Externally, Ignatius’s life in Rome now seemed pedestrian and routine for the most part. Back in March 1541, even before the election of a superior general, the companions had entrusted to Ignatius and Jean Codure the task of studying the requirements for the new constitutions of the Society and reporting to them at regular intervals on the work accomplished.85 Ignatius and Codure set to work, but Codure died suddenly on 29 August 1541. Ignatius was left alone to continue this burdensome work, and, without Codure’s support, he did not make great progress. He was in frail health and had many other preoccupations about the ever-growing young Society. Nevertheless, to the year 1545 belongs Constitutiones circa missiones (Constitutions about Missions), a document that would later form the substance of Part VII of the Constitutions. This early draft of 1545 tells us much about what Ignatius saw as a priority for the Society of Jesus: the mission on which each Jesuit was to be sent by virtue of his vow of obedience.
March 1547 saw the arrival in Rome of Juan Alfonso de Polanco, and a new stage began in the work of the preparation and drafting of the Jesuit Constitutions.86 Polanco made a thorough study of the constitutions and rules of older religious orders, including the Rules of Saints Augustine, Basil, Benedict, and Francis, as well as the ordinances of the Franciscans and Dominicans. Ignatius and Polanco also investigated the constitutions and ordinances of other institutions, including the more famous colleges of Europe, such as Alcalà, Paris, Louvain, Padua, Bologna, and Salamanca. Polanco, who always considered himself to be the “memory and hand” of Ignatius, worked tirelessly on this burdensome task. A preliminary draft of the constitutions was ready by September 1550.
Those who were available to come to Rome from among the early companions arrived in the winter of 1550–51 to examine the work thus far. They suggested certain emendations, and by April 1553 Ignatius and Polanco had put together a new text, which became known as the Autograph Text. It was given the force of law in the Society of Jesus in 1558, two years after Ignatius’s death.
The Jesuit Constitutions is a unique document in this genre. They are divided into ten parts, following the path of a Jesuit’s life from his first application to join the Society, through noviceship, the years of study, admission to full membership of the Society, and personal life.87 They then deal with the more corporate aspects of the Society: the choosing of missions, help towards maintaining unity in the widely scattered group, the character and leadership of the superior general, and, finally, how the Society can best be preserved and developed.
The Constitutions declare that the end of the Society of Jesus is the salvation and perfection of its members and the salvation and perfection of others. The vows that a Jesuit takes of poverty, chastity, and obedience and, in many cases, the fourth vow of special obedience to the pope in relation to missions are a means to this end. Jesuits are to strive to seek God in all things, not just in prayer but also in their various apostolic works.
Interestingly, Ignatius, in Part IV of the Constitutions, stipulates that there should be professors of Latin, Greek and Hebrew to help the Jesuit scholastics study the Old and New Testaments in their original languages.88 Ignatius shows great foresight here. To prepare Jesuits to go among the Muslims and the Turks, a knowledge of Arabic or Chaldaic would be expedient. Ignatius still had his eye on the Muslim world!
In what pertains to the vows, Ignatius calls the vow of poverty the “mother,” “strong wall,” and “bulwark” of religious life.89 Ignatius was only too aware of the scandal of opulence within the Church and wanted the Jesuits to live simply and frugally. They were not to demand any payment for Masses said or lectures given. The professed of four vows were to live totally on alms, without fixed income. All Jesuits were to be ready to beg from door to door when necessity required it. Ignatius wanted it to be seen and known that his followers sought nothing but the eternal salvation of people. Poverty was an unspoken sermon on the subject of trust in God. Ignatius made it absolutely clear in his letters that absence of funds was never an adequate reason to halt any apostolic work; even if money had to be borrowed, a start was to be made. He assured Juan de Polanco that the worst that could happen to the Jesuits was that they would land in jail for bad debts!
