Theo 273 - A Modern Church History Giacomo Martina, S.J.

Chapter VIII - The Renewal of Religious Life

Because of the great interest in this topic, it is opportune to trace here a rapid synthesis
that will take us beyond the chronological limits of the Catholic Reform and the Counter-
Reformation.

The genesis and development of the religious orders clearly show two elements:

“Charism”: the free inspiration of God, independent of every law and every human
mediation

“Juridical constitution”: necessary or at least useful in order to distinguish true from false
charism and to assure its stability

In the course of centuries, religious life has assumed various new forms; thus do we assist
at the periodic births of new forces in the history of religious life, each of which responds
to a new exigency of the historical moment

In a first phase, usually rapid, of development, growth and diffusion, there usually
follows a phase of consolidation, and then sometimes of decadence due to the passing
away of the original or special circumstances that surrounded the birth of the religious
institute itself

Though the ideal of individual personal perfection remains, a shift nevertheless usually
takes place toward a greater attention to the apostolate…

In the middle ages, we find the birth and development of three forms of religious life:

The monastic communities

The religious canons (canons regular)

The mendicant friars

The Monks: almost all, except the Carthusians, followed the rule of St. Benedict, but
adapted in the new Benedictine reforms of the Cluniacs, the Camaldolese, the
Vallambrosians, the Cistercians, the Florentines, the Silvestrinians, all the way to the
Trappists or reformed Cistercians, distinguished for their individual even if not for their
collective poverty, for their stability, the absolute preponderance given to a life of prayer,
particularly to the choir, while leaving the pastoral care of people to their free time and as
long as this was not incompatible with monastic life.

The Canons Regular: these aimed to fill the needs of the parishes that were in crisis in
the 11th century because of the deficiencies of the diocesan clergy. They were usually
priests incardinated in a diocese (thus they were canons), but who practiced the common

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life and professed the religious vows, primarily according to the rule of St. Augustine
(thus, they were also religious). Examples of canons regular are those of the Lateran in
Rome (from the 2nd half of the 11th century) and the Premonstratensians (founded by St.
Norbert in the 12th century).

The Mendicant Friars: these began to appear in the beginning of the 1200s (13 th century).
They were characterized not only by individual poverty but also collective poverty. They
also gave importance to the pastoral care of souls, particularly through preaching. Unlike
the monks, they demonstrated a readiness to move to other places according to necessity
and the demands of the apostolate. They were also characterized by a highly centralized
institutional administration and government structure, differing therefore from the highly
autonomous structure of monastic congregations. It could be said that monastic life was
in general tied to the feudal structures of medieval society, while the mendicant orders
had their life-setting in the rise of cities, towns and villages. The Dominicans,
Franciscans, Servites, Augustinians, Carmelites, Mercedarians, Trinitarians were the
primary examples of this form of religious life. In the 1300s, there were 8,000
Dominicans, 5,000 Franciscans, and 3,000 Augustinians…

In the 1500s (thus the Modern Age): the Clerics Regular:

The new religious orders, in a manner more decisive than that of the mendicant orders
and in conformity with the new spirit of the modern age, more dynamic and restless,
would distance themselves from the forms of monastic life in order to engage in the
apostolate much more easily. Thus

They did not wear the monastic garb

Others limited themselves to the recitation of the Office in private

They dedicated themselves to the education of the young, to preaching, to the

administration of the sacraments

More than in the mendicant orders, the administrative and government structures of the
new religious orders were even more centralized, with the traditional structure of chapters
falling into disuse

The name of the members of these new religious orders: Clerics Regular, i.e., religious
priests, priests dedicated to the apostolate in its various forms.

In effect, religious life itself would become a means to greater efficiency in the
apostolate.

Note the analogical movement and circumstances surrounding the foundation of the
following religious orders:

In the 13th century: Innocent III approved the Franciscans and Dominicans

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In the 16th century: Paul III approved the Society of Jesus

Almost all the religious orders of clerics regular appeared in the 16th century:

Theatines: 1524 Camillians: 1582

Barnabites: 1533 Marianists: 1595
Jesuits: 1540 Scolopians: 1617
Somaschans: 1540

Many difficulties were encountered by the new religious orders in this movement of
change in religious life. For example, the choir was thought to be essential to the
religious life, and the Jesuits for a time had to bow to the verbal wishes of Paul IV (the
Carafa pope) that recitation of the Office in choir be imposed on them. Another
innovation brought about by the new religious orders was the introduction of simple
vows.

