Saint Ignatius of Loyola

He was in the city of Pamplona when the Pampelune Birthplace of Saint Firmin in Spain. army of Francis I, led by André de Foix, Lord of Lespare, came to invest it. At first, he did what he could to prevent the inhabitants from surrendering; but having been unable to cure their fear with his remonstrances, he withdrew into the citadel. The governor of this fort took alarm himself and wished to capitulate; but Ignatius broke the capitulation and encouraged the officers and soldiers to hold firm and defend themselves. The attack and the resistance were furious: they fought on both sides with much courage and stubbornness. Ignatius was the one who encouraged the besieged and showed the most valor. But at the height of the action, a cannonball grazed his left leg and shattered the bone of his right leg; which put him out of action. The Navarrese, seeing him wounded, lost heart and surrendered at discretion; but the French, making good use of their victory, carried Ignatius to their general's quarters, took care to have him bandaged, and, when his leg had been set and the state of his wound allowed him to change location, they had him carried in a litter to the castle of Loyola, which was not far from Pamplona.

When our Saint had arrived, it was recognized that he had not been well bandaged and that the bones of his leg had not been set in their natural position. This forced him to suffer a second operation by the surgeons, which caused him extreme pain; the fever took him with such violent symptoms that his life was despaired of; so that he received the sacraments on the eve of Saints Peter and Paul, to prepare himself to die; but the following night, the Prince of the Apostles appeared to him in a dream, touched him with his sacred hands, and cured him of his fever. His vanity then led him to have a third operation performed, because, although in the second the two parts of the broken bone had been rejoined, there was nevertheless one that protruded more than the other, which made a small bump on the leg and prevented the stocking and boot from being pulled on properly. During this long cure, Ignatius, forced to stay in bed or in his room, sought to dispel his boredom through reading. He would have preferred some profane stories or romances; but they brought him the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ and that of the Saints, in the Spanish language, the only one he knew at the time. Through this reading, which his long idleness forced him to take up several times, grace insinuated itself into his soul. He began to see the corruption and danger of his worldly and sensual life, the folly of his ambition and vanity, and the lies of the world which promises true happiness without ever being able to give it. He resolved to chastise himself with merciless rigor and to begin a new life. The penance he planned was to go barefoot to the Holy Land, to clothe himself in a sack, to fast on bread and water, to sleep only on the hard ground, and finally to shut himself up in some dreadful solitude where he could groan for the rest of his days for those he had spent satisfying the desires of corrupt nature.

But, as the wound in his leg prevented him from executing his great designs so soon, he made up for it with all the mortifications of which he was capable in his state of illness. He would rise secretly every night, and, prostrate on the ground, he would weep for his sins with very bitter tears. One night, he consecrated himself to Jesus Christ through his holy Mother with extraordinary fervor, and swore to them an inviolable fidelity; then he heard a great noise, the house shook, the windows of his room broke, and a fairly large opening was made in the wall, which has existed there for a very long time since. Perhaps God wished to show, by this sign, that he accepted the sacrifice of his new servant. Moreover, the reading that he continued to do, no longer out of curiosity, as before, but out of an ardent desire to model himself on the examples of Jesus Christ and the Saints, increased his fervor at every moment: and he was astonished himself to no longer be what he was and to see himself transformed into another man. To strengthen him further in his good resolutions, the Virgin appeared to him one night holding the infant Jesus in her arms and surrounded by light. This apparition produced wonderful effects in his soul: it filled him with a celestial unction that made the pleasures of the senses insipid to him; it purified his heart and tore from it earthly desires and affections; it even freed his mind and erased from it all images of sensual voluptuousness. From that moment, Ignatius saw himself happily freed from the revolts of the flesh and from those troublesome thoughts that sometimes torment even the most chaste persons.

Dom Garcia, his elder brother, who, by the death of Dom Beltrand, had become lord of Loyola, suspecting the design of our Saint, tried to keep him in the world; but Ignatius had definitively made up his mind. When he was healed, he mounted his horse, with no other apparent design than to visit the Duke of Najera, who had often sent to inquire after his health during his illness and who was then at Navarette, a small neighboring town; the true goal of his journey was the pilgrimage of Montserrat, located about a day's journey from Barcelona, where people came from all parts to honor a miraculous image of the most holy Virgin and to place themselves under her powerful protection. On the way, he sent back two servants who had followed him, and at the same time made the vow of perpetual chastity, which he has since kept inviolably until death. He also resolved to take the discipline every night: which he always practiced very faithfully, as long as his health permitted; finally, he proposed from then on to do all things for the greater glory of God, and never to have any other end for his thoughts, his desires, his words, or his actions. It is this sentiment that led him to take for the motto of his Order these beautiful words: Ad majorem Dei gloriam: "For the greater glory of God."

Having arrived at a small town at the foot of the mountain, he bought (for his design was to then make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem) a long garment of coarse cloth, a belt, and rope sandals, with a staff and a gourd, and placed this equipment on the pommel of his horse's saddle. The first thing he did, being in the church of this holy monastery, was to ask for an enlightened confessor who could instruct him in all the duties of a penitent and put him on the path of salvation. God having directed him to Dom Jean Chanones, a Frenchman by birth, a religious very famous for his experience in the guidance of souls and for his holiness, he made his general confession to him for three days with great exactitude and extreme sorrow for his sins. Then, he revealed all his designs to him as his director, and showed him the plan of the retired and austere life he wished to lead. This holy man, who himself lived very austerely, confirmed Ignatius in his resolution, while nevertheless prescribing rules of prudence for his conduct and revealing to him the traps that the evil spirit could set for him in his first fervor.

Our penitent, being thus resolved never to return to the world, made a gift of his horse to the monastery and hung his sword and dagger before the altar of the holy Virgin. In the evening, he went secretly to find a poor man and gave him his clothes; after which, having clothed himself in the sackcloth and girded himself with the rope he had bought on the way, he returned to the church, where he spent the night in prayers and tears. It was the night of the Annunciation (1522). The next day, he heard Mass and received Communion early in the morning; and, after his thanksgiving, he left immediately so as not to be discovered by the pilgrims from his country. One cannot express the joy and vigor with which he walked, although he had already weakened his body by two days of vigil and a very rigorous fast. He had the staff in his hand, the gourd at his side, his head uncovered, and one foot bare; for the other, which still felt the effects of his wound and swelled every night, he judged it appropriate to wear a shoe. His occupation was to praise God for having delivered him from the captivity of the world and to sing canticles in His honor; but he had hardly gone a league when his joy was slightly troubled: someone came to ask him if it were true that he had given precious clothes to a beggar the evening before; for this poor man was suspected of having stolen them, and had been put in prison for it. To deliver this innocent man, he confessed the truth, refusing only to tell his name, his rank, and his country, knowledge of which was not necessary to justify the beggar.

The first place where he stopped was the small town of Manresa, three leagues from Montserrat, which then had nothing Manrèse Place of spiritual retreat and the writing of the Spiritual Exercises. of note except a monastery of Saint Dominic and a hospital called Saint Lucy, located outside the gates and intended for pilgrims and the sick. He lodged in this hospital; there, in addition to the service he rendered assiduously to the poor, he undertook an austerity that has almost no example in the lives of famous anchorites. Indeed, he fasted all week on bread and water, except on Sunday, when he ate a few cooked herbs after having thrown ashes on them; he slept little and had no other bed than the ground; he wore the hair shirt continuously under his fine pilgrim's habit, with an iron belt. He took the discipline very harshly, three times a day; finally, he cut off from his body everything that could give it pleasure, and on the contrary made it suffer everything that was capable of bothering it. The spirit of penance carried him even further; for, to punish the excessive care he had taken of cleanliness and the time he had wasted in making himself polished and pleasant, he neglected his person entirely and let himself become like a savage: so that, when he appeared in Manresa to beg for his bread, the children pointed at him and subjected him to various outrages. However, he was extremely assiduous in prayer, and, besides not missing Mass, Vespers, and Compline, he regularly spent seven hours a day in prayer on his knees, during which he was so recollected that he appeared as if motionless. He often visited the church of Our Lady of Viladordis, which is only half a league from Manresa, and, in these small pilgrimages, he usually added to the hair shirt and the iron chain he wore, a belt of nettles or other prickly herbs.

