Page - 20 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Introduction20 God, the “common good,” rests not on theological but philosophical founda- tions, and it has been demonstrated that the sources of the qualities and vir- tues listed in Ignatius of Loyola’s (c.1491–1556) Constitutions as necessary to succeed in this undertaking include secular ones like Cicero’s De officiis (Of duties).51 It is owing to the all-inclusive character of the common good that while the Constitutions are firm in defining certain goals, in the pursuit of these goals they provide for expediency and ways of procedure “according to times, places and circumstances,” from which the famous bent of Jesuits to flexibility and adaptability—criticized by adversaries as concessions to the profane and other sorts of opportunism—derives.52 Finally, in searching for Jesuit distinctiveness, it is worth looking more close- ly at the third ministry mentioned above, that of teaching, which rose to spe- cial prominence thanks to a 1560 decree of Ignatius’s successor as general, Di- ego Laínez (1512–65, in office 1558–65), requiring all Jesuits to teach at some point in their career. Being a teacher thus became fundamental to Jesuit iden- tity.53 The Society created and maintained an international public education system, consisting in the mid-eighteenth century of around seven hundred schools of various kinds in Europe and around an additional one hundred in other continents, everywhere based on the same curriculum, texts, and peda- gogy. The schools broadened and redefined the mission of the Society of Jesus as cultural and, indeed, as civic: located in cities, they served the burghers who might be indifferent to liturgy, but were concerned about the education of their offspring, and were willing to make donations.54 As the purposes of Jesuit education were attuned to the larger aspirations mentioned above—saving souls and helping neighbors while contributing to the common good, includ- ing that of civil society as well as the church, understood in unison—it is little surprise that while the Ratio studiorum actually imposed limitations of philo- sophical and theological speculation in teaching, the curriculum had a strong “unclerical” component in the studia humanitatis, implying a dedicated study and emulation of Latin and Greek classics as recommended by Renaissance 51 Kevin Spinale, “The Intellectual Pedigree of the Virtue of Magnanimity in the Jesuit Con- stitutions,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 2, no. 3 (2015): 451–69. 52 “Few religious superiors can have told members of their order so firmly to forget the rules and do what they thought best.” John Bossy, “Editor’s Postscript,” in H. Outram Everett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 126–45, here 130. Cited in O’Malley, “Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus,” 5. 53 O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200–1; Paul F. Grendler, “Jesuit Schools in Europe: A Historiographi- cal Essay,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 1 (2014): 7–25; Grendler, “The Culture of the Jesuit Teacher 1548–1773,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 17–41. 54 O’Malley, “Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus,” 14.