The Jesuits were enrolled as an army, in an hour of grave peril for the Church, to undertake her defense. They pledged themselves, by this vow of obedience, to perform that duty with their eyes shut. It was not their mission to reform or purify or revivify Catholicism, but to maintain it intact with all its intellectual anachronisms. How well they succeeded may be judged from the issue of the Council of Trent, in which Lainez and Salmeron played so prominent a part. That rigid enforcement of every jot and tittle in the Catholic hierarchical organization, in Catholic ritual, in the Catholic cult of saints and images, in the Catholic interpretation of Sacraments, in Catholic tradition as of equal value with the Bible, and lastly in the theory of Papal Supremacy, which was the astounding result of a Council convened to alter and reform the Church, can be attributed in no small measure to Jesuit persistency.
Ignatius attained his object. Obedience, blind, servile, unquestioning, unscrupulous, became the distinguishing feature of the Jesuits. But he condemned his Order to mediocrity. No really great man in any department of human knowledge or activity has arisen in the Company of Jesus. In course of time it became obvious to any one of independent character and original intellect that their ranks were not the place for him. And if youths of real eminence entered it before they perceived this truth, their spirit was crushed. The machine was powerful enough for good and evil; but it remained an aggregate of individual inferiorities. Its merit and its perfection lay in this, that so complex an instrument could be moved by a single finger of the General in Rome. He consistently employed its delicate system of wheels and pulleys for the aggrandizement of the Order in the first place, in the second place for the control of the Catholic Church, and always for the subjugation and cretinization of the mind of Europe.
The training of a Jesuit began with study of the Exercitia Spiritualia.[166] This manual had been composed by Loyola himself at intervals between 1522 and 1548, when it received the imprimatur of Pope Paul III. He based it on his own experiences at Manresa, and meant it to serve as a perpetual introduction to the mysteries of the religious life. It was used under the direction of a father, who prescribed a portion of its text for each day's meditation, employing various means to concentrate attention and enforce effect. The whole course of this spiritual drill extended over four weeks, during which the pupil remained in solitude. Light and sound and all distractions of the outer world were carefully excluded from his chamber. He was bidden to direct his soul inward upon itself and God, and was led by graduated stages to realize in the most vivid way the torments of the damned and the scheme of man's, salvation. The first week was occupied in an examination of the conscience; the second in contempla tion of Christ's Kingdom upon earth; the third in meditation on the Passion; the fourth in an ascent to the glory of the risen Lord. Materialism of the crudest type mingled with the indulgence of a reverie in this long spiritual journey. At every step the neophyte employed his five senses in the effort of intellectual realization. Prostrate upon the ground, gazing with closed eyelids in the twilight of his cell upon the mirror of imagination, he had to see the boundless flames of hell and souls encased in burning bodies, to hear the shrieks and blasphemies, to smell their sulphur and intolerable stench, to taste the bitterness of tears and feel the stings of ineffectual remorse.
He had to localize each object in the camera obscura of the brain. If the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance, were the subject of his meditation, he was bound to place Christ here and the sleeping apostles there, and to form an accurate image of the angel and the cup. He gazed and gazed, until he was able to handle the raiment of the Saviour, to watch the drops of bloody sweat beading his forehead and trickling down his cheeks, to grasp the chalice with the fingers of the soul. As each carefully chosen and sagaciously suggested scene was presented, he had to identify his very being, soul, will, intellect, and senses, with the mental vision. He lived again, so far as this was possible through fancy, the facts of sacred history. If the director judged it advisable, symbolic objects were placed before him in the cell; at one time skulls and bones, at another fresh sweet smelling flowers. Fasting and flagellation, peculiar postures of the body, groanings and weepings, were prescribed as mechanical aids in cases where the soul seemed sluggish. The sphere traversed in these exercises was a narrow one. The drill aimed at intensity of discipline, at a concentrated and concrete impression, not at width of education or at intellectual enlightenment. Speculation upon the fundamental principles of religion was excluded. God's dealings with mankind revealed in the Old Testament found no place in this theory of salvation. Attention was riveted upon a very few points in the life of Christ and Mary, such as every Catholic child might be supposed to be familiar with. But it was fixed in such a way as to bring the terrors and raptures of the mystics, of a S. Catharine or a S. Teresa, within the reach of all; to place spiritual experience à la portée de tout le monde. The vulgarity is only equaled by the ingenuity and psychological adroitness of the method. The soul inspired with carnal dread of the doom impending over it, passed into almost physical contact with the incarnate Saviour. The designed effect was to induce a vivid and varied hypnotic dream of thirty days, from the influence of which a man should never wholly free himself. The end at which he arrived upon this path of self-scrutiny and materialistic realization, was the conclusion that his highest hope, his most imperative duty, lay in the resignation of his intellect and will to spiritual guidance, and in blind obedience to the Church. Thou sands and thousands of souls in the modern world have passed through this discipline; and those who responded to it best, have ever been selected, when this was possible, as novices of the Order. The director had ample opportunity of observing at each turn in the process whether his neophyte displayed a likely disposition.
