Saint Ignatius Loyola

THE Bologna mission awaited him immediately on his recovery. Disappointed in the Palestinian project, Ignatius resolved on proceeding to Rome, according to their previous decision in such event. He took with him only Favre and Lainez. The seven others were again to disperse, this time into university cities, where they would have a field of labour among the students: Salmeron and Broet to Siena, Codure and Hozes to Padua, Rodriguez and Le Jay to Ferrara, Xavier and Bobadilla to Bologna, as Xavier had been warned.

And now for the first time we become entitled to speak of the Companions as Jesuits; for hitherto the infant Order had been nameless. They asked rules before their separation, and were assigned virtually the same elementary rules as before: each to be Superior for a week, preaching in the squares, or whereso they might be suffered; their discourse to be impromptu, without thought of eloquence; instruction of children in doctrine and morals, watchful charity, and no money to be taken for any service, which should in all things and all ways be rendered for the love of God. Such, in 'sum, were their rules; after which they asked what they should answer, being demanded their rule and name. Then was it that the Saint, speaking with decision and authority, as one who had long been resolved on this point, bade them reply that they were of the Company of Jesus: as we should now say, the Brigade or Corps of Jesus. Since the day of the Free Companies which ravaged France under the Black Prince, and desolated Italy under the banners of mercenary captains, the word " Company " had been a familiar military phrase, well known to ex-Captain Inigo de Loyola. Now he had a company of his own, ready to go and to fight anywhere at the bidding of the Ruler of the Church. Throughout Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the New World just dawning upon the Old, its banners were to fly; in Paraguay it was to conquer and rule a peaceful kingdom until the advent of the destroyer; its captains were to influence the councils of princes, its soldiers to conquer democracies. What of this did Ignatius dream? He foresaw, perhaps, but battle; he asked for it but the legacy of hate.

The brethren parted, therefore, each to his own assigned mission, of which the most difficult, perhaps, was Le Jay's. He had to deal at Ferrara with a Court infected by the Reformed teaching. The brilliant and beautiful Renee d'Este was the admirer of Calvin, whose flight she had aided from the city: her husband's orthodoxy was of doubtful strength, and his nature brutal, as his Duchess too soon experienced; and Le Jay's chief support was the illustrious Vittoria Colonna. But the fortune of the Society went Romeward with its great head. To him as to Peter, though in other fashion, came a vision on the road to the City of the Seven Hills. At little La Storta, six miles from Rome, as he prayed in a wayside chapel, he told his comrade Lainez that he saw Christ with the Cross on His shoulder, and by Him the Father, Who said:

'' I will You to take this man for Your servant."

" I will have you to serve Me," and, looking on him graciously, declared, " I v^ill be propitious to you in Rome."

The Father gave him to Christ as a portion, said Ignatius; but the meaning of Christ's promise he did not then well understand, surmising that perhaps they would be martyred in Rome — a most characteristic interpretation, which shows how far he was from conceiving the great destinies awaiting him in the papal city. Dreaming, like Teresa, of " the Moors and martyrdom," he would, perchance, have been half disappointed had he divined the splendid truth. Lainez took ofF his shoes at the gates, and entered barefoot on the soil steeped in the blood of martyrs. It was November when they arrived; and, after at first begging alms, were installed as before by wealthy Spaniards in the Hospital of St. James of the Spaniards.

With the coming of Ignatius to Rome begins his wider history. With a quickness almost startling, he is transformed from the obscure and struggling student, the scarce less obscure lay missionarv, into the influential head of an astonishingly successful Order. It was inevitable. A man who can command the implicit devotion of nine remarkable men is already an unrecognised power, and needs only official approbation to become a recognised power.

