FOOTNOTES:[1]A good study of the controversy as to the indebtedness of Ignatius to the Benedictines, and even the Mohammedans, from the point of view of an outsider, will be found in H. Müller'sLes origines de la Compagnie de Jésus(1898).
[1]A good study of the controversy as to the indebtedness of Ignatius to the Benedictines, and even the Mohammedans, from the point of view of an outsider, will be found in H. Müller'sLes origines de la Compagnie de Jésus(1898).
[1]A good study of the controversy as to the indebtedness of Ignatius to the Benedictines, and even the Mohammedans, from the point of view of an outsider, will be found in H. Müller'sLes origines de la Compagnie de Jésus(1898).
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST JESUITS
Fromthis account of the influences which shaped the character of the Society of Jesus before and during its birth we may derive our first clue to the singular history of the Jesuits. They might not implausibly make a proud boast of the fact that they have always borne the intense hostility of heretics and unbelievers, but the very reason they assign for this—their effective service to the Church—prevents them from explaining why they have, from their foundation, incurred an almost equal enmity on the part of a very large proportion of the monks, priests, and laymen of their own Church. "Jealousy," they whisper; but since no other body in the Church, however learned or active, has experienced this peculiar critical concentration of its neighbours, we are bound to seek a deeper explanation. There are distinctive features of the Jesuit Society which irritate alike the pious and the impious, the Catholic and the non-Catholic.
We begin to perceive these features at the very birth of the Society. Its founder has the temper of a monk, but the times will not permit the establishment of a monastic order of the old type; a new regiment of soldiers of the Church must engage in active foreign service, not degenerate into fatness in domestic barracks. The success of Ignatius was due to the fact that he had other qualities than those of the monk, and he met thenew conditions with remarkable shrewdness. It seems to me a mistake to conceive him as a soldier above all things. He was pre-eminently a diplomatist. He infused into the Society the energy and fearlessness of the soldier, but he also equipped it with the weapons of the diplomatist, or, one might say, of the secret-service man. He was a most sincerely and unselfishly religious man, but he used, and taught others to use, devices which the profoundly religious man commonly disdains. The Jesuits were Jesuits from the start. It is a truism, a fulfilment of the known command of Ignatius, that they sought the favour of the rich and powerful; it is a fact lying on the very surface of their history, as written by themselves, that they accommodated their ideals to circumstances as no other religious order had ever done in the first decades of its life; it is the boast of their admirers that they used "holy wiles" in the attainment of their ends. This stamp was impressed on them by inheritance from their sire and the pressure of their surroundings. These things were consecrated by the undoubted sincerity of the early Jesuit ideal; they wanted power only for the service of Christ and the salvation of men. What happened later was that the inner fire, the glow of which sanctified these worldly manœuvres in the mind of the first Jesuits, grew dim and languid, and the traditional policy was developed until even crime and vice and hypocrisy were held to be lawful if they contributed to the power of the Jesuits.
An examination of the rules and the activity of the early Jesuits will make this clear. The Constitutions of the Society were not completed by Ignatius until several years after the establishment, and they were afterwards modified and augmented by Lainez, a less religious man than Ignatius, but it will be useful to consider at once their distinctive and most importantfeatures. In the main they follow the usual lines of monastic regulations, and many points which are ascribed to the soldier Ignatius and usually held to be distinctive of his Society are ancient doctrines of the monastic world; such are, the duties of blind obedience, of detachment from family and country, and of surrendering one's personality. The famous maxim, that a Jesuit must have no more will than a corpse, is familiar in every monastic body, and is even found in the rules of Mohammedan brotherhoods. Some writers have conjectured that Ignatius borrowed much from the Moorish fraternities, but it is difficult to see how he could have any knowledge of them, and the parallels are not important. In any case, the story of the Society will very quickly show us that this grim theory of blind obedience and self-suppression was not carried out in practice; even the earliest Jesuits were by no means will-less corpses and men who sacrificed their affections and individuality.
Omitting points of small technical interest, I should say that the most significant features of the Jesuit Constitutions are: the establishment of a large body of priests (Spiritual Coadjutors) between the novices and the professed members, the extraordinary provisions by which a superior gets an intimate knowledge of his subjects, the stress on the duty of teaching, the distinction between a "house" and a "college," the deliberate recommendation to prefer youths of wealthy or distinguished families (cæteris paribus) to poor youths, the despotic power and lifelong appointment of the General, the fallacious and imposing vow of direct obedience to the Pope, and the absence of "choir." These primitive and fundamental features of the Society, taken in conjunction with the special privileges which the Society gradually wheedled from the Popes, go fartoward explaining its great material success and its moral deterioration. Some of these points need no explanation, or have already been explained, and a few words will suffice to show the effect of the others.
