THE FIRST JESUITS
From this account of the influences which shaped the character of the
Society of Jesus before and during its birth we may derive our first
clue to the singular history of the Jesuits. They might not implausibly
make a proud boast of the fact that they have always borne the intense
hostility of heretics and unbelievers, but the very reason they assign
for this--their effective service to the Church--prevents them from
explaining why they have, from their foundation, incurred an almost
equal enmity on the part of a very large proportion of the monks,
priests, and laymen of their own Church. "Jealousy," they whisper;
but since no other body in the Church, however learned or active, has
experienced this peculiar critical concentration of its neighbours, we
are bound to seek a deeper explanation. There are distinctive features
of the Jesuit Society which irritate alike the pious and the impious,
the Catholic and the non-Catholic.
We begin to perceive these features at the very birth of the Society.
Its founder has the temper of a monk, but the times will not permit
the establishment of a monastic order of the old type; a new regiment
of soldiers of the Church must engage in active foreign service, not
degenerate into fatness in domestic barracks. The success of Ignatius
was due to the fact that he had other qualities than those of the monk,
and he met the new conditions with remarkable shrewdness. It seems
to me a mistake to conceive him as a soldier above all things. He was
pre-eminently a diplomatist. He infused into the Society the energy
and fearlessness of the soldier, but he also equipped it with the
weapons of the diplomatist, or, one might say, of the secret-service
man. He was a most sincerely and unselfishly religious man, but he
used, and taught others to use, devices which the profoundly religious
man commonly disdains. The Jesuits were Jesuits from the start. It is
a truism, a fulfilment of the known command of Ignatius, that they
sought the favour of the rich and powerful; it is a fact lying on the
very surface of their history, as written by themselves, that they
accommodated their ideals to circumstances as no other religious order
had ever done in the first decades of its life; it is the boast of
their admirers that they used "holy wiles" in the attainment of their
ends. This stamp was impressed on them by inheritance from their sire
and the pressure of their surroundings. These things were consecrated
by the undoubted sincerity of the early Jesuit ideal; they wanted
power only for the service of Christ and the salvation of men. What
happened later was that the inner fire, the glow of which sanctified
these worldly manoeuvres in the mind of the first Jesuits, grew dim and
languid, and the traditional policy was developed until even crime and
vice and hypocrisy were held to be lawful if they contributed to the
power of the Jesuits.
An examination of the rules and the activity of the early Jesuits will
make this clear. The Constitutions of the Society were not completed
by Ignatius until several years after the establishment, and they were
afterwards modified and augmented by Lainez, a less religious man than
Ignatius, but it will be useful to consider at once their distinctive
and most important features. In the main they follow the usual lines
of monastic regulations, and many points which are ascribed to the
soldier Ignatius and usually held to be distinctive of his Society are
ancient doctrines of the monastic world; such are, the duties of blind
obedience, of detachment from family and country, and of surrendering
one's personality. The famous maxim, that a Jesuit must have no more
will than a corpse, is familiar in every monastic body, and is even
found in the rules of Mohammedan brotherhoods. Some writers have
conjectured that Ignatius borrowed much from the Moorish fraternities,
but it is difficult to see how he could have any knowledge of them, and
the parallels are not important. In any case, the story of the Society
will very quickly show us that this grim theory of blind obedience and
self-suppression was not carried out in practice; even the earliest
Jesuits were by no means will-less corpses and men who sacrificed their
affections and individuality.
Omitting points of small technical interest, I should say that the
most significant features of the Jesuit Constitutions are: the
establishment of a large body of priests (Spiritual Coadjutors) between
the novices and the professed members, the extraordinary provisions
by which a superior gets an intimate knowledge of his subjects, the
stress on the duty of teaching, the distinction between a "house" and
a "college," the deliberate recommendation to prefer youths of wealthy
or distinguished families (_cæteris paribus_) to poor youths, the
despotic power and lifelong appointment of the General, the fallacious
and imposing vow of direct obedience to the Pope, and the absence of
"choir." These primitive and fundamental features of the Society,
taken in conjunction with the special privileges which the Society
gradually wheedled from the Popes, go far toward explaining its great
material success and its moral deterioration. Some of these points need
no explanation, or have already been explained, and a few words will
suffice to show the effect of the others.
First as to the Spiritual Coadjutors. One who aspires to enter the
Society passes two years of trial as a "novice," then takes "simple"
(or dissolvable) vows and becomes a "scholastic" (student). In the
other monastic bodies, which now have simple vows, the aspirant takes
his "solemn" (or indissoluble) vows three years afterwards, before he
becomes a priest. The peculiarity of the Jesuits is that they defer the
taking of the "solemn" vows for a considerable number of years, and
they thus have a large body of priests who are not rigidly bound to the
Society and cannot hold important office in it. This gives the General,
who has a despotic power of dismissing these Spiritual Coadjutors, a
very lengthy period for learning the intimate character of men before
they are admitted to the secrets of the Society.
