Society of Jesus

SOCIETY OF JESUS. - Religious order of Regular Clerics, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola (v.) and approved by the Holy See in 1540. Its members are commonly called Jesuits. The first origins of the S. of J. go back to 1534, when St. Ignatius gathered in Paris a first group of carefully chosen companions, desirous of devoting themselves to the good of souls; and it took concrete form later in Rome in 1539. The fundamental points, collected in a brief Formula Instituti Societatis Iesu, were approved verbally, on 3 Sept. 1539, by Paul III, who the following year officially confirmed the new Institute with the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae of 27 Sept. 1540.

I. ORGANIZATION

1. The Institute

The body of legislative texts of the Society of Jesus, whether originating from St. Ignatius or of later date, constitutes the Institutum Societatis Iesu (collected editions: Antwerp 1635, 15 vols.; Prague 1705 and 1757, each in 2 vols.; Avignon 1827-93, 7 vols.; Rome-Florence 1869-91 and 1892-93, each in 3 vols.). Here are its essential parts:

1) the papal bulls of approval or of concession of privileges. - 2) The Constitutions of St. Ignatius, preceded by a General Examen for the use of candidates. Each of the ten parts of the Constitutions is accompanied by "declarations" (critical edition of the Constitutions in the Monumenta historica S. I., vols. 63-65, Rome 1934-38; extensive historical and ascetical commentary: J. M. Aicardo S.I., Commentario a las Constituciones de la Compañía de Jesús, 6 vols., Madrid 1919-32). - 3) The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius which, without being a legislative document, provide the animating spirit of the Society of Jesus (critical ed. in the Mon. hist. S. I., Madrid 1914). - 4) The Rules, among which one series, the Summary of the Constitutions, is an extract of the passages of greater ascetical importance from the Constitutions; the others, the Common Rules and the Rules of the Various Offices, break down the great ascetical principles into practical prescriptions. - 5) The Decrees and canons of the General Congregations; to these may be added the formulas or regulations for the celebration of the same General and Provincial Congregations. - 6) The Instructions and ordinances made or caused to be made by the father generals and especially multiplied by Fr. Acquaviva. Two were of exceptional importance, the Directory on the manner of giving the Spiritual Exercises (definitive ed., Florence 1599; critical ed. with the Exercises in the Mon. hist. S. I., Madrid 1914), and the Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum S. I. (definitive text Naples 1599; scholarly ed. by Fr. Pachtler in the Mon. Germaniae Paedagogica, V, Berlin 1887; Italian trans. by Fr. Barbera, Padua 1942; not included in the volumes of the Institutum), the Circular Letters of the father generals to the whole Order, are of a predominantly parenetic character. - For practical purposes, a compendium or Epitome Instituti Societatis Iesu was compiled (Rome 1689; reprints 1704, 1847, 1882). A total reworking of it was carried out (1924) after the publication of the new code of canon law.

The form of religious life that the Society of Jesus follows is that of the Regular Clerics, which arose precisely in the sixteenth century (with the Theatines, Somaschans, Barnabites, etc.) and which abandons many of the exterior observances of the ancient orders, emphasizing instead the apostolic practice of the priestly ministries.

2. The Purpose

The purpose of the Society of Jesus is twofold: to obtain the greater glory of God both through personal sanctification and through the salvation and perfection of one's neighbor. Here is how the official texts explain this apostolic end: the defense and propagation of the faith and the profit of souls in Christian life and doctrine, and this through preaching, spiritual exercises, catechisms, administration of the Sacraments and other priestly ministries, without excluding the other works of spiritual and even temporal mercy. The forms of apostolate are not rigidly limited, but adapt with great flexibility to the needs and possibilities of the age.

