Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/258

LOY distinctions between truth and fiction, between the genuine and the spurious, are not only lost in a glare, but are screened from reasonable inquiry. If it be so in any hundred instances of the canonized, it is peculiarly the case as to the few heroes of sanctity who head the monastic orders: so it is that Loyola stands on this unapproachable elevation, where the nimbus that encircles his head serves not merely as a glorification, but as a defiance of gainsaying.

Who those authors are on whom we must rely, and of what sort they are as to their trustworthiness, we shall presently say: meantime it is our only course to accept their narratives, such as we find them.

Inigo de Recalde Loyola, born in the year 1491, was of an ancient family, possessed of estates and a castle in Guipuscoa, one of tile Basque provinces. In conformity with the usages of Spain in that age, the youth, handsome and aspiring, was sent to court, where he obtained position as a page to Ferdinand and Isabella. Ardent and ambitious, he quickly distinguished himself among his comrades in every accomplishment proper to his destined course of life; excluding, however, it is said, those false recommendations which would imply a laxity of moral principles. Correct he was in his conduct, scrupulously regardful of truth, and always respected in his language and behaviour towards the church and its ministers. It is reported of him also that at a very early age he acquired a reputation for that sagacity and tact which brings other men to cluster around the possessor of those qualities, and to look to him as their chief. Ignatius, athirst always for glory, joined the Spanish forces in the war then raging between Spain and France, and at the siege of Pampeluna he was struck by a ball, which so shattered the leg as to threaten permanent disfigurement, the thought of which was intolerable. Unskilful surgery in the first treatment of his hurt, could be remedied in no other way than by a new fracture and a new setting of the bone, and to this torture the young soldier cheerfully submitted himself. After all, an imperfect cure was the best that could be effected—imperfect, notwithstanding the miraculous intervention (visibly afforded, so the sufferer affirmed) of "the Prince of the apostles." The wearisome hours of several months' confinement to his couch, the young soldier diverted by the perusal of books of romance and of piety; and among these were the lives of the saints, those "warriors of the faith" whose conflicts and triumphs in combating invisible powers of evil, turned his thoughts away from the pomps and perils of material warfare, and fixed his soul upon the glories and honours of the world unseen. The reality of this conversion need not be doubted. The chivalrous spirit of the youthful and court-bred Spaniard, emulous, most of all, of honours awarded by the smiles and plaudits of beauty, followed Ignatius onward through the crisis of his conversion, and thus it was that from the very first hour of this change to the last day of his public life, a romantic devotion to the "blessed Virgin" came to be emphatically his religion. This spiritual gallantry was at once the marked characteristic of the piety of the man, and it was the determinative feature of the religious system which he bequeathed to the church and the world. By the acknowledgment of its leaders at a later time, jesuitism is—"the religion of Mary."

In the year 1522, a year memorable in the history of the German reformation, Loyola, in the most solemn manner, devoted himself to the service of the "blessed Mother of God;" and about the same time, so it is said, he composed the noted manual, the "Spiritual Exercises," on which, as its basis, the society takes its stand. Soon afterwards a burning zeal to convert mahometan nations induced him to visit Palestine as a pilgrim, where his adventures, and they were many, ended in his discomfiture and his return to Spain in 1524. He had attained his thirtieth year when a new ambition—that of founding an order differing in principle and in practices from any which hitherto had been organized—possessed itself of his soul; and to this project his after years were devoted, and upon this every energy of his nature was concentrated. A very decisive proof of the intensity of this purpose was afforded when, for accomplishing it, he submitted himself to the humiliating drudgery of acquiring the elements of learning, classical and theological. With this view he graduated at the university of Paris, where he passed the required terms of years in assiduous study, in religious exercises, and in forming and cementing friendships with men of his own age and turn of mind, whom he selected as best fitted for the part he assigned them in realizing the proposed institute. Some of these, his colleagues, must be thought of as greatly his superiors, not only in learning, but also in worldly wisdom and intelligence. The most noted of these were Peter Faber, a Savoyard; the truly heroic Francis Xavier, the so-called apostle of India; James Lainez, who succeeded Loyola as general of the order; Alphonso Salmeron; Nicolas, surnamed Bobadilla; Simon Rodriquez, a Spaniard of noble birth; and, at a later time, Claude le Jay. It is this band of men—seven, Loyola himself included—who stand possessed of whatever honour is due to them as the authors and fathers of the order of jesuits. To two of them—Lainez and Faber—the society, as it seems, owed its constitutional structure and its internal coherence, much rather than to Loyola himself.

It was in the year 1534 that the society constituted itself as a religious order; but it then remained with the sovereign pontiff, Paul III., to give his sanction to the enterprise; and this warranty was not obtained until after the papal court had been wearied by often repeated importunities. When at last granted in 1540, Loyola, by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, became general of the order, which in fact he governed with great tact and ability to the hour of his death. This occurred at Rome in 1556; he was then in his sixty-fifth year. In the course of these sixteen years the society had established itself in every European state which then adhered to the papacy; and it had, moreover, in consequence of its foreign missions, gained a footing wherever Spain or Portugal had conquered or colonized in India and in America. The centre establishment of this extensive spiritual empire was at Rome, where Loyola himself, as is affirmed, held the reigns of power; and yet, while doing so, he did not cease to exercise his functions as physician of souls, and as a popular preacher, and as the administrator of charities in the city. The society, by means of its perfect knowledge of every individual member, as to abilities, acquirements, and dispositions—and its members, drawn from all countries, were very numerous—was at all times able to find accomplished and devoted men, fit for every service or function which might come within its view. Thus it was that the jesuit professor in universities—the jesuit teacher in schools of a lower grade—the jesuit confessor of princes—and even the jesuit manager of trading enterprises—seldom if ever failed to approve himself to his employers, or to win the admiration and to secure the confidence of those who witnessed his performances. The jesuit who was a regular in relation to his superiors of the order, was at the same time a secular man in relation to the busy world around him; and thus he stood in a position which never before had been occupied, or even attempted to be realized, by any of the ancient monastic orders. Some of these institutions had indeed carried the principle of passive obedience to almost an equal degree of individual abnegation: but then this sort of obedience, which left to the individual monk no will, no reason, no conscience of his own, was exacted of a recluse who for the most part passed his days in the deep shade and the monotonous routine of the monastery; but the same passive obedience of the jesuit was that of a man who was conversant with the world, and was ever acting a part in the crowded resorts of common and of political life. Toward his superior he was always obedient and unreservedly communicative; toward all others—toward high and low alike—he was reticent, keenly observant, list of hearing, retentive of impressions, bland and insinuating in behaviour; and even when this jesuit was the most sincere and well-intentioned, yet so observant was he of that conventional demeanour which merges the natural characteristics, as well of honesty as of guile, that men of the world the most penetrating and cautious could never trust themselves in deciding whether the man whom they had admitted to their confidence was cordially their friend, or was in fact a spy and an enemy plotting their ruin. Suspicions of this kind, which too often were proved to be well founded, at length brought the society into disrepute in every country in which it had established itself. Especially had it aroused the jealousy of governments; and from each of these countries therefore, sooner or later, was it expelled and its establishments overthrown. Again and again it has recovered its footing in those same Roman catholic countries; but never has it been able to relieve itself from the obloquy of having furnished a new ethical term to every European language; for whenever in modern times there is occasion to denounce any course of conduct as guileful,