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A CANDID HISTORY OF THE JESUITS
A CANDID HISTORY
OF
THE JESUITS
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
AUTHOR OF
"THE DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME" ETC.
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1913
PREFACE
It is the historic custom of the Church of Rome to enlist in its
service monastic or quasi-monastic bodies in addition to the ordinary
clergy. In its hour of greatest need, at the very outbreak of the
Reformation, the Society of Jesus was formed as one of these auxiliary
regiments, and in the war which the Church of Rome has waged since
that date the Jesuits have rendered the most spirited and conspicuous
service. Yet the procedure of this Society has differed in many
important respects from that of the other regiments of the Church, and
a vast and unceasing controversy has gathered about it. It is probable
that a thousand times, or several thousand times, more books and
pamphlets and articles have been written about the Jesuits than about
even the oldest and most powerful or learned of the monastic bodies.
Not a work of history can be opened, in any language, but it will
contain more references to the Jesuits than to all the other religious
orders collectively. But opinions differ as much to-day as they did a
hundred or two hundred years ago about the character of the Jesuits,
and the warmest eulogies are chilled by the most bitter and withering
indictments.
What is a Jesuit? The question is asked still in every civilised
land, and the answer is a confusing mass of contradictions. The most
learned historians read the facts of their career so differently,
that one comes to a verdict expressing deep and criminal guilt, and
another acquits them with honour. Since the foundation of the Society
these drastically opposed views of its action have been taken, and
the praise and homage of admirers have been balanced by the intense
hatred of an equal number of Catholic opponents. It would seem that
some impenetrable veil lies over the history and present life of the
Society, yet on both sides its judges refuse to recognise obscurity.
Catholic monarchs and peoples have, time after time, driven the Jesuits
ignominiously over their frontiers; Popes have sternly condemned them.
But they are as active, and nearly as numerous, in the twentieth
century as in the last days of the old political world.
No marshalling of historical facts will change the feeling of the
pronounced admirers and opponents of the Jesuits, and it would be idle
to suppose that, because the present writer is neither Roman Catholic
nor Protestant, he will be awarded the virtue of impartiality. There
seems, however, some need for an historical study of the Jesuits which
will aim at impartiality and candour. On one side we have large and
important works like Crétineau-Joly's _Histoire religieuse, politique,
et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jésus_, and a number of smaller
works, written by Catholics of England or America, from the material,
and in the spirit, of the French historian's work. Such works as
these cannot for a moment be regarded as serious history. They are
panegyrics or apologies: pleasant reading for the man or woman who
wishes to admire, but mere untruth to the man or woman who wishes to
know. Indeed, the work of M. Crétineau-Joly, written in conjunction
with the Jesuits, which is at times recommended as the classical
authority on the Society, has worse defects than the genial omission
of unedifying episodes. He makes the most inflated general statements
on the scantiest of material, is seriously and frequently inaccurate,
makes a very generous use of the "mental reserve" which his friends
advocate, and sometimes embodies notoriously forged documents without
even intimating that they are questioned.
Such works naturally provoke an antagonistic class of volumes, in
which the unflattering truths only are presented and a false picture
is produced to the prejudice of the Jesuits. An entirely neutral
volume on the Jesuits does not exist, and probably never will exist.
The historian who surveys the whole of the facts of their remarkable
and romantic career cannot remain neutral. Nor is it merely a question
of whether the writer is a Roman Catholic or no. The work of M.
Crétineau-Joly was followed in France by one written by a zealous
priest, the Abbé Guettée, which tore its predecessor to shreds, and
represented the Society of Jesus as fitly condemned by Pope and kings.
It will be found, at least, that the present work contains an
impartial account both of the virtue and heroism that are found in
the chronicles of the Jesuits, and the scandals and misdeeds that may
justly be attributed to them. It is no less based on the original
Jesuit documents, as far as they have been published, and the work of
Crétineau-Joly, than on the antagonistic literature, as the reader
will perceive. Whether or no it seems to some an indictment, it is
a patient endeavour to give all the facts, within the compass of the
volume, and enable the reader to form a balanced judgment on the
Society. It is an attempt to _understand_ the Jesuits: to understand
the enthusiasm and fiery attachment of one half of the Catholic world
no less than the disdain or detestation of the other, to employ the
white and the black, not blended into a monotonous grey but in their
respective places and shades, so as to afford a truthful picture of
the dramatic fortunes of the Society during nearly four centuries, and
some insight into the character of the men who won for it such ardent
devotion and such intense hostility.
J.M.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Origin of the Society 1
II. The First Jesuits 27
III. Early Storms 55
IV. General Francis Borgia 80
V. Progress and Decay under Acquaviva 106
VI. The Early Jesuits in England 142
VII. The First Century of Jesuitism 167
VIII. Under the Stuarts 195
IX. The Struggle with the Jansenists 220
X. The Expulsion from Portugal and Spain 253
XI. The Foreign Missions 279
XII. In the Germanic Lands 311
XIII. The Suppression of the Society 334
XIV. The Restoration 364
XV. The New Jesuits 390
XVI. The Last Phase 424
Index 445
A CANDID HISTORY OF THE
JESUITS
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY
In the early summer of the year 1521, some months after Martin Luther
had burned the Pope's bull at Wittenberg and lit the fire of the
Reformation, a young Basque soldier lay abed in his father's castle
at the foot of the Pyrenees, contemplating the wreck of his ambition.