Then there is the remarkable scheme of spying, tale-bearing, and
registering by which this knowledge of men is secured. The aspirant
must make a general confession of his life to the superior, or some
priest appointed by him, when he enters the Society. He is from that
day closely observed and subjected to extraordinary tests, and a
strict obligation is laid on each to tell the faults and most private
remarks of his neighbour. The local superiors then send periodical full
reports on each man to the headquarters at Rome, where there must be
a bureau not unlike the criminal intelligence department of a great
police-centre: except that the good and the mediocre are as fully
registered as the suspects.
The important place assigned to teaching in the programme of the
Society also leads to serious modifications of the monastic ideal.
Every order has some device or other by which it escapes the practical
inconveniences of its vow of poverty, but the Jesuits have gone beyond
all others. They have drawn a casuistic distinction between a "college"
and a "house of the professed," and have declared that the ownership of
the former is not inconsistent with their vow of poverty. The result is
that they may heap up indefinite wealth in the shape of colleges and
their revenues, yet boast of their vow of poverty. The various devices
of the monastic bodies to, at the same time, retain and disclaim the
ownership of their property are many and curious. This is the one
instance of a monastic body boldly saying that its vow is consistent
with the ownership of great wealth. Hence the mercantile spirit which
will at once spread in the Society.
The deliberate counsel to prefer rich or noble youths to poor, when
their other qualifications are equal, is a further obvious source of
material strength and moral weakness; we shall soon find them making
wealth, or social standing, or talent, the first qualification. The
exemption from "choir" (or chanting the psalms in choir for several
hours a day) falls in the same category. When we add to these elements
of their Constitutions the extraordinary privileges they secured from
the Popes in the course of a decade or two, we have the preliminary
clues to the story of the rise and fall of the Society. They were
allowed to grant degrees in their colleges (and so ruin and displace
universities); they were declared exempt from the jurisdiction of the
local authorities, spiritual or secular; they might encroach on the
sphere of any existing monastery; and they received many other powers
which enabled them to pose as unique representatives of the Papacy.
The tendency which we thus detect in the legislation of the Society is
equally visible in much of the personal conduct of its founder, and
soon shows its dangers in the lives of his less fervent followers. We
have seen how the sanction of the Society was secured, and we must
note that Ignatius was not more ingenuous in obtaining control of it.
The conventional account of his appointment to the office of General
is edifying. About Easter 1541 he summoned to Rome, for the purpose of
electing a General, the nine fathers who had taken the solemn vows.
Four were unable to come, but they sent, or had left at Rome, written
votes, and Ignatius was unanimously elected. He protested, however,
that he was unworthy to hold the office, and compelled them to hold
a second ballot. At this ballot he received two-thirds of the votes,
three being cast for Favre. He then consulted his confessor, and was
told to accept the office; and for several days afterwards he washed
the dishes and discharged the humblest offices.
Orlandini naively confesses, however, that at the election Ignatius
gave a blank vote, and we can hardly suppose that he was so far lost
in contemplation as to be unaware that a blank vote was a vote for
himself. Further, the result of the second ballot plainly suggests
that, if Ignatius had again refused to accept the office, Favre would
have been appointed. It is difficult to doubt that he intended from
the first to hold the office of General, and indeed it would have been
ludicrous for them to appoint any other. But Ignatius knew his young
followers, and he seems to have acted in this way in order that they
might place the authority in his hands in the most emphatic manner.
They are described in the chronicles as little less than angelic, but
we shall presently find that some of them were very human, especially
in the matter of obedience, and that at the death of Ignatius they
quarrel like petty princes for the succession. Ignatius was piously
diplomatic. He would use his power unreservedly in the cause of Christ
and the Pope, but it is important to note how from the start the
founder of the Society employs casuistry or diplomacy in _getting_
power.
During the next fifteen years Ignatius remained at Rome, making only
three short and relatively unimportant missions into Italy. They
had moved from the house in the Piazza Margana to the foot of the
Capitoline Hill, where the famous church of the Gesù now is. The old
church of Sta Maria della Strada had been given to them, and Codacio
(who had joined the Society and given his wealth to it) had built
a house beside it for them. When Sta Maria proved too small, they
proposed to build a larger church, and nearly secured the services
of Michael Angelo; but the actual Gesù was begun in 1568 by Cardinal
Alexander Farnese.
From their house beside the old church the keen eyes of the General
followed the travels of his subjects to the ends of the earth and kept
watch on Rome. He was now approaching his fiftieth year: a bald, worn
man, with piercing black eyes in his sallow face, concealing an immense
energy and power of intrigue under his humble appearance. Under his eye
the novices were trained, and it was characteristic that he used to
protest, when others urged him to expel an unruly brother, that--to put
it in modern phrase--he liked a little "devil" in his novices. One of
the first was young Ribadeneira, a cardinal's page, a noble by birth.
He had come to their house one day when he was playing truant, and had
been caught by the romance of the life. He was only fourteen years old,
yet Ignatius received him and bore his fits of temper and rebellion
until he became a useful and obedient member. Between the fiery Spanish
boy and the aged and simple Codacio, the former papal official, there
was every shade of character to be studied and humoured. The younger
novices--they went down to the age of eleven--were encouraged to
laugh and play, and come to the General's room to have fruit peeled
for them; perhaps on the very day on which he was stirring the Pope
to set up an Inquisition on the Spanish model at Rome or in Portugal.
