§ 149.8. The Society of Jesus: Founding of the Order.—Ignatius Loyola, Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde, born at the castle of Loyola in A.D. 1491, was descended from a distinguished family of Spanish knights. Seriously wounded at the siege of Pampeluna by the French in A.D. 1521, he sought to relieve the tedium of a prolonged and painful sickness by reading romances of chivalry and, when he had finished these, the legends of the saints. These last made a deep impression upon him, and enkindled in him a glowing zeal for the imitation of the saints in their abandonment of the world, and their superiority to the world’s thoughts and ways. Nervous convulsions and appearances of the queen of heaven gave their Divine consecration to this new tendency. After his recovery he distributed his goods among the poor, and in beggar’s garb subjected himself to the most rigorous asceticism. At the age of thirty-three years he began, in A.D. 1524, sitting among boys, to learn the first elements of Latin, then studied philosophy at Complutum and theology at Salamanca and Paris. With iron determination of will he overcame all difficulties. In Paris, six like-minded men joined together with him: Peter Favre of Savoy, who was already a priest; Francis Xavier, belonging to a family of Spanish grandees; James Lainez, a Castilian; Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese; Alphonso Salmeron and Nicholas Bobadilla, both Spaniards. With glowing enthusiasm they drew out the plan of a new order, which, by its very name, “Compañia de Jesus,” indicated its character as that of a spiritual army, and by combining in itself all those features which separately were found to characterize the several monkish orders, advanced the bold claim of being the universal and principal order of the Romish church. But pre-eminently they put themselves under obligation, in A.D. 1534, by a solemn vow of absolute poverty and chastity, and promised to devote themselves to the service of the Catholic faith at the bidding of the pope. Practising the strictest asceticism they completed their studies, and obtained ordination as priests. As insurmountable difficulties, arising from the war carried on by Venice with the Turks, prevented the accomplishing of their original intention of a spiritual crusade to the Holy Land, they travelled to Rome, and after some hesitation Paul III., in A.D. 1540, confirmed their association as the Ordo Societatis Jesu. Ignatius was its first general. As such he continued to devote himself with great energy of will to spiritual exercises, to the care of the sick, to pastoral duties, and to the conflict with the heretics. He died in A.D. 1556, and was beatified by Paul V. in A.D. 1609, and canonized by Gregory XV. in A.D. 1622.A collection of his letters was published in three vols. by the Jesuits in A.D. 1874.[435]—Among his disciples who emulated their master in genius, insight, and wide, world-embracing schemes, we must name the versatile Lainez, the energetic Francis Borgia, a Spanish grandee, grandson of the murdered Giovanni Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. (§ [110, 12]), but above all the Neapolitan Claudio Aquaviva, A.D. 1581-1615, who in many respects deserves to be regarded as a new founder of Loyola’s creation. Under these the order entered upon a career of universal significance in history, as a new spiritual army for the defence of the papacy. The popes showed their favour by heaping unheard of privileges upon it, so that it grew from year to year more and more powerful and comprehensive. Never has any human society come to understand better how to prove spirits, and to assign to each individual a place, and to set him to work for ends for which he is best suited; and never has a system of watchful espionage been more consistently and strictly carried out. Everything must be given up to the interests of the order in unconditional obedience to the commands of the superior, even that which is to men most dear and sacred, fatherland, relations, likings and dislikings. One’s own judgment and conscience count for nothing; the order is all in all.They have understood how to use everything that the world affords, science, learning, art, worldly culture, politics, and, in carrying out their foreign missions, colonization, trade, and industry, as means for accomplishing their own ends (§ 156, 13). The order got into its own hands the education of the children of the higher ranks, and thus secured devoted and powerful patrons. By preaching, pastoral work, and the founding of numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods they wrought upon the people, became advisers of the princes through the confessional, wormed their way into connections and into all secrets. And all these innumerable appliances, all these conspicuous powers and talents, united under the direction of one will, were unwaveringly directed to one end: on the positive side, the furthering and spread of Catholicism; on the negative side, the overthrow and uprooting of Protestantism.On the death of the founder, in A.D. 1556, the order already numbered over 1,000 members in thirteen provinces and 100 colonies; and seventy years later, the number of provinces had increased to thirty-nine, with 15,493 members in 803 houses.[436]—Continuation, §§ [151, 1]; 165, 9.

