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ILL'JIOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY

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THE JESUITS

1534-1921

THE JESUITS

1534-1921

A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time

THOMAS JP^^MPBELL, SJ.

NEW YORK THE ENCYCLOPEDIA PRESS

Permissu superiorum

NIHIL OBSTAT: ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, D.D., Censor IMPRIMATUR: PATRICK J. HAYES, D.D., Archbishop of New York

COPYWCHT 1921

The Encyclopedia Pue3S

AH rights rtterxed

I

52 PREFACE

F -

Some years ago the writer of these pages, when on his way to what is called a general congregation of the Society of Jesus, was asked by a fellow-passenger on an Atlantic liner, if he knew anything about the Jesuits. He answered in the affirmative and proceeded to give an account of the character and purpose of the Order. After a few moments, he was interrupted by the inquirer with, " You know nothing at all about them, Sir; good day." Possibly the Jesuits themselves are responsible for this attitude of mind, which is not. peculiar to people at sea, but is to be met everywhere. As a matter of fact, no Jesuit has thus far ever written a complete or adequate history of the Society; Orlandini, Jouvancy and Cordara attempted it a couple of centuries ago, but their work never got beyond the first one hundred years. Two very small compendiums by Jesuits have been recently published, one in Italian by Rosa, the other in French by Brucker, but they are too congested to be satisfactory to the average reader, and Brucker's stops at the Suppression of the Society by Clement XIV in 1773. Cretineau-Joly's history was written in great haste ; he is often a special pleader, and even Jesuits find him too eulogistic. At present he is hopelessly antiquated, his last volume bearing the date of 1833. B. N. (Barbara Neave) published in English a history of *he Society based largely on Cretineau-Joly. The consequence of this lack of authoritative works is that the general public gets its information about the Jesuits from writers who are prejudiced or ill-informed or, who, perhaps, have been hired to defame the Society for political purposes.

V

5174G9

vi Preface

Other authors, again, have found the Jesuits a romantic theme, and have drawn largely on their imagination for their statements.

Attention was called to this condition of things by the Congregation of the Society which elected Father Martin to the post of General of the Jesuits in 189a. As a result he appointed a corps of distinguished writers to co-operate in the production of a universal history of the Society, which was to be colossal in size, based on the most authentic documents, and in line with the latest and most exacting requirements of recent scientific historiography. On the completion of the various parts, they are to be co-ordinated and then translated into several languages, so as to supply material for minor histories within the reach of the general public. Such a scheme necessarily supposes a very considerable time before the completion of the entire work, and, as matter of fact, although several volumes have already appeared in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, the authors are still discussing events that occurred two centuries ago. Happily their researches have thrown much light on the early history of the Order; an immense number of documents in^dits, published by Carayon and others, have given us a more intimate knowledge of the intermediate period; many biographies have been written, and the huge volume of the " Liber saecularis " by Albers brings the record down to our own days. Thus, though much valuable information has already been made available for the general reader the great collaborative work is far from completion. Hence the present history of the Jesuits.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Origin

The Name — Opprobrious meanings — Caricatures of the page Founder — Purpose of the Order — Early life of Igna- tius — Pampeluna — Conversion — Manresa — The Ex- ercises — Authorship — Journey to Palestine — The Universities — Life in Paris — First Companions — Montmartre First Vows — Assembly at Venice. Failure to reach Palestine — First Journey to Rome — Ordina- tion to the Priesthood — Labors in Italy — Submits the Constitutions for Papal Approval — Guidiccioni's opposi- tion — Issue of the Bull Regimini — Sketch of the Institute — Crypto-Jesuits 1-35

CHAPTER II

Initial Activities

Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy — Election of Ignatius — Jesuits in Ireland — " The Scotch Doctor "

— Faber and Melanchthon — Le Jay — Bobadilla — Council of Trent — Lafnez, Salmer6n, Canisius — The Catechism — Opposition in Spain — Cano — Pius V — First Missions to America — The French Parliaments

— Postel — Foimdation of the Collegium Germanicum at Rome — Similar Establishments in Germany — Cler- mont and other Colleges in France — Colloque de Poissy. 36-71

CHAPTER III

Ends of the Earth

Xavier departs for the East — Goa — Around Hindostan — Malacca — The Moluccas — Return to Goa — The Val- iant Belgian — Troubles in Goa — Enters Japan — Returns to Goa — Starts for China — Dies o£E the Coast

— Remains brought to Goa — Africa — Congo, Angola, Caffreria, Abyssinia — Brazil, Nobrega, Anchieta, Azevedo — Failure of Rodriguez in Portugal — 72-95

yii

viii Contents

CHAPTER IV

Conspicuous Personages

Ignatius — Lafnez — BorRia — Bellarmine — Toletus — paob Lessius — Maldonado — Suirez — Lugo — Valencia — Petavius — Warsewicz — Nicolai — Possevin — Vieira

— Mercurian 9^'33

CHAPTER V The English Mission

Conditions after Henry VIII — Allen — Persons — Campion

— Entrance into England — Kingslcy's Caricature — Thomas Pounde — Stephens — Capture and death of Campion — Other Martyrs — Southwell, Walpole — Jesuits in Ireland and Scotland — The English Succes- sion — Dissensions — The Archpriest Blackwell — The Appellants — The Bye- Plot — Accession of James I —

The Gunpowder Plot — Garnet, Gerard 134-165

CHAPTER VI

Japan 1555-1645

After Xavier's time — Torres and Femandes — Civandono — Nunhes and Pinto — The King of Hirando — First Per- secution — Gago and Vilela — Almeida — Uprising against the Emperor — Justus Ucondono and Nobunanga

— Valignani — Founding of Nangasaki — Fervor and Fidelity of the Converts — Embassy to Europe — Journey through Portugal, Spain and Italy — Reception by Gregory XIII and Sixtus V — Return to Japan — The Great Persecutions by Taicosama, Dailusama, Sho- gun I and Shogun II — Spinola and other Martyrs — Arrival of Franciscans and Dominicans — Popular eager- ness for death — Mastrilli — Attempts to esteblish a Hier- archy — Closing the Ports — Discovery of the Christians. 166-196

CHAPTER VII

The Great Storms 1 580- 1 597

Manares suspected of ambition — Election of Aquaviva — Beginning of Spanish discontent — Dionisio Vdsquez — The " Ratio Studiorum " — Society's action against Confessors of Kings and Political Embassies — Trouble with the Spanish Inquisition and Philip II — Attempts at a Spanish

Contents ix

Schism — The Ormanetto papers — Ribadeneira sus- page pected — Imprisonment of Jesuits by the Spanish Inquisition — Action of Toletus — Extraordinary Con- gregation called — Exculpation of Aquaviva — The dis- pute " de Auxiliis " — Antoine Amauld's attack — Henry IV and Jean Chastel — Reconciliation of Henry IV to the Church — Royal protection — Saint Charles Borromeo — Troubles in Venice — Sarpi — Palafox 197-227

CHAPTER VIII

The Asiatic Continent

The Great Mogul — Rudolph Aquaviva — Jerome Xavier — de Nobili — de Britto — Beschi — The Pariahs — Enter- ing Thibet — From Pekin to Europe — Mingrelia, Paphlagonia and Chaldea — The Maronites — Alexander de Rhodes — Ricci enters China — From Agra to Pekin

— Adam Schall — Arrival of the Tatars — Persecutions

— Schall condemned to Death — Verbiest — de Tour- non's Visit — The French Royal Mathematicians — Avril's Journey 228-267

CHAPTER IX

Battle of the Books

Aquaviva and the Spanish Opposition — Vitelleschi — The " Monita Secreta "; Morlin — Roding — " Historia Jesuitici Ordinis " — " Jesuiticum Jejunium " — • " Speculum Jesuiticum " — Pasquier — Mariana —

" Mysteries of the Jesuits " — " The Jesuit Cabinet " — " Jesuit Wolves " — " Teatro Jesuitico " — " Morale Pratique des Jesuites " — " Conjuratio Sulphurea " — " Lettres Provinciales " — " Causeries du Lundi " and Bourdaloue — Prohibition of publication by Louis XIV

— Pastoral of the Bishops of Sens — Santarelli — Escobar — Anti-Coton — Margry's " Descouvertes " — Norbert 268-295

CHAPTER X

The Two Americas 1567-1673

Chile and Peru — Valdivia — Peruvian Bark — Paraguay Reductions — Father Fields — Emigration from Brazil

— Social and religious prosperity of the Reductions —

X Contents

Martyrdom of twenty-nine missionaries — Reductions paob in Colombia — Peter Claver — French West Indies — St. Kitts — Irish Exiles — Father Bath or Destriches — Montserrat — Emigration to Guadeloupe — Other Islands — Guiana — Mexico — Lower California — The Pious Fund — The Philippines — Canada Missions — Br^beuf, Jogues, Le Moyne, Marquette — Maryland — White — Lewger 296-342

CHAPTER XI

Culture

Colleges — Their Popularity — Revenues — Character of education: Classics; Science; Philosophy; Art — Dis- tinguished Pupils — Poets: Southwell; Balde; Sarbievius; Strada; Von Spee; Gresset; Beschi. — Orators: Vieira; Segneri; Bourdaloue. — Writers: Isla; Ribadeneira; Skarga; Bouhours etc. — Historians — Publications — ■ Scientists and Explorers — Philosophers — Theologians — Saints 343-386

CHAPTER XII

From Vitelleschi to Ricci 1615-1773

Pupils in the Thirty Years War — Caraflfa; Piccolomini; Gottifredi — Mary Ward — Alleged decline of the Society — John Paul Oliva — Jesuits in the Courts of Kings — John Casimir — English Persecutions. Luzancy and Titus Oates — Jesuit Cardinals — Gallicanism in France — Maimbourg — Dez — Troubles in Holland. De Noyelle and Innocent XI — Attempted Schism in France — Gonzalez and Probabilism — Don Pedro of Portugal — New assaults of Jansenists — Administration of Retz — Election of Ricci — The Coming Storm 387-423

CHAPTER XIII

Conditions before the Crash

State of the Society — The Seven Years War — Political Changes — Rulers of Spain, Portugal, Naples, France and Austria — Febronius — Sentiments of the Hierarchy — Popes Benedict XIV; Clement XIII; Clement XIV. . . 424-441

Contents xi

CHAPTER XIV

POMBAL

Early life — Ambitions — Portuguese Missions — Seizure of pagh the Spanish Reductions. Expulsion of the Missionaries

— End of the Missions in Brazil — War against the Society in Portugal — The Jesuit Republic — Cardinal Saldanha — Seizure of Churches and Colleges — The Assassination Plot — The Prisons — Exiles — Execution

of Malagrida 442-477

CHAPTER XV

Choiseul

The French Method — Purpose of the Enemy — Preliminary Accusations — Voltaire's testimony — La Vallette — La Chalotais — Seizure of Property — Auto da i6 of the Works of Lessius, Sudrez, Valentia, etc. — Appeal of the French Episcopacy — Christophe de Beaumont — Demand for a French Vicar — " Sint ut sunt aut non sint "

— Protest of Clement XIII — Action of Father La Croix and the Jesuits of Paris — Louis XV signs the Act of Suppression — Occupations of dispersed Jesuits — Undis- turbed in Canada — Expelled from Louisiana — Choiseul's Colonization of Guiana 478-503

CHAPTER XVI

Charles III

The Bourbon Kings of Spain — Character of Charles III — Spanish Ministries — O'Reilly — The Hat and Cloak Riot

— Cowardice of Charles — Tricking the monarch — The Decree of Suppression — Grief of the Pope — His death

— Disapproval in France by the Encyclopedists — The Royal Secret — Simultaneousness of the Suppression —

— Wanderings of the Exiles — Pignatelli — Expulsion by Tanucci 504-529

CHAPTER XVII

The Final Blow

GanganeHi — Political plotting at the Election — Bemis, Aranda, Aubeterre — The Zelanti — Election of Clement XIV — Renewal of Jesuit Privileges by the new Pope — Demand of the Bourbons for a universal Suppression — ' The Three Years' Struggle — Fanaticism of Charles III

xii Contents

— Menaces of Schism — Motiino — Maria Theresa — paqb Spoliations in Italy — Signing the Brief — Imprison- ment of Father Ricci and the Assistants — Silence and Submission of the Jesuits to the Pope's Decree 530-554

CHAPTER XVIII

The Instrument

Summary of the Brief of Suppression and its Supplementary

Document 555-576

CHAPTER XIX

The Execution

Seizure of the Gcsd in Rome — Suspension of the Priests — Juridical Trial of Father Ricci continued during Two Years — The Victim's Death-bed Statement — Admis- sion of his Innocence by the Inquisitors — Obsequies — Reason of his Protracted Imprisonment — Liberation of the Assistants by Pius VI — Receipt of the Brief outside of Rome — Refused by Switzerland, Poland, Russia and Prussia — Read to the Prisoners in Portugal by Pombal

— Denunciation of it by the Archbishop of Paris — Sup- pression of the Document by the Bishop of Quebec — Acceptance by Austria — Its Enforcement in Belgium — Carroll at Bruges — Defective Promulgation in Mar>-land. 577-603

CHAPTER XX

The Sequel to the Suppression

Failure of the Papal Brief to give peace to the Church — Liguori and Tanucci — Joseph II destroying the Church in Austria — Voltaireanism in Portugal — Illness of Clement XIV — Death — Accusations of poisoning — Election of Pius VI — The Synod of Pistoia — Febron- ianism in Austria — Visit of Pius VI to Joseph II — The Punctation of Ems — Spain, Sardinia, Venice, Sicily in opposition to the Pope — Political collapse in Spain — Fall of Pombal — Liberation of his Victims — Protest of de Guzman — Death of Joseph II — Occupations of the dispersed Jesuits — The Theologia Wicehurgensis — Feller

— Beauregard's Prophecy — Zaccaria — Tiraboschi — Boscovich — Missionaries — Denunciation of the Sup- pression in the French Assembly — Slain in the French Revolution — Destitute Jesuits in Poland — Shelter in Russia 604-635

Contents xiii

CHAPTER XXI

The Russian Contingent

Frederick the Great and the " Philosophes " — Protection of page the Jesuits — Death of Voltaire — Catherine of Russia — The Four Colleges — The Empress at Polotsk — Joseph II at Mohilew — Archetti — Baron Grimm — Czemie- wicz and the Novitiate — Assent of Pius VI — Potemkin

— Siestrzencewicz — General Congregation — Benis- lawski — " Approbo; Approbo " — Accession of former Jesuits. Gruber and the Emperor Paul — Alexander I

— Missions in Russia 636-664

CHAPTER XXII The Rallying

Fathers of the Sacred Heart — Fathers of the Faith — Fusion

— Paccanari — The Rupture — Exodus to Russia — Varin in Paris — Clorivi^re — Carroll's doubts — Pigna-

telli — Poirot in China — Grassi's Odyssey 665-684

CHAPTER XXIII

The Restoration

Tragic death of Father Gruber — Fall of Napoleon — Release of the Pope — The Society Re-established — Opening of Colleges — Clorivi^re — Welcome of the Society in Spain

— Repulsed in Portugal — Opposed by Catholics in England — Announced in America — Carroll — Fenwick

— Neale 685-715

CHAPTER XXIV

The First Congregation

Expulsion from Russia — Petrucci, Vicar — Attempt to wreck

the Society — Saved by Consalvi and Rozaven 716-733

CHAPTER XXV

A Century of Disaster

Expulsion from Holland — Trouble at Freiburg — Expulsion and recall in Spain — Petits Seminaires — Berryer — Montlosier — The Men's Sodalities — St. Acheul mobbed — Fourteen Jesuits murdered in Madrid — Interment of Pombal — de Ravignan's pamphlet — Veuillot — Montalembert — de Bonald — Archbishop Affre — Michelet, Quinet and Cousin — Gioberti —

XIV Contents

Expulsion from Austria — Kulturkampf — Slaughter of taou the Hostages in the Commune — South America and Mexico — Flourishing Condition before the Outbreak of the World War 734-764

CHAPTER XXVI

Modern Missions

During the Suppression — Roothaan's appeal — South America — The Philippines — United States Indians — De Smet — Canadian Reservations — Alaska — British Honduras — China — India — Syria — Algeria — Guinea

— Egypt — Madagascar — Mashonaland — Congo — Missions depleted by World War — Actual number of missionaries 765-824

CHAPTER XXVII

Colleges

Responsibility of the Society for loss of Faith in Europe — The Loi Falloux — Bombay — Calcutta — Beirut — Ameri- can Colleges — Scientists, Archaeologists, Meteorologists, Seismologists, Astronomers — Ethnologists 825-854

CHAPTER XXVIII

Literature

Grammars and Lexicons of every tongue — Dramas — His- tories of Literature — Cartography — Sinology — Egypt- ology — Sanscrit — Catholic Encyclopedia — Catalogues of Jesuit Writers — Acta Sanctorum — Jesuit Relations

— Nomenclator — Periodicals — Philosophy — Dogmatic,

Moral and Ascetic Theology — Canon Law — Exegesis. . 855-890

CHAPTER XXIX

The Sovereign Pontiffs and the Society

Devotion, Trust and Affection of each Pope of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries manifested in his Official and Personal Relations with the Society 891-916

CHAPTER XXX

Conclusion

Successive Generals in the Restored Society — Present

Memberskip, Missions and Provinces 917-930

WORKS CONSULTED

Institutum Societatis Jesu. JouvANCY — Epitome historiae Societatis Jesu. JouvANCY — Montmienta Societatis Jesu.

Cretineau-Joly — Hist, relig., pol. et litt. de la Comp. de J^sus. B. N. — The Jesuits: their foundation and history. Rosa, I Gesuiti dalle origini ai nostri giomi. Mesceller, Die Gesellschaft Jesu. BoHMER-MoNOD — Les J6suites. Feval, Les J^suites. HuBER — Der Jesuitenorden. DuHR — Jesuiten-Fabeln. Brou — Les J6suites et la Idgende. Belloc, Pascal's Provincial Letters. Foley — Jesuits in Conflict.

FouQUERAY — Histoire de la compagnie de Jesus en France. BouRNiCHON — La Compagnie de J^sus en France : 1814-1914. Albers — Liber saecularis ab anno 1814 ad annum 1914. Tacchi-Venturi — Storia della compagnia di Gesvi in Italia. Monti — La Compagnia di Gesu.

DuHR — • Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Landem deutschen Zunge. Kroess — Geschichte der bohmischen Provinz der Gesellschaft Jesu. AsTRAiN — Hist, de la Comp. de Jesus en la asist. de Espana. Hughes — History of the Society of Jesus of North America. Alegre — La Compama de Jesus en la Nueva Espana. Frias — La Provincia de Espana de la corapania de Jesiis, 1815-63. Pollard — The Jesuits in Poland. HoGAN — Ibernia Ignatiana. Tanner — Societas Jesu praeclara. Lives of Jesuit Saints. Menologies of the Society of Jesus. Southwell — Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Jesu. SoMMERVOGEL — Bibl. des ^crivains de la comp. de Jdsus. Chandlery — Fasti breviores Societatis Jesu. Maynard — The Studies and Teachings of the Society of Jesus. Daniel — Les J6suites instituteurs. Weld — Suppression of the Society of Jesus in Portugal. De Ravignan — De I'existence et de I'institut des J^suites. De Ravignan — C16ment XIII et Clement XIV. Theiner — Geschichte des Pontifikats Klemens XIV. Artaud de Montor — Histoire du pape Pie VII.

rv

xvi Works Consulted

Carayon — Documents inddits concemants la Compagnie de Jdsus.

Bertrand — Mdmoircs sur les missions.

Brou — Les Missions du xix*^ si^le.

Seaman — "Map of Jesuit Missions in the United States.

Marshall — Christian Missions.

Bancroft — Native Races of the Pacific States.

Campbell — Pioneer Priests of North America.

Charlevoix — Histoire du Japon.

Charlevoix — Histoire du Paraguay.

Charlevoix — Histoire de la Nouvelle-France.

Crasset — Histoire de I'^glise du Japon.

Avril — Voyage en divers ^tats d'Europe et d'Asie.

Thwaites — Jesuit Relations.

Bolton — Kino's Historical Memoir.

Janssen — History of the German People.

Lavisse — Histoire de France.

Ranke — History of the Popes.

LiNGARD — History of England.

Tiernev-Dodd — Church History of England.

Pollen — The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell.

Haile-Bonney — Life and Letters of John Lingard.

Pollock — The Popish Plot.

Guildav — English Catholic Refugees on the Continent.

MacGeoghegan — History of Ireland.

Flanagan — Ecclesiastical History of Ireland.

O'Reilly — Lives of the Irish Mart>Ts and Confessors.

RocHEFORT — Histoire des Antilles.

Eyzaguirre — Historia de Chile.

Tertre — Histoire de St. Christophe.

RoHRBACHER — • History of the Church.

HiJBNER — Sixte-Quint.

Hue — Christianity in China, Tartary and Tibet.

Robertson — History of Charles V.

Shea — The Catholic Church in Colonial Days.

Pacca — • Memorie storiche del ministero.

Sainte-Beuve — Causeries.

Petit de Julleville — Histoire de la litt^rature frangaise.

GoDEFROY — Litt<5rature frangaise.

Schlosser — History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Canto — Storia universale.

