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.]

[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 of consolidating anew a system of Christian education."[1]

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 it."[2]

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 them to the care of the Jesuits."[3] 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 to those whom the universities could boast of," etc.[4]

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 assumed name.[5]

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 age at the date of the Jesuits' expulsion.[6] 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 dissolute habits."[7]

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 perdition.[8] 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 personal development imposed upon him";[9] 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 in Spain, France, and Italy.[10] 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 charges excite."[11] 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 notion, to get it out of their heads again!"[12] 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 Pharnabaus, 'Talis quum sis, utinam noster esses.'"[13]

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, as found in the Paris records, are given by the Bollandists.[14]

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 sciences."[15] 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 preaching," etc.[16]

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 of later ages.[17] 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 personal solicitude.[18] 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; and, among them, is the subject of our study, the Education of Youth.[19] 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 universities."[20]

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 boys and students of every kind, in schools open to all.[21] 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 persons and "souls of men,"[22] 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, have much quickened and strengthened the state of learning."[23] 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 Church."[24]

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 by a unanimous vote.[25] The Fathers had concluded the first deliberation, whether they should form a society at all; and they had decided in the affirmative sense.[26] 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, inclinations, etc.; and this from histories, from intercourse, etc."[27] 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 him."[28]

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 order.[29]

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 ministrations in the service of others."[30]

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; or a University, with seventy.[31] 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 ordinance.[32]

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 may bestow on the small towns and villages."[33] 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 had to be transferred within the city."[34]

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 of the right kind of scholars.[35]

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 Society, by an ill-advised assent.[36] And he said, as Polanco his secretary tells us, that "if anything ought to make him wish to live a longer time, it was that he might be severe in admitting men into the Order."[37] 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 sense: "No college is to be sent to any place," etc.[38]

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, we shall first speak of the colleges; then of the universities," etc.[39]

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 Professors."[40] 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 colleges already existing."[41] 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 Society the multiplication of its institutions.[42]

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 another arrangement to be made; which was accordingly done.[43] 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: To give gratuitously, what we have received gratis."[44]

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 another class, who labored, who taught, who wrote."[45]

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 enemies of the Altar and the Throne. I have built it."[46]

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 and finish."[47]

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, besides 172 Missions in the less organized regions of the globe.[48]

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 single one. Take the 92 colleges of France alone.[49] 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 other colleges in the upper German Province.[50]

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 Oliva,[51] 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 money."[52]

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, 160 missions, 6 professed houses.[53]

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 be found in the same Monumenta.[54] 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 ten secular Professors.[55] 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 administration of the government, always suffer diminution."[56] 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 cultivate a plant so rare."[57]

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 circumstances and self-abnegation. We may see it illustrated in Dilingen.[58] 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 paying badly, and the treasurers lamenting."[59]

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 was fully fitted up with all necessary instruments, and their observatory.[60] "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 means of living.[61]

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 least in the departments of Humane Letters."[62] 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, Humanities, Rhetoric, Languages, and Moral Theology.[63] 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 sufficiency of literary culture."[64] This curriculum served also the purpose of those, who, while members of the Order, were for some reason dispensed from the full course of studies.[65] If any grades are wanting in a college, it must be the lower ones which are omitted, the higher being retained.[66] 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 universities.[67]

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 by Professors not of the Society.[68]

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 allied Sciences.[69]

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 finished, and when four years have been spent on Theology."[70] Specialties are to be cultivated.[71] 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 see later, when analyzing the Ratio.[72]

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 studies as a work of great merit in the sight of God."[73]

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 simply refers to the Constitution.[74] 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 Protestant Germany, took children up from the alphabet.[75] 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 separate Professors are placed over each."[76]

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 authentic act, in which the term is used, dates from 1539.[77] 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 imitation of models.[78]

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 therein."[79]

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 glory of virtue." He quotes Cicero and Quintilian to the same effect.[80]

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 pen of Father Peter Canisius himself.[81] 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 probation of struggle."[82]

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 students will be in attendance."[83] 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 victor, "whereupon the music will strike up a sweet symphony."[84] 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 burghers. Descartes[85] 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 who are not so, is an extremely good invention."[86]

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 Française, au XVII^e et au XVIII^e siècle.[87] 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 World, as truly and faithfully as he can discover.[88] 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 called "the most recent edition."[89] 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 represented from age to age."[90] 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, excluding many others!"[91] 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 me to do more than refer to it.[92]

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, by the Censor of Studies, in the Lyceum of Agen.[93] In seventy pages, which concern transactions with the Jesuits,[94] 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 in a tone somewhat subdued, but not more so than his subject:[95] "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
To do thee gentle service.[96]

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 education and a private tutor.'"[97]

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 the perils of the world, even before the age of discernment had begun."[98] 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. Reluctantly the authorization was given by the general assembly.[99] 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 for the introduction of these colleges.[100] 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 writing and the vilest pictures;[101] 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 Divine precept public worship is due."[102]

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 boyhood, especially such as are somehow inborn and native to that age."[103]

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 world.[104] "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 "sufficiency" would appear spare luxury to our looser times.[105] "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 idleness, if the boys remain on our hands."[106]

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 ordinary, virtuous, and pious."[107]

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 management of the republic."[108] 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 indulgent toward others."[109]

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 may still be found.[110] 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 lost in the first heat of manhood's passions,[111] 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
I fell.[112]

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 of the Order, which they have known as the cradle of their youth.[113] 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 Prefect."[114]

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 more powerfully, than many lectures and sermons given in common."[115]

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 Belgium, supplied with matter for his orations,[116] 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 most blind devotedness."[117]

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 maintained their own prestige.[118]

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 laboravit, hoc studiosius adjuta est; Ignatio nulla regio commendatior.[119] 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, and wrested from us a share of our fatherland."[120]

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 the "Counter-Reformation."[121] 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 students, little by little, with a taste for Theology."[122]

Secondly, we may recall to mind what was mentioned before,[123] 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 chairs.[124] 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, incidental to university affairs.[125] No ingenious compromise was admitted which tended to relax this principle, regarding a pecuniary consideration.[126] On the contrary, the most legitimate and ample revenues offered were not accepted as a recommendation for a university, if there were any conditions whatever not in keeping with the Institute.[127]

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 be wanting to them."[128] 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 of the Order, who could delegate the same to subordinate Superiors.[129]

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 its course.[130]

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 may be noted in the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica.[131] 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 formation of Professors.[132] 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. Those which concern studies are given in a few pages of the Monumenta.[133]

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 age."[134] 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 incapable of holding office in Church or State."[135] 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, it has acquired that high esteem."[136]

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 salute Père Rapin in a somewhat questionable manner.[137] 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 brilliant figures, whom Dr. Blair names as illustrating the epoch,[138] 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 emphatically said, "the Star-chamber of literary reputations."[139]