Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies 1, no. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. viii + 118. Pb, $84.00/€70.00. Available also in Open Access at https://brill.edhh.ma/view/journals/rpjs/1/1/rpjs.1.issue-1.xml.

The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, was an itinerant pilgrim, preacher, and spiritual director well before he obtained papal approval for the Society of Jesus in 1540. Even then he saw teaching as mainly catechism, and he did not yet have in mind an order devoted above all to running and working in schools, colleges, and universities across Catholic Europe or elsewhere. Yet by the time of the death of Ignatius in 1556, the Jesuits were well on their way to making education their primary or signature work. Paul Grendler, author of this compact but very useful book from Brill, cites the Jesuit Juan Alfonso de Polanco, one of the closest collaborators of Ignatius, stating in a 1560 letter that “education was the most important ministry of the Society, equal to all the other ministries combined” (10).

Grendler is a specialist of the history of education in early modern Italy. A complement to his more voluminous works on that topic, this handbook quickly orients the reader to two types of Jesuit educational institutions in Europe: schools and universities. The “schools” were organized in three levels: lower: humanities, focusing on Latin, rhetoric and eloquence, poetry, history; upper: philosophy, including logic, natural philosophy (science), mathematics, and metaphysics; upper: theology, including Scripture, Scholastic theology, and cases of conscience. Charging no tuition, Jesuit schools relied on donors, and whenever possible on income from endowments (usually property). Mostly urban institutions, these were day schools, but some also accepted students for room and board, for which there was usually a charge. The lower-level schools prepared boys for a variety of careers in civil society as well as in the church. “Philosophy” prepared students not only for theology but for study of law or medicine; theology was for priests and those preparing for ordination. The Ratio studiorum of 1599 was a document intended to structure the curriculum of Jesuit educational institutions everywhere. Practice did not necessarily follow theory. Grendler reports that while the Ratio envisioned most instruction as given in Latin, this was not always so; the Ratio considered Greek a part of required studies, but some Jesuit schools did not teach it; the Ratio saw history as ancient history, but there is evidence that more recent Hungarian history was taught in some Jesuit schools. And though Ignatius had banned Jesuits from carrying out any corporal punishment in the schools, Grendler states that students with poor academic performance or who misbehaved might receive “slaps from a leather strap” (36).

France figures large in the early years of the Jesuits, and so to in this study. A map and list (54–58) show what a dense network of schools the Society ran, in all corners of the realm of the “Most Christian King.” This was no easy feat. Royal support and defense were essential, as opponents to Jesuit education in France were many, ranging from other, envious religious orders, to the law courts, to Gallicans and other champions of French autonomy deeply suspicious of Jesuits as papists and regicidal foreigners. But some of the French bishops looked to the Jesuits for help and conceded to them direction of their seminaries.

The first Jesuits were all students at the University of Paris. And though Ignatius himself exhibited no aptitude or inclination for a career as a university professor or administrator, many Jesuits in Europe were missioned to such work. The Society sought to place some Jesuits as professors in existing universities, but this was often met with the resistance of entrenched faculties to such newcomers. Grendler argues that the “oldest and most prestigious universities were the most hostile toward the Jesuits […]. Paris, Bologna, and Padua went to war against the Jesuits, while Kraków […] kept out the Jesuits” (100). Jesuits were also at times excluded because they lacked the requisite university degrees for the positions sought. If existing universities would not allow Jesuits, Jesuits could nevertheless create their own, new institutions. Grendler clearly explains how two types of new, Jesuit universities developed: those fully under the control of the Society of Jesus, composed of faculties in the humanities, mathematics, philosophy, and theology; and “civic-Jesuit” universities that offered these subjects taught by Jesuits but also law and medicine taught by lay professors.

Whereas Jesuit schools had little difficulty being taken seriously, their universities had to establish their credibility, and that could take time. University authorities might turn a blind eye to the presence of foreign, Protestant students as long as they did not engage in anti-Catholic actions. The attitude was that foreign students brought prestige to universities, welcome and needed, even if from “heretics.” Such students also brought important income to university towns.

Both schools and universities faced challenges out of their control such as the devastating effects of war or pestilence. Grendler cites as an example the years c.1630, years of the War of the Mantuan succession in which Mantua was besieged, sacked, and struck by plague. Fifteen Jesuits in Mantua died of the plague, and this was a factor in making the temporary closure of the university there permanent.

An excellent bibliography is appended to this volume. Yet a small book, no matter how well written, cannot do everything. The visual dimension of Jesuit education finds no examination here, and there is little on Jesuit theater. Comparison of Jesuit schools and universities in Europe with those created outside Europe—such as Quebec City in the 1630s—is not attempted. Grendler examines the period from the founding of the first Jesuit school at Messina, in 1548, to the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. But in 2014 the bicentennial of the restoration of the Society of Jesus was celebrated with an abundance of conferences and publications, and many scholars are now focusing more and more on the restored Jesuits. Perhaps Grendler or another scholar can produce a sequel to this fine handbook, focused on Jesuit education since 1814, on all continents.

doi:10.1163/22141332-00704008-01