What We Learn From the Gratitude of Our Lady
Dec 13, 2018 20:19:25 #
Jesuits Have Played Central Role In History Of The Church
March 14, 201312:36 PM ET
SCOTT NEUMAN
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/03/14/174294897/jesuits-have-played-central-role-in-history-of-the-church
Jesuit Mission in Santa Catalina in Cordoba in Argentina.
Luis Davilla/Getty Images
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's ascendency to Pope Francis has suddenly placed his Jesuit order in the spotlight.
Francis' papacy is the first for a member of the Society of Jesus, which was founded in 1540 by the Spaniard St. Ignatius of Loyola and has grown to become the single-largest Catholic order, playing a central and occasionally controversial role within the church.
Today, some 20,000 Jesuits, about three-quarters of them priests, work in more than 100 countries and are best known for the schools and institutions of higher learning they administer.
Over the centuries, the Jesuits have founded hundreds of missionaries, schools, colleges and seminaries around the world.
Members take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and are sometimes referred to as the "pope's marines" because they swear a special allegiance to the pontiff and agree to accept religious orders anywhere in the world, even in extreme conditions.
(Jesuits also vow not to seek offices of honor or prestige, which is one of the reasons that Bergoglio's elevation came as a surprise to many. Father Robert Ballecer, the national director for vocation promotion for the U.S. Society of Jesus, tells NPR that Jesuits can accept such offices if they are asked, as a way of "being obedient priests.")
According to Marquette University, a Jesuit institution:
"The first Jesuits made their mark as preachers, convent reformers, and missionaries, but in 1548 the Jesuits opened their first college intended for lay students at Messina in Sicily. It was an instant success, and petitions for more Jesuit colleges flowed into Rome from most of the cities of Catholic Europe.
"Quickly, education became the main Jesuit ministry. By 1579 the Jesuits were operating 144 colleges (most admitted students between twelve and twenty) in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By 1749 the Jesuits were staffing 669 colleges and 235 seminaries world-wide."
"The main mission has always been very flexible, and it has been to do anything for the greater glory of God," says the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit, editor at the Catholic weekly America magazine and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
"Here I am a journalist at a Catholic magazine," he observes. "I have Jesuit friends who are prison chaplains, writers and teachers."
Reflecting a tradition of scholarship, many Jesuits have also been scientists and mathematicians and have served as astronomers at the Vatican Observatory.
But the Jesuit order has been no stranger to controversy, both within and outside the church.
The Jesuits' loyalty to the pope drew them into European political intrigues at the time of the Protestant Reformation and the so-called Counter-Reformation. In the 18th century, the Jesuits had become so influential in European courts that Pope Clement XIV moved to suppress the order.
In the 1970s and '80s, Jesuit priests in Latin America were instrumental in the promulgating of liberation theology, which interprets Jesus' teachings as aimed at redressing economic, political and social repression.
Pope John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI, actively discouraged the movement, and in 2007, the doctrinal office of the Vatican criticized the "erroneous or dangerous" writings of Spanish Jesuit scholar Jon Sobrino, saying they "may cause harm to the faithful."
(At a time when "many priests, including many Jesuits, were gravitating toward the progressive liberation theology movement," Bergoglio "insisted on a more traditional reading of Ignatian spirituality, mandating that Jesuits continue to staff parishes and act as chaplains rather than moving into 'base communities' and political activism," according to The National Catholic Reporter.)
Ballecer calls the ascendancy of Pope Francis the "realization of something we thought would never happen."
Martin adds that while Jesuits are supposed to pray for humility, on hearing the news of Bergoglio's election to the papacy on Wednesday, he was "[as] delighted and proud as a Jesuit is allow to be."
March 14, 201312:36 PM ET
SCOTT NEUMAN
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/03/14/174294897/jesuits-have-played-central-role-in-history-of-the-church
Jesuit Mission in Santa Catalina in Cordoba in Argentina.
Luis Davilla/Getty Images
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's ascendency to Pope Francis has suddenly placed his Jesuit order in the spotlight.
Francis' papacy is the first for a member of the Society of Jesus, which was founded in 1540 by the Spaniard St. Ignatius of Loyola and has grown to become the single-largest Catholic order, playing a central and occasionally controversial role within the church.
Today, some 20,000 Jesuits, about three-quarters of them priests, work in more than 100 countries and are best known for the schools and institutions of higher learning they administer.
Over the centuries, the Jesuits have founded hundreds of missionaries, schools, colleges and seminaries around the world.
Members take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and are sometimes referred to as the "pope's marines" because they swear a special allegiance to the pontiff and agree to accept religious orders anywhere in the world, even in extreme conditions.
(Jesuits also vow not to seek offices of honor or prestige, which is one of the reasons that Bergoglio's elevation came as a surprise to many. Father Robert Ballecer, the national director for vocation promotion for the U.S. Society of Jesus, tells NPR that Jesuits can accept such offices if they are asked, as a way of "being obedient priests.")
According to Marquette University, a Jesuit institution:
"The first Jesuits made their mark as preachers, convent reformers, and missionaries, but in 1548 the Jesuits opened their first college intended for lay students at Messina in Sicily. It was an instant success, and petitions for more Jesuit colleges flowed into Rome from most of the cities of Catholic Europe.
"Quickly, education became the main Jesuit ministry. By 1579 the Jesuits were operating 144 colleges (most admitted students between twelve and twenty) in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By 1749 the Jesuits were staffing 669 colleges and 235 seminaries world-wide."
"The main mission has always been very flexible, and it has been to do anything for the greater glory of God," says the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit, editor at the Catholic weekly America magazine and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
"Here I am a journalist at a Catholic magazine," he observes. "I have Jesuit friends who are prison chaplains, writers and teachers."
Reflecting a tradition of scholarship, many Jesuits have also been scientists and mathematicians and have served as astronomers at the Vatican Observatory.
But the Jesuit order has been no stranger to controversy, both within and outside the church.
The Jesuits' loyalty to the pope drew them into European political intrigues at the time of the Protestant Reformation and the so-called Counter-Reformation. In the 18th century, the Jesuits had become so influential in European courts that Pope Clement XIV moved to suppress the order.
In the 1970s and '80s, Jesuit priests in Latin America were instrumental in the promulgating of liberation theology, which interprets Jesus' teachings as aimed at redressing economic, political and social repression.
Pope John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI, actively discouraged the movement, and in 2007, the doctrinal office of the Vatican criticized the "erroneous or dangerous" writings of Spanish Jesuit scholar Jon Sobrino, saying they "may cause harm to the faithful."
(At a time when "many priests, including many Jesuits, were gravitating toward the progressive liberation theology movement," Bergoglio "insisted on a more traditional reading of Ignatian spirituality, mandating that Jesuits continue to staff parishes and act as chaplains rather than moving into 'base communities' and political activism," according to The National Catholic Reporter.)
Ballecer calls the ascendancy of Pope Francis the "realization of something we thought would never happen."
Martin adds that while Jesuits are supposed to pray for humility, on hearing the news of Bergoglio's election to the papacy on Wednesday, he was "[as] delighted and proud as a Jesuit is allow to be."
Dec 13, 2018 20:25:07 #
The Jesuits in United States History
The Society of Jesus is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in 1534, by Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish soldier.
Following a religious awakening while recovering from wounds, Ignatius gathered a small group of dedicated followers who pledged themselves to lives of poverty and chastity.
They also were committed to spreading Catholicism to the Muslims in the Holy Land, but were prevented from making that journey by warfare in the region.
Ignatius of Loyola
In 1540, the group received a charter from Rome in which the members promised total loyalty to the pope, including a willingness to go wherever he might assign them.
The name Jesuit was originally a term of derision applied to the group by its critics, but in time it was recognized by all parties.
The Jesuits made their initial impact by combating advances made by the Protestant Reformation.
Their energetic efforts during this Counter-Reformation won back many areas that had pulled away from Rome.
Over the next 150 years, the order would grow and extend its influence through its roles in education, scholarship, and missionary activities.
Schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries were established in nearly all of the great urban centers of Europe, and missions were founded in such faraway locations as India, Japan, China, South America, and New France.
The Jesuit influence in northern North America was significant.
The first French missionaries arrived in 1625, and a steady stream followed in later years. Known to native peoples as the Black Robes, the Jesuits concentrated their efforts on the dominant Huron, who probably numbered more than 30,000 at the time.
Lesser attention was paid to the Iroquois.
The Jesuits lived with the tribes in their villages and were willing to probe deep into the interior; some traveled as far as present-day Oregon.
Despite such diligent efforts, the number of actual converts remained small.
Tensions between the Jesuits and other Frenchmen in the area developed quickly.
The root of the problem was the missionaries’ criticism of the use of alcohol in trade with the Indians.
The natives quickly developed a dependence on the libation, making the task of conversion all the harder.
Jesuit protests achieved their aim in 1662, when the French government outlawed the use of alcohol in the North American fur trade.
The rule was hard to enforce; nevertheless, it embittered the majority of traders and trappers.
While the alcohol issue was being contested, another factor entered the picture — disease.
The Jesuits brought with them such European maladies as
influenza, smallpox, and measles; the Indians had no natural immunities to those diseases and began dying by the hundreds, later by the thousands.
By 1650, the Huron numbers had been so drastically depleted that they were nearly wiped out by their weaker traditional enemy, the Iroquois.
The Jesuits were blamed for the spread of disease and many were tortured and killed.
The record of the Jesuits in New France was mixed at best.
The introduction of fatal diseases was, of course, unintended, but the effort to enforce an alien religion upon the natives was appreciated by very few.
The missionaries were impervious to criticism on this score, believing that any inconvenience on the Indians’ part, was a small price to pay for salvation.
The fastidious record-keeping habits of the early Jesuits have preserved a valuable record of events in New France.
A highly detailed catalog of customs, language and beliefs of the Huron was assembled from the priests’ reports and later published in Jesuit Relations.
Much of what is known today about the history, ethnology, and natural science of the area stems the writings of the Jesuits.
The Society of Jesus fared poorly during the 18th century, both in North America and in Europe.
In an age of widespread anticlerical feeling, the Jesuits were singled out for special disparagement.
Some of the antipathy had been earned by their overzealousness, but rival churchmen and political figures also were motivated by the close relationship between the order and the pope.
In 1773, the pontiff gave in to political pressure and dissolved the Society.
Only in Russia did the order survive. It was not until the end of the Napoleonic era that the Jesuits reemerged.
See Indian Wars Time Table .
Off-site search results for "The Jesuits"...
Ohio Indian Wars Message Board - The Jesuit Relations - Online
... Beaver Wars (1650-1700) :: The Jesuit Relations - Online AuthorTopic: The Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124LoThe Jesuit Relations - Online AuthorTopic: The Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124LoThe Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124Location ...
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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Suppression of the Jesuits (1770-1773)
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http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14096a.htm
The American Jesuits
These accounts became known as the Jesuit Relations.
The Jesuit Relations provided Europeans interested in settling in North America with information on life in the New World. These writings also have provided subsequent historians wthe Jesuit Relations. The Jesuit Relations provided Europeans interested in settling in North America with information on life in the New World.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2058
The Society of Jesus is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in 1534, by Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish soldier.
Following a religious awakening while recovering from wounds, Ignatius gathered a small group of dedicated followers who pledged themselves to lives of poverty and chastity.
They also were committed to spreading Catholicism to the Muslims in the Holy Land, but were prevented from making that journey by warfare in the region.
Ignatius of Loyola
In 1540, the group received a charter from Rome in which the members promised total loyalty to the pope, including a willingness to go wherever he might assign them.
