Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

the sword but by catching character in malleable youth and forming

it immovably to faith. Founder of the most successful educational

order in history, he laid little emphasis on learning or intellect. He

was not a theologian, took no part in the arguments and refinements of

the Scholastics; he preferred direct perception to rational

understanding. He did not have to argue about the existence of God, of

Mary and the saints; he was convinced that he had seen them; he felt

them closer to him than any object or person in his surroundings; in

his own way he was a God-intoxicated man. Yet his mystical experiences

did not make him impractical. He could combine pliancy of means with

inflexibility of ends. He would not justify any means for an end

that he held good, but he could bide his time, moderate his hopes

and demands, adjust his methods to characters and conditions, use

diplomacy where needed, judge men shrewdly, choose fit aides and

agents, and manage men as if he were- as he actually thought

himself- a general leading a martial company. He called his little

band by a military term, Compania de Jesu; they were soldiers

enlisted for life in the war against unbelief and the dissolution of

the Church. For their part, as a matter of course and necessity,

they accepted the military discipline of co-ordinated action under

absolute command.

In the fall of 1537 Loyola, Faber, and Laynez set out from Venice to

Rome to ask papal approval of their plans. They walked all the way,

begged their food, and lived mostly on bread and water. But they

sang psalms happily as they went along, as if they knew that out of

their small number would grow a powerful and brilliant organization.

V. THE JESUITS

-

Arrived in Rome they did not at once ask audience with the Pope, for

Paul III was immersed in critical diplomacy. They took service in

the Spanish hospital, tended the sick, taught the young. Early in 1538

Paul received them, and was impressed by their desire to go to

Palestine and live there as exemplary monks; he and some cardinals

contributed 210 crowns ($5,250?) to pay the passage of the band.

When the devotees had to abandon the idea as impracticable, they

returned the money to the donors. `063836 Those members who had

remained in the north were summoned to Rome, and the company now

numbered eleven. Paul appointed Faber and Laynez to professorships

in the Sapienza (the University of Rome), while Ignatius and the

rest devoted themselves to works of charity and education. Loyola made

a special mission of converting prostitutes; with funds collected from

his supporters he founded the House of Martha to receive such women;

and his fervent preaching against sexual transgressions made him

many enemies in Rome.

As new candidates were received into the company, it became

desirable to define its principles and rule. The vow of obedience

was added to those of chastity and poverty; the "general" chosen by

them was to be obeyed only next to the Pope. A fourth vow was taken:

to "serve the Roman Pontiff as God's vicar on earth," and "to

execute immediately and without hesitation or excuse all that the

reigning Pope or his successors may enjoin upon them for the benefit

of souls or for the propagation of the faith" anywhere in the world.

In 1539 Loyola asked Cardinal Contarini to submit these articles of

organization to Paul III, and to request the papal confirmation of the

company as a new order. The Pope was favorable; some cardinals

dissented, thinking the group to be unmanageable extremists; but

Paul overcame their objections, and by the bull Regimini militantis

ecclesiae ("For the rule of the Church Militant") he formally

established what the bull called Societas Jesu, the "Society of

Jesus" (September 27, 1540). The members were properly called

"Clerks Regular of the Society of Jesus"; the name "Jesuit" did not

appear till 1544, and then chiefly as a satirical term used by

Calvin and other critics; `063837 it was never used by Ignatius

himself. After his death the success of the new order deprived the

term of its early sting, and in the sixteenth century it was a badge

of honor.

On April 17, 1541, Ignatius was elected general. For several days

thereafter he washed dishes and discharged the humblest

offices. `063838 During his remaining years (he was now fifty) he made

Rome his home, and the city became the permanent headquarters of the

society. Between 1547 and 1552, after much thought and experiment,

he drew up the Constitutions which, with minor changes, are the Jesuit

rule today. The ultimate authority in the order was to lie in the

fully, "professed" members. These would choose two delegates from each

province, and these delegates- together with the provincial heads, the

general, and his aides- were to compose the "General Congregation."

