The devils of Loudun

Aldous Huxley

When Voltaire went to school, the Jesuit colleges were familiar features of the educational scene. A century earlier, their merits had seemed positively revolutionary. In an age when most pedagogues were amateurs in everything except the handling of the birch, their disciplinary methods were relatively humane and their professors carefully chosen and systematically trained.

They taught a peculiarly elegant Latin and the very latest in optics, geography and mathematics, together with 'dramatics' (their end-of-term theatricals were famous), good manners, respect for the Church and (in France, at least, and after Henri IV's conversion) obedience to the royal authority.


For all these reasons, the Jesuit colleges recommended themselves to every member of the typical upper-class family - to the tender-hearted mother, who could not bear to think of her darling undergoing the tortures of an old-fashioned education; to the learned ecclesiastical uncle, with his concern for sound doctrine and a Ciceronian style; and finally to the father who, as a patriotic official, approved of monarchical principles and, as a prudent bourgeois, counted on the Company's backstairs influence to help their pupil to a job, a place at court, an ecclesiastical sinecure.