The very young Jesuits

Entry into the Society of Jesus today takes place at an average age of between 27 and 30, the upper age limit being 50, but in the past it was much lower.

The young men who, before knocking at the novitiate door, wrote to the Provincial to be admitted as novices, often still went to school and were little more than children.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen were the most frequent ages of candidates admitted to the novitiate.

Where did such an early vocation come from?

In the memoirs given by the novices, we discover that interest in the Company sometimes arose from reading the lives of the early Jesuit fathers, or, very often, from the desire to go on mission.

However, between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, most of the novices came from the apostolic schools.

These were schools for children and young people who showed an early vocation, between the ages of ten and fifteen, and were run by the Society of Jesus in various cities.

They were an alternative to the seminary, which had stricter access criteria and sometimes excessively high fees: furthermore, the apostolic schools, unlike the colleges of the Society, were open to all and families often asked their children to enrol so as to guarantee them board and lodging.

Enrolment in the apostolic school did not guarantee access to the novitiate; it was often the fathers themselves who directed the boys to other paths of life.

The apostolini, as the boys enrolled in these schools were called, are often described in the letters as particularly pious, already characterised by a deep spiritual feeling.

Let us read the letter with which Sister Aloisia presented to the Provincial of the Venetian-Milanese a child, whose baptismal name we do not know but only his surname: Dagnino.

Sala Bagnanza, 8 December 1915

Most Reverend Father,

On the advice of the Rev. Father Luigi M. Vismara, I dare to present myself to Your Reverence to apply to have Fr. Raffaele Dagnino’s nephew accepted in your institute in Brescia among the Apostolins; he is attending the fourth class and is 10 years old. At the first request I myself made to the child’s parents and grandparents to let him leave and thus fulfil his heartfelt wish, I received a negative reply; the second time I was granted, but when I went to San Michelino to present the child to Fr Vismara, who had taken such an interest in him, Father Vismara was absent and I could not get the information I hoped for from the Reverend Father Rector.

Then I thought of following the advice Fr. Vismara gave me from the first day I spoke to him about the child, that is, to turn to Your Reverence. The little one wants to come to them so much that the other day when he was at S. Michelino, he would have left for Brescia right away without going home to embrace his mother. He is very lively, but he is imbued with Christian sentiments, he made his First Communion at the age of six, and as his parents did not want to let him, he himself went to the parish priest to ask this favour, and now he often attends the Sacraments. […]”. […]”.

The description of the child is mediated by the writing of this nun.

We do not know the evolution of this story, but we do know that this child did not enter the Society of Jesus.

However, he is not the only one who was proposed for the apostolic schools at such a young age, along with adolescents who personally asked to enter the novitiate.

The eldest members of the Euro-Mediterranean Province themselves, who today reach the jubilees of 50 and 70 years of life in Company, were precisely those pious little novices.

The apostolic schools have been closed since the mid-20th century, the last ones having ceased their activities around the 1980s.

Maria Macchi