First as to the Spiritual Coadjutors. One who aspires to enter the Society passes two years of trial as a "novice," then takes "simple" (or dissolvable) vows and becomes a "scholastic" (student). In the other monastic bodies, which now have simple vows, the aspirant takes his "solemn" (or indissoluble) vows three years afterwards, before he becomes a priest. The peculiarity of the Jesuits is that they defer the taking of the "solemn" vows for a considerable number of years, and they thus have a large body of priests who are not rigidly bound to the Society and cannot hold important office in it. This gives the General, who has a despotic power of dismissing these Spiritual Coadjutors, a very lengthy period for learning the intimate character of men before they are admitted to the secrets of the Society.
Then there is the remarkable scheme of spying, tale-bearing, and registering by which this knowledge of men is secured. The aspirant must make a general confession of his life to the superior, or some priest appointed by him, when he enters the Society. He is from that day closely observed and subjected to extraordinary tests, and a strict obligation is laid on each to tell the faults and most private remarks of his neighbour. The local superiors then send periodical full reports on each man to the headquarters at Rome, where there must be a bureau not unlike the criminal intelligence department of a great police-centre: except that the good and the mediocre are as fully registered as the suspects.
The important place assigned to teaching in theprogramme of the Society also leads to serious modifications of the monastic ideal. Every order has some device or other by which it escapes the practical inconveniences of its vow of poverty, but the Jesuits have gone beyond all others. They have drawn a casuistic distinction between a "college" and a "house of the professed," and have declared that the ownership of the former is not inconsistent with their vow of poverty. The result is that they may heap up indefinite wealth in the shape of colleges and their revenues, yet boast of their vow of poverty. The various devices of the monastic bodies to, at the same time, retain and disclaim the ownership of their property are many and curious. This is the one instance of a monastic body boldly saying that its vow is consistent with the ownership of great wealth. Hence the mercantile spirit which will at once spread in the Society.
The deliberate counsel to prefer rich or noble youths to poor, when their other qualifications are equal, is a further obvious source of material strength and moral weakness; we shall soon find them making wealth, or social standing, or talent, the first qualification. The exemption from "choir" (or chanting the psalms in choir for several hours a day) falls in the same category. When we add to these elements of their Constitutions the extraordinary privileges they secured from the Popes in the course of a decade or two, we have the preliminary clues to the story of the rise and fall of the Society. They were allowed to grant degrees in their colleges (and so ruin and displace universities); they were declared exempt from the jurisdiction of the local authorities, spiritual or secular; they might encroach on the sphere of any existing monastery; and they received many other powers which enabled them to pose as unique representatives of the Papacy.
The tendency which we thus detect in the legislation of the Society is equally visible in much of the personal conduct of its founder, and soon shows its dangers in the lives of his less fervent followers. We have seen how the sanction of the Society was secured, and we must note that Ignatius was not more ingenuous in obtaining control of it. The conventional account of his appointment to the office of General is edifying. About Easter 1541 he summoned to Rome, for the purpose of electing a General, the nine fathers who had taken the solemn vows. Four were unable to come, but they sent, or had left at Rome, written votes, and Ignatius was unanimously elected. He protested, however, that he was unworthy to hold the office, and compelled them to hold a second ballot. At this ballot he received two-thirds of the votes, three being cast for Favre. He then consulted his confessor, and was told to accept the office; and for several days afterwards he washed the dishes and discharged the humblest offices.
Orlandini naively confesses, however, that at the election Ignatius gave a blank vote, and we can hardly suppose that he was so far lost in contemplation as to be unaware that a blank vote was a vote for himself. Further, the result of the second ballot plainly suggests that, if Ignatius had again refused to accept the office, Favre would have been appointed. It is difficult to doubt that he intended from the first to hold the office of General, and indeed it would have been ludicrous for them to appoint any other. But Ignatius knew his young followers, and he seems to have acted in this way in order that they might place the authority in his hands in the most emphatic manner. They are described in the chronicles as little less than angelic, but we shall presently find that some of them were very human, especially in the matter of obedience, and that at thedeath of Ignatius they quarrel like petty princes for the succession. Ignatius was piously diplomatic. He would use his power unreservedly in the cause of Christ and the Pope, but it is important to note how from the start the founder of the Society employs casuistry or diplomacy ingettingpower.
During the next fifteen years Ignatius remained at Rome, making only three short and relatively unimportant missions into Italy. They had moved from the house in the Piazza Margana to the foot of the Capitoline Hill, where the famous church of the Gesù now is. The old church of Sta Maria della Strada had been given to them, and Codacio (who had joined the Society and given his wealth to it) had built a house beside it for them. When Sta Maria proved too small, they proposed to build a larger church, and nearly secured the services of Michael Angelo; but the actual Gesù was begun in 1568 by Cardinal Alexander Farnese.