That approbation was ready for him in Rome. Not in vain had Christ said, " I will be propitious to you in Rome." Paul III., true to the promises he had made to the Saint's emissaries, received him with all favour, and accepted readily the offered service of Ignatius and his followers. It could scarce be otherwise. Never had Church and 1 1 1

Papacy, battling with enemies on all sides, and struggling under the task of self-reformation, with the obstinate resistance it provoked from those of their own household, greater need for a devoted and powerful instrument. It seems incredible that in such a time Ignatius had ever been for throwing this elect energy on a foreign and distant shore. Paul III., at any rate, discerned the value of the tool placed in his hand. Not only did he accept the general offer of the new-comers' service, but he forthwith set himself to find immediate employment for those actually at hand; appointing Favre and Lainez to lecture at the University of the Sapienza, the one on Scripture, the other on Scholastic Theology. Ignatius meanwhile addressed himself to his favourite task, the apostolate of the people. With his usual scrupulous conscientiousness, he had promptly returned the money sent him by the Pope for the Levantine journey. Nor was such scrupulosity needless. For the favour of those in high places now began to flow towards the young Society, and calumny quickly adapted itself to these changed conditions. The Imperial Ambassador, the Marquis de Aguilar, on whom the three Jesuits called, warned them of the new attack. It was said, he told them, that they were ambitious hypocrites. They baited their hook with humility, but they angled for mitres and red hats. Ignatius crossed himself. Then he indignantly spoke out, and vowed never to accept, either for himself or any of the Society, honours or dignities, save under obedience to the Pope's command. This vow was subsequently renewed before Cardinal Carpi, Protector of the Order. Cardinal Contarini fully shared the Pope's benevolence towards the new Society, and at once manifested his friendship for the Saint. He used his influence to confirm the altered sentiments of Ortiz towards Ignatius; with such effect that the Saint's former persecutor presently sought his direction, and went through the " Exercises '* with him. The frequency of these striking changes from violent enmity to admiring reverence in those who came in contact with Ignatius is one of the many proofs that the worst trials of extraordinary sanctity come not from the evil-minded, but from excellent men of short-sighted or conservative character. Sanctity, like genius — and genius it is — frightens the large and well-meaning class which clings to trodden ways, and instinctively dreads the unhabitual in any form, because it disturbs comfortable automatism, and enforces the effort of a readjusted focus. But these very people, if they can once be got to make the effort, and effect the readjustment, may become the stoutest upholders of that which they once cried down. Thus it was with Ortiz, henceforward the firm supporter of the Jesuit Order. We are grateful to him for this retreat under the Saint's direction, were it only for the sidelight it throws on an aspect of Ignatius we might otherwise never have known. We like to learn that the Saint of Assisi once frankly and enjoyingly laughed — a most kind and innocent laughter — at the simplicity of a good lay-brother. And even so we value an answering little anecdote of Ignatius, in its place, as much as the records of his visions and sublimities. It helps us to keep touch with his humanity, which is in danger of obscuration by the dazzling aureole of his sanctity. A kindly featured face emerges from that circle of luminous whiteness. Ortiz, it is said, gave way under the strain of those recluse meditations in the abbey of Monte Cassino; his head became affected. Then the lofty and ascetic Saint forgot to forget his own gay and cavalier youth; he danced before Ortiz; he danced as another David; he danced the old Basque national dance. Ortiz was roused and brightened — the two, one may well think, laughed heartily together; and lo and behold! the " Exercises'' were carried successfully to an end. There is a charming southern atmosphere about the tale. An English Saint would doubtless have had the wisdom to enliven his drooping disciple under like circumstances; he might perhaps have sung, if an English Saint chanced to be capable of singing; but perhaps no Englishman, no man of the North, could so far h^ve forgotten his constitutional gravity as to dance. Ortiz, after this, was for becortiing a Jesuit; but Ignatius, with his customary prudence, dissuaded him from a change so total at an age already advanced.

At Monte Cassino Ignatius learned that there was indeed room for a new disciple; for one of the little army had already gone to meet " his Captain, Jesus Christ.'' Hozes waa dead. And, strangely and providentially, coming back Ignatius encountered the man. who was to fill the gap in his ranks — Francesco Strada. Strada, of whom he had formerly some knowledge in Spain, had since been in the household of Cardinal Caraffa; but, the Cardinal having disbanded his retinue, Strada was setting out to seek military service in Naples. He met Ignatius, and under the great persuasion of that personality was soon enlisted in an army other than he had dreamed. With his new General he went back, a Jesuit. This new recruit was a born preacher, one of those who move by sight as much as by hearing. He, too, was to make his mark in the Order.

