Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

This system of prelection, which in addition to the perfection of its technique, required erudition from every branch of learning,304 made of the Professor anything but a technical pedagogue. Voltaire noticed it, speaking of his own Professor. "Nothing will efface from my heart," he wrote to Père de la Tour, Rector of the Collège Louis-le-Grand, "the memory of Father Porée, who is equally dear to all that studied under him. Never did man make study and virtue more amiable. The hours of his lessons were delicious hours to us. And I should have wished that it was the custom at Paris, as it used to be at Athens, that one, at any age, could listen to such lectures. I should often go to hear them. I have had the good fortune to be formed by more than one Jesuit of the character of Père Porée, and I know that he has successors worthy of him."305

The productions of such Professors replenished the literature of the classics, as we may see in the great editions, or bibliothecæ classicæ, published during the present century. Father De la Cerda of Toledo, in his three folio volumes on Virgil, in 1617, gave to literature an encyclopædia of political and moral observations, including geography, history, and the natural sciences.306 His technical work was not inferior; for his "Grammatical Institutions" became in 1613, by an exclusive privilege, the standard of all the public schools in Spain. Father Nicholas Abram, whose "Epitome of Greek Precepts in Latin Verse" went through fifty editions in twenty-two years, published in 1632, while Professor at the College of Pont-à-Mousson, two volumes octavo on Virgil, which were then republished constantly at Rouen, Paris, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, etc.307 Undertaking the same labor, in behalf of Cicero, he issued two volumes folio, "by which John George Grævius profited in his edition of Cicero, Amsterdam, 1699; as well as the editor of Cambridge, whose work appeared in 1699, 1710, and 1717."308 Father De la Rue's (Carolus Ruæus) Delphin Virgil is a familiar work in France, Holland, England; so, too, De Merouville's Delphin edition of Cicero, which was often reproduced at Cambridge, London, Dublin, etc. The same we see with regard to Sanadon on Horace, Brumoy's great work on the Greek Drama, René Rapin's various critical and poetical works; and so of the rest. Of Père Rapin's thirty-five works, there are few which were not translated into various European languages; and Oxford, London, Cambridge, have been among the most active centres of republication, or translation into English.309

4. This chapter, which has extended beyond the usual limits, cannot close better than with a word on books, a matter intimately connected with its subject. The Fathers of 1586 set down some principles with regard to the proper supply and use of books, as well as the expurgation of the classical standard works;310 and accordingly the Ratio of 1599 ordains that "the students are neither to be without useful books, nor to abound in useless ones."311 A multitude is considered useless, because "it oppresses the mind, and interferes with the convenient preparation of the lesson. Of books by more recent authors few are to be allowed, and those very carefully selected." Yet, "a variety of authors gives a richer vein to the boys, and makes imitation easier."312 Here the Fathers proceed to give directions for the composition of an entirely new kind of work, which would be of great use in the colleges. It is exactly the species so well known in our days under the various titles of "Precepts of Rhetoric," "Art of Composition," etc. As the development of pedagogical literature, which we took note of in a former chapter,313 had already made some progress, the critics say: "Some one most versed in all these matters should be deputed to gather whatever is best in this line, and to compile in one treatise, written in an elegant style, all that he has selected, about the art of writing epigrams, elegies, odes, eclogues, sylvæ (that is, materials, "objects"), comedies, tragedies, epopœiæ, a brief method of chronology; explaining also what is the historical (or narrative) style, the poetic, the epistolary, the different kinds of speaking, and other such matters, all to be illustrated by examples."314 Elsewhere they call for a similar work of a higher order, on the Art of Oratory. The sources which they designate for such a compilation are "the numerous publications of our Professors of Rhetoric, as well on the art itself, as on classical orations."315 These compendia, or text-books, were a new idea in education.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CLASSICAL LITERATURES. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL

The subject of Literary Exercises and School Management is treated in such a manner by the critics of 1586, that justice could be done to it, only by transcribing, word for word, the several chapters of the preliminary Ratio. As that is impossible, within the limits of space remaining, I shall endeavor to trace the outline.

