CHAPTER X
WHILE the foundations of the Society were thus being securely laid in Rome, another mission had gone forth from it, besides the great Indian mission and the Spanish mission already named. This was a brief affair, and, in the common course, thought unsuccessful; but it deserves a word of mention if only because of its concern with our own islands.
It was a mission to Ireland. Ireland was now bent beneath the first furious blast of the English Reformation: the arm of Henry VIII. and his terrible Minister, Cromwell, had been stretched forth ruthlessly across the narrow seas: all clergy who refused the royal supremacy in religion were driven to flight or hiding; Mass and the Sacraments were become penal; the nobility as a whole had bowed to the King, and the blind Wauchop, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, was an exile in Rome. An emissary from the stricken country (Raymond, conjectured to have been Redmond O'Gallagher, Bishop of Killala) besought ecclesiastical aid for the wretched priesthood and people. The Archbishop of Armagh, in 1 541, the first year of Ignatius's Generalship, added his voice, and asked Pope Paul to send a Jesuit with power to grant dispensations, give the Sacraments, and sustain the persecuted Catholics. Broet and Salmeron were chosen, after a delay caused by the death of Codure, who had first been named in Broet's place. They were sent with the full powers of Papal Nuncios. It was originally designed they should travel without money, after the customary
Jesuit fashion; but a young noble, Francisco Zapata, who had long desired to join the Society, gained leave to finance and join the mission. It was well, indeed, that Zapata was inspired to start his Novitiate in this new and striking fashion, for the country was in no position to support even the frugal Jesuit Nuncios, as the result painfully proved. The Saint gave them marching instructions, most admirable examples of the Pauline sagacity which made him and his great pupil, Xavier, irresistible in the winning of men. Thus he enjoins:
" In order to make acquaintance with great persons, and to gain their affection for the greater glory of God, Our Lord, first study their character, and act accordingly. If, for example, a man be of a hasty temper and speaks rapidly and much, then assume with him something of a familiar tone, adopt his way, but let it be about things good and holy, and be not too serious, or reserved, or melancholy. But with those of a more phlegmatic character, who are slow of speech, grave and measured in discourse, adopt a manner similar to theirs; this is sure to propitiate them. ' I make myself all things to all men.' "
But, says the Saint, if a man be " tempted and melancholy,'* then in order to edify and console him " it is desirable to adopt a disposition contrary to his own." You should then " be kind and good, converse much with him, and show him both at home and abroad much complaisance and cheerfulness." One remembers Ignatius's own dancing of the Basque dance in order to cheer Ortiz. Knowing Salmeron's quick temper, he gives a special caution on the necessity of such a character's approaching any disputatious conference with a careful predetermination to avoid quarrel and suppress irritation. Of all which wise counsels the only thing to be said is that few men have the adaptability of character effectually to follow them. Yet that Jesuit discipline did in some measure supply for any defect of that native gift, we have the singular successes of Jesuit diplomacy to prove. The three missioners reached Ireland by way of Scotland. At Stirling Castle they saw the Scottish King, who promised fidelity to the Pope against the influence of Henry VIII., and gave them commendatory letters to the people of his isles. They reached Ireland in the beginning of Lent, 1542. They landed in disguise, and their progress through the island was a stealthy progress; for not only were they in danger themselves, but they brought deadly risk on any who should be convicted of harbouring them. Save one, all the chiefs had submitted to Henry, and were sworn to hand over to him any recalcitrant priest or Roman emissary who should fall into their power. So much was this the case that they found the Irish terrified at their coming: they had to sleep under a fresh roof every night, lest they should draw discovery and punishment on those who sheltered them, and it was only by slow degrees that the cowed people took heart of grace. But the new Jesuit fervour presently warmed and animated the abandoned people: the priesthood, hunted down and decimated, in particular found courage and hope from their ministrations and exhortations. In thirtyfour days they completed their covert visitation of hapless Ireland, going through the entire country. But death was on their track; the Viceroy knew of their coming, and set a price upon their heads, a writ of confiscation and death on their harbourers. Back to Scotland they needs must go, and here too was no stay for them; Henry had stirred disaffection and revolt throughout the land, the shadow of the coming Scottish Reformation was already deepening over it. They retreated to Paris, where they found a Papal commission to transfer their Nunciature to Scotland. But the order was quickly rescinded when Paul learned the state of that country, and they pursued their way to Rome — not without trouble, including temporary arrest, caused by fresh war between France and the Emperor.
