The Jesuits, 1534-1921

St. Ignatius was chosen General on Easter Sunday, 1541. After the election, the companions repaired to St. Paul's outside the Walls and there renewed their vows. On that occasion it was ordained that every professed father should, after making his vows, teach catechism to children or ignorant people for forty days; subsequently this obligation was extended to rectors of colleges after their installation. Ignatius acquitted himself of this task in the church of Our Lady of the Wayside at the foot of the Capitol.

In 1541 we find Salmerón and Brouet on their way to Ireland as papal nuncios. They had been asked for by Archbishop Wauchope of Armagh, when Henry VIII was endeavoring to crush out the Faith in England and Ireland. Wauchope is a very interesting historical character. He had been named Archbishop of Armagh after Browne of that see had apostatized. He was generally known as "the Scotch Doctor," and had been the Delegate of Pope Paul III at Spires where Charles V was striving in vain to conciliate the German princes. With him as advisers were Le Jay, Bobadilla and Faber. What made him especially conspicuous then and subsequently, was the fact that he had risen to the dignity of archbishop and of papal delegate though he was born blind. This is asserted by a host of authors, among them Prat in his life of Le Jay, and Crétineau-Joly, MacGeoghegan and Moore in their histories.

On the other hand we find in the "Acta Sanctæ Sedis" (XIII) a flat denial of it by no less a personage than Pope Benedict XIV. It occurs incidentally in a decision given on March 20, 1880, in connection with an appeal for a young theologian, whose sight was very badly impaired at the end of his theological course. The appellants had alleged the case of the Archbishop of Armagh and the court answered as follows: "Nec valeret adduci exemplum cujusdam Roberti Scoti, cui quamvis cæco a puerili ætate, concessa fuit facultas nedum ad sacerdotium sed etiam ad episcopatum, ascendendi, uti tenent Maiol. (De irregularitate), et Barbos (De officio episcopi). Respondet enim Benedictus XIV, quod reliqui scriptores, quibus major fides habenda est, Robertum non oculis captum sed infirmum fuisse dicunt;" which in brief means: "Benedict XIV declares that the most reliable historians say that Scotch Robert was not blind but of feeble vision." As Benedict XIV was perhaps the greatest scholar who ever occupied the Chair of Peter, and as his extraordinary intellectual abilities were devoted from the beginning of his career to historical, canonical and liturgical studies, in which he is regarded as of the highest authority, such an utterance may be accepted as final with regard to the "Scotch Doctor's" blindness.

Codure was to have been one of the Irish delegates, but he died, and hence Salmerón, Brouet and Zapata undertook the perilous mission. The last mentioned was a wealthy ecclesiastic who was about to enter the Society and had offered to defray the expenses of the journey. In the instructions for their manner of acting Ignatius ordered that Brouet should be spokesman whenever nobles or persons of importance were to be dealt with. As Brouet had the looks and the sweetness of an angel, whereas Salmerón was abrupt at times, the wisdom of the choice was obvious. They went by the way of France to Scotland, and when at Stirling Castle, they received a letter from James V, the father of Mary Queen of Scots, bespeaking their interest in his people. Crétineau-Joly says they saw the king personally. Fouqueray merely hints at its likelihood. From Scotland they passed over to Ireland and found that the enemy knew of their arrival. A price was put upon their heads, and they had to hurry from place to place so as not to compromise those who gave them shelter. But in the brief period of a month which they had at their disposal before they were recalled by the Pope they had ample opportunity to take in the conditions that prevailed. They returned as they had gone, through Scotland and over to Dieppe, and then directed their steps to Rome, but they were arrested as spies near Lyons and thrown into prison – a piece of news which Paget, the English ambassador in France, hastened to communicate to Henry; Cardinals de Tournon and Gaddi, however, succeeded in having them released and they then proceeded to the Holy City to make their report.

Eighteen years later, Father Michael Gaudan was sent as papal nuncio to Mary Stuart. He entered Edinburgh disguised as a Scottish peddler and succeeded in reaching the queen. As a Frenchman could not have acted the part of a Scottish peddler, it is more than likely that Gaudan is a gallicized form of Gordon. Indeed, there is on the records a Father James Gordon, S. J., who had so exasperated the Calvinists by his refutation of their errors that he was driven out of the country. He returned again, however, immediately, as he simply got a boat to take him off the ship which was carrying him into exile, and on the following day he stood once more upon his native heath, remaining there for some years sustaining his persecuted Catholic brethren (Claude Nau, Mary's secretary).

