Jesuits, or SOCIETY OF JESUS, a celebrated religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, which has filled a large space in the ecclesiastical and even the political history of the world. It was founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola (q.v.), in concert with five associates—Peter Le Fevre, a Savoyard; three Spaniards—James Lainez, Francis Xavier, and Nicholas Bobadilla; and a Portuguese named Rodriguez. The original object of association was limited to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and a mission for the conversion of infidels; but as all access to the Holy Land was precluded by the outbreak of a war with the Turks, the associates turned their thoughts to a more comprehensive organisation, specially designed to meet those more modern requirements which had arisen since the Reformation. With this view, Ignatius Loyola, with Lainez and Le Fevre, having meanwhile recruited several new associates, repaired to Rome in 1539, and submitted to the pope, Paul III., the rule of the proposed order, the great aim of which was expressed in their adopted motto: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam ('To the greater glory of God'); and the vow of which, in addition to the threefold obligations common to all Catholic religious orders, of chastity, poverty, and obedience, comprised a fourth, whereby the members bound themselves unreservedly to go as missionaries to any country which the pope might indicate to them. The new rule was approved by a bull of 1540; and in the following year the association was practically inaugurated at Rome, by the election of Ignatius Loyola as its first general.
The original constitution of the society has undergone few modifications. Although it is commonly represented as absolutely monarchical, yet the authority of the general is, in many respects, strictly limited. It is true that the general—who is elected by a congregation of professed members, composed of two elected fathers in each province together with the provincial—holds his office for life; and, although he is aided in his government by a council of five assistants, he is not obliged to follow their advice even when unanimous. These assistants are elected by the same congregation that elects the general, and remain in office during his life. Each assistant has a more immediate charge of a group of provinces and missions called an Assistancy, formed mainly according to the principal European languages—Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English. But though the general is thus absolutely free in his decisions, he is strictly bound by the constitutions of the order; nor, although he may dispense in particular cases, is he competent of his own authority to annul or to alter any of the constitutions. Another check on merely arbitrary power and outlet for complaints, may be mentioned. Every three years a Congregation of Procurators, as it is called, is summoned by the general. This is composed of a deputy chosen by vote in each province to go to Rome or elsewhere, and lay the condition and needs of the province personally before the general. When all the deputies are assembled, they have under the presidency of the general always to vote on and decide one question—whether there is any need of convoking a general congregation. Although no instance of deposition has ever occurred, the general himself is liable to be deposed by the sentence of such a general congregation, in certain contingencies which are specifically pointed out by the constitutions.
The body over which this general presides consists of four classes: (1) Professed, who, having passed through all preparatory stages, which commonly extend over ten or twelve years, or even a longer period, have solemnly taken the vows described above, including that of obedience to the pope. It is from this class alone that the general and all the higher officials of the society are chosen. (2) Coadjutors, spiritual and temporal: the former—who have completed their studies, and have (seldom before their thirty-second year, or even later) been admitted to holy orders—being designed to assist the professed in preaching, teaching, and the direction of souls; the latter being lay-brothers, to whom the minor and menial offices of the society are assigned. (3) Scholastics, who, having passed through the novitiate, are engaged for a long series of years, either in pursuing their own studies, or in teaching in the various schools of the order. (4) Lastly, novices, who, after a short trial as 'postulants' for admission, are engaged for two years exclusively in spiritual exercises, prayer, meditation, ascetic reading, or ascetic practices, and generally in a course of disciplinary training. The administrative and executive government of the society, throughout the various provinces or missions into which it is divided, is entrusted, under the general, to provincials, who are named by the general, and hold office commonly for at least three years. In each separate province there are three kinds of communities—professed houses or residences, colleges, and novitiates. The head-superior in each is appointed by the general, who receives at stated intervals a detailed report of the character, conduct, and position of each member of the society. In all these gradations the subordination is complete, and the obligation of obedience is immediate and unreserved; and one of the most familiar accusations against the society is that this duty of blind and implicit obedience makes the superior the sole and final arbiter of conscience for all his subjects, the judge of good and evil, of virtue and of vice. Nevertheless, whatever may be said of the practical tendency of this relation, the Jesuits and their apologists plead that both in the rules of St Ignatius and in the so-called 'examen' of the candidate there is contained, in the duty of obedience to a superior, an explicit reservation for the subject, 'unless where the superior should command what is sinful.'
