CHAPTER VIII.

IGNATIUS ADMINISTERING THE COLLEGIATE SYSTEM. HIS DEATH.

The first two colleges were established in the same year, 1542,--one of them in the royal university at Coimbra in Portugal, the other at Goa in Hindustan. Though they were organized at an early date, only two years after the foundation of the Order, when as yet no system had been formally adopted, nevertheless these two first colleges, a good many thousands of miles apart, were found to have been established in precisely the same way. Francis Xavier, having been assigned to the apostolic ministry in the East, began a university there, in which all the sciences and branches were professed, just as in the European colleges. This became the base of operations for Japan, China, Persia, Ethiopia, and the other nations of the East. Forty years later, there were as many as one hundred and twenty Jesuits in the college.

In 1542, Ignatius had a select body of fifteen or sixteen young men studying in Paris; others he had placed in Padua or elsewhere. He availed himself of the actual universities until such time as he should have his own. War breaking out between the Emperor Charles V and the French King Francis, all Spaniards and Belgians were ordered out of France. Such as were Italians remaining in Paris, the other young Jesuits crossed the frontier to Louvain, under the charge of Father Jerome Domenech. There the Latin oratory of the youth, Francis Strada, whom Lefèvre, on his way through Belgium, supplied with matter for his orations,[116] helped to build up the Order rapidly with two kinds of men, talented youths, who were captivated by the things they saw and heard, and men already eminent, who were equally attracted by the scope of the new Institute. In the young Strada preaching and the eminent Lefèvre going out of his way to subsidize him with matter, we catch a family glimpse of that intensified force which can be developed in a closely bound organization.

Conspicuously wanting in gifts of presence and of learning, Francis Villanova, sent by Ignatius to the university seat of Alcalà, won such an ascendency there by his other qualities as a Priest, that a commodious and flourishing college was soon founded. Father Jerome Domenech endowed one in his native city of Valentia, 1543. Lefèvre and Araoz, following awhile by royal request in the suite of the Princess Mary, daughter of the Portuguese King, and queen of the Spanish King, founded a college at Valladolid. In Gandia, his own duchy, Francis Borgia erected and richly equipped a university, which was the first placed in the hands of the Society.

Colleges at Barcelona, Bologna, Saragossa, arose within the next two or three years; also at Messina, Palermo, Venice, and Tivoli. It is evident that Ignatius had a world of administration already on his hands. As early as March 16, 1540, he had excused himself from granting an application, because of "much pains he was taking in sending some to the Indies, others to Ireland and to parts of Italy." Now, though his forces were increasing, yet he was husbanding them; and even so, while refusing many applications, he seemed to be everywhere. But this need not be so much a matter of wonder, if we consider that it is the right place, and the right move at the proper time, that commands other places, movements, and times.

At the death of Lefèvre, in 1546, the onward movement of these select men, coming in contact, either friendly or adverse, with every actual power in Europe, was so impressive for its strategic completeness, and so far-reaching in its results, that, as an historian remarks, "These ten men, so ably chosen, had accomplished to their entire satisfaction, in less than six years, what the most absolute monarch would not have ventured to exact of the most blind devotedness."[117]

Hardly had Lefèvre departed this life, when his place was taken by the last man whom he had dealt with, Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, the friend and cousin of the Emperor Charles V. Still wearing his ducal robes, until his temporal affairs could be settled, he came to Rome in 1550. He founds the Roman College, which is the centre and type of all Jesuit colleges.

It was begun on February 18th, 1551, at the foot of the Capitol, with fourteen members of the Order, and Father John Peltier, a Frenchman, at their head. Doubling this number in the following September, the College moved to a larger building. The Professors taught Rhetoric, and three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In 1553, the entire course of Philosophy and Theology was added. The number of Jesuit students among the auditory amounted, in this year, to sixty, and, in the following year, to one hundred. A few years later, Vittoria Toffia, niece of Paul IV, and wife of Camillo Orsini, provided the institution with a splendid property. Thenceforth, the number of Jesuit students alone was as high as 220, brought together from sixteen or more different nations, most of them familiar with many languages, all speaking by rule the tongue of the country in which they were residing, and all competent to speak and teach in the one universal and learned language of the time, the Latin tongue.

