But in spite of such variations from the old monastic type, the Society
of Jesus would doubtless never have appeared, had not the way for its
existence been paved by previous monastic societies. Its aims and its
methods were the natural sequence of monastic history. They were merely
a development of past experiences, for the objects of the society were
practically the objects of the Mendicants; the vows were the same with a
change of emphasis. The abandonment of austerities as a means of
salvation or spiritual power was the natural fruit of past experiments
that had proved the uselessness of asceticism merely for the sake of
acquiring a spirit of self-denial. The extirpation of heresy undertaken
by Ignatius had already been attempted by the friars, while the
education of the young had long been carried on with considerable
success by the Benedictine and Dominican monks. The spirit of its
founder, however, gave the Society of Jesus a unique character, and
monasticism now passed out from the cell forever. The Jesuit may fairly
be regarded as a monk, unlike any of his predecessors but nevertheless
the legitimate fruit of centuries of monastic experience.
_Ignatius de Loyola, 1491-1556 A.D._
Inigo Lopez de Recalde, or Loyola, as he is commonly known, was born at
Guipuzcoa, in Spain, in 1491. He was educated as a page in the court of
Ferdinand the Catholic. He afterwards became a soldier and led a very
wild life until his twenty-ninth year. During the siege of Pamplona, in
1521, he was severely wounded, and while convalescing he was given lives
of Christ and of the saints to read. His perusal of these stories of
spiritual combat inspired a determination to imitate the glorious
achievements of the saints. For a while the thirst for military renown
and an attraction toward a lady of the court, restrained his spiritual
impulses. But overcoming these obstacles, he resolutely entered upon his
new career.
Sometime after he visited the sanctuary of Montserrat, where he hung his
shield and sword upon the altar of the Virgin Mary and gave his oath of
fealty to the service of God. A tablet, erected by the abbot of the
monastery in commemoration of this event, reads as follows: "Here,
blessed Ignatius of Loyola, with many prayers and tears, devoted himself
to God and the Virgin. Here, as with spiritual arms, he fortified
himself in sackcloth, and spent the vigil of the night. Hence he went
forth to found the Society of Jesus, in the year MDXXII."
After spending ten months in Manresa, Loyola went on a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, intending to remain there, but he was sent home by the
Eastern monks, and reached Italy in 1524.
Now began his struggle for an education. At the age of thirty-three he
took his seat on the school-bench at Barcelona. In 1526 he entered the
University at Alcala. He was here looked upon as a dangerous innovator,
and was imprisoned six weeks, by order of the Inquisition, for preaching
without authority, since he was not in holy orders. After his release he
attended the University of Salamanca, but he finally took his degree of
Master of Arts at the University of Paris, in 1533.
During this period he was several times imprisoned as a dangerous
fanatic, but each time he succeeded in securing a verdict in his favor.
The hostility to Ignatius and his work forms a strange parallel to the
bitter antagonism which his society has always encountered.
Nine men, among whom was Francis Xavier, afterwards widely renowned, had
been chosen with great care, as the companions of Ignatius. He called
them together in July, 1534, and on August 15th of the same year he
selected six of them and bade them follow him to the Church of the
Blessed Virgin, at Montmartre, in Paris. There and then they bound
themselves to renounce all their goods, and to make a voyage to
Jerusalem, in order to convert the Eastern infidels; if that scheme
proved impracticable, they agreed to offer themselves to the sovereign
pontiff for any service he might require of them. War prevented the
journey to the Holy Land, and so, after passing through a variety of
experiences, Ignatius and his companions met at Rome, to secure the
sanction of Pope Paul III. for the new society. After a year and a half
of deliberation and discussion a favorable decision was reached, which
was, no doubt, partly facilitated by the growth of the Reformation. The
new society was chartered on September 27, 1540, for the "defence and
advance of the faith."
Ignatius was elected as the general of the order and entered upon his
duties, April 17, 1541. He soon prepared a constitution which was not
adopted until after his death, and then in an amended form. Loyola ended
his remarkable and stormy career, July 31, 1556.
_Constitution and Polity of the Order_
The _Institutum_, which contains the governing laws of the society, is a
complex document consisting of papal bulls and decrees, a list of the
privileges which have been granted to the order, ten chapters of rules,
decrees of the general congregations, the plan of studies (_ratio
studiorum_), and three ascetic writings, of which the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius constitute the chief part.
The society is distributed into six grades: novices, scholastics,
temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows,
and professed of the four vows.
