Chapter XVIII: Part 18

The Jesuits had to find their principal work in the world and in
direct and immediate contact with mankind. To seek spiritual
perfection in a retired life of contemplation and prayer did not seem
to Ignatius to be the best way of reforming the evils which had
brought about the revolt from Rome. He withdrew his followers from
this sort of retirement, except as a mere temporary preparation for
later activity; he made habitual intercourse with the world a prime
duty; and to this end he rigidly suppressed all such external
peculiarities of dress or rule as tended to put obstacles in the way
of his followers acting freely as emissaries, agents or missionaries
in the most various places and circumstances. Another change he
introduced even more completely than did the founders of the Friars.
The Jesuit has no home: the whole world is his parish. Mobility and
cosmopolitanism are of the very essence of the Society. As Ignatius
said, the ancient monastic communities were the infantry of the
Church, whose duty was to stand firmly in one place on the
battlefield; the Jesuits were to be her light horse, capable of going
anywhere at a moment's notice, but especially apt and designed for
scouting and skirmishing. To carry out this view, it was one of his
plans to send foreigners as superiors or officers to the Jesuit houses
in each country, requiring of these envoys, however, invariably to use
the language of their new place of residence and to study it both in
speaking and writing till entire mastery of it had been acquired--thus
by degrees making all the parts of his system mutually
interchangeable, and so largely increasing the number of persons
eligible to fill any given post without reference to locality. But
subsequent experience has, in practice, modified this interchange, as
far as local government goes, though the central government of the
Society is always cosmopolitan.

Next we must consider the machinery by which the Society is constituted and governed so as to make its spirit a living energy and not a mere abstract theory. The Society is distributed into six grades: novices, scholastics, temporal coadjutors (lay brothers), spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows. No one can become a postulant for admission to the Society until fourteen years old, unless by special dispensation. The novice is classified according as his destination is the priesthood or lay brotherhood, while a third class of "indifferents" receives such as are reserved for further inquiry before a decision of this kind is made. The novice has first to undergo a strict retreat, practically in solitary confinement, during which he receives from a director the _Spiritual Exercises_ and makes a general confession of his whole life; after which the first novitiate of two years' duration begins. In this period of trial the real character of the man is discerned, his weak points are noted and his will is tested. Prayer and the practices of asceticism, as means to an end, are the chief occupations of the novice. He may leave or be dismissed at any time during the two years; but at the end of the period if he is approved and destined for the priesthood, he is advanced to the grade of scholastic and takes the following simple vows in the presence of certain witnesses, but not to any person:--

"Almighty Everlasting God, albeit everyway most unworthy in Thy holy
sight, yet relying on Thine infinite kindness and mercy and impelled
by the desire of serving Thee, before the Most Holy Virgin Mary and
all Thy heavenly host, I, N., vow to Thy divine Majesty Poverty,
Chastity and Perpetual Obedience to the Society of Jesus, and promise
that I will enter the same Society to live in it perpetually,
understanding all things according to the Constitutions of the
Society. I humbly pray from Thine immense goodness and clemency,
through the Blood of Jesus Christ, that Thou wilt deign to accept this
sacrifice in the odour of sweetness; and as Thou hast granted me to
desire and to offer this, so wilt Thou bestow abundant grace to fulfil
it."

The scholastic then follows the ordinary course of an undergraduate at a university. After passing five years in arts he has, while still keeping up his own studies, to devote five or six years more to teaching the junior classes in various Jesuit schools or colleges. About this period he takes his simple vows in the following terms:--

"I, _N._, promise to Almighty God, before His Virgin Mother and the
whole heavenly host, and to thee, Reverend Father General of the
Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and to thy successors (or
to thee, Reverend Father _M._ in place of the General of the Society
of Jesus and his successors holding the place of God), Perpetual
Poverty, Chastity and Obedience; and according to it a peculiar care
in the education of boys, according to the manner expressed in the
Apostolic Letter and Constitutions of the said Society."

The lay brothers leave out the clause concerning education. The scholastic does not begin the study of theology until he is twenty-eight or thirty, and then passes through a four or six years' course. Only when he is thirty-four or thirty-six can he be ordained a priest and enter on the grade of a spiritual coadjutor. A lay brother, before he can become a temporal coadjutor for the discharge of domestic duties, must pass ten years before he is admitted to vows. Sometimes after ordination the priest, in the midst of his work, is again called away to a third year's novitiate, called the tertianship, as a preparation for his solemn profession of the three vows. His former vows were simple and the Society was at liberty to dismiss him for any canonical reason. The formula of the famous Jesuit vow is as follows:--

"I, _N._, promise to Almighty God, before His Virgin Mother and the
whole heavenly host, and to all standing by; and to thee, Reverend
Father General of the Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and
to thy successors (or to thee, Reverend Father _M._ in place of the
General of the Society of Jesus and his successors holding the place
of God), Perpetual Poverty, Chastity and Obedience; and according to
it a peculiar care in the education of boys according to the form of
life contained in the Apostolic Letters of the Society of Jesus and in
its Constitutions."

