Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits. Hughes Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