From Probability to the Sublime(S): Early Modern Jesuit Rhetoric; an Anti-Philosophy Or an Alternative Path to a Modern Idea of “Truth”?

Chapter 3 From Probability to the Sublime(s): Early Modern Jesuit Rhetoric; an Anti-philosophy or an Alternative Path to a Modern Idea of “Truth”?

Anne Régent-Susini

Philosophy has often been conceived as opposed to rhetoric; indeed, the sup posed tension between the active and the contemplative life has become a truism in Western thought. This apparent tension is reflected in the percep tion of the early modern humanists, who inherited the Greek Sophists’ view of the importance of speech and rhetoric, which seemingly stood opposed to the importance medieval thinkers attached to dialectics and Scholasticism. And as they primarily considered themselves ministers of the Word, this particu larly applies to the Jesuits and the emphasis they placed on the importance of preaching and the emotional effects of their speeches.1 In doing so, the Jesuits seemingly rejected Scholasticism’s opposition to the use of rhetoric: indeed, in the Jesuit Constitutions, good preaching is primarily defined by contrast to the Scholastic method: “[The Jesuits] will exercise themselves in preaching and in delivering sacred lectures in a manner suitable for the edification of the people, which is different from the scholastic manner.”2 The main sign of the preeminence of rhetoric over philosophy in the Jesuit tradition is contained in the widely influential curriculum the order designed for use in its colleges. The curriculum that was taught in the powerful network of Jesuit colleges established at the instigation of Popes Gregory xiii (r.1572–85) and Sixtus v (r.1585–90)3 not only shared in common Ignatius of Loyola’s (c.1491–1556) Spiritual Exercises but also two major pagan authorities: first, Ar istotelian science and philosophy, at the very moment when Aristotelianism

1 See, for instance, the long and influential Orator Christianus (1612) by Jesuit professor of rhetoric at Rome, Carlo Reggio (1540–1612), which, like so many post-Tridentine preaching manuals, emphasizes the importance of emotional persuasion. 2 Ignatius of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans. George E. Ganss (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), 201. 3 See, for instance, Oskar Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: Jesuit Educational Strategy, 1553–1622 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 159–60.

78 Régent-Susini was undergoing a major reconfiguration in Europe;4 and second, the Cice ronian rhetorical model, since unlike the Oratory and what historian Marc Fumaroli calls its strict Christian “attic writing” (a style characterized by cor rectness and elegance rather than its emotional power), the Jesuits (like most Renaissance humanists) retained an accommodating attitude toward pagan auctoritates, and especially Cicero. In the words of historian Robert Maryks: “Nothing was more characteristic of the Ratio than the […] fascination with the Ciceronian rhetoric: its civic values, its principle of accommodation, and its epistemic probability.”5 In their colleges, the Jesuits devoted the fifth and fi nal year to “rhetoric” (classic oratory) after three years of “grammar” and a year of “humanities.” Only a small number of students would progress further to study logic, ethics, and metaphysics (among other disciplines), as well as the ology. Thus classical rhetoric was at the heart of Jesuit education. Even those students who excelled and would eventually progress to the next class of phi losophy were usually encouraged to devote a second year to rhetoric in order to “lay down a more solid foundation.”6 The advanced students would then go on to receive training directly inspired by the medieval curriculum of dialec tic, logic, astronomy, physics, psychology, ethics, and metaphysics, directly or indirectly based on Aristotle’s texts. As a result of this curriculum, the educa tional identity of the Jesuits was defined first by being masters of rhetoric, and second as the masters of a philosophy of the past—at a time when a specific idea of modern philosophy was being born. No wonder, then, that a legenda nigra of the Jesuit order had become widespread as early as the mid-sixteenth century, especially in France, in which the Jesuits were depicted as treacherous sophists, enemies of common sense, of scientific progress, of genuine ethics, and last but not least, of philosophy itself.7

4 On the reconfiguration of the status of Aristotle in this epistemological and philosophical mutation, or even crisis, see Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). 5 Robert A. Maryks, “A Jesuit’s Education in the Age of Fr. Matteo Ricci,” in Scienza, ragione, fede: Il genio di Padre Matteo Ricci, ed. Claudio Giuliodori and Roberto Sani (Macerata: Ed izioni università di Macerata, 2012), 103–11. 6 The Ratio studiorum of 1599: The Official Plan of Studies for Jesuit Education ed. Claude Pavur, S.J. (Saint Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005), 14. 7 About this dark legend, which combines political accusations of despotism and regicide, moral accusations of dishonesty, moral laxity, and accusations of questionable pastoral and apologetic methods, see Pierre-Antoine Fabre and Catherine Maire, eds., Les Antijésuites: Dis- cours, figures et lieux de l’antijésuitisme à l’époque moderne (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010). The main themes of this anti-Jesuitism were codified and stabilized as early as the 1550s.