Saint Ignatius Loyola

IN Italy itself the Society was steadily spreading during the fruitful years 1 542-1 544, following Ignatius's election as General in 1541. To Venice vvent Lainez; and the Venetians in crowds passed half the night outside the church, as outside the doors of a theatre, to hear his ardent oratory. It availed to restrain even the licence of their beloved Carnival — a sacrifice which only an Italian can properly measure; and his sermons in San Salvatore on the Gospel of St. John he was solicited to repeat thrice a week. He lodged, as of old, at the Hospital of SS. John and Paul; but Ignatius sent him word to accept the rejected offer of the Doge's palace — thanks to the intervention of the Nuncio at Venice. The Doge was Andrea Lippomani, a Teutonic Knight, and brother to the Bishop of Verona. This was the beginning of a College at Padua; for Andrea offered Lainez the Priory of the Maddalena there, which was his benefice. The Jesuits did not take over the gift unhindered. Lippomani's family were angered that the Priory should be withdrawn from their ancestral control; his brother and nephew appealed against him to the famous Council of Ten. That much-maligned but sufficiently harmless body showed itself discriminating and just. Salmeron hastened, at Ignatius's bidding, to support Lainez, and the two appeared before a hostile Council, Tiaturally favourable to its own nobles and prejudiced against the interloping strangers, with their shabby garments.

Upon this adverse auditory Lainez worked an effect which preluded his triumphs before that Council, yet more august, of Trent. At the close of his speech they rose as one man and applauded. The Lippomani had to taste defeat. Ignatius would have propitiated them by an annuity of two hundred crowns to the two young men; and, when Andrea objected, made him perpetual administrator of the College, as the only means left of maintaining something of the family connection with the Priory. Polanco and des Freux, then Otelli, came first to Padua; and some five more with Mendoza next year completed the opening of the College — the first in Italy. Andre des Freux, though only a scholastic, was an accomplished student: the catalogue of his knowledge is cncy- clopcEdic, after the manner of the age. He would deserve note for one thing alone — that (becoming secretary to the Saint) he translated the " Exercises*" into Latin, the first published work of the Society that was to fill the world with its publications. At a subsequent period he was Superior of the College secured for the Society by Lippomani at Venice. A Jew named Elia came thither in pursuit of his brother, whom the Jesuits had received. Des Freux offered him lodging in the College, that he might be free to converse with his brother. On his arrival during the evening, the Fathers, according to custom, washed his feet. Softened by their gentleness and courtesy, he was himself converted, and, being young, learned, and proficient in Eastern tongues, he became a missionary at Jerusalem and Cairo.

Otelli, who had been a student at Padua, was another invaluable accession to the new College, and had a successful after-career. The College found abundant work. Padua was infected with the Reformed teaching; and the preaching of Lainez prospered against it, as it had prospered in Venice. From Padua he turned his intellectual arms against the German innovations in Bassano with the same brilliant results. The perfervid Italians cast flowers upon him as he left the pulpit. In 1544 Lainez attacked another Italian stronghold of Lutheranism, Brescia. A monk who had turned Lutheran stood forth as champion of the Reformation, and challenged Lainez to a public disputation. He had reasons against the doctrine of Purgatory, so cogent that Lainez w^ould be silenced. A crowd assembled to hear the contest. In those days a public disputation was as much relished as it would have been in the Athens of Socrates, or as a lecture is still relished in the country of Emerson. One cannot say that, for the most part, these contests were more practically efficacious than they were in Athens. Some listeners may have been convinced; but for the disputants themselves, whichever way the dialectical victory inclined, they generally parted of their own opinion still. It is not the convincing of heads, but the convincing of hearts, that usually brings about a conversion. This disputation is remarkable as an exception to a rule which has few exceptions. The monk opened the attack. Lainez listened quietly, without interruption and with lowered eyes. The monk concluded; and then Lainez took his arguments one by one, answering them in the order of their delivery, though he had not taken a note. It was an extraordinary feat of memory; and the result was sensational. The monk, on the spot, publicly owned himselt persuaded, and afterwards was reconciled to the Church. He became an attached friend of Lainez. Another Jesuit, Achille, the pupil of Favre, founded with Delanoy the College of Palermo.