The name Jesuit was originally a term of derision applied to the group by its critics, but in time it was recognized by all parties.
The Jesuits made their initial impact by combating advances made by the Protestant Reformation.
Their energetic efforts during this Counter-Reformation won back many areas that had pulled away from Rome.
Over the next 150 years, the order would grow and extend its influence through its roles in education, scholarship, and missionary activities.
Schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries were established in nearly all of the great urban centers of Europe, and missions were founded in such faraway locations as India, Japan, China, South America, and New France.
The Jesuit influence in northern North America was significant.
The first French missionaries arrived in 1625, and a steady stream followed in later years. Known to native peoples as the Black Robes, the Jesuits concentrated their efforts on the dominant Huron, who probably numbered more than 30,000 at the time.
Lesser attention was paid to the Iroquois.
The Jesuits lived with the tribes in their villages and were willing to probe deep into the interior; some traveled as far as present-day Oregon.
Despite such diligent efforts, the number of actual converts remained small.
Tensions between the Jesuits and other Frenchmen in the area developed quickly.
The root of the problem was the missionaries’ criticism of the use of alcohol in trade with the Indians.
The natives quickly developed a dependence on the libation, making the task of conversion all the harder.
Jesuit protests achieved their aim in 1662, when the French government outlawed the use of alcohol in the North American fur trade.
The rule was hard to enforce; nevertheless, it embittered the majority of traders and trappers.
While the alcohol issue was being contested, another factor entered the picture — disease.
The Jesuits brought with them such European maladies as
influenza, smallpox, and measles; the Indians had no natural immunities to those diseases and began dying by the hundreds, later by the thousands.
By 1650, the Huron numbers had been so drastically depleted that they were nearly wiped out by their weaker traditional enemy, the Iroquois.
The Jesuits were blamed for the spread of disease and many were tortured and killed.
The record of the Jesuits in New France was mixed at best.
The introduction of fatal diseases was, of course, unintended, but the effort to enforce an alien religion upon the natives was appreciated by very few.
The missionaries were impervious to criticism on this score, believing that any inconvenience on the Indians’ part, was a small price to pay for salvation.
The fastidious record-keeping habits of the early Jesuits have preserved a valuable record of events in New France.
A highly detailed catalog of customs, language and beliefs of the Huron was assembled from the priests’ reports and later published in Jesuit Relations.
Much of what is known today about the history, ethnology, and natural science of the area stems the writings of the Jesuits.
The Society of Jesus fared poorly during the 18th century, both in North America and in Europe.
In an age of widespread anticlerical feeling, the Jesuits were singled out for special disparagement.
Some of the antipathy had been earned by their overzealousness, but rival churchmen and political figures also were motivated by the close relationship between the order and the pope.
In 1773, the pontiff gave in to political pressure and dissolved the Society.
Only in Russia did the order survive. It was not until the end of the Napoleonic era that the Jesuits reemerged.
See Indian Wars Time Table .
Off-site search results for "The Jesuits"...
Ohio Indian Wars Message Board - The Jesuit Relations - Online
... Beaver Wars (1650-1700) :: The Jesuit Relations - Online AuthorTopic: The Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124LoThe Jesuit Relations - Online AuthorTopic: The Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124LoThe Jesuit Relations - Online (Read 205 times)Matthew S. SchweitzerAdministratormember is offlineTecumseh 1767-1813 Joined: Sept 2003Gender: Male Posts: 124Location ...
http://ohioindianwars.proboards18.com/index.cgi?board=beaverwars&actio ...
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Suppression of the Jesuits (1770-1773)
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http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14096a.htm
The American Jesuits
These accounts became known as the Jesuit Relations.
The Jesuit Relations provided Europeans interested in settling in North America with information on life in the New World. These writings also have provided subsequent historians wthe Jesuit Relations. The Jesuit Relations provided Europeans interested in settling in North America with information on life in the New World.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2058
Dec 13, 2018 20:27:44 #
The Jesuits
Citation: C N Trueman "The Jesuits"
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-counter-reformation/the-jesuits/
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 17 Mar 2015. 28 Nov 2018.
The Jesuits played a very important role in the Counter-Reformation. The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, must be seen as a key player during it. Loyola was the son of a Basque nobleman and was born in 1491. He became a soldier who was fond of women and gambling – and he had a typical upbringing for a richman’s son with enjoyment taking a precedence within his life with no obvious professional calling.
In 1521 he fought in the army of Charles V. While defending Pampuna he was hit by a cannonball and badly damaged his left leg. While recovering from this injury, he suffered a crisis believing that his life seemed purposeless. He took to reading about the life of Christ and the Saints. He saw a vision of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus and he went to the shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat in Aragon and became a hermit living in a cave near Mantua in 1522. He spent his time in rags confessing and scourging himself whilst helping the sick. “I will follow like a puppy dog if I can only find a way to salvation.” Loyola threw himself at the mercy of God and this crisis (be it psychological or not) is similar to what Luther went through.
However, unlike Luther, he found his salvation in mystical experiences and not in the Scriptures. He was willing to accept the beliefs already available so he felt no desire to develop a new creed. He had complete obedience to the Catholic Church and its faith.
In 1523, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as he wished to communicate his love and knowledge to others. He intended a mission to the Turks but he was sent back by the Franciscans to Italy. He spent the next seven years learning Theology and Latin at Barcelona, Alcara and Salamanca and after this he went to the college of Montaigu in Paris. He arrived in Paris at the same time as John Calvin was leaving!
While in Paris he collected around himself six companions. Xavier, who was a Basque, three men from Castille, one from Savoy and a Portugese. In 1534 they all swore an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. They made a promise to go to Palestine if the pope agreed to this. Loyola was ordained as a priest in Venice in 1537. Here he helped the sick and the poor. After Venice, Loyola went to Rome. He could not go to Palestine as the Muslim Turks barred his way. In Rome he met many other Counter-Reformers.
In September 1540, Pope Paul III licensed the Society of Jesus for the care of souls in life and for teaching and preaching the faith. Loyola felt that he had to start a fresh order rather than work within an already existing one as existent orders were tainted.
In 1541, Loyola was elected as first General of the Society – a position he held until his death in 1556. Training in the Society was long and hard. You were a novice for two years doing theory and practical work in hospitals. You went on pilgrimages and you had to spend time begging. If you ‘passed’ this part, you then spent between 10 and 12 years as a scholar studying Theology, Philosophy and the Humanities. You also learnt how to teach others.
Loyola’s “Constitutions” did not reach its final form until 1558. This laid down the rules for the Society:
The Jesuits were to be at the disposal of the pope.
They were to go wherever he ordered them to go to save souls.
They were never to accept a bishopric etc. unless the pope ordered it.
They were to wear no special habit.
There were to be no special mortification’s, e.g. no fasting without a medical report.
They were excused from communal prayer and masses.
All members were to take the three traditional monastic vows. An elite would take a fourth vow of direct obedience to the pope if he sent them on a foreign mission.
Faith was to be spread by preaching, spiritual exercises, charity and education in Christianity.
Loyola’s other major work was “Spiritual Exercises“. This he had begun in 1522 and it was completed in 1548. This was designed for Jesuits to become mystics and to have less attachment to things of the world. It informed Jesuits on how “to master the soul to manipulate the body.”
A series of mental exercises was developed concentrating on sin and conscience, on the life of Christ – directing the mind to complete union with Him. It outlined the correct posture for meditation. These exercises toughened the mind for the work that was to follow. Loyola placed high value on meditation but he was also an active and able organiser.
Like Luther, his conversion was a emotional experience and like Calvin he had an iron logic which placed an emphasis on education and a desire to create a powerful spiritual religious order that was, nevertheless, realistic in its approach. All Jesuits had a sense of commitment, a capacity for organisation and a high level of intellectual ability and this helped to preserve and transmit much of the new learning of the Renaissance.
The Jesuits were held in such high regard that popes sent them into the heart of Protestantism to “win back lost souls”. They went without dissent despite the obvious dangers to their own well—being and liberty. Their commitment, as Loyola had demanded, was fierce possibly even fanatical.
In England, it was a Jesuit priest (John Gerrard) who despite being terribly tortured managed to escape from the Tower of London and, after recovering, continued with his work. Xavier, one of the original Jesuits, went to the Far East to convert the population despite the obvious and real dangers to himself.
Even catholic countries had reason to fear the Jesuits. In France, they were seen as a potential rival to the Parlément de Paris and the Sorbonne when they declared their intention of opening a Jesuit college in Paris. The fear could have been that the Jesuits might have shown up both bodies as not being the true Catholics they claimed to be whereas they, the Jesuits, quite clearly led the life of true Catholics.
Citation: C N Trueman "The Jesuits"
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-counter-reformation/the-jesuits/
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 17 Mar 2015. 28 Nov 2018.
The Jesuits played a very important role in the Counter-Reformation. The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, must be seen as a key player during it. Loyola was the son of a Basque nobleman and was born in 1491. He became a soldier who was fond of women and gambling – and he had a typical upbringing for a richman’s son with enjoyment taking a precedence within his life with no obvious professional calling.
In 1521 he fought in the army of Charles V. While defending Pampuna he was hit by a cannonball and badly damaged his left leg. While recovering from this injury, he suffered a crisis believing that his life seemed purposeless. He took to reading about the life of Christ and the Saints. He saw a vision of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus and he went to the shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat in Aragon and became a hermit living in a cave near Mantua in 1522. He spent his time in rags confessing and scourging himself whilst helping the sick. “I will follow like a puppy dog if I can only find a way to salvation.” Loyola threw himself at the mercy of God and this crisis (be it psychological or not) is similar to what Luther went through.
However, unlike Luther, he found his salvation in mystical experiences and not in the Scriptures. He was willing to accept the beliefs already available so he felt no desire to develop a new creed. He had complete obedience to the Catholic Church and its faith.
In 1523, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as he wished to communicate his love and knowledge to others. He intended a mission to the Turks but he was sent back by the Franciscans to Italy. He spent the next seven years learning Theology and Latin at Barcelona, Alcara and Salamanca and after this he went to the college of Montaigu in Paris. He arrived in Paris at the same time as John Calvin was leaving!
While in Paris he collected around himself six companions. Xavier, who was a Basque, three men from Castille, one from Savoy and a Portugese. In 1534 they all swore an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. They made a promise to go to Palestine if the pope agreed to this. Loyola was ordained as a priest in Venice in 1537. Here he helped the sick and the poor. After Venice, Loyola went to Rome. He could not go to Palestine as the Muslim Turks barred his way. In Rome he met many other Counter-Reformers.
In September 1540, Pope Paul III licensed the Society of Jesus for the care of souls in life and for teaching and preaching the faith. Loyola felt that he had to start a fresh order rather than work within an already existing one as existent orders were tainted.
In 1541, Loyola was elected as first General of the Society – a position he held until his death in 1556. Training in the Society was long and hard. You were a novice for two years doing theory and practical work in hospitals. You went on pilgrimages and you had to spend time begging. If you ‘passed’ this part, you then spent between 10 and 12 years as a scholar studying Theology, Philosophy and the Humanities. You also learnt how to teach others.
Loyola’s “Constitutions” did not reach its final form until 1558. This laid down the rules for the Society:
The Jesuits were to be at the disposal of the pope.
They were to go wherever he ordered them to go to save souls.
They were never to accept a bishopric etc. unless the pope ordered it.
They were to wear no special habit.
There were to be no special mortification’s, e.g. no fasting without a medical report.
They were excused from communal prayer and masses.
All members were to take the three traditional monastic vows. An elite would take a fourth vow of direct obedience to the pope if he sent them on a foreign mission.
