One of the more unlikely pieces of speculation to emerge from the recent World Cup concerned the origins of soccer in Brazil. A historian of the game claimed that it had been introduced by Jesuits.
According to his account, the Jesuits in St Louis School in Itu, near São Paulo, wanted to introduce sport into the college during the 1870’s. They thought that the students would derive many benefits from this: ‘all the muscles will work harmoniously, and the moral lessons imbibed from sportsmanship will be assimilated by the students through enjoyable and recreational games.’
So between 1879 and 1881 Jesuits from Brazil visited Europe. They visited the school at Vannes where soccer was played. They also consulted Fr Stanislas du Lac, a Jesuit headmaster and a strong proponent of introducing English football into French schools. He believed that football ‘promoted the right balance between virility and morality, and was an effective way of forming healthy young people land good citizens.’
From France, the Brazilian Jesuits went to England and particularly to Harrow school. They also visited Germany where soccer and gymnastics were common in Jesuit schools. When they returned they introduced soccer to all Jesuit schools in Brazil. And from there it spread through the whole nation.
Or so the story goes. Jesuits and Australians might find in it many cultural resonances and questions. It seems odd that the Jesuits would have gone to Harrow to see soccer played in schools. The game of football played there was distinctive, and has been seen as an influence on the development of Australian rules. It was played with a large, heavy ball shaped like a pork pie and allowed players to catch the ball and to shirtfront one another. But there is also an early photo of a Harrow soccer team (above) looking suitably lordly and languid. Soccer may or not have meant soccer, and the photo may or may not have had something to do with the school.
Fr du Lac was an exceptionally competent Jesuit educationalist who became a controversial figure in the Dreyful affair. His father was of noble birth, and Stanislas’ first appointment was as Headmaster of the Jesuit school in Le Mans. It was during the Franco Prussian war; the school was requisitioned for use as a military hospital; Fr du Lac administered it.
He was subsequently Headmaster at the Ecole Sainte-Geneviève, a preparatory school for the scientific and military academies. Many of the students graduated to Saint-Cyr, and Stanislas formed friendship with many high ranking military officers. When the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1880, he was the founder and headmaster of a French boarding school in Canterbury.
After the wrongful conviction as a spy of Alfred Dreyfus and its later cover up by the French military, France was bitterly divided between his mainly republican supporters and the monarchists who thought him guilty. Dreyfus was an Alsatian of Jewish descent, and in the aftermath of defeat in the Franco-Prussian war both factors contributed to his conviction and to the later concealment of evidence that cleared him.
Catholics were regarded as monarchists, and in the controversy Jesuits were accused of plotting to overthrow the Republic. Fr du Lac, with his aristocratic descent and association with the French officer class, was portrayed as the archetypical conniving and scheming Jesuit. The plot and the caricature were fictitious, but brought Fr du Lac unwanted notoriety.
Later in his Jesuit life he gave retreats and spiritual direction in rural France, and established credit unions to support poor women workers in the textile trade.
Altogether an ideal person, we might think, to manage a national team at the World Cup. In hindsight, though, Brazil might have benefited even more if he had advised the visiting Jesuits to spend more time in Germany.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.