He loved the flowers of their garden, and tender ladies had no more
sympathetic confidant. Great austerities, of the Manresa type, he
rigorously forbade. The Jesuit was to be neat, clean, cheerful, strong,
industrious, guarded in speech--and obedient. When it was necessary to
strike, he struck at once. One night, when the prefect of the house
came to make his report, it appeared that one of the novices (a young
nobleman) had ridiculed the excessive zeal of another. Brother Zapata
was at once summoned from bed and put out of doors.
His personal life was simple, to the eye. A Bible, a breviary, and an
_Imitation of Christ_ were the only books in his poor chamber, which is
still shown to the visitor; and of these the breviary was not used, as
he wept so much in reading the office that he endangered his sight, and
the Pope excused him from reading it. He spent the first four hours of
his early day in meditation and the saying of Mass, then worked until
noon, when all dined together, in silence, and afterwards spent an
hour in conversation under his observant eye. Then he returned to his
desk, or took his stick and his sombrero, and limped to the hospital,
or to the houses of the very poor or the rich, or to the chambers of
cardinals or papal officials. Many a jeer and curse followed him as
he walked, in neat black cloak, with downcast eyes and grave smile,
courteous to every beggar or noble who addressed him. Rome was rich
with monuments of his philanthropy--schools, orphanages, rescue-homes,
etc.; but the fierce hostility never died, and at times it rose to the
pitch of a gale. After his round of visits he limped back, grave and
humble, to the house for the silent evening meal. When the novices were
abed, the prefect came to give him a minute account of the day's life
in the house, and, when the prefect was abed, the large eyes still
flashed in the worn, olive-tinted face. He slept only four hours a
night.
But all these pages of the written biography of Ignatius are of less
interest than the unwritten. To understand his real life during those
fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays you have to study the adventures
of his colleagues far away: to mark how the hostility of bishops
and doctors and princes is disarmed by a papal privilege or a papal
recommendation, how the Protestant plague cannot break out anywhere
but a Jesuit appears, how the most nicely fitted man is sent for each
special mission, how the man disappears when there is, rightly or
wrongly, a cry of scandal, how the long white arms of Ignatius Loyola
seem to stretch over the planet from Sta Maria della Strada, near the
Pope's palace. This vast and obscure activity of the General will be
best gathered from a short survey of the fortunes of the Jesuits during
his reign.
The first mission of interest to us, though not quite the first in
point of time, was the sending of two Jesuits to the British Isles. It
seemed that England was lost, and all that could be done was to resist
Henry's attempt to stamp out the old faith in Ireland and persuade
James V. to follow his profitable example in Scotland. The mission was
perilous, for, on the word of these Jesuits of the time, nearly every
chief in Ireland had gone over to Protestantism, and in Scotland the
nobles and officials were looking with moist lips at the fat revenues
of the monasteries. The Archbishop of Armagh, who had fled to Rome,
asked the Pope to send two Jesuits to his country, and Codure and
Salmeron were appointed. Codure died, however, during the negotiations,
and Paschase Brouet was named in his place. As usual, Ignatius chose
his men with shrewdness. Brouet, the "angel of the Society," was the
counterpart of Salmeron's vigour and learning. They were granted the
privileges of Nuncii by the Pope, though Ignatius directed them to
mention these privileges only when the success of the mission required.
In fact, he gave them a written paper of instructions as to their
personal behaviour when, on 10th September 1541, they left for Paris
and Edinburgh. They were to travel as poor Jesuits--but the wealthy
young noble Zapata was permitted to accompany and care for them.
What the precise aim of this mission was we do not know, but it
was from every point of view a complete failure. It is, of course,
represented as a success, and its purpose is said to have been merely
to hearten the suffering Irish people in their resistance and convey
to them indulgences and absolutions. But from the circumstances of
the time and the duration of the mission we may be sure that the two
Jesuits learned very little English, and less or no Gaelic, so that
the idea seems absurd. In Scotland, certainly, their mission was
political. They saw James at Stirling Castle, and easily got from him
an assurance that he would resist the allurements of Henry VIII. What
they trusted to do in Ireland we are not informed, and it seems most
reasonable to suppose that they were to see the chiefs and stiffen them
in their opposition to England. This they wholly failed to do, for the
leading men would have nothing to do with them. The customary Catholic
version of the enterprise is that they happily accomplished their
mission, traversed "the whole of Ireland" (as even Francis Thompson
says), consoling and absolving, and went home to report success. One
fears that this account may be typical of these early Jesuit reports
of missions. To learn Gaelic and traverse the whole of Ireland, or any
large part of it, in thirty-four days (Orlandini), in the sixteenth
century, and in circumstances which compelled them to travel with the
greatest prudence, would assuredly be a miracle, especially when we are
told that for some time even the common folk shrank from them, and it
is hinted that the scattered Irish priests were unfriendly.
