The Jesuits (5 page)

I
n 1640 the Jesuits celebrated their first centenary. The provinces around the world entered enthusiastically into the occasion. Their superior general, Muzio Vitelleschi, exhorted them to use the occasion to thank God for what in the past hundred years he had wrought through the Society. The Jesuits indeed had much to be thankful for. Historians often describe the mid-seventeenth century as the high-water mark of Jesuit influence and success, after which such troubles began to afflict the Society that the eighteenth century was for them “the century of calamities,” which culminated in 1773 with Pope Clement XIV's worldwide suppression of the order.

No doubt, by 1640 the Jesuits were widely influential in the world of culture and religion. Admired and sought after, they moved with seemingly equal ease among the highest and the lowest strata of society. Although they aroused distrust and resentment in certain quarters of the church, they for the most part seemed to
be doing very well indeed. They were roundly hated and feared by Protestants, which for most Catholics was a sign the Jesuits were doing their job.

At the time of the centenary, there were about sixteen thousand Jesuits. They were divided into some forty provinces—five, for instance, in France; four each in Italy and Spain; three in Germany; two each in India and Sicily. Provinces were now further organized into so-called assistancies according to certain common traits such as language or geographical proximity. The French provinces, for instance, formed the French assistancy. However, assistancies were purely an organizational convenience. It was the provincials who singly or acting as a group made binding decisions within an assistancy. The superior general always had the last word—and sometimes of course the first word.

The number of Jesuits per province varied, but European provinces tended to have around five or six hundred members. According to a survey in 1626, the Peruvian and Mexican provinces were relatively large among those outside Europe, with 390 and 365 Jesuits respectively. In that same year, the Goa province had 320 members, the Philippines 128, but the vice-province of China only 30. The Flemish province with 860 members in 1640 competed with the Roman province for the title as the largest in the order. The Walloon province was not far behind.

Provinces typically contained, besides a few simple residences and a novitiate, a considerable number of colleges in proportion to the number of Jesuits. The colleges were by far the largest institutions in the provinces and, as mentioned, were the base for other ministries besides teaching. Smaller colleges might enroll barely a hundred students, the larger ones a thousand or more. Almost
inevitably it seems, some larger colleges evolved into universities by offering programs in philosophy and, less often, theology.

Not counting the colleges in Rome itself, the Roman province in 1640 operated twenty-five—in Tivoli, Perugia, Florence, Ancona, and so forth in an area corresponding to the Papal States and the Grand Duchy of Florence. In the five provinces of France, the Jesuits ran about seventy colleges, and about ninety in the German assistancy, which included Austria and Bohemia. Each of the two Belgian provinces operated eighteen, which was an astounding concentration for such a small area. Outside Europe there were thirteen colleges in Mexico, for instance; eleven in Peru; and nine in Goa.

Such figures are approximate because of the variety of institutions sometimes designated as colleges and because at a rate difficult to track schools opened and others closed. They in any case reveal how massive the Jesuits' commitment to education was and how well established the Society had become in urban centers even outside Europe. Both the school and the church attached to a college nurtured the development of Marian congregations serving students and various groupings of adults. These congregations, also known as sodalities, were the Jesuit adaptation of lay brotherhoods or confraternities so popular in Catholic Europe since the late Middle Ages. Their purpose was, in the first place, to sustain the members' religious devotion, but the congregations also often engaged in works of social assistance to the needy and in sponsoring cultural events such as concerts and oratorios. The Jesuits founded them in every place they labored.

Vitelleschi, the sixth superior general, held the office for thirty years, from 1615 until 1645. Early in his generalate he presided over an extraordinarily happy occasion, the canonization in
1622 of Ignatius and Xavier, and over the great celebrations of the event throughout the Society. The celebration in the Roman College, though particularly splendid, is emblematic of others and, indeed, of the Jesuits' engagement with the arts to which their schools had committed them.

