries in an unbridled scholasticism; or, again, as the whole history of the
intellectual Greek world had evidenced, whether in the early ages of the
Christian Church, or in the heathen generations before.
Whatever, then, a man may think privately, and be free to think, in
matters of mere opinion, the genius of education imposes limits on the
manner and matter of his actual teaching; and the speculations of a thinker,
a writer, or an investigator, are not to be confounded with the best results of
an educator, who, doing his work in the best way, is to effect a definite and
immediate object. That object is nothing less than the equipping of fresh
young spirits with principles of thought and habits of life, to enter fully
appointed on their respective paths of duty. In this view, therefore,
definiteness of matter, no less than unity of method, were required from the
first for an effective system of education.
During forty years, the individual enterprise of experienced and
responsible men had been interpreting the values and measuring the results
of existing methods. The Society itself had mounted into such a position, as
practically to command the whole field of secular education. Its own system
must have been excellent already. Nor could that system have been
uniformly excellent, but for some uniformity which characterized it. Still
the unity was defective. The Provinces were petitioning for an
improvement. Evils obstructed the way to something better. For these
reasons, the matter was taken in hand by one General after another. And the

final outcome of their work was a "Form," or "Method of Studies,"
Formula, or Ratio Studiorum.
On the nineteenth day of February, 1581, Father Claudius Aquaviva
was elected fifth General Superior of the Society. Taking up this educational
project where his predecessors had left it, and, like them, availing himself
of his almost boundless resources for obtaining information, he began by
putting the work through every possible stage of consultation, to which the
traditions of his office, and his own executive ability prompted him; and,
when all prudent means had been exhausted in deliberating, he then used
the executive power which was vested in him; and he required that what
had been so laboriously designed, by the united efforts of many, should
henceforth be reduced to practice, with the good will of all.
It will be interesting to review briefly the process of elaboration. In the
general assembly which elected Aquaviva, a committee of twelve Fathers
from different countries was appointed to draw up a method of studies.
How far their work proceeded does not appear. Three years later, in 1584,
the General named a Commission of six, John Azor from Spain, Gaspar
Gonzalez from Portugal, Peter Buys from Austria, Anthony Guisani from
Upper Germany, Stephen Tucci of Rome, and James Tyre to represent
France. This last-named Jesuit, a Scotchman, was not unknown in the lists
of controversy to his countryman, John Knox. They were all experienced in
the administration of colleges, and versed in the subjects of all the faculties.
Entering on their labors, they worked during six winter months in the
Pœnitentiaria of St. Peter's in Rome; and, during the next three summer
months, they resided in the Quirinal. The eyes of the chief authorities in the
Catholic world were turned in expectancy towards them. Indeed, some of
the chief interests of Catholic Christendom seemed to depend upon them.
They spent three hours a day in consultation. The rest of their time they
devoted to consulting authors and conning over methods, in the three fields
of letters, philosophy, and divinity. The documents which they studied are
enumerated by themselves as being the minutes of previous deliberations
held at Rome, or in the more prominent colleges of the Order; the letters,
consultations and laws of the universities, and other such documents, sent at
different times up to that date from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Poland;
the fourth part of the Constitution, as the standard of guidance; the canons

of the general assemblies; the rules and statutes of the schools; moreover,
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the customs and regulations of the Roman College.
After nine months of consecutive labor, they presented the results to the
General, in August, 1585. Father Aquaviva submitted the document for
examination to the Professors of the Roman College. Then he took the
whole matter under his own personal consideration, with his four General
Assistants, who represented each a certain number of Provinces. At this
stage, the report was printed, not as a rule determined on, but as the
preliminary outline of a rule. The copies struck off were few, just enough
for the use of the Provinces. The General's letter, which accompanied the
report, defined the precise stage at which the process was now understood
145
to be.
He says that, in a matter of such grave and universal consequence, it
was not his intention to prescribe anything, without first learning the
opinions of the chief Doctors of the Society. Accordingly, he had been
content with reading the results of the Commission's labors, decreeing
nothing, changing nothing, except so far as was necessary to put it in shape
for distribution. He now required the Provincial Superiors, immediately
upon receipt of the present letter, to select at least five men, who were the
best qualified in point of learning and judgment, along with other members,
who were eminent in literature, and whom the Provincial might think fit to
convoke. To these the report was to be submitted, for each to examine
privately, and with great care. On certain days, several times in the week,
they were to meet and hold consultations; to put their conclusions in
writing, as well with regard to the practical method of studies, as with
regard to the speculative opinions which they favored; they were to note
whatever they thought should be added, or be made clearer, or otherwise
regulated, for the greater perfection of the work. If any of the Fathers,
designated for this Provincial committee, could not possibly attend the
meetings, still they were to send their opinions in writing to the Fathers
actually in session; so that full account might be taken of the public opinion
in that Province. The criterion they were to follow, in making up their
minds, was not so much their own private sentiment or their own leaning
this way or that, as the general good of the whole Society, the practice of

the universities and schools, and, in fine, the judgment of Doctors most
approved for their authority and solidity of doctrine.
Aquaviva refers to the idea and intention of Ignatius with respect to the
present undertaking; and he adds: "I would have all steadfastly keep this
object in view, that they endeavor to find out reasons, not how a final
decree may be prevented, as if the enterprise were hard, and could not
possibly be carried out (for we have made up our mind to carry it out, since
it is necessary, and is recommended by the Constitution); but how the
difficulties, if any such there be, may disappear, and the whole Order may
combine in one and the same arrangement; for otherwise the final result
would only be the greater detriment of the Society."
He calls their attention to an important point, in what is now styled
Pedagogics, or the Science of Education. It is, that, in the form now sent
out, the Fathers had taken pains to explain their reasons for arriving at
conclusions. That would not be done in the System to be drawn up later,
which would contain only the statement of directions for all to follow. In
these words, we have a most important distinction laid down between the
science which underlies the system of education, and the practical method
itself which rests upon the science. The Ratio Studiorum, as subsequently
promulgated, is a practical method. The science is sketched, as need arises,
in the preliminary Ratio of 1586.
At the same time, Father Aquaviva despatched another letter, about
which he says, in a postscript to the foregoing, that the six points
provisionally laid down in it are to be subjected to the same examination as
the preliminary Ratio itself.
In this supplementary epistle, he premises that it will require much time
and consideration to issue the final code of rules; and therefore, as a
direction for the time being, he issues the following:—
First, Professors shall adhere to St. Thomas Aquinas as their standard in
theology.
Secondly, they shall take care, in their manner of teaching, always to
consolidate faith and piety.
Thirdly, he lays down a principle of still wider application, and one
which seems vital in the whole theory and practice of teaching: "Let no one

defend any opinion which is judged by the generality of learned men to go
against the received tenets of philosophers and theologians, or the common
consent of theological schools." This touches a vital element in education. If
we suppose that the teacher's art lies, not in giving forth the lucubrations of
his own private thoughts and theories, but in imparting solid results,
approved and ascertained, to those who come for such results, and wish to
receive them in the most approved way, then the Professor in his chair
ought not to mistake himself for the author in his study, nor should he
practise on living men, whose life is all before them, what he might, with
more propriety, first practise on the leisured world, and test elsewhere,
either in the printed page, or in conference with his equals. The Professor,
as such, is not the original investigator. In mathematics, he is notoriously
not so. In that branch, the best teacher is the man who walks along a
definite line, turns neither to the right nor left, and finishes in a definite
time; or else his scholars will never finish. To a certain degree, the same
holds in all courses. If a man is theorizing, when he ought to be instructing,
he goes off the line of perfect system, however much pains he takes with his
matter; just as much as if, taking no pains whatever, he neglected his matter
altogether, went behind it, or around it, gave histories of his branch,
methods of teaching it, and descanted on pedagogics, to young people who
were never sent to him for that purpose. They are sent to learn definite
matter, and to be formed therein on a good plan, by the man who
understands it. Then, as Loyola said in another connection, "when they have
experienced in themselves the effects thereof," they will be qualified for all
the rest, for understanding the plan itself on which they have been formed,
and enjoying all the practical results of it; and, if their line of life invites, for
understanding other plans too. This is practical wisdom in education;
neither dilettantism nor speculation.
Fourthly, Aquaviva lays down a principle regarding the public
advocacy of opinions. He is not referring to authorities denouncing, or
Professors repudiating, them; but merely to certain conditions for putting
them forward: "If opinions, no matter whose they be, are found in a certain
province or city to give offence to many Catholics, whether members of the
Society or not, that is, persons not unqualified to judge, let no one teach
them or defend them there, albeit the same doctrines may be taught
elsewhere without offence." The word "defence," in a context like this,
means publishing and sustaining theses against all comers in public

disputations; wherein the Professor represents the school, and the school is
put to the account of the Order. The principle seems discreet. If a corporate
body does not want to be compromised, it is not for the member to
compromise it. If he wants to use the perfect freedom of his opinions, and
deliver himself of his own pronouncements, he ought first to assure himself
that his circumstances are such as to set him free from representing others.
This is an elementary principle of social and urbane existence.
The fifth point concerns the march of improvement in the advancement
of opinions. It describes the method of discreet development: "In questions
which have already been treated by others, let no one follow new opinions,
or, in matters which in any way pertain to religion, or are of some
consequence, let no one introduce new questions, without consulting the
Prefect of Studies, or the Superior. If, then, it still remains dubious, whether
the new opinion, or the new question, is permissible, it will be proper for
the said authority, in order that things may proceed more smoothly, to learn
the judgment of others in the Society upon the subject; and then he will
determine what appears best for the greater glory of God." In the sixth and
last point, Aquaviva calls attention to a former decree, upon the manner of
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treating the Aristotelian philosophy.
So much for this letter of Aquaviva. On the sense and purport thereof
he invited the communication of views from the Order at large, as well as
on the document which he encloses, the preliminary Ratio Studiorum. To
this we may now turn our attention.
The six Fathers, who drew it up, state, in their introduction, that there
are two mainstays and supports of the Society of Jesus, "an ardent pursuit of
piety and an eminent degree of learning," ardens pietatis studium et
præstans rerum scientia. If piety is not illumined with the light of learning,
it can be, no doubt, of great use to the person who possesses it, but of
scarcely any use in the service of the Church and of one's neighbor, in the
administration of the Word and of the Sacraments, in the education of
youth, in controversies with those who are hostile to the faith, in giving
counsel, answering doubts, and in all other offices and functions, which are
proper to men of the Order. All these call for an endowment of learning not
common, but excelling in its degree.

To acquire such learning, it is of supreme consequence that we set
before ourselves what path we enter on, what arts we employ, and what
means we use; because, unless a ready and tried method be adopted, ratio
facilis ac solers, much labor is spent in gathering but little fruit; whereas, if
the labor of studies be guided by some sage rule, great results are
compendiously obtained, at the cost of little research.
Then the Commission goes on to say: "We have undertaken to teach,
not only members of the Order, but youth from the world outside. The
number of this latter class is vast; it includes brilliant talent, and represents
the nobility. We cannot imagine that we do justice to our functions, or come
up to the expectations formed of us, if we do not feed this multitude of
youths, in the same way as nurses do, with food dressed in the best way, for
fear they grow up in our schools, without growing much in learning. An
additional spur is felt in the circumstance, that whatever concerns us is
public and, day after day, is before the eyes of all, even of those who are not
well disposed towards us." The Fathers consider it unnecessary to enlarge
upon that harmony of views, so much commended in the Constitution, as to
matters of public policy or teaching; they say, "sufficient regard could not,
up to this, be paid to such harmony; for, when no common order or form
was as yet prescribed, every one thought that he could hold what sentiments
he liked, and teach them to others in the manner he himself preferred; so
that sometimes the members of the Order disagreed as much among
147
themselves, as with others outside."
After describing, in vivid terms, the manner in which they had
conducted their deliberations, and arrived at conclusions, and how, when
148
any keen dispute had arisen among them, they had divided and
distinguished the disputed matter, and had examined it during two and even
three days, till they came to settle at last on what all of them accepted, the
149
critics come to the Practice and Order of Studies; and upon this they
enlarge, in successive chapters, under the following heads:—
The Sacred Scriptures. The Length of the Course in Divinity. The
Means of finishing that Course in Four Years. The Method of Lecturing.
The Questions which are either not to be treated by the Theological
Professors, or are to be treated only at a Certain Part of the Course.

Repetitions. Disputations. The Choice, Censorship, and Correcting of
Opinions. The Private Studies of Students. Vacations. The Degrees of
Bachelor, Master, Doctor. Controversial Theology. Moral Theology.
Hebrew. The Study of Philosophy, which includes Physics. Mathematics.
Literature, that is, Grammar, History, Poetry, Rhetoric. Seminaries for
Literature and the Higher Faculties. The Professors of Literature. The
Grammar to be used. Greek. Different Exercises in the Classics. Incitements
to Study. The Method of Promotion. Books. Vacations in the Lower Classes.
Order and Piety. The Respective Objects and Exercises of the Classes of
Grammar and Humanity. The Class of Humanity. The Class of Rhetoric.
General Distribution of Time during the Year.
These are the matters handled in the publication of 1586. In the course
of treatment, this document contains, by way of a running commentary, the
complete theory of Education, or Science of Pedagogics, as understood by
these critics. It will not be possible, within the brief limits of this work, to
give more than a bare sketch of the pedagogical elements contained in the
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one hundred and fifty pages of the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica.
A second, partial edition of this preliminary Ratio was sent out by
Father Aquaviva, in 1591, to which an entertaining bibliographical history
151
is attached. In 1593, the fifth general assembly of the Order met,
Claudius Aquaviva presiding. By this time, during the interval of seven
years which had elapsed since the first edition, the book had been subjected
to examination in all the Provinces; observations and criticisms had been
returned; it had been re-committed to the Fathers at Rome, and revised by
the General with his Assistants; and had again been sent out for trial. The
Provincials and Deputies, meeting in 1593, brought with them the reports of
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how the system worked. Its slightest defects were noted. Most asked for
an abridged form.
Amid the very grave questions then pending, the assembly took some
action on the Ratio. It was re-committed once more to the competent
authorities for revision. And it assumed its last and definite form, in what
was probably its ninth edition. This last issue, in the year 1599, after fifteen
years spent on the elaboration of it, is the RATIO STUDIORUM.

One hundred and twenty-seven years later, the great old University of
Paris seems to have become a disciple of its educational rival, the Society
of Jesus. Querard observes that the Rector, Rollin, "without saying anything
153
about it, translated the Ratio for his Traité des Études." Indeed, as M.
Bréal, historian of that University, observes, referring to the suppression of
the Order: "Once delivered from the Jesuits, the University installed itself in
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their houses, and continued their manner of teaching."
In all general works on education, there is question of this System. Its
form is that of a practical method, without reasons being assigned, or
arguments urged. It is a legislative document, which superseded all previous
forms. The General's letter, which accompanied it, ordered the suppression
of them all, promulgating this one to the exclusion of the rest.
The sentiment, to which the last words of this letter gives expression as
a fond hope, was fully responded to by the course of events, in the one
hundred and seventy-four years which were to elapse before the general
suppression of the Order: "It is believed," he said, "that it will bring forth
abundant fruit, for the benefit of our scholars," Quae nostris auditoribus
uberes fructus allatura creditur. Aquaviva's letter is dated the eighth day of
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January, 1599.

CHAPTER XI.

FORMATION OF THE MASTER. HIS
COURSES OF LITERATURE AND
PHILOSOPHY.

It seems an apt distribution of our subject, to consider, first, the
formation of the Master, and secondly, the formation of the Scholar. The
Master's development will conduct us chiefly through the higher studies;
the Scholar's, rather through the lower. Thus the two persons, about whom
the science of education revolves, will be directly under inspection; while
the elements which go to form them will, at the same time, pass under
review.
Without theorizing on pedagogy, the Jesuit system itself, merely as
observed and realized, results in the formation of Professors. There are
several reasons, apparent on the surface, why it should do so. The studies,
which the members of the Order pursue, are the same courses as the Order
professes for the world at large. But, for the Jesuit members of the divers
courses, a most elaborate system of examinations at every stage, with a
specially searching manner of testing the students, is made to regard one
objective point, which is the capacity of the Jesuit to teach what he has
learnt, and this, as evinced, while under examination. The manner, in which
this point is judicially determined, consists in referring the examiners to a
standard, called "mediocrity." After a personal and oral disputation with the
young Jesuit, lasting either half an hour, or one hour, or two consecutive
hours, according to the stage at which he happens to be, a preponderating
vote of the four or five examining Professors must aver that he has
"surpassed mediocrity." The learning, prudence, and sincerity of the

examiners are appealed to without further sanction, except at the very last
stage in the young man's progress, when success under the ordeal will
entitle him to Profession in the Society. Then each examiner's prudence is
stimulated, and his sincerity bound down, by an oath. Only at one initial
stage, that of the first examination in the course of his three years'
Philosophy, is a certain margin allowed the beginner, in favor of bare
mediocrity.
"Mediocrity" is defined to be that degree of intelligence, and
comprehension of the matters studied, which can give an account of them to
one asking an explanation. "To surpass mediocrity" designates the student's
ability to defend his entire ground with such erudition and facility as show
him qualified, in point of actual attainments, to profess the philosophy or
theology studied. The final degree in the Order, which is that of Profession,
requires this competency for all Philosophy and Theology together. Here
then we see, that the capacity to teach is made the criterion of having
learned sufficiently well. Passing through all the grades with this mark of
excellence, the man who, after a general formation of seventeen years, and
the requisite development of other qualifications, is then appointed to
profess in a chair of the higher faculties, has been very much to the manner
born of "surpassing mediocrity," and of doing so with the characteristics of
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a Professor. How the same principles, if not in the same form, affect the
conduct of the literary curriculum, we shall now see in the rest of this
chapter.
The literary curriculum has been already finished by the Jesuit, before
entering the Order. But, after his admission, special means are taken to have
him revise those studies, extend them, and grasp them from the standpoint
of the teacher. It happens in Jesuit history, and the nature of secondary
education will always have it so, that the largest amount of teaching has
been done in the arena of these literary courses. And it was no small part of
the general revival of studies, effected by Ignatius of Loyola, that justice
was done to literature, as well by students who were to enter on
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philosophical or scientific courses, as by those who contemplated
embarking on life in the world. We noticed, on a former occasion, the
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reasoning of Aquaviva with respect to this policy. The literary courses in
question are those of Grammar, Humanities, and Rhetoric, which fill from

five to seven years. The Fathers of 1586 urge the importance of these
studies for the English and German students in Rome, as if special
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difficulties were experienced with them.
If we inquire what were the results of the stringent regulations adopted
to enforce this policy, and what degree of proficiency was attained in the
Jesuit courses of Belles-Lettres and eloquence, we have only to consult the
concordant testimony of history upon the "handsome style" and literary
finish of the scholars. An interesting answer, from a domestic point of view,
is casually afforded us by a remark, which the Fathers of Upper Germany
make, when in 1602 they send to Aquaviva some animadversions of theirs
upon the Ratio. They say that students in the class of Rhetoric might deliver
their own orations, "since there are generally found in that class,
particularly among those of the second year, young men who often surpass
even their own Professors in genius, and in the variety and fluency of their
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language."
The bearing of all this is obvious, in determining the grade of those
students who ask for admission into the Order. It is after a full gymnasium
course of this kind, that the life of the Jesuit is to begin. And these are the
studies which he will have to possess after the manner of a teacher. He will
review them as soon as his two years of novitiate are over.
Those years of novitiate are blank, under the aspect of secular pursuits.
But, in other respects, being a time for reflection and for internal
application to the affairs of his mind and heart, they are worth a long season
in the process of developing character, by habits of assiduous labor, of
acquiring a taste for retirement and virtue, and practising the spirit of
docility to counsel. Indeed, on issuing from this period of intense
application to the knowledge of self, the young religious student is already
started on his career of knowing men, and dealing successfully with human
characters. Henceforth, ecclesiastical knowledge and other acquirements
will be proper to his state, as a Religious; but, for the special vocation of the
Society of Jesus, he returns to secular studies.
In view of his approaching "regency," or Professorship in the
curriculum of letters, the critics of 1586 give this advice: "It would be most
profitable for the schools, if those who are about to be Preceptors were

privately taken in hand by some one of great experience; and, for two
months or more, were practised by him in the method of reading, teaching,
correcting, writing, and managing a class. If teachers have not learnt these
things beforehand, they are forced to learn them afterwards at the expense
of their scholars; and then they will acquire proficiency only when they
have already lost in reputation; and perchance they will never unlearn a bad
habit. Sometimes, such a habit is neither very serious nor incorrigible, if
taken at the beginning; but, if the habit is not corrected then, it comes to
pass that a man, who otherwise would have been most useful, becomes
well-nigh useless. There is no describing how much amiss Preceptors take
it, if they are corrected, when they have already adopted a fixed method of
teaching; and what continual disagreement ensues on that score with the
Prefects of Studies. To obviate this evil, in the case of our Professors, let the
Prefect in the chief College, whence our Professors of Humanities and
Grammar are usually taken, remind the Rector and Provincial, about three
months before the next scholastic year begins, that, if the Province needs
new Professors for the following term, they should select some one
eminently versed in the art of managing classes, whether he be, at the time,
actually a Professor, or a student of Theology or Philosophy; and to him the
future Masters are to go daily for an hour, to be prepared by him for their
new ministry, giving prelections in turn, writing, dictating, correcting, and
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discharging the other duties of a good teacher."
This advice was in keeping with an ordinance of the second general
assembly, held in 1565, nine years after the death of Ignatius. It had been
resolved, that at least one perfect Seminary of the Society should be
established in each Province for the formation of Professors and others,
who would be competent workmen in the vineyard of Christ, in the
department of Humane Letters, Philosophy, and Theology, so as to suffice
for the needs of the whole Province. This was to be done as soon as
convenient in each Province.
Henceforward, it became a matter of general observance that all should
have spent "at least two years in the school of eloquence," besides repeating
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grammar, if that were necessary. "And if any are so gifted as to promise
great success in these pursuits, it will be worth while seeing whether they
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should not spend three years in them, to lay a more solid foundation." To

such a solid foundation in Humane Letters corresponds a special privilege
in the crowning of a member's formation, inasmuch as the Society admits to
Profession one who is altogether eminent in literature, even though in
Theology he may not have surpassed mediocrity; a privilege which was
extended to great proficiency in the Indian and Oriental languages, as also
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to a marked excellence in Greek and Hebrew.
Examining more in detail this literary formation, we may take up the
programme for the seminary of the junior members, as drafted by Jouvancy.
He drew it up in pursuance of a decree to that effect, passed a hundred years
later, by the general assembly of 1696. This decree required that, "besides
the rules, whereby the Masters of Literature are directed in the manner of
teaching, they should be provided with an Instruction and Method of
learning properly, and so be guided in their private studies even while they
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are actually teaching." The method in question is outlined in the first part
of Jouvancy's little book, entitled Ratio Discendi et Docendi, "The art of
Learning and of Teaching." A cursory glance at this part shows that, while
addressing Masters on the subject of their own private studies, his
directions bear chiefly upon their efficiency as teachers.
Jouvancy divides his subject into three chapters: first, the knowledge
and use of languages; secondly, the possession of sciences; thirdly, some
aids to study.
As to languages, they are three in number: Greek, Latin, and the native
tongue. Laying down some principles on style in general, he says: "If a
correct understanding, according to Horace, be the first principle and source
of writing well, it follows that style, which is nothing else than a certain
manner of writing, has two parts; first, the intelligent thought or sentiment,
properly conceived; secondly, the expression of the same; so that, as man
himself is made up of soul and body, all style likewise consists of the
underlying thought and the manner of its expression." Thought must be
true, perspicuous, and adapted to the subject. To think truly or justly of
things, there is required mental power and insight, which distinguishes what
is really the gist of a subject-matter from what is only a deceptive
appearance, or is superficial. Assistance is to be had for all this from the
reading of good books, from accurate reflection and protracted thought,
which does not merely skim over the subject, or touch it in a desultory way;

again, from the analysis of parts, causes, adjuncts; finally, from the prudent
judgment of others, or what is called criticism. As to the ways of acquiring
proper diction, Jouvancy says: "I would have you avail yourself of books
which treat of this matter, not so as to imagine all is done by thumbing
them; you will gain much more by the plentiful reading of the best writers";
and again, "'abundance of diction,' copia verborum, will be easily acquired
by reading much." It is by reading, writing, and imitating the best authors
that a good style is formed; and only the best authors are to be read, "lest
the odor of a foreign and vicious style cling to the mind, as to new vases."
Coming to treat of one's native tongue, Jouvancy lays down these
points: "The study of the vernacular consists chiefly in three things. First,
since the Latin authors are explained to the boys, and are rendered into the
mother-tongue, the version so made should be as elegant as possible.
Wherefore, let the master elaborate his version for himself, or, if he draws
on any writer in the vernacular, let him compare first the Latin text with the
version before him; thus he will find it easy to perceive what is peculiar to
either tongue, and what is the respective force and beauty of each. The same
method is to be observed in explaining and translating histories in the lower
classes. Secondly, all the drafts of compositions, which are dictated in the
vernacular, must be in accord with the most exact rules of the mother-
tongue, free from every defect of style. [Thirdly,] it will be of use to bring
up and discuss, from time to time, whatever has been noticed in the course
of one's reading, and whatever others have observed regarding the vicious
and excellent qualities of speech. The younger Master should be on his
guard against indulging too much in the reading of vernacular authors,
especially the poets, to the loss of time, and perhaps to the prejudice of
virtue."
The interest here manifested in the vicious and excellent qualities of the
mother-tongue was a contribution of the schools to the development of
modern languages. Nor was the severity, which is here prescribed, with
reference to the use of poetry, a barrier to the formation of some good poets
among the Jesuits themselves. Friedrich von Spee is considered a
distinguished lyric poet of the seventeenth century. Denis, as the translator
of Ossian into German, helped to inaugurate the later period of German
literature. In Italian prose, Bartoli, Segneri, Pallavicini, have ranked as
classics; Tiraboschi, as the historian of literature; Bresciani, in our days, as

the popular novelist. As writers of French prose, Bourdaloue and Bouhours
appertain to the choicest circle of Louis XIV's golden age; Du Cygne,
Brumoy, Tournemine, besides others already mentioned in these pages, took
their place as literary critics. And, in their several national literatures,
Cahours, Martin, Garucci, have attained their literary eminence as art-
critics.
Reverting to solidity of thought as the basis of style, Jouvancy
eliminates the false ornaments of a subtle and abrupt style, by reducing the
conceptions to a dialectical analysis: "What does the thing mean?" And he
gives examples.
In the second chapter of the same part, the Ars Discendi, he comes to
the acquisition of those sciences, which are proper to a Master of Literature.
He says: "The erudition of a religious master is not confined to mere
command of languages, whereof we have spoken heretofore; it must rise
higher to the understanding of some sciences, which it is usual to impart to
youth. Such are Rhetoric, Poetry, History, Chronology, Geography, and
Philology or Polymathy, which last is not so much a single science as a
series of erudite attainments, whereof an accomplished person should at
least have tasted." History he divides into Sacred, Universal, and Particular.
"As to the histories of particular nations, writers of the respective
nationalities record them;" "and if you do not add Chronology to History,
you take out one of History's eyes." For Geography, he designates the books
and maps which were then to be had. And, for all the branches, he indicates
standard authors.
Now, in this little rhetorical sketch of Jouvancy's, we may take note of
two features, one pedagogical, the other historical. The distinctively
pedagogical cast is put upon these private studies, in as much as they are
magisterial, being pursued with express reference to the Master's chair. The
historical feature, to be noted here, is common to the Jesuit educational
literature in general; which, in its many departments, marked several epochs
and, as a whole, made an era in education.
Thus, at the time of the Ratio Studiorum, there were indeed several
guides of the very first rank, in the path of a literary formation. They were
three in number, Cicero, Quintilian, and Aristotle. From these the Professor
of Rhetoric had to derive his matter and make clear his method. The Ratio