From their house beside the old church the keen eyes of the General followed the travels of his subjects to the ends of the earth and kept watch on Rome. He was now approaching his fiftieth year: a bald, worn man, with piercing black eyes in his sallow face, concealing an immense energy and power of intrigue under his humble appearance. Under his eye the novices were trained, and it was characteristic that he used to protest, when others urged him to expel an unruly brother, that—to put it in modern phrase—he liked a little "devil" in his novices. One of the first was young Ribadeneira, a cardinal's page, a noble by birth. He had come to their house one day when he was playing truant, and had been caught by the romance of the life. He was only fourteen years old, yet Ignatius received him and bore his fits of temper and rebellionuntil he became a useful and obedient member. Between the fiery Spanish boy and the aged and simple Codacio, the former papal official, there was every shade of character to be studied and humoured. The younger novices—they went down to the age of eleven—were encouraged to laugh and play, and come to the General's room to have fruit peeled for them; perhaps on the very day on which he was stirring the Pope to set up an Inquisition on the Spanish model at Rome or in Portugal. He loved the flowers of their garden, and tender ladies had no more sympathetic confidant. Great austerities, of the Manresa type, he rigorously forbade. The Jesuit was to be neat, clean, cheerful, strong, industrious, guarded in speech—and obedient. When it was necessary to strike, he struck at once. One night, when the prefect of the house came to make his report, it appeared that one of the novices (a young nobleman) had ridiculed the excessive zeal of another. Brother Zapata was at once summoned from bed and put out of doors.
His personal life was simple, to the eye. A Bible, a breviary, and anImitation of Christwere the only books in his poor chamber, which is still shown to the visitor; and of these the breviary was not used, as he wept so much in reading the office that he endangered his sight, and the Pope excused him from reading it. He spent the first four hours of his early day in meditation and the saying of Mass, then worked until noon, when all dined together, in silence, and afterwards spent an hour in conversation under his observant eye. Then he returned to his desk, or took his stick and his sombrero, and limped to the hospital, or to the houses of the very poor or the rich, or to the chambers of cardinals or papal officials. Many a jeer and curse followed him as he walked, in neat black cloak, with downcast eyes andgrave smile, courteous to every beggar or noble who addressed him. Rome was rich with monuments of his philanthropy—schools, orphanages, rescue-homes, etc.; but the fierce hostility never died, and at times it rose to the pitch of a gale. After his round of visits he limped back, grave and humble, to the house for the silent evening meal. When the novices were abed, the prefect came to give him a minute account of the day's life in the house, and, when the prefect was abed, the large eyes still flashed in the worn, olive-tinted face. He slept only four hours a night.
But all these pages of the written biography of Ignatius are of less interest than the unwritten. To understand his real life during those fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays you have to study the adventures of his colleagues far away: to mark how the hostility of bishops and doctors and princes is disarmed by a papal privilege or a papal recommendation, how the Protestant plague cannot break out anywhere but a Jesuit appears, how the most nicely fitted man is sent for each special mission, how the man disappears when there is, rightly or wrongly, a cry of scandal, how the long white arms of Ignatius Loyola seem to stretch over the planet from Sta Maria della Strada, near the Pope's palace. This vast and obscure activity of the General will be best gathered from a short survey of the fortunes of the Jesuits during his reign.
The first mission of interest to us, though not quite the first in point of time, was the sending of two Jesuits to the British Isles. It seemed that England was lost, and all that could be done was to resist Henry's attempt to stamp out the old faith in Ireland and persuade JamesV.to follow his profitable example in Scotland. The mission was perilous, for, on the word of these Jesuits of the time, nearly every chief in Ireland had gone over toProtestantism, and in Scotland the nobles and officials were looking with moist lips at the fat revenues of the monasteries. The Archbishop of Armagh, who had fled to Rome, asked the Pope to send two Jesuits to his country, and Codure and Salmeron were appointed. Codure died, however, during the negotiations, and Paschase Brouet was named in his place. As usual, Ignatius chose his men with shrewdness. Brouet, the "angel of the Society," was the counterpart of Salmeron's vigour and learning. They were granted the privileges of Nuncii by the Pope, though Ignatius directed them to mention these privileges only when the success of the mission required. In fact, he gave them a written paper of instructions as to their personal behaviour when, on 10th September 1541, they left for Paris and Edinburgh. They were to travel as poor Jesuits—but the wealthy young noble Zapata was permitted to accompany and care for them.
What the precise aim of this mission was we do not know, but it was from every point of view a complete failure. It is, of course, represented as a success, and its purpose is said to have been merely to hearten the suffering Irish people in their resistance and convey to them indulgences and absolutions. But from the circumstances of the time and the duration of the mission we may be sure that the two Jesuits learned very little English, and less or no Gaelic, so that the idea seems absurd. In Scotland, certainly, their mission was political. They saw James at Stirling Castle, and easily got from him an assurance that he would resist the allurements of HenryVIII.What they trusted to do in Ireland we are not informed, and it seems most reasonable to suppose that they were to see the chiefs and stiffen them in their opposition to England. This they wholly failed to do, for the leading men wouldhave nothing to do with them. The customary Catholic version of the enterprise is that they happily accomplished their mission, traversed "the whole of Ireland" (as even Francis Thompson says), consoling and absolving, and went home to report success. One fears that this account may be typical of these early Jesuit reports of missions. To learn Gaelic and traverse the whole of Ireland, or any large part of it, in thirty-four days (Orlandini), in the sixteenth century, and in circumstances which compelled them to travel with the greatest prudence, would assuredly be a miracle, especially when we are told that for some time even the common folk shrank from them, and it is hinted that the scattered Irish priests were unfriendly.
