In the first general assembly, Father James Laynez was elected to succeed the founder, in the office of General Superior. The matters which concerned the assembly in its legislation, and the new General in his administration, were the proper temporal foundation of colleges, the admission of convictus or boarding-colleges, and other questions, which may be noted in the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica.[131] Laynez governed the Order during nine years, till 1565.
Father Francis Borgia, who had resigned his dukedom, and by this example led Charles V to seek repose in the monastery of St. Yuste, was elected third General. His virtues and his presence, wherever he appeared, exercised such a magic influence that, when he had merely passed through Spain, colleges had sprung up as from the soil. Three Provinces had been formed in that country alone, within thirteen years from the foundation of the Society. But this multiplication of colleges, often not sufficiently endowed for their future development, was already seen to be one of the threatened weaknesses of the Company. The special legislation passed at the time of his election regarded the proper establishment, in every Province, of philological, philosophical, and theological seminaries, for the formation of Professors.[132] Instead of the proportionate number of Jesuit students being supported on each collegiate foundation, this legislation, and much more that followed later, ordained a system of concentration in seminaries of humane letters, philosophy, science, and divinity, which were conducted respectively by corps of eminent Professors selected for the purpose, and were maintained either on some munificent foundation specially made for this object, or by a due proportion of the other collegiate foundations. At this date it was that colleges for the formation of diocesan clergy, or "Bishops' Seminaries," as they are commonly called, were coming into existence, in accordance with the decrees of the Council of Trent. The manner of admitting them, as annexed to colleges of the Society, and thereby availing themselves of the Jesuit courses, was regulated by this assembly. In no case were they to be provided with a corps of Professors distinct from the faculty of the college.
In 1573 Father Everard Mercurian, a Belgian, was elected to succeed Saint Francis Borgia. He was sixty-eight years old at the time of his election, and lived eight years after. He drew out of the Constitution various summaries of rules for the guidance of the chief officers in the Society. Those which concern studies are given in a few pages of the Monumenta.[133]
At his death, a young man thirty-seven years old, who had entered the Order only about twelve years before, was elected to succeed him. This was Claudius Aquaviva, son of Prince John Aquaviva, Duke of Atri. He was a man who, for his superior executive abilities and his services rendered to the Order in times most critical, has been regarded as a second founder. As to what his administration saw effected in the matter of education, the Ratio Studiorum bears witness. He governed the Society during thirty-four years.
Mutius Vitelleschi, one of the mildest and gentlest of men, but not on that account ineffective in his government, succeeded Aquaviva, filling a term of thirty-one years, from 1615 to 1646. Various pedagogic interests occupied the attention of the general assembly, by which he was elected; in particular, the promotion of Humane Letters, the means of supplying Professors, and the searching character of the examinations ordained, at every step in their studies, for the members of the Society.
The farther the Society advanced in history, the less there was of new legislation. The tension grew on the side of administration; and the urgency shown by general assemblies evinces this. The philological seminary was developed for the junior scholastics; and a classic form drawn up for it by Jouvancy. As distinguished talents for preaching and governing were treated with the special favor of being allowed to compensate for some deficiencies, in the qualifications requisite for the degree of Profession in the Order, so special legislation provided for similar eminence in literature, in Oriental languages, in Greek and Hebrew.
Mathematics had, from the first, been a department of activity native to the energies of the Company. The schools of Geography and History developed in the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The school of modern Physics then asserting itself, and running so close upon the field of Metaphysics, was subjected to regulations in the assemblies of 1730 and 1751.
After the restoration of the Order, social and educational circumstances being so immensely altered, the whole ground had to be surveyed again, with a view to adaptation; the curriculum had to be expanded, and, where necessary, prolonged to meet the growing demands of the exact sciences; and an indefinite number of specialties to be provided for, by the selection and fostering of special talents. These special lines are, in the terms of the latest general assembly, "Ancient Languages, Philology, Ethnology, Archæology, History, Higher Mathematics, and all the Natural Sciences." We are thus brought down, in the history of general legislation, to the very recent date, 1883, less than ten years ago.
Meanwhile the Generals, on whom rested the burden of supervising all this, discharged the functions of administration. Father Vincent Caraffa promoted and urged on the pursuit of Belles Lettres, and defined positions in Mathematics. Father Francis Piccolomini, in a general ordinance for all the higher studies, defined the stand to be taken by Professors, as representing the Society itself in their chairs; so, too, Father Goswin Nickel, with reference to certain new issues. Both he and his successor, Paul Oliva, had to face the new contingencies which arose from the charges of the Jansenists against what they called the loose moral teachings of the Jesuits. Father Oliva stimulated the pursuit of excellence in Humane Letters, in the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic languages. Positions of Descartes, Leibnitz, as well as of certain others in Philosophy and Theology, were animadverted upon by the Generals Tamburini and Retz. Father Ignatius Visconti urged again the pursuit of perfection in literary matters, and in the manner of conducting the schools of literature. And the General Aloysius Centurione, shortly before the Suppression, laid down the clearest principles with respect to the study of Moral Theology, and the examinations therein. Since the restoration of the Order, Fathers Roothaan, Beckx, and the actual General, Anthony M. Anderledy, have devoted their own attention and directed that of the Society to the ways of accepting, with undiminished energy, the altered and unfavorable situation, in which the present century has placed the Order, and hampers the revived Institute.
For this immense organization had been almost entirely destroyed by the stroke of a pen—the signature of Clement XIV given in pencil. They dispute whether he gave it at all; or, at least, whether he meant it. Howsoever that be, the Order, which had been erected on the principle of obedience, received the word and disappeared. The rock on which it had set its foot became the altar of a sacrifice; and that a sacrifice offered without a struggle or a remonstrance, to betray any change in the spirit, with which Ignatius, two hundred and thirty-three years before, had vowed obedience to the Vicar of Christ. An epigram had been written, on the occasion of the first centenary, under a picture of Archimedes and his lever; Archimedes is getting a foothold for his lever to move the world; and beneath is the epigram:—