Dealings with his Chief Lieutenants—­Propaganda—­The Virtue of Obedience—­The Exercitia Spiritualia—­Materialistic Imagination—­Intensity and Superficiality of Religious Training—­The Status of the Novice—­Temporal Coadjutors—­Scholastics—­Professed of the Three Vows—­Professed of the Four Vows—­The General—­Control exercised over him by his Assistants—­His relation to the General Congregation—­Espionage a part of the Jesuit System—­Advantageous Position of a Contented Jesuit—­The Vow of Poverty—­Houses of the Professed and Colleges—­The Constitutions and Declarations—­Problem of the Monita Secreta—­Reciprocal Relations of Rome and the Company—­Characteristics of Jesuit Education—­Direction of Consciences—­Moral Laxity—­Sarpi’s Critique—­Casuistry—­Interference in affairs of State—­Instigation to Regicide and Political Conspiracy—­Theories of Church Supremacy—­Insurgence of the European Nations against the Company.

We have seen in the preceding chapters how Spain became dominant in Italy, superseding the rivalry of confederate states by the monotony of servitude, and lending its weight to Papal Rome.  The internal changes effected in the Church by the Tridentine Council, and the external power conferred on it, were due in no small measure to Spanish influence or sanction.  A Spanish institution, the Inquisition, modified to suit Italian requirements, lent revived Catholicism weapons of repression and attack.  We have now to learn by what means a partial vigor was communicated to the failing body of Catholic beliefs, how the Tridentine creed was propagated, the spiritual realm of the Roman Pontiff policed, and his secular authority augmented.  A Spanish Order rose at the right moment to supply that intellectual and moral element of vitality without which the Catholic Revival might have remained as inert as a stillborn child.  The devotion of the Jesuits to the Papacy, was in reality the masterful Spanish spirit of that epoch, masking its world-grasping ambition under the guise of obedience to Rome.  This does not mean that the founders and first organizers of the Company of Jesus consciously pursued one object while they pretended to have another in view.  The impulse which moved Loyola was spontaneous and romantic.  The world has seen few examples of disinterested self-devotion equal to that of Xavier.  Yet the fact remains that Jesuitry, taking its germ and root in the Spanish character, persisting as an organism within the Church, but separate from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, devised the doctrine of Papal absolutism, and became the prime agent of that Catholic policy in Europe which passed for Papal during the Counter-Reformation.  The indissoluble connection between Rome, Spain, and the Jesuits, was apparent to all unprejudiced observers.  For this triad of reactionary and belligerent forces Sarpi invented the name of the Diacatholicon, alluding, under the metaphor of a drug, to the virus which was being instilled in his days into all the States of Europe.[157]