JESUITS, 1540-1556

powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was too small for the

JESUITS, 1540-1556

hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of the apostate kings, to spread evil rumors, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty, the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these divines as the most rigid, others

audience. The name of Jesuit on a titlepage secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful noble, and the beautiful, breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from childhood to manhood, from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the South of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and desert, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country; scholars, physicians, merchants, serving men; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor-house of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the

as the most indulgent of spiritual directors; and both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, who knew how to make allowance for the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too. The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. They were to be found in

t

depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word."-T. B. Macaulay, Essays, historical and miscellaneous, PP. 478-481.

"Experience had shown that the old monastic orders were no longer sufficient. . . . About 1540, therefore, an idea began to be entertained at Rome that a new order was needed; the plan was not to abolish the old ones, but to found new ones which should better answer the required ends. The most important of them was the Society of Jesus. But in this case the moving cause did not proceed from Rome. Among the wars of Charles V. we must recur to the first contest at Navarra, in 1521. It was on this occasion, in defending Pamplona against the French, that Loyola received the wound which was to cause the monkish tendency to prevail over the chivalrous element in his nature. A kind of Catholicism still prevailed in Spain which no longer existed anywhere else. Its vigour may be traced to the fact that during the whole of the Middle Ages it was always in hostile contact with Islam, with the Mohammedan infidels. The crusades here had never come to an end. . . . As yet untainted by heresy, and suffering from no decline, in Spain, Catholicism was as eager for conquest as it had been in all the West in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was from the nation possessing this temperament that the founder of the order of the Jesuits sprang. Ignatius Loyola (born 1491) was a Spanish knight, possessing the two-fold tendencies which distinguish the knighthood of the Middle Ages. He was a gallant swordsman, delighting in martial feats and romantic love adventures; but he was at the same time animated by a glowing enthusiasm for the Church and her supremacy, even during the early period of his life. These two tendencies were striving together in his character, until the event took place which threw him upon a bed of suffering. No sooner was he compelled to renounce his worldly knighthood, than he was sure that he was called upon to found a new order of spiritual knighthood, like that of which he had read in the chivalrous romance, 'Amadis.' Entirely unaffected by the Reformation, what he understood by this was a spiritual brotherhood in the true mediæval sense, which should convert the heathen in the newly-discovered countries of the world. With all the zeal of a Spaniard he decided to live to the Catholic Church alone; he chastised his body with penances and all kinds of privations, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and, in order to complete his defective education, he visited the university of Paris; it was among his comrades there that he formed the first associations out of which the order was afterwards formed. Among these was Jacob Lainez; he was Loyola's fellow-countryman, the organizing head who was to stamp his impress upon the order. . . . Then came the spread of the new doctrines, the mighty progress of Protestantism. No one who was heartily attached to the old Church could doubt that there was work for such an association, for the object now in hand was not to make Christians of the aboriginal inhabitants of Central America, but to reconquer the apostate members of the Romish Church. About 1539 Loyola came with his fraternity to Rome. He did not find favour in all circles; the old orders regarded the new one with jealousy and mistrust; but Pope Paul III.

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(1534-49) did not allow himself to be misled, and in 1540 gave the fraternity his confirmation, thus constituting Loyola's followers an order, which, on its part, engaged 'to obey in all things the reigning Pope-to go into any country, to Turks, heathen, or heretics, or to whomsoever he might send them, at once, unconditionally, without question or reward.' It is from this time that the special history of the order begins. During the next year Loyola was chosen the first general of the order, an office which he held until his death (1541-56). He was succeeded by Lainez. He was less enthusiastic than his predecessor, had a cooler head, and was more reasonable; he was the man for diplomatic projects and complete and systematic organization. The new order differed in several respects from any previously existing one, but it entirely corresponded to the new era which had begun for the Romish Church. . . . The construc

tion of the new order was based and carried out on a monarchical-military system. The territories of the Church were divided into provinces; at the head of each of these was a provincial; over the provincials, and chosen by them, the general, who commanded the soldiers of Christ, and was entrusted with dictatorial power, limited only by the opinions of three judges, assistants or admonitors. The general has no superior but the Pope, with whom he communicates directly; he appoints and dismisses all officials, issues orders as to the administration of the order, and rules with undisputed sway. The absolute monarchy which was assigned to the Pope by the Council of Trent, was conferred by him on the general of the Jesuits. Among the four vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and subjection to the Pope, obedience was the soul of all. To learn and practise this physically and mentally, up to the point where, according to the Jesuit expression, a man becomes 'tanquam lignum et cadaver,' was the ruling principle of the institution. . . . Entire renunciation of the will and judgment in relation

