Ignatius Loyola

IGNATIUS LOYOLA THE FOUNDER OF THE JESUITS BY PAUL VAN DYKE i PYNE PROFESSOR IN HISTORY AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK . LONDON 1926 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America IGNATIUS LOYOLA BY PAUL VAN DYKE IGNATIUS LOYOLA CATHERINE DE MEDICIS. Two Volumes RENASCENCE PORTRAITS THE AGE OF THE RENASCENCE CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 760733 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOX J I. THE TASK i H. IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 14 III. His OWN STORY: His CONVERSION AND How GOD TAUGHT HIM 29 IV. LOYOLA'S OWN STORY: A PILGRIM AND A STUDENT . 46 V. AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES AND IN THE HANDS o* THE INQUISITION 63 VI. SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS AND THE COMRADES HE GAINED THERE 77 VTI. THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS: WORKING AND WAITING . 95 VHI. A POWERFUL ENEMY. BEGGING AND FINANCE. THE INQUISITION AGAIN 112 v IX. THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS .... 130 X. THE CONSTITUTIONS 146 l^ XI. THE NEED OF THE TIMES 158 XII. THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 175 XIII. OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 192 XTV. IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY . 210 XV. OBEDIENCE 225 V XVI. THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS .... 238 XVH. THE BEGINNINGS OF MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN: THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIES 255 V vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVIII. THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 267 XIX. His VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 285 XX. THE MYSTIC 303 XXI. THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS . 317 XXII. THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS .... 335 NOTES 359 LIST OF BOOKS CITED 364 INDEX 369 IGNATIUS LOYOLA CHAPTER I THE TASK This chapter discusses three topics: first, the greatness of Ignatius Loyola; second, the difficulty of seeing him in the light of his own ideals; third, the materials for making a true picture of him. The sixteenth century was an age of that "passion and strong desire" which young German writers toward the end of the eighteenth century wished to describe in poetry, romance and the drama. Their leader, the youthful Goethe, chose well when he took as the hero of his first play a robber baron of the sixteenth century. For during that century ideals, impulses, habits of thought, hopes, fears which their ancestors had ignored or suppressed became dominant in the lives of many people of western Europe. The whole mediaeval conception of the universe faded like some grandiose dream as humanity awakened. Just as the prows of Columbus broke the bounds of the ocean which the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had not dared to pass; just as the telescope of Galileo finally proved in the teeth of theological authority that Joshua could not have made the sun stand still, so in the spiritual sphere large numbers of men broke through the scholastic tradition, not so much by a reasoned process, as because it restricted new beliefs, feelings and habits. The Renas- cence passed the Alps and during the sixteenth century flooded western Europe from Gibraltar to the shores of the Baltic. Its influence appeared in the world of action. Two dynasties, each supported by the nascent pride of a great nation, fought for half a century over the spoils of weaker 2 IGNATIUS LOYOLA peoples and the hegemony of a new political world. Man lost interest in the ideals of chivalry and discussed the maxims of Machiavelli. One of the bitterest contro- versies in human history bred fear and hate. Roman Catholic and Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist and Anabaptist solemnly put each other to death in fulfillment of what they thought to be their duty to God and man. Out of strife and labour, out of growth and decay, out of effort to find new truths and struggle to defend old institutions, a great change in the attitude of humanity began to be accomplished. For many people the vision of man's place in the universe as Dante saw it, was changed into the vision of man's life as Shakespeare saw it. The century which beheld these great and sometimes convulsive changes was a century of great personalities. New thoughts and feelings need mouthpieces, the defense of ancient institutions or of new ideals calls for captains who are braver and stronger and wiser than their followers. Of all the results of this change and turmoil of that troubled century none is so outstanding as the breaking up of the Church. In 1500 Europe had left from the days when all the lands and peoples south of the Rhine and the Danube were united in the Roman Empire, only one universal institution; the Holy Roman Church Catholic and Apostolic. Into her membership all men were born, to her