Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 837 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2.

Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 837 pages of information about Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2.

The torrent of Sarpi’s indignation against the Jesuits, as perverters of sound doctrine in the Church, disturbers of kingdoms, sappers of morality and disseminators of vile customs through society, runs so violently forward that we are fain to check it, while acknowledging its justice.  One passage only, from the many passages bearing on this topic in his correspondence, demands special citation, since it deals directly with the whole material of the present work.  Writing to his friend Leschassier, he speaks as follows:  ’Nothing can be of more mischief to you in France than the dishonesty of bad confessors and their determination to aggrandize Rome by any means, together with the mistaken zeal of the good sort.  We have arrived at a point where cure of the disease must even be despaired of.  Fifty years ago things went well in Italy.  There was no public system of education for training young men to the profit of the clergy.  They were brought up by their parents in private, more for the advantage of their families than for that of the hierarchy.  In religious houses, where studies flourished, attention was paid to scholastic logic.  The jurisdiction and the authority of the Pope were hardly touched on; and while theology was pursued at leisure, the majority passed their years in contemplation of the Deity and angels.  Recently, through the decrees of the Tridentine Council, schools have been opened in every State, which are called Seminaries, where education is concentrated on the sole end of augmenting ecclesiastical supremacy.  Furthermore, the prelates of each district, partly with a view of saving their own pockets, and partly that they may display a fashionable show of zeal, have committed the charge of those institutions to Jesuits.  This has caused a most important alteration in the aspect of affairs.’[170] It would be difficult to state the changes effected by the Tridentine Council and the commission of education to the Jesuits more precisely and more fairly than in this paragraph.  How deeply Sarpi had penetrated the Jesuitical arts in education, can be further demonstrated from another passage in his minor works.[171] In a memoir prepared for the Venetian Signory, he says that the Jesuits are vulgarly supposed to be unrivaled as trainers of youth.  But a patent equivocation lurks under this phrase ‘unrivaled.’  Education must be considered with regard to the utility of the State.  ’Now the education of the Jesuits consists in stripping the pupil of every obligation to his father, to his country, and to his natural prince; in diverting all his love and fear toward a spiritual superior, on whose nod, beck and word he is dependent.  This system of training is useful for the supremacy of ecclesiastics and for such secular governments as they are ready to submit to; and none can deny that the Jesuits are without equals in their employment of it.  Yet in so far as it is advantageous in such cases, so also is it prejudicial to States, the end whereof is liberty and real virtue, and with

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Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.