A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

La saincte Escriture toute
Purement se preschera,
Et toute doctrine sotte
Des hommes on oublîra!
La Sorbonne, la bigotte,
La Sorbonne se taira!”[671]

Amidst this seething crowd of warring students and teachers, Ignatius went, silent, watchful, observing everything. He cared little for theological speculation, being a true and typical Spaniard. The doctrines of the mediæval theology were simply military commands to his disciplined mind; things to be submitted to whether understood or not. Heresy was mutiny in the ranks. He had a marvellous natural capacity for penetrating the souls of others, and had cultivated and strengthened it by his habits of daily introspection and of writing down whatever, good or bad, passed through his own soul. It is told of him that in company he talked little, but quietly noted what others said, and that he had infinite genius for observing and storing details.[672] He sought to learn the conditions of life and thought outside Paris and France, and made journeys to the Low Countries and to England, saying little, thinking much, observing more. All the time he was winning the confidence of fellow-students, and taking infinite pains to do so—weighing and testing their character and gifts. He played billiards with some, paid the college expenses of others, and was slowly, patiently making his selection of the young men whom he thought fit to be the confidants of his plans for the regeneration of Christendom, and to be associates with him in the discipline which the Exercises gave to his own soul.[673]

He finally chose a little band of nine disciples—Peter Faber, Diego Lainez, Francis Xavier, Alonzo Salmeron, Nicholas Boabdilla, Simon Rodriguez, Paul Broet, Claude Jay, and Jean Codure. Codure died early. Faber, the first selected, was a Savoyard, the son of a poor peasant, with the unbending will and fervent spiritual imagination of a highlander. No one of the band was more devoted to his leader. Francis Xavier belonged, like Loyola himself, to an ancient Basque family; none was harder to win than this proud young Spaniard. Lainez and Salmeron were Castilians, who had been fellow-students with Ignatius at Alcala. Lainez had always been a prodigy of learning, “a young man with the brain of an ancient sage.” He, too, had been hard to win, for his was not a nature to kindle easily; but once subdued he was the most important member of the band. Salmeron, his early companion, was as impetuous and fiery as Lainez was cool and logical. He was the eloquent preacher of the company. Boabdilla, also a Spaniard, was a man of restless energy, who needed the strictest discipline to make him keep touch with his brothers. Rodriguez, a Portuguese, and Jay, from Geneva, were young men of insinuating manners, and were the destined diplomatists of the little company. Broet, a phlegmatic Netherlander among these fiery southerners, endeared himself to all of them by his sweet purity of soul.

Such were the men whom Ignatius gathered together on the Feast of the Ascension of Mary in 1534 in the Church of St. Mary of Montmartre, then outside the walls of Paris. There they vowed that if no insuperable difficulty prevented, they would go together to Palestine to work for the good of mankind. If this became impossible, they would ask the Pope to absolve them from their vow and betake themselves to whatever work for the good of souls His Holiness directed them to do. No Order was founded; no vows of poverty and obedience were taken; the young men were a band of students who looked on each other as brothers, and who promised to leave family and friends, and, “without superfluous money,” work together for a regeneration of the Church. Faber, already in priest’s orders, celebrated Mass; the company dined together at St. Denys. Such was the quiet beginning of what grew to be the Society of Jesus.

The companions parted for a season to meet again at Venice.

§ 3. The Spiritual Exercises.

All the nine associates had submitted themselves to the spiritual guidance of Ignatius, and had all been subjected to the training contained in the Exercitia Spiritualia. It is probable that this manual of military drill for the soul had not been perfected at the date of the meeting at Montmartre (1534), for we know that Loyola worked at it from 1522 on to 1548, when it was approved by Pope Paul III.; but it may be well at this stage to give some account of this marvellous book, which was destined to have such important results for the Counter-Reformation.[674]

The thought that the spiritual senses and faculties might be strengthened and stimulated by the continuous repetition of a prescribed course of prayer and meditation, was not a new one. The German Mystics of the fourteenth century, to name no others, had put their converts through such a discipline, and the practice was not unusual among the Dominicans. It is most likely that a book of this kind, the Exercitatorio dela vida spirital of Garcia de Cisneros, Abbot of the Monastery of Montserrat (1500), had been studied by Ignatius while he was at Manresa. But this detracts nothing from the striking and unique originality of the Exercitia Spiritualia, they stand alone in plan, contents, and intended result.[675] They were the outcome of Loyola’s protracted spiritual struggles, and of his cool introspection of his own soul during these months of doubt and anguish. Their evident intention is to guide the soul through the long series of experiences which Loyola had endured unaided, and to lead it to the peace which he had found.

It is universally admitted that Ignatius had always before him the conception of military drill. He wished to discipline the soul as the drill-sergeant moulds the body. The Exercises are not closet-rules for solitary believers seeking to rise to communion with God by a ladder of meditation. A guide was indispensable, the Master of the Exercises, who had himself conquered all the intricacies of the method, and who, besides, must have as intimate a knowledge as it was possible to acquire of the details of the spiritual strength and weakness of his pupil. It was the easier to have this knowledge, as the disciple must be more than half won before he is invited to pass through the drill. He must have submitted to one of the fathers in confession; he must be made to understand the absolute necessity of abandoning himself to the exercises with his whole heart and soul; he must promise absolute submission to the orders of the director; he must by frequent confession reveal the recesses of his soul, and describe the most trivial thoughts which flit through it; above all, he must enter on his prolonged task in a state of the liveliest expectation of the benefits to be derived from his faithful performance of the prescribed exercises.[676] A large, though strictly limited, discretion is permitted to the Master of the Exercises in the details of the training he insists upon.

The course of drill extends over four weeks[677] (twenty-five days). It includes prolonged and detailed meditations on four great subjects:—sin and conscience; the earthly Kingdom of Christ; the Passion of Jesus; and the Love of God with the Glory of the Risen Lord.[678] During all this time the pupil must live in absolute solitude. Neither sight nor sound from the world of life and action must be allowed to enter and disturb him. He is exhorted to purge his mind of every thought but the meditation on which he is engaged; to exert all his strength to make his introspection vivid and his converse with the Deity unimpeded.