The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Faber’s conversion was rapidly accomplished. He was supplied with the Spiritual Exercises, which is, of all books, the best adapted to produce the proper self-abandonment and plastic condition of soul which befit the neophyte of the Society of Jesus. And this work, composed, say the Roman Catholic authorities, in the cavern of Manresa with the help of the Virgin Mary, may be regarded as the keenest instrument by which men’s lives were ever carved into the patterns designed by a superior will. We have no space for a discussion of Jesuitism further than to indicate its methods when they affect the subject before us, but Faber’s behavior undoubtedly had its weight upon Xavier. The Savoyard took to fasting with a perfect fury. In his debilitated condition he was the fit vehicle for spiritual impressions, for ecstasies, and for mystical dreams. He would kneel in the open court in the snow, and sometimes allow himself to be covered with icicles. His bundle of fuel he made into a bed and slept upon it for the few hours of what one biography “scarcely knows whether to call torture or repose.” In fact, he so outran the instruction of Loyola, that that keen observer checked him and prevented what would have reacted against his own designs. “For,” saith quaint Matthew Henry, speaking of another subject, “there is a great deal of doing which, by overdoing, is altogether undone.”

Xavier was, however, more important to Loyola than Faber. And Xavier was of tougher material and harder to reach. Upon him the intense Loyola bent the blow-pipe flame of his own spirit. He had failed to touch him by texts or by austerities. He therefore changed his tactics altogether and began to soften him by praise, by judicious cultivation of his sympathies, by procuring new scholars for him, and even by attending his lectures and feigning a deep interest in whatever he did. In short, he applied flattery and deference in such a way that he insinuated himself very soon into the confidence of Xavier, and allowed the haughty Don to recognize the high birth and good breeding which he could also claim. This was a master stroke. Faber was after all only a Savoyard; but Loyola was born in a castle, had been a page at the court of Ferdinand, and had led soldiers into the deadliest places of battle. He had also the advantage of being Xavier’s senior by fully fourteen years, for his birth had been contemporaneous with Columbus’s expedition in search of the new world.

Here, then, the influence of this strong, undaunted, unflinching spirit began to focus itself upon the young teacher of philosophy. “Resistance to praise,” says the bitter La Rochefoucauld, “is a desire to be praised twice.” And to so acute a student of human nature as Loyola it soon grew evident that he was making progress. This was proved even by the modesty of Xavier. Therefore he redoubled his energies and utilized that marvellous power of adaptation, which was his chief legacy to his order, in obtaining a definite result. He gained ground so fast that Michael Navarro, a faithful servant of the young scholar, became determined to break off this dangerous fascination, and even attempted to kill Loyola in his private apartments. But he, too, was dealing with a brain which never relaxed its vigilance and with a magnetic personality which felt a danger, and moved safely, cat-like, through the dark. He was halted and challenged by the man he came to kill, and being crushed down in confusion was thereupon treated with magnanimity, and went away revolving many things in his mind.

This was the power of Loyola—a power which sprang, first of all, from his peculiar constitution, and, second, from his fanatical ambition. It has been the key by which the Jesuit has ever since unlocked the doors of palaces and contrived to whisper in the ears of kings. Its extent has been that of the civilized and uncivilized world. In the matter of organization no human fraternity has ever equalled the Society of Jesus. The germs which we behold at Ste. Barbe in Paris have grown into a tree whose roots have taken hold on every soil, and whose fruit has dropped in every clime. The order has invariably employed strategy, intrigue, ingenuity, and perfect combination to secure its ends. It is, as a system, far from being either dead or insignificant. And its real vitality has always sprung from its maxim that its associated members, vowed to celibacy and to the accomplishment of its purposes, should be Perinde ac si cadavera—absolutely subordinate and dead to any other will—in the hands of the “general” who is at the head of its affairs. It has worked, first for itself, second for the Roman Catholic Church, and third for the proselytizing of the heathen and the heretics. It has never neglected to procure in every manner the information it needed to the full extent or to employ its principle that the end to be gained justifies the means that are taken to gain it. Thus it is the legitimate outgrowth of the soldier-courtier-fanatic mind of its founder. And this was the mind which was now spending its splendid resources upon Xavier, playing with him like a trout upon the hook, until it should land him, a completely surrendered man, within its own control.

In another sphere and under other influences, Xavier might have been a far different person. He, at least, was sincere in his devotion to the cause. He identified Jesuitism with Christianity and Loyola with Jesus Himself. Hence his character and labors have blinded many persons to the methods which he used and to the results which he sought.

It must be sufficient for us that Ignatius Loyola had now gotten the mastery of Francis Xavier so perfectly that he could be “applied to the Spiritual Exercises, the furnace in which he [Loyola] was accustomed to refine and purify his chosen vessels.” A sister of the future missionary had become one of the Barefooted Clares, and had aided in dissuading her father from interference. And now we behold Xavier praying with hands and feet tightly bound by cords; or journeying with similar cords about his arms and the calves of his legs until inflammation and ulceration ensued. There were now nine of these converts, but this man outdid the others in his austerities, and finally travelled on foot with them to meet Loyola at Venice in 1537. The society had really been formed on August 15th, 1534, at Montmartre near Paris, and this was but its natural outward movement.

