Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

by Thomas Hughes

Christian morals and Christian manners make the perfect gentleman.

Plato had put it down that "he who hath a good soul is good"; and he insisted that no youth, who has had a personal acquaintance with evil, can have a good soul. He did not mean that a youth must be ignorant of what temptation is. There is no hot-house raising in this world which will keep off that blast. Every child, while keeping on the royal road of innocence, has enough in himself, and in the choicest of surroundings, to know the realities of life and its warfare. But Plato refers to a personal experience of the by-ways, which are not virtue, and which it is not necessary to travel by, in order to know enough about them. The educational means, the industry, the vigilance, which have for a result the preservation of youth in the freshness of innocence, signify a medium of respiration which is kept pure, and a moral nutriment which is good and is kept constantly supplied, until tender virtue has risen steadily into a well-knit rectitude, and is able thenceforth to brave manfully the incidental storms of life.

For this moral strengthening of character, no less than for the invigorating of mental energies, the system of Ignatius Loyola prescribes an education which is public,—public, as being that of many students together, public as opposed to private tutorism, public, in fine, as requiring a sufficiency of the open, fearless exercise both of practical morality and of religion. Since the time of Ignatius, Dupanloup has observed on this subject:—

"I have heard a man of great sense utter this remarkable word. 'If a usurping and able government wanted to get rid of great races in the country, and root them out, it need only come down to this, that it require of them, out of respect for themselves, to bring up their children at home, alone, far from their equals, shut up in the narrow horizon of a private education and a private tutor.'"[97]

The youthful material, on which the Jesuit system had to work, may be described from two points of view. There were home conditions; and there were conditions too of the educational system, which was commonly prevalent in those centuries.

As to the circumstances of polite society at the boys' homes, Charles Lenormant, speaking of those times, tells us that "it was the privilege of a gentleman to have from his infancy the responsibility of his own actions. The fathers of families were the first to launch their sons into the midst of the perils of the world, even before the age of discernment had begun."[98] Even when boys' homes effect no positive harm, still, only too often, they answer this description, that they undo the best of what the school training is endeavoring to effect, by the discipline of subordination and the practice of obedience.

It was this state of things which made the German Jesuits, in spite of themselves, petition for the requisite authorization to open boarding colleges in the north, as had already been done in Portugal and elsewhere. Reluctantly the authorization was given by the general assembly.[99] These convictus, or pensionnats, were known to make great inroads on the time of the Fathers, on their study, their religious retirement, and especially on that immunity of theirs from financial transactions, which they enjoyed as Religious. The Constitution of Ignatius offers no more than a bare foothold for the introduction of these colleges.[100] Yet they have proved to be the most prolific nurseries of the eminent men, whom the Society has sent forth into all the walks of life.

Not at home alone were effeminacy and dissoluteness to be feared. There were conditions of life in the university system of the sixteenth century, which seemed considerably worse than those already described in the first chapter of this book. Possevino, who had spent ten years in the midst of the religious turmoils of France, and ten more in Papal legations to Germany, Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, Russia, Muscovy, Sweden, and Gothia, and, after that, four more years in visiting the universities throughout Europe, notices that there were five ways, whereby a general corruption of society had come about. First, he mentions the dissemination of bad books. Secondly, "the omission of lectures; or, when lectures were held, such disturbances during them, with noise and yells, that there scarce remained an appearance of human, let alone of Christian, society. Thirdly, factions. Fourthly, sensuality, to which cause must be referred that atrocious kind of iniquity, whereby the very walls of the schools were defiled with writing and the vilest pictures;[101] so that the tender age, which had come innocent, must go away more polluted with crime, than imbued with learning, becoming hateful to God himself. Fifthly, an aversion for Divine worship, inasmuch as disputations and graduating festivities and lectures have constantly been transferred to those days and those hours, when by Divine precept public worship is due."[102]

The means organized by Ignatius into a method of moral education I will sketch in the words of his contemporaries. Ribadeneira, his biographer, says: "Those means are employed by our Masters, whereby virtue is conceived in the hearts of the pupils, is preserved and augmented. They are morning prayer, for obtaining grace from God not to fall into sin; night prayer and a diligent reflection on all the thoughts, words, and actions of the day, to do away by contrition of heart with all the faults committed; the attentive and devout hearing of Mass every day; frequent and humble confession of sins to a Priest; and if they are old enough, and great devotion recommends it, and their confessor approves of it, the reverent and pious reception of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ; teaching and explaining the rudiments of the Christian faith, whereby the boys are animated to live well and happily. Besides, great pains are taken to know and root out the vices of boyhood, especially such as are somehow inborn and native to that age."[103]

Here, by the way, the reader may advert to the fact that the confessional, of which mention is made, never comes in as part of the external means of moral development; nor is a superior ever the confessor of those under his charge, except when desired to be so by the free choice of the subordinate himself. A general law of the Catholic Church ordains it thus.