Faith was to be spread by preaching, spiritual exercises, charity and education in Christianity.
Loyola’s other major work was “Spiritual Exercises“. This he had begun in 1522 and it was completed in 1548. This was designed for Jesuits to become mystics and to have less attachment to things of the world. It informed Jesuits on how “to master the soul to manipulate the body.”
A series of mental exercises was developed concentrating on sin and conscience, on the life of Christ – directing the mind to complete union with Him. It outlined the correct posture for meditation. These exercises toughened the mind for the work that was to follow. Loyola placed high value on meditation but he was also an active and able organiser.
Like Luther, his conversion was a emotional experience and like Calvin he had an iron logic which placed an emphasis on education and a desire to create a powerful spiritual religious order that was, nevertheless, realistic in its approach. All Jesuits had a sense of commitment, a capacity for organisation and a high level of intellectual ability and this helped to preserve and transmit much of the new learning of the Renaissance.
The Jesuits were held in such high regard that popes sent them into the heart of Protestantism to “win back lost souls”. They went without dissent despite the obvious dangers to their own well—being and liberty. Their commitment, as Loyola had demanded, was fierce possibly even fanatical.
In England, it was a Jesuit priest (John Gerrard) who despite being terribly tortured managed to escape from the Tower of London and, after recovering, continued with his work. Xavier, one of the original Jesuits, went to the Far East to convert the population despite the obvious and real dangers to himself.
Even catholic countries had reason to fear the Jesuits. In France, they were seen as a potential rival to the Parlément de Paris and the Sorbonne when they declared their intention of opening a Jesuit college in Paris. The fear could have been that the Jesuits might have shown up both bodies as not being the true Catholics they claimed to be whereas they, the Jesuits, quite clearly led the life of true Catholics.
Dec 13, 2018 20:31:31 #
THE JESUIT MISSION: SEEKING GOD IN ALL THINGS
https://www.georgetown.edu/news/the-jesuit-mission
Father Mark Bosco walks out of Dahlgren chapel with students on his left and right
Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., Georgetown's vice president for mission and ministry, chats with students outside of Dahlgren Chapel.
November 19, 2018 – Each November, Georgetown joins other Jesuit colleges and universities in celebrating Jesuit Heritage Month. The Society of Jesus – or the Jesuits for short – is the religious order of men in the Catholic Church who founded Georgetown along with many other high schools, colleges and universities around the world.
From the beginnings of the Society of Jesus – education, ministry and outreach to the marginalized have been at the core of the Jesuit mission.
Still, many ask: Who exactly are the Jesuits? Who was their founder? How do they fit into the Catholic Church? What is their history? The following sections attempt to answer some of these questions.
WHAT IS A JESUIT?
The Jesuits are an apostolic religious community called the Society of Jesus. They are grounded in love for Christ and animated by the spiritual vision of their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, to help others and seek God in all things. As members of a worldwide society within the Catholic Church, the Jesuits are committed to the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
WHEN DID THE SOCIETY OF JESUS BEGIN?
St. Ignatius created the religious order of men in the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. Ignatius and his friends – all of them students at the University of Paris – committed themselves to establishing the Society of Jesus in Montmartre in 1534. They received official recognition as a religious order in the Catholic Church from Pope Paul III in 1540.
WHO WAS SAINT IGNATIUS?
Ignatius was born in the Basque region of Spain in 1491, the youngest son of a minor nobleman. A soldier and courtier in Spain, he was driven by a desire for fame, honor and nobility. While defending a castle in Pamplona against a French siege, however, he was struck by a cannonball that shattered his leg and left him bedridden for months. Out of boredom during his recovery, he turned to the only books available in the castle's limited library – the life of Christ and the lives of the saints. This resulted in a deep desire to serve God. Ignatius began to travel widely – begging, preaching and caring for the poor and the sick. Along the way, he recorded his spiritual insights and methods of prayer in a manual that later became the Spiritual Exercises. This handbook provides the paradigm for a spirituality and pedagogy that Jesuits and their lay colleagues continue to use to this day.
HOW DID IGNATIUS DEVELOP A FOLLOWING?
During Ignatius’ conversion process, he recognized his lack of formal education and training in the humanities, philosophy and theology. Already in his 30s, Ignatius went to school to pursue an education. While finishing his studies at the University of Paris, Ignatius’ experience of God and his boundless spirit captivated other students. Soon after, in a chapel in Montmartre outside Paris, Ignatius and six of his university friends professed religious vows of poverty and chastity to bind themselves more closely together in their dedication to God and “the betterment of souls.” These companions, who called themselves “friends in the Lord,” would eventually become the first Jesuits, officially known as the Society of Jesus (hence the S.J. behind Jesuits’ last names).
HOW DID THE JESUITS BECOME ASSOCIATED WITH EDUCATION?
While Ignatius did not direct Jesuits to open schools, he soon discovered how greatly people’s lives could be improved by an education rooted both in gospel values and the humanistic revival of the Renaissance. He began to see the task of education as one of the most important ways of promoting “the betterment of souls.” The Jesuits quickly built a reputation as teachers and scholars. Students from all over Europe flocked to the burgeoning schools, and Jesuit missionaries opened schools where none before had existed. Even prior to the establishment of Georgetown University, the Jesuits were operating more than 800 universities, seminaries and secondary schools around the globe. Many of these schools catered to students who might otherwise not receive a formal education, and the Jesuits committed themselves to educating everyone they could. Ignatius himself spent significant time in his later years fundraising for these schools so that students who could not afford tuition would not be turned away.
HOW DOES A JESUIT BECOME A JESUIT?
After entering the Society, men pursue a decade-long course of studies and spiritual formation before being ordained to the priesthood. Many also earn advanced degrees in a wide variety of academic disciplines. The Georgetown Jesuit community has thus been home to actors, astronomers, poets, politicians, playwrights, physicians, lawyers, sculptors, painters and professors of every field. Most but not all Jesuits serve as priests. There are also Jesuit brothers, several of whom live and work here at Georgetown.
HOW DOES THIS TRADITION CONTINUE AT GEORGETOWN TODAY?
The spirituality and values of Ignatius and the early Jesuits marked the schools they founded. Thus Georgetown continues to offer its students a distinctive education. Certain characteristics, grounded in the vision of Ignatius and the early Jesuits, are of paramount importance for universities in the Ignatian tradition. St. Ignatius believed that as individuals come to understand the world and develop a more robust vision of it, they are led to think and act in new ways. He understood this integral connection between knowing and acting, and hoped that Jesuits and the graduates of their schools would become “contemplatives in action.” The phrase refers to women and men committed to the service of others and to a faith that does justice in the world. Grounded in a spirituality that seeks to “find God in all things,” the pedagogical approach of Jesuit schools emphasizes an individual agency, while contextualizing it within a broader search for the common good. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1983 to 2008, once described four objectives that influenced St. Ignatius and the early Jesuits to become involved in higher education. These directives still determine the work of Ignatian educators today. They strive to:
Provide students with knowledge and skills to excel in whatever field they choose.
Contribute to the education of women and men as good citizens, people of competence, conscience and compassion dedicated to the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
Celebrate the full range of human intellectual power and achievement, viewing reason not as antithetical to faith, but as its necessary complement.
Affirm a Christian understanding of the human person as a creature of God whose ultimate destiny is beyond the human.
WHAT IS CURA PERSONALIS?
During the time of his conversion, Ignatius experienced God not as distant and removed, but as a teacher personally involved in his life. Early Jesuit educators similarly worked to develop a reverent familiarity with their students, which allowed Jesuits to educate them on an individual basis according to the particular needs and gifts of each student. The Latin phrase associated with this Jesuit focus on the individual is cura personalis or “care of the whole person.” Caring for the whole person means knowing the student beyond what a transcript can reveal. In keeping with this age-old tradition, Georgetown faculty and administrators strive to learn about students personally – their backgrounds and life histories, their strengths and limitations, their struggles and hopes. These teachers and mentors seek to build personal, trusting relationships with students so they will feel comfortable asking questions, taking intellectual risks and making mistakes and learning from them.
WHO WAS GEORGETOWN'S FOUNDER?
Jesuit principles guided John Carroll when he first announced his plans for Georgetown, plans at once modest and grand. In a letter to friends, dated 1788, he wrote: “We shall begin the building of our Academy this summer. …On this academy is built all my hope of permanency and success to our holy religion in the United States.” Carroll does not have an “S.J.” after his name because Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus in July 1773. It was not until the early 1800s that the Jesuits were restored as a religious order in the Catholic Church. The Jesuit college that Carroll’s imagination framed so long ago still stands as a living tradition of which every Georgetown student is a part. Each student shares in the responsibility for keeping this heritage alive. Georgetown University is not "Jesuit" merely because Jesuits live and work here. Ignatius' spirituality and mission along with John Carroll's vision and imagination shape the experience of all Georgetown's daughters and sons. Finally, in his “Proposals for Establishing an Academy,” Carroll sought to establish a home not just for people of the Catholic faith, but for people from all faith traditions. Carroll makes it clear that Georgetown “will be open to students of every religious profession … [and] will be at Liberty to frequent the Places of Worship and Instruction appointed by their Parents ...” This commitment to interreligious understanding and collaboration remains an enduring feature of the Georgetown experience to this day.
Rev. Brandon Harris, Iman Yahya Hendi, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Rev. Gregory Schenden, S.J., Rev. Olivia Lane, Rev. Bryant Oskvig and Brahmachari Vraj Vihari Sharan
WHAT IS THE LEGACY OF JESUITS AT GEORGETOWN?
Jesuits have cared for the university from its earliest days. Histories of the university celebrate their numerous contributions as teachers, scholars, administrators, chaplains and counselors. Hundreds of Jesuits, along with generous alumni and benefactors, have also worked tirelessly to build Georgetown, both literally and figuratively, into the university it is today. Through the years a significant number of Georgetown alumni have entered the Society of Jesus. Jesuits continue the work of their predecessors, contributing to all aspects of university life. Most of these men live in Wolfington Hall - the Jesuit Residence in Georgetown’s Southwest Quadrangle. Others serve as residential ministers in residence halls. The Jesuit community is led by its local religious superior and is connected to the worldwide Society of Jesus through a regional superior, known as the Provincial. Ultimately, all Jesuits come under the jurisdiction of the Superior General, who resides at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome.
https://www.georgetown.edu/news/the-jesuit-mission
Father Mark Bosco walks out of Dahlgren chapel with students on his left and right
Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., Georgetown's vice president for mission and ministry, chats with students outside of Dahlgren Chapel.
November 19, 2018 – Each November, Georgetown joins other Jesuit colleges and universities in celebrating Jesuit Heritage Month. The Society of Jesus – or the Jesuits for short – is the religious order of men in the Catholic Church who founded Georgetown along with many other high schools, colleges and universities around the world.
From the beginnings of the Society of Jesus – education, ministry and outreach to the marginalized have been at the core of the Jesuit mission.
Still, many ask: Who exactly are the Jesuits? Who was their founder? How do they fit into the Catholic Church? What is their history? The following sections attempt to answer some of these questions.
WHAT IS A JESUIT?
The Jesuits are an apostolic religious community called the Society of Jesus. They are grounded in love for Christ and animated by the spiritual vision of their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, to help others and seek God in all things. As members of a worldwide society within the Catholic Church, the Jesuits are committed to the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
WHEN DID THE SOCIETY OF JESUS BEGIN?
St. Ignatius created the religious order of men in the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. Ignatius and his friends – all of them students at the University of Paris – committed themselves to establishing the Society of Jesus in Montmartre in 1534. They received official recognition as a religious order in the Catholic Church from Pope Paul III in 1540.
