Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/282

 INTAKE JERUSALEM

should! Loyok did not awake images and reflections for their own sakes, but only as instruments to serve the will and the action which that will had in rnind from the beginning the liberation from tendencies to disorder, restoration to the order designed by God, and realization of the maxim that man must "become what he is." Loyola also utilized German mysticism in forging his weapons. But being a Spaniard, and therefore always a cherub and a stoic at the same time, he produced at last something uncannily like cold steel which emits sparks when it is struck.

The objective to which the young association was dedicated was mis- sionary work in the Orient. If this proved to be out of the question, the members were to place themselves at the disposition of the Pope. The missionary plan did not materialize; but service to the Papacy was there- by all the more assured. In Venice Ignatius saw men of the Counter- reform working beneficently in the confessional, in the pulpit and in hospitals. Thereupon he transformed his own circle of companions into a society of priests pledged to serve the home missions. This Society has been well characterized as a kind of Catholic Salvation Army under the supreme command of the Pope. While proceeding to Rome in 1537, Loyola gave his spiritual soldiers the name of Company of Jesus. Upon entering the city he said to his companions: "I see that many windows are locked." He had a premonition of difficulties, and this was borne out by the facts. The little group was suspected by the Inquisition, which believed that heresy and innovation were at work. Though, after the Pope intervened, a formal trial proved the in- nocence of Ignatius, the resistance of the commission of cardinals to the recognition of the new Order had still to be overcome. It was not until 1540 that Pope Paul III confirmed the establishment of the Society in a famous Bull which begins with the martial words Regimini militantis ecclesia. This new army vowed unconditional military obedience to the Pope on the field of home and foreign missions. Very gradually but constantly more noticeably, it gained the con- fidence of the Curia.

Ignatius, meanwhile ordained a priest, was elected General in 1541, twenty years after the mystical experience of Pamplona. The little man went through the streets of Rome with his cane, a spiritual field- marshal. Nearly a decade had still to pass before he completed the

THE