(From: Father Sebastiano Raviolo, CRS, “Historical Outlines of the Order of the Somascan Fathers”, for a Somascan Spirituality 7, Houston, 2017, Chapter IV, p.57-75)
Early Development of the Order
He demonstrated that by asserting his authority as master of his cooperators, when it was needed. In fact, he assured them from his deathbed that he would be “of greater help in the next life than in the present.” (8) This was a promise of a more valid and lasting assistance for the continuation of the work initiated and constituted by him. (9)
However, with the death of the Saint, the organization of the newborn society was so weak and uncertain that the companions decided to abandon the work started by him.
A certain Bergerio Deresma from Cisano Bergamasco wrote to Mons. G. B. Guillermi, canon of Feltre and Vicar General of Bergamo: “I have pity for the spiritual Company of Master Hieronjmo Miani, which was left without him; I do not say without government, because God governs all His faithful, to whom He gives perseverance and good intention.”
The companions who were present at the passing of St. Jerome were: Fr. Agostino Barili of Bergamo, the counts Angiol Marco and Vincenzo Cambarana of Pavia, Primo De’ Conti and Leone Carpani.
Summoned from the houses of Veneto and Lombardy, the other cooperators of St. Jerome gathered in Somasca.
The majority was inclined to break up and return to their own homes. But Vincenzo Gambarana, Agostino Barili and Giovanni Scotti were opposed to that with all their strength and encouraged them all to perseverance. Consequently, they proceeded to elect a head who would take the place of Miani. With unanimous vote, Fr. Agostino Barili was chosen.
We do not have documents to establish with precision of details the outlines of a program that the Saint could have drawn for the continuators of his work. However, one thing is certain: the ideal of the Reform powerfully animated the first companions and cooperators of Jerome and was ever the basis for all their activities.
The Bull of June 6, 1540, with which the Pope Paul III approved the new-born congregation constituted for it a strong element of stability. (10) Since then, it acquired numerous valid subjects. The Bull gave the faculty to elect a superior “ad tempus” as head of all the congregation with authority to transfer the Confreres from one house to another; it established that the Congregation be directly subjected to the Apostolic See; that the General Chapter have authority to issue constitutions.
Bishop Lippomano, of Bergamo, issued a decree in favor of the Congregation, giving faculties to each of its components to exercise within the confines of his Diocese the care of the orphans, boys and girls, of women converts and of the poor sick; to accept things offered them, to live in community, to elect a superior, to celebrate Mass, to preach, to erect oratories.
Toward the end of 1540, Father Barili, Superior General, asked the Pope through Cardinal Carafa, that the Congregation be united to that of the Theatines, because the one and the other would improve from mutual help.
The petition was granted with a Brief dated November 8, 1540.
After he became Pope, Carafa, for legitimate motives and with a previous agreement of both the Theatines and the Somascans, deemed it well to separate the two Congregations, with a Brief dated December 23, 1555, and leaving to each its own liberty and his own direction.
In 1568, in a Chapter held at the orphanage of Brescia, it was decided to petition the Pope Paul V to inscribe the Congregation among the number of religious orders, granting to its members the right to profess solemn vows.
So, on December 6, 1568, with a Bull of Pius V, the society founded by Emiliani was counted among the Orders of the Church and took the name of Congregation of the Clerics Regular from Somasca. The Bull of Pius V gave to the Order that stability that was a necessary guarantee of life and development.
In fact, we read in the Bull itself that many, not considering themselves true religious for not having professed the vows, would leave and take refuge in some other religious families. Others, because poor and unable to receive the sacred orders for not having according to the dispositions of the Council of Trent a benefice or patrimony, would choose another kind of life.
The gravity of such a situation is very well outlined in a copy of the document contained in the Archives of Somasca, whose original is in the Archives of the Episcopal Curia of Milano. It is a petition addressed by the Somascans (probably by Father Gambarana) to the Archbishop of Milano, St. Charles Borromeo, to obtain the Church of St. Maiolo in Pavia. The document makes us know how the Fathers in the beginning would recruit new religious for their institutions. “When in the above-mentioned institutions they detected some children with a quick mind and intelligence, with great charity the Confreres taught them letters. Some of them became priests who, nowadays, govern the institutions where they are with success.”
Therefore, undoubtedly, the orphanages constituted seed-beds of the best priestly vocations which were increasing the ranks of the clergy, both regular and secular, bearing great fruits of good.
