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JESUITS

JESUITS. The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) is a religious order of men within the Roman Catholic Church formed under the inspiration of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and his companions and given approval by Pope Paul III (1468–1549) on 27 September 1540. A dramatic conversion from a less than pious life encouraged Ignatius's desire to further his education to "help souls," a desire that brought him to the University of Paris in 1528. In Paris, Ignatius gathered like-minded men who followed his Spiritual Exercises to attain interior peace and a clearer idea of their vocation. Together they decided on lives of poverty and chastity. On 15 August 1534 they promised to go to the Holy Land and there decide their futures with the stipulation that, if the Jerusalem trip proved impossible, they would make themselves available to the Roman pontiff. The war between Venice and its allies against the Turks prohibited the Jerusalem trip, and while waiting for any possible entry to the Holy Land, Ignatius and some from the group were ordained priests in Venice on 24 June 1537.

In January 1538 the companions—as they called themselves—gathered in Rome, where they were suspected of harboring Lutheran tendencies. Ignatius protected his orthodox reputation by seeking legal justice against his detractors. Declared innocent of all charges on 18 November 1538, the companions offered themselves to Pope Paul III for service in the church. They then faced another question. Should they remain as a group, that is, form a religious order, or should they be missioned for service as individuals? They conferred from March to June 1539, and from these deliberations the companions elected to form a religious order. Ignatius composed a "way of life," to which the pontiff gave oral approval on 3 September 1539, reputedly saying, "The finger of God is here." This rule was unique in the history of religious life in making no mention of lifelong residence in one community, the singing of the divine office in common, and the choosing of a superior by election of the local community. Ignatius incorporated these radical changes believing that this "company of Jesus" should be free to spend "a great part of the day and even of the night in comforting the sick both in body and spirit." Ignatius also composed rules that favored a more absolutist form of government with structures for its implementation. Although Cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542), Ignatius's personal friend, advocated the rule's quick approbation, the cardinal designated to formulate these rules into a papal bull, Giralomo Ghinucci (d. 1541), saw in these novelties the very criticisms Martin Luther (1483–1546) had lodged against the Roman church. Another cardinal, Bartolomeo Guidiccioni (1469–1549), also raised issue with the plan since previous church legislation outlawed new orders.

Ignatius surmounted these objections, and on 27 September 1541 Pope Paul III signed the new order into existence with the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae. Pope Julius III (1487–1555) reconfirmed this "way of life" in Exposcit debitum, promulgated on 21 July 1550, and this is the version the Society of Jesus considers its founding document. This "way of life" or Formula of the Institute defined the company of men as those who desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, to serve the Lord alone and his church under the Roman pontiff, and to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine. The Formula specified how these goals were to be carried out: preaching, administration of the sacraments, reconciling the estranged, and providing for the poor in hospitals and prisons, works to be performed throughout the world, "even in the region called the Indies." From its inception the order's vision extended beyond the European peninsula.

GOVERNANCE

Soon after the pope approved the Formula, Ignatius composed a more detailed constitution that included rules concerning the order's governance and the training of its men. Jesuit formation was rigorous for its time. Legislation required those preparing for priesthood to study courses in humanities, philosophy, and theology according to the "method of Paris," a system characterized by a well-ordered approach to education that held Thomistic philosophy as the best system in which reason could defend the truths of the faith. The Constitutions established a governing system that placed the superior general as the head, area provincials directly under the general, and local superiors under the provincials. To promote unity within its membership, which by 1773 numbered 22,589 members working from Tibetan mountains to South American jungles, Jesuits were to write frequently to report their successes and failures and to seek advice from their superiors and provincials. Provincials in turn were to write annual reports to their headquarters in Rome. Jesuits rewrote and published these letters to promote vocations and inspire financial donations for their overseas efforts. These annual reports provide a wealth of information for historians, natural scientists, and ethnographers. The annual letters from New France, compiled by Reuben Gold Thwaites as Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (1896–1901), provide one important example.

