The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Ignatius Loyola as an Educational Reformer.

Read before the Reading Branch of the P.N.E.U., on March 17th, 1904.

"But in all these requisites for good and faithful janissaries of the Church, they were far excelled by the new order of Ignatius Loyola. Rome, I believe, found in their services, what has stayed her fall. They contributed in a very material degree, to check the tide of the Reformation. Subtle alike, and intrepid, pliant in their direction, unshaken in their aim, the sworn, implacable, unscrupulous enemies of protestant governments, the Jesuits were a legitimate object of jealousy and restraint." [from Constitutional History of England, Vol 1 of , Henry VII to George II by Henry Hallum.]

So writes our own Hallam, and we may well seek to know something of the man of this new order, from whence he came, who and what he was.

In the Basque Province of Guipuscoa [Spain] there rose a proud feudal castle, which belonged from the 13th century to a highly aristocratic family bearing the name of Loyola, and there, towards the end of the 15th century, resided Bertram, son of Perez, lord of Loyola and Ogne, and his wife. Six sons and four daughters had already been born to them, and their mother resolved to bring forth her youngest son in a stable, in memory of the birthplace of the Redeemer at Bethlehem. In 1491, eight years after the birth of Martin Luther, the infant son of the lord of Loyola was born and received the baptismal name of Don Innigo or Ignatius. As a boy he showed the most remarkable capabilities, but, unfortunately, they were not cultivated. Whilst he could, as regards learning, do little more than read and write his mother tongue, he was well instructed in fencing, dancing, and music. At the age of fourteen he was appointed a page at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and there, in a brilliant and luxurious atmosphere, he received the finishing touches of knight-errantry. He had the reputation of being vain, high spirited, and eccentric, yet an agreeable, brave, and self-sacrificing comrade who never broke his word.

In appearance he was well made and had a broad open forehead, grey eyes, and a fine Roman nose, somewhat bent, a healthy colour, and a symmetrical strong build, though not above the middle height.

After some years of Court life he was seized with a strong ambition for a military career. By the aid of an influential friend he was soon advanced to the rank of officer, a distinction he rendered himself worthy of in every respect, for he not only gave most glorious proof, on the battle-field, of a brave heart and a strong arm, but also, in his leisure hours he sought to perfect himself theoretically in systematic study of the art of war. Hence Loyola was well versed in the graces of Court life and well trained in the exercise and discipline of military pursuits. The traditions of his youth represented him as one in whom seeming contradictions met and were reconciled--as, for example, he was portrayed as a voluptuary, revelling in sensuous delights, yet a knight of surpassing hardihood; as a profligate in his habits, yet edifying his companions by modest speech and decorous manners; as being quickly roused to fierce anger, yet as quickly subdued to gentleness and peace; as destitute of learning yet a cultivator of poetry; as habitually distracted by conflicting aims, yet living under the constant domination of one master passion: that for controlling and directing the conduct of other men.

In 1521 Pampeluna was besieged by the forces of Francis the First. The garrison capitulated, but Ignatius, with one follower, retired to the citadel. Here, whilst heroically defending a breach, his leg was struck by a ball and splintered. His foes were enthusiastic in admiration of his courage. They carried him to the tent of their general, and a French surgeon attended to the fracture. The surgeon did his work badly, and the brave soldier allowed the leg to be broken again and re-set. Fever set in and a long illness, during the course of which, as a splinter yet protruded from the wounded limb, Ignatius submitted to tortures from which a martyr might have shrunk. His sufferings were all to no purpose. The handsome knight and courtier must henceforth proceed on life's journey with a limb mis-shapen, mutilated and contracted.