Apparently they travelled a little in disguise, or hid in the farms here and there, for a few weeks, granting indulgences and dispensations, probably through some Gaelic interpreter, until the English officials heard of their presence and put a price on their heads. The Jesuit narrative credits them with the bold idea of going to London and bearding the wicked Henry in his palace. Their behaviour was singularly prudent for men with such exalted ideas. Leaving Ireland, possibly at the entreaty of the Irish, as soon as the search for them grew hot, they returned to Scotland, and finding that country also aflame, they went on at once to Paris. There they received orders to return to Scotland and discharge a secret mission similar to that they had had in Ireland. They "hesitated and informed the Pope of the state of things in Scotland," says the Jesuit historian; in fact, they remained in Paris until the Pope allowed them to return to Rome. If any be disposed to criticise their conduct, he may be reminded that Brouet and Salmeron had spent several weeks in Ireland at the risk of their lives. However, it is plain that wehave to look closely into these early Jesuit accounts of missions which covered the infant Society with glory. A prudent examination of them discovers features which have been carefully eliminated from later Jesuit, or pro-Jesuit, works on the subject.
As HenryVIII.died in 1547, and EdwardVI.in 1553, it may seem singular that Ignatius did not, when the Catholic Mary acceded to the throne, at once dispatch a band of his priests to help in restoring the old faith. Neither Orlandini nor his discreet follower, Crétineau-Joly, throws any light on the mystery, but a few important hints may be gathered from the more candid early Jesuit historian Polanco, a close associate of Ignatius, and the full solution is indicated in Burnet'sHistory of the Reformation(ii. 526, in the Oxford edition). This rare discovery of an independent document suggests that the early story might read somewhat differently in many particulars if we were not forced to rely almost entirely on Jesuit authorities.
From the brief statements scattered over the various volumes of Polanco'sHistoria Societatisit appears that from 1553 until his death Ignatius made the most strenuous efforts to secure admission into England. Cardinal Pole, it seems, asked the prayers of Ignatius for his success when he was summoned to England, and, when Ignatius died and Lainez again approached Pole, the cardinal pointedly replied that the only way in which the Jesuits could aid him was by their prayers. In the meantime (1554) Ignatius pressed Father Araoz, who was in great favour at the Spanish court, to urge Philip, and induce ladies of the court to urge him, to take Jesuits to England. In 1556 he sent Father Ribadeneira, a courtly priest, to join Philip in Belgium and press the request, but the reply was always that Pole was opposed to admitting the Jesuits. Polanco makes it quite clearthat Pole resisted all the efforts of Ignatius from 1554 to 1556.
Burnet supplies the solution of the mystery. A friend of his discovered a manuscript at Venice, from which it appears that Ignatius had overreached himself and aroused the hostility of the cardinal. He had written to Pole that, as Queen Mary was restoring such monastic property as had fallen to the throne, it would be advisable to entrust this to the Jesuits, since the monks were in such bad odour in England; and he added that the Jesuits would soon find a way to make other possessors of monastic property disgorge. Pole refused their co-operation and left the Jesuits angry and disappointed. The historian cannot regard an anonymous manuscript as in itself deserving of credence, but the statement very plausibly illumines the situation. I may add that in 1558 Father Ribadeneira was actually smuggled into England in the suite of Count Gomez de Figueroa, who had gone to console the ailing Queen.[2]The count was a warm patron of the Jesuits, but Queen Mary died soon after his arrival, and the last hope of the Jesuits was extinguished.
We cannot examine with equal freedom all the chronicles of early Jesuit activity, and must be content to cull from the pages of theHistoria Societatis Jesu, the first section of which is written by Father Orlandini, such facts as may enable us to form a balanced judgment of the Society under Ignatius. Italy was, naturally, the first and chief theatre of their labours, and in the course of a few years they spread from the turbulent cities of Sicily to the foot of the Alps. I have already described the work of Ignatius at Rome, and need add only that,as Orlandini tells us, he was one of the most urgent in pressing the reluctant Pope to "reform" the Roman Inquisition, or to equip it with the dread powers of the Spanish tribunal. At the very time when he was devising pleas for toleration in Protestant and pagan lands, he was urging that in Italy and Portugal there should be set up the most inhuman instrument of intolerance that civilisation has ever known. The psychology of his attitude is simple; he was convinced that he was asking tolerance for truth and intolerance for untruth. The liberal-minded Romans were not persuaded of the justice of his distinction, and the opposition to the Society increased. The hostility, which at times went the length of breaking Jesuit windows, is ascribed by his biographers chiefly to his zeal for the conversion of prostitutes. He founded a large home for these women, and would often follow them to their haunts in thepiazzeand lead them himself to St. Martha's House. On the whole, his great philanthropic services and personal austerity secured respect for his Society at Rome, and it prospered there until his later years.