Iñigo of Loyola was the youngest son in a large family of ancient
lineage and little wealth. He had lost his mother at an early date, and
had been placed by a wealthy aunt at court, where he learned to love
the flash of swords, the smile of princes, the softness of silk and of
women's eyes, and all the hard deeds and rich rewards of the knight's
career. From the court he had gone to the camp, and had set himself
sternly to the task of cutting an honourable path back to court.
Fearless in war, skilful in sport and in martial exercises, refined
in person, cheerful in temper, and ardent in love, the young noble
had seen before him a long avenue of knightly adventure and gracious
recompense. He was, in 1521, in his thirtieth year of age, or near
it--his birth-year is variously given as 1491 or 1493; a clean-built,
sinewy little man, with dark lustrous eyes flashing in his olive-tinted
face, and thick black hair crowning his lofty forehead. And a French
ball at the siege of Pampeluna had, at one stroke, broken his leg and
shattered his ambition.
It took some time to realise the ruin of his ambition. The chivalrous
conquerors at Pampeluna had treated their brave opponent with
distinction, and had, after dressing his wounds, sent him to the Loyola
castle in the Basque provinces, where his elder brother had brought the
surgeons to make him fit for the field once more. The bone, they found,
had been badly set; it must be broken again and re-set. He bore their
operations without a moan, and then lay for weeks in pain and fever.
He still trusted to return to the camp and win the favour of a certain
great lady--probably the daughter of the Dowager-Queen of Naples--whose
memory he secretly cherished. Indeed, on the feast of the Apostles
Peter and Paul, he spoke of it with confidence; he told his brother
that the elder apostle had entered the dark chamber and healed him on
the eve of the festival. Unhappily he found, when the fever had gone,
that the second setting of his leg had been so ill done that a piece
of bone projected below the knee, and the right leg was shorter than
the left. Again he summoned the mediæval surgeons and their appalling
armoury, and they sawed off the protruding piece of bone and stretched
his leg on a rack they used for such purposes; and not a cry or curse
came from the tense lips. But the right leg still refused to meet its
fellow, and shades gathered about Iñigo's glorious prospect of life. A
young man who limps can hardly hope to reach a place of honour in the
camp, or the gardens of the palace, or the hearts of women. Talleyrand,
later, would set out on his career with a limp; and Talleyrand would
become a diplomatist.
Iñigo lay in the stout square castle of rugged stone, which is now
reverently enclosed, like a jewel, in a vast home of the Jesuits. It
then stood alone in a beautiful valley, just at the foot of the last
southern slopes of the Pyrenees, about a mile from the little town
of Azpeitia. The mind of the young Basque heaved with confused and
feverish dreams as he lay there, in the summer heat, beside the wreck
of his ambition. He called for books of knight-errantry, to while
away the dreary days, but there were none in the Loyola castle, and
someone--a pious sister, perhaps--brought him a _Life of Christ_ and a
_Flowers of the Saints_. For lack of anything better he read them: at
first fingering the leaves with the nearest approach to disdain that a
Christian soldier dare admit, then starting with interest, at length
flushing with enthusiasm. What was this but another form of chivalry?
Nay, when you reflected, it was the only chivalry worth so fierce a
devotion as his. Here was a way of winning a fair lady, the Queen of
Heaven, whose glances were worth more than the caresses of all the
dames in Castile: here was a monarch to serve, whose court outshone
the courts of France and Spain as the sun outshines the stars: here
were adventures that called for a higher spirit than the bravado of the
soldier.
The young Basque began to look upon a new world from the narrow windows
of the old castle. Down the valley was Azpeitia, and even there one
could find monsters and evil knights to slay in the cause of Mary.
Southward were the broad provinces of Spain, full of half-converted
Moors and Jews and ever-flourishing vices. Across the hills and the
seas were other kingdoms, calling just as loudly for a new champion of
God and Mary. One field, far away at the edge of the world, summoned
him with peremptory voice; after all the Crusades the sites in the Holy
Land were still trodden by the feet of blaspheming Turks. The blood
began to course once more in the veins of the soldier.
During the winter that followed his friends noticed that he was
making a wonderful chronicle of the lives of Christ and His saints.
He was skilled in all courtly accomplishments--they did not include
learning--and could write, and illuminate very prettily, sonnets to
the secret lady of his inner shrine. Now he used his art to make a
pious chronicle, with the words and deeds of Christ in vermilion and
gold, the life of Mary in blue, and the stories of the saints in the
less royal colours of the rainbow, and his dark pale face was lit by a
strange light. There were times when this new light flickered or faded,
and the fleshly queen of his heart seemed to place white arms about
him, and the sunny earth fought with the faint vision of a far-off
heaven. Then he prayed, and scourged himself, and vowed that he would
be the knight of Christ and Mary; and--so he told his followers long
afterwards--the heavy stone castle shook and rumbled with the angry
passing of the demon. He told them also that he had at the time a
notion of burying himself in the Carthusian monastery at Seville, and
sent one to inquire concerning its way of life; but such a design is so
little in accord with his knight-errant mood that we cannot think he
seriously entertained it.
By the spring the struggle had ended and Ignatius--he exchanged his
worldly name for that of a saint-model--set out in quest of spiritual
adventure. The "sudden revolution," as Crétineau-Joly calls his
conversion, had occupied about nine months. Indeed, friends and foes
of the Jesuits have conspired to obscure the development of his
feelings: the friends in order that they may recognise a miracle in
the conversion, the foes in order that they may make it out to have
been no conversion at all, but a transfer of selfish ambition from the
camp to the Church. Whatever be the truth about Iñigo's earlier morals,
he had certainly received a careful religious education in boyhood,
and he would just as certainly not learn scepticism at the court set
up by Ferdinand and Isabella. His belief that he had a vision of St.