That the "blind Archbishop" also succeeded in reaching his see is clear from a passage in Moore's "History of Ireland" (xlvii), which tells how during the reign of Edward VI two French gentlemen, the Baron de Fourquevaux and the Sieur Montluc, afterwards Bishop of Valence, went to Ireland as envoys of the French king and were concealed in Culmer Fort on Loch Foyle. They kept a diary of their journey which may be found, we are assured, in the "Armorial-général ou registre de la noblesse de France." The diary relates that while at the Fort "they received a visit from Robert Wauchope, better known by his pen name as Venantius, a divine whose erudition was the more remarkable as he had been blind from birth and was at the time, titular Archbishop of Armagh." He did not, however, remain in Ireland. MacGeoghegan says "he returned to the Continent and died in the Jesuit house at Paris in the year 1551." Stewart Rose in her "Saint Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits" tells us it was at Lyons, but that was impossible, for there was no Jesuit establishment in Lyons until after the great pestilence of 1565, when the authorities offered the Society the municipal college of the Trinity as a testimonial of gratitude to Father Auger. The generosity of this offer, however, was not excessive. The Fathers were to take it for two years on trial. They did so and then the provincial insisted that the gift should be absolute or the staff would be withdrawn. After some bickering on the part of a number of Calvinist échevins or aldermen, the grant was made in perpetuity and confirmed by Charles IX in 1568.

Meantime, Faber had been laboring in Germany. He was to have been the Catholic orator at Worms in 1540, but conditions were such that he made no public utterance. Melanchthon was present, but whether Faber and he met is not clear. In 1541 Faber received an enthusiastic welcome at Ratisbon from the Catholics, especially from Cochlæus, the great antagonist of Luther. Among his opponents at the Diet were Bucer and Melanchthon; the discussion, as usual, led to no result. In one of his letters he notes the inability of the Emperor to prevent the general ruin of the Faith. From Ratisbon he went to Nuremberg, but as the legate had been recalled, Faber's work necessarily came to an end. Le Jay and Bobadilla succeeded him in Germany. The former addressed the assembly of the bishops at Salzburg, preached in the Lutheran churches, escaped being poisoned on one occasion and drowned on another; he failed, however, to check the flood of heresy, which had not only completely engulfed Ratisbon, but threatened to overwhelm Catholic Bavaria, although Duke William maintained that such an event was impossible. Ingolstadt had already been badly damaged, both doctrinally and morally; and Bobadilla was despatched thither by the legate to see what could be done.

Faber had, meantime, returned to Germany. In spite of attacks by highwaymen, imprisonment, ill-treatment at the hands of disorderly bands of soldiers and heretics, he reached Spires and completely revived the spirit of the clergy. From there he hastened to Cologne, but in the midst of his work he was sent off to Portugal for the marriage of the king's daughter. By the time he reached Louvain, he was sick and exhausted, so that the order to proceed to Portugal had to be rescinded. He then returned to Cologne, where he again met Bucer and Melanchthon, who were endeavoring to induce the bishop to apostatize. Apprehensive of their success, he had them both expelled from the city. Again he was summoned to Portugal, and in 1547 the king, at his instance, gave the Society the college of Coimbra. Similar establishments were begun about the same time in Spain – at Valencia, Barcelona and Valladolid, chiefly through the influence of Araoz.