During the long tedium of convalescence Ignatius read books of knight-errantry, and became fascinated in legends of saints. He resolved henceforth to sheath the sword, once desecrated to earthly ambition, and cast his shield over the Church, consecrating his future life to the glory of the Virgin Mother of God. His resolution was speedily rewarded, for it was said that in a vision the Virgin Mother, environed in light and clasping her Infant to her bosom, revealed herself to the adoring gaze of her champion. At that heavenly vision all fantasies of worldly and sensual delight, like exorcised demons, fled from his soul into eternal exile. An evening and night spent in the sanctuary of Montserrat--as once before he had passed a vigil of arms when dubbed a chevalier by the King of Navarre--a morning begun with the Holy Sacrifice attended, and the Holy Communion received, opened to him a new era; and he went forth bound by a new oath of fealty to the service of the King of heaven. At the side of the altar in this sanctuary of Montserrat, the Abbot of the monastery, 81 years later, committed to a marble tablet this record of the event:--"Blessed Ignatius of Loyola here, with many prayers and tears, devoted himself to God and the Virgin. Here, as with spiritual arms, he fortified himself in sackcloth and spent the vigil of the night. Hence he went forth to found the Society of Jesus in the year MDXXII." The next period of preparation was characteristic of the thoroughness of Loyola. The disciple must not be above his Master; so the life of former luxury was changed for abject poverty. Seven hours were daily given to prayer, during which he remained silent and motionless as a statue. His week-day diet was bread and water, to which on Sunday he added a condiment or herbs and ground ashes boiled together. Next to his skin he wore alternately an iron chain, a horse-hair cloth, and a sash of prickly briars. The bare earth was his bed.

This was at Manreza, which he soon quitted for a neighbouring cavern, approachable only by forcing the body through thorns and briars. At its extremity it was dark as the grave. In this dismal cell, he delivered over his mind and body to pains which entirely eclipsed those of his hospital at Manreza. At one time he would commune with the Virgin Mother; at another, he would wrestle with the spirit of evil.

At the verge of madness Ignatius paused. A vision was vouchsafed to him. Standing on the steps of a Dominican church, reciting the office of Our Lady, Heaven was laid open to his eyes--the past ages of the world were rolled back in his presence. For eight days he remained in a sort of trance. Then he returned to show how the delirious enthusiasm of the cloister might be combined and reconciled in the heroic nature, with the shrewdness of a keen man of business.

The paroxysms of mental struggle and of bodily suffering were not without purpose and effect. Loyola had read of Benedict, of Francis, of Dominick, and the idea of founding a new monastic dynasty was gradually assuming shape in his mind. He had demonstrated his mastery over himself, he would henceforth control with a master-mind those who would join him in the greatest conquest man had yet dreamed of. So he took his place in human life with other men; but he laboured with a purpose which had already placed in his visionary grasp the sceptre with which, in distant years, he was destined to rule his spiritual family, and through them, to agitate the nations of the earth, from the Ganges to La Plata.

After a year more or less spent at Manreza, Loyola journeyed on foot to Italy, and then to the Holy Land. On his return he decided on a new course of probation. He had discovered that neither great desire for good, nor deep piety, furnished all the instruments needed for the spiritual regeneration of the world. And so, in 1524, at the age of 33, the man, who in turn has been Courtier, Soldier, and Anchorite, took his seat at the school bench in Barcelona, and began his Latin declensions. At the end of two years, he was judged by his teacher to be competent for approaching higher studies.

To secure and to enjoy the best advantages of a great University, he left Barcelona for Alcala, where in 1526, he entered on the study of Logic, using the summa of Di Soto, and the physics of Aristotle. All might have gone well had he been content to remain a simple student, but during 18 months spent at Alcala, he endeavored to carry on an apostolic mission, and thereby came into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. They adjudged him blameless, and at the same time forbade him to preach for four years. He thereupon turned his back on Alcala, and proceeded to the famous University of Salamanca.

The time was soon to come for a pleasant revenge, and apparently he knew of it long before it came. Just six years after the foundation of his Order, when he sent Francis Villanova to open a house at Alcala, not only did he find men of the University embracing his Institute, but two years after that, the whilom persecuted pilgrim received in a single twelve-month, thirty-four doctors into the society, all from that one seat of learning. There mere passing by of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandea, who had become a humble follower of Ignatius, made the choicest spirits flock to his standard, and all over Spain colleges sprang up as if from the soil.

Loyola had not been a fortnight at Salamanca before he was arrested and kept in prison for nearly a month. His examination by the authorities were resulted, as at Alcala, in his being praised for his zeal and forbidden to be zealous. Nothing daunted, he now resolved to try his fortunes in another land, and to continue his studies in the then greatest philosophical and theological centre of of the world--the University of Paris. The war then raging between France and Spain would have hindered most men, but no risks daunted Loyola as he made his way on food from Barcelona to Paris, which he reached in February, 1528.