This would, when occasion required, elect a new general, and then it

would delegate its authority to him as long as he should commit no

grave offense. He was given an "admonitor" and four assistants, who

were to watch his every act, warn him of any serious fault, and, if

need appeared, convene the General Congregation to depose him.

Candidates for admission were required to pass through two years

of novitiate, in which they would be trained in the purpose and

discipline of the society, go through the spiritual exercises, perform

menial duties, and submit to the superiors in absolute "holy

obedience." They must put aside their own individual wills, and

allow themselves to be ordered like soldiers and moved about "like

corpses"; `063839 they must learn to feel that in obeying their

superiors they are obeying God. They must agree to report the faults

of their associates to their superiors, and to harbor no resentment

against being reported themselves. `063840 This discipline was

rigorous but discriminating and flexible; rarely did it break the will

or destroy initiative. Apparently the willingness to obey is the first

step in learning to command, for this training produced a great number

of able and enterprising men.

Those who survived this trying novitiate would take "simple"-

revocable- vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and would enter

the "second class." Some of these would remain in that status as lay

brothers; some, as "formed scholastics," aspiring to the priesthood,

would study mathematics, the classics, philosophy, and theology, and

would teach in schools and colleges. Those who passed further tests

would enter the third class- "formed coadjutors"; and some of these

might rise into the fourth class- the "professed"- all priests, and

specially pledged to undertake any task or mission assigned them by

the Pope. The "professed" were usually a small minority- sometimes

hardly more than a tenth- of the entire society. `063841 All four

classes were to live in common like monks, but in view of their many

administrative and pedagogical duties they were exempted from the

monastic obligation to recite the canonical hours. No ascetic

practices were required, though they might on occasion be advised.

There was to be moderation in eating and drinking, but no stringent

fasting; body as well as mind was to be kept fit for all tasks. A

member might retain title to such property as he owned when entering

the order, but all income from it was to go to the society, which

hoped to be the ultimate heir. Every Jesuit possession and action must

be dedicated ad majorem Dei gloriam - to the greater glory of God.

Seldom has an institution borne so definitely the stamp of one

personality. Loyola lived long enough to revise the Constitutions into

a successfully functioning rule. From his small, bare room he guided

with severe authority and great skill the movements of his little army

in every quarter of Europe, and many other parts of the globe. The

task of governing the society, and of establishing and administering

two colleges and several charitable foundations in Rome, proved too

much for his temper as he aged; and though kind to the weak he

became cruelly harsh to his closest subordinates. `063842 He was

severest on himself. He made many a meal from a handful of nuts, a

piece of bread, and a cup of water. Often he left but four hours of

the day for sleep, and even restricted to a daily half-hour the period

that he allowed himself for celestial visions and

illumination. `063843 When he died (1556) many Romans felt that a

sharp wind had ceased to blow, and perhaps some of his followers

mingled relief with grief. Men could not realize, so soon, that this

indomitable Spaniard would prove to be one of the most influential men

in modern history.

At his death the society had approximately a thousand members, of

whom some thirty-five were "professed." `063844 After disputes that

showed considerable will to power in Jesuits supposedly broken in

will, Diego Laynez was chosen general (1558); the fact that he had

Jewish ancestors four generations back made him unacceptable to some

Spanish grandees who had some influence in the order. `063845 Pope

Paul IV, fearful that the office of Jesuit general, because of its

life tenure, might grow to rival the papacy, ordered the Constitutions

revised to limit the general's term to three years; but Pius IV

revoked the order, and the general became (as later generations

would call him from his black cassock) the "Black Pope." After Francis

Borgia, Duke of Gandia, joined the order and dowered it with his

wealth, the society grew rapidly in size and power. When he became its

third general (1565) it had 3,500 members, living in 130 houses in

eighteen provinces or countries.

