Uma 'Comunidade Pedagógica Europeia’: O Humanismo jesuítico e a identidade da Europa

Abstract

In this article, the A. highlights the specific contribution that Jesuits gave to the shaping of Modern Europe. The A. argues that, in the creation process of the “European Identity”, the Jesuit contribution corresponds to the Hellenic, Roman and Judeo-Christian paradigms which Jesuits adopted for their own formation and mission «ad gentes». This is why many Jesuits have been reckoned among the greatest European humanists, pedagogues, poets, mathematicians, scientists. astronomers, and architects. Above all, they should be remembered in History of Education as “masters of Europe'' on account of the unparalleled network of Colleges they themselves founded all over Europe: in 1579 Jesuits had founded 180, while in their apogee in 1710 the number of Colleges reached 517. ranging from Portugal to Russia, and including also the Provinces of Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and Eastern Europe (Austria, Bohemia, Poland and Lithuania). So wide a network of transnational Colleges was united through one only idiom, Latin, as well as a scholarly system which was anchored in the anthropological and pedagogical foundations of the Society of Jesus' «Ratio Studiorum».