While it was assuming its juridical identity, the Company would extend its institutions and with ardor would pursue the apostolic goals set up by its Founder.
In 1569 could be counted 24 residences, among which were 18 houses of orphans in the following cities of Italy:
VENETO: Venice, Vicenza.
LOMBARDY: Brescia, Bergamo, Milano, Pavia, Somasca, Mantua, Cremona.
PIEDMONT: Biella, Vercelli, Tortona.
EMI LIA: Ferrara, Piacenza, Reggio.
LIGURIA: Savona, Genova.
MARCHE: Recanati.
LAZIO: Rome.
In some localities they did not found a religious house, but they simply collaborated for the good functioning of institutions already established. Referring to this fact, the Acts of the Congregation speak of “aided institutions,” differentiating them from those owned.
The Chapter of 1569 prescribed to leave the care of orphan girls and of women-converts, care which, for obvious reasons, presented too much difficulty. Such works had to be entrusted to feminine Institutes.
Thus, only the male youth would remain entrusted to the Somascans. They will thus enter even the seminaries to bring that instruction and that spiritual formation which the Council of Trent will indicate as the essential element of the Reform. They will found Colleges and Academies to make of them, first of all, houses of study and of formation for young candidates to religious life and then, also institutes of instruction for lay students. They will open free schools for the children of the populace in order to snatch them from ignorance and its sad consequences.
At that time, also, the Somascans were spreading the catechetical schools founded by Castellino da Castello on the example of what St. Jerome already had done with the collaboration of Fr. Angiol Marco Gambarana.
The first school of Christian Doctrine was opened on November 30, 1536 in Milano and was considered as one of the most efficient means of stemming the Protestant heresy in Italy. All sources agree in admitting that the Fathers of St. Martin cooperated with Castellino. Ippolito Porro tells us that in1537 it was printed a booklet: ·”Questionnaire of the master to the disciples made in 1537 with the cooperation of Castellino, the Fathers of the Holy Sepulchre and of St. Martin of the Poor”.
The reasons which induced Castellino to seek the help to the Somascans is certainly to be found in the experience already made in such a field by Saint Jerome, and in the promptness with which the Fathers showed themselves very willingly disposed to collaborate in so effective a work of reform. Thus, St. Martin became, through the merits of Gambarana, one of the most important centers for the diffusion of catechetical culture.
In 1542, Castellino asked Fr. Marco Strata, successor of Gambarana in the direction of St. Martin, that two Delegates from that “Pious Place” assume the charge of General Visitors of the Company of Reform.
Fr. Stazzani introduced such schools in Ferrara. The General Chapter of 1559 decreed that every house must have at least one copy of the book “Of Christian Life”, containing the norms for the functioning of the schools.
In the third chapter of the “Orders for education poor orphans” we read: “Among the main cares of the Lay Brother will be teaching the children Christian Doctrine and reading. And if he cannot do so because of the large number of orphans, he will seek the help of the older ones who can read, and will assign so many to each one according to his prudence, so that all can learn to read”.
The Somascans always held dear this form of apostolate, so much in conformity with the needs of the Catholic Reform, as the documents give us abundant proofs.
Often, they took the charge of explaining the catechism to the children, and exerting, by order of the Bishops, the office of explaining morals from the pulpit of the Cathedral.
Thus, at Giovinazzo, they pledged themselves to “read cases of conscience”. This is an expression in common use that recurs quite often in the documents to indicate the teaching of moral theology from the professor’s chair or from the pulpit.
But side by side with catechetical teaching, the Somascans also had at heart that of letters. They aimed to give the children of the people the possibility to learn the first rudiments of culture.
During the Middle Ages, the Church, by extending her teaching activity beyond the clergy, attracted to her schools even the poor laity and imparting to all, lay and clerics, the same literary and religious instruction. The children came in large numbers to the schools that arose in the shadow of the cathedrals, the monasteries and the country parishes.
During the humanistic period, teaching ceased to be monopolized almost exclusively by the clergy and became also the dominion of the laity, which multiplied the centers of culture.
The conquest of the right to teach, wrung from the clerics by the laity, led to the result that instruction was no longer given “gratis pauperibus” (free to the poor), as the Councils wanted it to be. It became negotiable as any other merchandise.
Thus, little by little the school became secularized, and the schools for the people fell into decadence. Humanistic studies attracted the nobility and the rich middle class, and in the humanistic schools were centralized the fundamental social responsibilities.