Meantime Ignatius was extending the work of the Society in Rome itself. The once friendless innovator had now numerous friends in high ecclesiastical place, such as Francesco Vanucci, chief almoner to Pope Paul III., Lorenzo di Castello, and Giacomo Crescenzi, who advised him as to his projects and the means of promoting them. A first result was the establishment in 1543 of the House of St. Martha for unfortunate women. All who wished to be were received and maintained without vows being required from them. It was so successful that three hundred were admitted in four years. A confraternity of ladies was organised to provide funds for the house and to help personally in the work. Ignatius followed up these poor creatures to their own houses and quarters, and accompanied them to the house through the public streets of Rome. " If I can prevent but one sin, it is worth all the trouble I can take," he said when people remonstrated that such or such a woman's repentance was short-lived. Even the wife of the Imperial Ambassador lent her house for these women's reception, and other noble matrons followed her example. This good work too did not escape the customary opposition against Jesuit innovations. The scum of Rome, male and female, nightly for months thronged before the House of St. Martha; they broke the windows, and made the air foul with obscene cries and threats. But the work went on. Rules were passed that no married woman should leave unless to rejoiq her husband, no unmarried woman unless to become a nun or otherwise permanently and honourably establish herself. The discovery of ancient Roman remains on some ground before the Jesuits' House, which Codacio was able to sell at a profit, came in time to aid the finances of the new establishment, which Ignatius at first had himself supplied. This was used to buy ground, and with the help of charitable contributions the house was made ready.

Ignatius did not rest here. He next turned his attention to a house for the Jews. He had received, to Hve with him, converted Jews cast out by their families, till their number exceeded his accommodation, and it grew needful to seek a permanent establishment. This was finally provided at San Giovanni di Mercato. The inmates were allowed by the Pope to keep all their property save what had been won by usury: this was to be restored to those from whom it had been gained; or, if that were not feasible, used in an appointed way for their own advantage. It is a feature less commendable to our modern ideas, though quite in the taste of the time, that Ignatius procured for these converts an enforced contribution from the synagogues. He would have reasoned, doubtless, that their families were unjust in depriving them of subsistence, and it was therefore just that the synagogues should repair that injustice.

He was now become an object of popular veneration, and drew throngs w^henevcr he was seen abroad. He used his popularity to procure the foundation of orphanages for boys and girls, and a refuge for girls in need of protection. Another step which he took is at variance with modern feelings. He interested himself with all his energy in promoting the revival of a disused decree by which doctors were forbidden to attend persons in danger of death until a priest had first been called in. He did not succeed, but it was afterwards revived by Pius V. Many have come, nowadays, to doubt the ultimate efficacy of State interference with personal religion, but none then dreamed of doubting it.

Amidst the Saint's minor interests and foundations, however, one foundation stands out conspicuous— that of Santa Maria della Strada, already mentioned more than once. The parish church of Santa Maria della Strada stood beneath the Capitoline Hill, hard by the Papal palace of San Marco, a finely central site which Ignatius was quick to discern. He succeeded in obtaining it through the indefatigable Codacio. The parish was removed to the basilica of San Marco, and from 1 541 to 1543 his brethren and himself lived in an old and poor building facing the church. Then alms came in freely enough for Codacio to erect a new building, beside the church. This church of Santa Maria della Strada was small, too small for the crowds brought thither by Ignatius and the Jesuits. Additions were made, but, on his arrival, St. Francis Borgia determined to have done with patchings and to build an entirely new church. The foundation-stone was even laid in 1550, and it was the design of Borgia to make his church memorable by calling in no less a man than Michael Angelo. "The most celebrated man now known," wrote Ignatius, " Michael Angelo, who is doing St. Peter's, is undertaking the work for. mere devotion and without any gain." This passing link between Ignatius and Michael Angelo is itself interesting, and the perpetuation of it in immortal stone would have been monumentally valuable. But the scheme failed, and it was after Michael Angclo's death that Cardinal Alessandro Farnese began, in 1568, the existing church of the Gesu.

