第168章

Todd's Life of Cranmer; Strype's Life of Cranmer; Wood's Annals of the Oxford University; Burnet's English Reformation; Doctor Lingard's History of England; Macaulay's Essays; Fuller's Church History; Gilpin's Life of Cranmer; Original Letters to Cromwell;Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury; Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church; Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical biography;Turner's Henry VIII.; Froude's History of England; Fox's Life of Latimer; Turner's Reign of Mary.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

A.D. 1491-1556

RISE AND INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS.

Next to the Protestant Reformation itself, the most memorable moral movement in the history of modern times was the counter-reformation in the Roman Catholic Church, finally effected, in no slight degree, by the Jesuits. But it has not the grandeur or historical significance of the great insurrection of human intelligence which was headed by Luther. It was a revival of the pietism of the Middle Ages, with an external reform of manners. It was not revolutionary; it did not cast off the authority of the popes, nor disband the monasteries, nor reform religious worship: it rather tended to strengthen the power of the popes, to revive monastic life, and to perpetuate the forms of worship which the Middle Ages had established. No doubt a new religions life was kindled, and many of the flagrant abuses of the papal empire were redressed, and the lives of the clergy made more decent, in accordance with the revival of intelligence. Nor did it disdain literature or art, or any form of modern civilization, but sought to combine progress with old ideas; it was an effort to adapt the Roman theocracy to changing circumstances, and was marked by expediency rather than right, by zeal rather than a profound philosophy.

This movement took place among the Latin races,--the Italians, French, and Spaniards,--having no hold on the Teutonic races except in Austria, as much Slavonic as German. It worked on a poor material, morally considered; among peoples who have not been distinguished for stamina of character, earnestness, contemplative habits, and moral elevation,--peoples long enslaved, frivolous in their pleasures, superstitious, indolent, fond of fetes, spectacles, pictures, and Pagan reminiscences.

The doctrine of justification by faith was not unknown, even in Italy. It was embraced by many distinguished men. Contarini, an illustrious Venetian, wrote a treatise on it, which Cardinal Pole admired. Folengo ascribed justification to grace alone; and Vittoria Colonna, the friend of Michael Angelo, took a deep interest in these theological inquiries. But the doctrine did not spread; it was not understood by the people,--it was a speculation among scholars and doctors, which gave no alarm to the Pope. There was even an attempt at internal reform under Paul III. of the illustrious family of the Farnese, successor of Leo X. and Clement VII., the two renowned Medicean popes. He made cardinals of Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Pole, Giberto,--all imbued with reformative doctrines, and very religious; and these good men prepared a plan of reform and submitted it to the Pope, which ended, however, only in new monastic orders.

It was then that Ignatius Loyola appeared upon the stage, when Luther was in the midst of his victories, and when new ideas were shaking the pontifical throne. The desponding successor of the Gregorys and the Clements knew not where to look for aid in that crisis of peril and revolution. The monastic orders composed his regular army, but they had become so corrupted that they had lost the reverence of the people. The venerable Benedictines had ceased to be men of prayer and contemplation as in the times of Bernard and Anselm, and were revelling in their enormous wealth. The cloisters of Cluniacs and Cistercians--branches of the Benedictines--were filled with idle and dissolute monks. The famous Dominicans and Franciscans, who had rallied to the defence of the Papacy three centuries before,--those missionary orders that had filled the best pulpits and the highest chairs of philosophy in the scholastic age,--had become inexhaustible subjects of sarcasm and mockery, for they were peddling relics and indulgences, and quarrelling among themselves. They were hated as inquisitors, despised as scholastics, and deserted as preachers; the roads and taverns were filled with them. Erasmus laughed at them, Luther abused them, and the Pope reproached them. No hope from such men as these, although they had once been renowned for their missions, their zeal, their learning, and their preaching.

At this crisis Loyola and his companions volunteered their services, and offered to go wherever the Pope should send them, as preachers, or missionaries, or teachers, instantly, without discussion, conditions, or rewards. So the Pope accepted them, made them a new religions Order; and they did what the Mendicant Friars had done three hundred years before,--they fanned a new spirit, and rapidly spread over Europe, over all the countries to which Catholic adventurers had penetrated, and became the most efficient allies that the popes ever had.

This was in 1540, six years after the foundation of the Society of Jesus had been laid on the Mount of Martyrs, in the vicinity of Paris, during the pontificate of Paul III. Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde Loyola, a Spaniard of noble blood and breeding, at first a page at the court of King Ferdinand, then a brave and chivalrous soldier, was wounded at the siege of Pampeluna. During a slow convalescence, having read all the romances he could find, he took up the "Lives of the Saints," and became fired with religious zeal.