Europe was but a small sector of its activities. It sent

missionaries to India, China, Japan, and the New World. In North

America they were venturesome and undiscourageable explorers,

suffering every tribulation as a gift of God. In South America they

did more than any other group to develop education and scientific

agriculture. In 1541 St. Francis Xavier left Lisbon on a Portuguese

vessel, and after a year of travel and travail reached Goa. There he

walked up and down the streets ringing a hand bell to gather an

audience; this accomplished, he expounded the Christian creed with

such sincerity and eloquence, and illustrated the Christian ethic with

such cheerful sharing of his poorest listeners' life, that he made

thousands of converts among Hindus and Moslems, and even convinced

some hardship-hardened expatriated Portuguese Christians. His cures

were probably caused by his contagious confidence or his incidental

knowledge of medicine; miracles were later ascribed to him, but he

himself claimed none. The papal bull that canonized him (1622)

credited him with the "gift of tongues"- the ability to speak any

language at need; but in truth the heroic saint was a poor linguist,

who spent hours memorizing sermons in Tamil, Malay, or Japanese.

Sometimes his faith was too strong for his humanity. He urged John III

of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in Goa, `063846 and

recommended that no Hindu should be ordained unless he had several

generations of Christian ancestors; he could not bear the thought of a

Portuguese confessing to a native. `063847 He finally left Goa as

too polyglot for his purposes. "I want to be where there are no

Moslems or Jews. Give me out-and-out pagans!"- `063848 these, he felt,

were more open to conversion, as being less ingrained in another

faith. In 1549 he set out for Japan, studying Japanese on the way.

Landing at Kagoshima, he and his associates preached in the streets,

and were courteously heard by the people. Two years later he

returned to Goa; he settled some disorder that had arisen among the

Christians there, and then sailed off to convert China (1552). After

much suffering he stopped on the island of Chang-Tschouen, below the

mouth of the Canton River. The Chinese emperor had made it a capital

crime for a European to enter China; yet Xavier would have dared it,

had he been able to find passage. While he waited he fell sick. He

died on December 2, 1552, crying, "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped;

let me not be confounded forever." `063849 He was forty-six years old.

The same devotion which the Jesuits showed in foreign missions was

displayed in their work in Europe. They kept to their posts, and

tended the sick, in times of plague. `063850 They preached to all

classes, and accommodated their language to every situation. Their

superior education and good manners made them the favorite

confessors of women and nobles, finally of kings. They mingled

actively in the affairs of the world, but with prudence and tact;

Ignatius advised them that more prudence and less piety were better

than more piety and less prudence. `063851 Usually they were men of

high moral quality; the faults charged against them in a later

period hardly appeared in this age. `063852 Though they corporately

approved of the Inquisition, `063853 they stood aside from it,

preferring to work through education. Their limited number compelled

them to leave to others the instruction of children; they concentrated

on secondary education; and finding the universities preempted by

other orders, or the secular or Protestant clergy, they organized

their own colleges, and sought to train selected youths who would be

centers of influence in the next generation. They became the

greatest educators of their time.

At important points in Europe they established studia inferiora -

corresponding to the German Gymnasien and the French lycees - and

studia superiora - colleges. Sometimes, as at Coimbra and Louvain,

they were able to take over existing universities. They shocked

their competitors by giving instruction gratis. The curriculum

probably owed something to the schools set up in Holland and Germany

by the Brethren of the Common Life, something to the Gymnasium of

Sturm at Strasbourg, something to the humanist academies of Germany

and Italy. It was based on the classics and was given in Latin; the

use of the vernacular was forbidden to the students except on

holidays. `063854 In the higher grades the Scholastic philosophy was

restored. The education of character- of morals and manners- was given

fresh emphasis, and was bound up anew with religious belief. The

traditional faith was inculcated daily, and a regimen of prayer,

meditation, confession, communion, Mass, and theology so imbued the

students with orthodoxy that few of them, in the sixteenth century,

ever strayed from that beaten path. Humanism was turned back from

paganism to Christianity. The system had serious defects: it relied

too much on memory, and discouraged originality. Like the other

curricula of the time it was deficient in the sciences, and expurgated

history to control the present. And yet so independent a thinker as

Francis Bacon would soon say of the Jesuit schools, "Such as they are,

would that they were ours." `063855 In the next two centuries their

graduates would excel in almost every walk of life except scientific

research.