An innovation introduced by St. Ignatius was the length of formation and the proceeding by stages in aggregating new recruits to the Order, with the consequent distinction of categories or grades among the religious. After two years of novitiate with their "experiments," the three public simple and perpetual vows place the students in the category of approved scholastics, true religious ("professed" in the common terminology of law) bound toward the Order, which however does not yet bind itself unconditionally toward them. After studies of letters, philosophy and theology (commonly separated by some years of teaching), and a third year of probation (another Ignatian innovation), the final vows give the definitive grade: either the solemn profession of four vows (the fourth being of special obedience to the Supreme Pontiff), accompanied by five simple vows, or the grade of formed spiritual coadjutor with three ordinary public but simple (not solemn) vows; in current practice, the solemn profession of only the three substantial vows is an exceptional measure granted only in special cases. The Coadjutor Brothers (lay) likewise make two years of novitiate (after the canonical six months of postulancy), followed by the three simple and perpetual vows. After ten years, they make the final vows, which constitute them formed temporal coadjutors.

St. Ignatius willed for the Society a most strict poverty, which caused it to be recognized by St. Pius V as a Mendicant Order. Not only are individual members incapable, after the final vows, of possessing private goods, but not even the professed houses, the center and heart of the Society of Jesus, can possess fixed revenues. Houses of formation and colleges, on the contrary, should be endowed, in order to attain their end more freely. The professed houses were few in number and although their influence was notable in certain cities (Rome, Naples, Paris, Lisbon, etc.), it was nevertheless, historically, far inferior to that of the colleges.

As is well known, obedience occupies a privileged place in the spirit of the Society of Jesus and St. Ignatius is one of its classic theorists. Characteristic is the fourth vow of the professed, of special obedience to the Supreme Pontiff regarding his "missions," a vow that manifests without exhausting it the particular devotion of the Society of Jesus to the Apostolic See. The government of the order is monarchical (with a capitular element) and centralized. The Superior General is elected for life by the General Congregation (all the provincials, plus two deputies per province). The General Congregation, which alone enjoys full legislative authority (even the general is subject to it), is not periodic (another innovation that was opposed by members of ancient Orders, accustomed to periodic Chapters): save in cases of exceptional gravity, it meets only at the death of the general. The Assistants are elected by the Congregation to form the ordinary council of the general; they have the more special care of the affairs of an Assistancy or group of provinces forming a certain geographical unity. All other appointments depend directly or indirectly on the General.

St. Ignatius wished to preclude for his own access to prelatures and ecclesiastical dignities. The professed of solemn vows by force of a special vow, the others by virtue of their rules, can neither seek nor accept them, unless formally obliged by the supreme pontiff. The Society of Jesus has no Second order (it always rejected the claims of several female Congregations that wished to call themselves Jesuitesses and refused the ordinary care of the more recent Congregations, even if they have adopted a large part of the rules of St. Ignatius). It has no Third order either, and the affiliates of the Marian Congregations do not constitute one, which have been the most ordinary means of prolonging the apostolic action of the Society of Jesus among the laity.

II. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The history of the Society of Jesus is clearly divided into two great periods (1540-1773; 1814 to our own day), separated by the suppression of the Society by Clement XIV, and joined together by the survival of a small group of Jesuits in Russia.

1) The first century is marked by a prodigious expansion, by a generous zeal in every work of the apostolate, but already accompanied by strong opposition, not only in non-Catholic circles, but also in Catholic ones. Under the generalate of St. Ignatius (1541-50) the apostolic activity at first takes an itinerant form: the few religious, sought after here and there, especially by the bishops, hasten to whatever is most urgent: preaching, catechism classes, controversies, the work of ecclesiastical and religious reform. Two are sent by the pope to Ireland, others to Poland and Portugal, to the diets and religious conferences in Germany, and the best theologians to the Council of Trent. Then, with the influx of recruits and the founding of the first colleges (from 1548), the activity is organized in a more stable form, occupying key positions in order to bar the way to Protestantism. In fact their activity then presents itself as typical of the Catholic Reformation, in the full sense and positive sense of the word, and pedagogical activity is oriented in the same direction, not contemplated by St. Ignatius until after several years, but in which it now engages decisively. A place apart was held from the beginning by the Roman College (1551), a seminary and model for the others, and by the German College of Rome (1552), for the renewal of the clergy of Germany.