In the 17th century, other religious orders of the same type would appear: the
Redemptorists, the Passionists, etc.

Women’s Religious Life:

Because of many and persistent prejudices, the evolution of religious life for women
would suffer delays and setbacks, particularly in the areas of solemn vows and of cloister
(which allowed women to leave the convent only in cases of fire, leprosy and epidemics
or plagues!!!).

Thus, Pius V, in Circa pastoralis (1566), imposed on all women’s congregations the
double requirement of solemn vows and cloister, thus rendering impossible every
immediate apostolate of religious women outside of their convents and houses, i.e.,
outside the cloister, and pushing women to make a decision between two choices:
EITHER 1) to save religious life, renouncing all active apostolic work, OR 2) to
consecrate themselves to the apostolate, renouncing religious life in the process…

St. Francis de Sales would be forced to adopt the first solution for the congregation of
women he founded, the Visitation Sisters.

St. Vincent de Paul would opt for the second solution for the congregation of women
attached to his name, the Daughters of Charity who, even today, do not form a religious
institute in the juridical sense of the word (they do not have perpetual vows but must
renew their vows periodically)…

There is the example of the Ursuline Sisters. Founded by St. Angela Merici towards the
end of her life (1535), they were approved in 1544 after her death. This congregation for
women was an absolute novelty; the task of each sister was to live her consecration to

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God while remaining in her family (thus anticipating by four centuries what we now call
the “secular institutes”). However, her group would end up divided into three:
1) The Society of St. Ursula, Daughters of Angela Merici, which would remain faithful to
the original inspiration of the foundress, but which would end up today as a secular
institute

2) The Ursulines gathered by St. Charles Borromeo would adopt the common life

3) And a third group in France, adopting strict cloister, thus becoming nuns…

Then there is the attempt of Mary Ward (1585-1645) to relate in strict unity religious life
and apostolic work, similar to what St. Ignatius had achieved for the Jesuits and modeled
on his Society of Jesus; her efforts would end in utter failure.

After the initial tolerance and acceptance by Church authorities, her open house in Rome
would be closed in 1625.

Five years after, the religious institute itself would be suppressed, with Mary Ward herself
being arrested and imprisoned for heresy and schism, until Urban VIII himself finally
ordered her release.

Only in 1749 would her institute finally gain official recognition…

The juridical situation of religious institutes for women would remain, strictly speaking,
unchanged until the end of the 19th century (1800s). Only the nuns of strict enclosure or
cloister were considered up to that time as true religious…

Only a slow development would lead to the official recognition of sisters engaged in
active apostolic work as true religious, after the de facto situation in which many women
religious found themselves…

Before this, the clausula salutaris which approved the existence of women congregations
excluded any formal recognition of the religious character of women religious institutes,
limiting their members to a determinate kind of life usually expressed in their
constitutions…

The Evolution of the Franciscan Order: the Capuchins:

The whole history of the Franciscan Order is one long and continuous struggle between
on the one hand the heroic aspirations for the complete realization of the idea/ideal of
poverty resulting from the life and rule of St. Francis of Assisi and on the other the
inevitable and necessary adaptations for the incarnation, diffusion and stability of this
idea/ideal.

After the death of Francis, three tendencies emerged:

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1) The rigorists, among whom were the early companions of St. Francis, e.g., the friars
Leone and Cesario da Spira (i.e., the “Spirituals,” who would plunge the Order into
controversy)

2) The “laxists” or those who opted for a mitigated observance of the rule of St. Francis,
with the friar Elia, who expanded the rule and constructed the Basilica of Assisi, splendid
exaltation of the founder but at the same time a certain alienation from the primitive ideal
of poverty

3) The moderates, like Antonio di Padova and Bonaventura...

The controversies centered on the following issues: the observance of poverty and the
necessity of studies and scientific formation (considered useless by the rigorists).

