A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

First as to the Spiritual Coadjutors. One who aspires to enter the Society passes two years of trial as a "novice," then takes "simple" (or dissolvable) vows and becomes a "scholastic" (student). In the other monastic bodies, which now have simple vows, the aspirant takes his "solemn" (or indissoluble) vows three years afterwards, before he becomes a priest. The peculiarity of the Jesuits is that they defer the taking of the "solemn" vows for a considerable number of years, and they thus have a large body of priests who are not rigidly bound to the Society and cannot hold important office in it. This gives the General, who has a despotic power of dismissing these Spiritual Coadjutors, a very lengthy period for learning the intimate character of men before they are admitted to the secrets of the Society.

Then there is the remarkable scheme of spying, tale-bearing, and registering by which this knowledge of men is secured. The aspirant must make a general confession of his life to the superior, or some priest appointed by him, when he enters the Society. He is from that day closely observed and subjected to extraordinary tests, and a strict obligation is laid on each to tell the faults and most private remarks of his neighbour. The local superiors then send periodical full reports on each man to the headquarters at Rome, where there must be a bureau not unlike the criminal intelligence department of a great police-centre: except that the good and the mediocre are as fully registered as the suspects.

The important place assigned to teaching in the programme of the Society also leads to serious modifications of the monastic ideal. Every order has some device or other by which it escapes the practical inconveniences of its vow of poverty, but the Jesuits have gone beyond all others. They have drawn a casuistic distinction between a "college" and a "house of the professed," and have declared that the ownership of the former is not inconsistent with their vow of poverty. The result is that they may heap up indefinite wealth in the shape of colleges and their revenues, yet boast of their vow of poverty. The various devices of the monastic bodies to, at the same time, retain and disclaim the ownership of their property are many and curious. This is the one instance of a monastic body boldly saying that its vow is consistent with the ownership of great wealth. Hence the mercantile spirit which will at once spread in the Society.

The deliberate counsel to prefer rich or noble youths to poor, when their other qualifications are equal, is a further obvious source of material strength and moral weakness; we shall soon find them making wealth, or social standing, or talent, the first qualification. The exemption from "choir" (or chanting the psalms in choir for several hours a day) falls in the same category. When we add to these elements of their Constitutions the extraordinary privileges they secured from the Popes in the course of a decade or two, we have the preliminary clues to the story of the rise and fall of the Society. They were allowed to grant degrees in their colleges (and so ruin and displace universities); they were declared exempt from the jurisdiction of the local authorities, spiritual or secular; they might encroach on the sphere of any existing monastery; and they received many other powers which enabled them to pose as unique representatives of the Papacy.

The tendency which we thus detect in the legislation of the Society is equally visible in much of the personal conduct of its founder, and soon shows its dangers in the lives of his less fervent followers. We have seen how the sanction of the Society was secured, and we must note that Ignatius was not more ingenuous in obtaining control of it. The conventional account of his appointment to the office of General is edifying. About Easter 1541 he summoned to Rome, for the purpose of electing a General, the nine fathers who had taken the solemn vows. Four were unable to come, but they sent, or had left at Rome, written votes, and Ignatius was unanimously elected. He protested, however, that he was unworthy to hold the office, and compelled them to hold a second ballot. At this ballot he received two-thirds of the votes, three being cast for Favre. He then consulted his confessor, and was told to accept the office; and for several days afterwards he washed the dishes and discharged the humblest offices.

Orlandini naively confesses, however, that at the election Ignatius gave a blank vote, and we can hardly suppose that he was so far lost in contemplation as to be unaware that a blank vote was a vote for himself. Further, the result of the second ballot plainly suggests that, if Ignatius had again refused to accept the office, Favre would have been appointed. It is difficult to doubt that he intended from the first to hold the office of General, and indeed it would have been ludicrous for them to appoint any other. But Ignatius knew his young followers, and he seems to have acted in this way in order that they might place the authority in his hands in the most emphatic manner. They are described in the chronicles as little less than angelic, but we shall presently find that some of them were very human, especially in the matter of obedience, and that at the death of Ignatius they quarrel like petty princes for the succession. Ignatius was piously diplomatic. He would use his power unreservedly in the cause of Christ and the Pope, but it is important to note how from the start the founder of the Society employs casuistry or diplomacy in getting power.

During the next fifteen years Ignatius remained at Rome, making only three short and relatively unimportant missions into Italy. They had moved from the house in the Piazza Margana to the foot of the Capitoline Hill, where the famous church of the Gesù now is. The old church of Sta Maria della Strada had been given to them, and Codacio (who had joined the Society and given his wealth to it) had built a house beside it for them. When Sta Maria proved too small, they proposed to build a larger church, and nearly secured the services of Michael Angelo; but the actual Gesù was begun in 1568 by Cardinal Alexander Farnese.

From their house beside the old church the keen eyes of the General followed the travels of his subjects to the ends of the earth and kept watch on Rome. He was now approaching his fiftieth year: a bald, worn man, with piercing black eyes in his sallow face, concealing an immense energy and power of intrigue under his humble appearance. Under his eye the novices were trained, and it was characteristic that he used to protest, when others urged him to expel an unruly brother, that—to put it in modern phrase—he liked a little "devil" in his novices. One of the first was young Ribadeneira, a cardinal's page, a noble by birth. He had come to their house one day when he was playing truant, and had been caught by the romance of the life. He was only fourteen years old, yet Ignatius received him and bore his fits of temper and rebellion until he became a useful and obedient member. Between the fiery Spanish boy and the aged and simple Codacio, the former papal official, there was every shade of character to be studied and humoured. The younger novices—they went down to the age of eleven—were encouraged to laugh and play, and come to the General's room to have fruit peeled for them; perhaps on the very day on which he was stirring the Pope to set up an Inquisition on the Spanish model at Rome or in Portugal. He loved the flowers of their garden, and tender ladies had no more sympathetic confidant. Great austerities, of the Manresa type, he rigorously forbade. The Jesuit was to be neat, clean, cheerful, strong, industrious, guarded in speech—and obedient. When it was necessary to strike, he struck at once. One night, when the prefect of the house came to make his report, it appeared that one of the novices (a young nobleman) had ridiculed the excessive zeal of another. Brother Zapata was at once summoned from bed and put out of doors.

His personal life was simple, to the eye. A Bible, a breviary, and an Imitation of Christ were the only books in his poor chamber, which is still shown to the visitor; and of these the breviary was not used, as he wept so much in reading the office that he endangered his sight, and the Pope excused him from reading it. He spent the first four hours of his early day in meditation and the saying of Mass, then worked until noon, when all dined together, in silence, and afterwards spent an hour in conversation under his observant eye. Then he returned to his desk, or took his stick and his sombrero, and limped to the hospital, or to the houses of the very poor or the rich, or to the chambers of cardinals or papal officials. Many a jeer and curse followed him as he walked, in neat black cloak, with downcast eyes and grave smile, courteous to every beggar or noble who addressed him. Rome was rich with monuments of his philanthropy—schools, orphanages, rescue-homes, etc.; but the fierce hostility never died, and at times it rose to the pitch of a gale. After his round of visits he limped back, grave and humble, to the house for the silent evening meal. When the novices were abed, the prefect came to give him a minute account of the day's life in the house, and, when the prefect was abed, the large eyes still flashed in the worn, olive-tinted face. He slept only four hours a night.