The professed form only a small percentage of the entire body, and
constitute a sort of religious aristocracy, from which the officers of
the society are selected. Only the professed of the fourth vow, who add
to the three vows a pledge of unconditional obedience to the pope,
possess the full rights of membership. This final grade cannot be
reached until the age of forty-five, so that if the candidate enters the
order at the earliest age permissible, fourteen, he has been on
probation thirty-one years when he reaches the final grade.
The society is ruled by a general, to whom unconditional obedience is
required. The provinces, into which the order is divided, are governed
by provincials, who must report monthly to the general. The heads of all
houses and colleges must report weekly to their provincials. An
elaborate system of checks and espionage is employed to ensure the
perfect working of this complex ecclesiastical machinery. Fraud or
evasion is carefully guarded against, and every possible means is
employed to enable the general to keep himself fully informed concerning
the minutest details of the society's affairs.
_The Vow of Obedience_
That which has imparted a peculiar character to the Jesuit and
contributed more than any other force to his success, is the insistence
upon unquestioning submission to the will of the superior. This emphasis
on the vow of obedience deserves, therefore, special consideration.
Loyola, in his "Spiritual Exercises," commanded the novice to preserve
his freedom of mind, but it is difficult for the fairest critic to
conceive of such a possibility in the light of Loyola's rule of
obedience, which reads: "I ought not to be my own, but His who created
me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding myself to be
moulded in his hands like so much wax.... I ought to be like a corpse,
which has neither will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix,
which is turned about at the will of him who holds it, or like a staff
in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best assist or
please him."
As an example of the kind of obedience demanded of the Jesuit, Loyola
cited the obedience of Abraham, who, when he believed that Jehovah
commanded him to commit the crime of infanticide, was ready to obey. The
thirteenth of the rules appended to the Spiritual Exercises says: "If
the Church shall have defined that to be black which to our eyes appears
white, we ought to pronounce the thing in question black."
Loyola is reported as having said to his secretary that "in those who
offer themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to
firmness of character and ability for business." But that he did not
mean _independent_ firmness of character is clearly seen in the obvious
attempt of the order to destroy that noble and true independence which
is the crowning glory of a lofty character. The discipline is
marvelously contrived to "scoop the will" out of the individual. Count
Paul von Hoensbroech, who recently seceded from the society, has set
forth his reasons for so doing in two articles which appeared in the
"Preussische Jahrbücher." A most interesting discussion of these
articles, in the "New World," for December, 1894, places the opinions of
the Count at our disposal. It is quite evident that he is no passionate,
blind foe of the society. His tone is temperate and his praises
cordially given. While recognizing the genius shown in the machinery of
the society and the nobility of the real aims of the Jesuitical
discipline, and while protesting against the unfounded charges of
impurity, and other gross calumnies against the order, Count Paul
nevertheless maintains that it "rests on so unworthy a depreciation of
individuality, and so exaggerated an apprehension of the virtue of
obedience, as to render it unfit for its higher ends." The uniform of
the Jesuit is not an external garb, but such freedom is insignificant in
the light of the "veritable strait-jacket," which is placed upon the
inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually between the ages of
sixteen and twenty, is subjected to "a skillful, energetic and
unremitting assault upon personal independence." Every device that a
shrewd and powerful intellect could conceive of is employed to break up
the personal will. "The Jesuit scheme prescribes the gait, the way to
hold the hands, to incline the head, to direct the eyes, to hold and
move the person."
Every novice must go through the "Spiritual Exercises" in complete
solitude, twice in his life. They occupy thirty days. The "Account of
the Conscience" is of the very essence of Jesuitism. The ordinary
confession, familiar to every Catholic, is as nothing compared with this
marvelous inquiry into the secrets of the human heart and mind. Every
fault, sin, virtue, wish, design, act and thought,--good, bad or
indifferent,--must be disclosed, and this revelation of the inner life
may be used against him who makes it, "for the good of the order."
Thus, after fifteen years of such ingenious and detailed discipline, the
young man's intellectual and moral faculties are moulded into Jesuitical
forms. He is no longer his own. He is a pliable and obedient, even
though it may be a virtuous and brilliant, tool of a spiritual
master-mechanic who will use him according to his own purposes, in the
interest of the society.
The Jesuits have signally failed to convince the world that the type of
character produced by their system is worthy of admiration. The
"sacrifice of the intellect"--a familiar watchword of the Jesuit--is far
too high a price to pay for whatever benefits the discipline may confer.
It is contrary to human nature, and hence to the divine intention, to
keep a human soul in a state of subordination to another human will. As
Von Hoensbroech says of the society: "Who gave it a right to break down
that most precious possession of the individual being, which God gave,
and which man has no authority to take away?"