WHO WAS SAINT IGNATIUS?
Ignatius was born in the Basque region of Spain in 1491, the youngest son of a minor nobleman. A soldier and courtier in Spain, he was driven by a desire for fame, honor and nobility. While defending a castle in Pamplona against a French siege, however, he was struck by a cannonball that shattered his leg and left him bedridden for months. Out of boredom during his recovery, he turned to the only books available in the castle's limited library – the life of Christ and the lives of the saints. This resulted in a deep desire to serve God. Ignatius began to travel widely – begging, preaching and caring for the poor and the sick. Along the way, he recorded his spiritual insights and methods of prayer in a manual that later became the Spiritual Exercises. This handbook provides the paradigm for a spirituality and pedagogy that Jesuits and their lay colleagues continue to use to this day.
HOW DID IGNATIUS DEVELOP A FOLLOWING?
During Ignatius’ conversion process, he recognized his lack of formal education and training in the humanities, philosophy and theology. Already in his 30s, Ignatius went to school to pursue an education. While finishing his studies at the University of Paris, Ignatius’ experience of God and his boundless spirit captivated other students. Soon after, in a chapel in Montmartre outside Paris, Ignatius and six of his university friends professed religious vows of poverty and chastity to bind themselves more closely together in their dedication to God and “the betterment of souls.” These companions, who called themselves “friends in the Lord,” would eventually become the first Jesuits, officially known as the Society of Jesus (hence the S.J. behind Jesuits’ last names).
HOW DID THE JESUITS BECOME ASSOCIATED WITH EDUCATION?
While Ignatius did not direct Jesuits to open schools, he soon discovered how greatly people’s lives could be improved by an education rooted both in gospel values and the humanistic revival of the Renaissance. He began to see the task of education as one of the most important ways of promoting “the betterment of souls.” The Jesuits quickly built a reputation as teachers and scholars. Students from all over Europe flocked to the burgeoning schools, and Jesuit missionaries opened schools where none before had existed. Even prior to the establishment of Georgetown University, the Jesuits were operating more than 800 universities, seminaries and secondary schools around the globe. Many of these schools catered to students who might otherwise not receive a formal education, and the Jesuits committed themselves to educating everyone they could. Ignatius himself spent significant time in his later years fundraising for these schools so that students who could not afford tuition would not be turned away.
HOW DOES A JESUIT BECOME A JESUIT?
After entering the Society, men pursue a decade-long course of studies and spiritual formation before being ordained to the priesthood. Many also earn advanced degrees in a wide variety of academic disciplines. The Georgetown Jesuit community has thus been home to actors, astronomers, poets, politicians, playwrights, physicians, lawyers, sculptors, painters and professors of every field. Most but not all Jesuits serve as priests. There are also Jesuit brothers, several of whom live and work here at Georgetown.
HOW DOES THIS TRADITION CONTINUE AT GEORGETOWN TODAY?
The spirituality and values of Ignatius and the early Jesuits marked the schools they founded. Thus Georgetown continues to offer its students a distinctive education. Certain characteristics, grounded in the vision of Ignatius and the early Jesuits, are of paramount importance for universities in the Ignatian tradition. St. Ignatius believed that as individuals come to understand the world and develop a more robust vision of it, they are led to think and act in new ways. He understood this integral connection between knowing and acting, and hoped that Jesuits and the graduates of their schools would become “contemplatives in action.” The phrase refers to women and men committed to the service of others and to a faith that does justice in the world. Grounded in a spirituality that seeks to “find God in all things,” the pedagogical approach of Jesuit schools emphasizes an individual agency, while contextualizing it within a broader search for the common good. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1983 to 2008, once described four objectives that influenced St. Ignatius and the early Jesuits to become involved in higher education. These directives still determine the work of Ignatian educators today. They strive to:
Provide students with knowledge and skills to excel in whatever field they choose.
Contribute to the education of women and men as good citizens, people of competence, conscience and compassion dedicated to the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
Celebrate the full range of human intellectual power and achievement, viewing reason not as antithetical to faith, but as its necessary complement.
Affirm a Christian understanding of the human person as a creature of God whose ultimate destiny is beyond the human.
WHAT IS CURA PERSONALIS?
During the time of his conversion, Ignatius experienced God not as distant and removed, but as a teacher personally involved in his life. Early Jesuit educators similarly worked to develop a reverent familiarity with their students, which allowed Jesuits to educate them on an individual basis according to the particular needs and gifts of each student. The Latin phrase associated with this Jesuit focus on the individual is cura personalis or “care of the whole person.” Caring for the whole person means knowing the student beyond what a transcript can reveal. In keeping with this age-old tradition, Georgetown faculty and administrators strive to learn about students personally – their backgrounds and life histories, their strengths and limitations, their struggles and hopes. These teachers and mentors seek to build personal, trusting relationships with students so they will feel comfortable asking questions, taking intellectual risks and making mistakes and learning from them.
WHO WAS GEORGETOWN'S FOUNDER?
Jesuit principles guided John Carroll when he first announced his plans for Georgetown, plans at once modest and grand. In a letter to friends, dated 1788, he wrote: “We shall begin the building of our Academy this summer. …On this academy is built all my hope of permanency and success to our holy religion in the United States.” Carroll does not have an “S.J.” after his name because Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus in July 1773. It was not until the early 1800s that the Jesuits were restored as a religious order in the Catholic Church. The Jesuit college that Carroll’s imagination framed so long ago still stands as a living tradition of which every Georgetown student is a part. Each student shares in the responsibility for keeping this heritage alive. Georgetown University is not "Jesuit" merely because Jesuits live and work here. Ignatius' spirituality and mission along with John Carroll's vision and imagination shape the experience of all Georgetown's daughters and sons. Finally, in his “Proposals for Establishing an Academy,” Carroll sought to establish a home not just for people of the Catholic faith, but for people from all faith traditions. Carroll makes it clear that Georgetown “will be open to students of every religious profession … [and] will be at Liberty to frequent the Places of Worship and Instruction appointed by their Parents ...” This commitment to interreligious understanding and collaboration remains an enduring feature of the Georgetown experience to this day.
Rev. Brandon Harris, Iman Yahya Hendi, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Rev. Gregory Schenden, S.J., Rev. Olivia Lane, Rev. Bryant Oskvig and Brahmachari Vraj Vihari Sharan
WHAT IS THE LEGACY OF JESUITS AT GEORGETOWN?
Jesuits have cared for the university from its earliest days. Histories of the university celebrate their numerous contributions as teachers, scholars, administrators, chaplains and counselors. Hundreds of Jesuits, along with generous alumni and benefactors, have also worked tirelessly to build Georgetown, both literally and figuratively, into the university it is today. Through the years a significant number of Georgetown alumni have entered the Society of Jesus. Jesuits continue the work of their predecessors, contributing to all aspects of university life. Most of these men live in Wolfington Hall - the Jesuit Residence in Georgetown’s Southwest Quadrangle. Others serve as residential ministers in residence halls. The Jesuit community is led by its local religious superior and is connected to the worldwide Society of Jesus through a regional superior, known as the Provincial. Ultimately, all Jesuits come under the jurisdiction of the Superior General, who resides at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome.
Dec 13, 2018 20:34:01 #
Founded by St Ignatius Loyola more than 450 years ago, the Society of Jesus is a religious order of priests and brothers committed to the service of Christ.
https://jesuit.org.au/about/our-story/
Members of our Society, known as Jesuits, are contemplatives in action. The rich tradition of Ignatian spirituality gives us a way to examine our deeper desires and discern God’s plan for us in the world. Inspired by that discernment, we serve the Catholic Church wherever we see there is need.
An international mission
Ignatius and the First Companions making their first vows at Montmartre.
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1534 in Montmartre outside Paris, where Ignatius of Loyola and six companions made their first vows together to ‘enter upon hospital and missionary work in Jerusalem, or go without questioning wherever the Pope might direct’.
Since then, Jesuits have served the Church in a wide array of areas. Distinguished Jesuits throughout history include scientists and theologians, poets and philosophers, explorers and missionaries, pastors and preachers.
READ MORE: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SOCIETY
The Society of Jesus in Australia
kranewitter
Fr Aloysius Kranewitter SJ.
The first Jesuits to set foot in Australia, Fr Aloysius Kranewitter SJ and Fr Maximilian Klinkowstroem SJ, came from Austria. They arrived in Adelaide in 1848. In 1853, a property was bought near Clare. Fr Kranewitter named it Sevenhill.
Two Irish Jesuits established a community in Melbourne in 1865, and three more Austrians and one of the first native-born Australians to become a Jesuit established a community in Darwin in 1882.
The Australian Province was formally established in 1950, with Fr Austin Kelly SJ its first Provincial.
READ MORE: THE SOCIETY IN AUSTRALIA
Called to the frontiers
Today, our work takes us to the frontiers of our world – the places where cultures meet, where new enterprises are launched and where new ideas are debated. Jesuit ministries in Australia range from social service organisations to publishing houses, from schools to spirituality centres, with many other activities in between.
Jesuit priests and brothers are men on the move, ready to do anything, or go anywhere, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ in our world.
READ MORE: PROVINCE INDUCTION
https://jesuit.org.au/about/our-story/
Members of our Society, known as Jesuits, are contemplatives in action. The rich tradition of Ignatian spirituality gives us a way to examine our deeper desires and discern God’s plan for us in the world. Inspired by that discernment, we serve the Catholic Church wherever we see there is need.
An international mission
Ignatius and the First Companions making their first vows at Montmartre.
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1534 in Montmartre outside Paris, where Ignatius of Loyola and six companions made their first vows together to ‘enter upon hospital and missionary work in Jerusalem, or go without questioning wherever the Pope might direct’.
Since then, Jesuits have served the Church in a wide array of areas. Distinguished Jesuits throughout history include scientists and theologians, poets and philosophers, explorers and missionaries, pastors and preachers.
READ MORE: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SOCIETY
The Society of Jesus in Australia
kranewitter
Fr Aloysius Kranewitter SJ.
The first Jesuits to set foot in Australia, Fr Aloysius Kranewitter SJ and Fr Maximilian Klinkowstroem SJ, came from Austria. They arrived in Adelaide in 1848. In 1853, a property was bought near Clare. Fr Kranewitter named it Sevenhill.
Two Irish Jesuits established a community in Melbourne in 1865, and three more Austrians and one of the first native-born Australians to become a Jesuit established a community in Darwin in 1882.
The Australian Province was formally established in 1950, with Fr Austin Kelly SJ its first Provincial.
READ MORE: THE SOCIETY IN AUSTRALIA
Called to the frontiers
Today, our work takes us to the frontiers of our world – the places where cultures meet, where new enterprises are launched and where new ideas are debated. Jesuit ministries in Australia range from social service organisations to publishing houses, from schools to spirituality centres, with many other activities in between.
Jesuit priests and brothers are men on the move, ready to do anything, or go anywhere, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ in our world.
READ MORE: PROVINCE INDUCTION
Dec 13, 2018 20:35:14 #
Who are the Jesuits, exactly?
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/03/19/who-are-the-jesuits-exactly
The election of Pope Francis marks the first time a Jesuit has led the Catholic church. What does this mean?
The Economist explains
Mar 19th 2013by E.H.
THE election of Pope Francis on March 13th was surprising for several reasons. He is the first pope from South America, making him the first non-European since the 8th century. He is also the only pope to take the name Francis—evoking the humility of St Francis of Assisi, a 12th century Italian monk. Most surprising of all, he is the only member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order dating from the 16th century, to become a pope. But just who are the Jesuits, exactly?