Meantime the other members of the Society were busy, each at his post. Of Le Jay at Ferrara something we have said. He had to do with a Court in which the Duke, brutal and feeble, detested his French Duchess, Renee, but was orthodox after his not over-zealous fashion. The Duchess, celebrated by the verses in which the Huguenot poet, Clement Marot, has sung of her excellence and the sorrows heaped on her by her husband, was attached to the Reform party, admired and patronised Calvin, and loved her own countrymen — itself a grievance to the husband who hated her. Le Jay, being French, might have hoped to gain some influence with her. But in this he was disappointed: she held aloof from him throughout his stay of two years. In Vittoria Colonna he found his supporter: she not only took him for her Director, but introduced him to the Duke and prevailed on that unamiable personage to do likewise. He would even have made Le Jay tutor to his son, but Ignatius refused consent to an appointment which carried with it life at Court. It was a Court, moreover, rent by the factions which adhered to Duke or Duchess, Catholic or Reformed Religion.

At Padua, Codure and Hozes began by an experience of prison, after the fashion so familiar to their Founder in Spain. As of old, the ecclesiastical authorities, astonished at so great a novelty as zeal, suspected false teaching or other hidden mischief; and acting on the maxim " imprison first and inquire afterwards," laid them by the heels. T^hey spent the night in rejoicing over this good beginning to their work, singing psalms and hymns; but, next day, testimony was quick in their favour, and they were freed to preach as they would. No long time elapsed when Hozes, preaching in the great square from the text, " Watch and pray, for ye know neither the day nor the hour,'' at the end of his sermon was seized with fever, and thereafter died in the hospital. Ignatius, at Monte Cassino, was told of his illness, and related that, praying for him, he saw his spirit borne into Heaven by angels amidst a glory of light. On a later day, at the words in the Confiteor of the Mass, " omnibus Sanctis^'' the heavens opened to him and he beheld Hozes with a luminous splendour about him — a vision many days repeated. The actual face, indeed, of the dead man was so beautiful to the comrades at Padua who looked on it, that Codure wept for happiness.

Rodriguez now joined Codure, from Ferrara — none too soon. For Codure also fell ill, and was received into the house of a rich priest whom he had reformed. Meanwhile Xavier, at Bologna, had also been taken into the house of a noble ecclesiastic, Don Girolamo Casalini, Canon of San Petronio, at the instance of his niece, who had visited Xavier and been struck by his inspiration. There, for several months, he was visited with a quartan fever, in which he recognised the cross foretold by St. Jerome. He remitted on this account no jot of his assiduity in preaching and labouring for souls. His success and the affection in which he was held by the people already foreshadowed the brilliant apostolate of the Indies. A man of few words, said Casalini, but those few told; and he had that rare gift of Christian sweetness which, wherever found, fascinates the heart.

But before the Easter of 1538 Ignatius closed up his scattered Society like a fan. He called the members to Rome, and coming out of the cities wherein they had trodden the wine-press of the Lord, they found their earthly leader appropriately lodged in a vineyard at the foot of the Pincian Mount. There he had a little house, lent to him by a relative of Cardinal de Cupis, one Quirino Garzonio. This was not for long. With the arrival of the brethren a larger house became a need; and they found it at the Torre del Melangolo in the Piazza Margana, where it still is. It was the gift of a wealthy member of the Papal household, a favourite of the Pope, by name Codacio. Codacio not only gave the abode, but was the first Roman to join the Society. He was made, by Ignatius, Minister of the house he had bestowed, and gained the chiefs trust so completely that it was said Ignatius never refused him a request.

