Ignatius of Loyola Takes Up Latin Grammar—Why It Matters

This article examines Ignatius of Loyola’s turn to formal studies in 1524, an often-overlooked decision that laid the foundation for Jesuit educational ideals. By joining a Latin grammar class in Barcelona, Ignatius began a lifelong commitment to integrating intellectual rigor with spiritual formation. The article traces the historical development and eventual dissolution of the “juniorate” program, which fostered classical humanistic values among Jesuits. Focusing on the program’s decline in the 1960s, the study suggests that reviving such formative training could enhance contemporary Jesuit education, aligning it with modern apostolic needs while retaining Ignatius’s vision. This analysis underscores the unique contributions of Ignatian pedagogy to Jesuit education and its potential relevance today.

Keywords:
Ignatius of Loyola, juniorate, classical studies, humanistic formation, pedagogy

Introduction

In 2021, we celebrated 500 years of our “cannonized” saint, whose conversion followed his wounding by cannonball at the battle of Pamplona. From that military disaster, many glories emerged over a long and fitful time. Now with 2024 just behind us, it is not too late to enjoy a quincentennial remembrance of another Ignatian moment that is far less dramatic yet arguably as significant for much of what came to pass in Ignatius’s life. For it was in the year 1524 that there appeared the first sprout of what was to be through the ages a distinguishing and even a constitutive feature of Jesuit existence—namely, Ignatius’s formal turn to studies with the intention of becoming a better instrument for helping souls.

His humble enrollment in Latin classes with youngsters a third his age under the tutelage of Gerónimo Ardévol in Barcelona set him on a path toward college and university studies. That path would ultimately issue in both an impressively strong academic core for all scholastic Jesuit formation and the eventual recognition of the Society by others as educators—which quickly convinced Ignatius to have the Society adopt education as a major apostolic enterprise. His enthusiasm for establishing the Collegio Romano as a model for all other Society schools was ignited soon after he had been cajoled by appeals from the Viceroy of Sicily, Juan de Vega, and certain city councilmen’s appeals to the pope to have Jesuits open a college in Messina (1547–48). Would this have happened without something like his turn to studies in Barcelona twenty-three years earlier?

I call this moment in Ignatius’s life the first sprout for the reason that there had been an earlier seeding: his reading of solid spiritual material during his recovery; his high estimation of religious life (which typically meant formal and even advanced studies); his attention to the learned preaching of Dominicans and Franciscans in Manresa and elsewhere; and his regular attendance at liturgies at which books and readings played a sacral role. As a young man, Ignatius had no doubt seen the importance of official documents and letters in courtly affairs. We know from his own testimony that he had become a good “penman.” Even in his relatively unschooled state, he was inspired to write a book of spiritual exercises in Manresa (1522), and much later he became quite a “man of letters”—not in the usual but in the epistolary sense of that term. The sprout that appeared—that is, his academic program at Barcelona—had also emerged from well-prepared soil and within an accommodating atmosphere (the well-established attitudes and practices of Catholic culture). Even beyond the liturgical sphere, the Church had from its earliest days combined learning (or “letters”) and spirituality: recall Jesus’s penetrating knowledge of Scripture, Saint Paul’s brilliant disquisitions, the written Gospels, conciliar discussions and documents, patristic literary and intellectual giants like Origen and Augustine, the Benedictine monasteries’ care for and reproduction of manuscripts, Charlemagne’s religious and cultural revitalization, and the rise of universities and scholasticism from the heart of the Church during what we might better call the “central,” not the “middle,” ages. The Church has always fostered education.

After the founding of the Society, Ignatius always insisted on a strong humanistic grounding for his scholastics. This formational priority of his attained a lasting expression in Jesuit schooling in the stage of “Letters,” which always preceded the higher stages of philosophy and theology. Jesuit formation carried this tradition on in established “juniorates,” standing scholastic communities in which young Jesuits pursued two years of humanistic and rhetorical studies. This time always followed immediately upon the vows taken after the two-year novitiate period. In the juniorate, the young Jesuits, while following the regular practices of the vowed religious life, studied Latin, Greek, and vernacular works; put on plays; composed poems, hymns, and essays; practiced declamation and public speaking; and extended their knowledge of scholarship and cultural history. Ideally, they would observe the manner and methods of masterful instructors who served as models for their own teaching later in the Society’s collegia.