The Protestant Reform, in the countries it occupied, took hold of the school and placed it under its own supervision. At any rate, favoring the schools was something that logically fit its programs, because it wanted direct reading of the Bible, which each one should interpret according to his own interior feeling. Since then, the School became more than ever the ground on which the Church and the State will meet, either to understand and help each other mutually when they were in accord, or to argue and wrangle the upper hand when they were in struggle. It was natural, therefore, that the Catholic Church, in her work of defense for traditional Faith, would identify religious interests with cultural and pedagogical interests.
The Company of Jesus took the lead in the scientific movement. The Somascans too gave their little contribution in the spreading of the Catholic schools.
The modest origin of their school activity could be found in the orphanages. Already St. Jerome had attributed great importance to the spreading of the early rudiment of culture.
A prescription of 1560 said that “in all institutions the children with capacities must be taught in reading during meal, in the Grammar of Donato, and in writing on the fest days.”(11) They were taught “letters and grammar and arithmetic.” The grammar techer had to be a Father, possibly not the Director, as we know from the “Chapters on the government of the poor orphans of St. Martin of Porta Nuova in Milano, of November 24, 1585.” It was a school regularly organized that needed all the activity of a Teacher, who had to dedicate all his energies, without any other occupation but the daily celebration of Mass and hearing confessions on Sundays.
The Rome’s orphanage would mandate his students to pursue education. Fr. Angiol Marco Gambarana before 1569 had founded in Milano and Trivulzio orphanages for the education of the orphanage of St. Martin of Milano in the preparation studies for the ecclesiastical courses.
Besides the orphans, on the same benches, often seated other children admitted to the school as externs. In fact, in Somasca a cetain Girolamo Carchi had left an inheritance to the school there with the obligation to educate some children of noble families. However, the thing did not seem to be well appreciated for different reason because the Chapter of 1547decreed to take the first steps with the testament executors of Girolamo Carchi to “exclude the children of noble families in order to better help some of our poor.”(12)
These were the very ones whom the Somascans had particularly at heart in those years and to whose education they dedicated themselves with evident preference.
The Gallio College in Como was founded in 1583. Here is what stated the Bull of foundation issued by Gregory XIII on October 15: “…as the above mentioned Cardinal Tolomeo, a little time ago informed us that he thought that in his town and his diocese a lot of youth, though very intelligent, because of the poverty of their families, could not learn both letters and liberal arts, as well as the other arts. Therefore, without hope, they waste their time without any fruit, feel useless to themselves and others, and worse yet, because of their ignorance of the things related to salvation, they are easy prey of vice. They avoid them if these poor youth could be educated in the fear of God and good morals and letters. Therefore, since the Clerics of the Congregations of Somasca are very good at this task as they already have experience in educating the youth with honor and fruits, he strongly desires that in the parish residence of St. Maria be established and founded a college for children, under the care and management of one director and three teachers of the Congregation…”
The Bull continues saying that the children, about fifty in number, must be educated “in religion and piety and instructed in “good morals,” in sciences and discipline, according to the skills of each one; and those who are not suitable for these studies, be taught mechanical arts and those other arts which they will deem appropriate. The administrators must choose very poor children who do not have or they parent do not have any means for being fed and educated, especially the orphans. In the capitulations proposed by Card, Gallio to the Fathers, he insisted that they are to “take care of the children whom will be assigned by His Grace, as they do with the orphans they have in custody in other towns of Lombardy, teach them Christian doctrine and grammar, and the other honest trade, such as sowing, needle-work, according to the tradition of the orphanages…”
It was, therefore, an organization of study and work identical to that already introduced in the orphanages of St. Jerome.
During this period, the Somascans founded public schools also, solely for extern students. In this, they took example on the Jesuits who already under the Pontificate of Paul III, had opened in Padua a school to instruct the children in grammar and in the rudiments of Christian Faith.
As early as 1581, the public schools of Vercelli were offered to the Somascans; however, they had to refuse due to a lack of personnel. On the other hand, in 1586 they established the College of St. Giustina in Saló, assuming the charge of teaching “twenty-four children of Saló”. In 1607, they were invited to staff the public schools of the whole city. It appears that such an invitation obtained a favorable reception.
In 1591, the regents of the city of Tortona invited the Somascans to staff its schools and these accepted to teach two hours a day until it would be provided otherwise.