Immediately after the vows the Jesuit adds the following simple vows: (1) that he will never act nor consent that the provisions in the constitutions concerning poverty should be changed; (2) that he will not directly nor indirectly procure election or promotion for himself to any prelacy or dignity in the Society; (3) that he will not accept or consent to his election to any dignity or prelacy outside the Society unless forced thereunto by obedience; (4) that if he knows of others doing these things he will denounce them to the superiors; (5) that if elected to a bishopric he will never refuse to hear such advice as the general may deign to send him and will follow it if he judges it is better than his own opinion. The professed is now eligible to certain offices in the Society, and he may remain as a professed father of the three vows for the rest of his life. The highest class, who constitute the real core of the Society, whence all its chief officers are taken, are the professed of the four vows. This grade can seldom be reached until the candidate is in his forty-fifth year, which involves a probation of thirty-one years in the case of those who have entered on the novitiate at the earliest legal age. The number of these select members is small in comparison with the whole Society; the exact proportion varies from time to time, the present tendency being to increase the number. The vows of this grade are the same as the last formula, with the addition of the following important clause:--

"Moreover I promise the special obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff
concerning missions, as is contained in the same Apostolic Letter and
Constitutions."

These various members of the Society are distributed in its novitiate houses, its colleges, its professed houses and its mission residences. The question has been hotly debated whether, in addition to these six grades, there be not a seventh answering in some degree to the tertiaries of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, but secretly affiliated to the Society and acting as its emissaries in various lay positions. This class was styled in France "Jesuits of the short robe," and there is some evidence in support of its actual existence under Louis XV. The Jesuits themselves deny the existence of any such body, and are able to adduce the negative disproof that no provision for it is to be found in their constitutions. On the other hand there are clauses therein which make the creation of such a class perfectly feasible if thought expedient. An admitted instance is the case of Francisco Borgia, who in 1548, while still duke of Gandia, was received into the Society. What has given colour to the idea is that certain persons have made vows of obedience to individual Jesuits; as Thomas Worthington, rector of the Douai seminary, to Father Robert Parsons; Ann Vaux to Fr. Henry Garnet, who told her that he was not indeed allowed to receive her vows, but that she might make them if she wished and then receive his direction. The archaeologist George Oliver of Exeter was, according to Foley's _Records of the English Province_, the last of the secular priests of England who vowed obedience to the Society before its suppression.

The general lives permanently at Rome and holds in his hands the right to appoint, not only to the office of provincial over each of the head districts into which the Society is mapped, but to the offices of each house in particular. There is no standard of electoral right in the Society except in the election of the general himself. By a minute and frequent system of official and private reports he is informed of the doings and progress of every member of the Society and of everything that concerns it throughout the world. Every Jesuit has not only the right but the duty in certain cases of communicating, directly and privately, with his general. While the general thus controls everything, he himself is not exempt from supervision on the part of the Society. A consultative council is imposed upon him by the general congregation, consisting of the assistants of the various nations, a _socius_, or adviser, to warn him of mistakes, and a confessor. These he cannot remove nor select; and he is bound, in certain circumstances, to listen to their advice, although he is not obliged to follow it. Once elected the general may not refuse the office, nor abdicate, nor accept any dignity or office outside of the Society; on the other hand, for certain definite reasons, he may be suspended or even deposed by the authority of the Society, which can thus preserve itself from destruction. No such instance has occurred, although steps were once taken in this direction in the case of a general who had set himself against the current feeling.

It is said that the general of the Jesuits is independent of the pope;
and his popular name, "the black pope," has gone to confirm this idea.
But it is based on an entirely wrong conception of the two offices.
The suppression of the Society by Clement XIV. in 1773 was an
object-lesson in the supremacy of the pope. The Society became very
numerous and, from time to time, received extraordinary privileges
from popes, who were warranted by the necessities of the times in
granting them. A great number of influential friends, also, gathered
round the fathers who, naturally, sought in every way to retain what
had been granted. Popes who thought it well to bring about certain
changes, or to withdraw privileges that were found to have passed
their intentions or to interfere unduly with the rights of other
bodies, often met with loyal resistances against their proposed
measures. Resistance up to a certain point is lawful and is not
disobedience, for every society has the right of self-preservation. In
cases where the popes insisted, in spite of the representations of the
Jesuits, their commands were obeyed. Many of the popes were distinctly
unfavourable to the Society, while others were as friendly, and often
what one pope did against them the next pope withdrew. Whatever was
done in times when strong divergence of opinion existed, and whatever
may have been the actions of individuals who, even in so highly
organized a body as the Society of Jesus, cannot always be
successfully controlled by their superiors, yet the ultimate result on
the part of the Society has always been obedience to the pope, who
authorized, protected and privileged them, and on whom they ultimately
depend for their very existence.