Meanwhile the C. of J. had vigorously engaged itself in another field: having set out in 1541 from Lisbon, St. Francis Xavier founded in India his first mission, pushed on as far as the Moluccas in 1546 and to Japan in 1549, dying however in 1552 without being able to disembark in China. In 1549 India gave the young Order its protomartyr, Antonio Criminali. Other missionaries were sent in 1547 to the Congo and in 1548 to Morocco; in 1549, Emanuele de Nobrega began in Brazil a mission, destined for great developments. At the end of his life, St. Ignatius agreed to send to Ethiopia another group of his men, with a patriarch or two bishops. Dying, the founder left a little more than 1000 religious, divided into twelve provinces, with almost a hundred houses, and a solid position principally in Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Under the two following generals, Giacomo Lainez (1558-1565) and St. Francis Borgia (1565-72), the Company established itself firmly in Germany and in France, taking an active part there in the struggle against Protestantism (Canisius, Possevino, Auger etc.). Borgia, the former viceroy of Catalonia, especially favored the organic development of the missions (Mexico, Peru...). In Rome he undertook the construction of the Church of the Gesù and saw the Marian Congregations arise. After the generalate of the Belgian Everard Mercurian (1573-80), which closes the predominantly Spanish period in the life of the Order, the long government of the Italian Claudio Acquaviva (1581-1615) truly marks a culminating moment in its history.

Elected at 37 years of age, the new general knew how to confront with admirable prudence and energy grave internal and external difficulties. He succeeded in maintaining unchanged the institute of St. Ignatius, both against the alterations threatened by Sixtus V, and against the intrigues of certain malcontents, who boasted powerful patrons, especially in Spain. Two Congregations specially convoked (1595 and 1608) justified Acquaviva and restored peace of mind. Meanwhile the C. of J., having become in France the target of repeated attacks, was arbitrarily proscribed there after the Châtel attempt (1594; it recovered its rights there in 1608). In Italy, obedience to the pontifical interdict caused it to be banished from the Republic of Venice (1606; it returned there only in 1656). In the theological field, grave controversies with the Dominican fathers, concerning the Concordia of Fr. L. Molina (1588), led to the famous disputes in the Congregations de Auxiliis divinae Gratiae (1598-1607).

At the same time Acquaviva knew how to avoid what could have been a dangerous crisis of growth. In fact, in 34 years, he saw his subjects pass from 5000 to 13,000, erected eleven new provinces and accepted more than 200 new colleges. The C. penetrated into China with Fr. Matteo Ricci, into the Philippines, into Indochina, into Constantinople, into Canada, into Paraguay, where in 1609 the first of the famous reductions was founded; in Japan the most glowing hopes seemed legitimate. In Europe, it secured with its colleges a position of prime importance in humanistic and ecclesiastical teaching, while it pushed its conquests toward the North, where the Protestant nations were flanked with the so-called "apostolic seminaries," through the work, among others, of Fr. Antonio Possevino. Inspiring and regulating this intense dynamism, Acquaviva ensured religious observance through the sending of visitors and important circular letters; very noteworthy is Acquaviva's constant concern to maintain the primitive spirit in full vitality.

The C. of J. was then gladdened by copious fruits of holiness (Peter Canisius, Aloysius Gonzaga, Robert Bellarmine, Peter Claver, Bernardino Realino etc.) and especially the grace of martyrdom was largely granted to it: in Japan the three Holy crucified of Nagasaki (1597) and several blesseds, in India a cousin of the general, the b. Rodolfo Acquaviva and companions, in France the bb. Martyrs of Aubenas (1593), in England the bb. Campion (1583), Southwell (1595) and companions, etc. Under the government of Acquaviva and in part through his efforts, the C. of J. built up its own ascetic and mystical literature, notable for the number of great treatises still classic, such as A. Rodriguez, Alvarez de Paz, Luigi de la Puente, Ant. Le Gaudier, Francesco Suárez, etc. With a parallel effort of great publications, the theological school of the Jesuits simultaneously took its place in post-Tridentine scholasticism; it suffices to mention the exegetes Franc. Toledo, Franc. Ribera, Ben. Pereira, Ben. Giustiniani, Giov. Villalpando, etc., the dogmatic theologians or controversialists Rob. Bellarmine, Franc. Suárez, Gabr. Vázquez, Greg. of Valencia, Didaco Ruiz de Montoya, Luigi Molina, Giac. Gretser and others.