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names them as his text-books for the Precepts. From these sources the
literary activity and experience of many generations of Professors, in
several hundred colleges of the Order, tended to mark out the best line to
follow, for the attainment of literary perfection. The literary course, in
which they themselves were proximately formed for the duties of teaching,
served but to organize the matter, and to digest it. The numberless
pedagogical text-books, issued before Jouvancy, and after him, exhibit the
progress of the movement during the several centuries. And, at present, the
system may be seen in its most developed form, if one consults the newest
guides, like Father Kleutgen's Ars Dicendi, or Father Broeckaert's Le Guide
du Jeune Littérateur. But, long before our day, the most ordinary systems of
literary instruction have embodied the method; and the commonest text-
books have it.
A similar epoch was made, as early as 1572, by the Grammar of Father
Emmanuel Alvarez, De Institutione Grammatica Libri Tres, a work adopted
by the Ratio, then republished in editions so numerous as to baffle all
calculation, translated either entire, or in part, into thirteen languages; while
one portion, well-known in our times as a "Latin Prosody," is credited to
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divers authors or publishers. The latest editions of this Grammar, issued
in different languages, are of the last twenty-five years. This era of
development in grammar superseded the subtleties and metaphysical
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abstractions of mediæval methods.
In history, not to mention the voluminous James Sirmond, whose
researches among original sources were made before the sixteenth century
had closed, Father Denis Petau (Petavius), early in the following century,
composed his great work on Chronology, laying down the exact basis in this
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respect for Universal History, both sacred and profane. Geneva and
Holland alike reproduced the work. Labbe's publications on ancient and
modern History and Chronology, the greater part of his eighty works being
upon these subjects, with several abridgments and geographical adjuncts;
Father Buffier's "Practical History," which was published for the schools in
1701, and then rapidly went through divers editions, to be supplemented in
1715 by his "Universal Geography," his treatise on the Globe and his Maps,
all of which went through some scores of French, Italian and Dutch

editions; these and other works of the kind indicate the line of pedagogical
development going on at the same time in the various colleges. Hence, the
"New Elements of History and Geography for the use of the Scholars of the
Collège Louis-le-Grand," which was an abridgment of Buffier's book, could
say, with some propriety, on its first page: "How great has been the
carelessness of an age, otherwise so judicious and cultivated as ours, in not
having as yet made the science of History and Geography an essential part
of the education of youth? The public and posterity will perhaps be grateful
to the College of Louis-le-Grand, for having shown in this regard an
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example, which ought to do honor to our time." Thus the same resources
were at the service of Jesuit education as, in the general literary world,
helped to form the Jesuit historians: Mariana, historian of Spain; Damian
Strada, of the War in the Netherlands; Balbin, of Bohemia; Naruszewicz, of
Poland; Katona, of the Kings of Hungary; Damberger, of the Middle Ages;
Francis Wagner, of Leopold I; G. Daniel, historiographer royal of France.
Geography is not to be separated from History. Up to the end of the
sixteenth century, Ptolemy's Geography, corrected, modified, altered,
according to the reports of navigators, had been the scientific standard, but
uncertain, vacillating, and self-contradictory. From the earlier part of the
seventeenth century, the astronomical observations, sent from the far East
by the Jesuit missionaries, emphasized the need of a general reform, already
sufficiently evident. Father Riccioli, assisted by Father Grimaldi, who is
known in science as one of the precursors of Newton, undertook, in his
Geographia Reformata, the reform of Geography by means of
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Astronomy. For this purpose, he created first his own metrology,
identifying, and reducing to a common denomination, all the measures
received in reports from different parts of the earth. The first eclipse of the
moon which he makes mention of, among his astronomical reports, had
been observed on the night of November 8, 1612, by Father Scheiner at
Ingolstadt and by Father Charles Spinola at Nangasaki in Japan. At the time
that Riccioli was writing, the Jesuit missionaries had multiplied in China.
Adam Schall died in 1666, holding the post of President of the
Mathematical Tribunal at Pekin; he was followed by Ferdinand Verbiest;
and then a long line of imperial astronomers of the Celestial Empire,
Koegler, Hallerstein, Seixas, Francesco, De Rocha, Espinha, continued to
send their reports, either to the colleges of their respective Provinces, or to

other mathematical centres, or to the learned societies in Europe, whereof
not a few Jesuits were members. Meanwhile, scientific returns from
Hindustan, Siam, Thibet, on one side of the globe, and from San Domingo
on the other side, poured into the Collège Louis-le-Grand, and made of this
educational centre an indispensable auxiliary to the Bureau of Longitudes.
All this, reacting on education, was received with satisfaction by the general
world, and drew the pedagogic bodies steadily, though with some difficulty,
on the line of progress. The University of Paris was quite tardy in following
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up the steps of the Jesuits.
As to Mathematics in education, it is evident that a similar process of
development must have been the history of this branch, with the limitation
however, that mathematical science has not been so nearly created anew
within these last centuries, as some other departments. Father Christopher
Clavius, "the Euclid of his time," was engaged by Gregory XIII in
reforming the Calendar, the same which we use to-day; he died in 1612. His
death intervening, while his complete works were being republished, Father
Ziegler superintended the new edition, till it was finished in five tomes.
Francis Coster, at Cologne, Hurtado Perez, at Ingolstadt, Henry Garnet, an
Englishman, and Grienberger, successor of Clavius, both at Rome,
belonged, with other mathematicans of the Order, to the sixteenth century.
The writers of the preliminary Ratio, 1586, require that, in a brief course of
Mathematics, "Euclid's Elements" "be seasoned always with some
application to Geography or the Sphere"; then, in the following year, the
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rest of Father Clavius' "Epitome of Practical Arithmetic" is to be
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finished; and special courses are provided for members of the Order, who
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give promise of eminence.
Indeed, whether as Professors of officers for the army and navy, or as
constructing and directing observatories, the members pursued every branch
of Mathematics, pure and applied. Father L'Hoste's "Treatise on Naval
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Evolutions" was used in the French navy, as "the Book of the Jesuit." Of
this book the Count de Maistre writes quaintly in 1820: "An English
Admiral assured me less than ten years ago, that he had received his first
instructions in the 'Book of the Jesuit.' If events are taken for results, there

177
is not a better book in the world!" Eximeno, at the school of Segovia,
instructed young nobles in Mathematics and the science of Artillery. And
so, in general, courses were provided, according as the needs of respective
localities required. The Republic of Venice struck a gold medal in honor of
Vincent Riccolati, the Jesuit engineer, just as the King of Denmark honors
De Vico, the astronomer, with a gold medal struck in his honor, and having
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the words inscribed, "Comet Seen, Jan. 24, 1846."
Kircher, Boscovich, Pianciani, Secchi, Perry, honored with the
fellowship of so many learned and scientific Academies, and exercising a
distinct influence to-day, either by the far-reaching effects of their
researches, or by their actual contact with science, may be looked upon as
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belonging to our most recent times.
It is remarked that to the Order was due the multiplication of
observatories, in the middle of last century. Father Huberti superintended
the building of an observatory at Würzburg; Father Maximilian Hell, the
court astronomer, built one at Vienna. At Manheim, a third was erected by
Mayer and Metzger; at Tyrnau, one by Keri; at Prague, another by
Steppling; one at the Jesuit College of Gratz; similarly at Wilna, Milan,
Florence, Parma, Venice, Brescia, Rome, Lisbon, Marseilles, Bonfa. In
short, Montucla remarks: "In Germany and the neighboring countries, there
were few Jesuit colleges without an observatory. They were to be found at
Ingolstadt, Gratz, Breslau, Olmütz, Prague, Posen, etc. Most of them seem
to have shared the fate of the Society; though there are a few which survive
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the general destruction."
These few indications go to illustrate the pedagogical epochs made by
the system of the Order. And the young member, who is being formed to
contribute his own share towards carrying on the education of the world,
passes all these branches under review. One of them, Mathematics, is
conducted outside of the philological seminary, which we have so far been
considering; it is left for his course of Philosophy, which he will pursue
during three years, before actually embarking on the life of the class-room,
or his "regency." We may now suppose that the time has arrived for his
entering the class-room, as a Master of Grammar and Elementary
Literature.

When he does so, he has possessed himself, in that philosophical
triennium, of positive intellectual attainments, neither meagre nor common.
He has surveyed the whole field of natural thought and investigation, in the
various branches, mental, physical, and ethical. To enumerate them, there is
Logic, including dialectics, and the criteria, objective and subjective, of
truth; Ontology, or general metaphysics; Special Metaphysics, in its three
divisions:—Cosmology, which immediately underlies physics, chemistry,
and biology; Psychology, which underlies all the anthropological sciences
about the human compound, its principles, and the formation of its ideas;
Natural Theology. All this is theoretic or speculative philosophy. There is
besides the science of moral life, which comprises Ethics, Natural Right,
and Social Right. Concurrent with Philosophy, there has been a double
course of Physics and Chemistry, during one year, with a course of higher
Mathematics, varying from one year to three; as well as a half-year's course
of Geology, Astronomy, and some other subsidiary matters. This is the
general formation. The principle which guides individual cases was laid
down by Ignatius in these terms: "In the superior faculties, on account of
the great inequality of talents and age and other considerations, the Rector
of the University will consider how much in each line individuals shall
learn, and how long they shall stay in the courses; although it is better for
those who are of the proper age, and who have the requisite facility in point
of talent, that they should endeavor to advance and become conspicuous in
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all." During all this course of higher natural sciences, some attention has
still been paid to accessories; literature has not been entirely neglected;
oratory has been practised, and poems presented on stated occasions. And
then the new Master is introduced into his course of "regency."

CHAPTER XII.

YOUTHFUL MASTERS.

When Ignatius of Loyola was governing the Society, the multiplicity of
affairs which he had to administer, and the absorption of mind which they
demanded, did not prevent him from devoting to every minute element the
attention which it specially invited. Hence he required the young
Scholastics, who were reviewing their literary studies at Valencia, to send
him their orations and a poem. So, too, with the Masters of the lower
classes at Messina, in Sicily. This college had opened with the higher
courses of letters; but the very next year such numerous throngs of younger
boys came asking for admission, that the system, begun with Rhetoric and
Humanities, was carried down to meet their needs; and the entire course
was distributed into five grades. Ignatius required the teachers of these
lower grades, no less than those of the higher, to write each week, and send
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him an account of the affairs of his class.
It is indeed an eventful moment, when a man becomes a teacher of
others. They may be boys. But, whether they are boys merely blossoming
into life, or youths on the verge of manhood, the teacher of them has to be a
teacher of men; and perhaps more so with the boy than with the man,
inasmuch as his control of the younger student has to be so much the more
complete. It is not merely such a control as will address the intellects of
men mature, whose characters are already far advanced in the way of
formation, or are perhaps fixed for life; but it must be such as will form a
whole human nature, which is still pliable and docile.
As an almost universal rule, the Jesuit Scholastic, after his course of
Philosophy, takes his place in a college to teach Grammar or Literature. If it
be asked, why should this be an almost universal rule, several reasons are at

hand. In the first place, the candidate for admission into the Order has been
accepted with special reference to this work. If this reference was expressly
overlooked, the candidate so admitted is in an exceptional category. In the
second place, the whole tenor of what has to be said in the present chapter
will show the pedagogical policy in the arrangement. But, in the third place,
not to pass over too summarily one special fitness, I will say a few words
upon it at once.
The manner of teaching the young is oral and tutorial. All through the
Jesuit System the manner followed is oral: in the examinations of the lower
classes, where writing is admitted, it is only as a specimen of style and
composition that writing enters the examination exercises. With the younger
students, the manner of teaching is oral in its most specific sense. It is not
that generic quality which will suit as well the lecturer or the public
speaker. But it is the tutorial manner, which includes a fund of sympathy, of
that tact which supposes sympathy, of such a superiority, both moral and
intellectual, as knows how to stoop, and elevate the boy by stooping, and
does it all naturally, instinctively, gracefully. In the ordinary course of
human affairs, this magnetic power of the teacher is more intense,
according as in years he is nearer to the subject on whom his ascendancy
plays, and by whom it is spontaneously admitted. I mean that inestimable
and precious subject, the mind and heart of the impressionable boy, who is
about to develop into manhood, first young, and then mature.
The youthful subject is rich, though not in positive acquisitions already
made its own; for, in this respect, it may rather be considered parum
fructuosa, as Sacchini says; that is, bearing little fruit as yet, either of
judgment or positive acquirements. But it is rich in its promise, as it
struggles upward into the sunshine of varied and beautiful truth. This is the
fact which imposes upon liberal education the duty of omitting nothing that
is either beautiful or polished, in imagination, thought, or style. It justifies
Belles Lettres and the most finished course of Literature, as being the
chosen garden of flowers and fruit, to entertain withal, richly and
exquisitely, the youthful promise of mind, sentiment, and heart.
Or, inverting the figure, if we liken the mind itself in youth to the
choice and prolific soil of a garden, we may note that, to till such soil, there
is need of a gardener who has a delicate hand and a light touch. He must not
be a lecturer who stands off, nor a speaker who declaims, nor a text-book

monger who reads, and hears recitations of what a book says; nor is he to
dole out methods and analyses to an inquisitive sense and emotional fancy,
which, in the youthful soul, are the temporary vesture of an unfolding
intellect; even, as in nature around, things tangible and palpable are
bursting, to the boy's inquisitive eyes, with the great intellectual truths
which they contain. Analyses, text-books, lectures are not the powers with
the young mind. But, often enough, we see where the real power lies; when
young men, scarcely as yet approaching the prime of life, exercise over
impressionable and brilliant youths, not much beneath themselves in age,
such a personal influence as bids fair to rank them among the greater forces
of human nature—forces which are great in leading, because they know so
well how to follow. That other form of ascendancy, more purely intellectual,
and originating in wide learning and maturity of scholarship, belongs to the
University Professor of a later stage of life. Hence it appears that
youthfulness in the Master is an advantage for the tutorial teaching of the
young.
The critics who drew up the preliminary Ratio in 1586 were of opinion
that the Masters in the literary courses should be assigned to their work, not
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after their course of Philosophy, but before. They would except from this
arrangement only the Professor of Rhetoric; perhaps, also, in the chief
colleges, the Professor of Humanity or Poetry; besides, of course, those
"whose age or deportment shows that they are too young to become Masters
as yet, or too far advanced in years to be kept back from their Philosophy."
In support of this view, they urge several reasons, which do not much
concern us here; as, for instance, that, if young men have once tasted of the
subtleties of the philosophers, they can hardly bring themselves to take
pleasure any more in the insipid subject-matter of Grammar; they will pore
over philosophical lore; they will branch off, during class, into
philosophical digressions, which may serve for show, but not for utility. The
critics also express a fear that these philosophers will bring into the school-
room a style of language infected with philosophical terms; and they quote
the eminent Jesuit, Annibal Codret, to the effect that, if Philosophy has been
tasted beforehand, nothing brilliant in literary style can subsequently be
guaranteed. But, these arguments notwithstanding, the Society, when it
came to sanction a final arrangement, in the legislative document of 1599,
seems to have entertained a higher idea of the younger members, and of

their ability and resolution to shake off any deleterious effects of scholastic
Latin, when they advanced to the chair of purest Latinity. Hence the
legislation ordains that Philosophy is to be studied before undertaking to
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teach Letters.
There are several reasons, however, which, as urged by these critics,
are quite relevant to our present topic. They urge that Grammar studies
require a certain fervor, or alacrity, which is rather to be found in persons
who are younger, and so far are nearer to the thoughts and sentiments of
boyhood. The fuller results of education, in this respect, are not to be had
from them when older. If authority or experience is felt to be wanting, it can
readily be supplemented by the Prefect of Studies, who is constantly in
attendance on the classes of Grammar; and his direction finds a sufficient
response in the teacher's aptitude and docility. Indeed, docility to counsel is
so indispensable a requisite, on the part of young teachers, that the General
Mutius Vitelleschi observes: "If they were to show themselves impatient of
correction, and were to refuse the necessary aids for becoming efficient,
they should on all accounts be removed from teaching, even if they had
filled only half a year; since it is more just and expedient that one suffer
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shame, than that many be injured."
Unless singular talents, or the bare force of circumstance, recommend
another course of action, it is not desirable that new teachers should at once
become Masters of the higher class of Grammar or of Humanity, though
otherwise not unfit for these grades. On all accounts, say the critics, the rule
should be that they start with the lowest classes, and then, year after year,
advance to the next higher grade, with the best part of their scholars. A
certain crudeness and inexperience which, at the beginning, are unavoidable
in their management, will cause, as long as it lasts, not so much evil with
the younger as with the older students. Inexperience wears away with
practice. Then again, if the Masters go up each year, and the scholars go
with them, the same students are very much with the same teachers. The
young people have not to pass so often from one kind of management to
another. Frequent change entails a waste of time, until each party comes to
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know the other, and understand his own as well as the other's part. In
1583, Father Oliver Manare, visiting the German Provinces by the General's
authority, had noticed this point, in his ordinance for the management of

convictus, or boarding colleges; that "frequent changes were burdensome to
the students themselves, because they were forced to accommodate
187
themselves often to new teachers or prefects."
In the same sense, these critics, whom we are following, consider it
undesirable that a Master should resign his post in less than three years.
Frequent and manifold changes provoke complaints on the part of the
outside world. Besides, the Master's own efforts at acquiring perfection in
the magisterial art will be cut short. When there is no prospective
permanency in a position, the mind is not so seriously applied to the work
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in hand.
In all this, a most important question regarding boys is being faced by
these critics; and a definite practical solution is adopted. The question is,
which of the two alternatives to adopt, whether to submit boys to one
person's dominant influence, or to pass them on through the hands of divers
experienced and permanent Professors, stationed respectively in the
different grades. This latter alternative, if it is understood to mean that one
Professor remains perpetually in one grade, and another in another, scarcely
seems to merit consideration with them, except as regards the two highest
literary classes,—of Poetry and Rhetoric,—where the requirements of
erudition are so considerable as to need a lengthened term of years for
filling the chairs worthily. But, if the alternative regarding permanent
Professors means that the same teachers remain constantly within the limits
of the same curriculum, then the question seems to be the one which the
critics of the preliminary Ratio argue about in both senses, for and against;
189
and they finally arrive at a solution, or rather a compromise.
The severest thing they say against the plan is in this wise, when
speaking directly of the two highest grades: "Perpetuity of that kind may
give occasion to mere idleness and indifference; for after acquiring, in the
first years, some esteem and name for their learning (in Poetry or Rhetoric),
Masters prefer to enjoy the fruit and name of the labor already undergone,
however moderate that was, rather than wear themselves out with new
labors. Hence they make no new acquisitions in the learning and
accomplishments proper to their branch; they get rooted in very much the
same spot, and teach what they have taught before over and over again,

though with some variations. What is worse, as if they were quite worn out
with their prolonged exertions, they say that they cannot any longer stand
all the labor of exercising their students; whence everything freezes, and
they ask for an assistant, who, if he is unlearned, does more harm than
good; if learned, then why are two doing the work of one?"
The solution which they arrive at is a compromise, which recognizes
peculiar advantages in both arrangements. It is embodied in several rules of
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the Ratio Studiorum. As many perpetual Professors as possible, for
Grammar and Rhetoric, are to be provided; and some candidates for
admission to the Order, who seem qualified for this field of work, though
apparently not likely to succeed in the higher studies of the Society, may be
admitted on this condition, that they devote themselves in perpetuity to this
work of zeal. Thus such exigencies are provided for as postulate a
perpetuity of professorship within the same limited curriculum.
On the other hand, the normal process is that which arranges a constant
succession of teachers in the college, but not a constant change with the
same boys. The same boys go hand in hand with the one Master, with
whom they have most to do. And no one is to take charge of them, however
transiently, says the General Vitelleschi, "whether on account of fewness of
numbers, or merely to supply for another in his absence, of whom it is not
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certain that he is qualified for the post." The very frequent mention, in all
these discussions, of something like domestic tragedies resulting from the
change of masters, seems to show two things; first, it justifies the practice
of keeping the same Professor over the same boys for a certain term of
years, if not until the class itself dissolves into higher courses; secondly, it
shows what a usual condition it was for masters to have won the most
absolute attachment to themselves, in the exercise of their magisterial
duties, both on the side of parents and on the part of the scholars. Thus,
speaking of the Professors mounting with their classes, the critics say:
"They will have observed what their disciples need; they will take them up
to the next class. And hence, that changing of Masters, which has caused so
192
many tragic scenes, will not be felt so much."
Add to these elements of permanency and identity, another which is
most fundamental of all, the identity of their formation as Masters; so that

the young Jesuits, as the General Visconti sums up the matter in 1752,
"must have the most accomplished Professors of Rhetoric, immediately
after their novitiate, men who not only are altogether eminent in this
faculty, but who know how to teach, and make everything smooth for them;
men of eminent talent and the widest experience in the art; who are not
merely to form good scholars, but to train good Masters"; and that "two
years entire must be given to Rhetoric, according to the custom of the
193
Society, which term is not to be abridged, unless necessity is urgent."
Add, moreover, the uniformity of plan, "so that the form of our schools may
be everywhere as much as possible the same, and, when Masters are
194
changed, itself need undergo no change." It follows that, though the flow
of new blood is constantly entering the pedagogic body, and a constant
renewal is taking place, neither the permanency nor the identity of the
teaching body and its system is found to depend upon the same individuals
remaining at the same posts. Naturally, such conditions are not to be looked
for, except in the special circumstances of a religious community, with
perfect organization in the body, with the conscientiousness of a self-
denying formation actuating the members, with the landmarks of traditions,
and a statutory method to show the way; and, finally, with executive
officials adequate to control.
As to this last-named condition of executive superintendence over
persons and things in the system, several rules for the Prefect of Studies of
these literary courses will explain themselves. The Ratio of 1599 says: "Let
him have the rules of the Masters and scholars, and see that they are
observed, as if they were his own. Let him help the Masters themselves and
direct them, and be especially cautious that the esteem and authority due to
them be not in the least impaired. Let him be very solicitous that the new
Preceptors follow with accuracy the manner of teaching, and other customs
of their predecessors, provided that these were not foreign to our method; so
that persons outside may not have reason to find fault with the frequent
change of Masters. Once a fortnight, at least, let him listen to each one
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teaching."
This moral identity being secured, in the ways, means, and views of the
teaching body, the individual and personal elements, which each Master
brings to bear upon the work before him, are no more interfered with, or

hampered by community of method, than are all the varieties of race,
nation, politics, and environment, slighted or interfered with by a single
system of collegiate institution being placed in their midst. It was in view of
being everywhere, that the system was cast in its precise and adjustable
form, so that, in spite of being everywhere, it should be found equally
manageable and effective. And similarly, in spite of the system itself being
one, the play of individual talents can be various, as are the movable factors
in any great organization.
We may close this chapter by observing several far-reaching
consequences of the foregoing principles. In the first place, those who, after
personal experience in the classes, come to take charge of colleges in the
capacity of Rectors, are found, say the critics of 1586, to take full and
accurate account of studies and Professors alike; for they themselves "have
borne the burden of the schools, and know how to sympathize with others
from their own experience"; a fact which is the more conducive to the end
in view, as "colleges have been instituted for the study of letters. Besides,
not unfrequently there arise in the classes, especially of the smaller
colleges, difficulties which can scarcely be overcome, except by a Rector
who has personal experience to guide him; otherwise, whether he chances
to solve the difficulty aright, or solves it awry, he will not do much good
196
either way, since they do not give him the credit of knowing how." The
"smaller colleges" spoken of here, as more liable to encounter internal
difficulties, are contrasted elsewhere by these critics with "the greater and
principal ones, in which there are many counsellors or referees at hand, to
whom the Masters can have recourse for assistance; and the schools
themselves have sufficient authority." But, in what they call the minor
colleges, "the authority of the schools depends for the most part on the
reputation and authority of the individual Masters," who happen at a given
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time to be filling the posts.
In the spirit of this personal and experienced concurrence with all the
affairs of the college, the Rector is required so to moderate the other
concerns of his office, as to be prompt in fostering and advancing all
literary exercises. He is to go often to the classes, those of the lower
198
faculties as well as of the higher. Every month, or at least every other
month, he is to hold general consultations with all the Masters below the

course of Logic, the several Prefects being present; and, after the reading of
some selection from the Ratio, concerning the Masters or the piety and
good conduct of the students, he is to inquire what difficulties occur, or
199
what omissions are noticed in the observance of rules. Books are never to
be wanting, in the sufficiency desired by the members generally, whether
200
they are engaged in teaching, or are pursuing their studies. To this
regulation, which concerns the chief authority in a Province, the revised
Ratio of 1832 adds: "The same is to be said of literary periodicals for the
use of the Professors; of museums, physical apparatus, and other
equipments, which are needed by a college according to its degree." The
General Visconti observes somewhat emphatically, that "in buying books
201
the Rectors will never consider the money of their colleges ill spent."
Jouvancy applies the same principle to publishing the literary
productions of the Masters. He first sketches the series of literary
productions expected from them,—the annual addresses of inauguration to
be given by each Professor in his own class, the public and solemn one to
be delivered, on the same inaugural occasion, by the Professor of Rhetoric,
the poem to be composed and read by the Master of Poetry; then, during the
year, a certain number of addresses to be delivered; and, at the end, a
tragedy composed by the Professor of Rhetoric, a minor drama by the
Professor of Poetry, both to be acted on the stage. Jouvancy goes on to
recommend that no public occasion be allowed to go by, without receiving
the tribute of some such literary work. Then he adds: "Nor is that expense to
be considered useless which is incurred for printing and publishing good
poems. In all these matter, splendors should be added to literary exercises,
and to the exhibition thereof, in such wise that everything meanwhile tends
202
to solidity of erudition."
A second consequence of the literary cast, marking the whole Order, is
the vantage-ground on which it placed the Jesuits, with regard to all the
learning and the learned men of Europe. The fluent and elegant command
of the Latin language gave at once a mastery over the vehicle of
intercourse, in which all learning was conveyed. Our critics of 1586 sum up
the bearings of this particular advantage under several heads: The members
of the Order deal with so many nations; scholastic disputations, whether in