By the time of Loyola's death there were a hundred Jesuit

colleges. Through education, diplomacy, and devotion, through fervor

directed by discipline, through co-ordination of purposes and skillful

variation of means, the Jesuits turned back the Protestant tide, and

recaptured much of Germany, most of Hungary and Bohemia, all of

Christian Poland, for the Church. Rarely has so small a group achieved

so much so rapidly. Year by year its prestige and influence grew,

until, within twenty years of its formal establishment, it was

recognized as the most brilliant product of the Catholic Reform.

When at last the Church dared to call that general council to which

all Europe had so long looked for the quieting of its theological

strife and the healing of its religious wounds, it was to a handful of

Jesuits- to their learning, loyalty, discretion, resourcefulness,

and eloquence- that the popes entrusted the defense of their own

challenged authority, and the undiminished preservation of the ancient

faith.

CHAPTER XXXIX: The Popes and the Council: 1517-65

I. THE POPES AT BAY

-

WE have left to the last the difficult task, for a non-Catholic,

of understanding and impartially describing the reaction of the

popes to the challenge of the Reformation.

It was at first a reaction of pained surprise. The popes of the

Reformation period, with perhaps one exception, were good men, so

far as statesmen are permitted so to be; not selfless or sinless,

but basically decent, humane, and intelligent, and sincerely convinced

that the Church was an institution not only magnificent in its

achievements but still indispensable to the moral health and mental

peace of European man. Granting that the human ministrants of the

Church had fallen into serious abuses, were there not equivalent or

worse defects in every secular administration? And if one should

hesitate to overthrow civil government because of the greed of princes

and the peculations of officials, should one hesitate any the less

to subvert a Church that had been for a thousand years, through

religion, education, literature, philosophy, and art, the nourishing

mother of European civilization? What if some dogmas that had been

found helpful in promoting morality and order seemed difficult of

digestion by the historian or the philosopher- were the doctrines

proposed by the Protestants so much more rational or credible as to

warrant turning Europe upside down over the difference? In any case,

religious doctrines were determined not by the logic of a few but by

the needs of many; they were a frame of belief within which the common

man, inclined by nature to a hundred unsocial actions, could be formed

into a being sufficiently disciplined and self-controlled to make

society and civilization possible. Let that frame be shattered, and

another would have to be built, perhaps after centuries of moral and

psychical disorder; for were not the Reformers agreed with the

Church that a moral code would be ineffective unless supported by

religious belief? As to the intellectual classes, were they any

freer or happier under Protestant princes than under Catholic

popes? *06074 Had not art flowered under the leadership of the Church,

and was it not withering under the hostility of reformers who wished

to take from the people the images that fed the poetry and hope of

their lives? What commanding reasons were there, to mature minds,

for atomizing Christendom into countless sects, each vilifying and

nullifying the others, and individually powerless against the

instincts of men?