The demon, unable to bear such extraordinary fervor, employed all his efforts to turn him away from it, and especially made a great disgust for the filth of the hospital and an extreme shame of seeing himself in the company of beggars arise in his heart; but Ignatius easily recognized the temptation, and, to overcome it with advantage, he made himself more familiar than ever with the poor and even attached himself to the service of the most disgusting sick people. Meanwhile, the rumor spread in Manresa that the begging pilgrim, who was not known, was a man of noble condition who was doing penance, and who, having stripped himself at Montserrat, had taken a poor man's habit to disguise himself. The modesty, patience, and devotion of Ignatius made this conjecture very probable: so that the inhabitants of this place began to look at him with different eyes. People came to see him out of curiosity, and they admired him all the more because he had been treated so indignantly. Ignatius noticed this; and, to flee this new trap, which he believed the demon was setting for him, he retired six hundred paces from the town, into a dark and deep cave, which he found all covered with brushwood and with no light other than that which came from the crack in the rock. The horror of this solitude inspired in him a new spirit of penance. He mistreated his body there every day four or five times with a chain. He would remain three or four days without taking any food, and, when his strength failed him, he had recourse to some roots he found in the valley, or to a little bread he had brought from the hospital. He did nothing but pray and weep, and his sins often coming back before his eyes, he always meditated on new rigors against himself. These excessive austerities often made him fall into weakness: and one day some people who discovered his retreat by dint of searching for him found him fainted at the entrance of the cave. He was forced to return to the hospital. He fell ill there, and his fever became so violent that they soon despaired of his life. The demon then tempted him with vanity, and the temptation was so strong that Ignatius had difficulty getting rid of it; but, by the help of God, he represented to himself so vividly the sins of his past life and the little proportion there was between his penance and the pains of hell that he had deserved, that he repressed and conquered it entirely.

He then returned to convalescence; but, instead of thoughts of vanity, he was tormented by such violent scruples, notwithstanding the general and particular confessions he had made, that he did not have a moment of peace in his conscience. The spiritual sweetnesses and consolations with which God had favored him until then also changed into bitterness, and all his lights vanished, leaving him only doubts, anxieties, and darkness.

In these great floods, which seemed to be about to submerge him, he often threw himself on the ground and remained there for several hours with tears in his eyes and groans in his heart. He also redoubled his fasts and austerities, hoping, by this means, to bring back the calm he had lost. As confession and communion are great remedies for these kinds of temptations, he frequently had recourse to them, and he did not fail to reveal his troubles, either to a religious of Montserrat, who had been the first depositary of his designs, or to a Father of the Order of Saint Dominic, of the convent of Manresa, who was his confessor; but, not feeling relieved by all these means, he finally resolved to take no food before having recovered the peace of his soul, unless he saw himself in danger of death. Indeed, he fasted seven whole days, without drinking or eating, and without nevertheless relaxing any of his accustomed exercises; and as, by a miracle no doubt, he was not yet very exhausted, he would have prolonged it, if his confessor had not ordered him absolutely to break it. He found, in obedience to this order, the relief he had not found in so many other remedies. His tranquility was restored to him, and his exterior crosses changed into extraordinary delights. He thus received as a reward for his fervor the grace of the discernment of spirits and an excellent gift for healing scruples; he never again met a pained soul that he did not relieve in its crosses, and to whom he did not restore the calm and serenity of conscience.

Besides these favors, he also had visions and visits from heaven that were quite admirable. Being one day on the steps of the church of the Order of Saint Dominic, where he was reciting the Hours of Our Lady, he was raised in spirit and he saw as it were a figure that clearly represented to him the mystery of the most holy Trinity. A short time later, another light manifested to him the designs of divine wisdom in the creation of the world, and the order it had followed in the execution of this great work. Another time, he perceived without clouds the truth of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; and again, on another occasion, all the mysteries of our faith were so perfectly revealed to him that he said afterwards that, even if they were not written in the Gospel, the knowledge he had received of them at Manresa would suffice for him to preach them throughout the world and to defend them to the last drop of his blood.

But of all the graces he received then, the most remarkable was a rapture that lasted eight days, having begun on a Saturday evening and having ended only the following Saturday, at the same hour: he had no use of his senses all that time. He was thought dead, and he would have been buried if it had not been noticed that his heart was beating a little. His humility hid from the world the lights that were given to him in this ecstasy, and he never wanted to say anything about it, despite the instances his friends made to him. So many marks of holiness increased his reputation more and more: it was no longer doubted that he was an illustrious man, hidden under a penitent's habit. Also, as he fell ill again, he was forced to lodge with a rich inhabitant of Manresa, who took special care to bring him back to perfect health. It was then that he had the inspiration to apply himself to the conversion and sanctification of souls, and that he began to propose to men the ways of heaven, both in public and in private. He succeeded admirably in this design, and there were people every day so touched by his exhortations that they generously renounced the pleasures and honors of the century to embrace the penitent and crucified life of Jesus Christ.

For their help, although he was neither lettered nor learned, knowing only how to read and write, he nevertheless composed, without the help of anyone, the admirable book of the Spiritual Exercises, which Pope Paul III has since approved with such praise: this work contains, in effect, means so pressing and so effective for withdrawing souls from disorder and for leading them to the perfection of Christianity that we have no surer or more useful method f or that. After this Exercices spirituels A work of spiritual method composed by Ignatius. work, seeing himself strong enough to undertake the journey to Palestine, which he had initially planned, and learning that the sea trade, interrupted by the plague of Barcelona, was beginning to be re-established, he resumed his first resolution, adding to his former views the design of working for the salvation of the schismatics and infidels of the Holy Land. He did not leave Manresa as he had left Loyola and Montserrat. He declared his journey to his friends; but, whatever offers were made to him, he wanted neither companion nor money, so as to have no consolation but with God alone, and that all his support and resource should be in His amiable providence.

The time he spent in Manresa was about a year. When he arrived in Barcelona, he found in the port a brigantine and a large ship, which were preparing to leave for Italy. God did not permit him to embark on the brigantine, which, having barely left the port, perished, without a single passenger being saved. This is how Providence served him. A virtuous lady, Isabelle Roset, having noticed his luminous face while he was hearing the sermon in the great church, seated at the foot of the altar among the children, was inspired to have him called and to bring him to dine at her home with her husband. She recognized, in their conversation, that he was a man of God and filled with eternal truths; and, unable to keep him, she at least persuaded him not to embark on the brigantine, which she did not believe strong enough to withstand the sea, but rather on the large ship. He was received there out of charity, but on the condition that he would bring what was necessary for him to live. He was offered money from many places; but, either he refused it, or he left it behind after having received it out of importunity, and he contented himself with providing himself with bread, which he had begged from door to door. The navigation was perilous, but it was not long, since he arrived in five days at the port of Gaeta, which is between Rome and Naples. From there, he took the road to Rome, alone, on foot, fasting and begging, according to his custom. He arrived there on Palm Sunday of the year 1523, and left fifteen days later for Venice, having visited the stations and received the blessing of Pope Adrian VI. Some Spaniards, before his departure, tried to dissuade him from his voyage to the Levant, representing to him the great difficulties that were encountered there that year, because of the war, the famine, and the plague that he would find almost everywhere; but having been unable to gain anything over him, they forced him to accept at least seven or eight crowns to pay for his passage, it being impossible, they said, that, without this help, he could ever arrive in the Holy Land. Ignatius, having taken them only with regret, did not keep them long; he had a scruple about not having abandoned himself, as much as he ought, to the care of divine mercy, and for having relaxed something of the perfection of the poverty of which he wished to make profession; thus, he immediately distributed all this money to the poor, and reserved for himself only the fund of the providence of his God.