Within the Roman Catholic church, there are two types of priests: the secular clergy and those who are part of religious orders. The first group are known as diocesan priests, and will often (though not always) be attached to a parish and are accountable to a local bishop. They train at a seminary, a theological college, and do not take vows of poverty or seclude themselves from the outside world. In many ways they are the public face of the Catholic church. Religious orders, by contrast, have more autonomy from the central church. They are not under the jurisdiction of a bishop (who in turn has been appointed by the pope) and can live completely excluded from secular society, depending on the order they belong to. Monks and friars—such as the Dominicans, Benedictines, Cistercians (including Trappists) and Franciscans—live within their orders, though often will be connected to educational institutions and can run select parishes. In Britain alone the Benedictines teach at Ampleforth College, a public school in north England, while the Dominicans run Blackfriars Hall, an Oxford college.
The Society of Jesus is another such religious order. Set up by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish former soldier, in 1540, there are now over 12,000 Jesuit priests, and the society is one of the largest groups in the Roman Catholic church. Known as the "soldiers of Christ" after the military bearing of their founder (who discovered his vocation, it is claimed, after reading a book on the lives of the saints in a hospital when recovering from war wounds) the order emphasises education, particularly their belief in the importance of learning languages, and the need for missionary evangelism in the life of a priest. They work in churches within cities and towns or run schools and colleges. Unlike diocesan priests, who can complete their studies in four or five years, Jesuits train for 12 years and only become ordained when they are in their thirties. Associated with the more liberal aspects of catholicism, they are less likely than other groups, such as the Oratorians, to conduct mass in the old rite Latin form. On becoming a Jesuit, they also vow never to take ecclesiastical office, such as a bishopric, unless ordered to by the pope.
This last vow is one of the reasons why Pope Francis's election was particularly surprising. According to Brendan Callaghan, the master of Campion Hall, a Jesuit college in Oxford, many Jesuits thought they would never see one of their own in papal office, even if some, such as Pope Francis, had become archbishops. Accustomed to being slightly on the margins of church hierarchy, the Jesuits are marked out by a questioning and occasionally defiant attitude towards the central office of the church. Putting such a potential outsider at the head of an institution mired by difficulties and facing a declining membership is a bold move. It already signals the changes to come.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/03/19/who-are-the-jesuits-exactly
The election of Pope Francis marks the first time a Jesuit has led the Catholic church. What does this mean?
The Economist explains
Mar 19th 2013by E.H.
THE election of Pope Francis on March 13th was surprising for several reasons. He is the first pope from South America, making him the first non-European since the 8th century. He is also the only pope to take the name Francis—evoking the humility of St Francis of Assisi, a 12th century Italian monk. Most surprising of all, he is the only member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order dating from the 16th century, to become a pope. But just who are the Jesuits, exactly?
Within the Roman Catholic church, there are two types of priests: the secular clergy and those who are part of religious orders. The first group are known as diocesan priests, and will often (though not always) be attached to a parish and are accountable to a local bishop. They train at a seminary, a theological college, and do not take vows of poverty or seclude themselves from the outside world. In many ways they are the public face of the Catholic church. Religious orders, by contrast, have more autonomy from the central church. They are not under the jurisdiction of a bishop (who in turn has been appointed by the pope) and can live completely excluded from secular society, depending on the order they belong to. Monks and friars—such as the Dominicans, Benedictines, Cistercians (including Trappists) and Franciscans—live within their orders, though often will be connected to educational institutions and can run select parishes. In Britain alone the Benedictines teach at Ampleforth College, a public school in north England, while the Dominicans run Blackfriars Hall, an Oxford college.
The Society of Jesus is another such religious order. Set up by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish former soldier, in 1540, there are now over 12,000 Jesuit priests, and the society is one of the largest groups in the Roman Catholic church. Known as the "soldiers of Christ" after the military bearing of their founder (who discovered his vocation, it is claimed, after reading a book on the lives of the saints in a hospital when recovering from war wounds) the order emphasises education, particularly their belief in the importance of learning languages, and the need for missionary evangelism in the life of a priest. They work in churches within cities and towns or run schools and colleges. Unlike diocesan priests, who can complete their studies in four or five years, Jesuits train for 12 years and only become ordained when they are in their thirties. Associated with the more liberal aspects of catholicism, they are less likely than other groups, such as the Oratorians, to conduct mass in the old rite Latin form. On becoming a Jesuit, they also vow never to take ecclesiastical office, such as a bishopric, unless ordered to by the pope.
This last vow is one of the reasons why Pope Francis's election was particularly surprising. According to Brendan Callaghan, the master of Campion Hall, a Jesuit college in Oxford, many Jesuits thought they would never see one of their own in papal office, even if some, such as Pope Francis, had become archbishops. Accustomed to being slightly on the margins of church hierarchy, the Jesuits are marked out by a questioning and occasionally defiant attitude towards the central office of the church. Putting such a potential outsider at the head of an institution mired by difficulties and facing a declining membership is a bold move. It already signals the changes to come.
Dec 13, 2018 20:40:33 #
History of the Jesuits – Catholicism
Home » History of the Jesuits – Catholicism
Print Friendly, PDF & EmailIgnatius of Loyola, who started the Jesuits
History of the Jesuits: Ignatius of Loyola, who started the Jesuits
Ignatius of Loyola
In the early 1500s AD, the Protestants were the new thing in Europe. Protestants were getting more and more popular. A few students at the University of Paris in 1534, led by Ignatius of Loyola, wanted to make it cool to be a Catholic again. Ignatius was an older student, in his 40s – he had been a soldier first, and then a Franciscan monk. In 1540 these students formed the Society of Jesus, which most people call the Jesuits.
The Inquisition tortures a Protestant man in Spain (1560s)
The Inquisition tortures a Protestant man in Spain (1560s) Inquisition
The Inquisition
At first the Jesuits worked to help poor people in Italy under Charles V. Soon they began to specialize in three areas – they started many very good schools, they traveled all over the world to convert people to Christianity, and they tried to keep people from converting to Protestantism. In Italy and Spain, Jesuits were the men who organized the Inquisition, a system of torturing Jews, Muslims, and Protestants in order to make them obey Catholic rules.
Mision Santa Rosalia de Mulege, Mexico, built by Jesuits in 1766
Mision Santa Rosalia de Mulege, Mexico, built by Jesuits in 1766
Counter-Reformation and Catholic schools
As part of the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits trained priests and bishops so they would know how to read Latin and Greek, and understand maps and mathematics and astronomy. The Jesuits also taught many lawyers and men who worked for the government, like Cardinal Mazarin (they didn’t teach girls). But as Catholics, they could not study or teach the new scientific discoveries that the Pope disapproved of. In 1615 AD, Jesuits refused to teach that the earth went around the sun.
Jesuit missionaries
https://quatr.us/religion/jesuits-history-catholicism.htm
Jesuits also traveled to North America, South America, Africa, India, China, and Central Asia, trying to convert people to Christianity. Jesuit teachers in China and America brought back books like the works of Confucius and Aztec scrolls to Europe, and translated them.
Find out more about the history of the Jesuits – what happened in the 1700s and 1800s?
Home » History of the Jesuits – Catholicism
Print Friendly, PDF & EmailIgnatius of Loyola, who started the Jesuits
History of the Jesuits: Ignatius of Loyola, who started the Jesuits
Ignatius of Loyola
In the early 1500s AD, the Protestants were the new thing in Europe. Protestants were getting more and more popular. A few students at the University of Paris in 1534, led by Ignatius of Loyola, wanted to make it cool to be a Catholic again. Ignatius was an older student, in his 40s – he had been a soldier first, and then a Franciscan monk. In 1540 these students formed the Society of Jesus, which most people call the Jesuits.
The Inquisition tortures a Protestant man in Spain (1560s)
The Inquisition tortures a Protestant man in Spain (1560s) Inquisition
The Inquisition
At first the Jesuits worked to help poor people in Italy under Charles V. Soon they began to specialize in three areas – they started many very good schools, they traveled all over the world to convert people to Christianity, and they tried to keep people from converting to Protestantism. In Italy and Spain, Jesuits were the men who organized the Inquisition, a system of torturing Jews, Muslims, and Protestants in order to make them obey Catholic rules.
Mision Santa Rosalia de Mulege, Mexico, built by Jesuits in 1766
Mision Santa Rosalia de Mulege, Mexico, built by Jesuits in 1766
Counter-Reformation and Catholic schools
As part of the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits trained priests and bishops so they would know how to read Latin and Greek, and understand maps and mathematics and astronomy. The Jesuits also taught many lawyers and men who worked for the government, like Cardinal Mazarin (they didn’t teach girls). But as Catholics, they could not study or teach the new scientific discoveries that the Pope disapproved of. In 1615 AD, Jesuits refused to teach that the earth went around the sun.
Jesuit missionaries
https://quatr.us/religion/jesuits-history-catholicism.htm
Jesuits also traveled to North America, South America, Africa, India, China, and Central Asia, trying to convert people to Christianity. Jesuit teachers in China and America brought back books like the works of Confucius and Aztec scrolls to Europe, and translated them.
Find out more about the history of the Jesuits – what happened in the 1700s and 1800s?
Dec 13, 2018 20:42:03 #
Our history in Africa
https://www.jesuits.africa/thejesuits/thejesuitshistoryinafrica
Jesuit history in Africa goes as far back as the history of the Society of Jesus itself. It also divides itself fairly neatly into two periods: before the suppression of the Jesuits (1541-1759) and after the formal restoration of the order (1848 to the present).
During these periods, Jesuits have been intermittently present in various parts of Africa, preaching, baptizing, building churches and schools, running farms, transacting business, mediating politics and doing a variety of other works, just as has been their custom elsewhere in the world.
Francis Xavier
A history of exploration
The first Jesuit contact with Africa was made in 1541 when Francis Xavier, Micer Paulo Camerino and Francisco Mancillhas had an extended sojourn on the island of Mozambique while on their way to India. More permanent missions were opened in Algeria, Congo and Angola in 1548.
After 1561, the Congo-Angola mission, which was championed by Portuguese Jesuits, expanded significantly and counted among its works several churches and schools. Their "Church of Jesus" in Luanda was then recognized as the largest concrete structure in the southern hemisphere, and their schools passed on an education whose traces 19th century travelers could still find.
oxfordhb 9780199935420 e 56 graphic 003 full Photo: A 2014 painting of the seventeenth-century Church of Jesus in Luanda, Angola (by Martin Waweru Kamau, SJ)
The Mozambique-Zimbabwe region also received Jesuits fairly early. Gonçalo da Silveira (1526-61), a Portuguese Jesuit, is still recognized as the first European of whom detailed and accurate knowledge exists, who penetrated the interior of this vast region. Silveira was martyred in the Monomotapa Kingdom in 1561, but later on the Jesuits founded another mission that lasted there for close to two centuries.
Another African region that saw a concerted Jesuit effort towards evangelization was around today's Ethiopia. In the early period, the Jesuits lasted in this fabled land of Prester John from 1555 to 1632, holding on to a mission that stood precariously against opposition from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Spanish Jesuit Pedro Páez (1564-1622) stands out as the main protagonist of this mission and is recognized as the first European to see and describe the sources of the Blue Nile.
Evangilisation and Martyrdom
This early Ethiopian Jesuit mission ended rather disastrously with the killing of eight Jesuits after Emperor Fasilidas had proscribed Catholicism and expelled the Jesuits. The missions in Angola and Mozambique continued to hold on until 1759 when Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and all her oversees dominions
The expulsion from Portugal ushered in a series of local expulsions, which culminated in the papal suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. The Society was restored back to formal existence in the whole Church in 1814, making it possible for Jesuits to return to Africa eighteen years later.