The Cambridge Modem History, Vols. VIII, XII.

The Month.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, passim.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, passim.

Realencyclopadie fiir protestantische Theologie und Kirche, passim.

THE JESUITS 1534-1921

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN

The Name — Opprobrious meanings — Caricatures of the Founder

— Purpose of the Order — Early life of Ignatius — Pampeluna — Conversion — Manresa — The Exercises — Authorship — Journey to Palestine — The Universities — Life in Paris — First Companions — Montmartre First Vows — Assembly at Venice. Failure to reach Palestine — First Journey to Rome — Ordination to the Priesthood — Labors in Italy — Submits the Constitutions for Papal Approval

— Guidiccioni's opposition — Issue of the Bull Regimini — Sketch of the Institute — Crypto- Jesuits.

The name " Jesuit " has usually a sinister meaning in the minds of the misinformed. Calvin is accused of inventing it, but that is an error. It was in common use two or three centuries before the Reformation, and generally it implied spiritual distinction. Indeed, in his famous work known as " The Great Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ," which appeared somewhere about 1350, the saintly old Carthusian ascetic, Ludolph of Saxony, employs it in a way that almost provokes a smile. He tells his readers that " just as we are called Christians when we are baptized, so we shall be called Jesuits when we enter into glory." Possibly such a designation would be very uncomfortable even for some pious people of the present day. The opprobrious meaning of the word came into use at the approach of the Protestant Reformation. Thus, when laxity in the observance of their rule began to show itself in the once fervent followers of St. John Columbini — who were called Jesuati, because of their frequent use of

2 The Jesuits

the expression: "Praised be Jesus Christ" — their name fixed itself on the common speech as a synonym of hypocrisy. Possibly that will explain the curious question in the " Examen of Conscience " in an old German prayer-book, dated 15 19, where the penitent is bidden to ask himself: " Did I omit to teach the Word of God for fear of being called a Pharisee, a Jesuit, a hypocrite, a Beguine? "

The association of the term Jesuit with Pharisee and hypocrite is unpleasant enough, but connecting it with Beguine is particularly offensive. The word Beguine had come to signify a female heretic, a mysticist, an illuminist, a pantheist, who though cultivating a saintly exterior was credited with holding secret assemblies where the most indecent orgies were indulged in. The identity of the Beguines with Jesuits was considered to be beyond question, and one of the earliest Calvinist writers informed his co-religionists that at certain periods the Jesuits made use of mysterious and magical devices and performed a variety of weird antics and contortions in subterraneous caverns, from which they emerged as haggard and worn as if they had been struggling with the demons of hell (Janssen, Hist, of the German People, Eng. tr., IV, 406-7). Unhappily, at that time, a certain section of the associ- ation of Beguines insisted upon being called Jesuits. There were many variations on this theme when the genuine Jesuits at last appeared. In Germany they were denounced as idolaters and libertines, and their great leader Canisius was reported to have run away with an abbess. In France they were considered assassins and regicides; Calvin called them la racaille, that is, the rabble, rifraff, dregs. In England they were reputed political plotters and spies. Later, in America, John Adams, second President of the United States, identified them with Quakers and resolved to

Origin 3

suppress them. Cotton Mather or someone in Boston denounced them as grasshoppers and prayed for the east wind to sweep them away; the Indians burned them at the stake as magicians, and the Japanese bonzes insisted that they were cannibals, a charge repeated by Charles Kingsley, Queen Victoria's chap- lain, who, in " Westward Ho," makes an old woman relate of the Jesuits first arriving in England that " they had probably killed her old man and salted him for provision on their journey to the Pope of Rome," No wonder Newman told Kingsley to fly off into space. The climax of calumny was reached in a decree of the Parliament of Paris, issued on August 6, 1762. It begins with a prelude setting forth the motives of the indictment, and declares that " the Jesuits are recognized as guilty of having taught at all times, uninterruptedly, and with the approbation of their superiors and generals, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, the black art, magic, astrology, impiety, idolatry, superstition, impurity, corruption of justice, robbery, parricide, homicide, suicide and regicide." The decree then proceeds to set forth eighty-four counts on which it finds them specifically guilty of supporting the Greek Schism, denying the procession of the Holy Ghost; of favoring the heresies of Arianism, Sabellianism, and Nestorianism ; of assailing the hierarchy, attacking the Mass and Holy Communion and the authority of the Holy See; of siding with the Lutherans, Calvinists and other heretics of the sixteenth century; of repro- ducing the heresies of Wycliff and the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians; of adding blasphemy to heresy; of behttling the early Fathers of the Church, the Apostles, Abraham, the prophets, St. John the Baptist, the angels; of insulting and blaspheming the Blessed Virgin; of undermining the foundations of the Faith; destroying belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ;

4 The Jesuits

casting doubt on the mystery of the Redemption; encouraging the impiety of the Deists ;j suggesting Epicureanism; teaching men to Hve Hke beasts, and Christians hke pagans (de Ravignan, De I'existence et de I'institut des J6suites, iii).

This was the contribution of the Jansenists to the Jesuit chamber of horrors. It was endorsed by the government and served as a weapon for the atheists of the eighteenth century to destroy the rehgion of France, and finally the lexicons of every language gave an odious meaning to the name Jesuit. A typical example of this kind of ill-will may be found in the " Diccionario nacional " of Dominguez. In the article on the Jesuits, the writer informs the world that the Order was the superior in learning to all the others ; and produced, relatively at every period of its existence more eminent men, and devoted itself with greater zeal to the preaching of the Gospel and the education of youth — the primordial and sublime objects of its Institute. Nevertheless its influence in political matters, as powerful as it was covert, its startling accumulation of wealth, and its ambitious aims, drew upon it the shafts of envy^ created terrible antagonists and implacable persecutors, until the learned Clement XIV, the immortal Ganganelli, suppressed it on July 21, 1773, for its abuses and its disobedience to the Holy See. Why the " learned Clement XIV " should be described as " immortal " for suppressing instead of preserving or, at least, reforming an order which the writer fancies did more than all the others for the propagation of the Faith is difficult to understand, but logic is not a necessary requisite of a lexicon. " In spite of their suppression," he continues, " they with their characteristic pertinacity have succeeded in coming to life again and are at present existing in several parts of Europe." The

Origin 5

"Diccionario" is dated, Madrid, 1849. ^^ other words, the saintly Pius VII performed a very wicked act in re-establishing the Order.

Of course the founder of this terrible Society had to be presented to the public as properly equipped for the malignant task to which he had set himself; so writers have vied with each other in expatiating on what they call his complex individuality. Thus a German psychologist insists that the Order established by this Spaniard was in reality a Teutonic creation. The Frenchman Drumont holds that " it is anti-semitic in its character," though Polanco, Loyola's life-long secretary, was of Jewish origin, as were Lainez, the second General, and the great Cardinal Toletus. A third enthusiast. Chamberlain, who is English-born, dismisses all other views and insists that, as Loyola was a Basque and an Iberian, he could not have been of Germanic or even Aryan descent, and he maintains that the primitive traits of the Stone Age continually assert themselves in his character. In reading the Spiritual Exercises, he says, " I hear that mighty roar of the cave bear and I shudder as did the men of the diluvial age, when poor, naked and defenceless, surrounded by danger day and night, they trembled at that voice." (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, I, 570.) " If this be true," says Brou in " Les Jesuites et la legende, " then, by following the same process of reasoning, one must conclude that as Xavier was a Basque, his voice also was ursine and troglodytic; and as Faber was a Savoyard, he will have to be classified as a brachycephalous homo alpinus." Herman MuUer, in " Les Origines de la Compagnie de Jesus" claims the honor of having launched an entirely novel theory about Loyola's personaUty. " The ' Exercises' are an amalgam of Islamic gnosticism and militant Catholicism," he tells us; " but where did Ignatius

6 The Jesuits

become acquainted with these Mussulmanic congrega- tions? We have nothing positive on that score, though we know that one day he met a Moor on the road and was going to run him through with his sword. Then too, there were a great many Moors and Moriscos in Catalonia, and we must not forget that Ignatius intended to go to Palestine to convert the Turks. He must, therefore, have known them and so have been subject to their influence." Strange to say, Miiller feels aggrieved that the Jesuits do not accept this very illogical theory, which he insists has nothing discreditable or dishonoring in it.

Omitting many other authorities, Vollet in "La Grande Encyclopedic " (s. v. Ignace de Loyola, Saint), informs his readers that " impartial history can discover in Loyola numberless traits of fantastic exaltation, morbific dreaminess, superstition, moral obscurantism, fanatical hatred, deceit and mendacity. On the other hand, it is impossible not to admit that he was a man of iron will, of indomitable perseverance in action and in suffering, and unshakeable faith in his mission ; in spite of an ardent imagination, he had a penetrating intelligence, and a marvelous facility in reading the thoughts of men ; he was possessed of a gentleness and suppleness which permitted him to make himself all to all. Visionary though he was, he possessed in the supreme degree, the genius of organization and strategy; he could create the army he needed, and employ the means he had at hand with prudence and circumspec- tion. We can even discover in him a tender heart, easily moved to pity, to affection and to self-sacrifice for his fellow-men." Michelet says he was a combina- tion of Saint Francis of Assisi and Machiavelli. Finally Victor Hugo reached the summit of the absurd when he assured the French Assembly in 1850 that " Ignatius was the enemy of Jesus." As a matter of fact the

Origin 7

poet knew nothing of either, nor did many of his hearers.

As far as we are aware, St. Ignatius never used the term Jesuit at all. He called his Order the Compania de Jesus, which in Italian is Compagnia, and in French, Compagnie. The English name Society, as well as the Latin Societas, is a clumsy attempt at a trans- lation, and is neither adequate nor picturesque. Compania was evidently a reminiscence of Loyola's early military life, and meant to him a battalion of light infantry, ever ready for service in any part of the world. The use of the name Jesus gave great offense. Both on the Continent and in England, it was denounced as blasphemous; petitions were sent to kings and to civil and ecclesiastical tribunals to have it changed; and even Pope Sixtus V had signed a Brief to do away with it. Possibly the best apology for it was given by the good-natured monarch, Henry IV, when the University and Parliament of Paris pleaded with him to throw his influence against its use. Shrugging his shoulders, he replied: "I cannot see why we should worry about it. Some of my officers are Knights of the Holy Ghost; there is an Order of the Holy Trinity in the Church ; and, in Paris, we have a congregation of nuns who call themselves God's Daughters. Why then should we object to Company of Jesus?"

The Spaniards must have been amazed at these objections, because the name Jesus was, as it still is, in very common use among them. They give it to their children, and it is employed as an exclamation of surprise or fear; like Mon Dieul in French. They even use such expressions as: Jesu Crista I Jesu mille veces or Jesucristo, Dios mio\ The custom is rather startling for other nationalities, but it is merely a question of autre pays, autres maeurs. A compromise

8 The Jesuits

was made, however, for the time being, by calling the organization " The Society of the Name of Jesus," but that was subsequently forbidden by the General.

As a rule the Jesuits do not reply to these attacks. The illustrious Jacob Gretser attempted it long ago; but, in spite of his sanctity, he displayed so much temper in his retort, that he was told to hold his peace. Such is the policy generally adopted, and the Society consoles itself with the reflection that the terrible Basque, Ignatius Loyola, and a host of his sons have been crowned by the Universal Church as glorious saints; that the august Council of Trent solemnly approved of the Order as a "pious Institute;" that twenty or thirty successive Sovereign Pontiffs have blessed it and favored it, and that after the terrible storm evoked by its enemies had spent its fury, one of the first official acts of the Pope was to restore the Society to its ancient position in the Church. The scars it has received in its numberless battles are not disfigurements but decorations; and Cardinal Allen, who saw its members at close quarters in the bloody struggles of the English Mission, reminded them that "to be hated of the Heretikes, S. Hierom computeth a great glorie."

It is frequently asserted that the Society was organized for the express purpose of combatting the Protestant Reformation. Such is not the case. On the contrary, St. Ignatius does not seem to have been aware of the extent of the religious movement going on at that time. His sole purpose was to convert the Turks, and only the failure to get a ship at Venice prevented him from carrying out that plan. Indeed it is quite likely that when he first thought of consecrating himself to God, not even the name of Luther had, as yet, reached Montserrat or Manresa. They were contemporaries, of course, for Luther was bom in

Origin 9

1483 and Loyola in 149 1 or thereabouts; and their lines of endeavor were in frequent and direct antag- onism, but without either being aware of it. Thus, in 152 1, when Loyola was leading a forlorn hope at Pampeluna to save the citadel for Charles V, Luther was in the castle of Wartburg, plotting to dethrone that potentate. In 1522 when the recluse of Manresa was writing his " Exercises " for the purpose of making men better, Luther was posing as the Ecclesiast of Wittenberg and proclaiming the uselessness of the Ten Commandments; and when Loyola was in London begging alms to continue his studies, Luther was coquetting with Henry VIII to induce that riotous king to accept the new Evangel.

Ignatius Loyola was born in the heart of the Pyre- nees, in the sunken valley which has the little town of Azcoitia at one end, and the equally diminutive one of Azpeitia at the other. Over both of them the Loyolas had for centuries been lords either by marriage or inheritance. Their ancestral castle still stands; but, whereas in olden times it was half hidden by the surrounding woods, it is today embodied in the immense structure which almost closes in that end of the valley.

The castle came into the possession of the Society through the liberality of Anne of Austria, and a college was built around it. The added structure now forms an immense quadrangle with four interior courts. From the centre of the fagade protrudes the great church which is circular in form and two hundred feet in height. Its completion was delayed for a long time but the massive pile is now finished. At its side, but quite invisible from without, is the castle proper, somewhat disappointing to those who have formed their own conceptions of what castles were in those days. It is only fifty-six feet high and fifty-eight wide. The lower portion is of hewn stone, the upper

10 The Jesuits

part of brick. Above the entrance, the family escutcheon is crudely cut in stone, and represents two wolves, rampant and lambent, having between them a caldron suspended by a chain. This device is the heraldic symbol of the name Loyola. The interior is elaborately decorated, and the upper story, where Ignatius was stretched on his bed of pain after the disaster of Pampeluna, has been converted into, an oratory.

The church looks towards Azpeitia. A little stream runs at the side of the well-built road -way which connects the two towns. Along its length, shrines have been built, as have shelters for travelers if over- taken by a storm. The people are handsome and dignified, stately in their carriage — for they are moun- taineers — and are as thrifty in cultivating their steep hills, which they terrace to the very top, as the Belgians are in tilling their level fields in the Low Countries. There is no wealth, but there is no sordid poverty; and a joyous piety is everywhere in evidence. Azpeitia glories in the fact that there St. Ignatius was baptized ; and when some years ago, it was proposed to remove the font and replace it by a new one, the women rose in revolt. Their babies had to be made Christians in the same holy basin as their great compatriot, no matter how old and battered it might be.

Ignatius was the youngest of a family of thirteen or, at least, the youngest of the sons; he was christened Eneco or Inigo, but he changed his name later to Ignatius. His early years were spent in the castle of Arevalo; and, according to Maffei he was at one time a page of King Ferdinand. He was fond of the world, its vanities, its amusements and its pleasures, and though there is nothing to show that there was ever any serious violation of the moral law in his conduct, neither was he the extraordinarily pious youth such

Origin 11

as he is represented in the fantastic stories of Nierem- berg, Nolarci, Garcia, Henao and others. After the fashion of the hagiographers of the seventeenth century and later, they describe him as a sort of Aloysius who, under the tutelage of Dofia Maria de Guevara, visited the sick in the hospitals, regarding them as the images of Christ, nursing them with tenderest charity, and so on. All that is pure imagination and an unwise attempt to make a saint of him before the time.

Indeed, very little about the early life of Ignatius is known, except that when he was about twenty-six he gained some military distinction in an attack on the little town of Najara. Of course, he was conspicu- ous in the fight at Pampeluna, but whether he was in command of the fortress or had been merely sent to its rescue to hold it until the arrival of the Viceroy is a matter of conjecture. At all events, even after the inhabitants had agreed to surrender the town, he determined to continue the fight. He first made his confession to a fellow-knight, for there was no priest at hand, and then began what was, at best, a hopeless struggle. The enemy soon made a breach in the walls and while rallying his followers to repel the assault he was struck by a cannon-ball which shattered one leg and tore the flesh from the other. That ended the siege, and the flag of the citadel was hauled down. Admiring his courage, the French tenderly carried him to Loyola, where for some time his life was despaired of. The crisis came on the feast of St. Peter, to whom he had always a special devotion. From that day, he began to grow better. Loyalty to the Chair of Peter is one of the distinguishing traits of the Compafiia which he founded.

It is almost amusing to find these shattered limbs of Ignatius figuring in the diatribes of the elder Amauld against the Society, sixty or seventy years after the

12 The Jesuits

siege. " The enmity of the Jesuits for France," he said, "is to be traced to the fact that Loyola took an oath on that occasion, as Hannibal did against Rome, to make France pay for his broken legs." An English Protestant prelate also bemoaned " the ravages that had been caused by the fanaticism of that lame soldier." Other examples might be cited. To beguile the tediousness of his convalescence, Ignatius asked for the romance " Amadis dc Gaul," a favorite book with the young cavaliers of the period; but he had to content himself with the " Life of Christ " and " The Flowers of the Saints." These, however, proved to be of greater service than the story of the mythical Amadis ; for the reading ended in a resolution which exerted a mighty influence in the history of humanity. Igrtatius had made up his mind to do something for God. The " Life of Christ " which he read, appears to have been that of Ludolph of Saxony in which the name " Jesuit " occurs. It had been translated into Spanish and published at Alcala as early as 1502. Thus, a book from the land of Martin Luther helped to make Ignatius Loyola a saint.

When sufficiently restored to health he set out for the sanctuary of Montserrat where there is a Madonna whose thousandth anniversary was celebrated a few years ago. It is placed over the main altar of the church of a Benedictine monastery, which stands three thousand feet above the dark gorge, through which the river Llobregat rushes head-long to the Mediterranean. You can get a glimpse of the blue expanse of the sea in the distance, from the monastery windows. Before this statue, Ignatius kept his romantic Vigil of Arms, like the warriors of old on the eve of their knighthood; for he was about to enter upon a spiritual warfare for the King of Kings. He remained in prayer at the shrine all night long, not however in

Origin 13

the apparel of a cavalier but in the common coarse garb of a poverty-stricken pilgrim. From there he betook himself to the little town of Manresa, about three miles to the north, on the outskirts of which is the famous cave where he wrote the " Spiritual Exer- cises." It is in the face of the rock, so low that you can touch the roof with your hand, and so nacrow that there is room for only a little altar at one end. Possibly it had once been the repair of wild beasts. It is a mistake, however, to imagine that he passed all his time there. He lived either in the hospital or in the house of some friend, and resorted to the cave to meditate and do penance for his past sins. At present it is incorporated in a vast edifice which the Spanish Jesuits have built above and around it.

Perhaps no book has ever been written that has evoked more ridiculous commentaries on its contents and its purpose than this very diminutive volume known as "The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius." Its very simplicity excites suspicion; its apparent jejuneness suggest all sorts of mysterious and malignant designs. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is nothing but a guide to Christian piety and devotion. It begins with the consideration of the great fundaniental truths of religion, such as our duty to God, the hide- ousness and heinousness of sin, hell, death, and judg- ment on which the exercitant is expected to meditate before asking himself if it is wise for a reasonable creature who must soon die to continue in rebelUon against the Almighty. No recourse is had to rhetoric or oratory by those who direct others in these " Exer- cises," riot even such as would be employed in the pulpit by the ordinary parish preacher. It is merely a matter of a man having a heart to heart talk with himself. If he makes up his mind to avoid mortal sin in the future, but to do no more, then his retreat is

14 The Jesuits

over as far as he is conccmed. But to have even reached that point is to have accompHshed much.

There are, however, in the world a great many people who desire something more than the mere avoidance of mortal sin. To them the " Excercises " propose over and above the fundamental truths just mentioned the study of the life of Christ as outlined in the Gospels. This outline is not filled in by the director of the retreat, at least to any great extent. That is left to the exer- citant; for the word exercise implies personal action. Hence he is told to ask himself: "Who is Christ? Why does He do this ? Why does He avoid that ? What do His commands and example suppose or suggest?" In other words, he is made to do some deep personal thinking, perhaps for the first time in his life, at least on such serious subjects. Inevitably his thoughts will be introspective and he will inquire why the patience, the humility, the meekness, the obedience and other virtues, which are so vivid in the personality of the Ideal Man, are so weak or perhaps non-existent in his own soul. This scrutiny of the conscience, which is nothing but self-knowledge, is one of the principal exercises, for it helps us to discover what perhaps never before struck us, namely that down deep in our natures there are tendencies, inclinations, likes, dislikes, affections, passions which most commonly are the controlling and deciding forces of nearly all of our acts ; and that some of these tendencies or inclinations help, while others hinder, growth in virtue. Those that do not help, but on the contrary impede or prevent, our spiritual progress are called by St. Ignatius inordinate affections, that is tendencies, which are out of order, which do not go straight for the com- pleteness and perfection of a man's character, but on the contrary, lead in the opposite direction. The well- balanced mind will fight against such tendencies, so as

Origin ' 15

to be able to form its judgments and decide on its course of action both in the major and minor things of life without being moved by the pressure or strain or weight of the passions. It will look at facts in the cold light of reason and revealed truth, and will then bend every energy to carry out its purpose of spiritual advancement.

