What I am now going to say is not for the sake of causing you [Loyola] anxiety nor for complaining of my neighbor, but to satisfy our consciences, and in order that you may, by prayer or any other way that you see fit, apply the remedy in Bobadilla's case. It is perfectly true, as Magister Claude Jay and others say, that he serves the Lord in some ways and causes some souls to bear fruit, nevertheless there are so many things in the other balance that they should be looked to. These are, first: he puts his fingers into decisions as to where he shall be sent, as for instance not long ago he tried to be recalled from Germany, and now he does the same in order to come to Trent, according to what Cardinal Pole said to Magister Jay. And also in Germany he interfered in order to be sent from one place to another, as for example to stay at Cologne, and then to go to Passau. So, unless you take steps, it may well be that he will come here. Second: it is said that he talks a great deal too much, interrupts other people, and discourses at great length on the policies of princes and kingdoms, and gets into great disputes, and both gives offence and excites ridicule. At times, too, he quarrels; as he did once with the Papal Nuncios, and provoked them to speak sharply to him, and to say not very nice things of him behind his back. Third: in writing he oversteps all bounds, as in writing letters to royalties and cardinals without taking any advice, please God that he doesn't write foolishness. Among other letters he wrote one to Dr. Scott full of bad manners and insults. Luckily it fell into Magister Jay's hands and he did not deliver it. Again he oversteps bounds, in writing pamphlets and presenting them to princes, and one he had translated into German in order to give it to the Queen of Austria. He also made Canisio put another into proper style, wasting his time, and we are afraid that he will print it. And he proposes to expound one of his books in Ratisbon, and to invite princes, bishops, and ambassadors to hear him, and he speaks in his letters as if they came regularly to his lectures, whereas they could not have gone but once, for somebody wrote to Magister Jay, "Magister Bobadilla has begun to lecture on some book or other, but I do not think he will

have any audience." audience." Fourth: his behaviour is so free that he often plays chess with laymen, for instance with the Venetian ambassador. Besides some one here said to Magister Jay, that he once got heated in arguing and drank so much with some other men that he could hardly walk home; however, Magister Jay says he has never seen any such fault in him, but thinks that his gestures and gesticulations in argument make people think that he has drunk too much, although he has not.

When we read that his freedom of behaviour carried him to a game of chess, we may rest assured that his lively southern temperament and lack of tact and self-control,— grievous faults according to the stern discipline of the Society-were the worst that can be said of him. After Loyola's death, Bobadilla now and again became contentious, he criticised the constitution of the Society, and denied the validity of Lainez's election as Vicar. But, on the other hand, the generosity of his nature showed itself later, when, after Lainez had been elected general, the question arose whether it would be better to limit his term of office to a period of three years, as Pope Paul IV had wished, or to continue it for life as the Constitution provided. He wrote to Lainez as follows:

Very Reverend Father in Christ. Gratia et pax Christi Domini sit semper vobiscum. Amen. As to the office of General, my vote is that it shall always be for life, as the Constitution says; and may it be yours solidly enough to last for a hundred years, and if you should die but were immediately to rise again from the dead, I vote that you be confirmed in it until Judgment day, and I beseech you to accept it for the love of Jesus Christ.

That neither Bobadilla nor Rodriguez was a weakling is sufficiently proved by the fact that they were the first two brethren chosen to go upon the mission to India. Bobadilla was ill and could not go, and Rodriguez was detained in Portugal.

Ignatius also tried to attach to himself a young Spaniard, Jerome Nadal, who had been at the university at Alcalá while he was there. The attempt was unsuccessful and Nadal did not join till years later, but as the brief record in Nadal's autobiography sheds a little light on Loyola's method, I quote it:

He took me to the little old church that is near the gate of St. Jacques, and by the baptismal font read me a long letter that he had written to some nephew of his in Spain, of which the purport was to win him from the world to a life of perfection. The Devil perceived very well the efficacy of the letter and of its writer, and dragged me forcibly from the spiritual power that sought me. So, as we went out and were standing within the space in front of the church door, I said to Ignatius (I had the New Testament in my hands), "I propose to follow this book; I don't know in what direction you are headed; please do not do any more in this matter and don't concern yourself about me."

CHAPTER XIII

THE "SPIRITUAL EXERCISES"

It is now time to speak of Loyola's set of rules and counsels for religious practices, the Spiritual Exercises, for they were the chief means by which he imposed his vision and his will upon the young disciples. (This book is the fruit of his own needs and experiences; he entertained an unshakeable assurance that what had proved of great succour and consolation to him, a tonic and source of strength, would do as much for other sincere souls, and further, that there could be no better test of a man's fitness for a religious life than the manner in which he was affected by these exercises. He wrote the main part of the treatise at Manresa, in the first flood of religious emotion, but undoubtedly made additions and alterations at later times. The concluding chapter, which contains rules for rejecting private judgments and accepting the guidance of the Church, was evidently added later, probably at Alcalá, after his evangelical mission had attracted the notice of the Inquisition, or perhaps in Paris; and one particular clause "to attain the truth in all things, we ought always to hold that we believe what seems to us white to be black, if the Hierarchical Church so defines it" -belongs, I think, to the period of his residence in Rome, after the Society had been stationed in the van of the phalanx that upheld the doctrine of blind obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff. I do not for a moment suggest that Ignatius expressed in this last chapter more than he fully believed; I merely mean that he gave clear expression to his belief, when it became prudent perhaps advantageous, to do so.

It seems likely that at the monastery of Montserrat he had become acquainted with a book of spiritual guidance called

the Ejercitatorio Espiritual, written by a former abbot of the place, Francisco Garcia de Cisneros; and various unfriendly controversalists have seized upon this likelihood to deny originality to Loyola's book. It may well be that Ignatius got the idea of his book from this precedent, but if so, the starting point counted for little or nothing with him; he was completely absorbed by his own emotions, and swept along by a passionate desire to render the lessons of his experience valuable to others. As both books treat of the same general subject there is of necessity some slight resemblance between them, but the plans and the purposes are different, and the triumphant vindication of Loyola's originality lies in the fact that whereas only a few scholars know of Cisneros' book, the whole Roman Catholic world is as familiar with Loyola's Spiritual Exercises as Protestant England, for instance, is with Pilgrim's Progress. Loyola, also, no doubt derived some of his ideas from other sources, for he was neither so foolish nor so arrogant as to reject approved ideas that fitted in his schemes, merely because in some form or another they had been used before. In this case, as in others to which I shall refer hereafter, he took his raw materials as chance or Providence put them within reach, transformed them in the fiery furnace of his passionate purpose to serve God, perfectly oblivious of what he had taken. He would have been bewildered by any question of originality; how could that matter? He was not thinking of himself, or of his own reputation, but of the salvation of souls and the greater glory of God.

It is necessary, at the outset, to say, that the book is not meant to be put in the hands of a novice. It is a book of instruction for a spiritual director, and contains many suggestions as to the method of imparting the contents and imposing the discipline. An experienced director would supplement the text by oral explanations and amplifications. For this reason, in part at least, the book is stark and bare from beginning to end. All superfluity, emotional and intellectual, is stripped off, very much as nurses prepare the operating room of a hospital. The counsels are free from sentimental weakness; they may move the novice to re