Thomas Hughes - Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits

On the one side, those tens of thousands of Christian youths, who were aiming at all the posts of influence in Church and State, and who, entering their native university, or journeying to foreign ones, began life there at as early an age as twelve or fourteen years, to remain in this environment some nine or twelve years more, became, as was natural, the living, swarming members of a state of society so dissolute, that successive occupants of the Papal See depicted the condition of things as one of moral contagion. In the manner of thought and mind which prevailed, no form of theoretic error was wanting. In philosophy, there was scepticism; in theology, heresy; while, in politics, Cæsarism and absolutism became rife. Then, at the end of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance came; and one of the first things, which it expressly and formally did, was to renew in life, art, and politics, the same old paganism, upon the ruins of which, so many centuries before, Christianity had begun its upward and laborious ascent. Newly fashioning then much of what was old, Christianity had augmented all this with so much which was new, that in a thousand years it had made a Renaissance possible. And now the form of this Renaissance threatened its own ascendancy in morals and in life.

On the other hand, the old spirit of conservatism in religion, and of preservation in the matter of morals, maintained itself for a time, through those bodies of religious men and clergymen, who had left the cloister or the seminary, to take up their abode in the secular seats of learning. It was this spirit which originated the latest and best development of the universities, that of the "college" system, established in their midst. Salamanca had twenty colleges; Louvain, forty; Paris, fifty. Still, in the final issue, there was now scarcely any reserve force of cloistral or episcopal learning behind the universities, and outside of them. And the religious and the clergy themselves, who at best were not a little out of their element from the moment they migrated into the secular environment, conformed insensibly to the conditions in which they found themselves, and so far ceased to be the power they had been.

Witness, in the time of Ignatius, the Paris University, as described by contemporary records. "It was fallen from its ancient splendor. The bonds of discipline had been gradually relaxed; studies were abandoned; and with masters, as with scholars, all love of letters, and respect for the rule, had given place to sombre passions, to political hate, to religious fanaticism and dissolute habits." 7 7 Histoire de l'Université de Paris, par Charles Jourdain, liv. i, ch. 1; quoted with other testimonies, in the learned work, Un Collège de Jésuites aux xvii and xviii siècles, Le Collège Henri iv de la Flèche, par le P. Camille de Rochemonteix, 1889; tom. i, ch. 1, p. 3.

Here then we have two elements in the educational condition of Europe, which explain the rise of the Jesuit system. One was the positive, concrete fact, embodied in that great developed system of university learning. The other was a negative element, the decline therein of the essential moral life. These two factors are not mere antecedents in the order of time, as being only prior to the method of Loyola. One of them, the university system, supplied the very material out of which his method and matter were taken; yes, and the men themselves, the Jesuits who applied the principles of reform to education. The other factor, which I have called negative, that decline of the essential moral life, was the adequate occasion, which prompted Ignatius to approach the question of education at all. For we may say with confidence that, if the universities of the sixteenth century were still doing the work which originally they had been chartered to do, the founder of the Society of Jesus would not only have omitted to draw out his system as a substitute for them, and as an improvement upon them, but he would have done, what he always did with anything good in existence; he would have used what he found, and have turned his attention to other things more urgent. He did use these university centres for his own young men, until he had better educational institutions, and a better method of his own in progress.

Hence the educational problem, when it falls under the notice of Ignatius, presents itself as the identical one of old, that of moral regeneration. But it is a different state of the same question. In circumstances rendered acutely critical by the agitations of the epoch, social, moral, and religious, it was a favorite contemplation of his to look with compassion on men living like the blind, dying, and sinking into eternal depths; on men talking, blaspheming, reviling one another; on their assaulting, wounding, slaying one another; and all together going to eternal perdition. 8 8 Exercitia Spiritualia. It was from this moral point of view that he descended into the arena of education.

But before he can teach men, or mould teachers of men, or even conceive the first idea of legislating for the intellectual world, he must himself first learn. There are two fundamental lessons which he does learn, and they go to form him. One is that, among all pursuits, the study of virtue is supreme; the other, that, supreme as virtue is, yet, without secular learning, the highest virtue goes unarmed, and at best is profitable to oneself alone. He learns these two lessons, not only in theory, but in practice. To accomplish the purpose of the latter, he takes his seat upon the scholars' bench, and begins to learn with little children. Though he may not meet with brilliant success in the art of learning, still in the art of understanding what learning is, and in the lessons of experience, he becomes a finished scholar. He remains even then too much of a chevalier to give up a cherished idea of his about a spiritual crusade in the East. And it is only when thwarted in this project that, like a true knight, he simply turns to another side of the field. He stays in the West. He is still the Captain of a Company. But he becomes also a legislator among doctors; and, amid his other works, he effects an educational reform.

In his whole campaign, we may discern two characteristics in the spirit of his movements. One is that of defence, the other that of advance. His method of defence showed itself in the reassertion of old principles, in the conservatism of morals, – a plan of campaign, which determines the whole frame of mind, and the social construction of the Company. It rests on the principle of upholding what is, and not moving the ancient landmarks. On the other hand, his advance is towards the solution of the highest questions which can interest mankind. These formed part of the very object and direction of the Order's march. And so it came to pass, that his Company drew to itself that class of minds which are most powerfully arrested by the prospect of solving such questions, especially when times are agitated. His times were agitated, if any ever were, more so than our own, when the same questions still must dominate. His were times of wars with Turks in the East, and with Christians at home; of battles lost and won, with their effects reaching into every household; of royal and imperial administrations confused and overthrown; of new opinions without number; of the Church losing ground along the whole line of the frontier, and withal new worlds looming over an horizon, where from the beginning of time the unknown had brooded in absolute darkness. At such a moment, "Defence and Advance," or as the Papal authority expressed it in the solemn instrument which chartered his Institute, Defensio ac propagatio fidei , were stirring watchwords to men of parts, who felt restive under the inactivity and inefficiency of older methods, on older lines.

I will not pause to say, that the personal poverty and exact obedience, required in the new service, presented no obstacles to the minds and characters which were otherwise attracted to his standard. The antecedents of all antiquity seem to show that such conditions, to such minds, are rather an inducement than a check. And if one takes notice that to this was added, in the Order of Jesus, an absolute equality, whereby every formed member binds himself to accept no dignity within or without, or, at least, to affect no dignity at home or abroad, which will prejudice his full franchise as a member, then, perhaps, the attractiveness of such a life, the conservatism and intense concentration of the Order, as well as the alacrity and endurance manifested in the service, will not appear inexplicable to the minds of this age, in which, under a very different form, the same equality is called liberty, is made to construct republics, to bring down monarchies, and develop some of the most potent agencies for unfolding the energies of men. Yet the liberty of this latter equality reflects but faintly, and as from a broken surface, the freedom of him, who having liberated himself from the shackles of the world, and from all solicitude as to his movements, office, and place, finds in turn, as the German historian expresses it, "his own personal development imposed upon him"; 9 9 Ranke, History of the Papacy, vol. i, book ii, § 7. and, in the firm companionship of one aim, formation, and life, enjoys the manifold support and ready sympathy of individualities as developed as his own.