The Society now entered upon the apostolate of Rome. They preached in the churches and were soon surrounded by crowds. The wholesome emulation of the clergy was aroused: they cast off their carelessness, where their carelessfiess had not become too deeply ingrained. A widespread revival of religion was the result. Sunday sermons, which had fallen into disuse, became the rule. Yet many persons at the present day must reckon it not least among Ignatius's tokens of sanctity that he detested long sermons. Not because he did not preach. On the contrary, in that brilliant band which included such trained, eloquent, and erudite preachers as Salmeron, Lainez, and Bobadilla, who were discoursing in holy rivalry with him, he was unique in his power over listeners. His old persecutor, Ortiz, declared that he never missed the Saint's sermons at Santa Maria di Monserrato, and the elite of Rome shared Ortiz's enthusiasm. This is the more remarkable, because, while the Saint's companions all preached in the language of the country (some of them, indeed, not too fluently), Ignatius preached only in Spanish. At the same time the Jesuits heard confessions, and instructed children in the churches; while Favre and Lainez continued their lectures at the Sapienza; a striking record of activity. At the close of day, when they met after their work to return thanks, they would sometimes forget to beg alms (their means of livelihood) for joy of the fruit given to their labours.

Though the newpreachers thought it improper(as Ignatius says) to use graces or elegances of style, the graces and elegances were seeminglynot missed; and the jealous onlooker — be sure he was there — needed, therefore, some outer influence to check these much too successful men. Accordingly an attack, the most deadly Ignatius had yet sustained, was engineered with all due dexterity. The clumsy proceedings of Spain and Paris might be good enough for an unknown and almost solitary layteacher; for the head of a new Society, the favoured of Pope and other high authorities, the most venomed and finely tempered weapons of slander were required. Already Ignatius had heard from Aguilar concerning accusations of hypocrisy. But the hour was not then ripe. Now the Pope left Rome to confer with Francis I. and Charles V.

at Nice upon a crusade against the Turk. The new preachers were deprived of their most powerful patron; Rome was left in the hands of subordinates. Here was the hour and the chance. The man was speedily forthcoming. The charges of heresy and hypocrisy were suddenly set afoot again with a plausible cunning not yet attempted. The storm burst. And for a time the Company seemed about to be swept away.

The reader remembers Miguel Navarro, he of the midnight poignard and repentance in Paris.? This was the chief tool. He had been admitted and lost to the Company; had sought readmittance at Venice, had been refused; and was now ready as head calumniator. The prime mover was a very different and much more dangerous man, without whom the tools would have been of small effect. This was a minor Luther; like Luther, an Augustinian friar; but, unlike Luther, a Piedmontese, with the Italian finesse rather than the German aggressiveness. Appearing in Rome during the Pope's absence, he began to preach with an appearance of great devotion and simplicity, eschewing all controversial matter. His gifts soon gained him large audience; and then he began cautiously and gradually to glide in the characteristic Lutheran teachings. But already the new Society was preparing for its future function. He dashed up against that rock upon which so many heresies were to splinter. Lainez and Salmeron, who heard and, as it were, overheard him, began by calling on him, and endeavouring privately to move him from his offences. The Augustinian, Fra Agostino by name, reviled them as ignorant men, and declared that if they pursued their malice against him he would have all Rome on his side. The Jesuits then began to deal with his doctrines from the pulpit, without direct attack on him. Such was the preliminary skirmishing: the battle was to come.

For it w^as not long before Fra Agostino resolved to crush his critics once for all. He carried the war into their own country. From the pulpit he declared Ignatius a heretic and hypocrite, a wolf in shepherd's clothing, one who in holy guise had spread the mischief of his doctrines through the Universities of Europe. Salamanca, Paris, Venice had convicted him of heresy, and in all these places he had but escaped death by flight. Here, in Rome, were men of his own country who had discovered his character after at first being seduced by him, and abandoned him in horror. One such there was to whom the Friar especially pointed, who was ready to witness concerning what he knew of Ignatius's iniquities; and Agostino called on Rome to show itself not less discerning than Paris and these other cities which had cast the hypocrite out.