He received, as a reward for this trust, extraordinary help and consolations from heaven. One day when he had set himself to prayer in a deserted field, Our Lord appeared to him, animated him, fortified him, and promised to make him enter freely into Padua and Venice, although there was great difficulty in receiving foreigners there, because of the contagion. The event showed the truth of this prediction and the solidity of this promise. He entered these two cities without a health pass, and almost without the guards noticing that he was passing. When he was in Venice, he continued to beg his bread from door to door, and had no other house than the church, nor any other retreat during the night than the square of Saint Mark, where he slept on the pavement. One night when he was suffering greatly from such great misery, Marc-Antoine Trévisant, one of the wisest and most virtuous senators of this republic, and who later was Doge and died in the odor of sanctity, heard a voice saying to him: "You are lying softly in a gilded room and in a delicate bed, and my servant is on the square, without a bed, without clothing, without food, and abandoned by everyone." At this voice, this noble Venetian rose immediately, and, having gone out himself to look for the pilgrim whom the voice of heaven recommended to him, he found Ignatius in the state we have just described: he took him with him, treated him well, put him to bed as best he could, that is to say as well as the humility of the Saint could permit him, and offered him his house, his table, and his purse for all the time that he would remain in this city. The Saint thanked him for his charity; but, unable to see himself so well received, he left his house to go and live with a merchant from Biscay, whom he recognized. They did everything they could to dissuade him from his great voyage, because, Soliman having taken Rhodes the previous year, the Turks were roaming the seas freely and making many slaves; but this consideration could not dampen his fervor.

Having obtained from the Doge, who was then Andrea Gritti, one of the wisest politicians and greatest men of his century, a place in the Capitana of the republic, which was going to the island of Cyprus, he embarked there on July 14, notwithstanding a violent fever from which he had been tormented for several days. He did what he could on the way to repress the insolence and libertinage of the passengers, using for this purpose remonstrances, reprimands, and even very severe threats of the rigor of the judgments of God; but it was quite uselessly, and these hardened men even planned to put him on some deserted island, if the wind had not carried the vessel in a few hours to the port of Cyprus. From there, Ignatius, having put himself on the ordinary ship of the pilgrims, sailed toward Palestine, and arrived finally, after forty-eight days of navigation from his departure from Venice, at the port of Jaffa, from where he went in five days, and on September 4, to Jerusalem.

Upon seeing the city, he wept with joy and was seized with a certain religious horror that has nothing but what is sweet and consoling. He visited these holy places several times, and did so always with profound reverence and sensible piety. His design then was to remain in this country, to work for the conversion of the peoples of the Orient. But the provincial of the religious of Saint Francis, who had apostolic power to send pilgrims back to Europe, according to what he would judge appropriate, did not want him to remain there and even commanded him to return. The Saint believed himself obliged to obey him, and prepared for his departure, after having returned twice to the Mount of Olives: once to contemplate and kiss again the vestiges of Our Lord, which are imprinted there on the stone; the other, to ensure on which side these vestiges were turned: which he had not distinguished the other times. When he descended from this holy mountain, Jesus Christ, to whom his patience, his fervor, and his devotions were extremely agreeable, appeared to him in the air and was pleased to serve as his guide. He left Jerusalem in winter, with his legs and feet bare, and very poorly clothed.

His first ship having taken him only to Cyprus, he found three others on this island, which were ready to set sail toward Italy. One was a Turkish galleon, the other a large Venetian ship, and the third a very weak and poorly equipped boat. The Venetian captain did not want to receive him out of charity on board, despite the prayers that the other passengers made to him, who assured him that he was a Saint; but the master of the small boat, who was more honest, received him in his own for free and for the love of God, and showed him much kindness. God then made it appear that his providence watches over the preservation of the Saints; for, of these three vessels that left together with a favorable wind, only the one that carried Ignatius arrived in Venice at a good port; the Turkish galleon having perished in the sea, and the Venetian ship having run aground on rocks.

Ignatius did not stop in Venice, and he left it immediately to return to Spain, where he wished to study in order to make himself more capable of working for the conversion of sinners and the guidance of souls. Having taken the road to Genoa, he fell successively into the hands of the Spaniards and the French; but he was treated very differently by them: for the Spaniards, taking him at first for a spy, and then for a madman, beat him severely; the French, on the contrary, showed him only kindness. Finally, God giving him signs of His protection everywhere, he arrived in Genoa and from there, by sea, in Barcelona, thus ending his pilgrimage at the place where he had begun it.

This great Saint was then thirty-three years old. However, the desire to assist his neighbor made him take the definitive resolution to apply himself to profane and sacred studies, so that he could join the science of philosophy, theology, and the Holy Scriptures to the unction of the Holy Spirit with which his soul was penetrated. He first studied grammar under a virtuous person named Jerome Ardebale who taught it in Barcelona; but, at the same time, he resumed his former austerities which his travels and long illnesses had made him diminish a little. He also worked in secret for the salvation of souls; for, having recognized that young libertines frequented the nuns of the monastery of the Angels too freely, he made such wise remonstrances to these good women that they closed their grilles and their parlor, and put an end to the scandal that these conversations were causing in the city. This action drew upon him the hatred and persecution of these debauched men: one day, they had him beaten senseless by two Moorish slaves; but Ignatius placed all his joy in suffering something for the glory of his Master, and he was always disposed to give his life for the salvation of souls and even of each person in particular. He saved a man who had hanged himself; as soon as he had prayed for him, he returned to life, asked for a confessor, gave great signs of contrition and penance, and then died in the peace of the Church.

After two years of humanities, the Saint, by the advice of his Master, went to the University of Alcala to devote himself to higher sciences. He took with him three companions who wished to assist him in the practice of his good works, and he won a fourth in Alcala, a Frenchman by nation, whom God filled with the same zeal. His friends having persuaded him to take lessons in logic, physics, and theology at the same time, this caused such confusion in his studies that he made little progress. His main occupation was to teach Christian doctrine to children and the ignorant. He lodged at the hospital, begged for his bread, was dressed, as were his companions, in a long gray wool robe, always went barefoot, and made a profession of assisting the poor and begging for alms for them. He also worked for the conversion of the most debauched persons; and his remonstrances were so effective that he reformed all the youth of Alcala in a short time, and even won to God ecclesiastics who were entirely in disorder. However, he soon saw himself persecuted for Jesus Christ: he was accused of novelty, he was accused of error and heresy, he was put in prison and kept there for forty-two days without wanting persons of great merit, who admired his holiness and the unction of his discourses, to exert themselves to deliver him; but finally, his innocence was recognized, he was sent away absolved and with a public testimony of his virtue, the integrity of his morals, and his doctrine; this testimony was confirmed by the Archbishop of Toledo, whom he went to find in Valladolid to give him an account of his conduct and to implore his protection.

The Archbishop of Toledo having advised him to go and finish his studies in Salamanca, whose university was one of the most famous in the world, he followed this advice and moved there with his companions. He produced the same fruits there as in Alcala, winning many people to God in a short time; but he also suffered the same persecutions, we mean calumnies, outrages, and chains. However, Our Lord always brought him out of them gloriously, and his judges, as passionate as they were, were obliged to approve his doctrine and to admire his humility, his patience, and his other truly heroic virtues. The little progress he was making in these places in his studies, and especially the little freedom he was given to work for the salvation of his neighbor, made him resolve, by the inspiration of God, to leave Spain and come to Paris, where a large number of foreigners of all kinds had come to study. He arrived there at the beginning of February of the year 1528, and lodged in the College of Montaigu, where he resumed his humanities for some time, and from where he then went to follow philosophy lessons at the College of Sainte-Barbe. His great poverty made him suffer much and forced him sometimes to ask for alms, sometimes to take his meals at the Saint-Jacques hospital with the poor, sometimes to make trips to Flanders and England to receive assistance from the Spanish merchants who were there; but he suffered much from various persecutions that were stirred up against him, because of some students whom he withdrew from libertinage and whom he brought to frequent prayer and the sacraments and to devote themselves to good works. Divine Providence having thus delivered him in a very glorious manner from all these tribulations, he was received as Master of Arts with applause and after a very rigorous examination. He then did his theology in the school of Saint Thomas, at the Jacobins, where he drew the lights that he has since spread in his sermons and his exhortations full of doctrine and strength.

