The Use of the Visual in Classical Jesuit Teaching and Education

On the basis of the most important and largest collection of affixiones in the world, held at the Brussels Royal Library, this essay discusses their didactic characteristics, and the genre's intentions. Attention will primarily he paid to the emblems thematising Jesuit pedagogy itself. By having their pupils create symbolic signifiers of education and learning, the Jesuits ingeniously led them to participate consciously in their educational system. The affixiones combine visuality with literary erudition and humour, and they are a fascinating source of information for historians of education, not in the least because of the way in which the exhibitions managed to link the cultivation of rhetorical and artistic skills to reality‐based teaching. To the present day, however, they have aroused the interest of literature historians only.