CHAPTER VIII
THE Society was now an approved Order, and a permanent official Superior became a consequent necessity. Hitherto, as we have related, Superiors had held office by rotation, each of the members exercising the office for a brief period. Now that the Society was established on a lasting basis, a continuous head was the final necessity for its continuous existence. There could be no doubt who this head must be. Whatsoever Superior for a space held office, the Founder and inspirer inevitably remained the true head.
But Ignatius had never acted with any autocracy; everything had been decided by collective voice of the members, save the one matter of the Society's name. But at Easter, 1541, Ignatius summoned a conference to decide this last point of a permanent head, and five met at Santa Maria della Strada. Lainez, Le Jay, and Broet were among these. The rest sent their votes in writing. Bobadilla, on petition of the people, was bidden by the Pope to stay at Calabrian Bisignano, where he was. He had not even time to send his vote; but we do not need his declaration that it would have gone with the choice of the convention. Xavier and Rodriguez, called to other work, had left sealed votes in Rome. Favre sent his vote from the Diet now sitting at Worms, in which the new force of Catholicism was to bear a part so illustrious. Ignatius (by the brethren's desire) drew up the plan of the election, which was reviewed and adopted. As in a Conclave, the members held no communication upon the matter in hand.
Three days' prayer, and on April 7 the votingpapers were opened. Xavier's paper, declaring his adhesion to the decisions of the assembly, asked Lainez to take the vows on his behalf, and nominated Ignatius as their head. Ignatius, in fact, was chosen by all the votes barring his own, which he gave to none. When the result became known, he refused to accept office, and asked them to seek enlightenment in a second vote; alleging ill-health, the worldliness of his early life, and his present incapacity, possibly the weight of his fifty years. No doubt he would willingly have withdrawn to a more contemplative life, holding that the Society was now independent of his government. But after three days' further prayer the election repeated itself. He still refused; whereon Lainez solemnly asserted that he would accept no other head, and would leave the Society to dissolution unless Ignatius gave way. As a last resort, Ignatius ofi^ered to abide by the decision of his confessor, the Franciscan Fra Teodosio, of the Convent of San Pietro in Montorio. The association of Francis and Ignatius is interesting; let it therefore be recorded that it was a Franciscan who finally gave the Jesuits their first and greatest General. By way of securing what to him appeared a favourable decision, Ignatius spent three days in the convent, praying and confessing. Having thus exposed his iniquities, he asked the Franciscan to acquaint his own brethren in writing with the unworthiness of their choice. Teodosio's written decision was therefore opened before all the members, and proved to be a statement that the penitent was bound to accept the voice of his brethren and the office to which they had summoned him. Condemned out of the mouth of his chosen referee, Ignatius gave way. The Society had its General on April 13, I 54 1.
Two days later (April 15), this ceremony was followed by another, when the Fathers of the Society present in Rome made their profession. In St. Paul's Beyond-the-Walls, at the altar of the Blessed Virgin, on the Gospel side of the high altar, Ignatius said Mass. Lainez, Salmeron, Le Jay, Codure, and Broet knelt before the altar; and turning round before the Communion, the Host in his hand, the General read out his own vows, and communicated. The five in turn took their vows to their General, and received the Host. After Mass they made the round of the privileged altars in the church; and, returning to the high altar, embraced their Founder and General, kissing his hand with tears which might well have risen even to northern eyes. They finished by signing a paper, presumably destined for the Pope, recording the election of Ignatius and the placing of their vows in his hands. The first to take the vows among the five had been Codure, a man they held in high esteem; and in the course of this same year he died. Ignatius was proceeding towards San Pietro in Montorio to say Mass for him when, in the middle of the bridge, he halted, and looking upward, said, " Let us return. Codure is dead."
The new General nowise altered the simplicity of his habits; he began his Generalship by helping for some days in the kitchen, and he taught catechism for forty-six days in the Jesuits' church, Santa Maria della Strada. "Grown-ups,'' no less than children, frequented these instructions; and, apart from the attraction of the teacher, they had perhaps no less need of the instruction, and, above all, of the spirit of love by which that desire to spread the Gospel was informed.
