A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

He had not been long at the University before his strange ways set up the usual conflict of opinion. Was he a hypocrite, or a fool, or a saint? From the youths who took the more complimentary view of his ways he picked out a few to form the little band of disciples he was always eager to have, and put them through the Spiritual Exercises. They came out of this fiery ordeal in heroic temper, sold their little possessions, and began to beg their bread; to the extreme indignation of their friends in the Spanish colony. In order to save time for study, Ignatius used to go to the Low Countries in the holidays and beg funds for his "poor students" among the Spanish merchants. One year—the year before Henry VIII. set up the Church of England—he went to London, but we know only that the city was very generous to him. On these alms Ignatius and his disciples maintained their life of prayer, austerity, and philanthropy, living in one of the colleges among the other students and angling prudently for souls. The irritation against Ignatius among the Spaniards became so great that the Rector was persuaded to inflict on him a public flogging, the last disgrace of an unpopular student. He was not flogged, however; nor is there anything really miraculous, as some think, in the Rector's change of mind. Ignatius feared the effect on his disciples and had a private talk with the Rector before the appointed hour. He had a marvellous power of persuasion and penetration.

These earlier followers seem in time to have fallen away, or never been admitted to his secret designs, and it was not until 1530 that he began to gather about him the men whose names have been inscribed in the history of Europe. In 1530 Ignatius shared his room with a gentle and deeply religious youth from Savoy, Peter Favre, a peasant's son who had already won the doctor's cap and priestly orders, as pious as he was clever. He had made a vow of chastity in his thirteenth year, and was now, in his twenty-fifth year, as eager to keep a clean conscience as to advance in learning. He acted as philosophical coach to Ignatius. From Aristotle and Aquinas they passed, in their nightly talk, to other matters, and Favre presently made the Exercises.

Francis Xavier, a Navarrese youth of high birth, was a friend of Favre, and, like him, a brilliant student and keen hungerer for knowledge. He was a young man of great refinement, and his large soft blue eyes looked with disdain on the eccentricities of Ignatius; he was not a little vain of his learning, his handsome person, and his skill in running. Who but Ignatius could have seen the Francis Xavier of a later day, wearing out his life in the conversion of savages, in this elegant and self-conscious scholar? Francis Thompson speaks with admiration of the "holy wiles" by which Ignatius secured this gifted and elusive pupil. He laid hold of him by his vanity. Xavier taught philosophy and was ambitious to have his lecture-room full. Ignatius sat at his feet, brought others to the lectures, and gave them generous praise. After a time Xavier made the Exercises, and, in a secret conversation with Ignatius, was won to the plan of devoting his life to the conversion of the Mohammedans—or to some other religious campaign.

One by one the early Jesuits were captured by the skilful fisher of men. To the first two were soon added Diego Lainez, a Castilian youth of great ability and quiet strength of character, a future General of the Society; Alfonso Salmeron, a fiery and eloquent youth from Toledo, then in his twentieth year, who would become one of the most learned opponents of the Protestants; Nicholas Alfonso, from Valladolid, commonly known, from his native village, as Bobadilla, a fearless and impetuous fighter; and Simon Rodriguez, a handsome Spanish youth of noble birth, who would prove an admirable courtier when kings were to be won. Many others whom Ignatius sought refused to accept his stern ideal, and many were kept in the outer courts of his temple, as it were, and not admitted to share his secret design. The features of the coming Society were singularly foreshadowed. Only these six out of all the friends and companions of Ignatius knew anything of the great plan which filled his mind, and not one of the six knew which of the others were admitted, like himself, to the inner counsels of the master. Each was initiated in the strictest confidence, and forbidden to speak of it to his most intimate friend. It was wholly unlike the foundation of any other religious body.

At last, in July 1534, the six youths were permitted to know each other as comrades in arms. It was time to discuss what form their crusade should take, and Ignatius proposed that, after a week or two of increased austerity and prayer, they should make the vow of self-dedication and decide upon their future. There is the characteristic impress of Ignatius on every feature of the enterprise. The ceremony was not to be in one of the churches of Paris, but away across the meadows in the quiet little chapel of St. Denis on Montmartre; in fact, in the crypt underneath the chapel. And on August 15th they went out from the city gates in the early morning for what proved to be the historic foundation of the Society of Jesus. Paris was still, at that time, a comparatively narrow strip of town on either bank of the Seine centring upon the island which bore the cathedral and the palace. A mile or two of meadows and vineyards lay between it and the green hill of Montmartre, on the slope of which was the old chapel of St. Denis. Underneath the choir was a small vault-like chapel, and in this, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the little band of fervent southerners gathered to hear Peter Favre, the only priest amongst them, say the Mass of the Virgin. At its close they knelt in turns before the altar, and each vowed that he would live in poverty and chastity, and either go out to convert the Turks or go wherever the Pope should direct. No rumbling of angry devils was heard on this occasion: the life of Paris flowed on its sparkling way; yet there was born in that dim vault on that August morning one of the most singular and formidable forces in the religious life of Europe.