In Rome the blind Archbishop of Armagh was moved by their story to revisit his stricken country. But the Pope intervened, and he passed into Germany, to assist at the Council of Trent and finally die in exile at Lyons, in a Jesuit college. The mission was seemingly a failure; but who shall say what part it may not have played in heartening the Irish to that stubborn resistance which preserved Irish Catholicism for after-ages? Zapata's Jesuit career, one is sorry to learn, was a failure indeed. After finishing his studies at Paris, where he stayed while his companions went on to Rome, he returned to the novitiate in the Papal city. But he jeered at Nadal for preaching in the mountebankfrequented space of Monte de' Banchi; and Ignatius summoned him from bed to leave the house and the Society at dawn.
Broet and Salmeron, on their return, were sent to carry the Jesuit crusade through various Italian towns. Strada had already been successfully evangelising Montepulciano; and Broet continued his work on his way to Foligno, whither his companion and himself were now despatched. They were most successful at Foligno among the relaxed clergy and convents. It was not only in piety that the clergy needed reform; the Jesuits found scope among them for their abilities as schoolmasters. Then Salmeron went on to bitter contest with religious revolt at Modena; while Broet, reforming by the way a nunnery at Reggio, attacked the equivocal Bernardino Ochino in his stronghold at Faenza. As in the days of the Albigenses, austerity and zealous eloquence were on the side of the heretic, laxity and luxury on the side of the orthodox clergy. Nor had Ochino as yet openly broken with the Church. Broet opposed him by charity to the destitute no less than by instruction to the ignorant, drawing his resources from the rich whom he gained; and only when he had prepared his ground did he proceed to dispute. But his chief success was with the influential and educated class. One fruit of his labours was a Sodality for aiding the poor with food and medicines, having its own physician and its lawyer to undertake the causes of the wronged poor. He healed enmities and family feuds — always the curse of Italy; and among the schools of the young, that special Jesuit field, he had two years' richly rewarded labours.
All this concerns the sons, rather than the Father; and, in fact, henceforward the life of Ignatius becomes mainly the life of his Order. He had come into the world, first to sanctify his own soul, secondly to create that Order; and with its establishment the period of storm and stress, in which he had stood forth as its active protagonist, was at an end. It was the feeling of this that urged him to desire a retirement, wherein he might devote himself to that primal end of self-sanctification which now seemed to him the only one left. But he was to keep the task of ruling what he had founded; and, as ruler, he sunk his own personality in the energies he inspired and directed. As we are aware of the brain only through the acts of the members, and the words of the mouth, so the manifested achievements of Ignatius during this latter portion of his career are the achievements of his children, his Society. But behind the illustrious and more than European record we are aware, invisibly, of a brain, a heart energising and co-ordinating all; and that brain, that heart, is Ignatius. Only thrice he interrupted his central administrative life by distinctively personal action: to confer with Paul III. at Montefiascone concerning the Portuguese Inquisition; to reconcile the warring townships of Tivoli and Castel Madama; and to reconcile Ascanio Colonna with Juana de Aragon his wife, sister-in-law of Vittoria Colonna. On this last occasion it rained so heavily (and it does rain, when rain it does, in " sunny Italy ") that his companion, Polanco, entreated him to think of himself — and perhaps Polanco — and delay the journey.
" It is thirty years since I put off anything I undertook in God'? service, happen what might,'* he answered; and they went.
If this was characteristic of his energy, a minor incident connected with the Jesuit establishment at Tivoli, the town whose feud with Castel Madama he staunched, is no less characteristic of his justice. The Bishop was angered by his nephew's joining the Society. So a dispute on privilege broke out between him and Navarro, the Rector of the Jesuit
College at Tivoli. Ignatius, supporting his subordinate in the affair, nevertheless rebuked him severely for not observing humility in the defence of his privileges*
But while Ignatius remains thus in the Roman centre of action, obscured behind the great and w^idely ramifying affairs he controlled, his own personal life pursued its quiet and patient daily course, undeflected by these affairs. Let us, then, once for all survey what is known of that unambitious routine which made so much of his existence, and bears the stamp of his nature.