Apparently they travelled a little in disguise, or hid in the
farms here and there, for a few weeks, granting indulgences and
dispensations, probably through some Gaelic interpreter, until the
English officials heard of their presence and put a price on their
heads. The Jesuit narrative credits them with the bold idea of going to
London and bearding the wicked Henry in his palace. Their behaviour was
singularly prudent for men with such exalted ideas. Leaving Ireland,
possibly at the entreaty of the Irish, as soon as the search for them
grew hot, they returned to Scotland, and finding that country also
aflame, they went on at once to Paris. There they received orders to
return to Scotland and discharge a secret mission similar to that
they had had in Ireland. They "hesitated and informed the Pope of the
state of things in Scotland," says the Jesuit historian; in fact, they
remained in Paris until the Pope allowed them to return to Rome. If any
be disposed to criticise their conduct, he may be reminded that Brouet
and Salmeron had spent several weeks in Ireland at the risk of their
lives. However, it is plain that we have to look closely into these
early Jesuit accounts of missions which covered the infant Society with
glory. A prudent examination of them discovers features which have been
carefully eliminated from later Jesuit, or pro-Jesuit, works on the
subject.
As Henry VIII. died in 1547, and Edward VI. in 1553, it may seem
singular that Ignatius did not, when the Catholic Mary acceded to the
throne, at once dispatch a band of his priests to help in restoring the
old faith. Neither Orlandini nor his discreet follower, Crétineau-Joly,
throws any light on the mystery, but a few important hints may be
gathered from the more candid early Jesuit historian Polanco, a close
associate of Ignatius, and the full solution is indicated in Burnet's
_History of the Reformation_ (ii. 526, in the Oxford edition). This
rare discovery of an independent document suggests that the early story
might read somewhat differently in many particulars if we were not
forced to rely almost entirely on Jesuit authorities.
From the brief statements scattered over the various volumes of
Polanco's _Historia Societatis_ it appears that from 1553 until his
death Ignatius made the most strenuous efforts to secure admission into
England. Cardinal Pole, it seems, asked the prayers of Ignatius for
his success when he was summoned to England, and, when Ignatius died
and Lainez again approached Pole, the cardinal pointedly replied that
the only way in which the Jesuits could aid him was by their prayers.
In the meantime (1554) Ignatius pressed Father Araoz, who was in great
favour at the Spanish court, to urge Philip, and induce ladies of the
court to urge him, to take Jesuits to England. In 1556 he sent Father
Ribadeneira, a courtly priest, to join Philip in Belgium and press the
request, but the reply was always that Pole was opposed to admitting
the Jesuits. Polanco makes it quite clear that Pole resisted all the
efforts of Ignatius from 1554 to 1556.
Burnet supplies the solution of the mystery. A friend of his discovered
a manuscript at Venice, from which it appears that Ignatius had
overreached himself and aroused the hostility of the cardinal. He
had written to Pole that, as Queen Mary was restoring such monastic
property as had fallen to the throne, it would be advisable to
entrust this to the Jesuits, since the monks were in such bad odour
in England; and he added that the Jesuits would soon find a way to
make other possessors of monastic property disgorge. Pole refused
their co-operation and left the Jesuits angry and disappointed. The
historian cannot regard an anonymous manuscript as in itself deserving
of credence, but the statement very plausibly illumines the situation.
I may add that in 1558 Father Ribadeneira was actually smuggled
into England in the suite of Count Gomez de Figueroa, who had gone
to console the ailing Queen.[2] The count was a warm patron of the
Jesuits, but Queen Mary died soon after his arrival, and the last hope
of the Jesuits was extinguished.
We cannot examine with equal freedom all the chronicles of early Jesuit
activity, and must be content to cull from the pages of the _Historia
Societatis Jesu_, the first section of which is written by Father
Orlandini, such facts as may enable us to form a balanced judgment
of the Society under Ignatius. Italy was, naturally, the first and
chief theatre of their labours, and in the course of a few years they
spread from the turbulent cities of Sicily to the foot of the Alps.
I have already described the work of Ignatius at Rome, and need add
only that, as Orlandini tells us, he was one of the most urgent in
pressing the reluctant Pope to "reform" the Roman Inquisition, or to
equip it with the dread powers of the Spanish tribunal. At the very
time when he was devising pleas for toleration in Protestant and
pagan lands, he was urging that in Italy and Portugal there should be
set up the most inhuman instrument of intolerance that civilisation
has ever known. The psychology of his attitude is simple; he was
convinced that he was asking tolerance for truth and intolerance for
untruth. The liberal-minded Romans were not persuaded of the justice
of his distinction, and the opposition to the Society increased. The
hostility, which at times went the length of breaking Jesuit windows,
is ascribed by his biographers chiefly to his zeal for the conversion
of prostitutes. He founded a large home for these women, and would
often follow them to their haunts in the _piazze_ and lead them himself
to St. Martha's House. On the whole, his great philanthropic services
and personal austerity secured respect for his Society at Rome, and it
prospered there until his later years.
In the south of Italy the Society met little opposition in the early
years. Bobadilla had done some good work in troubled Calabria before
the Society was founded, and within the next ten years colleges were
opened at Messina (1548), Palermo (1549), and Naples (1551). The poet
Tasso was one of the first students of the Naples college. It was in
the north that the more arduous work had to be done. The seeds of the
Reformation were wafted over the Alps and found a fertile soil in the
cities of the Renaissance. Hardly anywhere else were monks and clergy
so corrupt and ignorant, and nowhere was there so much familiarity
with the immorality of the Vatican system. Rome itself lived on this
corruption and regarded it with indulgence, but in the university
towns of the north educated men, and even women, who almost remembered
the lives of Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II., and
Leo X., were but provoked to smile when they were exhorted to cling to
the "Vicar of Christ."