In 1596, the Fathers of St. Maria Segreta in Milano had assumed the charge “to teach the children,” but they soon had to decline because the house was to be the seat of formation for the Clerics.
We have to notice, however, that during this period they did not hide a certain reluctance to teach in public schools and accepted it only when grave needs compelled them. Of this, there is a clear example: the negotiations between the Somascans and Bishop Ferreri, for the establishment of a school in Biella. Bishop Ferreri proposed to the Somascans, on April 26, 1596, to “have the common school, the orphans, and a dozen youngsters, as do the Jesuit Fathers”. But the Chapter, convened in that same year, stated refuse to accept a dozen youngsters in that city and to teach to the pupils, because it was totally contrary to the intention of His Holiness”. We do not know what reasons the Pope had to oppose such a design; probably, there were particular motives. Certain it is that, notwithstanding farther insistence on the part of Ferreri, the Somascans were irrevocable in their refusal.
In conclusion, we observe that, besides the schools for the candidates for the priesthood, the Somascans, until 1595, devoted themselves to the instruction of the children, especially the poor, in the orphanages and also in the public schools, where they imparted the first elements of knowledge, and above all, instilled in their minds the principles of Faith and Christian morals. They taught grammar and arithmetic, correspondence in the vernacular and elementary secretarial work; approximately, a school with the nature and purpose of modern professional training.
The Order, in fact, could not open superior schools before it had suitable masters. Those few ones who entered the Company with a good store of literary and scientific knowledge, were employed as professors in the houses of formation for the Student Clerics and in the diocesan Seminaries.
To form a learned and virtuous clergy was the principal objective pursued by the Reform and the Somascans dedicated to it the best of their energies.
The Seminary, as an institution where future priests would prepare themselves for their high mission from early youth, with uniform discipline and with its own complete system of studies, was a new creation of the spirit of the Church, due to the Council of Trent,
If the main cause of the religious rebellion of the Sixteenth Century had been the collapse of ecclesiastic discipline, all cares must turn without delay to the education of the clergy. Saint Ignatius Loyola founded in 1551 in Rome the Roman College and shortly after, the German College (1552). Cardinal Pole founded almost contemporaneously the first college for clerics in England.
The Somascans, in more modest proportions but with no less clarity of insight and firmness of purpose, dedicated themselves to the foundation and development of Seminaries both for secular and religious clerics.
The first of such Institutions was that of Somasca. There, near the grave of the holy Founder, existed an orphanage, erected by Emiliani himself. Therefore, the Fathers decided to reserve this institution for the education and literary formation of those orphans who would aspire to follow St. Jerome more closely in the way of apostolate.
In the years 1556-57, Fr. Angiol Marco Gambarana thought of founding also in Pavia a institution of the same type as that of Somasca from which “as from another spiritual arsenal of the Somascan Congregation, the religious, supplied with the spirit in the quiet of the cloister, would come out to exercise with valor the works of charity proper to the institution in favor of the neighbor”. The intention was realized a few years later, in 1566, with the foundation of the school of St. Maiolo in Pavia. It was again by the work of Gambarana that the two minor Seminaries of S. Croce in Trivulzio, and of the Colombara of Milano were born for those orphans, especially of St. Martin, who intended to embrace religious life.
Thus, between 1560 and 1570, the Somascans prepared the future members of their religious family in Trivulzio and in the Colombara with the elementary instruction, and at Somasca and Pavia for superior instruction.
Of what did instruction consist?
The information on this subject is scarce but sufficient to give an approximate idea.
Our Clerics had a very learned professor in Fr. Primo Del Conte, one of the first followers of the Founder. His most outstanding student, Fr. Girolamo Novelli, who taught in 1574, and later became professor of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology in several of our houses, attested in the depositions for the cause of beatification of St. Jerome, that he had Fr. Primo Del Conte as professor of Greek letters and of Hebrew.
Along with the classical studies, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture occupied an important, or should we say, a preeminent place, and the reason for this is clear. A return to the Sacred Books, understood in their true and authentic meaning, was more than ever urgent to combat Protestantism which, on the theory of free interpretation hinged its biblical exegesis. There was need to enter the arena well equipped for warfare and to combat the enemy with his own weapons.
In conclusion, we can say that Somascan professors and students in the Sixteenth, Century acquired in their schools a culture based on philosophy, theology, ascetics, Scriptures, and classic-humanism.