The entire inner space of the College was redesigned for the occasion for a celebration extending over several days. At one point a group of fifty-four students, wearing crowns, classical garb, and medals of Saint Ignatius, danced and sang a dithyramb, the lyrics of which could be read on a banner hanging on the walls. The central part of the celebration was entrusted to three theatrical performances, which succeeded one another in the ceremonial hall and required continual change in the enormous scenographic apparatus constructed for the occasion.

Theater had by then become a distinguishing mark of Jesuit schools and was considered by the Jesuits an essential component in their educational program. It taught poise and put eloquence, the mark of a leader in society, into practice. It sparked enthusiasm in the students and rescued them at least for a while from the drudgery of the classroom. Even schools of modest size generally produced two or three plays annually, which further anchored the institution as an essential element in the cultural life of the city. The limitations of “school drama” are well known, but to put it into perspective we need to recall that Lope de Vega, Calderón, Andreas Gryphius, Jacob Bidermann, Corneille, and Molière received their first training in theater in Jesuit schools.

Despite their concentration on literary genres as the core of the curriculum, many of the schools included a strong program in mathematics. Two years after the Roman College opened its
doors, it added under the rubric of philosophy a chair of mathematics, understood to include geometry, optics, and astronomy. A major turning point occurred when in 1563 the German Jesuit Christoph Clavius assumed the chair, which he held until his death in 1612.

Clavius by force of his writings and the prestige he enjoyed among his peers launched a tradition that continued strong among the Jesuits until the suppression in 1773. An important consultant for Pope Gregory XIII on the reform of the calendar, he was also a teacher of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary in China, who used the mathematical skills he learned at the Roman College to win favor in the imperial court. Although Clavius had friendly relations with Galileo and supported some of his findings, he continued to hold to a basically Ptolemaic system.

The teaching of natural philosophy in Jesuit schools suffered from the condemnation of Galileo, but the discipline managed to survive and, though it for a while lagged behind in this rapidly developing field, it caught up. By the middle of the eighteenth century, physics taught in the Jesuits' colleges had largely assumed the characteristics of physics taught in other European schools. It by then was vastly different from what it had been when Clavius laid the groundwork. With the exception of Roger Boscovich (1711–1787), the Jesuits produced no scientist of first rank, but they kept abreast of what was going on and incorporated new developments into their teaching and writing.

Their vocation as missionaries provided them with opportunities for creating knowledge in geography, cartography, anthropology, and botany that were extraordinary. The reports the missionaries sent back became available to the larger academic community for two reasons special to the Jesuits. First, members of
the Society were encouraged to keep up a steady correspondence among themselves. Second, what they wrote, especially about “curious” phenomena, was produced by men who were or had been teachers, and it got fed into a network of Jesuit teachers who knew how to exploit this information and release it into the public domain. In their classrooms all across Europe, for instance, Jesuits taught the geography they learned from the missionaries' maps.

José de Acosta's firsthand description of the lands and peoples of Peru and Mexico,
Historia natural y moral de las Indias,
is among the more important and famous of such Jesuit publications. First appearing in 1590, it within two decades went through four editions in Spanish, two in Dutch, two in French, three in Latin, two in German, and one in English. Meanwhile, dozens upon dozens of botanizing Jesuits described and gathered plant specimens from as far away as China, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Paraguay, and Canada and sent them back home. This phenomenon enabled Jesuit teachers in Europe to assemble cabinets, create botanical gardens, and publish multivolume compendiums on natural history. The Jesuits opened pharmacies in which they distributed natural remedies such as quinine (known as “Jesuit bark”) that their confreres had sent them from the missions.

The Jesuit educational and cultural enterprises display a coherence surprising for an organization made up of men from such different national and socioeconomic backgrounds stationed almost around the world. The coherence was due, most basically, to a shared European culture and then to Ignatius and his close collaborators, Polanco and Nadal, who produced a template of procedures that emphasized reflection, consultation, and clear articulation of goals and means. An outstanding product of that tradition relating to education is the
Ratio Studiorum
or “Plan of
Studies” issued in 1599 by Vitelleschi's predecessor as general, Claudio Aquaviva.