The popes would be constrained to intervene several times, adopting, according to the
character of each pope, an oscillating line:

Nicholas III in 1279, in Exiit qui seminat, would confirm the Franciscan ideal, reminding
its readers that Christ and his apostles did not own property, and inculcating in the
Franciscans of his day the observance of a concrete poverty not tainted by abuses. At the
same time however, in order to meet the concrete exigencies of every day life, the pope
substantially confirmed the figure of the nuncius (or “spiritual friend”), which saved the
letter of the rule while it rendered possible acts of property (thus the friars were not to
purchase anything but were to inform their spiritual friend of their needs…). This was an
attempt to reconcile the principles of Franciscan life and its reality…

Clement V in 1312, with the bull Exivi de Paradiso, would put limits to the recourse to
the “spiritual friend” and would impose a more literal observance of the rule.

John XXII, irritated by the lack of discipline on the part of the rigorists, would drastically
intervene in the affairs of the Order, and, instead of suppressing the abuses, would opt for
an enlargement of the rule.

Mixed in with the controversy on poverty would be political conflicts. A faction of

Franciscans would throw their support behind Ludwig of Bavaria against John XXII, and
the General of the Order, Michele da Cesena, would be excommunicated.

The tempest would take a long time to die down, but the division would be heightened,
giving rise to two distinct branches of the Order: the Conventuals and the Observant
Friars Minor, with the latter more faithful to the primitive ideal.

In the 1400s, the Observant Friars Minor obtained their own vicar general.

The definitive separation of the two branches took place in 1517, with Leo X and his bull
Ite et vos in vineam meam; it is calculated that, at this time, the Observant Friars probably
numbered 30,000, and the Conventuals another 30,000…

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The Observant Friars Minor seemed to have won a clear victory in their desire to live the
Franciscan ideal as faithfully and as close to the letter of the rule of St. Francis as
possible…

But, through time, a weakening and a relaxation of the rule took place, thus seemingly
making necessary a new reform in order to save the Franciscan ideal.

It was thus that in 1525, Matteo da Bascio, a friar minor, left his convent of Montefalcone
in the Marche in disguise, arriving in Rome and obtaining from Clement VII the
permission to observe to the letter the rule of St. Francis, to put on a new habit, similar to
that which St. Francis himself had worn, and to preach.

This angered the friars minor, who succeeded in having Matteo arrested and incarcerated;
the latter however was freed through the intervention of Caterina Cybo, wife of the Duke
of Camerino and niece of Clement VII.

From another convent, two other Franciscans fled: Ludovico da Frossombrone and a
companion imitated the example of Matteo and they also obtained the same permission
and faculties.

After more incidents and controversies, Clement VII juridically recognized in 1528 the
new family as an autonomous branch of the Franciscan Order, ruled by a superior with
the powers of a Provincial, under the protection of the Conventual branch of the Order
(!); in order to practice a more rigid observance, the Capuchins now invoked the
protection of that branch of the Franciscan family which practiced a more mitigated
austerity of life!

In 1529, the Capuchins celebrated their first chapter in Albacina, the Marche. Matteo
resigned his office and was succeeded by Ludovico da Frossombrone.

In 1534, the Observant Friars Minor succeeded in getting Clement VII to use an edict
suppressing the Capuchins; but a popular outcry ensued and the Pope relented. However,
he also decreed that no member of one branch could pass to the other.

In 1639, the Capuchins finally achieved complete independence by cutting every juridical
tie to the Conventuals.

Initially, they lived an almost eremitical life, but one in which work and assistance to the
sick occupied a place of primary importance. Studies however occupied a rather limited
place in their formation. Their poor and austere life, their care, very often heroic, toward
the sick and the poor, their preaching founded on the Gospel, expressed in simple from
and adapted to the popular classes, far from the excesses of an out of place erudition, and
severe in their denunciations of vice and scandals, but ready to defend the poor oppressed
by the powerful, all of this would enable them to earn the love and favor of the people…

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The Carmelite Reform:

The struggle between the conservative and reformist Carmelites in Spain would give rise
to one of the most vivacious movements of spirituality in the Church, the mystical school
of Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz, and a flourishing theological movement which
would exercise a great influence in Europe from its center in Salamanca.