Philosophy or Theology, are always conducted in Latin; the members write
so many books; they can do justice to the ancient Fathers of the Church;
203
they have to deal constantly with learned men.
A last consequence, which I shall present, is suggested by an
observation of the same writers, in the same place. It throws no little light
upon the history of the Society, and it shows the practical adjustment of the
educational system to the times. They say then, it is by the studies of Belles-
Lettres, more than by the higher faculties, that the Society has, in a short
time, been propagated through all the principal parts of Christendom. Nor
can it be preserved better or more solidly, than by the same means through
which it was first introduced. Unless they endeavor to maintain this
honorable distinction, with which God has been pleased to grace the
Society, there is reason to fear that they themselves may yet lapse into the
barbarism, which they are far from admiring in others. "As to the other
faculties, which are brilliant enough of themselves, there is no trouble in
cultivating them. But, natural inclinations feeling a repugnance for less
conspicuous pursuits, people have, as it were, to drag themselves to these
lower faculties. They should take lesson, therefore, by good husbandmen,
who bestow more care on transplanted and exotic growths than on native
204
shoots." And they proceed to quote the rule, formulated in the words of
Ignatius, by the General Everard Mercurian, who required the institution
205
and preservation of the literary seminary. So that we end here this
discussion on the lower faculties, at the point where we began.
In all well-assorted plans each element has a reference to every other.
Men must match the work, and the work be suited to the men. Were the men
not formed, the best system would settle into an inert state; and, the more
consistency and vitality of its own it offered to contribute, the more inept
and inert would it look, a memorial of what it might do, dead to what it can.
In itself, and in its effects, it might appear to be out of date, as not being
understood. Only the practical working of a thing, by the man who
understands it, shows it off for what it is worth. This is a rule quite
universal, wherever practical insight is needed for the working of a
mechanism. It must be worked intelligently to be understood. Once it is
understood, the practical intelligence grows.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COURSES OF DIVINITY AND ALLIED
SCIENCES. PRIVATE STUDY. REPETITION.

1. Having finished his course of teaching literature, the Jesuit returns to
his higher studies. Divinity and its allied sciences stand out in prominence
for their intrinsic dignity; but they have, besides, a studied preëminence
assigned them in the system before us. The almost universal rule, of
intermitting the higher studies with a course of literary teaching, undergoes
a special exception in the case of those "theologians, whose number is few,
206
and use so manifold"; of whom Aquaviva says that, "according as the
higher courses are developed, the fewer proportionately, out of many
207
students, become qualified to profess those exalted sciences." The same
policy holds with respect to those who have an eminent talent for oratory.
Laynez, himself a great preacher, and a competent judge in the matter,
relieved Father Francis Strada of the office of Provincial, to set him free for
the ministry of the pulpit; and he wrote, as he did so: "If only he had a
sufficiency of those whom he could put in the office of Provincial, he would
relieve all preachers of that office, that they might devote themselves
208
entirely to spreading the seed of the Divine Word." Of these and others,
"who give eminent promise of being equal to the graver occupations, or for
209
whom an immediate need exists in that direction," an immediate
210
application is to be made to the study of Theology.
All who graduate in these higher courses do so, as "qualified to
profess"; just as they had graduated in Philosophy and its cognate

211
branches. But, though a master in the matter of his philosophical
triennium, no student is called upon to profess any of those branches, until
he has graduated also in Theology. Here we may advert to several lines of
strict parallelism in the system, both with regard to admitting any students,
whether Jesuits or not, to the respective courses of study, and with regard to
admitting Jesuits themselves to profess in the chairs.
As a condition for admitting any students at all into the higher courses,
the Society introduced a much-needed reform, in requiring that literary
qualifications of a sufficiently high grade should precede matriculation.
Thus the University of Ingolstadt ordains that no one shall be admitted to
Academic, that is, University lectures, except after one year of Rhetoric;
and it adds very strict regulations about the election of courses, repetitions,
212
disputations, etc., in the three years' curriculum of Philosophy.
In like manner, to be admitted as a student of Divinity and its
correlative sciences, it is necessary to have graduated in the course of Arts,
that is to say, Philosophy and its branches. Thus the University of Würzburg
ordains that no one shall be admitted as an auditor of Scholastic Theology,
unless he be Magisterio insignis, "a Master of Arts"; it excepts only the
members of religious Orders in attendance, and also Principis Alumnos,
"the Prince's scholars." Others, who have not so graduated, it will admit to
Moral Theology and its supplementary branches. It will not even examine,
for the Mastership in Arts, any one, whether a Religious or not, who has
213
studied Philosophy in a private institution or a monastery. To apply for
Academic Degrees, "they must prove that they have followed all the
214
courses in some approved public University."
The curriculum, now before the student, is a quadriennium, or four-year
course. It is prolonged into a fifth and sixth year, for reviewing the whole
ground of one's studies; for preparing a public defence against all comers;
and, in the case of Jesuit students, for an immediate preparation to fill the
Professor's chair, the pulpit, or to discharge other functions. Hence the
University of Cologne specifies, in general, a sexennium, or six-year course
215
for Theology.

Not unlike to this is the parallelism which we may notice, in appointing
the members of the Society to Professors' chairs. Though qualified to teach
literature after his own complete course of letters in the seminary, yet, as we
have seen, no one is to be put over the classes of Grammar or Humanity
who has not first studied his Philosophy. And so again, at this stage, though
apparently competent to teach Philosophy, and approved as being qualified
to profess it, yet no one is to be put in a chair of that course who has not
216
also studied his Theology.
The reasons for this are assigned by the critics of 1586. The
philosopher, they say, who has not yet become a theologian, will not be so
safe in his conclusions, in his proofs, in his manner of expression. He will
be of an age less mature. His learning will be less superabundant. He will
scarcely be able to answer the arguments of unbelievers. Nor will he treat
Philosophy in a way to render it useful to Theology. In fine, the proprieties
of things cannot be well observed, if he who has just filled a chair of
217
Philosophy has to sit down as a mere student in Theology.
The branches of this theological course are Scholastic Theology, Moral
Theology, Sacred Scripture, Hebrew and Oriental Languages, Ecclesiastical
History, and Canon Law. The general category of students is naturally more
limited than in the philosophical curriculum. There the auditors were young
men, who would betake themselves, at its close, to Medicine, or other walks
of life. They may have taken to Law; though Possevino, himself eminent in
jurisprudence, would seem to imply that Canon Law must have been
218
pursued first. The students now are chiefly Ecclesiastics, with various
careers before them; or they are Religious of different Orders; or, finally,
the members of the Society itself. The principal object of our consideration
is the formation of these latter, as qualified to profess. The pedagogical
elements before us may be ranged under three heads: Private Study;
Repetition, which includes Disputation; Lecturing, which is supplemented
by Dictation.
2. As to the method of private study, all the auditors of the course are
219
directed to look over, prior to the lecture, the text in Aristotle, St.
220
Thomas, etc., which the Professor is about to explain. Then, while the

lecture is being delivered, they take down notes; the copying of mere
dictation is not favored. After the lecture, they are to read over the notes
which they have taken down. Let them endeavor to understand their
annotations. Understanding what they have written, they are to make
objections to themselves against the thesis established, and endeavor to
solve their own objections. If they cannot find a solution, let them note the
difficulties, and take occasion to ask the Professor, or reserve them for
disputation. Such is the method of private study prescribed for the members
221
of the Order, and laid down in more general terms for the other
222
students. To develop habits of such study, and to afford the requisite
leisure, a certain custom, then prevailing in Portugal, of keeping the
Professors of Philosophy and their students during two hours and a half
consecutively in the lecture room is discountenanced by the critics of 1586:
"That the philosophers should remain two whole hours and a half in class,
as is now done, is burdensome to the Professor and troublesome to the
students; for these latter should get accustomed to private study, lest, like
223
parrots, they seem to be always talking by rote."
This curtailing of class hours was characteristic of the Society's system.
In 1567 the General Father Francis Borgia wrote, through his secretary
Polanco, correcting, in this respect, a school-regulation which had been
followed in the lower classes of the German Province. The secretary writes:
"It is found by experience, in the schools of the Company, that to teach
three consecutive hours in the forenoon, and three more in the afternoon, is
injurious to the health of our Masters, and does no good to the health of the
scholars; for which reason it is now ordained that in our schools the
morning classes shall not last longer than two and a half hours, and the
224
same in the afternoon."
Nothing intensifies more the results of studies than concentration, nor
dissipates them more than division of attention, while a given pursuit is in
progress. This principle applies to the number of courses taken up at one
time, the conduct of private studies in any single course, and the degree to
which the appointed teachers and the standard authors have full justice done
them. On this head, the critics of 1586 give recommendations, derived from
the Constitution, for the direction of all the students in general, and for the

members of the Order in particular. The recommendations are embodied
225
briefly in the Ratio Studiorum. With Aristotle in Philosophy, or with St.
Thomas in Theology, one commentary is to be designated, and that a
specially chosen author, suited to the individual's capacity. In the second
year of Theology, one of the Fathers of the Church can be added, "to be
read at odds and ends of time, or after the fatigue of a long stretch of study.
Another can be substituted, if after a while they ask for another. But care
should be taken that they do not spend too much time on this reading, as if
226
they were getting up a sermon."
All this, no doubt, tends to make the student "a man of one book," who,
as the adage says, is much to be feared. However, when he goes through
every course, and is everywhere a man of concentrated attention, while, for
the purpose of public disputation and the attempted refutation of his own
and the Professor's conclusions, the side avenues of various authors and
systems are studiously and necessarily kept open, it is probable that, after
being "a man of one book," in many courses successively, he will also be
well-rounded by the time his formation is complete. With students in
general, this can be accomplished by the age of twenty-five; with the Jesuits
themselves, about the age of thirty-three.
3. I come now to the subject of Repetition, of which two chief forms
offer themselves. One is just what the word of itself indicates; it belongs to
all the faculties, but chiefly to the lower courses. I shall call it by the
generic name of Repetition. The other has place principally in the higher; it
is Disputation; of which a preparatory exercise, called Concertatio, prevails
also from the lowest class of Grammar upwards.
Repetition then rehearses in full class, under various forms or
modifications of that exercise, what the Professor has explained in class.
Just before the close of the hour spent on his lecture, the Professor of
Philosophy or Theology signifies that he is ready for questions on the
matter treated; he asks sometimes an account of the lecture, and he sees that
it is repeated. The revised Ratio of 1832 puts it, in more general terms, thus:
"He is often to require an account of the lectures, and to see that they are
repeated"; and then it desires that, after the lecture, either in the class-room,
or somewhere near, he remain accessible to the students for at least a

227
quarter of an hour, to answer their questions. This is all from the
Constitution of Ignatius.
The Repetition, which he is to see to personally, is that which takes
place in small circles of about ten students each. "At the close of the
lectures let them, in parties of about ten apiece, repeat for half an hour what
they have just heard; one of the students, and, if possible, a member of the
228
Society, presiding over each party, decuria." Neither the preliminary, nor
the final, Ratio demands that the Professor himself preside over any of these
parties. But "those who do preside will become more learned, and will be
229
practising to become Masters themselves."
It must be admitted that the tenor of many remarks in the earlier
document of 1586, shows the presence of Jesuits among the auditors to
have acted on the course as a leaven and a relief; although the concurrent
testimony of historians, about the Jesuit schools, indicates little or nothing
there of that license of manners, such as Possevino described for us in a
230
former chapter. In a special manner, those Jesuit students, already young
priests, who, having gone through their four-year course, were now
reviewing in a biennium, of a fifth and sixth year, all their long studies of
the higher sciences, stood ready at hand for many functions in the arena of
direction and presidency, either over the repetitions or the disputations, or in
the chair; to which as many of them as were needed would be officially
231
assigned, when their private studies left them at last free.
To say a word upon this class of Jesuit students, they show us the
Professor's formation at its last stage. They are reviewing all Theology,
Philosophy, Sacred Scripture, Canon Law, Polemical or Controversial
Theology, and ecclesiastical erudition generally. The last of their rules for
self-guidance says: "In particular, they are to devote themselves most of all
to that pursuit, to which they feel chiefly drawn, without, however, omitting
232
any of the rest." Meanwhile, they present, in various ways, specimens of
their talent and erudition; they throw into the form of a digest, "from their
own genius," all Theology, under certain heads and principles; they can
233
choose some "splendid subject," and deliver ten public lectures
thereupon to the auditors who choose to attend, which, we may observe,

was precisely the status of all Professors in the mediæval universities. In
their acts of public defence, five of which are prescribed during the two
years, they are free to follow or to leave the opinions of their late
234
Professors.
These students then are assistant and extraordinary Professors. They
have begun the work, which some of them will continue when called upon
to become Professors in ordinary. They are already in training for that
independent work, which the revised Ratio of 1832 shows some anxiety
about preserving; for it says to all who occupy any chair in these faculties,
that, in case they adopt a standard author to follow in their lectures, which
is a custom rather prevalent in more recent times, they must nevertheless
deliver each year some special question elaborated independently by
235
themselves. This independence of style, perfect command of the matter,
with express leave for the incipient Professor, in the course of his final
biennium, to relinquish the opinions of his late Professors, are made the
subject of many a remark by the critics of 1586. Withal, it is clear enough
that for a younger man to leave an approved opinion safely, it is very
necessary for him to know well what he is about; and doubly necessary
when he comes forward in a public defence; for his own late Professors are
among the Doctors present, and are there to assail him in all his tenets.
These, then, or others presiding over the circles, "one person repeats,
the others listening; they propose difficulties mutually, and, if they cannot
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solve their own objections, they consult the Professor." The one who
repeats is to do so, not from his notes, but from memory. Thus "the memory
is exercised; practice is afforded those who are to be Masters, so that they
accustom themselves to develop their thoughts before others; it makes them
all keep alive and attentive during the lecture, to take down the necessary
237
notes, as they might not do, if they were free from such repetition."
There are several other possible forms of conducting this exercise.
When once the first crude repetition is over, the series of disputations
begins, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Without counting in the "Grand
Acts" of public defence against all objectors, at stated times and by
specially designated persons, we may enumerate as many as seven ordinary
rehearsals of the same matter.

First, before going to the lecture hall, the student looks over the text.
This is done easily enough in St. Thomas or Aristotle, if one of these is the
standard. As Ignatius expected would be done, many standard works have
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been published by writers of the Society. Their recommendation is, as he
intimated, that they are "more adapted to our times"; and they have
incorporated recent researches in progressive branches. In the sense of this
adaptation to times and circumstances, the theologians in Cologne, making
their announcement for the year 1578, say that they follow St. Thomas as a
general rule, but not so "as to treat all that he treats, nor only what he
treats.... Every age," they say, "has its own debated ground in matters of
doctrine, and this brings it to pass that Theology is not only constantly
enlarged with a variety of new disputations, but assumes, as it were, a new
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cast." And the critics of the preliminary Ratio, treating of the Scripture
course, lecture at some length all whom it may concern,—theologians,
professors, preachers,—precisely on this ground, the need of amplifying
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and adapting the course of Scripture to the conditions of the times.
Accordingly, works always new and adapted to latest needs, have poured
forth from the writers of the Order. And such as furnish the conditions of a
text, which may readily be followed, also supply the conditions for conning
over, before going to the lecture hall, what the Professor means to treat. If
no such standard is being followed, still, as I find noted in a documentary
report of 1886, "the Professors should always, as far as possible, throw out
directions enough for the students to look up the subject before coming to
the lecture."
In this connection many familiar names of authors occur. For
Scholastic Theology and Philosophy, there is, in the first place, the prince of
modern theologians, Francis Suarez, with his library of tomes; there are the
three Cardinals Toletus, Bellarmine, De Lugo; Valentia, Vasquez, Lessius,
Franzelin; and, in the modern school of Scholastic Philosophy, the elegant
Liberatore, Kleutgen, Tongiorgi, Pesch, along with the writers of Louvain,
Stonyhurst, Innsbruck, and elsewhere; in Positive Theology and
Controversy, Canisius, Becanus, Petau, Sardagna; in Exegesis, Maldonado,
Salmeron, À Lapide, Menochius, Patrizi, Cornely, with the school of Maria
Laach; in Moral Theology, an endless number, Sanchez, Laymann,
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Busembaum, with his two hundred editions, Gury, Ballerini.

Secondly, the student hears the Professor's lecture. Thirdly, one of the
forms of regular repetition is gone through. Fourthly, the daily disputation
takes place, at least among the Jesuit Scholastics: "At home, every day
except on Saturdays, free and feast days, one hour is to be appointed,"
during which, after a preliminary summarizing of the matter for defence,
the disputation follows; and, if time remains over, difficulties may be
proposed. "In order to have some time remain over, the president must have
the syllogistic form of discussion rigidly observed; and, if nothing new is
242
being urged, he will cut off the debate."
Fifthly, there is the weekly disputation: "On Saturday, or some other
day, as the custom of the University has it, let them hold disputations in the
schools during two hours, or longer still, whenever there is a large
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concourse of persons who come to hear." Sixthly, the more solemn
disputation follows, every month, or nearly so: "Each month, or, if the
students are few, every other month, let disputations be held on a certain
day, both morning and afternoon. The number of defendants will
244
correspond to the number of Professors whose theses they defend."
Seventhly, towards the close of the scholastic year, though no time is to be
set aside for the purpose, so as to prejudice the continuous course of the
Professor's lectures, yet "all the matter of the year is to have been gone
245
through, by way of repetition, when the time of vacation arrives." The
whole of this matter forms the subject of the year's examination for the
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Jesuit members of the course. To all these argumentative repetitions may
be added the discursive form, in the shape of lectures given by the students
247
themselves, or dissertations read on stated occasions.
It is evident that the members of the Society are the chief subjects of
this completeness of formation; and that for two reasons. In the first place,
no other students, even if convictores, that is, boarders in the Jesuit
colleges, can be brought under such a thoroughness of system. Secondly,
other students are not in the same way subject to the regular gradation of
examinations from year to year. When they are competent, they may apply
for admission to the requisite public tests, or Acts of Defence; and, in the
philosophical courses, they become Bachelors, Licentiates, and Masters of

Arts; in Theology, Bachelors in the first and then in the second grade,
Licentiates, Doctors. "No degree is to be conferred on any one who has not
stood all the tests, which, according to the custom of Universities, must
precede the conferring of these degrees." The character of each degree, its
conditions, tests, formalities, are treated of fully in the "Form and Method
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of conducting Academies and Studia Generalia S. J.," 1658.
Here, then, the spirit of the Constitution is fully observed, with regard
to repetition and also disputation. The Fathers remark that Ignatius
"recommends nothing with more urgency than disputation, and constancy in
its exercise; so much stress does he lay upon it, as not to let the students of
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Letters and Grammar go without it." In the lower classes it takes the
form of concertatio and mutual challenges, in the matter of Grammar and
literary doctrine. Here it is in its full form; and we may pass on to consider
it in the next chapter, not as a manner of repetition, but on its own merits.
I will make the transition, by quoting an important passage or two from
the preliminary Ratio. They bear not only on disputation, but on that very
essential point, where it is that the vital power for actuating the whole
system lies; and what is the intrinsic value of any system, as a mere code of
legislation.
The critics say that, to counteract the apparent decline of disputation,
and to restore this exercise to its ancient form and splendor, everything
depends on the vigilance and diligence of those in authority. "Without this,
nothing will be effected, even though, for the proper administration of this
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department of studies, many laws and precepts are put down in writing."
Elsewhere, acknowledging in another connection that there is indeed a
multitude of points defined for observance, the same writers go on to make
these pertinent reflections: "The perfection of doctrine, like the perfection
of moral life, stands in need of many aids; whence it is that there is no
people under the direction of more laws than the Christian people, nor any
Religious Order more under the obligation of Constitution and Decrees than
our own." They undertake to prove the advantage of this, both from the side
of those in authority, and of those under authority. "Aristotle and St.
Thomas," they say, "are both of opinion that as few points as possible
should be left to the private opinions of a judge, and as many as possible

should be determined by the clear definition of law. They prove it; for it is
easier to find the few wise men, whose wisdom is equal to the task of
determining fixed rules of guidance, than to find the multitude, which
otherwise is required to pass judgment in all contingencies of time and
place; there is the sanction of greater maturity in laws which have stood the
test of time and experience, than in the off-hand decision of the present
hour; there is less of a corrupting influence on law-givers, when they are
defining things in general and for the future. Wherefore, whatever can be
despatched by general law is so to be despatched; what cannot be provided
for by such law is to be left to the judge, as the living rule. Under this head
come the particular decisions to be passed in given junctures, whereof the
general law cannot take cognizance." So far Aristotle and St. Thomas; and
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the Fathers of 1586 agree with them.

CHAPTER XIV.

DISPUTATION. DICTATION.