§ 149.9. Constitution of the Jesuit Order.—Required to yield obedience and render an account of their doings only to the pope, exempted from every other kind of ecclesiastical supervision, and therefore scorning to accept any spiritual dignities and benefices, such as bishoprics, canonries, pastorates, etc., this order, thoroughly self-contained, presents a more perfect and compact organization than any large association on this earth has ever been able to show. Only those who had good bodily health and intellectual ability were admitted to the two years’ novitiate. After this period of probation had been passed in a satisfactory manner, the novices were released from the discipline of the novice master and put under the usual three monkish vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. They now either entered immediately as “secular coadjutors” on the duties assigned to such in administrating and taking care of the outward affairs of the houses of the order, or as “scholastici approbati” for their further intellectual culture were received into collegiate establishments provided for such under the direction of a rector. After completing the prescribed studies and exercises, they proceeded as “scholastici formati” to engage upon their duties as “spiritual coadjutors,” who were required to continue the prosecution of their studies, teach the young, and perform pastoral work. After many years’ trial, the most able and active of them were received into the number of the “professi,” who live purely on alms in a distinct and special kind of institution presided over by a superior. But among the professi, there is a distinction made between those who adopt three and those who adopt four vows. The latter, who, in addition to the other usual vows, take also one of obedience to the pope in regard to any mission among heathens and heretics which he may please to commission them to undertake, as the choice spirits of the order, constitute its very core and form the circle immediately around the general, who with monarchical absolutism stands at the head of all. Even this autocrat however is himself watched over by the four assistants associated with him and by an admonisher, who is at the same time his confessor, so that he may not commit anything contrary to the rules of the order and unduly stretch his own prerogatives; and he is also answerable to the general congregation of all the professi, which is convened every third year. The provincials officiate as his viceroys in different countries in which the order has a footing. Alongside of the spiritual superior of every house of the order stands a procurator, usually of clerical rank, for the administration of the property and the superintendence of the secular coadjutors. Like the general all the other superiors are watched over by the assistants or advisers associated with them, and by the admonishers or father confessors. The Constitutiones Societatis Jesu (Rom., 1583), p. vi., c. i. 1, thus describe the obedience that must be rendered to the superiors: Quisquis sibi persuadeat, quod qui sub obedientia vivunt, se ferri ac regi a divina providentia per superiores suos sinere debent perinde ac si cadaver essent, quod quoquoversus ferri et quacunque ratione tractari se sinit: vel similiter atque senis baculus, qui ubicunque et quacunque in re velit eo uti, qui cum manu tenet, ei inservit. By all members of the order, of every rank of degree, by novices and adepts alike, four weeks were usually devoted once a year under an exercise master chosen for that work to exercitia spiritualia, in which rigid attention was given to prayer, meditation, examination of conscience, mortification, etc., as an effectual means of breaking in and breaking down the individual will. The first sketch of a directory for exercises of this sort was made by the founder himself in his Exercitia Spiritualia (Antwerp, 1638). This work, annotated, enlarged, and completed, was finally adopted by the general congregation in A.D. 1594, and issued under the title Directorium in exer. sp.—The original rule of the Jesuits is set forth in the Constitutiones Societatis Jesu already referred to; their later rule, finally perfected at the eighteenth general congregation, is given in the Institutum Soc. Jesu (2 vols., Prag., 1757). The so called Monita secreta Soc. Jesu, first published at Cracow in A.D. 1612, professing to have been obtained from private instructions communicated by Aquaviva, the fifth general of the order, only to the most trustworthy of the very élite of the professi, which gives without the slightest reserve an account of the devices, often of the most unscrupulous description, to be practised in order to secure an increase to the order of power, reputation, influence, and possessions, have been repudiated with horror by the order as a malevolent calumny, by which probably some offender who had been ejected sought vent for his revenge.The author, who at all events betrays a thorough acquaintance with the internal arrangements of the order, under the fictitious form of a course of instruction given by the general named, may have communicated, with considerable exaggerations, an account of the practices current within the society of his own day.[437]

