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True to the Ratio Studiorum? Jesuit Colleges in St. Petersburg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Daniel L. Schlafly Jr.
Daniel L. Schlafly Jr.*
Affiliation:
St. Louis University
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Extract

The dramatic success of Jesuit schools since the Society admitted the first lay, or extern, students to its college in Gandìa, Spain, in 1546 is unparalleled in the history of education. By the time Ignatius of Loyola died in 1556, the Society had thirty-one schools, with more than ten times that number, 373, at the death of the fifth Father General, Claudio Aquaviva, in 1615. During Aquaviva's tenure, in response to this educational explosion, a comprehensive set of school regulations, the Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu, was drafted, debated, and finally promulgated in 1599 after fifteen years of preparation. The letter of transmission included Aquaviva's injunction that “this plan of studies … ought to be observed in the future by all of ours, setting aside all other plans.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 1997 , pp. 421 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 For a list of Jesuit schools founded during St. Ignatius's lifetime, see Farrell, Allan P. S.J., The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education: Development and Scope of the Ratio Studiorum (Milwaukee, Wisc., 1938), 431–35. Fitzpatrick, Edward A., ed., St. Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorum (New York, 1933), 26, 120–21 (quotation). The author includes translations of the 1599 Ratio and part 4, dealing with education, of St. Ignatius's Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. Google Scholar

2 Catholic Encyclopedia, 1st ed., s.v. “Ratio Studiorum” (first quotation); Tadeusz Czacki to Hugo Kołłataj, 10 July 1804, quoted in Beauvois, Daniel, “Les Jésuites dans l'Empire Russe, 1772–1820,” Dix-huitième siècle 8 (1976): 261 (second quotation); Eliot, Charles, “Recent Changes in Secondary Education,” Atlantic Monthly 84 (Oct. 1899): 443 (third quotation). Similarly, the noted historian of education Ellwood P. Cubberley wrote in 1920 that the Jesuit “course of study remained practically unchanged until 1832.” Cubberley, Ellwood P., The History of Education (Boston, 1920), 341. Reasons for the expulsion included resentment at some aristocratic conversions to Roman Catholicism, hostility from devotees of new Protestant-inspired and mystical religious movements, conflicts with the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Russia, and opposition by the Jesuits and their partisans to new government educational policies. For a judicious analysis of the reasons for the expulsion, see Flynn, James T., “The Role of the Jesuits in the Politics of Russian Education,” Catholic Historical Review 56 (July 1970): 249–65.Google Scholar

3 For the text of the Ratio, see Fitzpatrick, , St. Ignatius, 121–254. The Latin original with German translation, including the 1832 revisions, is in Pachtler, G. M. S.J., ed., Ratio Studiorum et Institutiones Scholasticae Societatis Jesu, Monumenta Germaniae Pedagogica (Berlin, 1887), 5: 234–481. Good discussions of the Ratio include Donohue, John W. S.J., Jesuit Education: An Essay on the Foundations of Its Idea (New York, 1963); Farrell, , The Jesuit Code ; Schwickerath, Robert S.J., Jesuit Education: Its History and Principles (St. Louis, Mo., 1903); and McGucken, William J. S.J., The Jesuits and Education (New York, 1932). Fitzpatrick, , St. Ignatius, 181 (first quotation), 196 (second quotation).Google Scholar

4 Fitzpatrick, , St. Ignatius, 252.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 146 (first quotation). The term coadjutors here refers to the Spiritual Coadjutors, or priests, who, usually because of insufficient education or ability, were not invited to take a fourth vow of special obedience to the pope. It was from the ranks of those who did, the so-called Professed Fathers, that all the important positions in the Society were filled. Scholastics are candidates for the priesthood assigned to teach under supervision as an integral part of their seminary training. Jesuit brothers were referred to as Temporal Coadjutors. Fitzpatrick, , St. Ignatius, 92 (fourth quotation), 118 (second and third quotations).Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 93–94 (third quotation), 137 (first and second quotations).Google Scholar

7 See, in addition to the works by Donohue, Farrell, and Schwickerath cited earlier, the comprehensive discussion of the suppression in the context of overall papal policy in von Pastor, Ludwig, The History of the Popes, trans. Peeler, E. F. et al., vols. 35–38 (St. Louis, Mo., 1950–52). For a time, until 1776, Frederick II of Prussia also kept the Jesuit houses in his domains functioning as before. For a good summary of the circumstances of the suppression with particular reference to the Jesuit survival under Catherine, see James, William, “Paul I and the Jesuits in Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1977), 13–19. Załeski, Stanislaw, Les Jèsuites de la Russie Blanche , trans. Vivier, Alexandre (Paris, 1886), 1:245. Pierling, Paul S.J., La Russie et la Saint-Siège (Paris, 1912), 5: 113 (first quotation). Catherine, quoted in Novikov, N. I., Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow, 1951), 577 (second quotation).Google Scholar