Ribadeneira gives us an account of it which prettily illustrates the kindly simplicity which won love for Ignatius, and which we are apt to overlook among his severer and more commanding qualities. The discourse was more pious than learned, says brilliant Ribadeneira, which, for that matter, was quite the right thing. But it was also in very bad Italian; and young Ribadeneira, with the bold freedom which perhaps he alone ventured to use with the General, not only told the Saint of the defect, but recommended that he should strive to rid himself of his Spanish idioms. Ignatius assented, and asked his young critic to note and repeat to him his blunders after the instruction. " Gil Bias " was not yet written, and the youth did not hesitate to fill his appointed function He escaped Gil Bias's fate at the hands of the Archbishop; but the Iberianisms were beyond counting. Ignatius smiled; " My Pedro, what can we do against God? " — meaning that he could not escape his native disabilities. This was something short of his accustomed indomitableness, and perhaps meant that he did not take his bad Italian so seriously as his young follower did. If so, he was right, by Ribadeneira's own account. His power was a thing apart from words, like that of so many — perhaps most — great leaders. They have the magnetism of the " well-graced actor,'* which hushes the audience at his mere entry on the stage. Who more unlike the chivalrous Spaniard than Wesley? But Wesley's "converted " disciple records that the Methodist leader, before one word spoken, impressed him with awe, and doubtless upon others among the waiting listeners the like sensation fell. So Ribadeneira describes Ignatius: " Even when he was silent, his countenance moved his hearers." When he spoke, it was not what he said, it was the suppressed heat of personal feeling, personal conviction which enkindled men. This has ever been the secret of great teachers, were they only schoolmasters; it is the communication of themselves which avails. Virtue goes forth from them. It drew men to children's instruction, and made the catechising of Ignatius more potent than that "pulpit eloquence" which our own Manning held in holy horror. He knew, as all discerners know, that it is by the spirit of a preacher that men are moved — not by mere parrot words.
These early Jesuits, under the direct rule of their Founder, like so many of the successors, display a singular and most adroit mixture of individualism with military precision of obedience. In the latter quaUty we must not lose sight of the former. No two things could be more exteriorly unlike than Franciscan democracy and Jesuit autocracy. Yet the Order of Francis could hardly be more individualistic beneath the surface than the Order of Ignatius. On both, by wholly different methods, the common and penetrating seal was set, so that Jesuit or Franciscan was Jesuit or Franciscan all through. But that seal once set, nay, in the setting of it (little though this might appear on the surface), the Jesuit's personality was sedulously educed and fostered. He was assigned to do that which he was, to act himself; even as, after other f^ashion, the law of Franciscan simplicity was to be one's self For all wise spiritual training is one in end, though the roads to that end are many, and in the diversity of human nature several men prefer several ways. In those diversities of nature and election lie the need and justification of many Religious Orders. Ignatius's power as a Founder lay even inore in his sagacity of training than in his wisdom of leading. And his handling of the headstrong, generous, able Ribadeneira, in its blending of indulgence and severity, its relaxation and tig^htening of the rein, excellently shows his skill. There we have a glimpse into detail, which may hereafter be extended. But the results are written large in the lists of men, diverse in character as they were equal in illustriousness, who came forth from the Society during the life of its founder. From the first this Order flung its net over the intellectual aristocracy of Catholicism; it was the capture and marshalling ot this aristocracy which made it formidable to the Reformation, and to those now decaying forces of Italian humanism, the rear-guard of the Renascence, which — seemingly triumphant — were ready to crumble before vigorous attack.
That attack was now to begin; and the new army was about to throw itself, energetic and hopeful, against the victorious advance of the Retormation, which it would beat back if it could not conquer. Even before the election of Ignatius as General the movement had started. Broet, Rodriguez, and Strada evangelised Siena. Favre and Laincz worked reformation in Parma. At Tuscan Bagnorea, Le Jay healed a bitter feud between clergy and people. Bobadilla pacified dissensions in the Isle of Ischia, part of the distracted Neapolitan kingdom, though it was long before the disorders of the kingdom itself found effectual remedy. And Francis Xavier sailed for India.
That great event — so great, yet finally so seeming ineffectual — demands that we pause on it. Portugal was now the vanguard of Europe in the Indies: her flag flew supreme in those waters, unchallenged by Dutch or English, whose navies were yet unnoted among the nations; she held the coast of Hindustan, and bade fair to forestall the future Indian empire of England. Unlike Holland, France, and England, when their day arrived, she had a conscience of her responsibility as the van of Christendom in the East. She felt herself the bearer to India of more treasurable merchandise than all the products of the West; the pupils of the East should now return to her what they had received from her — Christianity. Joam III. of Portugal looked round him for missioncrs who »53 u might Christianise his Indian conquests; and he asked advice of Gouvea. We know Gouvea, Ignatius's old Rector and bitter adversary at the College Ste. Barbe. Now he had undergone the like change with Ortiz, and other foes grown friends. We know his design to flog the Saint, and his sudden change when confronted by that irresistible personality. He had the chance at last to make great amends, and he took it. He commended to the King the new Society as the fit instrument for his purpose, and at Joam's request wrote to his old collegian.