In the south of Italy the Society met little opposition in the early years. Bobadilla had done some good work in troubled Calabria before the Society was founded, and within the next ten years colleges were opened at Messina (1548), Palermo (1549), and Naples (1551). The poet Tasso was one of the first students of the Naples college. It was in the north that the more arduous work had to be done. The seeds of the Reformation were wafted over the Alps and found a fertile soil in the cities of the Renaissance. Hardly anywhere else were monks and clergy so corrupt and ignorant, and nowhere was there so much familiarity with the immorality of the Vatican system. Rome itself lived on this corruption and regarded it with indulgence, butin the university towns of the north educated men, and even women, who almost remembered the lives of SixtusIV., InnocentVIII., AlexanderVI., JuliusII., and LeoX., were but provoked to smile when they were exhorted to cling to the "Vicar of Christ."
To tear these prosperous seedlings of heresy out of the soil of northern Italy was the congenial task of the early Jesuits, and Lainez, Brouet, and Salmeron, with some of the new recruits, went from city to city, challenging the Protestants to debate, strengthening the Catholics to resist, and founding colleges for the sound education of youth. Their procedure, and the resentment it constantly excited, may be illustrated by their experience at Venice. Lainez was sent by the Pope to Venice in 1542, at the request of the Doge. An honourable apartment awaited him in the Doge's Palace, but he humbly declined and went to live among the sick at the squalid hospital, varying his learned campaign against the Lutherans with the lowliest services to the poor and ailing. Many were edified, especially one Andrea Lippomani, an elderly and wealthy noble. Presently there came an instruction from Ignatius that Lainez must accept the hospitality offered him by Lippomani; and a little later the noble's heirs were infuriated to learn that he had assigned a rich benefice of his at Padua to the Jesuits. They appealed to the Venetian Council, and lost, for Lainez and Salmeron were ordered by the General to defend the donation. So the first college of the Society was founded, at Padua, and Lippomani afterwards enabled them to found one at Venice. Whatever view one takes of it, this was the normal procedure: tend the sick and beg your bread until "men of wealth and position" open their purses, then throw all your energy into the founding of colleges and the securing of novices. It was unquestionably a most effective method ofserving the Church; it also had an aspect which attracted critics.
In the Catholic atmosphere of Spain and Portugal the Society might be expected to grow luxuriantly, as it eventually did, but its fortunes in the Peninsula are rather due to the General's policy of securing influential patrons than to any popular welcome. As early as 1540 Ignatius had sent his nephew Araoz into Spain, and one reads—between the lines—that he had little success. At last a college was founded at Alcalà, to the anger of many of the University professors. One professor maintained his opposition so long and so violently that Father Villanueva, the Jesuit rector, fraternally informed him that the Inquisition proposed to put him a few questions, and the professor sullenly withdrew. Then a learned ex-rector of the university itself was won by Ignatius, during a visit to Rome, and was sent back, a Jesuit, to found a college at Salamanca. It was, as usual, founded in poverty; the fathers had not even a crucifix to put over their altar, and one of their number had to draw the figure on a sheet of paper. From the general laws of these phenomena one might deduce that the story brought a shower of crucifixes. However, the favour of the King of Portugal and the influence of Rome smoothed their paths, and little colonies were soon planted at Valladolid, Toledo, Saragossa, and other towns.
It was in Spain that the Society encountered the most virulent of its early Catholic antagonists, Melchior Cano. He was a very learned and sober Dominican monk, and a professor at the university: an enemy of mysticism and eccentricity. He knew of the early penances and "visions" of Ignatius, and had seen him at work in Rome. When the pale, black-robed, mysterious youths walked demurely into learned Salamanca and setup a college for the instruction of youth, the monk erupted. They were hybrids—neither the flesh of the secular clergy nor the fish of the regular clergy: they were leeches, fastening on wealthy saints and sinners; and so on. Miguel de Torres, the rector, called upon the irate friar, and told him of the great privileges the Pope had bestowed on the Society and the high missions he had entrusted to its members. This inflamed him still more, and he flung at them Paul's fiery warnings against the hypocrites who would come after him. He exaggerated heavily, especially in regard to the personal character of the Jesuits, but he saw very clearly those dangerous features and practices of the early Society which I have indicated. The struggle came to a diplomatic close. Melchior Cano was appointed Bishop of the Canaries, and the Jesuits invite us to admire the way in which Ignatius returned good for evil. It may be added that Cano afterwards recognised the ruse, laid down his mitre, and returned to plague his benefactors.
In the midst of this conflict the Jesuits made a most important convert, and their future in Spain was assured. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, one of the leading nobles of the kingdom, met and was enchanted by Favre in 1544, when the King of Portugal brought that gentle and persuasive Jesuit on a visit to the Spanish court. He was conducted through the Exercises by Favre, one of the most lovable and sincere of the early fathers. When Favre died two years afterwards, prematurely worn by his labours, Borgia wrote to ask Ignatius to admit him to the order. Observe the procedure once more. He was secretly initiated, not even the Pope knowing his name: which enabled him to remain in the eyes of men the Duke of Gandia, and shower his wealth and his patronage on the Society. It really matters little what lofty purposes are alleged for suchsinuous procedure; it was a new policy in the history of religious founders. When, a few years later, the Pope offered a cardinal's hat to the Duke of Gandia, and the King of Spain insisted that he should accept it, the truth had to come out. Ignatius had sternly enjoined that no dignity should ever be accepted by any member of his Society, yet, to avoid giving offence to the king, he said that he left the decision to Borgia.
