Society of Jesus
Around the globe there are very many institutions of higher learning which, like Heythrop, owe their origins to the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, a religious order within the Roman Catholic Church.
When the Order began, in 1534 in a chapel on Montmartre in Paris, education was the last thing on the minds of the first members. On that occasion they pledged themselves to the three vows, traditional in religious orders of the Catholic Church, of poverty, chastity and obedience - and to work in the Holy Land or, if that proved impracticable, in any task they might be given by the Pope.
The leader of this small group of seven was Ignatius of Loyola. He was a Spanish nobleman who is frequently portrayed as a soldier but who was by training a diplomat (he only took part in one battle, as far as is known, which he lost, after over-ruling the professional soldiers). He, like all his first companions, had been a student at the University of Paris, and the Jesuits continued to attract learned men. Not surprisingly, therefore, very soon after its official approval by the Pope in 1540, Jesuits began to be asked to start schools and universities. By the time Ignatius died in 1556 there were nearly 1,000 members of the Society, of whom three-quarters were engaged in education.
The colleges were not only in Europe. Many Jesuits went overseas on missions to spread Christianity - and some came to Britain to help maintain the faith of the persecuted Catholic minority. They applied their intellect as much to spreading their faith as to educating the faithful. In India Roberto de Nobili became a Brahmin, in China Matteo Ricci adopted the Mandarin style of life in order to get access to the imperial court. There is a stop on the Beijing underground railway called "The old observatory" which is beside the observatory established by Jesuits in the seventeenth century: the names of the Jesuit makers can still be seen on the astronomical instruments on the observatory roof.
Perhaps the most famous achievement of the Society was the establishment of the "reductions" in South America, independent townships for the Guarani people where they would be free from the oppression of Spanish and Portugese colonists. This was the setting for the film The Mission, and as that film showed, the Jesuits were eventually driven out by the colonial powers. Indeed shortly afterwards, because of the hostility towards them of European governments, the Pope suppressed the Order.
That was in 1773. In 1814 another Pope, just freed from French captivity, re-established the Society. Some schools and universities were recovered, new ones started, and the missionary effort began again. But after all it had been through, the Society of Jesus in the 19th century was a much more conservative, and pro-papal, body than it had been in the 17th and 18th centuries even though, at the end of the 19th, it produced in the English (in fact Irish, though he belonged to the English Province) Jesuit George Tyrrell one of the most remarkable, and attractive, figures of the Modernist movement. He died both outside the Society and outside the Church, despite the best efforts of his English Jesuit colleagues to mitigate the hostility of Rome.
Despite this degree of conservatism, Jesuits showed themselves ready for new tasks. The 19th and 20th century saw a great flurry of magazine publishing; when a Vatican Radio station was set up it was given to Jesuits to run; likewise they took charge of the Vatican Observatory and took a considerable interest in every aspect of science. They were also to the fore in discussing the social issues of the day, and dealing particularly with the "border questions" between philosophy and theology.
Theological research continued in the Jesuit institutes of higher learning in Europe and elsewhere, not always to the Vatican’s liking. In 1950 there was another crackdown on those regarded as thinking too progressively, and some eminent Jesuits (and others) were sent off to teach catechism to children. But their scholarship helped to prepare the way for the Second Vatican Council, and a major shift in Roman Catholic theology.
In the aftermath of the Council Jesuits have been to the fore in the highly politicized "Liberation Theology" associated particularly with Latin America but also to be found elsewhere around the world. They are deeply committed to issues of social justice, and also to the adaptation of the message of Christianity to cultures far removed from the European civilisation in which Christianity had hitherto mainly developed. They remain within the tradition of humane scholarship established four and a half centuries ago.