The Re-instruction And The Recapture

To the Jesuits, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), was mainly due the "re-instruction" of Europe and the recapture of the renaissance. Sufficient to say that their success was so overwhelming that it aroused the violent antagonism of the Universities, and thus ultimately made a contributory cause of their downfall. They were, too, exposed to the peculiar danger of a system which is, after all, in some essential degree imitative. The training of the Society undoubtedly went to produce admirably efficient men of a generally high level of worth, rather than of isolated and very originative geniuses. Such men are perhaps too likely to trade on their resources without really developing them; and doubtless, to some extent, that happened. However, the Jesuits provided the seed plot for a number of first-rate men, and in their special way renewed the work of the early Benedictines in a distracted world.

Link (here) to the book entitled Catholic Thought and Thinkers, edited by Fr. C.C. Martindale, S.J.