Le Jay, meanwhile, had been made professor of theology at Innsbruck, on the death of the famous Dr. Eck, and the university petitioned the Pope to make his appointment perpetual; but he was clamored for simultaneously by several bishops, and we find him subsequently at Augsburg, Salzburg, Dillingen and elsewhere, battling incessantly for the cause of the Faith. He succeeded in inducing the bishops assembled at Augsburg to prohibit the discussion of religion at the Diet, and a little later he assisted at the ecclesiastical council of the province. With him at this gathering was Bobadilla, who, says the chronicler, "resembled him in energy and zeal but was altogether unlike him in character." Le Jay was gentle and persuasive; Bobadilla, impetuous and volcanic. Bobadilla's fire, however, seems to have pleased the Germans. He strengthened the nobles and people of Innsbruck in their faith, was consulted by King Ferdinand on the gravest questions, scored brilliant successes in public disputes, and was made socius of the Apostolic nuncio at Nuremberg, where, it was suspected, a deep plot was being laid for the complete extirpation of the Faith. At the king's request, he attended the Diet of Worms, and by his alertness and knowledge rendered immense service to the Catholic party. He was shortly afterward summoned by the king to Vienna where he preached to the people incessantly and revived the ecclesiastical spirit of the clergy. He was again at Worms for another diet, and persuaded both the emperor and Ferdinand to oppose the Lutheran scheme of convoking a general council in Germany. At the suggestion of St. Ignatius, an appeal had been made to the bishops, through Le Jay, to establish seminaries in their dioceses. They all approved of the project; and several immediately set to work to carry it out.

When the Diet adjourned, Le Jay left Germany to take part in the Council of Trent, while Bobadilla remained with the king as spiritual adviser to the court and general supervisor of the sick and wounded soldiers of the royal armies. In the latter capacity he acquitted himself with his usual energy – his impetuosity of character often bringing him into the forefront of battle, where he merited several honorable scars for his daring. He also succeeded in falling a victim to the pestilence which was ravaging the country; he was robbed and maltreated by marauders, but came through it all safely, and we find him at the Diets of Ratisbon and Augsburg, everywhere showing himself a genuine apostle, as the Archbishop of Vienna informed Ignatius. The king offered him a bishopric, but he refused. He was soon, however, to know Germany no more.

The Council of Trent had already been in session for three years, when Charles V issued an edict known as the Interim, which forbade any change of religion until the council had finished its work; but at the same time he made concessions to the heretics which angered the Catholics both lay and clerical. Bobadilla was especially outspoken in the matter and in a public discourse was imprudent enough to condemn the imperial policy. Clearly he had not yet acquired the characteristic virtue of his great leader. Not only did he not mend matters by his intemperate eloquence, but he created an aversion for the Society in the mind of Charles V, which lasted till the time of St. Francis Borgia. Besides, he virtually blasted his own career. He was ordered to Naples by St. Ignatius and forbidden to present himself at the Jesuit house as he passed through Rome. He appears only once later and then in a manner scarcely redounding to his credit: objecting to the election of Laínez as vicar, although he had previously voted for him and obeyed him for a year. Happily the brilliant services of his fellow Jesuits who were at the Council of Trent and elsewhere, as well as his own splendid past, averted any very great damage to the Society.

Although Ignatius had been invited to be present at the sessions in Trent, he sedulously avoided the prominence which that would have given him personally; moreover, absence from his post as General of the newly-formed Institute would have materially interfered with the task of preparing successors to the great men who were already at work. Thus, Salmerón and Laínez were the Pope's theologians and Father Faber was summoned from his sick bed in Portugal to assist them, but he arrived in Rome only to die in the arms of Ignatius and never appeared at the council. Le Jay was present as theologian of the Cardinal Archbishop of Augsburg; Cavallino represented the Duke of Bavaria; and later Canisius and Polanco were added to the group. The coming of Canisius was due more or less to an accident. He had been laboring at Cologne to prevent the archbishop, Herman von Weid, from openly apostatizing; when the concessions to Melanchthon and Bucer had become too outrageous to be tolerated, he had hurried off to meet the emperor and King Ferdinand to ask for the deposition of the prelate. With the king he met Truchsess, the great Cardinal of Augsburg, and had no difficulty in gaining his point, but the Cardinal was so fascinated by the ability of the young pleader that he insisted on taking him to Trent as his theologian in spite of the protests of the whole city of Cologne.

Naturally, many of the Fathers of the Council had their suspicions of these new theologians. They were members of a religious order which had broken with the traditions of the past, and they might possibly be heretics in disguise. Moreover, they were alarmingly young. Canisius was only twenty-six, Salmerón thirty-one, Le Jay about the same age, and Laínez, the chief figure in the council, not more than thirty-four. But the indubitable holiness of their lives, their amazing learning, and their uncompromising orthodoxy soon dissipated all doubts about them. Laínez and Salmerón were especially prominent. They were allowed to speak as long as they chose on any topic. Thus, after Laínez had discoursed for an entire day on the Sacrifice of the Mass, he was ordered to continue on the following morning. Entire sections of the Acts of the council were written by him; and by order of the Pope both he and Salmerón had to be present at all the sessions of the council, which lasted with its interruptions from 1545 to 1563. Bishoprics and a cardinal's hat were offered to Laínez; and, at the death of Paul IV, twelve votes were cast for him as Pope. Indeed one section of the cardinals had made up their minds to elect him, but when apprised of it, he fled and kept in concealment until the danger was averted. He was at that time General of the Society.

