VITELLESCHI, MUZIO. - Sixth general of the Society of Jesus, b. in Rome on 2 Dec. 1563, d. there on 9 Feb. 1645.
Having entered the Order (1583), overcoming the fierce opposition of his noble family by an appeal to Gregory XIII, he was an esteemed preacher, professor of philosophy and theology, provincial in Rome and Naples, assistant for Italy (1608) and finally, on 15 Nov. 1615, general.
His thirty years of governance, marked by a particular note of gentleness and fatherliness (Urban VIII used to call him an "angel of peace"), can be counted among the happiest and most flourishing for the Order, especially in the Latin nations, above all in France. The colleges grew in number and in students, which brought to maturity a choice band of theologians and philosophers (e.g., J. De Lugo, moralist and jurist, A. Tanner, polemicist, D. Pétau, master of positive theology) and even more of humanists, preachers and writers (e.g., F. Florencia, A. Vieira, J. Gretser, F. Strada, M. K. Sarkiewski, J. Balde and Cardinal Pietro Sforza Pallavicini). Parallel and consoling was the development of the missions; besides the fields of the Indies and of China, already stretching toward new conquests, other new ones opened up: Fr. A. de Andrade penetrated into Tibet, Fr. A. White into Maryland (United States) and others into Angola and Guinea; the Canadian missions among the Redskins were founded and also a college at Québec (1635) and the famous Reductions of Paraguay; penetration was made into the Levant, from Turkey to Chaldea, promoting returns to union with Rome or arousing and keeping alive the desire for it. There were not lacking, however, thorns as well, with the dispersions and ruins caused by the Thirty Years' War in Germany and Sweden, with the decline of the Japanese mission under the raging of a merciless persecution, the failure of the Ethiopian mission, the harsh difficulties arising from the anxious situation of the confessors, sometimes only in name, of kings and princes, especially in France and Bavaria; V. had to regret some imprudence or defection on the part of the father confessors, but much more had he to rejoice over the many evils kept away and the much good achieved, especially in opposing the anti-ecclesiastical desires of Cardinal Richelieu.
V. also had the joy of seeing the canonization of Ignatius and Francis Xavier (1622), the beatification of Stanislaus Kostka, Luigi Gonzaga and the three Japanese martyrs, Paolo Michi, Giov. di Goto and Giac. Kisai; the celebration of the 1st centenary of the Society, in which Urban VIII took part, attending with his Court the function at the Gesù and granting the Jesuits a jubilee of spiritual graces. This did not go unnoticed by the adversaries, to whom the commemorative work added fuel to the launching of accusations against the unbearable and vainglorious pride of the Jesuits: Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu (Antwerp 1640), which was instead the fruit more of understandable youthful enthusiasm, aggravated by the hyperbolic custom of the time, than of history and criticism. At his death V. left more than 16,000 Jesuits, distributed among 35 provinces, 3 vice-provinces, 521 colleges, 49 seminaries and more than 360 residences in Europe and in the missions.
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