Successive Generals in the Restored Society — Present Membership, Missions and Provinces.

As we have seen, the first General of the Society elected after the Restoration was Father Fortis, who died on January 27, 1829. On June 29 of that year Father John Roothaan was chosen as his successor on the fourth ballot. As in the previous election, Father Rozaven was the choice of many of the delegates.

John Philip Roothaan, the twenty-first General of the Society, was born at Amsterdam on November 23, 1785, and finished his classical studies in the Atheneum Illustre under the famous Jakob van Lennep. When he had made up his mind to enter the Society in White Russia in 1804, his distinguished teacher, though a Protestant, gave him the following letter of introduction: "I am fully aware of how in former times the Society distinguished itself in every branch of knowledge. Its splendid services in that respect can never be forgotten, and I am, therefore, especially pleased to recommend this young man whose merit I most highly appreciate. May he be enriched with all your science and your virtues, and I trust to see him again in possession of those treasures which he has gone so far to seek."

The praise was well merited, for, even at that early period of his life, Roothaan had mastered French, Polish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He studied philosophy at Polotsk, and in 1812 was ordained priest. After the expulsion he went to Switzerland in 1820, and taught rhetoric there for three years. As socius to the provincial, he made the tour of all the Jesuit houses in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland three times, and afterwards was appointed rector of the new college in Turin. As General, his chief care was to strengthen the internal life of the Society. His first eleven encyclicals have that object in view. His edition of the "Exercises" is a classic. In 1832 he published the "Revised Order of Studies," adapting the Ratio to the needs of the times; and he increased the activities of the Society in the mission fields. But his long term of office was one uninterrupted series of trials. His enforced visit to the greater number of the houses has already been told in a preceding chapter.

Among the many things for which the Society is profoundly grateful to Father Roothaan is the very remarkable publication of the "Exercises of St. Ignatius." According to Astrain, "the autograph was in rough and labored Castilian," for it must be remembered that the saintly author was a Basque. "The text," he tells us, "arrests the attention," not by its elegance but, "by the energetic precision and brevity with which certain thoughts are expressed. The autograph itself no longer exists. What goes by that name is only a quarto copy made by some secretary, but containing corrections in the author's handwriting. It has been reproduced by photography. Two Latin translations were made of it during the lifetime of St. Ignatius. There remain now, first the versio antiqua or ancient Latin translation, which is a literal version, probably by the saint himself; second, a free translation by Father Frusius, more elegant and more in accordance with the style of the period. It is commonly called the 'Vulgate.' The versio antiqua bears the date, Rome, July 9, 1541. The 'Vulgate' is later than 1541 but earlier than 1548, when the two versions were presented to Paul III for approval. He appointed three examiners, who warmly praised both versions, but the Vulgate was the only one printed. It was published in Rome on September 11, 1548, and was called the editio princeps.

"Besides these two translations, there are two others. One is the still unpublished text left by Blessed Peter Faber to the Carthusians of Cologne before 1546. It holds a middle place between the literal document and the Vulgate. The second was made by Father Roothaan, who, on account of the differences between the Vulgate and the Spanish autograph, wished to translate the Exercises into Latin as accurately as possible, at the same time making use of the versio antiqua. His intention was not to supplant the Vulgate, and on that account he published the work of Frusius and his own in parallel columns (1835)."

Father Roothaan was succeeded as General by Father Beckx, who was born in 1795 at Sichem, near Diest, the town that glories in being the birthplace of St. John Berchmans. He entered the Society at Hildesheim in 1819, after having been a secular priest for eight months. In 1825 he was appointed chaplain of the Duke of Anhalt-KÖthen, who had become a Catholic after visiting the home of one of his Catholic friends in France. Anhalt-KÖthen is in Prussian Saxony, and there were only twenty Catholics in the entire duchy when Beckx arrived there. Before four years had passed, the number had grown to two hundred. In 1830 he was sent to Vienna and for a time was the only Jesuit in that city. In 1852 he was made provincial of Austria and had the happiness of leading back his brethren to the beloved Innsbruck as well as to Lenz and Lemberg. In the following year he was elected General, and occupied the post for thirty-four years. He used to say that at the time he entered into office the province of Portugal consisted of one Jesuit and a half. The one was in hiding in Lisbon, and the "half" was a novice in Turin. Even now they number only three hundred. All the houses have been seized by the Republican government and the Fathers, scholastics and brothers expelled from their native land in the usual brutal fashion.

