Jesuit college

“ In an organization like his, there are no men at large to lend. And, were the most eminent men assigned for work outside of the Jesuit colleges and universities, the younger generation of the Order would practically be debarred from the influence of their type of eminence. And again, if there were eminent men laboring in a country, without the stable abode of a Jesuit college in the same place, there would be no propagating the distinctive work of the Order itself, by means of the men of that country. ”

“ At a modest estimate, there must have been some two hundred thousand students in the Jesuit colleges when they were at their height. Prominent graduates. Their graduates seem to have become prominent in every important activity of life, and included a large number of the noted authors, prelates, statesmen, and generals of the time. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the ideals and content of education had somewhat changed, and the Jesuits did not adapt their course 138 to the new conditions. ”

“ Bandelier, writing in "The Catholic Encyclopedia" (IV-123) , tells us that in the district in which Cartagena was situated, "the religious of the Society of Jesus were the first during the Colonial period to found colleges for secondary instruction; eight or ten colleges were opened in which the youth of the country and the sons of Spaniards were educated. In the Jesuit College of Bogotá the first instruction in physics and mathematics was given. ”

“ Their judicious arrangement of the studies, their admirable superintendence, their exemplary discipline, their many inducements to application, rendered the Jesuit colleges the resort of all those who aspired to eminence in the literary or learned world. The greatest men in all the Catholic countries of [49] Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were educated by the Jesuits.
All the property bequeathed or given to the Society is made over to the colleges and universities, which, however, have not the power of administering it. ”

“ The later Jesuits sought to enjoy their wealth and power and social position. They became—as rich and prosperous people generally become—proud, ambitious, avaricious, and worldly. They were as elegant, as scholarly, and as luxurious as the Fellows of Oxford University, and the occupants of stalls in the English cathedrals,—that is all: as worldly as the professors of Yale and Cambridge may become in half-a-century, if rich widows and brewers and bankers without children shall some day make those universities as well endowed as Jesuit colleges were in the eighteenth century. ”

“ The efforts of the Jesuits for a college are first realized through the Jesuit visitor, Diego Garcia, who is well assisted by Pedro Chirino. Luis Gomez, the first rector, secures the necessary civil and ecclesiastical permissions, in 1601. The college opens with thirteen fellowships, which are given to [14] the sons of influential citizens, a number soon increased to twenty. Rules and regulations are made for teachers and scholarships. ”

“ If they have not the best of masters, it is very much to be feared that they will betake themselves elsewhere and then every effort on our part to repair the damage will be futile."
In the second place, after the year 1762, that is twenty-seven years before the Revolution, there were not only no Jesuit colleges at all in France, but no Jesuits, and consequently there was an entire generation which had been trained in schools that were distinctly and intensely antagonistic to everything connected with the Society. ”

“ In a little while the college of Stoneyhurst was deemed insufficient for the number of pupils who repaired thither from every part; so that, within a quarter of a mile, at Greenhurst, was established a seminary for boarding and educating boys preparatory to their entering Stoneyhurst. The most striking characteristic of Jesuit education, as we have already frequently remarked, was, and still is, that almost all the persons educated in their colleges consider themselves in a certain way attached to the order, and to the end of their lives work to their utmost for its aggrandisement. ”

“ No faculty at Paris, Rome, Salamanca, or Oxford ever preserved the control over [Pg 162] its 50, 20, or 8 colleges that each Provincial exercised over his 10, 20, or 30 colleges, or the general of the Order over the 700 colleges, with 22,126 members in the Order."
At the present day we find the Jesuit colleges in almost every part of the known world. In Rome and in China, in South Africa and North America, in the Philippine Islands as well as in Ceylon and Egypt, in Australia and Cuba, as well as in Syria and the city of New York. ”

“ It was during the Suppression, but happily the Jesuit traditions had been maintained in the college. He has left his impressions in writing: "This public performance has convinced me anew of the cleverness of the Jesuits. They rejected nothing that could be of any conceivable service to them, and they knew how to wield their weapons with devotion and dexterity. This is not cleverness of the merely abstract order; it is a real fruition of the thing itself; an absorbing interest which springs from the practical uses of life. ”

“ Accordingly the Bishop of Pamiers was induced to solicit the assistance of the Jesuits in his diocese, and had no difficulty in finding enough of them to engage in that mission, for they were held in constant readiness to obey the orders of their superior. These Jesuit missionaries [Pg 100] are represented as having caused many who had professed Protestantism to renounce their "heretical errors," and as having commenced their educational plan of operations by establishing a college at Pamiers. ”

“ Many were the Protestants who sent their children to the Jesuit colleges: and these children were kindly received by the masters, treated with great indulgence, and premiums were freely bestowed upon them even in preference to the Roman Catholic children. The Jesuits thus acquired an immense influence, especially over the female part of the population, who were proud of their children’s learning ”

“ The Jesuit Methods of Teaching.—The methods of teaching and the splendid qualification of the instructors were from the first distinctive features in the Jesuit colleges, especially when one considers how little attention Trained teachers, up to their time had been given to the preparation of teachers. No one could teach in the lower colleges who had not passed through the course in philosophy, while professors in the universities had first to complete the theological course. ”