Thus constituted, with a skilful union of strictness and freedom, of complex organization with a minimum of friction in working, the Society was admirably devised for its purpose of introducing a new power into the Church and the world. Its immediate services to the Church were great. The Society did much, single-handed, to roll back the tide of Protestant advance when half of Europe, which had not already shaken off its allegiance to the papacy, was threatening to do so. The honours of the reaction belong to the Jesuits, and the reactionary spirit has become their tradition. They had the wisdom to see and to admit, in their correspondence with their superiors, that the real cause of the Reformation was the ignorance, neglect and vicious lives of so many priests. They recognized, as most earnest men did, that the difficulty was in the higher places, and that these could best be touched by indirect methods. At a time when primary or even secondary education had in most places become a mere effete and pedantic adherence to obsolete methods, they were bold enough to innovate, both in system and material. Putting fresh spirit and devotion into the work, they not merely taught and catechized in a new, fresh and attractive manner, besides establishing free schools of good quality, but provided new school books for their pupils which were an enormous advance on those they found in use; so that for nearly three centuries the Jesuits were accounted the best schoolmasters in Europe, as they were, till their forcible suppression in 1901, confessedly the best in France. The Jesuit teachers conciliated the goodwill of their pupils by mingled firmness and gentleness. Although the method of the _Ratio Studiorum_ has ceased to be acceptable, yet it played in its time as serious a part in the intellectual development of Europe as did the method of Frederick the Great in modern warfare. Bacon succinctly gives his opinion of the Jesuit teaching in these words: "As for the pedagogical part, the shortest rule would be, Consult the schools of the Jesuits; for nothing better has been put in practice" (_De Augmentis_, vi. 4). In instruction they were excellent; but in education, or formation of character, deficient. Again, when most of the continental clergy had sunk, more or less, into the moral and intellectual slough which is pictured for us in the writings of Erasmus and the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_ (see HUTTEN, ULRICH VON), the Jesuits won back respect for the clerical calling by their personal culture and the unimpeachable purity of their lives. These qualities they have carefully maintained; and probably no large body of men in the world has been so free from the reproach of discreditable members or has kept up, on the whole, an equally high average of intelligence and conduct. As preachers, too, they delivered the pulpit from the bondage of an effete scholasticism and reached at once a clearness and simplicity of treatment such as the English pulpit scarcely begins to exhibit till after the days of Tillotson; while in literature and theology they count a far larger number of respectable writers than any other religious society can boast. It is in the mission field, however, that their achievements have been most remarkable. Whether toiling among the teeming millions in Hindustan and China, labouring amongst the Hurons and Iroquois of North America, governing and civilizing the natives of Brazil and Paraguay in the missions and "reductions," or ministering, at the hourly risk of his life to his fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, the Jesuit appears alike devoted, indefatigable, cheerful and worthy of hearty admiration and respect.

Nevertheless, two startling and indisputable facts meet the student who pursues the history of the Society. The first is the universal suspicion and hostility it has incurred--not merely from the Protestants whose avowed foe it has been, not yet from the enemies of all clericalism and dogma, but from every Catholic state and nation in the world. Its chief enemies have been those of the household of the Roman Catholic faith. The second fact is the ultimate failure which seems to dog all its most promising schemes and efforts. These two results are to be observed alike in the provinces of morals and politics. The first cause of the opposition indeed redounds to the Jesuits' credit, for it was largely due to their success. Their pulpits rang with a studied eloquence; their churches, sumptuous and attractive, were crowded; and in the confessional their advice was eagerly sought in all kinds of difficulties, for they were the fashionable professors of the art of direction. Full of enthusiasm and zeal, devoted wholly to their Society, they were able to bring in numbers of rich and influential persons to their ranks; for, with a clear understanding of the power of wealth, they became, of set purpose, the apostles of the rich and influential. The Jesuits felt that they were the new men, the men of the time; so with a perfect confidence in themselves they went out to set the Church to rights. It was no wonder that success, so well worked for and so well deserved, failed to win the approval or sympathy of those who found themselves supplanted. Old-fashioned men, to whom the apostles' advice to "do all to the glory of God" seemed sufficient, mistrusted those who professed to go beyond all others and adopted as their motto the famous _Ad majorem Dei gloriam_, "To the greater glory of God." But, besides this, the _esprit de corps_ which is necessary for every body of men was, it was held, carried to an excess and made the Jesuits intolerant of any one or anything if not of "ours." The novelties too which they introduced into the conception of the religious life, naturally, were displeasing to the older orders, who felt like old aristocratic families towards a newly rich or purse-proud upstart. The Society, or rather its members, were too aggressive and self-assertive to be welcomed; and a certain characteristic, which soon began to manifest itself in an impatience of episcopal control, showed that the quality of "Jesuitry," usually associated with the Society, was singularly lacking in their dealings with opponents. Their political attitude also alienated many. Many of the Jesuits could not separate religion from politics. To say this is only to assert that they were not clearer-minded than most men of their age. But unfortunately they invariably took the wrong side and allowed themselves to be made the tools of men who saw farther and more clearly than they did. They had their share, direct or indirect, in the embroiling of states, in concocting conspiracies and in kindling wars. They were also responsible by their theoretical teachings in theological schools, where cases were considered and treated in the abstract, for not a few assassinations of the enemies of the cause. Weak minds heard tyrannicide discussed and defended in the abstract; and it was no wonder that, when opportunity served, the train that had been heedlessly laid by speculative professors was fired by rash hands. What professors like Suarez taught in the calm atmosphere of the lecture hall, what writers like Mariana upheld and praised, practical men took as justification for deeds of blood. There is no evidence that any Jesuit took a direct part in political assassinations; however, indirectly, they may have been morally responsible. They were playing with edged tools and often got wounded through their own carelessness. Other grievances were raised by their perpetual meddling in politics, e.g. their large share in fanning the flames of political hatred against the Huguenots under the last two Valois kings; their perpetual plotting against England in the reign of Elizabeth; their share in the Thirty Years' War and in the religious miseries of Bohemia; their decisive influence in causing the revocation of the edict of Nantes and the expulsion of the Protestants from France; the ruin of the Stuart cause under James II., and the establishment of the Protestant succession. In a number of cases where the evidence against them is defective, it is at least an unfortunate coincidence that there is always direct proof of some Jesuit having been in communication with the actual agents engaged. They were the stormy petrels of politics. Yet the Jesuits, as a body, should not be made responsible for the doings of men who, in their political intrigues, were going directly against the distinct law of the Society, which in strict terms, and under heavy penalties, forbade them to have anything to do with such matters. The politicians were comparatively few in number, though unfortunately they held high rank; and their disobedience to the rule besmirched the name of the society and destroyed the good work of the other Jesuits who were faithfully carrying out their own proper duties.