However, between the juniorate and the teaching assignment (usually called “regency”) came the Society’s philosophy studies. There the scholastics were able to advance both chronologically and intellectually so that, being a little further from the ages and academic levels of their students, they could have a more authoritative presence in the classroom.

The Surprising Disappearance of the Juniorates

The quincentennial moment may come as a surprise to some who know the Society well. Radical changes in Jesuit formation and schooling, dating from around 60 years ago, have obscured the institutional and apostolic significance of Ignatius’s turn to language and literary studies. It is worth exploring the topic here because right now more than a celebration is at stake. This quincentennial, properly appreciated, could lead to apostolic reconsiderations and to the undertaking of new initiatives vital for the Society’s flourishing and possibly for its very existence. So let us ask how it happened that the stage of Letters was attenuated even to its virtual suppression in the United States and whether there might be reasons for its rediscovery and return in a contemporaneous form.

First, in the fateful year of 1967, juniorates in most of the 10 United States provinces began to be closed. The reasons given typically included the idea that more young men were entering the Society at a later time of life, already in possession of college degrees and therefore with some humanistic background (in the way that Bachelor of Arts degrees often required it in those days). These scholastics, it was argued, did not really need to cover elements of a basic liberal arts education such as the juniorate was offering; nor did they need more time to mature through late adolescence in the structured religious life of a juniorate community. They could begin to move more quickly to the higher studies and into the apostolic works.

Second, after the Second Vatican Council some of the staple courses of the juniorate, particularly in ancient languages, no longer seemed to be necessary. Why develop those skills in speaking, writing, and reading Latin? Now the liturgy was in the vernacular, and so were the courses of instruction in philosophy and theology. No longer did scholastics have to face final oral exams in Latin in those two fields. Nor were there Latin disputations to prepare for or even hear. The juniorate investment in learning Latin therefore seemed superfluous, and Greek was even less in demand. Those who specialized in Scripture or patristics could get these languages later in their own specialized programs.

Third, pragmatism and the desire to limit formational expenses contributed to the final decision. A great savings was realized in time and dollars by eliminating two years of studies from the program.

Fourth, it is quite plausible to suggest (and it is supported anecdotally) that there had been a pressing desire to send the best Jesuit teachers to the leading colleges, where they could have a greater effect on more people, raise the reputation of the schools if those schools were doing well, and help to keep them afloat if they were not, especially in days of very limited funding. Why sequester the most effective teachers somewhere in a rural in-house academic program? Outstanding scholastic students could “make it on their own.” But having weaker teachers on staff would inevitably lead to the juniorates’ loss of credibility and worth.

Fifth, and most significantly, the Society’s strong apostolic turn to contemporary social issues, coming to explicit expression in General Congregation 32 (1974–75), shifted the center of apostolic gravity in such a way that the whole enterprise of traditional classically oriented Jesuit education was put into question. Behind this movement, there had also been, apart from the interest in social questions, a generations-old movement in secular society to drop what had been a long-standing emphasis on classical learning.[1]

The quincentennial moment may come as a surprise to some who know the Society well. Radical changes in Jesuit formation and schooling, dating from around 60 years ago, have obscured the institutional and apostolic significance of Ignatius’s turn to language and literary studies. It is worth exploring the topic here because right now more than a celebration is at stake. This quincentennial, properly appreciated, could lead to apostolic reconsiderations and to the undertaking of new initiatives vital for the Society’s flourishing and possibly for its very existence. So let us ask how it happened that the stage of Letters was attenuated even to its virtual suppression in the United States and whether there might be reasons for its rediscovery and return in a contemporaneous form.

First, in the fateful year of 1967, juniorates in most of the 10 United States provinces began to be closed. The reasons given typically included the idea that more young men were entering the Society at a later time of life, already in possession of college degrees and therefore with some humanistic background (in the way that Bachelor of Arts degrees often required it in those days). These scholastics, it was argued, did not really need to cover elements of a basic liberal arts education such as the juniorate was offering; nor did they need more time to mature through late adolescence in the structured religious life of a juniorate community. They could begin to move more quickly to the higher studies and into the apostolic works.