However, the time arrived when God wished to give to His Church, through the means of Ignatius, the help of the Society of Je Compagnie de Jésus Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. sus. He therefore first inspired six excellent young men to join him to work tirelessly for the salvation of their neighbor. The first of this troop was Peter Faber, from the village of Villaret, in Savoy. The second, Francis Xavier, a gentl François-Xavier Apostle of the Indies and companion of Peter Faber. eman from the kingdom of Navarre. The third, James Laynez, from the village of Almazan, in the diocese of Siguenza. The fourth, Alphonsus Salmeron, from the surroundings of Toledo, in Castile. The fifth, Nicholas Alphonsus, from Robadilla, which is a small place near Valencia. The sixth, Simon Rodriguez, from Azevedo, in Portugal: all have, since then, become very illustrious by their doctrine, their holiness, and the great services they have rendered to the Church. On the day of the Assumption of Our Lady, in the year 1534, all seven assembled in the church of the monas Montmartre Site of the beheading of Denis and his companions. tery of Montmartre, of the Order of Saint Benedict, near Paris, where, after having confessed and received communion, they made a vow in a loud and distinct voice to undertake, within a time they prescribed, the journey to Jerusalem for the conversion of the faithful of the Levant; to leave everything they possessed, except what would be necessary for the voyage; and, in the event that this journey became impossible for them, or that they were not permitted to remain in the Orient, to go and throw themselves at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, so that His Holiness might dispose of them entirely for the service of the Church and for the salvation of souls.

From that time on, Ignatius put all his care into maintaining the fervor of his companions and their mutual union, until they had finished their course of theology and the term he had given them to go to Venice, in order to pass into the Holy Land, had arrived. It was January 25, 1537. He also worked to fortify the faithful of Paris against the heresies of Luther and Zwingli, which some German doctors were secretly spreading on all sides. This did not prevent him, as well as his companions, from being suspected of novelty because of the austere and reformed life they led and the close bond they had together. But he justified himself admirably from this suspicion before an apostolic inquisitor who was in Paris and who, having read his book of Exercises, could not praise his doctrine and this excellent method he used to bring souls to God enough.

Before leaving for Italy, he found himself obliged to make a trip to Spain, as much to restore his health, which he had ruined by new and almost excessive austerities, as to settle the domestic affairs of three of his Spanish disciples who might have let themselves be shaken in their vocation if they had been at home to settle them themselves. When he approached the castle of Loyola, all the clergy of the town of Azpeitia, which is very close, came in procession to meet him. He rid himself as best he could of such a great honor, and retired to the hospital of the Magdalene. His brother and his nephews ran there and conjured him to come and lodge at the castle, telling him that it was his house and that he would be the master of it; but he excused himself and begged them to leave him with the poor. They brought him a fine bed, and his brother sent him delicious food every day; but he gave this food to the sick, ate only bread that he begged from door to door, and slept only on the bare ground. In the three months that he stayed so close to Loyola, he went there only once, and even then it was only after his sister-in-law had begged him with great insistence and by the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He taught Christian doctrine to the poor and to children; he preached to all kinds of people, and he was listened to with such satisfaction that, the churches being too small to contain everyone who flocked there, he was obliged to preach in the open fields. One cannot express the good he did through his excellent instructions. He said that he had come to this place to repair the scandals he had once caused; he repaired them in an admirable manner. He gave two farms that belonged to him from the inheritance of his parents to a poor man who had formerly been put in prison and fined for a theft of fruit that Ignatius, being young, had committed in a garden with other fools of his age. One saw the luxury and immodesty of the women disappear as soon as he had preached on this subject. The day he spoke against gambling, all the players threw their cards and dice into the river, and no one in the town handled them for more than three years. He exterminated blasphemies and perjuries, converted several courtesans, and made some ecclesiastics who were living in libertinage change their conduct. He also made several very useful foundations with his property; thus, among others, he charged his heirs to give, every Sunday, in the church of Azpeitia, twelve loaves of bread to as many poor people in honor of the twelve Apostles. He founded for the relief of the "shamefaced poor" a confraternity of charity, to which he gave the name of the Blessed Sacrament. He established or renewed the custom of saying the Angelus, of praying at noon for those who are in a state of mortal sin, and in the evening for the dead. Finally, during the three months he remained in his country, he did more good there than any other preacher would have done in three years. His reputation became so great that there was a crowd to see him and to touch the hem of his robe. He performed several miracles: he delivered a possessed person by the power of the sign of the cross, and he healed a man who, for several years, had often fallen from the falling sickness.

Ignatius, having done in Biscay what his zeal had inspired him to do, traveled to the lands of his disciples and finished all their affairs there in a short time. Then he embarked promptly for Italy and went immediately to Venice, where he worked as elsewhere to win souls for God, and also overcame a terrible persecution. Meanwhile, the college of his disciples had increased in Paris by three other excellent workers, whom Peter Faber, who governed the first ones in the absence of Ignatius, had received to complete the number of ten. The first was Claude Le Jay, from Annecy, in Savoy; the second, Jean Codure, from the diocese of Embrun, in Provence; the third, Pasquier Brouet, from that of Amiens, in Picardy. These three men made the same vow as the others, in the very church of Montmartre, and all together they left Paris on November 15, 1536, to go and find their holy founder. When they had arrived, the weather not being suitable for navigation, they distributed themselves in the hospitals of the city, where they rendered great assistance to the sick. From there, Ignatius sent his companions to Rome to receive the pontifical blessing, and, upon their return, he received with them, except for three who were already priests, the holy Orders up to the priesthood. One cannot believe with how much fervor he prepared himself to celebrate his first sacrifice. He took much more than a year for this, not believing that it was too much time to put himself in the state of purity and devotion that such a formidable mystery demands. He even retired for forty days into an old hovel exposed to all the winds; there, fasting, watching, and praying continually, he asked God to make him worthy to approach His altars, and also begged the Blessed Virgin to give him to her Son as a perpetual servant.

The war that broke out between the Venetians and the Turks having made the journey to Palestine quite impossible, Ignatius did not fail to remain the rest of the year with his companions in the Venetian States, following the vow they had made to wait for one year for a favorable time for navigation. Then this wise captain distributed his men among the most famous universities of Italy, to combat the errors that were beginning to insinuate themselves there, to inspire piety in the young people who were studying there, and to associate some of them with themselves. As for him, feeling pressed to ask the Pope for the establishment of his Company, he took the road to Rome with Father Lefèvre and Father Laynez. It was during this journey that, having begun to pray in a ruined chapel he encountered on the road from Siena to Rome, he saw the Eternal Father who presented him to his Son, and this adorable Son burdened with a heavy cross, who, after having received him from the hands of his Father, said these words to him: "I will be propitious to you in Rome." The sight of the cross astonished him, but the promise of Our Lord consoled him and filled him with confidence and strength. He was very well received by Pope Paul III, who wished for his companions to teach, one scholastic theology and the other Holy Scripture at the Sapienza College, and who permitted him, himself, to work throughout the city on the reformation of morals through the way of spiritual exercises and Christian instructions. Several persons of great merit placed themselves under his guidance and wished to have him as their guide and director of their conscience. Some learned and zealous persons associated themselves one day with him to continue working to combat vice and to establish the kingdom of Jesus Christ. These happy advances made him conceive the design of erecting his Society into a Congregation, to make it firmer, more venerable, and subsequently of greater utility in the world. For this, he summoned all his companions who were dispersed, and who had already filled a large part of Italy with the high reputation of their holiness and their doctrine.

They arrived only after the Pope had left to go to Nice; which delayed the execution of this design; but this delay did not harm him at all. While awaiting the return of His Holiness, all these great men began to preach in the most famous churches of Rome; and the fruit they produced by their sermons was so marvelous that one soon saw a notable change in the morals of the faithful; luxury and debauchery diminished, and the frequentation of the Sacraments, which was no longer in use, was re-established on the model of the first centuries of the Church. Moreover, Ignatius used this delay advantageously to draft, with his companions, the rules of his new Institute; he was aided by an extraordinary light from the Holy Spirit which made him know what was most expedient for a company devoted to the salvation of souls and the service of one's neighbor. However, this holy troop endured a terrible storm stirred up against it by the malice of a heretical priest, whom these generous Fathers opposed; but it was promptly appeased, because, by a providence of heaven, those who had been the judges of Ignatius, when his virtue had been attacked in Spain, in Paris, and in Venice, happened happily to be in Rome, and all, unanimously, bore witness to his holiness and his innocence. His accusers were forced to retract and to admit their imposture: the government of Rome, by order of the Pope, drew up a sentence in due form, which contained the praise of the accused priests and justified them entirely.