1. Many wise things had been said by the experienced masters of old on
the subject of disputation. Thus Robert of Sorbon, the founder of the
College of the Sorbonne, had put it down in one of his six essential rules for
the scholar, that "nothing is perfectly known unless masticated by the tooth
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of disputation."
Our Jesuit critics mention incidentally, in one place, that "their age is
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eminently versed in disputation." They are cautioning the Professor of
Scripture against using disputation at all, lest he come thereby to relinquish
his own eloquent style of commentary. For every chair has its own
character; and that which the Ratio Studiorum of 1599 attributes to the chair
of Scripture includes, among a number of qualifications, this one, which is
mentioned in the last place, that, "as far as possible, the Professors be well
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versed in eloquence."
On the other hand, in the proper arena of disputation, they caution
Professors against its abuse. Taking note, in one place, of the discord which
can arise among learned men, they illustrate their point with some
instances, taken precisely from a disputatious tendency, from that
exaggerated scholasticism which had run into dialectic excesses. They say:
"For the disturbance of harmony, it makes very little difference whether
discord arises in great things or in little. It is not only the importance of a
question, it is also the spirit of emulation, that fosters contention; so that
sometimes a war of words and the bitterest altercation is kept up on a single
term and phrase. Forsooth, what is more trivial than to ask whether God is

in imaginary space? Yet what tragic scenes does not this very question give
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rise to!"
Excesses of this kind being guarded against, the Fathers lay down the
thesis that, when employed in its proper place, no exercise is more useful
than disputation. You will see not a few wholly taken up with reading,
writing, arranging, and paging what they have written; but they eschew
most carefully all disputation, neglecting it, looking upon it as an idle
occupation, having all their Theology locked up, not so much in their
memory and intelligence, as in their paper books. Men of authority, they go
on to say, have always been persuaded that Philosophy and Theology are
learnt, not so much by hearing, as by discussing. For, in this exercise, you
have a most certain test how much a man understands of what he is writing
about or teaching; also how much solidity there is in one's own private
cogitations, since it happens not unfrequently that what appears brilliant in
one's private room is seen to drag in the mud, when it comes to
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disputation. Then, too, while we are hard pressed by our adversary, we
are forced to strain every nerve of our wits, and, when others are bearing
down heavily upon us, we knock out of our brains many things which
would never have come into our heads, while we stayed in the quiet of
leisure and rested in the shade. We hear things which others have found out,
and which either throw light on doubtful points, or indicate the path to some
other point. Or, if what is said does not commend itself to our judgment, we
see through the opponent's artifice; we meet him with more facility, and
establish our own thesis with more stability. The auditors, meanwhile, can
take note of the good points one Professor makes, the strong points of
another, and, after the example of their Doctors, they quicken their wits for
the fray, observing where the arguments limp, which are the distinctions
that tell, how the whole doctrine of a Professor hangs together. In short, it is
well established by the authority of the gravest men, and by the test of
experience, that one disputation does more good than many lectures; not to
mention the other consideration, that there is nothing more calculated to
render our schools illustrious, than making our students competent to win
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great approbation and applause, in public sessions and disputations.
These critics express their mind upon the need which exists, of reviving
considerably the fervor and dignity of this exercise, and so restoring it to its

former educational influence. But we can observe for ourselves, how
congenial an element the whole exercise must be in a system like this,
which is preëminently oral—oral examinations, oral and self-reliant defence
and attack, free and open lecturing, with the influence of eye, voice, and
person, to bring everything home, even though all the while there is no
question of oratory, but of mere teaching. In the earlier stages, too, of the
scholar's life, however much has been made of the acquirement of style,
"forging the word with Grammar," as Robert of Sorbon had said, "and
polishing it with Rhetoric," to make it glow on the written page, yet from
the very first, also, no less account has been taken of the ability to express
one's thought, with perfect presence of mind, without depending upon note
or book. In the higher faculties, this holds good more than ever. Now the
time has come for matter of the most approved kind. And the independent,
self-possessed delivery of one's thoughts, with the power to force them
home unto conviction, or to maintain them against all odds, appears not
only as the scope proposed in the system, but also as the historical result,
effected in the public career of the Order.
Father Laynez, at the Conference of Poissy, contended thus with Peter
Martyr and others; Possevino at Lyons with Viret, using, not so much the
severe syllogistic form, as copious and learned discussion. Maldonado was
double-handed, either syllogistic or discursive. In the Conference at Sedan,
in 1572, he argued first in dialectic form; then, on the demand of his
opponents for a different kind of weapon, he took with the same facility to
discursive exposition. Edmund Campian, in England, on being removed
from the rack more dead than alive, was immediately brought face to face
with Newell and Day, able champions as well of the Queen's spiritual
supremacy, as of the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone. He proceeded
to argue: "If faith alone justifies, it justifies without charity; but without
charity it does not justify; therefore faith alone does not justify." Now for
the answer, clear and incisive as the propositions. Deny or distinguish major
or minor proposition, if you want to deny the conclusion; for, those
premises standing, the inference remains intact, since the syllogism is
perfect in form. And so argumentations proceed.
To revive disputation in its best style, the critics devote several pages to
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a most valuable analysis of the conditions and method of the exercise.
Their suggestions are embodied in the final Ratio. The Rectors are to show

their lively and active interest in the disputations, by attending on public
and private occasions alike, and by the various arts which such interest will
inspire. As argument "freezes except in a crowd," the critics require that the
attendance of all be insisted on, when the days and hours of disputation
arrive. This susceptibility of human nature, which the Fathers touch upon,
when they speak of disputation freezing except in a concourse, is not
without an exact counterpart, when, in another connection, they are
speaking of the humanists, or Professors of the literary classes. There they
adopt the view that the literary seminary of the Province should be in the
same great college, along with the faculties of Philosophy and Theology;
for, say they, among other reasons, "the humanists would languish in
obscurity, if they had not the philosophers and theologians to be witnesses,
spectators, and applauding auditors of their literary achievements." And
again they plead sympathetically, "the philosophers and theologians, when
composing the prefatory essays for their disputations, call for the taste of
the humanists, by whose verses and orations, moreover, they are refreshed
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from time to time."
Continuing their remarks, the Fathers define the limits of the weekly
disputations to be two hours, not more, assigning four regular objectors for
that time. The Professors, belonging to different faculties, should invite one
another reciprocally to the private disputations in their classes, at least for
an hour or so, that the intellectual contest may wax warm by the meeting of
these Doctors. Other Doctors, too, not of the faculty, can be invited for the
same purpose. But, continues the Ratio of 1599, in undertaking to push the
arguments which are being urged, "they should not take the thread out of
the hands of an objector, who is still ably and strenuously following it
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up." Meanwhile, the students who receive the commission to act as
objectors, on occasions of some publicity, must be the more qualified
members of the course; the others have the practice of their private arena,
until they can take part with dignity in a public tournament.
If argument freezes except in a crowd, so, too, it palls, if it never comes
to a conclusion; and no useful point of doctrine is carried away by the
listeners. Truth is lost in clouds, and there is no gain to good humor.
Acrimony or melancholy may well be the only outcome of an unfinished or
revolving argumentation. It will not revolve, if the disputants keep to strict

syllogistic form. But when both or all parties become heated, and wit
becomes lively, the syllogism may suffer, and then, when will they finish?
To obviate this inconvenience, two persons are charged with the
responsibility of the performance, one the Professor himself, who is
presiding over his own disputation, the other, the General Prefect of
Studies, who controls the whole series of disputations, as they follow one
another in turn.
Of the Professor it is said, that he is to consider the day of disputation
as no less laborious and useful than that of his own lecture; and that all the
fruit and life of the exercise depends upon him. The earlier Ratio lays even
more stress upon the private disputations, "which are wont to grow more
frigid than the public ones." He is to assist the two disputants, "so as to be
himself apparently the person contesting in each; let him signify his
approval, if anything specially good is urged, excite the attention of all
when any first-class difficulty is proposed, throw out a hint now and then to
support the respondent or direct the opponent; call them back to strict
syllogistic form, if they wander from it; not always be silent, nor yet be
always talking, so as to let the students bring out what they know. What is
brought forward, he can amend or improve; let him bid the objector
proceed, so long as his argument carries weight with it; carry on the
objector's difficulty for him farther; nor connive at it, if he slips off to
another track. He is not to allow an argument which has been well answered
to be kept up, nor an answer that is not solid to be long sustained; but, when
the dispute has been sufficiently exhaustive, let him briefly define the
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matter, and explain it."
The General Prefect of Studies is required to keep the series of
disputations in due form; arguing himself but sparingly, and thereby
discharging the duty of general direction with more dignity. He is not to
suffer any difficulty which comes under debate, to be agitated this way and
that, "so that it remains as much of a difficulty after as before"; but when
such an agitated question has been sufficiently mooted, he will see that an
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accurate explanation of it is given by the Professor who is presiding.
With the last public act, or general defence of Philosophy and
Theology, the formation of the future Professor closes. This public defence
occupies four or five hours, in two sessions. If the defendant is not a

member of the Order, special care is taken to honor it with all solemnity,
and with the attendance of all the faculties, of guests invited, Doctors from
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without, and princes or the nobility. This act will be followed by the
solemnity of conferring the final degree upon the Licentiate. When the
student is a Jesuit, much more is made of thoroughness in a searching
examination then, as at all times previously. He has now passed through a
long series of yearly examinations, which were almost always disputations,
264
and that, not with equals, but with four or five Professors. So that, on
viewing him at the close of his formation, we are enabled to conceive, with
more distinctness, the meaning of that standard, "surpassing mediocrity,"
265
which, in a former chapter, I endeavored to define.
2. On turning our attention now to the Professor's chair, and examining
his manner of lecturing, of explaining, of teaching, whether in the field of
Letters, Science, Philosophy, or Theology, we have, on the one side, to
suppose him complete in his formation, and, on the other, to regard the
scholar as undergoing formation. Here, then, we begin the second part of
this analysis. The style of teaching and of management, which is
distinctively the Jesuit type, is presented in the Ratio Studiorum under its
practical and ideal aspect. There is also a manner of instruction which is not
considered an ideal method, however much it may sometimes recommend
itself as practically expedient. I will touch upon this latter, the negative side
of the question, first, to be free, in the next chapter, for approaching the
matter on its positive and constructive side.
In putting dictation down as not being the ideal form of teaching in the
Society, I do not speak of the proper use of dictation. The Ratio itself leaves
room for it. It is the abuse of dictation that merits and receives a protracted
examination of its value, at the hands of the critics. The discussion is of the
highest importance. In analyzing a style of instruction, with which they are
not in harmony, they bring out the essential elements of all true teaching.
And, if we approve at all of their principles, the implied disapproval for the
rejected form becomes only aggravated, on contemplating an exaggerated
development of the same; that is to say, when, instead of dictating what has
the merit of being one's own laborious production, the teacher is seen to
become the servile dependant on a text-book printed by somebody else; and
neither does the teacher show any of the qualifications necessary to have

composed the book, nor does the scholar expend the industry which would
have been necessary to copy it. But it is left to speak as best it may, is read
by the teacher, instead of his teaching, is read by the scholar as the talk of
some third person, and is found, in the last issue, to have spoken just
articulately enough for the pupil to have learnt a memory lesson, and
perhaps to have gathered information which may or may not adhere to his
mental structure. But, as to anything like mental training, or what is
properly education, the final result of a long series of years seems to show
that, if there has been any of it, possibly the man who wrote the book had it;
and with him it has remained. So must it always be under such conditions.
For when the living Master has contributed so little in the way of live
education, the scholar must, of necessity, go away with somewhat less.
These critics say trenchantly: "Let no dictation be given, unless the
explanation of very much all that is dictated has gone before, or
accompanies, or follows the dictation; where the custom does not exist, let
no dictation be introduced; where it does, an effort should be made to do
away with it, as far as possible." Then they support their position by many
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quotations from the Constitution of Ignatius.
They go on to state that this habit of dictating was a thing unheard of
till within the last forty years; "yet the auditors were not less learned then
than now." In fact, but a slight acquaintance with the old university system
of Europe will show how jealously the empire of the spoken word was
maintained—the spoken word, as distinct, not only from reading what the
Doctor had himself composed, but also from consulting even notes, while
actually lecturing. He might have the text of Aristotle, or Peter the
Lombard, before him; he might himself have written and published works;
the student might, with permission, take down notes in shorthand, from
which in part, but chiefly from memory, he would commit the whole lecture
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to writing, on his return from school. It was not mere want of facilities
that determined the system so. But the objective point was, not to have
learning in one's papers and bound up; still less to have it in books, bought
for the learning that is in them, and left afterwards with the learning still
remaining there. The object was to make learning one's personal possession,
and to profess the live mastery of it, with voice, eye, and person showing
how live it was.

These Doctors continue: "The common impression in men's minds is,
that dictating is not lecturing; also that it is one thing to write after the
manner of polishing off a treatise, a different thing to have at hand merely
some brief heads and references. And, should the matter which is dictated
be from some author, the labor of taking it down is superfluous."
The living voice actuates the mind more; it expresses, it impresses; it
arouses, suspends the attention; it explains. All these effects are nowhere in
a dead-and-alive dictation. Nor do they give satisfaction, who append the
explanation afterwards; for then both times seem to be lost, that taken up
with dictation and that with the explanation. First, while the dictation was
going on, the auditors were intent upon writing rather than understanding;
particularly as, before the end of a sentence is come to, the beginning of it
has already slipped from the mind; and the writing has to go on, without
allowing any of that time to breathe, which is frequent enough if the
Professor lectures and explains. Secondly, when the time for explanation
comes after the dictation, the students are tired; they think they have all
their learning now, down in their papers; so they go off, or they yawn, or
they read over their copy, to see if anything is wanting.
After dictating, the Professor thinks that he has now done his part.
What follows, that is, the work of explaining, he gulps down, as best he can,
—a laborious work, requiring memory, promptitude, facility of
development, fluency of speech; whence he will gradually vanish away into
a nonentity, as we see actually taking place in some universities.
More time is lost. For, while he goes over his dictation to explain it, he
has to take up again things which were clear enough, in order to follow out
the whole thread of his matter. If he had lectured, he would have said those
things once for all. Then, since it must be something polished and finished
in style that a man dictates, the poor scribes have to take down much that is
not necessary.
As if they had wearied themselves with this general assault on
dictation, the Fathers go on to relieve their feelings by exclaiming: "What
an amount of tedium meanwhile to those who are not writing, especially to
Prelates and other illustrious persons present! Must they be told not to come
while the dictation is going on, and to appear only afterwards when the
matter is being explained? If so, they will be in attendance barely half an

hour, and what they will hear will be meagre enough; and the person they
listen to will be one accustomed to languid dictation, one who relies on his
papers, and is but little practised in the oral development of his thoughts.
Besides, the students themselves ought to get accustomed to make things
their own when they hear them, and to exercise their own judgment in
selecting what to write. Thus they will understand things better, and be kept
more on the alert."
Not to disguise inconveniences, from whatever side they come, these
critics take note of the difficulties which are thought to exist; that, unless
the matter is dictated, the students cannot do justice to it, that the lecturer is
too quick, or, out of the many things he says, they do not know how to
select the necessary elements for annotation; and, while phrase is piled
upon phrase, they are at a loss, their notes are disordered, inept, and
sometimes simply wrong.
To this the critics promptly make answer: Those who are to lecture in
future are either such as are now beginning their career of Professorship, or
such as are long accustomed to dictation. For those who are now beginning,
previous exercise is to be recommended in the most approved form of
lecture, or prælectio. And they sketch the form. As to the others who are
long habituated to dictating, the critics ask such Professors to give this form
of lecturing the benefit of a trial. If they despair of being able to adopt it, let
them go their own way, until another generation of Professors is ready to
take their places. Dictation can also be permitted, where our Professors
have often tried to give it up, but with the consequence that the students
took fright, and abandoned the classes. "Yet," continue the Fathers, "they
would not be apt to abandon the courses, nor complain so much, if all the
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Professors would devote themselves to brilliant lecturing, and would put
away dictation. For, if one dictates and nurses the lazy folks, and another
does not, who doubts but that sloth will still be dearer to the slothful than
the labors and thorns of study? Yea, by dictation they are made daily more
and more lazy, so as to be always asking for more and more time; whereas,
without dictation, they become daily more prompt, and need less time for
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everything."
The final Ratio of 1599 embodies these suggestions, without being
absolute in excluding all dictation, for which it suggests the form most

useful and in accord with the spirit of true lecturing. It deprecates the
dictation of what may be found in authors within reach of the students. "Let
the Professor refer his hearers to those authors who have been copious and
accurate in their treatment of any matter." As to what the critics of 1586
recommend, that, if dictation be given, the lecture should extend to five
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quarters of an hour, the Ratio says nothing about it.
Possevino, in his Bibliotheca Selecta, has a chapter on this question,
"Whether mental culture suffers by the dictation of lectures?" He answers in
the affirmative, and he speaks on the subject with his usual erudition. He
refers to the Pythagorean "acoustic" disciples, who were never copyists, and
not even talkers, until, by a prolonged silence for years, they had thought
enough to be able to talk well, to put questions, and make comments. He
quotes the cynicism of Diogenes, about writing at the expense of true
exercise. He notes the plan of Xeniades the Corinthian, who gave a written
compendium to the young people, but one so short that they had to have the
best part of their learning in their heads. The Socratic method was
eminently one of living speech. And, as to Aristotle's "peripatetic" school,
which was conducted while walking about the Lyceum, that was certainly
neither in practice nor in principle favorable to writing. Coming to speak
expressly of dictation and citing a pleasant old rhyme:—

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Quod si charta cadat, secum sapientia vadat,

Possevino goes on to plead for the chests of the students, and says that the ink
is the price of their blood, and the end of their studies becomes the end of their
lives. Hence one singular result of it all is, that scholars even employ amanuenses
to go to school instead of themselves, and bring back in writing what was said. But
all that money, says Possevino, could have been reserved for the buying of books,
to supplement real study.
Then he enforces what he has said with a piece of university history, wherein
perhaps no one of his time was better versed. The University of Paris, two and a
half centuries before, had legislated against dictating, and against the Doctors who
used it, and who were dubbed Nominatores ad pennam. One century before, the
Cardinal Legate had again formulated a law on the subject. And finally the Jesuits,
"of whom a great number are chiefly engaged in this profession, taught by
experience the evils of that system, have long understood the necessity, not merely
of moderating it, but simply doing away with it. Wherefore the Fathers in the
universities of Portugal have already published a part of Natural Philosophy,
whereby writing is dispensed with, room is left for quickening genius, and much
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material stored up to bring into the arena of discussion."

CHAPTER XV.

FORMATION OF THE SCHOLAR. SYMMETRY OF
THE COURSES. THE PRELECTION. BOOKS.

What is developed to perfection can make other things like unto itself; it is
prolific. So the Aristotelian principle has it: Perfectum est, quod generat simile sibi.
This is the outcome and test of perfection. Having followed the Master, therefore,
till he was complete in his own formation, we have now turned to look in another
direction, and see him reacting upon those whom he is to form. Though much has
been said already implicitly or otherwise, on the method and principles of this
reactive process, yet something remains, especially with regard to the lower
faculties, the literary courses. In this chapter, we may consider the attitude which
the Professors take, singly and as a body, towards the students and towards their
own courses; and then their chief manner of imparting knowledge, or what is called
in the Ratio the prælectio. In the next chapter we can survey the principal class
exercises, and the method of school management, throughout the lower grades.
And, in the chapter after that, I shall sketch the system of grades from the lowest to
the highest.
1. One of the first most general rules lays it down that the authority, in whose
hands is the appointment of Professors, "should foresee far ahead what Professors
he can have for every faculty, noting especially those who seem to be more adapted
for the work, who are learned, diligent, and assiduous, and who are zealous for the
advancement of their students, as well in their lectures (or lessons) as in other
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literary exercises." "They are to procure the advancement of each of their
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scholars in particular," says Ignatius. The Professor "is not to show himself more
familiar with one student than with another; he is to disregard no one, to foster the
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studies of the poor equally with the rich."
These are the regular and "ordinary Professors, who take account of their
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students in particular." There can also be in a university one or more of another

kind, "who, with more solemnity than the ordinary lecturers, treat Philosophy,
Mathematical Sciences, or any other branch, after the manner of public
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Professors."
In the lower, or literary courses the Masters must "be good and skilled," who
"seriously, and with all the attention of their mind, work for the advancement of
their scholars, as well in what concerns learning, as in the matter of morals. They
will have to take care that besides the Christian doctrine, which is so integral a part
of our Institute, they also give frequent exhortations, suited to the capacity of the
boys, and not devised for empty ostentation; let them endeavor to instil solid
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affections of piety and love for the things of God, and a hatred for sin."
What is meant by "good and skilled Masters" in these courses, we have already
seen from Jouvancy's sketch of the accomplishments proper to a teacher of
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Literature. If anything remained to be said on this topic, it would only be to note
and reject false standards, by which the position or efficiency of Professors might
possibly, but incorrectly, be measured. Thus, some five years ago, that is to say,
three hundred years later than the drawing up of the Ratio, I find two such false
standards distinctly repudiated; one is the idea of gathering in just enough of
doctrine beforehand to be able, when occasion calls for it, to develop the
attainments of a Professor; another is that which would look only to the
environment around, and would measure the intellectual formation of men, and the
supply of learning, by the estimate commonly formed of the article, and the actual
demand for it.
2. If we regard not individual Professors, but the whole moral body or faculty
of them, there are two characteristics which it may be difficult to find, or at least to
ensure, outside of an organization such as the Society of Jesus. One is the very
strict unity of educational matter presented to the studious world. The other is the
degree of coördination and subordination of courses professed. A word upon each.
The unity of matter in question, as designed for the purposes of education, is
prescribed on the strength of a double maxim; first, that the sifting of many
opinions, by the varied and multiplied activity of many minds, leaves a residue of
matter, quite solid enough to support a compact and reliable system of teaching;
secondly, that, in point of fact, such matter, which I have called "a residue," is
nothing else than the basis of truth, divine and eternal; since, in clearing away the
ground, all the criteria of each order, the natural and supernatural, have been
faithfully and assiduously regarded.
Hereupon, intellectual concord is felt to be the result in the entire teaching
body. Of this concord the critics say, that it is the condition and cause of a wider

and profounder learning in the faculties at large. Each Professor is engaged, "not in
tilling some patch of his own, but in contributing his industry to the general field of
all." Where is the gain, they ask, "if what one establishes, another upsets, not as if
he had always excogitated something better, but for fear he should be thought to
profit by the fruits of another's genius? Sometimes it really makes no difference
whether one or other tenet is held; but, if we are bent on receiving no support from
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another, then, for all our labor, we get no other fruit but dissension." I presume
there is not a university anywhere but will bear witness, by its internal history, to
the justice of this remark.
Nor do these Fathers apprehend that reputation for real science will suffer by
such concord, since "reputation for science does not come from opinions
contradicting one another, but from their having agreed." They express no lofty
esteem for the notoriety which may be had, by fighting no less with friends than
with foes, and reserving admiration for only what is at a respectable distance, and
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"turning up one's nose at what is near." This pungent remark seems to be a new
and pedagogical application of the old proverb, Nihil vicinia molestius, "Nothing
more annoying than one's neighbors!" They hold that, upon a basis of concord,
there is always room and liberty for the exercise of talent; first, in those questions
which are manifestly indifferent; secondly, in thinking out new distinctions and
reasons, whereby truths already certain may be made more secure still; thirdly, in
attacking the same, either when publicly disputing, or also when actually teaching,
if what they acutely urge against a position, they more acutely refute; fourthly, in
proposing new opinions and questions, but after they have sought the approval of
the responsible authorities, lest the labor be spent amiss. The most learned men
have always been persuaded that there is more subtlety shown, more applause
merited and comfort enjoyed, in pursuing the lines of approved and received
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thought, than in a general license and novelty of opinion. But these critics throw
out an idea of theirs, which quite possibly will not meet with universal acceptance.
They say, "It is not every one who can build up a Theology for himself." The
remark they add is graceful, that a modest genius does not court every kind of
liberty, but that which is not divorced from virtue.
These principles explain for us the unity of educational matter, as presented to
the studious world. The same marshalling and husbanding of force, which
effectuates this result, operates another, akin to the former. It is the most definite
coördination and subordination of courses, with a mutual understanding between
Professors and faculties. Where grades exist, either in their perfect form, as in the
five stages of the classical or literary course, or in a shape approximating to that, as
in the three stages of the philosophical triennium, such subordination is easily

secured. But, also, elsewhere the conditions of perfectly definite outlines are laid
down for courses, which have any points of mutual contact.
This may be illustrated by some rules of the Ratio. The two Professors of
Dogmatic Theology are to consider themselves dispensed from commenting on
questions proper to Sacred Scripture, from treating philosophical matters, from
evolving cases of Moral Theology. The Professor of Moral Theology is to despatch
with the briefest definitions the matter which belongs to dogma. The Professor of
Holy Scripture is desired not to go at length into points of controverted Theology.
The Professor of Ecclesiastical History need not treat canons or dogma. The
Professor of Canon Law will not touch Theology or Public Right, any more than
his time permits, and the necessary understanding of Canon Law requires. The
same reserve is practised between Theology in general, and Philosophy. Thus a
Professor of Moral Theology despatches perhaps in ten minutes the definition of
Natural Law, upon which he knows two days are spent by the Professor of Moral
Philosophy.
Half a century later, this question of coördination received a still fuller
treatment at the hands of the General Francis Piccolomini. After requiring that
philosophers and theologians alike finish conscientiously all the matter assigned
for each year, he will not allow that "the example of authors who have mixed up
subjects, or have followed out their questions into mere minutiæ, can be cited as of
any weight with our Professors. For, whatever is to be thought of them, this method
is not opportune for practical teaching in the schools." The General scouts the idea
of "exploring the treasure-house of possibilities," to find out new questions; for
there is reason to fear that "while folks search about for truths not ascertained, they
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will catch at chimeras and shadows." Hence, as the Ratio prescribes, "opinions
which are useless, obsolete, absurd, manifestly false, are not to receive treatment."
The Professors are to run rapidly through questions which are easy. In Holy
Scripture, difficult passages are not to be dwelt on indefinitely, nor too much time
to be given to chronological computations, or topological surveys of the Holy
Land.
In facing the objection, that all this entails a great expenditure of thought and
matter, when Professors must despatch in such short courses what might well be
treated in longer terms, the preliminary Ratio draws a sharp line of demarcation
between other universities and those conducted by Jesuits. "Whatever is the custom
in other universities, our method is very different from theirs, so that no less
progress can be made in our schools during four years, than in others during five;
because our Professors are for the most part more laborious; we have more
numerous exercises; our Society, as standing in need of many workmen, requires
that perfection of science which is necessary for its men, not that otiose method of

others, who, having no motive of this kind to make them expeditious, divide up
into many lectures what could well be treated in fewer; their vacations too are for
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the most part longer and more frequent."
Ex ungue leonem, "You can tell a lion by his paw." Let it appear that the
brevity which you study is necessitated by your limits of time; let discernment be
conspicuous in your selection of matter, whether to treat summarily or to treat
copiously; let the alternate courses supplement one another, so that what had to be
skimmed over in one quadriennium is dilated upon more at large in your next; then,
say the Fathers, the authority which the Professors enjoy with ecclesiastical
dignitaries will not suffer the detriment anticipated by some, when we give
condensed and accurate treatment in a shorter time of what is usually spread out
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through a longer. The paw shows the lion.
3. We may proceed now to the typical form of Jesuit instruction. It is called
prælectio. This word is largely the equivalent of "lecturing," in the higher faculties;
of "explanation," in the lower. In either case, however, it is something specific. For
this reason, and because I shall have to use the word often, I may be allowed to put
it in an English dress, and speak of "prelection."
Its form, as a lecture in the higher faculties, is conceived thus: The whole
proposition, which is advanced, is to be delivered consecutively, without
interposing any stoppages. Then it should be repeated in the same words; and this
will be taken by the students as a sign that it is to be written down; and the delivery
of it should be marked by such inflections, and proceed at such a pace, especially
in its obscure and finer points, that the students may readily distinguish between
what is to be written and what is not. Now, while the proposition is thus being
taken down, the lecturer ought not to advance new ideas, but should dally with the
same, either explaining it in more phrases or clearer ones, or adducing an example
or similitude, or amplifying the topic, or drawing out the same logical sequence in
another order, so as to make it stand out more distinctly, or throwing out a reason
or two, which, however, it is not necessary for them to note. Indeed, if the
Professor brings his own papers into the school, he might have in them some select
phrases, brief but not obscure, in which he sums up in few words the gist of the
propositions. Longer development they will receive only in the explanation, which
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is then to be given. In that, the Professor will endeavor to prove his thesis, not so
much by the number of arguments, as by their weight. He should not be excessive
in adducing authorities. And it belongs to his dignity, as a Master, scarcely ever to
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quote an author whom he has not himself read.