A far graver cause for uneasiness was given by the Jesuits' activity in the region of doctrine and morals. Here the charges against them are precise, early, numerous and weighty. Their founder himself was arrested, more than once, by the Inquisition and required to give account of his belief and conduct. But St Ignatius, with all his powerful gifts of intellect, was entirely practical and ethical in his range, and had no turn whatever for speculation, nor desire to discuss, much less to question, any of the received dogmas of the Church. He gives it as a rule of orthodoxy to be ready to say that black is white if the Church says so. He was therefore acquitted on every occasion, and applied each time for a formally attested certificate of his orthodoxy, knowing well that, in default of such documents, the fact of his arrest as a suspected heretic would be more distinctly recollected by opponents than that of his honourable dismissal from custody. His followers, however, have not been so fortunate. On doctrinal questions indeed, though their teaching on grace, especially in the form given to it by Molina (q.v.), ran contrary to the accepted teaching on the subject by the Augustinians, Dominicans and other representative schools; yet by their pertinacity they gained for their views a recognized and established position. A special congregation of cardinals and theologians known as _de auxiliis_ was summoned by the pope to settle the dispute, for the _odium theologicum_ had risen to a desperate height between the representatives of the old and the new theology; but after many years they failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, and the pope, instead of settling the dispute, was only able to impose mutual silence on all opponents. Among those who held out stiffly against the Jesuits on the subject of grace were the Jansenists, who held that they were following the special teaching of St Augustine, known _par excellence_ as the doctor of grace. The Jesuits and the Jansenists soon became deadly enemies; and in the ensuing conflict both parties accused each other of flinging scruples to the wind. (See JANSENISM.)

But the accusations against the Jesuit system of moral theology and their action as guides of conduct have had a more serious effect on their reputation. It is undeniable that some of their moral writers were lax in their teaching; and conscience was strained to the snapping point. The Society was trying to make itself all things to all men. Propositions extracted from Jesuit moral theologians have again and again been condemned by the pope and declared untenable. Many of these can be found in Viva's _Condemned Propositions_. As early as 1554 the Jesuits were censured by the Sorbonne, chiefly at the instance of Eustache de Bellay, bishop of Paris, as being dangerous in matters of faith. Melchor Cano, a Dominican, one of the ablest divines of the 16th century, never ceased to lift up his testimony against them, from their first beginnings till his own death in 1560; and, unmollified by the bribe of the bishopric of the Canaries, which their interest procured for him, he succeeded in banishing them from the university of Salamanca. Carlo Borromeo, to whose original advocacy they owed much, especially in the council of Trent, found himself attacked in his own cathedral pulpit and interfered with in his jurisdiction. He withdrew his protection and expelled them from his colleges and churches; and he was followed in 1604 in this policy by his cousin and successor Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. St Theresa learnt, in after years, to mistrust their methods, although she was grateful to them for much assistance in the first years of her work. The credit of the Society was seriously damaged by the publication, at Cracow, in 1612, of the _Monita Secreta_. This book, which is undoubtedly a forgery, professes to contain the authoritative secret instructions drawn up by the general Acquaviva and given by the superiors of the Society to its various officers and members. A bold caricature of Jesuit methods, the book has been ascribed to John Zaorowsky or to Cambilone and Schloss, all ex-Jesuits, and it is stated to have been discovered in manuscript by Christian of Brunswick in the Jesuit college at Prague. It consists of suggestions and methods for extending the influence of the Jesuits in various ways, for securing a footing in fresh places, for acquiring wealth, for creeping into households and leading silly rich widows captive and so forth, all marked with ambition, craft and unscrupulousness. It had a wide success and popularity, passing through several editions, and even to this day it is used by controversialists as unscrupulous as the original writers. It may, perhaps, represent the actions of some individuals who allowed their zeal to outrun their discretion, but surely no society which exists for good and is marked by so many worthy men could systematically have conducted its operations in such a manner. Later on a formidable assault was made on Jesuit moral theology in the famous _Provincial Letters_ of Blaise Pascal (q.v.), eighteen in number, issued under the pen-name of Louis de Montalte, from January 1656 to March 1657. Their wit, irony, eloquence and finished style have kept them alive as one of the great French classics--a destiny more fortunate than that of the kindred works by Antoine Arnauld, _Théologie morale des Jésuites_, consisting of extracts from writings of members of the Society, and _Morale pratique des Jésuites_, made up of narratives professing to set forth the manner in which they carried out their own maxims. But, like most controversial writers, the authors were not scrupulous in their quotations, and by giving passages divorced from their contexts often entirely misrepresented their opponents. The immediate reply on the part of the Jesuits, _The Discourses of Cleander and Eudoxus_ by Père Daniel, could not compete with Pascal's work in brilliancy, wit or style; moreover, it was unfortunate enough to be put upon the Index of prohibited books in 1701. The reply on behalf of the Society to Pascal's charges of lax morality, apart from mere general denials, is broadly as follows:--