2) With the almost equally long generalate of the Roman Muzio Vitelleschi (1615-45) begins a more tranquil period, which would last in substance throughout the second century. The strong impulse of growth is now exhausted: 50 years will be needed to gain 2000 subjects.

In France, however, the C. of J. participates in the euphoria of the "grand siècle." It counts there, after Pierre Coton (d. 1626), men such as Stef. Binet and Franc. Annat; apostles such as Julien Maunoir, Vinc. Huby and St. Franc. Régis (d. 1641); scholars such as Denis Petau, Giov. Sirmond and Fil. Labbe, who open the erudite tradition of the "Writers" of the college of Paris; spiritual men such as Louis Lallemant, Giov. Giuseppe Surin and their school; there takes place then the mystical and heroic epic of New France, with the eight martyrs of the years 1646-49, Giov. de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues and companions, canonized in 1930. But likewise in France grave controversies are kindled, especially with the appearance of Jansenism. Also in Belgium, the C. preserves the most flourishing state it had reached under the archdukes Albert and Isabella, and its expression can be found in the baroque splendor of the Imago primi saeculi (Antwerp 1640). It is likewise attested, on a far higher plane, by the beginning, in 1643, of the publication of the Acta SS. of the Bollandists.

Under the following generals, Vinc. Carafa (1646-49), Franc. Piccolomini (1649-51), Al. Gottifredi (1652), Goswin Nickel (1652-64), the alternation continues of the tranquil and fruitful work of the colleges, and of apostolic successes along with trials: in Poland on the part of the Cossacks (1648-54; in 1657 they martyr St. Andrew Bobola) and of the Swedes (1655-60), in Ireland under Cromwell (1650), in England under Charles II (1666). In 1656 there appeared in Spain against the Company the Theatrum asiaticum and the same year in France the much more dangerous "pamphlet de génie," the Lettres d'un Provincial of Blaise Pascal; the struggle henceforth will never cease against the "laxism" of the Jesuits.

A figure of great prominence, the Genoese G. Paolo Oliva had a generalate (1644-81) that was full and troubled. It abounds in strong personalities who have a place in the history of culture or politics: in France a Bourdaloue and a François de la Chaise; an Everard Nidhard in Austria and Spain; an Edward Petre in England; a Maur. Vota in Germany and Poland; in Portugal Ant. Vieira; in Italy P. Segneri, Dan. Bartoli, Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino; in the missions men like Ferd. Verbiest in China, St. John de Brito in India. But it encountered difficulties because of the attitude of some fathers toward the religious policy of their absolute sovereigns, especially in the France of Louis XIV, and because of the infiltration among the religious of an excessive nationalism, which spread also to the Eastern missions. In England, the complete fabrication of the apostate Titus Oates cost the lives of a group of Jesuits, with the provincial Thomas Whitebread (1679; eight of them were beatified in 1929). In Italy, the Jesuits were engaged in various controversies — Quietism, probabilism and casuistry — which led to the condemnation of several propositions upheld by some of their moralists (decrees of Alexander VII, 1665 and 1666, of Innocent XI, 1679). The question of the oath that missionaries in the Far East had to swear to the apostolic vicars sent by Propaganda also led to painful conflicts. Particular difficulties of this kind must not make one lose sight of the undiminished output of the whole: among other things, mention should be made of the flourishing development that the work of spiritual retreats took on in France and that of popular missions on the Segnerian model in Italy. In France, too, there begins at that time devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in its modern form, with the confidant of St. Margaret Mary, the blessed Claude La Colombière (d. 1682).

