and partly to a conviction that penitents living in enclosure, as
all religious persons then were, would be of no effective use to the
Society; whereas the founder, against the wishes of several of his
companions, laid much stress on the duty of accepting the post
of confessor to kings, queens and women of high rank when
opportunity presented itself. And the year 1546 is notable in
the annals of the Society as that in which it embarked on its
great educational career, especially by the annexation of free
day-schools to all its colleges.
The council of Trent, in its first period, seemed to increase the reputation of the Society; for the pope chose Laynez, Faber and Salmeron to act as his theologians in that assembly, and in this capacity they had no little influence in framing its decrees. When the council reassembled under Pius IV., Laynez and Salmeron again attended in the same capacity. It is sometimes said that the council formally approved of the Society. This is impossible; for as the Society had received the papal approval, that of the council would have been impertinent as well as unnecessary. St Charles Borromeo wrote to the presiding cardinals, on the 11th of May 1562, saying that, as France was disaffected to the Jesuits whom the pope wished to see established in every country, Pius IV. desired, when the council was occupying itself about regulars, that it should make some honourable mention of the Society in order to recommend it. This was done in the twenty-fifth session (cap. XVI., d.r.) when the decree was passed that at the end of the time of probation novices should either be professed or dismissed; and the words of the council are: “By these things, however, the Synod does not intend to make any innovation or prohibition, so as to hinder the religious order of Clerks of the Society of Jesus from being able to serve God and His Church, in accordance with their pious institute approved of by the Holy Apostolic See.”
In 1548 the Society received a valuable recruit in the person of Francisco Borgia, duke of Gandia, afterwards thrice general, while two important events marked 1550—the foundation of the Collegio Romano and a fresh confirmation of the Society by Julius III. The German college, for the children of poor nobles, was founded in 1552; and in the same year Ignatius firmly settled the discipline of the Society by putting down, with promptness and severity, some attempts at independent action on the part of Rodriguez at Coimbra—this being the occasion of the famous letter on obedience; while 1553 saw the despatch of a mission to Abyssinia with one of the fathers as patriarch, and the first rift within the lute when the pope thought that the Spanish Jesuits were taking part with the emperor against the Holy See. Paul IV. (whose election alarmed the Jesuits, for they had not found him very friendly as cardinal) was for a time managed with supreme tact by Ignatius, whom he respected personally. In 1556, the founder died and left the Society consisting of forty-five professed fathers and two thousand ordinary members, distributed over twelve provinces, with more than a hundred colleges and houses.
After the death of the first general there was an interregnum of two years, with Laynez as vicar. During this long period he occupied himself with completing the constitutions by incorporating certain declarations, said to be Ignatian, which explained and sometimes completely altered the meaning of the original text. Laynez was an astute politician and saw the vast capabilities of the Society over a far wider field than the founder contemplated; and he prepared to give it the direction that it has since followed. In some senses, this learned and consummately clever man may be looked upon as the real founder of the Society as history knows it. Having carefully prepared the way, he summoned the general congregation from which he emerged as second general in 1556. As soon as Ignatius had died Paul IV. announced his intention of instituting reforms in the Society, especially in two points: the public recitation of the office in choir and the limitation of the general’s office to a term of three years. Despite all the protests and negotiations of Laynez, the pope remained obstinate; and there was nothing but to submit. On the 8th of September 1558, two points were added to the constitutions: that the generalship should be triennial and not perpetual, although after the three years the general might be confirmed; and that the canonical hours should be observed in choir after the manner of the other orders, but with that moderation which should seem expedient to the general. Taking advantage of this last clause, Laynez applied the new law to two houses only, namely, Rome and Lisbon, the other houses contenting themselves with singing vespers on feast days; and as soon as Paul IV. died, Laynez, acting on advice, quietly ignored for the future the orders of the late pope. He also succeeded in increasing further the already enormous powers of the general. Laynez took a leading part in the colloquy of Poissy in 1561 between the Catholics and Huguenots; and