During Father Beckx's term of office eighty Jesuits were raised to the honors of the altar. All but three of them were martyrs. In spite of this the Society was expelled from Italy in 1860; from Spain in 1868; and from Germany in 1873, at which time the General and the assistants left Rome, where, after the Piedmontese occupation, it was no longer safe to live. They took up their abode at Fiesole and there the curia, as it is called, remained until after the death of Father Beckx's successor. In 1883 the age and infirmities of the General made the election of a vicar peremptory, and Father Anderledy was chosen. Father Beckx died at the age of ninety-two, and one who saw him in the closing years of his life thus writes of him: "This holy old man who has attained the age of nearly ninety years, so modest, so humble, so prudent, always the same; always amiable, with the glory of thirty years' government and of interior martyrdom inflicted upon him by the mishaps of the Society, was a spectacle to fill one with admiration. His angelic mien delighted me. With how great charity he received me in his room! With what deference! His poor cassock was patched. He is as punctual at the exercises as the most vigorous. In spite of his old age he observes all the laws of fasting and abstinence. At a quarter past five he commences his Mass and spends considerable time kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament. God grant us many imitators of his virtues."

Father Anderledy was a Swiss. He was born in the canton of Valais in 1819, and entered the Society at Brieg in 1838. He was sent to Rome for his theological studies and it is reported that he was such a pertinacious disputant that old Father Perrone said to him one day: "Young man, cease or I shall get angry." In the disturbances of 1847, he was on his way to Switzerland when he was halted by a squad of furious soldiers who asked him "Are you a Jesuit?" "What do you mean by a Jesuit?" he asked. When the conventional answer was given, he angrily demanded "Do you take me for a scoundrel?" and they let him pass. In 1848 he was sent to America and was ordained at St. Louis by Archbishop Kenrick and then put in charge of a German parish at Green Bay, Wisconsin, a place teeming with memories of the old Jesuit missionaries: Marquette, Allouez and others. On his return to Europe, he went through Germany preaching missions and winning a reputation as a great orator, although working in conjunction with the famous Father Roh. He was made rector of the College of Cologne and, subsequently, professor at the scholasticate of Maria-Laach. In 1870 he was called to Rome to be made German assistant, and in 1883 he was elected vicar to Father Beckx with the right of succession. He was particularly zealous as General in promoting the study of theology and philosophy, and in training men in the physical sciences. During his administration, the Society increased from 11,840 members to 13,275, but he was very much adverse to the establishment of new provinces. The creation of Canada as an independent mission was all he would grant in that direction. He died at Fiesole on 18 January, 1892.

Luis MartÍn GarcÍa, or, as he is commonly called, Father MartÍn, who succeeded Father Anderledy, was the fifth Spanish General of the Society. He was born on 19 August, 1846, at Melgar de Fermamental, a small town about twenty-five miles north-west of Burgos, and was already a seminarian in his second year of theology when he began to think of becoming a religious. To be a Jesuit, however, was at first as abhorrent to him as becoming a Saracen. But his ideas on that point began to clarify when he heard his very distinguished professor Don Manuel GonzÁlez PeÑa, who had been a theologian in the Vatican Council, discourse enthusiastically and on every occasion, about the glories of SuÁrez, Toletus, Petavius, Bellarmine and the other great lights of the Society. The impression was heightened by some letters from the Philippine Jesuits which had fallen into his hands, and CrÉtineau-Joly's history also contributed to his change of views. A conversation with the Jesuit superior of the residence at Burgos, and the departure of a brilliant fellow-student for the novitiate, completed the disillusionment and he was admitted at Loyola on 13 October, 1864.

