Chapter 7 THE FINGERSTROKE OF GOD

DETERMINED ON a priestly life, Iñigo de Loyola returned to Barcelona from Jerusalem in the spring of 1524. He spent the next three years in Spain getting the requisite Latin. Since direct contact with the Bible was prohibited by law, his reading coursed the humanities.

With the esoteric experience of his Spiritual Exercises, he charmed the wives of important men. He received frequent invitations to dine at elegant tables, but preferred to beg food door to door and distribute the choice pickings to the poor and sick. He lived in an attic and slept on the floorboards, trying desperately to persuade God of his worthiness. He prayed for six hours each day, attended mass three times a week, confessed every Sunday, and continued whipping himself. He devised secret penances, such as boring holes in his shoes and going barefoot in winter.

Sometimes the Exercises aroused in his followers instances of bizarre conduct – swooning, long spells of fainting or melancholia, rolling about the ground, being gripped with corpse-like rigidity. The Spanish Inquisition investigated him on suspicion of preaching gnostic illuminism. When Iñigo insisted that he was not preaching at all, but was merely talking about the things of God in a familiar way, the Inquisitor released him. In successive frays, the Inquisition ordered Iñigo (1) to get rid of his eccentric clothing and dress like other students, (2) to refrain from holding meetings until he had completed four years of study, and (3) to refrain from defining what constituted a grave sin. Wearying of the harassment, he decided to seek his four years of education beyond the Inquisition’s reach.

He set out for the University of Paris with a pack mule carrying his belongings. He arrived at the University on February 2, 1528, and soon afterward registered in the run-down old College of Montaigu. John Calvin, who would become Protestantism’s great theological systems designer, was leaving Montaigu just as Loyola arrived. Erasmus, the College’s most famous alumnus, remembered graduating from Montaigu “with nothing except an infected body and a vast array of lice.” The student body consisted mostly of wayward Parisian boys kept under harsh discipline; Iñigo was thirty-seven.

Paris was expensive, even for students. Much of the funds Iñigo had raised in Barcelona had been stolen by one of his disciples. In early 1529 he went into Belgium, where it is believed he received money from people close to the Holy Roman Emperor. One of these was Juan de Cuellar, Treasurer of the Kingdom of Spain. Another was Luis Vives, personal secretary to the Emperor’s aunt, Queen Catherine of England, and private tutor to her daughter, Princess Mary (afterward the “Bloody” Queen). Iñigo returned to Paris much better off. He upgraded his lodgings.

In October, he left Montaigu and enrolled at the College of Ste. Barbe across the street. He pursued a course in arts and philosophy that would last three and a half years. His name appears on the Ste. Barbe registry as “Ignatius de Loyola.” Some Jesuit historians have guessed he adopted the name in veneration of Ignatius of Antioch, an early Christian martyr. It was at Ste. Barbe that Iñigo began earnestly organizing his army, but not before traveling again to Belgium to ask Juan de Cuellar and Luis Vives for yet more money.

Armed with his command of the Templar secrets and with introductions provided by the Emperor and Vives, Ignatius crossed to England. This significant voyage is mentioned only once in his autobiography. He admits that he “returned with more alms than he usually did in other years.” Perhaps Queen Catherine, the Emperor’s aunt, introduced him to the Howards and the Petres, known to be among the first families to receive and nourish Jesuits sent to England.

Starting with his two Ste. Barbe roommates, Ignatius soon gathered a circle of six close friends ranging in age from teens to early twenties. Somewhat like himself, they were adventurous, impressionable, intelligent, and unpersuaded of the Bible’s supreme authority. Their fondest dream was to save the Holy Land from the Muslims by performing heroic Templaresque exploits. One by one Ignatius gave them the Spiritual Exercises, and one by one they became disciples. Within a few years they were calling themselves La Compañìa de Iesus, the Company of Jesus.

On August 15, 1534, Feast Day of the Assumption of the Virgin into heaven, the companions swore oaths of service to the Blessed Virgin in Ste. Marie’s Church at Montmartre, and to St. Denis, patron saint of France, in his chapel. (The experience of the Montmartre Oaths must have been intense, for Francis Xavier, who would become St. Francis, Apostle to the East, made the Spiritual Exercises with “a penitential fervor,” says Broderick in Origin of the Jesuits, “that nearly cost him the use of his limbs.”) They vowed poverty, chastity, and to rescue Jerusalem from the Muslims. However, should the rescue prove infeasible within a year, they vowed to undertake without question whatever other task the pope might require of them.

