The First Jesuits and the First Jesuit Universities

Abstract

John W. O’Malley S. J. in The First Jesuits described well the basic principles of the Jesuit educational ministry that shapeed Jesuit schools and universities. He did not discuss what constituted a Jesuit university because that was not the purpose of the book. After assessing the major contributions that O’Malley made to define the principles of Jesuit education, this article will pick up where O’Malley left off by describing the first Jesuit universities. There was not a single model of a Jesuit university. Instead, the Jesuits taught in four kinds of universities: the all-Jesuit university, the civic-Jesuit collegiate university, the civic-Jesuit Italian law and medicine university, and the civic university in which individual Jesuits taught but the Society had no institutional role.