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Section I The Founding of the Jesuit Order.
1. Ignatius of Loyola

The founder of the Society of Jesus, the Spanish Basque don Inigo Lopez de Recalde, was born at the castle of Loyola, in the province of Guipuzcoa, in 1491. He was one of the strangest types of monk-soldier ever engendered by the Catholic world; of all the founders of religious orders, he may be the one whose personality has left the strongest mark on the mind and behaviour of his disciples and successors. This may be the reason for that “familiar look” or “trade-mark”, a fact which goes as far as physical resemblance. Mr. Folliet disputes this fact (1), but many documents prove the permanence of a “Jesuit” type through the ages. The most amusing of these testimonies is found at the Guimet museum; on the golden background of a 16th century screen, a Japanese artist portrayed, with all the humour of his race, the landing of the Portuguese, and of the sons of Loyola in particular, on the Nipponese islands. The amazement of this lover of nature and bright colours is obvious in the way he depicted those long, black shadows with their mournful faces on which is congealed all the arrogance of the fanatic ruler. The likeness between the work of the oriental artist of the 16th century and our Daumier of 1830 is there for all to see.

Like many other saints, Inigo—who later Romanised his name and became Ignatius—looked far from being the one predestined to enlighten his contemporaries (2). His stormy youth was filled with mistakes and even “heinous crimes”. A police report said he was “treacherous, brutal, vindictive”. All his biographers admit that he yielded to none of his boon companions regarding the violence of the instincts, then a common thing. “An unruly and conceited soldier”, said one of his confidants—”he led a disorderly life as far as women, gambling and duels were concerned”, added his secretary Polanco (3). All this is related to us by one of his spiritual sons, R.P. Rouquette, who tried somewhat to explain and excuse this hot temper which was eventually turned “ad majorem Dei gloriam”. (To the greater glory of God).

(1) “La Croix”, 31 st of July 1956.
(2) Like Saint Augustine, Saint Francis of Assisi and many others.
(3) R.P. Jesuit Robert Rouquette, “Saint Ignace de Loyola” (Ed. Albin Michel, Paris 1944, p.6).

As is the case for many heroes of the Roman Catholic Church, a violent physical blow was necessary to change his personality. He had been pageboy to the treasurer of Castille until his master’s disgrace. Then he became a gentleman in the service of the Viceroy of Navarre; having lived the life of a courtier until then, the young man started the life of a soldier by defending Pampeluna against the French commanded by the Count de Foix. The wound which decided his future life was inflicted during that siege. A leg broken by a bullet, he was taken by the victorious French to his brother Martin Garcia, at the castle of Loyola. Now starts the martyrdom of surgery without anaesthesia, through which he had to go a second time as the work had not been done properly. His leg was broken again and reset. In spite of all this, Ignatius was left with a limp. One can understand that he only needed an experience such as this to cause him a nervous breakdown. The “gift of tears” which was then bestowed on him “in abundance”—and in which his pious biographers see a favour from on high—is maybe only the result of his highly emotional nature, henceforth to affect him more and more.

His sole entertainment, while lying wounded and in pain, was the reading of the “Life of Christ” and the “Life of the Saints”, the only books found in the castle.

As he was practically uneducated and still affected by that terrible shock, the anguish of Christ’s passion and the martyrdom of the saints had an indelible impact on him; this obsession led the crippled warrior on to the road of apostolate.

“He put the books to one side and day-dreamed. A clear case of the wakeful dream, this was a continuation into the adult years of the imaginary game of the child… if we let it invade the psychic realm, the result is neurosis and surrender of the will; that which is real takes second place!…”(4)

At first sight, this diagnosis seems hardly to apply to the founder of such an active order, nor to other “great mystics” and creators of religious societies, all of whom had apparently great capacities for organization. But we find that all of them are unable to resist their over-active imaginations and, for them, the impossible becomes possible.

(4) R.P. Jesuit Robert Rouquette, op.cit., p.9.

Here is what the same author says on this subject: “I want to point out the obvious outcome of the practice of mysticism by someone possessing a brilliant intelligence. The weak mind indulging in mysticism is on dangerous ground, but the intelligent mystic presents a far greater danger, us his intellect works in a wider and deeper way… When the myth takes over from the reality in an active intelligence, it becomes mere fanaticism; an infection of the will which suffers from a partial enlargement or distortion”.(5)

Ignatius of Loyola was a first-class example of that “active mysticism” and “distortion of the will”. Nevertheless, the transformation of the gentlemen- warrior into the “general” of the most militant order in the Roman Church was very slow; there were many faltering steps before he found his true vocation. It is not our intention to follow him through all those different stages. Let us recall the main points: in the spring of 1522, he left the ancestral castle, with his mind made up to become a saint similar to those whose edifying exploits he had been reading about in that big “gothic” volume. Besides, did not the Madona herself appear to him one night, holding in her arms the child Jesus? After a thorough confession at the monastry of Montserrat, he was planning to go to Jerusalem. The plague was rife in Barcelona and, as all maritime traffic had stopped, he had to stay at Manresa for nearly a year. There, he spent his time in prayers, orisons, long fasts, flagellating himself, practicing all the forms of maceration, and never failing to appear before the “tribunal for penance”, even though his confession at Montserrat had apparently lasted three whole days; such a thorough confession would have been sufficient to a less scrupulous sinner. All this depicts quite clearly the mental and nervous state of the man. At last delivered from that obsession of sin by deciding it was only a trick of Satan, he devoted himself entirely to the varied and plentiful visions which were haunting his feverish mind.