At Paris his previous studies were brought under review with the result that whilst logic, philosophy and theology had been all taken up together, his real progress was inappreciable, whilst his knowledge of the Latin tongue (an indispensable vehicle then of all real learning) was too slight to be of much use. Here his character asserted itself again; and in no instance is he more true to himself, "governing himself in great things and small by reasons most high," than when, with little facility and less inclination, he sits down again at the age of 37 years to resume his Latin declensions. In 1534 he finished his course by passing the Examen lapideum (the rocky test), considered the most searching of all the examinations in the Paris Academy, and became a Master of Arts of the University of Paris.

He now entered on his theological studies. It was evident that the obstructions which had thwarted so many of his efforts heretofore were disappearing one by one. And more than that, the means were being placed in his hands for the great work before him. These means were a company of men. He was in the midst of a devoted little band, each one of whom he had won individually. They were Peter Lefevre and Francis Xavier; James Lainez and Alphonsus Salmeron, both of them were mere youths; there were Claude Le Jay, John Coduri, Nicholas Bobadilla, Simon Rodriguez; and lastly, the only one who at this time was a Priest among their number, Pasquier Brouet. Among these, "never at their head though considered a father by all, never leading the way, though on that account showing himself the more effectively a leader, Ignatius was all in all to each one of them." He had previously acquired some valuable experience in selecting and forming companions. But such as he had gathered round him in Spain were no longer with him. Each one of his present party was a picked man.

"On the dawn of the day on which, in the year 1534, the Church of Rome celebrated the feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady, a little company of men emerged in solemn procession from the deep shadows cast by the towers of Notre Dame over the silent city below them. With a stately though halting gait, as one accustomed to military command, marched at their head a man of swarthy complexion, bald headed, and of middle stature, who had passed the meridian of life, his deep-set eyes glowing, as with a perennial fire, from beneath brows which announced to every observer a commission from on high to subjugate and to rule mankind. So majestic, indeed, was the aspect of Ignatius Loyola that, during the 16th century few, if any, of the books of his Order appeared without the impress of that imperial countenance. Beside him, in the Chapel of St. Denys, knelt another worshipper, Francis Xavier, whose manly bearing, buoyant step, clear blue eye, and finely-chiselled features contrasted strangely with the solemnities in which he was engaged. Not less incongruous with the scene in which they bore their parts were the slight forms of the boy Alphonso Salmeron, and of his bosom friend Iago Laynez, the destined successor of Ignatius in his spiritual dynasty. With them Nicholas Alphonso Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriguez--the first a teacher, the second a student of philosophy--prostrated themselves before the altar, where ministered Peter Faber, once a shepherd in the mountains of Savoy, but now a priest in holy orders. By his hands was distributed to his associates the seeming bread over which he had uttered words of more than miraculous efficacy; and then were lifted up by their united voices, uttering in low but distinct articulation an oath, at the deep significance of which the nations might well have trembled. Never did human lips pronounce a vow more religiously observed, or pregnant with results more momentous. That day, then--August 15th, 1534--was the real birthday of the Society of Jesus."

By a vow there and then taken, they bound themselves to renounce all their goods by a given date and to betake themselves to the Holy Land. Failing in that they would throw themselves at the feet of the Pope and offer him their absolute service. Meanwhile they pursued their studies and as each of the two following years brought round the 15th day of August, it found them in the same place and with the same solemnity, and with an enlarged number renewing this vow. The legal birthday of the order came only with the Papal Charter on September 27th, 1540.

For the next six years Ignatius travelled to Spain. To France again, and even to London, to discuss and arrange his future plans for work. Returning to Italy he waited nearly a year at Venice to carry out his project of journeying to Jerusalem. War made this impossible. Now, in accordance with the terms of the vow he and his companions proceeded to Rome to offer their services to the spiritual head of Christendom. Recognition for the new order was procured only after considerable difficulty and prolonged delay, for reasons which we need not here go into, and it was not until 27th September, 1540, that Pope Paul III, affixed the Papal Seal to the Bull of Regimini, the Magna Charta of the order of Jesus. Ignatius proceeded at once to the election of a general of his now formidable band, and (after twice refusing the proffered honour) was unanimously chose to be the first general. When once elected, Ignatius, as might be expected, wielded the sceptre as became an absolute monarch, possessing the qualities of a great ruler. He ruled magnanimously and with unfaltering decision, reverenced, but exciting no servile fear; beloved, but permitting no rude familiarity; declining no enterprise which high daring might accomplish, attempting none which headlong ambition might suggest; self multiplied in the ministers of his will, yielding to them a large and generous confidence; trusting no man whom he had not deeply studied; assigning to none a province beyond the range of his capacity. And to what ends were his government and his ambition directed? First to preaching, for he must needs secure the common people; secondly to confession, for by this the Jesuits were to hold the immediate guidance and government of men's consciences. With these two objects it is not our present purpose to deal. They became in an incredibly short time, inextricably bound up in the history of Europe. Thirdly, and with this we have something to do, they devoted themselves to the education of the youth. They had intended to bind themselves to this last by a special clause in their vows, and although they had not yet done so, the practice of this duty was made imperative by the most stringent rules. To gain the rising generation was among the purposes most earnestly pursued, and to accomplish these purposes, they laid aside all secondary matters, and devoted themselves wholly to such labours as were essentially of immediate result, and calculated for the extension of their scheme. This was a system, pre-eminently practical, evolved from the visionary aspirations of Ignatius, and from ascetic conversions he had made. There resulted an Institution framed with all that skilful adaptation of means to their end which the most consummate worldly prudence could suggest.

