KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 



LOYOLA AND THE EARLY JESUITS. 



BY R. P. LORING, M. D. 



The 15th Century was the turning point in the history of the Romish church. 

 The warmth and Hght of reviving learning had commenced to penetrate and dis- 

 pel the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition which had hung over Europe 

 for nearly a thousand years. Already Wycliffe in England, and Huss and Jerome 

 in Bohemia, had been awakening slumbering Europe with their demands for free 

 thought and liberty of conscience, and the printing press — that great enemy of 

 Rome — had commenced its work. A few thoughtful men were beginning to see 

 through the veneering which had so long covered the enormities of Popery, and 

 a moral and intellectual opposition to its long imposed yoke was quietly generat- 

 ing, until, later, Tetzel — the friar — with his indulgences, caused the indignation 

 of Luther to culminate in open insurrection. Papal bulls of excommunication 

 and the inquisition were of no avail. The Gordian knot had been severed, and 

 Rome felt that the bonds with which she had so long fettered civilization, were 

 being loosened. What a struggle was this. The human heart and intellect were 

 trying to free themselves from the despotic form and precedent of a thousand 

 years. 



This was the condition of Europe when Loyola came to the front and infus- 

 ed that element which has modernized and saved the church of Rome, up to the 

 present time. Jesuitism was evolved from the brain of Loyola, and in order 

 that its characteristics may be comprehended, it will be necessary to review some 

 of the events in the life of its illustrous founder. Loyola was of noble family, and 

 had been educated at the Spanish Court in all subjects necessary to the training 

 of a knight. Even while a young man, he had gained a reputation for bravery 

 and high military ability. All biographers speak of his ardent nature as being 

 filled, at this time, with those romantic sentiments of knight-errantry which still 

 lingered in Spain, until a little later, " Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away." 

 While defending a garrison against an invasion of the French, in the year 1521, 

 he was severely wounded and taken prisoner. Seven months of confinement 

 and suffering followed, during which time he read the lives and adventures of 

 many Christian saints and martyrs. One can easily understand how the enthus- 

 iastic and intensified imagination of the sick soldier could have been excited by 

 these narratives; how the heroic in his own nature sympathized with the suffer - 

 ings of these holy men, and how he realized the contrast between their lives and 

 and his own. He was filled with a burning desire to emulate their example, and 