It is possible that the Somascans had introduced in the schools of the Diocesan Seminaries in which they work the same curriculum, at the invitation of the Bishops.
Urged by the Council of Trent to erect Seminaries, but lacking in suitable personnel for the spiritual and cultural formation of the candidates to the Priesthood, whom could the Bishops appeal to if not to the new Clerics Regular? And the Somascans not only did not raise any difficulty, but started with extraordinary zeal to collaborate on the education of the secular clergy, justly considered as the starting point for a true Reform.
Some Seminaries were directed by the Somascans for many years, others on the contrary, only “aided”, in the sense that Religious already assigned to a determinate work lent themselves to teaching in a Seminary until the Bishop could provide for it with his own elements.
On October 4, 1566, Saint Charles Borromeo went to Somasca on a pastoral visit. He thus had the opportunity to visit the school of the Somascan Clerics. He was so satisfied with it that he decided to implant there, parallel to that one, a diocesan Seminary and to entrust it to the care of these Fathers. Borromeo already knew and esteemed the Sons of St. Jerome, to whom in that same year, he had entrusted the Church of St. Maiolo in Pavia. The negotiations with the Superior of the house, Fr. Angiol Marco Gambarana, and with the Superior General, Fr. Giovanni Scotti, were rapidly conducted, with the result that on November 19, 1566, the Seminary was officially established.
On August 18, 1568, Saint Charles could write to Ormaneto: “Here are educated children born mostly in the mountains… Of course, they demand a strict discipline for these children who should become accustomed to it for the future. The Rector of a strict province shall admit these children accustomed to a firmer discipline. This kind of life would not be easy to the Milanoese students whose more delicate physique abhors the asperities of this way of life.”
It is known how St. Charles had established a quota of cleric students for each Parish. To facilitate things, therefore, he founded small country Seminaries for poor clerics so that, in an environment of lesser needs of treatment, they could succeed more easily in finding someone who could pay the minimum charge. It was with this aim in view that the Seminary of Somasca was instituted.
Ordinarily, the stay of Clerics in Somasca was not prolonged beyond a year or two. At the end of this term, they were examined by two priests delegated for this by the Cardinal. If they passed this exam successfully, they were sent to the Major Seminary in Milano, where they would pursue superior studies.
The Seminary at Somasca was transferred in 1579 to Celana, in a larger and more comfortable see. In that same year, the Somascans assumed the direction of the Patriarchal Seminary in Venice.
The leap, nevertheless, was not unexpected, because the Somascans already for some years had been giving proofs of their education qualities in other seminaries of Italy In fact, since 1568, the Pope Pius V, in the Bull with which the Congregation was inscribed among the Religious Orders, had written: ” …They manage also seminaries of clerics in studies of high level”.
In 1574, they gave religious to staff the Seminary of Naples; in 1576, they assumed the care of that of Tortona, and, shortly after, of that of Pavia.
On May 15, 1579, after overcoming no slight difficulties, the negotiations between the Patriarch of Venice and the Fathers of the Congregation of Somasca were concluded.
How grave an engagement and of how much responsibility they assumed is easy to infer from reading the letter with which the Patriarch announced the aims and the importance of the new institution to his diocesans: “Because of the paternal benevolence that we always had for the souls committed to us, and because of the obedience we owe to the decrees of the Sacred Council of Trent, we had the ardent desire to found in this city a Seminary of clerics from which, in a few years could graduate priests whose knowledge of letters will make them apt to teach the people, and whose good example will be sufficient to guide them well…”
What was the main reason that induced the Patriarch to give the preference to the Somascans? Certainly, it was the good reputation which they had acquired in the government of other Seminaries and perhaps also the fact that they kept a group of Clerics in the hospital of St. Giovanni e Paolo, and therefore, they already had in Venice one of their minor Seminaries.
How much the Somascans had met the expectations of the diocese and of its worthy Pastor is attested by the words of Patriarch Federico Carner, uttered in 1590: “O dear Sons of Milanoi, heirs to the spirit of such a charitable citizen! To you I entrust and recommend this tender youth, destined to the clerical state; mold their hearts with feelings of love for religion, form their minds with knowledge so they will turn usefully to the needs of the uneducated; you, so moderate in dress, in your motions, in behavior…I cannot doubt you that, as generous as you are, you want no other reward than that of their happy success…” (Cfr. Piva, Il seminario di Venezia, 1910, p. 62) To these words echo those of Patriarch Lorenzo Priuli: “I wish that God will never take my seminary from my Somascan Fathers; they have reformed all the clergy.” (Notizie intorno alla vita di Primo Del Conte, p. 82).