to everything commanded by the superior, blind obedience, unconditional subjection, constitute their ideal. There was but one exception, but even in this there was a reservation. It was expressly stated that there can be no obligation 'ad peccatum mortale vel veniale,' to sinful acts of greater or less importance, 'except when enjoined by the superior, in the name of Jesus Christ,' 'vel in virtute obedientiæ,'-an elastic doctrine which may well be summed up in the dictum that 'the end justifies the means.' Of course, all the members of this order had to renounce all ties of family, home, and country. . . . Of the vow of poverty it is said, in the 'Summarium' of the constitution of the order, that it must be maintained as a 'murus religionis.' No one shall have any property; every one must be content with the meanest furniture and fare, and, if necessity or command require it, he must be ready to beg his bread from door to door ('ostiatim mendicare'). The external aspect of members of the order, their speech and silence, gestures, gait, garb, and bearing shall indicate the prescribed purity of soul. . . . On all these and many other points, the new order only laid greater stress on the precepts which were to be found among the rules of other orders, though in the universal demoralisation of the monastic life they had fallen into disuse. But it decidedly differed from all the others in the manner in which it aimed at obtaining sway in every sphere and every aspect of life. Himself without home or country, and not holding the doctrines of any political party, the disciple of Jesus renounced everything which might alienate him among varying nationalities, pursuing various political aims. Then he did not confine his labours to the pulpit and the confessional; he gained an influence over the rising generation by a systematic attention to education, which had been shamefully neglected by the other orders. He devoted himself to education from the national schools up to the academic chair, and by no means confined himself to the sphere of theology. This was a principle of immense importance. . . . It is a true saying, that 'he who gains the youth possesses the future'; and by devoting themselves to the education of youth, the Jesuits secured a future to the Church more surely than by any other scheme that could have been devised. What the schoolmasters were for the youth, the confessors were for those of riper years; what the clerical teachers were for the common people, the spiritual directors and confidants were for great lords and rulers-for the Jesuits aspired to a place at the side of the great, and at gaining the confidence of kings. It was not long before they could boast of astonishing success."-L. Häusser, Period of the Reformation, ch. 20.-"The Society, in 1556, only 16 years after its commencement, counted as many as twelve provinces, 100 houses, and upwards of 1,000 members, dispersed over the whole known world. Their two most conspicuous and important establishments were the Collegio Romano and the German College. They already were in possession of many chairs, and soon monopolised the right of teaching, which gave them a most overwhelming influence."G. B. Nicolini, History of the Jesuits, p. 90.-Sce also CHRISTIANITY: 16th century: Counterreformation; EDUCATION: Modern: 16th-17th centuries: Jesuit teaching, etc.; EUROPE: Renaissance and Reformation: Catholic Reformation; ITALY: 1530-1600; MONASTICISM: 1534; 16th-19th centuries; PAPACY: 1534-1540; NAVARRE: 1442-1521.

Jesuits.-T. Hughes, Loyola and the educational system of the Jesuits.