After the first adjournment of the council, these men whose stupendous labors would appear to have called for some repose were granted none at all. Thus, we find Laínez summoned by the Duke of Etruria to found a college in Florence. The Pope's vicar wanted him to look after the ecclesiastical needs of Bologna, whither he repaired with Salmerón, while Le Jay was working at Ferrara and elsewhere in the Peninsula. The most remarkable of them all, however, in the matter of work during these recesses was undoubtedly Peter Canisius (Kanees, Kanys or De Hondt, as he was variously called.) One would naturally imagine that he would have been sent back to Cologne to the scene of his former triumphs. On the contrary, he was ordered to teach rhetoric in the newly-founded college of Messina in Sicily. He was then recalled to Rome, where he made his solemn profession in the hands of St. Ignatius; after this he started with Le Jay and Salmerón to Ingolstadt, where he taught theology and began his courses of catechetical instructions which were to restore the lost Faith of Germany.

On the way to the scene of his labors, he received a doctor's degree at Bologna. In 1550 he was made rector of the University of Ingolstadt, but was nevertheless, sent to Vienna to found a new college. He was simultaneously court preacher, director of the hospitals and prisons, and, in Lent, the apostle of the abandoned parishes of Lower Austria. He was offered the See of Vienna, but three times he refused it, though he had to administer the diocese during the year 1557. Five years prior to that he had opened colleges at Prague and Ingolstadt, after which he was appointed the first provincial of Germany. He was adviser of the king at the Diet of Ratisbon, and by order of the Pope took part in the religious discussions at Worms. He began negotiations for a college at Strasburg, and made apostolic excursions to that place as well as to Freiburg and Alsace. While taking part in the general congregation of the order in Rome, he was sent by Pope Paul IV to the imperial Diet of Pieterkow in Poland. In 1559 he was summoned by the emperor to the Diet of Augsburg, and had to remain in that city from 1561 to 1562 as cathedral preacher; during this time it is recorded that besides giving retreats, teaching catechism and hearing confessions, he appeared as many as two hundred and ten times in the pulpit. In 1562 he was back again as papal theologian at Trent, where he found himself at odds with Laínez, then General of the Society, on the question of granting the cup to the laity – Laínez opposing this concession, which he advocated. He remained at the council only for a few sessions, but returned again after having reconciled the Emperor with the Pope. The Emperor's favor, however, he lost later when he changed his views about Communion under both species, and also by reason of an unfounded charge of revealing imperial secrets which had been made against him.

In that year Canisius opened the college of Innsbruck and directed the spiritual life of Magdalena, the saintly daughter of Ferdinand I. In 1564 he inaugurated the college of Dillingen and became administrator of the university of that place; he was also constituted secret nuncio of Pius IV to promulgate the decrees of the council in Germany. His mission was interrupted by the death of the Pope, and although Pius V desired him to continue in that office, he declined, because it exposed him to the accusation of meddling in politics. In 1566 he was theologian of the legate at the Diet of Augsburg and persuaded that dignitary not to issue a mandate against the so-called religious peace. He thus prevented another war and gave new life to the Catholics of Germany. In 1567 he founded a college at Würzburg, and evangelized Mayence and Spires. At Dillingen he received young Stanislaus Kostka into the Society conditionally and sent him to Rome; he settled a philosophical dispute at Innsbruck and established a college at Halle. At last in 1569 at his own request he was relieved of his office of provincial, which he had held for thirteen years; in 1570 he was court preacher of the Archduke Ferdinand II; in 1575 he was papal envoy to Bavaria, and theologian to the papal legate at the Diet of Ratisbon. He introduced the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin at Innsbruck, and at the command of the Pope built a college at Freiburg, where he remained for the rest of his life.

