True meditation, according to Ignatius, ought to include four things—a preparatory prayer; præludia, or the ways of attuning the mind and sense in order to bring methodically and vividly some past historical scene or embodiment of doctrine before the soul of the pupil; puncta, or definite heads of each meditation on which the thoughts are to be concentrated, and on which memory, intellect, and will are to be individually exercised; colloquia, or ecstatic converse with God, without which no meditation is supposed to be complete, and in which the pupil, having placed the crucifix before him, talks to God and hears His voice answering him.
When the soul’s progress on the long spiritual journey in which it is led during these meditations is studied, one can scarcely fail to note the crass materialism which envelops it at every step. The pupil is required to see in the mirror of his imagination the boundless flames of hell, and souls encased in burning bodies; to hear the shrieks, howlings, and blasphemies; to smell the sulphur and intolerable stench; to taste the saltness of the tears, and to feel the scorching touch of the flames.[679] When the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane is the subject of meditation, he must have in the camera obscura of his imagination a garden, large or small, see its enclosing walls, gaze and gaze till he discerns where Christ is, where the Apostles sleep, perceive the drops of sweat, touch the clothes of our Lord.[680] When he thinks of the Nativity, he must conjure up the figures of Joseph, Mary, the Child, and a maid-servant, hear their homely family talk, see them going about their ordinary work.[681] The same crass materialism envelops the meditations about doctrinal mysteries. Thinking upon the Incarnation is almost childishly limited to picturing the Three Persons of the Trinity contemplating the broad surface of the earth and men hurrying to destruction, then resolving that the Second is to descend to save; and to the interview between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin.[682]
A second characteristic of this scheme of meditation is the extremely limited extent of its sphere. The attention is confined to a few scenes in the life of our Lord and of the Virgin. No lessons from the Old Testament are admitted. All theological speculation is strictly excluded. What is aimed at is to produce an intense and concentrated impression which can never be effaced while life lasts. The soul is alternately torn by terror and soothed by the vision of heavenly delights. “The designed effect was to produce a vivid and varied hypnotic dream of twenty-five days, from the influence of which a man should never wholly free himself.”[683]
The outstanding feature, however, of the Exercises and of the Directory is the minute knowledge they display of the bodily conditions and accompaniments of states of spiritual ecstasy, and the continuous, not to say unscrupulous, use they make of physical means to create spiritual abandon. They master the soul by manipulating the body. Not that self-examination, honest and careful recognition of sins and weaknesses in presence of temptation, have no place in the prolonged course of discipline. This is inculcated with instructions which serve to make it detailed, intense, almost scientific. The pupil is ordered to examine himself twice a day, in the afternoon and in the evening, and to make clear to himself every sin and failure that has marked his day’s life. He is taught to enter them all, day by day, in a register, which will show him and his confessor his moral condition with arithmetical accuracy. But during his own period of spiritual struggle and depression at Manresa, Ignatius, in spite of the mental anguish which tore his soul, had been noting the bodily accompaniments of his spiritual states; and he pursued the same course of introspection when rejoicing in the later visions of God and of His grace. The Exercises and the Directory are full of minute directions about the physical conditions which Ignatius had found by experience to be the most suitable for the different subjects of meditation. The old Buddhist devotee was instructed to set himself in a spiritual trance by the simple hypnotic process of gazing at his own navel; the Ignatian directions are much more complex. The glare of day, the uncertainty of twilight, the darkness of night are all pressed into service; some subjects are to be pondered standing upright motionless, others while walking to and fro in the cell, when seated, when kneeling, when stretched prone on the floor; some ought to be meditated upon while the body is weak with fasting, others soon after meals; special hours, the morning, the evening, the middle of the night, are noted as the most profitable times for different meditations, and these vary with the age and sex of the disciple. Ignatius recognises the infinite variety that there is in man, and says expressly that general rules will not fit every case. The Master of Exercises is therefore enjoined to study the various idiosyncrasies of his patients, and vary his discipline to suit their mental and physical conditions.