SCHOOLS

Although the Jesuits embraced a singular goal, the members employed means as varied as the countries and cities in which they labored. Though schools were not mentioned specifically in the Formula, Ignatius soon realized that they would be one of the best means "to aid our fellowmen to the knowledge and love of God and to the salvation of their souls." (Constitutions, part 4, chapter 12, paragraph 446) Since his own education benefited from the organized "method of Paris," he legislated these organizational principles in part 5 of the Constitutions. Although a few schools predated it, the Roman College, founded in 1551, received a great part of Ignatius's attention. This school and its method of studies, or ratio studiorum, served as a template for Jesuit schools throughout the world. Constantly modified, the initial ratio embedded in part 5 of the Constitutions received a definitive articulation in the Ratio Studiorum, published under superior general Claudio Aquaviva (1543–1615) in 1599. Under the inspiration of this Ratio, by 1773 the Jesuits ran 669 colleges, 179 seminaries, and 61 houses of study for their members in formation in addition to partial or full governance of 24 universities.

Within these academic walls the order's greatest minds taught and did their research. A few names speak for many. Christoph Clavius's (1537–1612) astronomical observations provided the basis for the Gregorian calendar. Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680), one of the seventeenth century's more eclectic minds, did pioneering work in linguistic theory, archaeology, and pharmacology. Pietro Pallavicino (1607–1667), in his History of the Council of Trent (1656–1657), set a higher standard for historical writing, as did Heribert Rosweyde (1569–1629) and Jean van Bolland (1596–1665), historians who developed hagiography into a modern discipline. Jesuit philosophers and theologians dominated the field in the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century. Catholic apologists, such as Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) and Peter Canisius (1521–1597), wrote catechisms used throughout the Catholic world, old and new. Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) wrote leading works on international law and statecraft. Luis de Molina (1535–1600) attempted a Catholic response to the complex relationship between God's power and foreknowledge and human free will.

Jesuit artists frequently traveled to create works for Jesuit colleges and their chapels. Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709) excelled as the master of perspective, particularly in his portrayal of a light-filled dome painted on a flat canvas for the ceiling of Saint Ignatius Church in Rome. In China, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766) combined Western techniques with Chinese brushwork for the pleasure of the Ch'ing court. Baroque spectacle filled the Jesuit school stages, where rhetoric, drama, choreography, set design, and lighting combined to produce a moral message that moved souls toward love of the good and fear of hellfire—which the Jesuits frequently portrayed in great detail. Just as some Jesuits excelled in directing the drama on stage, others directed the drama within the individual soul. To this end they preached from the pulpit, persuaded others with books and pamphlets, and served as confessors and spiritual directors, all activities undertaken to help move souls toward their supernatural end. Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704), Paolo Segnari (1624–1694), John Regis (1597–1640), and Edmund Campion (1540–1581) were a few of the order's great preachers.

Just as the Ratio provided a template for promoting education, the Marian Congregations, established in 1563 by Jean Leunis at the Roman College, served as a model for implementing spiritual reform among the laity throughout the world. Under Jesuit direction, these congregations provided spiritual counsel and structured guidance for frequent reception of the sacraments and participation in good works. Limited first to students, the groups quickly comprised all aspects of male society and became a successful means for Jesuits to implement Tridentine Catholicism's ideals and their own spirituality. Jesuits also promoted specific devotions, rituals, and practices intended to bring souls to a greater love of Christ. The Jesuits established the devotion to the merciful heart of Jesus in France during the late seventeenth century specifically to counter the rigors of Jansenism. Increased mortality in Europe during the mid-seventeenth century encouraged the Jesuits to develop the bona mors devotion: Friday lectures and prayers that focused on preparation for a "good death." During the late seventeenth century the Jesuits promoted devotion to the Holy Family and to Saint Joseph in an attempt to emphasize the family's dignity, especially the responsibilities of husbands and fathers. The Jesuits advanced these congregations and devotions because they best implemented the advice given by Ignatius in the Constitutions: the most practical and best use of personnel occurs when one Jesuit influences or has a great effect on many. Keeping this advice in mind, the Jesuits seized the opportunity to act as confessors to Europe's Catholic ruling houses.

