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

by Thomas M. Lindsay

Ignatius had his eye on Germany from the first. He longed to combat heresy in the land of its birth. Boabdilla, Faber, and Jay were sent there at once. Boabdilla won the confidence of William, Duke of Bavaria; Jay insinuated himself into the counsels of Ferdinand of Austria, and Faber did the most important work of the three by winning for the Society, Petrus Canisius. He was the son of a patrician of Nymwegen, trained in Humanist lore, drawn by inner sympathy to the Christian Mysticism of Tauler, and yet steadfast in his adherence to the theology of the mediæval Church. Faber soon became conscious of his own deficiencies for the work to be done in Germany. His first appearance was at the Religious Conference at Worms, where he found himself face to face with Calvin and Melanchthon, and where his colleagues, Eck and Cochlæus, were rather ashamed of him. The enthusiastic Savoyard lacked almost everything for the position into which, at the bidding of his General, he had thrust himself. Since then he had been wandering through those portions of Germany which had remained faithful to Rome, seeking individual converts to the principles of the Society, and above all some one who had the gifts for the work Ignatius hoped to do in that country. It is somewhat interesting to note that almost all the German Roman Catholics who were attracted by him to the new Order were men who had leanings towards the fourteenth century Mystics—men like Gerard Hammond, Prior of the Carthusians of Köln. Faber caught Canisius by means of his Mysticism. He met him at Mainz, explained the Exercitia Spiritualia to him, induced the young man to undergo the course of discipline which they prescribed, and won him for Loyola and the Company. “He is the man,” wrote Faber to Ignatius, “whom I have been seeking—if he is a man, and not rather an angel of the Lord.”

Ignatius speedily recognised the value of the new recruit. He saw that he was not a man to be kept long in the lower ranks of the Company, and gave him more liberty of action than he allowed to his oldest associates. Faber had sent him grievous reports about the condition of affairs in Germany. “It is not misinterpretation of Scripture,” he wrote, “not specious arguments, not the Lutherans with their preaching and persuasions, that have lost so many provinces and towns to the Roman Church, but the scandalous lives of the ministers of religion.” He felt his helplessness. He was a foreigner, and the Germans did not like strangers. He could not speak their language, and his Latin gave him a very limited audience. People and priests looked on him as a spy sent to report their weaknesses to Rome. When he discoursed about the Exercitia, and endeavoured to induce men to try them, he was accused of urging a “new religion.” When he attempted to form student associations in connection with the Company, it was said that he was urging the formation of “conventicles” outside the Church’s ordinances. But the adhesion of Canisius changed all that. He was a German, one of themselves; his orthodoxy was undisputed; he was an eminent scholar, the most distinguished of the young masters of the University of Köln, a leader among its most promising students. Under his guidance the student associations grew strong; after his example young men offered themselves for the discipline of the Exercises. Loyola saw that he had gained a powerful assistant. He longed to see him personally at Rome; but he was so convinced of his practical wisdom that he left it to himself either to come to Italy or to remain in Germany. Canisius decided to remain. Affairs at Köln were then in a critical state. The Archbishop-Elector, Hermann von Wied, favoured the Reformation. He had thoughts of secularising his Electorate, and if lie succeeded in his design his example might be followed in another ecclesiastical Electorate, with the result that the next Emperor would be a Protestant. Canisius organised the people, the clergy, the University authorities against this, and succeeded in defeating the designs of the Archbishop. When his work at Köln was done, he went to Vienna. There he became the confessor and private adviser of Ferdinand of Austria, administered the affairs of the diocese of Vienna during a long episcopal interregnum, helped to found its Jesuit College, and another at Ingolstadt. These Colleges became the centres of Jesuit influence in Germany, and helped to spread the power of the Society. But with all this activity it can scarcely be said that the Company was very powerful in that country until years after the Council of Trent.

The foreign mission activity of the Jesuits has been often described, and much of the early progress of the Company has been attributed to the admiration created by the work of Francis Xavier and his companions. This was undoubtedly true; but in the earliest times it was the home mission successes that drew most attention and sympathy; and these have been too often left unmentioned.

Nothing lay nearer the hearts of devout persons who refused to accept the Reformation than the condition of the great proportion of the Roman Catholic priests in all countries, and the depravity of morals among laity and clergy alike. Ignatius was deeply affected by both scandals, and had resolved from the first to do his best to cure them. It was this resolve and the accompanying strenuous endeavours which won Ignatius the respect and sympathy of all those in Italy who were sighing for a reform in the moral life of people and clergy, and brought the Company of Jesus into line with Italian Reformers like Contarini, Ghiberti, and Vittoria Colonna. His system of Colleges and the whole use he made of education could have only one result—to give an educated clergy to the Roman Church. It was a democratic extension of the work of Caraffa and Gaetano da Thiene. Ignatius had also clear views about the way to produce a reformation of morals in Rome. Like Luther, he insisted that it must begin in the individual life, and could not be produced by stringent legislation; “it must start in the individual, spread to the family, and then permeate the metropolis.” But meanwhile something might be done to heal the worst running sores of society. Like Luther, Ignatius fastened on three—the waste of child life, the plague of begging, and what is called the “social evil”; if his measure of success in dealing with the evils fell far short of Luther’s, the more corrupted condition of Italy had something to do with his failure.