§ 149.10. The Doctrinal and Moral System of the Jesuits.—In dogmatics Loyola himself and his immediate disciples were firmly attached to the prevailing doctrinal system of Thomas (§ [113, 2]). Gradually, however, it came to be seen, that upon this ground their conflict with the Protestants in regard to the fundamental doctrines of sin and grace, justification and sanctification was in various ways precarious, and this occasioned an inclination more and more toward the Scotist side. Their general Aquaviva, in his order of study prescribed in A.D. 1586, publicly announced this departure from the doctrine of the Doctor Angelicus, restricting it, however, to the doctrines of grace and of the immaculate conception. On the other hand, they were the most zealous defenders of the characteristic doctrines of St. Thomas (§ [96, 23]) even in their extremest form, the papal infallibility, the pope’s universal episcopate, and his absolute supremacy over every earthly potentate. In the interests of the papacy they thus laid the foundations of a theory of the sovereignty of the people in matters of civil life: Only the papal power is, according to Matthew xvi. 18, immediately from God, that of the princes is from the people. The people therefore, if their prince be a heretic or a tyrant, can rid themselves of him by deposing, banishing, or even putting him to death; i.e. tyrannicide. Thus taught Bellarmine, who died in A.D. 1621, speaking for the whole order, in his treatise De potestate pontificis in temporalibus, and still more decidedly and openly the careful and reliable Spanish historian Juan Mariana, who died in A.D. 1624, in his “Mirror for Princes,” De rege et regis institutione, which was therefore condemned by the parliament of Paris to be burnt; while another work of his, published only after his death, reflecting upon the despotic proceedings of the general of the order, Aquaviva, and mercilessly exposing many other offences of the society, was condemned by Urban VIII. Alongside of the Pelagianizing Jesuit doctrine of grace there was also developed a lax doctrine of morals, which threatened to sap the very foundations of morality. This they made familiar to people generally through the confessional. The following are the principal points upon which their quibbling casuistry has been exercised in such a manner as to bring the morality of the Jesuits into thorough disrepute:

  1. Probabilism, which teaches, that in a case where the conscience is undecided as to what should be done or borne in that particular instance, one is not necessarily bound to the more certain and probable meaning, but may even take a less certain and less probable view, if this were supported by weighty reasons, or could be sustained by the authority of some distinguished theologian, a doctor gravis.
  2. Intentionalism, or the doctrine that any action, even it be in itself sinful, is to be judged only according to the intention with which it was performed, pointedly expressed in the saying, The end justifies the means, “quia cum finis est licitus etiam media sunt licita” (Busembaum).
  3. The distinction between philosophical and theological sin, according to which only the latter, as a sin committed with a clear understanding of the sinfulness of the deed, and with the present consciousness and intention thereby expressly to break a Divine command, is condemnable before God.
  4. The doctrine of the permissibility of a secret reserve, reservatio mentalis, and the use of ambiguous language, by means of which, if one, upon giving a solemn affirmation or denial upon oath, has so arranged his words, that besides the meaning naturally to be taken from them that is contrary to the truth or the intention, they admit of another that is in accordance with fact, he is not to be regarded as guilty of giving false witness, of breach of faith, deceit, or perjury.

These and other suchlike moral axioms, not indeed expressed for the first time by the Jesuit order, but already for the most part rooted in the mediæval system of casuistry, were certainly first carried out with reckless consistency in the moral code of the Society of Jesus. In the most frivolous and lighthearted way they were applied to the life, and openly and unreservedly set forth in the confessional, by the most celebrated moralists of the order. They were laid down as well established principles, not merely in learned theological discussion, but in the regularly authorized handbooks of morals, approved by the congregation of the order, of which some fifty or seventy treatises, e.g. those of Escobar and Busembaum (§ 157, 1), are still extant. They cannot therefore be repudiated as the individual opinions of some rash and inconsistent writers.They will also be found to lie at the foundation of the whole scheme and procedure of the order in their prosecution of foreign missions (§§ [150]; 156, 12) and in their attempts to proselytise Protestants (§ [151, 1], [2]), to supply the principle underlying their ecclesiastical and civil policy, their industrial and commercial activity (§ 156, 13), their pastoral and educational work. They are also thoroughly illustrative of their well known motto, Omnia in majorem Dei gloriam. It need not, however, be denied that the order has at all times numbered among its members many distinguished by deep piety and strict moral principles, and indeed some among them expressly combated from Scripture and experience those doctrines so perilous to moral truth and purity. The most notorious of the Jesuit moralists who taught and defended these pernicious views were Francis Toletus, who died in A.D. 1596, Gabriel Vasquez, who died in A.D. 1604, Thomas Sanchez, who died in A.D. 1610, Francis Suarez, who died in A.D. 1617, the Westphalian Hermann Busembaum, who died in A.D. 1668, and the Spaniard Escobar de Mendoza, who died in A.D. 1699.The name of the last mentioned has obtained an unenviable notoriety by the adoption of the word escobarderie into the French language.[438]