Today, we might find it strange that Ignatius devotes only a few lines to his treatment of the vow of chastity. We may even find his words shocking and naïve:
What pertains to the vow of chastity does not require explanation, since it is evident how perfectly it should be preserved through the endeavour in this matter to imitate the angelic purity by the purity of the body and mind.90
The American Jesuit scholar George Ganss sheds some light on this seemingly extraordinary statement by Ignatius. Ganss writes that the value of virginity as an ideal was accepted almost universally and without question in the Catholic countries of Europe in the 1500s, in spite of the many well-known lapses in the practice of chastity.91 Even though some humanists and Protestants had attacked celibacy, the modern psychological interest in matters pertaining to sexuality, so widely discussed today, obviously had not then arisen. Ganss argues that it was natural for Ignatius, as for other spiritual writers of his age, to dismiss the vow of chastity with a brief remark. Ganss adds that we can safely conjecture that if Ignatius were alive today, he would be impelled to a fuller treatment of chastity by his sensitivity to contemporary needs and by his loyalty to the pope, the Church, the Second Vatican Council, and the members of his order.
When treating of obedience, Ignatius desired that each Jesuit should distinguish himself in this virtue, and he wrote several strongly worded letters on this topic. He was desirous that every Jesuit be available for mission, eager for service in the vineyard of the Lord, and ready to go wherever he might be sent.
Ignatius had great confidence in the wisdom of Jerónimo Nadal and his knowledge of the Society’s affairs.92 In order to promote the new Constitutions, he sent Nadal as his emissary to Sicily, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, and Italy to explain the content of the Constitutions to the various Jesuit communities that had sprung up. He gave Nadal many blank pages, to be used for both private letters and letters patent, each bearing Ignatius’s own signature and stamped with the seal of the Society. On these blank pages, Nadal could write what he judged would be best in the particular circumstances of time and place.
The Infanta Juana was the daughter of the Emperor Charles V and sister of Philip II of Spain. In 1552, at the age of seventeen, she was married to Prince João Manuel, the heir to the Portuguese throne. Two years after their marriage, her husband died. Eighteen days later, Juana gave birth to the future King Sebastian, who would later have Jesuit tutors. Philip appointed Juana regent of Spain, a post she held for five years, while he was in England and the Netherlands.
To the consternation of Ignatius and his companions, Juana let it be known in late 1554 that she herself was determined to become a Jesuit. The situation was delicate, since to refuse her request could have had serious consequences for the work of the Society in Spain. The Jesuits debated the very special circumstances of “Matteo Sanchez,” the secret pseudonym they used in all correspondence about Juana and “his” request to enter the Society. Ignatius allowed her to take the simple vows of a Jesuit scholastic.93 This was kept secret even from her brother, King Philip II. Juana’s life at court was one of unusual austerity. Her palace was said to be “more like a convent,” and she remained unfailingly helpful to the Society. In 1558, two years after the death of Ignatius, Francis Borgia wrote to the second superior general, Diego Laínez, “She grows daily in the spiritual life and in pious submission to the Society; I think she is one of those who fully understands the nature of the Society, and she has in truth a good will for all our affairs.”94 Juana died in 1573 at the age of thirty-eight, the only woman Jesuit.
Of all the personal diaries that Ignatius kept, only two small notebooks have survived. The first records his mystical experiences from 2 February to 12 March 1544, and the second similar experiences from 13 March 1544 to 27 February 1545. These notebooks, commonly known as the Spiritual Diary, were made available only from 1934.
All who were close to Ignatius in his Roman days and saw him at prayer are agreed that a deep personal sense of union with the Trinity was of the essence in his spiritual life. We see mention of the Trinity and of tears on almost every page of the diary. “The gift of tears” during prayer is frequently mentioned, an experience also regularly mentioned by saints and mystics like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena. “The most excellent tears,” Ignatius wrote to Francis Borgia on 28 September 1548, “are those that come from the thought and love of the Divine Persons.”
These periods of illumination were punctuated at times by intervals of darkness and isolation. On 12 March Ignatius writes:
After Mass and later in my room, I found myself completely bereft of all help, unable to find delight in the mediators, or in the Divine Persons; I felt as remote and separated from them as if I had never felt their influence in the past, or was ever to feel it in the future. Instead I was beset by thoughts, now against Jesus, now against another.95
After Mass, it was usual for Ignatius to remain at prayer for two hours. Though the Jesuit rule stipulated that there would be no sung office in the Society, Ignatius personally derived great comfort from its chant if he chanced to enter a church at Vespers or during some other ceremony.
