Loyola and the Educational System of the JesuitsHughes, Thomas
History
Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits
Hughes, Thomas
Education -- History; Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 1491-1556; Jesuits
When once the first crude repetition is over, the series of
disputations begins, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Without counting
in the "Grand Acts" of public defence against all objectors, at stated
times and by specially designated persons, we may enumerate as many as
seven ordinary rehearsals of the same matter.
First, before going to the lecture hall, the student looks over the
text. This is done easily enough in St. Thomas or Aristotle, if one
of these is the standard. As Ignatius expected would be done, many
standard works have been published by writers of the Society.[238]
Their recommendation is, as he intimated, that they are "more adapted
to our times"; and they have incorporated recent researches in
progressive branches. In the sense of this adaptation to times and
circumstances, the theologians in Cologne, making their announcement
for the year 1578, say that they follow St. Thomas as a general
rule, but not so "as to treat all that he treats, nor only what he
treats.... Every age," they say, "has its own debated ground in matters
of doctrine, and this brings it to pass that Theology is not only
constantly enlarged with a variety of new disputations, but assumes, as
it were, a new cast."[239] And the critics of the preliminary _Ratio_,
treating of the Scripture course, lecture at some length all whom it
may concern,--theologians, professors, preachers,--precisely on this
ground, the need of amplifying and adapting the course of Scripture
to the conditions of the times.[240] Accordingly, works always new
and adapted to latest needs, have poured forth from the writers of the
Order. And such as furnish the conditions of a text, which may readily
be followed, also supply the conditions for conning over, before going
to the lecture hall, what the Professor means to treat. If no such
standard is being followed, still, as I find noted in a documentary
report of 1886, "the Professors should always, as far as possible,
throw out directions enough for the students to look up the subject
before coming to the lecture."
In this connection many familiar names of authors occur. For Scholastic
Theology and Philosophy, there is, in the first place, the prince
of modern theologians, Francis Suarez, with his library of tomes;
there are the three Cardinals Toletus, Bellarmine, De Lugo; Valentia,
Vasquez, Lessius, Franzelin; and, in the modern school of Scholastic
Philosophy, the elegant Liberatore, Kleutgen, Tongiorgi, Pesch, along
with the writers of Louvain, Stonyhurst, Innsbruck, and elsewhere; in
Positive Theology and Controversy, Canisius, Becanus, Petau, Sardagna;
in Exegesis, Maldonado, Salmeron, À Lapide, Menochius, Patrizi,
Cornely, with the school of Maria Laach; in Moral Theology, an endless
number, Sanchez, Laymann, Busembaum, with his two hundred editions,
Gury, Ballerini.[241]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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