Opening this second period the French Jesuits reached Madagascar in 1832, although political intrigue rendered their initial attempts fruitless. In 1840, another French mission was sent to Algeria where an orphanage was opened. A more international group of Jesuits took part in a mission of the Holy See to the Sudan, where they first arrived in 1848. For a brief moment, a Polish Jesuit, Fr. Maksymillian Ryłło (1802-48), became the mission's pro-vicar apostolic. On another front, Queen Isabella of Spain invited the Jesuits to move to her newly acquired Island of Fernando Po in 1858. A Jesuit mission was opened there and lasted for fourteen years.
Besides the smaller missions mentioned above, other 19th century efforts in Madagascar, southern Africa, Congo and Egypt survived then and have lasted to our day. From 1855, the local situation in Madagascar was slightly more favourable to Christian evangelization. The Jesuits took advantage of this development, although their missionary advance was constantly being checked by political intrigue. It was, indeed, politics that led to the martyrdom of Fr. Jacques Berthieu (1838-96), who was declared a saint in 2012.
In southern Africa, the Jesuits responded to a local invitation and entered the region in 1875 to run St. Aidan's College in Grahamstown. These Jesuits were later entrusted with a territory that covered the whole of today's Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, Mozambique and parts of Botswana, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Their efforts were then known as the Zambezi Mission. Following instructions from Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), another mission opened in Egypt in 1879.
Jesuit presence grew fairly steadily both in Cairo and in Alexandria—two cities that hosted two Jesuit colleges in those early years. In 1893, Belgian Jesuits established a mission at Kwango in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. This marked a return to the region the Jesuits had left in the 17th century and laid the foundation for a work that would contribute significantly to the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the Congo.
The nineteenth century missions, together with several others that started in the twentieth century, have endured in one form or another and have given rise to a myriad of other activities in several new locations.
https://www.jesuits.africa/thejesuits/thejesuitshistoryinafrica
Jesuit history in Africa goes as far back as the history of the Society of Jesus itself. It also divides itself fairly neatly into two periods: before the suppression of the Jesuits (1541-1759) and after the formal restoration of the order (1848 to the present).
During these periods, Jesuits have been intermittently present in various parts of Africa, preaching, baptizing, building churches and schools, running farms, transacting business, mediating politics and doing a variety of other works, just as has been their custom elsewhere in the world.
Francis Xavier
A history of exploration
The first Jesuit contact with Africa was made in 1541 when Francis Xavier, Micer Paulo Camerino and Francisco Mancillhas had an extended sojourn on the island of Mozambique while on their way to India. More permanent missions were opened in Algeria, Congo and Angola in 1548.
After 1561, the Congo-Angola mission, which was championed by Portuguese Jesuits, expanded significantly and counted among its works several churches and schools. Their "Church of Jesus" in Luanda was then recognized as the largest concrete structure in the southern hemisphere, and their schools passed on an education whose traces 19th century travelers could still find.
oxfordhb 9780199935420 e 56 graphic 003 full Photo: A 2014 painting of the seventeenth-century Church of Jesus in Luanda, Angola (by Martin Waweru Kamau, SJ)
The Mozambique-Zimbabwe region also received Jesuits fairly early. Gonçalo da Silveira (1526-61), a Portuguese Jesuit, is still recognized as the first European of whom detailed and accurate knowledge exists, who penetrated the interior of this vast region. Silveira was martyred in the Monomotapa Kingdom in 1561, but later on the Jesuits founded another mission that lasted there for close to two centuries.
Another African region that saw a concerted Jesuit effort towards evangelization was around today's Ethiopia. In the early period, the Jesuits lasted in this fabled land of Prester John from 1555 to 1632, holding on to a mission that stood precariously against opposition from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Spanish Jesuit Pedro Páez (1564-1622) stands out as the main protagonist of this mission and is recognized as the first European to see and describe the sources of the Blue Nile.
Evangilisation and Martyrdom
This early Ethiopian Jesuit mission ended rather disastrously with the killing of eight Jesuits after Emperor Fasilidas had proscribed Catholicism and expelled the Jesuits. The missions in Angola and Mozambique continued to hold on until 1759 when Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and all her oversees dominions
The expulsion from Portugal ushered in a series of local expulsions, which culminated in the papal suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. The Society was restored back to formal existence in the whole Church in 1814, making it possible for Jesuits to return to Africa eighteen years later.
Opening this second period the French Jesuits reached Madagascar in 1832, although political intrigue rendered their initial attempts fruitless. In 1840, another French mission was sent to Algeria where an orphanage was opened. A more international group of Jesuits took part in a mission of the Holy See to the Sudan, where they first arrived in 1848. For a brief moment, a Polish Jesuit, Fr. Maksymillian Ryłło (1802-48), became the mission's pro-vicar apostolic. On another front, Queen Isabella of Spain invited the Jesuits to move to her newly acquired Island of Fernando Po in 1858. A Jesuit mission was opened there and lasted for fourteen years.
Besides the smaller missions mentioned above, other 19th century efforts in Madagascar, southern Africa, Congo and Egypt survived then and have lasted to our day. From 1855, the local situation in Madagascar was slightly more favourable to Christian evangelization. The Jesuits took advantage of this development, although their missionary advance was constantly being checked by political intrigue. It was, indeed, politics that led to the martyrdom of Fr. Jacques Berthieu (1838-96), who was declared a saint in 2012.
In southern Africa, the Jesuits responded to a local invitation and entered the region in 1875 to run St. Aidan's College in Grahamstown. These Jesuits were later entrusted with a territory that covered the whole of today's Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, Mozambique and parts of Botswana, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Their efforts were then known as the Zambezi Mission. Following instructions from Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), another mission opened in Egypt in 1879.
Jesuit presence grew fairly steadily both in Cairo and in Alexandria—two cities that hosted two Jesuit colleges in those early years. In 1893, Belgian Jesuits established a mission at Kwango in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. This marked a return to the region the Jesuits had left in the 17th century and laid the foundation for a work that would contribute significantly to the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the Congo.
The nineteenth century missions, together with several others that started in the twentieth century, have endured in one form or another and have given rise to a myriad of other activities in several new locations.
Dec 13, 2018 20:51:39 #
The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590–1615), (review no. 593)
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/593
As popular television and film insists on reminding us, Jesuits were infamous in the early-modern period for plotting the deaths of monarchs. Shekhar Kapur’s portrayal of Edmund Campion in Elizabeth (1998), cloaked and dagger in hand, is a case in point. Eric Nelson’s book The Jesuits and the Monarchy will do much to dispel this misconception, and much more. Nowhere, outside the British Isles, were the Jesuits more reviled than in France: they were an integral part of the Catholic black legend until at least the separation of Church and State just over a century ago. This tradition was invented during the French Wars of Religion, not by Protestants, as we might have expected, but by the Gallican clergy and magistracy who were otherwise staunchly orthodox in their beliefs. In spite (or because) of this opposition from the French-Catholic establishment, the fortunes of the French Jesuits were thrown in with those of the first Bourbon monarch, Henri IV, however unlikely this may seem.
Eric Nelson admirably demonstrates that, with the inventiveness and adaptability that characterized his reign, Henri IV sided with the Jesuits when they were at their most controversial and won their trust. The Jesuits in return proved to be bulwarks of royal authority throughout the seventeenth century and contributed to the emergence of absolutism. This is a historiographical tour de force as, until recently, discussions of the French Jesuits focused almost exclusively on the issues of papal authority in France and the controversy surrounding their expulsion and subsequent reinstatement with little understanding of the Gallican context. In this sense The Jesuits and the Monarchy is in good company with a number of other groundbreaking works that have sought in the past ten years to refine our understanding of French Catholicism. I must acknowledge here the contribution that was made by Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (Paris, 1997) and Thierry Wanegffelen, Ni Rome Ni Genève (Paris, 1997), in works that, sadly, remain untranslated, and, more recently and in English, Jotham Parsons, The Church in the Republic (Washington, 2004). These works have done justice, in different ways, to the ambiguity and complexity of the French Catholic Church’s involvement in the Reformations and Wars of Religion.
As in so many other respects, the idiosyncratic French response to the Reformations, both Catholic and Protestant, conditioned the establishment, expulsion, and reinstatement of the Jesuits in France in ways that have largely been ignored until now. With painstaking analysis of archival and printed sources, Nelson has reconstructed the Jesuits’ legal battles with the parlement of Paris, fought in the last decade of the sixteenth and the first two decades of the seventeenth centuries. There were a number of reasons why the presence of the Society of Jesus in France was problematic, too numerous to be gone into here, but they largely congregate around the contested issue of papal supremacy in France. Indeed, the liberties of the Gallican Church, as this nebulous body of medieval legal precedents was called, denied some of the pope’s privileges that had been uncontested in other parts of pre-Reformation Europe. Thanks to Francis I’s victories in Italy against the Emperor at the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of these liberties were reclaimed by the king as part of a settlement with the pope known as the Concordat of Bologna (1516). The Church in France, imprecisely referred to as the Gallican Church, was thus already in much turmoil before the advent of the Reformation, torn as it was between the rival (but sometimes joined-up) claims of royal and papal supremacy. It is in the context of Gallican law that the controversy surrounding the Jesuits’ oath of allegiance to the pope must be understood, and it was on this ground that the Paris parlement fought to keep them out of the kingdom.
Eric Nelson’s book opens at the end of the French Wars of Religion, at a time when a great many of these legal battles, although already fought and won by the Jesuits, were becoming controversial once more as the prospects of religious peace loomed ever larger. It could be argued that the presence of the Jesuits had been tolerated by the Gallican authorities as the two formed a marriage of convenience for the purpose of fighting heresy. After the Catholic League had overtaken the Protestant heresy as a ‘clear and present danger’ to political and religious stability in France, however, Gallican clergy and magistracy returned to their pet hate and blamed the Jesuits for all the excesses of the League. By blaming the Jesuits as an external influence for the demise of concord in France, the Gallican lawyers played the royal card of reconciliation between Protestant and Catholic former enemies as bon français. Indeed, as Nelson has shown in his contribution to Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe, ed. Naphy and Parish (Manchester, 2003), the Jesuits came to be portrayed as foreign agents of papal and Spanish interests which made them a convenient ‘other’ against whom Protestant and Catholic Frenchmen could make common cause.
This solved a particularly difficult conundrum for the politiques: how to gain the trust of the king’s Catholic subjects without antagonizing former allies? Henri’s conversion and reconciliation with the pope was crucial if he was to pacify former Leaguers who had made it clear that they would not disband unless Henri converted. But although they agreed that Henri should convert, the politiques did not want him to become a puppet of the pope. The Gallican magistracy therefore singled out the Jesuits as champions of ultramontanism, the expulsion of whom would mollify the moderates. This placed Henri IV in a very awkward position vis-à-vis the pope at a time when he was still trying to have an excommunication lifted. Eric Nelson sheds light on this problematic issue in the context of an attempt on the king’s life in 1594. Until that point, Henri IV had succeeded in preventing the expulsion of the Jesuits, but this time the Gallican lawyers were able to point the finger at them using circumstantial evidence: namely that the assassination of Henri III in 1589 could be blamed on their advocacy of regicide. For the first time the Jesuits’ reputation as dispatchers of crowned heads was brought to bear to effect their expulsion from the kingdom.
