Under his direction, the members of the Society spread themselves over Europe, and always with similar results. Wherever they went, hundreds of adherents joined the Order. Paul III. and Julius III. heaped privileges upon it, seeing what a power it had become in warfare with heresy. Ignatius spared no pains to secure his position in Rome, paying court to Cardinals and prelates, visiting ambassadors and princes, soliciting their favors and offering the service of his brethren in return. Profitable negotiations were opened with the King of Spain and the Duke of Bavaria, which, under cover of reforming convents, led to a partition of ecclesiastical property between the Jesuits and the State. Good reasons seemed to justify such acts of spoliation; for the old orders were sunk in sloth and immorality beyond redemption, while the Company kept alive all that was sound in Catholic discipline, preaching, and instruction. In Italy the Jesuits made rapid progress from the first. Lainez occupied the Venetian territory, opposing Protestant opinions in Venice itself, at Brescia, and among the mountains of the Valtelline. Le Jay combated the forces of Calvin and Renée of France at Ferrara. Salmeron took possession of Naples and Sicily. Piacenza, Modena, Faenza, Bologna, and Montepulciano received the fathers with open arms. The Farnesi welcomed them in Parma. Wherever they went, they secured the good will of noble women, and gained some hold on universities. Colleges were founded in the chief cities of the peninsula, where they not only taught gratis, but used methods superior to those previously in vogue. Rome, however, remained the stronghold of the Company. Here Ignatius founded its first house in 1550. This was the Collegium Romanum; and in 1555, some hundred pupils, who had followed a course of studies in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and theology, issued from its walls. In 1557 he purchased the palace Salviati, on the site of which now stands the vast establishment of the Gesù. In 1552 he started a separate institution, Collegium Germanicum, for the special training of young Germans. There was also a subordinate institution for the education of the sons of nobles. These colleges afforded models for similar schools throughout Europe; some of them intended to supply the society with members, and some to impress the laity with Catholic principles. Uniformity was an object which the Jesuits always held in view.
They did not meet at first with like success in all Catholic countries. In Spain, Charles V. treated them with suspicion as the sworn men of the Papacy; and the Dominican order, so powerful through its hold upon the Inquisition, regarded them justly as rivals. Though working for the same end, the means employed by Jesuits and Dominicans were too diverse for these champions of orthodoxy to work harmoniously together. The Jesuits belonged to the future, to the party of accommodation and control by subterfuge. The Dominicans were rooted in the past; their dogmatism admitted of no compromise; they strove to rule by force. There was therefore, at the outset, war between the kennels of the elder and the younger dogs of God in Spain. Yet Jesuitism gained ground. It had the advantage of being a native, and a recent product. It was powerful by its appeals to the sensuous imagination and carnal superstitions of that Iberian-Latin people. It was seductive by its mitigation of oppressive orthodoxy and inflexible prescriptive law. Where the Dominican was steel, the Jesuit was reed; where the Dominican breathed fire and fagots, the Jesuit suggested casuistical distinctions; where the Dominican raised difficulties, the Jesuit solved scruples; where the Dominican presented theological abstractions, the Jesuit offered stimulative or agreeable images; where the Dominican preached dogma, the Jesuit retailed romance. It only needed one illustrious convert to plant the Jesuits in Spain. Him they found in Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, Viceroy of Catalonia, and subsequently the third General of the Order and a saint. This man placed the university, which he had founded, in their hands; and about the same time they gained a footing in the university of Salamanca. Still they continued to retain their strongest hold upon the people, who regarded them as saviours from the tyranny and ennui of the established Dominican hierarchy.
Portugal was won at a blow. Xavier and Rodriguez planted the Company there under the affectionate protection of King John III. When Xavier started on his mission to the Indies in 1541, Rodriguez took the affairs of the realm into his hands, controlled the cabinet, and formed the heir-apparent to their will.
With France they had more trouble. Both the University and the Parliament of Paris opposed their settlement. The Sorbonne even declared them 'dangerous in matters of the faith, fit to disturb the peace of the Church, and to reverse the order of monastic life; more adapted to destroy than to build.' The Gallican Church scented danger in these bondsmen of the Papacy; and it was only when they helped to organize the League that the influence of the Guises gave them a foothold in the kingdom. Even then their seminaries at Reims, Douai, and S. Omer must be rather regarded as outposts epiteichismoi against England and Flanders, than, as nationally French establishments. In France they long remained a seditious and belligerent faction.[162]
They had the same partial and clandestine success in the Low Countries, where their position was at first equivocal, though they early gained some practical hold upon the University of Louvain. We are perhaps justified in attributing the evil fame of Reims, Douai, S. Omer, and Louvain to the incomplete sympathy which existed between the Jesuits and the countries where they made these settlements. Not perfectly at home, surrounded by discontent and jealousy, upon the borderlands of the heresies they were bound to combat, their system assumed its darkest colors in those hotbeds of intrigue and feverish fanaticism. In time, however, the Jesuits fixed their talons firmly upon the Netherlands, through the favor of Anne of Austria; and the year 1562 saw them comfortably ensconced at Antwerp, Louvain, Brussels, and Lille, in spite of the previous antipathy of the population. Here, as elsewhere, they pushed their way by gaining women and people of birth to their cause, and by showily meritorious services to education. Faber achieved ephemeral success as lecturer at Louvain.
