Thus we see that Sturm had drawn his educational ideas from the very same schools in which many of the first Jesuits had been educated, and which were considered by them as models. Is it not much more probable that the Jesuits fashioned their own system after these schools, than after that of Sturm in Strasburg? Assertions, like that of Dr. Russell, that "the Society of Jesus incorporated so many of his [Sturm's] methods into the new Catholic schools,"[1] are highly improbable, and certainly not substantiated by any positive proof. What was similar in both systems, was to be found in the humanistic schools of the Netherlands.[2]
On equally feeble grounds rests another hypothesis advanced in recent years, namely that "what is really good in the Jesuit system can be traced almost in detail to Luiz Vives."[3] In proof of this statement the fact is mentioned that Ignatius met Vives in Bruges. The Spaniard Vives was one of the most brilliant humanists of the time, and a distinguished writer on pedagogy. He, too, had studied at Paris (1509-1512), and spent a great part of his life in the Netherlands. The argument used against the dependence on Sturm, holds good in this case as well. It is asserted that Ignatius had borrowed from Vives, among other good things, "the physical care bestowed upon the young,
- ↑ German Higher Schools, p. 47.
- ↑ After this chapter had been finished, I found that Professor Paulsen had expressed the same conclusion in his Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts (vol. I, p. 412), where he states that any dependence of the Jesuit system on Sturm's plan is most improbable.
- ↑ Lange, in Encyclopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens, IX, 776. See Duhr, l. c., p. 13.
