‘To the adornment and honour of the city’: the mathematics course of the Flemish Jesuits in the seventeenth century

Abstract

In 1980 Omer van de Vyver drew attention to the existence of a Jesuit ‘school of mathematics’ in the Flemish province. However, in recent years historians of science have constructed a more refined picture of Jesuit science and Jesuit scientific teaching in the different colleges scattered around Europe. A reappraisal of the specific conditions and underlying motives of the inauguration of the mathematics course in the Flemish province shows that this course cannot be reduced to a mere copy of Clavius's Academy in Rome. Nor can the course be considered to be a straightforward implementation of the Ratio studiorum. Rather, the foundation and organization of the Flemish course of mathematics responded to characteristic contextual impulses.1

¹ This work was done with the support of a scholarship from the Vlaams-Nederlands Comité voor Nederlanse Taal en Cultuur (VNC). This is a revised version of the paper I read to a colloquium in Antwerp, organized by the Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis and published in Dutch in the proceedings of that colloquium.

Notes

¹ This work was done with the support of a scholarship from the Vlaams-Nederlands Comité voor Nederlanse Taal en Cultuur (VNC). This is a revised version of the paper I read to a colloquium in Antwerp, organized by the Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis and published in Dutch in the proceedings of that colloquium.

² Nine years later, he discussed the ‘mathematics school’ once more, in a contribution to a book on seventeenth-century Antwerp (van de Vyer 1989), but this work, which is in Dutch, contains little new information.

³ Remarkably, Peter Dear does not refer to the colleges of Antwerp or Louvain when enumerating the colleges where mathematical disciplines had a prominent role (Dear 1987, 135).

⁴ Cum igitur disciplinae Mathematicae veritatem adeo expetant, adament, excolantque […] dubium esse non potest, quin eis primus locus inter alias scientias omnes sit concedendus. (Clavius 1612, 5).

⁵ After several preliminary drafts, the final version of the itshape Ratio studiorum was codified in 1599. It contained the curriculum guidelines, and the organizational and educational strategies, of the Jesuit colleges. Though all the colleges were bound by the guidelines, they often added certain details or modifications as determined by the local situation.

⁶ The philosophy course in the Belgian province lasted two years, which was an exception. Most Jesuit colleges had three-year philosophy courses.

⁷ By contrast, the professors of philosophy and of sacred scripture each had twenty guidelines.

⁸ Dat de voorseide patres oock metter tijdt aldaer souden schicken te leeren mathematica die noch tot Loven noch elders in geene universiteyten en wordt geleert ende nochtans het fundament is van vele consten die in een coopstadt als dese meest van doene syn nyet alleen tot chiraet ende eere der selver maer oock tot voorderinge vande gene die hen totte coopmanschappen Flandere neiringe souden willen begeven.

⁹ Compare this to the situation in Portugal where the Jesuits established mathematics education, at the express request of the king, to benefit seamen (Leitão 2003, 234).

¹⁰ Neither Poncelet nor van de Vyver explains how they obtained the starting date of 1617 for the mathematics courses. However, from the 1622 persons catalogue it is clear that de Saint Vincent was then into his sixth year as a mathematics instructor (Antwerp Royal Archive, 963A). Ziggelaar refers to: ARSI Fl. Belg. 3, 346 (Ziggelaar 1983, 50).

¹¹ The triannual and annual persons catalogues, the Historia collegii Antverpiensis, in Antwerp Royal Archive, Jesuits, Flemish Province, 963 and 973; Brussels Royal Library 20194 af.

¹² From 1667 to 1669 the course was taught in both Louvain and Antwerp. Van de Vyver (1989, 258) suggests some slight deviations from these dates. For an overview of the professors see van de Vyver 1980, 277–278, though the account contains a few inconsistencies.