In the grade of Rhetoric, which is the highest of the literary or classical course,
the prelection is double; one is upon the art of eloquence, wherein precepts are
explained; the other is upon an author, and has for its object the development of
style. Taking up an author such as Cicero, the Professor will, in the first place,
make clear the sense of the passage. Secondly, the artistic structure is to be
analyzed and demonstrated: the Ratio here details the elements of this analysis.
Thirdly, other passages which are similar in thought or expression are to be
adduced; other orators and poets, whether in the classics or in the vernacular, are to
be cited as employing the same principles of art, in persuading or narrating.
Fourthly, if the matter allows of it, the thoughts expressed by the author are to be
confirmed by what wise men have said on the same subject. Fifthly, whatever else
will conduce to ornamenting the passage is here in place, from history, mythology,
erudition of every kind. Finally, the words are to be weighed singly; their propriety
of use, their beauty, variety, rhythm to be commented upon. The whole of this
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treatment, however, does not come within the limits of each and every lesson.
The "erudition" for this grade is defined to comprise "the history and manners of
nations, the authority of various writers, and all learning, but sparingly, to suit the
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capacity of the scholars."
The prelection on the precepts or rules, "the power of which," says the Ratio,
"is very great for the purposes of oratory," comprises six points. Cicero is the
rhetorician who supplies the precepts; but Quintilian and Aristotle may also be
used. First, the meaning of the rule is to be explained. Secondly, upon the same
rule, the rhetoricians are to be collated. Thirdly, some reason for the rule is to be
expounded. Fourthly, some striking passages from prose writers, and also from
poets, are to be adduced in exemplification of the rule. Fifthly, if anything in the
way of varied erudition makes to the purpose, it is to be added. Lastly, an
indication should be given how this principle of art can be turned to use by
ourselves; the style in which this is done must be marked by the most absolute
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choice and finish of diction possible.
In the grade of Humanity, which is immediately below Rhetoric, the prelection
is to be lightly adorned from time to time with the ornaments of erudition, as far as
the passage requires. The Master should rather expatiate to the fullest extent upon
the genius of the Latin tongue, on the force and etymology of words as shown by
approved authors, on the use and variety of phrases, with a view to imitation. Here,
as in other rules of this kind, we may notice the degree of progress made in the
native tongues during two centuries and a half. While the Ratio of 1599 adds these
words: "Nor let him think it out of his way to bring forward something from the
vernacular, if it presents anything specially idiomatic for rendering the idea, or

offers some remarkable construction;" the revised Ratio of 1832 substitutes these
words: "Let him expatiate on a comparison between the genius of both tongues,
with a view to imitation." When he is explaining a prose author, he should
investigate the precepts of art, as exemplified therein. Lastly, if he thinks fit, he can
give a version, but a most elegant one, of the whole passage into the mother
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tongue. Greek has its own form of prelection.
As to the "prose writer" just mentioned, the manner of treating an historical
writer in Humanity, which is otherwise called the class of Poetry, will serve by the
way to illustrate the difference between what is recognized as the staple of studies
in a class, and what comes in as subsidiary—a most essential distinction,
characterizing this system of literary teaching. The critics of 1586 advert to it
clearly. After showing the importance of including the study of historians in the
course of Poetry, they say: "This will not be too onerous to the Preceptor; for the
style of history is plainer and more lucid, so as not to need great study; and it
would be enough to explain the course of events, as they are narrated by the author,
so that he need not consult other authors who have written on the same matter. The
prelection of the historian ought to be easy; after rendering a sentence of the author,
the words may be lightly commented upon, and only such as have some obscurity
hanging about them." The historians of whom there is question here, are Cæsar,
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Sallust, Q. Curtius, Justin, Tacitus, Livy.
"In both classes of Rhetoric and Humanities, not everything indiscriminately is
to be dictated and taken down, but only certain interpretations of difficult passages,
which are not readily obvious to every one, or which the Master has elaborated as
the outcome of his personal study; besides, some rather striking remarks on various
passages of the author under examination, such annotations as the commentators
give, who edit books of various readings. This will befit the Master's dignity, and
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will be useful for the young men to know."
The grades of Grammar have respectively their own forms of prelection, given
in detail by the final Ratio. It will be enough for us to sketch the general form of
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the earlier critics.
According as it is a grammar or an author that is being explained, a very
different method of prelection is to be followed. In the grammar, we acquire a fund
of precepts; in an author, a store of words and phrases. Wherefore, in the books of
grammar, the boys must understand perfectly the things explained; they need not
attend scrupulously to the words there, with a view to forming style. But, in the
letters of Cicero, and other texts of the kind, it is not so much the substance of the
sentences, as the words and phrases that are of chief consequence; the significance

and force of his thoughts are to be reserved for the higher classes, when the
students are no longer mere boys.
In the classes of Grammar then, let the Master follow this method of
explaining Cicero, or any other author. First, he will sketch, in the briefest way, the
meaning of the author, and the connection between what has gone before and what
is now to be explained. Then he will give a version of the period literally,
preserving to the utmost the collocation of words, as they stand in the author; and
also the figures employed. As to the collocation or arrangement of the words, this
is of such consequence that sometimes, if a single word is put out of its place, the
whole thought seems to lose its force and fall flat. Herein, too, is perceived that
rhythmic flow of the style, which of itself, even if other ornaments are wanting,
pleases the ear wonderfully and gratifies the mind. Thirdly, the whole period is to
be resolved analytically into its structural elements, so that the boys understand
distinctly what every word governs; and their attention should be directed to some
useful points of good Latinity. As to this structural analysis, I may be allowed the
passing remark, which is familiar to every judge of a classical education, that the
disciplinary value of literary studies reaches here its highest degree of mental
exercise; and that the two classical tongues, Latin and Greek, are altogether
eminent as supplying materials for this exercise, in their own native structure;
which, in the Latin, is an architectural build, characteristic of the reasoning Roman
mind; and, in the Greek, is a subtle delicacy of conception and tracery, reflecting
the art, the grace and versatility of Athens and the Ionian Isles.
After this, each word is to be examined, as to what it signifies, and to what
uses it may be applied; the boy is to understand, as far as may be, the original and
proper idea and force of every word, not merely its general significance, as in a
shadowy outline; he should know, too, the phrases in his native tongue, which
correspond with precision and propriety to the Latin. The metaphors and the
figurative use of words, especially as found in Cicero, are to be explained to the
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boys in an extremely plain manner, and by examples drawn from the plainest
objects. Unless this use of words is understood, the true and genuine knowledge of
the tongue is seriously obstructed. Then, picking out the more elegant turns of
style, the Master will dictate them to the scholars, and afterwards require the use
and imitation of these phrases in their themes. Lastly, he will go back and translate
the words of the author over again, as he did at the beginning; and, if need be, do
so a third and a fourth time.
As to writing, during all this, let him forbid them absolutely to take down a
single letter, except when told. What he does dictate to them, he is to finish within
the time of the prelection, and not prolong this time for the sake of the writing. It
happens now and then that, with much labor, waste of time, and to no good purpose

whatever, the boys take down, and preserve with diligence, a set of notes which
have not been thought out very judiciously nor been arranged very carefully,—
notes simply trivial, common, badly patched together, sometimes worse than
worthless; and these notes they commit to paper, in wretched handwriting, full of
mistakes and errors. Therefore, let the dictation be only of a few points, and those
extremely select.
The Masters are to be on their guard, lest private tutors at the boys' homes
explain new lessons to them. These tutors have merely to repeat with the boys what
has been heard in class. Otherwise, the fruit of the good explanation which is
received at school is lost at home.
Repetition is now in order. Two principles govern this exercise. First, "what
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has often been repeated sinks deeper into the mind." Secondly, "the industry of
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youths flags under nothing so much as satiety." As soon, therefore, as the
prelection is over, the Professor is to require at once an account of all that he has
said, and he is to see that the whole line of his explanation is followed in the
repetition. As if this seemed to imply that only the best scholars were to be called
upon, the critics go on to note that not all of what has been explained should be
repeated by one only, but that as many as possible should be practised every day.
The Master should not follow the order in which the boys are seated, but take them
here and there. However, the first to be called on are those more advanced; then,
the duller, or perhaps lazier ones, and these should rather be asked oftener, to be
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kept up to the mark.
The final Ratio notes that the daily lesson should not exceed four lines in the
lowest class of Grammar; seven in Middle Grammar. There is, as I have already
observed, a prelection proper to grammatical rules; also to Greek, whether it be in
the grammar or in an author. Proportion in width and depth of matter is adjusted to
each grade. A careful dictation in the vernacular is to be given, which, when
rendered into Latin or Greek, will exemplify the precepts explained, or the use of
the phrases already dictated. And one part of the school exercises, from the lowest
class up to Rhetoric, is a concertatio between rivals, which is a lively discussion
either upon matters explained in the prelections, or upon one another's
compositions. In this field of debate, as is natural, the activity of the students
grows, both in the extent of the field to be covered, and in the depth of erudition
required, according as the grades are mounted. And it is carried out of the class-
room into select societies, called "academies," the members whereof, whether
grammarians or littérateurs, conduct their debates, give their own prelections or
repeat a choice one of their Professor's, award a place in the archives to some
specially meritorious production; and they conduct all these exercises in exact

keeping with their actual prelections and studies. Nor do they yield an inch in
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gravity or dignity to the great academy of theologians and philosophers.
As to the native tongue, one of the earliest systems of studies in the Society,
prior to the general Ratio by about forty years, lays down for the middle class of
Grammar, that "on Mondays and Wednesdays the boys will receive the themes in
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Bohemian and German for their epistolary exercises." This document is
probably from the pen of Peter Canisius, soon after the colleges were founded at
Prague, Ingolstadt and Cologne. In a directive memorial of 1602, drawn up for
Mayence by Father Ferdinand Alber, a postscript is added to the effect, "Let
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exercise in the German tongue be furthered." Jouvancy lays down the practice in
this manner: "After the correction and dictation of the written exercises, the Latin
author is rendered into the mother tongue, or a concertatio is held. These two
exercises can be held on alternate days, if there is not enough of time every day for
both. In rendering the author into the vernacular, you will observe three things:
first, the idiom of the vernacular, and its agreement in construction with the Latin,
or else its disagreement, so that the scholars learn each tongue by the other;
secondly, the proper turns and elegance of the Latin style; finally, the thoughts of
the author, as having a moral bearing, and as calculated to form and mould the
judgment of the boys; also the ways of men, the punishments of the wicked, the
maxims of sages. Some part of an historical author should be given sometimes for
their written exercise, to translate into the mother tongue; or it may be added, as an
appendix, to a shorter theme. Let the boys hold a discussion among themselves
upon the merits of the translation; they can write in that narrative style, to win the
best places in class; as also, at the close of the year, for the premiums. However,
the whole time of class is not to be taken up by such translations, as happens
sometimes with negligent Masters, who shirk the labor of the prelection, and of the
correction of themes. While the boys dispute among themselves on the precepts of
grammar, poetry, or eloquence, one stands against many, or several against several.
The subject, time, and manner of the concertatio is to be defined beforehand;
umpires and judges are to be appointed, prizes for the victors, penalties for the
vanquished. The others, who are merely listening during the contest, will show in
writing what fruit they have derived from it, or will be asked questions
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thereupon."
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In the following article, the same writer gives several specimens of a
prelection in Cicero, Virgil, Phædrus, as adapted to the different classes. They are
only passages. The whole of this system goes by passages, taken consecutively,
until a whole piece has been mastered by the students. For it is in the prior

perfection of detail that perfection in a larger compass is attained. And we may also
note that it is only in the original productions of perfect Masters in style, that detail
can ever be adequately studied. The understanding and enjoyment of an entire
masterpiece, taken as a whole, is by every law of nature and of art an easy resultant
of understanding the parts. If any writers on pedagogy have thought that no student
could "understand and take pleasure" in an original classic, and therefore have
advocated the reading of translations as a means of receiving the "literary
impressions," I fear that we need only point to the style of literary writing which
seems to have resulted from doing things in this second-hand fashion—if indeed it
is even second-hand. For, after all, style itself never appears in a translation; only
the thoughts are translated. Thoughts are the soul of style; its expression was the
body; each fitted the other in the classic original; and, in an eminent mutual fitness,
an eminent style was being studied. The best translation of a classic piece has never
done more than produce a bare equivalent. Wherefore, if with the striking original
no thorough work has been done, it is more than probable that, in the results,
nothing original and striking will ever be done.
This system of prelection, which in addition to the perfection of its technique,
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required erudition from every branch of learning, made of the Professor
anything but a technical pedagogue. Voltaire noticed it, speaking of his own
Professor. "Nothing will efface from my heart," he wrote to Père de la Tour, Rector
of the Collège Louis-le-Grand, "the memory of Father Porée, who is equally dear
to all that studied under him. Never did man make study and virtue more amiable.
The hours of his lessons were delicious hours to us. And I should have wished that
it was the custom at Paris, as it used to be at Athens, that one, at any age, could
listen to such lectures. I should often go to hear them. I have had the good fortune
to be formed by more than one Jesuit of the character of Père Porée, and I know
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that he has successors worthy of him."
The productions of such Professors replenished the literature of the classics, as
we may see in the great editions, or bibliothecæ classicæ, published during the
present century. Father De la Cerda of Toledo, in his three folio volumes on Virgil,
in 1617, gave to literature an encyclopædia of political and moral observations,
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including geography, history, and the natural sciences. His technical work was
not inferior; for his "Grammatical Institutions" became in 1613, by an exclusive
privilege, the standard of all the public schools in Spain. Father Nicholas Abram,
whose "Epitome of Greek Precepts in Latin Verse" went through fifty editions in
twenty-two years, published in 1632, while Professor at the College of Pont-à-
Mousson, two volumes octavo on Virgil, which were then republished constantly at
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Rouen, Paris, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, etc. Undertaking the same labor, in

behalf of Cicero, he issued two volumes folio, "by which John George Grævius
profited in his edition of Cicero, Amsterdam, 1699; as well as the editor of
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Cambridge, whose work appeared in 1699, 1710, and 1717." Father De la Rue's
(Carolus Ruæus) Delphin Virgil is a familiar work in France, Holland, England; so,
too, De Merouville's Delphin edition of Cicero, which was often reproduced at
Cambridge, London, Dublin, etc. The same we see with regard to Sanadon on
Horace, Brumoy's great work on the Greek Drama, René Rapin's various critical
and poetical works; and so of the rest. Of Père Rapin's thirty-five works, there are
few which were not translated into various European languages; and Oxford,
London, Cambridge, have been among the most active centres of republication, or
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translation into English.
4. This chapter, which has extended beyond the usual limits, cannot close
better than with a word on books, a matter intimately connected with its subject.
The Fathers of 1586 set down some principles with regard to the proper supply and
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use of books, as well as the expurgation of the classical standard works; and
accordingly the Ratio of 1599 ordains that "the students are neither to be without
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useful books, nor to abound in useless ones." A multitude is considered useless,
because "it oppresses the mind, and interferes with the convenient preparation of
the lesson. Of books by more recent authors few are to be allowed, and those very
carefully selected." Yet, "a variety of authors gives a richer vein to the boys, and
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makes imitation easier." Here the Fathers proceed to give directions for the
composition of an entirely new kind of work, which would be of great use in the
colleges. It is exactly the species so well known in our days under the various titles
of "Precepts of Rhetoric," "Art of Composition," etc. As the development of
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pedagogical literature, which we took note of in a former chapter, had already
made some progress, the critics say: "Some one most versed in all these matters
should be deputed to gather whatever is best in this line, and to compile in one
treatise, written in an elegant style, all that he has selected, about the art of writing
epigrams, elegies, odes, eclogues, sylvæ (that is, materials, "objects"), comedies,
tragedies, epopœiæ, a brief method of chronology; explaining also what is the
historical (or narrative) style, the poetic, the epistolary, the different kinds of
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speaking, and other such matters, all to be illustrated by examples." Elsewhere
they call for a similar work of a higher order, on the Art of Oratory. The sources
which they designate for such a compilation are "the numerous publications of our
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Professors of Rhetoric, as well on the art itself, as on classical orations." These
compendia, or text-books, were a new idea in education.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CLASSICAL LITERATURES. SCHOOL
MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL.

The subject of Literary Exercises and School Management is treated in such a
manner by the critics of 1586, that justice could be done to it, only by transcribing,
word for word, the several chapters of the preliminary Ratio. As that is impossible,
within the limits of space remaining, I shall endeavor to trace the outline.
1. There is one fundamental point, however, which should be touched on, to
meet a latent query in the mind. It refers to the kind of education projected
throughout. It is evidently not a special training which is contemplated; not the
training of specialists, or technical students. All through the system, the field of
pedagogical activity is that of a general culture; and, therefore, properly an
education. The result aimed at is a general one, that of developing in the young
mind all fundamental qualities; of adjusting it, by the early development of all
natural fitnesses, to any special work of thought and labor in the mature life of the
future. It would lay a solid substructure, in the whole mind and character, for any
superstructure of science, professional and special; also for the entire building up
of moral life, civil and religious. That such a general culture should go before the
special seems to be obvious. To supplant it by the special, or even to abridge the
process, is not only to sacrifice the general culture; it has a more serious effect than
that. By a false economy, it cramps, curtails, and reduces to the smallest
proportions whatever possibilities existed of general and special qualifications in
the youthful mind. Without a broad, radical formation below, the amplitude of
organic growth above must necessarily fall short; the roots underneath not having
shot out, the development above is wanting in vigor, to ramify according to its
environment, and use its opportunities. In a boy's mind, there is needed a
suppleness of general powers, as only the young mind can be made supple, while at
the same time it is preëminently apt to be general. It is what Seneca calls curiosum
ingenium, "an inquisitive genius," open to everything, and prying to open
everything. Memory is then at its flourishing stage, ready to be cultivated

throughout the extent of a potential vastness, which will never again be
experienced in life. If cultivated richly in its season, it will be capable afterwards of
every kind of ready yield, according to its acquired tenacity, and according to the
richness of the seed deposited in it. The imagination, too, is at the stage of
impressionable and vital expansion, and is keenly sensitive to the lights and shades
of objective life. These are either brought under its observation, or, better still, are
pictured for it in beautiful literature; since the fine fancy of great minds paints
nature, as nature herself is not found dressed at every one's door. The opening
judgment also is receptive of the thoughts and wisdom, which other minds have
thought out and handed down, encasing it, as they did so, in a style worthy of their
own vigor, and presenting it as the heritage of the past to the present, of the wise
old age of the world to its youth, which may be wiser still. And thus in each
individual youth, the judgment being tenderly nursed, and learning ripening with
age, what was before in the memory passes gradually into the whole character and
competency of the man.
In the system which we are considering, the instrument employed for working
these effects is a literature in the hands of a competent teacher; it is a great
literature, and a double one. The great literatures of Rome and Greece have always
been considered adequate instruments of universal culture. Under a literary aspect,
the eloquence and poetry of Greece had been the mistress of Roman excellence.
Under a philological aspect, the Latin tongue has been the principal basis of our
modern languages, as formed in the history of Christendom. In both of them, the
varied elements of richest thought are brought into contact with the undeveloped,
but developing nature of the youth; glimpses of human life, individual, social, and
political, favor his inquiring eyes, and lead him to feel the finest springs of human
sentiment. Better still, he feels these springs as touched by the greatest masters of
expression; and he conceives thought as rendered in a style worthy of the greatest
thinkers; and that, in languages, one of them the most delicately organized, the
other perhaps the most systematically elaborated, of all tongues living or extinct.
And, besides, these two literatures come down to us, bearing in their own right
what no other tongues can convey. Not as translations, which, in their best form,
exhibit only a respectable degree of mendicancy, and represent other men's living
thoughts in a decent misfit, these two literatures come down to us bearing in their
own right all the historic memories of antiquity, as well sacred as profane; all the
masterpieces of eloquence and poetry, belonging to no less than two out of the very
few great epochs, those of Pericles and Augustus; all human philosophy, from
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, down to St. Thomas Aquinas, and, further down, to
Leibnitz and Newton, both of them men of classical letters; in fine, all the
traditions, the Faith, and Divinity of Christendom.

To these considerations we may add one more characteristic of the classical
literatures, as instruments in the class-room, and we shall have seen enough on our
present topic, to understand the theory which underlies the Ratio Studiorum. These
tongues are dead. They are not the language of common life. They are not picked
up by instinct, and without reflection. Everything has to be learned by system, rule,
and formula. The relations of grammar and logic must be attended to with
deliberation. Thought and judgment are constantly exercised in assigning the exact
equivalents of the mother tongue for every phrase of the original. The coincidence
of construction is too little, the community of idiomatic thought too remote, for the
boy's mind to catch at the idea, by force of that preëstablished harmony which
exists among most modern tongues. Only the law of thought and logic guides him,
with the assistance of a teacher to lead the way, and reassure his struggling
conception.
And when, in the last instance, the boy comes to write and to speak the
language so learned, and quickens it, though dead, with the very life of actual
speech which makes modern languages live, we have the supreme test and proof of
successful toil, that which consists in the power to reproduce. We have also the
very specific advantage, in this case, that the toil has been of the most valuable
kind; it has been personal labor, spent in the freshness of life on complete self-
culture. For that great law of all success in life, personal labor, has been honored in
the most remunerative way, by cultivating memory, exercising judgment, and
acquiring in the same thoughtful, reflective manner two languages together, Latin
and the mother tongue, Greek and the mother tongue, each systematically helping
the others by analogy and contrast. And, withal, what is more congenial to the
young than letters, language, talk?
As to the working of this Jesuit system, it is very much of a commonplace, in
pedagogic history, that "a handsome style" was aimed at, and a handsome style was
the outcome. The Scottish Professor, whom I quoted on a former occasion, states
very exactly the value of this result. Speaking of the Structure of Sentences, he
says: "Logic and Rhetoric have here, as in many cases, a strict connection; and he
that is learning to arrange his sentences with order, is learning to think with
accuracy and order; an observation which alone would justify all the care and
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attention we have bestowed on this subject." And, in another connection, he
quotes, with the approval which it merits, the Roman rhetorician's saying: Curam
verborum, rerum volo esse sollicitudinem, "I would have a sufficient care be given
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to the diction, but the thoughts must be the object of scrupulous attention." This
latter principle, of diction first and matter afterwards, as translated into a process of
educational development, assigns, in the Ratio, five grades, or seven years, more or
less, to be spent on the acquirement of style, chiefly as to its body, or, if you like,

its form; then two great courses of Science, natural and revealed, or Philosophy and
Theology, for the acquirement of the same style, chiefly as to its soul, or, if you
wish so to call it, the substratum of matter. From both together issues the
thoroughly cultured man; as the well-known phrase has it: Le style c'est l'homme,
"A style is the man himself." And, if we have just had occasion to take notice that
two of the great literary epochs of the world's history, those of Pericles and
Augustus, are made present to us by the classical literatures, it is a subject of
historical verification that a third great literary epoch, the age of Louis XIV, was
created under the influence of this system.
The manner in which the critics of 1586 discuss the question of Greek shows
the practical eye they kept on the requirements of actual life, and the conditions of
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concrete surroundings. Their conclusions are embodied in a rule of the Director
or Prefect of Studies: "He should not grant an immunity, particularly for any length
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of time, from either versification or Greek, except for a grave reason."
Upon this theme there is a facetious touch in the report of the Upper German
Province, which was sent to Father Aquaviva some three years after the final Ratio
was published. The deputies say: "Some ask for an exemption from Greek and
versification, in behalf of the older monks and nobles. But as the rule itself
insinuates that an exception can be made, for a sufficiently grave cause, there is no
need of a change. If we are facile in the matter, whether with monks or nobles, we
shall end by eliminating Greek altogether. But, if one is seen to be altogether inept
and incapable, the impossibility of the thing exempts him; for, if God himself does
not enjoin impossibilities, why, neither should we impose Greek on such disciples."
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Father Aquaviva replies, "That is correct."
2. Under the head of Exercises, the preliminary Ratio treats elaborately and
minutely the literary direction of a class. The subjects are orthography, and all that
pertains to it; the prelection, as explained before; the repetitions, daily themes, and
the method of daily correction; the recitation of lessons by heart; parsing; and the
speaking of Latin. Jouvancy gives the order of the daily class exercises. And he
makes this reflection: Few things are to be taught in each class, but accurately, so
that they remain in the minds of the boys; the teacher is to remember that these
young intellects are like vases with a narrow orifice, which waste the liquid, if it is
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poured in copiously, but take it all, if it comes in by drops.
There are, besides, a number of aids to School Management. These are the
division of the class into parties of ten apiece, or decuriæ; the exposition, once or
twice a month, of some passage by a student, in the presence of invited friends;
contests between rivals or parties; the delivery of an original piece or else an

oratorical contest, every week; the exhibition or delivery of original poems; the
annual distribution of premiums; the use of the stage, when "the boys can produce
some specimen of their studies, their delivery and powers of memory." The
composition of the tragedy and minor drama devolves, as we saw before, upon the
Professors of Rhetoric and Poetry.
A general condition in the management of a class is absolute silence and
attention. Besides, it belongs to the college programme to insure application, not
only in school to class exercises, but out of school to private study, especially when
holidays intervene. The usual weekly relaxations scarcely rise to the rank of
"holidays." For the amount of time to be assigned in private study to composition
and other work is part of the daily order, whether the students be alumni, day-
scholars, or convictores, boarders. All must have enough to occupy them, "that the
boys be deterred from roaming about to their hurt." The same applies to the
ordinary intervals between school hours, "particularly," say the Fathers, "on the
days in summer, when there is much time in the early afternoon, before classes are
resumed; and we hear the court-yard resounding with cries and noisy pastimes,
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hour after hour."
Boys were the same genus then as now. It took all the efficacy of a benign
firmness to control that element which tries the experience of every age. The
German Fathers draw a graphic picture of these sixteenth century boys. They are
commenting on the rule which requires the Prefect of Studies at the end of school
to be on the ground and supervise. They write thus to Father Aquaviva: "Many
object to this; but it seems reasonable. For, if somebody is not on hand, some one
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whom the scholars revere, then like a herd, all in a heap, they will fill the whole
place with their yells and uproar, their tussling, laughter, and jostling. Now, it is
necessary to require the observance of decorum on the part of our scholars; since, if
we leave room anywhere for unmannerliness, it will get at once into the school-
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rooms and ruin everything." In this sense, a certain small number of rules in the
Ratio, only fifteen in number, and very short, are directly presented to the students
for their observance. "None of our students shall come to college with arms,
poniards, knives, or anything else that is prohibited, according to the circumstances
of time or place." Swords and daggers were part of a gentleman's personal
equipment in those times. "They must abstain entirely from swearing, injurious
language or actions, detraction, lies, forbidden games, from places, too, that are
dangerous, or are forbidden by the Prefect of Schools; in fine, from everything
which is adverse to purity of morals." Other rules follow, equally radical for those
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times, and reconstructive of education for the future.