Peter, a few weeks after receiving his wound and before he read the
pious books, shows that he had kept a vivid religious faith in the
camp. Some looseness of conduct would not be inconsistent with this,
especially in Spain, but the darker descriptions of his adolescent ways
which some writers give are not justified. "He was prone to quarrels
and amatory folly," is all that the most candid of his biographers
says. Let us grant the hot Basque blood a quick sense of honour and a
few love-affairs. On the whole, Iñigo seems to have been an officer of
the stricter sort, and a thorough Catholic. Hence we can understand
that, as earth grows dark and cheerless for him, and the casual reading
brings before him in vivid colouring the vision of faith, his fervent
imagination is gradually won, and he sincerely devotes his arms to the
service of Christ and Mary.
Piously deceiving his brother as to his destination, he set out on a
mule in the month of March. He would go to the shrine of Our Lady at
Montserrat, to ask a blessing on his enterprise, and then cross the
sea to convert the Mohammedans in Palestine. His temper is seen in an
adventure by the way. He fell in with one of the Moors who had put on a
thin mantle of Christian profession in order that they might be allowed
to remain in Spain, and talked to him of Our Lady of Montserrat. Being
far from the town and the ears of Inquisitors, the Moor spoke lightly
of the Mother of Christ, and, when the convert showed heat, fled at
a gallop. Ignatius wondered, with his hand on his sword, whether or
no his new ideal demanded that he should follow and slay the man. He
left the point to God, or to his mule, and was taken on the road to
Montserrat.
At last he came to the steep mountain, with saw-like peaks, which rises
out of the plain some twenty miles to the north-west of Barcelona, with
the famous shrine of the Virgin on its flank. In the little town of
Iguelada, at the foot of the mountain, he bought the rough outfit of a
pilgrim--a tunic of sackcloth, a rope-girdle, a pair of rough sandals,
a staff, and a gourd--and made his way up the wild slopes, among the
sober cypresses, to the Benedictine monastery which guarded the shrine.
For three days he knelt at the feet of one of the holiest of the monks,
telling, with many tears, the story of his worldly life. Then he went
again to the town, took aside a poor-clad beggar, as Francis of Assisi
had done in his chronicle, and exchanged garments with him, putting the
sackcloth tunic over his rags. It was the eve of the great festival of
Mary, the Annunciation (March 25th), and he spent the night kneeling
before the altar, as he had read of good knights doing before they
took the field. In the morning he hung his sword in the shrine and set
forth. From that moment we shall do well to forget that Ignatius had
been a soldier, and seek some other clue to his conduct.
The next step in his journey toward Rome is described at great length
in lives of the saint, yet it is not wholly intelligible. Instead of
going to Barcelona, where one took ship, he went to Manresa, and his
pilgrimage was postponed for nearly a year. He did not take the high
road to Barcelona, says his biographer, lest he should meet the people
coming to the shrine: a theory which would not only require another
theory to explain it, but which gives no explanation of the year's
delay. Others think that he heard there was plague in the port; though
the plague would not last a year, and one may question if Ignatius
would flee it. The truth seems to be that the idea of spending his
life in the East was already yielding in his mind to another design:
the plan of forming a Society was dimly breaking on him. He had studied
the monastic life in the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat, and had
brought away with him a book, written by one of their abbots, over
which he would brood to some purpose. He had a vague feeling that the
appointed field of adventure might be Europe.
However that may be, he took a road that led away from Barcelona, and
as he limped and suffered, for he had discarded the mule and would
make his pilgrimage afoot, he asked where he could find a hospital (in
those days a mixture of hostel and hospital). He was taken to Manresa,
a picturesque little town in one of the valleys of the district, where
he lodged in the hospital for a few days, and then, instead of going to
Barcelona, found an apartment and became a local celebrity. The beggar
to whom he had given his clothes had, naturally, been arrested, and
Ignatius was forced to tell his strange story, in order to clear the
man and himself. The story grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, and
it was presently understood that the dirty, barefoot, ill-clad beggar,
who asked a little coarse bread at the doors, and retired to pray
and scourge himself, was one of the richest grandees of the eastern
provinces. Children followed "Father Sackcloth" about the streets; men
sneered at his uncut nails and his long, wild black locks and thin
face; women wept, and asked his prayers.
After a few months he found a cavern outside the town, at the foot
of the hills, and entered upon the period of endless prayer and wild
austerity in which he wrote his book, the _Spiritual Exercises_. He
scourged himself, until the blood came, three times a day: he ate so
little, and lived so intense a life, that he was sometimes found
unconscious on the floor of the cave, and had to be removed and nursed;
his deep black eyes seemed to gleam from the face of a corpse. Thus he
lived for six months, and wrote his famous book. I need not analyse
that passionate guide to the spiritual life, or consider the legend of
its miraculous origin. We know from Benedictine writers that Ignatius
had received at Montserrat a copy of the _Exercitatorium_ of their
abbot Cisneros, and anyone familiar with Catholic life will know that
similar series of "meditations" are, and always have been, very common.
There is an original plan in Ignatius's book, and the period during
which the mind must successively brood over sin and hell, virtue and
heaven, Christ and the devil, is boldly extended to four weeks. These
are technicalities;[1] the deeply original thing in the work is its
intensity, and for the source of this we need only regard those six
months of fierce inner life in the cave near Manresa.