Teresa de Cepeda became a Carmelite in 1536 in the Carmel of the Incarnation in Avila.
After almost 30 years of religious life, she felt the inspiration to found a new monastery
where the rule approved by Innocent IV in the 1200s could be practiced without any
mitigation, i.e., in full poverty and austerity of life.

The Teresian reform consisted not so much in a reform in the sense neither of a reaction
against abuses nor of a return to the origins, but in the affirmation of an ideal of religious,
eremitical and contemplative life that was largely original and in open dissension with the
prevailing tendencies of the “calzati.”

With the initial support of the Provincial of the Carmelites, and having overcome the
difficulties put in her way by the nuns and the civil authorities who were hostile to the
opening of new religious houses, Teresa opened in 1562 the first reformed monastery in
Avila itself.

In 1566, the General of the Carmelites, P. Rubeo (or P. Giovanni Rossi di Ravenna),
visiting the houses of the Order in Spain, encouraged Teresa to open new houses and to
found at least two houses for the male branch of the Carmelite Order.

Teresa then met Juan de la Cruz, convert him to her vision and cause, and Juan would
open in 1568 the first convent of the male Discalced Carmelites.

Subsequent problems, difficulties and controversies did not succeed in derailing the
project of reform. In 1593, Clement VIII allowed the Discalced Carmelites to have their
own General Superior.

The Oratorians:

Filippo Neri, several years after 1550, moved not so much by personal inclination but by
the encouragement of his disciples, agreed to gather around himself in commonality of
life a small group of priests and lay people, bound together by ties of fraternal charity.

Later, Gregory XIII gave the Oratory, as the Philippian foundation was then called, the
structure of a congregation, but this conserved a noteworthy elasticity, and still today is
entered in the category of societies living in common without vows.

The Oratory became diffused in France, receiving new impulse from Berulle.

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In the 1800s, the Oratory would count among its members the most significant
representatives of the Catholic Reawakening in England: Faber and Henry Newman…

The Society of Jesus:

A. St. Ignatius of Loyola was born in 1491 at Loyola, Azpeitia, in “Pais Vasco,” the
Basque territory. He passed his young life as a page of the royal court and became
noted not so much for his military skills but for his diplomatic tact. In 1521, he was
wounded in the leg during the siege of Pamplona by French forces. He was brought
back to the family manor to recuperate. There, with nothing much to do, he asked
for romances to read, but was given instead the lives of saints. He then underwent a
profound conversion and offered himself to the Lord.

As a penitent, he went to Montserrat and then to Manresa where he received special

divine illuminations. He resolved to go to the Holy Land to pass the rest of his life in the
land that knew the earthly presence of the Lord.

Constrained to leave Jerusalem by the anxious Franciscans, he returned to Spain and

decided to go through the Latin course of studies at his mature age and in the company of
young boys in Barcelona. He also found himself in Alcala and Salamanca, sites of
prestigious centers of learning in Spain.

Because of the cloud of suspicion that hovered over him, he decided to leave Spain for
the more salubrious air of Paris academia. There he gathered several friends together
who went through the Spiritual Exercises that he had composed. They then vowed
themselves to a life of poverty, chastity, and to go to Jerusalem in a chapel in Montmartre.

They then left for Italy to wait for a ship to bring them to the Holy Land, but this became
impossible due to the outbreak of war. The small band of companions then decided to go
to Rome instead, there to put themselves in the service of the pope.

In these years before 1540, also due to the example of the Theatines and other religious
orders of clerks regular, the idea of founding a religious institute, still uncertain,
developed gradually. This idea proposed to do away with observances that were
monastic in nature and to totally dedicate religious itself to the apostolate.

Ignatius finally arrived at this decision after overcoming two difficulties:

1) The fear of the first companions that the religious vows might constitute an obstacle
for the apostolate;

2) The perplexity of the Roman curia with regard to the profound novelties of Ignatius’s
project, a project that formed a clear break with the traditional forms of religious life.

In 1540, Paul III, through the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, approved the Society of
Jesus. The Jesuits spread themselves out to engage in apostolic works in various places,

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from Italy to Germany to India. Ignatius remained in Rome, elected General by his
companions, and from his rooms in a building adjoining a church dedicated to Mary,
Madonna della Strada, he worked to administer the rapidly growing Society, writing his
prodigious correspondence (more than 6,000 letters) and drafting and perfecting the
Jesuit Constitutions.