Second, after the Second Vatican Council some of the staple courses of the juniorate, particularly in ancient languages, no longer seemed to be necessary. Why develop those skills in speaking, writing, and reading Latin? Now the liturgy was in the vernacular, and so were the courses of instruction in philosophy and theology. No longer did scholastics have to face final oral exams in Latin in those two fields. Nor were there Latin disputations to prepare for or even hear. The juniorate investment in learning Latin therefore seemed superfluous, and Greek was even less in demand. Those who specialized in Scripture or patristics could get these languages later in their own specialized programs.

Third, pragmatism and the desire to limit formational expenses contributed to the final decision. A great savings was realized in time and dollars by eliminating two years of studies from the program.

Fourth, it is quite plausible to suggest (and it is supported anecdotally) that there had been a pressing desire to send the best Jesuit teachers to the leading colleges, where they could have a greater effect on more people, raise the reputation of the schools if those schools were doing well, and help to keep them afloat if they were not, especially in days of very limited funding. Why sequester the most effective teachers somewhere in a rural in-house academic program? Outstanding scholastic students could “make it on their own.” But having weaker teachers on staff would inevitably lead to the juniorates’ loss of credibility and worth.

Fifth, and most significantly, the Society’s strong apostolic turn to contemporary social issues, coming to explicit expression in General Congregation 32 (1974–75), shifted the center of apostolic gravity in such a way that the whole enterprise of traditional classically oriented Jesuit education was put into question. Behind this movement, there had also been, apart from the interest in social questions, a generations-old movement in secular society to drop what had been a long-standing emphasis on classical learning.[2] The increasing number of departures from the Society during that decade urgently suggested major revisions of some type, particularly as archaic survivals like the late-medieval, early-Renaissance disputatio (in Latin) were chafing modern sensibilities. Latin did not seem to be a very persuasive selling point in the late-modern world. Also, in the general optimism following Vatican II, a good-sized majority was no doubt willing to give innovations a chance. I have rarely heard from older fathers any laments about the suppression of the juniorates. On the other hand, I have heard some of their regret that they had not gotten more language facility out of the considerable expenditure of their time and effort.

It nevertheless remains hard to escape the impression that the decision to suppress the juniorates was made too quickly, under duress perhaps, without a searching discussion or historical understanding and without much of an effort to rethink, restructure, and reinforce what might have been especially fruitful or at least more in line with the Society’s deliberate, constitutionally established choice through the centuries. The net loss was greater than most realized, either then or now. Historically, the juniorate formation of scholastics had equipped most of them to competently carry on the literary, cultural, and rhetorical education of the collegia (later the high schools). Those schools had long been the setting in which many young men were drawn to support the Society and even enter it. The collegia promoted devotion and edifying culture, shaping and directing the souls of impressionable adolescents. Jesuits themselves, young and old, as teachers of youth, were thereby invested with a special authority and called to a serious level of social responsibility and spiritual integration. They were pressed to become good examples for their students and to act as important collaborators with parents in the raising of the next generation. Families and civil society saw the results and felt the benefits. Consequently this educational apostolate was much in demand. Benefactors multiplied along with school enrollments.

What triggered the early rapid growth and reputation of the Jesuit order was, to a notable extent, this constant connection of enthusiastic, skillful, devout, and admired teachers with indebted youth who were profiting from their teachers’ personal sacrifices to educate them. The schools provided a continuous line of potential candidates for the Society, generation after generation. Closing the juniorates necessarily entailed some distancing from the high-school classroom. Young Jesuits were no longer being directly given in their Jesuit formation the teaching models and the specific sort of expertise that they could put to good use in language, literary, and cultural classes during their regencies in high schools. In fact, the meaning of the term “regency” has now been widened to cover many kinds of apostolic work not at all connected with schooling.

The traditional approach had given the Society a proven formula for success: the academic content served as “teacher training” for the young scholastics in the juniorate, down to the details of the materials they would be using in class. If assigned the appropriate subjects, scholastics had a better chance of entering the classrooms as well-prepared and confident purveyors of these parts of Jesuit education. And because a relatively large number of scholastics were involved in the same effort, the weaker could rely on help from the stronger. What could possibly replace the juniorate program and all its benefits?

Reviving the Juniorate

Whatever our judgment on the virtual abolition of the juniorate, we might ask if a strong case can be made for its re-establishment today, answering the main arguments put forth for its closing. The following sections provide a summary attempt.

