In education, the Jesuits, if they did not precisely innovate, improved upon the methods of the grammarians which had persisted from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance.  They spared no pains in training a large and competent body of professors, men of extensive culture, formed upon one uniform pattern, and exercised in the art of popularizing knowledge.  These teachers were distributed over the Jesuit colleges; and in every country their system was the same.  New catechisms, grammars, primers, manuals of history, enabled their pupils to learn with facility in a few months what it had cost years of painful labor to acquire under pompous pedants of the old regime.  The mental and physical aptitudes of youths committed to their charge were carefully observed; and classes were adapted to various ages and degrees of capacity.  Hours of recreation alternated with hours of study, so that the effort of learning should be neither irksome nor injurious to health.  Nor was religious education neglected.  Attendance upon daily Mass, monthly confession, and instruction in the articles of the faith, formed an indispensable part of the system.  When we remember that these advantages were offered gratuitously to the public, it is not surprising that people of all ranks and conditions should have sent their boys to the Jesuit colleges.  Even Protestants availed themselves of what appeared so excellent a method; and the Jesuits obtained the reputation of being the best instructors of youth.[172] It soon became the mark of a good Catholic to have frequented Jesuit schools; and in after life a pupil who had studied creditably in their colleges, found himself everywhere at home.  Yet the Society took but little interest in elementary or popular education.  Their object was to gain possession of the nobility, gentry, and upper middle class.  The proletariat might remain ignorant; it was the destiny of such folk to be passive instruments in the hands of spiritual and temporal rulers.  Nor were they always scrupulous in the means employed for taking hold on young men of distinction.  One instance of the animosity they aroused, even in Italy, at an early period of their activity, will suffice.  Tuscany was thrown into commotion by the discovery of their designs upon the boys they undertook to teach.

[Footnote 172:  See Sarpi’s Letters, vol. i. p. 352, for Protestant pupils of Jesuits.  Sarpi’s Memorial to the Signory of Venice on the Collegio de’Greci in Rome exposes the fallacy of their being reputed the best teachers of youth, by pointing out how their aim is to withdraw their pupils’ allegiance from the nation, the government, and the family, to themselves.]