Such is not the view of those who write about the "Exercises" without knowledge or who are carried away by prejudice, an exalted imagination, an over- whelming conceit or religious bias or perhaps because of a refusal to recognize the existence of any spiritual element in humanity. It is difficult to persuade such men that there are no " mysterious devices " resorted to in the Exercises; no " subterraneous caverns," no " orgies," no " emerging livid and haggard from the struggle," no " illuminism," no " monoideism" as William James in his cryptic English describes them; no " phantasmagoria or illusions;" no " plotting of assassinations " as the Parliament of Paris pretended to think when examining Jean Chastel, who had attempted the life of Henry IV; no " Mahommedanism" as Miiller fancies in his " Origins of the Society of Jesus," nothing but a calm and quiet study of one's self, which even pagan philosophers and modern poets assure us is the best kind of worldly occupation.

Even if some writers insist that " their excellence is very much exaggerated," that they are " dull and ordinary and not the dazzling masterpieces they are thought to be," or are " a Japanese culture of counter- feited dwarf trees," as Huysmans in his " En Route " describes- them; yet on the other hand they have, been praised without stint by such competent judges as Saints Philip Neri, Charles Borromeo, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus Liguori, Leonard of Port Maurice, and by Popes Paul III, Alexander VII, Clement

16 The Jesuits

XIII, Pius IX and Leo XIII. Camus, the friend of St. Francis of Sales, thought " they were of pure gold; more precious than gold or topaz;" Freppel calls them " a wonderful work which, with the ' Imitation of Christ ' is perhaps of all books the one which gains the most souls for God;" Wiseman compares the volume to "an apparently barren soil which is found to contain the richest treasures," and Janssen tells us that " the little book which even its opponents pronounced to be a psychological masterpiece of the highest class, ranks also as one of the most remarkable and influential products of later centuries in the field

of religion and culture in Germany As a guide

to the exercises it has produced results which scarcely any other ascetic writings can boast of " (Hist, of the German People, VIII, 223).

Whatever may be thought of it, it is the Jesuit's manual, the vade mecum, on which he moulds his particular and characteristic form of spirituality. In the novitiate, he goes through these " Exercises " for thirty consecutive days; and shortly after he becomes a priest, he makes them once again for the same period. Moreover, all Jesuits are bound by rule to repeat them in a condensed form for eight days every year; and during the summer months the priests are generally employed in explaining them to the clergy and religious communities. Indeed the use has become so general in the Church at the present time, that houses have been opened where laymen can thus devote a few days to a study of their souls. Even the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves employ them as a means of spiritual advancement. Thus we find in the press of today the announcement, as of an ordinary event, that " in the Vatican, the Spiritual Exercises which began on Sunday, September 26, 1920, and ended on October 2, were followed by His Holiness, Benedict XV, with the

Origin 17

prelates and ecclesiastics of his Court; during which time, all public audiences were suspended. After the retreat, the two directors and those who had taken part in it were presented to the Sovereign Pontiff, who pronounced a glowing eulogy of what he called the * Holy ' Exercises."

St. Ignatius' authorship of these " Exercises ** has been frequently challenged, and they have been de- scribed as little else than a plagiarism of the book known as the " Ejercitatorio de la vida espiritual," which v/as given to him by the Benedictines of Mont- serrat. It is perfectly true that he had that book in his hands during all the time he was at Manresa, and that he went every week to confession to Dom Chan- ones, who was a monk of Montserrat, but there are very positive differences between the " Ejercitatorio " and the " Spiritual Exercises."

In the first place it should be noted that the title had been in common use long before, and was employed by the Brothers of the Common Life, to designate any of their pious publications. Even Ludolph of Saxony speaks of the " Studia spiritualis exercitii." Secondly, the " Ejercitatorio " is rigid in its divisions of three weeks of seven days each, whereas St. Ignatius takes the weeks in a metaphorical sense, and lengthens or shortens them at pleasure. Thirdly, the object of the Benedictine manual is to lead the exercitant through the purgative and illuminative life up to the unitive ; whereas St. Ignatius aims chiefly at the election of that state of life which is most pleasing to God, or at least at the correction or betterment of the one in which we happen to be. Finally, the " Ejercitatorio " does not even mention the foundation, the Kingdom, the particular examen, the Two Standards, the election, the discernment of spirits, the rules for orthodox thinking, the regulation of diet, the three degrees of

2

18 The Jesuits

IhbdB^, ttie time I'lassrs or tiie tinBC mftfMJJB of pEsper. Qofy a few of the Bfupdirtme counseis have been ailrnilwl, as m AimuLdiups s, 4, 13. 18, 19 and so. Some of tlnqglits. miWd, are siniilar in the fiist ^pc^ icooding iredks of St. Igoatms

ait r .ny case, the " Ejeratatorio "

.ard. Saint Booaventufc

_ Z : -i;i IgnatiiK" In the "Catholic

Zr XiV, 326.)

_ - ntdi easier to find a sooroe of the

• Z _ "The Great life of Christ " by

1_ '-dch as has been said, was one

^— atius in his oonvalesoenoe. of meditataons, and r^ idndi are siqiposed St. Ignatins, for tbe apfliratinn of -Jie oitfaer hand

-r

:h as

bescei r-_

die " Kii^dam " idnd: d to

_ I ^^satian is <Mily an adti r

Sl J^ wiiliiig in the " Stinunen " traces it to

7- : -rn. ■■■■mii'»» idncfa had long been cuiient

: cinvaliy, but minch, onfortanat^^, is

most afahanent to Catholics;

tdieval William, however.

is modem homonym.

: - Tross. indignant that

.- his kii^ and he

" Give me

Origin 19

Spain," he cries, "which is still in the power of the Saracens." The curious request is granted, wbeieiqxxi William sjMings upon the table and shouts to those around him : " Listen, noble knights of France 1 By the Lord Almighty ! I can boast d possessing a &d larger than that of thirty of my peers, but as yet it is uncon- quered. Therefore I address myseK to poor kni^ts,who have only a limping horse and ragged garments : and I say to them that if, up to now, they have gained nothing for their service, I will give them money, lands and Spanish horses, castles and fortresses, if together with me, they will brave the fortunes of war, in order, to help me to effect the conquest of the country and to reestablish in it the true reHgion. I make the same offer to poor squires, proposing, moreovo-, to arm them as knights." In answer to these words all exclaim "By the Lord Almighty! Sir William! haste thee, haste thee ; he who cannot follow thee on hors^iadk, will bear thee company on foot." Frcan all parts there crowded to him knights and squires with any arms they could lay hold of, and before long thirty thousand men were ready to march. They swore fealty to Count William and promised never to abandon him, though they should be cut to pieces, St. Ignatius appHes this legend to Christ in the " Exercises ".

Finally, the " Two Standards " is a picture of those who want to do more than obey the Coomiaiidmiaits. Their " Captain," the Divine Redeemer, reveals to than the wiles of the foe, which thev resolve to defeat-

What is emphatically distinctive in the " Exercises " is their coherence. With iaexorable logic, each con- clusion is deduced from what has been antecedoiily admitted as indisputable. Thus, at the aid of the first " week ", it is clear that mortal sia is an act cff condition of supreme folly; and in the course of the second, third, and fourth, we are made to see that

20 The Jesuits

unless a man chooses that particular state of life to which God calls him, or unless he puts to rights the one he is already in, he has no character, no courage, no viriHty, no gratitude to God, and no sense of danger. The fourth " week ", besides enforcing what preceded, may be regarded as intimating, though not developing, the higher mysticism,

Throughout the " Exercises," the insistent considera- tion of the fundamental truths of Christianity, and the contemplation of the mysteries or episodes of the life of Christ so illumine the mind and inflame the heart that we cannot fail, if we are reasonable, at least to desire to make the love of Christ the dominating motive of our life; and, in view of that end, we are given at every step a new insight into our duties to God, chiefly under the double aspect of our Creation and Redemption; we are taught to scrutinize our thoughts, tendencies, inclinations, passions and aspira- tions, and to detect the devices of self-deceit; we are shown the dangers that beset us and the means of safety that are available; we are instructed in prayer, meditation and self-examination. The proper co-ordi- nation of these various parts is so essential, that if their interdependence is neglected, if the arrangements and adjustments are disturbed and the connecting links disregarded or displaced, the end intended by Saint Ignatius is defeated. Hence the need of a director. It may be noted that the "Exercises" were not produced at Manresa in the form in which we have them now. They were touched and retouched up to the year 1541, that is twenty years after Loyola's stay in the " Cueva ", but they are substantially identical with the book he then wrote.

After spending about a year in the austerities of the Cave, Ignatius begged his way to Palestine, but remained there only six weeks. The Guardian of the

Origin 21

Holy Places very peremptorily insisted upon his withdrawal, because his piety and his inaccessibility to fear exposed him to bad treatment at the hands of the infidels. He then returned to Spain and set himself to the study of the Latin elements, in a class of small boys, at one of the primary schools of Barcelona. It was a rude trial for a man of his years and anteced- ents, but he never shrank from a difficulty, and, moreover, there was no other available way of getting ready for the course of philosophy which he proposed to follow at Alcala. At this latter place, he had the happiness of meeting Lamez, Salmeron and Bobadilla, but he also made the acquaintance of the jails of the Inquisition, where he was held prisoner for forty- two days, on suspicion of heresy, besides being kept under surveillance, from November, 1526, till June of the year following. It happened, also, that as he was being dragged through the streets to jail, a brilHant cavalcade met the mob, and inquiries were made as to what it was all about, and who the prisoner was. The cavaHer who put the question was one who was to be later a devoted follower of Ignatius ; he was no less a personage than Francis Borgia. Six years after the establishment of the Society, Ignatius repaid Alcald, for its harsh treatment, by founding a famous college there, whose chairs were filled by such teachers as Vasquez and Suarez.

Ignatius had no better luck at Salamanca. There he was not even allowed to study, but was kept in chains for three weeks while being examined as to his orthodoxy. But as with Alcala, so with Salamanca. Later on he founded a college in that university also, and made it illustrious by giving it de Lugo, Suarez, Valencia, Maldonado, Ribera and a host of other distinguished teachers. Leaving Salamanca, Ignatius began his journey to Paris, travelling on foot, behind

22 The Jesuits

a little burro whose only burden were the books of the driver. It was mid-winter; war had been declared between France and Spain, and he had to beg for food on the way; but nothing could stop him, and he arrived at Paris safe and sound, in the beginning of Fcbruar}^ 1528. In 1535 he received the degree of Master of Arts, after " the stony trial," as it was called, namely the most rigorous examination. For some time previously he had devoted himself to the study of theology, but ill health prevented him from presenting himself for the doctorate. He lived at the College of Ste Barbe where his room-mates were Peter Faber and Francis Xavier. Singularly enough and almost prophetic of the future, Calvin had studied at the same college. The names of Loyola and Calvin are cut on the walls of the building to-day. In 1533 Calvin, it is said, came back to induce the rector of the college, a Doctor Kopp, to embrace the new doctrines. He succeeded, and, before the whole university, Kopp declared himself a Calvinist. Calvin had prepared the way by having the city placarded with a blasphemous denunciation of the Blessed Eucharist. A popular uprising followed and Calvin fled. In reparation a solemn procession of reparation was organized on January 21, 1535. There is some doubt, however, about the authenticity of this story. Ignatius encountered trouble in France as he had in Spain. On one occasion he was sentenced to be flogged in presence of all the students; but the rector of the college, after examining the charge against him, publicly apologized. There was also a delation to the Inquisition, but when he demanded an immediate trial he was told that the indictment had been quashed. Previous to these humiliations and exculpations he had gathered around him a number of brilliant young men, all of whom have made their mark on history.

Origin 23

They afford excellent material for an exhaustive study of the psychology of the Saints.

Most conspicuous among them was Francis Xavier, who will ever be the wonder of history. With him were Lainez and Salmeron, soon to be the luminaries of the Council of Trent, the former of whom barely escaped being elevated to the chair of St. Peter, and then only by fleeing Rome. There was also Bobadilla, the future favorite of kings and princes and prelates, the idol of the armies of Austria, the tireless apostle who evangelised seventy-seven dioceses of Europe, but who unfortunately alienated Charles V from the Society by imprudently telling him what should have come from another source or in another way. There was Rodriguez who was to hold Portugal, Brazil and India in his hands, ecclesiastically ; and Faber who was to precede Canisius in the salvation of Gennany.

Each one of these remarkable men differed in char- acter from the rest. Bobadilla, Salmeron, Lainez and Xavier were Spaniards; but the blue-blooded and somewhat " haughty " Xavier must have been tempted to look with disdain on a man with a Jewish strain like Lainez. Salmeron was only a boy of about nineteen, but already marvelously learned; and Bobadilla was an impecunious professor whom Ignatius had helped to gain a livelihood in Paris, but whose ebulliency of temper was a continued source of anxiety; Rodriguez was a man of velleities rather than of action, and his ideas of asceticism were in conflict with those of Ignatius. The most docile of all was the Savoyard Peter Faber, who began life as a shepherd boy and was already far advanced in sanctity when he met St. Ignatius. In spite, however, of all this divergency of traits and antecedent environment, the wonderful personality of their leader exerted its undisputed sway over them all, not by a rigid uniformity of direc-

24 The Jesuits

tion, but by an adaptation to the idiosyncravSies of each. His profound knowledge of their character, coupled as it was with an intense personal affection for them, was so effective that the proud aloofness of Xavier, the explosiveness of Bobadilla, the latent persistency of Lainez, the imaginativeness and hesi- tancy of Rodriguez, the enthusiasm of the boyish Salmeron, and the sweetness of Faber, all paid him the tribute of the sinccrest attachment and an eagerness to follow his least suggestion. Rodriguez was the sole exception in the latter respect, but he failed only twice. Two other groups of young men had previously gathered around Ignatius, but, one by one, they deserted him. All of the last mentioned persevered, and became the foundation-stones of the Society of Jesus.

On August 15, 1534, Ignatius led his companions to a little church on the hill of Montmartre, then a league outside the city, but now on the Rue Antoinette, below the present great basilica of the vSacred Heart. In its crypt which they apparently had all to themselves that morning, they pronounced their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Faber, the only priest among them, said Mass and gave them communion. Such was the beginning of the new Order in the Church. A brass plate on the wall of the chapel proclaims it to be the " cradle of the Society of Jesus." It is almost startling to recall that while in the University of Paris, not only Ignatius but also Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, who were to be so prominent in the world in a short time, were in destitute circumstances. They had no money even to pay for their lodging, and they occupied a single room which had been given them, out of charity, in one of the towers of Ste Barbe. It was providential, however, for in the same college, but paying his way, was a former schoolmate of Faber

Origin 25

and like him a native of Savoy. This was Claude Le Jay, or Jay, as he is sometimes called. Of course he had noticed Ignatius and the group of brilliant young Spaniards, but he had little or nothing to do with them until once, when Ignatius was absent in Spain, Faber let him into the secret of their great plan of converting the Turks. The result was that when next year the associates went out to Montmartre to renew their vows, Le Jay was with them as were also two other university men : Jean Codure from Dauphine and the Picard, Pasquier Brouet, who was already a priest.

It had been arranged that in 1536 when their courses of study were finished and their degrees and certificates secured, they were to meet at Venice to em'bark for the Holy Land. They were to make the journey to Venice on foot. They set out, therefore, in two bands, a priest with each, taking the route that passed by Meaux and then through Lorraine, across Switzerland to Venice. It was a daring journey of fifty-two days in the dead of winter, over mountain passes, without money to pay their way or to purchase food; with poor and insufficient clothing, across countries filled with soldiers preparing for war, or angry fanatics who scoffed at the rosaries around their necks, and who might have ill-treated them or put them to death; they bore it all, however, not only patiently but light-heartedly, and on January 6, 1537, arrived in Venice, where Ignatius was waiting for them. To them was added a new member of the association, Diego Hozes, who had known Ignatius at Alcala and now came to him at Venice.

After a brief rest, which they took by waiting on the poor and sick in the worst hospital of the city, they were told to go down to Rome to ask the Pope's permission to carry out their plans. This journey was not as long or as dangerous as the one they had just

26 The Jesuits

made, but the bad weather, the long fasts, the sickness of some of them, the rebuffs and abusive language which they received when they asked for alms, made it hard enough for flesh and blood to bear; however their devotion to the end they had in view, or what the world might call their Quixotic enthusiasm bore them onward. They were apprehensive, however, about their reception in Rome, not it is true, from the Father of the Faithful himself, but from a certain great Spanish canonist, a Doctor Ortiz, who happened to be just then at the papal court, making an appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff in behalf of Catherine of Aragon against Henry VIII.

Ortiz had met Ignatius in Paris and was bitterly prejudiced against him. That, indeed, was the reason why the little band appeared in the Holy City without their leader, but neither he nor they were aware that Ortiz had changed his mind and was now an enthusi- astic friend. Hence when the travel-stained envoys from Venice presented themselves, they could scarcely believe their eyes. Ortiz received them with every demonstration of esteem and affection. He presented them to the Pope, and urged him to grant all their requests. Subsequently, Faber acted as theologian for Ortiz, when that dignitary represented Charles V at Worms and in Spain. Of course the Pontiff was overjoyed and not only blessed the members of the httle band but gave them a considerable sum of money to pay their passage to the Holy Land. So they hurried back to Ignatius with the good news, and on June 24 all those who were not priests were ordained.

The custom that prevails in the Church, in our days, is for a newly -ordained priest to celebrate Mass on the morning following his ordination; but Ignatius and his companions prepared themselves for this great act in an heroic fashion. They buried themselves in

Origin 27

caverns or in the ruins of dilapidated monasteries for an entire month, giving themselves up to fasting and prayer, preaching at times in some adjoining town or hamlet. It was on this occasion that the vacillating character of Rodriguez revealed itself. He and Le Jay- had taken up their abode in a hermitage near Bassano where a venerable old man named Antonio was reviving in the heart of Italy the practices of the old solitaries of the Thebaid. Rodriguez fell ill and was at the point of death when Ignatius arrived and told him that he would recover. So, indeed, it happened, but singularly enough he was anxious to continue his eremitical life and, without speaking of his doubts to Ignatius, set out to consult the old hermit about it, but became conscience-stricken before he arrived. " O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" was all St. Ignatius said, when Rodriguez confessed what he had done. Nevertheless, that did not cure him, for the desire of leading a life of bodily austerity had taken possession of him and was at the bottom of the trouble which he subsequently caused in Portugal, and also when, in 1554, he wrote entreatingly to Pope Julius III for permission to leave the Society and become a hermit (Prat, Le P. Claude Le Jay, 32, note).

At the end of the retreat, the}'- all returned to Venice, where they waited in vain for a ship to carry them to the land of the Mussulmans. It was only when there was absolutely no hope left, that they made up their minds to go back to Rome, and put themselves at the disposal of the Pope for any work he might give them. As this was fully twenty years after Martin Luther had nailed his thesis to the church door of Wittenberg, it is clear that Ignatius had no idea of attacking Protestantism when he founded the Society of Jesus.

Possibly this stay in Venice has something to do

28 The Jesuits

with the solution of a question which has been fre- quently mooted and was solemnly discussed at a congress of physicians at San Francisco as late as igoo, namely, why did Vesalius, the great anatomist, go to the Holy Land? The usual supposition is that it was to perform a penance enjoined by the Inquisition in consequence of some alleged heretical utterances by the illustrious scientist. However, Sir Michael Foster of the University of Cambridge, who was the principal speaker at the Congress, oflered another explanation. " It is probable," he said, " that while pursuing his studies in the hospitals of Venice, Vesalius often conversed with another young man who was there at the time and who was known as Ignatius Loyola." Such a meeting may, indeed, have occurred, for Ignatius haunted the hospitals, and his keen eye would have discerned the merit of Vesalius, who was a sincerely pious man. Hence, it is not at all unlikely that the young physician may have made the " Spiritual Exercises " under the direction of Ignatius, and that his journey to the Holy Land was the result of his intercourse with the group of brilliant young students, who just then had no other object in life but to convert the Turks.

On the journey to Rome Ignatius went ahead with Faber and Lainez, and it was then that he had the vision of Christ carrying the cross, and heard the promise: "Ego vobis RomcT propitius ero " (I will be propitious to you in Rome.) They were received aflectionately and trustingly by the Pope, who sent Lainez and Faber to teach in the Sapienza, one lecturing on holy scripture and the other on scholastic theology; while Ignatius gave the " Spiritual Exercises " wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself. When the other four arrived, they were immediately employed in various parts of Rome in works of charity and zeal.

Origin 29

It was in Rome that Ignatius first came in personal contact with the Reformation. A Calvinist preacher who had arrived in the city had succeeded in creating a popular outcry against the new priests, by accusing them of all sorts of crimes. As such charges would be fatal in that place above all, if not refuted, the usual policy of silence was not observed. By the advice of the Pope the affair was taken to court where the complaint was immediately dismissed and an ofificial attestation of innocence given by the judge. The result was a counter-demonstration, that made the accuser flee for his life to Geneva. As an assurance of his confidence in them, the Sovereign Pontiff employed them in several parts of Italy where the doctrines of the Reformation were making alarming headway. Thus, Brouet and Salmeron were sent to Siena; Faber and Lainez accompanied the papal legate to Parma; Xavier and Bobadilla set out for Campania; Codure and Hozes for Padua; and Rodriguez and Le Jay for Ferrara. It is impossible to follow them all in these various places, but a brief review of the difficulties that confronted Rodriguez and Le Jay in Ferrara may be regarded as typical of the rest.

