pursued one object while they pretended to have another in view. The
impulse which moved Loyola was spontaneous and romantic. The world has
seen few examples of disinterested self-devotion equal to that of
Xavier. Yet the fact remains that Jesuitry, taking its germ and root in
the Spanish character, persisting as an organism within the Church, but
separate from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, devised the doctrine of
Papal absolutism, and became the prime agent of that Catholic policy in
Europe which passed for Papal during the Counter-Reformation. The
indissoluble connection between Rome, Spain, and the Jesuits, was
apparent to all unprejudiced observers. For this triad of reactionary
and belligerent forces Sarpi invented the name of the Diacatholicon,
alluding, under the metaphor of a drug, to the virus which was being
instilled in his days into all the States of Europe.[157]

The founder of the Jesuit order was the thirteenth child of a Spanish
noble, born in 1491 at his father's castle of Loyola in the Basque
province of Guipuzcoa.[158] His full name was Inigo Lopez de Recalde;
but he is better known to history as Saint Ignatius Loyola. Ignatius
spent his boyhood as page in the service of King Ferdinand the Catholic,
whence he passed into that of the Duke of Najara, who was the hereditary
friend and patron of his family. At this time he thought of nothing but
feats of arms, military glory, and romantic adventures.

[Footnote 157: For Sarpi's use of this phrase see his _Lettere_, vol.
ii. pp. 72, 80, 92. He clearly recognized the solidarity between the
Jesuits and Spain. 'The Jesuit is no more separable from the Spaniard
than the accident from the substance.' 'The Spaniard without the Jesuit
is not worth more than lettuce without oil.' 'For the Jesuits to deceive
Spain, would be tantamount to deceiving themselves.' _Ibid._ vol. i. pp.
203, 384, vol. ii. p. 48. Compare passages in vol. i. pp. 184, 189. He
only perceived a difference in the degrees of their noxiousness to
Europe. Thus, 'the worst Spaniard is better than the least bad of the
Jesuits' (vol. i. p. 212).]

[Footnote 158: Study of the Jesuits must be founded on _Institutum
Societatis Jesu_, 7 vols. Avenione; Orlandino, _Hist. Soc. Jesu_;
Cretineau-Joly, _Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus_; Ribadaneira, _Vita
Ignatii_; Genelli's Life of Ignatius in German, or the French
translation; the Jesuit work, _Imago Primi Saeculi_; Ranke's account in
his _History of