As soon as they had thus recovered their honor, they began again with new zeal to work for the relief and salvation of their neighbor. They found the opportunity for this especially in the high cost of food that devastated Rome in the year 1539. The streets were full of poor people who were dying of hunger and who did not even have the strength to drag themselves from door to door to ask for bread. Our holy priests undertook to assist them. They took them in their arms or on their shoulders, carried them themselves into their house, and without having any other help than that of Divine Providence which provided them abundantly with food, clothing, and money for such a charitable work, they fed them, clothed them, and housed them for a long time, up to the number of four hundred. This example also awakened the charity of the rich of the city, so that a fund was raised sufficient for the subsistence of three or four thousand men whom famine was reducing to extreme misery. Spiritual aids were joined to bodily ones, and these poor people found that they had gained much by this famine, because our holy priests instructed them in the principles of good morals and taught them to pray to God, to go to confession, and to live as good people.

However, Pope Paul III, wishing to proceed to the confirmat pape Paul III Pope who approved the Somascan Order in 1540. ion of the Company, ordered three cardinals to examine its institute and rules. These appeared at first to be very contrary to it, particularly Cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni, one of the wisest and most virtuous of the sacred college; he believed that it was better to reform the old congregations than to make new ones, following the decree of Innocent III, at the Council of the Lateran, and of Gregory X, in that of Lyon. But Jesus Christ, who had promised Saint Ignatius that he would be favorable to him in Rome, faithfully fulfilled his promise and changed the spirit and heart of this cardinal so much that he was the first to approve the institute of his Society; and the Pope himself, after having read the constitutions, exclaimed: "The finger of God is in this matter"; *Digitus Dei est hic*.

Before it could be finished, companions of the Saint were requested from all sides with such insistence that he was obliged to spread them throughout the world. The principal mission was that of Saint Francis Xavier, in the Indies, which we will recount in the life of this Apostle of the New World. Finally, the society of Ignatius was approved by Paul III, on September 27, 1540, and took the name of the Company of Jesus, because it was under its banners and under its special assistance that it was to work to repress heresies and to re-establish the purity of the faith and the good morals of Christendom. The first thing that was done afterward was to proceed to the election of a general who was to be perpetual and had absolute authority, according to the Constitutions of the Order. The Fathers of the Company who were in Italy assembled for this in Rome, and those who were outside of Italy gave their votes in writing. They nominated Saint Ignatius. But they could never compel him to submit to this election; he pointed out to them that there were in the Company persons who surpassed him in doctrine, in prudence, and in virtue; they should not, therefore, stop at him; furthermore, he felt entirely incapable of the weight of this charge and did not believe he could in conscience take it upon himself. The Fathers who were present were well convinced of the contrary; nevertheless, so as not to afflict the Saint, they agreed to proceed to a new election, after four days of prayers. But this second election was entirely similar to the first and to the votes in writing. Ignatius, however, resisted again, until a learned theologian of the Order of Saint Francis, who was his confessor before the confirmation of his Order, and to whom he declared all his weaknesses in the secret tribunal of penance, had told him that he could not resist his election without resisting the will of God.

Having thus yielded to the eager desires of his children, he made his profession publicly, obliging himself to the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and dependence on the Holy See, for all kinds of missions; then he received that of the other religious with the same vows. There was only this difference, that he addressed his promise immediately to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, as to his superior, and that his companions addressed theirs to him himself, as to their general and their chief. The first action of his generalate was to teach the catechism to children for forty days, in Santa Maria della Strada, which had been given to him as a church. He produced incredible fruits there, and it is by his example that the superiors of the Company also teach the catechism when they enter into office. He then drew up, for the good government of the Order that he had just founded, regulations in which the Spirit of God, which is a Spirit of wisdom and holiness, appears admirably.

Nothing can be added to the prudence and holiness with which he governed all this great body; for if God had given him singularly the grace of the discernment of spirits to know in what manner each member of this body should be led, he had also given him a happy alliance of firmness with gentleness to correct without irritating, and to reprimand without causing a mortal wound. He left Rome only twice: once to reconcile the inhabitants of San Angelo with the inhabitants of Tivoli, against whom they had taken up arms; the other to reconcile Duke Ascanio Colonna with Joanna of Aragon, his wife, who were extremely at odds with each other: he succeeded perfectly in both enterprises. He also made, by the help of heaven, other very important reconciliations; especially that of King John III of Portugal with Pope Paul III and with the Cardinal of Silva, Bishop of Viseu. The good that he did in Rome by helping all kinds of miseries is so numerous that it would take an entire volume to describe it. He had a house built there for the Jews who would convert, and he himself converted several who embraced the Catholic faith with ardor. He founded another for the libertine women and girls who would leave their disorder without wishing to be religious; for, as for those whose conversion was so perfect that they wished to embrace the regular life, they already had the monastery of the repentant girls, under the title of Saint Mary Magdalene. This new house was called Saint Martha. The Saint himself led these public sinners there; and, as he was sometimes told that he was wasting his time and that these unfortunate women never converted with a good heart: "If I only prevented them from offending God a single time," he replied, "I would consider my trouble well spent." His charity extended to four or five other establishments. The first was for girls whom their great poverty and the abandonment of their parents or their poor education exposed to the peril of losing the treasure of their chastity; he built a monastery for them under the name of Saint Catherine. The second and third were in favor of orphans of both sexes, who had been until then extremely abandoned and deprived of the spiritual and bodily assistance that was necessary for them. The fourth was that of the German College, for which he showed incredible zeal, being persuaded that it was impossible to re-establish the Catholic religion in Germany if one did not take care to raise children from that country in Rome to then go and govern the parishes and bishoprics and defend the religion against the enemies of the Church. It is to him that we are indebted for the holy industry of the Forty Hours' prayers, during the days of Carnival, to withdraw the faithful from the debaucheries that usually take place at this time.

Finally, the blessed Ignatius, after so many labors for the honor of Jesus Christ and for the salvation of his members, wishing for nothing more than to be with Him, began to pray, with continual sighs and groans, that He might grant him the grace to withdraw him from his exile to go and sing His praises eternally and to enjoy in rest and without any trouble His divine presence. Our Lord heard his prayers and even let him know, in advance and in a particular revelation, that He had granted his request. In a letter he then wrote to Eleanor Mascarenhas, who had been governess to the King of Spain Philip II, he took leave of her forever and informed her that he would write to her no more; but that, being in heaven by the mercy of God, he would not fail to recommend her to Our Lord. Having thus fallen ill at the end of July in the year 1556, and seeing that this blessed moment was near, he confessed and received communion, as he was accustomed to do when he could not say Mass. On the 30th of the same month, in the evening, although the doctors who were treating him were all of the opinion that his illness was by no means dangerous, he called Father Polanco, who was his secretary, and, having had those who were in his room leave: "My hour," he said to him, "has come; go find the Pope and ask him for his blessing for me, so that my soul may have more assurance in this terrible passage. Tell also His Holiness that if I go to a place where my prayers may be of some avail, as I hope from the divine mercy, I will not fail to pray for Him, just as I have done when I had the most to pray for myself." The secretary, unable to believe, after the assurance of the doctors, that the matter was so pressing, begged the Saint to be pleased to let him wait until the next day to carry out his order; the Saint, not wishing to show, by too much eagerness, that he had had a particular revelation of the time and hour of his death, permitted him to do so. Meanwhile, he prepared himself more and more for death and spent the whole night in continuous elevations of his spirit toward God.

The next day, the secretary only just had time to go and speak to the Pope. His Holiness expressed much sorrow at the loss that the Church was about to suffer of a subject so useful and who still rendered Him such great service, and sent him his blessing with a plenary indulgence. Thus, the glorious founder of the Society of Jesus, being sixty-five years old, of which he had spent thirty in the world, nineteen in his pilgrimages and studies, and sixteen since the foundation of his Society, rendered his blessed spirit into the hands of his Creator to receive from Him the immortal crown that so many holy actions had earned him. His Order was then divided into twelve provinces and had at least one hundred colleges. Several of his disciples had already shed their blood for Jesus Christ, and others had died in the fatigues of preaching the Gospel, baptizing the infidels, debating against heretics, and traveling for the establishment of the kingdom of God. He left a happy posterity that continues throughout the earth to ruin idolatry and heresies, to reform the morals of Christians, to raise children, to instruct the ignorant, to visit prisons and hospitals, to relieve the poor, and to procure an infinity of other goods for the Christian world. Never did the Roman Empire extend its conquests so far as Ignatius, through his children, extended his for the glory of their sovereign Master.

