IGNATIUS LOYOLA, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER.
It is of little consequence to the general reader what place in history
is assigned to Ignatius Loyola, apart from the fact that he was the
founder and originator of the society of Jesuits, and lived long
enough to stamp upon it the impress of his own personality. He availed
himself of that organization to maintain among its members the vain and
impious assumption of his equality with God, and in that way obtained
such complete mastery over them that, in explanation and justification
of their slavish obedience, they represent him as having possessed
miraculous powers. They assign to him the performance of more miracles
than Christ, and do not hesitate to record that he not only restored
the dead to life, but, in one conspicuous case, gave life to a child
born dead! The silly stories of this character, told of him in apparent
seriousness, can have no other effect than to impose upon and encourage
ignorant and superstitious people, and are undoubtedly repeated by his
Jesuit biographers for this purpose. They seem never to have realized
that the world has grown wiser, and that the period has passed when
fictions and myths can be proclaimed as realities.
The life of Loyola was written, soon after his death, by Rabadenira,
one of his Jesuit followers, who had known him intimately. Of course,
under such circumstances, his statement of personal characteristics
was presumably reliable. What he stated in the first edition was
professedly based upon his own knowledge and what he had learned from
Loyola's "intimate friends" and "inseparable companions." And with
these facts before him and fully considered, he declared that his
"sanctity was not justified by miracles." Some years after, however, it
was deemed expedient that this concession should be withdrawn entirely,
and another more favorable to the Jesuits be substituted for it.
Accordingly, in another edition of the same work, it is stated that
Loyola's performance of miracles was "confirmed by the most authentic
proofs and careful examination."[4] These statements are in direct
conflict, and can not both be true. The first bears the impress of
veracity because it is consistent with human experience, while the
latter shows the tracings of Jesuit fingers too clearly to mislead any
thoughtful and intelligent mind.
It is singularly strange that, in the present reading and enlightened
age, these pretended miracles are cited by Jesuits to prove that
divine power and authority were conferred upon Loyola, because God
chose him to accomplish special objects in his name; when the very
things which, as they allege, he was providentially appointed to
defeat, have transpired in spite of him, his successors, and all their
followers. The suppression of the Reformation and the extirpation
of Protestantism--its legitimate fruit--were the avowed purposes of
himself and his society, because, according to them, the curse of
God rested upon these as the excess of unpardonable heresy. For the
accomplishments of these objects he converted the members of his
society into a compact body of militia, and placed in their hands
weapons chosen by himself, instructing them that they were specially
selected as the executioners of the Divine vengeance. Yet the
Reformation progressed until it marked out new paths of advancement for
the nations; and Protestantism has extended its beneficent influences
until it is to-day the controlling power in human affairs, and has even
taken possession of places where the papacy once ruled with sovereign
and unchallenged authority. And the great work thus begun, in the face
of Jesuit maledictions and curses, has not yet ended; for Protestantism
still continues to build up new nations, elevate and improve peoples,
and make mankind freer, happier, and more prosperous; whilst there
has not been a time since the Jesuits existed as a society when they
have not been odious in all parts of the world, and have not been
regarded as the plotters of mischief and disturbers of the public
peace. How can a thoughtful mind account for these results by any known
process of human reasoning, if it were true that Loyola had divine
power conferred upon him expressly for the purpose of exterminating
Protestantism as heresy? And how, if his society of Jesuits has been
providentially endowed with faculties to consummate his ends, could it
have happened that one of the wisest and best of the popes--for whom
infallibility is now claimed--was constrained to condemn it by positive
suppression, and to declare, under the solemn responsibilities of his
sacred office, that it was not worthy of longer existence? But leaving
these questions unanswered for the present, it is sufficient to say
here that no qualities possessed by Loyola, whatsoever they were, can
oblige the present age to recognize his society as entitled to any
such prerogatives and immunities as exempt it from having its real
worth tested by the rules universally accepted as applicable to human
conduct and affairs. It must now be tried by these rules; and if it
shall be found that its conduct has been marked by wrong and injustice,
its boastful claim of superiority will appear to every investigator as
merely vain and presumptuous.
