Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

kes 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 ecclesiastica

a system of Chris

e 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 l

ound 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

sh 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 Jesu

d, 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

d 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 instant

ans 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,

s 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 w

s 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,-th

ng 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 peda

d 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

us 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

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

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

re mostly annexed to cathedral churches. As they developed, the cloistral influence waned. And again, as

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 al

ere. 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 learn

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 s

ssive 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, C?sarism 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,

it 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 u

or. The bonds of discipline had been gradually relaxed; studies were abandoned; and with masters, as with scholars, all love of lett

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 charte

d 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 t

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

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 administra

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 th

al art, by which he himself was formed, and which then he reformed in the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. In the second part,