It is due chiefly to this use of the conditions of the body acting upon the mind that Ignatius was able to promise to his followers that the ecstasies which had been hitherto the peculiar privilege of a few favoured saints should become theirs. The Reformation had made the world democratic; and the Counter-Reformation invited the mob to share the raptures and the visions of a St. Catherine or a St. Teresa.
The combination of a clear recognition of the fact that physical condition may account for much in so-called spiritual moods with the use made of it to create or stimulate these moods, cannot fail to suggest questions. It is easy to understand the Mystic, who, ignorant of the mysterious ways in which the soul is acted upon by the body, may rejoice in ecstasies and trances which have been stimulated by sleepless nights and a prolonged course of fasting. It is not difficult to understand the man who, when he has been taught, casts aside with disdain all this juggling with the soul through the body. But it is hard to see how anyone who perceived with fatal clearness the working of the machinery should ever come to think that real piety could be created in such mechanical ways. To believe with some that the object Ignatius had was simply to enslave mankind, to conquer their souls as a great military leader might master their lives, is both impossible and intolerable. No one can read the correspondence of Loyola without seeing that the man was a devout and earnest-minded Christian, and that he longed to bring about a real moral reformation among his contemporaries. Perhaps the key to the difficulty is given when it is remembered that Ignatius never thought that the raptures and the terrors his course of exercises produced were an end in themselves, as did the earlier Mystics. They were only a means to what followed. Ignatius believed with heart and soul that the essence of all true religion was the blindest submission to what he called the “true Spouse of Christ and our Holy Mother, which is the orthodox, catholic, and hierarchical Church.” We have heard him during his time of anguish at Manresa exclaim, “Show me, O Lord, where I can find Thee; I will follow like a dog, if I only learn the way of salvation!” He fulfilled his vow to the letter. He never entered into the meaning of our Lord’s saying, “Henceforth I call you not servants ... but friends”; he had no understanding of what St. Paul calls “reasonable service” (λογικη λατρεια). The only obedience he knew was unreasoning submission, the obedience of a dog. His most imperative duty, he believed, lay in the resignation of his intelligence and will to ecclesiastical guidance in blind obedience to the Church. It is sometimes forgotten how far Ignatius carried this. It is not that he lays upon all Christians the duty of upholding every portion of the mediæval creed, of mediæval customs, institutions, and superstitions; or that the philosophy of St. Thomas of Bonaventura, of the Master of the Sentences, and of “other recent theologians,” is to be held as authoritative as that of Holy Writ;[684] but “if the Church pronounces a thing which seems to us white to be black, we must immediately say that it is black.”[685] This was for him the end of all perfection; and he found no better instrument to produce it than the prolonged hypnotic trance which the Exercises caused.
§ 4. Ignatius in Italy.
In the beginning of 1537 the ten associates found themselves together at Venice. A war between that Republic and the Turks made it difficult for them to think of embarking for Palestine; and they remained, finding solace in intercourse with men who were longing for a moral regeneration of the Church. Contarini did much for them; Vittoria Colonna had the greatest sympathy with their projects; Caraffa only looked at them coldly. The mind of Ignatius was then full of schemes for improving the moral tone of society and of the Church—daily prayer in the village churches, games of chance forbidden by law; priests’ concubines forbidden to dress as honest women did, etc.;—all of which things Contarini and Vittoria had at heart.
After a brief stay in Venice, Ignatius, Lainez, and Faber travelled to Rome, and were joined there by the others in Easter week (1538). No Pontiff was so accessible as Paul III., and the three had an audience, in which they explained their missionary projects. But this journey through Italy had evidently given Ignatius and his companions new ideas. The pilgrimage to Palestine was definitely abandoned, the money which had been collected for the voyage was returned to the donors, and the associates took possession of a deserted convent near Vicenza to talk over their future. This conference may be called the second stage in the formation of the Order. They all agreed to adopt a few simple rules of life—they were to support themselves by begging; they were to go two by two, and one was always to act as the servant for the time being of the other; they were to lodge in public hospitals in order to be ready to care for the sick; and they pledged themselves that their chief work would be to preach to those who did not go to church, and to teach the young.