That Loyola was shrewd and sagacious, and laid his plans with a full
and intelligent comprehension of the ends he had in view, ought not to
be denied. When engaged in framing the constitution of the Jesuits,
he was familiar with the troubles existing in the Church, and with
the prevailing public sentiment with reference to their causes; that
is, the unfitness for the proper discharge of spiritual functions of
those charged with their exercise. The Jesuits themselves assert this,
in explanation of the necessity for the establishment of theirs as a
new society, declaring that the numerous orders then existing--such as
the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Minorites, and others--were
incompetent to arrest the decline of the Church, on account of their
own need of reform. This point in their history should invite the
closest attention and scrutiny, because it shows, in a conspicuous
degree, the basis of their assumed superiority over all other societies
and orders which, in the course of time, have had the sanction of
the Church. And this scrutiny is desirable, moreover, inasmuch as it
will be seen that the pictures of demoralization prevailing among
the clergy, as they were drawn by the reformers in their most vivid
coloring, had their accuracy vouched for by Loyola himself, to justify
the establishment of his society of Jesuits, not merely because it
would constitute a distinct, independent, and superior organization,
but would bring back all dissenters to obedience, which he made its
main and fundamental principle.
One of the leading Jesuit authorities--an author upon whom the
society relies to make known that part of its history considered
favorable--endeavors to maintain the proposition that it was absolutely
obligatory for Loyola to have been intrusted with the duty "of
reforming the morals of the people of Rome," immediately within the
shadow of the Vatican. He represents the task as "most difficult and
important, as at that time the people were much demoralized, and
indulged in the most frightful excesses," notwithstanding the papal
Government, with plenary and absolute powers, had existed there during
all the period of the Middle Ages--nearly a thousand years. Not content
alone with asserting that the people were demoralized, this same author
affirms, in addition, that Loyola "sought to reform the monastic
orders, and reanimate the priesthood with a holy fervor,"[5] thus
alleging that the monastic orders and the priesthood were demoralized
like the people, and needed that a new guardian of their morals, other
and better than any the Church had ever furnished, should be empowered
to regulate their conduct. In further explanation of the reasons why
Loyola desired to establish the society of Jesuits, he represents him
as having addressed directly to the pope, Paul III, this argument: "It
appears that this society is absolutely necessary for the eradication
of those abuses with which the Church is afflicted."[6] And at another
place, referring to the condition of the Church in Germany, he says
it was "mainly attributable to the ignorance of the people, and, more
dangerous still, to the shortcomings of the priesthood, abandoned to
the gratification of their own passions. In the entire city of Worms
there was but one priest worthy of respect."[7] Neither Luther nor the
reformers could have employed apter words to justify themselves; nor
can those of the present time, who comment upon the vices which then
prevailed among the clergy, express themselves in stronger language.
The well-established historical fact is, that the same condition of
things existed throughout the leading nations of Europe, beginning at
Rome and reaching out in every direction, having the papacy as its
common center. When the Jesuits, therefore, bestow their curses upon
Luther and other reformers for having proclaimed the necessity for
reform in the Church because of the demoralization of the clergy, they
show their memories to be short in forgetting that their society was
justified by its founder upon the plea of the same necessity.
Loyola was fully advised, also, of the progress made by the
Reformation, and doubtless persuaded himself to believe that the
necessity for reform would be made available by others of less ambition
than himself, who would be likely to seek for it elsewhere than through
the papacy, under whose auspices so many evils had grown up, unless he
could check the progress of the Reformation by the creation of some new
and opposing influences which he could himself control. There were no
fundamental points of Christian doctrine involved; and, if there had
been, the whole life of Loyola proves that he would have regarded them
of inferior importance, compared with his main purpose of preventing
the enlightenment of society by free religious thought, and holding
it in obedience to authority superior to itself. The friendly author
already quoted declares his object to have been "to re-establish
those principles of submission and discipline which alone can insure
obedience to legitimate authority;"[8] that is, to the combined
authority of Church and State, as no other was at that time considered
legitimate by him, or has ever been by his society since then.
