Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy

Biographical Writing in the Early Global Age

Camilla Russell

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780674261129
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674270046
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

A new history illuminates the Society of Jesus in its first century from the perspective of those who knew it best: the early Jesuits themselves.

The Society of Jesus was established in 1540. In the century that followed, thousands sought to become Jesuits and pursue vocations in religious service, teaching, and missions. Drawing on scores of unpublished biographical documents housed at the Roman Jesuit Archive, Camilla Russell illuminates the lives of those who joined the Society, building together a religious and cultural presence that remains influential the world over.

Tracing Jesuit life from the Italian provinces to distant missions, Russell sheds new light on the impact and inner workings of the Society. The documentary record reveals a textual network among individual members, inspired by Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. The early Jesuits took stock of both quotidian and spiritual experiences in their own records, which reflect a community where the worldly and divine overlapped. Echoing the Society's foundational writings, members believed that each Jesuit's personal strengths and inclinations offered a unique contribution to the whole—an attitude that helps explain the Society's widespread appeal from its first days.

Focusing on the Jesuits' own words, Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy offers a new lens on the history of spirituality, identity, and global exchange in the Renaissance. What emerges is a kind of genetic code—a thread connecting the key Jesuit works to the first generations of Jesuits and the Society of Jesus as it exists today.

1 Vocation and Entry

For Jesuits, the phases of vocation and entry to religious life were located at crossroads, where individuals left one path, il secolo (the world), and entered another one as consecrated members of a religious institute. The documents that describe this phase open onto a rich world of people and physical environments, as well as recorded inner lives that are of particular interest to this study. They include especially the meeting of individual will, conscience, and agency with obedience, communal life, and conformity, and the constellations of people that made up these (mainly young) men’s lives on entry. These included relatives, Jesuit teachers, confessors, friends, mentors, and many others who appear in the documents as either having helped or hindered this momentous crossing point—and the first step to becoming a Jesuit.

Two main types of documents guide the analysis. The first are entrance records of the Roman novitiate (“Ingressus Novitiorum”) and the second relate to individual vocations, also generated for the Roman novitiate (“Vocationi”).¹ Together the extant documents about those who joined the Society in Rome during its first century constitute a unique set of records for the first phase in a Jesuit life. The most important novitiate, S. Andrea al Quirinale, attracted candidates from throughout the Italian lands and Europe, such as Spaniards, Portuguese, Flemish, French, German, English, and Scottish, although the majority were from Italy. For example, in the early years (1540–1565), out of 1,750 Jesuits in Italy, between just over one-half and two-thirds were from Italy. The largest number of those from outside Italy, 193, were from Spain; 162 were from France, 111 from Belgium, and 108 from Germany; almost 40 were from different parts of the British Isles; a few were from Czech lands, Hungary, and Greece, respectively; and, reflecting the extremely precocious impact of the overseas missions, one was from Japan (Bernardo of Kagoshima (d. 1557), who entered the Society in Portugal and came to Rome in 1554).² This cosmopolitan environment, together with the extensive available documentation from S. Andrea (unmatched with respect to other Jesuit provinces), provide the backdrop for this chapter.

The documents underpinning the analysis have received relatively little scholarly attention to date: the “Ingressus Novitiorum” are practically unknown, while the autobiographical narratives of the “Vocationi” are the subject of important analyses by Miriam Turrini. These studies have done much to explain the context for their production, the major themes they contain, and some key characteristics underpinning a Jesuit vocation from a number of measurable viewpoints.³

The subject of vocations more broadly, also treated by Turrini, has fared better in the historical scholarship of the Society: Adriano Prosperi produced a thematic study based mainly on retrospective vocation narratives written by individual Jesuits toward the end of their lives, in the genre of the spiritual memoir. Prior to these Italian studies, the work of Thomas V. Cohen remains a beacon for this subject, as does that of A. Lynn Martin and John O’Malley; the latter provided essential overviews of procedures in relation to individual Jesuit vocations, formation, and retention, while Aliocha Maldavsky applied the question of the religious vocation to the Jesuit overseas missions, specifically, the Peru province.⁴

Two key objectives underpin this chapter: the first is to shed light on the organizational structures that these sources touch on; the second is to interrogate the dynamics at play between the individual and collective worlds of these would-be Jesuits on the cusp of entry to religious life. The aim is to tease out how the applicant, through his vocation, became a hub among the many spokes in the turning wheel of the Society as he stepped away from the life that he knew before; for a short time, at least, he was the meeting point between the past, present, and future of the Jesuits. This special value given to the single individual—revealed in these documents through the Jesuits’ own written accounts of their life stories and life choices—provide important clues for this book’s aim to understand the appeal of this new Society.

