The Return to Poetry

Abstract

The course in Theology had a daunting reputation: ‘Hours of study very close — lectures in dogmatic theology, moral ditto, canon law, church history, scripture, Hebrew and what not’,2 wrote Hopkins to his father at the beginning of it. The account written by Fr Clarke for The Nineteenth Century some years later does not minimise the difficulties: The work is certainly hard, especially during the first two years. On three days in the week, the student … has to attend two lectures in the morning and three in the afternoon. The morning lectures are on moral and dogmatic theology; and those in the afternoon on canon law or history, dogmatic theology, and Hebrew. … Besides this, on each of these afternoons there is held a circle or disputation. … During the third and fourth years of the course of theology, lectures in Scriptures are substituted for those on moral theology and Hebrew. At the end of the third year the young Jesuit (if a man of thirty-four or thirty-five can be accounted young) is ordained priest.3