The witness, of course, was Miguel Navarro; and his fellows in righteousness were Pedro de Castillo, Francis Muderra, and another Spaniard, Barrera, all adherents and helpers of Agostino. The attack so nimbly begun was boldly prosecuted. Not only did Navarro privately relate iniquitous acts of Ignatius which he asserted himself to have known, but he formally accused him before the Governor of Rome, Monsignor Conversini. The effect of these reports, backed and seemingly confirmed by an action so bold, was immense. The Jesuits were as generally shunned and detested as before they were frequented and revered. The power of their preaching and conversation was set down to witchcraft, a facile charge in those days. How complete was Agostino*s success and the terror he had spread among the followers of the new preachers is shown by one fact. The Cardinal Legate had given them two.priests to help in hearing confessions: these priests now fled. For all expected the hand of the authorities to fall soon and heavily on the Jesuits. And not without reason. Quirino Garzonio, in whose house Ignatius had formerly lived, was upbraided by his kinsman. Cardinal de Cupis, the head of the Sacred College, for having to do with these suspected men. He replied by alleging his own experience of Ignatius's holiness. The usual response came: Quirino was misled by enchantments. " You do not know,'* said de Cupis, " what convincing proofs I have of their wickedness. Be assured, these men are very different from what you suppose.''

When all men seemed to fail them, Ignatius remembered and reminded Christ of His words at La Storta: " Ego vobis Roma propitius ero,'' And they were fulfilled. Ignatius sought an interview with de Cupis, who granted it with the forbidding assurance, " I shall treat him as he deserves." Garzonio awaited the issue in another room, and waited two hours. For Ignatius subdued the Cardinal by those " enchantments " against which his red robes were no protection, so that he too knelt and besought forgiveness of the Saint. It was even as it had been with the Rector at Paris, when the rod was ready for Ignatius; and with all who tempted the personal fascination of this amazing man. Like the Rector, de Cupis brought him out of his room with the utmost show of reverence, promising him all help in his power in this or any matter. He further ordered a daily dole of bread and wine to him and his followers, and continued it throughout his lifetime.

Fresh from this victory, Ignatius attacked Conversini himself, the Governor of Rome, and requested an instant trial. It was granted, and resulted triumphantly. Navarro had the audacity not only to appear, but to repeat the old tale that at Alcala, Paris, and Venice the Saint had been condemned of heresy. Ignatius calmly produced a letter of Navarro's own and read it out. In it Navarro eulogised Ignatius to a friend, and bore witness to his virtues from his own eyesight. Navarro admitted the letter, and broke down in confusion. Ignatius was justified; his accuser was banished as a calumniator.

But Ignatius insisted on formal judgment and sentence, according to his wont; while the Legate and judges were unwilling to proceed further. Agostino and his confederates offered to recant publicly, as they did before Legate and Governor, and they made strong influence against the course on which Ignatius was bent. He must needs await the Pope's return, and then, even, the matter hung suspended. But this indomitably patient man was not so to be baffled. He sought a personal interview with Paul; related the various imprisonments he had undergone, and insisted on the necessity, brought home to him by those past experiences, ot such a public pronouncement as should put the orthodoxy of his companions and himself beyond the further power of these tiresome, these unholily dispiriting assaults. He succeeded. The Pope gave orders for a fresh trial before the Governor. Then happened a thing so extraordinary that Ignatius justly comments on it as a providence. For Figueroa, who imprisoned him at Alcala; Ori, the Dominican Inquisitor who tried him in Paris; and the Vicar-General of the Venetian Legate, who proceeded against him in Venice — all these three, the very men who could attest the falsehood of Navarro's assertions, were at this time simultaneously in Rome and readily came forward on the Saint's behalf. Nor was this all. The Bishop of Vicenza, in whose diocese three or four of Ignatius's followers had preached, was also in Rome and affirmed in their favour; while Siena, Bologna, and Ferrara sent evidence in support. Finally, the Duke of Ferrara wrote specially to his ambassador, ordering him to say everything in his power on behalf of Simon Rodriguez and Le Jay, who had resided so long in his city. This ended the tragic farce; the Jesuits were cleared by a formal pronouncement of the completest character.

