Absolutism of the
General--Devotion to the Roman Church--Choice of Members--Practical
and Positive Aims of the Founder--Exclusion of the Ascetic,
Acceptance of the Worldly Spirit--Review of the Order's Rapid
Extension over Europe--Loyola's Dealings with his Chief
Lieutenants--Propaganda--The Virtue of Obedience--The _Exercitia
Spiritualia_--Materialistic Imagination--Intensity and
Superficiality of Religious Training--The Status of the
Novice--Temporal Coadjutors--Scholastics--Professed of the Three
Vows--Professed of the Four Vows--The General--Control exercised
over him by his Assistants--His relation to the General
Congregation--Espionage a part of the Jesuit System--Advantageous
Position of a Contented Jesuit--The Vow of Poverty--Houses of the
Professed and Colleges--The Constitutions and Declarations--Problem
of the _Monita Secreta_--Reciprocal Relations of Rome and the
Company--Characteristics of Jesuit Education--Direction of
Consciences--Moral Laxity--Sarpi's
Critique--Casuistry--Interference in affairs of State--Instigation
to Regicide and Political Conspiracy--Theories of Church
Supremacy--Insurgence of the European Nations against the Company.

We have seen in the preceding chapters how Spain became dominant in
Italy, superseding the rivalry of confederate states by the monotony of
servitude, and lending its weight to Papal Rome. The internal changes
effected in the Church by the Tridentine Council, and the external power
conferred on it, were due in no small measure to Spanish influence or
sanction. A Spanish institution, the Inquisition, modified to suit
Italian requirements, lent revived Catholicism weapons of repression and
attack. We have now to learn by what means a partial vigor was
communicated to the failing body of Catholic beliefs, how the Tridentine
creed was propagated, the spiritual realm of the Roman Pontiff policed,
and his secular authority augmented. A Spanish Order rose at the right
moment to supply that intellectual and moral element of vitality without
which the Catholic Revival might have remained as inert as a stillborn
child. The devotion of the Jesuits to the Papacy, was in reality the
masterful Spanish spirit of that epoch, masking its world-grasping
ambition under the guise of obedience to Rome. This does not mean that
the founders and first organizers of the Company of Jesus consciously