§ 149.11. Jesuit Influence upon Worship and Superstition.—As Jesuitism itself may be described as in every respect a reproduction in an exaggerated form of the Catholicism of the mediæval papacy, with all its unevangelical and anti-evangelical deterioration, all this showed itself pre-eminently and characteristically in reference to worship and superstition. Above all, this appeared in the mariolatry, in which the doctrine and practice of the Jesuits far outstripped all the extravagances of the Middle Ages. In the scheme of worship recommended and practised by the Jesuits the Divine Trinity was supplanted by a quaternity, in which Mary was assigned her place as the adopted daughter of the Father, mother of the Son, and spouse of the Holy Ghost, and thus her fervent devotees made her worship overshadow that of the three Persons of the Godhead. Along with the worship of Mary the order gave a new impetus to the veneration of St. Ann (§ 57, 2), whom Thomas de St. Cyrillo in his book, De laudibus b. Annæ, celebrated as “the grandmother of God and mother-in-law of the Holy Ghost.”In like manner it gave an impulse to worship of saints, images, and relics, to processions, pilgrimages, and rosary devotions, as well as to superstitious beliefs about wonder working scapularies, girdles, medals, amulets, and talismans (§ 186, 2), Ignatius and Xavier-water, endowed with healing properties through contact with the relics or models of these saints. The Jesuits were also making endless discoveries of new miracle legends and relics previously unknown.They originated the worship of the heart of Jesus (§ 156, 6), renewed the practice of flagellation, gave a new vitality to the indulgence nuisance, and diligently fostered belief in sorcery, demoniacal possession, apparitions of the devil, and exorcism. They also encouraged the silly notions of the people about witches, with all their cruel and horrible consequences (§ [117, 4]). The Jesuit Delrio, with the approval of his order, published, in A.D. 1599, a book with the title, “Disquisitiones Magicæ,” which, as a worthy companion volume to the “Hammer for Witches,” branded as heresy every doubt as to the truth of witchcraft witnessed to by so many infallible popes, and gave a powerful impetus to witch persecutions throughout Roman Catholic countries. That two noble Jesuits, Tanner, who died in A.D. 1632, and Spee, who died in A.D. 1635, are to be numbered among the first opponents of the gross delusion, does not in the very least affect the indictment brought against the order; for Tanner was persecuted on account of his utterances being contrary to the principles of the society, and Spee’s “Cautio Criminalis” could venture into the light only anonymously, and be printed only in a Protestant town (Ruiteln, 1631).

§ 149.12. Educational Methods and Institutions of the Jesuits.—The Jesuit order never interested itself in elementary and popular education. The pulpit and confessional, as well as the founding and control of spiritual brotherhoods and sisterhoods, afforded ample means and opportunities for impressing their influence upon the lower orders of the people. On the other hand, the order laboured unweariedly to secure professorships in gymnasiums, seminaries for priests, and universities, and that, not merely in the department of theology, but also in all the other faculties. By these means and by the founding of regular Jesuit schools they sought to get into their own hands the education of the higher ranks, so as to secure from among them as large a number as possible of members, friends, and protectors. Under the general Aquaviva this movement obtained an authorized directory and rule in the Ratio et institutio studiorum Soc. J., published in A.D. 1586. And very remarkable although thoroughly one-sided, and thus no doubt most effectually realizing the ends desired, were the results which the order gained in the department of Catholic education, which had been thrown into deep shade by the brilliant advances of Protestant scholarship and educational methods. The study of philology had for its almost sole object the acquiring of the Latin language with Ciceronian elegance, but this only produced fluency in writing and speaking. Greek was studied only by the way; and the knowledge of classical antiquities, as well as the arts and sciences generally, with the exception of mathematics, was utterly neglected. But special attention was devoted to rhetoric, and by means of disputations, public lectures, and dramatic representations readiness in speaking and replying was obtained; but freedom of thought and independent culture were rigorously suppressed. The whole course of instruction, as well as the method of tuition, had for its aim the breaking in and subduing of the pupil’s will. Adherence to rigid order, and unconditional obedience to reasonable demands, and a mild discipline, with strict control, and a regular system by which one was set to watch another, were the means used for arousing to the utmost a spirit of emulation and giving a sharp spur to ambition. The course of study which a scholastic of the order had to pass through in the collegiate establishments was divided into the studia inferiora and superiora. The former, consisting of three classes, embraced the Grammatica as a preliminary basis for the two higher classes of the Humanitas and the Rhetorica. The superiora comprised a three years’ course of Aristotelian philosophy, and a four years’ course of scholastic theology upon the Sentences of the Lombard and the Summa of St. Thomas, together with Bible study upon the Vulgate and the original texts, a little Church history, and, as the crown of the whole curriculum, casuistic ethics.

