The Educational Method of Saint Jerome Emiliani
By Fr. Giuseppe Oddone
Translated by Fr. Remo Zanatta
Jerome, fervent and refuge for the poor and the little ones, undoubtedly had his own practice, his own educational method.
Jerome began teaching children at least twenty years before St. Ignatius and the Jesuits started their schools (the first Jesuit college dates back to 1548; it was opened in Messina and was extraordinarily successful). In 1551 the Roman College for the formation of the ruling classes began: Ignatius was initially reluctant because he saw in the school an obstacle to the mobility of religious and feared that by doing school the Society would lose its apostolic momentum. He accepted this risk, drafted a ratio studiorum, and reworked his educational method based on the esercitia spiritualia with prelectio (stimulating interest), lectio (exposition of the disciplines), and repetitio (verification of the assimilation of the contents).
We can summarize the educational method of Jerome in the following points, still essential for us today, but still to be reworked and adapted.
- Being with the children and living with them.
It is an anonymous friend, probably one of the Contarini brothers (Marco), who narrates the episode that illuminates the Saint’s practice. Invited by his friend Domenico Sauli (1533) to go to his house in Milan and leave the children in the “hospitalaccio”, he answered: “Brother, I thank you very much for your charity and I am happy to come here, as long as you accept these brothers of mine with whom I want to live and die. Domenico Sauli found this too burdensome but took the trouble to report the matter to the Duke who sent him the necessary things, assigned him a “hospitale”, where he more than in any other place willingly stayed together with his company”.
This is a physical presence, a direct contact with the children. We can extend it to all school environments and require it first of religious and then of their collaborators and teachers. The children need to see their educators physically in their midst. They need to feel that they are there willingly, because this is our mission, their way of being.
- Knowledge dictated by love in a welcoming environment.
It is always Contarini, the anonymous friend of life, who repeatedly visits Girolamo Miani at San Rocco and at the Incurabili. He sees him in action when Girolamo shows him the work done by his children, each one identified with his ingenuity, with his spiritual, cultural and moral gifts (“they pray and have great grace from the Lord; they read well and write; others work, one is very obedient, the other keeps very quiet…”). “It is a matter of having a positive knowledge of each one. It is dictated by love, without despairing of anyone, without stereotypes, because otherwise I am not teaching and educating, but only seeking confirmation of my prejudice. It is possible knowledge in the educational field with direct dialogue, with an emotional flow that allows the passage of information, with the knowledge as much as possible of the family events and history of each one. The children must feel this rich human warmth and welcome in all educators.”
- All must abide by the rule of working.
If there is a point on which Girolamo Miani is severe in his letters, it is work: everyone must abide by this fundamental rule, adults and children, otherwise they cannot be part of the educational community, they must be discharged and sent back to the hospitals. The word “work” has a very high frequency in the letters: it occurs 18 times. Although he belonged to an ancient Venetian patrician family, Girolamo had direct experience of working in the family. In fact, the Miani family drew the means of a decent subsistence from the trade and the art of wool. After his religious education, work must have seemed to the Miani to be the first way to give young orphans the possibility of moral and social redemption. We know that it was a job done with discretion, alternating with moments of leisure, study and prayer. In fact, before learning the art of work, the boys had to somehow invest themselves with the will to work and be educated to this need, internalizing the saying of Sacred Scripture “whoever does not work does not eat”. We always know from his friend Contarini that at Bersaglio and San Rocco, Miani had led some masters who taught how to “make iron pitchers, with which art he exercised himself and his children”. Girolamo resorted to specialized masters, so that the learning of the craft was as rigorous and exact as possible. Other job in Venice was to sow the cloths of wool according to a special patent of Arcangelo Romitan. In Brescia Girolamo starts the production of hats.
Personal commitment is a difficult point to achieve today, but in our educational environments we must demand fidelity to school work, the healthy ambition to succeed in life as professionals prepared and accustomed since the years of adolescence to personal responsibility. Life is neither a despair for some nor a celebration for others, but for everyone a service and a job for which we must be accountable: this is how our former student Alessandro Manzoni expresses himself in “I Promessi Sposi”.
- Devotion as fidelity to Christian values and traditions.
This is another basic foundation of our educational project. Certainly, for St. Jerome it had a stronger value than ours: it was the climate of spiritual tension, of prayer, of imitation of Jesus, of poverty, of service, of discipline (good customs) that makes possible the assimilation and the diffusion of Christian values. It is only through it that communities stand. Without devotion, without the fire of the Spirit, it ruins everything.
“Devotion” involves all the components of the educational community: the religious and the laity who must feel being sent by the Church to witness to the faith that must pass from the heart to the mouth, from the mouth to life, to profession, to witness, operating a synthesis between culture and life and trafficking the treasure, the charism left to us by St. Jerome. Students must be educated to interiority, to the sense of meaning of life, to open themselves to the proposal and practice of a life of faith, which illuminates the path of their existence. There should be no lack of moments of Christian proposal and practice, such as a few moments of prayer at the beginning of the lessons, the proposal to participate in the sacraments of the Eucharist and reconciliation, the study of the Christian religion in its mysteries and morals.
The word “devotion”, which occurs nine times in the letters of Jerome, historically recalls the Renaissance spirituality of the devotio moderna, shared by other saints of the time, in particular by St. Ignatius, and finds its expression in the spiritual exercises, which should lead to the mastery of all the faculties of man to be more available to the needs of his neighbor. It is, however, an essentially lay spirituality, made their own by the brothers of divine love, who wanted to imitate Christ without the qualms of a heavy legalism, serving him in their brothers with works of charity.
- Charity, as welcome and love within the community and as solidarity towards the poor.
Together with work and devotion, it constitutes the other basic element of the work of education. Charity, a term that also occurs nine times in the Saint’s letters, has value if it is first of all practiced within the educational community, if everyone feels welcomed, accepted, respected as persons, if there is a climate of interaction and empathy among all the components of the community. Aspects of prevarication, division and laceration are inadmissible and must be vigorously eliminated. Charity must be open to the outside world, to the values and practice of solidarity and peace-building. To love one another and to take care of the poor is in its practical aspect the spiritual testament of Girolamo Miani. To create a climate of love within his communities and to serve the poor in order to make them grow and be fully included in society, he dedicated all his energies to sharing his own life with them.