It is true that no human organization has so magnificently brought to
perfection a unity of purpose and oneness of will. It is also true that
a spirit of defiance toward human authority is often accompanied by a
disobedience of divine law. But the remedy for the abuses of human
freedom is neither in the annihilation of the will itself, nor in its
mere subjection to some other will irrespective of its moral character.
Carlyle may have been too vehement in some of his censures of Jesuitism,
but he certainly exposed the fallaciousness of Loyola's views concerning
the value of mere obedience, at the same time justly rebuking the too
ardent admirers of the perverted principle: "I hear much also of
'obedience,' how that and kindred virtues are prescribed and exemplified
by Jesuitism; the truth of which, and the merit of which, far be it from
me to deny.... Obedience is good and indispensable: but if it be
obedience to what is wrong and false, good heavens, there is no name for
such a depth of human cowardice and calamity, spurned everlastingly by
the gods. Loyalty? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub? Will you 'make a
covenant with Death and Hell'? I will not be loyal to Beelzebub; I will
become a nomadic Choctaw rather, ... anything and everything is
venial to that."
_The Casuistry of the Jesuits_
It is often asserted, even by authoritative writers, that a Jesuit is
bound by his vows to commit either venial or mortal sin at the command
of his superior; and that the maxim, "The end justifies the means," has
not only been the principle upon which the society has prosecuted its
work but is also explicitly taught in the rules of the order. There is
nothing in the constitution of the society to justify these two serious
charges, which are not to be regarded as malicious calumnies, however,
because the slovenly Latin in one of the rules on obedience has misled
such competent scholars as John Addington Symonds and the historian
Ranke. Furthermore, judging from the doctrines of the society as set
forth by many of their theologians and the political conduct of its
representatives, the conclusion seems inevitable that while the society
may not teach in its rules that its members are bound to obedience even
to the point of sin, yet practically many of its leaders have so held
and its emissaries have rendered that kind of obedience.
Bishop Keane admits that one of the causes for the decline and overthrow
of the society was its marked tendency toward lax moral teaching. There
can be but little doubt that the Jesuits have ever been indulgent toward
many forms of sin and even crime, when committed under certain
circumstances and for the good of the order or "the greater glory
of God."
To enable the reader to form some sort of an independent judgment on
this question, it is necessary to say a few words on the subject of
casuistry and the doctrine of probabilism.
Casuistry is the application of general moral rules to given cases,
especially to doubtful ones. The medieval churchmen were much given to
inventing fanciful moral distinctions and to prescribing rules to govern
supposable problems of conscience. They were not willing to trust the
individual conscience or to encourage personal responsibility. The
individual was taught to lean his whole weight on his spiritual adviser,
in other words, to make the conscience of the church his own. As a
result there grew up a confused mass of precepts to guide the perplexed
conscience. The Jesuits carried this system to its farthest extreme. As
Charles C. Starbuck says: "They have heaped possibility upon possibility
in their endeavors to make out how far there can be subjective innocence
in objective error, until they have, in more than one fundamental point,
hopelessly confused their own perceptions of both[H]."
[Footnote H: Appendix, Note H.]
The doctrine of probabilism is founded upon the distinctions between
opinions that are sure, less sure, or more sure. There are several
schools of probabilists, but the doctrine itself practically amounts to
this: Since uncertainty attaches to many of our decisions in moral
affairs, one must follow the more probable rule, but not always, cases
often arising when it is permissible to follow a rule contrary to the
more probable one. Furthermore, as the Jesuits made war upon individual
authority, which was the key-note of the Reformation, and contended for
the authority of the church, the teaching naturally followed, that the
opinion of "a grave doctor" may be looked upon "as possessing a fair
amount of probability, and may, therefore, be safely followed, even
though one's conscience insist upon the opposite course." It is easy to
see that this opens a convenient door to those who are seeking
justification for conduct which their consciences condemn. No doubt one
can find plausible excuses for the basest crimes, if he stills the voice
of conscience and trusts himself to confusing sophistry. The glory of
God, the gravity of circumstances, necessity, the good of the church or
of the order, and numerous other practical reasons can be urged to
remove scruples and make a bad act seem to be a good one. But crime,
even "for the glory of God," is crime still.