The system of training exhibits the most profound knowledge of the human heart, and the most correct appreciation of the religious instincts and impulses of mankind. The long exercises of the novitiate were designed by Ignatius to form the individual character in habits of personal holiness, and practices of personal piety. It was the business of the school and college to form the social character of the future teachers of men, and directors of the destinies of society. To learning carefully adapted to the actual condition and progress of knowledge they sought to add manners and habits calculated to inspire confidence, and to disarm prejudice and suspicion. Unlike the older orders, they made no parade of a special calling, whether by a peculiar habit, or by peculiar exterior indications of austerity or asceticism. They enjoyed, indeed, in these respects, some exemptions from the more austere practices of other orders. Their churches were but designed as supplementary to those of the parish clergy (whose ordinary costume they adopted as their own conventual dress), without the canonical services, without much imposing or attractive ceremonial; being chiefly appropriated for religious instruction, and for the duties of the confessional. Their casuistry avoided all harsh and excessive rigour; and it cannot be doubted that some of their writers carried it to the opposite extreme. But above all, they addressed themselves to the great want of their time—education; and through the mastery which they soon obtained in this important field, as well as their eminence in every department of learning, divinity, philosophy, history, scholarship, antiquities, and letters, they attained to unbounded influence in every department of society.
The organisation of the society is settled, in every important particular, by the original rules and constitutions of St Ignatius. The opponents of the Jesuits, however, allege that, in addition to these public and avowed constitutions, there exists in the society, for the guidance of their hidden actions, and for the private direction of the thoroughly initiated members, a secret code, entitled Monita Secreta ('Secret Instructions'), which was meant to be reserved solely for the private guidance of the more advanced members, and which was not only not to be communicated to the general body, but was to be boldly repudiated by all should its existence at any time be suspected or discovered. This singular code, a masterpiece of craft and duplicity, was first printed at Cracow in 1612, and has been repeatedly reprinted by the enemies of the Jesuits; but it is indignantly disclaimed by the society. The accounts of the time and circumstances of its discovery are suspicious and contradictory. The book has been repeatedly condemned, both at Rome and by other authorities, as well as by the society, and its apocryphal character is now commonly admitted.
The history of the society is varied in the different countries, but in each may be divided into three stages—the rise, the suppression, and the restoration of the order. In Italy its early career was brilliant and unclouded. Before the death of the first general, St Ignatius, in 1556, the Italian Jesuits had swelled to 1000 in number, and the order was established in twelve provinces. Their first check in Italy occurred in Venice. In the contest of this republic with Paul V. (q.v.) the Jesuits, taking the side of Rome, accepted in 1606 the alternative, proposed by the senate, of leaving the Venetian territory; nor was it till 1656 that they were re-established in Venice, from which time they continued to enjoy undisturbed influence in Italy until the suppression of the order. The earliest settlements outside of Italy were in Portugal and Spain. In 1540 Rodriguez (a Portuguese nobleman) and Francis Xavier opened colleges in Portugal, at the invitation of the king. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, in Spain, was equally well received in his native country, where the order flourished so rapidly, that, at the time of the suppression, the Spanish Jesuits numbered above 6000.
