The Colleges in Operation (1550S–1620S)

chapter 6 The Colleges in Operation (1550s–1620s)

Jean Pelletier (d.1564), the first rector of the Roman College (established 1551), described it in 1555 as a model institution for training young Catholic men. He explained that the school ensured that its students confessed regularly and studied, and that those who were priests preached in local churches, and heard confessions; it also taught catechism. The college “in truth is a grand ornament of this city,” he stated, and ought to be “like a fountain, from which would flow many other colleges in Italy and in other nations.” The network of schools would defeat heresy and act with the greatest charity to rescue those who had been led astray by either the unlettered or the Protestant.1 The colleges founded in subsequent years may not have perceived the Collegio Romano as a source for their existence; each was opened under circumstances which depended largely on local conditions. They did, however, use documents and norms developed at the Collegio Romano for teaching and librarianship, and often had close personal and personnel ties to it and other Jesuit institutions. This chapter focuses on the activities of the Florentine, Sienese, and (where possible) Polizian colleges, attempting to shed light on their development as teaching institutions during the period preceding the finalizing of the Ratio studiorum and progressing through the death of Cosimo II, by which time the Ratio was the norm.2 Its adoption in 1599 meant that education in Jesuit colleges around the world would henceforth be centralized and standardized. As happened with the Medici, these twin processes were slow for the Jesuits, yet the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century events within the Society of Jesus as well as within the Grand Duchy of Tuscany tended in those directions. Students in Jesuit colleges were of two types: extern and resident, either of which could be clergy. Large numbers of students were enrolled in classes at the colleges. This chapter focuses on those who were already members of the Soci- ety while enrolled, or who subsequently joined. These students attended classes in subjects ranging from Latin grammar to Scholastic theology , beginning

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1 IgnEpisInstr, 9: letter 5745, September 21, 1555, Jean Pelletier, “Status Collegii Romani Societa- tis [Iesu], tam in litterarum studio et virtutum exercitationibus, quam in penuria rei familia- ris, qua maxime laborat, distincte et ordinate describitur,” 635–40, here 636–67. 2 Ratio atque institutio studiorum Societatis Jesu (Naples: T. Longi, 1599).

The Colleges in Operation 167 with the more basic disciplines (grammar, humanities, and rhetoric), then progressing to philosophy and finally to theology.3 This education was interrupt- ed, or supplemented, by teaching the lower-level subjects that the students had already completed. According to Grendler, in the 1570s, “the vast majority of the teachers [in the Jesuit Latin schools] were scholastics.” They were there- fore teaching the disciplines enumerated above, largely to the young extern students, but also to other Jesuits. In all three colleges under consideration here, that generalization appears to holds true. In each college, those who taught grammar, humanities, and rhetoric were either simultaneously study- ing the higher disciplines or would do so later, in the same or nearby colleges.4 The Jesuits employed the so-called modus parisiensis (Parisian method), divid- ing and subdividing students into classes for the purposes of exercises such as drilling and recitation. This method did not allow progression from one subject to the next without demonstrated competence, and required a clearly delineated teaching sequence.5 The Jesuits endured a long and tempestuous period of searching for a per- manent home in Florence. During that time, both the Medici and the Jesu- its had hoped that the residents of the college would be truly central in the religious and social life of the city. Their hopes were fulfilled in many ways: members of the Society preached in the cathedral and in the Medici family church; they sent missions to the contado; and they advised the rulers, both secular and spiritual. Indeed, San Giovannino had broad outreach. It served as a source of missions and other forms of spiritual support for other dioceses and as a feeder for other colleges in the region. For example, while rector at San Giovannino (1551–57), Louis de Coudret maintained a correspondence with the Jesuit leadership about not only the state of the college in Florence, but about plans to open and/or maintain foundations nearby. These included Siena and Montepulciano, where he eventually served as rector. In 1556, de Coudret traveled to Arezzo. The comune had reportedly asked for Jesuits to visit, and the Florentine rector was pleased with his reception

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3 Grendler, “Italian Schools and University Dreams,” 486. For a more detailed description of the way in which pre-Ratio studiorum Jesuit colleges organized their curriculum, see, e.g., Mark A. Lewis, “‘Preachers of Sound Doctrine, Followers of the True Religion, and Learned’: The Social Impact of the Jesuit College of Naples, 1552–1600” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1995), esp. Chapters 2–4. 4 Grendler, “Italian Schools and University Dreams,” 486–87. 5 For a thorough investigation of the development of the term, and its meaning, see Gabriel Codina, “The ‘modus parisiensis’,” in The Jesuit Ratio studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspec- tives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 28–49.