When the Exercitia had been performed, there was an end of asceticism. Ignatius, as we have seen, dreaded nothing more than the intrusion of that dark spirit into his Company; he aimed at nothing more earnestly than at securing agreeable manners, a cheerful temper, and ability for worldly business in its members.
The novice, when first received into one of the Jesuit houses, was separated, so far as possible, for two years from his family, and placed under the control of a master, who inspected his correspondence and undertook the full surveillance of his life. He received cautiously restricted information on the constitutions of the Society, and was recommended, instead of renouncing his worldly possessions, to reserve his legal rights and make oblation of them when he took the vows. It was not then made clear to him that what he gave would never under any circumstances be restored, although the Society might send him forth at will a penniless wanderer into the world. Yet this was the hard condition of a Jesuit's existence. After entering the order, he owned nothing, and he had no power to depart if he repented. But the General could cashier him by a stroke of the pen, condemning him to destitution in every land where Jesuits held sway, and to suspicion in every land where Jesuits were loathed. Before the end of two years, the novice generally signed an obligation to assume the vows. He was then drafted into the secular or spiritual service. Some novices became what is called Temporal Coadjutors; their duty was to administer the property of the Society, to superintend its houses, to distribute alms, to work in hospitals, to cook, garden, wash, and act as porters. They took the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Those, on the other hand, who showed some aptitude for learning, were classified as Scholastics, and were distributed among the colleges of the order. They studied languages, sciences, and theology, for a period of five years; after which they taught in schools for another period of five or six years; and when they reached the age of about thirty, they might be ordained priests with the title of Spiritual Coadjutors. From this body the Society drew the rectors and professors of its colleges, its preachers, confessors, and teachers in schools for the laity. They were not yet full members, though they had taken the three vows, and were irrevocably devoted to the service of the order. The final stage of initiation was reached toward the age of forty-five, after long and various trials. Then the Jesuit received the title of Professed. He was either a professed of the three vows, or a professed of the four vows; having in the latter case dedicated his life to the special service of the Papacy, in missions or in any other cause. The professed of four vows constituted the veritable Company of Jesus, the kernel of the organization. They were never numerous. At Loyola's death they numbered thirty-five out of a thousand; and it has been calculated that their average proportion to the whole body is as two to a hundred.[167] Even these had no indefeasible tenure of their place in the Society. They might be dismissed by the General without indemnification.
The General was chosen for life from the professed of four vows by the General Congregation, which consisted of the provincials and two members of each province. He held the whole Society at his discretion; for he could deal at pleasure with each part of its machinery. The constitutions, strict as they appeared, imposed no barriers upon his will; for almost unlimited power was surrendered to him of dispensing with formalities, freeing from obligations, shortening or lengthening the periods of initiation, retarding or advancing a member in his career. Ideal fixity of type, qualified by the utmost elasticity in practice, formed the essence of the system. And we shall see that this principle pervaded the Jesuit treatment of morality. The General resided at Rome, consecrated solely to the government of the Society, holding the threads of all its complicated affairs in his hands, studying the per sonal history of each of its members in the minute reports which he constantly received from every province, and acting precisely as he chose with the highest as well as the lowest of his subordinates. Contrary to all precedents of previous religious orders, Ignatius framed the Company of Jesus upon the lines of a close aristocracy with autocratic authority confided to an elected chief. Yet the General of the Jesuits, like the Doge of Venice, had his hands tied by subtly powerful though almost invisible fetters. He was subjected at every hour of the day and night to the surveillance of five sworn spies, especially appointed to prevent him from altering the type or neglecting the concerns of the Order. The first of these functionaries, named the Administrator, who was frequently also the confessor of the General, exhorted him to obedience, and reminded him that he must do all things for the glory of God. Obedience and the glory of God, in Jesuit phraseology, meant the maintenance of the Company. The other four were styled Assistants. They had under their charge the affairs of the chief provinces; one overseeing the Indies, another Portugal and Spain, a third France and Germany, a fourth Italy and Sicily. Together with the Administrator, the Assistants were nominated by the General Congregation and could not be removed or replaced without its sanction. It was their duty to regulate the daily life of the General, to control his private expenditure on the scale which they determined, to prescribe what he should eat and drink, and to appoint his hours for sleep, and religious exercises, and the transaction of public business. If they saw grave reasons for his deposition, they were bound to convene the General Congregation for that purpose. And since the Founder knew that guardians need to be guarded, he provided that the Provincials might convene this assembly to call in question the acts of the Assistants. The General himself had no power to oppose its convocation.