Ignatius was anxious that the rapidly increasing numbers joining the Society might lead to a lowering of standards and was convinced it needed a superior general in good health to watch over its expansion. As we have seen, however, his proffered resignation was twice rejected.
Ignatius had learned over the years about the activities of the Protestant reformers and the separation of much of northern Europe, especially Germany, from the Roman Catholic Church. To help counteract this movement, Pope Julius III founded the German College in Rome on 31 August 1551. This new institution was to be governed by the Society of Jesus.
In 1552, Ignatius wrote to the Jesuits who were teaching in Vienna, Ingolstadt, Cologne, and Louvain, bidding them to send young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two to Rome. All should be of agreeable appearance, physically healthy, and capable of bearing up under the labour of study. They should be endowed with talent and be of upright character, so that one could reasonably hope that they would emerge as reliable and strenuous workers in the Lord’s vineyard. The better educated were to be preferred, and special consideration would be given to those of noble blood, something that was much esteemed in those nations. He was hoping for promising young men who, on their return, would be promoted to bishoprics and important roles and who could be trusted for their loyalty to Rome. This hope was realised before the end of the century, when most of the important bishoprics in central Europe were occupied by former students of the German College. To his last day, Ignatius struggled to maintain the financial viability of the German and Roman Colleges, both of which he regarded as key to the future of Catholicism in Europe.
As early as December 1546, Ignatius pointed out to Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia and younger brother of Charles V, that of the nine companions who were professed at that time, four or five had been presented for bishoprics. Ignatius resisted this vigorously. Writing to King Ferdinand, he makes his position quite clear.
We are convinced in conscience that for us to accept the prelacy would be to demolish the Society. Indeed, if I wanted to think or imagine a variety of methods for overthrowing and wrecking this Society, one of the most effective—indeed the most effective—would be to accept a bishopric. For us to abandon our simplicity would be for us to undo our spirit and so undo our profession, and its undoing would mean the complete ruin of the Society. 96
A few years later, however, Ignatius softened his stance with regard to Jesuits accepting bishoprics. On that occasion, Jesuit Nuñes Barretto was consecrated Patriarch of Ethiopia in a grand ceremony in Lisbon, along with two auxiliary bishops, Andres de Oviedo and Melchior Carneiro, also Jesuits. Twelve priests were to accompany them to Ethiopia. Ignatius had long been fascinated by the stories of an ancient Christian civilisation in Ethiopia, and he hoped that this mission would forge new contacts and even bring about reconciliation. Since he regarded the assignment to Ethiopia to be one of unrelieved hardship, he had no difficulty in allowing his men to accept these bishoprics.
Today, there are about 100 Jesuit bishops in the world, usually, though not always, in the Developing World, where the demands are greatest. One wonders what Ignatius would have thought of a Jesuit pope!
We would be shocked today to hear a Roman Catholic call a Lutheran or a Calvinist a “heretic.” To do so would be an affront to our more developed theology and ecumenical sensitivities. But there was no ecumenical movement in Ignatius’s time. Roman Catholics were convinced that theirs was the only true Church and that those reformers—whether they be Lutherans, Calvinists, or Anabaptists—who had broken away from Rome were rightly branded as heretics. As a man of his time, Ignatius would have shared that view. Notwithstanding this widespread attitude, which often generated bitterness on both sides, Ignatius wrote to certain Jesuit theologians who were to work in the German lands, giving them the following advice:
You should attempt to win the friendship of any leading adversaries and of the influential among those who are heretics, or suspected of heresy, and are not altogether obdurate . . . Your zeal in pursuing heresy should evidence above all love for the heretics’ persons, desire for their salvation, and compassion for them.97
The sincere pastoral concern and respect that Ignatius shows here for the reformers was remarkable in those days. As with the reformers, Ignatius also encouraged friendly discussions with leading Muslims and masters of the Quranic law. He asked that a copy of the Quran be sent to him, and he encouraged Jesuits to make themselves familiar with its theological terminology.