Of students not belonging to the Order, nearly twenty colleges are enumerated, at some periods, as following the courses of this central Roman College. They included the colleges of the English, the Greeks, the Scotch, the Maronites, the Irish, and the Neophytes; the Colleges named Capranica, Fuccioli, Mattei, Pamfili, Salviati, Ghislieri; the German College and the College Gymnasio; also the Roman Seminary. Of the 2107 students counted, as following the courses at a given time, 300 were in theology. The most eminent professors filled the chairs, in successive generations; theologians like Suarez and Vasquez, commentators like Cornelius a Lapide and Maldonado, founders or leaders in the schools of national history like Mariana and Pallavicini; Clavius, reformer of the Gregorian calendar; Kircher, universal in all exact sciences; and so of the rest; while the cycle of colleges over the world remained provided with their requisite forces, and maintained their own prestige.[118]

The emblem of this institution was Theology, enthroned, as it were, in a temple of imposing proportions. At her right and left two Maids of Honor stand; they are the Natural Sciences. One of them, representing Mathematics, is placing the celestial sphere under the feet of the august goddess seated; the other, representing Physics, is subjecting, in like manner, the orb of the earth. The legend attached reads: _Leges impone subactis_.

In forty or fifty years such an investment of talent, character, and virtue, had been made, by management within the Order, and by that power to which Ignatius always appealed, Divine Providence, that Rome had seen pass through this house the most distinguished men of the age, in every line of intellectual life, of moral eminence, and of all that could elevate the thoughts of noble and generous minds. For the young, in particular, three characters came, figures that were to fill the niches and terminate the aisles of contemplation, as the ideal choice of the bloom of youth--Stanislaus Kostka, a young Polish noble of seventeen, Aloysius Gonzaga, an Italian prince of twenty-three, and John Berchmans, a Flemish burgher of twenty-two. Being what they were, and leaving this life at such an age, they have appropriated in the Catholic Church the honors of the young.

With regard to Germany, it is with a classic touch, as of Cæsar's style, that an historian introduces the subject thus: _Germania, quo gravius laboravit, hoc studiosius adjuta est; Ignatio nulla regio commendatior_.[119] Nor will the association be considered far-fetched, if, substituting for Cæsar's pen and Cæsar's sword, Loyola's legislation for letters and his strategic tactics, one catches a suggestive idea, on the present topic, from that statue of the same Roman General, which represents him as holding in one hand a sword, and in the other a pen, with the words inscribed underneath, _Ex utroque Cæsar_.

Of the services of those nine men, with whom he founded the Order, he spent a large part upon Germany. Lefèvre was there, Le Jay, Bobadilla, Salmeron, Laynez; not to mention the great Canisius (de Hondt), a young man already in the field, who was to stay there for half a century. It is of these men and their work that Ranke writes: "Of what country were these, the first of their Order amongst us? They were natives of Spain, Italy, the Netherlands. For a long time, even the name of their Society was unknown, and they were styled the Spanish Priests. They filled the chairs of the universities, and there met with disciples willing to embrace their faith. Germany has no part in them; their doctrine, their constitution, had been completed and reduced to form, before they appeared in our midst. We may then regard the progress of their Institute here, as a new participation of Latin Europe in German Europe. They have defeated us upon our own soil, and wrested from us a share of our fatherland."[120]

In concert with the Duke of Bavaria and the Emperor Ferdinand, Ingolstadt and Vienna became the two first centres of operations. Ingolstadt was indeed destined to become soon one of the most representative universities of the Company, and the German centre of what has been called the "Counter-Reformation."[121] But Ignatius would not accept it, without the clearest enunciation of some fundamental principles in the educational work of his Institute. I will mention them.

First, the condition of all higher studies, and of lower studies as well, was such, that, as Ignatius said, it was useless to begin with the top, which without a good foundation will never stand. The disappointment of individual hopes and of general expectation would be the only result, with demoralization for the future. Let Literature, he said, and Philosophy be gone through satisfactorily; then Theology may be approached. Literature must come first of all. Hence Polanco, the secretary of Ignatius, writes to the Duke of Bavaria, in 1551, that the "Jesuits must begin by undertaking preparatory teaching, with Professors capable of inspiring their young students, little by little, with a taste for Theology."[122]

Secondly, we may recall to mind what was mentioned before,[123] that Ignatius provides for Law and Medicine in his universities, but the professors of these departments are to be taken from without the Order. Now, quite as a counterpart to this, we find him declaring to the Duke of Bavaria, that it is at variance with his plan to lend any Professors or Lecturers of the Order for work outside of Jesuit institutions. Therefore a college must be founded for them, or the Duke cannot have them.