This disagreeable subject will not be pursued further. To say less than
has been said would be to ignore one of the most prominent causes of the
Jesuits' ruin. To say more than this, even though the facts might
warrant it, would incur the liability of being classed among those
malicious fomentors of religious strife, for whom the writer has mingled
feelings of pity and contempt. The Society of Jesus is not the Roman
Catholic Church, which has suffered much from the burden of
Jesuitism--wounds that are scarcely atoned for by the meritorious and
self-sacrificing services on her behalf in other directions. The
Protestant foes have never equaled the Catholic opponents of Jesuitism,
either in their fierce hatred of the system or in their ability to
expose its essential weakness. A writer in the "Quarterly Review,"
September, 1848, says: "Admiration and detestation of the Jesuits
divide, as far as feeling is concerned, the Roman Catholic world, with a
schism deeper and more implacable than any which arrays Protestant
against Protestant."
_The Mission of the Jesuits_
The Society of Jesus has been described as "a naked sword, whose hilt is
at Rome, and whose point is everywhere." It is an undisputed historical
fact that Loyola's consuming passion was to accomplish the ruin of
Protestantism, which had twenty years the start of him and was
threatening the very existence of the Roman hierarchy. It has already
been shown that the destruction of heresy was the chief aim of the
Dominicans. What the friars failed to attain, Loyola attempted. The
principal object of the Jesuits was the maintenance of papal authority.
Even to-day the Jesuit does not hesitate to declare that his mission is
to overthrow Protestantism. The Reformation was inspired by a new
conception of individual freedom. The authority of tradition and of the
church was set at naught. Loyola planted his system upon the doctrine of
absolute submission to authority. The partial success of the Jesuits,
for they did beat back the Reformation, is no doubt attributable to
their fidelity, virtue and learning. Their devotion to the cause they
loved, their willingness to sacrifice life itself, their marvelous and
instantaneous obedience to the slightest command of their leaders, made
them a compact and powerful papal army. Their methods, in many
particulars, were not beyond question, and, whatever their character,
the order certainly incurred the fiercest hostility of every nation in
Europe, and even of the church itself.
Professor Anton Gindely, in his "History of the Thirty Years' War,"
shows that Maximilian, of Bavaria, and Ferdinand, of Austria, the
leaders on the Catholic side, were educated by Jesuits. He also fixes
the responsibility for that war partly upon them in the plainest terms:
"In a word, they had the consciences of Roman Catholic sovereigns and
their ministers in their hands as educators, and in their keeping as
confessors. They led them in the direction of war, so that it was at the
time, and has since been called the Jesuits' War."
The strictures of Carlyle, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Lytton have been
repeatedly denounced by the Jesuits, but even their shrewd, sophistical
defences of their order afford ample justification for the attitude of
their foes. For example, in a masterful oration, previously quoted from,
in which the virtues of the Jesuits are extolled and defended, Father
Sherman says: "We are expelled and driven from pillar to post because we
teach men to love God." He describes Loyola as "the knightly, the loyal,
the true, the father of heroes, and the maker of saints, the lover of
the all-good and the all-beautiful, crowned with the honor of sainthood,
the best-loved and the best-hated man in all the world, save only his
Master and ours." "'Twas he that conceived the daring plan of forging
the weapon to beat back the Reformation." No one but a Jesuit could
reconcile the aim of "preaching the love of God" with "beating back the
Reformation," especially in view of the methods employed.
Numerous gross calumnies have been circulated against the Society of
Jesus. The dread of a return to that deplorable intellectual and moral
slavery of the pre-Reformation days is so intense, that a calm,
dispassionate consideration of Jesuit history is almost impossible. But
after all just concessions have been made, two indisputable facts
confront the student: first, the universal antagonism to the order, of
the church that gave birth to it, as well as of the states that have
suffered from its meddling in political affairs; and second, the
complete failure of the order's most cherished schemes. France, Germany,
Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain and other nations, have been compelled
in sheer self-defence to expel it from their territories. Such a
significant fact needs some other explanation than that the Jesuit has
incurred the enmity of the world merely for preaching the love of God.
Clement XIV., when solemnly pronouncing the dissolution of the order, at
the time his celebrated bull, entitled "_Dominus ac Redemptor Noster_"
which was signed July 21, 1773, was made public, justified his action in
the following terms: "Recognizing that the members of this society have
not a little troubled the Christian commonwealth, and that for the
welfare of Christendom it were better that the order should disappear,"
etc. When Rome thus delivers her _ex cathedra_ opinion concerning her
own order, an institution which she knows better than any one else, one
cannot fairly be charged with prejudice and sectarianism in speaking
evil of it.
But while there is much to be detested in the methods of the order,
history does not furnish another example of such self-abnegation and
intense zeal as the Jesuits have shown in the prosecution of their aims.
