Part 48

No particular bodily mortifications are prescribed by the rule of the Society; but two most perfect practices of interior mortification are rigorously enjoined, on account of which Suarez (t. 3, de Relig.) who treats at length of the obligations of their Order, calls it the most rigorous of religious Orders; the first is, the rule of Manifestation, by which every one is bound to discover his interior inclinations to his superior; the second is, that every Jesuit renounces his right to his own reputation with his superior, giving leave to every brother to inform immediately his superior of all his faults he knows, without observing the law of private correction first, which is a precept of fraternal charity, unless where a person has given up his right.

The general nominates the provincial and rectors; but he has five assistants nominated by the general congregation, who prepare all matters to his hands, each for the province of his assistency; and these have authority to call a general congregation to depose the general if he should evidently transgress the rules of the Society. Every provincial is obliged to write to the general once every month, and once in three years transmit to him an account of all the Jesuits in his province. The perfect form of government which is established, the wisdom, the unction, the zeal, and the consummate knowledge of men, which appear throughout all these constitutions, will be a perpetual manifest monument of the saint’s admirable penetration, judgment, and piety. He wrote his constitutions in Spanish, but they were done into Latin by his secretary, father John Polancus. It is peculiar to the Society, that the religious, after their first vows, retain some time the dominion or property of their patrimony, without the administration (for this later condition is now essential to a religious vow of poverty), till they make their renunciation.

St. Ignatius forbade the fathers of his Society to undertake the direction of nunneries on the following occasion. In 1545, Isabel Rozella, a noble Spanish widow, and two others, with the approbation of pope Paul III. put themselves under St. Ignatius’s direction, to live according to his rule; but he soon repented and procured from his Holiness, in 1547, the abovesaid prohibition, saying, that such a task took up all that time which he desired to dedicate to a more general good in serving many. When certain women in Flanders and Piedmont afterward assembled in houses under vows and this rule, and called themselves Jesuitesses, their institute was abolished by Urban VIII. in 1631, the end and exercises of this society not suiting that sex.

[353] See his edifying life by Raderus and Sacchini.

[354] Bouhours, l. 4. Orlandin. Hist. Soc. l. 7, c. 25.

[355] The value of this treasure is enhanced by the elegant dress by which it is set off in the French translation of the abbé Regnier des Marais, three volumes in 4to. four in 8vo. and six in 12mo. The devout abbé Tricalet gave a good abridgment of this excellent work, printed in 1760. The translation of Rodrigues made by the gentlemen of Port-Royal is faulty in several places, particularly, Tr. 1, c. 10.

[356] Orland. Hist. Soc. l. 16.

[357] Extant to Bartoli, l. 4, p. 372.

[358] L. 4, n. 29, 355.

[359] Bayle makes exceptions to the miracles of St. Ignatius because Ribadeneira, in the first life of this saint, which he wrote in 1572, inquires why his sanctity was not equally attested by wonderful miracles as that of the founders of some other Orders. “Quamobrem illius sanctitas minus est testata miraculis,” &c. But in this very edition, in the last chapter, p. 209, he writes: “Mihi tantum abest ut ad vitam Ignatii illustrandam miracula deesse videantur, ut multa eaque præstantissima judicem in mediâ luce versari.” He then recapitulates some facts which he had before related, and which he esteems miraculous, as a rapture in which the saint continued for eight days; so many wonderful, heavenly illuminations and revelations; the restoration of F. Simon, who lay dangerously sick, to his health, pursuant to his prediction; the wonderful deliverance of a demoniac; the cures of several sick persons; the foretelling many particular things to private persons, &c. The author republished this life in 1587, with some additions. He afterwards wrote a Latin abstract of this first life, in which he inserted many miracles. This he calls “Alteram breviorem vitam, sed multis ac novas miraculis auctam.” In this he tells us, that he had before been more cautious in relating miracles, because they had not yet been examined and approved; but that he chose some which were esteemed miraculous, not in the opinion of the common people, but in the judgment of prudent persons. See this remark also in the Spanish abstract of this life, published in 1604; and in the Latin abstract reprinted at Ipres in 1612. In his Spanish life of St. Ignatius, among his lives of saints, printed in 1604, he writes thus: “Though, when I first printed his life in 1572, I knew of some miracles of the holy father, I did not look upon them to be so verified (averiguados) as to think that I ought to publish them, which afterward, by the authentical informations taken for his canonization, were proved true by credible witnesses; and the Lord, who is pleased to exalt him, and make him glorious on earth, works daily such miracles on his account as oblige me to relate part of them here, taken from the original juridical informations which several bishops have made, and from the depositions made upon oath by the persons on whom the miracles were wrought,” &c. Ribad. Spanish lives, p. 1124. Moreover, Ribadeneira mentions in his first and second edition of this life, prophecies, revelations, visions, and the like miraculous favors, and he expressly distinguishes these from the gift of miracles, by which he means miraculous cures and the like, though the former may be justly placed in the general class of miracles. If the works of Ribadeneira on this subject be all carefully perused, it will be easy to discern the scrupulous accuracy of the author in this point; and the candid reader will be convinced how much some have misrepresented his testimony. Nor was he allowed to publish miracles before they had been approved, as the Council of Trent severely ordained. (Sess. 25, de Inv. Sanct.) See on it Julius Nigronius (Disp. Hist. de SS. Ignatio et Cajetano, n. 57) and Pinius the Bollandist in his confutation of this slander.

