I realize these pages have done little more than glide over the surface of a long and complex history, yet I hope the journey has resulted in a somewhat better understanding of those mysterious creatures, the Jesuits. But the mystery has not been altogether dispelled. The history of the Society of Jesus is not only rich and complex; it is extraordinarily rich and complex. It stretches over centuries, continents, and cultures, in which the Jesuits have played a strikingly wide range of roles.
For that reason the Jesuits resist easy categorization. They are priests but also astronomers. They pledge obedience yet are encouraged to cultivate initiative. They pronounce a solemn vow to be missionaries, yet the largest percentage of them even today are resident schoolmasters. Although they have a reputation for cultivating the high-born and have been the confessors of kings, they have consistently devised means of reaching every stratum of society, with a special concern for the most wretched.
The Jesuits have provoked fear and envy in ways and to a degree not verified in any other Catholic religious order. The phenomenon has produced a large stream of vituperation, at the headwaters of which are the Monita Secreta and the Lettres Provinciales. Such works created myths and misunderstandings about the Jesuits that entered so deeply into the public domain that they seem impossible to eradicate. In virtually every Western language the adjective jesuitical means devious, slippery, sinister.
Even for the fair-minded the Jesuits can be difficult to understand because of the changes the order has undergone over the course of the centuries. Some changes were the result of deliberate decisions of the members, some the result of forces from outside. Even such a brief book as this has provided examples of both types of change.
Some of those changes are of course more important than others. In the history of the Society, four are undoubtedly pivotal. Each of them has marked a significant moment in Jesuit self-definition that was at the same time a partial redefinition of the Society. These moments were turning points. A more dramatic way to express the phenomenon is to say that the Society has several times refounded itself. Although each refounding has drawn its core identity from the past, it has partially reshaped the past or moved beyond it. If we adopt the conceit of a prologue and four foundings to organize the history of the Society of Jesus, the following is the result.
In 1534 Ignatius and six other students at the University of Paris pronounced a vow of poverty and determined to travel together to the Holy Land. They were no longer simply students who associated with one another; they were now bonded together in a common enterprise. Though they were not aware of it, they at that moment took the first step that would lead to the official founding of the Society. Before they left Paris they were joined by three other students. They began to describe themselves as members of a compagnia di Gesù, a brotherhood of Jesus.
In 1540 the companions of Paris now bound themselves together permanently as members of a religious order, formally recognized as such by the church. This meant they replaced their informal and egalitarian lifestyle with that of members of an organization with Constitutions, procedures, superiors, and subjects. From a close-knit band of ten friends, they had grown by the death of Ignatius to a membership a hundred times larger.
Sometime around 1550 Ignatius, in consultation with his closest advisers, took the momentous step of committing the Society to formal schooling as its primary ministry. This was a decision of immense import for the future of Catholicism but more immediately for the Society of Jesus. The original ideal of a band of missionaries and itinerant preachers now had to be modified to take account of the Society as also a band of resident schoolmasters. Moreover, Ignatius’s decision wrought a profound change in the culture of the Society, as Jesuits became specialists in every branch of knowledge and every cultural form, including theater, music, and dance.
By virtue of the papal brief of 1773, the Society of Jesus had ceased to exist. By virtue of a papal bull forty-one years later, it was restored to life. The Society was restored as part of a wave of conservative restorations initiated in that year, 1814, and its self-understanding began to reflect that fact. In its essential identity it was the same Society as before the suppression, yet its cultural, political, and even religious mind-set reflected the culture of restoration prevalent in Catholicism in this period.
General Congregation Thirty-One, 1965–1966, made its decisions under the influence of two powerful factors that no previous Congregation had had to take into account. The first was the cumulative effect upon Jesuit self-understanding of the intense study of Jesuit sources that had been under way for the previous half-century. That study had resulted in an understanding of the early Society and its normative documents that was more flexible and less moralistic than the understanding generally operative since the restoration in 1814.
The second was Vatican Council II, which ended just as the Congregation was beginning. The Congregation saw its major task as implementing for the Society the ideals and vision of the council. It gave the Society the mandate, for instance, to promote understanding and dialogue among people of all religious faiths. It in more general terms took account of the great cultural shifts that had occurred since the restoration of 1814 and moved the Society beyond certain positions it had formally or informally adopted in those circumstances.
In the meantime the four Congregations that have subsequently taken place have directed the Society along those same lines. What is clear is that the Society is now evolving in new ways in a world that seems to be evolving even faster. Its challenge now, as always, is to retain its identity while at the same time exploiting its tradition of adaptation to persons, places, and circumstances.
There is reason to believe the identity will hold. Through all the changes over the years, the Jesuits have had to guide them some remarkable resources that have continued to be their touchstones for authenticity. Absolutely primary among them are the Spiritual Exercises, the Formula, and the Constitutions. While each of these documents counsels flexibility and adaptability, the principles that undergird them are firm. They provide the foundation for an identity that in its general contours is discernible by an alert eye.