Ratio Studiorum

The document was revised in 1832, still built upon the classical subjects but giving more attention to the study of native languages of the students, history, geography, mathematics, and the natural sciences.

The work was the product of many hands and wide experience, but it most directly derives from the efforts of an international team of academics at the Collegio Romano, the Jesuit school in Rome.

In his Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, Charles Sears Baldwin writes, "The sixteenth century closed with the full [classical] doctrine operative in the Ratio Studiorum and in the rhetoric of Soarez" (64).

[1] The Society of Jesus had not originally envisaged running a network of schools when it was founded, but it soon became progressively involved in and then largely associated with educational work.

A new committee of six was soon formed in 1584: Juan Azor (Spain), Gaspar González (Portugal), James Tyrie (Scotland), Peter Busée (the Netherlands), Anthony Ghuse (Flanders), and Stephen Tucci (Sicily).

Italy was represented by Fulvio Cardulo among the first, and afterwards by Antonio Possevino, Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Francesco Benci, Orazio Torsellino, Stefano Tucci, and Giulio Negrone; France by André des Freux and Jean Pelletier; Germany by Peter Canisius, Leonard Kessel, Christopher Clavius (Klau) and Jacobus Pontanus (Spanmüller).