(1) St Ignatius himself, the founder of the Society, had a special
aversion from untruthfulness in all its forms, from quibbling,
equivocation or even studied obscurity of language, and it would be
contrary to the spirit of conformity with his example and institutions
for his followers to think and act otherwise. Hence, any who practised
equivocation were, so far, unfaithful to the Society. (2) Several of
the cases cited by Pascal are mere abstract hypotheses, many of them
now obsolete, argued simply as intellectual exercises, but having no
practical bearing whatever. (3) Even such as do belong to the sphere
of actual life are of the nature of counsel to spiritual physicians,
how to deal with exceptional maladies; and were never intended to fix
the standard of moral obligation for the general public. (4) The
theory that they were intended for this latter purpose and do
represent the normal teaching of the Society becomes more untenable in
exact proportion as this immorality is insisted on, because it is a
matter of notoriety that the Jesuits themselves have been singularly
free from personal, as distinguished from corporate, evil repute; and
no one pretends that the large number of lay-folk whom they have
educated or influenced exhibit greater moral inferiority than others.

The third of these replies is the most cogent as regards Pascal, but the real weakness of his attack lies in that nervous dread of appeal to first principles and their logical result which has been the besetting snare of Gallicanism. Pascal, at his best, has mistaken the part for the whole; he charges to the Society what, at the most, are the doings of individuals; and from these he asserts the degeneration of the body from its original standard; whereas the stronger the life and the more extensive the natural development, side by side will exist marks of degeneration; and a society like the Jesuits has no difficulty in asserting its life independently of such excrescences or, in time, in freeing itself from them.

A charge persistently made against the Society is that it teaches that
the end justifies the means. And the words of Busembaum, whose
_Medulla theologiae_ has gone through more than fifty editions, are
quoted in proof. True it is that Busembaum uses these words: _Cui
licitus est finis etiam licent media_. But on turning to his work (ed.
Paris 1729, p. 584, or Lib. vi. Tract vi. cap. ii., _De sacramentis_,
dubium ii.) it will be found that the author is making no universal
application of an old legal maxim; but is treating of a particular
subject (concerning certain lawful liberties in the marital relation)
beyond which his words cannot be forced. The sense in which other
Jesuit theologians--e.g. Paul Laymann (1575-1635), in his _Theologia
moralis_ (Munich, 1625), and Ludwig Wagemann (1713-1792), in his
_Synopsis theologiae moralis_ (Innsbruck, 1762)--quote the axiom is an
equally harmless piece of common sense. For instance, if it is lawful
to go on a journey by railway it is lawful to take a ticket. No one
who put forth that proposition would be thought to mean that it is
lawful to defraud the company by stealing a ticket; for the _proviso_
is always to be understood, that the means employed should, in
themselves, not be bad but good or at least indifferent. So when
Wagemann says tersely _Finis determinat probitatem actus_ he is
clearly referring to acts which in themselves are indifferent, i.e.
indeterminate. For instance: shooting is an indifferent act, neither
good nor bad in itself. The morality of any specified shooting depends
upon what is shot, and the circumstances attending that act: shooting
a man in self-defence is, as a moral act, on an entirely different
plane to shooting a man in murder. It has never been proved, and never
can be proved, although the attempt has frequently been made, that the
Jesuits ever taught the nefarious proposition ascribed to them, which
would be entirely subversive of all morality. Again, the doctrine of
probabilism is utterly misunderstood. It is based on an accurate
conception of law. Law to bind must be clear and definite; if it be
not so, its obligation ceases and liberty of action remains. No
probable opinion can stand against a clear and definite law; but when
a law is doubtful in its application, in certain circumstances, so is
the obligation of obedience: and as a doubtful law is, for practical
purposes, no law at all, so it superinduces no obligation. Hence a
probable opinion is one, founded on reason and held on serious
grounds, that the law does not apply to certain specified cases; and
that the law-giver therefore did not intend to bind. It is the
principle of equity applied to law. In moral matters a probable
opinion, that is one held on no trivial grounds but by unprejudiced
and solid thinkers, has no place where the voice of conscience is
clear, distinct and formed.