Fr. Evangelista Dorati, born in Biadena (Cremona) in 1539, was then Director. Having become a secular priest, he had developed a warm friendship with Fr. Scotti who had persuaded him to enter Miani’s Company. Elected Director of the Seminary of Venice, he distinguished himself by his excellent qualities of government and was greatly esteemed. Then, he was appointed as Master of Novices until he was called to Rome by the Pope Gregory XIV for some assignments. The esteem of the Pope for Dorati was such that he named him Cardinal but the insistence of the good religious to be exonerated from the honorary office was such that the Pope desisted from his purpose. Moved by the same sentiment of humility, he tried to refuse also the charge of Superior General, but despite his resistance, he was compelled to accept it.
His reputation for holiness was so widespread that even miracles were attributed to him, as well as the gift of prophesy and that of penetration of hearts. He predicted, among other things, the day of his death which arrived on June 24, 1602.
A famous disciple of Fr. Dorati was Fr. Andrea Stella, a scholar of Sacred Scriptures and of the Holy Fathers, and gifted also with a very vast profane culture. These qualities combined with a particular facility of speech, made him an orator of renown, so much so that he was chosen to display his eloquence before the Venetian Senate, the Duke of Savoy, and the Pope Clement VIII in the Basilica of St. Peter. He also wrote a life of St. Jerome Emiliani.
Worthy of notice was also Fr. Gerolamo Novelli whom the historians praise as a master of great value and of whom the Bollandists said he was “a man well versed in classical letters.” He taught rhetoric in the patriarchal seminary in the year 1588. Under his guidance, even the celebrated Vincenzo Contarini, who obtained later a chair in the University of Padua, was taught “Greek and Latin eloquence.” (13)
By the side of so eminent a master were teaching with honor and success also the young Somascan Clerics (14).
Thus, making use of these fresh energies, they were able to provide teachers for the Seminary at Alessandria (1580), and to take over the direction of that of Vincenza (1583), of the Ducal of Venice (1591) and that of Trento (1593).
In a manuscript note by the Director of the Seminary of Trento, Don Gabriele Rizzi, preserved in the archives of the Order in Genova, we read: “… (The Somascans) did not lend themselves only to the teaching of theological subjects to the candidates to the priesthood, but would teach also in the gymnasium and lyceum schools to the children of the citizens. The consuls of the town, with this aim in view, had enjoined the Fathers to teach grammar, humanities and rhetoric…”
Already the times were ripe and the Order had individuals sufficiently prepared to tackle superior teaching in the public schools for the preparation of the ruling classes.
Clementine College will open the new arduous way and will be a splendid affirmation of the contribution borne by the Somascans for the defense and development of truth, especially the religious one, in the scholastic field.
In this period which goes from the death of the Founder until 1595, the year that hailed the dawn of Clementine College in Rome, the Order went on consolidating its foundations, assuming an ever more complete organization, and ever more clearly defining the scopes and methods of its activity. To contribute to the reform of morals and to the struggle against Protestant heresy through the apostolate of teaching: here is the idea that prevailed and polarized about itself energies and marked its direction and its limits.
First, in the orphanages, then also in the public schools and the seminaries, the work of the Somascans unfolded silently and modestly, but fruitfully, guided by a single intent: that of bringing to the people instruction and education, both religious and scientific.
And it is exactly the most humble sons of the people who are the first to enjoy the fruits of this apostolate. Then, when from the houses of formation, veritable burning centers of Christian spirit, of holy vocations, of admirable examples, and centers of fervent religious rebirth, came out youths formed with the new ideals of reform, even the clergy experienced the beneficial influence of their religious fervor.
The instruction of the young clergy was serious and well prepared. It was not possible to have a precise and absolute unity of direction since that experience had not yet suggested the choice of better systems.
While in the elementary schools they welcomed the methods then in use, in teaching to the candidates of the seminary, they had in view the preparation of men capable of opposing themselves efficiently to the spreading of heresy. For that reason, the Scriptural studies dominated supremely in the schools of theology, even though literary studies were not neglected, for the ones needed the others.
In the course of time, the studies in the schools acquired unity of methods and direction; this will constitute a true scholastic tradition, and will be the way that the teachers will follow constantly, with evident advantage, both for themselves and the students.