In conformity with the instructions of Ignatius, they lodged at the hospital, preached whenever they could, either in the churches or on the public streets, and taught catechism to the children and hunted for scandalous sinners. An old woman at the hospital discovered by looking through a crack in the door that they passed a large part of the night on their knees. At this point Hozes died at Padua, and Rodriguez had to replace him; Le Jay was thus left alone at Ferrara. The duke, Hercules II, became his friend, but the duchess, Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII, avoided him. She was a supposedly learned

30 The Jesuits

, a iwei unner, so to say, of the precieuses ridicmUs of liobere, and an ardent patron of Cahrin, a frequent Wsitor at the ooort, akxig with the lascivioas poet CMment Marot. idio translated the Psalms into verse to popolaxiae Calvin's heretical teadiings. Another <■!■■■» WIS figure that kxmed tip at Ferrara was the ffmn*^i*t Capochin preacher, Bernardo Oc^nno, a man cf i»=^in*itifcMi» doqnenoe, whidi, however, was literary and dramatic rather than apostolic in its character. Ss emaciated coantenaiice, his long flowing white beard and his fanrent c^ipeak to penance made a deep impressioo on the people. TlKy regarded >mn as a saint, never dreaming that he was a coocealed heretic, who vonld eventoally apostatise and assail the Church. He was nraci admired by the dti<ii€ss, who ocxioeived a bitto' hatred for Le Jay and would not even admit him to her presence. The trouble of the Jesuit was increased by the attitude of the bidiop, who, knowing the real diaracter of Odnno, loolced with sospicion on Le Jay, as possibly annthpr wolf in dieep's dothing; bdt his sn^acians were soon d^)elkd, and he gave Le Jay every means in his power to revive the faith and morals of the dry. The dnrhpss, howrever, became so aggressive in ha- pro8d3rtism that the duke ordered her into seclusion, and when he died, his son and SMCTPSMir S0it her bac^ to her people in France where slie died an obstinate heretic

From Ferrara Le Jay hastened to Bagnoiea to end a siAism tliere, and thoog^ neither side would listen to at first, yet his fiatimce overcame all difficulties, finally, evaybody met everybody else in the great fhmrh, embraced and went to Holy Communion. Peace then reined in the city. The other envoys achieved sknilar siirrpsises elsewhere throog^ioixt the pemosnia; and Cretineao-Jc^ says that their joint efforts thwarted the plot of the heretics to destroy the

Origin 31

Paitli in Italy. The winter ci 1538 was severe in Rome, and a scarcity of pfOvisioDS tntiag^t on what amotmted almost to a famine. This distzess gave Ignatius and his cooqianioQS the :;:.-.:-: of showing thdr devotion to the soflFerinc ; : '':.--

not only cxmtrived in sine "s-ay or other to :-tI m tl^ir own house, as man^r ^ : . .r '..r. ir^l ii : : people, but inspired m^r; :: :..- - :^ i.:^ les to

imitate their example.

\^^th this and other good woris to their credit, they could now ask the anthcxizatioo c: the Sovereign PontifiE for thdr enterprise. Hence cr ~t -err.':-er 3, 1539, they submitted a driuc:.* ::' t'vr I : :;:::u:::!i, and were pleased to hear that it evihri :: : r . ...^ ? :;e the exclamation: " llie finger <rf Goi :£ . -t Z ^: they vrere not so fcatunate witli the -- n oi

cardinals to whom the matter was rhr" reterred- Guidicciom, who presided, was not :r-ly i r-'-o^iy hostile, but expressed the opinio "hit ^ . .?

rehgioos orders should be reducTi : : r mi jit::^ he contemptuously tossed the j- - ^^ I: ~as

only after a year that he toc^ it _li . — „; i_^rt=ly

knew why — and on readine it :- vely he was

CMnpletely craiverted and hai.r ii. :; reoort cm it as foUows: "Although as befewe, I 5: Id to the

opinion that no new reHgioas order £. _ r ._-£:: _:ei.. I cannot refrain frcxn approving thi£ me. Indeed, I regard it as something that is now needed to help Christaidom in its ::: : les, and e^iecially to destroy the hereaeswhidi are at t: :r .: devastatii^ Europe." Thus it is Guidicciom who is re^nnsiUe for ^yttmg the Society to undo t-.r " : : : of Martin Luther.

The Pope was extre ::.t- z le.i;ed by the cxxmmssicHi's report, and on Septen.irr 27, i5_; r . i ^ ' oe BuU " Regimini mih'tantis Eeclesi:?. .i : : r : : 7 r Institute of the Sociery ctf Jesus." In this B.l. ^ 1

32 The Jesuits

that of Julius III, the successor of Paul III, we have the official statement of the character and the purpose of the Society. Its object is the salvation and perfec- tion of the souls of its members and of the neighbor. One of the chief means for that end is the gratuitous instruction of youth. There are no penances of rule; but it is assumed that bodily mortifications are practised and employed, though only under direction. Great care is taken in the admission and formation of novices, and lest the protracted periods of study, later, should chill the fervor of their devotion, there are to be semi-annual spiritual renovations, and when the studies are over, and the student ordained to the priesthood, there is a third year of probation, somewhat similar to the novitiate in its exercises. There are two grades in the Society — one of professed, the other of coadjutors, both spiritual and temporal.

All are to be bound by the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but those of the coadjutors are simple, while those of the professed are solemn. The latter make a fourth vow, namely, one of obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, which binds them to go wherever he sends them, and to do so without excuse, and without provisions for the journey. The Father- General is elected for Hfe. He resides in Rome, so as to be at the beck of the Sovereign Pontiff, and also because of the international character of the Society. All superiors are appointed by him, and he is regularly informed through the provincials about all the members of the Society. Every three years there is a meeting of procurators to report on their respective provinces and to settle matters of graver moment. The General is aided in his government by assistants chosen mostly according to racial divisions, which may in turn be subdivided. There is also an admonitor who sees that the General governs according to the laws of the

Origin 33

Society and for the common good. Disturbers of the peace of the Order are to be sharply admonished, and if incorrigible, expelled. When approved scholastics or formed coadjutors are dismissed they are dispensed from their simple vows. The simple vow of chastity made by the scholastics is a diriment impediment of matrimony. Because of possible withdrawals or dis- missals from the Society, the dominion of property previously possessed is to be retained, as long as the general may see fit, but not the usufruct — an arrangement which has been repeatedly approved by successive Pontiffs, as well as by the Council of Trent. All ambition of ecclesiastical honors is shut off by a special vow to that effect. There is no choir or special dress. The poverty of the Society is of the strictest. The professed houses are to subsist on alms, and cannot receive even the usual stipends. Moreover, the professed are bound by a special vow to watch over and prevent any relaxation in this respect. The rule is paternal, and hence an account of conscience is to be made, either under seal of confession or in whatever way the individual may find most agreeable, A general congregation may be convened as often as necessary. Its advisability is determined at the meeting of the procurators. In the first part of the Constitution, the impediments and the mode of admission are considered ; in the second, the manner of dismissal; in the third and fourth, the means of furthering piety and study and whatever else concerns the spiritual advancement, chiefly of the scholastics; the fifth explains the char- acter of those who are to be admitted and also the various grades; the sixth deals with the occupations of the members ; the seventh treats of those of superiors ; the eighth and ninth relate to the General; and the tenth determines the ways and means of government. Before the Constitutions were promulgated, Ignatius

3

34 The Jesuits

submitted them to the chief representatives of the various nationaHties then in the Order, but they did not receive the force of law until they were approved by the first general congregation of the whole Society. After that they were presented to Pope Paul III, and examined by four Cardinals. Not a word had been altered when they were returned. The Sovereign Pontiff declared that they were more the result of Divine inspiration than of human prudence.

For thOvSe who read these Constitutions without any preconceived notions, the meaning is obvious, whereas the intention of discovering something mysterious and maHgnant in them inevitably leads to the most ridiculous misinterpretations of the text. Thus, for instance, some writers inform us that St. Ignatius is not the author of the Constitutions, but Lainez, Mercurian or Acquaviva. Others assure their readers that no Pope can ever alter or modify even the lext; that the General has special power to absolve novices from any mortal sins they may have committed before entering; that the general confessions of beginners are carefully registered and kept; that a special time is assigned to them for reading accounts of miraculous apparitions and demoniacal obsessions; that before the two years of novitiate have elapsed a vow must be taken to enter the Society; that all wills made in favor of one's family must be rescinded; that in meditating, the eyes must be fixed on a certain point and the thoughts centered on the Pater Noster until a state of quasi-hypnotism results; that the grades in the Society are reached after thirty or thirty-five years of probation, after which the applicant becomes a probationer; the professed are called "ours"; the spiritual coadjutors " externs." The latter do the plotting and have aroused all the ill-will of which the Society has been the object; whereas the professed

Origin 35

devote themselves to prayer and are admired and loved.

There are also, we are assured, secret, outside Jesuits. The Emperors Ferdinand II and III, and Sigismund of Poland are put in that class, and probably also John III of Portugal and Maximilian of Bavaria; while Louis XIV is suspected of belonging to it. The Father-General dispenses such members from the priesthood and from wearing the soutane. " Imagine Louis XIV," says Brou, who furnishes these details, " asking the General of the Jesuits to be dispensed from wearing the soutane!" Unlike the other Jesuits, these cryptics would not be obliged to go to Rome to pronounce their vows. Again, it is said. Pope Paul IV had great difficulty in persuading the Jesuits to accept the dispensation from the daily recitation of the breviary. Perhaps the most charming of all of these " discoveries " is that the famous phrase perinde ac cadaver, " you must obey as if you were a dead body," was borrowed from the Sheik Si-Senoussi who laid down rules for his Senoussis in Africa, about two centuries after St. Ignatius had died. The authors of these extraordinary conceptions are Miiller, Reuss, Cartwright, Pollard, VoUet and others, all of whom are honoured with a notice posted in the British Museum, as worthy of being consulted on the puzzling subject of Jesuitry, and yet the Constitutions of the Society and the explanations of them, by prominent Jesuit writers, can be found in any public library^

CHAPTER II

'INITIAL ACTIVITIES

Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy — Election of Ignatius — Jesuits in Ireland — " The Scotch Doctor " — Faber and Melancthon

— Le Jay — Bobadilla — Council of Trent — Lainez, Salmer6n, Canisius — The Catechism — Opposition in Spain — Cano — Pius V

— First Missions to America — The French Parliaments — Postel — Foundation of the Collegium Germanicum at Rome — Similar Estab- lishments in Gennany — Clermont and other Colleges in France — Colloque de Poissy.

The pent-up energy of the new organization immedi- ately found vent not only in Europe but at the ends of the earth. Portugal gave its members their first welcome when Xavier and Rodriguez went there, the latter to remain permanently, the former only for a brief space. Araoz evangelized Spain and was the first Jesuit to enter into relations with Francis Borgia, Viceroy of Catalonia, who afterwards became General of the Society. A college was begun in Paris and pro- vided with professors such as Strada, Ribadeneira, Oviedo and Mercurian. Faber accompanied Ortiz, the papal legate, to Germany; Brouet, Bobadilla, Salmeron, Codure and Lainez went everywhere through Italy; while Ignatius remained at Rome, directing their operations and meantime establishing orphanages, night refuges, Magdalen asylumns, shelters for persecuted Jews, and similar institutions. Strangely enough, Ignatius was not yet the General of the Society, for no election had thus far taken place. Strictly speaking, however, none was needed, for none of the associates ever dreamed of any other leader. However, on April 5, 1 54 1, the balloting took place; those who were absent sending their votes by messenger. That of

[36]

Initial Activities 37

Xavier could not arrive in time, for he had already left Portugal for the East; indeed he had departed before the official approval of the Order by the Pope — two things which have suggested to some inventive historians that Francis Xavier was not really a Jesuit. They would have proved their point better, if they could have shown Xavier had remained in Europe after he had been ordered away. As a matter of fact ; he had been one of the collaborators of Ignatius iji framing the Constitutions and was still in Portugal when the news arrived of Guidiccioni's change of mind. In the election every vote but one went for Ignatius. The missing one was his own. He was dissatisfied and asked for another election. Out of respect for him, the request was granted but with the same result — Such a concession, it may be noted, is never granted now. The one who is chosen submits without a word. The office is for life but provisions are made for re- moval — a contingency which happily has never arisen. As in the beginning, those elections are held at what are called general congregations. The first one was made up of all the available fathers but at present they consist of the fathers assistant, namely the repre- sentatives of the principal linguistic groups in the Society or their subdivisions — a body of men who constitute what is called the Curia and who live with the General; the provincials; two delegates from each province; and finally the procurator of the Society. With one exception, these congregations have always met in Rome ; the exception is the one that chose Father Luis Martin in 1892, which assembled at Loyola in Spain. That these elections may be absolutely free from all external and internal influence, the delegates are strictly secluded, and have no communication with other members of the Society, Foiu* days are spent in pra^^er and in seeking information from the various

38 The Jesuits

electors, but the advocacy of any particular candidate is absolutely prohibited. The ballot is secret and the voting is immediately preceded by an hour's meditation in presence of the crucifix. The electors are fasting, but the method of voting is such that a deadlock or even any great delay is next to impossible. Up to the time of the Suppression of the Society in 1773, there had been eighteen Generals. In the interim between that catastrophe and the re-establishment, there were three Vicars-General, who were compelled by force of circumstances to live in Russia. In 1802 on the receipt of the Brief " CathoHcae Fidei," the title of the last Vicar was changed to that of General. Since then, there have been eight successors to that post.

St. Ignatius was chosen General on Easter Sunday, 1 541. After the election, the companions repaired to St. Paul's outside the Walls and there renewed their vows. On that occasion it was ordained that every professed father should, after making his vows, teach catechism to children or ignorant people for forty days ; subsequently this obligation was extended to rectors of colleges after their installation. Ignatius acquitted himself of this task in the church of Our Lady of the Wayside at the foot of the Capitol.

In 1 541 we find Salmeron and Brouet on their way to Ireland as papal nuncios. They had been asked for by Archbishop Wauchope of Armagh, when Henry VIII was endeavoring to crush out the Faith in England and Ireland. Wauchope is a very interesting historical character. He had been named Archbjshop of Armagh after Browne of that see had apostatized. He was generally known as " the Scotch Doctor," and had been the Delegate of Pope Paul III at Spires where Charles V was striving in vain to conciliate the German princes. With him as advisers were Le Jay, Bobadilla and Faber. What made him especially conspicuous

Initial Activities 39

then and subsequently, was the fact that he had risen to the dignity of archbishop and of papal delegate though he was bom blind. This is asserted by a host of authors, among them Prat in his life of Le Jay, and Cr6tineau-Joly, MacGeoghegan and Moore in their histories.

On the other hand we find in the " Acta Sanctag Sedis " (XIII) a flat denial of it by no less a personage than Pope Benedict XIV. It occurs incidentally in a decision given on March 20, 1880, in connection with an appeal for a young theologian, whose sight was very badly impaired at the end of his theological course. The appellants had alleged the case of the Archbishop of Armagh and the court answered as follows: " Nee valeret adduci exemplum cujusdam Roberti Scoti, cui quamvis caeco a puerili setate, concessa fuit facultas nedum ad sacerdotium sed etiam ad episcopatum, ascendendi, uti tenent Maiol. {De irregularitate), et Barbos (De officio episcopi). Respondet enim Bene- dictus XIV, quod reliqui scriptores, quibus major fides habenda est, Robertum non oculis captum sed infirmum fuisse dicunt;" which in brief means: " Benedict XIV declares that the most reliable historians say that Scotch Robert was not blind but of feeble vision." As Benedict XIV was perhaps the greatest scholar who ever occupied the Chair of Peter, and as his extraor- dinary intellectual abili'ties were devoted from the beginning of his career to historical, canonical and liturgical studies, in which he is regarded as of the highest authority, such an utterance may be accepted as final with regard to the " Scotch Doctor's " blind- ness.

Codure was to have been one of the Irish delegates, but he died, and hence Salmeron, Brouet and Zapata undertook the perilous mission. The last mentioned "Vvas a wealthy ecclesiastic who was about to enter the

40 The Jesuits

Society and had offered to defray the expenses of the journey. In the instructions for their manner of acting Ignatius ordered that Brouet should be spokesman whenever nobles or persons of importance were to be dealt with. As Brouet had the looks and the sweetness of an angel, whereas Salmeron was abrupt at times, the wisdom of the choice was obvious. They went by the way of France to Scotland, and when at Stirling Castle, they received a letter from James V, the father of Mary Queen of Scots, bespeaking their interest in his people. Cretineau-Joly says they saw the king personally. Fouqueray merely hints at its likelihood. From Scotland they passed over to Ireland and found that the enemy knew of their arrival. A price was put upon their heads, and they had to hurry from place to place so as not to compromise those who gave them shelter. But in the brief period of a month which they had at their disposal before they were recalled by the Pope they had ample opportunity to take in the conditions that prevailed. They returned as they had gone, through Scotland and over to Dieppe, and then directed their steps to Rome, but they were arrested as spies near Lyons and thrown into prison — a piece of news which Paget, the English ambassador in France, hastened to communicate to Henry; Cardinals de Tournon and Gaddi, however, succeeded in having them released and they then proceeded to the Holy City to make their report.

Eighteen years later. Father Michael Gaudan was sent as papal nuncio to Mary Stuart. He entered Edinburgh disguised as a Scottish peddler and succeeded in reaching the queen. As a Frenchman could not have acted the part of a Scottish peddler, it is more than likely that Gaudan is a gallicized form of Gordon. Indeed, there is on the records a Father James Gordon, S. J., who had so exasperated the Calvinists by his

Initial Activities 41

refutation of their errors that he was driven out of the country. He returned again, however, immediately, as he simply got a boat to take him off the ship which was carrying him into exile, and on the following day he stood once more upon his native heath, remaining there for some years sustaining his persecuted Catholic brethren (Claude Nau, Mary's secretary).

That the " blind Archbishop " also succeeded in reaching his see is clear from a passage in Moore's " History of Ireland " (xlvii), which tells how during the reign of Edward VI two French gentlemen, the Baron de Fourquevaux and the Sieur Montluc, after- wards Bishop of Valence, went to Ireland as envoys of the French king and were concealed in Culmer Fort on Loch Foyle. They kept a diary of their journey which may be found, we are assured, in the " Armorial-general ou registre de la noblesse de France." The diary relates that while at the Fort " they received a visit from Robert Wauchope, better known by his pen name as Venantius, a divine whose erudition was the more remarkable as he had been blind from birth and was at the time, titular Archbishop of Armagh." He did not, however, remain in Ireland. MacGeo- ghegan says " he returned to the Continent and died in the Jesuit house at Paris in the year 1551. Stewart Rose in her " Saint Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits " tells us it was at Lyons, but that was impossible, for there was no Jesuit establishment in Lyons until after the great pestilence of 1565, when the authorities offered the Society the municipal college of the Trinity as a testimonial of gratitude to Father Auger. The generosity of this offer, however, was not excessive. The Fathers were to take it for two years on trial. They did so and then the pro- vincial insisted that the gift should be absolute or the staff would be withdrawn. After some bickering on

42 The Jesuits

the part of a number of Calvinist 6chevins or aldermen, the grant was made in perpetuity and confirmed by Charles IX in 1568.

Meantime, Faber had been laboring in Germany. He was to have been the Catholic orator at Worms in 1540, but conditions were such that he made no public utterance. Melanchthon was present, but whether Faber and he met is not clear. In 1541 Faber received an enthusiastic welcome at Ratisbon from the Catholics, especially from Cochlceus, the great antagonist of Luther. Among his opponents at the Diet were Bucer and Melanchthon; the discussion, as usual, led to no result. In one of his letters he notes the inability of the Emperor to prevent the general ruin of the Faith. From Ratisbon he went to Nurem- berg, but as the legate had been recalled, Faber's work necessarily came to an end. Le Jay and Bobadilla succeeded him in Germany. The former addressed the assembly of the bishops at Salzburg, preached in the Lutheran churches, escaped being poisoned on one occasion and drowned on another; he failed, however, to check the flood of heresy, which had not only completely engulfed Ratisbon, but threatened to overwhelm Catholic Bavaria, although Duke William maintained that such an event was impossible. Ingolstadt had already been badly damaged, both doctrinally and morally; and Bobadilla was despatched thither by the legate to see what could be done.

Faber had, meantime, returned to Germany. In spite of attacks by highwaymen, imprisonment, ill- treatment at the hands of disorderly bands of soldiers and heretics, he reached Spires and completely revived the spirit of the clergy. From there he hastened to Cologne, but in the midst of his work he was sent off to Portugal for the marriage of the king's daughter. By the time he reached Lou vain, he was sick and

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exhausted, so that the order to proceed to Portugal had to be rescinded. He then returned to Cologne, where he again met Bucer and Melanchthon, who were endeavoring to induce the bishop to apostatize. Apprehensive of their success, he had them both expelled from the city. Again he was summoned to Portugal, and in 1547 the king, at his instance, gave the Society the college of Coimbra. Similar establish- ments were begun about the same time in Spain — at Valencia, Barcelona and Valladolid, chiefly through the influence of Araoz.