1542-1649.-Early Jesuit missionaries.-Their labors in China, India, Paraguay, and Canada. "In 1542, Xavier landed at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese colony, on the western coast of Hindostan. He took lodgings at the hospital, and mingled with the poor. He associated also with the rich, and even played with them at cards, acting piously upon the motto of the order, 'Ad majorem Dei gloriam.' Having thus won goodwill to himself, he went into the streets, with his hand-bell and crucifix, and, having rung the one, he held up the other, exhorting the multitudes to accept that religion of which it was the emblem. [See also MISSIONS, CHRISTIAN: India.] His great facility in acquiring foreign languages helped him much. He visited several times the pearl-fisheries on the Malabar coast, remaining at one time thirteen months, and planting forty-five churches. Cape Comorin, Travancore, Meliapore, the Moluccas, Malacca, and other ports of India, and finally the distant island of Japan-where Christianity was [introduced (see JAPAN: 1542-1593; 1593-1625)] . . . -received his successive visits. Leaving two Jesuits on the island, he returned to settle some matters at Goa, which done, he sailed for China, but died at the island of Sancian, a few leagues from the city of Canton, in 1552-ten years only after his arrival in India. He had in this time established an inquisition and a college at Goa. Numbers of the society, whom he had wisely distributed, had been sent to his aid; and the Christians in India were numbered by hundreds of thousands before the death of this 'Apostle of the Indies.' It has even been said, that he was the means of converting more persons in Asia than the church had lost by the Reformation in Europe. The empire of China, which Xavier was not allowed to enter, was visited, half a century later, by the Jesuit Matthew Ricci, who introduced his religion by means of his great skill in science and art, especially mathematics and drawing. . . . [He] allowed those who received Christianity to retain any rites of their own religion to which they were attached-and died in 1610, bequeathing and recommending his policy to others. [See also MISSIONS, CHRISTIAN: China.] This plan of accommodation was far more elaborately carried out by Robert Nobili, who went to Madura, in southern Hindostan, as a missionary of the order in 1606. He had observed the obstacle which caste threw in the way of missionary labor, and resolved to remove it. He presented himself as a foreign Brahmin, and attached himself to that class. They had a tradition, that there once had been four roads to truth in India, one of which they had lost. This he professed to restore. He did no violence to their existing ideas or institutions, but simply gave them other interpretations, and in three years he had seventy converted Brahmins about him. From this time he went on gathering crowds of converts, soon numbering 150,000. This facile policy, however, attracted the notice of the other religious orders, was loudly complained of at Rome, and, after almost an entire century of agitation, was condemned in 1704 by a special legation, appointed by Clement XI to inquire into the matter of complaint. . . . The attention of the society was early directed to our own continent, and its missions everywhere anticipated the settlements. The most remarkable missions were in South America. [See BRAZIL: 1510-1661; URUGUAY: 1515-1624.] Missionaries had been scattered over the whole continent, everywhere making converts, but doing

ALSO IN: I. Taylor, Loyola and Jesuitism in its rudiments.-S. Rose, Ignatius Loyola and the early

nothing for the progress of the order. Aquaviva was general. This shrewd man saw the disadvantage of the policy, and at once applied the remedy. He directed, that, leaving only so many missionaries scattered over the continent as should be absolutely necessary, the main force should be concentrated upon a point. Paraguay was chosen. [See PARAGUAY: 1608-1873.] The missionaries formed what were called reductionsthat is, villages into which the Indians were collected from their roving life, taught the ruder arts of civilization, and some of the rites and duties of the Christian religion. These villages were regularly laid out with streets, running each way from a public square, having a Church, workshops and dwellings. Each family had a small piece of land assigned for cultivation, and all were reduced to the most systematic habits of industry and good order. . . . The men were trained to arms, and all the elements of an independent empire were fast coming into being. In 1632, thirty years after the starting of this system, Paraguay had twenty reductions, averaging 1,000 families each, which at a moderate estimate, would give a population of 100,000, and they still went on prospering until three times this number are, by some, said to have been reached. The Jesuits started, in California, in 1642, the same system, which they fully entered upon in 1679. This, next to Paraguay, became their most successful mission."--Historical sketch of the Jesuits (Putnam's Magazine, Sept., 1856).—In 1632 the Jesuits entered on their mission work in Canada, or New France, where they supplanted the Récollet friars. (See CANADA: 1620-1630.) "In 1640 Montreal, the site of which had been already indicated by Champlain in 1611, was founded, that there might be a nearer rendezvous than Quebec for the converted Indians. At its occupation a solemn mass was celebrated under a tent, and in France itself the following February a general supplication was offered up that the Queen of Angels would take the Island of Montreal under her protection. In the August of this year a general meeting of French settlers and Indians took place at Montreal, and the festival of the Assumption was solemnised at the island. The new crusading spirit took full possession of the enthusiastic French people, and the niece of Cardinal Richelieu founded a hospital for the natives between the Kennebec and Lake Superior, to which young and nobly-born hospital nuns from Dieppe offered their services. Plans were made for establishing mission posts, not only on the north amongst the Algonkins, but to the south of Lake Huron, in Michigan and at Green Bay, and so on as far as the regions to the west. The maps of the Jesuits prove that before 1660 they had traced the waters of Lake Erie and Lake Superior and had seen Lake Michigan. The Huron mission embraced principally the country lying between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, building its stations on the rivers and shores. [See HURONS; MICHIGAN: 1640-1671.] But the French missionaries, however much they might desire it, could not keep outside the intertribal strifes of the natives around them. Succeeding to Champlain's policy, they continued to aid the Algonkins and Hurons against their inveterate enemies the Iroquois. The Iroquois retaliated by the most horrible cruelty and revenge. There was no peace along the borders of this wild country, and missionaries and colonists carried their lives in their bands. In 1648 St. Joseph, a Huron mission town on the shores of Lake Simcoe, was burned down and destroyed by the Iroquois, and Père Daniel,