1. There is one fundamental point, however, which should be touched on, to meet a latent query in the mind. It refers to the kind of education projected throughout. It is evidently not a special training which is contemplated; not the training of specialists, or technical students. All through the system, the field of pedagogical activity is that of a general culture; and, therefore, properly an education. The result aimed at is a general one, that of developing in the young mind all fundamental qualities; of adjusting it, by the early development of all natural fitnesses, to any special work of thought and labor in the mature life of the future. It would lay a solid substructure, in the whole mind and character, for any superstructure of science, professional and special; also for the entire building up of moral life, civil and religious. That such a general culture should go before the special seems to be obvious. To supplant it by the special, or even to abridge the process, is not only to sacrifice the general culture; it has a more serious effect than that. By a false economy, it cramps, curtails, and reduces to the smallest proportions whatever possibilities existed of general and special qualifications in the youthful mind. Without a broad, radical formation below, the amplitude of organic growth above must necessarily fall short; the roots underneath not having shot out, the development above is wanting in vigor, to ramify according to its environment, and use its opportunities. In a boy's mind, there is needed a suppleness of general powers, as only the young mind can be made supple, while at the same time it is preëminently apt to be general. It is what Seneca calls curiosum ingenium, "an inquisitive genius," open to everything, and prying to open everything. Memory is then at its flourishing stage, ready to be cultivated throughout the extent of a potential vastness, which will never again be experienced in life. If cultivated richly in its season, it will be capable afterwards of every kind of ready yield, according to its acquired tenacity, and according to the richness of the seed deposited in it. The imagination, too, is at the stage of impressionable and vital expansion, and is keenly sensitive to the lights and shades of objective life. These are either brought under its observation, or, better still, are pictured for it in beautiful literature; since the fine fancy of great minds paints nature, as nature herself is not found dressed at every one's door. The opening judgment also is receptive of the thoughts and wisdom, which other minds have thought out and handed down, encasing it, as they did so, in a style worthy of their own vigor, and presenting it as the heritage of the past to the present, of the wise old age of the world to its youth, which may be wiser still. And thus in each individual youth, the judgment being tenderly nursed, and learning ripening with age, what was before in the memory passes gradually into the whole character and competency of the man.

In the system which we are considering, the instrument employed for working these effects is a literature in the hands of a competent teacher; it is a great literature, and a double one. The great literatures of Rome and Greece have always been considered adequate instruments of universal culture. Under a literary aspect, the eloquence and poetry of Greece had been the mistress of Roman excellence. Under a philological aspect, the Latin tongue has been the principal basis of our modern languages, as formed in the history of Christendom. In both of them, the varied elements of richest thought are brought into contact with the undeveloped, but developing nature of the youth; glimpses of human life, individual, social, and political, favor his inquiring eyes, and lead him to feel the finest springs of human sentiment. Better still, he feels these springs as touched by the greatest masters of expression; and he conceives thought as rendered in a style worthy of the greatest thinkers; and that, in languages, one of them the most delicately organized, the other perhaps the most systematically elaborated, of all tongues living or extinct. And, besides, these two literatures come down to us, bearing in their own right what no other tongues can convey. Not as translations, which, in their best form, exhibit only a respectable degree of mendicancy, and represent other men's living thoughts in a decent misfit, these two literatures come down to us bearing in their own right all the historic memories of antiquity, as well sacred as profane; all the masterpieces of eloquence and poetry, belonging to no less than two out of the very few great epochs, those of Pericles and Augustus; all human philosophy, from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, down to St. Thomas Aquinas, and, further down, to Leibnitz and Newton, both of them men of classical letters; in fine, all the traditions, the Faith, and Divinity of Christendom.

To these considerations we may add one more characteristic of the classical literatures, as instruments in the class-room, and we shall have seen enough on our present topic, to understand the theory which underlies the Ratio Studiorum. These tongues are dead. They are not the language of common life. They are not picked up by instinct, and without reflection. Everything has to be learned by system, rule, and formula. The relations of grammar and logic must be attended to with deliberation. Thought and judgment are constantly exercised in assigning the exact equivalents of the mother tongue for every phrase of the original. The coincidence of construction is too little, the community of idiomatic thought too remote, for the boy's mind to catch at the idea, by force of that preëstablished harmony which exists among most modern tongues. Only the law of thought and logic guides him, with the assistance of a teacher to lead the way, and reassure his struggling conception.

And when, in the last instance, the boy comes to write and to speak the language so learned, and quickens it, though dead, with the very life of actual speech which makes modern languages live, we have the supreme test and proof of successful toil, that which consists in the power to reproduce. We have also the very specific advantage, in this case, that the toil has been of the most valuable kind; it has been personal labor, spent in the freshness of life on complete self-culture. For that great law of all success in life, personal labor, has been honored in the most remunerative way, by cultivating memory, exercising judgment, and acquiring in the same thoughtful, reflective manner two languages together, Latin and the mother tongue, Greek and the mother tongue, each systematically helping the others by analogy and contrast. And, withal, what is more congenial to the young than letters, language, talk?