The acute and penetrating intellect of Loyola enabled him to foresee
that, unless some new method of counteracting the effects of the
Reformation should be discovered, the disintegration of the Church,
already begun, could not be arrested. The difficulties surrounding
this problem were increased by the fact that the papacy had been
unable to put a stop to its own decline; and accordingly he taxed
his inventive faculties, not to reform doctrine--for that was not
needed beyond the points interpolated upon the primitive faith by the
ambitious popes--but to prevent the decay of papal and ecclesiastical
power. Undoubtedly it was his purpose that whatsoever plan he might
adopt should supersede the old methods to which the Church had been
long accustomed, and which had the sanction of numerous popes and
many centuries of time. He intended to enter upon an experiment,
the chief recommendation of which was, that it required new paths
to be marked out in preference to those which had acquired the
approval of antiquity. But he was careful to see, at every step he
took, that whatsoever was done should inure to his own credit in the
accomplishment of such ends as were suggested by the burning ardor and
ambition of a soldier; in other words, that if good results ensued,
they should be attributed to himself, and neither to the pope, nor
to the Church, nor to the ancient monastic orders. Assuming, as he
manifestly did, that all these combined had failed to check the
advancing corruptions of the clergy, which had grown up under their
protracted auspices, his inventive and ambitious mind was animated by
the hope of bringing the world to realize that he alone could give to
the organized authority of Church and State the vigor and efficiency
necessary to keep society in obedience. Having a mind thoroughly
indoctrinated with the principle of absolute monarchism, he did not
regard it as possible or desirable to accomplish this in any other mode
than by making that the central and controlling feature of whatsoever
plan should be adopted. Accordingly, in the constitution of the society
of Jesuits, which was the product of his reflections, he provided for
consolidating in his own hands, as superior or general, such absolute
authority as would subject all its members to his individual will, so
as to hold them, at all times and under all possible circumstances, in
perfect and uninquiring obedience, surrendering their right to think
as completely as if they had never possessed it. By this method he
designed to annihilate all personal independence, so that freedom of
thought should not, by any possibility, exist in the society. He meant
to convert all who were brought within the circle of his influence,
from thoughtful and reflecting men into mere human automatons, and so
to mold and fashion them that each one should be reduced to a universal
and common level of humiliating submission and obedience. Thus he
hoped to arrest the further development of popular intelligence, so
that those who had been lifted out of the old grooves of despotism
might be plunged into them again, and such as had not should be held
there in ignorance and superstition. This he supposed would defeat
the Reformation, in which event he and his society, as the originator
and executors of the plan, would enjoy the glory of the achievement.
If he had ever exhibited any evidences of great sanctity of life,
this presumption of selfish ambition might have been rebutted; but
he was known only as an aspiring soldier, whose early life had been
characterized by such follies and irregularities as prevailed about the
courts of royalty at that time. He had done nothing to raise him above
the character of an adventurer.
There was nothing in the original Jesuit constitution necessary to
Christian faith or to the established doctrines of the Roman Church.
It provided for the organization of a select body of men, united
together professedly to maintain what Loyola chose to call the greater
glory of God--"_ad majorem Dei gloriam_"--by such undefined methods as
might be, from time to time, made known to them by their general, and
without fixing any limitation or restraint upon either his discretion
or authority. There was no pretense of adding to or taking from the
settled doctrines or dogmas of the Church; for that could have been
done only by the pope, or by a General Council, or by the two powers
acting conjointly--in unity. It would have been a direct censure of
the Church to have assumed the necessity of this, or to have solicited
authority to undertake it--equivalent to saying that it had failed to
provide the necessary means of maintaining the true faith after many
centuries of unlimited power. It was the duty of Loyola, as a faithful
son of the Church, no less than it was the duty of those who were
less pretentious, to have regarded its faith and doctrines as already
perfect. To have done otherwise would have given aid and comfort to
Luther and the Reformation. Hence his pretense of the necessity for the
organization of a new society or order, with special methods of its
own hitherto unknown, clearly indicated a desire to act apart from and
independently of the existing methods and authorities of the Church.