The latter years of Loyola's life were devoted to the compilation of a written Constitution of the order. Whilst practically finished during his lifetime, it was not until two years after his death that it was finally ratified and promulgated. The constitution consists of ten parts, the fourth one is on studies. In length this fourth part alone fills up some twenty-eight out of one hundred and eleven quarto pages, as it stands printed in the latest Roman edition. The legislation about studies is thus seen to be about one-fourth of the whole. It has seventeen chapters. In one of them (on the method and order to be observed in treating the sciences), the founder observes that a number of points will be treated of separately in some document approved by the general Superior. This is the express warrant contained in the constitution for the future Ratio Studiorum, or system of studies of the Society of Jesus.

In this brief sketch of the probationary period (if I may so call it) of Loyola's life, I have endeavored to interpret that life in its most favourable aspect. Loyola recorded his personal experience in a striking work called Spiritual Exercises. He there lays down a splendid rule for charitable judgment.

"It is to be supposed," he writes, "that every pious Christian man should be more ready to interpret any obscure proposition of another, in a good, rather than a bad sense." It is interesting, no less than instructive, in this connection to quote Loyola's usual formula on hearing his conduct impugned--
"God grant they never talk ill of me, and be saying the truth."

I have dwelt at some length on the life of Ignatius. It might be possible, I admit, to treat the educational tenets of Loyola and the Jesuits, quite apart from the life of the founder of the Jesuit system. But I cannot help feeling that a critical appreciation of the educational system which he founded can only be adequately effective if the system itself be judged by the life and mission of the founder. Take, as examples of the close connection between the experience of life and its legislative outcome, such cases as these.

Loyola himself, with absolute self-surrender, chose to live a life of abject poverty, begging his bread from door to door, and from city to city. The King whom he served was poor, naked, hungry, and not where to lay his head, and the King's soldier would follow in his Master's footsteps. But he learned in that state two fundamental truths affecting student life.

1. That the pursuit of science cannot successfully or easily subsist in absolute penury--that the culture of the mind is impeded by the duty of providing for the body. So he legislated that, though poverty might be the rule of the Order, yet the period of "Student life" must be freed from the care of obtaining subsistence, otherwise the best results could not be obtained. He experienced the weakness which arises from illness and disease, so he ruled that "great pains must be taken to protect the health of the members."

In his own student life he had attempted too many studies at once, and he had unwisely attempted to carry on an Apostolic mission side by side with those studies. Therefore he decreed that all studies must be ordered, methodised, and systematised. He defined the limitation of specialised study by ruling that when the student had obtained knowledge in each department of learning sufficient as a groundwork of good general knowledge, then, and only then, might he specialise. A complete education was to be the culture of all--specialisation, the appointed life of certain individuals.

The educational policy of Ignatius Loyola--we might not lose sight of this--was to effect a "moral regeneration."

"In circumstances rendered acutely critical by the agitations of the epoch, social, moral and religious, it was a favourite 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."

He therefore lays down as first principles:

1. That, among all pursuits, the study of virtue is supreme.

2. That, supreme as virtue is, without secular learning the highest virtue goes unarmed, and at best is profitable to oneself alone.