Under Borgia's patronage the net of the Society spread over Spain, many blessing and some cursing. At Saragossa, where they had built a chapel, the Augustinian friars complained that it encroached on their sphere. To prevent unedifying conduct on the part of rival friars, the Church had decreed that no order should establish itself within five hundred feet of a house belonging to a different order. When the Jesuits who had broken this law, refused to yield, they were excommunicated by the Vicar-General, and a pleasant procession was arranged by the townsfolk, in which effigies of damned Jesuits were propelled toward their destination by little devils. The Augustinians were popular. But the long arm of Ignatius was extended once more, and the Papal Nuncio intervened in favour of the Jesuits. Before many years the Jesuits won from the Pope a declaration that the law did not apply to them, and they might build where they pleased. They prospered, and were hated.
An incident of the same significance occurred at Alcalà. The college obtained many pupils, though little wealth, and the Jesuit fathers began to be very active. In 1551 they were surprised to hear that the Archbishop of Toledo had suspended the whole of them from priestly functions for daring to hear confessions without his authorisation. The Jesuits produced their privileges, and persuaded the Governor of Toledo, and even theRoyal Council, to explain to the prelate that the Pope had exempted them from the jurisdiction of bishops. He refused to recognise such extraordinary privileges, and maintained the suspension. Ignatius then laid the matter before the Pope, and the Archbishop was directed from Rome to withdraw his opposition.
When we turn to Portugal we find an interesting illustration of the early effect of great prosperity on the Society. On the throne at the time was JohnIII. from whose reign all historians date the downfall of what had become one of the most brilliant and wealthy Powers in Europe. Blind to the gross administrative corruption in his kingdom, and to the decay of the stirring patriotism which had borne the Portuguese flag over the globe, John was concerned only about the religious needs of his country and his new colonies. He had invited Xavier and Rodriguez in 1540, intending to send them to the Indies, but he was so charmed with them that he wished to keep them in Portugal. Ignatius allowed Rodriguez to remain, and Xavier set out on his historic mission to the far east. In this Ignatius showed his usual discernment: Rodriguez proved as supple and graceful a courtier as Xavier proved a fiery missionary. John then wished to entrust the tutorship of his son to Rodriguez, and Ignatius consented. His own followers were puzzled at times to know whichwerethe dignities that they were forbidden to accept. When John asked for a Jesuit confessor, Rodriguez refused, but Ignatius overruled him. The next step was to set up the Inquisition, through the mediation of Ignatius, and Orlandini admits that when, in 1555, the king wished to make Father Merin, his confessor, head of the Inquisition, Ignatius seriously considered the proposal. He did not refuse, as is sometimes said; the negotiations broke down.
In this genial atmosphere the Society flourished. Its chief college was at Coimbra, the great university centre, where the Jesuits rapidly ran their course. At first they shocked staid Catholics with the excesses of their zeal. A youth in the college confessed to temptations of the flesh, and was ordered to walk the streets at mid-day without a hat or a cloak, holding a skull in his hand. Another student went forth almost naked in a cold wind, begging from door to door; and, finding a crowd of folk dancing and singing in a church, he mounted the pulpit to admonish them, and was dragged out and severely chastised. At nights Father Simon would send out a procession of youths to cry in the ears of indignant sinners or quiet wine-bibbers some such doggerel as: "Hell, hell, hell, for those in grave sin"; or long processions of children with masks and lanterns paraded the streets and squares. We gather that the boys of Coimbra had a pleasant time during these exhibitions. But the college flourished; there were in a few years a hundred and fifty pupils in it, and it supplied large numbers of missionaries.
In 1546 Favre visited Coimbra, and reported to Ignatius that prosperity had flushed the veins of his brothers. Nicolini and other anti-Jesuit writers speak of the college as having become a place of "debauch," but this is not stated in the chronicles. Frivolity and good-living are the only vices charged, whatever we may suspect. The students stooped to writing sonnets, and the King's money provided plenty of good cheer. Ignatius felt that Father Simon had lost his fervour at the court, deposed him from office—he was Provincial (or head of the province)—and ordered him to go either to Brazil or Aragon. The piety of Rodriguez had evidently deteriorated, and he made a struggle to hold his place. He was a handsome and comfortable man,much liked for his liberality. He went to Coimbra, where Ignatius had appointed a new rector, and the liberals tried to induce the court to protect them. The King was alarmed, however, and Father Simon had to submit, and the college to mend its ways. Numbers of students left or were expelled, and for the rest, when the new rector piously walked the streets of Coimbra, laying the bloody lash on his own bare shoulders, they fell to tears and went out in a body scourging themselves under the eyes of the townsfolk. The story ends in Orlandini with Simon Rodriguez submitting in holy joy and kissing the rebuking letters of his General. But when we turn to Sacchini, the Jesuit writes of the next section of the "Historia Societatis Jesu," who does not always carefully notice what his predecessor has said, we learn that Rodriguez smarted for years under the humiliation, and awaited an opportunity to undo it. However, the province returned to piety, and before the death of Ignatius we find the Jesuits capturing, after a long siege, the famous University of Coimbra.