The Company of Jesus was thus based upon a system of mutual and pervasive espionage. The novice on first entering had all his acts, habits, and personal qualities registered. As he advanced in his career, he was surrounded by jealous brethren, who felt it their duty to report his slightest weakness to a superior. The superiors were watched by one another and by their inferiors. Masses of secret intelligence poured into the central cabinet of the General; and the General himself ate, slept, prayed, worked, and moved about the world beneath the fixed gaze of ten vigilant eyes. Men accustomed to domesticity and freedom may wonder that life should have been tolerable upon these terms. Yet we must remember that from the moment when a youth had undergone the Exercitia and taken the vows, he became no less in fact than in spirit perinde ac cadaver in the hands of his superior. The Company replaced for him both family and state; and in spite of the fourth vow, it is very evident that the Black Pope, as the General came to be nicknamed, owned more of his allegiance than the White Pope, who filled the chair of S. Peter. He could, indeed, at any moment be expelled and ruined. But if he served the Order well, he belonged to a vast incalculably-potent organism, of which he might naturally, after such training as he had received, be proud. The sacrifice of his personal volition and intelligence made him part of an indestructible corporation, which seemed capable of breaking all resistance by its continuity of will and effecting all purposes by its condensed sagacity. Nor was he in the hands of rigid disciplinarians. His peccadilloes were condoned, unless the credit of the order came in question. His natural abilities obtained free scope for their employment; for it suited the interest of the Company to make the most of each member's special gifts. He had no tedious duties of the regular monastic routine to follow. He was encouraged to become a man of the world, and to mix freely with society. And thus, while he resigned himself, he lived the large life of a complex microcosm. Nor were men of resolute ambition without the prospect of eventually swaying an authority beyond that possessed by princes; for any one of the professed might rise to the supreme power in the order.
Something must be said about Loyola's interpretation of the vow of poverty. During his lifetime the Company acquired considerable wealth; and after his death it became a large owner of estates in Europe. How was this consistent with the observance of that vow, so strictly inculcated by the founder on his first disciples, and so pompously proclaimed in their constitutions? The professed and all their houses, as well as their churches, were bound to subsist on alms; they preached, administered the sacraments of the Church, and educated gratis. They could inherit nothing, and were not allowed to receive money for their journeys. But here appeared the wisdom of restricting the numbers of the professed to a small percentage of the whole Society. The same rigid prohibition with regard to property was not imposed upon the houses of novices, colleges, and other educational establishments of the Jesuits; while the secular coadjutors were specially appointed for the administration of wealth which the professed might use but could not own.[168] In like manner, as they lived on alms, there was no objection to a priest of the order receiving valuable gifts in cash or kind from grateful recipients of his spiritual bounty. A separate article of the constitutions furthermore reserved for the General the right of accepting any donation whatsoever, made in favor of the whole Company, and of assigning capital or revenue as he judged wisest.
Scholastics, even after they had taken the vow of poverty, were not obliged to relinquish their private possessions. Sooner or later, it was hoped that these would become the property of the order. In a word, the principle of this solemn obligation was so manipulated as to facilitate the acquisition and accumulation of wealth by the Jesuit like any other corporation. Only no individual Jesuit owned anything. He was rich or poor, he wore the clothes of princes or the rags of a mendicant, he lived sumptuously or begged in the street, he traveled with a following of servants or he walked on foot, according as it seemed good to his superiors. The vow of poverty, thus interpreted in practice, meant a total disengagement from temporalities on the part of every member, an absolute dependence of each subordinate upon his superior in the hierarchy.