This most remarkable order have had little influence on art. They neglected it as a means of teaching. Their great wealth was lavished in gorgeous ornament: but few pictures, and they not of the best, are to be found in their churches. Nor, though they can justly boast of men of science, classical learning, mathematicians, astronomers, antiquarians, have they produced one painter. The Jesuits' perspective is still a standing work; but Father Pozzi can scarcely merit the name of artist,—"who used his skill less as an artist than a conjuror, to produce such illusions as make the vulgar stare." The fact is, art had long declined before the canonisation of their saint. Mrs Jameson thinks them unfortunate in this; yet it may be doubted if the genius of their order is not in a degree adverse to art, and would not at all times have disregarded it. The secret working of their system—the depositing their influence in every house, in every bosom—their ubiquity, their universal aim, required neither the particular circumstances and incidents, nor the localities of art. It was the insidious "teaching through the ear, and by their books, upon which they relied for success." Nor can it be said of them that they have been doomed to a long night of forgetfulness: in this their lack of sacred art they have not perished—Carent quia vate sacro—for they are indestructible, intangible. They have been nominally suppressed, but spring up in full vigour at the first call, and everywhere; for they exist everywhere, known and unknown. And one clause in their regulations greatly favours them in this, that they are permitted to assume the dress of the country in which they may be, whenever they shall deem it expedient. And it has been asserted that they are at liberty to assume much more than the dress, and that Jesuits are to be found among the functionaries in Protestant countries, and at Protestant courts. We have only to see the nature of their vows; and if we give them credit for zeal and honesty in fulfilling them, certainly we must be alive to the danger of such a society, whose movements are secret, and whose conscience is in implicit obedience organised throughout the body.
"They were to take, besides, a vow of special obedience to the head of the Church for the time being, devoting themselves, without condition or remuneration, to do his pleasure, and to go to any part of the world to which he should see fit to send them.... The essential duties of the new order were to be three: preaching in the first place; secondly, the guidance of souls through confession; and thirdly, the education of the young."
Surely this is a wise scheme, to prepare the kingdoms of the earth and subdue them, not to their Divine master, but to their temporal, and, through their temporal, to themselves. Their founder, Ignatius Loyola, was one of the most remarkable men of the world. His life is too well known to admit of our dwelling upon any of its incidents. He died first General of his order, 1556, and was canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622. Although the Jesuits were not conspicuous as patrons of art—nor has sacred art done much for them—yet the gorgeous pencil of Rubens, of a more material than spiritual splendour, has to a considerable degree brought them within pictorial notice and celebrity. Mrs Jameson thinks that no portrait was taken of their founder during his life. We are surprised she does not notice that wondrously fine portrait at Hampton Court, by Titian.
In the histories of religious orders, it is a striking fact that the founders never failed to unite themselves with one or more congenial spirit, ready to co-operate with them, and doubtless, as they thought, by a Divine appointment. As St Francis and St Dominick, different as they were in individual character, had the one great sympathy under which they met, embraced, and then parted—as for one end to divide the world between them—so did Ignatius Loyola find in Francis Xavier a friend and associate, and subsequently in Francis Borgia, a no less willing disciple. One is perfectly astonished at reading accounts of the entire devotion of the whole man to the law of obedience, and the more than satisfaction, the joy, at being selected to suffering and death. It had been the dream of Francis Xavier to die a martyr in the Indies for the conversion of mankind; and when chosen to that end by Ignatius,—
"When the clearer sense and approaching accomplishment of those dark intimations were disclosed to him, passionate sobs attested the rapture which his tongue was unable to speak. He fell on his knees before Ignatius, kissed the feet of the holy father, repaired his tattered cassock, and, with no other provision than his breviary, left Rome on the 15th March 1540, for Lisbon, his destined port of embarkation for the East."
Nor is the story of St Francis Borgia less strange, showing the sudden impulse, yet continued purpose, executed after many years—never for a moment lost sight of. A grandee of Spain, high in honour and office, in his twenty-ninth year, as her master of horse he attends the funeral of the Empress Isabella, first wife of Charles V. The ceremonial required that he should raise the lid of the coffin, remove the covering, and see the face, to swear to the identity of the royal remains committed to his charge. He beheld in the solemn paleness of death the face of his beautiful and benign empress, and from that hour made a vow to dedicate himself to the service of God. Nevertheless, he repaired to his active duties—conscientiously performed them—and after the death of his wife, and six years spent in settling his affairs and providing for his children, and "bidding a farewell to every worldly care and domestic affection, departed for Rome, to place himself, and every faculty of his being, at the feet of St Ignatius." It was in the character of the humble Father Francis he visited his cousin Charles V., soon after his abdication.
How unlike are times and personages at various periods! Yet, doubtless, what man does at any time is in the man to do at all times. The influences set in in various directions: now we sail in another current and under trade-winds—and must go that course; but while we look back upon the history of our own and other countries, and read the doings of men, we marvel, and for a moment ask if they were of our flesh and blood.
A personal security has given us the experience of ease. It is not the temple but the home is in every man's thought. Let security be removed, our god Mammon be dethroned, and poverty be upon us—not as a vow, but an enforcement of the times—distress bring violence and persecution, and persecution the fever of excitement—the now sleeping capabilities of our nature would be roused to an energy which would make another generation as unlike the present as ours is to that which has been under contemplation.
The whole subject of this volume belongs to ecclesiastical history, and it is a strange one—how difficult to read to our actual knowledge, and to receive with candour. How much is there to condemn, to abhor—how much to admire, to love, to venerate. Sincerity, zeal, piety, and charity ought always to claim our sympathies, when our understandings reject a creed. If rising from contemplative communion with the saints and martyrs of the Romish calendar, with such mixed feelings, yet in which, we confess, a loving admiration preponderates, let us not come under a suspicion, so common in these days, of "tendencies to Rome." We have not the shadow of a thought that way—we utterly abominate and abhor Popery as a system, its frauds, its idolatry, or idolatries—for they are many—and the bondage which it would impose upon the necks of all people. But forbid it, charity—Christian charity above all—that we should join in a bestial persecution, and sit, as we were gods, and as some do, in severe judgment on, and denounce as children of perdition, and as doomed, all simple and innocent, virtuous and pious, members of that Church. To do this would, we conceive, be the part of a bad Protestant, for it is not the part of a Christian. But to return. It is remarkable of the Jesuits that they have no female saint. Yet, if there be truth in history, they have dealt cunningly and widely in female agencies.
We have too hastily passed by the Carmelites, and without noticing that extraordinary woman St Theresa—at a very early age a candidate for martyrdom—who with her brother, when they were children of eight and nine years of age, went begging into the country of the Moors, in hopes of being martyred for their faith at the hands of the infidels. At her death she had founded fifteen convents for men, and seventeen for women. We refer to the volume of Mrs Jameson for a larger notice of this saintly and sainted woman. We merely mention her slightly ourselves, that we may pass to her eulogy from the pens of two eloquent writers of her own sex—Mrs Jameson and Miss Martineau.