Ignatius died in 1556. The Society of Jesus at his death counted about 1,000 members,
some of whom had reached India and Japan. Ignatius had already founded the Collegio
Romano and the Collegio Germanico whose products would render signal service to the
Church in Germany, France and Spain.

B. The Characteristics of the New Religious Institute:

It has been said, not without exaggeration, that the Society of Jesus represented an
absolutely new case in the history of religious life. But it is more accurate to affirm that
in her the evolution already taking place in the Theatines and other groups of religious
priests had reached its ultimate development.

Thus this way one is able to see how Ignatius was less original than what might appear at
first sight, but nonetheless how he then exercised a great influence on the subsequent
historical development of diverse religious institutes.

The end for which the Society of Jesus was founded was not only the sanctification of its
members; rather, it included the sanctification of the other, of the neighbor, and this on
the same level as an equally principal goal of the institute.

To the apostolate therefore was dedicated not only that time left over after other duties
(usually prayer and liturgical and devotional practices) had been complied with, but the
entire life and activity of the Jesuit. Thus, negatively, many traditional elements of the
religious life had to be suppressed because they were now considered incompatible with a
free and mobile apostolate: choir, distinctive dress, fixed penitential practices, etc. But,
positively, the institute created structures well-adapted to its goal:

In place of the monastic vow of stability, the religious must now be ready to go anywhere
in every part of the world in order to achieve whatever purpose and mission useful to the
Church and the sanctification of souls.

The counter-weight to this inevitable dispersion of religious was the governing structure
of the institute itself, a regime that was monarchical and oligarchic. The supreme
authority rested with the general congregation, convoked rarely however (usually, at the
death of the General, its first task was to elect his successor).

The General Superior was elected for life; chapters, regular or not, were therefore
abolished, and the General himself chose almost all superiors. The life term of the
General was not an absolute novelty; it was already a feature of Benedictine abbacies, the
Carthusians and Dominicans. This appeared to be a dangerous innovation however to the

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Roman curia, particularly to Paul IV (the Carafa pope) who during his pontificate would
abrogate this rule of the Society (but which would be restored almost automatically after
his death, for the abrogation was verbal).

Jesuit formation was particularly long: two years of novitiate, studies in the faculties of
theology up to the attainment of university degrees, something that was quite rare at the
time, and then a third year of novitiate (called the tertianship).

Solemn profession of the final vows came at the end of many years of study and
preparation (which subsequent norms would fix at seventeen years for those who were to
complete the entire course of studies in the Society of Jesus), in difference therefore from
the ancient orders where solemn final vows came at the end of novitiate, one year after
entrance.

Grades in the Society of Jesus were another feature: not all the religious had the same
rights, the full extent of which was reserved to the professed of four vows (the fourth vow
being that of special obedience to the pope in the matter of missions).

All kinds of ministries were admitted, except the stable care of the parishes and of
women religious. However, after 1548, Ignatius understood the importance of the
colleges and directed the institute toward its course, thus admitting a certain restriction to
the mobility of his men.

Rejected was the idea of a parallel religious order for women, quite common among the
older religious orders.

Prescribed was a special obedience to the pope; but ecclesiastical dignities were to be
refused and avoided as much as possible.

In all of this, the Society of Jesus preceded by three centuries what would become
common norms in religious life.

C. The First Difficulties:

The old religious orders and those attracted to the established traditions looked with
diffidence on these innovations.

Paul IV (the Carafa pope), immediately after the death of Ignatius, ordered the Jesuits to
recite the office in choir (but this order, verbally expressed, was rescinded immediately
after the death of this pope). Again imposed by Pius V, it was definitively abrogated after
his death.

Particularly hostile to the new religious institutes were Melchior Cano, the Dominican,
and several theologians of the Sorbonne (Paris).

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Sixtus V wanted to the change the name of the institute, which in his judgment smacked
of pride, but he died before his decree could be published.

