Jouvancy (1643–1719, SJ) is a prominent figure in the history of education, with two celebrated masterpieces published during the Roman part of his bright career: The Way to Learn and the Way to Teach (De Ratione Discendi et Docendi [Florence, 1703]) and The Student of Rhetoric (Candidatus Rhetoricae [Rome, 1710]; L’Élève de rhétorique [2020]). The two books form a diptych, with a specific audience for each of them. Whereas The Student of Rhetoric is of course for the students, The Way to Learn is a teacher guide, the very first words of its full title being Magistris Scholarum Inferiorum de Ratione: “To the masters in the lower classes,” i.e., the regents or young instructors in the first classes—grammar, humanities, and rhetoric. As very well shown by the editors’ introduction, the Jesuit Order considered that “the decline in Letters had especially affected the younger Jesuits who were usually given charge of the instruction of the younger students” (1). For helping those juniores, the order was thinking of creating a juniorate. The Way to Learn is, very officially, part of this plan: “the way to learn” means: “how a young instructor will manage to keep learning himself, during five years, in spite of his teaching duties.”

In the present edition, the original Latin text appears side by side with the complete English translation, with a light but useful annotation, plus an introduction and an index. The new translation is very elegant and reliable, even though, as with any translation, one could discuss minor choices: an amusing “to educate leaders” instead of “princes” (“viros principes erudire” [123, cf. 125 and 253]); “short prayers” once correctly for oratiunculis (169), the second time erroneously for oratiunculae (179), where it designates a variety of short but profane compositions, from birthday poems to funeral orations (see L’Élève de rhétorique, 387–93). The reviewer has seen only two typos (goads for goals, 179; These can be for Theses can be, 187) and one irrelevant footnote (48: the Progymnasmata here referred to are not those by Aphthonius, but by Franciscus Sylvius, published by Alexander Scot at the end of his edition of Nizzoli's Apparatus latinae locutionis, Lyon: Pillehotte, 1588). Such a short erratum speaks highly of the quality of the whole. We have here a very helpful edition that will be most welcome by all scholars in the history of education or simply interested by Jesuit education in the early modern period. Jouvancy's own Ratio is, in 1703, a sort of authorized companion of the 1599 Ratio Studiorum (translated into English by Claude Pavur, 2005), and it gives precious insights into the actual practices of the Jesuit colleges by the end of the seventeenth century in Europe.

According to the old Jouvancy (60 in 1703), the juniores are not writing Latin enough “de suo” (they do not write “original materials,” 163), and so they have no “style,” meaning here “the best way to write Latin” (45). Jouvancy would like them to recite in the dining hall their own compositions, once a year: the first year, “a sermon in the vernacular” (157); and afterward, “a Latin oration,” etc. These mandatory exercises stress how much times have changed. The original purpose of the colleges was the acquisition of a fluent Latin, through reading and writing. In 1703, reading Latin has obviously become in itself a challenge. No wonder if the classes spent most of their time in the explicatio or interpretatio (a paraphrase in Latin or a translation in vernacular); or if “they have an historian expounded for entire classes” (251)—much easier, indeed, than Cicero's speeches. In other words, the juniores’ main problem is not their supposed “decline in Letters”: they are doing their best, trapped in an educational system unable to switch to the vernacular. But Jouvancy has at least clearly perceived the importance of keeping together reading and writing. This pedagogic program will be pursued in nineteenth-century Europe, but in the national vernaculars and with great national authors. This is a lesson to be meditated on.