For years Canisius had urged his superiors and had also pleaded at the Council of Trent for the establishment of colleges of writers in various countries to defend the Faith. He was in constant touch with the great printers and publishers of the day, such as Plantin, Cholin and Mayer; he brought out the first reports of foreign missions, and induced the town council of Freiburg to establish a printing-press. All this time he was actively writing, and the list of his publications covers thirty-eight quarto pages in the "Bibliothèque des écrivains de la C. de Jésus." He was commissioned by Pius V to refute the Centuriators of Magdeburg – the society of writers who, under the inspiration of Flacius Illyricus, had undertaken to falsify the works of the early Fathers of the Church, century by century, so as to furnish a historical proof in support of Luther's errors. In 1583 he united in one volume the two books which he had previously issued in 1571 and 1577, styling them "Commentaria de Verbi corruptelis," having in the meantime published the genuine texts of Saints Cyril and Leo.

His "Catechism" was his most famous achievement. It consisted of two hundred and eleven, and later, of two hundred and twenty-two doctrinal questions, and was intended chiefly for advanced students; but there were annexed to it a compendium for children, and another for students of the middle and lower grades. It is recognized as a masterpiece even by Protestant writers such as Ranke, Menzel, Kawerau and others. Two hundred editions of it in one form or another were published during his lifetime in twelve different languages. "I know my Canisius" became a synonym in Germany for "I know my catechism." In brief, he did more than any other man to save Germany for the Church, and he is regarded as another St. Boniface. He died on November 21, 1597 and was beatified by Pius IX on April 17, 1864. The Catechism appears to have been first suggested by Ferdinand I to Le Jay who took up the work enthusiastically. But instead of crowding everything into one volume, he divided it into three: the first, a summa of theology for the university; the second, a volume for priests engaged in the ministry; while the third was for school teachers. He laid the matter before St. Ignatius, who assigned the first part to Laínez and the second to Frusius, then rector of Vienna. But as Frusius died, and Laínez was made General of the Society, Canisius undertook the entire work.

Apparently, it was from Le Jay also that the idea came of founding the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, though Cardinal Morone claims it as his conception. Le Jay, indeed, had discussed the matter with him, but had previously made a much more serious study of the question with Cardinal Truchsess, Archbishop of Augsburg. As the purpose of the Collegium was to supply a thoroughly educated priesthood to Germany, Truchsess could appreciate the need of it more than Morone, whose ideas about the need of good works, the vital question in Germany at the time, were extremely curious, according to his own account of a stormy interview he had with Salmerón on that topic. He reproached Salmerón for making too much of good works. Indeed Morone had been at one time under the surveillance of the Inquisition on account of certain utterances. His orthodoxy, however, must have been above suspicion, because of the exalted position he occupied.

Le Jay was broken-hearted when Maurice of Saxony, the leader of the imperial troops, swung his whole army over to the very Lutherans whom he had just defeated at Muhlberg. The awful condition of religion in the Empire preyed upon his mind to such a degree that he died at Vienna on Aug. 6, 1552, at the age of fifty-two. Canisius, who preached the funeral oration, said that he was "a worthy successor of Faber, and that his instinct was so correct that the character he gave to the college of Vienna over which he presided was adopted as the model throughout Germany." Ranke might be quoted on that point also. He points out that "at the beginning of 1551 the Jesuits had no fixed place in Germany – Le Jay was appointed rector only in June of that year – but in 1566 they occupied Bavaria, Tyrol, Franconia, a great part of the Rhine Province and Austria, and had penetrated into Hungary and Moravia. It was the first durable anti-Protestant check that Germany had received."

Under normal conditions, Spain would of course, have received these distinguished sons of hers with open arms; but, unfortunately, a deplorable state of affairs prevailed in the highest circles both of Church and State, almost as open and as shameless as in other parts of Europe. Princes and nobles held the titles of bishops and archbishops and appropriated the revenues of dioceses. That alone made any effort in the way of reform impossible. Added to this, Bobadilla's indiscretion in attacking the policy of Charles V in Germany had, as we have already said, predisposed that monarch, and consequently many of his subjects, against the whole Society; but as the Emperor did not openly interfere with them they established colleges in Barcelona, Gandia, Valencia and Alcalá, as early as 1546; but two years later, when they made their appearance in Salamanca, they found an implacable foe in the person of the distinguished Dominican theologian, Melchior Cano.