In 1870, when the Society was expelled from Spain, he went with the other scholastics to Vals in France, and later to Poyanne. In the latter place he remained as minister and professor of dogmatic theology until 1880, and when the religious were expelled from France he returned to Spain and was made superior of the scholasticate which had been opened in Salamanca. He was charged also with the duty of teaching theology and Hebrew. In 1886 he opened the house of studies at Bilbao, and in the same year he was made provincial of Castile. Previous to that he had been the editor of "The Messenger of the Sacred Heart" for a year. In 1891 he was summoned to Rome by Father Anderledy, to analyze and summarize the reports sent in by all the provinces on the proposed quinquennium of theology and a new arrangement of studies. On the death of Father Anderledy he was made Vicar General. He was then only forty-five years of age. His appointment coincided with the outbreak of an epidemic of influenza of which he was very near being a victim. Singularly enough, it was this same disease that carried him off thirteen years later, supervening as it did on the terrible sarcoma from which he had long been suffering.

As Vicar he convoked the general congregation, assigning September 23 as the date and choosing Loyola in Spain as the place of meeting. It was the first time in the history of the Society that the convention took place outside of Rome, with the exception of the meetings in Russia during the Suppression. The reason for the decision was that the Pope let it be known that it would not be possible to remain in session in Rome for any considerable period, though he suggested that they might elect the General in Rome and then continue the congregation elsewhere. After long deliberation by the assistants, it was determined not to separate the election from the other proceedings. As for the place of meeting, Loyola was chosen, though Tronchiennes in Belgium had been offered. The choice of Spain was determined by the vote of the assistant who had no Spanish affiliations. Father MartÍn was elected general on 2 October, and the sessions continued until 5 December.

In this congregation, Father MartÍn called the attention of the delegates to the fact that no Jesuit had ever addressed himself to the task of writing the complete history of the Order; an abstention, it might be urged, which ought to acquit them of the accusation of unduly praising the Society. Father Aquaviva had indeed commissioned Orlandini to begin the work, but the distinguished writer not only got no further then the Generalate of St. Ignatius but did not even publish his book. Sacchini his continuator had to see to the publication; his own contributions appeared in 1615 and 1621. Jouvancy was then called to Rome to finish the second half of the fifth section which had by that time appeared, but he did not advance beyond the year 1616. He had bad luck with it even in that small space, for certain opinions appeared in it about the rights of sovereigns which were not acceptable to the Bourbon kings, and the book was forbidden in France by decrees of Parliament, dated 25 February and 25 March, 1715. Finally, Cordara, an Italian, assumed the task and wrote two volumes, which though exquisitely done embraced not more than seventeen years of Father Vitelleschi's generalate (1616-33), and only one volume was published then. More than one hundred years elapsed before the second appeared. It was edited by Raggazzini in 1859.

It was high time, Father MartÍn declared, that something should be done to remedy this condition of affairs and that a history of the Society should be written on a scale commensurate with the greatness of the subject, and in keeping with the methods which modern requirements look for in historical writing. As the undertaking in the way it was conceived would have been too much for any one man, a literary syndicate was established in which Father Hughes was assigned to write the history of the Society's work in English-speaking America, Father Astrain that of the Spanish assistancy, Father Venturi the Italian, Father Fouqueray the French, Father DÜhr and Father Kroess the German. This work is now in progress. Those who are engaged on it are men of unimpeachable integrity. Meantime an immense number of hitherto unpublished documents are being put in the hands of the writers. As many as fifty bulky volumes known as the "Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu," consisting of the chronicles of the houses and provinces, the intimate correspondence of many of the great men of the Society, such as Ignatius, LaÍnez, Borgia etc., have been printed, and sent broadcast through all the provinces. Nor is this mass of material jealously guarded by the Jesuits themselves. It is available to any sincere investigator.