Approaching a Jesuit Life

In Rome, in the early years after the Society’s foundation, the novitiate was not separate but was located in the professed house, and novices lived as part of the regular community there, alongside those who were already fully incorporated members. Gradually, however, Jesuit novices were being housed in buildings or quarters separate from those who had completed their training. This was already taking place in 1559. Nevertheless, in Rome, novices continued to live in the casa professa until 1564, after which they lived separately from professed members but still remained in the same building. The professed house then became the primary residence of Jesuits who had completed all training, while, numerically, colleges remained the place of residence for the largest number of Jesuits. Following the example of older religious orders, and as the Society continued to grow and become more settled, it was decided that a separate house would be provided for all novices in the Society. The first novitiate was established in 1550 in Messina. In Rome, the novitiate of S. Andrea, located on the Quirinal Hill, was established in September 1565, although novices continued to share the building with the professed members there.⁵

For most seeking entry to the Society, the novitiate did not constitute the first point of contact because more than 50 percent of novices were drawn from Jesuit schools. Nevertheless, these records represent the earliest moment in the initial phase of a long period of training and preparation to become a Jesuit, which lasted around ten years (and even longer for some, depending on the grade). Membership in the Society was conferred according to four possible grades, each with distinct formation and training. They were temporal coadjutors (the equivalent of lay brothers); spiritual coadjutors with two possibilities—a nonprofessed member of the Society (not an ordained priest) or ordained priests (professed with three vows); and the fourth grade of membership, which entailed the fullest possible integration into the Society as professed with four vows. The fourth vow included the promise to obey the pope “concerning missions” to go anywhere that was deemed necessary and it provided a core impetus for the Society’s works. This grade was reserved for Jesuits with the most learning and promise for governance, and the Society’s senior positions, such as provincials, were conferred only on them. Of 1,750 members in Italy between 1540 and 1565, 1,314 were priests and scholastics; the remaining number, a minority, were temporal coadjutors or unprofessed spiritual coadjutors.⁶

In general, the phases of training to become a Jesuit priest took the following path: the novitiate lasted for about two years, after which time he took simple vows and became an approved scholastic whose activities involved a period of studies and other tests. This was followed by his regency, when he taught in Jesuit schools and colleges. After his regency he commenced his theology training of about four years. Toward the end of this phase he was ordained to the priesthood, after which the ordained scholastic completed his fourth year of theology. Then he set aside his academic studies and other works to become a tertian in preparation for final vows. The whole process toward full incorporation into the Society took between ten and fifteen years to complete.⁷

The admission and vocation records for S. Andrea are the product of a series of stipulations contained in the Constitutions. Developed between 1547 and 1558 / 1559 (when they were published), and attributed to Ignatius of Loyola with substantial assistance from his secretary Juan Alfonso de Polanco, this document defined the government and outlook of the Society. It provided practical and conceptual elaborations of its briefer predecessor, the Formula of the Institute of the Society of Jesus (written for the 1540 papal ratification of the Society and revised in 1550).

The Constitutions provide guidelines for the Jesuit life path and selection to appointments, from entry to the highest positions in the Society. With the active apostolate in mind, they are structured on developmental principles, on the idea that the Jesuit would grow spiritually and that different tasks would become appropriate, according to the stage of the individual in the Society.⁸ They are also very complex, even unwieldy, and notoriously difficult to follow. They consist of not one but several separate documents, each with distinct parts—the Formula of the Institute, the General Examen (and their accompanying Declarations on the Examen), and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (with their Declarations on the Constitutions)—collectively named after the longest core part of the work, the Constitutions (here, where the cited text refers to the Formula or Examen, this is indicated). On the one hand, they are filled with minute detail about how things must be organized; on the other hand, they contain surprising latitude for applying their prescriptions flexibly, or not at all, depending on the circumstances. It is difficult to gauge how much they were apprehended and implemented, even by those in the Society whose task it was to do so. They were not so much slavishly followed—the document itself advises against this—as much as used to provide the outlines for how to be a Jesuit.