8 Gruber, Gabriel to Marotti, Monsignor, 11/23 November 1800, quoted in Gagarin, Ivan, “L'Empereur Paul et le P. Gruber,” Ètudes 23, 3 (1873): 46 (first quotation). Rouët de Journel, M.-J., Un Collège de Jésuites à Saint-Pétersbourg, 1800–1816 (Paris, 1922), 20 (second quotation).Google Scholar

9 See The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, s.v. “Jesuits in Russia.” On the earlier Jesuit school in Moscow, see Florovský, Antonìn Vasiljevičn, Češntí Jesuité na Rusi (Prague, 1941), 271–85. Hostility to the Jesuits persists in Russia today, as seen in the first comment a reporter from the newspaper Argumenty i fakty made to the newly appointed apostolic nuncio to Russia, Msgr. John Bukovsky: “In the Russian mentality, Catholicism is associated above all with the Jesuits. We are accustomed to perceiving the Jesuits as cruel and devious people.” Nikolaeva, Iuliia, “Diplomat of Papy Rimskogo,” Argumenty i fakty, Sept. 1996, 11.Google Scholar

10 Ignatieff, Leonide, “French Émigrés in Russia, 1789–1825: The Interaction of Cultures in Time of Stress” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1963), 175–99; Pingaud, Léonce, Les Français en Russie et les Russes en France: L'ancien régime-l'émigration-les invasions (Paris, 1886). On the transformation of the Russian nobility in the eighteenth century, with special emphasis on the way western culture and mores came to be identified as an essential aspect of noble status, see Raeff, Marc, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York, 1966). On Romme, Gilbert, who left perceptive observations of Russian life, see Mikhailovich, Grand Duke Aleksei, Le Comte Paul Stroganoff, vol. 1 (Paris, 1905). The eagerness for Western European learning was satirized in Denis Fonvizin's comedy Nedorosl' [The Raw Youth or The Adolescent], in which a nobleman hires a series of foreign impostors in a vain attempt to civilize his loutish son. A French officer who visited Russia in 1792 claimed that another Frenchman “found one of his former postilions [employed as] a tutor in a house in Moscow.” Comte de Piles, Fortia, Voyage de deux français dans le nord de l'Europe (Paris, 1796), 4: 75.Google Scholar

11 Eeckhaute, Denise, “À propos de la pédagogie en Russie au début du XIXe siècle,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 11 (Apr.-June 1970): 244–58; Ignatieff, , “French Émigrés in Russia,” 175–99. Quotation from Frappaz, , Vie de l'abbé Nicolle (Paris, 1857), 57. For descriptions of Nicolle's pension, see also de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 51–54; and the eyewitness account by the abbé Georgel, , Memoires pour servir à l'histoire de la fin du dix-huitième siècle depuis 1760 jusqu'en 1806–1810 (Paris, 1820), 6: 348–50.Google Scholar

12 The term “contemptuous” is from Smolitsch, Igor, Geschichte der russischen Kirche, 1700–1917 (Leiden, 1964), 244 (first quotation). While the clergy in Roman Catholic and some Protestant lands represented all levels of society, most Orthodox priests, monks, and other church people came from hereditary clerical families at the lower end of the social scale. Vocations from the nobility were almost unheard of. See Claus, Claire Louise, “Probleme der religiösen Erziehung in den russischen Schulen des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Kirche im Osten 6 (1963), 34–35. Regarding the search for new spiritual forms, see esp. Pypin, A. N., Die geistigen Bewegungen in Russland in der ersten Hälfte des XIX Jahrhunderts , trans. Minz, Boris, vol. 1, Die Russische Gesellschaft unter Alexander I (Berlin, 1894), and idem, Religiozniia dvizheniia pri Aleksandre I (Petrograd, 1916). See also Zacek, Judith Cohen, “The Russian Bible Society” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1964). Starting in the latter part of Alexander I's reign, a growing emphasis on a distinctive Russian national and religious identity gave new life to the older image of the Jesuit menace. See, for example, the hostile portrait of the Society in the Slavophil Iurii Samarin's Iezuity i ikh otnoshenie k Rossii (Moscow, 1870). A prerevolutionary encyclopedia of Orthodoxy concluded an article “Jesuits and Jesuit-Catholic Teaching” by stating that “Jesuit teaching is far from the teaching of Christ.” Polnyi pravoslavnyi bogoslovskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar,‘ s.v. “Iezuity i iezuitsko-katolicheskaia ispoved’.” Google Scholar