The twelfth general, the Belgian Charles de Noyelles (1682-86), was paralyzed by the contradictory demands with which the Franco-Spanish rivalry hemmed him in. Louis XIV demanded the transfer to the French assistance of the houses of the Society of Jesus located in the territories he had conquered. Under the following general, the Spaniard Tirso González (1687-1705), the conflict grew so bitter that the king recalled from Rome all the French Jesuits together with the assistant himself (1688) and forbade all correspondence with the general. Elected under the pressure of Innocent XI, but without the preparation that experience of lesser offices of government gives, Father Tirso González was to plunge the Society of Jesus into extremely painful situations. Already in Spain, Fathers Oliva and de Noyelles had refused him permission to print a book in which he attacked the doctrine — certainly not official, but common in the Society of Jesus — of probabilism; as general, he believed himself destined to uproot from his Order a doctrine that he considered pernicious. But when he wished to have printed in Germany a Tractatus succinctus of his on the subject, he entered into a long and open conflict with his assistants, and with others among the most prominent fathers, such as Paolo Segneri. After various vicissitudes Father González was finally able to publish in 1684 his Fundamentum theologiae moralis, and the XV General Congregation (1696-1697) restored peace to minds.

Once internal union was re-established, the Modenese Michelangelo Tamburini (1706-30) found himself facing other trials, such as the ruins accumulated in several provinces by the war of the Spanish Succession and by the wars in northern Europe, while in France the fathers were again at the center of the fray over Jansenism and the bull Unigenitus; but the most painful trials came from the missions, with the entry of the already centuries-old controversy over the Chinese and Malabar rites into its concluding phase: the legation to the East of the patriarch Maillard de Tournon, the condemnations issued by him at Pondichéry (1704) and Nanking (1705), confirmed at Rome by the bull Ex illa die of Clement XI in 1710 (and, after several other decrees, by the definitive condemnation of Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari, 1742). Placed in a very delicate position by the violent reaction of the emperor Kangxi, the Jesuit missionaries came out of it on the whole with honor, and the generals were able to justify them against the accusation of disobedience to Rome. However, the debate was distorted and thrown to the general public, with an impressive mass of polemical pamphlets; this impassioned campaign was not without consequences in the struggle for the suppression of the Order.

Indeed, with the following generals — the Bohemian François Retz (1730-50), the Milanese Ign. Visconti (1751-55), the Genoese Luigi Centurione (1755-57) and finally the Florentine Lorenzo Ricci (elected 1758) — it becomes ever more clearly felt that the struggle now closes in on the very existence of the Society of Jesus; against it now converge the attacks of the French and Italian Jansenists, of the Gallicans of the type of the French parliamentarians, of the statesmen of the new generation of enlightened despotism, of the Voltairian and encyclopedic philosophical currents, of all the tendencies that through them wish to destroy the influence of the Church of Rome.