The year 1544 was closed for Ignatius with a minor incident, which he doubtless did not think minor — the illness of Ribadeneira. That Benjamin of the Society gradually acquires with the reader something of the attraction he had for Ignatius. The illness was long. This Pedro, one conjectures, for all his high spirits, was of no robust constitution; and he hesitated to comply with the doctor's prohibition of Lenten fasting. His brethren might be shocked. " Who has a right to be shocked? " answered Ignatius. " Ought they not rather to thank God they are not in the like need } '' Yet poor Pedro had not been so fai wrong in his fast; some of the Toledo College actually found matter for scandal in the necessary relaxation. Ignatius was so angered that he sent a letter, which he ordered to be read in the College refectory, denouncing the penalty of expulsion against all w^ho should repeat the offence. One likes the touch of hot indignation on behalf of the ardent lad who had cost him such special trouble in the Novitiate. When Ribadeneira recovered Ignatius despatched him to Padua, that he might finish studies twice broken off, once when he left Paris with the Spanish Jesuits, and again when his health obliged him to leave Louvain for Rome. Two brothers of Salmeron accompanied him, of whom the young Diego died at Padua. "I believe," wrote Ignatius to Ortiz of Ribadeneira, during this sojourn at Padua, " that, if he lives, he will be a great and true servant of God our Lord."

At the same time Ignatius was exercising his vigilance in affairs abroad. In 1542 he had mediated betvseen the Pope and the King of

Portugal, Joam III. The Pope had raised to the Cardinalate Miguel da Sylva, Bishop of Viseu, who, after being Prime Minister, had fallen under the royal displeasure; the king was offended, recalled his ambassador from Rome, and sequestrated the bishop's revenues. Ignatius suggested a compromise, by which the bishopric should pass to Cardinal Farnese, while Farnese should pay over its revenues to Miguel during the latter's lifetime. The king accepted the proposal, indirectly made to him through Father Simon Rodriguez, the Jesuit Provincial at Lisbon. The Pope gave special privileges to the Portuguese Church, Joam made Miguel protonotary of the kingdom of Portugal, and the matter was smoothed over. Thus early we see the Society beginning to exert that political influence for which it afterwards became famous.

Nor was this the sole instance. Ignatius obtained Joam's interference against duelling, and was again a mediator between him and the Pope concerning the Inquisition. The Portuguese Jews had been summarily " converted,'* and the Portuguese Church was not long in discovering that hidden Jews were more dangerous than open Jews. The remedy which Joam was anxious to try was the ill remedy of the Inquisition. But the Popes never loved that weapon of the Spanish or Portuguese kings, and Paul III. stood out, anxious concerning the right of accused persons. In August 1546 Ignatius writes to Rodriguez that the king's proposals arc not yet quite accepted.

"The Pope desires that the Saracens and Jews who have received baptism shall have four months granted them to decide cither to remain in Portugal and live there as true Christians, or to leave it, if they prefer to retain their superstitious worship. The Pope wills also that the Inquisition shall be gentle and compassionate towards all who are brought before it, whatever be the cause of accusation."

The Pope, in fact, under Ignatius's mediation, yielded at last, but reluctantly and with every effort to safeguard the just treatment of prisoners.