obtained a legal footing from the states-general for colleges of the Society in France. He died in 1564, leaving the Society increased to eighteen provinces with a hundred and thirty colleges, and was succeeded by Francisco Borgia. During the third generalate, Pius V. confirmed all the former privileges, and in the amplest form extended to the Society, as being a mendicant institute, all favours that had been or might afterwards be granted to such mendicant bodies. It was a trifling set-off that in 1567 the pope again enjoined the fathers to keep choir and to admit only the professed to priests’ orders, especially as Gregory XIII. rescinded both these injunctions in 1573; and indeed, as regards the hours, all that Pius V. was able to obtain was the nominal concession that the breviary should be recited in choir in the professed houses only, and that not of necessity by more than two persons at a time. Everard Mercurian, a Fleming, and a subject of Spain, succeeded Borgia in 1573, being forced on the Society by the pope, in preference to Polanco, Ignatius’s secretary and the vicar-general, who was rejected partly as a Spaniard and still more because he was a “New Christian” of Jewish origin and therefore objected to in Spain itself. During his term of office there took place the troubles in Rome concerning the English college and the subsequent Jesuit rule over that institution; and in 1580 the first Jesuit mission, headed by the redoubtable Robert Parsons and the saintly Edmund Campion, set out for England. This mission, on one side, carried on an active propaganda against Elizabeth in favour of Spain; and on the other, among the true missionaries, was marked with devoted zeal and heroism even to the ghastly death of traitors. Claude Acquaviva, the fifth general, held office from 1581 to 1615, a time almost coinciding with the high tide of the successful reaction, chiefly due to the Jesuits. He was an able, strong-willed man, and crushed what was tantamount to a rebellion in Spain. It was during this struggle that Mariana, the historian and the author of the famous De rege in which he defends tyrannicide, wrote his treatise On the Defects in the Government of the Society. He confessed freely that the Society had faults and that there was a great deal of unrest among the members; and he mentioned among the various points calling for reform the education of the novices and students; the state of the lay brother and the possessions of the Society; the spying system, which he declared to be carried so far that, if the general’s archives at Rome should be searched, not one Jesuit’s character would be found to escape; the monopoly of the higher offices by a small clique; and the absence of all encouragement and recompense for the best men of the Society.
It was chiefly during the generalship of Acquaviva that the Society began to gain an evil reputation which eclipsed its good report. In France the Jesuits joined, if they did not originate, the league against Henry of Navarre. Absolution was refused by them to those who would not join in the Guise rebellion, and Acquaviva is said to have tried to stop them, but in vain. The assassination of Henry III. in the interests of the league and the wounding of Henry IV. in 1594 by Chastel, a pupil of theirs, revealed the danger that the whole Society was running by the intrigues of a few men. The Jesuits were banished from France in 1594, but were allowed to return by Henry IV. under conditions; as Sully has recorded, the king declared his only motive to be the expediency of not driving them into a corner with possible disastrous results to his life, and because his only hope of tranquillity lay in appeasing them and their powerful friends. In England the political schemings of Parsons were no small factors in the odium which fell on the Society at large; and his determination to capture the English Catholics as an apanage of the Society, to the exclusion of all else, was an object lesson to the rest of Europe of a restless ambition and lust of domination which were to find many imitators. The political turn which was being given by some to the Society, to the detriment of its real spiritual work, evoked the fears of the wiser heads of the body; and in the fifth general congregation held in 1593–1594 it was decreed: “Whereas in these times of difficulty and danger it has happened through the fault of certain individuals, through ambition and intemperate zeal, that our institute has been ill spoken of in divers places and before divers sovereigns ... it is severely and strictly forbidden to all members of the Society to interfere in any manner whatever in public affairs even though they be thereto invited; or to deviate from the institute through entreaty, persuasion or any other motive whatever.” It would have been well had Acquaviva enforced this decree; but Parsons was allowed to keep on with his work, and other Jesuits in France for many years after directed, to the loss of religion, affairs of state. In 1605 took place in England the Gunpowder Plot, in which Henry Garnet, the superior of the Society in