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the Jesuit leader, killed under circumstances of great atrocity. In 1649 St. Ignace, a station at the corner of Georgian Bay, was sacked, and there the pious Brebeuf met his end, after having suffered the most horrible tortures the Indians could invent. Brebeuf, after being hacked in the face and burnt all over the body with torches and redhot iron, was scalped alive, and died after three hours' suffering. His companion, the gentle Gabriel Lallemand, endured terrible tortures for seventeen hours."-W. P. Greswell, History of the Dominion of Canada, ch. 6.-The Hurons were dispersed and their nation destroyed by these attacks of the Iroquois. "With the fall of the Hurons fell the best hope of the Canadian mission. They, and the stable and populous communities around them, had been the rude material from which the Jesuit would have formed his Christian empire in the wilderness; but, one by one, these kindred peoples were uprooted and swept away, while the neighboring Algonquins, to whom they had been a bulwark, were involved with them in a common ruin. The land of promise was turned to a solitude and a desolation. There was still work in hand, it is true,-vast regions to explore, and countless heathens to snatch from perdition; but these, for the most part, were remote and scattered hordes, from whose conversion it was vain to look for the same solid and decisive results. In a measure, the occupation of the Jesuits was gone. Some of them went home, 'well resolved,' writes the Father Superior, 'to return to the combat at the first sound of the trumpet'; while of those who remained, about twenty in number, several soon fell victims to famine, hardship, and the Iroquois. A few years more, and Canada ceased to be a mission; political and commercial interests gradually became ascendant, and the story of Jesuit propagandism was interwoven with her civil and military annals."-F. Parkman, Jesuits in North America, ch. 34.See also CANADA: 1606-1608; 1608-1611; 1634-1652; 1634-1673; MARYLAND: 1633-1637; MISSIONS, CHRISTIAN: 17th19th centuries; North America.

1558.-Mission founded in Abyssinia. See ABYSSINIA: 15th-19th centuries.

1572-1603.-Persecution in England under Elizabeth. See ENGLAND: 1585-1587.

1573-1592.-Spanish predominance.-Conflict with pope.-Changes in the Order.-"At the first establishment of the Order, the elder and already educated men, who had just entered it, were for. the most part Spaniards; the members joining it from other nations were chiefly young men, whose characters had yet to be formed. It followed naturally that the government of the society was, for the first ten years, almost entirely in Spanish hands. The first general congregation was composed of twenty-five members, eighteen of whom were Spaniards. The first three generals belonged to the same nation. After the death of the third, Borgia, in the year 1573, it was once more a Spaniard, Polanco, who had the best prospect of election. It was however manifest that his elevation would not have been regarded favourably, even in Spain itself. There were many new converts in the society who were Christianized Jews. Polanco also belonged to this class, and it was not thought desirable that the supreme authority in a body so powerful, and so monarchically constituted, should be confided to such hands. Pope Gregory XIV., who had received certain intimations on this subject, considered a change to be expedient on other grounds also. When a deputation presented itself before him from the congregation assembled to elect their general, Greg