A less questionable topic of negotiation between Joam and Ignatius concerned the possessions of Portugal in the East and in Africa, Thus in 1543 the Jesuits sent out to join Xavier took over the Seminary of Goa. And, in Africa, Portugal asked their assistance. Her Red Sea possessions had brought her (like Italy nowadays) into contact with Abyssinia. Abyssinia, the ancient Ethiopia, which of old gave his title to the Egyptian as Wales to our English heir-apparent, was a land of fable and romance for our European ancestors. So it had been in the Middle Ages, and the legend still subsisted in the sixteenth century. It will ever subsist, for the mediaeval romance has been immortalised in the most enchanted poetry of our nineteenth century:

It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.

And yet to another poet it was " all in a heavenly Abyssinian vale " that

The ruddy snow On many-ridg^d Abora turned pale.

For, said mediaeval legend, Abora was the guardian

Mount which overlooked the site of Paradise. To the sixteenth century Abyssinia was a land of fabulous riches; and, like the imagined El Dorado of the West, set on edge its worst lusts of avarice. The Portuguese Catholics, like the Dutch and

Anglo-Saxon heretics alter them, while their Government talked about the spread of Christianity, too often made Christianity a synonyrn for rapine and craving of gold. Xavier protested that these Catholics were making Catholicism infamous; but nothing was done to check the infamy by Catholic Portugal and her Catholic king. It was politically convenient to be blind, even as yet more Catholic Spain found eminently useful Nelson's policy of looking with the blind eye.

But at length Xavier, in the fame of his success, roused that incalculable thing, the conscience of a king. Joam instructed his ambassador to request from Ignatius the despatch of a mission to these Portuguese possessions; a mission to both Christians and heathens, for the Catholicising of the Catholics no less than their unhappy subjects. This was in 1546, and Ignatius eagerly embraced the opportunity, choosing Broet for head of the mission. But, with the request, Joam's Catholic zeal was exhausted, and he troubled himself no further. Ignatius was not so ready to be content with good imagination; he persisted in soliciting the king, and endeavoured to prick his sluggish purposes by diplomatic considerations of his own dignity and political advantage, having regard to the neighbourhood of his Indian territories. Despite all his efforts, it was not till seven years later, in 1553, that Joam at last took active measures. He asked Ignatius to send twelve priests; one to be Ethiopian Patriarch, another to be coadjutor, with right of succession. Ignatius no longer proposed Broet; and, of the three names submitted by him, Joam selected Juan Nunez. The other two, who accompanied him in the mission, were Carneiro and Oviedo; the two first being Portuguese. At last the belated mission put to sea; and Ignatius's pertinacity was successful. The letter he wrote to Rodriguez when Joam first mooted his design is worth quoting from, to show the minute care he exercised in weighing the qualifications of the men whom he chose for any important mission. It has all the worldly sagacity which he so remarkably conjoined with sanctity.

" I think that whoever may undertake the enterprise in Ethiopia must have three qualifications — first, virtue; secondly, learning; thirdly, that he should be of a dignified exterior, strong and middlc-

aged. To speak of Le Jay, he is very old; Master Lainez, though of great virtue, has not much presence, and is very delicate. Master Salmeron is young, and is still almost as boyish and beardless as you knew him; Master Bobadilla is very often poorly, and is not very suitable. Master Paschasc (Broet) alone seems to me to have in full every requisite gift. First, he is so good that we consider him in our company as an angel; secondly, in addition to the learning that he possesses, he has much experience in the reform of bishoprics and convents; and, as he went to Ireland as Nuncio, none of the Society knows so much about these affairs; for he is naturally very active and very diligent, and has always many episcopal and reserved cases to resolve, which will be still more pressing in Ethiopia. Besides, he is in person very comely and strong, and his age is a little more or less than forty."

The insistence on presence and physical strength shows the Saint to have had a prudent regard for physical advantages, over and above his reliance on virtue and grace. Clearly he did not share the Shakesperean view, that a man is in the plenitude of his powers at twenty-nine or thirty, and reckoned forty an excellent working age — despite some modern opinions to the contrary.