It would take another new work to make the necessary reflections on his virtues. He had the gift of tears and the gift of prayer to a very eminent degree, and he spent a large part of the day and night in these exercises. God spoke to him continually in the depths of his heart, and he listened to Him with a wonderful rest and taste. The slightest thing raised him to God and made him enter into a wonderful contemplation of His greatness and perfections. He often had raptures and ecstasies, and he was always, while praying, so recollected and so attentive that he appeared as if motionless. All his enterprises and all his actions are so many marks of his great love toward God, and he was so inflamed by it that he desired nothing else but to serve such a good Master, without regard for himself and his own interests, which made him take these words as his motto: *Ad majorem Dei gloriam*: "For the greater glory of God." As for his charity toward his neighbor, it appears by the inexplicable desire he had for the salvation of everyone, by the tenderness and benevolence he had for his enemies and even for those who undertook to destroy him and ruin his Company, by his zeal to preserve peace even at the expense of his own interests and those of his houses, by his gentleness toward his disciples, and by his readiness to excuse the most guilty actions or temptations. He had such low sentiments of himself that there are few saints who have carried humility so far. He looked upon himself only as the lowest of creatures, and, if the good of the Church and his neighbor had permitted it, he would have wished to be trampled under the feet of everyone, or to be shamefully driven from the company of men. It is in this sentiment that he did what he could not to be General, and that he used all his industry afterward to be discharged from this burden, of which he fled the honor and the brilliance more than the weight.

The state of mendicancy to which he often reduced himself shows enough the love he had for poverty. We have already remarked that he received, from the time of his conversion, a great gift of chastity and that he kept it inviolably and without contrary movements, all the rest of his life. The admirable letter he composed on obedience shows the esteem he had for this virtue, and how much it was at his heart, and, besides that he wished to practice it continually and by stripping himself of the superiorate, he practiced it, in fact, on a thousand occasions where he submitted his judgment to that of his inferiors. Nothing was capable of shaking his confidence in God; it seemed, on the contrary, that it increased with the difficulty of affairs, the abandonment of men, the deprivation of all help, and the most unfortunate events. Finally, as not only these religious, but also those from the outside, and, among others, the great Philip Neri, founder of the Oratory of Rome, looked upon him as a saint, so he was truly a saint, who possessed eminently the concert of all virtues.

His body was first buried in the church of the professed house, at the foot of the high altar, on the Gospel side, and, that very day, he healed of scrofula the daughter of the nobleman Andrea Nerucci, who had been afflicted with it for five years. It was then transported, in 1587, to the new church called the Grand-Jesus, *il Giesu*, and placed in the main chapel, on the right side of the altar, with this inscription on the stone that covers him: "To Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus"; *Ignatio Societatis Jesu fundatori*.

The signal miracles that have been performed since, both at his tomb and in Barcelona, by the virtue of his hair shirt, and in other places, and which are found to the number of two hundred, with authentic testimonies, in the process of his beatification, finally obliged the Holy See to place him in the number of the saints: which was done on March 12 of the year 1622, by Pope Gregory XV. The Roman Martyrology speaks of him with a very beautiful eulogy, composed by Urban VIII. He has this glorious prerogative attributed to Saint Augustine by Saint Jerome, in his Epistle LXXX, that all heretics hated and persecuted him, and that they tried to fill the world with invectives and calumnies against him. But, as he was the faithful servant of God and the obedient child of the Church, he has this happiness that all good people revere and praise him, and that they give a thousand blessings to God for having sent him in these latter times for the support and propagation of the Christian religion.

Having recounted the foundation of the Society of Jesus above, we shall briefly speak of: 1° its extension in the various countries of Christendom; 2° its constitution; 3° the abolition and restoration of the Order.

1° Extension of the Order, from its creation until its abolition.

During the very lifetime of Saint Ignatius, Henry VIII, King of England, had torn his country and his people from the Church. Ignatius could oppose this only with prayer. However, Brouet and Salmeron were more fortunate in Ireland, which they did not abandon until the last extremity and when the island was absolutely forbidden to them. But, despite these persecutions, the Jesuits continued to risk approaching this inhospitable island. During this time, other Jesuits worked with tireless ardor in Italy for the improvement of morals and the reform of the clergy. In 1606, the Republic of Venice, then in conflict with the Holy See, having risen against ecclesiastical immunities and having encroached upon the jurisdiction of the Church, ordered the Jesuits, so well known for their attachment to the Holy See, to obey the decrees of the Senate or leave the Republic. The latter, faithful to their principles, had to leave the city. Their house was immediately invaded, and justice claimed to have discovered the strangest things there.

At this same time, the King of France, Henry IV, seriously concerned with having the Jesuits return to his kingdom, wanted to know if they were guilty or not. His ambassadors could obtain no explanation from the Senate. After long negotiations, reconciliation took place, without, however, bringing about the reinstatement of the Jesuits. In 1656, Pope Alexander VII submitted the matter again to the Senate, which finally voted for the admission of the Jesuits, who indeed returned on January 19, 1657. Since then, the Society of Jesus remained peaceful, numerous, and active in Italy.

In France, the nationality of the first Jesuits and the monopoly of the University were from the beginning two obstacles to the progress of the Order. For ten years they lived in Paris without having a house or church of their own. At the end of this time, Guillaume Duprat, Bishop of Clermont, gave them a house in which, under the name of Fathers of the College of Clermont (today the Lycée Louis-le-Grand), they fulfilled their laborious ministry in silence and without any external display. The opposition of the Sorbonne was very prejudicial to them. They became the object of daily discussions; people preached against them, insulted them in the streets, and finally the Bishop of Paris, Eustache de Bellay, forbade them all ecclesiastical functions in his diocese. They withdrew, without reply, to Saint-Germain, and obtained from the munificence of the Bishop of Clermont a college in the small town of Billom, chief town of the canton in the Puy-de-Dôme, where from the beginning they counted more than seven hundred students (1557). The Bishop of Pamiers also gave them a college in Guyenne, and Cardinal de Tournon a third college in the city of Tournon. Their case having been brought to the Assembly of Estates at Poissy, they were finally admitted legally throughout France in 1561. From then on, they lived in accordance with the spirit of their Order, without being disturbed. In 1564, they opened their courses in philosophy and literature at the College of Clermont; they obtained rare success. But a new rector of the University, upon taking office, ordered the Jesuits to close their school. They obeyed. Their students were less docile, and their murmurs decided the ministry to authorize the reopening of the courses. The doctors of the University then thought of ways to publicly accuse the Jesuits, and, while waiting for the opportunity, secretly spread the most egregious calumnies against the Society. But the Jesuits won their case, and the majority of the Parliament voted in their favor. Reinstated in their rights from then on, they continued to prove their zeal through their preaching and their writings. They thus passed through times of trouble and civil wars.

Henry III having died under the dagger of Jacques Clément, the Huguenots found the occasion excellent to renew their slanderous imputations and make the Jesuits pass for regicides. They published letters, fragments of sermons, attributed to this or that Jesuit, or, which was more convenient, to the Jesuits in general. But their innocence shone forth especially in the trial of Jacques Clément. Not one contemporary writer accused them of any participation whatsoever, direct or indirect, in this attack. As for the part they took in the League, it is proven that they never associated themselves with it, but that they worked with incomparable zeal for the recognition of King Henry IV by the people and the Roman court. They were noted for the reserve, order, dignity, and moderation of their sermons. Despite this wise and prudent conduct, the Parliament and the University resolved to precipitate the fall of the Jesuits before Henry IV had himself taken the direction of the affairs of the State. The University renewed their trial, but Sully stopped the entire procedure. Unfortunately, the attack by Châtel, who had studied with the Jesuits, sufficed to make them responsible for his crime. Father Guéret was accused, but the tribunals most hostile to the Jesuits, finding not the slightest trace of guilt, had to pronounce his acquittal. Be that as it may, Father Guignard died on January 7, 1593, at the hands of the executioner, not as a criminal, but as an innocent victim of the vengeance of the Parliament; the property of the Jesuits was confiscated; they were forbidden their costume, the education of children, and public teaching; libels paid for with their own money were launched against them in profusion, proclaiming them factious and seducers of youth. Henry IV had difficulty approving this iniquitous sentence, far from having, as has been said, made it valid for all of France by a special edict. On the contrary, the King protected the Jesuits as much as he could. They continued their evangelical work in various provinces, such as Languedoc and Guyenne, where the Parliaments were not hostile to them. Thus, it was by a decree of the Parliament of Paris, on December 29, 1594, and not by a royal edict, that they were banished from a portion of France.