In later years Ignatius claimed that the general design of his Society,
and even the chief features of its constitution, were revealed to
him in that cavern. "I saw it thus at Manresa," he used to say when
he was asked why such or such a feature was included. In this he is
clearly wrong. His Society was, in essence and details, a regiment
enlisted to fight Protestantism, and Ignatius certainly knew nothing
of Protestantism as a formidable menace to the Pope's rule in 1522;
one may doubt if he was yet aware of the existence of Luther. We may
conclude again that he had in mind a vague alternative to his mission
to the Mohammedans. Those who are disposed to believe that the Society
of Jesus was in any definite sense projected by him at Manresa will
find it hard to explain why for five years afterwards he still insisted
that his mission was to the Turks.
In January 1523 he set out for Barcelona, trimming his nails, combing
and clipping his hair, and exchanging his sack for clothes of coarse
grey stuff. He did not wish to attract too much attention, he said. He
was detained a few weeks at Barcelona, and begged his bread, and served
the poor and the sick, in the way which was to become characteristic of
the early Jesuits. On Palm Sunday he entered Rome, lost in a crowd of
other pilgrims and beggars, and from there he walked on foot to Venice,
whence he sailed in July. Within six months he was back in Venice. The
Franciscan monks who controlled the Christian colony at Jerusalem had
sent him home very quickly, fearing that his indiscreet fervour would
lead to trouble with the Turks. The whole expedition was Quixotic, if
it was really meant to be more than a pilgrimage, as Ignatius knew not
a word of any language but Basque and Castilian. He returned to Venice
in a thin ragged coat, his legs showing flagrantly through his tattered
trousers, and in this guise he crossed on foot to Genoa, in hard wintry
weather. By the end of February he was again in Barcelona.
For several years yet Ignatius will continue to speak of the conversion
of the Turks as his chief mission, but his actions suggest that the
alternative in his mind was growing larger. The year's experience had
taught him that the knight of the Lord needed education, and he sat
among the boys at Barcelona learning the Latin grammar and startling
them by rising into literal ecstasies over the conjugation of the verb
"to love." He now dressed in neat plain clothes, but begged his bread
on the way to school and took every occasion to preach the gospel.
Once, when he had converted a loose community of nuns, the fast young
men of Barcelona, who were angry at this interference with their
pleasures, sent their servants to waylay him. They nearly killed him
with their staves. Many jeered at him as a hypocrite or a fanatic: many
revered him, and a few youths became his first disciples. With three of
these he went, after two years' study in Barcelona, to the University
of Alcalà, and began his higher studies. But he was so eager to make an
end of this intellectual preparation, and so busy with saving souls and
gaining proselytes, that he tried to take simultaneously the successive
parts of the stately mediæval curriculum, and learned very little.
His first attempt to found a Society also ended in disastrous failure.
Opinion in Alcalà was divided about "the sackcloth men." Some
picturesque figures were known in the religious life of Spain, but no
one had yet seen such a thing as this little band of youths, led by a
pale and worn man of thirty-two, who went barefoot from house to house,
begging their bread, and passed from the schools in the evening to
the hospitals or the homes of the poor, or stood boldly in the public
squares and told sinners to repent. It was an outrage on the dignity
of ecclesiastical life, and so they were denounced to the Inquisition,
and two learned priests were sent from Seville to examine them. Mystics
were hardly less obnoxious to the Inquisition than secret Jews and
Moors, and then there was this new device of Satan which was said to
be spreading in Germany. Ignatius and his grey-coated young preachers
were arrested and brought before the terrible tribunal. Their doctrine
was found to be sound, but they were forbidden to wear a uniform dress
and were ordered to put shoes on their feet. They dyed their coats
different colours, and returned to their work; as Jesuits have often
done since.
Four months afterwards, the officers of the Inquisition fell on them
again and put them in prison. Among the women who sought the spiritual
guidance of Ignatius were some ladies of wealth, who wished to follow
his example. It is said that he did not consent, and they set out,
against his will, to beg their bread and tend the sick. This was too
much for respectable folk in Alcalà, and Ignatius was closely examined
to see whether he was not a secret Jew, since Christians did not do
these things. The inquiry ended in the companions being ordered to
dress as other students did, and to forbear preaching for four years.
It is important to notice how from the first Ignatius, relying on his
inner visions, will not bend to any authority if he can help it. He
and his youths walked to Salamanca, and resumed their ways, but the
eye of the Inquisition was on them, and they were imprisoned again.
The authorities now fastened on them a restriction which may puzzle a
layman: they were forbidden to attempt to distinguish between mortal
and venial sin until their theological studies were completed. It
meant, in practice, that they must not disturb the gay sinners of Spain
with threats of hell, and for the time it entirely destroyed the design
of Ignatius. His disciples fell away, and Ignatius fled to a land where
there were no Inquisitors. He crossed the Pyrenees and went the whole
length of France on foot.
The seven years which he spent at Paris were of the greatest importance
in the life of Ignatius. Of his studies little need be said. He now
took the university courses in proper succession, and won his degree
in 1534. But these studies were only a means to an end, and he never
became a scholar. He discarded books, wrote a very poor Latin, and took
long to master Italian. For secular knowledge he had a pious disdain.
His followers were to be learned just in so far as it was needed to
capture and retain the control of youth and promote the authority of
the Pope. The chief interest of the long stay in Paris is that he there
founded his Society, and the manner of its foundation is of great
importance.
