JESUITS. 



229 



(1728). Mr Douce states that the costume of ihe 

 domestic fool, in the time of Shakspeare, was of two 

 sorts. The one was a motley or party-coloured coat, 

 attached to the body by a girdle, and often having bells 

 on the !-kirts and elbows. The breeches and hose were 

 in one, and sometimes the legs were of different colours. 

 A hood resembling a monk's cowl, covered the head 

 completely, and the breast and shoulders partly. It 

 sometimes bore ass's ears, sometimes the neck and head 

 of a cock, and sometimes only the comb of that bird 

 (whence coxcomb, as a term of contempt). The bawble 

 (marotte) was a short stick, terminated with a fool's 

 head, or with that of a doll or puppet. To this was fre- 

 quently appended a blown bladder, sometimes filled 

 with sand or peas, and employed as a weapon of spor- 

 tive offence ; sometimes a skin or bladder only, and 

 sometimes a club instead of a bawble, and, occasion- 

 ally, both together. The other dress, which seems to 

 have been most common in the time of Shakspeare, 

 was a long petticoat, of various colours, fringed with 

 yellow. There were, however, many variations from 

 this dress ; bells supplied the place of the cock'scomb; 

 the head was shaven like a monk's crown ; fox 

 tails or squirrel tails were fastened on the clothes, 

 &c. See Fools, Feast of. 



JESUITS, or SOCIETY OF JESUS; a religious 

 order, which rose in influence and power far above 

 all the other orders, though strictly prohibiting its 

 members to accept any office in the church, and 

 which, in the art of ruling, excelled the governments 

 of the world no less than its ecclesiastical rivals. 

 No other religious order affords a parallel to this ; 

 for, while those who give themselves only to devotion 

 and religious contemplation, present few distinguish- 

 ing traits, and, for the most part, differ from one 

 another only in their names, in the fashion and colour 

 of their dress, the greater or less strictness of their 

 rules, the number of their penances and devotional 

 exercises ; and while those of the more active class, 

 who operate abroad by their influence at courts and 

 in families, and by engaging in offices of instruction, 

 pastoral care, or charity, are almost universally but 

 monks, the society of Jesus early raised itself to a 

 degree of historical importance unparalleled in its 

 kind. But a small part of this greatness is to be 

 ascribed to their founder, Ignatius Loyola (q. v.), 

 who owes his fame more to the shrewd policy and 

 energy of his successors than to the merit of the 

 original scheme of the order. At the university of 

 Paris, Loyola entered into an agreement with some 

 of his fellow students to undertake the conversion of 

 unbelievers, and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Pierre 

 le Fevre (a Savoyard), Francis Xavier (a native of 

 Navarre), James Lainez and Nicholas Bobadilla (two 

 Spaniards of ardent and powerful minds), and Rodri- 

 guez, a Portuguese nobleman, were the first com- 

 panions of Loyola. A war with the Turks prevented 

 their journey to Jerusalem. They therefore went to 

 different universities in Upper Italy, to gain new 

 associates ; Loyola himself went with Le Fevre and 

 Lainez to Rome, where he accomplished, in 1539, 

 his plan of founding a new and peculiarly organized 

 order. He called it the society of Jesus, in conse- 

 quence of a vision, and bound the members, in addi- 

 tion to the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and 

 implicit obedience to their superiors, to a fourth, viz. 

 to go, unhesitatingly, and without recompense, 

 whithersoever the pope should send them, as mis- 

 sionaries for the conversion of infidels and heretics, 

 or for the service of the church in any other way, 

 and to devote all their powers and means to the 

 accomplishment of the work. The novices, besides 

 spiritual exercises, were to be proved by performing 

 tie most menial offices for the sick, Xavier having 

 given the example by sucking the loathsome sores of 



the sick in the hospitals. A special bull of Paul lit 

 in 1540, established this society, whose object ap- 

 peared so favourable to the interests of the pajral 

 power; and in the following year, the members, 

 assembled in Rome, chose their founder for their 

 first general. He showed himself, however, unequal 

 to the management of great affairs. As general, he 

 was ever pursuing secondary objects, while his 

 learned and more sagacious friends, especially 

 Lainez, who was his constant companion, contrived 

 to improve and carry out his rude plans for the 

 advancement of the society. The popes Paul III. 

 and Julius III., seeing what a support they would 

 have in the Jesuits against the reformation, which 

 was rapidly gaining ground, granted to them privi- 

 leges such as no body of men, in church or state, had 

 ever before obtained. They were permitted not only 

 to enjoy all the rights of the mendicant and secular 

 orders, and to be exempt from all episcopal and civil 

 jurisdiction and taxes, so that they acknowledged no 

 authority but that of the pope and the superiors of 

 their order, and were permitted to exercise every 

 priestly function, parochial rights notwithstanding, 

 among all classes of men, even during an interdict, 

 but also (what is not even permitted to the arch- 

 bishops unconditionally), they could absolve from all 

 sins and ecclesiastical penalties, change the objects 

 of the vows of the laity, acquire churches and estates 

 without further papal sanction, erect houses for the 

 order, and might, according to circumstances, dis- 

 pense themselves from the observance of canonical 

 hours of fasts and prohibition of meats, and even 

 from the use of the breviary. Besides this, their 

 general was invested with unlimited power over the 

 members; could send them on missions of every 

 kind, even amongst excommunicated heretics ; could 

 appoint them professors of theology at his discretion, 

 wherever he chose, and confer academical dignities, 

 which were to be reckoned equal to those given by 

 universities. These privileges, which secured to 

 the Jesuits a spiritual power almost equal to that of 

 the pope himself, together with a greater immunity, 

 in point of religious observance, than the laity pos- 

 sessed, were granted them to aid their missionary 

 labours, so that they might accommodate themselves 

 to any profession or mode of life, among heretics and 

 infidels, and be able, wherever they found admission, 

 to organize Catholic churches without a further 

 authority. But the latitude in which they under- 

 stood their rights and immunities gave occasion 

 to fear an unlimited extension and exercise of them, 

 dangerous to all existing authority, civil and eccle- 

 siastical, as the constitution of the order, and its 

 erection into an independent monarchy in the bosom 

 of other governments, assumed a more fixed character. 

 A general dispersion of the members throughout 

 society, with the most entire union and subordina- 

 tion, formed the bases of their constitution. The 

 society of Jesus was accordingly divided into several 

 ranks or classes. The novices, who were chosen 

 from the most talented and well educated youths 

 and men, without regard to birth and external cir- 

 cumstances, and were tried, for two years, in separate 

 novitiate-houses, in all imaginable exercises of self- 

 denial and obedience, to determine whether they 

 would be useful to the purposes of the order, were 

 not ranked among the actual members, the lowest of 

 whom are the secular coadjutors, who take no 

 monastic vows, and may therefore be dismissed. 

 They serve the order partly as subalterns, partly as 

 confederates, and may be regarded as the people ol 

 the Jesuit state. Distinguished laymen, public offi- 

 cers, and other influential personages (e. g. Louis 

 XIV. in his old age), were sometimes honoured with 

 admission into this class, to promote the interests of 