In 1603, Henry IV published an edict by virtue of which they were restored to all their property and recalled throughout the kingdom, on the condition that they would swear obedience and fidelity to the King and the authorities of the kingdom; that they would submit to the laws of the State; and that they would not found new colleges, inherit real estate, or accept successions without the King's approval. They then received houses and colleges in many cities that had not yet had Jesuits. But it required a firm and persevering will from the King to have this edict of recall registered by the Parliament, which resisted for a long time. The King honored them with his confidence, built them a magnificent college at La Flèche, and restored the one at Dijon. However, the Jesuits did not remain at rest for long. On May 14, 1610, Henry IV was assassinated by Ravaillac, and this abominable attack was again imputed to them, with as much iniquity as relentlessness; but no one at court believed in their complicity, and the Queen Mother left them all her confidence. Their innocence was established by the acts of the procedure, which they presented in 1611 to the Queen, with a justificatory memorandum, without anyone rising against the authenticity of these acts. Despite the incessant intrigues, the underhanded dealings, and the violent diatribes of the Protestants, Louis XIII was extremely favorable to them, and Cardinal de Richelieu energetically took their defense. Louis XIV had the same inclination for them, as did Mazarin and Louvois. But this high favor never reduced their adversaries to silence. The Fathers were mainly attacked by Pascal in the *Provincial Letters*, which Voltaire, Voltaire though he was, blamed and accused of lying. Despite the influence and authority they enjoyed, people thought they could hold them responsible for the persecution to which the Jansenists were subjected, the dragonnades, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, etc., etc. Finally, under the reign of Louis XV, the Jesuits succumbed to the attacks of the Encyclopedists and the Jansenists, as we shall show in the overview on the abolition of the Order.

Germany received the Jesuits in 1551; it was Ferdinand of Austria who first called them into his states. They obtained a chair of theology from the Duke of Bavaria at the University of Ingolstadt. They preached at court and in the cities of Vienna, Mainz, and Cologne. Soon after, Cardinal Farnese, the Pope's legate, determined the German bishops to found seminaries for the education of their clergy and to entrust them to the direction of the Jesuits. As early as 1559, they established themselves in the capital of Bavaria, where a magnificent college was built for them. It was the same in Cologne in 1556, in Trier in 1561, in Augsburg in 1563, in Ellwangen, Dillingen, Würzburg, Aschaffenburg, Mainz, and in many other German cities. The Society of Jesus spread very rapidly throughout Germany, and during the very lifetime of Saint Ignatius, it already had twenty-six colleges and ten residences there. This number increased year by year, and soon there was no city of any importance in Germany that did not possess a Jesuit college. The zeal they displayed everywhere soon made them so odious to all sects that, as early as 1588, their enemies wrested from Prince Christopher Báthory a decree of expulsion from the Principality of Transylvania. After seven years, however, they were recalled. In 1630, a new persecution arose; their college in Cluj was pillaged; some Fathers were wounded, and one of them was killed. During the space of twenty years, they were forced to flee three or four times. Finally, in 1687, Emperor Leopold successfully used the Jesuits to restore Catholicism in Transylvania. In Hungary, they were harshly persecuted; but the Emperor having put an end to the political disorders, the bishops founded new colleges and entrusted them to the Jesuits, who soon became as numerous in Hungary as in Austria. The same fate was reserved for the Jesuits in Bohemia. Having become the object of the special hatred of the Protestants and the victim of their furies, they had to abandon the country; but they returned under the protection of the Emperor, following the events of 1620. They had much to suffer in Moravia and Upper Austria until the day when Catholicism was restored and consolidated there.

As soon as war broke out between Charles V and Francis I, all Spaniards were forced to leave France. The Spanish Jesuits went to Brussels and spread rapidly in the Low Countries. They created a college in Louvain, which later became one of the largest establishments of the Order. They obtained another college in Antwerp, and little by little they were able to establish themselves in several other cities of the Low Countries. They were not fortunate in Russia. In Portugal and Spain, their history only takes on importance at the moment of their true ruin.

2° Constitution of the Society of Jesus. Its constitution, as to its essence and its basis, was given to it by Saint Ignatius. Laynez and the other Generals determined the organization in its detail in a more special manner and adapted it to circumstances. This organization is mixed. Supreme authority resides in the hands of the professed, who form the body of the Society. The General Congregation, that is to say, the representatives of the Order elected by the professed, elects the General, who must reside in Rome and is subject only to the Pope. The authority of the General is unlimited, in the sense that the council of assistants given to him has only a consultative voice. However, this authority is restricted in other respects, for he is obliged to follow the fundamental laws of the constitution. He can, it is true, dispense with them in particular cases, but he has in no way the right to abolish or modify the constitutions of the Order.

After the General come the Provincials, who are dependent on no one in the exercise of their power, and are required to account only to the General. Following the Provincials come the Superiors of the professed houses, the Rectors of the colleges, and the Superiors of the residences or affiliated colleges. All these offices are renewed every three years, while the dignity of the General is for life.

The authority of the General, the Provincials, and the Superiors is further restricted in that they have at their side a certain number of consultors or Assistants and an Admonitor.

He who is admitted into the Society no longer belongs to his family; he is solely subject to the direction of his superiors and to the rules of the Order. The Postulant is admitted after some serious trials and sufficient clarifications given regarding the difficulties of his vocation. The Novice lives for two years in the deepest retreat, completely given over to his reflections and to prayer. He is still free at the end of this time and is bound by no vow. This term elapsed, he is put to study, and he spends two years in the study of rhetoric and belles-lettres, three years and often more in that of philosophy, physical sciences, and mathematics. These studies finished, he must himself teach in a lower class, and, in the space of five to six years, he must go through all the classes up to the highest. It is only at the age of twenty-eight to thirty that the Jesuit begins to study theology, for four to six years, and at the end of this study, rarely before the age of thirty-two, he is ordained a priest. At the end of each year, a severe examination takes place, and no one can move to a higher class if he has not shown himself capable. At the end of all this long course of studies, there is a new, very serious examination on all parts of philosophical and theological knowledge, and the result partly decides the future admission of the subject to the profession of the Order. Thus prepared by a long practice of life and varied and solid studies, the Jesuit is subjected to a new time of trials. He is, in truth, ordained a priest, but he cannot yet fulfill any functions; he is obliged to return to the novitiate, to renounce for a whole year any kind of study, any external relationship. This time is called the school of the heart. His solitude is interrupted only by some catechisms given to small children, by some missions given to the people of the countryside. Only then is the Jesuit admitted to the grade, that is to say, to the final vow as a professed, or spiritual coadjutor.

The essential difference between these two classes consists in the fact that the professed alone constitute the body of the Society properly so called. There are therefore four classes in the hierarchy: 1° the Professed, who take, besides the three ordinary vows, the fourth vow of absolute obedience to the Pope: it is from their ranks only that the General and the Superiors are chosen; 2° the Spiritual Coadjutors, who are the cooperators of the professed for teaching and preaching, and the Temporal Coadjutors, that is to say, lay brothers who do manual labor and fulfill the lowest functions; 3° the Scholastics, that is to say, all those who are pursuing their studies and have not yet received a grade; 4° the Novices.

All these members live, according to the class to which they belong, in professed houses, colleges, or novitiates.