To tear these prosperous seedlings of heresy out of the soil of
northern Italy was the congenial task of the early Jesuits, and Lainez,
Brouet, and Salmeron, with some of the new recruits, went from city
to city, challenging the Protestants to debate, strengthening the
Catholics to resist, and founding colleges for the sound education
of youth. Their procedure, and the resentment it constantly excited,
may be illustrated by their experience at Venice. Lainez was sent by
the Pope to Venice in 1542, at the request of the Doge. An honourable
apartment awaited him in the Doge's Palace, but he humbly declined
and went to live among the sick at the squalid hospital, varying his
learned campaign against the Lutherans with the lowliest services
to the poor and ailing. Many were edified, especially one Andrea
Lippomani, an elderly and wealthy noble. Presently there came an
instruction from Ignatius that Lainez must accept the hospitality
offered him by Lippomani; and a little later the noble's heirs were
infuriated to learn that he had assigned a rich benefice of his at
Padua to the Jesuits. They appealed to the Venetian Council, and lost,
for Lainez and Salmeron were ordered by the General to defend the
donation. So the first college of the Society was founded, at Padua,
and Lippomani afterwards enabled them to found one at Venice. Whatever
view one takes of it, this was the normal procedure: tend the sick and
beg your bread until "men of wealth and position" open their purses,
then throw all your energy into the founding of colleges and the
securing of novices. It was unquestionably a most effective method of
serving the Church; it also had an aspect which attracted critics.
In the Catholic atmosphere of Spain and Portugal the Society might be
expected to grow luxuriantly, as it eventually did, but its fortunes
in the Peninsula are rather due to the General's policy of securing
influential patrons than to any popular welcome. As early as 1540
Ignatius had sent his nephew Araoz into Spain, and one reads--between
the lines--that he had little success. At last a college was founded
at Alcalà, to the anger of many of the University professors. One
professor maintained his opposition so long and so violently that
Father Villanueva, the Jesuit rector, fraternally informed him that
the Inquisition proposed to put him a few questions, and the professor
sullenly withdrew. Then a learned ex-rector of the university itself
was won by Ignatius, during a visit to Rome, and was sent back, a
Jesuit, to found a college at Salamanca. It was, as usual, founded in
poverty; the fathers had not even a crucifix to put over their altar,
and one of their number had to draw the figure on a sheet of paper.
From the general laws of these phenomena one might deduce that the
story brought a shower of crucifixes. However, the favour of the King
of Portugal and the influence of Rome smoothed their paths, and little
colonies were soon planted at Valladolid, Toledo, Saragossa, and other
towns.
It was in Spain that the Society encountered the most virulent of its
early Catholic antagonists, Melchior Cano. He was a very learned and
sober Dominican monk, and a professor at the university: an enemy
of mysticism and eccentricity. He knew of the early penances and
"visions" of Ignatius, and had seen him at work in Rome. When the pale,
black-robed, mysterious youths walked demurely into learned Salamanca
and set up a college for the instruction of youth, the monk erupted.
They were hybrids--neither the flesh of the secular clergy nor the
fish of the regular clergy: they were leeches, fastening on wealthy
saints and sinners; and so on. Miguel de Torres, the rector, called
upon the irate friar, and told him of the great privileges the Pope
had bestowed on the Society and the high missions he had entrusted to
its members. This inflamed him still more, and he flung at them Paul's
fiery warnings against the hypocrites who would come after him. He
exaggerated heavily, especially in regard to the personal character
of the Jesuits, but he saw very clearly those dangerous features and
practices of the early Society which I have indicated. The struggle
came to a diplomatic close. Melchior Cano was appointed Bishop of the
Canaries, and the Jesuits invite us to admire the way in which Ignatius
returned good for evil. It may be added that Cano afterwards recognised
the ruse, laid down his mitre, and returned to plague his benefactors.
In the midst of this conflict the Jesuits made a most important
convert, and their future in Spain was assured. Francis Borgia, Duke of
Gandia, one of the leading nobles of the kingdom, met and was enchanted
by Favre in 1544, when the King of Portugal brought that gentle and
persuasive Jesuit on a visit to the Spanish court. He was conducted
through the Exercises by Favre, one of the most lovable and sincere of
the early fathers. When Favre died two years afterwards, prematurely
worn by his labours, Borgia wrote to ask Ignatius to admit him to the
order. Observe the procedure once more. He was secretly initiated, not
even the Pope knowing his name: which enabled him to remain in the eyes
of men the Duke of Gandia, and shower his wealth and his patronage on
the Society. It really matters little what lofty purposes are alleged
for such sinuous procedure; it was a new policy in the history of
religious founders. When, a few years later, the Pope offered a
cardinal's hat to the Duke of Gandia, and the King of Spain insisted
that he should accept it, the truth had to come out. Ignatius had
sternly enjoined that no dignity should ever be accepted by any member
of his Society, yet, to avoid giving offence to the king, he said that
he left the decision to Borgia.