The second chapter of The Jesuits and the Monarchy deals with the recall of the Jesuits at the king’s own request in 1603, and contains, in my view, the monograph’s most original contribution to scholarship. As Nelson articulates very lucidly, the king’s involvement in this particular episode of the Jesuits’ fortunes in France had repercussions for the entire seventeenth century and the style of government that his successors would adopt with the support of the Jesuits as newfound allies. As Henri IV had occasion to discover, the Gallican lawyers, although staunch defenders of royal supremacy, could be just as troublesome as his Leaguer enemies or former Huguenot allies. Nelson demonstrates admirably how Henri IV used the Jesuits as pawns to placate the pope, along with his most vocal Catholic subjects, while chastising his critics within the parlement of Paris. It is ironic that this effectively turns on its head the Protestant myth of Jesuit generals using Catholic monarchs as puppets.
Because of their oath of allegiance to the pope the Jesuits were free from entanglement in Gallican politics, and this made them ideal candidates to help in the pursuit of an idiosyncratic royal campaign of Catholic reform. Henri IV articulated the justification of his recall of the Jesuits using the same principle that had allowed him to reconcile himself with Leaguer enemies and former Huguenot allies: clemency. Recourse to this concept created a precedent on which successive Bourbon monarchs could fall back when legal or theological justifications failed them. The royal goodwill was inscrutable, unjustifiable, and yet at the heart of Henri’s style of government. Here I have to point out the success with which the first Bourbon king propagandized his self-image as the ‘good king Henri IV’, which was still echoing in French classrooms in this reviewer’s lifetime. But this strategy was far cleverer than posterity has let on, as it made the Jesuits indebted to the king and made them dependent on his protection which could be mitigated by no text of law or recourse to theological argument.
In return, French Jesuits moved further away from their counterparts outside France in accommodating their rule to the specific demands of Gallican law. For instance, Jesuits emphasized their credentials as ‘good Frenchmen’ to distance themselves from the accusations of colluding with Spain or Rome that had flourished during the League. This might infringe on the principle of strict obedience to the pope, sometimes without the knowledge of their Father General, provoking the anger and outrage of the papal nuncio. In this respect, Nelson shows us, the Jesuits were no different from other religious orders that had accommodated their rule to the specific demands of Gallicanism in the course of the medieval and early-modern periods. The example of the Franciscan order can be evoked here, as shown in a recent monograph by Megan Armstrong: The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers during the Wars of Religion, 1560–1600 (Rochester, 2004). Here is another particular strongpoint of Nelson’s monograph: in no way were the Jesuits unique with respect to their response to Gallicanism. Aside from their black legend, gleefully replicated in later centuries by polemicists and historians alike, Jesuits were like any other order that had accommodated its rule to the strictures imposed by Gallicanism. What is different here is what the king, Henri IV, made of these difficulties and how he used them to his advantage.
It is no coincidence that Jesuits became the favourite confessors of the Bourbons and that Henri IV endowed the order with land and money for the building of a flagship Jesuit College at La Flèche in 1603. The subject of the third chapter is the expansion of the Society of Jesus under the auspices of the new alliance struck between Henri and the Jesuits. The terms of this alliance were couched in a legal document known as the Edict of Rouen (1603), drafted for the purpose of placating the objections of the Gallican lawyers in the parlement of Paris. This document required a measure of compliance with Gallican principles which directly contradicted the Jesuits’ first rule of direct obedience to the pope. Moreover, it was reminiscent of the strictures that had been placed on foreign regular clergy by Philip the Fair with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438 at the inception of the ‘liberties of the Gallican Church’. It also limited the foundation of further Jesuit colleges, seen as unfair competition by the Gallican clergy, except at the direct behest of the king himself, exemplified by the spectacular foundation of the Collège de La Flèche. This strengthened the king’s hold on the Society, as it placed it beyond the reach of both the Gallican magistracy and clergy, but firmly at the mercy of the king’s pleasure or displeasure. Not unlike the Edict of Nantes, the Edict of Rouen was a carefully worded piece of legal finessing that at once placated Gallican criticism within the parlement and the Sorbonne while clearly placing the Jesuits in the king’s debt.
The Jesuits were instrumental in a deliberate royal policy of Catholic reform and education of the French nobility’s sons which bore its fruits during the reigns of both Louis XIII and XIV. This is Nelson’s most provocative and valuable contention: the crown’s alliance with the Jesuits in the face of Gallicanism coincided with the Bourbons’ move towards absolutism. Gallicanism, with its reliance on medieval precedents and theoretical independence from Rome, no longer squared with the political needs of post-civil-war France and had become a thorn in the side of the crown. Thanks to the caveat that the king had skilfully inserted in the Edict of Rouen, Jesuit foundations flourished under the direct patronage of Henri IV. In the meantime, the suspicion of regicide and collusion with foreign powers that had characterized anti-Jesuit polemics leading up to their expulsion had declined. Although the Edict of Rouen limited membership of the Society of Jesus to Frenchmen, foreign Jesuits were reinstated in 1608 to remedy the shortage of vocations in the kingdom. When Henri IV was stabbed to death in 1610, the fortunes of the French Jesuits fell into the hands of the Gallicans who, under the regency of Marie de Médicis, were able to apply the letter rather than the spirit of the Edict of Rouen.
The fourth and penultimate chapter of The Jesuits and the Monarchy is devoted to the renewal of the Jesuits’s troubles after the regicide of Henri IV that the judges were keen to pin on them. The Gallican lawyers were no more successful in linking Ravaillac to the Jesuits than they had been with Chastel who had been the author of the previous attempt in 1594. The context, however, was different from that of 1594 when the parlement had nonetheless obtained the order’s expulsion: by 1610 the Jesuits had estranged themselves enough from contentious arguments to thwart Gallican efforts to expel them again. This did not deter Gallican jurists from renewing their polemical war against the Society, using against it the defences of papal supremacy and treatises advocating regicide that had been penned by foreign Jesuits. It led to further tinkering with the Jesuit rule to accommodate Gallican principles expressed in the Edict of Rouen. Interestingly, in this case the most vocal protestations did not emanate from the Jesuit Father General or the papal nuncio, but from members of the Gallican clergy itself. The bishop of Paris, for instance, protested at the parlement’s infringement on his jurisdiction over theological works published in Paris, albeit by foreign Jesuits. This highlights the relevance of much deeper divisions within the Gallican establishment that took precedence, Nelson argues, over the wider issue of the Jesuits’ presence in France.
It is necessary here to question Nelson’s insistence on using Jotha
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/593
As popular television and film insists on reminding us, Jesuits were infamous in the early-modern period for plotting the deaths of monarchs. Shekhar Kapur’s portrayal of Edmund Campion in Elizabeth (1998), cloaked and dagger in hand, is a case in point. Eric Nelson’s book The Jesuits and the Monarchy will do much to dispel this misconception, and much more. Nowhere, outside the British Isles, were the Jesuits more reviled than in France: they were an integral part of the Catholic black legend until at least the separation of Church and State just over a century ago. This tradition was invented during the French Wars of Religion, not by Protestants, as we might have expected, but by the Gallican clergy and magistracy who were otherwise staunchly orthodox in their beliefs. In spite (or because) of this opposition from the French-Catholic establishment, the fortunes of the French Jesuits were thrown in with those of the first Bourbon monarch, Henri IV, however unlikely this may seem.
Eric Nelson admirably demonstrates that, with the inventiveness and adaptability that characterized his reign, Henri IV sided with the Jesuits when they were at their most controversial and won their trust. The Jesuits in return proved to be bulwarks of royal authority throughout the seventeenth century and contributed to the emergence of absolutism. This is a historiographical tour de force as, until recently, discussions of the French Jesuits focused almost exclusively on the issues of papal authority in France and the controversy surrounding their expulsion and subsequent reinstatement with little understanding of the Gallican context. In this sense The Jesuits and the Monarchy is in good company with a number of other groundbreaking works that have sought in the past ten years to refine our understanding of French Catholicism. I must acknowledge here the contribution that was made by Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (Paris, 1997) and Thierry Wanegffelen, Ni Rome Ni Genève (Paris, 1997), in works that, sadly, remain untranslated, and, more recently and in English, Jotham Parsons, The Church in the Republic (Washington, 2004). These works have done justice, in different ways, to the ambiguity and complexity of the French Catholic Church’s involvement in the Reformations and Wars of Religion.
As in so many other respects, the idiosyncratic French response to the Reformations, both Catholic and Protestant, conditioned the establishment, expulsion, and reinstatement of the Jesuits in France in ways that have largely been ignored until now. With painstaking analysis of archival and printed sources, Nelson has reconstructed the Jesuits’ legal battles with the parlement of Paris, fought in the last decade of the sixteenth and the first two decades of the seventeenth centuries. There were a number of reasons why the presence of the Society of Jesus in France was problematic, too numerous to be gone into here, but they largely congregate around the contested issue of papal supremacy in France. Indeed, the liberties of the Gallican Church, as this nebulous body of medieval legal precedents was called, denied some of the pope’s privileges that had been uncontested in other parts of pre-Reformation Europe. Thanks to Francis I’s victories in Italy against the Emperor at the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of these liberties were reclaimed by the king as part of a settlement with the pope known as the Concordat of Bologna (1516). The Church in France, imprecisely referred to as the Gallican Church, was thus already in much turmoil before the advent of the Reformation, torn as it was between the rival (but sometimes joined-up) claims of royal and papal supremacy. It is in the context of Gallican law that the controversy surrounding the Jesuits’ oath of allegiance to the pope must be understood, and it was on this ground that the Paris parlement fought to keep them out of the kingdom.
Eric Nelson’s book opens at the end of the French Wars of Religion, at a time when a great many of these legal battles, although already fought and won by the Jesuits, were becoming controversial once more as the prospects of religious peace loomed ever larger. It could be argued that the presence of the Jesuits had been tolerated by the Gallican authorities as the two formed a marriage of convenience for the purpose of fighting heresy. After the Catholic League had overtaken the Protestant heresy as a ‘clear and present danger’ to political and religious stability in France, however, Gallican clergy and magistracy returned to their pet hate and blamed the Jesuits for all the excesses of the League. By blaming the Jesuits as an external influence for the demise of concord in France, the Gallican lawyers played the royal card of reconciliation between Protestant and Catholic former enemies as bon français. Indeed, as Nelson has shown in his contribution to Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe, ed. Naphy and Parish (Manchester, 2003), the Jesuits came to be portrayed as foreign agents of papal and Spanish interests which made them a convenient ‘other’ against whom Protestant and Catholic Frenchmen could make common cause.
This solved a particularly difficult conundrum for the politiques: how to gain the trust of the king’s Catholic subjects without antagonizing former allies? Henri’s conversion and reconciliation with the pope was crucial if he was to pacify former Leaguers who had made it clear that they would not disband unless Henri converted. But although they agreed that Henri should convert, the politiques did not want him to become a puppet of the pope. The Gallican magistracy therefore singled out the Jesuits as champions of ultramontanism, the expulsion of whom would mollify the moderates. This placed Henri IV in a very awkward position vis-à-vis the pope at a time when he was still trying to have an excommunication lifted. Eric Nelson sheds light on this problematic issue in the context of an attempt on the king’s life in 1594. Until that point, Henri IV had succeeded in preventing the expulsion of the Jesuits, but this time the Gallican lawyers were able to point the finger at them using circumstantial evidence: namely that the assassination of Henri III in 1589 could be blamed on their advocacy of regicide. For the first time the Jesuits’ reputation as dispatchers of crowned heads was brought to bear to effect their expulsion from the kingdom.