In the midst of these labours he was once more assailed by personal opponents; but these attacks, being after the old pattern, may be briefly dismissed. One came from a certain Mattia, postmaster of San Cassiano, and arose out of his connection with the penitents' house of St. Martha. A woman, with whom Mattia lived, found shelter there for her remorse. Mattia first attacked the house by night, and then the orthodoxy and morals of the Jesuits. Ignatius sought and finally gained an inquiry; but, before it came off, Mattia was already repentant, testified in the Jesuits' favour, and escaped with an injunction of silence — becoming afterwards a friend of the Society. The second assault arose out of the house for Jews, and the jealousy of the secular priest who was its Superior, Giovanni di Torano. Heresy, and violation of the Confessional bond of secrecy, these were his charges; but, forcing them to a hearing, his own conduct failed to bear the Hght; and life-imprisonment was commuted to banishment through the Saint's intervention. The third attack, from a Spanish friar Barbaran, was again directed against St. Martha; but the inquiry by Cardinal Crescenzi easily disposed of it; and its one result was a little Ignatian letter in which the Saint returned the Friar's wishes for a bonfire of Jesuits by a hope that the Friar himself might be fired with the Holy Ghost. Of these things enough.

Matters more weighty called for Ignatius's attention. One was the matter of dignities for his disciples. First Bobadilla, and then Le Jay, were proposed for the Bishopric of Trieste by Ferdinand, King of the Romans. All over Europe, such were the disorders of the Church and the time, there was difficulty in finding worthy occupants for vacant sees, when worthy occupants were most in demand. In Germany the difficulty and the necessity were alike at their height, and Ferdinand had seen with his own eyes the success of the Jesuits there where others failed. From Germany, therefore, came the first conceptions of a design which would have replenished the veins of the episcopacy by draining those of the Society. Nor was this the only reason for the alarm with which Ignatius heard of the project. From those early Roman days, when the Imperial ambassadors made known to him the charge that his humility was a bait for a mitre, he had resolved to refuse all dignities for his Order except under Papal compulsion; and he held them fatal to the very spirit of his Society. He had cause, then, on all hands for alarm. The danger was instant. Refused by Bobadilla, Ferdinand turned to Le Jay. Refused by Le Jay, he turned to the Pope to compel Le Jay. Le Jay, panic-stricken, appealed to Ignatius; but the matter was already afoot. Ferdinand had put the affair in the hands of his ambassador, Lasso, with a letter, setting forth his reasons, and ordering him to press the matter urgently with the Pope. Ignatius appealed to the ambassador, and was met by Ferdinand's letter. He hastened to the Pope, and found Paul III. already committed, and firm in his approval. The hearts of kings were in the hands of the Lord; and the Pope held that Ferdinand, at any rate, had justified Scripture. From his standpoint the view was natural; and he would give Ignatius nothing beyond a promise to seek counsel of prayer, with a recommendation that Ignatius should do the same. Ignatius doubtless did; but he also sought aid of his friends in the purple: with the result that Cardinal Carpi wrote in his behalf to Ferdinand — fruitlessly. Finally he had recourse to his penitent, Margaret of Austria: she engaged Paul to delay the nomination till a final appeal could be made to Ferdinand. Ignatius wrote the letter himself, and where Carpi had failed he succeeded. Ferdinand instructed Lasso to drop the business, and the Pope then gave way to Ignatius. T\\tjinale was a Jesuit Te Dtiim,

