a was magnificently in earnest. He remembered the Medician
Papal courts and their scandal. He would have his order endangered by no
looseness of priestly morals. His rules were of iron strictness.
Moreover, and this greatly to his official advantage, he knew women.
Especially well he knew, too, the sentimental, introspective,
hero-worshipping woman. The spiritual direction of three such women for
a short time gave him more trouble, he afterward declared, than the
government of his whole world-spread order. Accordingly, he decreed:

"No woman shall come twice to confession in one day."

"If the female penitents pretend to scruples of conscience, the
confessors are to tell them 'not to relate tales and repeat trifles.'
Sometimes they must be silenced at once, for if they are truly disturbed
by conscience there will be no need of prolixity."

"Consolation and advice to women are to be given in an open part of the
church."

Visits to women were also severely restricted. They must be confined to
women of rank and consequence. The women visited must be those who have
rendered signally important service to the order. Visits must be
agreeable to the husband or other ruling male relative of the woman
visited. Confession by a woman was always to be witnessed by another
priest, stationed near the confessor.

A Jesuit of advanced age and ancient probity once infringed this last
order and listened to a woman penitent without witnesses. Loyola called
eight priests together and made the old Jesuit scourge himself on his
naked back till each of the priests had repeated one of the penitential
psalms.

To do all things vehemently has always been a German trait. According to
Hasenmuller, a German Jesuit turned Lutheran, many of Loyola's disciples
in Germany exceeded their chief in their expressed contempt for women.
Some Jesuit priests, he says, expectorated whenever a woman's name was
mentioned. Others would eat no dish prepared by a woman. One cried:
"When I think of a woman my stomach rises and my blood is up." Another
exclaimed: "It grieves me and I am ashamed that a woman brought me into
the world."

The emotional element in Jesuitism appealed strongly to women. The
general contempt for their sex expressed by Jesuit priests made special
notice all the more valuable. No modern woman of fashion who has secured
for her drawing room the first appearance of a social lion is more
elated thereby than were the few queens, princesses,