Older Candidates and Their Academic Preparation

It is true that young men usually enter the Society older and equipped with bachelor’s degrees, largely because of the Society’s own decision to expect or require some college experience in all candidates, on the assumption that these applicants would necessarily have greater maturity and would be more likely to make firmer decisions about entering and remaining in the Society. But to assume that anyone has received from a typical college today the equivalent of what the juniorate should be offering—a liberal arts program integrated with the specific apostolic aims and vision of the Society—is to assume too much. Studying literature with an atheistic post-modernist Marxist feminist hostile to religion, men’s groups, and Western culture may give you a credit in English, but that credit should not count as some kind of equivalent to a juniorate offering on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins taught by an understanding believer interested in training young religious.

Even many Catholic colleges today, hiring “pluralistically” and giving departments a generously wide berth to manage their own affairs, may in fact be promoting narratives of Western intellectual history that, for example, would spend more time on Machiavelli’s The Prince than on Erasmus’s The Education of a Christian Prince, even though it is certainly with the latter that students will get better insights into a Christian approach to responsible political leadership. The point of juniorate studies is greater Christian maturity and concrete preparation for the Society’s distinctive educational approach, not simply immersion in what the latest and “hottest” academic celebrities are saying. Therefore, it does not matter that candidates come to the Society with degrees in hand. The question is whether they already have enough of what the Society should want them to have.

Reconsidering Latin and Greek

Admittedly, ancient languages do not have the same heft in our culture that they once had. Latin and Greek play a diminished role in a progressively vernacular-oriented Church. Yet one need not excuse absolutely everybody—and especially not the Society of Jesus—from keeping some living connection with those languages that have been so essential in Church history, in Western/World culture, and in important Jesuit documents and literature. Secular society may choose to lose touch with its roots—to its great discredit and loss—but the Society need not follow that crowd. The formational priority of classical language study has been enshrined in Canon Law (1983) and in the Society’s own Complementary Norms (1995), the latter of which enjoined continuing instruction of scholastics in Latin and Greek.[3] These documents were issued well after Vatican II, which itself was far more pro-Latin than progressivists may admit.[4] If the Society ignores or deprecates such clearly stated directives as these, it sets a very bad example for obedience. Why produce documents if they are to have such little weight, even in their most authoritative forms? Furthermore, there are intrinsic values to some study of Latin and Greek, values very well known to those who have come to appreciate them.[5] Including this classical language study in some reasonably significant measure does not at all require the reinstantiation of the entire old Latin regime, with conversations, courses, and exams in Latin. The Society could provide an eight-week intensive course in Greek and a similar one in Latin to give everyone some solid introduction to these languages. It would break neither the bank nor the minds of the scholastics. Interested and talented individuals could be given opportunities to pursue such studies and teach them in regency.

It might be possible to accept the loss of Latin and Greek if something clearly better were substituted for it. Yet it is quite hard to see what this could be. Nothing of equivalent all-around value and historical relevance has been proposed or introduced as a general requirement. Spanish study has potential apostolic relevance, but it does not give what the classical languages offer, and in fact relatively few scholastics attain and keep enough Spanish to become available for Hispanophone assignments.

Costs and Benefits

Expenses for this program were well anticipated by the building up of seminary arcas, or funds, which by law can be used only for the purposes of Jesuit formation. With diminished numbers, there is certainly enough in the arca to support a juniorate program. The theology years have always cost far, far more per person than juniorate studies. Pragmatic concerns should take into account the intended outcome, not just what is more convenient, feasible, inexpensive, and time-saving at the moment. One might even pragmatically note that providing a spiritually and intellectually beneficial liberal arts education is highly likely not only to raise the quality of apostolic effectiveness in the schools but also to attract new applicants to the Society and admiration from a certain segment of the public at large.

Providing the Right Teachers

The Society’s strongest teachers could easily be assigned to formation, and that assignment could just as easily be made an attractive one. It is a matter of provincial discernment and decision and investment. There must also be a proper oversight structure to keep the program’s quality high. The schools are not as in need of the Society’s best teachers as they once were; competent lay colleagues abound. Nor can a Jesuit in the modern dispensation simply be assigned by a provincial to a department, no matter how strong a teacher he may be. Rather, the question is often whether a college department autonomously operating on secular professional norms is going to be sufficiently eager to support the Jesuit connection to the putative mission of the entire institution. In any case, poor teachers should simply be excluded both from formation programs and from teaching positions in the schools.