They planted missions in Japan, China, Africa, Ceylon, Madagascar, North
and South America.
In Europe the Mendicant friars by their coarseness had disgusted the
upper classes; the affable and cultured Jesuit won their hearts. The
Jesuits became chaplains in noble families, learned the secrets of every
government in Europe, and became the best schoolmasters in the age. They
were to be found in various disguises in every castle of note and in
every palace. "There was no region of the globe," says Macaulay, "no
walk of speculative or active life in which Jesuits were not to be
found." That they were devoted to their cause no one can deny. They were
careless of life and, as one facetiously adds, of truth also. They
educated, heard confessions, plotted crimes and revolutions, and
published whole libraries. Worn out by fatigue, the Jesuits still toiled
on with marvelous zeal. Though hated and opposed, they wore serene and
cheerful countenances. In a word, they had learned to control every
faculty and every passion, and to merge every human aspiration and
personal ambition into the one supreme purpose of conquering an opposing
faith and exalting the power of priestly authority. They hold up before
the subjects of the King of Heaven a wonderful example of loving and
untiring service, which should be emulated by every servant of Christ
who too often yields an indifferent obedience to Him whom he professes
to love and to serve.
Francis Parkman, in his brilliant narrative of "The Jesuits in North
America," presents the following interesting contrast between the
Puritan and the Jesuit: "To the mind of the Puritan, heaven was God's
throne; but no less was the earth His footstool; and each in its degree
and its kind had its demands on man. He held it a duty to labor and to
multiply; and, building on the Old Testament quite as much as on the
New, thought that a reward on earth as well as in heaven awaited those
who were faithful to the law. Doubtless, such a belief is widely open to
abuse, and it would be folly to pretend that it escaped abuse in New
England; but there was in it an element manly, healthful and
invigorating. On the other hand, those who shaped the character, and in
a great measure the destiny, of New France had always on their lips the
nothingness and the vanity of life. For them, time was nothing but a
preparation for eternity, and the highest virtue consisted in a
renunciation of all the cares, toils and interests of earth. That such a
doctrine has often been joined to an intense worldliness, all history
proclaims; but with this we have at present nothing to do. If all
mankind acted on it in good faith, the world would sink into
decrepitude. It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of
active life, and is like the error of those who, in their zeal to
cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and
pine, till body and mind alike lapse into feebleness and disease."
Notwithstanding the success of the Jesuits in stopping the progress of
the Reformation, it may be truthfully said that they have failed. The
principles of the Reformation dominate the world and are slowly
modifying the Roman church in America. "In truth," says Macaulay, "if
society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any
security, it was because common sense and common humanity restrained men
from doing what the order of Jesus assured them they might with a safe
conscience do." Our hope for the future progress of society lies in the
guiding power of this same common sense and common humanity.
The restoration of the order by Pius VII., August 7th, 1814, while it
renewed the papal favor, did not allay the hostility of the civil
powers. Various states have expelled them since that time, and wherever
they labor, they are still the objects of open attack or ill-disguised
suspicion. Although the order still shows "some quivering in fingers and
toes," as Carlyle expresses it, the principles of the Reformation are
too widely believed, and its benefits too deeply appreciated, to
justify any hope or fear of the ultimate triumph of Jesuitism.
_Retrospect_
So the Christian monk has greatly changed since he first appeared in the
deserts of Nitria, in Egypt. He has come from his den in the mountains
to take his seat in parliaments, and find his home in palaces. He is no
longer filthy in appearance, but elegant in dress and courtly in manner.
He has exchanged his rags for jewels and silks. He is no longer the
recluse of the lonely cliffs, chatting with the animals and gazing at
the stars. He is a man of the world, with schemes of conquest filling
his brain and a love of dominion ruling his heart. He is no longer a
ditch-digger and a ploughman, but the proud master of councils or the
cultured professor of the university. He still swears to the three vows
of celibacy, poverty and obedience, but they do not mean the same thing
to him that they did to the more ignorant, less cultured, but more
genuinely frank monk of the desert. Yes, he has all but completely lost
sight of his ancient monastic ideal. He professes the poverty of
Christ, but he cannot follow even so simple a man as his Saint Francis.
It is a long way from Jerome to Ignatius, but the end of the journey is
nigh. Loyola is the last type of monastic life, or changing the figure,
the last great leader in the conquered monastic army. The good within
the system will survive, its truest exponents will still fire the
courage and win the sympathy of the devout, but best of all, man will
recover from its poison.