“It is because of a vision”, says H. Boehmer, “that he started eating meat again; it is a whole series of visions that revealed to him the mysteries of the Catholic dogma and helped him to truly live it: in that way, he meditates upon the Trinity under the shape of a musical instrument with three cords; the mystery of the creation of the world through “something” hazy and light coming out of a ray of sunshine; the miraculous descent of Christ into the Eucharist as flashes of light entering the consecrated water, when the priest held it up while praying; the human nature of Christ and the holy Virgin under the form of a dazzling white body; and finally Satan as a serpentine and shimmering shape similar to a multitude of sparkling and mysterious eyes (6).” Is not this the start of the well-known Jesuitic image-making?

(5) Dr Legrain, “Le Mysticisme et la folie” (Ed. de l’ldee Libre, Herblay (S.-et-O.) 1931, pp. 14-16).
(6) H. Boehmer, professor at the University of Bonn, “Les Jesuites” (Armand Colin, Paris 1910, pp. 12-13).

Mr. Boehmer adds that the deep meaning of the dogmas was revealed to him, as a special favour from on-high, through transcendental intuitions. “Many mysteries of Faith and science became suddenly clear to him and later he pretended to have learned more in those short moments than during the whole of his studies; however, he was never able to explain what these mysteries were which suddenly became clear to him. There was only a hazy recollection left, a feeling of something miraculous as if, at that moment, he had become “another man with another intelligence”.(7)

All this may be the result of a nervous disorder and can be identified with what happens to smokers of opium and eaters of hashish: that enlargement or extension of the ego, that illusion of soaring up beyond what is real, a flashing sensation leaving only a dazed recollection. Blissful visions and illuminations were constant companions of this mystic throughout his life.

“He never doubted the reality of these revelations. He chased Satan with a stick as he would have done a mad dog; he talked to the Holy Spirit as one does to another person actually; he asked for the approval of God, the Trinity and the Madonna on all his projects and would burst into tears of joy when they appeared to him. On those occasions, he had a foretaste of celestial bliss; the heavens were open to him, and the Godhead was visible and perceptible to him.(8)

Is not this the perfect case of an hallucinated person? It will be this same perceptible and visible Godhead that the spiritual sons of Loyola will constantly offer to the world—not only for political reasons, leaning on and flattering the deep-rooted inclination in the heart of man for idolatry— but also by conviction, having been well and truly indoctrinated. From the start, mediaeval mysticism has prevailed in the Society of Jesus; it is still the great animator, in spite of its readily assumed worldly, intellectual and learned aspects. Its basic axiom is: “All things to all men”. The arts, literature, science and even philosophy have been mere means or nets to catch souls, like the easy indulgences granted by its casuists and for which laxity they were so often reproved. To this Order, there is not a realm where human weakness cannot be worked upon, to incite the spirit and will to surrender and go back to a more childish and restful devotion. So they work for the bringing about of the “kingdom of God” according to their own ideal: a great flock under the Holy Father’s crozier. That learned men could have such an anachronic ideal seems very strange, yet it is undeniably so and the confirmation of an oft-disregarded fact: the pre-eminence of the emotions in the life of the spirit. Besides, Kant said that every philosophy is but the expression of the philosopher’s temperament or character.

(7) H. Boehmer, professor at the University of Bonn, “Les Jesuites” (Armand Colin, Paris 1910, pp. 12-13).
(8) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p. 14.

Apart from individual methods, the Jesuitic “temperament” seems more or less uniform amongst them. “A mixture of piety and diplomacy, asceticism and worldly wisdom, mysticism and cold calculation; as was Loyola’s character, so is the trade-mark of this Order”.(9).

In the first place, every Jesuit chose this particular Order because of his natural dispositions; but he really becomes a “son” of Loyola after rigorous tests and systematic training lasting no less than fourteen years.

In that way, the paradox of this Order has continued for four hundred years: an Order which endeavours to be “intellectual” but, simultaneously, has always been, within the Roman Church and society, the champion of the strictest disposition.

(9) J. Huber, professor of Catholic theology in Munich, “Les Jesuites” (Sandoz et Fischbacher, Paris 1875, p. 127).