The reason for this reserve is not hard to discern. In an organization like his, there are no men at large to lend. And, were the most eminent men assigned for work outside of the Jesuit colleges and universities, the younger generation of the Order would practically be debarred from the influence of their type of eminence. And again, if there were eminent men laboring in a country, without the stable abode of a Jesuit college in the same place, there would be no propagating the distinctive work of the Order itself, by means of the men of that country. Yet, as he projected a native clergy for Germany, so he intended native Jesuits for the Germans. Besides, it does not seem possible to accept of a chair outside, except on the basis of some pecuniary consideration for the individual Professor. Now this is a situation which he does not accept. A Professed Father is not to sacrifice his religious life and independence, bound to a work outside of the Order's own houses, and that for a valuable consideration. Ignatius accepts of no obligations to fill chairs, save as accepting universities, which contain those chairs.[124] And, as to pecuniary considerations, his principle is, _Gratis accepistis, gratis date_; "Give freely what you have freely received." To this cardinal principle the statutes of so many universities, if not of all, in which a Jesuit College conducted any of the faculties, distinctly refer, as the ground for exempting Religious of the Society from all pecuniary charges, incidental to university affairs.[125] No ingenious compromise was admitted which tended to relax this principle, regarding a pecuniary consideration.[126] On the contrary, the most legitimate and ample revenues offered were not accepted as a recommendation for a university, if there were any conditions whatever not in keeping with the Institute.[127]

The German College in Rome was founded by Ignatius, to form German ecclesiastics for the Germans. At that time benefices and parochial cures, in the German Emperor's dominions, were generally vacant for want of Priests. It soon came to pass that Priests were found to be in waiting, for want of benefices. It was not merely for the ordinary cure of souls that this college received so much attention from Loyola. True to himself, ever contemplating something eminent,--_rarum et eximium facinus_, as he said once to the Scholastics of Coimbra, "that rare and excellent achievement; which is worth more than six hundred common ones,"--he was founding a seminary for preachers, professors, prelates. If the students sent from Germany, to be admitted and supported on this foundation, are not noblemen, "at all events," writes Ignatius in 1552, "let nobility of soul not be wanting to them."[128] This is the institution which caused so much vexation to non-Catholic Germany. It renovated the priesthood.

Thus, then, in a short official career of sixteen years, Ignatius had the gratification of seeing a new and vast educational policy crowned with success. In spite of the active opposition which powerful interests in Rome led against him--and a vigorous siege from the side of the schoolmasters was not to be despised, nor should it fail to be recorded,--in spite of the desperate hostility of the Sorbonne, which was but beginning its war upon the Society in France, with storms at Toledo and Saragossa flanking his movements in Spain; in spite of the open war with heresy in Protestant Germany, where acrimony, distilled to its last degree of concentration, was to embitter history, till the days of Ranke and Janssen should come, and begin to vindicate the truth of history; thanks to the labors of Ignatius, the monopoly of education was being broken down; the old universities were no longer either the sole depositories of superior instruction, or the arbiters of the intellectual life of Europe; and all the best learning, which the most accomplished men could impart, was now being given gratuitously, and in as many centres of educational activity as the Society was allowed to create. And, whereas it is put down to the credit of Germany, that sixteen of the old universities had arisen on its soil, now, in the German Assistency of the Society, there arose more than sixteen Jesuit universities, besides two hundred colleges. And, in virtue of Papal charters, it was already an accomplished fact, that all the powers of universities, with regard to the degrees of Bachelor, Master, Licentiate, and Doctor, were vested in the head of the Order, who could delegate the same to subordinate Superiors.[129]

No wonder all the faculties of Christendom considered the Order an intruder and an aggressor. It might be considered so to-day. Free and universal education was at the doors of all. We, men of the nineteenth century, may flatter ourselves that it was the spirit of our age which breathed upon the Order of Jesus, three centuries before the time. Perhaps so. But we shall have to wait a few centuries more, even beyond the nineteenth century, before we come to such education given universally and given gratuitously. For it is one of the most palpable characteristics of all educational and other philanthropy which we know of, that it is an extremely expensive thing.