Under Borgia's patronage the net of the Society spread over Spain, many
blessing and some cursing. At Saragossa, where they had built a chapel,
the Augustinian friars complained that it encroached on their sphere.
To prevent unedifying conduct on the part of rival friars, the Church
had decreed that no order should establish itself within five hundred
feet of a house belonging to a different order. When the Jesuits
who had broken this law, refused to yield, they were excommunicated
by the Vicar-General, and a pleasant procession was arranged by the
townsfolk, in which effigies of damned Jesuits were propelled toward
their destination by little devils. The Augustinians were popular. But
the long arm of Ignatius was extended once more, and the Papal Nuncio
intervened in favour of the Jesuits. Before many years the Jesuits won
from the Pope a declaration that the law did not apply to them, and
they might build where they pleased. They prospered, and were hated.
An incident of the same significance occurred at Alcalà. The college
obtained many pupils, though little wealth, and the Jesuit fathers
began to be very active. In 1551 they were surprised to hear that the
Archbishop of Toledo had suspended the whole of them from priestly
functions for daring to hear confessions without his authorisation.
The Jesuits produced their privileges, and persuaded the Governor of
Toledo, and even the Royal Council, to explain to the prelate that the
Pope had exempted them from the jurisdiction of bishops. He refused to
recognise such extraordinary privileges, and maintained the suspension.
Ignatius then laid the matter before the Pope, and the Archbishop was
directed from Rome to withdraw his opposition.
When we turn to Portugal we find an interesting illustration of the
early effect of great prosperity on the Society. On the throne at the
time was John III. from whose reign all historians date the downfall of
what had become one of the most brilliant and wealthy Powers in Europe.
Blind to the gross administrative corruption in his kingdom, and to the
decay of the stirring patriotism which had borne the Portuguese flag
over the globe, John was concerned only about the religious needs of
his country and his new colonies. He had invited Xavier and Rodriguez
in 1540, intending to send them to the Indies, but he was so charmed
with them that he wished to keep them in Portugal. Ignatius allowed
Rodriguez to remain, and Xavier set out on his historic mission to the
far east. In this Ignatius showed his usual discernment: Rodriguez
proved as supple and graceful a courtier as Xavier proved a fiery
missionary. John then wished to entrust the tutorship of his son to
Rodriguez, and Ignatius consented. His own followers were puzzled at
times to know which _were_ the dignities that they were forbidden to
accept. When John asked for a Jesuit confessor, Rodriguez refused, but
Ignatius overruled him. The next step was to set up the Inquisition,
through the mediation of Ignatius, and Orlandini admits that when, in
1555, the king wished to make Father Merin, his confessor, head of the
Inquisition, Ignatius seriously considered the proposal. He did not
refuse, as is sometimes said; the negotiations broke down.
In this genial atmosphere the Society flourished. Its chief college was
at Coimbra, the great university centre, where the Jesuits rapidly ran
their course. At first they shocked staid Catholics with the excesses
of their zeal. A youth in the college confessed to temptations of the
flesh, and was ordered to walk the streets at mid-day without a hat
or a cloak, holding a skull in his hand. Another student went forth
almost naked in a cold wind, begging from door to door; and, finding a
crowd of folk dancing and singing in a church, he mounted the pulpit
to admonish them, and was dragged out and severely chastised. At
nights Father Simon would send out a procession of youths to cry in
the ears of indignant sinners or quiet wine-bibbers some such doggerel
as: "Hell, hell, hell, for those in grave sin"; or long processions
of children with masks and lanterns paraded the streets and squares.
We gather that the boys of Coimbra had a pleasant time during these
exhibitions. But the college flourished; there were in a few years
a hundred and fifty pupils in it, and it supplied large numbers of
missionaries.
In 1546 Favre visited Coimbra, and reported to Ignatius that prosperity
had flushed the veins of his brothers. Nicolini and other anti-Jesuit
writers speak of the college as having become a place of "debauch,"
but this is not stated in the chronicles. Frivolity and good-living
are the only vices charged, whatever we may suspect. The students
stooped to writing sonnets, and the King's money provided plenty of
good cheer. Ignatius felt that Father Simon had lost his fervour at
the court, deposed him from office--he was Provincial (or head of the
province)--and ordered him to go either to Brazil or Aragon. The piety
of Rodriguez had evidently deteriorated, and he made a struggle to
hold his place. He was a handsome and comfortable man, much liked for
his liberality. He went to Coimbra, where Ignatius had appointed a new
rector, and the liberals tried to induce the court to protect them.
The King was alarmed, however, and Father Simon had to submit, and the
college to mend its ways. Numbers of students left or were expelled,
and for the rest, when the new rector piously walked the streets of
Coimbra, laying the bloody lash on his own bare shoulders, they fell to
tears and went out in a body scourging themselves under the eyes of the
townsfolk. The story ends in Orlandini with Simon Rodriguez submitting
in holy joy and kissing the rebuking letters of his General. But when
we turn to Sacchini, the Jesuit writes of the next section of the
"Historia Societatis Jesu," who does not always carefully notice what
his predecessor has said, we learn that Rodriguez smarted for years
under the humiliation, and awaited an opportunity to undo it. However,
the province returned to piety, and before the death of Ignatius we
find the Jesuits capturing, after a long siege, the famous University
of Coimbra.
