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44 Coster, Peter Busaeus, John Theodore Macherentius, and others. The traditions of the University of Paris and of the humanistic schools of the Netherlands undoubtedly exerted a considerable influence on the Jesuit system of education. Before narrating the foundation of the Society and the development of its educational system, it is necessary to speak of two great movements, the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Higher education in the Middle Ages followed the course known as the study of the "Seven Liberal Arts," divided into the Trivium: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic; and the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. If we read that "grammar" was studied for several years and that many confined their studies to this part of the course, we ought well to understand the meaning of this term. By grammar was not meant, as now, the mere study of the rules of a language, its etymology and syntax, but rather a scholarly acquaintance with the literature of that language, together with the power of writing and speaking it. Rabanus Maurus, the greatest pupil of Alcuin and later on Archbishop of Mentz, defined grammar as "the science of interpreting poets and historians, as well as the science of the rules of speaking and writing." Latin was the principal subject of instruction, the favorite authors were Virgil and Ovid. Hugo of Trimberg, the master of a school at Bamberg,