His first measure of social reform was to gather Roman children, either orphans or deserted by their parents. They were gratuitously housed, fed, and taught in a simple fashion, and were instructed in the various mechanical arts which could enable them to earn a living. In a brief time, Ignatius had over two hundred boys and girls in his two industrial schools.

How to cure the plague of beggars which infested all Roman Catholic countries, a curse for which the teaching of the mediæval Church was largely responsible,[692] had been a problem studied by Ignatius ever since his brief visit to his native place in 1535. There he had attempted to get the town council of Azpeitia to forbid begging within the bounds of the city, and to support the deserving and helpless poor at the town’s cost. He urged the same policy on the chief men in Rome. When he failed in his large and public schemes, he attempted to work them out by means of charitable associations connected with and fostered by his Society.

Nothing, however, excited the sympathy of Loyola so much as the numbers and condition of fallen women in all the larger Italian towns. He was first struck with it in Venice, where he declared that he would willingly give his life to hinder a day’s sin of one of these unfortunates. The magnitude of the evil in Rome appalled him. He felt that it was too great for him to meddle with as a whole. Something, however, he could attempt, and did. In Rome, which swarmed with men vowed to celibacy simply because they had something to do with the Church, prostitution was frequently concealed under the cloak of marriage. Husbands lived by the sinful life of their wives. Deserted wives also swelled the ranks of unfortunates. Loyola provided homes for any such as might wish to leave their degrading life. At first they were simply taken into families whom Ignatius persuaded to receive them. The numbers of the rescued grew so rapidly that special houses were needed. Ignatius called them “Martha-Houses.” They were in no sense convents. There was, of course, oversight, but the idea was to provide a bright home where these women could earn their own living or the greater part of it. The scheme spread to many of the large Italian towns, and many ladies were enlisted in the plans to help their fallen sisters.

Loyola’s associations to provide ransom for Christian captives among the Moslems, his attempts to discredit duelling, his institutions for loans to the poor, can only be alluded to. It was these works of Christian charity which undoubtedly gained the immediate sympathy for the Company which awaited it in most lands south of the Alps.

Almost all earlier monastic Orders provided a place for women among their organisation. An Order of Nuns corresponded to the Order of Monks. Few founders of monastic Orders have owed so much to women as Ignatius did. A few ladies of Barcelona were his earliest disciples, were the first to undergo the discipline of the Exercises, then in an imperfect shape, and encouraged him when he needed it most by their faith in him and his plans.[693] One of them, Isabella Roser (Rosel, Rosell), a noble matron, wife of Juan Roser, heard Ignatius deliver one of his first sermons, and was so impressed by it, that she and her husband invited him to stay in their house, which he did. She paid all his expenses while he went to school and college in Spain. She and her friends sent him large sums of money when he was in Paris. Ignatius could never have carried out his plans but for her sympathy and assistance. In spite of all this, Ignatius came early to the conclusion that his Company should have as little as possible to do with the direction of women’s souls (it took so much time, he complained); that women were too emotional to endure the whole discipline of the Exercises; and that there must never be Jesuit nuns. The work he meant his Company to do demanded such constant and strained activity—a Jesuit must stand with only one foot on the ground, he said, the other must be raised ready to start wherever he was despatched—that women were unfit for it. That was his firm resolve, and he was to suffer for it.

In 1539 he had written to Isabella Roser that he hoped God would forget him if he ever forgot all that she had done for him; and it is probable that some sentences (unintentional on the part of the writer) had made the lady, now a widow, believe that she was destined to play the part of Clara to this Francis. At all events (1543) she came to Rome, accompanied by two friends bringing with them a large sum of money, sorely needed by Ignatius to erect his house in Rome for the Professed of the Four Vows. In return, they asked him to give some time to advise them in spiritual things. This Ignatius did, but not with the minuteness nor at the length expected. He declared that the guidance of the souls of the three ladies for three days cost him more than the oversight of his whole Society for a month. Then it appeared that Isabella Roser wanted more. She was a woman of noble gifts, no weak sentimental enthusiast. She had studied theology widely and profoundly. Her learning and abilities impressed the Cardinals whom she met and with whom she talked. She desired Ignatius to create an Order of Jesuit nuns of whom she should be the head. When he refused there was a great quarrel. She demanded back the money she had given; and when this was refused, she raised an action in the Roman courts. She lost her case, and returned indignant to Spain.[694] Poor Isabella Roser—she was not a derelict, and so less interesting to a physician of souls; but she needed comforting like other people. She forgave her old friend, and their correspondence was renewed. She died the year before Ignatius.