§ 149.13. Theological Controversies.

  1. The old controversy about the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin had not by any means obtained a final settlement at Trent.By firmly maintaining the decree on the universality of original sin the Franciscans hoped, with the zealous support of the Jesuits Lainez and Salmeron, to obtain express recognition of the pet doctrine of their order (§ [104, 7]); but, on the other hand, the Dominicans so vehemently protested, that the council, in order to prevent a threatened schism, was obliged to leave the point in dispute undecided, and was satisfied with renewing the constitution of Sixtus IV., of A.D. 1483 (§ [112, 4]), and thus prohibiting the one party from accusing the other of heresy.—Continuation, § 156, 5.
  2. The council for the same reason was just as little able to set at rest the burning controversy between Thomists and Scotists on the doctrine of grace (§ [113, 2]) by issuing any decisive statement on the subject. When the pious and learned professor Michael Baius of Lyons came forward in lectures and writings as a zealous defender of Augustinianism, the Franciscans extracted from his works seventy-six propositions, which were condemned by Pius V., A.D. 1567. And when again the Jesuits came forward in support of the papal verdict, the theological faculty of Lyons in A.D. 1587, took the field and passed censure upon thirty-four Pelagianizing propositions of the Jesuits Leonard Less and John Hamel as opposed to Holy Scripture and St. Augustine. In the following year the Portuguese Jesuit Louis Molina, in his treatise Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis concordia of A.D. 1588, set forth a semi-pelagian modification of the disputed propositions; the Dominicans, with the learned Dominicus Bañez at their head, opposed with a bitter polemic. But now the whole order of the Jesuits stood together as one man on the side of Molina. Besieged from both sides into complaints and demands, Clement VIII., in A.D. 1597, appointed a commission, the so called congregatio de auxiliis, to make a thorough investigation into the matter, and to give an exhaustive report. After this commission had spent ten years in vainly endeavouring to construct a formula which would give satisfaction to both parties, Paul V. dissolved it in A.D. 1607, promised to make known his decision at a more suitable time, and then in A.D. 1611 forbade all further disputings on that question. But after little more than thirty years the controversy broke out again at another place in a far more threatening and dangerous form (§ 156, 5).

§ 149.14. Theological Literature.—Various kinds of expedients were tried in order thoroughly to secure the establishment of the Tridentine system of belief. Paul IV. had as early as A.D. 1499 drawn up a list of prohibited books, which was again ratified at Trent in A.D. 1562, and has been since then continued and enlarged through some forty editions as the Index librorum prohibitorum et expurgandorum (with the note, donec corrigatur).Pius V. founded in A.D. 1571 a special “Congregation of the Index,” for looking after this business.[439] The Professio fidei Tridentinæ of A.D. 1564, and the Catechismus Romanus of A.D. 1566, were issued as authentic statements of the Tridentine doctrine; and in A.D. 1588 a permanent congregation was instituted for the explaining of that system in all cases of dispute that might arise. Also the new Breviarium Romanum of A.D. 1568 (§ 56, 2), as well as the Missale Romanum of A.D. 1570, served the same end. In A.D. 1566 Pius V. had appointed a commission, the so called Correctores Romani, for the preparing of a new edition of the Corpus juris canonici, which Gregory XIII. issued as the only authentic form in A.D. 1582. Sixtus V. published in A.D. 1589 a new edition of the Vulgate, Editio Sixtina, and, notwithstanding its numerous errata, often only pasted over or scratched out, pronounced it authentic. Clement VIII., however, issued a much altered revision, Editio Clementina, in A.D. 1592, and strictly forbade any alteration of it, but was induced himself to send out next year a second edition, which was guilty of this very fault. Meanwhile Roman Catholics and scholars began, in spite of the Tridentine decree as to the authenticity of the Vulgate, to give diligent attention to the study of the original text of Holy Scripture. The Dominican Santes Pagninus of Lucca, who died in A.D. 1541, a pupil of Savonarola, after careful study of all rabbinical aids, produced a Hebrew lexicon in A.D. 1529, a Hebrew grammar in A.D. 1528, a literally exact rendering of the Old and the New Testaments from the original texts, upon which he was engaged for thirty years, an introduction, with a thorough treatment of the tropical language of Scripture, and commentaries on the Pentateuch and Psalms. The literal meaning was with him palea, folium, cortex; the