Each day he said Office, till dispensed therefrom by Paul III. at the suggestion of some among the brethren. The reason was one possible only in the case of a Saint — lest he should injure his eyes by his tears. Each morning he made an hour's first meditation, and said Mass — with such emotion that it took him another hour. But, with his usual impersonal common sense, he said that half an hour was enough for most priests; and the Faithful of the Farm Streets of those days were found to prefer that their priest were not a Saint in this particular Then, after Mass, he meditated by himself for two hours, his favourite piactice being to kneel by a small window in his room whence he could see the tabernacle of Santa Maria della Strada; and at these times his face was seen to be irradiated. Afterwards he went out on business with his beloved Ribadeneira or another, or in the absence of such business was at home to callers. He dined with the Community at noon, and then retired to another chamber for the recreation hour. The brother who waited at table set out an hour-glass^ and they talked of their affairs, each Father having a note of the matters he wished to bring forward. Ignatius needed no such aid: on the contrary, his excellent memory — the memory which has always characterised the great active leaders of men, whether generals, statesmen, or Saints — enabled him to suggest and rectify the omissions of other speakers. He controlled the discussion, and inquired of each w^hat he had to put forward. The glass ran out, and he left the room, dealing with correspondence, and dictating to his secretary. Many letters he wrote himself, copying a letter three or four times sooner than risk error. After supper he received the reports for the day of his subordinate authorities in the House, and issued his instructions. The infirmarian he questioned particularly, regarding the sick as his special charge After this he conversed with his secretary, and then paced his room, leaning on a stick, sometimes praying audibly. He slept only four hours — a fact which implies a marvellous vitality. Even then, the brother who occupied the next room often heard groans and blows: it was believed he sustained diabolical attacks. But the brother going to inquire was forbidden to repeat his visit, nor did Ignatius vouchsafe other comment or answer.
His care of the sick was most tender. A patient had been ordered soft skins to enwrap him:, the infirmarian acknowledged they had not been procured. He was despatched at night, with a couple of comrades, to get them. When another patient lacked a doctor, and it was midnight, infirmarian and steward were sent to summon him — ordered not to return without him. They did not disobey, though, to catch their man, they had to wait in a hospital till day. The Saint not only visited, but watched the sick during the night, if their illness were serious. To Fathers who were sick in his absence he wrote encouraging letters — one is preserved on the wall of his room in Rome. God, he said, had afflicted him with so much illness that he might sympathise with it in others. A Father laughingly repeated the words of a delirious brother: Ignatius was severely vexed with him. He sold pewter plates and dishes, even the bedcoverings, to buy food ordered for the sick; and when, delicacies being prescribed for a prostrate brother, there were but three small coins in the hands of the steward, " Spend them on the sick man," said he; " we will dine on bread.'' The Community must beg in the streets, he ordered, or reduce their numbers, but the doctor's orders concerning the treatment of the sick must be rigidly carried out. The Rector of Ravenna College he menaced to remove for slack care of the sick: he sent Novices to cheer by singing a patient suffering from deep melancholy. The remedy was potent with himself; but for that very reason, esteeming it a self-indulgence, he seldom would suffer himself the advantage of it. Such nothings in themselves go to illustrate the attitude of the Saint, or, what is quite as much to the point, the attitude of his contemporaries towards him.
Going abroad with his companion, he wore a sombrero and the ecclesiastical cloak yet used in Spain: his lowered eyes he lifted not to a woman when she spoke to him. The wounded leg of Pamplona, always painful to the touch, made him limp somewhat, though he tried to hide the limp; and, save when he raised his hand in salute, nothing was to be seen but his face. That was quiet and grave; but those who saw him in old age averred that it seemed to them divine in conversation. To the last he retained the extraordinary power and control of his eyes, when the downcast glance was lifted to those who spoke with him. His dress was now neat, and he specially enjoined neatness on his followers, without departing from the homeliness proper to their poverty. They were to follow the dress of the place where they lived, avoiding singularity. But, provided the garb were clean and tidy, he so inculcated poverty that Lainez and Salmeron appeared even before the Council of Trent in patched clothes.
In his manner he practised the rules he gave to the Irish missioners, opening talk with every one according to his profession and interests, then adroitly turning the conversation to higher things. His aristocratic courtesy, his gentleness and urbanity, were irresistibly ingratiating; while his sagacity in temporal matters caused Diego Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, to say that his master's affairs always went well when he himself followed Ignatius's counsel, ill when he neglected it. So notorious was this that he made a resolution against giving advice on such matters, even to his kinsfolk; or he would have been universally resorted to. And, despite his care for his subjects, he was severe on self-seeking. His beloved Bobadilla asked a larger room: prepare, he was answered, to lodge two more with him! A priest who showed impatience and petulance in illness was sent into exile on his recovery; and only by long and patient zeal did he finally wrest from Ignatius an assurance that he still belonged to the Society. So severely did he inculcate poverty that he was angered if a Jesuit took an apple from the garden, or even picked it from the ground; he must not so much as pluck a flower. Nay, he was to confess this fault of acquisitiveness before any other sin.