Two causes have been at work to produce the universal failure of the great Society in all its plans and efforts. First stands its lack of really great intellects. It has had its golden age. No society can keep up to its highest level. Nothing can be wider of the truth than the popular conception of the ordinary Jesuit as a being of almost superhuman abilities and universal knowledge. The Society, numbering as it does so many thousands, and with abundant means of devoting men to special branches of study, has, without doubt, produced men of great intelligence and solid learning. The average member, too, on account of his long and systematic training, is always equal and often superior to the average member of any other equally large body, besides being disciplined by a far more perfect drill. But it takes great men to carry out great plans; and of really great men, as the outside world knows and judges, the Society has been markedly barren from almost the first. Apart from its founder and his early companion, St Francis Xavier, there is none who stands in the very first rank. Laynez and Acquaviva were able administrators and politicians; the Bollandists (q.v.) were industrious workers and have developed a critical spirit from which much good can be expected; Francisco Suarez, Leonhard Lessius and Cardinal Franzelin were some of the leading Jesuit theologians; Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637) represents their old school of scriptural studies, while their new German writers are the most advanced of all orthodox higher critics; the French Louis Bourdaloue (q.v.), the Italian Paolo Segneri (1624-1694), and the Portuguese Antonio Vieyra (1608-1697) represent their best pulpit orators; while of the many mathematicians and astronomers produced by the Society Angelo Secchi, Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich and G. B. Beccaria are conspicuous, and in modern times Stephen Joseph Perry (1833-1889), director of the Stonyhurst College observatory, took a high rank among men of science. Their boldest and most original thinker, Denis Petau, so many years neglected, is now, by inspiring Cardinal Newman's _Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine_, producing a permanent influence over the current of human thought. The Jesuits have produced no Aquinas, no Anselm, no Bacon, no Richelieu. Men whom they trained, and who broke loose from their teaching, Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, have powerfully affected the philosophical and religious beliefs of great masses of mankind; but respectable mediocrity is the brand on the long list of Jesuit names in the catalogues of Alegambe and De Backer. This is doubtless due in great measure to the destructive process of scooping out the will of the Jesuit novice, to replace it with that of his superior (as a watchmaker might fit a new movement into a case), and thereby tending, in most cases, to annihilate those subtle qualities of individuality and originality which are essential to genius. Men of the higher stamp will either refuse to submit to the process and leave the Society, or run the danger of coming forth from the mill with their finest qualities pulverized and useless. In accordance with the spirit of its founder, who wished to secure uniformity in the judgment of his followers even in points left open by the Church ("Let us all think the same way, let us all speak in the same manner if possible"), the Society has shown itself to be impatient of those who think or write in a way different from what is current in its ranks.

Nor is this all. The _Ratio Studiorum_, devised by Acquaviva and still
obligatory in the colleges of the Society, lays down rules which are
incompatible with all breadth and progress in the higher forms of
education. True to the anti-speculative and traditional side of the
founder's mind, it prescribes that, even where religious topics are
not in question, the teacher is not to permit any novel opinions or
discussions to be mooted; nor to cite or allow others to cite the
opinions of an author not of known repute; nor to teach or suffer to
be taught anything contrary to the prevalent opinions of acknowledged
doctors current in the schools. Obsolete and false opinions are not to
be mentioned at all, even for refutation, nor are objections to
received teaching to be dwelt on at any length. The result is that the
Jesuit emerges from his schools without any real knowledge of any
other method of thought than that which his professors have instilled
into him. The professor of Biblical Literature is always to support
and defend the Vulgate and can never prefer the marginal readings from
the Hebrew and Greek. The Septuagint, as far as it is incorrupt, is to
be held not less authentic than the Vulgate. In philosophy Aristotle
is always to be followed, and St Thomas Aquinas generally, care being
taken to speak respectfully of him even when abandoning his opinions,
though now it is customary for the Jesuit teachers to explain him in
their own sense. _De vera mente D. Thomas_ is no unfamiliar expression
in their books. It is not wonderful, under such a method of training,
fixed as it has been in minute detail for more than three hundred
years, that highly cultivated commonplaces should be the inevitable
average result; and that in proportion as Jesuit power has become
dominant in Christendom, especially in ecclesiastical circles, the
same doom of intellectual sterility and consequent loss of influence
with the higher and thoughtful classes, has separated the part from
the whole. The initial mistake in the formation of character is that
the Jesuits have aimed at educating lay boys in the same manner as
they consider advisable for their own novices, for whom obedience and
direction is the one thing necessary; whereas for lay people the right
use of liberty and initiative are to be desired.

