The popes Paul III. and Julius III., seeing what a support they would have in the Jesuits against what is usually called "the Reformation," which was rapidly gaining ground, granted to them privileges such as no body of men, in church, or state, had ever before obtained. They were permitted not only to enjoy all the rights of the mendicant and secular orders, and to be exempt from all episcopal and civil jurisdiction and taxes, so that they acknowledged no authority but that of the pope and the superiors of their order, and were permitted to exercise every
priestly function, parochial rights notwithstanding, among all classes of men, even during an interdict; but, also (what is not even permitted to archbishops unconditionally), they could absolve from all sins and ecclesiastical penalties, change the objects of the vows of the laity, acquire churches and estates without further papal sanction, erect houses for the order, and might, according to circumstances, dispense themselves from the canonical observance of hours of fasts and prohibition of meats, and even from the use of the breviary. Besides this, their general was invested with unlimited power over the members; could send them on missions of every kind, even among excommunicated heretics; could appoint them professors of theology at his discretion, wherever he chose, and confer academical dignities, which were to be reckoned equal to those given by universities. These privileges, which secured to the Jesuits a spiritual power almost equal to that of the pope himself, together with a greater impunity, in point of religious observance, than the laity possessed, were granted them to aid their missionary labors, so that they might accommodate themselves to any profession or mode of life, among heretics, and infidels, and be able, wherever they found admission, to organize Catholic churches without a further authority. A general dispersion, then, of the members throughout society with the most entire union and subordination, formed the basis of their constitution.
In the education of youth, there has been a very unjust charge against them, that is, that they mutilated the classics. Would to God that every pure Christian would follow such an example; and that we might thereby present such an expurgated edition, as would create all the good they may contain, devoid of evil. Any who have read Virgil, Ovid, Terence, or other classic works, must acknowledge this necessity. Even Shakespeare's plays can not be read, as printed, in a modest company. There is not, either, any prudery in this. And, accordingly, a family expurgated edition has been published by Dr. Bowdler, demanding a far greater circulation than it may have as yet received. Praise, then, be awarded to all instructors of youth who will promote such expurgation from the classics as will blot out their immorality!
The latitude in which this society has understood its rights and immunities has given occasion to fear an unlimited extension and exercise of them, dangerous to all existing authority, civil and ecclesiastical, as the constitution of the order, and its erection into an independent monarchy in the bosom of other governments, have assumed a more fixed character.
This society seems to have been divided into different ranks or classes. The novices, chosen from the most talented and well-educated youths, and men without regard to birth or external circumstances; and who were tried for two years, in separate
novitiate houses, in all imaginable exercises of self-denial and obedience, to determine whether they would be useful to the purposes of the order, were not ranked among the actual members, the lowest of whom are the secular coadjutors, who take no monastic vows, and may, therefore, be dismissed. They serve the order partly as subalterns, partly as confederates, and may be regarded as the people of the Jesuit state. Distinguished laymen, public officers, and other influential personages (e.g., Louis XIV., in his old age), were honored with admission into this class, to promote the interests of the order. Higher in rank, stand the scholars and spiritual coadjutors, who are instructed in the higher branches of learning, take upon themselves solemn monastic vows, and are bound to devote themselves particularly to the education of youth. These, as it were, the artists of the Jesuit community, are employed as professors in academies, as preachers in cities, and at courts; as rectors, and professors in colleges, as tutors and spiritual guides in families which they wish to gain or to watch, and as assistants in the missions. Finally, the nobility, or highest class, is made up of the professed, among whom are admitted only the most-experienced members, whose address, energy, and fidelity to the order, have been eminently tried and proved. According to one statement, they make profession, that is, take the vows of their order, by binding themselves in addition to the common
monastic vows by the fourth vow, to the undertaking of missions, among whom they consider heathen and heretics, as governors in colonies in remote parts of the world, as father-confessors of princes, and as residents of the order in places where it has no college. They are entirely exempt, on the other hand, from the care of the education of youth. None but the professed have a voice in the election of a general, who must himself be of their number, and who has the right of choosing from them the assistants, provincials, superiors, and rectors. The general holds his office for life, and has his residence in Rome, where he is attended by a monitor, and five assistants or counsellors, who also represent the five chief nations: the Italians, Germans, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is the centre of the government of the whole order, and receives monthly reports from the provincials, and one every quarter from the superiors of the professed-houses, from the rectors of the colleges, and from the masters of the novices. These reports detail all remarkable occurrences, political events, and the characters, capacities, and services of individual members, and thereupon the general directs what is to be done, and how to make use of tried and approved members. All are bound to obey him implicitly, and even contrary to their own convictions. There is no appeal from his orders.
Loyola died July 31, 1556, leaving to the order a sketch of this constitution, and a mystical treatise
called "Exercitia Spiritualia," which work occupies the first four weeks of every novice. The rapid increase of the order, and the previous purity of Loyola's life, obtained canonization for him in 1662. Their first great missionary was St. Francis Xavier, whose labors (1541) in the Portuguese East Indies, where he died ten years afterward, have obtained for him the name of "the apostle of India", and the honor of canonization. We are told that, at Goa, Travancore, Cochin, Malacca, Ceylon, and Japan, some hundred thousand were by him converted to the Christian religion. If so, at present the light of it has become very dim. Stat nominis umbra. The inquisition at Goa, perhaps, may have shown the people the difference between theory and practice. Claudius Aquaviva, of the family of the dukes of Atri, general of the Jesuits from 1581 to 1615, is the author of their system of education. The want of deep, critical learning, with the mutilation of the classics (for which last they deserve praise, not blame), exposed their teachers, for a time, to the censure of philologists. Viewed with suspicion by the French, they only were admitted into that nation in 1562, under the name of "the Fathers of the College of Clermont," with a humiliating renunciation of their most important privileges, but they soon united in the factions of that country, and, notwithstanding a strong suspicion of their having had a share in the murder of Henry III., under the