Justice Concerns

The strong turn to social issues that decentered the Society’s educational work is now undergoing great and greatly needed qualification and revision that are much friendlier to traditional Jesuit ministries, particularly education. To understand this, one need only read the conscientious and thoroughgoing critique written by Martin Tripole in 1994, Faith Beyond Justice: Widening the Perspective,[6] now in an expanded thirtieth anniversary edition. Father Tripole makes very clear, in a painstakingly detailed way, how GC 34 corrected the limitations and misdirections of GC 32 on the topic of Jesuit mission. Moreover, since educational justice is foundational for social justice and intrinsic to it, the school apostolate should on these grounds rightly be given renewed attention, particularly in these times of false guides and tendentious, partisan, ideological manipulation of news and other sources of information. The Society’s well-wrought educational program is more sorely needed than ever as a countercultural answer to progressivist pressures that in the end are not very Gospel- or Church- or faith-friendly. One might add here that the family too needs all the more help in raising children in these complex and confusing days. The teaching role is one that requires careful and devoted attention; the Society should posit it as a high priority, in continuity with its proven charism for centuries and with the mission given to it by the Church.[7]

Preparation for Teaching and the Ministries of the Word

Adequate apostolic preparation also speaks for the renewal of the juniorate. The first stage of Jesuit education, Letters, culminated in the completion of the rhetorical course of study. It is precisely with such a study that scholastics can be well prepared for preaching, lecturing, and all sorts of other ministries of the Word. In a two-year juniorate, there would be time for extensive reading of great prose writers whose substance is completely in accord with the Society’s apostolic intentionality, writers like Christopher Dawson and C. S. Lewis. The internet has also made great and persuasive speakers with extremely relevant content available for study and imitation, people like Bishop Robert Barron and Jordan Peterson. The rethinking of the entire rhetorical dimension of Jesuit education and its eloquentia perfecta is long overdue.[8]

The Need for Expanded Content

There is a need for much more to be studied than exists in philosophy and theology curricula alone—economics, cultural history, social and political thinking, governmental dynamics and structures, contours and major categories of scientific developments, and pressing arguments of the day (including heresies like materialism, scientism, and atheism). A revamped juniorate could help to produce much more effective evangelizers and apologists who know the intellectual, political, and cultural-historical terrain at least as well as the best educated audiences. The juniorate is a good place for large-scale overviews and introductions to material that can be refined later.[9]

The Spiritual Reality of the Jesuit Classroom

Just as technological advance does not imply moral progress, so great learning does not guarantee moral excellence. Yet a Christian cultural education at its best will always at least aim in some fashion at a moral and religious conversion in a way in which mere training does not. Conceived as personal formation rather than technical instruction, such education by its very nature intends the fullness of human flourishing, a wholeness, a balance, a flowering of the student that requires conversion to the good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. That larger aim enhances the meaning of studies and stokes the energies for academic achievement. We read in Francesco Sacchini’s Paraenesis (19.1):

The first thing is that the teacher should diligently demand academic discipline and the keeping of the rules, and likewise the literary assignments. And he should be entirely persuaded that if he diligently oversees the pursuits of letters, he will by the same token be promoting the pursuits of devotion: for there is an amazing connection between the two; and generally it turns out that whoever makes outstanding progress in learning makes splendid progress in character as well.[10]

This is not entirely a surprise. Formational education rightly conceived involves the integral totality of the person. Aspects of one’s life are integrated and motivated by a high moral standard and a vision of the blessed life. The classroom involves a person’s spirituality. And that is the arena in which conversions take place and from which the greatest social changes will ultimately arise. This is yet more reason for the Society of Jesus to return to its educational apostolate with its characteristic studious zeal and devoted learning.[11]

Confirmation and Conclusion

A cannonball injury eventually sent Ignatius on his way to Manresa (1522), then to Jerusalem (1523). Gerónimo Ardévol’s Latin grammar classes in Barcelona (1524–26) led him to university work at Alcalá, Salamanca, and Paris for a total of eleven academic years (1524–35). Toward the end of that time, Ignatius gathered into the first companionship the devout fellow scholars who would soon found the Society. In our quincentennial moment, we celebrate both the start of Ignatius’s academic life and the earliest beginnings of the juniorate. We might realize anew, if not for the first time, how the formational stage of Letters is entirely integral to Jesuit education.