The second chapter of The Jesuits and the Monarchy deals with the recall of the Jesuits at the king’s own request in 1603, and contains, in my view, the monograph’s most original contribution to scholarship. As Nelson articulates very lucidly, the king’s involvement in this particular episode of the Jesuits’ fortunes in France had repercussions for the entire seventeenth century and the style of government that his successors would adopt with the support of the Jesuits as newfound allies. As Henri IV had occasion to discover, the Gallican lawyers, although staunch defenders of royal supremacy, could be just as troublesome as his Leaguer enemies or former Huguenot allies. Nelson demonstrates admirably how Henri IV used the Jesuits as pawns to placate the pope, along with his most vocal Catholic subjects, while chastising his critics within the parlement of Paris. It is ironic that this effectively turns on its head the Protestant myth of Jesuit generals using Catholic monarchs as puppets.
Because of their oath of allegiance to the pope the Jesuits were free from entanglement in Gallican politics, and this made them ideal candidates to help in the pursuit of an idiosyncratic royal campaign of Catholic reform. Henri IV articulated the justification of his recall of the Jesuits using the same principle that had allowed him to reconcile himself with Leaguer enemies and former Huguenot allies: clemency. Recourse to this concept created a precedent on which successive Bourbon monarchs could fall back when legal or theological justifications failed them. The royal goodwill was inscrutable, unjustifiable, and yet at the heart of Henri’s style of government. Here I have to point out the success with which the first Bourbon king propagandized his self-image as the ‘good king Henri IV’, which was still echoing in French classrooms in this reviewer’s lifetime. But this strategy was far cleverer than posterity has let on, as it made the Jesuits indebted to the king and made them dependent on his protection which could be mitigated by no text of law or recourse to theological argument.
In return, French Jesuits moved further away from their counterparts outside France in accommodating their rule to the specific demands of Gallican law. For instance, Jesuits emphasized their credentials as ‘good Frenchmen’ to distance themselves from the accusations of colluding with Spain or Rome that had flourished during the League. This might infringe on the principle of strict obedience to the pope, sometimes without the knowledge of their Father General, provoking the anger and outrage of the papal nuncio. In this respect, Nelson shows us, the Jesuits were no different from other religious orders that had accommodated their rule to the specific demands of Gallicanism in the course of the medieval and early-modern periods. The example of the Franciscan order can be evoked here, as shown in a recent monograph by Megan Armstrong: The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers during the Wars of Religion, 1560–1600 (Rochester, 2004). Here is another particular strongpoint of Nelson’s monograph: in no way were the Jesuits unique with respect to their response to Gallicanism. Aside from their black legend, gleefully replicated in later centuries by polemicists and historians alike, Jesuits were like any other order that had accommodated its rule to the strictures imposed by Gallicanism. What is different here is what the king, Henri IV, made of these difficulties and how he used them to his advantage.
It is no coincidence that Jesuits became the favourite confessors of the Bourbons and that Henri IV endowed the order with land and money for the building of a flagship Jesuit College at La Flèche in 1603. The subject of the third chapter is the expansion of the Society of Jesus under the auspices of the new alliance struck between Henri and the Jesuits. The terms of this alliance were couched in a legal document known as the Edict of Rouen (1603), drafted for the purpose of placating the objections of the Gallican lawyers in the parlement of Paris. This document required a measure of compliance with Gallican principles which directly contradicted the Jesuits’ first rule of direct obedience to the pope. Moreover, it was reminiscent of the strictures that had been placed on foreign regular clergy by Philip the Fair with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438 at the inception of the ‘liberties of the Gallican Church’. It also limited the foundation of further Jesuit colleges, seen as unfair competition by the Gallican clergy, except at the direct behest of the king himself, exemplified by the spectacular foundation of the Collège de La Flèche. This strengthened the king’s hold on the Society, as it placed it beyond the reach of both the Gallican magistracy and clergy, but firmly at the mercy of the king’s pleasure or displeasure. Not unlike the Edict of Nantes, the Edict of Rouen was a carefully worded piece of legal finessing that at once placated Gallican criticism within the parlement and the Sorbonne while clearly placing the Jesuits in the king’s debt.
The Jesuits were instrumental in a deliberate royal policy of Catholic reform and education of the French nobility’s sons which bore its fruits during the reigns of both Louis XIII and XIV. This is Nelson’s most provocative and valuable contention: the crown’s alliance with the Jesuits in the face of Gallicanism coincided with the Bourbons’ move towards absolutism. Gallicanism, with its reliance on medieval precedents and theoretical independence from Rome, no longer squared with the political needs of post-civil-war France and had become a thorn in the side of the crown. Thanks to the caveat that the king had skilfully inserted in the Edict of Rouen, Jesuit foundations flourished under the direct patronage of Henri IV. In the meantime, the suspicion of regicide and collusion with foreign powers that had characterized anti-Jesuit polemics leading up to their expulsion had declined. Although the Edict of Rouen limited membership of the Society of Jesus to Frenchmen, foreign Jesuits were reinstated in 1608 to remedy the shortage of vocations in the kingdom. When Henri IV was stabbed to death in 1610, the fortunes of the French Jesuits fell into the hands of the Gallicans who, under the regency of Marie de Médicis, were able to apply the letter rather than the spirit of the Edict of Rouen.
The fourth and penultimate chapter of The Jesuits and the Monarchy is devoted to the renewal of the Jesuits’s troubles after the regicide of Henri IV that the judges were keen to pin on them. The Gallican lawyers were no more successful in linking Ravaillac to the Jesuits than they had been with Chastel who had been the author of the previous attempt in 1594. The context, however, was different from that of 1594 when the parlement had nonetheless obtained the order’s expulsion: by 1610 the Jesuits had estranged themselves enough from contentious arguments to thwart Gallican efforts to expel them again. This did not deter Gallican jurists from renewing their polemical war against the Society, using against it the defences of papal supremacy and treatises advocating regicide that had been penned by foreign Jesuits. It led to further tinkering with the Jesuit rule to accommodate Gallican principles expressed in the Edict of Rouen. Interestingly, in this case the most vocal protestations did not emanate from the Jesuit Father General or the papal nuncio, but from members of the Gallican clergy itself. The bishop of Paris, for instance, protested at the parlement’s infringement on his jurisdiction over theological works published in Paris, albeit by foreign Jesuits. This highlights the relevance of much deeper divisions within the Gallican establishment that took precedence, Nelson argues, over the wider issue of the Jesuits’ presence in France.
It is necessary here to question Nelson’s insistence on using Jotha
Dec 13, 2018 21:11:32 #
TexaCan
Loc: Homeward Bound!
Doc110 wrote:
Balmer,
Spell check, your breaking up on coherent statement or were you mumbling again in the brain . . .
Spell check, your breaking up on coherent statement or were you mumbling again in the brain . . .
AND just how many times do you make mistakes? MANY! This is the second time that you have criticized Balmer while making a grammatical error YOURSELF! How hard is it to figure out the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE?
Oh well! What more can one expect from an obnoxious Entertainer?
Dec 13, 2018 21:17:22 #
Naturally I walk on water in the winter time . . .
TexaCan wrote:
AND just how many times do you make mistakes? MANY! This is the second time that you have criticized Balmer while making a grammatical error YOURSELF! How hard is it to figure out the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE?
Oh well! What more can one expect from an obnoxious Entertainer?
AND just how many times do you make mistakes? MANY! This is the second time that you have criticized Balmer while making a grammatical error YOURSELF! How hard is it to figure out the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE?
Oh well! What more can one expect from an obnoxious Entertainer?
Dec 13, 2018 21:52:04 #
TexaCan
Loc: Homeward Bound!
jack sequim wa wrote:
I posted two new threads that if any "truth&q... (show quote)
Thank you for continuing to unveil the true history of the Catholic Church! This further explains the anger and hate that we are witnessing in the desperation of some of the Catholics.
There seems to be ample evidence that The Vatican is planning a One World Religion and is well on it’s way!
As Gary Stearman of ProphecyWatchers says, “Keep looking Up!”
Maranatha
Dec 13, 2018 21:57:10 #
TexaCan
Loc: Homeward Bound!
[quote=Doc110]Naturally I walk on water in the winter time . . .[/quote
Careful Doc, All that hot air may melt that thin ice!
Careful Doc, All that hot air may melt that thin ice!
Dec 13, 2018 22:01:15 #
Jack just provided Hog-Wallop compost . . .
No Website or Url link to a reputable website that gives truthful answers.
Jack just trolls around seedy disrespect-able anti-Catholic web sites and cut's and paste protestant fundamentalist hog-wallop compost
And then you believe that this is respectable factual information, Texacan.
Yes you too, haas have the latest and greatest hog-wallop compost for, $9.99 it doesn't stink to high heaven . . . . Its clean as snow driven water . . .
And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you . . .
You two are as Protestant gullible snake-oil salesman.
What a joke . . .
No Website or Url link to a reputable website that gives truthful answers.
Jack just trolls around seedy disrespect-able anti-Catholic web sites and cut's and paste protestant fundamentalist hog-wallop compost
And then you believe that this is respectable factual information, Texacan.
Yes you too, haas have the latest and greatest hog-wallop compost for, $9.99 it doesn't stink to high heaven . . . . Its clean as snow driven water . . .
And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you . . .
You two are as Protestant gullible snake-oil salesman.
What a joke . . .
TexaCan wrote:
Thank you for continuing to unveil the true history of the Catholic Church! This further explains the anger and hate that we are witnessing in the desperation of some of the Catholics.
There seems to be ample evidence that The Vatican is planning a One World Religion and is well on it’s way!
As Gary Stearman of ProphecyWatchers says, “Keep looking Up!”
Maranatha
Thank you for continuing to unveil the true history of the Catholic Church! This further explains the anger and hate that we are witnessing in the desperation of some of the Catholics.
There seems to be ample evidence that The Vatican is planning a One World Religion and is well on it’s way!
As Gary Stearman of ProphecyWatchers says, “Keep looking Up!”
Maranatha
Dec 13, 2018 22:14:44 #
TexaCan,
A conspiracy theorist on the OPP religious forum. And a baptist Vatican conspiracy theorist, shocking I say . . .
Please don't make me laugh, and your paranoid to boot.
Watch out for those dangerous catholics.
There are almost 1.2 billion Catholic world-wide, 70 million in the US.
In the past 1,000 years because of the dark and Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was a Country, and a military power, It didn't intend to be that way, but it happened.
Gradually the Vatican went back to spirituality and religious and church affairs, But it is defiantly into the affaires of social human affairs all over the world.
How many baptist are their out their 16 million ? World-wide 40 million members ?
It's still winter here, no cracks in the Ice till spring . . .
[quote=TexaCan][quote=Doc110]
Naturally I walk on water in the winter time . . .[/quote
Careful Doc, All that hot air may melt that thin ice![/quote]
A conspiracy theorist on the OPP religious forum. And a baptist Vatican conspiracy theorist, shocking I say . . .
Please don't make me laugh, and your paranoid to boot.
Watch out for those dangerous catholics.
There are almost 1.2 billion Catholic world-wide, 70 million in the US.
In the past 1,000 years because of the dark and Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was a Country, and a military power, It didn't intend to be that way, but it happened.
Gradually the Vatican went back to spirituality and religious and church affairs, But it is defiantly into the affaires of social human affairs all over the world.
How many baptist are their out their 16 million ? World-wide 40 million members ?
It's still winter here, no cracks in the Ice till spring . . .
[quote=TexaCan][quote=Doc110]
Naturally I walk on water in the winter time . . .[/quote
Careful Doc, All that hot air may melt that thin ice![/quote]
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