“The efforts of the Jesuits were above all directed towards the universities. Their ambition was to rival the fame of those of the Protestants. The education of that day was a learned one merely, and was based exclusively on the study of the ancient languages. This the Jesuits prosecuted with earnest zeal, and in certain of their schools, they had very soon professors who might claim a place with the restorers of classical learning. Nor did they neglect the cultivation of the exact sciences. At Cologne, Franz Koster lectured on astronomy in a manner at once agreeable and instructive. But their principal object was still theological discipline, as will be readily comprehended. The Jesuits lectured with the utmost diligence even during the holidays, reviving the practice of disputations, without which they declared all instruction to be dead. These disputations, which they held in public, were conducted with dignity and decorum, were rich in matter, and altogether the most brilliant that had ever been witnessed. In Ingolstadt, they soon persuaded themselves that their progress in theology was such as would enable the university to compete successfully with any other in Germany. Ingolstadt now acquired an influence among Catholics similar to that possessed among Protestants by Wittemberg and Geneva. They next established schools for the poor—arranged modes of instruction adapted to children—and enforced the practice of catechising. Canisius prepared his catechism, which satisfied the wants of the learners by its well-connected questions and apposite replies. “This instruction was imparted entirely in the spirit of that fanciful devotion, which had characterised the Jesuits from their earliest establishment. The first rector in Vienna was a Spaniard named Juan Victoria, a man who had signalised his entrance into the Society by walking along the Corso of Rome, during the festivities of the carnival, clothed in sackcloth, and scourging himself as he walked, till the blood streamed from him on all sides. The children educated in the Jesuit schools of Vienna were soon distinguished by their steadfast refusal of such food as was forbidden on fast-days, while their parents ate without scruple. In Cologne it was again become an honour to wear the rosary. Relics were once more held up to public reverence in Treves, where for many years no one had ventured to exhibit them. In the year 1560, the youth of Ingolstadt belonging to the Jesuit school walked two and two on a pilgrimage to Gichstadt, in order to be strengthened for their confirmation ‘by the dew that dropped from the tomb of St Walpurgis.’ The modes of thought and feeling thus implanted in the schools, were propagated by means of preaching and confession through the whole population.”[192]