Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/144

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JESUIT EDUCATION.

Greek. Repetition of syntax; prosody; the dialects, a further introduction into Greek literature. The standard authors are Demosthenes, Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, etc.; also Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Chrysostom may be read.

Other Latin and Greek authors which may be given into the hands of the pupils of the class of Rhetoric and of other classes, are enumerated by Juvencius.

Religion. Catechism of Canisius (larger one). On Saturday the Acts of the Apostles are read in Greek, or an oration of Chrysostom.

History. Rudimenta historica, vol. VI: Compendium of Church history.

The school hours were not too long; two hours and a half in the morning and the same in the afternoon; in the highest class (rhetoric), only two hours in the morning and the same in the afternoon; thus the students of the highest grade were wisely given more time for home work. There was ordinarily a full holiday every week, usually Wednesday or Thursday, "lest," as the regulations of the Province of the Upper Rhine have it, "the pupils have to go to school four days in succession."[1] These holidays were frequently spent in a country house (villa), near the city. On the whole, study and recreation were so distributed that the complaints of "overburdening" the students could not reasonably be made in Jesuit schools.

Against the literary curriculum of the Society some serious charges have been made by modern critics. It has been said that nothing but the ancient languages was studied in Jesuit colleges, and that other branches,

  1. Pachtler, l. c., vol. III, p. 398.