Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/682

JESUITS Brahmaus, adopted their insignia and mode of life in 1605 a step sanctioned by Gregory XV. in 1623 the fathers who followed his example pushed the new caste-feeling so far as absolutely to refuse the ministrations and sacraments of religion to the pariahs, lest the Brahman converts should take offence, an attempt which was reported to Rome by Norbert, a Capuchin, and by the bishop of Rosalia, and was vainly censured in the pontifical briefs 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 Wadding, addressed to Paul V. by Soleto, a Franciscan missionary, who was martyred in 1624, in which he complains to the pope that the Jesuits had systematically postponed the spiritual welfare of the native Christians to their own con venience 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. 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 short there, and employed them simply in raising produce to be traded with for the interests of the society, in accordance with a privilege conferred on them by Gregory XIII., licensing them to engage in commerce. 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 of which he was a part, and which he was obliged to administer, is fundamentally unsound, and in contraven tion of inevitable laws of nature, so that his noblest toils were foredoomed to failure, save in so far as they tended to ennoble and perfect himself, and offered a model for others to imitate. The influence of the society since its revival in Latin Christendom has not been beneficial. It presents the seeming paradox of the strictest and most irreproachable body amongst the Roman clergy doing nothing to raise the general standard of clerical morals ; of that which is collec tively the best educated order setting itself to popularize merely emotional and material cults, to the practical neglect and disparagement of more spiritual agencies ; of the most intellectual religious teachers deliberately eviscerating the understanding, and endeavouring to substitute mechanical submission to a word of command for intelligent and spontaneous assent to reasonable argument. And yet in all tlii-s they are but carrying out the fatal principles of the original institute. True to the teaching of that remarkable panegyric on the society, the Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis Jesu (probably written by John Tollenarius in 1640), they have identified the church with their own society, and have considered only what mode of action would make it more easily governed in the same spirit. It is thus for the advantage of such a scheme that laymen should reason as little as possible on questions of theology, that the fathers of the company should hold an acknowledged position of moral and intellectual superiority to the ordinary secular clergy, that all the threads of ecclesiastical authority should be gathered up into one hand, and that one hand in the stronger grasp of the society a policy modelled exactly on the lines of the concordat of Napoleon I. with Pius VII. Hence the long preparation and elaborate intrigues which issued in the Vatican decrees of papal infallibility and immediate jurisdiction in all dioceses, the ultimate issues of which are still hidden in futurity. HISTORY. Such being in outline the constitution and character of tho Company of Jesus, it remains to summarize its historical career. Don Inigo de Loyola, a nobleman of Guipuzcoa, brave and accom plished, but unversed in letters, was severely wounded at the siege of Pampeluna in 1521, when he was thirty years of age. Sent to his father s castle by his chivalrous captors, he was induced by the reading of some pious books, intended to divert the tedium of illness, to devote himself to a religious life. Quitting his home, he betook himself first to Montserrat and thence, in the garb of a pil grim, to Manresa, a small town near Barcelona, whence, after serving for a time in the hospital, he withdrew to a cavern close at hand, where, amidst the practice of various austerities, he made the first draft of his famous Sjnritual Exercises, a work which, often re touched and amplified in his later years, is one of the chief authori tative formularies of his society. Thence he proceeded b} r way of Barcelona to sail for Italy, and, after visiting Koine and Venice, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, intending if possible to establish a missionary society there for the conversion of the Mahometans. Compelled to withdraw by the provincial of the Franciscans, who feared a collision with the Turkish authorities, Loyola returned to Spain, and at thirty-three years of age attended school at Barcelona to acquire the rudiments of Latin, spending two years there between his studies and such missionary work as was possible for him. He then removed in 1526 to the newly founded university of Aleala, where he first began to gather round him a little band of fellow- workers, holding religious conferences amongst the students, and giving private instruction besides to various townsfolk. This con duct drew on him the suspicions of the Inquisition, but after a short imprisonment he was released, and migrated to Salamanca, whither two of his friends had preceded him. Here he was again thrown into prison on suspicion of heresy, and formed the plan of going to Paris on recovering his liberty, as a place where he could have more freedom of action, superior teaching, and a greater likelihood of finding able recruits in so central and populous a city for the society he was preparing to found. He reached Paris in 1528, and entered at the college of St Barbara in the university. Not until his sixth year of residence did he attempt the regular organization of the most, promising of the young men whom he drew around him. It was in July 1534 that he opened his plans to them for starting a missionary society to work in the Holy Land, and the actual vows, binding the new companions to one another and to the sort of life they con templated, or to direct service of the pope, should that prove impracticable, were taken in the crypt of Notre Dame de Montmartre on August 15, 1534, by Ignatius Loyola himself; Peter Faber or Le Fevre, a Savoyard ; Francis Xavier, Diego Laynez, Alfonso Salmeron, Nicolas Alfonso de Bobadilla, Spaniards ; and Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese. With his usual practical foresight, Loyola postponed the execution of their scheme till January 25, 1537, and provided for its possible modification or abandonment. Three more disciples speedily joined the infant society, Jean Codure, Claude le Jay, and Paschase Brouet. In March 1535 Loyola quitted Paris, committing his society to Faber, the eldest, and betook himself to Spain, where he remained a few months, and then proceeded to Venice, whence he wrote to summon his companions to join him. They left Paris on November 15, 1536, and reached Venice on January 6, 1537, where their leader had already gained three fresh recruits, Hosez ana the two brothers D Eguia. Remaining in Venice himself for pruden tial reasons, he sent all the others to Rome to solicit from Paul III. leave to go as missionaries to Jerusalem. They were aided in their application by Pedro Ortiz, the emperor s envoy, and readily ob tained the desired permission, with further licence to be ordained priests by any bishop, on being duly qualified . Returning to Venice, they were ordained on St John Baptist s Day, 1537, along with Loyola himself, by Vincenzio (or Antonio) Nigu- santi, bishop of Arba. A war which broke out between Turkey and Venice made the intended journey to Palestine impracticable ; and accordingly Loyola, Faber, and Laynez betook themselves to Rome, while the others dispersed themselves through the chief university towns of North Italy, and began their work as borne missionary preachers ; and it was immediately before they separated on this occasion, at Vicenza in November 1537, that Loyola announced his intention that their fellow-ship should henceforward be known as the " Company of Jesus," and that, abandoning their original plan of a purely Oriental mission, they should offer themselves to the pope as a special militia. It may be here remarked that the more popular name "Jesuits" seems to have bcjcn first used by Calvin, and it appears also in the register of the parliament of Paris as early as 1 552, while the enemies of the society in Spain usually spoke of its mem bers as " Inigistas," after the name of its founder. On their arrival at Rome, the three Jesuits weie favourably received by Paul III., who at once appointed Faber to the chair of Biblical exegesis, and Laynez to that of scholastic theology, in the collegeof Sapienza. But they encountered much opposition, and were even charged with heresy, nay, when this accusation had been dis posed of, there still were difficulties in the way of starting any