Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/676

646 JESUITS examination the Jesuit body proves to resemble those other religious societies only in external and separable accidents, differing from them and from all others in its essential character, and that not in degree merely, but in kind also, so as to be an institution absolutely unique in history. In the first place, all the earlier associations of the kind, even the military orders themselves, have their origin in a desire to withdraw so far as possible from contact with the world and its concerns, to seek spiritual perfection In a retired life of contemplation and prayer, to concentrate efforts for this end chiefly within the cloister where each such group is collected, and to act only indirectly, and as it were with the mere surplus overflow of religious energy, on their more immediate neighbours around, and even then chiefly with the idea of persuading all the most devout and fervent amongst them to forsake the world in a similar fishion. Contrariwise, the Jesuit system is to withdraw religious men from precisely this sort of retirement, except as a mere temporary preparation for later activity, and to make habitual intercourse with society a prime duty, rigidly suppressing all such external regulations of dress, rule, and austerities as tend to put obstacles in the way, so leaving the members of the " Company " free to act as emissaries, agents, or missionaries in the most various places and circumstances. Next, the constitution of the elder societies was for the most part democratic. Allowing for special exceptions, the normal scheme of government was this. Each house of an order had a separate life and partial in dependence of its own. It electee! its own superior and officers, usually by ballot, for a short term of years, it discussed its business, and its members confessed their faults, in open chapter. Each group of houses elected a provincial; the provincials, or delegates from among them, elected the general, whose authority was strictly constitu tional, and limited as definitely by the rule and statutes as the rights of the youngest novice. Further, admission was seldom difficult ; the noviciate rarely exceeded two years, and the novice, professed at the close of that probation, at once entered on a share in the government of the society, and became eligible for its highest offices. Unlike this method in every respect, the Jesuit polity is almost a pure despotism, guarded, no doubt, with certain checks, but even those of an oligarchical kind. The general is indeed elected by the congregation of the society ; but, once appointed, it is for life, and with powers lodged in his hands, partly clue to the original constitutions, and partly to special faculties and privileges conferred by various popes, which enormously exceed, as regards enactment and repeal of laws, as to restraint and dispensation, and both in kind and degree, those wielded by the heads of any other communities. He alone nominates to every office in the society (with certain significant exceptions to be named presently) and appoints the superiors of all the houses and colleges. The vow of obedience is taken directly to him, and not, as in the older orders, to the rule, as distinguished from the mere chief of the executive. The admission or dismissal of every member depends on his absolute fiat; and, by a simple provision for reports to him, he holds in his hands the threads of ths entire business of the society in its most minute and distant ramifications. Once more, the distinguishing peculiarity of the earlier communities, dating from the origin of the Benedictine rule, is their hostility to local change. The vow of stability, soon added to the three customary pledges of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was designed to impede, not merely itinerancy without settled abode, such as had brought discredit on those ancient monks who were styled circumcellions, nor even easy transition from one religious community to another, unless in search of greater austerity, but even facility of transfer from one house to another of the very same order. Where the profession was made, there, in the absence of exceptional reasons, the life should be spent ; and this rule of course tended to nationalism in the monasteries of every country, even in the great military orders, which, though accepting recruits from all quarters, yet grouped them into tongues. But mobility and cosmopolitanism are of the very essence of the Jesuit programme. The founder of the society has excluded the possibility of doubt on this subject, for having chosen the military term " Company," rather than " Order " or " Con gregation " to describe his new institute, he explained its meaning to Paul III. as being that, whereas the ancient mon astic communities were, so to speak, the infantry of the church, whose duty was to stand firmly in one place on the battlefield, the Jesuits, contrariwise, were to be the " light horse/ capable of going anywhere at a moment s notice, but especially apt and designed for scouting or skirmishing. And, to carry out this view, it was one of his plans to send foreigners as superiors or officers to the Jesuit houses of each country, requiring of these envoys, however, to use invariably 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 vast system mutually interchangeable, and so largely increasing the number of persons eligible to fill any given post, without reference to locality. Further, the object of the older monastic societies was the sanctification of their individual members. In truth, community life was only a later development of the original system, as exhibited in the Thebaid, in accordance with which solitary hermits began to draw near to each other, until the collection of separate huts gradual^ assumed the form of a laura or hamlet of cells, grouped under an abbot, and with a common place of worship a model still sur viving in the Camaldolese order. Their obedience to a superior, and the observance of some kind of fixed rule, had no further intention than the improvement of the spiritual character of each person who entered such a community ; and, with certain qualifications, this has con tinued the ideal of the older orders, modified chiefly by the natural desire of each such body to gain influence and credit from the personal character of all its members and the efficiency of its active operations. But the founder of Jesuitism started at once with a totally different purpose. To him, from the first, 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. In a MS. collection of sayings by Loyola, whose genuineness is accepted by the Bollanclists, themselves Jesuits, and by his biographer F. Genelli, he is stated to have 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 went even further than this, and laid down 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. On this principle, he raised obedience to a position it had never held before, even amongst monastic virtues. 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 two other products of his pen, the Spiritual Exercises and the Con stitutions ; and it is evident that his views differ very seriously from the older theories on the subject, as formu lated in other rules. In them the superior is head of a local family, endued with paternal authority, no doubt as