In France, although a house for novices was founded in Paris by St Ignatius in 1542, the university of Paris opposed their introduction as unnecessary, and irreconcilable with its privileges. They were distasteful to supporters of the Gallican liberties, and still more to the Huguenots. The jurists, the parliament, and the partisans of absolutism were alarmed by the free political opinions which had found expression in some of the Jesuit schools. On the other hand, the democratic party attributed to them a sinister use of their influence with courts. And thus their progress in France was slow, and their position at all times precarious. It was with much difficulty that the parliament of
Paris consented to register the royal decree which authorised their establishment. In more than one instance the university protested against their schools as invading its privileges. In the wars of the League they did not fail to make new enemies; and at length the assassination of Henry III. by Clement (although no evidence of any connection with the Jesuits appeared in his case), and the circumstance that Chatel, who attempted the life of Henry IV., had at one time been a pupil in their schools, led to their expulsion from France in 1594. They were reinstated, however, in 1603; but on the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac the outcry against them was renewed. Although it seems quite certain that this clamour was utterly without foundation, yet the opinions held by one of their order, Mariana (q.v.), on the right of revolt, although condemned by the general, gave a colour to this and every similar imputation. A less deep but more permanent and formidable movement against them was gradually stirred up at a later period, by a combination of all the causes of unpopularity already described, to which new point was given by the well-known Jansenist controversy, and by the questions as to the imputed laxity of the moral teaching of the Jesuits, and their alleged corrupt and demoralising casuistry. What the ponderous and indignant prelections of the Sorbonne, and the learned folios of the Dominican and Augustinian schools had failed to accomplish, the wit and brilliancy of the celebrated Lettres Provinciales of Pascal (q.v.) effectually achieved. The laxity of some of the Jesuit casuists was mercilessly exposed by this brilliant adversary, who represented it as the authorised teaching of the order, and the crafty maxims and practices popularly ascribed to the society were placed before the world in a light at once exquisitely amusing and fatal to the reputation of the body. The attempts at rejoinder on the part of the Jesuits but served to fix the ridicule more firmly. Of the thousands who laughed at the happy humour, or sympathised with the vigorous raillery of Pascal, few, indeed, could plod through the learned but heavy scholasticism of his adversaries. In vain the Jesuits insisted that the obnoxious casuists had been condemned by the society itself; in vain they showed where their opinions differed from those imputed to them. The wit of Pascal remained unanswered; and whatever were the logical merits of the controversy, no doubt could be entertained as to its popular issue. The pungent pleasantries, too, of the Provincial Letters were but a foretaste of the acrimony of the later Jansenistical controversies, in which the Jesuits stored up for themselves an accumulation of animosities in the most various quarters, the divines, the lawyers, the courtiers, which were destined to bear bitter fruit in the later history of the society in France. Nevertheless, after a long conflict, they enjoyed a temporary triumph in the last years of the Regency and the beginning of the reign of Louis XV.
In Germany the Jesuit institute was received with general and immediate favour. In the Catholic territories, Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhenish principalities, they not only founded colleges and other establishments of their own, but they were appointed at Ingolstadt and other universities to hold important professorships, and received in many dioceses the charge of the episcopal seminaries then newly established. Before the death of the first general, St Ignatius, the order could reckon in Germany 26 colleges and 10 professed houses. In Hungary and Transylvania much bitterness arose out of their introduction; the same may be said of Bohemia and Moravia; and through the whole course of the Thirty Years' War the Jesuits, though in many instances wrongfully, were regarded by the belligerent Protestants as the soul and centre of the Catholic camp.
In the Netherlands they encountered some opposition at first; but in 1562 Lainez, the second general of the order, came to the Low Countries, and a college was opened at Louvain, which eventually became one of the greatest colleges of the order. In the Protestant kingdoms the Jesuits obtained entrance only as missionaries, and in some, as in England, Scotland, and Ireland, under circumstances of great difficulty and peril. From England they were excluded by the penal laws under pain of death; nevertheless, with a constancy and devotedness which it is impossible not to admire, they maintained through the worst times an unbroken succession of missionaries in many parts of England. They often resorted to the most singular disguises, and generally bore false names; and several of the old Roman Catholic mansions still show the 'Priest-hole,' which was contrived as a retreat for them in cases of sudden emergency. Into Ireland they effected an entrance almost at the first foundation, and, after many vicissitudes, towards the close of the reign of Charles II. they had more than one considerable college for the education of youth.
But a still more fertile field for the enterprise of the order was that of the missions to the heathen, in which they outstripped all the older orders in the church. In the Portuguese colonies of India the successes of Francis Xavier (q.v.) are well known. The results of their missions in China (under such men as Ricci, 1552-1610, and Schall, 1591-1669) and Japan were even more extraordinary, as also in Northern and Central America. Above all, their establishments in the southern continent, in Brazil, in Paraguay and Uruguay, upon the Pacific coast, in California, and the Philippine Islands were missions of civilisation as much as of religion.