For, in these days of ours, we are not accustomed to see students walk in and
out of a lecture room as they choose. And many other inconveniences of the
sixteenth century are not usual with us. But the reason is, that we come three
hundred years later than those times, and are enjoying the fruits of other people's
labors.
An ascendency of personal tact and address, conspicuous in the Jesuit teachers,
is usually commented upon and referred to some cause or other, in themselves or in
the general organization of the Society. Omitting that, I prefer to designate one
secret of control, which is full of significance, though not so likely to arrest
attention. It is an insensible method of organization, making its way among the
youths themselves, and subserving the purpose of general collegiate control. There
were, in all, four classes of auditors, mingled together, and intermingling their
influences. That of the strongest of course preponderated. There were Jesuits
themselves in the higher courses. There were boarders, convictores, who remained
for ten, or rather eleven months of the year, entirely under the control and direction
of the Fathers. Among these were whole houses of Religious or Ecclesiastics.
Besides, there were alumni, day scholars, that great body of students originally
contemplated in the Constitution of Ignatius. These, however, owing to their
divided life, partly at school, partly at home, were not found to represent, as a rule,
the fullest effects of the education. Finally, there were externi, external students,
such as not being entered on the books, still attended lectures; and to this category
we must refer such general gatherings as those several thousand hearers, who were
in attendance for hours, before the time, at Father Maldonado's lectures in Paris,
and made him go out into the open air to satisfy all. Now, besides the bond of
affection which attached scholars to the Professors, there was another bond, that of
their character as Sodalists. This character denoted membership in the Sodality of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, a religious association which is most highly commended
in the Ratio Studiorum, and which gathered into itself all that was excellent in the
body of students. The literary and scientific "academies" were recruited only from
the Sodality. Thus, by a double process, an aristocracy of virtue and talent was
created among the students themselves, tending not only to the maintenance of
order, but to the active development of all those qualities which an educational
system most desires.

CHAPTER XVII.

EXAMINATIONS AND GRADUATION. SCHEDULE
OF GRADES AND COURSES.

1. All examinations, as projected by the Ratio Studiorum, are conducted by
word of mouth. Writing enters the examinations, only when the written word itself
is the subject of investigation. Thus, in the grades of the literary course, the
composition of the student, from its elementary qualities of spelling, punctuation,
grammar, up to the most varied forms and species of style, comes under
examination for advancing to the next grade. But even then, after each of the three
examiners has inspected carefully the written composition, and consulted the
Master's reports of the individual's progress during the year, they call in the writer,
submit his paper to him, and subject him to an oral investigation upon it. After that,
they proceed to the other branches, all by word of mouth.
In the higher courses, where style is no longer a matter of study, writing never
appears in examinations. Written dissertations, special lectures, literary pieces of
all kinds, composed for certain occasions, are merely a part thenceforth of the
exercises incident to those courses.
To speak here only of Grammar and the Humanities, each new-comer, on
presentation of the credentials required, is examined by the Director or Prefect of
Studies, who "places him in the class, and with the Professor, adapted to the boy's
qualifications; in such a manner, however, that the young person be rather worthy
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of the class above, than unworthy of the class in which he is placed." It is the
remark of the earlier critics, that "severity must be practised in examinations, since
it is more injurious for boys to ascend a grade, when not fit, than, if really fit, to be
kept where they are; and, in addition to that, if they are advanced when not
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qualified, they create no slight disturbance in the upper class."
Into the lowest grade, neither youths advanced in age, nor boys of very tender
years, are to be admitted. The plea that parents merely want the children to be in

good hands is not a sufficient reason for taking them; the only exception is for
young boys who are really far advanced for their years.
These conditions of age, and sufficient preparation for entering the classical
course, illustrate very distinctly several features of the policy which the Society
pursued. Father Joseph Calasanzio, a priest of great zeal, petitioned the Rector of
the Roman College, which was flourishing with more than two thousand students,
to open some schools for the unprovided children of Rome. There is a Latin word
coined from the first four letters of the alphabet, for designating this elementary
class of scholars, who are not yet qualified for literature. The word is abecedarii.
The term is employed both in the Constitution of Loyola and in the Ratio. The
Rector declined. Father Joseph applied to the General Claudius Aquaviva. He too
declined; he referred to the Constitution of the Society, which had been distinctly
and in all its parts approved by the Popes. Unable to have his idea carried out by
the Jesuits, Father Joseph opened his first "Pious School" in Rome, which was soon
frequented by 1200 little boys, abecedarii. After the founder's death in 1648, his
work spread into the vast system of Scuole Pie. In our times, the revised Ratio of
1832 recognizes the element of Preparatory Departments. It merely requires that
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they be entirely under the same jurisdiction as the College proper.
Another feature of the policy which these conditions illustrate and which they
also further, is that of their tending to discriminate between the right kind of
scholars and others, whose circumstances will debar them from ever reaching the
ultimate end of higher culture. Where circumstances are not propitious, neither is
the culture altogether desirable. For what is more injurious to society at large than
to have young people hurt in two ways, positively and negatively; positively, by
placing them in a false environment of culture, which cannot be theirs in future
life; negatively, by taking up with such culture all the time and labor which might
usefully be spent in receiving a plainer education, and reach its term in any
commonest walk of life? Besides, the liberal education itself suffers prejudice; for
it is misinterpreted; since it comes to be estimated then by results and by
circumstances which do not appertain to it. Every system should be set on its own
basis, and be built up subject to its own conditions. The absoluteness of Loyola's
Constitution throughout, and of the Ratio Studiorum in particular, throws this
policy into relief at every turn.
After the boy's admission into a class, he advances thenceforward, either with
the whole class, at the general and solemn promotion every year, or, if he excels, as
the reports and the Master will determine, he is not to be detained in that grade, but
may ascend, at any time of the year, after a fitting examination. A number of
conditions, hard to realize, make this special promotion barely possible from the

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grade of First Grammar to Humanity, or from Humanity to Rhetoric. On the
other hand, "if any one is found to be utterly incapable of entering the next grade,
no account is to be taken of any petitions."
2. In the philosophical and theological courses, both of which terminate in the
conferring of degrees, the system of examinations for all students, who are not
members of the Society, refers only to those degrees, at the time when application
is made for them. For the philosophical degree, the first preliminary is an hour's
disputation with three examiners, on the matter of the whole course, and that in
presence of the other students. The result being satisfactory, permission will then
be granted to prepare for a public defence of all Philosophy. This is the method for
the solemn form of graduation, which, in the old style, confers upon the successful
student, after three years of Natural Sciences, or Philosophy, the title of Master of
Arts.
At this point start the three professional lines of Medicine, Jurisprudence,
Theology. The last-named faculty ends in much the same manner as that of
Philosophy, but with a much greater amplitude of public acts or defence, and then
finally with a defence of all Philosophy and Theology together. This entitles the
defendant to the degree of Doctor of Divinity, which is conferred in the most
solemn manner.
There is a pedagogical history connected with the present subject, which it
may be well to sketch in two stages, first, that of the sixteenth century, and
secondly, that of the nineteenth.
Ignatius of Loyola had legislated in his Constitution to this effect: "In the study
of Arts, courses shall be arranged in which the Natural Sciences shall be taught;
and, for these, less than three years will not suffice; besides which, another half-
year shall be assigned the students, for repeating the matters they have heard, for
holding public acts of defence, and for receiving the degree of Master. The whole
course, therefore, shall be three years and a half, up to the reception of the
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degree." Again, Ignatius had legislated for Divinity: "The course of Theology
shall be six years in length; all the matters that have to be read will be treated in the
first four; in the other two, besides making a repetition, those who are to be
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promoted to the degree of Doctor will make the usual acts of defence."
Having this legislation before them, with the experience of forty years to
illustrate its working, the critics of 1586 are confronted, at the same time, with a set
of historical facts, which seem not to be in harmony with the legislation. While
Loyola's system was obviously the organization of education, the facts, which they
notice, show a concomitant process going on, in an inverse sense, towards the

dissolution of system. This, no doubt, was owing to the disturbed condition of the
sixteenth century. Making an effort to bring the Ratio and the facts more into
harmony, the critics reason in this manner:—
"It is hard to expect everywhere that external students will be content to hold
their acts of public defence, only after their course of Philosophy or Theology; and
that, during the half-year, or the two years specified beyond. For, in Italy, scarcely
any are promoted to the degrees by our faculties, except our own alumni, or
convictores, who cannot wait so long as that in expectancy, and who will readily
slip away to Medicine or Jurisprudence; nay, they are alienated from us, and are
offended at this severity, seeing that, in the other universities of Italy, they can most
easily obtain the degree if they want it. In Germany, too, such intervals of
protracted waiting are scarcely tolerated; and they rather think they have done
something, if they have gone through a four-year course in Theology. And it would
seem proper to grant them a relaxation there; otherwise, the men are deterred from
seeking the Doctorate; so that Germany will have but few Catholic Doctors in the
future; whereas, it abounds in non-catholic Doctors, whose promotion is to be had
any day. In France, too, the philosophers do not wait beyond the close of the
triennium to be made Masters of Arts; they could not put up with delay, for they are
hurrying on to Law. The same is the condition of things with the German
philosophers, for other reasons. Therefore the Reverend Father General might
consider whether he will dispense with the observance of the Constitution in the
Italian and Transalpine Provinces; the more so, as the Constitution itself says that it
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is to be observed, as far as may be."
In accordance with this, the Ratio Studiorum is not absolute in its general
legislation, and leaves room for the special conditions of different countries. A
most distinct conception of the meaning and process of conferring degrees may be
had, by consulting the typical constitution of an exclusively Jesuit university, as
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exhibited in the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica. The third part of this
document treats exclusively of the "Variety of Academic Degrees and the
Conditions for Each." And it begins by saying: "As it is expedient to confer
Academic degrees on those who are found worthy of the same, so the utmost
caution is to be practised, lest, at any time, they be conferred on such as would only
bring the name of the Academy into discredit, and the degrees themselves into
contempt. Wherefore no degree is ever to be conferred upon any one, who has not
undergone all the tests which the customs of universities require."
Passing on from the sixteenth century to our time, an important gap has to be
crossed in the educational history of the Order. It is that of the Suppression, during
about forty years at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present.

These blank pages signify the total loss of property and position, with a severance
in many places of the educational traditions for almost sixty years, and the entire
destruction of them in many other parts. Besides, like "goods derelict," the whole
system of education which, by means of the Society, had passed out of a limited
number of mediæval universities, and had been accommodated with a home
gratuitously in over seven hundred cities and towns of a dozen nationalities, was
found by the Order, at its resurrection, to be largely in the hands of State
authorities, or, at least, not independent of State control. Restored, but having had
to struggle into existence, under altered and unfavorable circumstances, this
pedagogical system may be viewed with interest, as it stands towards the close of
the nineteenth century. For this purpose I may be allowed to glance at it, in several
parts of the world, under the precise aspect which I have just been regarding, that
of endeavoring to complete its work of education with Academic degrees.
In the United States, it has the same freedom of action as any other system of
higher education, with none of the special support which is given to organizations
endowed by the State.
In many parts of the continent of Europe, the property of the Order is in an
habitual or chronic state of confiscation, and the members, as educators, are legally
outlawed. Education can scarcely thrive when on the wing.
In Austria, where the Society is fully recognized, its teachers are, by a cross-
move, practically debarred from State recognition. To pass on their students for
State degrees, it is required that they themselves be certified State teachers. To
become such teachers, they must have followed in actual attendance, and during
four years, the special course of Grammar, History, etc., in which their certificate
afterwards will be recognized. Meanwhile, as Jesuits, they have gone through the
courses which I have sketched in the pages of this essay; and they are certainly, by
this time, not to be confounded with young persons, who are merely prospecting
some limited field of pedagogic activity, as the scope of their lives. Hence, at this
most energetic and ripe period of their lives, they must waste four years, as if they
were young normal scholars, in following out some one or two lines of pedagogical
formation; and that, merely to have their word admitted when they pass their
students on for the State degrees.
In Great Britain and the dependencies of the British Empire there are no such
harassing restrictions. The conditions for matriculation, and for the subsequent
series of examinations, in such universities as those of London, Calcutta, or Laval,
are quite in keeping with the American ideas of social liberality; however high and
exacting otherwise may be the standard requisite for success, either in the pass-
examinations or in the Honors. Nor, if special matriculation is again required in
certain English universities, before entering their courses of Medicine, does that

impose any special hardship. Hence, St. Francis Xavier's, Calcutta, ranks among
the highest of what are called the "Christian schools" of India. To make matters
clearer, I shall take two instances, one from Great Britain itself, the other from the
Dominion of Canada.
Stonyhurst will illustrate the working of the State system, as coming in contact
with the Ratio Studiorum. The matriculation examinations at the London
University create no special difficulty, although the higher classes of the literary
curriculum may be regarded as under a strain, in the double effort to satisfy the
Ratio, and to matriculate at that university. After matriculation, the process is
considerably smoother. To take the classical or mathematical Honors, in the B. A.
or M. A. examinations, is altogether in harmony with the usual course of the Jesuit
system. At once, after the B. A. Honors, a good place on the Indian Civil Service
list is within easy reach. And, in general, changes made by the Civil Service
Commissioners have all been in the direction of adapting their competitive
examinations to the ordinary school curriculum. In preparation for the military
academies of Woolwich and Sandhurst, students follow the regular school course at
Stonyhurst, to within two years or so of the time for entrance; and then they merely
take up their special course, designed for the military cadetship. The same is now
possible with regard to the navy, since the age for entering that service has been
somewhat raised. And, to mention one of the courses which are altogether proper to
the Jesuit system, that of Philosophy, the usual lectures of the two years'
philosophical curriculum have only to be supplemented with a few special lectures,
and the students are ready for the philosophical papers of the B. A. examination, in
the London University.
Montreal exhibits the relations of Jesuit and State systems in a Catholic
country. The University of Laval is at the same time chartered by the State and by
the Pope. The Jesuit Professors in the College at Montreal conduct their own
studies, examine their students, and merely send them with certificates to receive
degrees at the University.
From this history it appears, that, though the curriculum of Divinity in the
Jesuit system need have undergone no great change during three centuries, beyond
the usual self-accommodation of the courses to new and pressing questions, its
curriculum of Philosophy has been materially affected, with reference to the
general world of students. This, as foreseen in the Ratio Studiorum of 1586, and as
referred to again in the revised Ratio of 1832, causes a double arrangement to be
made. First, wherever members of the Order are pursuing their studies, the
philosophical triennium is, as a matter of course, in full operation, and is prolonged
with individuals into a fourth year, for reviewing the subjects and prosecuting them
further; and this seminary course, if connected with a public college, remains open

as ever to the outside world. Secondly, to meet the requirements of external
students, who do not desire the full triennium, the Provincial "will see that a course
of Philosophy be established according to the customs and necessities of the
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country." Hence a biennium, or two-year course, is commonly established; and,
according to the needs or desires of the locality, it is conducted either in Latin or in
the vernacular.
3. Now we may review succinctly the different courses as conducted by the
year, and as distributed through the week.

THE LITERARY CURRICULUM.

The grading is based upon the principles of a classical education. Other
branches enter a classical course, as completing the staple studies. But, on their
own merits, they receive a special distribution of their own. The Prefect of the
lower studies is instructed to "distribute History, Geography, the elements of
Mathematics, and whatever else is usually treated in these classes, in such a
manner that each Master can satisfactorily and conveniently finish the matter
assigned to him." This is to be done "after consulting the Provincial authority,"
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which assures stability in the manner of organizing these branches. As to the
mother tongue, the study of which is bound up intimately with the classic
literatures, a general direction is given once for all to the Professors of these
grades: "In learning the mother tongue, very much the same method will be
followed as in the study of Latin." And, in the form of prelection to be used, they
are to adopt the method specified as peculiar to the historian and the poet, which is
more summary than the prelection of the central prose author: "Much the same
method will be followed in giving the prelection on classic authors in the
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vernacular."

Lower Grammar. The grade of this class is the perfect knowledge of the
rudiments, and an incipient knowledge of syntax. In Greek: reading, writing, and a
certain portion of the grammar. The authors used for prelection will be some easy
selections from Cicero, besides fables of Phædrus and lives of Nepos.

Middle Grammar. The grade is the knowledge, though not entire, of all
grammar; another portion of the Greek grammar; and, for the prelection, only the
select epistles, narrations, descriptions, and the like from Cicero, with the

Commentaries of Cæsar, and some of the easiest poems of Ovid. In Greek: the
fables of Æsop, select and expurgated dialogues of Lucian, the Table of Cebes.

Upper Grammar. The grade is the complete knowledge of grammar, including
all the exceptions and idioms in syntax, figures of rhetoric, and the art of
versification. In Greek: the eight parts of speech, or all the rudiments. For the
lessons: in prose, the most difficult epistles of Cicero, the books De Amicitia, De
Senectute, and others of the kind, or even some of the easier orations; in poetry,
some select elegies and epistles of Ovid, also selections from Catullus, Tibullus,
Propertius, and the eclogues of Virgil, or some of Virgil's easier books. In Greek:
St. Chrysostom, Xenophon, and the like.

Humanity. The grade is to prepare, as it were, the ground for eloquence, which
is done in three ways, by a knowledge of the language, some erudition, and a
sketch of the precepts pertaining to Rhetoric. For a command of the language,
which consists chiefly in acquiring propriety of expression and fluency, the one
prose author employed in daily prelections is Cicero; as historical writers, Cæsar,
Sallust, Livy, Curtius, and others of the kind; the poets used are, first of all, Virgil;
also select odes of Horace, with the elegies, epigrams, and other productions of
illustrious poets, expurgated; in like manner, orators, historians, and poets, in the
vernacular. The erudition conveyed should be slight, and only to stimulate and
recreate the mind, not to impede progress in learning the tongue. The precepts will
be the general rules of expression and style, and the special rules on the minor
kinds of composition, epistles, narrations, descriptions, both in verse and prose. In
Greek: the art of versification, and some notions of the dialects; also a clear
understanding of authors, and some composition in Greek. The Greek prose
authors will be Saints Chrysostom and Basil, epistles of Plato and Synesius, some
selections from Plutarch; the poets, Homer, Phocylides, Theognis, St. Gregory
Nazianzen, Synesius, and others like them.

Rhetoric. The grade of this class cannot easily be defined. For it trains to
perfect eloquence, which comprises two great faculties, the oratorical and poetical,
the former chiefly being the object of culture; nor does it regard only the practical,
but the beautiful also. For the precepts, Cicero may be supplemented with
Quintilian and Aristotle. The style, which may be assisted by drawing on the most
approved historians and poets, is to be formed on Cicero; all of his works are most
fitted for this purpose, but only his speeches should be made the subject of
prelection, that the precepts of the art may be seen in practice. As to the vernacular,
the style should be formed on the best authors. The erudition will be derived from
the history and manners of nations, from the authority of writers and all learning;
but moderately, as befits the capacity of the students. In Greek, the fuller

knowledge of authors and of dialects is to be acquired. The Greek authors, whether
orators, historians, or poets, are to be ancient and classic: Demosthenes, Plato,
Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and others of the kind, including Saints
Nazianzen, Basil, and Chrysostom.
The compilers of the preliminary Ratio throw out some very useful hints,
relative to the work and scope of this class. They say, for instance, that the students
of Rhetoric "are to be assisted with almost a daily exposition of some poet, to
derive thence the variety and richness of poetic imitation and diction." Again,
"nothing dialectic is to be made the subject of prelection in this class, since
rhetoricians are to be kept as far away as possible from the style, invention, and
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spirit of dialectics." "Two or three years" are spoken of as spent in this grade. At
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any rate, "all our day-scholars or boarders should spend one year in Rhetoric
before they enter on Philosophy; this should be brought home to their parents. The
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others, who attend our courses from outside, should be persuaded to do the
340
same." If they still insist upon entering the philosophical curriculum at too early
an age, special means are suggested to discountenance such a practice.
All these five grades are evidently so connected as not to overlap one another.
Neither are they to be multiplied, except in the sense of allowing more than a
single division, when scholars are very numerous. If all the grades cannot be
maintained in any place, "the higher ones, as far as possible, are to be kept, the
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lower being dispensed with."

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CURRICULUM.

With the side branches sufficiently learned, with the boy's native talents
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"stimulated" or "cultivated," as the Ratio frequently expresses itself, and his
memory enriched with the fullest materials for style in two languages, Latin and
the vernacular, while Greek has subsidized his culture, the student enters on the
study of Philosophy, using scholastic Latin as the vehicle of expression.
This instrument for the expression of philosophical thought possesses the
qualities of subtlety, keenness, and precision, which the dialectic practice of all
universities had tended to develop in it, from the twelfth century onwards. With the
addition of Cicero's fulness and richness, which the colleges cultivated with so
much ardor, the scholastic Latin of men like Molina, Ripalda, Liberatore,
Franzelin, and so many others, has flourished to a degree of literary excellence.

Mathematics runs parallel with the course of Philosophy, and upon that branch
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of science there is a rather eloquent passage in the Ratio of 1586. Physics was
always included in the Aristotelian philosophy. The career of Modern Physics was
then in the future. But, as in Mathematics pure and applied, the courses were
always advanced to the foremost rank, and in Arithmetic and Geometry we notice
that, as early as 1667, a single public course, under the direction of Jesuits at Caen,
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numbered four hundred students, so, in the middle of the next century, the
eighteenth, we find physical cabinets in regular use, and experimental lectures
345
given to the classes by the Professors of Physics. The basis of the study is thus
laid down in the rules of the revised Ratio: "The Professor is to expose theories,
systems, and hypotheses, so as to make it clear what degree of certitude or
probability belongs to each. Since this faculty makes new progress every day, the
Professor must consider it part of his duty to know the more recent discoveries, so
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that in his prelections he may advance with the science itself." The general
assemblies had legislated on this subject, as I indicated before; assigning its proper
place in Philosophy to what they called "the more pleasant" or the "lighter" form of
Physics. Indeed, Philosophy itself in the course of three centuries came to feel
many new needs and submitted to new lines of treatment.
First Year. Logic and General Metaphysics. One Professor: eight hours a
week. Introductory sketch of Philosophy. Dialectics or Minor Logic: ideas,
judgment, reasoning. Logic Proper: The criteria of truth; species of knowledge, and
general rules of criticism and hermeneutics. General Metaphysics or Ontology: The
notions of being and the categories. Mathematics. One Professor: six hours a week.
All that prepares for the Physics of the following year, viz., algebra, geometry,
plane and spherical trigonometry, and conic sections. This rapid course, in so short
a time, supposes that the matter is not entirely new, but has been studied already in
the literary course.
Second Year and part of the Third. Special Metaphysics. One Professor:
four hours a week. First, Cosmology: The origin of the world, the elements of
bodies, the perfection of the world, its nature and laws, supernatural effects and
their criteria, as examined by philosophical principles. Secondly, Psychology: The
essence of the human soul, and its faculties: sensation, imagination, memory, the
nature of intelligence and reason, appetite, will, freedom; the essential difference
between soul and body; the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul; the
union of soul and body, the nature and origin of ideas; the vital principle of brutes.
Thirdly, Natural Theology: God, His existence and attributes, etc., as viewed by the
light of human reason. Physics. One Professor: nine hours a week. Mechanics,
dynamics; the properties of bodies, hydrostatics, hydraulics, aerostatics,

pneumatics; the elements of astronomy; light, caloric, electricity, magnetism,
meteorology. What is not completed in this year is continued in the next, with the
elements of natural history. Much of this course may have been seen in the literary
curriculum. "The matters are not to be treated so exclusively from a rational
standpoint, as to leave barely any time for experiments; nor are experiments so to
occupy the time, that it looks like a merely experimental science." Chemistry. One
Professor: three hours a week. Inorganic and organic.
Third Year. Metaphysics. One Professor: four hours a week. What remains of
the course just described, under the second year. Moral Philosophy. One
Professor: four hours a week. The end of man, the morality of human actions,
natural law, natural rights and duties; the principles of public right. Physics. One
Professor: two hours a week. Geology, astronomy, physiology. Part of the course
above can be reserved for this year. Mathematics. One Professor: three hours a
week. Analytical geometry and differential calculus.
In these courses of Natural Science, if the matter is not altogether new, as
having been studied in the lower faculties, the philosophical attitude of theoretic
criticism is quite specific throughout this curriculum.

