“Upon this the bishop advised his imperial master [Ferdinand I] to found a similar college in Vienna, seeing how great was the decay of Catholic theology in Germany. Ferdinand warmly embraced the suggestion; in a letter he wrote to Loyola on the subject, he declares his conviction that the only means to uphold the declining cause of Catholicism in Germany, was to give the rising generation learned and pious Catholics for teachers.” We can understand the grounds for this decision when we recall the statement that about 1563 it was said that “twenty years had elapsed in Vienna since a single student of the university had taken priest’s orders.” “The preliminaries,” says Ranke, “were easily arranged. In the year 1551 thirteen Jesuits, among them Le Jay himself, arrived in Vienna, and were in the first instance, granted a dwelling, chapel, and pension, by Ferdinand, until shortly after he incorporated them with the university, and even assigned to them the visitation of it.” “Soon after this they arose to consideration in Cologne,” but for a time had little success. In 1556 the endowed school referred to before governed by a Protestant regent, “gave them an opportunity of gaining a firmer footing. For since there was a party in the city bent above all things on maintaining the Catholic character of the university, the advice given by the patrons of the Jesuits to hand over the establishment to that order, met with attention.” “At the same period they also gained a firm footing in Ingoldstadt.” “From these three metropolitan centers the Jesuits now spread out in every direction.” These schools were, some of them at least, training schools for Catholic teachers; for Ranke tells of a certain man in Hungary, Olahus by name, and dedicated in infancy to the church, who, “contemplating the general decay of Catholicism in Hungary, saw that the last hope left for it was that of maintaining its hold on the common people, who had not yet wholly lapsed from its rule. To this end, however, there lacked teachers of Catholic principles, and to form whom, he founded a college of Jesuits at Tyrnau in the year 1561.” “Two privy councilors of the elector Daniel, of Mainz, ... conceived likewise that the admission of the Jesuits was the only means that promised a recovery of the University of Mainz. In spite of the opposition made by the canons and feudal proprietors, they founded a college of the order in Mainz, and a preparatory school in Aschaffenburg.”
School at Heidelberg
The Jesuits advanced up the Rhine. “They particularly coveted a settlement at Spires, both because ... there were so many distinguished men [assembled there] over whom it would be of extraordinary moment to possess influence; and also in order to be placed near the Heidelberg University, which at that day enjoyed the highest repute for its Protestant professors. They gradually carried their point.” It is interesting to note how they shadowed the Protestant schools, as if, like a parasite, to suck from them their life. “In order to bring back his University of Dillingen to its original purpose, Cardinal Truchess resolved to dismiss all the professors who still taught there, and to commit the establishment entirely to the Jesuits.”
Rapid growth of Jesuit schools
To show the rapidity with which the Jesuits worked, Ranke says: “In the year 1551 they had not yet any fixed position in Germany;” “in 1556 they had extended over Bavaria and the Tyrol, Franconia, and Swabia, a great part of Rhineland, and Austria, and they had penetrated into Hungary, Bohemia, and Moravia.” True to the purpose of the order, “their labors were above all devoted to the universities. They were ambitious of rivaling the fame of those of the Protestants.”
Jesuits’ preparatory schools
“The Jesuits displayed no less assiduity in the conduct of their Latin schools. It was one of the leading maxims of Lainez that the lower grammatical classes should be supplied with good teachers, since first impressions exercise the greatest influence over the whole future life of the individual.” The Jesuits were willing to devote a lifetime to one phase of education. “It was found that young persons learned more under them in half a year than with others in two years; even Protestants called back their children from distant schools, and put them under the care of the Jesuits.” From this last sentence two things are to be observed. Protestants had lost sight of the importance of education, and their schools had greatly deteriorated, else they would not have intrusted their children to the Jesuits. While the Jesuits began by working into the universities, “schools for the poor, modes of instruction adapted for children, and catechizing followed.”
Reputation of Jesuit schools
“The instruction of the Jesuits was conveyed wholly in the spirit of that enthusiastic devotion which had from the first so peculiarly characterized their order.” This had its effect; for earnest, whole-hearted work on the part of the teacher, even though the methods may be wrong and material false, will surely react in the lives of the pupils. Viewing the work of Jesuit teachers, one feels to exclaim, “Since thou art so noble, I would thou wert on our side!” And so “erelong the children, who frequented the schools of the Jesuits in Vienna, were distinguished for their resolute refusal to partake on fast days of forbidden meats which their parents ate.”
Jesuits conquered Germany by their schools