He had not been long at the University before his strange ways set
up the usual conflict of opinion. Was he a hypocrite, or a fool, or
a saint? From the youths who took the more complimentary view of his
ways he picked out a few to form the little band of disciples he was
always eager to have, and put them through the Spiritual Exercises.
They came out of this fiery ordeal in heroic temper, sold their little
possessions, and began to beg their bread; to the extreme indignation
of their friends in the Spanish colony. In order to save time for
study, Ignatius used to go to the Low Countries in the holidays and
beg funds for his "poor students" among the Spanish merchants. One
year--the year before Henry VIII. set up the Church of England--he went
to London, but we know only that the city was very generous to him. On
these alms Ignatius and his disciples maintained their life of prayer,
austerity, and philanthropy, living in one of the colleges among the
other students and angling prudently for souls. The irritation against
Ignatius among the Spaniards became so great that the Rector was
persuaded to inflict on him a public flogging, the last disgrace of an
unpopular student. He was not flogged, however; nor is there anything
really miraculous, as some think, in the Rector's change of mind.
Ignatius feared the effect on his disciples and had a private talk with
the Rector before the appointed hour. He had a marvellous power of
persuasion and penetration.
These earlier followers seem in time to have fallen away, or never
been admitted to his secret designs, and it was not until 1530 that he
began to gather about him the men whose names have been inscribed in
the history of Europe. In 1530 Ignatius shared his room with a gentle
and deeply religious youth from Savoy, Peter Favre, a peasant's son who
had already won the doctor's cap and priestly orders, as pious as he
was clever. He had made a vow of chastity in his thirteenth year, and
was now, in his twenty-fifth year, as eager to keep a clean conscience
as to advance in learning. He acted as philosophical coach to Ignatius.
From Aristotle and Aquinas they passed, in their nightly talk, to other
matters, and Favre presently made the Exercises.
Francis Xavier, a Navarrese youth of high birth, was a friend of Favre,
and, like him, a brilliant student and keen hungerer for knowledge.
He was a young man of great refinement, and his large soft blue eyes
looked with disdain on the eccentricities of Ignatius; he was not a
little vain of his learning, his handsome person, and his skill in
running. Who but Ignatius could have seen the Francis Xavier of a later
day, wearing out his life in the conversion of savages, in this elegant
and self-conscious scholar? Francis Thompson speaks with admiration
of the "holy wiles" by which Ignatius secured this gifted and elusive
pupil. He laid hold of him by his vanity. Xavier taught philosophy and
was ambitious to have his lecture-room full. Ignatius sat at his feet,
brought others to the lectures, and gave them generous praise. After
a time Xavier made the Exercises, and, in a secret conversation with
Ignatius, was won to the plan of devoting his life to the conversion of
the Mohammedans--or to some other religious campaign.
One by one the early Jesuits were captured by the skilful fisher of
men. To the first two were soon added Diego Lainez, a Castilian youth
of great ability and quiet strength of character, a future General of
the Society; Alfonso Salmeron, a fiery and eloquent youth from Toledo,
then in his twentieth year, who would become one of the most learned
opponents of the Protestants; Nicholas Alfonso, from Valladolid,
commonly known, from his native village, as Bobadilla, a fearless and
impetuous fighter; and Simon Rodriguez, a handsome Spanish youth of
noble birth, who would prove an admirable courtier when kings were to
be won. Many others whom Ignatius sought refused to accept his stern
ideal, and many were kept in the outer courts of his temple, as it
were, and not admitted to share his secret design. The features of the
coming Society were singularly foreshadowed. Only these six out of all
the friends and companions of Ignatius knew anything of the great plan
which filled his mind, and not one of the six knew which of the others
were admitted, like himself, to the inner counsels of the master. Each
was initiated in the strictest confidence, and forbidden to speak of it
to his most intimate friend. It was wholly unlike the foundation of any
other religious body.
At last, in July 1534, the six youths were permitted to know each
other as comrades in arms. It was time to discuss what form their
crusade should take, and Ignatius proposed that, after a week or
two of increased austerity and prayer, they should make the vow
of self-dedication and decide upon their future. There is the
characteristic impress of Ignatius on every feature of the enterprise.
The ceremony was not to be in one of the churches of Paris, but
away across the meadows in the quiet little chapel of St. Denis on
Montmartre; in fact, in the crypt underneath the chapel. And on August
15th they went out from the city gates in the early morning for what
proved to be the historic foundation of the Society of Jesus. Paris was
still, at that time, a comparatively narrow strip of town on either
bank of the Seine centring upon the island which bore the cathedral and
the palace. A mile or two of meadows and vineyards lay between it and
the green hill of Montmartre, on the slope of which was the old chapel
of St. Denis. Underneath the choir was a small vault-like chapel, and
in this, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the little band
of fervent southerners gathered to hear Peter Favre, the only priest
amongst them, say the Mass of the Virgin. At its close they knelt in
turns before the altar, and each vowed that he would live in poverty
and chastity, and either go out to convert the Turks or go wherever
the Pope should direct. No rumbling of angry devils was heard on this
occasion: the life of Paris flowed on its sparkling way; yet there was
born in that dim vault on that August morning one of the most singular
and formidable forces in the religious life of Europe.
