enedictines--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 order of monks; 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. He immediately forsook the pursuit of
arms, and betook himself barefooted to a pilgrimage. He served the sick
in hospitals; he dwelt alone in a cavern, practising austerities; he
went as a beggar on foot to Rome and to the Holy Land, and returned at
the age of thirty-three to begin a course of study. It was while
completing his studies at Paris that he conceived and formed the
"Society of Jesus."

From that time we date the counter-reformation. In fifty years more a
wonderful change took place in the Catholic Church, wrought chiefly by
the Jesuits. Yea, in sixteen years from that eventful night--when far
above the star