Yet he was so far from arbitrary, that he discussed all measures with his brethren; and even then enjoined them to sleep on the matter, and pray the next morning before decision. His words were so deliberative that his disciples said they were like laws: " To see and hear Father Ignatius is like reading a chapter in the Imitation of Christ^'' said Gonfalez. The military idea which so prominently influenced the conception of his Company he seems to have carried also into his Generalship; or, rather, it was in the soldierly nature of the man. Like a military general, he was reticent and sparing of speech —
" Alike reserved to blame or to commend,"
in Pope's words; though not of him could it be added:
" A timorous foe and a suspicious friend."
He was firm of friendship, but undemonstrative in its expression; indeed, he carried out in himself that prohibition of particular friendships which he strictly imposed on his followers, and where he loved most was like to give least shows of love. Love was to be diffused over all, without distinction of favour, much less of favouritism. He so hated detraction that he sought to find some softening of all blame he heard pronounced on others, and we are told " the interpretations of Ignatius " became proverbial among his brethren. Where he could find no palliation, " Truly I would not have done it '* was his harshest sentence. He betook him to the confessional, because in some needful comment on a brother's passing fault he spoke to three when two alone were enough for his purpose. His speech was direct, brief, and unadorned; he preferred to be a listener rather than a talker, and he was pithy, so also was not discursive — a defect his strong mind disliked in others. He was so conscientiously accurate that Gonfalez declared that he once repeated a story after a lapse of years without variation of detail or almost of words. His scrupulosity as to letter-writing we have already noted. He would have his disciples reserve private matters to a postscript and a separate sheet, bestowing extreme care on the body of the letter, which was for the public eye. Bobadilla told him he had no time for such meticulousness, which he roundly condemned. Ignatius replied with the gentlest humility, but held to his point. The outspokenness must have been grateful to Ignatius, who hated secrecy, ambiguity, or cunning.
No less did he hate sloth. Asked for whom he was working, a Lay-brother answered, " For God and His love." "Then," retorted Ignatius, " I assure you if you do no better henceforth I shall penance you soundly. Were you working for men, it might be no great matter to take so small trouble over it; but to work thus carelessly for God holds no excuse.*' When Lainez said he would gladly take the offer of immediate Heaven, Ignatius declared, " I would elect rather to stay and work on for the glory of God: I am sure he is a generous Master, and would not suffer harm to a soul that had delayed its own fruition of Heaven to increase His glory here." Again he said, " Whoso would do aught for the glory of God must not be over-wise, nor act only after the measure of his
He was, so to speak, for a certain holy rashness. His own charity was so fervid, that he imagined he should suffer more in hell from the blasphemies of the lost than from aught beside. Nor was he less eager to suffer than to do for God. It was with exultation he told Ribadeneira that Christ had promised the Cross should never be lacking to the Order. " If God sends you great sufferings, it is a sign He will make you a great Saint: if you wish Him to make you a great Saint, ask Him to send you great sufferings,*' was one of his sayings. Where the Society prospered without check, he diagnosed relaxation.
He was not all austerity. He would visit, receive, and talk freely with the friends of the Society, and of his tenderness to sorrow we have already seen something. With himself only he was always austere. He asked a Father, about noontide, how often he had examined himself that day. " Seven times,'* came the answer. " Only seven times? " His rewards were great but secret, hinted to us rather than revealed. Saying Mass on Christmas Day in the Lateran Basilica, during his early priesthood, he caused a man present to say to Strada, the acolyte: " That priest of yours must have been very wicked, for his conscience smote him so at Mass that he wept all the time." And asked as to his method of prayer, he answered Lainez that in the things of the Lord he was as those who receive rather than those who work. It was Lainez, too, who asked him if it were true he had an archangel for his guardian. He averted his face with a virginal blush.