To take firm hold on Germany had been the cherished wish of Ignatius; 'for there,' to use his own words, 'the pest of heresy exposed men to graver dangers than elsewhere.' The Society had scarcely been founded when Faber, Le Jay, and Bobadilla were sent north. Faber made small progress, and was removed to Spain. But Bobadilla secured the confidence of William, Duke of Bavaria; while Le Jay won that of Ferdinand of Austria. In both provinces they avowed their intention of working at the reformation of the clergy and the improvement of popular education—ends, which in the disorganized condition of Germany, seemed of highest importance to those princes. Through the influence of Bavaria, Bobadilla succeeded in rendering the Interim proclaimed by Charles V. nugatory; while Le Jay founded the college of the Order at Vienna. In this important post he was soon succeeded by Canisius, Ferdinand's confessor, through whose co-operation Cardinal Morone afterwards brought this Emperor into harmony with the Papal plan for winding up the Council of Trent. It should be added that Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, became the second headquarters of the Jesuit propaganda in Germany.
The methods adopted by Ignatius in dealing with his three lieutenants, Bobadilla, Le Jay, and Canisius, are so characteristic of Jesuit policy that they demand particular attention. Checkmated by Bobadilla in the matter of the Interim, Charles V. manifested his resentment. He was already ill-affected toward the Society, and its founder felt the need of humoring him. The highest grade of the Order was therefore ostentatiously refused to Bobadilla, until such time as the Emperor's attention was distracted from the cause of his disappointment. With Le Jay and Canisius the case stood differently. Ferdinand wished to make the former Bishop of Triest and the latter Archbishop of Vienna. Ignatius opposed both projects, alleging that the Company of Jesus could not afford to part with its best servants, and that their vows of obedience and poverty were inconsistent with high office in the Church. He discerned the necessity of reducing each member of the Society to absolute dependence on the General, which would have been impracticable if any one of them attained to the position of a pre late. A law was therefore passed declaring it mortal sin for Jesuits to accept bishoprics or other posts of honor in the Church. Instead of assuming the miter, Canisius was permitted to administer the See of Vienna without usufruct of its revenues. To the world this manifested the disinterested zeal of the Jesuits in a seductive light; while the integrity of the Society, as an independent self-sufficing body, exacting the servitude of absolute devotion from its members, was secured. Another instance of the same adroitness may be mentioned. The Emperor in 1552 offered a Cardinal's hat to Francis Borgia, who was by birth the most illustrious of living Jesuits. Ignatius refrained from rebuffing the Emperor and insulting the Duke of Gandia by an open prohibition; but he told the former to expect the Duke's refusal, while he wrote to the latter expressing his own earnest hope that he would renounce an honor injurious to the Society. This diplomacy elicited a grateful but firm answer of Nolo Episcopari from the Duke, who thus took the responsibility of offending Charles V. upon himself. Meanwhile the missionary objects of the Company were not neglected. Xavier left Portugal in 1541 for that famous journey through India and China, the facts of which may be compared for their romantic interest with Cortes' or Pizarro's exploits. Brazil, the transatlantic Portugal, was abandoned to the Jesuits, and they began to feel their way in Mexico. In the year of Loyola's death, 1561, thirty-two members of the Society were resident in South America; one hundred in India, China, and Japan; and a mission was established in Ethiopia. Even Ireland had been explored by a couple of fathers, who returned without success, after undergoing terrible hardships. At this epoch the Society counted in round numbers one thousand men. It was divided in Europe into thirteen provinces: seven of these were Portuguese and Spanish; three were Italian, namely, Rome, Upper Italy, and Sicily; one was French; two were German. Castile contained ten colleges of the Order; Aragon, five; Andalusia, five. Portugal was penetrated through and through with Jesuits. Rome displayed the central Roman and Teutonic colleges. Upper Italy had ten colleges. France could show only one college. In Upper Germany the Company held firm hold on Vienna, Prag, Munich, and Ingolstadt. The province of Lower Germany, including the Netherlands, was still undetermined. This expansion of the Order during the first sixteen years of its existence, enables us to form some conception of the intellectual vigor and commanding will of Ignatius. He lived, as no founder of an order, as few founders of religions, ever lived, to see his work accomplished, and the impress of his genius stereotyped exactly in the forms he had designed, upon the most formidable social and political organization of modern Europe.