In the relation made in the secret consistory before Gregory XV. of miracles which had been examined and approved by the cardinal à Monte and other commissaries, are mentioned the supernatural light shining on his face at prayer, upon the testimony of St. Philip Neri and F. Oliver Manerius. That St. Ignatius, by his blessing and prayer, cured one Bastida of the falling sickness, and the hand of a cook miserably burnt; delivered Pontanus from most violent temptations with which he had been grievously molested for two years, &c.: but the miracles which are chiefly attended to in a canonization, are those which have been performed after the person’s death. Of such, many manifest ones were approved, first by the Auditors of the Rota, and afterward by the Congregation of Rites. Among these are mentioned the following: Isabel Rabelles, a nun of Barcelona, sixty-seven years old, in 1601, had broken her thigh-bone; and being attended by a physician and surgeon during forty days, and under grievous pains and a violent fever, was expected to die that night, and given over as to all natural remedies; when by applying a relic of St. Ignatius, and saying the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary, with an invocation of this saint, the swelling of the thigh and leg went down, she found herself able to stir both, and without any pain; and calling for her clothes she got up, walked perfectly, and with ease, and felt no more of her complaint, not even at new moons or in the dampest seasons. Anne Barozellona, at Valladolid, almost sixty years old, was cured of a desperate palsy by invoking St. Ignatius, with a vow to perform a novena. A widow who had lost her sight in both her eyes, recovered it by recommending herself to the prayers of Saint Ignatius, and touching her eyes with a relic, &c. F. Jos. Juvency (Hist. Soc. Jesu, l. 15, part 5, § 9) has selected and related many like miracles of St. Ignatius. F. Daniel Bartoli, in his life of this saint, has given a history of a hundred such miracles (l. 5). See also the great collection made by F. Pinius, the continuation of Bollandus.

Though cardinal Pole thought circumstances did not allow him to make any settlement for Jesuits in England, as the author of the Monastic History of Ireland and others take notice, that great and holy man highly esteemed St. Ignatius and his Institute. See a letter of Saint Ignatius to cardinal Pole dated at Rome, 24th of January, 1555, and that cardinal’s answer to him from Richmond, 8th of May; and another from London, 15th of December the same year; also his letter of condolence to F. Lainez upon the death of St. Ignatius, dated at London, 15th of November, 1556, published among the letters of cardinal Pole collected by cardinal Querini at Brescia, t. 5, p. 117, 118, 119, 120, 121.

[360] The Jesuats of St. Jerom were at first all lay brothers, and practised pharmacy; but, in 1606, obtained leave of Paul V. to study and take holy orders. The houses of the friars being reduced, they were suppressed by Clement IX. in 1668; but some nunneries of this Order still subsist in Italy. See the life of this saint, and those of other illustrious persons of this Order, written by Moriggia, a pious general of the same, who died in 1604. Also the Bollandists and Helyot.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The following corrections have been made in the text:

Day: 1, section: Table of Contents - ‘Rumbold’ replaced with ‘Rumold’ (St. Rumold, Bishop and Martyr)

Day: 1, section: SS. JULIUS AND AARON - ‘Caerlton’ replaced with ‘Caerleon’ (at Caerleon in the year 1200,)

Day: 1, section: SS. JULIUS AND AARON - ‘Canbrensis’ replaced with ‘Cambrensis’ (Giraldus Cambrensis,)

Day: 3, section: SAINT GUNTHIERN - ‘Guereck’ replaced with ‘Guerech’ (Guerech I., count of Vannes,)

Day: 4, section: SAINT ODO - ‘Ethelwulf’ replaced with ‘Ethelwolf’ (who in the reign of king Ethelwolf)

Day: 4, section: ST. SISOES - ‘Scete’ replaced with ‘Sceté’ (retired to the desert of Sceté,)

Day: 6, section: ST. MONINNA - ‘Calgan’ replaced with ‘Colgan’ (See Colgan ad 6 Jul.)

Day: 9, section: ST. VERONICA - ‘sead’ replaced with ‘send’ (begging Him to send me more torments.)

Day: 16, section: ST. EUSTATHIUS - ‘Ceilier’ replaced with ‘Ceillier’ (Ceillier, t. 4,)

Day: 17, section: ST. LEO IV. - ‘355’ replaced with ‘855’ (September in the same year, 855,)

Day: 18, section: ST. FREDERIC - ‘Lewis’ replaced with ‘Louis’ (her marriage with Louis)

Day: 19, section: ST. SYMMACHUS - ‘intsance’ replaced with ‘instance’ (never had been an instance of )

Day: 22, section: SAINT JOSEPH OF PALESTINE - ‘month’ replaced with ‘mouth’ (from his own mouth the particulars )

Day: 25, section: SAINTS THEA AND VALENTINA - ‘Firmillian’ replaced with ‘Firmilian’ (Firmilian, the successor of Urbanus)

Footnote 55 - ‘Ushur’ replaced with ‘Usher’ (Usher, p. 418.)

Footnote 56 - ‘Kilmrures’ replaced with ‘Kilmaures’ (from whom Kilmaures is named,)

Footnote 90 - ‘Arringhi’ replaced with ‘Aringhi’ (produced by Aringhi, Diss. 2, l. 3, c.)

Footnote 102 - ‘suffiicient’ replaced with ‘sufficient’ (seems of sufficient authority)

Footnote 103 - Footnote anchor missing in text.

Footnote 104 - ‘Villote’ replaced with ‘Villotte’ (and F. James Villotte,)

Footnote 139 - Omitted footnote symbol inserted in text.

Footnote 161 - ‘Charlemage’ replaced with ‘Charlemagne’ (Charlemagne marched into Italy,)

Footnote 171 - ‘supposititions’ replaced with ‘suppositions’ (are generally esteemed suppositions.)

Footnote 270 - ‘Russicœ’ replaced with ‘Russiæ’ (Orig. Russiæ, t. 8,)

Footnote 346 - Omitted footnote symbol inserted in text.