This master of asceticism loved the garden, loved the plants and loved the flowers he would not pick. It was in the garden he most walked and contemplated. One who saw him in the country spoke of him as " that Father who is always looking upwards, and talking with God." It was " looking upwards " in the balcony of his study on the nights of summer, that he sat gazing on the stars: it was then Lainez heard him say, " Oh, how earth grows base to me when I look upon heaven.'*
This man, as we have said, held native kindred with the Raleighs and Sidneys, the poet-soldiers and statesmen of our own sixteenth century. Nay, the like imaginative strain, so scorned of our petty day, inhered in all the lofty souls of that age. It is in the English martyr, bowing his head to the axe of Elizabeth: " Though I shall have a sharp dinner, I trust in Christ I shall have a most sweet supper." It is in his brother-sufferer, pointing at foot of the scaffold to his last sun: " I shall shortly be above yon fellow! " The splendid familiarity of the utterance recalls FalstafFs arrogant terming of the stars " the cinders of the element." Poet, Saint, and Martyrs shared the noble imaginative elevation of their era, in which the spirit of the Gothland the whole once-barbaric West culminated alike for good and evil. Even the Saints of our day speak a less radiant language: and sanctity shows '* shorn of its rays" through the black fog of universal utilitarianism, the materiality which men have drawn into the very lungs of their souls.
To the world of this day Ignatius, however worthy of admiration in his practical energy, his administrative sagacity, on the contemplative side is a " visionary/' And the v^^ord, in this world's sense, means a man subject to self-wrought hallucinations, a practiser of extravagances, and an encourager of extravagances in others. Yet the true Ignatius, master of the interior life though he was, far from encouraging visions and extravagances, far even from setting store by them, looked on such matters with doubt and reserve. He was at one in this matter with the unchanged mind of the Church, which — even where it accepts them as true — has steadily maintained that visions and ecstasies are accidents, not essentials, of sanctity. Thus, after the Saint's coming to Rome, Father Santa Cruz waxed eloquent to him concerning the " inspiration " of one Maddalena della Croce, a nun, about whose visions and raptures Rome was all agog. Ignatius told him plainly that no Jesuit should say such a thing, or commit himself to such hasty judgment. In effect, the woman was presently brought to heel as dupe or impostor. Nor was he less prompt to censure and silence one of his own priests, who had talked to Novices of visions and extraordinary communications. His wisdom was justified. At one time a number of his subjects, headed by one of the Fathers, were reported to be using private and extra devotions: it proved that when, by the rule, they should have gone bedward, they got together and luxuriated in extraordinary austerities. Ignatius publicly punished the leader and banished him to Naples — not before one excellent student had been nigh driven mad.
So also he kept a check on all excess of fasting or devotion. His firm common sense would have temperance in all things, and he remembered his own ascetic indiscretions (as he now regarded them) at Manresa. Not less did he profit, in guiding others, by that agony of scruples which had been the final ordeal of his Manresan preparation. A Spanish Lay-brother, who had enfeebled himself by fasting, he bade under holy obedience conform himself to the doctor's regimen in all things, since it was better he should have a due care of himself that he might the longer be fit for God's service. And when a Flemish brother grew so fantastically scrupulous in the saying of his Office as to consume the whole day over it, he bade him take an hour, and leave alone whatsoever he had not then said. He freed the man of his scruples, as in similar fashion he had freed Favre in Paris. Another Lay-brother with a mind diseased by self-distrust, who was tormented by the fear that he would have to quit the Order, " Be sure. Brother John," said the Saint, " if I remain in the Society so will you." Ht had many ways of combating this special difficulty. One Novice lay awake at night, irritated by a command given him, and revolved departure. Ignatius sent for him, and asked what course he would prescribe for certain temptations — the lad's own. In the talk he glided in suggested remedies, so adroitly and with such insight, into the youth's mind that the Novice abandoned his design. In another of these cases, he told the waverer to quit if he would; but first, when he waked at night, to lay himself out as on his death-bed, and ask himself how he would wish to have lived when death was at hand. That youth also persevered.