THE THEOLOGICAL CURRICULUM.

As the Jesuit theologians of Cologne announced in their programme of 1578
that, while they followed St. Thomas, yet "neither all the matters, nor those alone
which he treated," were to be handled by them; so, in every age, the standard
adopted has been adhered to, with the same practical eye to the needs of the times.
The reason is the same as those theologians assigned; because, they said, "Every
age has definite fields of conflict, which render it necessary that Theology be
enlarged with a variety of newly disputed questions, and, in fact, that it assume a
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new form." In the arrangement of Scholastic Theology the Ratio suggests the
following form:—
Scholastic Theology. Four Years. Two Professors: each four hours a week.
One course. Religion and the Church; God in Unity and Trinity; His attributes,
predestination: God as Creator; the Angels; the creation of Man and his fall; the
Incarnation; Three of the Seven Sacraments. The other course. Human acts,
virtues, and vices; the theological virtues; the cardinal virtues; right and justice;
religion; grace; the Sacraments in general; the rest of the Seven Sacraments.
Moral Theology. Two years. One Professor: five and a half hours a week.
The scope of this course is to form Ministers of the Sacraments. One year. Human

acts, conscience, laws, sins, the Commandments, excepting the seventh. The other
year. The seventh Commandment, which includes contracts; the Sacraments,
censures, the states and duties of life.
Ecclesiastical History. Two Years. One Professor: two hours a week. The
questions, necessary and opportune, in the history of each century.
Canon Law. Two Years. One Professor: two hours a week. One year. Persons,
judgments, penalties. The other year. Things.
Sacred Scripture. Two Years. One Professor: four hours a week. General
prolegomena. A book from the Old and New Testament alternately.
Hebrew. One Year. One Professor: two hours a week. Supplemented with one
hour a week on Syriac, Arabic, Chaldaic, during four years.

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.

The compilers of the preliminary Ratio made an effort to draw up a uniform
system for the distribution of time in the various countries. But the final Ratio
preferred to leave the matter thus: "Since the variety of countries, times, and
persons is apt to introduce variety in the order to be observed, and in the
distribution of hours for study, repetitions, disputations, and other exercises, as also
in vacations, the proper authority will report to the General whatever he thinks
more expedient in his Province, for the better advancement of studies, that a
definite arrangement may be come to, which will meet all exigencies; keeping,
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however, as near as possible to the common order of our studies." Accordingly, a
rule of the General Prefect of Studies prescribes that "he lay down not only an
order of studies, repetitions, disputations to be observed by members of the
Society, by our scholars, and by external students at large, under the direction of
their Professors; but also that he distribute all their time, to the effect that they
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spend the hours of private study well."
I shall give three sketches of actual arrangements for the conduct of the literary
or secondary curriculum; and one normal arrangement for the two departments of
superior education in Philosophy and Theology. The three schedules for the
secondary course are taken from the English speaking world. That numbered (I), if
presented in full, would read very much like the usual arrangement of an American
college. It is the method more or less adopted by the Jesuit colleges which centre
around the St. Louis University in the Western States. The schedule numbered (II)
represents the system of Georgetown College, and of others in the Eastern States; it

looks like a close adaptation of the system as presented in these pages. Number
(III) is the method of Stonyhurst College, England; and to it may be referred the
Canadian system, and that of Hindustan. The hours indicated in this schedule
include the set time for studies, besides the hours of class. The set study time, in a
boarding college, may be taken to average four and a half hours a day; other hours
may be added thereto, from free study time, or hours of superfluous recreation. The
Stonyhurst arrangement is interesting, as being that of a faculty two hundred and
ninety-nine years old, without any intermission in its career. Its original home was
St. Omer's, France, where Father Parsons founded the college in 1592. At the
suppression of the Order in France, 1762, the college moved to Bruges in Belgium;
thence, in 1773, to Liége; whence, under the stress of the French Revolution, it
took refuge in England, and opened its courses at Stonyhurst, Lancashire, in 1794.
The schedule for the philosophical triennium (Superior Instruction, B) is taken
from Woodstock College and St. Louis University; that of the theological course
(Superior Instruction, C) from Woodstock. In these schedules, as well as in that not
exhibited here for the seminary course of Literature (Superior Instruction, A), no
material difference would be found to exist between one house of studies and
another in the Society.

DISTRIBUTION OF HOURS PER WEEK.

Secondary Instruction.—Literary.
I. II.
Grades V.–
I.–IV. VII. I.–IV. V.–VI. VII.
VI.
Four One Four Two One
Two
Years Year. Years. Years. Year.
Years.
Age of Student 13– 17–
19. 13–16. 17–18. 19.
16. 18.
SUBJECTS.
Classics 9. 9. .. 13½. 13½. ..
Mathematics 4. 4. 4. 5½. 5½. ..
English and
12. 9. 6. 8. 5. ..
Accessories
Natural Sciences .. 3. .. .. 3. 10.
Philosophy .. .. 10. .. .. 12.

III.
Grades V.– Philosophical
I.–IV.
VII. curriculum.
Four
Three
Years.
Years.
Age of Student 11– 16–
..
15. 18.
SUBJECTS.
Classics 18. 18. ..
Mathematics 8½. 8½. ..
English 6. 6. ..
French 5. .. ..
History and
3. .. ..
Geography
Natural Sciences .. 3–6. ..
Philosophy Two Year Course, as
.. ..
below (b).

Superior Instruction.—(A) Literary.
SEMINARY COURSE.

Literature Two Years For Members of the Order.

Superior Instruction.—(B) Philosophical.
TRIENNIAL COURSE.

Years I. II. III.
Subjects of
Courses.
Philosophy:
Logic,
Ontology. }8(Disputation).
+5

Cosmology, 4+3
Psychology. } (Disputation).
Psychology, 4+3
Natural } (Disputation).

Theology.
Moral 4+3
Philosophy (Disputation).
Mathematics:
Algebra,
Geometry, }6.
Trigonometry.
Analytical
Geometry, } 3.
Calculus.
Mechanics 9 (Three
Months).
Physics 9 (Seven
Months).
Chemistry 3 (Ten
Months).
Geology,
Astronomy, } 2.
Physiology.
Specialties Outside of
this
Triennium.

BIENNIAL COURSE.

(a) Two Year Curriculum, included in the Triennium.
(b) Similar Curriculum, conducted separately in English.

Superior Instruction.—(C) Theological.
SEXENNIAL COURSE.
Years I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
Subjects of
Courses.
Scholastic
Theology. }8 +(Disp.).
5 8+5
(Disp.).
8+5
(Disp.).
8+5
(Disp.).
Biennium of
General
Repetition,
Moral Philosophical
Theology, 5½ 5½ ½ ½
and

Ecclesiastical Theological;
History. } 2 2 .. .. and Special
Seminary
Canon Law. .. .. 2 2 Work.
Sacred
Scripture. } .. .. 4 4
Hebrew. 2 .. .. ..
Syriac,
Arabic, } .. 1 1 1
Chald.
Specialties. Outside of this Sexennium.

Superior Instruction.—(D) Law.
Conducted by a Faculty not of the Order.

Superior Instruction.—(E) Medicine.
Conducted by a Faculty not of the Order.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONCLUSION.

It will not have escaped the attentive reader, that almost all the history,
pedagogic or otherwise, which has been sketched in this essay, falls within the lines
of what has been called the Counter-Reformation; and some portion of it belongs to
what is styled, in the present century, the Counter-Revolution. For this reason, if
the facts recorded seem at all new, he will discern the reason. They have lain
outside of one of the beaten paths in history.
Beyond the facts of evolution, as they may have appeared in these pages, I do
not pretend to have found a place for this system in any plan of pedagogic
development. Nor do I lay claim to the far-sightedness which may discern any
posthumous development, as the legacy of this system to the world of education.
Politically, its place has often been assigned to it summarily by main force. But,
pedagogically, too, the day may come, when gathered to the other remains which
moulder in the past, it can look down from a grade and place of its own in
evolution, and look out, like others, on a progeny more favored than itself, the fair
mother of fairer children; even as the old university system of mediæval Europe,
particularly that of the great University of Paris, can look down from its silent and
solemn place in history, as the direct progenitor of the Ratio Studiorum. "We, too,
have been taught by others," said Possevino in 1592. Indeed, as is evident, the last
thing which the system ever seems to dream of, which never, in fact, crosses the
path of its intellectual vision, is that it is playing the rôle, perchance, of a
pedagogic adventurer, or courting notice by some new and striking departure. No
doubt, in its integrity, it is singularly the system of the Jesuits, and, in a multitude
of practical elements, it embodies the elaborate experience of one practical
organization of men. But, none the less, if we look down for its foundations, we
pass through the Renaissance of Letters, and find the traditions of scholastic
Europe; and further down still, in the stratification of history, we come to the
principles of education as defined by Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates.
As to its ulterior evolution, I may designate two forms which the system has
been invited to assume. Rather, I may point to an epoch in its history, at which

general and universal education divided off into two lines; and, by one or other
way, almost all the secondary and superior education, which prevails amongst us,
reaches our present time. The principles adopted on one side, however extravagant
they may have been at their first adoption and in all the glow and fervor of a new
departure, will certainly recommend themselves to some. The other was practically,
if it has not as yet been formally, adopted by the Order as a continuation of its old
method, and as a revision in the nineteenth century of what itself had laid down in
the fifteenth. I will quote, to explain one of the movements, a writer, M. Drevon,
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whom I cited once before, chiefly because he is quite recent, and also because
he is entirely out of sympathy with the system of the Jesuits. For the other, I will
quote one of the latest Generals of the Society of Jesus, Father John Roothaan.
When the Jesuit colleges, more than ninety in number, were abruptly closed in
France, then, says the first writer, "the departure of the Jesuits was the occasion of
a noisy demonstration against the instruction which had been imparted in the
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colleges. A multitude of books were at once seen pouring into the market,
presenting plans for a new system of education, which should be more in keeping
with the progress of Science and Philosophy. Men of the gravest authority, like the
President Roland, did not disdain to occupy themselves with these matters, and to
enter into details: 'The moment was come,' cried one of them, 'to set up furnaces, to
352
add bellows thereto, and initiate scholars into the doctrine of gases.' The reaction
was so much the more violent, as spirits had been the longer suppressed. It went
even beyond the just measure, as happens almost always in such circumstances; so
353
that, says a contemporary writer, children, properly instructed, ought to have
become, at the age of fifteen, agriculturists sufficiently well qualified, intelligent
naturalists, prudent economists, shrewd business men, enlightened politicians,
profound metaphysicians, prodigious geometricians, without prejudice to writing
and drawing, to universal geography, and ancient as well as modern history;
without prejudice to the French language, English also and German and a little
Latin; and again without prejudice to music and heraldry, to dancing and fencing,
to horsemanship, and, above all, to swimming. But people had not long to wait
before deploring such excess. All this agitation proved unfortunately sterile; and as
I have just said, on the eve of the French Revolution, secondary education had not
taken a step forward during fifty years....
"It came to a new birth in 1808, and found itself very much where it had been,
before this long sleep. Napoleon declared that the new method of the University
was very like that of the ancient University of Paris; only that the courses 'left
something to desire with regard to drawing, modern languages, geography, history,
and especially mathematical and physical sciences.' This was progress, no doubt,

and it is well to grant it. But Napoleon is mistaken, when he pretends that the new
University is a child of the ancient one. It is preëminently a child of the Jesuits.
For, as we have remarked, the Jesuits, at the beginning, took great care to make no
innovations. They accepted, as they found them, the old methods, introduced little
by little their own mode of procedure, an alteration most calculated to assure their
influence and their success. The grand old University which went down to the
second rank, so to say, in public education, submitted to the influence of its
detested and triumphant rivals, and, in spite of itself, it allowed itself to be
permeated by their methods. Hence, in 1808, at the moment when Napoleon
dreams that he is reëstablishing the University, the ideal of public instruction was a
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mixture of the old university traditions and the empiric methods of the Jesuits."
It does not come within the scope of this writer to indicate how, from this
historical point of divergence, the modern practical method of instruction came to
be fully organized. Each system went its own way. I pass on to the other line, or
rather back to the Jesuit Ratio; and I will merely point out what process of
adjustment it then underwent.
In 1832, Father Roothaan, General of the Society, addressed an encyclical
letter to the Order. To give an abstract of it, he says: "In the very first assembly
after the restoration of the Society, a petition had been received from the Provinces,
and daily experience since then has shown it to be more and more necessary, that
the System of Studies should be accommodated to the exigencies of the times.
After a consultation, involving much labor and accurate study, a form of revised
Ratio has been drawn up, which is now offered for use and practice, in order that
after being amended again if necessary, or else enlarged, it may receive the
sanction of a universal law. The undertaking was approached with the greatest
reverence for a System which had been approved by two centuries of successful
operation, and which had been extolled, not unfrequently, by the very enemies of
the Order.
"Of the novelties which had been introduced into the method of educating
youth, during the last fifty years or more, was it forsooth possible that all could be
approved and adopted in our schools? New methods and new forms invented day
after day, a new arrangement of matter and of time, often self-contradictory and
mutually repugnant—how could all this be taken as a rule for our studies?
"In the higher schools or in the treatment of the graver studies, it is a subject of
lamentation with prudent men that there is no solidity but much show,—an ill-
arranged mass of superfluous knowledge, very little exact reasoning—; that the
sciences, if you except Physics and Mathematics, have not made any true progress,
but are in general confusion, so that where the final results of truth are to be found

scarcely appears. The study of Logic and severe Dialectics is almost in contempt,
whence errors come to be deeply rooted in the minds of men who are not otherwise
illiterate; and these errors, by some fatality or other, are made much of, as if they
were ascertained truths, and they are lauded to the skies, because nothing is treated
with strictness and accuracy, no account is made of definitions and distinctness of
reasoning. Thus, tasting lightly of philosophical matters, young men go forth
utterly defenceless against sophistry, since they cannot even see the difference
between a sophism and an argument.
"In the lower schools, the object kept in view is to have boys learn as many
things as possible, and learn them in the shortest time, and with the least exertion
possible. Excellent! But that variety of so many things and so many courses, all
lightly sipped of by youth, enables them to conceive a high opinion of how much
they know, and sometimes swells the crowd of the half-instructed, the most
pernicious of all classes to the Sciences and the State alike. As to knowing anything
truly and solidly, there is none of it. Something of everything: nothing in the
355
end. Running through the courses of letters in no time, tender in age, with minds
as yet untrained, they take up the gravest studies of Philosophy and the Higher
Sciences; and, possessing themselves therein of scarcely any real fruit, they are
only captivated by the enjoyment of greater liberty; they run headlong into vice,
and are soon to become teachers themselves of a type, which, to put it as gently as
possible, I will call immature.
"As to the methods, ever easier and easier, which are being excogitated,
whatever convenience may be found in them, there is this grave inconvenience;
first, that what is acquired without labor adheres but lightly to the mind, and what
is summarily gathered in is summarily forgotten; secondly, and this, though not
adverted to by many, is a much more serious injury, almost the principal fruit of a
boy's training is sacrificed, which is, accustoming himself from an early age to
serious application of mind, and to that deliberate exertion which is required for
hard work.
"In some points, however, which do not concern the substance of education,
the necessities of our times require us to modify the practice of our predecessors.
And to consult the requirements of such necessities, far from being alien to our
principles, is altogether in keeping with the Institute.
"In the superior courses, how many questions are there which formerly never
entered into controversy, which now are vehemently assaulted, and must be
established by solid arguments, lest the very foundations of truth be sapped!
Therefore the questions which are alive call for special discussion, solution,
refutation.

"In Physics and Mathematics we must not prove false to the traditions of the
Society, by neglecting these courses which have now mounted to a rank of the
highest honor. If many have abused these sciences to the detriment of religion, we
should be so much the farther from relinquishing them on that account. Rather, on
that account, should the members of the Order apply themselves with the more
ardor to these pursuits and snatch the weapons from the hands of the foe, and with
the same arms, which they abuse to attack the truth, come forward in its defence.
For truth is always consistent with itself, and in all the sciences it stands erect, ever
one and the same; nor is it possible that what is true in Physics and Mathematics
should contradict truth of a higher order.
"Finally, in the method of conducting the lower studies, some accessory
branches should have time provided for them, especially the vernacular tongues
and literatures. But the study of Latin and Greek letters must always remain intact
and be the chief object of attention. As they have always been the principal
sources, exhibiting the most perfect models of literary beauty in precept and style,
so are they still. And, if they were kept more before the eyes and mind, we should
not see issuing from the press, day after day, so many productions of talented men,
with a diction and style no less novel and singular, than are the thoughts and
opinions to which they give expression. The commonalty regard them with
admiring awe and stupor; but men of knowledge and correct taste look with
commiseration and grief on these unmistakable signs of an eloquence, no less
depraved than the morals of the times.
"The adaptation of the Ratio Studiorum, therefore, means that we consult the
necessities of the age so far as not in the least to sacrifice the solid and correct
356
education of youth."
This is the substance of a document not unworthy of the letters and ordinances
in behalf of education, issued by a long line of experienced and learned judges in
the art of training youth. The modifications made in the old Ratio have been few;
and I have taken note of them in the preceding analysis.
So then the edifice of the past stands, with the latest modifications introduced
into its façade by the spirit of the present. As the monumental structures which stud
the soil of Europe, and are set amid royal parks or rich fields of waving grain, have
been tributes of devotion from princes of the church or princes of the land, and are
not only the memorials of kings or peoples, but are especially the architectural
record of centuries; so a system recognized in history as great, elevated in the order
of highest human achievement, that of educating humanity, and resting on the basis
of oldest traditions and the wisdom of the remotest past, has not been the work of
an ordinary individual, nor of a day. Masters in their art, and centuries in their

duration, have combined to build it up, a monument of the practice and theory of
generations. With devoted zeal and prudence, secular communities, and even
pagans in times far gone by, had brought the stones, and contributed tithes to the
erection of the fabric. But it is only too well known that Ecclesiastics and Religious
men have been the architects of the monument as it stands. And they did not build
better than they knew; for their structure is precisely one of knowledge, chiefly of
divine knowledge, raised into a consistent theory, and honored by the most
practical use. So the very first sentence in the Ratio Studiorum, speaking of the
"abundant practical fruit to be gathered from this manifold labor of the schools,"
mentions that fruit as being "the knowledge and love of the Creator."
I may be permitted then to close this work by quoting their own poetry, which
is inscribed on a statue of Christ. The statue overlooks a park in front of it, and the
fields hard by, and the rich garden of studious youth, within the college walls
alongside. Thus one inscription reads:—

TIBI · HAEC · ARVA · RIDENT · ATQUE · AGGERE
COMPLANATO · HAE · FLORIBUS · NITENT · AREOLAE · ET
PUBES · UNDIQUE · ACCITA · VIRTUTIBUS
357
SCIENTIIS · QUE · ADOLESCIT.
And again the granite reads:—

QUAS · CIRCUM · CERNIS · CHRISTO
URNAE · FLORIBUS · HALANT · NE · CARPE
358
INCESTO · POLLICE · QUISQUE · FUAS.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX,
INDICATING SOME OF THE SOURCES AND OTHER WORKS, MORE
EASY OF ACCESS.

Pachtler, G. M., S. J.: Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum, 1586; Ratio
Studiorum, 1599, 1832; and other pedagogical documents:—
Comprised in Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vols. ii, v, ix (to be
followed by others); Berlin, A. Hofmann & Co., 1887.
Jouvancy, Jos., S. J.: Ratio Discendi et Docendi pro Magistris Scholarum
Inferiorum, 1 vol. 12mo; Avignon, Fr. Seguin, 1825.
Sacchini, Franc., S. J.: Parænesis ad Magistros Scholarum Inferiorum Soc.
Jes.; Protrepticon ad Magistros Scholarum Inferiorum Soc. Jes.——
Judde, Claude, S. J.: Instruction pour les Jeunes Professeurs qui
enseignent les Humanités:—Comprised in Manuel des Jeunes
Professeurs, 1 vol. 18mo; Paris, Poussielgue-Rusand, 1842.
* * * * *

Crétineau-Joly, Monsieur M. J.: Histoire Religieuse, Politique et
Littéraire de la Compagnie de Jésus, 6 vols. 12mo; 3d edit.; Paris, V.
Poussielgue-Rusand, 1851.
Maynard, Monsieur L'Abbé: The Studies and Teaching of the Society of
Jesus, 1 vol. 8vo; Baltimore, John Murphy & Co., 1855.
The Jesuits: Their Foundation and History, by B. N., 2 vols. 8vo; Benziger
Bros., New York, 1879.
Genelli, Christopher, S. J.: Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, 1 vol. 8vo;
Benziger Bros., New York.
De Rochemonteix, Camille, S. J.: Un Collège de Jésuites aux XVIIe. et
XVIIIe. siècles, Le Collège Henri IV. de la Flèche, 4 vols. in 8vo; Le
Mans, Leguicheux, 1889.
Daniel, Charles, S. J.: Les Jésuites Instituteurs de la Jeunesse Française,
au XVIIe. et au XVIIIe. siècle, 1 vol. 12mo; Paris, Victor Palmé, 1880.

* * * * *

De Backer, Augustin, S. J.: Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie
de Jésus, ou Notices Bibliographiques 1o de Tous les Ouvrages Publiés
par les Membres &c., 2o des Apologies, des Controverses Religieuses,
des Critiques Littéraires et Scientifiques Suscitées à leur sujet; 3 large
folios (see above, page 134); Liége, chez l'Auteur, A. De Backer; Paris,
chez l'Auteur, C. Sommervogel, 1869. Only 200 copies were struck
off; it is embodied and amplified in the following, now in process of
publication:—
Sommervogel, Carlos, S. J.: Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus:—
Première partie, Bibliographie; seconde partie, Histoire. Bibliographie,
tom. i, Abad-Boujart, in 4to, à double colonne, 1928 col.; Bruxelles,
Oscar Schepens, 16, rue Treurenberg; Paris, Alphonse Picard, 82, rue
Bonaparte, 1890.
Wetzer und Welte's Kirchenlexicon: 2d edit., by Cardinal Hergenroether
and Dr. F. Kaulen; vol. vi, "Jesuiten," col. 1374–1424; Freiburg,
Benjamin Herder, 1889.

Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A.

INDEX.