Well before a year had passed, Clement VII died and the Jerusalem dream was overwhelmed by more present dangers. Luther’s Bible in German was creating defection in record numbers throughout Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In France, the response to LeFevre’s Bible was so decisive that King Francis I exclaimed that he would behead his own children if he found them harboring the blasphemous heresies acquirable through direct contact with scripture. England was lost in its entirety, due not to Bible reading, which Henry VIII prosecuted as avidly as any pope, but to the royal love life. Henry had demanded that Clement VII grant him a divorce from the Emperor’s aunt Catherine, and then recognize the Protestant-oriented Anne Boleyn as his new Queen. When Clement stood mute, Henry took all of England away from Rome and made himself “complete owner of the lands and tenements [of England], as well at law as in equity.”¹

Clement VII was succeeded by the oldest cardinal, an erudite humanist with formidable diplomatic skills, 66-year-old Alessandro Farnese. Cardinal Farnese had been privately educated in the household of Lorenzo d’Medici and had been appointed Treasurer of the Vatican in 1492. He was crowned Pope Paul III. Vatican wags called Farnese “Cardinal Petticoat” because his strikingly beautiful sister Giulia had been Giulia Farnese, with mistress to the licentious Pope Alexander metal blouse VI, for which the same wags nicknamed her “Bride of Christ.” Giulia posed undraped for the statue of the Goddess Justice that still reclines voluptuously on Paul Ill’s tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. Two centuries later, at the command, in the interests of decency, of Pius IX, the first pope to be officially declared infallible, Giulia’s exposed breasts were fitted with a metal blouse.²

Paul III is a major figure in the history of the Society of Jesus, and consequently of the United States of America, since it was he who approved, in the summer of 1539, Ignatius de Loyola’s business plan. Ignatius proposed a “minimal society” that would “do battle in the Lord God’s service under the banner of the Cross.” The militia would be very small, no more than sixty members, and each would have to take four vows – of poverty, chastity, obedience to the Church, and a vow of special obedience to the pope. They would not be confined to any specific parish but would be dispersed throughout the world according to the papacy’s needs. They would wear no particular habit, but would dress according to the environment in which they found themselves. They would infiltrate the world in an unpredictable variety of pursuits – as doctors, lawyers, authors, reforming theologians, financiers, statesmen, courtiers, diplomats, explorers, tradesmen, merchants, poets, scholars, scientists, architects, engineers, artists, printers, philosophers, and whatever else the world might demand and the Church require.

Their head would be a Superior General. In the Constitutions which Ignatius was writing, the Superior General would be “obeyed and reverenced at all times as the one who holds the place of Christ our Lord.”³ The phrase “holds the place of Christ” means that the Superior General would share with the Pope, at a level unperceived by the general public, the divine title of “Vicar of Christ” first claimed by Gelasius I on May 13, 495. Loyola’s completed Constitutions would repeat five hundred times that one is to see Christ in the person of the Superior General.4 The General’s equal status with the Pope, advantaged by an obscurity that renders him virtually invisible, is why the commander-in-chief of the Society of Jesus has always been called Papa Nero, the Black Pope.

The Superior General’s small army would be trained by the Spiritual Exercises to practice a brand of obedience Loyola termed contemplativus in actione, active contemplation, instantaneous obedience with all critical thought suppressed. As stated in Section 353.1 of the Exercises, “We must put aside all judgment of our own, and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the hierarchical Church.” But Jesuit obedience would be more than mere obedience of the will. An obedient will suppresses what it would do in order to obey what a superior wants done. Ignatius demanded obedience of the understanding. An obedient understanding alters its perception of reality according to the superior’s dictates. Section 365.13 declares, “We must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.” Francis Xavier would later describe this quality of submission in a vow that unintentionally summarized the Jesuit mission: “I would not even believe in the Gospels were the Holy Church to forbid it.”

The Society does not open its extreme oath of obedience to public inspection. However, a script alleged to be a true facsimile was translated by Edwin A. Sherman and deposited in the Library of Congress with the number BX3705.S56. According to this document, when a Jesuit of the minor rank is to be elevated to command, he is conducted into the Chapel of the Convent of the Order, where there are only three others present, the principal or Superior standing in front of the altar. On either side stands a monk, one of whom holds a banner of yellow and white, which are the Papal colors, and the other a black banner with a dagger and red cross above a skull and crossbones, with the initials ’I.N.R.I.,’ and below them the words ’ICSTUM NACAR REGES IMIOS,’ the meaning of which is ’It is just to annihilate impious rulers.’ [Biblically, these initials represent the Roman inscription above Christ’s head on the cross: ’Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.’]

On the floor is a red cross upon which the postulant or candidate kneels. The Superior hands him a small black crucifix, which he takes in his left hand and presses to his heart and the Superior at the same time presents to him a dagger, which he grasps by the blade and holds the point against his heart, the Superior still holding it by the hilt….

The Superior gives a preamble, and then administers the oath:

I, , now, in the presence of Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed Michael the Archangel, the blessed St. Paul and all the Saints and sacred Hosts of Heaven, and to you, my Ghostly Father, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, in the Pontificate of Paul the Third, and continued to the present, do by the Womb of the Virgin, the Matrix of God, and the Rod of Jesus Christ, declare and swear, that His Holiness the Pope is Christ’s Vice-Regent and is the true and only Head of the Catholic and Universal Church throughout the earth; and that by virtue of the keys of binding and loosing, given to His Holiness by my Saviour, Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, princes, states, commonwealths and governments, all being illegal without his sacred confirmation, and that they may safely be destroyed.