3° Abolition and restoration of the Society. The Order of the Jesuits had displayed for more than two hundred years a fruitful and brilliant activity in all the regions of Europe, and had founded a multitude of missions among the pagans of the whole earth, when it was struck by a formidable and double catastrophe in the Iberian Peninsula and in France, a catastrophe following which the Order was abolished by the authority of the Church. In France, the Encyclopedists, with a view to annihilating Christianity, resolved upon the ruin of the Jesuits and found powerful auxiliaries at court. The weapons they used were lies, calumny, and pamphlets. On January 5, 1757, an assassination attempt having taken place against King Louis XV, the Jesuits were immediately accused of complicity; but not the slightest trace of complicity on their part could be discovered. In the meantime, news arrived of the abolition of the Order of the Jesuits in Portugal. The famous Sebastião José de Carvalho, better known under the title of Marquis of Pombal, had put into circulation all kinds of pamphlets directed against them; they were attributed with immense wealth in Uruguay and Paraguay, and it was spread everywhere that they were threatening the world with universal domination. Pombal marvelously exploited these slanderous rumors. The Jesuits were violently driven from the Portuguese missions in America; and to give an appearance of legality to iniquitous measures, they insisted to Pope Benedict XIV that he give the order to visit and reform the Order, which was completely fallen, it was said, from its pious and holy statutes. Some time later, it was claimed that, on the night of September 3 to 4, 1758, an assassination attempt had been directed against the King, and the Jesuits were designated as the authors of this crime; hence their banishment from Portugal and the abolition of their Order in that kingdom in 1759.

Hardly had the news of this abolition reached France when the kingdom was immediately flooded with a multitude of pamphlets paid for by the ministry. They were represented as men dangerous to the State, exciting trouble and sedition everywhere. Such was the situation of minds in France when it was learned that Father Lavalette, procurator of the Jesuit house in Martinique, had made unfortunate operations, had been declared bankrupt, and had been excluded from the Order. This disobedience to the formal prescriptions of the Holy See, and especially of Benedict XIV, had the most disastrous consequences. The enemies of the Jesuits knew how to exploit it in every way and had a trial brought against the entire Company before the Parliament. The General of the Order, and the Order in his person, were condemned. The loss of this trial was most disastrous for the Order. It had as an immediate consequence that the confraternities, the pious associations, and the retreats of the Jesuits were abolished as dangerous to the State. On August 6, 1761, the Parliament hastened to publish a decree that forbade Frenchmen from entering the Company, ordered the closing of its colleges, and declared anyone who would follow their teaching in the future incapable of State service. Louis XV annulled the decree of the Parliament at the beginning of 1762; but the latter refused the registration of the royal decree, and the King saw himself obliged to withdraw it. On August 6, 1762, the Parliament rendered a new decree by virtue of which the Order of the Jesuits was abolished as impious and sacrilegious in its doctrine, dangerous to the State in its practice; the vows were proclaimed null, and command was given to the members of the abolished Society to abandon their houses and to lay aside their costume. Most of the Parliaments followed the example of that of Paris, with the exception of those of Franche-Comté, Alsace, Flanders, and Artois. The Pope and the episcopate declared themselves for the maintenance of their rights, and justice seemed this time to be about to prevail, when the Jansenists and the philosophers resumed their old schemes and pushed them further than ever. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr de Beaumont, having taken them under his protection and having published a pastoral letter in their favor, was exiled to La Trappe; in Brest, a Jesuit was hanged; in Paris, a secular priest who had dared to take their defense was hanged.

In 1764, seeing that the bishops were employing them in the pastoral ministry, they were required to declare by oath that they considered their Order as harmful and guilty, a requirement to which, except for a few rare exceptions, they resisted courageously. An edict surreptitiously wrested from the King in November 1764 confirmed all the parliamentary iniquities, definitively declared the Order abolished, while granting its members the authorization to live as private persons in the kingdom. This edict decided Pope Clement XIII to speak in his turn, and, on January 7, 1765, he promulgated the bull *Apostolicum*, which approved the Society of Jesus once again.

But the storm unleashed against the Jesuits was not limited to France and Portugal; it had repercussions in Spain, Naples, and Sicily. A sedition having taken place in Spain, it was imputed to the Order of the Jesuits, and on the night of March 31, 1767, they were expelled from the kingdom. More than six thousand Jesuits were crowded into ships and deported to the States of the Church; the Spanish soil was forbidden to them under pain of death. Thus, without accusation, without inquiry, without judgment, the Order was exiled, stripped of its property, and all these iniquitous measures were approved by the so-called Pragmatic Sanction of Charles III, of April 3, 1767. In vain did Cardinal Braschi, who later became Pope Pius VI, demonstrate the falsity of the letters that had served as the text of the accusation; in vain did Clement XIII complain, in a letter addressed to Charles III, of the iniquitous treatment to which an innocent Order was being subjected: the consummated iniquity was maintained. The same fate befell the Jesuits in Sicily and Naples, where, on November 6, by order of the Prime Minister, the Marquis of Tanucci, they were seized, embarked, and deported to the States of the Church, as well as in Parma, from where they were sent away on February 7, 1768, despite the paternal and energetic protests of Clement XIII.

The Order remained innocent in the eyes of the Catholic world, covered as it was by the protection and confidence of the Holy Father. However, Pope Clement XIV, obsessed on all sides by the courts, ordered, in the month of October 1772, the closing of the Roman College, forbade the Jesuits f rom teachin Clément XIV Pope who granted canonical institution and the house of Saints John and Paul. g, preaching, and hearing confessions, and had the archives of their houses sealed. The same measures were taken in other cities of the States of the Church. Thus was little by little prepared the brief of suppression *Dominus ac Redemptor noster*. Clement XIV condemned the Order, according to his own words, only "out of love for peace, and to restore good understanding between the Holy See and the various cabinets of Europe." Frederick, King of Prussia, forbade the official communication of the brief to the authorities of Silesia, and let the Holy See know, through his chargé d'affaires, that he was resolved to maintain the Jesuits, because they were the best priests in his kingdom. Catherine, Empress of Russia, did the same with regard to the Jesuits in her states, and when Pope Pius VI ascended the throne, she asked him for the reinstatement of the Order, which the Pope, despite his good will, could not yet grant. However, the Jesuits endeavored to preserve the spirit of their Order under the name of Clerics of the Sacred Heart and Missionaries of the Faith.

Pope Pius VII restored, at the express request of Paul I, for all of Russia, the Society in all its previous rights and privileges, and authorized it to elect Pie VII Pope who authorized the cult of Blessed Rainier. a General, in place of the Vicar General it had had until then. Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, requested their restoration and offered to return to them all the property that had been taken from them. The Pope granted his request by his brief of July 31, 1804, and a novitiate was erected in Naples. On August 7, 1814, the Bull *Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum* solemnly revoked the brief of Clement XIV and restored the Society in all Catholic countries. Belgium and Ireland tolerated them; Naples, Sardinia, and Modena entrusted them with the education of youth; Ferdinand VII restored them in Spain to the possession of their property: the revolution of 1820 drove them out; the restoration of 1823 brought them back. The revolution of 1830 restricted their privileges; in 1835, they were definitively sent away from the kingdom.

In France, they were tolerated tacitly at first, and were legally restored in 1822; but the government of the Bourbons was forced, in 1828, by the Chambers, to restrict the influence of the Company, to submit their educational houses to the University, and to monitor them closely. After the July Revolution, the University had them forbidden from teaching youth, and in 1845, Gregory XVI consented to the Jesuits being amicably sent away from France. They were, however, tolerated there as individuals; they were even left a certain number of houses, and the government pretended not to notice that they continued to receive novices there and to exercise the pastoral ministry in all the dioceses where people hastened to call them. The Republic of 1848 placed them back under common law and let them enjoy the same freedom as all other citizens. Since then, they have opened many colleges in France; they also have a large number of residences for the ministry there, several novitiates, houses of study and retreat; they also direct some seminaries.

Portugal sent them away in 1833, and Brazil refused to admit them. They were restored in Switzerland, then expelled from that country. They encountered little opposition in England; however, only Jesuits of English origin are tolerated. They established themselves in Malta in 1845, and spread actively in the States of America as in the East Indies. On the other hand, their situation has been overturned in Russia. In 1813, they were expelled from Saint Petersburg and Moscow; in 1820, from all of Russia and Poland, because they were considered the greatest obstacle to the projected union of the Russians and Poles in the Greco-Russian schismatic church. They are generally not disturbed in the states of the Austrian monarchy. Mr. von Bismarck has just violently expelled them from all the states of Germany subject to the Prussian yoke. After having persecuted the Jesuits, he is persecuting the German Catholics: thus Providence punishes them for having collaborated in the foundation of a heretical and tyrannical empire.