The Society of Jesus was thus formed, though the seven men did not
know it, or adopt any corporate name. They broke their fast and spent
the day on the slope of the hill, elated with the joy of brotherhood
and the promise of mighty enterprise, talking of the adventurous
future. What should be the next step? Again we find the stamp of the
peculiar genius of Ignatius on their decision: the features which would
degenerate into what is called Jesuitry in the hearts and minds of
less sincerely religious men. They were to return to their studies,
their philanthropy, and their secrecy, for two years, and they would
meet at Venice at the beginning of 1537. Ignatius never hurried. He
lived as if he intended to quit the world very speedily; he acted as
if he were assured of long life. He was founding a body whose supreme
and distinctive aim should be to serve the Pope, yet he concealed his
work from the Pope's representatives as carefully as if he were really
forming an auxiliary troop for Martin Luther. Let it be carefully
noted, too, that they vowed either to go to Palestine _or_ to serve
the Pope in some other way appointed by him. It seems clear that, if
Ignatius had not already abandoned the idea of a mission to the Turks,
he held it lightly. In Paris he had learned that the spirit of the
Reformation was spreading over Europe as fire spreads over a parched
prairie. Men talked much of Luther and Calvin, little of Mohammed.
They returned to their colleges and their hospitals for two years,
and were known to their companions only as monks who were too ascetic
to enter a monastery. Ignatius practised fearful austerities, and his
followers fasted and scourged themselves. Xavier looked back with such
contrition on his former fame as a runner that he tied cords round
his legs until they bit into the flesh and caused a dangerous malady.
Probably the long delay was proposed by Ignatius in the hope that he
might add to the number of his followers, but he found no more at Paris
worthy or willing to be initiated; though three--Le Jay, Paschase
Brouet, and Codure--were added after his departure. He had gone to
Spain in the spring of 1535. Those of the youths who had property to
sacrifice had talked of going to Spain to arrange their affairs, but
Ignatius took the work on himself. His health was poor, he said, and
he would try his native air; he was also eager to keep them from their
native air and disapproving families. In March he walked afoot from
Paris to Loyola, begging his bread by the way.
The report of his life had reached the quiet valley at the foot of
the Pyrenees, and he found his brother and many admirers waiting in
the last stage of his journey. He remained three months in Azpeitia,
and, as no one could now interfere with his fiery preaching, he urged
his townsmen to repent and startled the province. His sanctity was now
beyond question, because a woman had recovered the use of a withered
arm by washing his linen. Then he arranged the affairs of his disciples
and went to Venice. Here Hozes and the Eguia brothers were added to the
secret fraternity, and a year was spent in tending the sick and other
work of edification. The year 1537 broke at last, and in its first week
the six disciples, worn and ragged from the long journey, joined their
master. Walking in demure pairs, a staff in one hand and a chaplet in
the other, begging their bread and exhorting all they met to virtue
and repentance, the six learned students of the Paris University had
covered afoot, in the depth of winter, the hundreds of miles that lay
between Paris and Venice; flying before the advances of bold women,
beaming under the abuse of the new heretics, facing the Alps more
bravely than a Hannibal or a Napoleon. Strong efforts had been made to
keep them at Paris. Why abandon their precious work at the University
for an unknown world? They had a secret vow, they said; though they
probably had little more idea than Ignatius of going to Palestine. None
of them learned Arabic or Turkish, or studied the Koran: what they did
learn was the Catholic doctrine assailed by the followers of Luther.
For a month or two the strange missionaries mystified and edified
Venice. It was known that some of them were nobles, and all brilliant
scholars, yet they performed the most repulsive offices for the sick,
and at times put their mouths to festering wounds. Cardinal Caraffa,
a stern Neapolitan reformer, asked Ignatius to join the new Theatine
order which he had just founded, and Ignatius replied that they had
vowed to go to Palestine. They would remember their refusal when
Caraffa became Pope. At last, in the middle of Lent, Ignatius sent his
followers to Rome to ask the Pope's blessing on their mission. He would
not go himself, as he feared the enmity of Caraffa and of the Spanish
envoy Ortiz, who had opposed them at Paris. There was, in fact, little
danger of Ignatius going without the Pope's blessing, as a new war with
the Turk had broken out, and it would not be unjust to conclude that
the real object of Ignatius was to bring his little troop to the notice
of Paul III. Ortiz himself procured them an audience, and they received
the papal blessing to accompany them to Palestine--if they could get
there, the Pope lightly said. It is singular that Ignatius, after
waiting so long, should choose a time for their departure when the seas
were closed against them.
They were ordained priests at Venice, and then they scattered over
Northern Italy, to allow a year's grace to the Palestinian mission
and let other cities see their ways. Bologna, Ferrara, Siena, and
Padua--all university towns--now witnessed the strange labours of the
nameless knights of Christ. The years were not far distant when men
would start with suspicion at the coming of a "Jesuit" and wonder
what dark intrigue brought him amongst them, but in those early days
they seemed the plainest and most guileless of ministers. Two soberly
dressed, barefooted youths, their pale faces warmed by the smile which
the master bade them wear under the eyes of men, would enter the gate
one evening, covered with the dust of long roads, and mount some stone
in the busy street or square; and, when men and women gathered round
to see the tricks of these foreign jugglers or tumblers, they would be
startled to hear such fiery preaching as had not been heard in Italy
since the fresh spring-time of the followers of Francis and Dominic.