Therefore, to the utmost of my power, I shall and will defend this doctrine and His Holiness’ right and custom against all usurpers of the heretical or Protestant authority whatever, especially the Lutheran Church of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and the now pretended authority and churches of England and Scotland, and branches of the same now established in Ireland and on the Continent of America and elsewhere; and all adherents in regard that they be usurped and heretical, opposing the sacred Mother Church of Rome.

I do now renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince, or state named Protestants or Liberals, or obedience to any of their laws, magistrates or officers.

I do further declare that the doctrines of the churches of England and Scotland, of the Calvinists, Huguenots and others of the name Protestants or Liberals to be damnable, and they themselves damned and to be damned who will not forsake the same.

I do further declare that I will help, assist and advise all or any of His Holiness’ agents in any place wherever I shall be, in Switzerland, German, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, Ireland, or America, or in any other kingdom or territory I shall come to, and do my uttermost to extirpate the heretical Protestants or Liberals’ doctrines and to destroy all their pretended powers, regal or otherwise.

I do further promise and declare that, notwithstanding I am dispensed with, to assume any religion heretical, for the propagating of the Mother Church’s interest, to keep secret and private all her agents’ counsels from time to time, as they may entrust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writing, or circumstance whatever; but to execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge or discovered unto me, by you, my Ghostly Father, or any of this sacred convent.

I do further promise and declare that I will have no opinion or will of my own, or any mental reservation whatever, even as a corpse or cadaver, but will unhesitatingly obey each and every command that I may receive from my superiors in the Militia of the Pope and of Jesus Christ.

That I will go to any part of the world whithersoever I may be sent, to the frozen regions of the North, the burning sands of the desert of Africa, or the jungles of India, to the centres of civilization of Europe, or to the wild haunts of the barbarous savages of America, without murmuring or repining, and will be submissive in all things whatsoever communicated to me.

I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex, or condition; and that I will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poinard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus.

In confirmation of which, I hereby dedicate my life, my soul, and all my corporeal powers, and with this dagger which I now receive, I will subscribe my name written in my own blood, in testimony thereof; and should I prove false or weaken in my determination, may my brethren and fellow soldiers of the Militia of the Pope cut off my hands and my feet, and my throat from ear to ear, my belly opened and sulphur burned therein, with all the punishment that can be inflicted upon me on earth and my soul be tortured by demons in an eternal hell forever!

All of which I, , do swear by the blessed Trinity and blessed Sacrament, which I am now to receive, to perform and on my part to keep inviolably; and do call all the heavenly and glorious host of heaven to witness these my real intentions to keep this my oath.

In testimony hereof I take this most holy and blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, and witness the same further, with my name written with the point of this dagger dipped in my own blood and sealed in the face of this holy Convent.

He receives the wafer from the Superior and writes his name with the point of his dagger dipped in his own blood taken from over the heart….

WHEN Ignatius concluded his presentation, the Pope reportedly cried out “Hoc est digitus Dei!” – “This is the finger- stroke of God!” On September 27, 1540, Paul III sealed his approval with the highest and most solemn form of papal pronouncement, a document known as a “bull” (from the Latin bulla, meaning “bubble,” denoting the attached ovoid or circular seal bearing the pope’s name). Paul’s bull ordaining the Jesuits is entitled Regimini militantis ecclesiae, “On the Supremacy of the Church Militant.” The title forms a cabalistic device common to pagan Roman divining. Known as notariqon, this device is an acronym that enhances the meaning of its initialized words, in the way “MADD” tells us that Mothers Against Drunk Drivers are more than “against” drunken drivers, they’re very angry. “Regimini militantis ecclesiae” produces the notariqon “R[O]ME,” the empire whose salvation the Society of Jesus was ordained by this bull to secure through the arts of war.

The following April, the original six and a few other members elected Ignatius de Loyola their first Superior General. What had been approved as a minimal society soon multiplied to a thousand strong. Ignatius did this by administering to only sixty the extreme oath of obedience to the pope, while admitting hundreds more under lesser oaths. Ever since, the exact size of the Society has been known only to the Superior General. As the world gained increasing numbers of doctors, lawyers, authors, reforming theologians, financiers, statesmen, courtiers, diplomats, explorers, tradesmen, merchants, poets, scholars, scientists, architects, engineers, artists, printers, and philosophers, it was extremely difficult for an ordinary citizen to tell which were Jesuits and which were not. Not even Jesuits could say for sure, because of a provision in the Constitutions (Sections 81-86 of Part I) which authorizes the Superior General to “receive agents, both priestly agents to help in spiritual matters and lay agents to give aid in temporal and domestic functions.” Called “coadjutors,” these lay agents could be of any religious denomination, race, nationality, or sex. They took an oath which bound them “for whatever time the Superior General of the Society should see fit to employ them in spiritual or temporal services.” This provision was availed by so many black popes that the French had a name for people suspected of being Jesuit agents: les robes-petites (“short-robes”). The English called them “short-coats” or “Ignatians.”

Within two years of Regimini militantis ecclesiae, Paul III appointed the Society to administer the Roman Inquisition (not to be confused with the Spanish Inquisition, which reported only to the Spanish crown). When the Jesuits were comfortable with the Inquisition, Paul made his move to “reconcile” with the Protestants.

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