As to the working of this Jesuit system, it is very much of a commonplace, in pedagogic history, that "a handsome style" was aimed at, and a handsome style was the outcome. The Scottish Professor, whom I quoted on a former occasion, states very exactly the value of this result. Speaking of the Structure of Sentences, he says: "Logic and Rhetoric have here, as in many cases, a strict connection; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with order, is learning to think with accuracy and order; an observation which alone would justify all the care and attention we have bestowed on this subject."316 And, in another connection, he quotes, with the approval which it merits, the Roman rhetorician's saying: Curam verborum, rerum volo esse sollicitudinem, "I would have a sufficient care be given to the diction, but the thoughts must be the object of scrupulous attention."317 This latter principle, of diction first and matter afterwards, as translated into a process of educational development, assigns, in the Ratio, five grades, or seven years, more or less, to be spent on the acquirement of style, chiefly as to its body, or, if you like, its form; then two great courses of Science, natural and revealed, or Philosophy and Theology, for the acquirement of the same style, chiefly as to its soul, or, if you wish so to call it, the substratum of matter. From both together issues the thoroughly cultured man; as the well-known phrase has it: Le style c'est l'homme, "A style is the man himself." And, if we have just had occasion to take notice that two of the great literary epochs of the world's history, those of Pericles and Augustus, are made present to us by the classical literatures, it is a subject of historical verification that a third great literary epoch, the age of Louis XIV, was created under the influence of this system.

The manner in which the critics of 1586 discuss the question of Greek shows the practical eye they kept on the requirements of actual life, and the conditions of concrete surroundings.318 Their conclusions are embodied in a rule of the Director or Prefect of Studies: "He should not grant an immunity, particularly for any length of time, from either versification or Greek, except for a grave reason."319

Upon this theme there is a facetious touch in the report of the Upper German Province, which was sent to Father Aquaviva some three years after the final Ratio was published. The deputies say: "Some ask for an exemption from Greek and versification, in behalf of the older monks and nobles. But as the rule itself insinuates that an exception can be made, for a sufficiently grave cause, there is no need of a change. If we are facile in the matter, whether with monks or nobles, we shall end by eliminating Greek altogether. But, if one is seen to be altogether inept and incapable, the impossibility of the thing exempts him; for, if God himself does not enjoin impossibilities, why, neither should we impose Greek on such disciples." Father Aquaviva replies, "That is correct."320

2. Under the head of Exercises, the preliminary Ratio treats elaborately and minutely the literary direction of a class. The subjects are orthography, and all that pertains to it; the prelection, as explained before; the repetitions, daily themes, and the method of daily correction; the recitation of lessons by heart; parsing; and the speaking of Latin. Jouvancy gives the order of the daily class exercises. And he makes this reflection: Few things are to be taught in each class, but accurately, so that they remain in the minds of the boys; the teacher is to remember that these young intellects are like vases with a narrow orifice, which waste the liquid, if it is poured in copiously, but take it all, if it comes in by drops.321

There are, besides, a number of aids to School Management. These are the division of the class into parties of ten apiece, or decuriæ; the exposition, once or twice a month, of some passage by a student, in the presence of invited friends; contests between rivals or parties; the delivery of an original piece or else an oratorical contest, every week; the exhibition or delivery of original poems; the annual distribution of premiums; the use of the stage, when "the boys can produce some specimen of their studies, their delivery and powers of memory." The composition of the tragedy and minor drama devolves, as we saw before, upon the Professors of Rhetoric and Poetry.

A general condition in the management of a class is absolute silence and attention. Besides, it belongs to the college programme to insure application, not only in school to class exercises, but out of school to private study, especially when holidays intervene. The usual weekly relaxations scarcely rise to the rank of "holidays." For the amount of time to be assigned in private study to composition and other work is part of the daily order, whether the students be alumni, day-scholars, or convictores, boarders. All must have enough to occupy them, "that the boys be deterred from roaming about to their hurt." The same applies to the ordinary intervals between school hours, "particularly," say the Fathers, "on the days in summer, when there is much time in the early afternoon, before classes are resumed; and we hear the court-yard resounding with cries and noisy pastimes, hour after hour."322

Boys were the same genus then as now. It took all the efficacy of a benign firmness to control that element which tries the experience of every age. The German Fathers draw a graphic picture of these sixteenth century boys. They are commenting on the rule which requires the Prefect of Studies at the end of school to be on the ground and supervise. They write thus to Father Aquaviva: "Many object to this; but it seems reasonable. For, if somebody is not on hand, some one whom the scholars revere, then like a herd,323 all in a heap, they will fill the whole place with their yells and uproar, their tussling, laughter, and jostling. Now, it is necessary to require the observance of decorum on the part of our scholars; since, if we leave room anywhere for unmannerliness, it will get at once into the school-rooms and ruin everything."324 In this sense, a certain small number of rules in the Ratio, only fifteen in number, and very short, are directly presented to the students for their observance. "None of our students shall come to college with arms, poniards, knives, or anything else that is prohibited, according to the circumstances of time or place." Swords and daggers were part of a gentleman's personal equipment in those times. "They must abstain entirely from swearing, injurious language or actions, detraction, lies, forbidden games, from places, too, that are dangerous, or are forbidden by the Prefect of Schools; in fine, from everything which is adverse to purity of morals." Other rules follow, equally radical for those times, and reconstructive of education for the future.325

For, in these days of ours, we are not accustomed to see students walk in and out of a lecture room as they choose. And many other inconveniences of the sixteenth century are not usual with us. But the reason is, that we come three hundred years later than those times, and are enjoying the fruits of other people's labors.