In his administration of the Order, Ignatius was absolute and autocratic. We have seen how he dealt with aspirants after ecclesiastical honors, and how he shifted his subordinates, as he thought best, from point to point upon the surface of the globe. The least attempt at independence on the part of his most trusted lieutenants was summarily checked by him. Simon Rodriguez, one of the earliest disciples of the College of S. Barbe at Paris, ruled the kingdom of Portugal through the ascendency which he had gained over John III. Elated by the vastness of his victory, Rodriguez arrogated to himself the right of private judgment, and introduced that ascetic discipline into the houses of his province which Ignatius had forbidden as inexpedient. Without loss of time, the General superseded him in his command; and, after a sharp struggle, Rodriguez was compelled to spend the rest of his days under strict surveillance at Rome. Lainez, in like manner, while acting as Provincial of Upper Italy, thought fit to complain that his best coadjutors were drawn from the colleges under his control, to Rome. Ignatius wrote to this old friend, the man who best understood the spirit of its institution, and who was destined to succeed him in his headship, a cold and terrible epistle. 'Reflect upon your conduct. Let me know whether you acknowledge your sin, and tell me at the same time what punishment you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.' Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain from preaching, confine his studies to the Breviary, walk as a beggar to Rome, and there teach grammar to children, or perform menial offices. This was all Ignatius wanted. If he were the Christ of the Society, he well knew that Lainez was its S. Paul. He could not prevent him from being his successor, and he probably was well aware that Lainez would complete and supplement what he must leave unfinished in his life-work. The groveling apology of such an eminent apostle, dictated as it was by hypocrisy and cunning, sufficed to procure his pardon, and remained among the archives of the Jesuits as a model for the spirit in which obedience should be manifested by them.
Obedience was, in fact, the cardinal and dominant quality of the Jesuit Order. To call it a virtue, in the sense in which Ignatius understood it, is impossible. The Exercitia, the Constitutions, and the Letter to the Portuguese Jesuits, all of which undoubtedly explain Loyola's views, reveal to us the essence of historical Jesuitry, the fons et origo of that long-continued evil which impested modern society. Let us examine some of his precepts on this topic. 'I ought to desire to be ruled by a superior who endeavors to subjugate my judgment and subdue my understanding.'—'When it seems to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which my conscience revolts as sinful, and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty to yield my doubts to him, unless I am constrained by evident reasons.'—'I ought not to be my own, but His who created me, and his too through whom God governs me.'—'I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither will nor understanding; like a crucifix, that is turned about by him that holds it; like a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it at will for his assistance or pleasure.'—'In our Company the person who commands must never be regarded in his own capacity, but as Jesus Christ in him.'—'I desire that you strive and exercise yourselves to recognize Christ our Lord in every Superior.'—'He who wishes to offer himself wholly up to God, must make the sacrifice not only of his will but of his intelligence.'—'In order to secure the faithful and successful execution of a Superior's orders, all private judgment must be yielded up.'—'A sin, whether venial or mortal, must be committed, if it is commanded by the Superior in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of obedience.' Of such nature was the virtue of obedience within the Order.[163] It rendered every member a tool in the hands of his immediate Superior, and the whole body one instrument in the hand of the General. The General's responsibility for the oblique acts and evasions of moral law, committed in the name of this virtue, was covered by the sounding phrase, 'Unto the greater glory of God.'
He had also his own duty of obedience, which was to Holy Church. 'In making the sacrifice of our own judgment, the mind must keep itself ever whole and ready for obedience to the spouse of Christ, our Holy Mother, the Church orthodox, apostolical and hierarchical.'[164] Not a portion of the Catholic creed, of Catholic habits, of Catholic institutions, of Catholic superstitions, but must be valiantly defended.—'It is our duty loudly to uphold reliques, the cult of saints, stations, pilgrimages indulgences, jubilees, the candles which are lighted before altars.' To criticise the clergy, even though notoriously corrupt, is a sin. The philosophy of the Church, as expressed by S. Thomas Aquinas, S. Bonaventura, and others, must be recognized as equal in authority with Holy Writ. It follows that just as a subordinate was enjoined to sin, if sin were ordered by his Superior, so the whole Company were bound to lie, and do the things they disapproved, and preach the mummeries in which they disbelieved, in virtue of obedience to the Church. They may not even trust their senses; for 'If the Church pronounces a thing which seems to us white to be black, we must immediately say that it is black.'[165]