Then the preachers would beg a crust of bread and a cup of water, and
ask for the hospital, where they might serve the sick. They had no
name, the inquirer learned, and belonged to no monastic body; they
were simple knights-errant in the cause of Christ and the poor. The
one feature by which they might, to some close observer, have given an
inkling of the future was that they hung about the universities and
impressed youths with their learning; or that, while they served the
poor, they were pleased to direct the consciences of noble and wealthy
women. Yet who would suppose that within twenty years these men would
be intriguing for the control of the universities and shaping the
counsels of kings?
Ignatius, Favre, and Lainez went to Vicenza, and found a lodging in a
ruined monastery near the town. From this they went out daily to beg,
and tend the sick, and startle townsfolk and villagers with explosive
exhortations, in broken Italian, to lay aside their sins. Again the
Inquisition summoned them, and dismissed them. At last, when it was
clear that the road to the East was indefinitely closed, Ignatius
called his followers from their several towns, and a council was held
in the old convent. The events of these early days are known to us
only from Jesuit writers of the next generation, and, discarding only
the miracles with which they unnecessarily adorn the ways of their
founders, we may follow them with little reserve. These men were,
beyond question, in deadly earnest, though we shall see that some of
them sheltered little human frailties under their hair-shirts. But it
is quite plain that, however high and pure their aim was, they formed
and carried their plans with a diplomacy, almost an astuteness, of
which you will not find a trace in the founding of any other monastic
body. One monastic virtue is conspicuously absent from the aureole of
St. Ignatius--holy simplicity.
It was decided that Ignatius, Favre, and Lainez should go to Rome, and
the others should return to work in their university cities until they
were called to Rome. Before they parted, however, they gave themselves
a name, since people demanded one. We are, said Ignatius, the "Compañia
de Jesu," the "Company of Jesus"; although the prose of a later
generation has translated it the "Society of Jesus." Then Xavier and
Bobadilla went to Bologna, Rodriguez and Le Jay to Ferrara, Salmeron
and Brouet to Siena, Codure and Hozes to Padua, to tend the sick, and
instruct the children, and angle for recruits; and Ignatius and his
companions went on foot, in the depth of winter, to Rome.
Paul III. occupied the papal throne in the year 1537, and looked with
troubled eyes to the lands beyond the Alps, where the Reformation was
now in full blast. He was by temperament a Pope of the Renaissance,
a man of genial culture and artistic feeling, a man who owed his
elevation to his sister's intimacy with a predecessor, and who
might, if the age had not turned so sour, have carried even into the
papal apartments the graceful vices of his youth. But there was now
no mistaking the roll of the distant thunder; Rome was sobered and
disposed to put its house in order. Paul, knowing that the appalling
corruption of the Vatican, the clergy, and the monks must cease, or
else the Vatican and clergy and monks would cease, had appointed a
commission of the sterner cardinals to examine Luther's indictment of
his Church, and one of the clearest points of agreement was that the
unquestioned degradation of the monks throughout Christendom must be
severely punished. The general feeling was that most, if not all, of
the monastic orders should be suppressed. It was therefore a peculiarly
inopportune time to propose the establishment of a new order. Was
Ignatius more holy than Benedict, or Bruno, or Francis, or Dominic? And
had not every order that had yet been founded fallen into evil ways
within fifty years?
Ignatius was not more holy than Dominic and Francis, but he was
shrewder and more alert to the circumstances. He did not propose to
rush into the presence of Paul III. He and his companions settled at
the Spanish hospital, and began to tend the sick and instruct the
children. They began also to have influential admirers. "Let us,"
Ignatius had said, as they entered Rome, "avoid all relations with
women, except those of the highest rank." In later years he said
of their early work at Rome: "We sought in this way to gain men of
learning and of position to our side--or, to speak more correctly, to
God's side." This identification of "our" side and God's is the clue
to early Jesuitism. Men who were convinced of it might be intensely
earnest and unworldly, yet act as if they were ambitious. In fact,
they were ambitious to win the wealthy and powerful--Ignatius says it
repeatedly--"for the greater glory of God." And the work went forward
with great speed. They received a poor little house in a vineyard at
the foot of the Pincian Hill, and went out daily to minister and to
edify. One of their first friends was Codacio, a wealthy and important
official of the papal court. The better disposition of Ortiz, the
Spanish envoy, was also encouraged. Ignatius put him through the
Exercises in the old Monte Cassino Abbey, and, when the strain nearly
drove him mad, entertained him by performing some of the old Basque
dances: a subject for a painter, if ever there was. After a time the
Pope received Ignatius very affably, encouraged him to preach, and
found academic chairs for Favre and Lainez. Within a month or two
Ignatius had made so much progress that Roman gossip marked him as an
intriguer for the red hat, which he was not wealthy enough to buy.
Within four months, or at Easter 1538, Ignatius summoned the whole of
his followers to Rome. The poor little house in a vineyard was now
too small, and Codacio gave them a large house in the Piazza Margana.
From this they went out daily to beg and teach and preach, and to
visit "ladies of the highest rank." These eleven eloquent and learned
preachers, these nobles who begged their bread and washed verminous
invalids, soon divided the Roman world into ardent admirers and ardent
critics. An Augustinian friar, in particular, opened fire on them from
his pulpit. Ignatius was "a wolf in sheep's clothing," he insisted; let
people inquire at Alcalà, and Salamanca, and Paris, and Venice, and see
whether he was not wanted by the Inquisition here and there. Friends
at the Vatican were reminded that this sort of thing interfered with
their good work, and the Pope was induced to inquire into the charges;
but even the Pope's acquittal of them did not silence their critics,
and for a time they bore much poverty and anxiety. Half of Rome, if
not half of Catholicism, hated the Jesuits from their first year; and
it would be absurd to think that this was due to their fervour in
denouncing sin. It was due in a very large measure to the diplomatic
character of the work of Ignatius, which we perceive so clearly even in
the discreet narratives of the early Jesuit historians.