It was now, when his enemies were scattered, that Ignatius said his first Mass, so long delayed. Possibly his long abstention had lent plausibility to the libels uttered against him; just as he had formerly been a suspect in his zeal because he elected to be a layman. " I went at Christmas," he wrote, with a quietude some have thought baffling, " to Santa Maria Maggiore, and said there, with the help and grace of God, my first Mass, in the chapel which contains the crib where the Infant Jesus was laid."

This marks the close of that memorable year, 1538. The Order, not yet formally an Order, merely a Company of preachers and missioners, had at last surrendered its Founder's heart-cherished scheme of work in the Holy Land, and entered on its true career. From that moment, and in brief time, it had made singular advances. Its greater future was preparing, and to Ignatius came gleams of it. He met in Rome, as he was walking from the Ara Coeli, a young man of his former acquaintance in Barcelona — Miguel Arrovira. Miguel showed him a letter from the Catalan Governor, that youth who in triumphal welcome had passed Ignatius haled to a Spanish prison, Francis Borgia, now in the full joy of marriage to his beloved Leonora. Ignatius looked at the letter, and said: 129 R

" You will one day see the writer of that letter a member of the Company of Jesus, and its head." He had already prophesied to Arrovira the unhappy issue of his own marriage; and both prophecies were fulfilled. An immediate accession came to him after the defeat of Fra Agostino's conspiracy, in the person of his own nephew, Antonio Araoz. It was not till 1540, however, that Ignatius granted him admission to the Society; and since Araoz had to go back to provide for the surrender of his property, necessitated by his new life, Ignatius used him as the first Jesuit missionary in Spain. At Barcelona Ignatius was ardently remembered, and Araoz found the fields white for harvest. It was still one who sowed, and another who reaped. Before he left, Ignatius gave him a crucifix and a little picture of Mary Queen of Sorrows, which had been his own companion since the unforgettable initiation of Montserrat.

" Never," said he, " give this to any one: I have always worn it since I changed life and dress, and amidst many wants and dangers of soul and body I have ever experienced the protection of the Blessed Mother."

But Araoz lent it to Ignatius's niece. Dona Marina, from whom it passed to the Jesuits of Saragossa, where it long stayed.

Whatever the explanation of his warnings to his followers against women, women were ever his good friends. Does he not write this year, after the Agostino business, to Isabel Roser of the Barcelona days? "I am persuaded," he tells her, " that if I were to forget all the good that God has done me through you, with such love and compassion. His divine Majesty would forget me also; for you have never ceased helping me, out of love and reverence to Him." Possibly the Saint, himself so free and frank, did not trust his followers at large to possess his own discernment of spirits, by which alone could be evaded the possible snare latent in society even of well-meaning but unregulated women, victims of their own emotions. He knew, also, that the peril may lie not in the woman at all, but in the man's self, in temperament.

On the energies of his Order the dying year made full demand. Famine was in Rome, famine and bitter winter. The perishing and destitute lay in the squares and streets, as in London the houseless in our day have lain in Trafalgar Square, and over four hundred were carried into the Jesuits' new house of the Torre del Melangolo. Three thousand are said to have been aided by them from first to last. Moved by such example, the rich poured in donations of food, clothing, and money, so that the Jesuits were able to provide warmth and covering for the poor whom they sheltered and fed. Beginning with the body, they were easily able to care for the soul. Many were reclaimed to God. Ignatius, one may say, informally anticipated the Salvation Army Shelters and Providence Row. For indeed thi:5 sixteenth century, splendid, calamitous, spacious, and ruinous, ushered in not only the rise of modern society, but that of our chief modern problems. Men stood aghast before them; and the few of courage, initiative, and goodwill had to lace them with what means came to hand, Ignatius being of that fit and honourable few.