LOYOLA AS THE GENERAL OF HIS ARMY.
HIS company being now established, Loyola’s first step was to elect a commander-in-chief or general. Only five members of the Order were present on the occasion; the remainder transmitted their votes in writing, and as we might expect Loyola was elected to the post. But he declined the honour! A second election was insisted upon, which produced the same result, whereupon Loyola declared, “Since you persist in choosing me, it only remains that we refer the contested point to my confessor, whom, as you know, I consider the interpreter of the divine will.” The confessor, Father Theodosius, declared that in refusing the generalship, Loyola was fighting against God.
On Easter Day, in the year 1541, Ignatius Loyola assumed the government of the Society, and was constituted master of the bodies and souls, minds and consciences, of all who yielded themselves to him. The installation of “the General” was carried out in a course of splendid processions and services, held in the seven principal churches of Rome; and with extraordinary pomp and ceremony, on April 23rd, 1541, before the altar of the Virgin in the magnificent church of St. Paul, the Society renewed its four vows and his disciples took the oath of absolute obedience to the General.
This ceremony completed, the Society at once began its proper work. Loyola was in his fiftieth year, and possessed the same iron will which carried him through the agonies of his mutilated leg long years before; but it required all his courage and determination to carry out the program before him. He set himself resolutely to the work of conquering the nations for Rome, and he determined to succeed. Very soon the world saw with astonishment what great things a small body of men could accomplish when governed by one unconquerable will.
From the first day of his institution as General, Loyola commenced the carrying out of a strict rule in the central college at Rome. While he drew the cord of implicit obedience round his associates with ever-tightening grip, he severed every tie that bound them to the outside world. Letters from relatives at home, long delayed, would be thrown into the fire without being read! He would suddenly require the most refined and cultivated of the brotherhood to take the scullion’s place in the kitchen, or impose upon him the task of carrying a heap of stones one by one from the floor to the garret of the college, and the next day to bring them down in a similar manner, as “wholesome spiritual exercises” in humility and industry.
It will be interesting to gather up information as to the number and character of grades into which Loyola decided his army should be divided from its earliest beginning and through all time. No one can be enrolled in the great secret Society until he has undergone a long and severe course of training. There are four classes of Jesuits—Novices, Scholars, Spiritual Coadjutors, and Professed Members.
Novices are young men who have been highly educated and exhibit a certain amount of talent. The wealthy stand the best chance of admission. The Jesuit must be a picked man. And it is worthy of remark that while Loyola had trained men for every kind of enterprise, he had a gentleman for each and all, and to this fact much of the success attending the Society is attributable.
The Novice, after a satisfactory examination, passes into the novitiate house for a two years’ training.
Twice a day the Novice “examines his conscience,” and makes out a list of all his sins of thought, words, deeds, and omissions, to be confessed later on to the rector, who may thus know all the secret thoughts and desires of his disciples day by day. In the first year he must castigate his flesh, be occupied in begging and other low employments, and, assist in nursing the most loathsome patients in the hospitals. In the second, when he has proved his humility, and acquired the habit of that obedience, called by the founder “the tomb of the will,” he is permitted to preach, to hear confessions, to instruct boys, and to catechise. While the Jesuit is thus undergoing the several trials of his fitness, he may not presume to say that he is one of the Society. He must only describe himself as wishing to enter it, indifferent to the station which may be assigned him. Hence he is enrolled among the “Indifferents.”
Having successfully passed his two years’ probation, the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are then administered to the Novice, who binds himself by a solemn oath to “live and die in the Society,” and he is then admitted into the class of “Scholars.”
The Scholastic is immediately sent to one of the numerous colleges endowed by wealthy devotees, of which we shall see the Jesuits speedily became possessed, and which were renowned for the excellence of their management.
At the conclusion of his college course the “Approved Scholar” renews his vows, and becomes a “True Assistant,” or in other words a “Spiritual Coadjutor.”
In this third class of members there are two divisions, temporal and spiritual. The Temporal Coadjutor is never admitted into holy orders. Such can become only porters, cooks, stewards, and secular agents of the Society, “content to serve in the careful office of a Martha.” It is worth noting that to qualify a porter or a cook an extra year’s trial is thought necessary beyond the allotted time of trial for the priest who will become superior of the religious house. The reason is not far to seek. Though the rectors of colleges, selected from among the Spiritual Coadjutors, are men of learning, it is the porters and cooks who will undertake the worldly business of the Order, and therefore there is greater need that they should be faithful and trustworthy.
The fourth division forms the inner circle―the proper heart and soul―of the Society, the PROFESSED MEMBERS. They alone know its deepest secrets, they alone wield its highest powers. Solemn vows are taken by this class only, those of the other divisions merely being considered simple. It is the Professed who take the fourth peculiar vow, to obey the Holy See, and to go without question, delay, or repugnance as missionaries into whatever part of the world the Pope may send them.
It will be remembered that it was this fourth vow which overcame the crafty Pope Paul’s objection, and that of his Cardinals, to sanction the Order. But the princes of the Church were no match for Loyola. The vow is made meaningless by the form in which he embodied it, for it is made only in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, and the Constitution enacts that “the GENERAL shall have ALL POWER over every individual of the Society, to send anyone on a mission, to recall missionaries, and to proceed in all things as he thinks will be best for the greater glory of God.” Thus obedience to the Pope depends entirely upon the will and pleasure of the General. Hence, notwithstanding his vehement profession of subservience to the Vicar of Christ, Loyola intended that Jesuitism should be its own master. And the Church of Rome shows to this day that she well understands it by a profound mistrust of the great secret Society.
The Professed seldom live in profess houses, but, as picked men of the first intellects, are dispersed today in every quarter of the globe, gaining the ear of princes, keeping the consciences of kings, controlling statesmen in their cabinets, monopolizing the education of the young, and making their voices heard through pulpit and press.
But the Professed does not escape from undergoing a fourth time the terrible ordeal of discipline whereby judgment, heart, and conscience are purged out of him, and he becomes a Jesuit apostle, ready to undertake the most difficult, the most dangerous, and withal the most unholy enterprises which his General may assign to him. “Talk of drilling and discipline!” exclaims Dr. Alexander Duff; “why, the drilling and the discipline which gave to Alexander, to Caesar, to Hannibal, to Napoleon, and to Wellington the men that marched in triumph achieving brilliant victories, cannot in point of stern, rigid, and protracted severity be compared to the drilling and discipline which fitted and moulded men for becoming full members of the militant institute of the Jesuits.”