So testifies the motto of the Collegio Romano (now the Pontifical Gregorian University): Religioni et bonis artibus (“for religion and the good arts,” or “for religion and culture”). Explicitly linking faith and culture, this motto points to features so productive, salutary, foundational, long-standing, and constitutive that they deserve much more than a passing quincentennial thought. Fr. Tripole was thinking entirely in accord with the Society’s essential spirit when he suggested that GC 32 would have done better to choose the motto of “faith and culture” rather than “faith and justice.”[12]

That essential spirit was also directly and memorably expressed in the strongest terms by GC 7 (1615):

The congregation has decreed with the utmost enthusiasm possible that the study of the great masters of humane letters, which has spread far and wide with the Society to the great benefit of the Christian commonwealth, is to be commended to all superiors as one of the most desirable pursuits and as one that is most suitable for achieving salutary benefit among vast numbers of people. Thus superiors themselves, laboring at this most praiseworthy task, may carry on their work with the greatest good will of which they are capable and may encourage all of their men to undertake and pursue this task with great eagerness, so that, expending themselves in this most useful type of erudition and the formation of souls, they may look for rewards from him who does not allow their labors to go unrequited. . . . Upon completion of the study of theology, whether they have taught the humane letters before this or not, theologians are to be applied to this study if superiors judge it proper. The congregation wished to commend this matter seriously to all superiors, that they keep in mind not the inclinations of the individual, but the common good and the greater glory of God in this most important and most beneficial type of occupation, and put aside every other feeling.[13]

A concerted, well-planned retrieval of this old and ever-relevant spirit is in order and in fact long overdue. In the meantime we can thank God that Ignatius put aside both his courtier’s sword and his pilgrim’s garment and picked up a Latin grammar. He was still on his way, of course, into a world both ever ancient and ever new. Let us continue on that journey.

Notes:

^[1] See Charles F. Donovan, S.J., “Boston College’s Classical Curriculum,” Occasional Papers on the History of Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 1980). Yale dropped its classical languages entrance requirement in 1931. On May 12 of that year, The New York Times carried a story on page 1 with this headline: “Yale Ends Classics as Required Studies: University Allows Students to Substitute Modern Languages for Latin and Greek. Lower Schools Affected: College Also Drops Philosophy Degree, Leaving Only B.A., Beginning with 1932 Class. Can Substitute Languages.” Harvard had made a similar move decades earlier.

^[2] See the narrative by Philip Gleason in his rightfully acclaimed Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

^[3] Canon 249 reads: “The program of priestly formation is to provide that students not only are carefully taught their native language but also understand Latin well [linguam latinam bene calleant] and have a suitable understanding of those foreign languages which seem necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of pastoral ministry.” See https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/cic_index_en.html. Complementary Norms, Part IV, 86 reads: “Before they begin philosophy and theology, scholastics should have completed that training in letters and sciences which in each nation is required before higher studies are begun. This training, if it has not been completed before entrance into the Society, is to be completed in the novitiate and, if necessary, later. Where it is possible, they should acquire knowledge of Latin and Greek, or at least sufficient preparation and knowledge that they can understand and use with ease the sources of so many sacred sciences and the documents of the Church. [See GC 31, d9, no. 17].” John W. Padberg, S.J., ed., The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms: A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts (Saint Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 153.

^[4] Sacrosanctum Concilium 36, 1: “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” See https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html.

^[5] The decision about languages in Jesuit schooling should not lie with people who have not come to know their value. Strong rationales for this language study are readily available from many sources; they should be weighed carefully.

^[6] Martin Tripole, S.J., Faith Beyond Justice: Widening the Perspective, rev. ed. (Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2024).

^[7] See for example, Pope Benedict XVI: “Another of [Ignatius’s] great concerns was the Christian education and cultural formation of young people: hence, the impetus he gave to the foundation of ‘colleges,’ which after his death spread in Europe and throughout the world. Continue, dear Jesuits, this important apostolate, keeping the spirit of your Founder unchanged.” Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Fathers and Brothers of the Society of Jesus, Jubilee Celebration, St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, April 2006, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060422_gesuiti.html.

