THE JESUITS ENTER THE SCENE

On 6 May 1542 Francis Xavier and a small party of companions landed at Goa. The Jesuits had arrived.

The Society of Jesus was different from any other religious order, but not as different as is sometimes supposed. H.O. Evennett has pointed out that ‘the various bodies of clerks regular were the outstanding creation of sixteenth-century Catholicism in the sphere of the religious orders’. Notable among these new orders were the Theatines, who arrived in India at a later date than the Jesuits (1646). The Theatines were neither monks nor friars nor canons. They were a body of pastoral priests living together, having taken the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, in order to live the apostolic priestly life in as perfect a manner as possible. While not accepting the official charge of either parishes or hospitals, they were busy in preaching, in hearing confessions and exhorting to the more frequent reception of the sacraments, in charitable works for the sick and the distressed, in study and especially in preparing for the reform of the liturgy.

Ignatius Loyola had known the Theatines in Venice in 1536–7, and clearly had learned much from them. But on everything that he did Loyola, that strange combination of the Chevalier Bayard and Don Quixote, stamped the marks of his highly individual genius. He, like many of his followers, was the perfect medieval man.