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Rh The literary course was an adaptation of the humanistic schools as they existed shortly before the outbreak of the Reformation. It is especially Paris and the Netherlands which we have to consider as the chief sources of much that is contained in the Ratio. We heard that the great University of Paris was the Alma Mater of St. Ignatius and his first companions. Great must have been the influence of this seat of learning on the formation of the educational system of the Jesuits. Bartoli, one of the historians of the Society, goes so far as to say: "Spain gave the Society a father in St. Ignatius, France a mother in the University of Paris." From this University Ignatius probably adopted the division of his system of studies into the three parts: Languages, Arts or Philosophy, Theology. In languages again the Constitutions, as well as the Paris University, distinguished three parts: Grammar, Humanities, Rhetoric. The school exercises, especially the disputations in philosophy, were fashioned after those of Paris. Father Polanco, secretary of the Society, himself a student of Paris, writes about the colleges of Messina and Vienna, that "exercises (disputations) were added to the lectures after the model of those of Paris (more parisiensi)."

Ignatius himself had recommended Paris as "the