The Society of Jesus was thus formed, though the seven men did not know it, or adopt any corporate name. They broke their fast and spent the day on the slope of the hill, elated with the joy of brotherhood and the promise of mighty enterprise, talking of the adventurous future. What should be the next step? Again we find the stamp of the peculiar genius of Ignatius on their decision: the features which would degenerate into what is called Jesuitry in the hearts and minds of less sincerely religious men. They were to return to their studies, their philanthropy, and their secrecy, for two years, and they would meet at Venice at the beginning of 1537. Ignatius never hurried. He lived as if he intended to quit the world very speedily; he acted as if he were assured of long life. He was founding a body whose supreme and distinctive aim should be to serve the Pope, yet he concealed his work from the Pope's representatives as carefully as if he were really forming an auxiliary troop for Martin Luther. Let it be carefully noted, too, that they vowed either to go to Palestine or to serve the Pope in some other way appointed by him. It seems clear that, if Ignatius had not already abandoned the idea of a mission to the Turks, he held it lightly. In Paris he had learned that the spirit of the Reformation was spreading over Europe as fire spreads over a parched prairie. Men talked much of Luther and Calvin, little of Mohammed.

They returned to their colleges and their hospitals for two years, and were known to their companions only as monks who were too ascetic to enter a monastery. Ignatius practised fearful austerities, and his followers fasted and scourged themselves. Xavier looked back with such contrition on his former fame as a runner that he tied cords round his legs until they bit into the flesh and caused a dangerous malady. Probably the long delay was proposed by Ignatius in the hope that he might add to the number of his followers, but he found no more at Paris worthy or willing to be initiated; though three—Le Jay, Paschase Brouet, and Codure—were added after his departure. He had gone to Spain in the spring of 1535. Those of the youths who had property to sacrifice had talked of going to Spain to arrange their affairs, but Ignatius took the work on himself. His health was poor, he said, and he would try his native air; he was also eager to keep them from their native air and disapproving families. In March he walked afoot from Paris to Loyola, begging his bread by the way.

The report of his life had reached the quiet valley at the foot of the Pyrenees, and he found his brother and many admirers waiting in the last stage of his journey. He remained three months in Azpeitia, and, as no one could now interfere with his fiery preaching, he urged his townsmen to repent and startled the province. His sanctity was now beyond question, because a woman had recovered the use of a withered arm by washing his linen. Then he arranged the affairs of his disciples and went to Venice. Here Hozes and the Eguia brothers were added to the secret fraternity, and a year was spent in tending the sick and other work of edification. The year 1537 broke at last, and in its first week the six disciples, worn and ragged from the long journey, joined their master. Walking in demure pairs, a staff in one hand and a chaplet in the other, begging their bread and exhorting all they met to virtue and repentance, the six learned students of the Paris University had covered afoot, in the depth of winter, the hundreds of miles that lay between Paris and Venice; flying before the advances of bold women, beaming under the abuse of the new heretics, facing the Alps more bravely than a Hannibal or a Napoleon. Strong efforts had been made to keep them at Paris. Why abandon their precious work at the University for an unknown world? They had a secret vow, they said; though they probably had little more idea than Ignatius of going to Palestine. None of them learned Arabic or Turkish, or studied the Koran: what they did learn was the Catholic doctrine assailed by the followers of Luther.

For a month or two the strange missionaries mystified and edified Venice. It was known that some of them were nobles, and all brilliant scholars, yet they performed the most repulsive offices for the sick, and at times put their mouths to festering wounds. Cardinal Caraffa, a stern Neapolitan reformer, asked Ignatius to join the new Theatine order which he had just founded, and Ignatius replied that they had vowed to go to Palestine. They would remember their refusal when Caraffa became Pope. At last, in the middle of Lent, Ignatius sent his followers to Rome to ask the Pope's blessing on their mission. He would not go himself, as he feared the enmity of Caraffa and of the Spanish envoy Ortiz, who had opposed them at Paris. There was, in fact, little danger of Ignatius going without the Pope's blessing, as a new war with the Turk had broken out, and it would not be unjust to conclude that the real object of Ignatius was to bring his little troop to the notice of Paul III. Ortiz himself procured them an audience, and they received the papal blessing to accompany them to Palestine—if they could get there, the Pope lightly said. It is singular that Ignatius, after waiting so long, should choose a time for their departure when the seas were closed against them.