It is impossible in the limited time at our disposal to-night to analyse, even in a broad and general way, the Ratio Studiorum. I must therefore restrict myself to some of the ideas and rules laid down, many of which, be it remembered, were new to the world. It is not easy for those living in an age when a good pedagogic library contains hundreds of volumes to go back to the days of first principles. Here then are some of them obiter dicta: Corporations are notoriously forgetful, therefore ungrateful, so the permanent duty of the order towards benefactors must be insisted on. Social conditions were tending to neutralise the Christian religion, and so to undermine Christian education. The Jesuits were to uphold existing institutions and not remove the ancient landmarks.

Free Education. As defined by Jesuit authors the education of youth meant the gratuitous teaching of letters and science; from almost the first beginnings of grammar up to culminating science of sacred theology, and that for boys and students of every kind in schools open to all. (We are just beginning in England to consider this question of freeing higher education and to talk about a possible educational ladder).

Knowledge must be imparted by the best teacher available.

"The professor's talents are well spent in the exposition of the gravest doctrines of theology, philosophy, and science. Neither he nor anyone else is too great to be a schoolmaster, a tutor and a father to the boy passing from childhood on to the state of manhood, that boyhood which, as Clement Alexander says, furnishes the very milk of age, and from which the constitution of the man receives its temper and complexion."

There was in Loyola's days no such thing as a state education. Loyola lays down formally and expressly the principle that the labour of education must become a fundamental plan of a religious order. This was an epoch of prime importance in pedagogics, for education thus became the work of moral body, incorporated with no limitation either as regards time or place. Education must be endowed. The society guaranteed by its constitution that members would endow the work at their own cost with that which is the most expensive endowment among all others, the labours, the attainments, and the lives of competent men, all gratuitously given.

An Educational Code. The last issue of the Ratio Studiorum was in 1599. It embodied the experience of 59 years of pedagogic experiment, of which the last 15 were occupied in the elaboration of the book itself. Regarded as an educational code, we have one striking and instructive feature. Whatever the universal experience had not yielded as a positive result, or as applicable to all places, was not embodied. Teacher are different, national customs vary, vernacular tongues are not the same. With regard to these mutable elements the maxim of the order in studies, in teaching, in conducting colleges, was the same as that which it proposed to itself in the various other functions of practical life. An exponent of the Institute states the maxim thus:--

"One should have a most exact knowledge of the country, nation, city, manner of government, manners of the people, states of life, inclinations, etc., and this from histories, intercourse, etc. General indications alone are given with regard to these variable factors. The same is done with respect to new sciences which from the time of the Renaissance were felt to be approaching and developing. Subsequent legislation arises to meet them as they come."

The careful and systematic method adopted in the organisation of studies in the various grades can be judged to some extent by a typical section. We reside in a town in which the organisation of a modern college has been carried on in our own time, and on lines which we have followed and doubtless criticised. Apply the instance we know of, to the organisation laid down by Loyola in the sixteenth century, and I think we can hardly admire too much the sound basis of his plan and the foresight shown by his grasp of the immediate, no less than the future needs of higher education.

Colleges. In the founding of his colleges, Ignatius laid down these conditions. (1) There should be a location provided with building and revenues, not merely sufficient for the present needs but with a view to future development. (2) These material conditions include a reference to the maintenance of the faculty. These must be substitute professors, scholastic students (? fellows), and a church for spiritual ministration. (3) There must be no prospective likelihood of a deficiency of students. (The monks of Clairvaux in their valleys, the Benedictines in their mountaintops, the Franciscans in a rural town, Ignatius in the great cities.) (4) External (social and political) conditions must be so favourable as to secure freedom and liberty of action. These are the chief conditions. The animating principles are:--(1) An intellectual and moral scope clearly defined. (2) A distinct intention to promote public and individual order and enlightenment rather than the local good of any city. (3) A tendency in the local institutions to become rather a great one than a small one, with more degrees of instruction, more and more eminent professors and a greater number of the right kind of scholars.

The central object of his attention therefore was the teaching body, the faculty, the college properly so called. The college was the body of educators sent to a place. It is only by derivation from this meaning that the term is applied to buildings and appointments. It is the body of men that makes the Institution.

To give permanence and continuity to the work, Ignatius carefully legislated for a constant succession of young men, who by their good lives and talents, would, it was hoped, grow into virtuous and learned men. Then the young men were to be trained to obedience, and to act together in the strength which comes of uniformity, sociability and harmony. Homo unus, homo nullus "A man alone is as good as no man at all." This is one instance, and only one, of the care and attention to details, which educational organisation receives in the Ratio Studiorum.