The studies of recent years have clearly brought to light with what inaccuracy it has been sought to represent the Society of Jesus, in the twenty or thirty years before the suppression, as in true spiritual and cultural decadence. If some provinces maintained their numbers with difficulty, others abounded in subjects, and precisely in 1756 a new Assistance was created for Poland. The missions of the East visibly suffer from the recently ended controversies, but those of Spanish America were to be struck by the royal ban of 1767, while they were in their most flourishing development; not a few merits did many missionaries of the German Assistance have there, with characteristic cultural contributions. The intellectual life of the Jesuits certainly does not escape the general conditions of the environment, in this end of the ancien régime, which was not rich in strong theological speculation. But precisely then, both in the school and in literary activity, a lively interest is reawakened as much for the physical-natural sciences as for great historical research: it is the generation, to limit ourselves to a few names, of the Boscovich, Lor. Ximenes, Crist. Mayer, Mass. Hell, but also that of the Tiraboschi, Morcelli, Lanzi and Zaccaria, Hartshein and Hansiz, Hervás and Burriel, Berthier and the other editors of the Mémoires de Trévoux. In the footsteps of the latter, begun already in the early 1700s, other provinces, for example in Poland, now spread periodical publications. Ascetico-mystical literature became more timid after the Quietist crisis, but, alongside the traditional output, solid and abundant, destined by the Jesuits for the whole of the Christian people, writers brought back into vogue today (the Milley, the Caussade, etc.) go to prove that not even the mystical vein has ever dried up. Indeed, religious fervor, to which the development in the Society of Jesus of devotion to the Sacred Heart brings new incentives (with Fathers Croiset, de Hoyos, etc.), seems to have maintained itself at a very satisfactory level, where there is no lack, as in other times, of eminent holiness; proof of this, besides many individual cases, is the persistence of requests for the missions and austere ministries and the life of the great majority of the fathers after the suppression.

The final assault against the order began in Portugal. After a campaign of defamatory libels and the execution of the old Father Gabr. Malagrida, the minister Pombal had all the Jesuits of Portugal, Brazil and India arrested and deported to the Papal State (1759-61). In France, seizing the occasion of the unfortunate bankruptcy of Fr. Ant. Lavalette in Martinique, the parliaments condemned the constitutions and doctrines of the Jesuits and closed the colleges (1761-63), forcing Louis XV to dissolve the Order throughout all of France (1764). The resolute intervention of Clement XIII and of many bishops in favor of the persecuted came to nothing. The other Bourbon governments followed: Spain, where Charles III, for reasons "hidden in his royal breast," had all the Jesuits of the kingdom arrested on a single night (April 2-3, 1767) and deported to Italy, then Sicily (1768) and Parma (1768). In the colonies dependent on the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, the expulsion of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus (1760-69) took on the proportions of a catastrophe, from which the work of evangelization took half a century to recover.

It is well known how the Bourbon courts then joined together to obtain from Clement XIII, who resisted all pressures, and then from Clement XIV, the total destruction of the Order, and how the Pope finally yielded by suppressing the Society of Jesus with the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (July 31, 1773). If the Pontiff's intentions are well understood — sacrificing, as was his right, a body that had been too heavily assailed, in order to restore peace to the Church — it must be recognized that the preparation and execution of the measure were often of a pettiness and a brutality quite superfluous.

While the secularized ex-Jesuits devoted themselves to the ministries, wherever these were permitted them, or to a life of study (the imposing literary activity of the Spanish ex-Jesuits exiled in Italy is justly noted), and several gave their blood for the Church during the great Revolution, certain political circumstances, which the Jesuits have always regarded as providential, saved from destruction a small portion of the Society of Jesus in White Russia (at one time also in Prussia), where Catherine II prevented the canonical execution of the brief of suppression. The Order was slowly reconstituted there, reassembling former members and receiving novices, especially after Pius VII had officially recognized its existence (brief Catholicae fidei, 1801; the Jesuits of Russia had previously relied on oral approvals). The desire to see the fathers resume the place that had remained largely empty, especially in the field of education, made itself increasingly felt, and after several other partial concessions, Pius VII finally re-established the Society of Jesus throughout the whole world on Aug. 7, 1814 (bull Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum). Some old Fathers of great virtue, in the first place the Bl. Giuseppe Pignatelli in Italy and Fr. de Clorivière in France, were the precious links between the two phases of the Order.

The early times of the restored Order, under the generals Taddeo Brzozowski (1805, d. in Russia in 1820) and Luigi Fortis, of Verona (1820-29), resemble its beginnings in the sixteenth century fairly closely: it is likewise a "heroic period," rich in exceptional personalities in the field of action, but the scarcity of personnel for the needs of the times likewise makes it rush to meet the most urgent needs. There is in addition the problem of the fusion between the venerable survivors of the "old Society" and the new recruits, a moving zeal to gather up the old traditions and perhaps also, already from the beginning, a broader harvest of persecutions and expulsions. The part that fell to Acquaviva in the sixteenth century was carried out in the nineteenth by the general G. Philip Roothaan (1829-53), a Dutchman, by restoring the Ignatian institutions to full and normal functioning, in particular for the formation of religious. His very special merits were the renewed study of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the broad and vigorous revival of missionary activity, adapted to modern conditions.