mystical, triticum, fructus, nucleus suavissimus. More importance was attached to the historical sense by the Dominican Sixtus of Siena, by birth a Jew, who died in A.D. 1569. His Bibliotheca sancta is an introduction to Holy Scripture extremely credible for that age. The Roman Inquisition condemned him to death because of heretical expressions in that work, especially with regard to the deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament; but Pius V. pardoned him, after he had prevailed upon him to retract. The Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who died in A.D. 1621, in his Ll. IV. de verbo Dei controverted the Protestant principle, Scriptura scripturæ interpres. Jerome Emser bitterly inveighed against Luther’s translation of the Bible, and, in A.D. 1527, set over against it an attempted translation of his own, which, however, is nothing more than a reprint of Luther’s, with the changes necessary in consequence of following the Vulgate and unimportant transpositions and alterations of words. The same barefaced impudence was practised by John Dietenberger of Mainz, in whose pretended rendering of the Old Testament of A.D. 1534, the translation of Luther and Leo Judä is followed almost word for word. John Eck of Ingolstadt produced, in A.D. 1537, a translation of the Bible from the Vulgate in the most wretched German, without the least consultation of the original text. On the other hand, the Augustinian monk Luis de Leon, who died in A.D. 1591, was not only celebrated as a learned and brilliant exegete, but also distinguished as a poet and prose writer of the first rank in the national literature of Spain. He was thrown into the prison of the Spanish Inquisition because of a translation and exposition of the Song of Songs in the mystico-ecclesiastical sense, circulated only in manuscript, and because of his depreciation of the Vulgate; and only after a five years’ confinement, during which he narrowly escaped the hands of the hangman, was he set free. The learned Spaniard Arias Montanus, under the patronage of King Philip II., edited the Antwerp polyglott in eight vols. folio, with learned notes and excursuses, in A.D. 1569 ff. The number of exegetes who now gave decided prominence to the literal sense became very considerable toward the end of the century. The most notable of these are Arias Montanus, who died in A.D. 1598, having commented on almost the whole Bible; the Jesuit John Maldonatus, who died in A.D. 1583, on the four gospels; John Mariana, who died in A.D. 1624, Scholia in V. et N.T.; Nich. Serrarius, who died in A.D. 1609, on the Old and New Testaments; and also William Estius of Douay, who died in A.D. 1613, on the New Testament epistles.—In the department of dogmatics the old traditional method was still followed by commenting on the Lombard. The most important schoolman of the age was the Spanish Jesuit Francis Suarez. In A.D. 1528 Berth. Pirstinger, Bishop of Chiemsee, under the title “Tewtsche Theologey,” wrote a complete handbook of theology in the High German dialect, which had completely emancipated itself from the scholastic forms (§ [125, 5]). John Eck also produced a rival work to Melanchthon’s Loci, the Enchiridion locorum communium, which within fifty years passed through forty-six editions. But of much greater importance are the Loci theologici of the Spanish Dominican Melch. Canus, who died in A.D. 1550, which were published at Salamanca in A.D. 1563. They consist not so much of a system of doctrines properly so called, as rather of comprehensive and learned preliminary investigations about the sources, principles, method, and fundamental ideas of dogmatics. He rejects the charge of absolute perversity brought against scholasticism, but grants that the method should be simplified, and what is good in it preserved. For instructions in higher and lower schools the two catechisms of the first German Jesuit provincial, Petrus [Peter] Canisius (§ 161, 1), Cat. major of A.D. 1554, and Cat. parvus of A.D. 1566, were epoch-making. They were circulated in numberless editions and translations,—the Little Catechism being printed more than 500 times,—and used for two centuries in all the Catholic schools in Germany; and even yet they are held in high esteem. Among the Catholic polemical writers, Cardinal Bellarmine occupies beyond dispute the foremost rank. His Disputationes de controversiis chr. fidei adv. hujus temp. hæreticos, A.D. 1588-1593, are in many respects unsurpassed even to this day. Before him William Lindanus, Bishop of Ghent, author of Panoplia evangelica (Colon., A.D. 1563), and the Jesuit Francis Coster of Mechlin, author of Enchiridion controversiarum (Colon., A.D. 1585), had won a great reputation among their own party as disputants against Protestantism. The services rendered to church history by Cardinal Baronius have already been referred to under § 5, 2.