Le Jay, meanwhile, had been made professor of theology at Innsbruck, on the death of the famous Dr. Eck, and the university petitioned the Pope to make his appointment perpetual ; but he was clamored for simultaneously by several bishops, and we find him subsequently at Augsburg, Salzburg, Dillingen and elsewhere, battling incessantly for the cause of the Faith. He succeeded in inducing the bishops assembled at Augsburg to prohibit the discussion of religion at the Diet, and a little later he assisted at the ecclesiastical council of the province. With him at this gathering was Bobadilla, who, says the chronicler, " resembled him in energy and zeal but was altogether unlike him in character." Le Jay was gentle and persuasive; Bobadilla, impetuous and volcanic. Bobadilla's fire, however, seems to have pleased the Germans. He strengthened the nobles and people of Innsbruck in their faith, was consulted by King Ferdinand on the gravest questions, scored brilliant successes in public disputes, and was made socius of the Apostolic nuncio at Nuremberg, where, it was suspected, a deep plot was being laid for the complete extirpation of the Faith. At the king's request, he attended the Diet of Worms, and by his alertness and knowledge rendered immense service to the Catholic party. He was shortly after-

44 The Jesuits

ward summoned by the king to Vienna where he preached to the people incessantly and revived the ecclesiastical spirit of the clergy. He was again at Worms for another diet, and persuaded both the emperor and Ferdinand to oppose the Lutheran scheme of convoking a general council in Germany. At the suggestion of St. Ignatius, an appeal had been made to the bishops, through Le Jay, to establish seminaries in their dioceses. They all approved of the project; and several immediately set to work to carry it out.

When the Diet adjourned, Le Jay left Germany to take part in the Council of Trent, while Bobadilla remained with the king as spiritual adviser to the court and general supervisor of the sick and wounded soldiers of the royal armies. In the latter capacity he acquitted himself with his usual energy — his impetu- osity of character often bringing him into the forefront of battle, where he merited several honorable scars for his daring. He also succeeded in falling a victim to the pestilence which was ravaging the country; he was robbed and maltreated by marauders, but came through it all safely, and we find him at the Diets of Ratisbon and Augsburg, everywhere showing himself a genuine apostle, as the Archbishop of Vienna informed Ignatius. The king offered him a bishopric, but he refused. He was soon, however, to know Germany no more.

The Council of Trent had already been in session for three years, when Charles V issued an edict known as the Interim, which forbade any change of religion until the council had finished its work; but at the same time he made concessions to the heretics which angered the Catholics both lay and clerical. Bobadilla was especially outspoken in the matter and in a public discourse was imprudent enough to condemn the imperial policy. Clearly he had not yet acquired the

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characteristic virtue of his great leader. Not only did he not mend matters by his intemperate eloquence, but he created an aversion for the Society in the mind of Charles V, which lasted till the time of St. Francis Borgia. Besides, he virtually blasted his own career. He was ordered to Naples by St. Ignatius and forbidden to present himself at the Jesuit house as he passed through Rome. He appears only once later and then in a manner scarcely redounding to his credit: objecting to the election of Lainez as vicar, although he had previously voted for him and obeyed him for a year. Happily the brilliant services of his fellow Jesuits who were at the Council of Trent and elsewhere, as well as his own splendid past, averted any very great damage to the Society.

Although Ignatius had been invited to be present at the sessions in Trent, he sedulously avoided the prominence which that would have given him person- ally; moreover, absence from his post as General of the newly-formed Institute would have materially interfered with the task of preparing successors to the great men who were already at work. Thus, Salmeron and Lainez were the Pope's theologians and Father Faber was summoned from his sick bed in Portugal to assist them, but he arrived in Rome only to die in the arms of Ignatius and never appeared at the council. Le Jay was present as theologian of the Cardinal Archbishop of Augsburg; Cavallino repre- sented the Duke of Bavaria; and later Canisius and Polanco were added to the group. The coming of Canisius was due more or less to an accident. He had been la"boring at Cologne to prevent the archbishop, Herman von Weid, from openly apostatizing; when the concessions to Melanchthon and Bucer had become too outrageous to be tolerated, he had hurried off to meet the emperor and King Ferdinand to ask for the

46

The Jesuits

deposition of the prelate. With the king he met Truchsess, the great Cardinal of Augsburg, and had no difficulty in gaining his point, but the Cardinal was so fascinated by the ability of the young pleader that he insisted on taking him to Trent as his theologian in spite of the protests of the whole city of Cologne.

Naturally, many of the Fathers of the Council had their suspicions of these new theologians. They were members of a religious order which had broken with the traditions of the past, and they might possibly be heretics in disguise. Moreover, they were alarmingly young. Canisius was only twenty-six, Salmeron thirty- one, Le Jay about the same age, and Lainez, the chief figure in the council, not more than thirty-four. But the indubitable holiness of their lives, their amazing learning, and their uncompromising orthodoxy soon dissipated all doubts about them. Lainez and Salmeron were especially prominent. They were allowed to speak as long as they chose on any topic. Thus, after Lainez had discoursed for an entire day on the Sacrifice of the Mass, he was ordered to continue on the following morning. Entire sections of the Acts of the council were written by him; and by order of the Pope both he and Salmeron had to be present at all the sessions of the council, which lasted with its interruptions from 1545 to 1563. Bishoprics and a cardinal's hat were offered to Lainez ; and, at the death of Paul IV, twelve votes were cast for him as Pope. Indeed one section of the cardinals had made up their minds to elect him, but when apprised of it, he fled and kept in concealment until the danger was averted. He was at that time General of the Society.

After the first adjournment of the council, these men whose stupendous labors would appear to have called for some repose were granted none at all. Thus, we find Lainez summoned by the Duke of Etruria to found a

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college in Florence. The Pope's vicar wanted him to look after the ecclesiastical needs of Bologna, whither he repaired with Salmeron, while Le Jay was working at Ferrara and elsewhere in the Peninsula. The most remarkable of them all, however, in the matter of work during these recesses was undoubtedly Peter Canisius (Kanees, Kanys or De Hondt, as he was variously called.) One would naturally imagine that he would have been sent back to Cologne to the scene of his former tri-umphs. On the contrary, he was ordered to teach rhetoric in the newly -founded college of Messina in Sicily. He was then recalled to Rome, where he made his solemn profession in the hands of St. Ignatius; after this he started with Le Jay and Salmeron to Ingolstadt, where he taught theology and began his courses of catechetical instructions which were to restore the lost Faith of Germany.

On the way to the scene of his labors, he received a doctor's degree at Bologna. In 1550 he was made rector of the University of Ingolstadt, but was never- theless, sent to Vienna to found a new college. He was simultaneously court preacher, director of the hospitals and prisons, and, in Lent, the apostle of the abandoned parishes of Lower Austria. He was offered the See of Vienna, but three times he refused it, though he had to administer the diocese during the year 1557. Five years prior to that he had opened colleges at Prague and Ingolstadt, after which he was appointed the first provincial of Germany. He was adviser of the king at the Diet of Ratisbon, and by order of the Pope took part in the religious discussions at Worms. He began negotiations for a college at Strasburg, and made apostolic exciirsions to that place as well as to Freiburg and Alsace. While taking part in the general congregation of the order in Rome, he was sent by Pope Paul IV to the imperial Diet of Pieterkow in

48 The Jesuits

Poland. In 1559 he was summoned by the emperor to the Diet of Augsburg, and had to remain in that city from 1561 to 1562 as cathedral preacher; during this time it is recorded that besides giving retreats, teaching catechism and hearing confessions, he appeared as many as two hundred and ten times in the pulpit. In 1562 he was back again as papal theologian at Trent, where he found himself at odds with Lainez, then General of the Society, on the question of granting the cup to the laity — Lainez opposing this concession, which he advocated. He remained at the council only for a few sessions, but returned again after having reconciled the Emperor with the Pope. The Emperor's favor, however, he lost later when he changed his views about Communion under both species, and also by reason of an unfounded charge of reveahng imperial secrets which had been made against him.

In that year Canisius opened the college of Innsbruck and directed the spiritual Hfe of Magdalena, the saintly daughter of Ferdinand I. In 1564 he inaugurated the college of Dillingen and became administrator of the university of that place ; he was also constituted secret nuncio of Pius IV to promulgate the decrees of the council in Germany. His mission was interrupted by the death of the Pope, and although Pius V desired him to continue in that office, he declined, because it exposed him to the accusation of meddling in poHtics. In 1566 he was theologian of the legate at the Diet of Augsburg and persuaded that dignitary not to issue a mandate against the so-called religious peace. He thus prevented another war and gave new life to the Catholics of Germany. In 1567 he founded a college at Wurzburg, and evangelized Mayence and Spires. At Dillingen he received young Stanislaus Kostka into the Society conditionally and sent him to Rome; he settled a philosophical dispute at Innsbruck and

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established a college at Halle. At last in 1569 at his own request he was relieved of his office of provincial, which he had held for thirteen years; in 1570 he was court preacher of the Archduke Ferdinand II; in 1575 he was papal envoy to Bavaria, and theologian to the papal legate at the Diet of Ratisbon. He introduced the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin at Innsbruck, and at the command of the Pope built a college at Freiburg, where he remained for the rest of his life.

For years Canisius had urged his superiors and had also pleaded at the Council of Trent for the establish- ment of colleges of writers in various countries to defend the Faith. He was in constant touch with the great printers and publishers of the day, such as Plantin, Cholin and Mayer; he brought out the first reports of foreign missions, and induced the town council of Freiburg to establish a printing-press. All this time he was actively writing, and the list of his publications covers thirty-eight quarto pages in the " Bibliotheque des ecrivains dela C. de Jesus." He was commissioned by Pius V to refute the Centuriators of Magdeburg — the society of writers who, under the inspiration of Flacius Illyricus, had undertaken to falsify the works of the early Fathers of the Church, century by century, so as to furnish a historical proof in support of Luther's errors. In 1583 he united in one volume the two books which he had previously issued in 1571 and 1577, styling them " Commentaria de Verbi corruptelis," having in the meantime published the genuine texts of Saints Cyril and Leo.

His " Catechism " was his most famous achievement. It consisted of two hundred and eleven, and later, of two hundred and twenty-two doctrinal questions, and was intended chiefly for advanced students; but there were annexed to it a compendium for children, and another for students of the middle and lower grades.

4

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It is recognized as a masterpiece even by Protestant writers such as Ranke, Menzel, Kawerau and others. Two hundred editions of it in one form or another were pubHshed during his lifetime in twelve different languages. " I know my Canisius " became a synonym in Germany for " I know my catechism." In brief, he did more than any other man to save Germany for the Church, and he is regarded as another St. Boniface. He died on November 21, 1597 and was beatified by Pius IX on April 17, 1864. The Catechism appears to have been first suggested by Ferdinand I to Le Jay who took up the work enthusiastically. But instead of crowding everything into one volume, he divided it into three : the first, a summa of theology for the university; the second, a volume for priests engaged in the ministry ; while the third was for school teachers. He laid the matter before St. Ignatius, who assigned the first part to Lainez and the second to Frusius, then rector of Vienna. But as Frusius died, and Lainez was made General of the Society, Canisius undertook the entire work.

Apparently, it was from Le Jay also that the idea came of founding the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, though Cardinal Morone claims it as his conception. Le Jay, indeed, had discussed the matter with him, but had previously made a much more serious study of the question with Cardinal Truchsess, Archbishop of Augsburg. As the purpose of the Collegium was to supply a thoroughly educated priesthood to Germany, Truchsess could appreciate the need of it more than Morone, whose ideas about the need of good works, the vital question in Germany at the time, were extremely curious, according to his own account of a stormy interview he had with Salmeron on that topic. He reproached Salmeron for making too much of good works. Indeed Morone had been at one time

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under the surveillance of the Inquisition on account of certain utterances. His orthodoxy, however, must have been above suspicion, because of the exalted position he occupied.

Le Jay was broken-hearted when Maurice of Saxony, the leader of the imperial troops, swung his whole army over to the very Lutherans whom he had just defeated at Muhlberg. The awful condition of religion in the Empire preyed upon his mind to such a degree that he died at Vienna on Aug. 6, 1552, at the age of fifty-two. Canisius, who preached the funeral oration, said that he was " a worthy successor of Faber, and that his instinct was so correct that the character he gave to the college of Vienna over which he presided was adopted as the model throughout Germany." Ranke might be quoted on that point also. He points out that " at the beginning of 1551 the Jesuits had no fixed place in Germany — Le Jay was appointed rector only in June of that year — but in 1566 they occupied Bavaria, Tyrol, Franconia, a great part of the Rhine Province and Austria, and had penetrated into Hungary and Moravia. It was the first durable anti-Protestant check that Germany had received."

Under normal conditions, Spain would of course, have received these distinguished sons of hers with open arms; but, unfortunately, a deplorable state of affairs prevailed in the highest circles both of Church and State, almost as open and as shameless as in other parts of Europe. Princes and nobles held the titles of bishops and archbishops and appropriated the revenues of dioceses. That alone made any effort in the way of reform impossible. Added to this, Boba- dilla's indiscretion in attacking the policy of Charles V in Germany had, as we have already said, predisposed that monarch, and consequently nrnny of his subjects, against the whole Society; but as the Emperor did

52 The Jesuits

not openly interfere with them they estabHshed colleges in Barcelona, Gandia, Valencia and Alcala, as early as 1546; but two years later, when they made their appearance in Salamanca, they found an implacable foe in the person of the distinguished Dominican theologian, Melchior Cano.

From the pulpit and platform and in the press Cano denounced and decried the new religious, not only as constituting a danger to the Church, but as being nothing else than the precursors of Antichrist. His own Master-General wrote a letter eulogizing the Society and forbidding his brethren to attack it; but this had no effect on Melchior, nor did the fact that the new Order was approved by the Pope avail to keep him quiet. Finally, in order to mollify him he was made Bishop of the Canaries, but he actually resigned that see in order to return to the attack. His hostility continued not only till his death, but after it; for, before he departed, he left in the hands of a friend a document which was of great service to the enemies of the Society at the time of the Suppression. " God grant," he wrote, " that I may not be a Cassandra, who was believed only after the sack of Troy. If the religious of the Society continue as they have begun, there may come a time, which I hope God will avert, when the Kings of Europe would wish to resist them but will be unable to do so." One of the reasons of Cano's hostility to the Society was that the Fathers urged Catholics to frequent the sacraments (Suau, Vie de Borgia, 136). This opposition of Cano was backed by the Archbishop of Saragossa, who was Francis Borgia's uncle. Bands of street children carry- ing banners on which hideous devils were painted marched to the new church of the Society and pelted it with stones. Then the mob drove the luckless Fathers out of the city; when Borgia's sister sheltered

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the exiles in her castle her uncle, the archbishops excommunicated her. But that was the way of the world in those days. Even the illustrious Cardinal Carranza was kept in the prison of the Spanish Inquisition for seventeen years, because of something discovered in his writings by his brother Dominican Melchior Cano (Suau, op. cit., 136).

Little by little, however, the prejudices were dissi- pated, and both Alcala and Salamanca called Strada to lecture in their halls. Nevertheless, each new success only raised a fresh storm. Thus it was bad enough when the rector of the University of Salamanca, Anthony of Cordova, who was just about to be made a cardinal, entered the Society; but the excitement became intense when, in 1550, Francis Borgia, who was Duke of Gandia, Viceroy of Catalonia, a friend of the Emperor, a soldier who had distinguished himself in the invasion of Provence, and whose future usefulness was reckoned upon for the service of his country, let it be known that he, too, was going to become a Jesuit. To prevent it, the Pope was urged to make him a Cardinal, but Borgia, who was then in Rome, fled back to Spain. When, however, he finally appeared as a member of the Order, houses and colleges were erected wherever he wished to have them: at Granada, Valladolid, Saragossa, Medina, San Lucar, Monterey, Burgos, Valencia, Murcia, Placentia and Seville. In 1556 Charles V was succeeded by Philip II, who asked that the cardinal's hat should be given to Borgia, but the honor was again refused. On three other occasions the same offers and refusals were repeated.

By the time Francis Borgia became General of the Order it had already developed into eighteen provinces, with one hundred and thirty establishments, and had a register of three thousand five hundred members.

54 The Jesuits

Besides attempting to convert the Vaudois heretics, the Society maintained the missions of Brazil and the Indies and estabHshed new ones in Peru and Mexico; by the help of the famous Pedro Menendez, who is the special object of hatred on the part of American Protest- ant historians, it sent the first missionaries to what is now Florida in the United States. Segura and his companions were put to death on the Rappahannock; and Martinez was killed further down the coast, while Sanchez, a former rector of Alcala, reached Vera Cruz in Mexico in 1572 with twelve companions to look after the Spaniards and natives and to care for the unfortunate blacks whom the Spaniards were importing from Africa,

When Pius V was elected Pope, there was a general fear that he would suppress the Society; but the Pontiff set all doubts at rest when, on his way to be crowned at St. John Lateran, he called Borgia to his side and embraced him. He also made Salmeron and Toletus his official preachers, and gave the Jesuits the work of translating the " Catechism " of the Council of Trent and of publishing a new edition of the Bible. He was, however, about to revoke the Society's exemption from the office of choir; but Borgia induced him to change his mind on that point, and even obtained a perpetual exemption from the pubHc recitation of the Office, as well as the revocation of the restriction of the priesthood to the professed of the Society. Moreover, when there was danger of a Turkish invasion, Borgia was sent with the Pope's nephew to Spain and France to organize a league in defence of Christendom, while Toletus accompanied another cardinal to Germany.

Philip n had asked for missionaries to evangelize Peru, and hence at the end of March, 1568, Portillo and seven Jesuits landed at Callao, and proceeding to

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Lima established a church and college there on a magnificent scale. It was easy to do so, however, for the Spanish colonists were rolling in wealth. At the same time, the Indians and negroes were not neglected. In 1569 twelve new missionaries arrived, and one of them, Alonzo de Barzana, to the amazement of every one, preached in the language of the Incas as soon as he came ashore. He had been studying it every moment of the long journey from Spain. In 1574 a college was established at Cuzco, in an old palace of the Incas, and another in the city of La Paz. . 'J

At this stage of the work the first domestic trouTDle in the New World presented itself. Portillo, the pro- vincial, was admitting undesirable candidates into the Society, and placing the professed in parishes, thus flinging them into the midst of the civil and ecclesiastical turmoil which then prevailed. In spite of his abilities, however,' he was promptly recalled to Spain. It is very gratifying to learn that outside the domestic precincts, no one ever knew the reason of this drastic measure. Freedom from parochial obligations left the Father.s time for their normal work, and they forthwith established schools in almost every city and town of Peru. The training school on Lake Titicaca, especially, was a very wise and far-seeing enterprise, for there the missionaries could devote themselves exclusively to the study of the native language and to historical, literary and scientific studies. The result was that some of the most eminent men of the period issued from that educational centre. It is said that the printing-press they brought over from Europe was the first one to be set up in that part of the New World. Titicaca flourished as late as 1767, but at that time Charles III expelled the Jesuits from Peru and Titicaca ceased to be.

56 The Jesuits

The Society had a long and desperate struggle, before it could gain an educational foothold in France. Possibly it was a preparation for the future glory it was to win there. Its principal enemies were the University of Paris and, incidentally, the Parliament, which came under the influence of the doctors of the Sorbonne. The first band of Jesuits arrived under the leadership of Domenech, who had been a canon in Spain but had relinquished his rich benefice to enter the Society — an act which seemed so supremely foolish in the eyes of his friends that they accused Ignatius of bewitching him. Later, he became a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul for Italy. He found Palermo swarming with throngs of half -naked and starving children, and immediately built an asylum for them. He estab- lished hospitals, Magdalen asylums, refuges for the aged, and went round the city holding out his hand for alms to repair the dilapidated convents of nuns, whom the constant wars had left homeless and hungry. Giving the Spiritual Exercises was one of his special occupations.

In the group, also, was Oviedo, the future Patriarch of Abyssinia, who was to spend his life in the wilds of Africa. There too was Strada, orator, poet and his- torian, who was to be one of the most illustrious men of his time; he taught rhetoric for fifteen years in the Roman College, was the official preacher and the inti- mate friend of Popes Clement VIII and Paul V, and wrote a " History of the Wars of Flanders," which met with universal applause. Finally, there was the famous young Ribadeneira, then only a boy of fourteen; he had left one of the most brilliant courts of Europe — that of Cardinal Famese, the brother of princes and popes — and later became famous as a distinguished Latinist, a successful diplomat, the chosen orator at the inaugural ceremonies of the Collegium Germanicum,

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*

an eminent preacher at Louvain and Brussels, and an envoy to Mary Tudor in her last illness. He was provincial, visitor and assistant under Borgia and Lainez, the great champion of the Society in Spain against Vasquez and his fellow-conspirators, and an author whose works in his native Castilian are ranked among the classics of the language.