At the end of the 16th century (1500s), during the pontificate of Clement VIII, a small
group of Spanish Jesuits, who had a penchant for intrigue, gave rise to gross difficulties
and with the help of Philip II, King of Spain, attempted to diminish the authority of the
General Superior based in Rome; the opposition, unanimous on the part of the rest of the
Society of Jesus, convinced the pope to withdraw his initial adhesion to the idea…

Within the order itself, two tendencies became noteworthy with regard to the length of
prayer required of Jesuits:

1) The tendency, essentially supported by the Spanish Jesuits, in part at least until the
generalate of Francisco de Borja (second successor of Ignatius, and therefore third
General of the Jesuits), which favored a life that was primarily contemplative and
therefore with a propensity to prolong the time of prayer prescribed by the
Constitutions…

2) The tendency, more favorable to the letter of the Constitutions, averse to the extension
of the time for prayer…

The first would have wanted to see the Society of Jesus become a contemplative-active
order, close to the ideal of the Carmelites; the second defended the physiognomy that St.
Ignatius had given to the order, essentially apostolic, characterized by his desire that
Jesuits be contemplative in actione…

Discussions would continue all the way up to the generalate of Claudio Acquaviva,
elected in 1580 at 37 years old. Acquaviva found himself having to deal with the scarce
or absence of sympathy for the Jesuits on the part of Sixtus V, the diffidence provoked in
Clement VIII by the repeated accusations of the Spanish Jesuits, the threats of the
religious of Spain who were bent not only in giving the Society a different orientation but
also to limit the powers of the General in Rome and to obtain a special autonomy for the
Spanish provinces.

In 1593, Acquaviva convoked a general congregation and, by his wish, his government
was put under examination. This severe testing would render to Acquaviva and his
government due recognition and justice and he would be confirmed in his direction of the
Society.

In 1608, Acquaviva called another general congregation for similar reasons; he emerged
vindicated once again in his office.

Thus, Acquaviva saved in this way the apostolic character of the Society of Jesus, despite
encountering opposition in some points from the party of Jesuits opposed to him. He did
impose one hour of meditation for all members of the Society and prohibited entrance
into the order of those Christians with Jewish origins (something which was accepted by

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the religious orders at the time), even if this was expressly against the spirit of St.
Ignatius, as indeed Ribadeneira had informed the members of the general congregation…

To formulate a judgment on Acquaviva’s generalate, one must keep the following in

mind:

He succeeded in saving the essential character of the Society, i.e., its preeminently
apostolic character.

But one must nevertheless question whether certain compromises made did not render the
apostolic body of the Society less than what Ignatius had intended it to be. Acquaviva
had allowed juridical elements to prevail over charismatic ones, so that the Society in
consequence lost some of that free character which Ignatius had designated for the
Society’s nature and mission.

Acquaviva’s generalate, lasting 34 years (from 1581 to 1615) was decisive for the
subsequent history of the Jesuits; on the whole, historians have given his term a largely
favorable judgment.

D. The Activity of the Jesuits:

Jesuit apostolic work embraced above all four camps:

1) In the Americas, India, China and Japan, a particular impulse to missionary activity
was given by the Jesuits. Their work had become so important in this area of apostolic
activity that it would suffer great damage on the occasion of the order’s expulsion from
Spanish and Portuguese dominions and its papal suppression toward the end of the 18th
century (1760s-1773).

2) The secondary education of the youth, in the Europe of the counter-reformation, would
take place largely in the colleges of the Jesuits. This education was given for free, thanks
to the generous endowments and donations of princes and cities. It was oriented
predominantly although not exclusively to the sons of noble families and of the bourgeois
class.

The method used in Jesuit education: the Ratio studiorum Societatis Iesu (redacted under
Acquaviva). The emphasis was placed on the teaching of Latin and Greek, learned as
living languages and not according to arid logico-grammatical schemes. Along with the
classical languages (and therefore the classic literature in those languages), attention was
also given to the mathematical sciences and to philosophy. Little space remained
however for the positive disciplines like history and geography, and the national
languages were largely ignored…

This method would be severely criticized later in the 19 th and 20th centuries in which the
classical languages would give way to the positive disciplines of history and the natural
sciences. The Ratio however did have the merit of forming the mind, through a

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deepening familiarity with the classics and philosophy, with a taste for the aesthetically
beautiful and for careful reasoning, all of which were supposed to be imbued with
Christian principles.

