Loyola's first contact with Italian society during this residence in Venice exercised decisive influence over his plans. He seems to have perceived with the acute scent of an eagle that here lay the quarry he had sought so long. Italy, the fountain-head of intellectual enlightenment for Europe, was the realm which he must win. Italy alone offered the fulcrum needed by his firm and limitless desire of domination over souls. It was with Caraffa and the Theatines that Ignatius obtained a home. They were now established in the States of S. Mark through the beneficence of a rich Venetian noble, Girolamo Miani, who had opened religious houses and placed these at their disposition. Under the direction of their founder, they carried on their designed function of training a higher class of clergy for the duties of preaching and the priesthood, and for the repression of heresy by educational means. Caraffa's scheme was too limited to suit Ignatius: and the characters of both men were ill adapted for co-operation. One zeal for the faith inspired both. Here they agreed. But Ignatius was a Spaniard; and the second passion in Caraffa's breast was a Neapolitan's hatred for that nation. Ignatius, moreover, contemplated a vastly more expansive and elastic machinery for his workers in the vineyard of the faith, than the future Pope's coercive temper could have tolerated. These two leaders of the Counter-Reformation, equally ambitious, equally intolerant of opposition, equally bent upon a vast dominion, had to separate. The one was destined to organize the Inquisition and the Index. The other evolved what is historically known as Jesuitry. Nevertheless we know that Ignatius learned much from Caraffa. The subsequent organization of his Order showed that the Theatines suggested many practical points in the method he eventually adopted for effecting his designs.
Some of his companions, meanwhile, journeyed to Rome. There they obtained from Paul III. permission to visit Palestine upon a missionary enterprise, together with special privileges for their entrance into sacerdotal orders. Those of the ten friends who were not yet priests, were ordained at Venice in June 1537. They then began to preach in public, roaming the streets with faces emaciated by abstinence, clad in ragged clothes, and using a language strangely compounded of Italian and Spanish. Their obvious enthusiasm, and the holy lives they were known to lead, brought them rapidly into high reputation of sanctity. Both the secular and the religious clergy of Italy could show but few men at that epoch equal to these brethren. It was settled in the autumn that they should all revisit Rome, traveling by different routes, and meditating on the form which the Order should assume. Palestine had now been definitely, if tacitly, abandoned. As might have been expected, it was Loyola who baptized his Order, and impressed a character upon the infant institution. He determined to call it the Company of Jesus, with direct reference to those Companies of Adventure which had given irregular organization to restless military spirits in the past. The new Company was to be a 'cohort, or century, combined for combat against spiritual foes; men-at-arms, devoted, body and soul, to our Lord Jesus Christ and to his true and lawful Vicar upon earth.'[159] An Englishman of the present day may pause to meditate upon the grotesque parallel between the nascent Order of the Jesuits and the Salvation Army, and can draw such conclusions from it as may seem profitable.
Loyola's withdrawal from all participation in the nominal honor of his institution, his enrollment of the militia he had levied under the name of Jesus, and the combative functions which he ascribed to it, were very decided marks of originality. It stamped the body with impersonality from the outset, and indicated the belligerent attitude it was destined to assume. There was nothing exactly similar to its dominant conception in any of the previous religious orders. These had usually received their title from the founder, had aimed at a life retired from the world, had studied the sanctification of their individual members, and had only contemplated an indirect operation upon society. Ignatius, on the contrary, placed his community under the protection of Christ, and defined it at the outset as a militant and movable legion of auxiliaries, dedicated, not to retirement or to the pursuit of salvation, but to freely avowed and active combat in defense of their Master's vicegerent upon earth. It was as though he had divined the deficiencies of Catholicism at that epoch, and had determined to supplement them by the creation of a novel and a special weapon of attack. Some institutions of mediaeval chivalry, the Knights of the Temple, and S. John, for instance, furnished the closest analogy to his foundation. Their spirit he transferred from the sphere of physical combat with visible forces, infidel and Mussulman, to the sphere of intellectual warfare against heresy, unbelief, insubordination in the Church. He had refined upon the crude enthusiasm of romance which inspired him at Montserrat. Without losing its intensity, this had become a motive force of actual and political gravity.