The second cause which has blighted the efforts of the Society is the lesson, too faithfully learnt and practised, of making its corporate interests the first object at all times and in all places. Men were quick to see that Jesuits did not aim at co-operation with the other members of the Church but directly or indirectly at mastery. The most brilliant exception to this rule is found in some of the missions of the Society and notably in that of St Francis Xavier (q.v.). But he quitted Europe in 1541 before the new society, especially under Laynez, had hardened into its final mould; and he never returned. His work, so far as can be gathered from contemporary accounts, was not done on true Jesuit lines as they afterwards developed, though the Society has reaped all the credit; and it is even possible that, had he succeeded the founder as general, the institute might not have received that political and self-seeking turn which Laynez, as second general, gave at the critical moment.

It would almost seem that careful selection was made of the men of the
greatest piety and enthusiasm, whose unworldliness made them less apt
for diplomatic intrigues, to break new ground in the various missions
where their success would throw lustre on the Society and their
scruples need never come into play. But such men are not to be found
easily; and, as they died off, the tendency was to fill their places
with more ordinary characters, whose aim was to increase the power and
resources of the body. Hence the condescension to heathen rites in
Hindustan and China, and the attempted subjugation of the English
Catholic clergy. The first successes of the Indian mission were
entirely among the lower classes; but when in Madura, in 1606, Robert
de Nobili, a nephew of Bellarmine, to win the Brahmins, adopted their
dress and mode of life--a step sanctioned by Gregory XV. in 1623 and
by Clement XI. in 1707--the fathers who followed his example pushed
the new caste-feeling so far as absolutely to refuse the ministrations
and sacraments to the pariahs, lest the Brahmin converts should take
offence--an attempt which was reported to Rome and was vainly censured
by the breves of Innocent X. in 1645, Clement IX. in 1669, Clement
XII. in 1734 and 1739, and Benedict XIV. in 1745. The Chinese rites,
assailed with equal unsuccess by one pope after another, were not
finally put down until 1744 by a bull of Benedict XIV. For Japan,
where their side of the story is that best known, we have a remarkable
letter, printed by Lucas Wadding in the _Annales minorum_, addressed
to Paul V. by Soleto, a Franciscan missionary, who was martyred in
1624, in which he complains to the pope that the Jesuits
systematically postponed the spiritual welfare of the native
Christians to their own convenience and advantage; while as regards
the test of martyrdom, no such result had followed on their teaching,
but only on that of the other orders who had undertaken missionary
work in Japan. Yet soon many Jesuit martyrs in Japan were to shed a
new glory on the Society (see JAPAN: _Foreign Intercourse_). Again,
even in Paraguay, the most promising of all Jesuit undertakings, the
evidence shows that the fathers, though civilizing the Guarani
population just sufficiently to make them useful and docile servants,
happier no doubt than they were before or after, stopped there. While
the mission was begun on the rational principle of governing races
still in their childhood by methods adapted to that stage in their
mental development, yet for one hundred and fifty years the
"reductions" were conducted in the same manner, and when the hour of
trial came the Jesuit civilization fell like a house of cards.

These examples are sufficient to explain the final collapse of so many promising efforts. The individual Jesuit might be, and often was, a hero, saint and martyr, but the system which he was obliged to administer was foredoomed to failure; and the suppression which came in 1773 was the natural result of forces and elements they had set in antagonism without the power of controlling.

The influence of the Society since its restoration in 1814 has not been marked with greater success than in its previous history. It was natural after the restoration that an attempt should be made to pick up again the threads that were dropped; but soon they came to realize the truth of the saying of St Ignatius: "The Society shall adapt itself to the times and not the times to the Society." The political conditions of Europe have completely changed, and constitutionalism is unfavourable to that personal influence which, in former times, the Jesuits were able to bring to bear upon the heads of states. In Europe they confine themselves mainly to educational and ecclesiastical politics, although both Germany and France have followed the example of Portugal and refuse, on political grounds, to allow them to be in these countries. It would appear as though some of the Jesuits had not, even yet, learnt the lesson that meddling with politics has always been their ruin. The main cause of any difficulty that may exist to-day with the Society is that the Jesuits are true to the teaching of that remarkable panegyric, the _Imago primi saeculi Societatis_ (probably written by John Tollenarius in 1640), by identifying the Church with their own body, and being intolerant of all who will not share this view. Their power is still large in certain sections of the ecclesiastical world, but in secular affairs it is small. Moreover within the church itself there is a strong and growing feeling that the interests of Catholicism may necessitate a second and final suppression of the Society. Cardinal Manning, a keen observer of times and influences, was wont to say:--"The work of 1773 was the work of God: and there is another 1773 coming." But, if this come, it will be due not to the pressure of secular governments, as in the 18th century, but to the action of the Church itself. The very nations which have cast out the Society have shown no disposition to accept its own estimate and identify it with the Church; while the Church itself is not conscious of depending upon the Society. To the Church the Jesuits have been what the Janissaries were to the Ottoman Empire, at first its defenders and its champions, but in the end its taskmasters.