Such was this association in the first stage of its history. At their first centenary jubilee the members already numbered 13,112, distributed over 32 provinces. At their suppression, a century later, they had increased to 22,589, and were possessed of 24 professed houses, 669 colleges, 176 seminaries, 61 novitiates, 335 residences, and 275 missionary stations in infidel countries or in the Protestant states of Europe.
The decline in the fortunes of the Jesuits was rapid and decisive in its consummation. The first blow which they sustained was in Portugal. An exchange of colonial territory having been effected between that kingdom and the crown of Spain, the so-called 'Reductions' of Paraguay (q.v.), in which the Jesuit missionaries possessed an authority all but sovereign, were transferred to Portugal. The native Indians having resisted this transfer, the Portuguese ascribed their disaffection to the Jesuit missionaries. The Portuguese minister, Pombal de Carvalho, to whom the Jesuits allege that their possessions in Portugal had long been an object of desire, instituted a commission of inquiry; and while it was still pending, an attempt on the life of the king, Joseph, which was laid to the charge of the Jesuits, furnished him with a fresh ground of impeachment; and, without awaiting any judicial proof of either accusation, he issued, in September 1759, a royal decree, by which the order was expelled from the kingdom. This example was followed in other kingdoms. In France, under the Due de Choiseul, the immediate occasion of the disgrace of the Jesuits was a trial in the civil courts. Father Lavalette, as procurator of the order in Martinique, had consigned to a commercial house in Marseilles two valuable cargoes, which were seized by English cruisers, and, Lavalette being unable to meet the bills, the Marseilles merchants proceeded successfully against the order. The Jesuits replied that Lavalette acted not only without the authority of the order, but against its positive constitutions, and appealed to the parliament of Paris against the sentence. The inquiry thus raised presented an opportunity of which the ancient enemies of the order in the parliament eagerly availed themselves. A report on the constitutions of the society, highly damnable, was speedily drawn up, and a demand was made for the suppression of the order, as being irreconcilable, in its constitution and practice, with the interests of the state and of society. A strong effort was made to arrest the proceeding; but a powerful court-faction, aided by the secret influence of the royal mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who was irritated by the refusal of her Jesuit confessor to grant her absolution unless on condition of her separating from the king, and supported in the press by the philosophic party, carried all voices, public and private, against the Jesuits. An attempt at compromise was proposed to the general, Father Ricci, by which the obnoxious constitutions might be abolished or modified; but his unbending reply, 'Sint ut sunt, aut non sint' ('Let them be as they are, or let them cease to exist'), cut short all negotiation; and a royal edict was published in 1764, by which the society was suppressed in the French territory. This example was followed by Spain, in 1767, with circumstances of great harshness and severity; and by the minor Bourbon courts of Naples, Parma, and Modena. The court of Rome had zealously but vainly interposed in their behalf, and from Clement XIII., especially, they received earnest support. But his successor, Clement XIV., inclining in this and all other questions of church and state to the side of peace, having in vain endeavoured to procure from the courts by which they were condemned a relaxation of their severity, and being pressed by the ambassadors of France and Spain, at length issued, July 21, 1773, the celebrated bull 'Dominus ac Redemptor Noster,' by which, without adopting the charges made against the society, or entering in any way into the question of their justice, acting solely on the motive of 'the peace of the church,' he suppressed the society in all the states of Christendom. The bull was put into execution without delay. In Spain and Portugal alone the members of the society were driven into exile. In other Catholic countries they were permitted to remain as individuals engaged in the ministry or in literary occupations; and in two kingdoms, Prussia under Frederick the Great, and Russia under Catharine, they were even permitted to retain a quasi-corporate existence as a society for education.