No matter, however, what pretenses were made by Loyola, or what his
secretly cherished designs were, there is not the least ground for
doubt that his method of establishing and organizing a new society had
no relations whatsoever to the principles of Christian faith--in other
words, that the existing methods were competent for all practicable
and necessary purposes without it. It was, consequently, temporal
merely; that is, it had reference exclusively to the management of
men, so as to reduce them to uninquiring obedience to such authority
as was set over them. There was nothing besides this which the Church
and the ancient monastic orders did not already possess the power to
accomplish. The "exercises" he prescribed were, it is true, spiritual
in character--such as penance and mortification of the flesh--but the
Church had already provided these, and they were rigidly observed by
the monastic orders. The pledge to employ them, made by the members
of the Jesuit society so as to promote their own spiritual welfare,
was merely incidental to the duty they already owed to the Church.
Consequently, while these "exercises" conformed to the existing
obligations imposed by the Church, the new society projected by
Loyola was intended to furnish the machinery necessary for exacting
obedience--for training and disciplining all who could be influenced by
it for that single purpose. And in order to accomplish effectually this
obedience to himself and his new society, leaving out entirely both the
Church and the pope, he originally designed that the members of the
society should be responsible alone to their general, from whom all the
laws and regulations for their government should emanate. The pope, as
the head of the Church, had not the least authority over these members
conferred upon him by the original constitution; nor was it intended
that they should obey any other authority than that of their general,
because he, and he alone, was recognized as the sole representative of
God upon earth. There was nothing spiritual in all this, in the sense
in which the Church had defined spiritual things and the Christian
world understood them; but it made the society, as Loyola planned
it, temporal merely--a mere police corps, drilled and disciplined to
obedience alone, without the right either to inquire or decide whether
the commands of their superior were right or wrong. It should surprise
no intelligent man, therefore, at learning the fact that the pope
hesitated about giving the society his approval, when Loyola first
requested his pontifical ratification of its constitution.
That Loyola's original intention was that his new society should exact
from its members a pledge of fidelity alone to himself and those who
should succeed him in its government, and not to the Church or to
the pope, is plainly to be seen in the fact that when he found a few
sympathizing friends to unite with him, he did not submit the plan of
organization to the pope for approval, so as to make it a religious
order like the Dominican, Franciscan, and other ancient orders, but
sought only from him permission for himself and friends to go as
missionaries to the Holy Land, to labor for the conversion of the
infidel Turks to Christianity. That he then contemplated acting, in
so far as the movements and operations of his society were concerned,
independently of the Church and the pope, is evidenced by the most
undoubted authority. The author of the "Lives of the Saints," a work
which has the highest indorsement, says: "In 1534, on the Feast of the
Assumption of our Lady, St. Ignatius and his six companions, of whom
Francis [Xavier] was one, made a vow at Montmartre to visit the Holy
Land, and unite their labors for the conversion of the infidels; or, if
this should be found not practicable, to cast themselves at the feet of
the pope, and offer their services wherever he thought fit to employ
them."[9]
It will be seen, therefore, that it was entirely conditional whether
or no Loyola would make known to the pope his new society and the plan
of its organization, and ask his pontifical approval. He had already
formed the primary organization, and obtained from Xavier and his
five other associates the necessary vow of obedience, by which they
had placed themselves entirely under his dominion and control. If it
should prove "practicable" for him to plant his new and independent
society in the Holy Land, which presented a large and tempting field
of operations, it was undoubtedly his secretly-cherished purpose to
do so, without making his constitution known to the pope, and thus
to establish in Asia an organization independent of the pope, and
submissive only to himself. But if found to be "not practicable," then,
and only then, he and his companions would "cast themselves at the feet
of the pope, and offer their services" to him and to the Church. His
military ambition, not yet extinguished, was manifestly kindled afresh
by the hope that a whole continent would be opened before him, where he
would find the Oriental methods of obedience strictly consistent with
those he desired to introduce, and where he could create, unmolested,
such influences as, being introduced into Europe, might counteract
those already produced by the Reformation. But not until he found
that he was balked in this, did he intend to devote himself and his