The Company of Jesus was far from obtaining the immediate approval of the Church. Paul III. indeed, perceived its utility, and showed marked favor to the associates when they arrived in Rome about the end of 1537. The people, too, welcomed their ministration gladly, and recognized the zeal which they displayed in acts of charity and their exemplary behavior. But the Curia and higher clergy organized an opposition against them. They were accused of heresy, and attempts to seduce the common folk. Ignatius demanded full and public inquiry, which was at first refused him. He then addressed the Pope in person, who ordered a trial, out of which the brethren came with full acquittal. After this success, they obtained a hold upon religious instruction in many schools of Rome. Adherents flocked around them; and they saw that it was time to give the society a defined organization, and to demand its official recognition as an Order. It was resolved to add the vow of obedience to their former vows of chastity and poverty. Obedience had always been a prime virtue in monastic institutions; but Ignatius conceived of it in a new and military spirit. The obedience of the Jesuits was to be absolute, extending even to the duty of committing sins at a superior's orders. The General, instead of holding office for a term of years, was to be elected for life, with unlimited command over the whole Order in its several degrees. He was to be regarded as Christ present and personified. This autocracy of the General might have seemed to menace the overlordship of the Holy See, but for a fourth vow which the Company determined to adopt. It ran as follows: 'That the members will consecrate their lives to the continual service of Christ and of the Popes, will fight under the banner of the Cross, and will serve the Lord and the Roman Pontiff as God's vicar upon earth, in such wise that they shall be bound to execute immediately and without hesitation or excuse all that the reigning Pope or his successors may enjoin upon them for the profit of souls or for the propagation of the faith, and shall do so in all provinces whithersoever he may send them, among Turks or any other infidels, to furthest Ind, as well as in the region of heretics, schismatics, or believers of any kind.'
Loyola himself drew up these constitutions in five chapters, and had them introduced to Paul III., with the petition that they might be confirmed. This was in September 1539, and it is singular that the man selected to bring them under the Pope's notice should have been Cardinal Contarini. Paul had no difficulty in recognizing the support which this new Order would bring to the Papacy in its conflict with Reformers, and its diplomatic embarrassments with Charles V. He is even reported to have said, 'The finger of God is there!' Yet he could not confirm the constitutions without the previous approval of three Cardinals appointed to report on them. This committee condemned Loyola's scheme; and nearly a year passed in negotiations with foreign princes and powerful prelates, before a reluctant consent was yielded to the Pope's avowed inclination. At length the Bull of Sept. 27, 1540, Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, launched the Society of Jesus on the world. Ignatius became the first General of the Order; and the rest of his life, a period of sixteen years, was spent in perfecting the machinery and extending the growth of this institution, which in all essentials was the emanation of his own mind.
It may be well at this point to sketch the organization of the Jesuits, and to describe the progress of the Society during its founder's lifetime, in order that a correct conception may be gained of Loyola's share in its creation. Many historians of eminence, and among them so acute an observer as Paolo Sarpi, have been of the opinion that Jesuitry in its later developments was a deflection from the spirit and intention of Ignatius. It is affirmed that Lainez and Salmeron, rather than Loyola, gave that complexion to the Order which has rendered it a mark for the hatred and disgust of Europe. Aquaviva, the fifth General, has been credited with its policy of interference in affairs of states and nations. Yet I think it can be shown that the Society, as it appeared in the seventeenth century, was a logical and necessary development of the Society as Ignatius framed it in the sixteenth.[160]
Lainez, who succeeded the founder as General, digested the constitutions and supplied them with a commentary or Directorium. He defined, formulated, and stereotyped the system; but the essential qualities of Jesuitry, its concentration upon political objects, its unscrupulousness in choice of means to ends, the worldliness which lurked beneath the famous motto Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, were implicit in Loyola's express words, and in his actual administration. The framework of the Order, as he fixed it, was so firmly traced, and so cunningly devised for practical efficiency, that it admitted of no alteration except in the direction of more rigid definition. Lainez may, indeed, have emphasized its tendency to become a political machine, and may have weakened its religious tone, by his rules for the interpretation of the constitutions; but we have seen that the development of Loyola's own ideas ran in this direction. The real strength, as well as the worst vices of Jesuitry, were inherent in the system from the first; and in it we have perhaps the most remarkable instance on record, of the evolution of a cosmopolitan and world-important organism from the embryo of one man's conception.
The Bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae restricted the number of the Jesuits to sixty. If Ignatius did not himself propose this limit, the restriction may perhaps have suggested his policy of reserving the full privileges of the Society for a small band of selected members—the very essence of the body, extracted by processes which will be afterwards described. Anyhow, it is certain that though the Papal limitation was removed in 1543, and though candidates flowed on the tide of fashion toward the Order, yet the representative and responsible Fathers remained few in numbers. These were distributed as the General thought fit. He stayed in Rome; for Rome was the chosen headquarters of the Society, the nucleus of their growth, and the fulcrum of their energy. From Rome, as from a center, Ignatius moved his men about the field of Europe. We might compare him under one metaphor to a chess-player directing his pieces upon the squares of the political and ecclesiastical chessboard; under another, to a spider spinning his web so as to net the greatest number of profitable partisans. The fathers were kept in perpetual motion. To shift them from place to place, to exclude them from their native soil, to render them cosmopolitan and pliant was the first care of the founder. He forbade the follies of ascetic piety, inculcated the study of languages and exact knowledge, and above all things recommended the acquisition of those social arts which find favor with princes and folk of high condition. 'Prudence of an exquisite quality,' he said, 'combined with average sanctity, is more valuable than eminent sanctity and less of prudence.' Also he bade them keep their eyes open for neophytes 'less marked by pure goodness than by firmness of character and ability in conduct of affairs, since men who are not apt for public business do not suit the requirements of the Company.' Orlandino tells us that though Ignatius felt drawn to men who showed eminent gifts for erudition, he preferred, in the difficulties of the Church, to choose such as knew the world well and were distinguished by their social station. The fathers were to seek out youths 'of good natural parts, adapted to the acquisition of knowledge and to practical works of utility.' Their pupils were, if possible, to have physical advantages and manners that should render them agreeable. These points had more of practical value than a bare vocation for piety. In their dealings with tender consciences, they were to act like 'good fishers of souls, passing over many things in silence as though these had not been observed, until the time came when the will was gained, and the character could be directed as they thought best.'[161] Loyola's dislike for the common forms of monasticism appears in his choice of the ordinary secular priest's cassock for their dress, and in his emancipation of the members from devotional exercises and attendance in the choir. The aversion he felt for ascetic discipline is evinced in a letter he addressed to Francis Borgia in 1548. It is better, he writes, to strengthen your stomach and other faculties, than to impair the body and enfeeble the intellect by fasting. God needs both our physical and mental powers for his service; and every drop of blood you shed in flagellation is a loss.
The end in view was to serve the Church by penetrating European society, taking possession of its leaders in rank and hereditary influence, directing education, assuming the control of the confessional, and preaching the faith in forms adapted to the foibles and the fancies of the age. The interests of the Church were paramount: 'If she teaches that what seems to us white is black, we must declare it to be black upon the spot.' There were other precepts added. These, for instance, seem worth commemoration: 'The workers in the Lord's vineyard should have but one foot on earth, the other should be raised to travel forward.' 'The abnegation of our own will is of more value than if one should bring the dead to life again.' 'No storm is so pernicious as a calm, and no enemy is so dangerous as having none.' It will be seen that what is known as Jesuitry, in its mundane force and in its personal devotion to a cause, emerges from the precepts of Ignatius. We may wonder how the romances of the mountain-keep of Loyola, the mysticism of Montserrat, and the struggles of Manresa should have brought the founder of the Jesuits to these results. Yet, if we analyze the problem, it will yield a probable solution. What survived from that first period was the spirit of enthusiastic service to the Church, the vast ambition of a man who felt himself a destined instrument for shoring up the crumbling walls of Catholicity, the martial instinct of a warrior fighting at fearful odds with nations running toward infidelity.
He had no doubt where the right lay. He was a Spaniard, a servant of S. Peter; and for him the creed enounced by Rome was all in all. But his commerce with the world, his astute Basque nature, and his judgment of the European situation, taught him that he must use other means than those which Francis and Dominic had employed. He had to make his Company, that forlorn hope of Catholicism, the exponent of a decadent and rotten faith. He had to adapt it to the necessities of Christendom in dissolution, to constitute it by a guileful and sagacious method. He had to render it wise in the wisdom of the world, in order that he might catch the powers of this world by their interests and vices for the Church. He was like Machiavelli, endeavoring to save a corrupt state by utilizing corruption for ends acknowledged sound. And, like Machiavelli, he was mistaken, because it will not profit man to trust in craft or the manipulation of evil. Luther was stronger in his weakness than the creator of the Jesuit machinery, wiser in his simplicity than the deviser of that subtle engine. But Luther had the onward forces of humanity upon his side. Ignatius could but retard them by his ingenuity. We may be therefore excused if we admire Ignatius for the virile effort which he made in a failing cause, and for the splendid gifts of organizing prudence which he devoted to a misplaced object.