An ascendency of personal tact and address, conspicuous in the Jesuit teachers, is usually commented upon and referred to some cause or other, in themselves or in the general organization of the Society. Omitting that, I prefer to designate one secret of control, which is full of significance, though not so likely to arrest attention. It is an insensible method of organization, making its way among the youths themselves, and subserving the purpose of general collegiate control. There were, in all, four classes of auditors, mingled together, and intermingling their influences. That of the strongest of course preponderated. There were Jesuits themselves in the higher courses. There were boarders, convictores, who remained for ten, or rather eleven months of the year, entirely under the control and direction of the Fathers. Among these were whole houses of Religious or Ecclesiastics. Besides, there were alumni, day scholars, that great body of students originally contemplated in the Constitution of Ignatius. These, however, owing to their divided life, partly at school, partly at home, were not found to represent, as a rule, the fullest effects of the education. Finally, there were externi, external students, such as not being entered on the books, still attended lectures; and to this category we must refer such general gatherings as those several thousand hearers, who were in attendance for hours, before the time, at Father Maldonado's lectures in Paris, and made him go out into the open air to satisfy all. Now, besides the bond of affection which attached scholars to the Professors, there was another bond, that of their character as Sodalists. This character denoted membership in the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a religious association which is most highly commended in the Ratio Studiorum, and which gathered into itself all that was excellent in the body of students. The literary and scientific "academies" were recruited only from the Sodality. Thus, by a double process, an aristocracy of virtue and talent was created among the students themselves, tending not only to the maintenance of order, but to the active development of all those qualities which an educational system most desires.

CHAPTER XVII

EXAMINATIONS AND GRADUATION. SCHEDULE OF GRADES AND COURSES

1. All examinations, as projected by the Ratio Studiorum, are conducted by word of mouth. Writing enters the examinations, only when the written word itself is the subject of investigation. Thus, in the grades of the literary course, the composition of the student, from its elementary qualities of spelling, punctuation, grammar, up to the most varied forms and species of style, comes under examination for advancing to the next grade. But even then, after each of the three examiners has inspected carefully the written composition, and consulted the Master's reports of the individual's progress during the year, they call in the writer, submit his paper to him, and subject him to an oral investigation upon it. After that, they proceed to the other branches, all by word of mouth.

In the higher courses, where style is no longer a matter of study, writing never appears in examinations. Written dissertations, special lectures, literary pieces of all kinds, composed for certain occasions, are merely a part thenceforth of the exercises incident to those courses.

To speak here only of Grammar and the Humanities, each new-comer, on presentation of the credentials required, is examined by the Director or Prefect of Studies, who "places him in the class, and with the Professor, adapted to the boy's qualifications; in such a manner, however, that the young person be rather worthy of the class above, than unworthy of the class in which he is placed."326 It is the remark of the earlier critics, that "severity must be practised in examinations, since it is more injurious for boys to ascend a grade, when not fit, than, if really fit, to be kept where they are; and, in addition to that, if they are advanced when not qualified, they create no slight disturbance in the upper class."327

Into the lowest grade, neither youths advanced in age, nor boys of very tender years, are to be admitted. The plea that parents merely want the children to be in good hands is not a sufficient reason for taking them; the only exception is for young boys who are really far advanced for their years.

These conditions of age, and sufficient preparation for entering the classical course, illustrate very distinctly several features of the policy which the Society pursued. Father Joseph Calasanzio, a priest of great zeal, petitioned the Rector of the Roman College, which was flourishing with more than two thousand students, to open some schools for the unprovided children of Rome. There is a Latin word coined from the first four letters of the alphabet, for designating this elementary class of scholars, who are not yet qualified for literature. The word is abecedarii. The term is employed both in the Constitution of Loyola and in the Ratio. The Rector declined. Father Joseph applied to the General Claudius Aquaviva. He too declined; he referred to the Constitution of the Society, which had been distinctly and in all its parts approved by the Popes. Unable to have his idea carried out by the Jesuits, Father Joseph opened his first "Pious School" in Rome, which was soon frequented by 1200 little boys, abecedarii. After the founder's death in 1648, his work spread into the vast system of Scuole Pie. In our times, the revised Ratio of 1832 recognizes the element of Preparatory Departments. It merely requires that they be entirely under the same jurisdiction as the College proper.328