In reality however, the Jesuits did not always succeed in evading a certain abstract
formalism. We recall here the criticism of René Descartes in his “Discourse on Method,”
which examined the education given at the time and which indirectly affected the schools
of the Society of Jesus of which he was an alumnus.

In any case, these colleges of the Jesuits (from which came zealous prelates and saints
like St. Francis de Sales, but also secularist philosophers and unbelievers like Voltaire)
did exercise a profound and tremendous influence in all of Europe and did contribute to
the salvation of the Church, especially in Germany.

Perhaps more useful still was the work undertaken in the seminaries entrusted to the
Jesuits, from the Collegio Germanico to the Seminario Romano, from the 1500s to the
eve of the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773).

3) Then there was the scientific activity of the Jesuits. Faithful to St. Thomas Aquinas,
the Jesuits contributed to the renewal of scholasticism, in dogma (Molina), in moral
theology (the theory of probabilism), in political philosophy and ethics (Suarez, and
Bellarmine, with his doctrine of papal indirect power in the temporal area, whose book
was put on the Index by Sixtus V and remained there for several years), critical
hagiography (the Bollandistes). When P. Papebroeck denied that Elia the Prophet was the
founder of Carmel, his book was also placed on the Index.

4) Finally, the Jesuits also engaged in the pastoral care of souls. Jesuits became
renowned for their popular missions, for their preaching to various groups and social
classes, both of the nobility and the ordinary, for their spiritual exercises, penitential
doctrine, and spiritual direction. Jesuits would also become the favorite or preferred
confessors of many princes and rulers. In this activity, the Jesuits intended the formation
of Christian elite groups, impregnated with the serious Christian spirit, through prayer
and frequent communion. There were three ways favored by the Jesuits in this area of
their work:

a) spiritual direction

b) the gathering of individuals and their being formed into groups – the Marian
congregations or the Sodalities for example

c) courses of the Spiritual Exercises to individuals and groups of lay and priests; this last
work was indeed an authentic novelty in the area of apostolic work.

E. Essential Characteristics of the Activity of Jesuits:

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Common to all the works of the Society in all of these areas: the defense of the human
person and of human values. Jesuits were to be found between the extremes of
Protestantism and Jansenism, both of which sustained the thesis of the total corruption of
human nature. Jesuits therefore were clearly Christian humanists, defenders of the innate
goodness and rectitude of human nature, showing a marked even if cautious optimism,
defending the responsibility of the human being as the maker of his own destiny.

In this sense, one can also understand the legitimate aspirations of a) Molinism, which,
being assured of the efficacy of grace, would be preoccupied with explaining in the best
possible manner human freedom itself, and of probabilism, which, between rigorism and
laxism, desired to leave a certain space to the initiative and choice of the individual…

We find Jesuit pedagogy itself deeply animated by this same Christian humanist spirit,
open to the use of the classics as helpful means in the formation of the youth. In this
matter, the Jesuits would have to defend themselves and their methods in the 1800s
against those intégristes like Gaume and Veuillot who attempted to abolish from Catholic
schools the reading of the classic pagan literature (like the Iliad and the Odyssey of
Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil).

We find this same Christian humanist spirit in Jesuits like Bellarmine and Suarez who
were among those who, against the principle of the divine right of kings, would retain
that the immediate source of civil authority was to be found in the people…

And finally we find this same spirit in those Jesuit missionaries who, tenacious defenders
of adaptation, and distinguishing between Christianity and European civilization,
welcomed whatever was not evidently illicit in the customs and traditions of India, China,
and Japan. Thus do we understand their attempts to assimilate the same, not only the
language but also the local customs, becoming like the Indians, the Chinese, the
Japanese, and therefore showing once again the same fundamental optimism vis a vis the
human wherever it was to be found.

F. The Accusation against the Jesuits

Jesuits would soon be noted as signs of contradiction. Vincenzo Gioberti, who had
gathered in five volumes of “The Modern Jesuit” all the criticisms and the accusations
directed against the Society, is only one name in the long list of anti-Jesuit bibliography,
which includes famous personages, sometimes great figures of the Church, like Pascal,
but also decided anti-clericals like J. Michelet and E. Quinet.

