Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/648

 628 JESUITS his conscience, of his temptations and trials, and the difficulties he meets with in the per- formance of his special office. This "mani- festation of conscience," whether made in sac- ramental confession or not, obliges the pro- vincial to the most inviolable secrecy. He can only make of the knowledge thus acquired the use which the inferior permits him. At the same time the latter is informed of the de- fects which have been remarked in his conduct. This practice is one of the fundamental points or iubatantialia of the constitutions, and con- tributes above all others to give to the govern- ment of the society its extraordinary power, as well as to make obedience easy. Another chief object of this yearly visitation is to cor- rect every abuse in the matter of poverty. Obedience and dependent poverty are the two mainsprings of the order. One of the vows made at the time of the solemn profession binds the professed to maintain the obligations of poverty inviolable, or to make them more rigorous. The rectors and local superiors yearly demand the same " account of con- science" of their subjects; and as all who have not pronounced their last solemn vows renew their simple vows twice a year, this renewal affords a fitting opportunity for repairing every violation of religious poverty. Before the time of Ignatius one year's novitiate only was required before admission to membership in a religious order, and the emission of the solemn religious vows. In his constitutions, besides a novitiate of two full years, he demanded a fur- ther probation of several years before any one was admitted to final membership. Thus there are three kinds of vows made by Jesuits to the society : the simple vows made at the end of the novitiate, and renewed every six months, but not accepted by the society ; the sim- ple but final vows made by the coadjutors, both temporal and spiritual, when they are olemnly admitted into the society, which ac- cepts them by the hands of the local superior ; and the solemn vows made by the professed. The fourth solemn vow is to the pope, and binds the Jesuit to go wherever the former may send him for the service of the church. The professed, besides these four which are made publicly in the church, pronounce in pri- vate immediately afterward a formula contain- ing several simple vows, among them one binding them neither to seek nor to accept any dignity or office in the society or in the church, and to denounce all of their brethren whom they know to be seeking them. The society of Jesus never admitted a third order, like the Dominicans and Franciscans ; and St. Ignatius inflexibly refused not only to allow nuns to have any fellowship with the society, but to permit its members to be cumbered with the direction of nuns. There never has been any body of men or women directly or indirectly affiliated to the Jesuits. The dress adopted by St. Ignatius and his companions was that of the better class of Spanish secular priests. It con- sists in a black cassock and cloak, and has been somewhat modified in various provinces. Two popes (Paul IV. and Pius V.) and one general (Francis Borgia) wished to assimilate the Jesu- its in some points more to the other religious orders, in particular by introducing the ob- servance of the canonical hours ; but this was soon given up, and the whole energy of the order was directed to laboring in behalf of the church by means of education and missions. As the " Spiritual Exercises " of St. Ignatius moulded not only his own religious character and that of his early companions, but the spirit of the society, it is impossible to understand either its constitutions or the private and pub- lic life of its members, without having some conception of the nature and aim of that fa- mous book. It is not a book to be merely read ; for it contains only germs of thought, and rude outlines of meditations on the great Christian truths and facts of gospel history. The " exercises " consist in a graduated series of meditations on the creation and destiny of man ; on the degradation and misery wrought by sin ; on the restoration of the fallen children of God to their true rank in Christ, and the man- ifestation of true heroism in following him, in poverty, toil, humiliation, suffering, and death. The meditations are intermingled with practi- cal rules for examining one's conscience, for the prudent use of penitential austerities, for detecting and resisting temptations, for discov- ering the action of the good spirit on one's soul from that of the evil one, for making a safe election in determining one's calling in life, for a right distribution of alms, for modera- ting one's appetite in eating and drinking, and finally for conforming one's judgment to that of the church. These exercises, when fully per- formed in retirement, last over a month, and are divided into four stages or "weeks." In the first, the truth of God's right over man's being, faculties, and life is, made the foundation of all the subsequent exercises, and a practical " in- difference " in the use of all things, states, and conditions of life is inculcated as a necessary conclusion from the fact that wealth and pov- erty, health and sickness, are only means to an end, and in themselves indifferent. The foundation of religious poverty and self-re- nouncement is thus laid at the very outset. Then come the meditations on sin and its pun- ishments in time and eternity, terminating with the contemplation of Christ crucified, and the mingled sentiments of grief and love, shame and generosity, inspired by the consciousness of one's own guilt in presence of the divine victim of sin. Next comes the meditation of Christ our king as the model of the generosity to be thenceforth displayed in serving God. Ignatius proposes here the conception formed at Manresa, when he had renounced the secu- cular militia for a life of spiritual chivalry. Christ presents himself as a king inviting all his subjects to aid him in subjecting the whole earth to God, asking none to follow where he