Their staunch friend was du Prat, the Bishop of Clermont, who gave them the palace which had been, up to that time, his residence when visiting the metropolis. Before that shelter was assured to them, they had lived as boarders, first in the College des Tresoriers and then in the College des Lombards, not as Jesuits, but as ordinary students whose similarity of taste in matters of piety seemed to the outside world to have drawn them together. Of course, their real character soon became known, and then their troubles began. A college was attempted at Tournon in the following year, with Auger as rector, but the civil war was raging and before a twelve- month, Adrets, the most bloodthirsty monster of the Huguenot rebellion, whose favorite amusement was to make his prisoners leap off the ramparts to the rocks below, put an end to everything Catholic in Tournon.

Cretineau-Joly is of opinion that the recognition of the Society in France was retarded by its refusal to admit the famous Guillaume Postel in its ranks. It seems absurd, but it happened just then that France had gone mad about Postel; and Marguerite de Valois used to speak of him as the " Wonder of the World." He was indeed a very remarkable personage. Though only self-instructed, he knew almost every language; he had plunged in the depths of rabbinical and astrological lore; to obtain an intimate knowledge of the Orient, he had accompanied the Sultan in an expedition against the Persians; he had spent vast

58 The Jesuits

sums of money in purchasing rare manuscripts; he was sought for by all the universities; he drew immense crowds to his lectures, and wrote books about every conceivable subject, but at the same time with all his genius he was undoubtedly insane. So that when he went to Rome and told about his spiritual communica- tions with the mythical Mere Jeanne, and how he proposed to unite the whole human race, by the power of the sword or the word, under the banner of the Pope and the King of France, who, he said, was a lineal descendant of the eldest son of Noe, the perspicacity of a Loyola was not needed to understand his mental condition. His rejection ought to have been a recom- mendation rather than a reproach.

When established in their new house, the Jesuits re- ceived scholars and asked for affiHation to the university, but the request was peremptorily refused, for the alleged reason that they were neither secular priests nor friars, but a nondescript and novel organization whose purpose was mysterious and suspicious. Besides, they were all Spaniards — a genuine difficulty at a time when Charles V and Francis I were threatening to go to war with each other. It happened also that the Archbishop of Paris, du Bellay, was their avowed enemy; he denounced them as corrupters of youth, and expelled them from the little chapel of Saint-Germain-des- Pres, which a Benedictine abbot had put at their disposal. Finally, when the war seemed imminent, the foreigners were sent away, some to Lyons and some to Louvain. For a time, those who remained were shielded by the papal nuncio at Paris, but he was recalled. Then the Archbishop of Rheims and the Cardinal of Lorraine appeared as their protectors. They had even secured the grant of a charter for the college and were very hopeful of opening it, but, as the concession had to be passed on by the Parliament

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before it became effective, they were as badly off as ever. Besides this, their lack of friends had left the college without funds, for the teaching given in their house was gratuitous — a practice which formed the chief educational grievance alleged by the university. Evidently a staff of clever professors who taught for nothing constituted a menace to all other institutions. Conditions became so desperate that at one time there were only four pupils at Clermont. Nevertheless, with an amazing confidence in the future success of the Society in France, it was just at this moment that St. Ignatius established the French province, and sent the beloved Pasquier Brouet as superior. j

Brouet had already given proofs of his ability in dealing with difficulties; for with Salmeron he had faced the danger of death in Ireland, and when there was question of creating a Patriarch of Abyssinia or Ethiopia, another place of prospective martyrdom, he was the first choice, though Oviedo was ultimately selected, probably because of his nationality. Shortly after his arrival, a new college was attempted at Billom, but Father de la Goutte who was appointed rector M^as captured by the Turks and died on an island off the coast of Tunis. A substitute, however, was appointed, and in a few years the college had five hundred students on its roll. Applications were made also for estabhsh- ments at Montarges, Perigueux and elsewhere. In 1 560 the first friend of the Society in France, the Bishop of Clermont, died, leaving rich bequests in his will to the colleges at Paris and Billom, but they were disal- lowed by the courts because the Society was not an authorized corporation. For, in spite of the fact that not only the sanction of Henry II but also that of Francis II had been given, yet the university and the Archbishop of Paris had contrived by all sorts of devices to delay the complete official recognition of the

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establishment. In the long fight that ensued against this injustice, Father Cogordan, who was the procurator of the province, distinguished himself by his resource- fulness in facing and mastering the various situations.

The opposition finally collapsed in a very dramatic fashion. Charles IX was on the throne, but the reins of government were in the hands of his mother, Catherine de' JMedici.who, contrary to the express wish of the Sovereign Pontiff, had consented to the demands of the Huguenots for a general assembly, where the claims of the new religion might be presented to the representative Catholics of the kingdom. The Colloqu3^ as it was called, took place at Poissy in 1561. The experience of Germany in permitting such gather- ings had shown very clearly that, instead of conducing to religious peace, they only widened the breach between Catholics and Protestants. For the calm statement of dogmatic differences was ignored by the appellants, and the sessions were purposely turned into a series of disorderly and virulent denunciations and recrimina- tions.

The Colloquy in this instance was very imposing. The queen mother, Charles IX and the whole court were present. There were five cardinals, forty bishops and a throng of learned divines from all parts of France. Cardinal de Toumon presided; Hopital was the spokesman for the crown; while the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde represented the Huguenot party. Among the Protestant ministers were Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr, the ex-friar. Eight days had gone by in useless squabbles when into the assembly came James Lainez, who was then General of the Society, and had been sent thither by the Pope to protest against the Colloquy. Beza had already been annihilated by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Peter Martyr was speaking when Lainez entered.

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The great man who had held the Council of Trent enthralled by his leaning and eloquence listened for a while to his unworthy adversary and then arose. Addressing the queen, he said: " It may be unseemly for a foreigner to lift his voice in this presence, but as the Church is restricted to no nation, it cannot be out of place for me to give utterance to the thoughts that present themselves to my mind on this occasion. I will first advert to the danger of these assemblies and will especially address myself to what Friar Peter and his colleague have advanced."

The use of the name " friar " publicly pilloried the apostate. He writhed under it, but he could not escape. It recurred again and again as the tactics of Beza and his associates were laid bare. Then, turning to the queen, Lainez said: "The first means to be taken to avoid the deceits of the enemy is for your Majesty to remember that it is not within the compe- tency either of your Majesty or any other temporal prince to discuss and decide matters pertaining to the Faith. This belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff and the Councils of the Church. Much more so is this the case when, as at present, the General Council of Trent is in session. If these teachers of the new religion are sincerely seeking the truth, let them go there to find it." After adding his authority to the splendid reply already uttered by the Cardinal of Lorraine, Lainez said: " As Friar Peter has asked us for a confession of faith, I confess the CathoHc Faith, for which I am ready to die; and I implore Your Majesties, both you, Madame, and your son, the Most Christian King, to safeguard your temporal kingdom if you wish to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. If on the contrary you care less for the fear and love of God than the fear and love of man, are you not running the risk of losing your earthly as well as your heavenly kingdom? I trust that this

62 The Jesuits

calamity will not fall upon you. I expect, on the contrary, that God in his goodness will grant you and your son the grace of perseverance in your faith, and will not permit this illustrious nobility now before me, and this most Christian kingdom, which has been such an example to the world, ever to abandon the Catholic Faith or be defiled by the pestilential touch of these new sects and new religions."

This discourse was a particularly daring act, on the part of Lainez. According to a recent authority (Martin, Gallicanisme et la Reforme, 28, note 4), Du Ferrier, the government delegate at Trent, circulated a note which said among other things: " As for Pius IV we withdraw from his rule; whatever decisions he may have made we reject, spit back at him (respuimus) and despise. We scorn and renounce him as Vicar of Christ, Head of the Church and successor of Peter." Far from reprehending his ambassador for these furious words, Charles IX and, of course, Catherine praised the ambassador unreservedly. Catherine had busied herself previous to this in trying to persuade the different governments to have a council in which the Pope should have nothing to say, one whose object would be, not to define dogma or enforce discipline, but, to draw up a formula of recon- ciliation which would satisfy Protestants. Even the French bishops, though admitting that the Pope was a supreme power in the Church, denied that he had supreme power over it, and refused to acknowledge " his plenitude of power to feed, rule and govern the Universal Church." The separation of France from the Church was at that time openly advocated. Since such were the conditions in France at that time, it is | clear that Catherine never expected an attack of the kind that Lainez treated her to. She burst into tears and withdrew from the Colloquy. There was never

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another public session. Cretineau-Joly says that Lainez told Conde: " The queen's tears are a bit of comedy; " but such an utterance from a man of the character of Lainez and in such surroundings, where the insult would have been immediately reported to the queen, is simply inconceivable. He could never have been guilty of such an impardonable indis- cretion.

Meantime, the bishops and archbishops of France had been meeting during the recesses of the Colloquy to consider the question of legislation for the Jesuit colleges. With the exception of Cardinal de Chatillon and the Archbishop of Paris, they were all anxious to put an end to the proscription to which the Society had been so long and so unjustly subjected. As it happened that Cardinal de Chatillon, the brother of the famous Admiral Coligny, the patron saint of the French Calvinists, was just then on the point of aposta- tizing and taking a wife and as the scandal was of common knowledge it evidently would not do for the Archbishop of Paris to be ranged on his side. That and, probably, the fact of his being tired out by the long fight which had been protracted only because of his natural stubbornness, made him give way, and the Society was legahzed in France. No doubt the presence of Lainez and his closing up of the Colloquy by his audacious discourse had helped largely to bring about that result. Some disagreeable restrictions were appended to the grant, it is true, but they were can- celled a few years later by a royal decree. Parliament finally yielded and signed the charter of the College on January 14, 1562. Lainez saw the queen frequently after the Colloquy, and remained in France for some time, striving unweariedly to win back to the Faith such men as Conde, the King of Navarre and others, and continuing to warn the queen that her unwise

64 The Jesuits

toleration would result in disaster to the realm. Unfortunately he was not heeded.

While all this was going on, another college had been established at Pamiers, which was in the heretical territory of Navarre. Its founders were none others than the rector of the Roman College, Jean Pelletier, and Edmond Auger. But in the beginning the inhabit- ants were suspicious and refused the commonest hospitality to the new comers, so that their first dwelling had the advantage of being like the Stable of Bethlehem — a hut with no doors and no windows. Finally, however, their sermons in the churches capti- vated the people and the " Jezoists," as they were called, succeeded in getting a respectable house and beginning their classes. This was in 1559, but before the end of 1561 the "Jezoists" were expelled by the excited Huguenots, and were compelled to take refuge in Toulouse.

The Edmond Auger just mentioned was perhaps the most eloquent man of that period in France. He was called the Chr^^sostom of his country. Wherever he went, crowds flocked to hear him, fanatical Calvinists as well as devoted Catholics. His first sermon was in Valence, where the bishop had just apostatized and the Huguenots were in complete possession. A furious outbreak resulted, and he was seized and sentenced to be burned to death. While standing at the stake, he harangued the people before the torch was applied, and so captivated the mob that fhey clamored for his release. His devotedness to the sick in a pestilence at Lyons won the popular heart and a college was asked for. At various times he was chaplain of the troops, confessor of Henry IV, rector and provincial; but imfortunately he was so outspoken in his denun- ciation of the League that the people of Lyons, who once admired him, were wrought up to fury by his

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utterances on the political situation, and were on the point of throwing him into the Rh6ne. His unwise zeal had thus seriously injured the Society.

When the council of Trent had concluded its sessions, Canisius was sent back to Germany by the Pope to see that the decrees were promulgated and enforced. He labored for five years to accomplish this task, but failed completely. With the exception of some bishops like Truchsess of Augsburg, very few paid any attention to the Pope's wish, the reason being that they were mostly scions of the nobility, who were accustomed to live in luxury and had adopted the ecclesiastical profession solely because of the rich revenues of the sees to which their relatives had had them appointed. At that very time fourteen of them, it is said on the best authority, were wearing their mitres without even having notified the Pope of their election or asking his approbation. They, more than Martin Luther, were responsible for the loss of Germany. Their lives were such that Canisius forbade his priests to accept the position of confessor to any of them. Of course, such men turned a deaf ear to the papal decree about establishing diocesan seminaries ; and those who desired them were prevented by their canons, some of whom were not even priests. It was for this reason that Canisius begged the Pope to establish burses in foreign seminaries, where worthy ecclesiastics might be trained whose lives would be in such contrast with the general depravity and ignorance of the clergy that the bishops would perhaps be shamed out of their apathy.

The establishment of burses, however, was only a temporary expedient ; for the few secular priests they might furnish could scarcely support the strain to which they would be subjected in the terrible isolation which their small number would entail. They would not have the compact organization of a religious order 5

66 The Jesuits

to keep them steady, and yet they would be the victims of the same kind of persecution as Canisius and his associates had to undergo. From this difficulty arose the idea of the Collegium Germanicum already referred to, an establishment in Rome under the direction of the Jesuits, to which young Germans distinguished for their intellectual ability and virtue could be sent and trained to be apostles in their native land. It was the Collegium Germanicum that saved to the Faith what was left of Germany and won back much that was lost. " The German College at Rome," said a Protestant preacher in 1594 (Nothgedrungene Erinnerungen, Bl. 8), " is a hotbed singularly favorable for developing the worst kind of Jesuitry. Our young Germans are educated there gratuitously; and at the end of their studies they are sent home to restore papistry to its former place and to fight for it with all their might. You find them exercising the ministry in a great number of collegiate churches and parishes. They become the advisers 'of bishops and even archbishops ; and we see these Jesuits under our very eyes defending the Catholic cause with such zeal that we Evangelicals may well ask ourselves in what lands and in what towns such fervent zeal for the beloved Gospel is found among our own party. They seduce so many souls from us that it is too distressing even to enumerate them." Martin Chemnitz, the Protestant theologian, said that if the Jesuits had done nothing but found the German College, they would deserve to be regarded for that one achievement as the most dangerous enemy of Lutheranism. " These young men," said another Protestant controversialist in 1593, "are like their teachers in diabolical cunning, in hypocritical piety, and in the idolatrous practices which they propagate among the people. They preach frequently, pre- tending to be good Christians, they frequent hospitals

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and visit the sick at home, all out of a pure hypocrisy saturating the very hides of these wretches. They are again persuading the simple and credulous people to return to their damnable papistry " (Janssen, op. cit., IX, 323, sqq.).

Echsfeld, Erfurt, Aschaffenburg, Mayence, Coblentz, Treves, Wurzburg, Spires and other places soon felt the effects of the zeal of these students of the Collegium Germanicum. Their manner of life meant hardship and danger of every kind; assaults by degenerate Catholics and infuriated heretics; vigils in miserable huts and pest-laden hospitals, resulting sometimes in sickness and violent death; but "these messengers of the devil," as the preachers called them, kept at their work and soon won back countless numbers of their countrymen to the Faith. Similar establish- ments also grew up at Braunsberg, DilHngen, Fulda, Munich and Vienna. Representatives of other religious orders entered into the movement and gave it new life and vigor. Janssen (IX, 313) informs us that the foundation of seminaries for poor students also was due to Canisius and his fellow-workers. At their sug- gestion Albert V founded the Gregorianum at Munich in 1574; and Ingolstadt, Wurzburg, Innsbruck, Halle, Gratz and Prague soon had similar establishments. As early as 1559 Canisius assumed the responsibility for two himdred poor students, and by having them live in common was able to supply all their needs. After each of his sermons in the cathedral, he went arotmd among the great personages assembled to hear him, to ask for alms to keep up his establishments. Father Voth, following his example forty years later, collected 1400 florins in a single year for the same purpose.

The work of regeneration was not restricted to the foundation of ecclesiastical seminaries. Janssen (1. c.)

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gives us an entire page of the names of colleges taken from the " Litterae annuae," in some of which there were nine hundred, one thousand, and even thirteen hundred scholars. Between 1612 and 1625 Germany had one hundred Jesuit colleges. In all of them were established sodalities the members of which besides performing their own religious exercises in the chapel, visited the hospitals, prisons and camps and performed other works of charity and zeal. On their rosters are seen the names of men who attained eminence in Church and State — kings, princes, cardinals, soldiers, scholars, etc. These sodalities had also established intimate relations with similar organizations all over Europe. Naturally, this intense activity aroused the fury of the heretics. Calumnies of every kind were invented; and in 1603 a preacher in Styria announced that the most execrable and sanguinary plots were being formed to drown the whole Empire in blood in order to nullify the teaching of the Evangel. " 0 poor Roman Empire! " he exclaimed, " your only enemies, the only enemies of the Emperor, of the nation, of religion are the Jesuits." Janssen adds: " The facts told a different story."

Father Peter Pazmany figures at this period in a notable fashion. He was a Hungarian from Nagy Varad, also known as Grosswardein. His parents were Calvinists, but he became a Catholic and at the age of sixteen entered the Society at Rome, where he was a pupil of such scholars as Bellarmine and Vasquez. He taught in the college of Gratz, which had been founded by the Jesuits in 1573 w^ith theological and philosophical faculties. The Archduke Ferdinand enriched it with new buildings and furnished it with ample revenues, giving it also ecclesiastical supremacy in Carinthia and other estates of the crown. Pazmany became the apostle of his countrymen, both by his

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books and his preaching. He was a master in his native tongue, says Ranke (History of the Popes, IV, 124), and his spiritual and learned work " Kalaus," produced an irresistible sensation. Endowed with a ready and captivating eloquence, he is said to have personally converted fifty of the most distin- guished families, one of which ejected twenty ministers from their parishes and replaced them by as many Catholic priests. The government was also swung into line; the Catholics had the majority in the Diet of 1625, and an Esterhazy was made Palatine. Pazmany was offered a bishopric which he refused, but finally the Pope, yielding to the demand of the princes and people, appointed him primate and then made him a cardinal. His " Guide to Catholic Truth " was the first polemic in the Hungarian language. He founded a university at Tymau which was afterwards transferred to Buda. The Hungarian College at Rome was his creation, as was the Pazmaneum in Vienna. His name has been recently inserted in the Roman Breviary in connection with the three Hungarian martyrs, two of whom were Jesuits, Pongracz and Grodecz, who were put to death in 1619.

Italy exhibited a similar energy from one end to the other of the Peninsula. Chandlery in his " Fasti Breviores " (p. 40) tells us that " the first school of the Society was opened in the Piazza Ara Coeli in 1551, and soon developed into the famous Roman College. In 1552 it was removed to a house near the Minerva; in 1554 to a place near the present site; in 1562 to the house of Pope Paul IV; and in 1582 to the new buildings of the Gregorian University." It was in this college on March 25, 1563, that the Belgian scholastic, John Leunis, organized the first sodality of the Blessed Virgin. Fouqueray, however, contests this claim of the Ara Coeli school, and asserts that the first

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college was at Messina, and was begun in 1547, and that St. Ignatius determined to make it the model of all similar establishments. Its rule was based on the methods that prevailed in the colleges of the University of Paris, with changes, however, in its discipline and religious direction. Its plan of studies was the first " Ratio studiorum." It had two sessions of two or three hours each daily; Latin was always employed as the language of the house, but both Hebrew and Greek were taught. Vacation lasted only fifteen days for pupils in humanities and the higher grades; and only eight days or less for those in the lower classes. The students went to confession every month and assisted daily at Mass. Nearly all the cities of the peninsula had called for similar colleges. In what is now Belgium there were thirty-four colleges or schools, an apparently excessive number, but the fact that they were, with two exceptions, day-schools and that small boys were excluded wiU explain the possibility of managing them with comparatively few professors. Six or seven sufficed for as many hundred pupils. Moreover, something in the way of a founda- tion to support the school was always required before its establishment.

In 1564 the Roman Seminary was entrusted to the Society; and in 1578 the Roman College. Five years previously, the Collegium Germanicum, after Canisius had presented a memorial to Gregory XIII on the services it was expected to render, obtained a subsidy for a certain number of students. The Bull, dated August, 1573, exhorted the Catholics of the German Empire to provide for a hundred students of philosophy and theology. The Pope gave it the palace of St, Apollinaris, the Convent of St. Sabas and the revenues of St. Stephen on Monte Coelio. Over and above this, he guaranteed 10,000 crowns out of the revenues of

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the Apostolic Treasury. In 1574 it had one hundred and thirty students and in a few years one hundred and fifty. The philosophers followed a three years' course, the theologians four. Between 1573 and 1585 the Pope disbursed for the Collegium Germanicum alone about 235,649 crowns — equivalent to about a quarter of a million dollars. Besides this, as early as 1552 St. Ignatius had obtained from Julius III a Bull endowing a college for the study of the humanities, in which young Germans could prepare themselves for philosophy and theology. In its opening year it had twenty-five students, and in the following twice as many. Under Paul IV when the establishment was in dire want, St. Ignatius supported it by begging, and he told Cardinal Truchsess that he would seU himself into slavery rather than forsake his Germans. It was while engrossed in this work that Ignatius died. His memory is tenderly cherished in the CoUegiimi Ger- manicum to this day. When his name is read out in the Martyrology on July 31, the students all rise, and with uncovered heads listen reverently to the an- nouncement of the feast of their founder.