ory inquired how many votes were possessed by each nation; the reply showed that Spain held more than all the others put together. He then ́asked from which nation the generals of the order had hitherto been taken. He was told that there had been three, all Spaniards. 'It will be just, then,' replied Gregory, 'that for once you should choose one from among the other nations.' He even proposed a candidate for their election. The Jesuits opposed themselves for a moment to this suggestion, as a violation of their privileges, but concluded by electing the very man proposed by the pontiff. This was Eberhard Mercurianus. A material change was at once perceived, as the consequence of this choice. Mercurianus, a weak and irresolute man, resigned the government of affairs, first indeed to a Spaniard again, but afterwards to a Frenchman, his official admonitor; factions were formed, one expelling the other from the offices of importance, and the ruling powers of the Order now began to meet occasional resistance from its subordinate members. But a circumstance of much higher moment was, that on the next vacancy-in the year 1581-this office was conferred on Claudius Acquaviva, a Neapolitan, belonging to a house previously attached to the French party, a man of great energy, and only thirty-eight years old. The Spaniards then thought they perceived that their nation, by which the society had been founded and guided on its early path, was now to be forever excluded from the generalship. Thereupon they became discontented and refractory, and conceived the design of making themselves less dependent on Rome. . . . They first had recourse to the national spiritual authority of their own country-the Inquisition.. One of the discontented Jesuits, impelled, as he affirmed, by a scruple of conscience, accused his order of concealing, and even remitting, transgressions of the kind so reserved, when the criminal was one of their society. The Inquisition immediately caused the Provincial implicated, together with his most active associates, to be arrested. Other accusations being made in consequence of these arrests, the Inquisition commanded that the statutes of the order should be placed before it, and proceeded to make further seizures of parties accused. . . . The Inquisition was, however, competent to inflict a punishment on the criminal only: it could not prescribe changes in the regulations of the society. When the affair, therefore, had proceeded thus far, the discontented members applied to the king also, assailing him with long memorials, wherein they complained of the defects in their constitution. The character of this constitution had never been agreeable to Philip II.; he used to say that he could see through all the other orders, but that the order of Jesuits he could not understand. . . . He at once commanded Manrique, bishop of Carthagena, to subject the Order to a visitation, with particular reference to these points. . . . The character of Sixtus V. made it particularly easy for Acquaviva to excite the antipathies of that pontiff against the proceedings of the Spaniards. Pope Sixtus had formed the hope, as we know, of rendering Rome, more decidedly than it ever yet was, the metropolis of Christendom. Acquaviva assured him, that the object really laboured for in Spain was no other than increased independence of Rome. Pope Sixtus hated nothing so much as illegitimate birth; and Acquaviva caused him to be informed that Manrique, the bishop selected as 'Visitator' of the Jesuits, was illegitimate. These were reasons sufficient to make Sixtus recall the assent he had already given to the visitation. He even sum

moned the case of the provincial before the tribunals of Rome. From his successor, Gregory XIV., the general succeeded in obtaining a formal confirmation of the rule of the order. But his antagonists also were unyielding and crafty. They perceived that the general must be attacked in the court of Rome itself. They availed themselves of his momentary absence. In the summer of 1592, at the request of the Spanish Jesuits and Philip II., but without the knowledge of Acquaviva, the pontiff commanded that a general congregation should be held. Astonished and alarmed, Acquaviva hastened back. To the generals of the Jesuits these 'Congregations' were no less inconvenient than were the Convocations of the Church to the popes; and if his predecessors were anxious to avoid them, how much more cause had Acquaviva, against whom there prevailed so active an enmity! But he was soon convinced that the arrangement was irrevocable; he therefore resumed his composure and said, 'We are obedient sons; let the will of the holy father be done.' . . . Philip of Spain had demanded some changes, and had recommended others for consideration. On two things he insisted: the resignation of certain papal privileges; those of reading forbidden books, for example, and of granting absolution for the crime of heresy; and a law, by virtue of which every novice who entered the order should surrender whatever patrimonial rights he might possess, and should even resign all his benefices. These were matters in regard to which the order came into collision with the Inquisition and the civil government. After some hesitation, the demands of the king were complied with, and principally through the influence of Acquaviva himself. But the points recommended by Philip for consideration were of much higher moment. First of all came the questions, whether the authority of the superiors should not be limited to a certain period; and whether a general congregation should not be held at certain fixed intervals? The very essence and being of the institute, the rights of absolute sovereignty, were here brought into question. Acquaviva was not on this occasion disposed to comply. After an animated discussion, the congregation rejected these propositions of Philip; but the pope, also, was convinced of their necessity. What had been refused to the king was now commanded by the pope. By the plenitude of his apostolic power, he determined and ordained that the superiors and rectors should be changed every third year; and that, at the expiration of every sixth year, a general congregation should be assembled. It is, indeed, true that the execution of these ordinances did not effect so much as had been hoped from them. . . . It was, nevertheless, a very serious blow to the society, that it had been compelled, by internal revolt and interference from without, to a change in its statutes."-L. von Ranke, History of the popes, v. 2, bk. 6, sect. 9.-See also PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: Language: 1600: Spanish power at its height.

1581-1641.-Hostility of Paulistas of Brazil.Opposition to enslavement of Indians. See BRAZIL: 1531-1641.

1595.-Expulsion from Paris. See FRANCE:

1593-1598.

1606.-Exclusion from Venice. See PAPACY: 1605-1700; VENICE: 1606-1607.

1608-1613.-Settlement in Maine. See MAINE:

1608-1613.

1653-1660.-First controversy and conflict with Jansenists. See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: 1602-1700.