In France the Society wholly failed under Ignatius. He placed students,
supported by wealthy patrons, at the University of Paris, and sent
fathers after a time to gather their neophytes under one roof. Then the
outbreak of war with Spain drove most of them abroad, and even when the
war was over the colony made slow progress, amid poverty and hostility.
In 1549 Ignatius won the favour of Cardinal Guise de Lorraine and,
through him, of the French court. The King issued letters authorising
the Jesuits to live and teach at Paris, and Brouet was sent to
conciliate the Parisians. Then began a long and famous struggle between
the Parlement and University of Paris and the court and Jesuits.
Parlement bluntly refused to register the King's letters, and they
were of no effect until this powerful legal body had accepted them.
Henry ordered his Privy Council to examine the Jesuit Constitutions and
approve them; Parlement retorted by inviting the Archbishop, who was
very hostile, and the theological faculty of the university to advise
it, and the issue was a violent condemnation of the Jesuits in the vein
of Melchior Cano. It was said that they admitted all sorts of aspirants
to their ranks, and that the extraordinary privileges they professed
to have were insulting to the spiritual and temporal authorities and
opposed to the interests of the other orders and the university.
In the main, it was undoubtedly the privileges of the Jesuits which
made the greater part of Paris and of France hostile to them. Bishops
were not to look at them, civic authorities were not to tax them,
universities were to be opposed by free classes, and were to respect
degrees granted by Jesuits to any whom they thought fit. The hostility
was quite natural, and it was fed by indiscretions on the part of the
Jesuits. They received a nephew of the Archbishop, against the uncle's
will, and they first turned the brain (with their Exercises) of, and
then put out of doors, a very learned ornament of the university
named Postel. The Archbishop bade them leave Paris, and they remained
helpless outside the city, at St. Germain aux Prés, until after the
death of Ignatius. He pressed the case at Rome, and doctors of the
Sorbonne went there to exchange arguments with Jesuit doctors, but
nothing was done until years afterwards.
During the war the Spanish Jesuits had gone from Paris to Louvain and
began to teach there. Here again the university scorned and opposed
them, and for many years (until they secured the interest of the
Archduchess) they made no progress. Ribadeneira, who was in charge,
used to break down and retire from the room to weep. In Germany they
had a different and more spirited struggle, but they seem to have had
little influence in the various conferences and diets at which attempts
were still made to reconcile the parties. Favre was at the Diet of
Worms in 1540, then at the Ratisbon Conference, where Bobadilla and
Le Jay succeeded him. They were restricted to an effort to reform the
Catholics themselves, and found it difficult. The letters of these
early Jesuits make it quite impossible for any historian to question
the appalling corruption of priests, monks, and people in every part
of Europe at the time of the Reformation. From Worms Favre wrote to
Ignatius that there were not three priests in the city who were not
stained by concubinage or crime. At Ratisbon the Catholics threatened
to throw Le Jay into the river. "What does it matter to me whether I
enter heaven by water or land?" he said. They knew very little German,
generally preaching in Latin, and had slight influence for some years.
In time, as they learned German, and confined themselves to the
Catholic provinces, their work was more successful. They fastened
especially on Cologne, and assailed the Archbishop, a very worldly
prelate of the old type, who was annoyed to find these Jesuit wasps
buzzing about him, and their house was closed for a time by the
authorities. But they had the favour of the Emperor, and the Archbishop
was deposed. In 1545 the Council of Trent opened, and Lainez and
Salmeron appeared there as the Pope's theologians, together with
Peter Canisius (an able German student whom Favre had attracted to
the Society) as theologian of the new Archbishop of Cologne. It need
only be said of the earlier sittings of the famous Council (in 1545
and 1551) that the Jesuits had little influence, and this they used to
oppose any concession to the Protestants and magnify the authority of
the Pope. This will be plainer in connection with the later sittings.
The work in Germany was afterwards thwarted by the zeal of the fiery
Bobadilla. It had at last come to war with the Protestants, to the
satisfaction of the Jesuits, and Bobadilla marched with the troops and
was severely wounded at Mühlberg. In 1548, however, Charles published
his _Interim_, or provisional concession of certain Protestant claims
(such as the marriage of the clergy) until the Council of the Church
should decide the points at issue. It may be recalled that the general
Council of Trent was first intended as a common meeting of Protestant
and Catholic divines, and the hope of reconciliation was not yet
dead. Reconciliation, however, could mean only concession, and the
Jesuits were resolutely against concession. Whatever influence they
had in Germany, apart from their effort to reform the morality of the
Catholics, was reactionary and mischievous in the highest degree.
Bobadilla overflowed with wrath at the _Interim_, and denounced it
fiercely by pen and tongue. Charles angrily ordered him to leave the
Empire, and he returned to Rome; and it is recorded that Ignatius so
warmly resented his "indiscretion" that he refused at first to admit
him to the house. Thus did the saint vindicate the majesty of kings,
says M. Crétineau-Joly. The outbreak did unquestionably hamper the
progress of the Jesuits for a time, but before the death of Ignatius
they were firmly established in Vienna, Prague, Cologne, and a few
other cities. At Vienna the court demanded that Canisius should accept
the office of archbishop, and Ignatius compromised by allowing him to
administer the see and refuse its revenue. In the same year a Jesuit
was made "Patriarch of Abyssinia." It was just seven years since
Ignatius had induced the Pope to decree that no Jesuit should ever
accept an ecclesiastical dignity.