Conditions for entry were defined in the chapter “The candidates who should be admitted.” It stipulated that “the greater the number of natural and infused gifts someone has from God our Lord which are useful for what the Society aims at in his divine service, and the more experience the candidate has in the use of these gifts, the more suitable will he be for reception into the Society.” It then follows the attributes ideally sought for each grade—such as, for temporal coadjutors, to be “content with the lot of Martha,” the woman in the Gospel account who served Jesus and other guests in her home while her sister, Mary, chose to sit and learn. For all applicants, the following direction was given: “In regard to their exterior these candidates ought to have a good appearance, health, and age as well as the strength for the bodily tasks which occur in the Society.” It added that “to admit persons who are difficult or unserviceable to the congregation is not conducive to His [God’s] greater service and praise, even though their admission would be useful to themselves.”⁹

Those pertaining to grades other than that of temporal coadjutor, that is, those “who are admitted to serve in spiritual matters,” should “have sound doctrine, or ability to acquire it.” Indeed, theological training before or after entrance rose sharply and quickly in the Society, held by just over 50 percent between 1540 and 1556, then 70 percent in 1600, and over 90 percent between 1650 and 1750. The Constitutions advised that those destined for spiritual work in the Society should possess “a pleasing manner of speech, so necessary for communication with one’s fellowmen,” “a good appearance,” “health and strength,” plus a suitable age: “more than fourteen for admission to probation and more than twenty-five years for profession.”¹⁰

From the just over 1,700 members in Italy during the period from 1540 to 1565, Ladislaus Lukás ascertained the age groups of 748 Jesuits at the time of their entry to the Society. The most numerous were between the ages of sixteen and twenty (289, or 39 percent); the next most numerous were between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five (192, or 26 percent). The lowest number (10) joined between the ages of forty-one and fifty-three, while a considerable group (107, or 14 percent) entered before the suggested age of fourteen stipulated in the Constitutions (of these youths, 44 percent eventually left).¹¹

Social standing was also mentioned in the Constitutions: While “nobility, wealth, reputation, and the like, are not necessary when the others [attributes discussed above] are present … the more an applicant is distinguished by those qualifications the more suitable will he be … and the less he is distinguished by them, the less suitable.”¹² It is in these words that a complicated and ambiguous relationship comes into view between the Society of Jesus and the elites that it tended to attract, and in some senses sought, especially in light of the broad meaning of nobility—analyzed very effectively by Patrick Goujon. The ultimate aim was to do God’s work, with the ambition that the best possible talent be applied to that work; of secondary importance for Ignatius was the fact that much of that talent was identified among the elites, whether through birth or education, or both.¹³

On the social-cultural level, of course, the elite weighting of vocations to the Society was significant, while its very codes were written by several members of the nobility (and therefore in some sense also for the nobility). Because those codes were not only about prayer life and spirituality, but also concerned the specific mission of the Society to work in the world, they by necessity and perhaps more than those of equivalent religious orders dealt with the elevated social values and well-educated worldviews of the original companions. The Society of Jesus—apart from the ecclesiastical hierarchy around the papacy, the college of cardinals, bishoprics, and other such high Church offices—was more successful than most at harnessing worldly status and talent and using them in the world for its purposes of conversion. This is a key to understanding the Jesuits’ success, and ability to attract fellow elites and talented males to their mission: those from privileged backgrounds could see in the Society the opportunity to influence their world in a way that was already familiar; those without privilege who could show their ability had the chance to aspire to such influence. The appeal of such p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: A New Society and Its Jesuits, 1540–1640
• 1. Vocation and Entry
• 2. Candidates for Overseas Missions
• 3. Being a Jesuit in the “Indies”
• 4. On the Italian Home Front
• 5. Deaths and Departures
• Afterword: Writing Jesuit Lives
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index