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. Descartes85 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 XVIIe et au XVIIIe 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."
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:—
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.
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:—
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.
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.