Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/159

Rh famous schools all over the Netherlands; their college in Liège was perhaps the most flourishing school in Europe at the beginning of the Reformation. Many points conspicuous in the Ratio Studiorum, as well as in Sturm's system, were to be found in this college. Latin was the principal branch. It was taught very methodically, and the imitation of authors was insisted on. The course had eight classes; the lower were grammar classes; the fifth – and part of the sixth – was Rhetoric, the seventh and eighth taught Aristotelian philosophy and mathematics. Contests between the pupils (concertationes) were frequent, especially solemn ones at the distribution of prizes at the end of the scholastic year. On account of the great number of pupils, the classes were divided into decuriae, divisions of ten pupils each. At the head of each decuria was a decurio, to whom his ten subjects had to recite their lessons, etc. All these customs are found in the Ratio Studiorum.

A result of humanistic influences was also the domineering position which Cicero held in the classical course. To the humanists Cicero had been the author, whose style was considered by many with almost superstitious reverence.

Humanism in the Netherlands had been much more conservative than in Italy and Germany. Owing to the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life, it had kept more faithfully the Christian views of the earlier humanists. It certainly was this Christian humanism which appealed to the religious mind of Ignatius; he always suspected the writings of the younger humanists. Very early, shortly after his