CHAPTER III

ENDS OF THE EARTH

Xavier departs for the East — Goa — Around Hindostan — Malacca — The Moluccas — Return to Goa — The Valiant Belgian — Troubles in Goa — Enters Japan — Returns to Goa — Starts for China — Dies off the Coast — Remains brought to Goa — Africa — Congo, Angola, Caffreria, Ab3'ssinia — Brazil, Nobrega, Anchieta, Azevedo — Failure of Rodriguez in Portugal.

When John III of Portugal asked for missionaries to evangelize the colonies which the discoveries of Da Gama and others had won for the crown in the far east, Bobadilla, Rodriguez and Xavier were assigned to the work. Bobadilla's sickness prevented him from going, and then His Majesty judged that he was too generous to his new possessions and not kind enough to the mother country; so it was decided to keep Rodriguez in Portugal, his native land, and send Xavier to the Indies.

Xavier arrived at Lisbon in June, 1540, and waited there eight months for the departure of the vessel, during which time he and Rodriguez effected a complete reformation in the morals of the city. He then began a series of apostolic journeys which were nothing less than stupendous in their character, not only for the distances covered during the eleven years to which they were restricted, but because of the extraordinary and often unseaworthy craft in which he traversed the yet imcharted seas of the East, which were swept by typhoons and infested by pirates, and where there was constant danger of being wrecked on inhos- pitable coasts and murdered by the savage natives. Three times his ship went to pieces on the rocks, and on one occasion he had to cling to a plank for days

72

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while the waves swept over him. Several times he came near being poisoned, and once he had to hide in the bush for a long time to escape the head-hunters of the Moluccas. The distances he traversed can only be appreciated by having an atlas at hand while perusing the story.

Leaving Europe, his course lay along the west coast of Africa, rounding Cape of Good Hope and then making for far away Mozambique. From there he pointed across the Arabian Sea to Goa on the west coast of Hindostan. Shortly afterwards, he continued down the coast to Cochin and Cape Comorin and across to Ceylon, then along the eastern side of the peninsula to the Pearl Fisheries, and back to Goa. Soon after, he is sailing across the Bay of Bengal to distant Malacca, which lies north of Sumatra; from there he penetrates into the Chinese Sea, and skirting Borneo and the Celebes, he arrives at the Molucca Islands, going through them from north to south and back. Returning to Goa, he again makes for Malacca and points north to Japan, passing the Philippines on his way, though it is claimed that he landed at Mindanao. From Japan he returns to Goa and then sets out for China. He reached an island opposite Canton, pined away there for a month or so, as no one dared to carry him over to the coast. He then took his flight to heaven, which was very near.

It was a great day for Lisbon when, on April 7, 1541, which happened to be his birthday, Xavier set sail for India. He was papal nuncio and King John's ambas- sador to the Emperor of Ethiopia. Nevertheless the princes and potentates whom this poorly clad ambas- sador met on 'his way must have gazed at him in wonder; for in spite of his honors, he washed and mended his own clothes, and while on shipboard refused the assistance of a servant and scarcely ate any

74 The Jesuits

food. The crew were a rascally set, as were most of the sea-rovers of those days; but this extraordinary papal nuncio and ambassador passed his time among them, always bright, approachable and happy, nursing them when they were sick, and gently taking them to task for their ill-spent lives. All day long he was busy with them, and during the night he was scourging himself or praying. By the time the ship reached its destination it was a floating church.

Goa was the capital of Portuguese India. It was not yet the golden Goa of the seventeenth century; but it had churches and chapels and a cathedral, an inchoate college and a bishop and a Franciscan friary. Mingled, however, with the Christian population was a horde of idolaters, Mussulmans, Jews, Arabians, Persians, Hindoos and otfiers, all of them rated as inferior races by the Portuguese who were the hidalgos or fidalgos of Goa, even if they had been cooks and street-sweepers in Lisbon or Oporto. They were now clad in silks and brocades, and wore gold and precious gems in profusion; they delighted in religious displays; but in morality they were more debased than the worst pagans they jostled against in the streets. There were open debauchery, concubinage, polygamy and kindred crimes.

The coming of the papal nuncio was a great event, but he refused all recognition of his official rank. He lived in the hospital, looked after the lepers in their sheds, or the criminals in the jails, taught the children their catechism, and conversed with people of every class and condition. He got the secrets of their con- science; and in five months, Goa, at least in its Christian population, was as decent in its morals as it had formerly been corrupt and depraved. At the end of the penin- sula, but beyond Cape Comorin, were the Pearl Fisher- ies, where lived a degraded caste who had been visited

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by the Franciscans and baptized some years before; but they had been left in their ignorance and vice, and no one in Goa now ever gave them a thought. Thither Xavier betook himself with his chalice and vestments and breviary, but with no provisions for his support.

On his way he passed Salsette, where Rudolph Aquaviva was martyred in later days; and he saw Canara and Mangalore and Cananon, where there was a mission station. He then went to Calicut and Cranganore and Cape Comorin, where the goddess Dourga was worshipped, and finally arrived at the Fish- eries, where he found a people who were wretchedly poor, with nothing to cover them but a turban and a breech-clout, and who lived in huts along the shifting sands near the cocoanut- trees. With their tiny boats and rafts they contrived to get a livelihood from the sea, but they were shunned by the other Hindoos; for baptism had made them outcasts, and they were also the helpless victims of the pirates who were constantly prowling along the coast. Xavier lived in their filthy houses, talked with them through interpreters, gave them what instructions they were capable of receiving, and baptised all who had not yet become Christians. He remained two years with them, and after getting Portuguese ships to patrol the Sea, sent other mission- aries to replace him when he had built catechumenates and little churches here and there. Although Xavier appears to have justified these rapid conversions by the precedent of 3000 people becoming Christians after the first sermon of St. Peter, yet Ignatius, while not blaming his methods, wrote him later that the instructions should precede and not follow baptism, and that quality rather than quantity should be the guide in accessions to the Faith.

Xavier returned thence to Goa, but we find him in the last days of September, 1545, abandoning India

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for a time and going ashore near the Portuguese settlement on the Straits of Malacca. It was a danger- ous post, for it swarmed with Mohammedans. There were fierce ^cumeurs de mcr, or sea-combers, on the near-by coasts of Sumatra, and on the island of Bitang the dethroned sultans were waiting for a chance to expel the Portuguese, while all through the interior were fierce and unapproachable savage tribes. Besides all this, the whites who had settled there for trade were a depraved mob ; it is recorded that Xavier spent three whole days without food hearing their con- fessions, and passed entire nights praying for their conversion. In spite of all this accumulation of labor, he contrived to write a catechism and a prayer-book in Malay. In 1546 he went further east, past Java and Flores, and reached the Moluccas after a month and a half. He was on sociable terms everywhere, with soldiers and sailors and commandants of posts as well as cannibals, and made light of every hardship and danger in his efforts to win souls to God. Up and down the islands of the archipelago he travelled, meeting degeneracy of the worst kind at every step. But he established missionary posts, with the wonderful result that ten years later, De Beira, whom he sent there, had forty-seven stations and 3000 Christian families in these islands. Xavier spent two years in the Moluccas to prepare the way, and was back again in Goa in 1548.

During his absence, a number of missionaries, making in all six priests and nine coadjutor brothers, had been sent from Portugal. With them were a dozen Dominicans. Among the Jesuits were Femandes and Cosmo de Torres, who, later on, were to be along with Xavier the founders of the great mission of Japan. There came also Antonio Gomes, a distinguished student of Coimbra, a master of arts, a doctor of

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canon law, and a notable orator. But, except as an orator, he was not to have the success in Goa that he had won in Lisbon. Likewise in the party was Gaspard Baertz, a Fleming, who had had a varied career, as a master of arts at Lou vain, a soldier in the army of Charles V, a hermit at Montserrat, a Jesuit in Coimbra, and now a missionary in India. It was Baertz's capacity for work that prompted Xavier's famous petition: " Da mihi fortes Belgas " (Give me sturdy Belgians). Criminali, the first of the Society to be martyred in the East, had arrived previously, as had Lancilotti, a consumptive, who seemed to be particularly active in writing letters to Rome com- plaining of Xavier's frequent absences from Goa. Gomes was appointed rector of the nondescript college, which belonged to the Bishop of Goa, and which had been partly managed by Lancilotti up to that time. The new superior immediately proceeded to turn everything upside down, and his hard, au- thoritative methods of government immediately caused discontent. According to Lancilotti, he was utterly unused to the ways of the Society in dealing not only with the members of the community but with the native students. His idea was to make the college another Coimbra — a great educational institution with branches at Cochin, Bacaim and elsewhere. How- ever, the plan was not altogether his conception. Some- thing of that kind had been projected for India in connection with a great educational movement which was agitating Portugal at that time. In writing to Lisbon and Rome about this matter, Xavier incidentally reveals his ideas on the question of a native priesthood. He required for it several previous generations of respectable Christian parents. The division of castes in India also created a difficulty, for the reason that a priest taken from one caste was never allowed

78 The Jesuits

intercourse with those who belonged to another; and, finally, he pointed out that for a Portuguese to confess to a native was unthinkable.

Meanwhile, although domestic matters were not as satisfactory as they might have been, Xavier was planning his departure for Japan. He first visited several posts and settled the difficulties that presented themselves. Gomes was his chief source of worry, and there is no doubt that he would have been removed from his post as rector on account of the dissatis- faction he had caused, had it not been for his wonderful popularity in the city as a preacher. Just then a change might have caused an outbreak among the people and a rupture with the bishop. Xavier con- tented himself, therefore, with restricting the activities of Gomes to temporal matters ; and assigned to Cypriano the care of the spiritual interests of the community. He could have done nothing more, even if he had remained at Goa.

These repeated absences of Francis Xavfer from Goa have often been urged against him as reveaHng a serious defect in his character; a yielding to what was called " Basque restlessness," which prompted those who had that strain in their blood to be continually on the road in quest of new scenes and romantic adven- tures. The real reason seems to have been his despair of doing anything in Goa, with its jumble of Moslems and pagans and corrupt Portuguese, and its string of military posts where every little political commandant was perpetually interfering with missionary efforts. It could never be the centre of a great missionary movement. "I want to be," he said, "where there are no Moslems or Jews. Give me out and out pagans, people who are anxious to know something new about nature and God, and I am determined to find them." He had heard something about Japan, as verifying

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these conditions; and, though he had travelled much already and was aware of the complaints about him- self, he resolved to go further still; so, taking with him de Torres and Fernandes, besides a Japanese convert, Xaca, and two servants, he set his face towards the Land of the Rising Sun. He was then forty-three years of age.

He was at Malacca from May 31 to June 24, 1549, and found that the missions he had established there were doing remarkably well, as were the others in the Moluccas. The latter, however, he did not visit. He started for Japan in a miserable Chinese junk, three other associates having joined him meantime, — a Portuguese, a Chinaman, and a Malay. It took two months before he saw the volcanoes of Kiu Siu on the horizon, land it was only on August 15, 1549, that he went ashore at Kagoshima, the native city of his Japanese companion. The day was an auspicious one. It was the anniversary of his first vows at Montmartre.

Xavier began studying the language of the country and remained for a time more or less in seclusion; with the help of Xaca, or Paul as they called him, a short statement of the Christian Faith was drawn up. With that equipment, after securing the necessary permission, he, Fernandes and Xaca started on their first preaching excursion. Their appearance excited the liveliest curiosity. In the eyes of the people Xavier was merely a new kind of bonze, and they listened to him with the greatest attention. The programme adopted was first for Xaca to summon the crowd arid address them, then Xavier would read his paper. They were always ready to stop at any part of the road or for any assembly and repeat their message. Soon their work rose above mere street preaching. They were invited to the houses of the great who listened more or less out of curiosity or

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for a new sensation. When they had accomplished all they could in one place, they went to another, always on foot, in wretched attire, through cities and over snow-clad mountains, always, however, with the aim of getting to the capital of the empire, both to see the emperor and to reach the great university, about which they had heard before they set out for Japan. Naturally, the teaching of this new religion brought Xavier into conflict with the bonzes, who were a grossly immoral set of men, though outwardly pretending to great austerity. The people, how- ever, understood them thoroughly and were more than gratified when the hypocrites were held up to ridicule.

By this time he discovered his mistake in going about in the apparel of a beggar, and henceforward he determined to make a proper use of his position as envoy of the Governor of the Indies and of the Bishop of Goa. He, therefore, presented himself to the Daimyo of Yamaguchi in his best attire, with his credentials engrossed on parchment and an abundant supply of rich presents — an arquebus, a spinnet, mirrors, crystal goblets, books, spectacles, a Portuguese dress, a clock and other objects. Conditions changed immediately. The Daimyo gave him a handsome sum of money, besides full liberty to preach wherever he went. He lived at the house of a Japanese noble- man at Yamaguchi, and crowds listened to him in respectful silence as he spoke of creation and the soul — subjects of which the Japanese knew nothing. His learning was praised by every one, and his virtue admired; soon several notable conversions followed. After remaining at this place for six months, Xavier went to the capital, Meaco, the present Kioto, but apparently he made little or no impression there. Then news came from Goa which compelled him to

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return to India. So leaving his faithful friends, de Torres and Fernandes, to carry on the work which was so auspiciously begun, he started for Goa, some- where between 15 and 20 November, 1551. He had achieved his purpose — he had opened Japan to Christianity.

On the ship that carried him back to Goa, Xavier made arrangements with a merchant named Pereira to organize an expedition to enter China. Pereira was to go as a regularly accredited ambassador of the Viceroy of the Indies, while Xavier would get permission from, the emperor to preach the Gospel, and ask for the repeal of the laws hostile to foreigners and, among other things, for the liberation of the Portuguese prisoners — dreams which were never realized, but which reveal the buoyant and almost boyish hopefulness of Xavier's character. On his way back he heard of the tragic death of Criminali at Cape Comorin — the first Jesuit to shed his blood in India. It occurred in one of the uprisings of the Badages savages against the Portuguese. Later a brother was killed at the same place. Success, how- ever, had attended the labors of Criminali and his associates; for according to Polanco and an incomplete government census, there were between 50,000 and 60,000 Christians at that point in 1552. It was well on in February of that year when Xavier stepped ashore at Goa.

During his absence, the missions had all achieved a remarkable success. Among them was a new post at Ormuz off the coast of Arabia where Mussulmans of Persia, Jews from far and near, even from Portugal, Indian Brahmans and Jains, Parsees, Turks, Arabians, Christians of Armenia and Ethiopia, apostate Italians, Greeks, Russians and a Portuguese garrison met for commerce, and for the accompanying debauchery of 6

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such Oriental centres. The Belgian missionary, Baertz, had transformed the place. All this was satisfactory; but the college at Goa where Gomes presided was in disorder. Before that imprudent man could have possibly become acquainted with the ways of the new country, he had let himself be duped by one of the native chiefs who pretended to be a convert, but who was in reality a black-hearted traitor. He had also nullified the authority of his associate in the government of the college, and had been acting almost as superior of the entire mission. Among the people he had caused intense irritation by changing the traditional church services; he had dismissed the students of the college and put novices in their stead; he had appropriated a church belonging to a con- fraternity and, in consequence, had got both himself and the Society embroiled with the governor-general. But in spite of all this, it was still difficult to depose him on account of his popularity and because he was looked upon as an angel by the bishop. Unfortunately, Gomes refused to be convinced of his shortcomings and even disputed the right of his successor, who had already been appointed. Hence popular though he was, he was given his dimissorial letters. He appealed to Rome, and on his way thither was lost at sea. It is rather startling to find that Francis Xavier not only used this power of dismissal himself but gave it even to local superiors (Monumenta Xaveriana, 715-18). Possibly it was because of the difficulty of communication with Rome that this method was adopted, but it would be inconceivable nowadays. When all this was settled, Xavier appointed Baertz, vice-provincial, and, on April 17, 1552, departed for China. On arriving at Cochin, he heard that one of the missionaries had been badly treated by the natives, that the mission was in dire want, and that

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Lancilotti was in sore straits at Coulam. But all that did not stop him. He merely wrote to Baertz to remedy these evils, and then continued on his journey. Of course it would be impossible to judge such missionary methods from a mere human standpoint. For Xavier's extraordinary thaumaturgic powers, his gifts of prayer and prophecy easily explain how he could not only convert multitudes to the Faith, in an incredibly short space of time, but keep them firm and constant in the practice of their religion, long after he had entrusted the care of them to others. The memory of his marvellous works, which are bewildering in their number, would necessarily remain in the minds of his neophytes, while the graces which his prayers had gained for them would give them a more intelligent comprehension of the doctrines he had taught them than if they had been the converts of an ordinary missionaiy.

Up to the time of his departure for China his apostolic career had been like a triumphal progress. He was now to meet disaster and defeat, but it is that dark moment of his life which throws about him the greatest lustre. His friend, Pereira, had been duly accredited as ambassador of the viceroy and had invested the largest part of his fortune in the vessel that was to convey Xavier as papal nuncio to the court of the Emperor of China. It was the only way to enter the country and to reach the imperial court; but the Governor of Malacca defeated the whole scheme. He was a gambler and a debauchee, and wanted the post of ambassador for himself to pay his debts. Hence, in spite of the entreaties of Xavier and the menace of the wrath both of the king and the Pope he confiscated the cargo and left the two envoys stranded, just when success was assured. The result was that Pereira had to remain in hiding, while Xavier

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shook the dust from his feet, not figuratively but actually, so as to strike terror into the heart of Don Alvaro. He embarked on his own ship, " The Holy Cross," which was now converted into a merchantman and packed with people. In that unseemly fashion he started for China.

A landing was made on the island of Sancian which lay about thirty miles from the mainland, on a line wuth the city of Canton. Trading was allowed at that distance, but any nearer approach to the coast meant imprisonment and death. That island was Xavier's last dwelling-place on earth ; there he remained for months gazing towards the land he was never to enter. There were several ships in the offing, but he was shunned by the crews, for fear of the terrible Alvaro who was officially " master of the seas " and could punish them for being friends of his enemy. At least the Chinese traders who had come over to the island were approachable, and Xavier succeeded in inducing one of them for a money consideration to drop him somewhere on the coast — he did not care where. But no sooner was the bargain known than there was an uproar among the crews of the ships. If he were caught, they would all be massacred, and so he agreed to wait till they had sailed away.

Slowly the weeks passed, as one by one the vessels hoisted sail and disappeared over the horizon. Xavier's strength was failing fast, and he lay stretched out uncared for, under a miserable shed which had been built on the shore to protect him from the inclemency of the weather. With his gaze ever turned towards the coast which he had so longed to reach, he breathed his last on December 2, 1552, with the words on his lips: " In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me not be confounded forever." He was but forty-six years old; eleven years and seven months had elapsed

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since he sailed down the Tagus for the Unknown East. Only four people were courageous enough to give him the decencies of a burial, the others looked on from the gunwales of the ship, while his grave was being dug on shore. His body was placed in a box of quick- lime so that the flesh might be quickly consimied, and the bones carried back to Goa; having lowered it into a grave which was made in a little hillock above the sea, the small party withdrew.

Two months later, when the ship was about to leave, the box was opened, and to the amazement and almost the terror of all, not only was the flesh found to be intact, but the face wore a ruddy hue, and blood flowed from an incision made below the knee. It was a triumphant ship's-crew that now carried the precious freight to Malacca. They were no longer afraid, for their ship was a sanctuary guarding the relics of a saint. The ceremonies were impressive when they reached Malacca, though Don Alvaro scorned even to notice them; but when the vessel entered the harbor of Goa the splendor of the reception accorded the dead hero surpassed all that the Orient had ever seen. Xavier rests there yet, and his body is still incorrupt. It was a proper ending of the earthly career of the greatest missionary the world has known since the days of the Apostles. In 1622 he was canon- ized with his friend Ignatius by Pope Gregory XV.

In striking contrast with all this glory is the failure of every one of the missions on the Dark Continent of Africa. Between 1547 and 1561 the Congo and Angola had been visited, but no permanent post had been established. In Caffreria, Father Silveira and fifty of his neophytes were martyred. In 1555 Nunhes, Camero and Oviedo were sent to Abyssinia, the first as patriarch, the others as siiffragans. The patriarchate subsequently passed to Oviedo, who was the only one

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to reach the country. He was well received by the Negus, Asnaf, and permitted to exercise his ministry, but, in 1559 the king was slain in battle, and his successor drove the missionary and his little flock out into the desert of Adowa, a region made famous, in our own times, by the disastrous defeat of the Italian troops when they met Menelik and his Abys- sinians. Oviedo continued to live there during twenty years of incredible suffering. In 1624 Paez, one of his successors, succeeded in converting the Emperor Socimos, and in getting Abyssinia to abjure its Euty- chianism, but when Basilides mounted the throne in 1632 he handed over the Jesuits to the axe of the executioner. After that, Abyssinia remained closed to Christianity until 1702.

The most curious of these efforts to win Africa to the Faith occurred as early as 1561, when Pius IV, at the request of the Patriarch of Alexandria, sent a delgation to the Copts, in an endeavour to re-unite them to the Church. Among the papal representatives was a Jesuit named Eliano, who was a converted Jew. He had been brought up as a strict Hebrew, and when his brother became a Christian he had hurried off to Venice to recall him to Judaism. The unexpected happened. Eliano himself became a Christian and, later, a Jesuit. As he had displayed great activity in evangelizing his former co-religionists, he was thought to be available in this instance, but un- fortunately on arriving at Alexandria, he was recognized by the Jews, who were numerous and influential there, and a wild riot ensued, the voice that shrieked the loud- est for his blood being that of his own mother. It was with great difficulty that his friends prevented his murder. He returned to Europe and his last days were spent in Rome where he was the friendly rival of the great Cardinal Farnese in caring for the poor

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of the city. They died on the same day, and their tombs were regarded as shrines by their sorrowing beneficiaries.

