British administration was completely established in the district in 1781, when the governor-general ordered the opening of a court at Murali near Jessore. Before that, however, the fiscal administration had been in the hands of the English, having been transferred to the East India company with that of the rest of Bengal in 1765. The changes in jurisdiction in Jessore have been very numerous. After many transfers and rectifications, the district was in 1863 finally constituted as it at present stands. The rajas of Jessore or Chanchra trace their origin to Bhabeswar Rai, a soldier in the army of Khan-i-Azam, an imperial general, who deprived Raja Pratapaditya, the popular hero of the Sundarbans, of several fiscal divisions, and conferred them on Bhabeswar. But Manohar Rai (1649-1705) is regarded as the principal founder of the family. The estate when he inherited it was of moderate size, but he acquired one pargana after another, until, at his death, the property was by far the largest in the neighbourhood.
JESTER, a provider of “jests” or amusements, a buffoon, especially a professional fool at a royal court or in a nobleman’s household (see [Fool]). The word “jest,” from which “jester” is formed, is used from the 16th century for the earlier “gest,” Lat. gesta, or res gestae, things done, from gerere, to do, hence deeds, exploits, especially as told in history, and so used of the metrical and prose romances and chronicles of the middle ages. The word became applied to satirical writings and to any long-winded empty tale, and thence to a joke or piece of fun, the current meaning of the word.
JESUATI, a religious order founded by Giovanni Colombini of Siena in 1360. Colombini had been a prosperous merchant and a senator in his native city, but, coming under ecstatic religious influences, abandoned secular affairs and his wife and daughter (after making provision for them), and with a friend of like temperament, Francesco Miani, gave himself to a life of apostolic poverty, penitential discipline, hospital service and public preaching. The name Jesuati was given to Colombini and his disciples from the habit of calling loudly on the name of Jesus at the beginning and end of their ecstatic sermons. The senate banished Colombini from Siena for imparting foolish ideas to the young men of the city, and he continued his mission in Arezzo and other places, only to be honourably recalled home on the outbreak of a devastating pestilence. He went out to meet Urban V. on his return from Avignon to Rome in 1367, and craved his sanction for the new order and a distinctive habit. Before this was granted Colombini had to clear the movement of a suspicion that it was connected with the heretical sect of Fraticelli, and he died on the 31st of July 1367, soon after the papal approval had been given. The guidance of the new order, whose members (all lay brothers) gave themselves entirely to works of mercy, devolved upon Miani. Their rule of life, originally a compound of Benedictine and Franciscan elements, was later modified on Augustinian lines, but traces of the early penitential idea persisted, e.g. the wearing of sandals and a daily flagellation. Paul V. in 1606 arranged for a small proportion of clerical members, and later in the 17th century the Jesuati became so secularized that the members were known as the Aquavitae Fathers, and the order was dissolved by Clement IX. in 1668. The female branch of the order, the Jesuati sisters, founded by Caterina Colombini (d. 1387) in Siena, and thence widely dispersed, more consistently maintained the primitive strictness of the society and survived the male branch by 200 years, existing until 1872 in small communities in Italy.
JESUITS, the name generally given to the members of the Society of Jesus, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1539. This Society may be defined, in its original conception and well-avowed object, as a body of highly trained religious men of various degrees, bound by the three personal vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, together with, in some cases, a special vow to the pope’s service, with the object of labouring for the spiritual good of themselves and their neighbours. They are declared to be mendicants and enjoy all the privileges of the other mendicant orders. They are governed and live by constitutions and rules, mostly drawn up by their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, and approved by the popes. Their proper title is “Clerks Regulars of the Society of Jesus,” the word Societas being taken as synonymous with the original Spanish term, Compañia; perhaps the military term Cohors might more fully have expressed the original idea of a band of spiritual soldiers living under martial law and discipline. The ordinary term “Jesuit” was given to the Society by its avowed opponents; it is first found in the writings of Calvin and in the registers of the Parlement of Paris as early as 1552.