^[8] There are important apostolic benefits at stake in Jesuit training as well: a single course in homiletics in theology studies and ad hoc occasions for preaching along the formational path are not really sufficient for training scholastics to be the best preachers they might be able to be.

^[9] For example, philosophy will generally focus on Kant’s Critiques, but of very great importance are his more approachable essays like the iconic and widely known “What Is Enlightenment?” or Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Montaigne’s Essays, and Thomas More’s Utopia, which are frequently omitted from the philosophical syllabus, even though the cultural impact of these works has been considerable. Classical imaginative works like those of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth are most suitable for the juniorate as well; even without a full reading, scholastics can be given a solid introduction to them, some taste of their achievement, some sense of their significance. Late-modern thinkers can be introduced as well (Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, Babbitt, Röpke, Kirk), along with relevant documents from the most relevant traditions (for example, in America George Washington’s “Farewell Address” and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America).

^[10] Francesco Sacchini, S.J., Exhortation and Advice for the Teachers of Young Students in Jesuit Schools, ed. and trans. Cristiano Casalini and Claude Pavur, S.J. (Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2021), 399.

^[11] For the importance of docta pietas (learned devotion) as a defining core feature of Jesuit spirituality, see Claude Pavur, S.J., “Afterword: Recovering the Fullness of Ignatian and Jesuit Spirituality.” In In the School of Ignatius: Studious Zeal and Devoted Learning (Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2019), 129–36.

^[12] Tripole, Faith, 115.

^[13] John W. Padberg, S.J., Martin D. O’Keefe, S.J., and John L. McCarthy, S.J., eds., For Matters of Greater Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General Congregations: A Brief History and A Translation of the Decrees, trans. Martin D. O’Keefe, S.J. (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1994), 260. This decree might be taken as the classic statement of the Society’s intentional investment in Letters, an investment that lasted well into the twentieth century. Note that the decree explicitly links this literary kind of “useful erudition (or scholarly learning)” with the formation of souls (cultus animarum); and it even allows scholastics to be assigned to teach humane letters after their theological studies.

Benedict XVI. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Fathers and Brothers of the Society of Jesus, Jubilee Celebration, St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, April 2006. Accessed January 22, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060422_gesuiti.html.

Code of Canon Law. Accessed January 22, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/cic_index_en.html.

Constitution on The Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium Solemnly Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963. Accessed January 22, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html.

Donovan, Charles F., S.J. Boston College’s Classical Curriculum. Occasional Papers on the History of Boston College. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 1980.

Gleason, Philip. Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Padberg, John W., S.J., ed. The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms: A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts. Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.

Padberg, John W., S.J., Martin D. O’Keefe, S.J., and John L. McCarthy, S.J., eds. For Matters of Greater Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General Congregations: A Brief History and A Translation of the Decrees. Translated by Martin D. O’Keefe, S.J. Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1994.

Pavur, Claude, S.J. “Afterword: Recovering the Fullness of Ignatian and Jesuit Spirituality.” In In the School of Ignatius: Studious Zeal and Devoted Learning, 129–36. Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2019.

Sacchini, Francesco, S.J. Exhortation and Advice for the Teachers of Young Students in Jesuit Schools. Edited and translated by Cristiano Casalini and Claude Pavur, S.J. Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2021.

Tripole, Martin, S.J. Faith Beyond Justice: Widening the Perspective. Revised edition. Chestnut Hill, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2024.

APA

Pavur, C. N., S.J. (2025). Ignatius of Loyola takes up Latin grammar—Why it matters. Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 1(1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.51238/NTCBBgJ

CMOS (17th Edition)

Pavur, Claude N., S.J. 2025. “Ignatius of Loyola Takes Up Latin Grammar—Why It Matters.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly. 2nd ser., 1 (1): 59–71. https://doi.org/10.51238/NTCBBgJ.

MLA

Pavur, Claude N., S.J. “Ignatius of Loyola Takes Up Latin Grammar—Why It Matters.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 1, no. 1, 2025, pp. 59–71. https://doi.org/10.51238/NTCBBgJ.

Turabian (9th Edition)

Pavur, Claude N., S.J. 2025. “Ignatius of Loyola Takes Up Latin Grammar—Why It Matters.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly. 2nd ser., 1 (1): 59–71. https://doi.org/10.51238/NTCBBgJ.