companions to the immediate work of attempting to arrest the progress
of the Reformation in Europe, where the existing methods of resisting
it were not under his control. It was worthy of the founder of the
Jesuits to solicit the pope's approval of this great missionary scheme,
and to conceal from him, at the same time, his secret purpose to act
in the name of a new society, adverse to the ancient monastic orders
and submissive to himself alone. That this concealment was studied and
premeditated, there can be no reasonable doubt; and as it was the first
step taken by Loyola in the execution of his plan, he thereby practiced
such duplicity and deceit toward the Church and the pope, that these
qualities may well be considered as fundamental in the society of
Jesuits. And there is ample proof in the strange and eventful history
of this society that it has been, from that time till the present,
consistently faithful to this example of its founder.
His first successes were, doubtless, flattering to the pride, as well
as encouraging to the hopes, of Loyola. Having succeeded in obtaining
the consent of the pope that he and his companions should become
missionaries to the Holy Land, without having revealed the existence
or character of his society, they were all ordained as priests for
that purpose, as none of them had been previously admitted to the
priesthood. Thus equipped, they took their departure for Palestine,
with the plan and principles of their organization locked up in their
own minds, and the ultimate design of their ambitious leader known,
probably, to himself alone. They must have commenced their journey with
joyful hearts and rapturous hopes, which soon, however, became chilled
by what Loyola must have considered a sad misfortune, probably the
first he had encountered since he had received the wound at the battle
of Pampeluna, which disfigured his person so that he could share no
longer in the gay festivities of the royal court. They were prevented
from reaching Palestine by the war then in progress between the Emperor
Charles V and the Turks, and, after an absence of about a year, were
compelled to return to Europe disheartened, as may well be supposed,
by their failure. This put a new aspect upon the fortunes of Loyola.
His first advance towards independence and the acquisition of power
had accomplished nothing favorable to his ambition, and, consequently,
it became necessary for him to discover some more promising field of
operations, where no such mishap as he had encountered would be likely
to occur again. There was abundant room in Europe for missionary labor;
but he was now, for the first time, confronted by the fact that his
society could not engage in this work, in the presence of numerous
religious orders already in existence, without obtaining for it the
express approval of the pope, so that, by this means, it might be also
stamped with a religious character, in so far as that approval would
confer it. He, manifestly, had not calculated upon a crisis which
would make it necessary to submit the provisions of his constitution
to the pope, or to make them known to any others besides those who
were to become members of his society, and were willing to yield
up their manhood so completely as to vow uninquiring obedience and
submission to him and his successors as the only representatives and
vicegerents of God upon earth. It can not be supposed that a man of so
much sagacity as he undoubtedly possessed, would not have foreseen the
difficulty in obtaining the approval of the pope to a constitution
which humiliated him by assigning higher authority to the general of
a new society than the Church had confided to him. But he had gone
too far to retreat, and had too much courage to attempt it; for his
courage was never doubted, either upon the battle-field or elsewhere;
and when he found it absolutely necessary to visit Rome in order to
obtain the pope's sanction, he did so, accompanied by Lefevre and
Laynez, two of his companions. Before their departure, however, from
Vicenza in Austrian Italy, where they were assembled, Loyola deemed it
important to announce to his followers, probably for the first time,
the name he had decided to give his society. He thus instructed them:
"To those who ask what we are, we will reply, we are the Soldiers of
the Holy Church, and we form '_The Society of Jesus_.'"[10] This was
evidently suggested by the necessities which then confronted him. He
had not found it expedient to adopt such a designation, or to announce
that they were "Soldiers of the Holy Church," until their attempt to
obtain an independent position in Palestine had failed. Therefore,
these avowals, made before going to Rome, are justly to be considered
as mere expedients, suggested by the necessity of obtaining the pope's
approval. The existing religious orders had taken their names from
their founders; but Loyola's profane use of the sacred name of the Son
of God, clearly indicated that he intended to set up for his society a
claim for holiness superior to all others. Or it was assumed as a cover
for practices, contemplated by him, that would not bear inspection
in the light. That it was intended as a reflection upon the ancient
monastic orders then existing, and to express superiority over them,
can not be doubted. In any view, to say the least, it was impudent and
presumptuous, and was generally offensive to the Christian world.
