LOYOLA AND THE JESUITS.
Conversion of Loyola • Foundation of the Society of Jesus • Preparation
of the Novice • Characteristics of the Order • The Canadian Jesuits
It was an evil day for new-born Protestantism, when a French
artilleryman fired the shot that struck down Ignatius Loyola in the
breach of Pampeluna. A proud noble, an aspiring soldier, a graceful
courtier, an ardent and daring gallant was metamorphosed by that stroke
into the zealot whose brain engendered and brought forth the mighty
Society of Jesus. His story is a familiar one: how, in the solitude of
his sick-room, a change came over him, upheaving, like an earthquake,
all the forces of his nature; how, in the cave of Manresa, the mysteries
of Heaven were revealed to him; how he passed from agonies to
transports, from transports to the calm of a determined purpose. The
soldier gave himself to a new warfare. In the forge of his great
intellect, heated, but not disturbed by the intense fires of his zeal,
was wrought the prodigious enginery whose power has been felt to the
uttermost confines of the world.
Loyola's training had been in courts and camps: of books he knew little
or nothing. He had lived in the unquestioning faith of one born and bred
in the very focus of Romanism; and thus, at the age of about thirty, his
conversion found him. It was a change of life and purpose, not of
belief. He presumed not to inquire into the doctrines of the Church. It
was for him to enforce those doctrines; and to this end he turned all
the faculties of his potent intellect, and all his deep knowledge of
mankind. He did not aim to build up barren communities of secluded
monks, aspiring to heaven through prayer, penance, and meditation, but
to subdue the world to the dominion of the dogmas which had subdued him;
to organize and discipline a mighty host, controlled by one purpose and
one mind, fired by a quenchless zeal or nerved by a fixed resolve, yet
impelled, restrained, and directed by a single master hand. The Jesuit
is no dreamer: he is emphatically a man of action; action is the end of
his existence.
It was an arduous problem which Loyola undertook to solve,--to rob a man
of volition, yet to preserve in him, nay, to stimulate, those energies
which would make him the most efficient instrument of a great design. To
this end the Jesuit novitiate and the constitutions of the Order are
directed. The enthusiasm of the novice is urged to its intensest pitch;
then, in the name of religion, he is summoned to the utter abnegation of
intellect and will in favor of the Superior, in whom he is commanded to
recognize the representative of God on earth. Thus the young zealot
makes no slavish sacrifice of intellect and will; at least, so he is
taught: for he sacrifices them, not to man, but to his Maker. No limit
is set to his submission: if the Superior pronounces black to be white,
he is bound in conscience to acquiesce. [1]
[1] Those who wish to know the nature of the Jesuit virtue of obedience
will find it set forth in the famous Letter on Obedience of Loyola.
Loyola's book of Spiritual Exercises is well known. In these exercises
lies the hard and narrow path which is the only entrance to the Society
of Jesus. The book is, to all appearance, a dry and superstitious
formulary; but, in the hands of a skilful director of consciences, it
has proved of terrible efficacy. The novice, in solitude and darkness,
day after day and night after night, ponders its images of perdition and
despair. He is taught to hear, in imagination, the howlings of the
damned, to see their convulsive agonies, to feel the flames that burn
without consuming, to smell the corruption of the tomb and the fumes of
the infernal pit. He must picture to himself an array of adverse armies,
one commanded by Satan on the plains of Babylon, one encamped under
Christ about the walls of Jerusalem; and the perturbed mind, humbled by
long contemplation of its own vileness, is ordered to enroll itself
under one or the other banner. Then, the choice made, it is led to a
region of serenity and celestial peace, and soothed with images of
divine benignity and grace. These meditations last, without
intermission, about a month, and, under an astute and experienced
directorship, they have been found of such power, that the Manual of
Spiritual Exercises boasts to have saved souls more in number than the
letters it contains.
To this succeed two years of discipline and preparation, directed, above
all things else, to perfecting the virtues of humility and obedience.
The novice is obliged to perform the lowest menial offices, and the most
repulsive duties of the sick-room and the hospital; and he is sent
forth, for weeks together, to beg his bread like a common mendicant. He
is required to reveal to his confessor, not only his sins, but all those
hidden tendencies, instincts, and impulses which form the distinctive
traits of character. He is set to watch his comrades, and his comrades
are set to watch him. Each must report what he observes of the acts and
dispositions of the others; and this mutual espionage does not end with
the novitiate, but extends to the close of life. The characteristics of
every member of the Order are minutely analyzed, and methodically put on
record.
This horrible violence to the noblest qualities of manhood, joined to
that equivocal system of morality which eminent casuists of the Order
have inculcated, must, it may be thought, produce deplorable effects
upon the characters of those under its influence. Whether this has been
actually the case, the reader of history may determine. It is certain,
however, that the Society of Jesus has numbered among its members men
whose fervent and exalted natures have been intensified, without being
abased, by the pressure to which they have been subjected.
It is not for nothing that the Society studies the character of its
members so intently, and by methods so startling. It not only uses its
knowledge to thrust into obscurity or cast out altogether those whom it
discovers to be dull, feeble, or unwilling instruments of its purposes,
but it assigns to every one the task to which his talents or his
disposition may best adapt him: to one, the care of a royal conscience,
whereby, unseen, his whispered word may guide the destiny of nations; to
another, the instruction of children; to another, a career of letters or
science; and to the fervent and the self-sacrificing, sometimes also to
the restless and uncompliant, the distant missions to the heathen.
The Jesuit was, and is, everywhere,--in the school-room, in the library,
in the cabinets of princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in the
tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, in Japan, in Africa,
in America; now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a
mathematician, an astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin, under countless
disguises, by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, or compelling souls
into the fold of Rome.
Of this vast mechanism for guiding and governing the minds of men, this
mighty enginery for subduing the earth to the dominion of an idea, this
harmony of contradictions, this moral Proteus, the faintest sketch must
now suffice. A disquisition on the Society of Jesus would be without
end. No religious order has ever united in itself so much to be admired
and so much to be detested. Unmixed praise has been poured on its
Canadian members. It is not for me to eulogize them, but to portray them
as they were.