authority all men were subject. She spoke and prayed in all lands in the old universal language. In her the idea of the unity of Christendom was incorporate. The sixteenth century drew a line, so far as religion was concerned, across Europe from east to west. South of that line, according to the thought and phraseology of any previous generation, was orthodoxy and unity; north of it was heresy and schism. England, Scotland, the northern provinces of the Netherlands, most of the cantons of Switzerland, most of the secular states of the German THE TASK 3 Empire, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, established their own national churches with their own creeds, their own prayers in their own tongue, their own system of govern- ment which owed no allegiance to any authority outside of their own borders, and tolerated no worship different from their own formularies. In France, Bohemia, Poland and Transylvania, although the bulk of the population remained faithful to the orthodox church, the fear of civil war brought about the toleration of one of the types of dissenting churches. It was in connection with the change in the Universal Church that the power of the institution Ignatius Loyola founded became most evident. He did not plainly foresee from the beginning this mightiest of the labours of the Company of Jesus. But, soon after his death, his followers were quite certain that it was the will of God that they should be the leaders in saving the Church from what one of their modern writers calls "a whirlwind of passions let loose by hell against the spouse of Christ . the most fruitful heresy ever launched by the devil upon * the earth." This did become, therefore, the most con- spicuous of four tasks undertaken with marked success by that Company of Jesus in which the spirit of Ignatius Loyola became incarnate. In the eyes of those who believe that the changes of the sixteenth century opened to men's feet the paths of prog- ress, Ignatius is therefore labelled as a reactionary and a conservative. Now a prevailing tendency of the modern world one might almost say the prevalent temperament of the modern world inclines it towards the assumption that no conservative can be a great personality, because conservatism is always the result of a weak intellect or a timorous character. The fundamental difficulty in show- ing to many people how highly developed and how rarely combined were the qualities of character which made ^strain L. LIH. 4 IGNATIUS LOYOLA Ignatius Loyola a power among men, lies therefore just in this fact that he was an extreme conservative; in his main attitude a reactionary. Certain other factors conditioning the way in which his character expressed itself factors purely circumstantial, tend to obscure his greatness for many of us. The Amer- ican of the twentieth century is a very different person from the Spaniard of the sixteenth, and Ignatius was born in those Basque provinces whose inhabitants still show the remnants of that trait of independent conservatism, shedding innovations as a duck sheds water, which became the most outstanding trait of the virile Spanish people, who in the sixteenth century threatened to dominate Europe and America and made in the realm of art and literature such magnificent contributions to the common treasure of humanity. The ideal of Ignatius was an in- ternational ideal. He thought and planned always in terms of Christendom, never in terms of Spain. He wished to look at humanity as God looks at it and to take toward the organized political world the attitude implied in the office of the visible Vicar of the Eternal Christ. But, in spite of his extraordinary success in this effort, Ignatius remained in all the subconscious motives and 'forces of his personality, a Spaniard. Though he spent many laborious years in university study, Spanish and not Latin remained his natural medium of expression. He was very proud of the fact that his order could unite men of hostile nations in affectionate relations, but he found his most efficient lieutenants among Spaniards. So that while he lived, and for seventeen years after his death, Spanish influence was as dominant in the Company of Jesus as Italian influence has been for five hundred years dominant in the Papacy. Then Ignatius was not only a Spaniard but in one re- spect a typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century. If any man ever made his faith his own, Ignatius did. It was THE TASK 5 strengthened by long converse with God in the silence of his soul, deepened by terrible self-denial, broadened by deeds of mercy. But, though his faith was his own, the extreme contented orthodoxy of Ignatius and his self- effacing obedience to the Church had its roots in his racial inheritance and the environment of his youth. A modern Spanish Jesuit, discussing the Spanish nation at the birth of Loyola, writes: "In the midst of such lamentable moral relaxations .

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