At the time of Loyola's visit to Rome, Paul III was pope. When his
approval of the new society was solicited, he deemed it indispensable,
as a measure of precaution, that the question should be investigated
with the greatest care; for until then no opportunity had been afforded
him of knowing the ultimate purposes of Loyola, or the machinery he
had constructed for executing them. Whether the pope suspected him
of concealment or not, it is impossible now to tell; but that he had
reason to do so is evident from the most favorable accounts given of
the original official interview between them. Then it was that the pope
was apprised, for the first time, that the constitution under which the
society of Jesuits had been organized, required a solemn vow, by which
all the members were pledged to "implicit and unquestioning obedience
to their superior,"[11] without the possibility of equivocation or
mental reservation; that is, to Loyola himself as the first general,
and to his successors from time to time thereafter. It required but
little deliberation upon the part of the pope to realize that neither
the Church nor the papacy could derive any advantage from this, but
rather injury; for the reason that it would create a society under the
protection of both, and, at the same time, absolutely independent of
both. He therefore hesitated, evidently supposing that his approval
under those circumstances would drag him into deep waters from which it
would not be easy to escape, and referred the question to a committee
of cardinals for thorough and scrutinizing investigation, so that his
final action should be based upon full information.
Loyola was too sagacious not to have anticipated this difficulty;
but he manifestly hoped to escape it in some way, either by evading
or bridging it over, or he would not have asked the pope to approve
the original constitution which contained it. He certainly did not
desire or contemplate any change in his original constitution or plan;
and therefore, when Paul III hesitated and appointed a committee of
cardinals to scrutinize them, he must have felt a degree of perplexity
to which his proud and ambitious military spirit had not been hitherto
accustomed to submit unresistingly. He could not avoid seeing, however,
that if the pope's final decision should be adverse to him, it would
necessarily be the death of his society, upon which he had, with
inordinate ambition, fixed his hopes. The occasion constituted the
most serious crisis in his personal fortunes he had ever encountered.
Success promised him a long list of triumphs; defeat, nothing but
obscurity. He had no such intellectual resources as fitted him for
rencounter with those who had, not having attended school until after
he had reached the years of manhood, and not having then shown any
special aptness for learning. Whatsoever capacity he possessed, tended
in the direction of governing men, his faculty for which was developed
during his service in the army; and he must therefore have experienced
the consciousness that if he failed to obtain the sanction of the
pope, his career would be seriously, if not entirely, checked. The
future of the papacy depended upon the successful training of men to
obedience; and Loyola, understanding this, could have had no difficulty
in persuading the pope that a society like his, contrived especially
to suspend the power of human reasoning and reduce its members to mere
unthinking machines, would more assuredly produce that result than had
been done by the very worst forms of absolute despotism which had, for
so many centuries, held the Oriental world in subjugation.