Thus it came to pass that Ignatius had the opportunity, early and long desired, to evangelise the heathen — if not through himself, at least through his sons. He was not like to hesitate. He and his brethren, he responded, were ready to go whithersoever the Pope sent them. Forthwith Joam urged his petition at the Papal Court. " Six Jesuits," demanded the Portuguese Ambassador, Mascarenhas, improving on his instructions. " If from so small a Society you take six for one kingdom, what is left for the rest of the world? " calculated and asked Ignatius. Two, he said, were already wanted as missionaries by the Pope. Paul would not compel the General's acquiescence, despite the Ambassador's entreaties; and Mascarenhas was obliged to accept Ignatius's offer of Bobadilla and Rodriguez. Rodriguez, back from Siena, sailed from Civita Vecchia on March 5; but Bobadilla came from Naples with rheumatism, and could not undertake the journey. Ignatius was himself ill, but he sent for Xavier.
"You know. Brother Messer Francis, that two of us, by His Holiness's command, must depart for
India; and Bobadilla, who was chosen, is kept by ill-health. The Ambassador is in such haste he will not wait: God designs to use you for this
" Father, I am here ready to sail," answered Xavier; and next day, March i6, he started with Mascarenhas. He presented himself before Ignatius for the journey in an old cassock which he had himself mended, with his breviary for entire baggage. Ignatius, who knew the Alps and their passage in the rough April weather, stripped off his own flannel vest to clothe him.
" Go," he said, " set all on fire and flame."
How well Xavier did that bidding, the Indies witnessed. On his very way he sowed flame, so that from his halting-place at Bologna he wrote to Ignatius: " I have much more to do at Bologna than at San Luigi " — San Luigi is Rome.
Joam found the Jesuits so much to his taste that he was loth to let them leave Portugal after all; and the year wore out in negotiations with the Pope and Ignatius before he compromised by retaining Rodriguez, while Xavier was suffered to proceed on his voyage. The King would have provided for him with all amplitude, as a Papal Nuncio; but Francis would have nothing beyond three sailors' coats for himself and two companions, with a few books. Nor would he dine with the Admiral, De Sousa. He turned his cabin into a hospital, and shared among the sick the viands set before him, while he begged for himself remainder-fragments from the passengers. This, though for two months he was sea-sick. After this manner, the great Apostle of the Indies set sail from Portugal on the illustrious April 7, 1541.
Rodriguez remained to found Seminaries in Lisbon and throughout Portugal. In 1542, besides an estabhshment in Lisbon, he founded the College of Coimbra, which sprang at once from twenty-five to sixty pupils, and, four years later, took the lead in admitting lay-students. This was a step of incalculable importance in spreading the Jesuit influence throughout Europe. At first the Portuguese were hostile, and drove out the students. They resented Ignatius's system of appointing foreign brethren to the College. He was resolute that his Jesuits should be cosmopolitan, and implacable towards that strange paradox, the spirit of nationality in religion, which is nothing if not universal. Doubtless the decree of Providence which had refused him his education in Spain, and drove him to the University of a stranger-land, with the fact that his own Order had found its early material among Spaniards outside Spain, operated to foster in him this idea. His sons were carefully to adopt the habits and language of the country in which they lived. Some of the priests in these early Portuguese colleges came from heretical places; a fact which specially roused the mistrust of the Iberians. But the Society quickly lived down this local opposition, and spread wide through Spain and Portugal.
Rodriguez subsequently becametutor to the King's son — much against his will, but by Ignatius's order. The two things in his life which had most vexed him, he said, were his failure to accompany Xavier to India, and the compulsion to live in a palace. His methods of evangelisation were those nowadays associated with the Salvation Army. He and his brethren went out in the evening and stood at the
Street-crossings crying in rhyme: " Death draw? near, yet the sinner quits not his sin. Ah me, what folly! " In similar fashion they went about to collect beforehand audiences for their preachers in the street. Critics said it was not dignified; but it succeeded. And when an impression had been made, there were the " Exercises" to fix it.
At Coimbra was asked of one who had passed through the " Exercises," " Did they not show you monsters and devils? " — the old charge was that the Jesuits were magicians. " Worse than that," said he, " they showed me myself/'