“ The municipal officers of the cities, the bureaus themselves hastened to petition the King, that their colleges might be confided to religious communities. Thus it was that the greater part of the old Jesuit colleges fell into the hands of the Benedictines and Bernardines, of the Carmelites and Minims, of Jacobins and Cordeliers, of Capuchins and Recollects, of Doctrinaires and Barnabites, and above all, of the Oratorians. But all these Religious, except the Oratorians, fell far short of the Jesuits. The greater part had not even any idea of teaching, etc. ”

“ In a detail of restrictions he mentions the superintendence of the seminaries being consigned to the ministry of public inspection, and asserts, that priests of the Greek national church are directed to attend the Jesuit colleges, to instruct the pupils of the Greek communion in religion. I am unacquainted with the weight of authority to be allowed to sir John's correspondent; but, certainly, the result of my inquiries differs {92}widely from the information communicated by him. The Jesuits have, ever since their establishment in Russia, been treated with unsuspecting liberality. ”

“ It is evident that the members of the Society are the chief subjects of this completeness of formation; and that for two reasons. In the first place, no other students, even if convictores, that is, boarders in the Jesuit colleges, can be brought under such a thoroughness of system. ”

“ In Germany and the neighboring countries, there were few Jesuit colleges without an observatory. They were to be found at Ingolstadt, Gratz, Breslau, Olmütz, Prague, Posen, etc. Most of them seem to have shared the fate of the Society ”

“ For years it was a favorite school for English Catholics and it rejoices in having had twenty [500] of its students die for the Faith. It continued its work for a century and a half. When the expulsion of the Jesuits left the college without teachers it was handed over to the secular clergy, but when they arrived there were no boys. They had all decamped for Bruges in Belgium, and there the classes continued until the general suppression of the Society in 1773. Even after that, the English ex-Jesuits kept the college going until 1794, when the French Revolution put an end to it. ”

“ The man who has been led thus to disregard one of his most sacred parental duties, in order to found a Jesuits’ college or endow a professorship, will be saved, because they promise him—“In every college of our Society, let masses be celebrated once a week for ever, for its founder and benefactor, whether dead or alive. At the beginning of every month, all the priests who are in the college ought to offer the same sacrifice for them ”

“ If the estimation of any body of teachers is to be rightly adjudged, surely there can be no better source of evidence with regard to them than what is to be obtained from their students. Almost without exception pupils of the Jesuits are most ardent in their praise. Only those who do not know them personally have been bitter in denunciation of them. To know them well enough is to love and honor them.
A few of the names of the great pupils of the Jesuit schools will serve to exemplify the sort of men that they were influencing by their education. ”

“ The education of youth in schools is one of the prominent features of the Jesuits' institute. Their founder saw, that the disorders of the world, which he wished to correct, spring chiefly from neglect of education. He perceived, that the fruits of the other spiritual functions of {194}his society would be only temporary, unless he could perpetuate them through every rising generation, as it came forward in succession. Every professed Jesuit was bound by a special vow, to attend to the instruction of youth ”

“ At the end of their course these masters, aged from twenty-five to thirty years, were now once more remanded to the benches, and applied, during four years, to the study of theology, under able professors, in the principal city and college of their province; thus forming a perpetual colony of forty or fifty mature and improved students, such as rival colleges could seldom equal. "At Paris," says cardinal de Maury, "the great college of the Jesuits was a central point, which attracted the attention of all the best writers, and of persons {208}of distinction in every rank. ”

“ In their seminaries were trained up the Scholars—those members of the order who were thought to be possessed of such talents as to qualify them to fulfil afterwards the office of professor. But the most numerous class, and perhaps the most useful for their purpose, was the class of day scholars. It is well known that all persons, of whatsoever rank, are admitted into the Jesuit schools, and receive the same instructions. At school hours the prince’s son, who is brought up in their boarding-houses, descends and takes his seat on the same bench with the son of a cobbler. ”

“ Educational Methods and Institutions of the Jesuits.―The Jesuit order never interested itself in elementary and popular education. The pulpit and confessional, as well as the founding and control of spiritual brotherhoods and sisterhoods, afforded ample means and opportunities for impressing their influence upon the lower orders of the people. On the other hand, the order laboured unweariedly to secure professorships in gymnasiums, seminaries for priests, and universities, and that, not merely in the department of theology, but also in all the other faculties. ”

“ The necessity for other colleges and seminaries will of itself create or continue them. The university will give them an example and model to follow, will furnish those not already amply provided for from the bosom of old and learned religious orders with professors, will give those who desire it a chance to complete their studies after leaving college by residing for a time within its walls, and will reign as a queen among lesser institutions, giving tone, character, and uniformity to the scientific and literary community of Catholic scholars throughout the country. ”

“ The great argument for secluding young ecclesiastics in seminaries entirely separate from secular colleges is, that their morals, their piety, their vocation, are otherwise endangered. We reply to this by a suggestion intended to do away with the objection to a university life, and at the same time to show how its advantages may be secured. Let both systems be combined. Let there be a college exclusively intended for young ecclesiastics, in which they shall be kept under the discipline of the Little Seminary, at the university. ”

“ About the same period, William Allen, “to perpetuate,” as Butler says, “the Catholic ministry in England,” resolved upon establishing colleges abroad, in which English priests should be educated, preparatory to exercising their calling at home. His exertions were crowned with success. A college, which he consigned into the hands of the Jesuits, was established in Douay in 1568, and Pope Gregory XIII. endowed it with £1500 yearly. When the Jesuits [153] were expelled from Douay, and their college sacked by the people, the Cardinal of Lorraine called them to Rheims. ”