But Loyola's embarrassment did not amount to discomfiture. He may never
have held personal intercourse with Paul III before; but he understood
the papacy, its wants and necessities, and had ample opportunity to
study the character and penetrate the motives of the pope. For this
he was specially fitted--few men have lived who excelled him in this
respect--and, having constructed his society upon the theory that men
were of no value unless persuaded to surrender up their personality
to superiors, the occasion served him to address such arguments to
the pope as would convince him that the obedience to authority he had
introduced in his society was just what the existing exigencies of
the papacy required to save it from overthrow. It may easily be seen
now--although the pope may not have then employed penetration enough
to discover it--that he did not intend to deal unequivocally and in
entire frankness with the pope, so long as there remained a prospect of
obtaining his end otherwise. He evidently had an accurate conception
of what is meant by the terms confession and avoidance, in the sense
of seeming to consent while not consenting. Thus, in order to remove
the objection of the pope and secure his approval, he suggested another
and new obligation to be inserted in the constitution of his society,
providing that the members should also take a vow "of obedience to the
Holy See and to the pope _pro tempore_, with the express obligation of
going, without remuneration, to whatsoever part of the world it shall
please the pope to send them."[12] These words must be read critically
in order that their meaning as intended by Loyola, and always since
interpreted by the Jesuits, may not be misconceived. Their true import
is, that whilst the members of the society were to pay obedience to the
pope as well as to their general, it was qualified as to the former,
and absolute as to the latter; that is, that as they were nominally
to have two heads, the authority of both should, for all practical
purposes, center in one. In point of fact, as amply demonstrated by
subsequent experience, this new provision did not change the nature or
limit the extent of the obligation of unquestioning obedience to the
Jesuit general. Its most essential feature was that which required the
members to go wheresoever ordered by the pope, without compensation;
but with regard to this and all other duties, and the manner of
discharging them, they were required to obey their general. They could
receive no instructions except those which came from him, all of which
they were required to obey as coming directly from God. This amendment
created no special relations--or, indeed, any whatsoever--between the
pope and the society; for he held no direct intercourse with it. And
it only created such relations between the pope and the general as
obliged the latter to send the members wheresoever the former desired,
without remuneration. They remained the slaves of the general, and
not the slaves of the pope. They obeyed the general, and not the
pope, unless ordered to do so by the general, in which case they
paid obedience only to the latter. But Paul III did not detect the
well-concealed purposes of Loyola, and may not even have suspected
them, in view of his anxiety to arrest the disintegration of the
Church and the threatened decay of the papacy. Howsoever this may
have been, the cunningly-contrived concession made to him by Loyola
was satisfactory to him, notwithstanding the opposition of one of the
committee of cardinals, and he issued his pontifical bull approving
the society of Jesuits as a religious order. This pledge of fidelity
to the pope, however, has been kept or evaded accordingly as the
interests of the society have from time to time demanded. Its history
shows prominent instances when the decisions of the popes have been
denounced and resisted, and when the popes themselves have been treated
with contempt and defiance. When the Jesuits have found shelter and
protection under the authority of the popes, they have exalted them to
absolute equality with God; when otherwise, they have disobeyed and
traduced them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Crit. and Phi. Dictionary. By Bayle. Article "Loyola,"
Vol. III, p. 889, note.]
[Footnote 5: History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol. I, p.
14. This work was translated by Clements, and published in Cincinnati
by Walsh, in 1865.]
[Footnote 6: History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol I, p.
22.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, p. 40.]
[Footnote 8: History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol. I, p.
40.]
[Footnote 9: Lives of the Saints. By the Rev. Alban Butler. Vol. XII,
article "St. Francis Xavier," December 3, p. 603.]
[Footnote 10: Daurignac. Vol. I, pp. 11-12.]
[Footnote 11: History of the Jesuits. By Nicolini. Page 27.]
[Footnote 12: History of the Jesuits. By Nicolini. Page 27.]