As the Congregation had expressed the desire that the residence of the General and his assistants at Fiesole be closed, and that if the political troubles would permit it he should return to Rome, Father MartÍn, after consulting with the Pope, who granted the permission with some hesitation, established himself at the Collegium Germanicum on 20 January, 1895. The public excitement that was apprehended did not occur. The papers merely chronicled the fact but made no ado about it whatever. Father MartÍn had much to console him, during his administration, as, for instance, the beatification of several members of the Society, but he had also many sorrows such as the closing of all the houses in France by the Waldeck-Rousseau government and the deplorable defections of some Jesuits in connection with the Modernist movement.

In 1905 the first symptoms of the disease that was to carry him off in a short time declared themselves. In that year, four cancerous swellings developed in his right arm. He had submitted to the painful cutting of two of them without the aid of anesthetics. The operation lasted two hours and a half, and he maintained his consciousness throughout. A little later, the other swellings showed signs of gangrene and the amputation of the arm was decided upon, but in this instance he submitted to chloroform. He rallied after the operation and in spite of his crippled condition was permitted by the Pope to say Mass. His strength had left him, however, and on 15 February, 1906 he was attacked by influenza and he died on 18 April at the age of sixty. At his death the Society numbered 15,515 members.

Father MartÍn's successor was Francis Xavier Wernz who was born in WÜrtemberg in 1842. When the Society was expelled from Germany in 1872, he went to Ditton Hall in England to complete his studies, after having spent the greater part of a year in the army ambulance-corps, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. He taught canon law for several years at Ditton Hall, and in 1882 was a professor at St. Beuno's in Wales. From there he was transferred to the Gregorian University in Rome, where he lectured from 1883 to 1906. In September of the latter year, he was elected General, in which post he lived only eight years. Previous to his election, he had issued four volumes of his great work on canon law. Two others were published later, one of them after his death. The end of his labors came on 19 August, 1914. He was then in his seventy-second year and had passed fifty-seven years in the Society. It was during this generalate that the provinces of Canada, New Orleans, Mexico, California and Hungary were erected.

Father Wladimir LedÓchowski was elected to the vacant post on 11 February, 1915. He was then only forty-nine years of age. He entered the Society in 1889, and in 1902, shortly after his ordination, was made provincial of Galicia, while in 1906 he was elected as assistant to Father Wernz. He is the nephew of the famous Cardinal LedÓchowski, whom Bismarck imprisoned for his courageous championship of the rights of Poland.

The new Society like the old has not failed to produce saints and at the present moment the lives of a very considerable number of those who have lived and labored in the century that has elapsed since the restoration are being considered by the Church as possible candidates for canonization.

The number of Jesuits who were under the colors as soldiers, chaplains or stretcher bearers or volunteers in the World War of 1914-1918 ran up to 2014, — a very great drain on the Society as a whole, which in 1918 had only 17,205 names on its rolls, among whom were very many incapacitated either by age or youth or ailment for any active work. Of the 2014 Belgium furnished 165, Austria 82, France 855, Germany 376, Italy 369, England 83, Ireland 30, Canada 4 and the United States 50. Of the 83 English Jesuits serving as chaplains, 5 died while in the service, 2 won the Distinguished Service Order, 13 the Military Cross, 3 the Order of the British Empire, 21 were mentioned in despatches, 2 were mentioned for valuable services and 4 received foreign decorations, — a total of 45 distinctions.