At Venice, on January 8th, 1537, they again met their leader and were assigned for duty to the two hospitals of the city. That of the “Incurables” fell to Xavier’s share, and we read that with the morbid devotion characteristic of a devout student of the Exercises, he determined now to conquer his natural repugnance to disease. In the course of his duties he had an unusually hideous ulcer to dress for one of the patients. And the authentic history relates that “encouraging himself to the utmost, he stooped down, kissed the pestilent cancer, licked it several times with his tongue, and finally sucked out the virulent matter to the last drop.” (Bartoli and Maffei, p. 35.) There could be nothing worse than that certainly. And a man who had resolutely sounded this deepest abyss of self-abandonment was marked for the highest honor that the new society could bestow. We cannot doubt Xavier’s sincerity, but the gigantic horror of this performance is of a sort to place the man who has achieved it upon an eminence apart from less daring minds. It was Loyola’s way of facing human nature and forcing it to concede the supreme self-devotion of his followers. The world looks with amazement upon such actions, but when it sees them, it yields a kind of stupefied allegiance to those who have thus rushed beyond the bounds. And to a close analysis there is as much concealed spiritual pride about this nastiness as there is an unnecessary shock given to the sense of decency. Thus, as Mozoomdar says, in his Oriental Christ, “Instead of abasing self, in many cases it serves the opposite end.” It “imposes a sort of indebtedness upon Heaven” (p. 66). Yet the poor wretch who felt those lips upon his awful wound could not but worship the frightful hero who plunged into such nauseous contact with his loathsomeness.

Yes, this was and is the power of it all. It was and it is the key-note of much that is potent with the world. When Victor Hugo pictures Jean Valjean in the toils of the Thenardiers laying that white, hot, hissing bar of iron upon his arm and calmly standing before them while they shrink—ogres as they are—from the stench and the sight, he merely uses this same element. Whatever, in short, among us brings out the old savage nature; whatever plunges outside of the conventionalities, the proprieties, or even the common decencies of life; whatever defies the lightning, or dares the volcano, or tramples upon the coiled serpent, that is the thing which controls the world.

It is worthy of note that this is not a Christian but a Jesuit act. It is born of that exaggerated sentimentalism which chooses to go beyond Christ and His apostles in its fallacious abnegation of self. But wherever such acts are performed they rank as the marks of saintship and as the stigmata of a crucifixion which proudly places itself on the same Golgotha with another and nobler cross. The records, not merely of Xavier’s life, but of the lives of the saints, swarm with these creeping, slimy frogs of Egypt, raised up by enchanters of the human mind to make Pharaoh believe them to be equal to a far higher Providence. And if we say little in these pages about such strange developments and morbid growths of piety, it need not be forgotten that they existed, and that they have been fostered and encouraged by the Roman Church. The Breviary, for instance, commends a roll of self-flagellators who used the whip upon their naked backs, and Xavier heads the list with his iron flail. Cardinal Damiani, who wrote one of our loveliest hymns, introduced this fashion of scourging in 1056, and the holy nun, St. Theresa, after such exercises and an additional repose upon a bed of thorns, was “accustomed to converse with God.” [Aliquando inter spinas volutaret sic Deum alloqui solita.] This topic, with its allied suggestions, is altogether out of our present scope; but in order to see Xavier as he was, we must appreciate to what extent his spirit was subdued before his belief.

This was the man, tested and edged and tempered, to whom was now committed the “salvation of the Indies.” It was during the papacy of Paul III., the same Pope who excommunicated Henry VIII. of England. And Xavier, who had practised many austerities both in life and in behavior, was at first sent to Bologna, while Loyola, with Faber and Laynez, went to Rome. It was subsequently at Rome that Xavier had his famous vision, in which he awoke crying, “Yet more, O Lord, yet more!” for he fancied that—as the Apostle Paul once did—he had beheld his future career and was glorying in trials and persecutions. Especially did he often have a dream in which he seemed to be carrying an Indian on his shoulders and toiling with him over the roughest and hardest roads. And when at last Govea, the Rector of the College of Ste. Barbe, happened to be in Rome, Ignatius and his companions were brought by him to the notice of John III. of Portugal, and the king desired to have six of them for use in India. The Pope did not show any special desire to secure their services, and when the question came up he referred it to Ignatius to decide it as he pleased. That sagacious general objected to taking six from ten and leaving only four to the rest of the world, for his ambition now extended to the orb of the earth. He accordingly chose Rodriguez and Bobadilla for India, men who were evidently well selected, for the first became a great propagandist in Portugal, and the other was a decided obstacle to the Reformation in Germany. When Rodriguez, however, fell ill with an intermittent fever Xavier naturally occurred to Loyola as the proper substitute. He therefore commissioned him for the service, and the worn and wasted ascetic patched up his old coat, said farewell to his friends, and having craved the Pope’s blessing, set off from Rome with the Portuguese Ambassador, Mascarenhas, on March 16th, 1540. He started in such poverty that Loyola took his own waistcoat and put it upon him, and he left behind him a written paper of consecration to the society, expressing in it his desire that Loyola should be its head, with Faber as alternate, and in which he took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the order under whose auspices he was going forth.