Other differences between the monastic communities and the Jesuits are to be observed.  The Jesuit discards the monastic gown, and is decidedly averse to the old monastic asceticism, with its rigorous and painful treatment of the body.  While the older religious societies were essentially democratic in spirit and government, the monks sharing in the control of the monastic property and participating in the election of superiors, the Jesuitical system is intensely monarchical, a despotism pure and simple.  In the older orders, the welfare of the individual was jealously guarded and his sanctification was sought.  Among the Jesuits the individual is nothing, the corporate body everything.  Admission to the monastic orders was encouraged and easily obtained.  The novitiate of the Jesuits is long and difficult.  Access to the highest grades of the order is granted only to those who have served the society many weary years.

[Illustration:  IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA

AFTER GREATBACH’S ENGRAVING FROM THE WIERZ PRINT

BENTON:  ALBERT BRANDT, PUBLISHER, 1900]

But in spite of such variations from the old monastic type, the Society of Jesus would doubtless never have appeared, had not the way for its existence been paved by previous monastic societies.  Its aims and its methods were the natural sequence of monastic history.  They were merely a development of past experiences, for the objects of the society were practically the objects of the Mendicants; the vows were the same with a change of emphasis.  The abandonment of austerities as a means of salvation or spiritual power was the natural fruit of past experiments that had proved the uselessness of asceticism merely for the sake of acquiring a spirit of self-denial.  The extirpation of heresy undertaken by Ignatius had already been attempted by the friars, while the education of the young had long been carried on with considerable success by the Benedictine and Dominican monks.  The spirit of its founder, however, gave the Society of Jesus a unique character, and monasticism now passed out from the cell forever.  The Jesuit may fairly be regarded as a monk, unlike any of his predecessors but nevertheless the legitimate fruit of centuries of monastic experience.

Ignatius de Loyola, 1491-1556 A.D.

Inigo Lopez de Recalde, or Loyola, as he is commonly known, was born at Guipuzcoa, in Spain, in 1491.  He was educated as a page in the court of Ferdinand the Catholic.  He afterwards became a soldier and led a very wild life until his twenty-ninth year.  During the siege of Pamplona, in 1521, he was severely wounded, and while convalescing he was given lives of Christ and of the saints to read.  His perusal of these stories of spiritual combat inspired a determination to imitate the glorious achievements of the saints.  For a while the thirst for military renown and an attraction toward a lady of the court, restrained his spiritual impulses.  But overcoming these obstacles, he resolutely entered upon his new career.