Of the foreign missions it is impossible to speak here at any length.
In 1540 Francis Xavier had come for his leader's blessing as he started
for the Indies. His cassock was worn and patched, and Ignatius took off
his own flannel vest and put it on the young priest before dismissing
him with the usual: "Go and set the world on fire." It was a different
Xavier from the one he had seen, a vain and brilliant teacher, at the
University of Paris, and it is well known how he did set the world on
fire. He was a handsome, blue-eyed man of thirty-six, and no Portuguese
sailor ever fronted the unknown with more courage and heroism than
Xavier displayed in his famous travels from India to Japan. After a
year's work at Goa, where his first need was to convert the Christians
and the Portuguese priests, he went on to Malabar, to the Moluccas,
to Malacca, and on to Japan, ending his life, in 1552, in an attempt
to reach China. What the result of his mission was it is difficult
to estimate soberly. The Jesuit chronicler forgets the confusion of
tongues, and makes Xavier leap from land to land, preaching to and
converting thousands everywhere, as if they all spoke Portuguese. In
Japan he clearly failed, although the Portuguese merchants were greatly
anxious for success, and the Japanese, of their own high character
and out of respect for the great king (of Portugal), his friend, were
extremely polite.
The other foreign missions of the early Jesuits were less irradiated
with miracle, or with heroism. Lainez went in the wake of the Spanish
troops to Tunis, said mass there, and left no trace behind. Nuñez,
the "Patriarch of Abyssinia," went out with two others to take over
his diocese, but found a "Patriarch" there already, who made a lively
opposition, and the Jesuits had to retire to Goa. Four Jesuits were
sent to the Congo. Two died at once, and the other two became so
interested in commerce that the king was alarmed. Ignatius recalled
and replaced them, but the king expelled the newcomers. In Brazil they
made more progress, penetrating the forests and winning the favour of
the natives by their medical and other material aid. They tried to save
the intended dinners of the cannibals, and, when they failed, sprinkled
the poor men with holy water; but the cannibals found that it made
them less succulent and forbade the practice. They did useful work in
Brazil, and laid the foundation of a great mission.
Such were the labours of the first Jesuits during the generalship
of Ignatius, and it remains only to close the career of their able
leader. The varied story of success and failure, the showers of glowing
testimonials and bitter diatribes, the heroism of some and the frailty
of others, kept him alternately elated or depressed to the end. He
must have seen that the first fervour could not be maintained, and
that opposition became more serious as the Society grew. It had now
nearly a thousand members scattered over the world, and a hundred
houses and colleges. The figures are misleading, however, as there
were only thirty-five professed fathers and only two professed houses;
many of the so-called colleges had no pupils and were little more than
names. Ignatius had twice attempted to resign his office in the last
few years; and there was much to distress him. He had hardly composed
the trouble in Portugal, in 1552, when Lainez gave him anxiety.
Lainez, who was made Provincial of Italy when Brouet was sent to Paris,
complained that the general was robbing his colleges of their best
teachers for the sake of Rome. Ignatius dictated to his secretary an
angry letter. "He bids me tell you," says the scribe, "to attend to
your own charge ... and you need not give him advice about this until
he asks it."
In the next year (1553) he had a grave quarrel with Cardinal Caraffa.
The Jesuits of Sicily had admitted a youth against his parents'
wishes, and Caraffa, to whom the mother appealed, ordered Ignatius to
give up the youth. He appealed to the Pope, and got Caraffa's verdict
cancelled. When, two years afterwards, Caraffa became Pope Paul IV.,
Ignatius remembered his momentary triumph with concern, and there
were grave faces in the Jesuit house. Paul III. had died in 1549. His
successor Julius III. had been, as the previous record shows, very
generous to the Jesuits, though funds had fallen very low in Rome,
owing to the Reformation, and Ignatius had great work to keep alive
the German college he had founded. Julius died in 1555, and it is said
by the Jesuit writers that five cardinals voted for Ignatius himself
at the next conclave. Marcellus, the next Pope, lived less than a
month, and then Caraffa occupied the see. To Caraffa the Spaniards were
"barbarians," and the Jesuits were Spaniards. But he postponed the
struggle which he was to have with the Society, and received Ignatius
courteously.
Work, austerity, and anxiety had at length seriously impaired the
strong frame of Ignatius, and he began to prepare for the end. It is
marvellous how he lived to see his sixty-fifth year, and continued
to control the mighty struggle of his Society against its various
enemies. With the opening of 1556, however, he retired to a great
extent from the labours of his office, and spent his days chiefly
in prayer. He died in the early morning of 31st July 1556, and the
struggle for the succession began.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: See Ribadeneira's _Historia Ecclesiastica del Scisma del
Reyno de Inglaterra_ (1588), L. ii. ch. xxii.]