_History._--The separate article on Loyola tells of his early years, his conversion, and his first gathering of companions. It was not until November 1537, when all hope of going to the Holy Land was given up, that any outward steps were taken to form these companions into an organized body. It was on the eve of their going to Rome, for the second time, that the fathers met Ignatius at Vicenza and it was determined to adopt a common rule and, at the suggestion of Ignatius, the name of the Company of Jesus. Whatever may have been his private hopes and intentions, it was not until he, Laynez and Faber (Pierre Lefevre), in the name of their companions, were sent to lay their services at the feet of the pope that the history of the Society really begins.

On their arrival at Rome the three Jesuits were favourably received by
Paul III., who at once appointed Faber to the chair of scripture and
Laynez to that of scholastic theology in the university of the
Sapienza. But they encountered much opposition and were even charged
with heresy; when this accusation had been disposed of, there were
still difficulties in the way of starting any new order. Despite the
approval of Cardinal Contarini and the goodwill of the pope (who is
said to have exclaimed on perusing the scheme of Ignatius, "The finger
of God is here"), there was a strong and general feeling that the
regular system had broken down and could not be wisely developed
farther. Cardinal Guidiccioni, one of the commission of three
appointed to examine the draft constitution, was known to advocate the
abolition of all existing orders, save four which were to be
remodelled and put under strict control. That very year, 1538, a
commission of cardinals, including Reginald Pole, Contarini, Sadolet,
Caraffa (afterwards Paul IV.), Fregoso and others, had reported that
the conventual orders, which they had to deal with, had drifted into
such a state that they should all be abolished. Not only so, but, when
greater strictness of rule and of enclosure seemed the most needful
reforms in communities that had become too secular in tone, the
proposal of Ignatius, to make it a first principle that the members of
his institute should mix freely in the world and be as little marked
off as possible externally from secular clerical life and usages, ran
counter to all tradition and prejudice, save that Caraffa's then
recent order of Theatines, which had some analogy with the proposed
Society, had taken some steps in the same direction.

Ignatius and his companions, however, had but little doubt of ultimate
success, and so bound themselves, on the 15th of April 1539, to obey
any superior chosen from amongst their body, and added on the 4th of
May certain other rules, the most important of which was a vow of
special allegiance to the pope for mission purposes to be taken by all
the members of the society. But Guidiccioni, on a careful study of the
papers, changed his mind; it is supposed that the cause of this change
was in large measure the strong interest in the new scheme exhibited
by John III., king of Portugal, who instructed his ambassador to press
it on the pope and to ask Ignatius to send some priests of his Society
for mission work in Portugal and its Indian possessions. Francis
Xavier and Simon Rodriguez were sent to the king in March 1540.
Obstacles being cleared away, Paul III., on the 27th of September
1540, issued his bull _Regimini militantis ecclesiae_, by which he
confirmed the new Society (the term "order" does not belong to it),
but limited the members to sixty, a restriction which was removed by
the same pope in the bull _Injunctum nobis_ of the 14th of March 1543.
In the former bull, the pope gives the text of the formula submitted
by Ignatius as the scheme of the proposed society, and in it we get
the founder's own ideas: "... This Society, instituted to this special
end, namely, to offer spiritual consolation for the advancement of
souls in life and Christian doctrine, for the propagation of the faith
by public preaching and the ministry of the word of God, spiritual
exercises and works of charity and, especially, by the instruction of
children and ignorant people in Christianity, and by the spiritual
consolation of the faithful in Christ in hearing confessions...." In
this original scheme it is clearly marked out "that this entire
Society and all its members fight for God under the faithful
obedience of the most sacred lord, the pope, and the other Roman
pontiffs his successors"; and Ignatius makes particular mention that
each member should "be bound by a special vow," beyond that formal
obligation under which all Christians are of obeying the pope, "so
that whatsoever the present and other Roman pontiffs for the time
being shall ordain, pertaining to the advancement of souls and the
propagation of the faith, to whatever provinces he shall resolve to
send us, we are straightway bound to obey, as far as in us lies,
without any tergiversation or excuse, whether he send us among the
Turks or to any other unbelievers in being, even to those parts called
India, or to any heretics or schismatics or likewise to any
believers." Obedience to the general is enjoined "in all things
pertaining to the institute of the Society ... and in him they shall
acknowledge Christ as though present, and as far as is becoming shall
venerate him"; poverty is enjoined, and this rule affects not only the
individual but the common sustentation or care of the Society, except
that in the case of colleges revenues are allowed "to be applied to
the wants and necessities of the students"; and the private recitation
of the Office is distinctly mentioned. On the other hand, the
perpetuity of the general's office during his life was no part of the
original scheme.