In the western world, the first Jesuit missionary work was begun in the Portuguese possession of Brazil. After Cabral had accidentally discovered the continent in 1500, a number of Portuguese nobles established important colonies along the coast; and when subsequently some French Calvinists, under Villegagnon, attempted a settlement on the Rio Janeiro, Thomas da Sousa was commissioned by the king to unite the scattered Portuguese settlements and drive out the French intruders. He chose the Bay of All Saints as his central position, and there built the city of San Salvador. Fortifications were thrown up; a cathedral, a governor's palace and a custom house were erected, and a great number of houses were built for the settlers. Unlike France and England, Spain and Portugal lavished money on their colonies. With da Sousa were six Jesuit mission- aries, chief of whom was the great Nobrega. They were given an extensive tract of land some distance from San Salvador, and there in course of time the city of Sao Paolo arose. There was plenty to do with the degenerate whites in the various settlements, but the savages presented the greatest problem. They were cannibals of an advanced type, and no food delighted them more than human flesh. To make matters worse, the white settlers encouraged them in their horrible practices, probably in the hope, that they would soon eat each other up.

Nobrega determined to put an end to these abomi- nations, he went among the Indians, spoke to them kindly, healed their bodily ailments, defended them against the whites, and was soon regarded by these wild creatures as their friend and ' benefactor. At

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last, concluding that the time had come for a master stroke, he one day walked straight into a group of women who were preparing a mangled body for the fire, and with the help of his companions carried off the corpse. This was sweeping away in an instant all their past traditions, and as a consequence the whole tribe rose in fury and swarmed around the walls of the city determined to make an end of the whites. But Sousa called out his troops, and, whether the Indians were frightened by the cannon or mollified by the kind words of the governor, the result was that they withdrew and promised to stop eating human flesh. This audacious act had the additional effect of exciting the anger of the colonists against Nobrega and his associates. The point had been made, however, that cannibahsm was henceforth a punishable offence and great results followed. Tribe after tribe accepted the missionaries and were converted to Christianity. But it was very hard to keep them steady in their faith. A pestilence or a dearth of food was enough to make them fall into their old habits; and they were moreover, easily swayed by the half-breeds who, time and time again, induced them to rise against the whites. But da Sousa was an exceptional man, and had the situation well in hand. He pursued the Indians to their haunts, and, as his punitive expeditions were nearly always headed by a priest with his uplifted cross he often brought them to terms without the shedding of blood.

Another obstacle in this work of subjugation was found in the remnants of Villegagnon's old French garrison. At one time they had succeeded in uniting all the savages of the country in a league to exterminate the Portuguese. Villegagnon's supposedly impreg- nable fort was taken and battle after battle was won by the Portuguese, but the war seemed never to end.

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At last Nobrega took the matter in his own hands. " Let me go," he said, "to see if I cannot arrange terms of peace with the enemy." It was a perilous undertaking, for it might mean that in a few days his body would be roasting over a fire in the forest, in preparation for a savage banquet. But that did not deter him. He and his fellow-missionary Anchieta set out and found the Indians wild with rage against the whites. Plea after plea was made, but in vain. At last, he got them to make some concession, and then returned to explain matters to the governor, leaving Anchieta alone with the Indians. They did him no harm, however; on the contrary, he won their hearts by his kindness and amazed them by his long prayers, his purity of life, his prophecies and his miraculous powers. Month after month went by and yet there was no news from Nobrega. Finally the governor, accepting the conditions insisted on by the Indians, yielded, and peace was made.

It is interesting to learn that the lonely man who had stayed all this while in the forest, Jose Anchieta, was a perfect master of Latin, Castilian and Portuguese; besides being somewhat skilled in medicine, he was an excellent poet and even a notable dramatist. He composed grammars and dictionaries of the native language, after he returned to where pen and ink were available; and it is said he put into print a long poem which he had meditated and memorized during his six terrible months of captivity. He died in 1597; but before departing for heaven, he saw the little band of six Jesuits who had landed with Nobrega increased to one hundred and twenty, and when his career ended one hundred more rushed from Portugal to fill the gap.

As for Nobrega, the day before he died, he went arotmd to call on his friends. " Where are you going? "

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they asked him. " Home to my own country," he answered, and on the morrow they were kneeUng around his coffin. Southey says that " so well had Nobrega and Anchieta trained their disciples that in the course of half a century, all the nations along the coast of Brazil, as far as the Portuguese settlements extended, were collected in villages under their superin- tendence " (History of Brazil, x, 310). "Nobrega died at the close of the sixteenth century," says Ranke, " and in the beginning of the seventeenth we find the proud edifice of the Catholic Church completely reared in South America. There were five arch- bishoprics, twenty-seven bishoprics, four hundred monasteries and innumerable parish churches." Of course, with due regard to Ranke, all that was not the work of Jesuits, but men of his kind see " Jesuit " in everything. It may be said, however, that they con- tributed in no small degree to bring about this result. In 1570 Azevedo conducted thirty-nine Jesuits from Madeira to Brazil. Simultaneously, thirty more in two other ships set sail from Lisbon for the same destination. But the day after Azevedo's party had left Madeira, the famous Huguenot pirate, Jaques Soria, swooped down upon them, hacked them to pieces on the deck, and then threw the mangled remains to the sharks. The amazing Southey narrates this event as follows: "He did by the Jesuits as they would have done by him and all their sect: — put them to death." When the news reached Madeira, the brethren of the martyrs sang a Te Deum which Southey informs us, " was as much the language of policy as of fanaticism." Four days later, one English and four French cruisers which Southey fails to tell us were commanded by the Huguenot Capdeville, caught the other missionaries and did their work so effectually, that of the sixty-nine splendid men whom

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Azevedo started out with, only one arrived in Brazil. The struggle did not end with the massacre. Sixty years afterwards the same enemy attacked the mis- sions of Pemambuco in Brazil where, " one hundred and fifty tribes " — a Protestant annalist calls them "hordes" — had been brought into alliance with the Portuguese, and were rapidly making progress both in Christianity and civilization ; on Good Friday in the year 1633 the freebooters, passing at midnight through the smoking ruins of Olinda, attacked Garassu in the early morning, while the inhabitants were assembled at Mass, with the result, says Southey, that " the men who came their way were slaughtered, the women were stripped, and the plunderers with cruelty tore away ear-rings through the ear-flap, and cut off fingers for the sake of the rings that were upon them. They then plundered and burnt the town."

Similar heroism was shown in other parts of the world about this time. Thus in 1549 Ribeira was poisoned at Amboina; a like fate overtook Gonzales in 1 55 1 at Bazaim, India; in 1555 three Jesuits were wrecked on a desert island while on their v/ay to the East, and died of starvation; in 1573, Alvares, the visitor of Japan and four companions were lost at sea; and in 1575 another Jesuit died at Angola in Africa after fourteen years' cruel imprisonment.

Over all this splendor, however, there rests a shadow. Simon Rodriguez, who was so to speak the creator of all this apostolic enthusiasm, came very near being expelled from the Society. He was the idol of Portugal and the intimate friend and adviser of King John III, who was untiring in promoting missionary enterprise in the vast regions over which he held sway, both in the Eastern and Western world. This association, however, involved frequent visits to the court, and the attractions of the work soon grew on Rodriguez,

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though with his characteristic unsteadiness he was writing to Xavier and others to say that he was longing to go out to the missions, a longing he never gratified. Moreover, his judgment in the choice of missionaries was of the worst. Untrained novices were sent out in great numbers and were naturally found unfit for the work with the result that they had to return to Europe. Meantime another influence was effacing the real spirit of the Society from the soul of this chosen man whom Ignatius himself had trained. A craze for bodily mortifications had swept over Portugal, and Brou in his " V^ie de St. Frangois Xavier " tells us: that it was not uncommon to see eight or ten thousand flagellants scourging themselves as they walked pro- cessionally through the streets of Lisbon. The Jesuits there were naturally affected by the movement, with the result that although intense fervor was displayed in the practice of this virtue, domestic discipline suffered. The supreme fact that obedience was the characteristic trait of the Society had never been thoroughly appreciated or understood by Simon Rodri- guez, although he was one of the first companions of St. Ignatius.

Astrain in his " Historia de la Compafiia de Jesus en la Asistencia de Espafia ", does not mince matters on this point (I, xix). Indeed, the provincialship of Rodriguez in Portugal almost brought about a tragedy in the history of the Society. Yielding to the popular craze for public penances, his subjects paid little attention to mortification of the will, with the result that the defections from the Society in that country, both in number and quality, amounted to a public scandal. Finally, the removal of Rodriguez became imperative, but, unfortunately, his successor. Father Miron, was deplorably lacldng in the very elements of prudence. Disregarding the advice of Francis Borgia

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and of the official visitor, de Torres, who were sent with him as advisers, he went alone into Portugal and abruptly removed Rodriguez from his post. As Rodriguez was almost adored then by the people of Portugal and was very much admired and beloved by King John III and by the whole royal family, they should have been first approached and the reason of the change explained. To pass by such devoted friends who had lavished favors on the Society and who could do so much harm, if alienated, was not only highly impolitic but grossly discourteous. Anyone else but John III might well not only have driven them from Portugal but have withdrawn them from Brazil and the Indies, with the result that the Society would probably never have had an Anchieta or a Francis Xavier. Happily such a calamity was averted. Miron's subsequent administration was in keeping with his initial act, and when at last the visitor arrived and restored normal conditions in the province no less than one hundred and thirty-seven members of the province had either left the Society or had to be dismissed.

Rodriguez was summoned to Rome and might have been pardoned immediately had he avowed his fault, but he demanded a canonical trial. Several grave fathers were, therefore, appointed and their sentence was extremely severe, but Ignatius made them recon- sider it again and again, and make it milder. He even modified their final verdict. Rodriguez never went back again to Portugal in an official capacity.

This humiliating episode is somewhat slurred over by Cretineau-Joly, but the Jesuit historians like Jouvancy, Brou, Astrain, Valignano, Pollen make no attempt to conceal or palliate it. The failure of Rodriguez only illustrates the difficulty that St. Ignatius had in making his followers grasp the fundamental idea of the Society.

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Paulsen, the German Protestant historian, is shocked to find that in Jesuits, generally, there exists " some- thing of the silent but incessant action of the powers of nature. Without passion, without appeals to war, without agitation, without intemperate zeal, they never cease to advance, and are scarcely ever compelled to take a step backward. Sureness, prudence and forethought characterize each of their movements. As a matter of fact, these are not lovable qualities," he says, " for whoever acts without some human weakness is never amiable." The " step backward " made by Rodriguez, in this instance, ought to satisfy Paulsen's requirements for that amiability which, according to him, is associated with " human weak- ness." One need not be reminded that it is a curious psychology that can find amiability in a disease or a deformity. The amiability is in the person who puts up with it, not in the offender. Henri Joly in his " Psychologic des Saints," furnishes another example of this disregard of facts which so often affects the vision of a man in pursuit of a theory. To prove the marvellous power which Ignatius exerted over men, he tells us that when Rodriguez was summoned to Rome " the only sentiment in his mind was that of almost delirious joy, at again seeing the companion of his youth, his friend and master." The facts narrated above would imply that there was anything but delirious joy in the mind of Rodriguez before, during or after his trial, and the facts also show that some- times it takes more than the marvellous power of a St. Ignatius to control even a holy man under the influence of a passion or a delusion.

This incident also disposes of the hallucination that Jesuits are all run in the same mould and hence easily recognizable as members of the Order. This is far from being the case. It is true that as the Society

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is governed to a certain extent on military principles, cheerful and prompt obedience is its characteristic. The General is supreme commander and is in touch with every member of the organization ; he can tell in a moment where the individual is, what he is doing and what are his good qualities and defects. He can assign him to any country or any post; refusal to obey is absolutely out of the question. Such is the special trait of the Society, but apart from this, it is an aggre- gation of as disparate units as can possibly be imagined. Men of all races, conditions, dispositions, aspirations and attainments, Americans, EngHsh, French, Italian, Spanish, Syrians, Hungarians, Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, Malgache, and others live in the same house, follow the same rules, and maintain absolute peace with each other. All infractions of brotherly love are frowned upon and severely punished, and continued dissension or rebellion means expulsion. These men, from the highest to the lowest, do not shirk danger — like genuine soldiers they covet it; nor are they de- pressed by the repeated exiles, expulsions, spoliations and persecutions-, to which the Society has been always subject. Taught by experience of the past, they loiow that they will emerge from the struggle stronger and better than before and will win further distinction in the battle for God.

CHAPTER IV

CONSPICUOUS PERSONAGES

Ignatius — Lafncz — Borgia — Bellarmine — Toletus — Lessius — • Maldonado — Suirez — Lugo — Valencia — Petavius — Warsewicz — Nicolai — Possevin — Vieira — Mercurian.

St. Ignatius died on July 31, 1556. During his brief fifteen years as General, he had seen some of I his sons distinguishing themselves in one of the greatest 1 councils of the Church; others turning back the tide of Protestantism in Germany and elsewhere; others 1 again, winning a large part of the Orient to the Faith; and still others reorganizing Catholic education through- out regenerated Europe, on a scale that was bewildering | both in the multitude of the schools they estabhshed and the splendor of their success. Great saints were I being produced in the Society and also outside of it! through its ministrations. Meantime, its development had been so great that the little group of men which had gathered around him a few years before had grown to a thousand, with a hundred establishments in every part of the world.

Magnificent as was this achievement he did not allow it to reflect any glory upon himself personally. On the contrary, he withdrew more and more from public observation, and devoted to the establishment of his multiplied and usual charities, among the humblest and most abandoned classes of the city of Rome, what time was left him from the absorbing care of directing, advising, exhorting and inspiring his sons who were scattered over the earth in ever changing and dangerous situations. The palaces of the great rarely, if ever, saw him, and he was the most positive and

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persistent antithesis of what he is so commonly accused of being: a schemer, a plotter, a politician, a poisoner of public morality and the like. Nor was he seeking to exercise a dominating influence either in the Church or State, as he is calumniously charged with doing. The glory of God and the advancement of the spiritual kingdom on earth was his only thought, and so far was he from imagining that the Society was an essential factor in the Church's organization that he did not hesitate to say that if it were utterly destroyed, or as he expressed it, " if it were to dissolve like salt in water," a quarter of an hour's recollection in God would have been sufficient to console him and restore peace to his soul, provided the disaster had not been brought about by his fault.

He was not, as he has often been charged with being, stem, severe, arbitrary, harsh, tyrannical; on the contrary, his manner was most winning and attractive. He was fond of flowers ; music had the power of making him forget the greatest bodily pain, and the stars at night filled his soul with rapturous delight. He would listen with infinite patience to the humblest and youngest person, and every measure of importance before being put into execution was submitted to dis- cussion by all who had any concern in it. He would show intense and outspoken indignation, it is true, at flagrant faults and offences, especially if committed by those who were in authority in the Society ; his wrath, however, was vented not against the culprit, but against the fault. Moreover, while reprehending, he kept his feelings under absolute control. Indeed, his longanimity in the cases both of Rodriguez and Boba- dnia is astounding, and it is very doubtful if St. Francis Xavier, whom he wanted to be his successor, would have been as tolerant or as gentle. In his directions for works to be undertaken he was not meticulous nor 7

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minute, but left the widest possible margin for personal initiative ; nor would he tolerate an obedience that was prompted by servile fear. He continually insisted that the only motive of action in the Society was love of God and the neighbor.

The gentle Lionel Johnson, poet though he was, gives us a fairly accurate appreciation of the character of Saint Ignatius. " In the Saints of Spain," he says, " there is frequently prominent the feature of chivalry. Even the great Saint James, apostle and Patriarch of Spain, appears in Spanish tradition and to Spanish imagination as an hidalgo, a knight in gleaming mail who spurs his white war horse against the Moor. And of none among them is this more true than of the founder of the Society of Jesus. Cardinal Newman, describing him in his most famous sermon, finds no phrase more fitting than ' the princely patriarch, St. Ignatius, the Saint George of the modem world with his chivalrous lance run through his writhing foe.' He was ever a fighter, a captain-general of men, indomitable, daunt- less. The secret of his character lies in his will; in its disciplined strength; its unfailing practicality; its singleness and its power upon other wills. It was hardly a Francisan sweetness that won to him his followers who from the famous six at Montmartre grew so swiftly into a great band; it was not supremacy of intellect or of utterance ; it was not even the witness of his intense devotion and self-denial. It was his unequalled precision and tenacity of purpose; it was his will and its method. But we can detect no trace of that proud personal ambition and imperiousness often ascribed to him. He simply had learned a way of life that was profitable to religion which was all in all to him, and he could not be lukewarm in its service. Noblesse oblige, and a Christian holds a patent from the King of kings. The Jesuit A. M. D. G. was his

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ruling principle. The former heroic soldier of Spain was still a soldier, a swordsman, a strategist, but in a holy war. His eyes were always turned towards the battle; but he was far from forbidding, harsh, grim. He was tender and stern and like Dante kept his thoughts fixed on the mysteries of good and evil."

His death was in keeping with his life. There was no show, no ostentation, nothing " dramatic " about it, as Henri Joly imagines in his " Psychologic des Saints." There was no solemn gathering of his sons about his bedside, no parting instruction or benediction, as one would have expected from such a remarkable man who had established a religious order upon which the eyes of the world were fixed. He was quite aware that his last hour had come, and he simply told Polanco, his secretary, to go and ask for the Pope's blessing. As the physicians had not said positively that there was any immediate danger, Polanco inquired if he might defer doing so for the moment, as there was something very urgent to be attended to; where- upon the dying Saint made answer: " I would prefer that you should go now, but do as seems best." These were his last words. He left no will and no instructions, and what is, at first, incomprehensible, he did not even ask for Extreme Unction — possibly because he was aware that the physicians disagreed about the seriousness of his malady, and he was unwilling to discredit any of them; possibly, also, he did so in order to illustrate the rule that he laid down for his sons " to show absolute obedience in time of sickness to those who have care of the body." When at last they saw that he was actually dying someone ran for the holy oils, but Ignatius was already in his agony.

For one reason or another, he had not designated the vicar, who, according to the Constitution, was to govern the Society, until a General was regularly

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elected. Hence, as the condition of the times prevented the assembling of the professed from the various countries of Europe, the fathers who were in Rome elected Lainez. He, therefore, summoned the congre- gation for Easter, 1557, but it happened just then that Philip n and the Pope were at odds with each other, and no Spaniard was allowed to go to Rome. Because of that, Borgia, Araoz and others sent in a petition for the congregation to meet at Barcelona. This angered the Pope, and he asked Lainez, who put the case before him: " Do you want to join the schism of that heretic Philip?" Nevertheless, when the papal nuncio at Madrid supported the request of the Spanish Jesuits, his holiness relented somewhat, and said he would think of it. ^ •*

The situation was critical enough with a Pope who was none too friendly, when something very disedifying and embarrassing occurred. The irrepressible Boba- dilla who had not only voted for the election of Lainez as vicar, but had served under him for a year, suddenly discovered that the whole previous proceeding was invalid, and he pretended, that, because St. Ignatius had failed to name a vicar, the government of the Society devolved on the general body of the professed. The matter was discussed by the Fathers and he was overruled, but he still persisted and demanded the decision of Carpi, the cardinal protector of the Society. When that official heard the case, he decided against Bobadilla who forthwith appealed to the Pope. This time the Cardinal assigned to investigate was no other than the future St. Pius V. He took in the situation at a glance and dismissed Bobadilla almost with contempt. There was another offender, Cogordan, who does not appear to have objected to Lainez personally but who sent a written communication to his holiness saying that Lainez and some others really wanted to

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go to Spain, so as to be free from Roman control. This so incensed the Pope that Lainez, though greatly admired by Paul IV, obtained an audience only with the greatest difficulty, and was then ordered to hand over the Constitutions for examination. Fortunately, the same holy Inquisitor was sent, and Cogordan never forgot the lesson he received on that occasion for daring to suggest such a thing about Lainez. In the meantime, Philip had allowed the Spanish Jesuits to go to Rome, and Lainez was elected General on July 2, 1558. As has been said in speaking of Rodriguez, this incident is another illustration of the tremendous difficulty of the task St. Ignatius undertook when he gathered around him those unusually brilliant men, who were accustomed to take part in the diets of the Empire, to be counsellors of princes and kings and even popes. He proposed to make them all, as he said " think the same thing according to the Apostle." He succeeded ultimately.

The splendid work performed by Lainez at the Council of Trent had naturally made him a prominent figure in the Church at that time. Personally, also he was most acceptable to the reigning Pontiff, Paul IV; nevertheless, owing to outside pressure, there was imminent danger on several occasions of serious changes being made in the Constitutions of the Society. The Pope had been dissuaded from urging most of them, but he refused to be satisfied on one point, namely the recitation of the Divine Office. He insisted that it must