§ 149.5. The Prophecy of St. Malachi.—In his book “Lignum Vitæ,” published at Venice in A.D. 1595, the Benedictine Wion made public for the first time a prophecy ascribed to St. Malachi, Archbishop of Armagh, who died in A.D. 1148, in which all the popes from Cœlestine II., in A.D. 1143, down to the end of the world, embracing in all one hundred and eleven, are characterized by short descriptive sketches. He also issued a paper purporting to be written by the Dominican Ciaconius, who died in A.D. 1599, the author of a history of the popes, which, however, in many particulars does not harmonize with this document. In this additional fragment we have short and frequent characterizations of the first seventy-four popes, reaching down to Urban VII., in A.D. 1590. The devices for the most part correctly represent the coat of arms, the name, the birthplace, the monkish order, etc., of the several popes; but these in every case are derived from the history of the man before he ascended the papal throne. On the other hand, the devices used to designate the three succeeding popes down to A.D. 1595 are utterly inapplicable and arbitrary. The same is true in almost every case of attempts to characterize the later popes. It can therefore be regarded as only the result of a chance coincidence, if now and again there should seem to be some fair measure of correspondence. Thus No. 83, Montium custos, describes Alexander VII., whose arms show six mountains; No. 100, De balneis Etruriæ, answers to Gregory XVI., who belonged to a Tuscan cloister; and No. 102, Lumen in cœlo, designates Leo XIII., who has a star in his coat of arms. If after Leo’s death, as Harnack remarks, a German pope were possible, No. 103, Ignis ardens, might be most exactly realized by the election of the Cardinal Hohenlohe.Still more striking, though breaking through the principle that is rigidly followed with respect to the earlier numbers from 1 to 74, is the way in which under No. 96, Peregrinus apostolicus, ridicule is cast upon the misfortune of Pius VI. (§ [165, 10], [13]); and in No. 101 Crux de cruce is applied to Pius IX. (§ [184, 2], [3]). Upon the whole, there can be no doubt that the composition of the document belongs to A.D. 1590, and indeed to the period during which the conclave sat for almost two months after the death of Urban VII., and that the author, though unsuccessfully, endeavoured to influence the cardinals in their election by making it appear that the appointment of Cardinal Simoncelli of Orvieto, i.e. Urbs vetus, with the device, De antiquitate urbis, had been thus divinely indicated. He chose the name of St. Malachi, because his friend and biographer, St. Bernard, had ascribed to him the gift of prophecy. His series of popes had, therefore, to begin with a contemporary of St. Malachi; and since the author must speak of him as a pope that has yet to be elected, he gives designations to him, and to all who follow down to his own times, which point exclusively to characteristics and relations belonging to them before their election to the papal dignity. Weingarten thinks that Wion himself is author both of the prophecy and of its explanatory appendix, but Harnack has given weighty reasons for questioning this conclusion.

§ 149.6. Reformation of Old Monkish Orders.

  1. The controversies that prevailed within the ranks of the Franciscans (§ [112, 3]) were finally put to rest by Pope Leo X. in A.D. 1517. The Conventuals and Observants were allowed to choose respectively their own independent general, and from that time forth maintained on equal terms a more peaceful relation to one another. The general of the Observants, however, who were in number, influence, and reputation greatly the superior, boasted of pre-eminence over his Conventual colleague. Although all Observants under him formed a close and thoroughly united society, there were still distinguished within the same regular, strict, and most strict Observants. Among the regulars the most prominent were the Cordeliers of France, so called because they were girt merely with a cord; to the strict belonged the Barefooted monks; and to the most strict the Alcantarines, founded by Peter of Alcantara in Spain. The founder of the Capuchins was the Italian Observant Minorite Matth. de Bassi. As he reported that St. Francis had worn a cowl with long sharp peak or capouch, and soon thereafter saw the saint himself in a vision dressed in such a garb, he withdrew from his cloister, went to Rome, and obtained from Clement VII., in A.D. 1526, the right of restoring the capouch. Falling out with the Observants over this, his followers attached themselves, in A.D. 1528, to the Conventuals as an independent congregation with their own vicar-general. The unusual style of dress produced a sensation. Whenever one of the brethren appeared the gutter children would run after him, crying out in mockery, Capucino. But the name that was given in reproach they accepted as a title of honour. Their self-denying benevolence upon the outbreak of the pestilence in Italy in A.D. 1528 soon won high reputation to the order, and secured its further spread. In consequence of their vicar-general, Bernardino Ochino (§ [139, 24]), going over to the Reformed church, the order came for a long time into disrepute. Thoroughly characteristic of them was their utter deficiency in scientific culture, which often went the length of a relapse in utter rudeness and vulgarity, and debased their preaching into burlesque “capuchinades.”
  2. A reformation of the Carmelites was brought about by St. Theresa de Jesus in A.D. 1562. The restored order bore the name of the “Shoeless Carmelites,” and its members distinguished themselves as teachers of the young and in works of charity.Alongside of her, as restorer of the male Carmelites, stood the pious mystic John of the Cross.[432]
  3. A reformed congregation of Cistercians was founded in A.D. 1586 by Jean de la Barrière, abbot of the monastery of Feuillans [Feuillants]. The mode of life of these Feuillants was so severe that fourteen brothers sank under the burden within a short time, and this led to the modification of the rules in A.D. 1595. The founder was called by Henry III. to establish a monastery near Paris. He continued faithful to the king after he had withdrawn from the league, and thus drew down upon himself the hatred of the fanatical Catholic members of the order to such a degree that they deposed and banished him in A.D. 1592. A later commission of inquiry, however, under Cardinal Bellarmine pronounced him innocent.