But not only a Te Deum, The escape had been too narrow, and Ignatius thought the moment ripe to make a repetition of the attempt impossible. He laid before the Pope the whole danger to the spirit of the Order in such honours. The dangei of worldliness; the danger of jealousies and disunion; the corruption of motive, or suspicion of such corruption; the hold it would give to their enemies, since the Jesuits, by their nearness to the Court of Rome and the Courts of princes, must have peculiar opportunity for seeking preferment, and would be charged, in any case, with taking advantage of it. He adduced also the drain on the talent and worth of the Society, but disclaimed any censure of other Orders which accepted dignities and bore them estimably. The young Order was too weak for a like levy, " Holy Father," said the Captain of Pamplona, reverting always to the martial conception of his Company, " I hold the other Orders in the army of the Church-Militant as so many squadrons of cuirassiers, who are to stand fast in the post assigned them, keep their ranks, and face the enemy, always in the same line, and with the same manner of fighting. But we are as so many light-horsemen, who must be always ready, night or day, against the hap of alarms and surprises, to assault or support, as it may chance, to go everywhere and skirmish on all sides. Being enforced to remove continually from town to town, from province to province, from pole to pole, at the least beck of Christ's Vicar, we cannot rightly be stablished anywhere.'' " It is the first time," said Paul, " that any Sovereign has hearkened to such a petition as this! " and Ignatius prevailed. The Jesuits were absolved from dignities.

The next matter was to secure them from undertaking the direction of Women-Religious; and this too arose out of chance occasion. It wears almost an ungracious look that Ignatius, who had owed so much to women in the early struggles which preceded the establishment of the Society — so that it might wellnigh be said women were the fostermothers of Jesuitism — should refuse to charge it with the responsibility for the most serious of their sex. It was a further irony of fate that the very occasion for this prohibition was created by the most constant of his early benefactresses, Isabel Roser. Isabel became a widows and arrived in Rome with the design of beginning a Religious life under obedience to Ignatius. Two Roman ladies joined her; and at first the Saint's gratitude, coupled with the Pope's personal intercession, proved stronger than his prepossession against such an idea. The community was a very little one, too; and would surely, therefore, give little trouble. He accepted the vows of Isabel and her friends. Brief experience dispelled the idea that a small community must be small charge. Devoted woman though she was, she gave rueful demonstration that women may attain heroic virtues sooner than reticence and discretion. The unlucky leader found the ladies a restless exaction: out of season, as well as in, he was pestered to resolve their doubts and scruples, hear their grievances, adjust their squabbles. The government of three pious women, he cried (there were actually four), was more trouble than that of the whole Society! He would have no more of it; and — after announcing his resolve to Isabel in a kind letter, engaging her to abide by the Papal decision — he appealed to Pope Paul for a release from his obligation, and an absolution of the Society from all such duties in future. Paul, accordingly, by Apostolical Letters discharged the Society from the government of women, singly or in community. Following the matter with wonted thoroughness, next year Ignatius secured that even specially granted Bulls should not compel the Jesuits to such charge, unless they were expressly designated for it by name. A provision against the government ol women was then inserted in the Constitutions — allowing the members, however, to render spiritual assistance, and hear confessions of women, on special occasions; and the peril of many Isabel Rosers was effectually fended from the Order. Two or three years afterwards Ignatius refused the petition of the Duke of Ferrara, a friend who had built the College in his own town, that the Jesuits would direct a convent founded by his mother; and the Valladolid Fathers were commanded to abandon the control of another they had been persuaded to assume. But with Isabel Roser the affair had an issue which must have been a grief to Ignatius. Her acquiescence, one may guess, covered a smouldering sense of injury, perhaps of ingratitude on the Saint's part. Be this as it may, she presently changed her attitude towards him, and through her nephews brought an action to recover " a great sum " which she alleged the Jesuit House owed her. Further, she wanted a written statement that Ignatius did not abandon her on account of her faults, and filled Rome with talk about her wrongs. Despite the Saint's efforts to have the case privately settled, she allowed her nephews (one of whom. Dr. Ferrar, was inimical to Ignatius) to carry it before the Substitute of the Papal Vicar; and of course lost it. One is sorry to know that she seems never to have renewed her friendship with the man to whom once she had been, as he himself called her, a mother in Christ.