What was meant, however, to be the suppression of the society proved but a temporary suspension. The ex-members continued in large numbers, especially in the Papal States and Northern Italy; and soon after the first storm of the Revolution had blown over measures began to be taken for the restoration of the society. The first overt reorganisation of them, barely tolerated by the pope, was in 1799, by the Duke of Parma; in 1801 Pius VII. permitted the re-establishment of the society in Lithuania and White Russia, and with still more formality in Sicily in the year 1804. It was not, however, until after the French Restoration, and the return of Pius VII. from captivity, that the complete rehabilitation of the Jesuit order was effected, by the publication of the bull 'Solicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum,' August 7, 1814; and in 1824 their ancient college, the Collegio Romano, was restored to them. Once thus re-established by Pius VII., the Jesuit order as a religious order has remained on in the Catholic Church. But in different kingdoms of Europe it has had various fortunes. In Modena, Sardinia, and Naples it was re-established in 1815, as also in Spain. It was again suppressed in Spain from 1820 to 1825, from 1835 to 1844, from 1854 to 1858, and its members were banished once more in 1868. In Portugal they have never obtained a firm footing. Their position in France was one of suffrage rather than of positive authorisation; nevertheless, they were very numerous and influential, and their educational institutions held the highest rank. In 1880, however, the republic decreed the dissolution of the order, without giving it the alternative of seeking authorisation; and in July of that year the members were expelled from all their establishments save the educational, an additional month being allowed them for vacating the latter. In Belgium they reinstated themselves after the Revolution, and they now possess many great establishments, professed houses as well as colleges, which are largely attended both by Belgians and foreigners. In Holland also they possess several considerable houses, as well as in England, Ireland, the United States, and, within a recent period, Scotland. In Switzerland they opened in 1818 a college at Freiburg, which became a most flourishing establishment, and subsequently they extended themselves to Schwyz and Lucerne; but the war of the Sonderbund (one of the main causes of which arose out of the Jesuit question) ended in their expulsion from the Swiss territory. Of the German states Bavaria and Austria tolerated their re-establishment for educational purposes. In the Italian provinces of the former, as also in the Tyrol, they enjoyed a certain freedom until the revolution of 1848. In Russia they were placed under sharp restrictions in 1817; and in 1820, in consequence of their successful efforts at proselytism, they were banished by a final ukase from the Russian territory, whence they still remain excluded. The Italian revolution of 1848 seriously affected their position in that country. In that year Pius IX. found it expedient to permit the breaking up of the college and other houses in Rome. They returned, however, with the pope himself, and resumed possession of their ancient establishments. On the proclamation of the kingdom of Italy they withdrew from Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, and the annexed territories in general. In the recent legislation of the kingdom of Italy the Jesuits have been visited with a special measure of repression. While each of the other principal religious orders is permitted to retain its 'mother house' at Rome, in which the general of the order may reside, the Jesuits have been required to quit their principal convent of the Gesù. In Germany also they have been treated with exceptional severity, being held responsible as the main agents and advisers of the measures adopted in the Vatican Council, which were complained of by the government as infringing the rights of the state. By a law of 1873 the order was excluded from the empire, its establishments were abolished, and all foreign Jesuits were ordered to be expelled, and the German members of the society, as well as of kindred orders and congregations, to be 'interned.'
The twenty-four generals of the Society of Jesus have been the following (Italians, except where otherwise specified): Loyola (1541-56), Spaniard; Lainez (1558-65), Spaniard; Borgia (1565-72), Spaniard; Mercurian (1573-80), Belgian; Acquaviva (1581-1615); Vitelleschi (1615-45); Caraffa (1646-49); Piccolomini (1649-51); Gottofredi (1652); Nickel (1652-64), German; Oliva (1664-81); Noyelle (1682-86), Belgian; Gonzalez (1687-1705), Spaniard; Tamburini (1706-30); Retz (1730-50), Bohemian; Visconti (1751-55); Centurioni (1755-57); Ricci (1758-75); Brzozowski (1805-20), Pole; Fortis (1820-29); Roothaan (1829-53), Dutch; Beckx (1853-84), Belgian; Anderledy (1884), Swiss; Martin (1892), Spaniard.
The literature of the history of the Jesuits, whether hostile or friendly, is almost endless in extent and variety: reference may be made to Gioberti, Il Gesùita Moderno (1847), and Cretineau Joly, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus (1845); to the histories by Wolff (2d ed. 1803), Steinmetz, Huber, Guettée (1859), Theleman (1873), Griesinger (Eng. trans. 2d ed. 1885); Parkman's Jesuits of North America in the 17th century (20th ed. 1886); Ranke's Römische Päpstc (6th ed. 1874); Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus; T. G. Law, Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars under Elizabeth (1890). See also CASUISTRY, LOYOLA, XAVIER.