But this patience was only with those in whom he detected the true spirit under their wavering or apparent recalcitrance. Others he did not wait to have go, but dismissed with a sternness that almost dismayed his brethren. The blow fell suddenly, but it is likely that it had long been meditated, and that Ignatius had reason beyond the apparent provocation (perhaps a long-standing perception of the subject's unfitness): for it was noted that he was apt to be unwontedly cheerful when he had made one of these abrupt riddances. He was known to have dismissed nine at one fell swoop, and ten subsequently. One had but given a playful blow to a comrade — " larking," as we should call it. We must remember that it was to the possession, actual or potential, of the Jesuit spirit Ignatius looked before all things. And part of that spirit was perfect discipline: to the General of the Company of Jesus, as to the General of an army, insubordination was the unpardonable fault. With this martial rigidity went a care that none should be tried beyond his strength: a Japanese who demanded to be tested by difficult injunctions was only indulged after long reluctance, and then with the proviso that he should speak at once if he felt the least fatigue or unwillingness. That reminds us how long ago began the attempted Christianisation of Japan; for this Bernard was sent by Xavier, one of the first-fruits of the labours of the great Founder. Nor were the Japanese the sole Eastern race represented in the Order. At Santa Maria della Strada was a Mohammedan, and at least one Jew. He, too, had designed to leave, before his conversion: but Ignatius only summoned him and said, " Isaac, stay with us." It was enough; he yielded to the fascination so many found irresistible, and he stayed.
While he would not place too heavy burthens on any, Ignatius would have his followers see God in all they did, " for it is most true that the Divine Majesty is present in all things/' "The manner of meditation which sees God in everything,'* he said, " is more easy than that other which elevates the mind to Divine objects/' With this, he insisted on humility " Humility is truth." It was merely a grasping of our veritable relation towards God. To attain it, his maxim was: " Hate what the world seeks, and seek what it avoids.'* Not only did he frown on the seeking of visions; he averred prayer itself to be a danger, lest it foster a conceit of spirituality. He would not therefore have prayer used the less, but self-abnegation, humility, charity, cultivated the more.
When Nadal would have had more hours for prayer in the rules of the Order, " It needs much prayer," said Ignatius, " to conquer the passions, but the victory gained, a quarter of an hour will serve to consociate intimately the soul with God, when the unmortified soul would scarce arrive at it in two hours." This quite accorded with his " Do all to the glory of God," as well as with his insistence on the spirit of the maxim, laborare est orare. Not less than Carlylc, he upheld the holiness of worthy work. And not less than a mihtary commander, he valued, for his subjects, men of action, or at least of energy. He did not deem that grace superseded nature, that a faineant was more valuable in religion than out of it. A laggard and weakling might by God's grace save himself, but was scarce like to save others. There was place and scope in the Company for the gentle and docile, as for all tempers, provided that they were mated with zeal; but the Saint's own gallant spirit favoured the gallant — not from favour, but from wisdom. In so choosing, he but chose others as his Master had chosen him, with a like wisdom and a like cause. He would have cried with Danton, " De Faudace^ et encore de Faudace^ et toujour s de Paudace'' His love and patience towards the fiery Ribadeneira he repeated towards all the hot and daring. He vowed his predilection for these sons of flame, and justified his special, his extreme patience with them — a patience he was not wont to show towards any taint of insubordination. Such hotspurs had a sterner task than others in self-mastery, he said; but, once successful, there was more mettle in them, and they would do greater things for God. Of two Lay-brothers contrasting in temperament, he cheered the one swift to anger, rather than the other who needed no heartening. Another such, who shunned his fellows to avoid provocation, he rebuked: " You are wrong,'* said he, " these temptations should be fought, not fled; solitude can but hide, not heal, your irritability; you will please God more by mastering this chafing than by shutting yourself in a cave for a year." Again, between passion and sullenness under rebuke, it was the sullen who got his conge from the Society. Of yet another hotspur, like Ribadeneira destined to eminence (Edmond Auger), Ignatius said he had acquired more solid holiness during his Novitiate than had two contemporaries of gentle temper.
The same saintly common sense (for high sanctity, like high genius, contrary to the vulgar notion, is eminently common-sensible) which made him cautious of visions, even of prayer, and an empha- siser of practical virtues, a lover of active energy, caused this great ascetic to set a practical if regulated value on good appetite and its concomitant, good spirits. He did not actually say " Laugh and grow fat '* (the maxim popularly imputed to monks), but he did say " Laugh and grov^ strong." The man whose own hue had paled, and his cheek grown lank in the cave of Manresa, called up a disciple conspicuously relishing his dinner, not to rebuke, but to bid him " continue to nourish himself well, and grow strong to serve God and our Society.'' So, too, he met Flemish Francis Coster in the street: " Francis, I see you are always laughing." " Now for it! " thinks poor Francis, a cheery new-comer. But no. Ignatius goes on: "I am glad of it; and while you are docile and faithful to your rule, I do not think you can be too gay. But remember, you must not be depressed by things that do not please you. I think I see in you the possessor of talents above the common; but if they are not of use because you lack humility, you will be sad." He proceeds to say he is sending Francis to Sicily for his health's sake, though the youth might prefer his native Flanders; and warns him not to let such thwarted preference sadden him. "Therefore keep yourself humble, that you may always rejoice." So, one remembers. Saint Francis of Assisi bade his ''''jongleurs of God " leave sadness to the devil and his disciples.