In France the Society wholly failed under Ignatius. He placed students, supported by wealthy patrons, at the University of Paris, and sent fathers after a time to gather their neophytes under one roof. Then the outbreak of war with Spain drove most of them abroad, and even when the war was over the colony made slow progress, amid poverty and hostility. In 1549 Ignatius won the favour of Cardinal Guise de Lorraine and, through him, of the French court. The King issued letters authorising the Jesuits to live and teach at Paris, and Brouet was sent to conciliate the Parisians. Then began a long and famous struggle between the Parlement and University of Paris and the court and Jesuits. Parlement bluntly refused to register the King's letters,and they were of no effect until this powerful legal body had accepted them. Henry ordered his Privy Council to examine the Jesuit Constitutions and approve them; Parlement retorted by inviting the Archbishop, who was very hostile, and the theological faculty of the university to advise it, and the issue was a violent condemnation of the Jesuits in the vein of Melchior Cano. It was said that they admitted all sorts of aspirants to their ranks, and that the extraordinary privileges they professed to have were insulting to the spiritual and temporal authorities and opposed to the interests of the other orders and the university.
In the main, it was undoubtedly the privileges of the Jesuits which made the greater part of Paris and of France hostile to them. Bishops were not to look at them, civic authorities were not to tax them, universities were to be opposed by free classes, and were to respect degrees granted by Jesuits to any whom they thought fit. The hostility was quite natural, and it was fed by indiscretions on the part of the Jesuits. They received a nephew of the Archbishop, against the uncle's will, and they first turned the brain (with their Exercises) of, and then put out of doors, a very learned ornament of the university named Postel. The Archbishop bade them leave Paris, and they remained helpless outside the city, at St. Germain aux Prés, until after the death of Ignatius. He pressed the case at Rome, and doctors of the Sorbonne went there to exchange arguments with Jesuit doctors, but nothing was done until years afterwards.
During the war the Spanish Jesuits had gone from Paris to Louvain and began to teach there. Here again the university scorned and opposed them, and for many years (until they secured the interest of the Archduchess) they made no progress. Ribadeneira,who was in charge, used to break down and retire from the room to weep. In Germany they had a different and more spirited struggle, but they seem to have had little influence in the various conferences and diets at which attempts were still made to reconcile the parties. Favre was at the Diet of Worms in 1540, then at the Ratisbon Conference, where Bobadilla and Le Jay succeeded him. They were restricted to an effort to reform the Catholics themselves, and found it difficult. The letters of these early Jesuits make it quite impossible for any historian to question the appalling corruption of priests, monks, and people in every part of Europe at the time of the Reformation. From Worms Favre wrote to Ignatius that there were not three priests in the city who were not stained by concubinage or crime. At Ratisbon the Catholics threatened to throw Le Jay into the river. "What does it matter to me whether I enter heaven by water or land?" he said. They knew very little German, generally preaching in Latin, and had slight influence for some years.
In time, as they learned German, and confined themselves to the Catholic provinces, their work was more successful. They fastened especially on Cologne, and assailed the Archbishop, a very worldly prelate of the old type, who was annoyed to find these Jesuit wasps buzzing about him, and their house was closed for a time by the authorities. But they had the favour of the Emperor, and the Archbishop was deposed. In 1545 the Council of Trent opened, and Lainez and Salmeron appeared there as the Pope's theologians, together with Peter Canisius (an able German student whom Favre had attracted to the Society) as theologian of the new Archbishop of Cologne. It need only be said of the earlier sittings of the famous Council(in 1545 and 1551) that the Jesuits had little influence, and this they used to oppose any concession to the Protestants and magnify the authority of the Pope. This will be plainer in connection with the later sittings.
The work in Germany was afterwards thwarted by the zeal of the fiery Bobadilla. It had at last come to war with the Protestants, to the satisfaction of the Jesuits, and Bobadilla marched with the troops and was severely wounded at Mühlberg. In 1548, however, Charles published hisInterim, or provisional concession of certain Protestant claims (such as the marriage of the clergy) until the Council of the Church should decide the points at issue. It may be recalled that the general Council of Trent was first intended as a common meeting of Protestant and Catholic divines, and the hope of reconciliation was not yet dead. Reconciliation, however, could mean only concession, and the Jesuits were resolutely against concession. Whatever influence they had in Germany, apart from their effort to reform the morality of the Catholics, was reactionary and mischievous in the highest degree. Bobadilla overflowed with wrath at theInterim, and denounced it fiercely by pen and tongue. Charles angrily ordered him to leave the Empire, and he returned to Rome; and it is recorded that Ignatius so warmly resented his "indiscretion" that he refused at first to admit him to the house. Thus did the saint vindicate the majesty of kings, says M. Crétineau-Joly. The outbreak did unquestionably hamper the progress of the Jesuits for a time, but before the death of Ignatius they were firmly established in Vienna, Prague, Cologne, and a few other cities. At Vienna the court demanded that Canisius should accept the office of archbishop, and Ignatius compromised by allowing him to administer thesee and refuse its revenue. In the same year a Jesuit was made "Patriarch of Abyssinia." It was just seven years since Ignatius had induced the Pope to decree that no Jesuit should ever accept an ecclesiastical dignity.
