Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits. Hughes Thomas

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      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: —

      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 СКАЧАТЬ