MISSIONS

Since the Jesuits identified saving souls as their purpose, they quickly responded to the challenge of converting "undiscovered" populations of the New World and the non-Christian populations of the Indies. Francis Xavier (1506–1552), one of Ignatius's first companions, inaugurated the order's missionary endeavors by accompanying Portuguese merchants into India, the Moluccas, and Japan. Alesandro Valignano (1539–1606) inaugurated tremendous success in the Asian missionary field with his Mission Principles (1574–1606), a set of recommendations that encouraged the adaptation of Christian thought to Indian, Japanese, and Chinese cultures. His former student and missionary companion Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) institutionalized these adaptations by formulating Christianity within a vocabulary understood by Chinese intellectuals. His T'ien-chu Shih-i [1603; The true meaning of the lord of heaven] explained basic metaphysical foundations of Christian truths using a Confucian vocabulary. The mission to Japan began with Xavier's arrival in 1549 and proceeded with some success. Because the Jesuits were not able to discern the shifts in political power while confronting fierce persecutions fueled by suspicion of Western traders, Christianity was all but eradicated in Japan by 1614.

Although Christianity existed in India prior to European expansion, Xavier initiated Jesuit contact in 1542. Again where Xavier left off others followed, in part because Akbar (1542–1605), ruler of the Mogul court, in 1579 requested Jesuits to explain the Christian faith. Like Ricci in China, Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656) in India studied the documents that shaped local culture. Nobili's understanding of Sanskrit and the Hindu Vedas provided an opportunity for a deeper insight into indigenous culture and means by which Catholicism could be expressed in a non-European vocabulary. The Jesuits arrived in the New World first in Brazil in 1549 and operated extensive missions in that Portuguese colony. In South America the most spectacular Jesuit missionary success was the transfer of thousands of Guaraní Indians away from the reach of costal slave traders and into small inland cities of approximately thirty-five hundred persons known as "reductions." Dominico Zipoli (1688–1726) composed music for voices, lutes, and viols for the reductions. Sung and played by natives, the music echoed from magnificent baroque structures and amazed European visitors, who had been told on some occasions that these natives had no souls. In North America the Jesuits labored for the most part in New France but also in what became the United States, particularly in the upper Midwest, on the East Coast, and in the Southwest.

CONTROVERSIES AND SUPPRESSION

Controversies followed the Jesuits along with success. From the foundation of the order, the Jesuits had always emphasized that human nature, despite its fallen state, still had as its deepest orientation the desire to be with God, an outlook grounded in Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises. This emphasis on the goodness of the will situated most Jesuits in opposition to some other Catholics, who accentuated the effects of original sin and disparaged a person's ability to choose to do good outside of God's direct action. This issue touched upon a difficult theological point that attempted to distinguish the extent of a person's free will in light of God's providence and power. Known as the controversies concerning nature and grace, these controversies raged into the early years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits' frequent acceptance of non-European rituals as a means of expressing Catholic truths further emphasized their implicit belief in the goodness of human nature. Holding that nature, human and otherwise, was not intrinsically evil, the Jesuits granted greater latitude in the performance of certain indigenous practices by converts. Nobili in India and Ricci in China allowed those indigenous rituals not perceived as injurious to the faith. Reports of native Christians wearing Brahmin designations or Chinese converts bowing before ancestor tablets left some missionaries (including some Jesuits)andtheologians disturbed. Theyfeared such practices jeopardize the efficacious action of the sacraments or could lead to synchronistic and superstitious practices.

These debates were commonly referred to as the rites controversies since they involved the propriety of indigenous ritual among new converts. The Jesuit emphasis on the probity of the will also set the order against the Jansenists, a group of Catholics who embraced the more pessimistic writings of Augustine (354–430) concerning the human condition. The Jansenists saw in the Jesuits' theology a laxity that would lead the faithful away from truly coming to grips with their sinful condition. The Jansenist Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), in his Provincial Letters (1656), ridiculed Jesuit theologians for what he believed was their attempt to soften moral rigor and their efforts to find causes for laxity. By the eighteenth century the Jesuits, with their strong propapal stance and resolute defense of the Catholic faith, came head to head with the Enlightenment's intellectual powers that saw organized religion as the true enemy of the rights of people.