Constitution and Character.—The formation of the Society was a masterpiece of genius on the part of a man (see [Loyola]) who was quick to realize the necessity of the moment. Just before Ignatius was experiencing the call to conversion, Luther had begun his revolt against the Roman Church by burning the papal bull of excommunication on the 10th of December 1520. But while Luther’s most formidable opponent was thus being prepared in Spain, the actual formation of the Society was not to take place for eighteen years. Its conception seems to have developed very slowly in the mind of Ignatius. It introduced a new idea into the Church. Hitherto all regulars made a point of the choral office in choir. But as Ignatius conceived the Church to be in a state of war, what was desirable in days of peace ceased when the life of the cloister had to be exchanged for the discipline of the camp; so in the sketch of the new society which he laid before Paul III., Ignatius laid down the principle that the obligation of the breviary should be fulfilled privately and separately and not in choir. The other orders, too, were bound by the idea of a constitutional monarchy based on the democratic spirit. Not so with the Society. The founder placed the general for life in an almost uncontrolled position of authority, giving him the faculty of dispensing individuals from the decrees of the highest legislative body, the general congregations. Thus the principle of military obedience was exalted to a degree higher than that existing in the older orders, which preserved to their members certain constitutional rights.
The soldier-mind of Ignatius can be seen throughout the constitutions. Even in the spiritual labours which the Society shares with the other orders, its own ways of dealing with persons and things result from the system of training which succeeds in forming men to a type that is considered desirable. But it must not be thought that in practice the rule of the Society and the high degree of obedience demanded result in mere mechanism. By a system of check and counter check devised in the constitutions the power of local superiors is modified, so that in practice the working is smooth. Ignatius knew that while a high ideal was necessary for every society, his followers were flesh and blood, not machines. He made it clear from the first that the Society was everything and the individual nothing, except so far as he might prove a useful instrument for carrying out the Society’s objects. Ignatius said to his secretary Polanco that “in those who offered themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to firmness of character and ability for business, for he was of opinion that those who were not fit for public business were not adapted for filling offices in the Society.” He further declared that even exceptional qualities and endowments in a candidate were valuable in his eyes only on the condition of their being brought into play, or held in abeyance, strictly at the command of a superior. Hence his teaching on obedience. His letter on this subject, addressed to the Jesuits of Coimbra in 1553, is still one of the standard formularies of the Society, ranking with those other products of his pen, the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions. In this letter Ignatius clothes the general with the powers of a commander-in-chief in time of war, giving him the absolute disposal of all members of the Society in every place and for every purpose. He pushes the claim even further, requiring, besides entire outward submission to command, also the complete identification of the inferior’s will with that of the superior. He lays down that the superior is to be obeyed simply as such and as standing in the place of God, without reference to his personal wisdom, piety or discretion; that any obedience which falls short of making the superior’s will one’s own, in inward affection as well as in outward effect, is lax and imperfect; that going beyond the letter of command, even in things abstractly good and praiseworthy, is disobedience, and that the “sacrifice of the intellect” is the third and highest grade of obedience, well pleasing to God, when the inferior not only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what he thinks, submitting his judgment, so far as it is possible for the will to influence and lead the judgment. This Letter on Obedience was written for the guidance and formation of Ignatius’s own followers; it was an entirely domestic affair. But when it became known beyond the Society the teaching met with great opposition, especially from members of other orders whose institutes represented the normal days of peace rather than those of war. The letter was condemned by the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal; and it tasked all the skill and learning of Bellarmine as its apologist, together with the whole influence of the Society, to avert what seemed to be a probable condemnation at Rome.
The teaching of the Letter must be understood in the living spirit of the Society. Ignatius himself lays down the rule that an inferior is bound to make all necessary representations to his superior so as to guide him in imposing a precept of obedience. When a superior knows the views of his inferior and still commands, it is because he is aware of other sides of the question which appear of greater importance than those that the inferior has brought forward. Ignatius distinctly excepts the case where obedience in itself would be sinful: “In all things except sin I ought to do the will of my superior and not my own.” There may be cases where an inferior judges that what is commanded is sinful. What is to be done? Ignatius says: “When it seems to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which my conscience revolts as sinful and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty to yield my doubts to him unless I am otherwise constrained by evident reasons. ... If submissions do not appease my conscience I must impart my doubts to two or three persons of discretion and abide by their decision.” From this it is clear that only in doubtful cases concerning sin should an inferior try to submit his judgment to that of his superior, who ex officio is held to be not only one who would not order what is clearly sinful, but also a competent judge who knows and understands, better than the inferior, the nature and aspect of the command. As the Jesuit obedience is based on the law of God, it is clearly impossible that he should be bound to obey in what is directly opposed to the divine service. A Jesuit lives in obedience all his life, though the yoke is not galling nor always felt. He can accept no dignity or office which will make him independent of the Society; and even if ordered by the pope to accept the cardinalate or the episcopate, he is still bound, if not to obey, yet to listen to the advice of those whom the general deputes to counsel him in important matters.