Abram, Father Nicholas, 245
Academies of the Jesuits, 76
Alber, Father Ferdinand, 242
Allen, Cardinal, 57
Alvarez, Grammar of, 167
Anderledy, Father Anthony, 128
Aquaviva, Father Claudius, 52, 59, 70, 82;
the fifth General of the Order, 126;
creates a commission to draw up a method of studies, 144;
provisional rules of, 148
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 11, 45;
the standard in theology, 148
Argento, Father John, 71, 76
Aristotle, use of, 166
Astronomical observations of the Jesuits, 172
Augustine, 9
Azor, John, 144

Bacon, Lord, 46, 93;
his debt to Possevino, 94
Bader, Father George, 104, 107

Bayonne, the College of, 96
Beckx, Father, 128
Bellarmine, literary productiveness of, 135
Belles-lettres, 82;
the Jesuits preëminent in the study of, 189
Berchmans, John, 113
Blair's "Rhetoric," 132, 252
Boarding colleges, 100
Bobadilla, Nicholas, 33, 43
Bonald, Viscount de, 7
Bonaventure, St., 11
Borgia, Francis, 24;
succeeds Laynez, 66, 110;
founds the Roman college, 111;
the third General of the Order, 124
Borromeo, St. Charles, 73
Bossuet, 66
Bourdaloue, 106, 165
Broeckaert, Father, 167
Brouet, Pasquier, 33
Buffer, Father, "Practical History" of, 168
Buys, Father, 73, 144

Calasanzio, Father Joseph, his "Pious School," 260
Calcutta, Jesuit school at, 268

Campano, Father, 66
Campian, Edmund, 57, 212
Canisius, Father Peter, 90;
the Catechism of, 134, 242
Caraffa, General Vincent, 81, 128
Catharine II., 129
Centurione, Father Aloysius, 128
Cerda, De la, Father, 245
Chalotais, La, 44
Christian schools, 3
Cicero used as a text-book, 166
Class hours, 196
Classical literature in the scheme of Jesuit education, 250
Clavius, Father Christopher, 170
Clement of Alexandria, 43
Clement XIV. dissolves the Order, 129
Coduri, John, 33, 53
Coimbra, university at, 109
Colleges, Jesuit, number of, 70 et seq.;
rise of, in Spain, 110
Confessional, the, in educational institutions, 102
Coton, Father, 66
Cretineau-Joly, M., 39

D'Alembert, 4

Daniel, Father Charles, 46, 93
Daniel, G., 169
De Backers, 67, 69;
his dictionary of Jesuit authors, 134
Descartes, 92
Dictation, how practised in the Jesuit seminaries, 217 et seq.;
objections to, by Possevino, 223
Disputation, the place of, in the Jesuit system, 198, 209 et seq.;
syllogistic or discursive, 212;
numerous attendance upon required, 213;
superintendence of, 215
Divinity, courses in, 191 et seq.
Doctrine, uniformity of, among the Jesuits, 142
Domench, Father Jerome, 110
Drevon, M., 287
Dupanloup, 99

Educational system of the Jesuits, the tributes of Ranke and D'Alembert
to, 4;
the Revolution the sequel of the overthrow of, 6;
explanation of its rise, 14;
kinship between it and the Paris university, 32;
defined, 43;
development of, 52;
as formulated in the Constitution, 56 et seq.;
Laynez's rule concerning the system of colleges, 59;
no tuition fees, 66, 117;
system and method of, 67;

number of colleges, 70;
number of students, 71 et seq.;
ramifications of, 74 et seq.;
scope and method of, 82 et seq.;
classification of, 87;
grades in, 89;
subordinate elements in, 89 et seq.;
moral scope of, 98 et seq.;
vacations, 104;
ascendency of the masters, 107;
law and medicine in, 116;
the study of mathematics in, 127;
the development of geography, history, and physics, 127;
the Ratio Studiorum, 143 et seq.;
the practice and order of studies, 152;
result of, the formation of professors, 156;
the literary curriculum, 158;
proficiency in belles-lettres, 159;
the study of history, 168;
of geography, 169;
of mathematics, 170;
manner of instruction, 176;
philosophy studied after the literary courses, 178;
masters advance with their scholars, 180;
the rectors, 186;
the study of divinity, 191 et seq.;
courses in divinity, 197;
thoroughness of, 205;
the use of disputation, 208 et seq.;

the place of dictation in, 217 et seq.;
co-ordination of the courses in, 227;
the prelection, 233;
study of the classical literatures, 250 et seq.;
school management, 255 et seq.;
the lowest grade, 260;
system of examinations, 262 et seq.;
academic degrees, 265;
literary curriculum, 270;
philosophical curriculum, 274;
theological curriculum, 278;
distribution of time, 279;
origin and evolution of the system, 286
Expurgating authors, 103

Fribourg, Jesuit university suppressed at, 130
Frederick the Great, letter of, to Voltaire, 79, 129

Generals of the Order, 124 et seq.
Geography, method of teaching, 169
Germany, Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order in, 114
German college in Rome, 117
Goa, seminary at, 74, 109
Gonzaga, Aloysius, 113
Gonzales, Gaspar, 144
Grammar, 179;
prelection in the grade of, 237;
method of teaching the classical languages in, 238;

the daily lesson in, 241
Gregory XIII., papal seminaries founded by, 73
Grotius, 79
Guisani, Anthony, 144

Huebner, Baron von, 7
Humanity, the course in, 83 et seq., 158, 188;
the prelection in the grade of, 237

Ingolstadt, university at, 115

Janssen, 118
Jesus, Society of, birthday of, 33, 34;
receives its bull of confirmation, 51;
constitution of, 54 et seq.;
not admitted to Germany at the present day, 123
Jouvancy, 29, 127;
his Ratio Discendi et Docendi, 162, 242

Kessel, Father, 60
Kleutgen, Father, Ars Docendi of, 167
Knox, John, 144
Kostka, Stanislaus, 113

Latin composition, elegant command of, by the Jesuits, 188
Laval, university of, 269
Law and medicine studied in the Jesuit universities, 116

Laynez, James, 28, 33, 54;
elected successor to Loyola, 55, 59, 124
Le Jay, Claude, 33
Lefèvre, Peter, 33, 110 et seq.
Lenormant, Charles, 100
Literary productiveness of the Jesuits, 134
Literary curriculum of the Jesuits at present, 270 et seq.
Loyola, St. Ignatius of, 8;
begins his education, 15;
story of his life, 19 et seq.;
becomes a master of arts, 33;
his self-discipline, 36;
at Rome, 40, 53;
promulgates the constitution of his Order, 55;
death of, 55, 119;
his educational system, 56;
his care for Germany, 114;
founds a German college in Rome, 117;
his educational policy successful, 118

Maistre, Count de, 6
Maldonado, a double-headed disputant, 212
Moriana, 112, 168
Mathematics in the Jesuit system of education, 170 et seq.
Mercurian, Father Everard, the fourth General of the Order, 126
Montague, college of, Loyola at, 31
Montmorency, Father, 65

Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, the, 75
Moral education, the, prescribed by Loyola, 102

Nadal, Jerome, 120
Netherlands, Jesuit schools in, 5
Nickel, Father Goswin, 128

Olave, Martin, 120
Oliva, General Paul, 73, 128

Pachtler, Father, 63, 76
Papal Seminaries founded by Gregory XIII., 73
Parma, Duke of, 69
Paris University, the, 13;
Loyola at, 25
Parsons, Robert, 57
Pascual, John Sacrista, 21
Pedagogics in the Ratio Studiorum, 147
Peltier, Father John, 111
Perry, 67
Petau, Father Denis, 167
Philosophy, course of, what it includes, 173
Philosophical Curriculum, the, at the present time, 275 et seq.
Piccolomini, Father Francis, 128, 231
Polanco, John, 115, 120
Porée, Père, Voltaire's preceptor, 132, 245

Playfer, Dr., 94
Plato, 98
Possevino, Father Anthony, Bacon's forerunner, 94, 103, 107
Prælectio, the typical form of Jesuit instruction, 232 et seq.
Professors formed by the Jesuit system, 156 et seq.;
literary productions expected from, 188;
in the Jesuit Seminaries, coördination between, 230
"Provincial Letters" of Pascal, 105

Quintilian, use of, 166

Ranke, Von Leopold, 4, 114, 118
Rapin, Père, 132;
works of, 246
Ratio Studiorum, the, 8, 32, 52, 56, 86, 89, 143;
formation of, by Aquaviva, 144 et seq., 151, 152;
final form of, 154, 183, 230, 235
Rectors of colleges, duties of, 186
Repetition, in the scheme of Jesuit education, 198;
in the Grammar Grade, 240
Revolution, the French, 6
Rhetoric, instruction in, 89, 178 et seq.;
double prelection in, 234
Ribadeneira, 29, 54, 87, 89, 102
Riccioli, Father, 169
Robertson, 79

Rochemonteix, Father, 80, 88
Rodriguez, Simon, 33
Roman College, the, 103;
founded by Lefèvre, 111;
other colleges following its course, 112
Roothaan, Father, 289
Rossignol, 135
Rue, Father de la, author of the Delphin Virgil, 246

Sacchini, 54, 177
Saint-Yves, college of, 80
Salmeron, Alphonsus, 33
Secchi, Father, 67
Schall, Adam, 169
Scheiner, Father, 169
Scholastics, Jesuit, expected to teach, 176
Schools, the cathedral, 9;
of study, of the Jesuits, 127
School management, 255 et seq.
Sirmond, James, 167
Sodalities, the, 103, 258
Sommervogel, 67, 134
Southwell, Father Nathaniel, 133
Sorbon, Robert of, 208, 211
"Spiritual Exercises," the, 27

Stonyhurst, 268
Strada, Damian, 168
Strada, Father Francis, 191
Strassmeyer, 67
Studies, Practice and Order of, in Jesuit seminaries, 152
Suarez, Francis, 112, 203

Text-books of the Jesuits, 131
Theological instruction, method of, 202 et seq.
Theological curriculum at the present time, 278 et seq.
Theology, scholastic, Jesuit authors in, 203
Tiraboschi, 165
Toffia, Vittoria, 112
Tucci, Stephen, 144
Tyre, James, 144

University system, rise of the, 10
Urban VIII., 42

Vacations in the Jesuit system, 104
Verbiest, Ferdinand, 169
Vernacular, the study of, 164, 242
Vienna and Ingolstadt, the Jesuits first centres in Germany, 115
Villanova, Francis, 24, 110
Visconti, Ignatius, 3, 128
Vitelleschi, Mutius, 70, 108;

the sixth general of the order, 126, 131
Voltaire, tribute of, to the morality of the Jesuits, 105, 132;
and Père Porée, 244

Xavier, Francis, 33, 37, 69, 109

Zaccaria, literary productiveness of, 134
Ziegler, Father, 170

FOOTNOTES
1
Christian Schools and Scholars, by A. T. Drane; 1881; last
chapter.
2
On the Furthering of Humane Studies; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 129.
3
History of the Papacy, vol. i, book v, § 3; Jesuit Schools in
Germany.
4
Sur la destruction des Jésuites, par un auteur désintéressé, p. 19.
5
Imago Primi Sæculi, lib. vi, Societas Flandro-Belgica, cap. iii,
§ 1, p. 772.
6
Crétineau-Joly, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, tom. iv, ch.
3, p. 210; 3me edit. 1851.
7
Histoire de l'Université de Paris, par Charles Jourdain, liv. i, ch.
1; quoted with other testimonies, in the learned work, Un Collège de
Jésuites aux xvii and xviii siècles, Le Collège Henri iv de la Flèche,
par le P. Camille de Rochemonteix, 1889; tom. i, ch. 1, p. 3.
8
Exercitia Spiritualia.
9
Ranke, History of the Papacy, vol. i, book ii, § 7.
10
Genelli, Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, p. 351.

11
Imago Primi Sæculi, lib. iv, cap. ix, pp. 521-2; De Calumniis.
12
Jouvancy, Epitome Hist. S. J., p. 168, ad annum 1551.
13
Advancement of Learning, book i; Philadelphia edit. 1841,
vol. i, p. 167.
14
Month of July, tom. vii; auct. J. P., § xviii, pp. 443-4.
15
Genelli, Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, part i, ch. 8.
16
Bollandists, as above, nn. 313-4; ibid., Suarez, Nigronius, and
others.
17
Genelli, Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, part ii, ch. 13.
18
Bulla canoniz. S. Ign. de Loyola, § 22.
19
Bollandists, nn. 313-4; 317.
20
Bollandists, July, tom. vii, auct. J. P., §§ xxvii, xxviii.
21
Nigronius; Bollandists, n. 317.
22
Apocalypse, ch. xviii, 13.
23
Advancement of Learning, book i, p. 176; Phila. edit.
24
Père Charles Daniel S. J., Des Études Classiques dans la
Société Chrétienne, ch. 8, La Concile de Trente; 1853.
25
Bollandists, auct. J. P., nn. 293-7.
26
Bollandists, n. 292.
27
Gagliardi.
28
Hist. S. J., 2da pars, Lainius; ad annum 1564, n. 220, p. 340.

29
Chiefly from P. Enrico Vasco, S. J., Il Ratio Studiorum
Addattato ecc, vol. i, cap. vii, n. 33, a private memoir, 1851.
30
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, ii, p. 71; Ratio
Studiorum, etc., by G. M. Pachtler, S. J.; Berlin, 1887.
31
Ibid. Pachtler, p. 334 seq.
32
Ibid. Pachtler, p. 337 seq.
33
Genelli, part ii, ch. 8.
34
Jouvancy, Epitome Hist. S. J., Anno Christi, 1547.
35
Vasco, vol. i, cap. vii, n. 33 seq.
36
Orlandini, Bollandists, n. 843.
37
Bollandists, n. 839.
38
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 72.
39
Constitutiones S. J., pars iv, declarationes in proœmium.
40
Sacchini, pars iii, lib. i, nn. 36-42.
41
Sacchini, pars iii, Borgia; lib. i, nn. 36 seq.
42
Sacchini, pars v, Claudius Aquaviva, tom. prior; lib. iv, n. 81.
43
Recherches sur la Compagnie de Jésus en France au temps du
Père Coton, par le P. Prat, tom. ii, p. 296.
44
Constitutiones S. J., pars iv, cap. vii, n. 3.
45
Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, Preface,
1869.

46
Crétineau-Joly; Histoire Religieuse, Politique et Littéraire de
la Compagnie de Jésus, tom. ii, ch. iv, p. 176; troisième édit. 1851.
47
De Institutione Juventutis; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 61.
48
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii; Pachtler, p. xx.
49
They are catalogued by Rochemonteix, Collège Henri IV, tom.
ii, ch. i, p. 57, note.
50
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix; Pachtler, p. 192,
n. 3.
51
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, pp. 110-2.
52
Arch. Rheni Sup., quoted by Pachtler; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 110; see also the letter of the General John
Paul Oliva, ibid. p. 106.
53
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii; Pachtler, p. xx.
54
Vol. ix, pp. 322-389.
55
Maynard; The Studies and Teaching of the Society of Jesus, at
the Time of its Suppression, 1750–1773; Baltimore edit. 1885, ch. 2;
The Jesuits in Germany, pp. 112-3.
56
1777, 18 novembre, Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xcv, p. 207; edit.
1832.
57
Lettre à Voltaire, 7 juillet, 1770; Œuvres de Voltaire, tom. xii,
p. 495; edit. 1817.
58
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, pp. 358-9.
59
Le Collège Henri IV, tom. ii, ch. 1, p. 20.

60
Fernand Butel, Docteur en Droit, etc.; L'Éducation des Jésuites
autrefois et aujourd'hui, Un Collège Breton, ch. 1, p. 51; p. 19; p. 28;
Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1890.
61
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 65.
62
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 7, n. 1.
63
Formulæ acceptandorum Collegiorum, etc., summarium;
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 338.
64
Ibid.
65
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 76, 5.
Their curriculum was enlarged in 1829; ibid., p. 110, 6.
66
Ratio Studiorum 1599; Reg. Prov. 21, § 4. Pachtler,
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 258.
67
Constitutiones, ibid.
68
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 12.
69
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 5, n. 1.
70
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 9, n. 3.
71
Ibid., c. 5, n. 1, C.
72
Ch. xi. below.
73
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 6, n. 2.
74
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 311.
75
Ibid., p. 310, note.
76
Ribadeneira, Bollandists, July, tom. vii, nn. 335 seq.

77
Le Collège Henri IV., tom. iii, pp. 5-7.
78
Compare the ordinance of Father Oliver Manare, 1583, n. 114;
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii. p. 269.
79
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 13, n. 4.
80
Bollandists, ibid., 376-7.
81
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 169.
82
L'Éducation des Jésuites autrefois, etc., par Dr. F. Butel, ch. 1,
pp. 22-8. This author sketches agreeably the means touched upon in
the text, and his references are useful.
83
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 261.
Addita quædam Exercitiis Litterariis Humanistarum, 1580; prior to
the completed Ratio Studiorum.
84
Ibid., p. 262.
85
Lettre xc.
86
Compare Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity, part iv, book
vi, Recapitulation; translation by Dr. Chas. I. White; Baltimore, 1884,
p. 637 seq.
87
Paris, Victor Palmé, 1880.
88
Works; Philadelphia edit. 1859, vol. i, p. 244.
89
Bibliotheca Selecta in qua agitur de Ratione Studiorum, in
Historia, in Disciplinis, in Salute Omnium procuranda. De Backer in
his Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus gives the
list of republications, either in whole or in part. Sommervogel's new
work, royal quarto, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1890,
has reached thus far only to the letter B; hence Possevino is not yet
entered.

90
Ibid., p. 187.
91
Ibid., p. 136.
92
Ch. 10, of book 1, Ratio Collegiorum et Scholarum, etc., end
of chapter; Roman edit.
93
Histoire d'un Collège Municipal aux XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe
siècles ... à Bayonne avant 1789. Thèse presentée à la Faculté des
Lettres de Toulouse, par J. M. Drevon, censeur des Études au Lycée
d'Agen, 1890. About 500 pages.
94
Pp. 160-234.
95
P. 429.
96
Dante, Parad. viii.
97
De La Haute Éducation Intellectuelle, liv. iv, ch 4. Compare
Vasco, vol. i, n. 24.
98
Essais sur l'Instruction Publique, par Charles Lenormant,
membre de l'Institut; quoted by Rochemonteix, Le Collège Henri IV,
tom. ii, ch. 1, p. 49, in his very instructive discussion on the Jesuit
internat, or pensionnat.
99
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 78.
100
Const., part iv, ch. 3, decl. B.
101
Turpissimis signis.
102
Bibliotheca Selecta, lib. i, ch. 44; Quasnam tetenderit insidias
humani generis hostis, etc.
103
Ribadeneira, Bollandists, nn. 373 seq.
104
Bibliotheca Selecta, lib. i, ch. 40.

105
Ratio Studiorum of 1599 and 1832, Reg. Prov. 37. The higher
courses are allowed a midsummer vacation of between one and two
months; in the lower or literary course, Rhetoric is allowed one
month, the others classes less. Besides certain feast-days during the
year, every week must have one day free, which, in the higher
courses, is the whole day, but, in the lower, is only the latter part of it.
106
1602; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p.
467.
107
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p. 411.
108
Bollandists, n. 374.
109
Lettre 7 février, 1746; Œuvres, tom. viii, p. 1128; edit. 1817.
110
Crétineau-Joly, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, tom. iv,
ch. 3, p. 209; edit. 1851. This chapter and the following one, ch. 4, in
Crétineau-Joly, pp. 158-297, contain the most varied information on
our subject, regarding professors, writers, scholars, etc.
111
Epistola de Institutione Juventutis, et Studiis Litterarum
Promovendis, 1639; Mon. Germ. Pæd., vol. ix, Pachtler, p. 62.
112
Paradise Lost, book iv.
113
Notice sur le Pensionnat, etc. à Fribourg en Suisse, 1839, pp.
56 seq.
114
1585; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, p.
411.
115
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, Pachtler, p. 59.
116
Manare, Commentarius.
117
Crétineau-Joly, tom. i, ch. 3, p. 150.

118
Compare Cretineau-Joly, tom. i, ch. 6; tom. iv, chs. 3, 4.
119
The more heavily the strain of war bore upon Germany, the
more assiduously were the succors sent in; no part of the field was
more under Loyola's eye.
120
History of the Papacy, vol. i, book v, § 3; The First Jesuit
Schools in Germany; Foster's translation, p. 417.
121
Compare Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix,
Pachtler, Nr. 72; Nr. 91; Nr. 92, etc.
122
This very instructive correspondence may be seen sketched in
Genelli's Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, part ii, ch. 8, pp. 342 seq.
1889.
123
Ch. 6, above, p. 84.
124
Const., pars iv, c. 7, decl. E.
125
Compare Mon. Germ. Pæd., vol. ii, Pachtler, Nr. 38, the
theological faculty of the University of Würzburg, p. 303, n. 7; Mon.
Germ. Pæd., vol. ix, Pachtler, Nr. 67, p. 162, and Nr. 68, p. 178, the
theological and philosophical faculties of the University of Trier, etc.
126
Compare Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii,
Pachtler, p. 38, note about Perugia.
127
Ibid., p. 51, note about Valencia.
128
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 369, Letter to
Father Kessel.
129
Compare Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii,
Pachtler, Papstliche Privilegien, pp. 1-8.
130
Bollandists, J. P., n. 612.

131
The pedagogic legislation, from this date onwards, is to be
found in Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, Pachtler, pp. 70-
125.
132
Pachtler, ibid., p 75.
133
Pachtler, ibid., pp. 126-132.
134
European Civilization, ch. 46.
135
National Education, part ii, vol. ii, p. 659; p. 74; New York,
1872.
136
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, Pachtler, p. 57.
137
Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Lecture 26.
138
Lecture 35.
139
Eulogy pronounced by the Cardinal Maury on his predecessor
in the Institute of France, the Jesuit De Radonvilliers, 1807.—
Orateurs Sacrés, Migne, tom. lxvii, column 1161.
140
A classification of eminent students may be found in
Crétineau-Joly, tom. iv, ch. 3, p. 207.
141
Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, nouvelle édition, par
Carlos Sommervogel S. J., Strasbourgeois, tom. i, from Abad to
Boujart; large quarto edition, 1890.
142
Doctrina Christiana, etc.; Traductions; Sommervogel, sub
voce, Bellarmine, columns 1187–1204.
143
In the matter of general philology alone compare the
monograph, Die Sprachkunde und die Missionen, von Joseph
Dahlmann S. J., 15 January, 1891, fiftieth supplement to the Stimmen
aus Maria-Laach, 121 pages.

144
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, Pachtler, p. 29.
145
Ibid., vol. v, p. 9 seq.
146
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 12 seq.
147
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 26 seq.
148
Disputatio acris oriebatur.
149
Ibid., Nr. 8, p. 65.
150
Vol. v, pp. 67-217.
151
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 15 seq.
152
As an instance of the minute criticism brought to bear upon it
in Germany, consult Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p.
218 seq. Similar animadversions are to be understood as coming from
other quarters.
153
Supercheries littéraires dévoilées iii, 446, f; Sommervogel,
Dictionnaire des Ouvrages Anonymes et Pseudonymes, etc., S. J., sub
voce, Ratio.
154
Quoted by Ch. Daniel, S. J., Les Jésuites Instituteurs de la
Jeunesse, etc., last ch. p. 297.
155
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, Nr. 11, p. 227.
156
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 252, Ratio
Studiorum of 1599, Reg. Prov. 19, § 11.
157
Compare Lord Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, book
ii, p. 186, 1st column; Philadelphia edit. 1846.
158
Chapter vi, above, p. 83.

159
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 129, Ratio
Studiorum of 1586, c. Stud. Philos.
160
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 491, n. 32.
161
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 154, n. 6,
Humanitatis Doctores quos et quales, etc.
162
Vitelleschi, 1639, Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol.
ix, p. 60, n. 4.
163
Ratio Stud., Reg. Prov. 19; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 242.
164
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, pp. 84, 93.
165
Ibid., vol. ii, p. 101.
166
Rt. St. 1599, Reg. Prof, Rhet. 6; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 404.
167
Sommervogel fills twenty-four columns with a partial
enumeration of the editions of Alvarez; Bibliothèque de la
Compagnie de Jésus, 1890, sub voce, Alvarez.
168
Compare Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 269,
n. 114; Manare's Ordinance for Germany.
169
Rationarium Temporum, Paris, 1632.
170
Daniel, Les Jésuites Instituteurs, etc., ch. 10, p. 216.
171
Geographiæ et Hydrographiæ Reformatæ Libri xii, Bologna,
1661, in folio.
172
See the pleasant sketch in Daniel's Les Jésuites Instituteurs,
etc., chs. 2-5; also Maynard's The Jesuits, their Studies and Teaching,
ch. 4, Scientific Condition of the Jesuits, etc.

173
Rome, 1583, 8vo, pp. 219.
174
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 141, De
Mathematicis.
175
Reg. Prov. n. 20.
176
First edition in 1697.
177
De l'Église Gallicane, liv. i, ch. 8, p. 46; edit. 1821.
178
The medal is in the Coleman Museum of the Georgetown
University, where De Vico, with Sestini, was astronomer for some
time.
179
For an historical sketch of Bavarian Jesuits, under the aspect
of scientific eminence, see Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol.
ix, pp. 445-6, where Father Pachtler gives the Prospectus of a new
scientific and literary review, to be issued in Bavaria, 1772. The
Suppression forestalled it.
180
Histoire des Mathematiques, t. iv, p. 347; quoted by
Crétineau-Joly, t. iv, c. 4, p. 283, who contains a large amount of
literature upon this subject. According to late researches, made by
MM. C. André and G. Rayet, astronomers of the observatory of Paris,
the number of observatories established in the whole world, towards
the close of the last century, was 130. Of this number, 32 were
founded by Jesuits, or were under their direction.—Victor Van Tricht,
La Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, etc.,
appendice 1er, p. 221; 1876.
181
Constitutiones, pars iv, c. 13, n. 4.
182
Bollandists, J. P., n. 871.
183
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 151 seq.

184
Ratio St., Reg. Prov. 28; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica,
vol. v, p. 260.
185
Ibid., vol. ix, p. 59.
186
Ibid., vol. v, Rt. St. 1586, Humanitatis Magistri, n. 5, p. 153.
187
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 415.
188
Ibid., vol. v, n.. 3, p. 152.
189
Ibid., vol. v, n. 4, p. 152.
190
Ibid., vol. v, p. 260; Reg. Prov. 24, 25.
191
Ibid., vol. ix, p. 60; letter of the year 1639.
192
Ibid., vol. v, p. 154.
193
Ibid, vol. ix, p. 130, n. 2.
194
Ibid., n. 6.
195
Ibid., vol. v, p. 352.
196
Ibid., vol. v, p. 149.
197
Ibid., p. 153.
198
Rt. St., Reg. Rect. 3; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol.
v, p. 268.
199
Ibid., n. 18, p. 272.
200
Reg. Prov. 33; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, p. 262.
201
Ibid., vol. ix, p. 131.
202
Jouvancy, Ratio Discendi; c. Ordo Studendi.

203
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 144.
204
Ibid.
205
Ibid., vol. ii, p. 126; Reg. Prov. n. 50.
206
Rt. St. 1586; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. v, p.
150.
207
Formula Acceptandorum Collegiorum, b; Monumenta
Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 339.
208
Hist. S. J., Sacchini, pars ii, Lainius, lib. viii, n. 219, ad
annum 1564.
209
Rt. St. 1586, ibid.
210
Rt. St. 1599, Reg. Prov. 27; Monumenta Germaniæ
Pædagogica, vol. v, p. 260.
211
Chapter xi, above, p. 155.
212
Statuten der philos. Fak. Ingolstadt, 1649; De Auditoribus;
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 284.
213
Qui non in Academia, sed privatim in aliquo Auditorio aut
Monasterio audierunt philosophiam.
214
Nisi probent se omnes materias publice audivisse in aliqua
Academia probata: Würzburger Promotionsgebrauche, 1662;
Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ix, p. 387.
215
Rhetius S. J. für Reform der theol. Fak. zu Köln, November,
1570; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica, vol. ii, p. 217.
216
Rt. St., Reg. Prov. 28; Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica,
vol. v, p. 260.