The
Ratio
was the result, typical of the Jesuits of this period, of widespread consultation and discussion within the Society. Its purpose was to ensure high standards and uniform practices in Jesuit schools in different parts of the world. In 1584 Aquaviva delegated a committee of six Jesuits to consolidate earlier documents addressing the subject. He then sent the results to the provinces for criticism, which poured into the Jesuit curia in Rome in great abundance. In 1591 he sent a new document for a three-year trial, which received a less negative response than the first. The results enabled him in 1599 to promulgate the definitive edition.

The
Ratio
consists essentially in a series of job descriptions for officials and teachers. It laid down the goals for each stage of the students' development and the pedagogical exercises that would ensure the goals were met. It reflected and codified assumptions about education common in the era, and therefore it assumed but did not articulate what those assumptions were. Only through inference can they be discovered. The
Ratio
without doubt stabilized practice in the Jesuit schools and set a high standard for them, which were huge benefits. But times change. The
Ratio
eventually began to impede the Jesuits' ability to respond to new circumstances, except when they decided virtually to ignore it or interpret it in the most generous way.

Jesuits exercised their ministries in many different countries and contexts. The history of the order, despite much that transcended
specific situations, reflects this fact. In Italy during this period, for instance, they suffered only one major setback. When Pope Paul V in 1606 placed the Republic of Venice under interdict, the Jesuits, along with the Capuchins and Theatines, sided with the pope and were therefore expelled. Although the pope lifted the interdict the next year, the Republic did not readmit the Jesuits until fifty years later. The Society had already become identified as an agent of a foreign power, a problem that often made its situation precarious elsewhere as well.

In Italy the Jesuits otherwise enjoyed relative freedom and prosperity, largely due to the prestige that their schools brought them. The smashing success of the Roman College shed luster on all their educational institutions. The superiors general brought to its classrooms from everywhere in Europe the order's most gifted teachers, such as Clavius from Germany, Francisco Suárez from Spain, Pierre Perpinien from France, and Roberto Bellarmino from the Roman province itself.

Adding to the luster of that province and to Italy in general were two youths of noble blood who entered the Society and died young in Rome with a reputation for sanctity—the Pole Stanilaus Kostka and the Italian Aloysius Gonzaga. In 1605 Pope Paul V allowed them the title of “blessed,” which was four years before he allowed the same for Ignatius. The Jesuits immediately held them up as models for the boys in their schools, and their portraits soon were to be found in every Jesuit church.

After the hostile pontificate of Paul IV, the popes generally took a favorable or neutral attitude toward the Society. Gregory XIII (1572–1585) was particularly friendly and showed special generosity toward the Roman College. Although Clement VIII (1592–1605) was not hostile to the Jesuits, he was certainly not
particularly favorable. During his pontificate occurred the Society's first major internal crisis since the death of Ignatius. Its point of origin was Spain.

In a small but influential group of Spanish Jesuits, which included José de Acosta, smoldered resentment of Aquaviva for what they believed were his high-handed methods. But along with an animus against Aquaviva, they advocated that rectors and provincials be elected on the local level instead of being appointed by the general in Rome. Such a change in the
Constitutions
would be radical.

Through reports sent to Rome, these Jesuits aroused the concern, first, of Pope Sixtus V and then of his successor, Clement. Aquaviva was able to dissuade the former from taking action, but when the problem recurred under the latter, he was much less successful. Clement, conscientious but easily intimidated, ordered Aquaviva to convoke a General Congregation of the order, which perforce would be a challenge to Aquaviva personally but also to fundamental principles in the
Constitutions.
(In the Society a General Congregation was the equivalent of a General Chapter in other orders and had supreme authority in the Society.) Sixty-three delegates were duly elected in the Jesuit provinces around the world and came to Rome, where on November 3, 1593, they opened the Fifth General Congregation. The Congregation lasted two and half months. It overwhelmingly rejected the idea that the mode of governance stipulated in the
Constitutions
be changed in any way, and it rejected as unfounded the criticisms of Aquaviva. The critics had overplayed their hand. Their coup failed.