Both he and his successor, the Belgian Peter Beckx (1853-87), saw persecutions repeatedly strike the greater part of the provinces. To give a brief summary of it for the whole century: the Jesuits were expelled in 1818 from Belgium (under the Dutch) and in 1820 from Russia; in 1828 they had their colleges closed in France, in 1834 and 1835 they were expelled from Portugal and from Spain, and in 1847 from Switzerland after the Sonderbund war; in 1848 they were dispersed or expelled in Italy, Austria and Galicia, and in 1850 in Colombia and Ecuador; in 1868 they were driven out again from Spain and in 1872 from Germany during the Kulturkampf; in 1873 they saw the confiscation of many houses in Italy, especially in Rome (the generals resided at Fiesole from 1873 to 1892); they were again dispersed in France in 1880 and 1901, expelled from Ecuador in 1879, from Portugal in 1910, dissolved in Spain in 1932-36. The persecution, for the most part legal, sometimes became bloody, in Spain (1822, 1836, 1932-35), in Paris (1871), in Mexico (Fr. Pro in 1927), not to speak here of the martyrs in the missions (in China in 1860, 1900-1902, in Syria 1859-60, in Madagascar 1885 and 1896).

With the modern generals — the Swiss Ant. M. Anderledy (1887-92), the Spaniard Luigi Martin (1892-1906), the German Fr. X. Wernz (1906-1914) and especially during the long and fruitful government of Fr. Wladimir Ledóchowski (1915-42) — the Society of Jesus has reached the development and complexity of works that it presents today and that far exceed what was its peak before the suppression.

It now numbers (1949) 29,973 religious (15,018 priests) divided into 8 assistancies and 55 independent provinces or vice-provinces. A sixth of them (4,650 religious of whom 2,859 are priests) are in the missions, which remain one of the principal activities of the Order. The most flourishing of these were, before the very recent events that threaten some of them, in the Near and Far East those of Syria and Japan, several in India and China, with large colleges and universities, those of Java and the Philippines, in Africa those of the Congo and Madagascar.

In the missions as in the provinces, the ministry of education has preserved a primary importance; to the colleges are added not a few flourishing universities, principally in the United States and in the missions. In several countries, a notable part of the educational effort goes to the formation of the clergy, not only in the missions, but in Rome (the Gregorian University with the Biblical and Oriental Institutes and several of the national "Colleges") and in the rest of Italy (regional seminaries), in Spain (Comillas), Austria (Innsbruck), in the two Americas. Added to the care of its own scholastics, this contributes to the abundance of literary production in the field of the sacred sciences. For half a century, the ministry of closed Spiritual Exercises has taken on a new and imposing development, now having more than 170 houses for retreats given for the most part to specialized categories; workers' retreats are only a part of the social apostolate, which now absorbs many young forces. The old work, so efficient in the old Society of Jesus, of the Marian Congregations, now presents itself as one of the forms of Catholic Action, particularly fruitful in Spain, Austria, the United States. Proper to the "new" Society of Jesus and one of its most characteristic contributions, the Apostleship of Prayer (founded at Vals in 1844) with the Eucharistic Crusade. Among the most modern means of apostolate, that of the press has at its disposal in the Society more than 1,100 periodicals, from the simple propaganda bulletin to the specialized reviews for the most varied branches of knowledge; to this is now added the radio apostolate.

The general Curia, where the Superior General resides (M.R.P. Gio. B. Janssens since Sept. 15, 1946), is located in Rome, Borgo S. Spirito, 5.

Edmondo Lamalle