L. Vives (1531), and in all his teaching aimed at the formation of a
_sapiens atque eloquens pietas_. Latin continued to be the living
language of learning and of literature, and a correct and elegant Latin
style was regarded as the mark of an educated person. Greek was taught
in all the great schools, but became more and more confined to the study
of the Greek Testament. In 1550 it was proposed in Brunswick to banish
all "profane" authors from the schools, and in 1589 a competent scholar
was instructed to write a sacred epic on the kings of Israel as a
substitute for the works of the "pagan" poets. In 1637, when the doubts
of Scaliger and Heinsius as to the purity of the Greek of the New
Testament prompted the rector of Hamburg to introduce the study of
classical authors, any reflection on the style of the Greek Testament
was bitterly resented.

The Jesuits.

The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540, and by 1600 most of the
teachers in the Catholic schools and universities of Germany were
Jesuits. The society was "dissolved" in 1773, but survived its
dissolution. In accordance with the _Ratio Studiorum_ of Aquaviva
(1599), which long remained unaltered and was only partially revised by
J. Roothaan (1832), the main subjects of instruction were the _litterae
humaniores diversarum linguarum_. The chief place among these was
naturally assigned to Latin, the language of the society and of the
Roman Church. The Latin grammar in use was that of the Jesuit rector of
the school at Lisbon, Alvarez (1572). As in the Protestant schools, the
principal aim was the attainment of _eloquentia_. A comparatively
subordinate place was assigned to Greek, especially as the importance
attributed to the Vulgate weakened the motive for studying the original
text. It was recognized, however, that Latin itself (as Vives had said)
was "in no small need of Greek," and that, "unless Greek was learnt in
boyhood, it would hardly ever be learnt at all." The text-book used was
the _Institutiones linguae Graecae_ of the German Jesuit, Jacob Gretser,
of Ingolstadt (c. 1590), and the reading in the highest class included
portions of Demosthenes, Isocrates, Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod,
Pindar, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil and Chrysostom. The Catholic and
Protestant schools of the 16th century succeeded, as a rule, in giving a
command over a correct Latin style and a taste for literary form and for
culture. Latin was still the language of the law-c