Note 352 — Chapter V · Jesuit Colleges and their Work before the Suppression of the Society (1540–1773).

Goethe writes: “This public performance has convinced me anew of the cleverness of the Jesuits. They rejected nothing that could be of any conceivable service to them, and knew how to wield their instruments with devotion and dexterity. This is not cleverness of the merely abstract order: it is a real fruition of the thing itself, an absorbing interest, which springs from the practical use of life. Just as this great spiritual society has its organ builders, its sculptors, and its gilders, so there seem to be some who, by nature and inclination, take to the drama; and as their churches are distinguished by a pleasing pomp, so these prudent men have seized on the sensibility of the world by a decent theatre.” Italienische Reise (Goethe’s Werke, Cotta’s edition, 1840, vol. XXIII, pp. 3–4).