We cannot know that these were the sentiments of the Reformation

popes, for the active leaders of men seldom publish their

philosophies. But we may so imagine the mood of Leo X (1513-21), who

found the papacy rocking under his feet so soon after he had been

called to enjoy it. He was a man like many of us- guilty of sin and

criminal negligence, but, all in all, forgivable. He was usually the

kindest of men, feeding half the poets of Rome; yet he pursued the

heretics of Brescia to the death, and tried to believe that disruptive

ideas could be roasted out of mankind. He was as patient with Luther

as could have been asked of a pope and a Medici; imagine the tables

turned, and how Pope Martin would have blasted rebellious Leo from the

earth! Leo mistook the Reformation as an unmannerly dispute among

unsophisticated monks. And yet, early in 1517, at the very outset of

his pontificate, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (nephew of the

more famous Pico) had delivered before the Pope and the cardinals a

remarkable address "painting in the darkest manner the corruption

which had made its way into the Church," and predicting that "if

Leo... refuses to heal the wounds, it is to be feared that God Himself

will no longer apply a slow remedy, but will cut off and destroy the

diseased members with fire and sword." `06391 Despite this warning,

Leo absorbed himself in maintaining, for the protection of the Papal

States, a balance of power between France and the Empire; "he never

gave a thought," says a Catholic historian, "to reform on the grand

scale which had become necessary.... The Roman Curia remained as

worldly as ever." `06392

The best proof that reform could come only by a blow from without

was the failure of Adrian VI (1522-23). Candidly admitting the abuses,

and undertaking to reform them at the top, Adrian was ridiculed and

reviled by the Romans as threatening their supply of transalpine gold;

and after two years of contending against this unenlightened

selfishness Adrian died of frustration.

The accumulated storm burst upon the head of Clement VII

(1523-34). Intellectually and morally he was among the best popes,

humane and generous, defending the hounded Jews, taking no part in the

sexual or financial looseness that surrounded him, and continuing to

the end of his troubled life to nourish with discriminating

patronage the art and literature of Italy. Perhaps he was too well

educated to be a successful administrator; his intellect was keen

enough to see good reasons for every course in every crisis; his

knowledge sapped his courage, and his vacillations alienated power

after power. We cannot withhold all sympathy from a man so well

intentioned; who saw Rome sacked under his eyes, and himself

imprisoned by a mob and an emperor; who was prevented by that

Emperor from seeking a reasonable peace with Henry VIII; who had to

make the bitter choice between losing Henry and England or Charles and

Germany; who, when he protested against the alliance of Francis with

the Turks, was told by that Most Christian King that if the Pope

protested further, France would divorce itself from the papacy.

Never had a pope drunk the cup of office to such bitter dregs.

His errors were catastrophic. When he miscalculated the character

and resources of Charles, and so invited the Sack of Rome, he dealt

the prestige of the papacy a blow that emboldened northern Germany

to renounce allegiance to Rome. When he crowned the man who had

permitted that attack he lost the respect of even the Catholic

world. He yielded to Charles partly through lack of material power

to resist, partly because he feared that an alienated Emperor would

call a general council of laity as well as clergy, would seize the

reins of both ecclesiastical and secular authority, would complete the

subjection of the Church to the rampant state, might even depose him

as a bastard. `06393 If he had had the courage that his uncle

Lorenzo de' Medici had shown at Naples in 1479, Clement would have

taken the initiative, and would have called a council that under his

liberal leadership might have reformed the morals and doctrine of

the Church, and saved the unity of Western Christendom.

His successor seemed at first sight to have all the requisites of

both intellect and character. Born in a rich and cultured family,

instructed in the classics by Pomponius Laetus, maturing as a humanist

among the Medici in Florence, favored by a pope whom his sister had

entangled in her golden hair, made a cardinal at twenty-five (1493),

proving his mettle in difficult diplomatic assignments, rising to

unquestioned pre-eminence in the college of cardinals, and unanimously

elected pope in 1534, Alessandro Farnese, as Paul III, was universally

recognized as the right man for the highest office in the Christian

world. The esteem in which he was held suffered little from his having

begotten four children before his ordination as a priest (1519). Yet

his character, like his career, showed uncertainty and contradictions,

partly because he stood like a shaken pillar between the Renaissance

that he loved and a Reformation that he could not understand or

forgive. Frail in body, he survived fifteen years of political and

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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