Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

by Thomas Hughes

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Those whom health and excellence have approved at every step are ordinarily to be withdrawn from studies, "when the course of Arts has been finished, and when four years have been spent on Theology."[70] Specialties are to be cultivated.[71]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]