While dismissing various affirmations that immediately appear to be ridiculous (e.g., that
the Jesuits were guilty of the assassination of Henry IV, king of France, or that they had
poisoned Clement VIII, or that they taught that the end justifies the means), some made
accusations that left one even more perplexed. Some of these accusations were directed
not so much against the Society in itself but against approved doctrines recommended
even by the Church (such as Molinism and probabilism), and in general against the

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morals called Jesuitical but which should rather be called the doctrine of St. Alfonso de
Liguori. Indeed, the beatification, canonization and proclamation of de Liguori as Doctor
of the Church explicitly confirm the doctrine commonly followed by the Jesuits in their
pastoral work. It was not by chance that Pius VIII wanted that the decree on the heroism
of the virtues of de Liguori be read in the Church of the Gesù in Rome…

Other, more serious accusations however the following:

It must be asked whether the Society of Jesus, initially an element that was strongly
innovative, had not with time transformed itself into a clearly conservative force, had not
defended a certain a certain juridicism, had not at times identified the good of the Church
with the victory of a politically conservative regime, absolutist in ideology (primarily
during the 1800s, in the struggle between liberal Catholics and intransigent Catholics, in
which the Jesuits had more than once given the impression of condemning democracy
and of sustaining absolutism with unsheathed swords).

Not lacking were excesses in the doctrine of some Jesuit moralists of the 1600s who
provoked the ire (just indignation) of Pascal in his “Provincial Letters”; moved to save
whatever was not intrinsically evil, several Jesuit moralists slipped easily from
probabilism into casuistry, and from casuistry into laxism, thus ending with the defense
of theses wholly incompatible with the true evangelical sense.

It is enough to recall here P. Etienne Bauny (1564-1649), author of Somme des péchés
qui se commettent en tous états, de leur conditions et qualités, en quelles occurrences ils
sont mortels ou véniels, et en quelle façon le confesseur doit interroger son pénitent
(Paris, 1630). The book was put on the Index and the author of theses thus condemned
by the Church, theses usually identical to those referred to by Pascal, given that they
depended on a common source.

Even if it is false that laxism was a doctrine common to all Jesuits, and more false that it
was a doctrine sustained only by Jesuits, it cannot be denied that this tendency did show a
certain affinity with that mentality which sought to save all that was not intrinsically evil,
a mentality not immune therefore from dangers.

Analogous observations may be made about Jesuit pedagogy, at times too trusting in
human means. In a similar way, the vaunted Jesuit asceticism did not always demonstrate
the proper balance between nature and grace, inclining sometimes dangerously towards
positions close to a certain kind of semi-pelagianism.

Not lacking were uncalled for interferences in political matters, on the part of court
confessors or of superiors of the Society, who tended to forget evangelical poverty and
humility.

It is not altogether clear up to what point the Jesuits, in the question of the Chinese and
Malabar rites, had always demonstrated obedience to the decrees of the Holy See, to
which the Constitutions of the Society obliged them. This question remains open.

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Other defects and sins of the Jesuits may be enumerated thus:

A certain exclusivism, which frequently provoked conflicts with bishops and with the
schools set up by the secular and other religious clergy

A kind of formalism in their approach to situations and a certain kind of hypocrisy

An intolerance shown by their attacks against doctrines not yet condemned by the Church
(thus, in the 1800s, the Jesuits engaged in heated polemics against the Rosminians, or
followers of Rosmini, which usually went beyond the limits imposed by charity, perhaps
more on the side of the Jesuits than of their adversaries)

A triumphalism that we find for example in the work Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu,
a solemn apologia for the history of the order in its first hundred years of life,
understandable only in the baroque cornice of the epoch

This complex of reasons had its foundation in the nature itself of the Society of Jesus, in
the characteristics of the post-Tridentine Church, in the intrinsic limitations of human
nature which always and everywhere unite the good and the bad…

It would however be unjust and unhistorical to underline only these lacunae and to give a
judgment on the work undertaken by the order by taking into account only these negative
points. A balanced evaluation cannot prescind from the energetic work undertaken in
defense of the Church and of the papacy, both within and without Europe, the reason for
which the Society of Jesus had become an integral and strict part of the post-Tridentine
Church. The different judgments passed on the order depended at least in part on
positions that various historians have taken vis a vis the Catholic Church in general.

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