§ 149.7. New Orders for Home Missions.

  1. The Theatines had their origin in an association of pious priests at Theate, which Cajetan, at the advice of John Peter Caraffa, bishop of that place, afterwards Pope Paul IV., constituted into an order. In A.D. 1524, having been organized as clerici regulares, they chose to live not by begging but by depending on Divine providence, i.e. on gifts bestowed without asking, and came to be of importance as a training school for the higher clergy. Their statutes expressly required of them to instruct the people by frequent preaching, to attend to the bodies and souls of the sick, to seek the spiritual good of criminals, and to labour for the overthrow of heresy.
  2. The Barnabites, also a society of regular clergy, founded by Antonio Maria Zaccaria at Milan, and confirmed by Clement VII. in A.D. 1533. They assigned to themselves the duty of devoting their whole life to works of mercy, pastoral care, education of the young, preaching, hearing confession, and conducting missions. They took the name Barnabites from the church of St. Barnabas, which was given over to them. To them was also attached the order of Angelicals, founded by Louisa Torelli, Countess Guastalla, a rich lady who was widowed for the second time in her twenty-fifth year, and confirmed by Paul III. in A.D. 1534. At first they accompanied the Barnabites on their missions, and wrought for the conversion of women, while the Barnabites devoted their attention to the men. Subsequently, however, on account of loose behaviour, they were obliged to keep within their convents. Each of the nuns in addition to her own name took that of the order, Angelica, which was intended to remind her of her obligation to keep herself pure as the angels.
  3. The congregation of the Somaskians, or regular clergy of St. Majolus, trace their origin from Jerome Emiliani of Somascho, a town of Lombardy. While serving as an officer in the army, a thoroughly careless man of the world, he happened to be cast into prison. In his gloomy cell he repented of his past sinful life, and made his escape, it is said, by the assistance of the blessed Virgin, in a manner similar to that recorded in Acts v. 19. Some years after, in A.D. 1518, he entered holy orders, and now devoted his whole life to a self-denying practice of benevolence, by founding orphanages and training schools, asylums for fallen women, etc. In order to secure support, instruction, and pastoral care for his numerous and varied dependants, he joined with himself several like-minded clergymen in A.D. 1532, and formed a benevolent society. Its richly blessed activity extended over all northern Italy as far down as Rome, and was not arrested even by the founder’s early death in A.D. 1537. Pius V. in A.D. 1568 prescribed to the society the rule of St. Augustine, and on the ground of this raised it into an order of St. Majolus, so called from a church gifted to it at Pavia by St. Charles Borromeo.
  4. The Brothers of Charity, in Spain called Hospitallers, in France Frères de Charité, were originally a secular fraternity for giving gratuitous attention to the sick, which was founded in Granada, in A.D. 1540, by a Portuguese, Juan Ciudad, poor in goods but rich in love, to whom his bishop gave the honourable title John of God, Juan di Dios, and who was canonized by Pope Alexander VIII. in A.D. 1690.[433] After Pius V. had in A.D. 1572 given the order the character of a monkish order by putting its members under the rule of St. Augustine, it soon spread over Italy, France, Germany, and Poland. Its cloisters were arranged as well-equipped hospitals for the destitute sick, without distinction of religious confession, so that their studies were directed even more to the medical than to the theological sciences.
  5. The Ursuline Nuns, founded in A.D. 1537 by a pious virgin, Angela Merici of Brescia, for affording help to needy sufferers of every sort, but especially for the education of girls.
  6. The Priests of the Oratory, or the Order of the Holy Trinity, founded by St. Philip Neri of Florence in A.D. 1548, a saint of the most profound piety, possessed at the same time with a bright and genial humour.They combined works of charity with exercises of common prayer and Bible study, which they conducted in the oratory of a hospital erected by them.[434]—Continuation, § [156, 7].

§ 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]