3. The founding of the Company

“The Society of Jesus” was constituted on Assumption Day in 1534, in the chapel of Notre-Dame de Montmartre.

Ignatius was then forty-four years old. After communion, the animator and his companions vowed to go to the Holy Land, as soon as their studies were finished, to convert the infidels. But the following year found them in Rome where the pope, who was then organising a crusade against the lurks with the German Emperor and the Republic of Venice, showed them how impossible their project was because of it. So Ignatius and his companions dedicated themselves to missionary work in Christian lands; in Venice, his apostolate roused again the suspicions of the Inquisition. The Constitution of the Company of Jesus was at last drafted and approved in Rome, by Paul III, in 1540, and the Jesuits put themselves at the disposition of the pope, promising him unconditional obedience, Teaching, confession, preaching and charitable work were the field of action for this new Order, but foreign missions were not excluded as, in 1541, Francis Xavier and two companions left Lisbon to go and evangelise the Far East. In 1546, the political side of their career was launched, when the pope chose Lainez and Salmeron to represent him at the Council of Trent in the capacity of “pontifical theologians”.

Mr Boehmer writes:

“Then, the Order was employed by the pope only on a temporary basis. But it performed its functions with so much promptitude and zeal that, already under Paul III, it had implanted itself very firmly into all chosen kinds of activities and won the confidence of the Curia for all time”.(12d) This confidence was fully justified; the Jesuits, and Lainez in particular, together with their devoted friend Cardinal Morone, became the cunning and untiring champions of pontifical authority and intangibility of the dogma, during the three sessions of that Council ending in 1562.

( l 2 d ) H. Boehmer, op.cit., pp.47-48.

By their clever manoeuvres and dialectics, they succeeded in defeating the opposition and all “heretic” claims including marriage of priests, communion with the two elements, use of the vernacular in services and, especially, reform of the papacy. Only the reform of convents was retained on the agenda. Lainez himself, by a forceful counter-attack, upheld pontifical infallibility which was promulgated three centuries later by the Vatican Council. (13) The Holy See emerged strengthened from the crisis where it nearly foundered, thanks to the steadfast actions of the Jesuits. The terms chosen by Paul III to describe this new Order in his Bull of Authorisation were then amply justified: “Regimen Ecclesiae militantis”.

The fighting spirit developed more and more as time went on as, beside foreign missions, the activities of Loyola’s sons started to concentrate on the souls of men, especially amongst ruling classes. Politics are their main field of action, as all the efforts of these “directors” concentrate on one aim: the submission of the world to the papacy, and to attain this the “heads” must be conquered first. And to realise this ideal? Two very important weapons: to be the confessors of the mighty and those in high places and the education of their children. In that way, the present will be safe while the future is prepared.

The Holy See soon realised the strength this new Order would bring. At first, the number of its members had been limited to sixty, but this restriction was promptly lifted. When Ignatius died, in 1556, his sons were working amongst pagans in India, China, Japan, the New World, but also and especially in Europe: France, Southern and Western Germany, where they fought against the “heresy”, in Spain, Portugal, Italy and even England, getting in by way of Ireland. Their history, full of vicissitudes, will be of a “Roman” network they will constantly try to spread over the world, whose links will be forever torn and mended.

(13) Vatican Council (1870).

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