13 See especially Maistre's, “Cinq lettres sur l'éducation publique en Russie,” in Lettres et opuscules inédits (Brussels, 1851), 2:220–65. An excellent analysis of Maistre's role in Russia is Stepanov, M., “Zhozef de Mestr v Rossii,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 29–30 (1937): 527–726. Also see Winter, Eduard, Russland und das Papsttum (Berlin, 1960–72), 2: 69–198, and idem, “Die Jesuiten in Russland (1772 bis 1820): Ein Beitrag zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration,” in Forschen und Wirken: Festschrift zur 150-Jahr-Feier der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin 1810–1960, vol. 3 of Forschungsbeiträge aus den Gebieten der Gesellschaftwissenschaftlichen Fakultäten (Berlin, 1960), 167–91. Beauvois, , “Les Jésuites dans l'Empire Russe,” includes citations from Czartoryski and other contemporary critics of the Jesuits.Google Scholar

14 “Élèves du Collëge de St. Pétersbourg,” typescript compiled by M.-J. Rouët de Journel, S.J., based in part on research by Pierling, Paul S.J., Carton “Jésuites de Russie,” Bibliothèque Slave, Paris; Tolstoi, Dmitri, Le Catholicisme romain en Russie (Paris, 1864), 2:170. Moroshkin, Mikhail, Iezuity v Rossii s tsarstvovanniia Ekateriny II-i i do nashego vremeni (St. Petersburg, 1870), 2: 127. The annual fee for the Noble College was six hundred rubles a year, which one foreign commentator called “very moderate” since “a mediocre tutor is paid at least 1500 rubles.” de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 109. Although Jesuit schools were not allowed to charge tuition until the 1830s, levying a fee for living expenses was permitted.Google Scholar

15 Regarding the curriculum at Pauline College, see “Ordre des Leçons et Division du Temps dans les Écoles de la Compagnie de Jésus,” in de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 55–64.Google Scholar

16 Regarding the curriculum at the Noble Pension, see Gruber, Fr. Gabriel, “Plan d'education au Pensionnat des nobles,” in ibid., 104–10. Unfortunately, no daily schedule has survived.Google Scholar

17 de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 112–16. An Orthodox student, Petr A. Viazemskii, wrote later, however, that “there never was any attempt to suggest that the Roman Church was better or more able to save one's soul than the Orthodox [Church].” Literaturnye kriticheskie i biograficheskie ocherki (St. Petersburg, 1878), 1: xxiv; Moroshkin, , Iezuity v Rossii, 2: 129–35.Google Scholar

18 On the shift to modern subjects, see, for example, Artz, Frederick, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); and Bednarski, Stanislas, “Déclin et Renaissance de l'Enseignement des Jésuites en Pologne,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 2 (1933): 199–233. The works of Schwickerath and Farrell cited earlier also describe curricular adaptation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit schools. Spence, Jonathan D., The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

19 de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 193–94.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 91–92, 138–39 (quotation, 138). Golovina, Varvara, Memoirs of the Countess Golovine , trans. Fox-Davies, G. M. (London, 1910), 349–50.Google Scholar

21 de Journel, Rouët, Un Collège de Jésuites, 207; James, , “Paul I and the Jesuits,” 72–78; Gagarin, Ivan, Vie du P. Marc Folloppe (Paris, 1877). See, for example, de Leissègues, Jean-Louis Rozaven, L'Èglise catholique justifiée contre les attaques d'un écrivain qui se dit orthodoxe (Lyon, 1822). Some of Grivel's correspondence is in MS. Golitsyn, Boîte 2, Bibliothèque Slave, Paris.Google Scholar

22 See Kuzniewski, Anthony J. S. J., “Francis Dzierozynski and the Jesuit Restoration in the United States,” Catholic Historical Review 74, 1 (1992): 51–73.Google Scholar

23 Naryshkina, Nataliia, 1812: Le Comte Rostopchine et son Temps (St. Petersburg, 1912), 265. Viazemskii, , Ocherki, 1: xxiii.Google Scholar

24 Beauvois, , “Les Jésuites dans l'Empire Russe,” 272. Naryshkina, , 1812 ; Rostopchina, Lidiia, Chroniques de Famille (Paris, 1909).Google Scholar

25 Billington treats this Jesuit episode in Russia in a chapter entitled “The Anti-Enlightenment.” Billington, James, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (London, 1966), 271–76; brief biographies of a number of former Jesuit students can be found in “Élèves du Collège de St. Pétersbourg.” Google Scholar