Accusations of financial mismanagement and rumored hoarding of vast treasures fueled distrust among European leaders. Sebastião Joséde Carvalho e Mello, the marquês de Pombal (1699–1782), orchestrated the Jesuits' eviction from Portugal and its colonies in 1759. Other Catholic countries followed: France in 1764, Spain in 1767. The universal suppression of the Society of Jesus occurred on 21 July 1773 with the papal bull Dominus ac Redemptor, signed by Clement XIV (1705–1774). Because of Poland's partition in 1772, 201 Jesuits formally working there became subjects of Catherine the Great (1729–1796) of Russia, who never allowed the papal bull of suppression to be promulgated. A novitiate and headquarters for the society survived in Poland, and future popes allowed Jesuits from other areas to join this group. The papacy officially restored the Society of Jesus in 1814.

See also Ignatius of Loyola; Jansenism; Trent, Council of.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Backer, Augustin de. Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. Edited by Carlos Sommervogel. Brussels, 1890–1932. Identifies books written by Jesuits from the order's beginning into the nineteenth century.

Burrus, Ernest J., ed. and trans. Jesuit Relations, Baja California, 1716–1762. Los Angeles, 1984.

Correis-Alfonso, John, ed. Letters from the Mughal Court: The First Jesuit Mission to Akbar (1580–1583). St. Louis, Mo., 1981.

Ignatius of Loyola. The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. Translated with an introduction and a commentary by George E. Ganss. St. Louis, Mo., 1970.

Nobili, Roberto de. Preaching Wisdom to the Wise. Translated and introduced by Anand Amaladass and Francis X. Clooney. St. Louis, Mo., 2000.

Padberg, John W., Martin D. O'Keefe, and John L. Mc-Carthy, eds. For Matters of Greater Moment: The First Thirty Jesuit General Congregations: A Brief History and a Translation of the Decrees. St. Louis, Mo., 1994. General congregations provided legislative interpretations of the Constitutions. An important complement to the order's fundamental documents.

Polgár, László. Bibliographie sur l'histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus: 1901–1980. 3 vols. Rome, 1981–1990. Bibliography of Jesuit subject matter authored in the twentieth century.

Ricci, Matteo. The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. Edited by Edward J. Malatesta, translated with introduction and notes by Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen. St. Louis, Mo., 1985.

Rienstra, M. Howard, ed. and trans. Jesuit Letters from China, 1583–84. Minneapolis, Minn., 1986.

Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio. The Spiritual Conquest. Edited and translated by C. J. McNaspy. St. Louis, Mo., 1993. A contemporary description of the reductions.

Simons, Joseph. Jesuit Theater Englished: Five Tragedies of Joseph Simons. Edited by Louis Oldani and Philip Fischer, translated by Richard Arnold. St. Louis, Mo., 1989.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. and trans. Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 66 vols. Cleveland, Ohio, 1896–1901. The compiled annual letters from New France.

Xavier, Francis. The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier. Translated and introduced by M. Joseph Costelloe. St. Louis, Mo., 1992.

Secondary Sources

Aldama, Antonio M. de. An Introductory Commentary on the Constitutions. Translated by Aloysius Owen. St. Louis, 1989.

Bangert, William V. A History of the Society of Jesus. St. Louis, Mo., 1972.

Chatellier, Louis. The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society. Translated by Jean Birrell. New York and Cambridge, U.K., 1989.

Codina Mir, Gabriel. Aux sources de la pédagogie des Jésuites: Le "modus parisiensis." Rome, 1968.

Elison, George. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass., 1973.

Gernet, Jacques. China and the Christian Impact. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1985. Provides an alternative view of Jesuit "success" in the China mission.

Guibert, Joseph de. The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Practice. Translated by William J. Young. Chicago, 1964.

Maher, Michael. Devotion, the Society of Jesus, and the Idea of St. Joseph. Philadelphia, 2000.

O'Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, Mass., 1993.

Schurhammer, Georg. Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times. 4 vols. Translated by M. Joseph Coselloe. Rome, 1973–1982.

Schütte, Josef Franz. Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan. Translated by John J. Coyne. St. Louis, Mo., 1980–1985.

Smith, Gerald, ed. Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance. Milwaukee, Wis., 1939.

MICHAEL W. MAHER