While Latin was retained as the official and liturgical language, frequent sermons were to be preached in the vernacular. Indulgences were not to be issued for money, and no charge should be made for conferring the sacraments.
[Sidenote: Index and inquisition ]
The seed sown by the council bore abundant fruit during several succeeding pontificates. The central government was completely reorganized. A definite catechism was prepared at Rome and every layman instructed in the tenets and obligations of his religion. Revisions were made in the service books of the Church, and a new standard edition of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was issued. A list, called the Index, was prepared of dangerous and heretical books, which good Catholics were prohibited from reading. By these methods, discipline was in fact confirmed, morals purified, and the scandal of the immense riches and the worldly life of the clergy restrained. From an unusually strict law of faith and conduct, lapses were to be punishable by the ancient ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition, which now zealously redoubled its activity, especially in Italy and in Spain.
A very important factor in the Catholic revival—not only in preserving all southern Europe to the Church but also in preventing a complete triumph of Protestantism in the North—was the formation of several new religious orders, which sought to purify the life of the people and to bulwark the position of the Church. The most celebrated of these orders, both for its labors in the sixteenth century and for its subsequent history, is the Society of Jesus, whose members are known commonly as Jesuits. The society was founded by Ignatius Loyola [Footnote: Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556).] in 1534 and its constitution was formally approved by the pope six years later.
[Sidenote: Ignatius Loyola]
In his earlier years, Ignatius followed the profession of arms, and as a patriotic Spaniard fought valiantly in the armies of Emperor Charles V against the French. But while he was in a hospital, suffering from a wound, he chanced to read a Life of Christ and biographies of several saints, which, he tells us, worked a great change within him. From being a soldier of an earthly king, he would now become a knight of Christ and of the Church. Instead of fighting for the glory of Spain and of himself, he would henceforth strive for the greater glory of God. Thus in the very year in which the German monk, Martin Luther, became the leading and avowed adversary of the Catholic Church, this Spanish soldier was starting on that remarkable career which was to make him Catholicism's chief champion.
After a few years' trial of his new life and several rather footless efforts to serve the Church, Ignatius determined, at the age of thirty- three, to perfect his scanty education. It was while he was studying Latin, philosophy, and theology at the University of Paris that he made the acquaintance of the group of scholarly and saintly men who became the first members of the Society of Jesus. Intended at first primarily for missionary labors among the Mohammedans, the order was speedily turned to other and greater ends.
[Sidenote: The Jesuits]
The organization of the Jesuits showed the military instincts of their founder. To the three usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was added a fourth vow of special allegiance to the pope. The members were to be carefully trained during a long novitiate and were to be under the personal direction of a general, resident in Rome. Authority and obedience were stressed by the society. Then, too, St. Ignatius Loyola understood that the Church was now confronted with conditions of war rather than of peace: accordingly he directed that his brothers should not content themselves with prayer and works of peace, with charity and local benevolence, but should adapt themselves to new circumstances and should strive in a multiplicity of ways to restore all things in the Catholic Church.
Thus it happened that the Jesuits, from the very year of their establishment, rushed to the front in the religious conflict of the sixteenth century. In the first place, they sought to enlighten and educate the young. As schoolmasters they had no equals in Europe for many years. No less a scholar and scientist than Lord Francis Bacon said of the Jesuit teaching that "nothing better has been put in practice." Again, by their wide learning and culture, no less than by the unimpeachable purity of their lives, they won back a considerable respect for the Catholic clergy. As preachers, too, they earned a high esteem by the clearness and simplicity of their sermons and instruction.