The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present TimeCampbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
Jesuits -- History
"In Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola there was scarcely a vestige of the
old Church in 1571. In 1573 the Jesuits established a college at Grätz,
and the number of communicants in that city rose immediately from 20 to
500. The college was transformed into a university twelve years later,
and in 1602 and 1613 new colleges were opened at Klagenfurth and Leoben.
In Bohemia and Moravia they had not all the secondary schools, but the
twenty colleges and eleven seminaries which they controlled in 1679
proved that at least the higher education and the formation of
ecclesiastics was altogether in their hands, and the seven
establishments and colleges on the northern frontier overlooking
Lutheran Saxony made it evident that they were determined to guard
Bohemia against the poison of heresy." The writer complains that they
even dared to dislodge "Saint John Huss" from his niche and put in his
place St. John Nepomucene, "who was at most a poor victim, and by no
means a saint." Böhmer's translator, Monod, adds a note here to inform
his readers that the Jesuits invented the legend about St. John
Nepomucene, and induced Benedict XIII to canonize him.
Finally, we reach Poland where, we are informed that "the Jesuits
enjoyed an incredible popularity. In 1600 the college of Polotsk had 400
students, all of whom were nobles; Vilna had 800, mostly belonging to
the Lithuanian nobility, and Kalisch had 500. Fifty years later, all the
higher education was in the hands of the Order, and Ignatius became,
literally, the _preceptor Poloniæ_, and Poland the classic land of the
royal scholarship of the north, as Portugal was in the south.
"In India, there were nineteen colleges and two seminaries; in Mexico,
fourteen colleges and two seminaries; in Brazil, thirteen colleges and
two seminaries; in Paraguay, seven colleges," and the authors might have
added, there was a college in Quebec, which antedated the famous Puritan
establishment of Harvard in New England, and which was erected not "out
of the profits of the fur trade," as Renaudot says in the Margry
Collection, but out of the inheritance of a Jesuit scholastic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account