France calls for special notice in this matter. From the four French provinces of the Society 855 Jesuits were mobilized. Of these 107 were officers, 3 commandants, 1 lieutenant-commander, 13 captains, 4 naval lieutenants, 22 lieutenants, 50 second-lieutenants, 1 naval ensign, and 5 officers in the health services. The loss in dead was 165 Jesuits, of whom 28 were chaplains, 30 officers, 36 sub-officers, 17 corporals and 54 privates. The number of distinctions won is almost incredible. The decoration of the LÉgion d'honneur was conferred on 68, the MÉdaille militaire on 48, the MÉdaille des ÉpidÉmies on 4, the Croix de guerre on 320, the Moroccan or Tunisian medal on 3, while 595 were mentioned in despatches, and 18 foreign decorations were received: in all 1,056 distinctions were won by the 855 Jesuits in the French army and navy (The Jesuit Directory, 1921). "What party or group or club or lodge," says a sometime unfriendly paper, the "Italia," "can claim a similar distinction?" Another of their distinctions is that Foch, de Castelnau, Fayolle, Guynemer and many more French heroes were trained in Jesuit schools. Finally, the French Jesuits performed this marvellous service to their country in spite of the fact that the government of that country had closed and confiscated every one of their churches and colleges from one end of France to the other, and by so doing had exiled these loyal subjects from their native land. To add to the outrage, they were summoned back when the war began, and not one of them failed to respond immediately, returning from distant missions among savages at the ends of the earth or from civilized countries that were more hospitable to them than their own for the defense of which they willingly offered their lives. Now, when the war is over, they have no home to go to.

In 1912, two years before the War, the Society had on its rolls 16,545 members. At the beginning of 1920 it had 17,250 members: 8,454 priests, 4,819 scholastics, 3,977 lay-brothers. The Society is divided into what are called assistancies. The Italian assistancy, which is composed of the provinces of Rome, Naples, Sicily, Turin and Venice, numbers in all 1,415 members. The frequent dispersions and confiscations to which this section has been subjected account for the small number. Thus, the Roman province has only 354, and Sicily has but 223. In the assistancy there are 748 priests, but the prospects of the increase of this category is the reverse of encouraging, for there are only 308 scholastics. The lay-brothers number 359. What has acted as a deterrent in Italy has, paradoxically, acted in a contrary sense in the German assistancy. Several of these provinces have been dispersed, but they aggregate as many as 4,329 members. Belgium is a strong factor in this large number, for it totals 1,279, of whom 672 are priests; the Germans, who have no establishment in their own country, but are scattered over the earth, have a membership of 1,210, of whom 664 are in Holy Orders. Austria has 356 on her register, Poland 464, Czecho-Slovakia 114, Jugoslavia 113, Hungary 212, while Holland has as many as 581.

The Waldeck-Rousseau Associations Law of 1901 not only confiscated every Jesuit establishment in France but denied the Society the right even to possess property. Nevertheless, unlike Italy the provinces of Champagne, France, Lyons and Toulouse show 2,758 names in their catalogues for 1920. They have 1,647 priests with 583 scholastics to draw on. The Spaniards are grouped in the provinces of Aragon, Castile, Mexico, and Toledo, to which has been added the Province of Portugal. This combination has 1,760 to its credit. Possibly the figures would have been larger had not the Revolution of 1901 brought about the exile of the Jesuits. The English assistancy which until recently included the United States, has now 1,622 members of whom 793 are priests and 544 scholastics: England 750, Canada 472 and Ireland 400. The assistancy of America has 2,892 members of whom 1,230 are priests with a future supply to draw on of 1,214 scholastics. The contingent of scholastics exceeds that of any other assistancy by more than a hundred. The province of California has 485 members, Maryland-New York, 1,080; Missouri, 1,022 and New Orleans, 305.

Besides its regularly established houses the Society has missions scattered throughout the world. Thus, in Europe its missionaries are to be found in Albania; in Asia, they are working in Armenia, Syria, Ceylon, Assam, Bengal, Bombay, Poona, Goa, Madura, Mangalore, Japan, Canton, Nankin, and South East Tche-ly. In Africa, they are in Egypt, Cape Colony, Zambesi, Rhodesia, Belgian Congo, and Madagascar, Mauritius and RÉunion; in America, they are working in Jamaica and among the Indians of Alaska, Canada, South Dakota, the Rocky Mountains, the PimerÍa, and Guiana; finally in Oceania, they are toiling in Celebes, Flores, Java, and the Philippines. To these missions 1,707 Jesuits are devoting their lives in direct contact with the aborigines.