The infant Society was delivered from its perils by returning from
the cultivation of the rich and powerful to the service of the weak
and powerless. We shall constantly find the fortunes of the early
Jesuits vacillating according as they practise one or other of these
incongruous activities, and we can quite understand that their critics
came to see an element of calculation even in their philanthropy. By
their brave ministration to the poor they win the favour of the rich:
by the favour of the rich they rise to political and educational work,
and the poor are almost forgotten until some epidemic of criticism
threatens their very existence. It is quite useless to deny that there
was calculation in their humbler ministration when we find Ignatius
admitting it from the outset; yet it would be equally untrue to deny
that they served the poor with a sincere and often heroic humanity, and
that the favour and power they trusted to obtain by doing so were not
sought for their personal profit, but for the better discharge of what
they conceived to be a high mission.
So it was in the winter which closed the year 1538, in which their
project ran some risk of being buried under the stones of their
critics. The terrible cold of that winter led to a famine in Rome,
and the followers of Ignatius spent day and night in relieving the
sufferers and begging alms for them. Their house in the Piazza
Margana was converted into a hospital, and no less than four hundred
destitute men found a home in it. The sympathy of the pious slowly
returned to them. "So happy a diversion had to be put to account," says
Crétineau-Joly, and Ignatius began to draw up the rules of his Society
for presentation to the Pope. Night by night the eleven priests sat
in council to determine the broad features of their association: to
say, especially, if they would add a vow of obedience to their vows of
poverty and chastity and thus become a monastic body. In April they
decided that they would have a Superior and vow obedience to him; in
May they resolved to adopt that masterpiece of the "holy wiles" of
Ignatius, the most distinctive and most serviceable feature of the
Society--the vow to put themselves at the direct disposal of the Pope.
Naturally there was, and is, no religious body in the Catholic Church
whose members would not leap with alacrity to obey any order of the
Pope, and think it an honour to be selected for such a distinction;
indeed, we shall see that no other religious ever ventured to defy or
evade the commands of Popes as Jesuits have done. But we must observe
how happily this parade of obedience fitted the circumstances. The
Pope had entered upon a war against half of Christendom. Heresy was,
like an appalling tide, invading even his southern dominions, and it
was inevitable that he should be attracted by the proposal to put at
his service a body of men of high culture and heroic purpose, who
would be ready, at a word, to fly to a threatened point, to penetrate
in disguise into the lands of the heretics, to whisper in the ears
and fathom the counsels of kings, or to bear the gospel to the new
countries beyond the seas.
This was the beginning of the famous Jesuit Constitutions, which
were not completed and printed until 1558. A short summary of their
proposals was handed by Ignatius, in September, to Cardinal Contarini,
who would present it to the Pope. It was read and approved by one of
the Pope's monk-advisers, and Contarini then read it himself to Paul
III. "The finger of God is here," the Pope is reported to have said,
and he appointed three cardinals to examine the document with care.
Unfortunately for Ignatius, one of the three, Cardinal Guiddiccioni,
was so disgusted with the state of the monastic orders that he would
not even read the document. It seemed to him preposterous to add to
their number at a time when their corruption was ruining the Church.
In that sense he and his colleagues reported to the Pope, and Ignatius
betook himself, by prayer and good works, to a strenuous assault upon
the heavens, that some miracle might open the eyes of the cardinal.
And about a year later, the Jesuit historians say, the hostility of
Guiddiccioni was miraculously removed. He read the document, and was
enchanted with it; and on 27th September 1540 the bull "Regimini
militantis Ecclesiae" placed the Society of Jesus at the service of the
Counter-Reformation.
It need hardly be added that the "miracle" is susceptible of a natural
explanation. There is a curt statement in Orlandini, one of the first
historians of the Society, that during the year 1540 letters came to
Rome from all the towns where the followers of Ignatius had already
worked, telling the marvellous results of their preaching. Ignatius had
done much more than pray. Many a time in the course of the next few
chapters we shall find a shower of testimonial-letters falling upon a
town where there is opposition to the admittance of the Jesuits, and
they were not "unsolicited testimonials." Contarini, too, would not
lightly resign himself to defeat by his brother-cardinal. Codacio,
Ortiz, and many another, would help the work, under the discreet
guidance of Ignatius. Long before the Society was authorised, the Pope
was induced to employ the Jesuits for important missions. He had chosen
Rodriguez and Xavier, at the pressing request of the King of Portugal,
to carry the gospel to the Indies; he had sent Lainez and Favre,
at the prayer of a distinguished cardinal, to fight the growth of
Protestantism in Parma. Other members of the little group had gone to
discharge special missions, and glowing reports of their success came
to Rome. The Pope was won, and, when the Pope willed, it would hardly
need a miracle to induce Cardinal Guiddiccioni to read a document
which it was his office to read. Indeed, the statement that he refused
for twelve months to read a paper which the Pope enjoined him to read
is incredible; it was a good pretext for a change of mind, and for a
miracle. The Society of Jesus was founded on diplomacy.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: A good study of the controversy as to the indebtedness of
Ignatius to the Benedictines, and even the Mohammedans, from the point
of view of an outsider, will be found in H. Müller's _Les origines de
la Compagnie de Jésus_ (1898).]