Let us now close our sketch of the great educator, Saint Ignatius of Loyola. All the particulars of his death have been preserved for us by those who were with him at the last. They were not his first companions. Of these, the few who survived at the present date, sixteen years after the foundation of the Society, were scattered in various climes. The members with him were John Polanco, his polished secretary, André Frusis, a Frenchman, one of the most gifted of linguists and of _littérateurs_, Christopher Madrizi, a university Doctor of Alcalà, and Jerome Nadal, whom in Paris, long before, Ignatius had endeavored to enlist in the service of his Institute; but Nadal had rejected all overtures, pointing to the Bible under his arm, and saying he wanted no other institute save that. He was a man of the first quality in judgment and the governing cast of mind. Later on, when the exploits of Saint Francis Xavier in India and Japan had become the talk and admiration of Europe, Nadal entered the Order, so cautiously that one might say he did it reluctantly; yet he did it. His subsequent career showed that he had made a mistake, when he missed a place in the very first ranks.

Others were close by. Laynez lay in a sick-room; as was thought, on his death-bed; Mendoza too, and Martin Olave. The latter, some thirty years before, was a boy whom Ignatius met, when as a poor pilgrim he reached Alcalà from Barcelona, to take up his university studies. The boy gave him an alms, the first received by Ignatius in that city. Time had passed since then. The boy had become a Master of Arts, and, in 1543, a Doctor of the Paris University, remarkable in many ways for virtue and learning. Now, a man of mature age and great authority, he had embraced the Institute of Ignatius. He alone of the invalids died immediately after his master in religion.

The latter, on July the 30th, told them he was about to die. But, diseases having preyed upon him for years, the physicians did not confirm what he said; and Father Ignatius made no more statements on the subject. He spent the evening in his usual manner, transacted some business with perfect serenity of mind, and then was left alone till the morrow.

The morrow is just dawning, when they find him breathing his last. He declines to accept any potion. Joining his hands together, with his eyes fixed heavenward, and pronouncing the name of "Jesus," the founder of the Society of Jesus passes away from this life, in the Professed House at Rome.

It was the thirty-first day of July, 1556. He was sixty-five years of age. Thirty-five years had passed, since the Knight of the King of Navarre had, with such solemnity, changed his garb, hung up his sword and poniard in the sanctuary of Montserrat, and vowed himself to be a Knight in the Kingdom of Christ.

All the time since then he had spent in extreme poverty, in the practice of austerity, in the laborious travels of a pilgrim, in the more laborious pursuit of letters, under the stress of persecution, prisons, and chains, and under the relentless fatigue of a universal foresight, vigilance, and administration. He had proved himself a leader and commander of men, as nature had made him to be, and as history shows that he was.

In an especial manner, he is famous for his prudence. Approaching every enterprise with the most varied and exhaustive deliberation, spending forty days of meditation on determining a single point of the Constitution, throwing upon his premises every kind of light from consultation and advice, and having habitually in his room, for reference, only two books, the New Testament, and the Imitation of Christ, he thought out every plan to the last degree of definiteness and consistency. Having once reached such a definite conclusion, he was not easy to move thenceforth out of the direction taken. Quite otherwise. With the utmost vigilance, he applied himself and he applied all the means, whether they were persons available or measures necessary, to the execution of his purpose. Even when, as often seemed to be the case, he was starting from principles other than those of ordinary human foresight, apparently from a pure trust in Divine Providence, he did not exempt himself from applying, with the same circumspection and diligence as ever, the means adequate to execute what he had begun. Waiting fourteen hours, and fasting withal, in the ante-chamber of a prince, lest the propitious occasion should slip, writing out the same letter twice, thrice, and oftener, lest the right thing should not be said in the right way, and sending out thirty letters in one night, he exhibited, in the administration of great things and small, what had marked all his previous deliberation, the highest degree of consummate prudence and of practical perfection.

If, in all this, there are many eminent qualities to admire, there is a resultant fact more marvellous still. He did his work so that it went on without him. And hence, if, whenever he happened to be anywhere on the field of action, account had to be taken of such a man, it will not perhaps appear singular that his Order too, even when ostracized and expatriated, is taken into account, if it is anywhere visible on the social horizon. While I am writing this, three hundred and fifty years after his time, the Bundesrath, on closing the Kulturkampf, and admitting all the exiled Orders of the Catholic Church back into the Empire of Germany, makes an exception of the Jesuits. It bans the Order of Jesus, and gives no reason, beyond the palpable fact that the Order is what it is. Evidently, Ignatius of Loyola did his work so as to make it go on without him; and go on just as he made it.