1. "I am ready, with the help of God's grace, to remain here or to go to Sicily, to India, or wherever it may be that obedience requires me.
2. "If I am sent to Sicily I affirm that I will accept with joy whatever office is conferred on me, even should it be that of porter, cook, or gardener.
3. "I am ready to learn or to teach in any department of science, although hitherto I may have been quite unskilled in it.
4. "I will regard as best for me whatever my superiors may decide to do with me, whether they entrust me with any office or with none. I promise this day, the 5th February, for my whole life never to demand anything for myself concerning my lodging, office or any other similar thing, but once for all I leave the guidance of my soul, and every care for my body in the complete submission of my judgment and will, to my father in God, the Rev. Father General, 1548. Peter Canisius of Nymwegen."
Hereupon St. Ignatius appointed him professor of rhetoric at Messina, and Canisius wrote to his friends at Cologne: "As I am useless for any spiritual office I am entrusted with the insipid department of belles lettres. I teach rhetoric for which I have little aptitude, but I take pains to form these good youths, and am always ready, with God's help, to do all that obedience requires of me."
After a fruitful year, during which he had learned Italian, and having preached in that language, had obtained some wonderful conversions from sin, he was recalled to Rome, where he laid his four solemn vows* in the hands of St. Ignatius. Immediately afterwards he was told to prepare for his apostolate in Germany.
* The first three of the solemn vows taken by the Jesuits are those of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The fourth vow is the promise to go wherever the Pope may send them.
William IV., Duke of Bavaria, surnamed the valiant, on account of his faithful adherence to the Catholic Church, at a time when so many of the reigning princes of Germany fell away, saw, with distress and alarm, the daily increasing dangers to which his beloved fatherland was a prey. Even in the college which he had himself founded at Ingolstadt, heresies were steadily gaining the upper hand, and he besought St. Ignatius to send him learned men, imbued with the apostolic spirit, to stay the progress of error.
The Church was not wanting at this time in men of learning and piety. Theologians, such as Cardinal Cajetan, Gropper of Cologne, Eck of Ingolstadt, Cochlaeus, and others, had a European reputation. The first members of the Society of Jesus were all saints and scholars. Lainez, Salmeron, Lefevre, Faber, Le Jay, Bobadilla, were formed for the exigencies of the time; but for the special work required of him, Canisius effaces them all, or rather, gathers up in his own character each of the great qualities which they possessed. His strength, moreover, was equal to his enormous task. Westphalia, Bavaria, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Franconia, Suabia, Moravia, Tirol, Switzerland, from the falls of the Rhine to its source in the Alps, both banks of the Danube, from Freiburgim-Breisgau to Pressburg, the banks of the Main and of the Vistula—all this was the scene of his labours during a period of fifty-four years; and within these limits, it is an incontrovertible fact that there is no city or district still remaining Catholic but owes its faith to him.
St Ignatius answered the demand of the Duke of Bavaria by sending Fathers Le Jay, Salmeron, and Peter Canisius, the three most distinguished men of his Society. On the way to Germany they stopped at Bologna, in order that the two first might receive the degree of doctor, Canisius, as we know, being already a graduate of Cologne. The German heretics prided themselves so much on the few individuals in their ranks who had attained to it, that it was important to provide them with opponents whom they might meet in controversy on equal grounds. At Munich Duke William welcomed them, assuring them that nothing lay nearer to his heart than the maintenance of the Catholic religion in his states, but that heresy had already taken possession of many of his towns and villages, and had even ventured to lift its head in the University of Ingolstadt. The three missionaries proceeded at once to that place, where they were received by the principal dignitaries of the University.