The same spirit of healthy practicality and common sense in Ignatius which encouraged holy cheer and (if we may so say) an unexaggcratcd relish for the good cheer of food, showed itself in the matter even of dress. His relative, Antonio
Araoz, he made to keep his smart garments during his Novitiate; and the same he did with two others. It might be that his insight discerned in it a subtle means of mortification: but it is quite in accord with his habit of calUng aristocratic members of the Order by their titles, and treating them with the etiquette due to their rank, until they asked him to discontinue the distinction. His care that the students should have healthful air and exercise has already been noted; but his strong sense was evinced in a way much more alien to the manners of his time and (perhaps we may add) of his country. Even to-day Italy does not impress the Anglo-Saxon by the minor cleanliness which his national proverb exalts as next to godliness; and the earlier ages in general shared our own Johnson's lack of passion for these matters. But Ignatius agreed with his friend, Philip Neri, in laying stress on such things. The Novice-master, a true child of the time, once reported a Novice to him for the shocking foppery of frequently washing the hands, but the Saint gave him cold comfort. He was to watch for any tokens of vanity in other ways, but not to rebuke the youth for this extraordinary inclination to cold water.
He insisted on a variation of duties — doubtless wishing to prevent his subjects from falling into a groove; and one story would seem to hint that, beyond this aim, he had a conception of that allround culture on which modern teachers have relied. His own early habits and history would impress on him its advantages. Anyway, he once asked a Novice, taking his turn in the kitchen, if he could write him a copy of verses.? It must have seemed to the lad an odd demand from his Saintly
Father; but in true Jesuit spirit he had answered that he could try, and (with more courtesy perhaps than discretion) produced some flattering verses addressed to Ignatius himself. He was asked if the lines described a Saint, and whether he really thought Ignatius to possess all the virtues set forth? With a quickness that modern criticism would consider eminently Jesuitical, and which certainly showed him no fool, the Novice rejoined he knew nothing of that, but he knew that Ignatius ought to possess them.
The dignified Spaniard, native to a land of hidalgos, had other affinities with our northern notions besides his strong common sense and his lov^e of cleanliness. Alone, probably, in that impulsive Southland, he disliked the universal -continental habit (was it then so universal, one wonders t) of the kiss between men. It may perhaps have been an ascetic objection, extending only to his Religious subjects, rather than a general dislike; but it seems so harmonious with his character at large that one is inclined to think it temperamental. He would admit it only when his Jesuits started on, or met after, a long absence caused by travel. Nay, he even reproved a Father for patting a boy on the head — an old Father into the bargain! That is certainly extreme even for 3ur cold northern notions, and clearly ascetic in its inspiration. This same eleven-year-old boy was brought on holidays by his schoolmaster to kiss Ignatius's hand; and a story is told about one such visit which reads as if it were from the life of the Saint's friend, Philip Neri. The lad came in holiday dress, with a fine purple band about his collar — doubtless an exultingly delightful purple band to its possessor! " Where is Jacopino? *' asked the Saint. Poor good little Jacopo retired and returned in his daily sobriety of plumage, to be welcomed with a quiet smile and ready hand. Yet that he himself sometimes caressed the lads who visited him, we have assurance from two of them.