Of the foreign missions it is impossible to speak here at any length. In 1540 Francis Xavier had come for his leader's blessing as he started for the Indies. His cassock was worn and patched, and Ignatius took off his own flannel vest and put it on the young priest before dismissing him with the usual: "Go and set the world on fire." It was a different Xavier from the one he had seen, a vain and brilliant teacher, at the University of Paris, and it is well known how he did set the world on fire. He was a handsome, blue-eyed man of thirty-six, and no Portuguese sailor ever fronted the unknown with more courage and heroism than Xavier displayed in his famous travels from India to Japan. After a year's work at Goa, where his first need was to convert the Christians and the Portuguese priests, he went on to Malabar, to the Moluccas, to Malacca, and on to Japan, ending his life, in 1552, in an attempt to reach China. What the result of his mission was it is difficult to estimate soberly. The Jesuit chronicler forgets the confusion of tongues, and makes Xavier leap from land to land, preaching to and converting thousands everywhere, as if they all spoke Portuguese. In Japan he clearly failed, although the Portuguese merchants were greatly anxious for success, and the Japanese, of their own high character and out of respect for the great king (of Portugal), his friend, were extremely polite.
The other foreign missions of the early Jesuits were less irradiated with miracle, or with heroism. Lainez went in the wake of the Spanish troops to Tunis, saidmass there, and left no trace behind. Nuñez, the "Patriarch of Abyssinia," went out with two others to take over his diocese, but found a "Patriarch" there already, who made a lively opposition, and the Jesuits had to retire to Goa. Four Jesuits were sent to the Congo. Two died at once, and the other two became so interested in commerce that the king was alarmed. Ignatius recalled and replaced them, but the king expelled the newcomers. In Brazil they made more progress, penetrating the forests and winning the favour of the natives by their medical and other material aid. They tried to save the intended dinners of the cannibals, and, when they failed, sprinkled the poor men with holy water; but the cannibals found that it made them less succulent and forbade the practice. They did useful work in Brazil, and laid the foundation of a great mission.
Such were the labours of the first Jesuits during the generalship of Ignatius, and it remains only to close the career of their able leader. The varied story of success and failure, the showers of glowing testimonials and bitter diatribes, the heroism of some and the frailty of others, kept him alternately elated or depressed to the end. He must have seen that the first fervour could not be maintained, and that opposition became more serious as the Society grew. It had now nearly a thousand members scattered over the world, and a hundred houses and colleges. The figures are misleading, however, as there were only thirty-five professed fathers and only two professed houses; many of the so-called colleges had no pupils and were little more than names. Ignatius had twice attempted to resign his office in the last few years; and there was much to distress him. He had hardly composed the trouble in Portugal, in 1552, when Lainez gave himanxiety. Lainez, who was made Provincial of Italy when Brouet was sent to Paris, complained that the general was robbing his colleges of their best teachers for the sake of Rome. Ignatius dictated to his secretary an angry letter. "He bids me tell you," says the scribe, "to attend to your own charge ... and you need not give him advice about this until he asks it."
In the next year (1553) he had a grave quarrel with Cardinal Caraffa. The Jesuits of Sicily had admitted a youth against his parents' wishes, and Caraffa, to whom the mother appealed, ordered Ignatius to give up the youth. He appealed to the Pope, and got Caraffa's verdict cancelled. When, two years afterwards, Caraffa became Pope PaulIV., Ignatius remembered his momentary triumph with concern, and there were grave faces in the Jesuit house. PaulIII.had died in 1549. His successor JuliusIII.had been, as the previous record shows, very generous to the Jesuits, though funds had fallen very low in Rome, owing to the Reformation, and Ignatius had great work to keep alive the German college he had founded. Julius died in 1555, and it is said by the Jesuit writers that five cardinals voted for Ignatius himself at the next conclave. Marcellus, the next Pope, lived less than a month, and then Caraffa occupied the see. To Caraffa the Spaniards were "barbarians," and the Jesuits were Spaniards. But he postponed the struggle which he was to have with the Society, and received Ignatius courteously.
Work, austerity, and anxiety had at length seriously impaired the strong frame of Ignatius, and he began to prepare for the end. It is marvellous how he lived to see his sixty-fifth year, and continued to control the mighty struggle of his Society against its variousenemies. With the opening of 1556, however, he retired to a great extent from the labours of his office, and spent his days chiefly in prayer. He died in the early morning of 31st July 1556, and the struggle for the succession began.