Ignatius was engaged upon Ratio Studiorum, and left it unfinished at the time of his death. It was finally completed in 1581 by Father Claudius Acqua Viva, the fifth General Superior of the society. The form or method of studies is to be found in the statement that there is a best way of doing everything, and not least in education; and in order to gain the unity of method (the best way adapted to circumstances), there was a need of a consistent uniformity of doctrine. We have only time to take at random a few other statements from the Ratio, but they may be sufficient as indicating some of its teaching.

"Definiteness of matter, no less than unity, are required from the first for an effective system of education."

"Let no one defend any opinion which is judged by the generality of learned men to go against the received tenets of philosophy or theology, or the common consent of theological schools."

The professor is not to shew himself more familiar with one student than with another. He is to disregard no one; to foster the studies of the poor equally with the rich. Each professor is engaged not in filling some patch of his own, but contributing his industry to the general field of all.

The manner of teaching the young is oral and tutorial, all through the Jesuit system the manner followed is oral. In the examination of the lower classes where writing is admitted, it is only as a specimen of skill and composition that writing enters the examination exercises; with the younger students the manner of teaching is oral in its most specific sense. Repitition was insisted upon. "He is often to require an account of the lectures and to see that they are repeated." Ignatius recommends nothing with more urgency than disputation and constancy in its exercise. So much stress does he lay upon it so as not to let the students of letters and grammar go without it.

"It would be very useful if from time to time, the professors treat with their audiences and converse with them; not about vain rumours and other affairs that are not to the purpose, but about those which appertain most to their well being and education; giving point to particulars that seem to meet their wants, and shewing them in a familiar way how they ought to conduct themselves in studies and piety. Let the professors be persuaded that a single talk in private, animated with true zeal and prudence on their part would penetrate the heart more and work more powerfully than many lectures and sermons given in common."

Again:

"Those means are employed by us whereby virtue is conceived in the hearts of the pupils and is preserved and augmented."

The instruction of youth had been hitherto left to those men, who after long study of profane literature, had turned their attention to theological subjects, which they treated in a manner never very acceptable to the court of Rome, and was eventually altogether reprobated by it. The Jesuits took upon themselves to expel these men from their office, and to occupy it in their stead. They began by the closest observance of a carefully considered system, dividing the schools into classes, and pursuing in these a method strictly uniform, from the earliest principles of learning to the highest degree of science. They paid great attention to moral culture and formed their pupils to good character and correct manners; they were favoured by the civil power, and, finally, their instructions were given gratis. Whenever a Prince or city had founded one of their colleges, no private person needed further to incur expense for the education of his children. They were expressly forbidden to ask or accept remuneration or reward, as were their sermons and masses, so was their instruction altogether gratuitous. there was not even the usual box for offerings in their churches. As men are constituted, this must have added to make the Jesuits popular, the rather as they taught with great ability and equal zeal. "Not only were the poor assisted by this practice," says Orlandini, "it was a solace to the rich also." He remarks further on the extraordinary success of their efforts, "many are now shining in the purple of the hierarchy," he declares, "whom we had but lately on the benches of our schools, others are engaged in the government of states and cities. We have trained up bishops and their counsellors, nay, other spiritual communities have been filled from our schools." The most remarkable talents among these pupils were appropriated by the order whenever that was possible, as may well be supposed, and the society had in fact formed itself into a body of instructors for all ages, that, extending over Catholic country, acquired an amount of influence altogether incalculable. From the Jesuits, education received that tone of religion by which it has since been marked, and was impressed by a strict unity of character, whether as regards method, doctrine, and discipline.

Ignatius was not merely a legislator and a statesman, but, to the last breath he drew, a soldier also. He was a general whose authority none might question; a comrade on whose cordiality all might rely; a leader who partook in every danger and hardship of his followers, a strategist of consummate skill and of all-embracing survey. The spiritual society of which he was the architect had, after less than a quarter of a century, acquired an extension almost as great and an establishment almost as firm as that which the Papacy had gained by the unremitting labours of 1,000 years. On the 30th July, 1556, that strong man received the summons to render up his soul to Him who gave it.

[In this paper I have quoted copiously from Stephen's Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (essay on The Founders of Jesuitism), and from Loyola, by [Thomas] Hughes in The Great Educators series, published by Heinemann.]

Typed by Erin Romano, Jun. 2024; Proofread by LNL, Jan. 2025