Moreover, we find that he had a habit — say rather a policy — of keeping his Jesuit youth in equilibrium between the heat and ice of a two-fold treatment; and liked to maintain the gentle paternal attitude as his own privilege. It was only in accord with his system of gaining an open and unchecked confidence from the young Religious: others had to take the thankless office of severity. Nothing is more notable in the sagacity, at once iron and flexible, of his system with the initiate young, than his resolved maintenance of them between the alternating winds of North and South. Of the two Superiors in the several Colleges, one was often instructed to manage the students with all benevolence, the other with austere inflexibility; so that they oscillated between love and rigid law. In his own Roman House, as we have said, sweetness was his monopoly; the iron part was for the unhappy Master of Novices. Whence this dialogue between a bright young Spanish Novice and Luis Gonzalez, his Master, who was exercising towards him a special and bidden severity. Gonfalez expounded to him that Jesuit piety was like a wooden beam, which could only be trusted when it had been tried by heavy burthens. " Alack,'* quoth poor Gaspar Loarte, " I perceive I must make me ready for more austerities.*' Yet another time, when he was* asked his mind concerning
Ignatius, " He is like a fountain of oil/* said Caspar. " And what of me? " questioned Gon-. 9alez. Answered Caspar: " You are like a fountain of vinegar." Which brought some abatement of the vinegar from Ignatius, quick to appreciate the pleasantry, and the good humour under trial that inspired it.
His devices with individual neophytes were various as their own characters, ranging from penetrating wisdom to that seeming childishness which may almost be called a monastic tradition, and is peculiarly trying to the sympathies of the outsider. A wealthy young man had in his cell a handsome crucifix, of which he was particularly fond. For that reason, and the Jesuit rule against private property, the natural expectation would have been that he should at once have to surrender it. But Ignatius took no seeming heed, until the youth had made large advance in detachment. Then he said: " Since our brother has learned self-renunciation, and has the image of the crucified Christ in his heart, we may take it from his hands.'* He judged well: the young man was no longer reluctant. Yet this same subtle trainer made a Novice, who kept a slovenly room, cram all his movables into a sack and bear it slung over shoulder through the house, proclaiming to all comers his fault. Or he would draw a circle, magician-wise, round a culprit, leaving him to sit within (if he could) till he was released; or, again, send him to pray for a given space before the Blessed Sacrament — sometimes to pray till he was recalled, when (with pious but slightly sardonic humour) he would subjoin, " Pray that I may not forget you." There is in that a certain (may we say?) celestial trace of the grim military jest, such as would have sprung to the lips of Calderon's Figueroa, gunpowder veteran of the Italian wars. Intermittently one is reminded that in Ignatius a great soldier was lost to Spain. But it was in an unequivocal vein of comedy that he set a Novice charged with presumption in the midst of the refectory, flying a pair of " property " wings at his shoulders, while a companion warned him against trying to fly before his wings were grown. Somewhat more trying was the fate of the youth who was bidden take his seat at the lower table, where a chosen tormentor made him the butt of his jeers and upbraidings for lack of advancement in the religious life. To us, nevertheless, these inflictions seem so like the forfeits at a Christmas game that we can scarce conceive them serious as a penance. But the likelihood is that keen-eyed Ignatius knew well what he was doing; that they were astutely apportioned to special types of character, confident and reliant on their own common-sense intelligence, for whom the triviality of the penance would not be its least trying feature. It is not unknown for such "absurd" penances or trials of obedience to find the weak side of modern Novices.
Once only do we find recorded of him that he imposed a penance which (apart from the off^ence) might be called cruel. A young Jewish Novice in a fit of passion uttered against a comrade the malignant wish — " May you have a cancer! " The word canchero in Italian means also a crab; and Ignatius, thoroughly indignant, bade them fasten a little crab to the back of the lad's neck. As the claws nipped him, the Saint said: " It is meet that you should feel pain, who have wished pain to another"; but when the lad cried and promised not to repeat the offence, he was at once released. He was afterwards a Dominican, and, when he became Bishop of Forli, he himself narrated the tale — proud perhaps to have been punished by a Saint. Even in this, Ignatius's end was not the infliction of suffering, but lastingly to imprint on the boy's mind his own abhorrence of malignant cruelty even in desire. It is not necessary to assume that he was always at his best; but this we know — that by such means, by such minute, varied, and patient vigilance, by adapting himself to all minds and tempers, that he might ultimately mould them to his design, by a discipline at once stern and capable of fine adjustment to individual variation, he built up the men who were to carry his Order to the ends of the earth. Yet amidst all this silent and manifold labour as the Superior of the Roman House, he was directing, consolidating, and extending his rapidly growing Society. The methods and judgment which built up the individual Jesuit were in effect those by which he built up the corporate Order. And so, quiet, scarce notable, hidden in the blaze of the great organisation which emanated from him, he remains during the rest of his life. But to the seeing eye it was Ignatius who fought the Reformation in the towns of Germany, Ignatius who helped to sway the decisions of Trent, nay, even in a sense, Ignatius who sailed with Xavier to cast fire upon the coasts of India.