Clerical Matters

The early Society grappled with accepting into its ranks those of Jewish descent—“New Christians” in the parlance of the time—and non-European converts, whether Asian, Indian, or American

by Thomas M. Cohen

The first Jesuits were committed in theory to admitting all qualified men, regardless of lineage. In practice, however, Jesuit unanimity concerning admissions was fragile.

The principle of ignoring lineage in admitting members to the Society was enshrined in the Constitutions and upheld, with a handful of exceptions, throughout Ignatius’s life. Jesuits were among the most vocal and effective opponents of statutes of limpieza de sangre—purity of blood—that required candidates for civil and ecclesiastical positions throughout the Iberian world to prove that they were from Old Christian families.

This opposition to limpieza among the first Jesuits was rooted in Ignatius’s insistence on inclusiveness and unity within the Society. After Ignatius’s death, however, Jesuit unity was threatened from many quarters. The most sustained threat came from Spain and Portugal in the form of opposition to the admission of Christians of Jewish descent—known as New Christians—to the Society.

The Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira (1526–1611), one of Ignatius’s most trusted companions, wrote that “[Ignatius] said that he would hold it to be a special grace of Our Lord to come from the lineage of the Jews. And he pursued the point, saying, ‘For a man to be able to be of the family of Christ Our Lord and of Our Lady the glorious Virgin Mary!’”

The Society under its first three generals—Ignatius, Diego Laínez (a descendant of Spanish New Christians), and Francis Borgia—became known throughout Europe as a haven for New Christians, including some of the most prominent members of the Society during the sixteenth century. This reputation was disturbing to many within and outside the Society. When Borgia died in 1572, his logical successor was Juan de Polanco, a Spanish New Christian who was one of Ignatius’s first companions. The expected election of a second general of Jewish descent provoked strong opposition among a small but vocal minority, and the Society elected Everard Mercurian, of Luxembourg, as its fourth general.

It was to combat the increasingly bitter divisions that threatened the Society following this election that the Italian Jesuit Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) urged Mercurian to write a “letter of unity.” He hoped to force those who advocated discrimination on the basis of lineage or nationality to desist from doing so. Possevino contended that in the absence of such a letter the Society, which was one of the few religious orders that had only one observance, risked being divided by an “irremediable schism.”

Mercurian declined to write the letter that Possevino requested, and the fifth general congregation decreed in 1593 that “in no case is anyone . . . of Hebrew or Saracen stock, henceforth to be admitted to the Society. And if by error any such will have been admitted, he should be dismissed as soon as this impediment has been shown to exist.”

The missionary experience was central to Possevino’s argument for unity. In addressing the New Christian question, Possevino sought as well to address the larger problem of equality within the Society as it moved into new mission fields in Asia, Africa, and America. If Jesuits were to continue to question the suitability of fellow Europeans for admission to the Society, how would they respond to requests to join from non-European converts and their descendants? Only a policy of inclusion could ensure the integrity of the missionary enterprise.

In America, the Jesuits never considered the question of ordaining indigenous people, despite the affirmation of Paul III, in Sublimis Deus (1537), of the spiritual capacities of the Indians. In Spanish America, Brazil, and New France, Jesuits spoke indigenous languages with most of their native converts, few of whom learned Spanish, Portuguese, or French. None studied Latin with the Jesuits, though Indians (especially Indian children) on Jesuit missions throughout America memorized Latin for singing Mass.

In Brazil, where the Society was the first religious order to establish a mission, the Jesuits struggled to find an adequate indigenous vocabulary with which to teach basic Christian beliefs and practices to the nomadic Indians. In contrast, the Jesuits were relative latecomers to Spanish America, arriving in 1568 in Peru and in 1572 in Mexico. By this time the Church hierarchy in both viceroyalties had prohibited the ordination of Indians, blacks, and mestizos.

In Asia the Society conducted a wide-ranging and frequently acrimonious debate about the desirability and feasibility of ordaining native clergy. Especially in the case of India, this debate was often inserted into a larger debate about miscegenation, which was famously encouraged by Dom Afonso de Albuquerque, the first Portuguese viceroy. Both Francis Xavier (1506–1552) and Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) linked their opposition to the admission of Indians to the Society to their opposition to race mixture and their conviction that Indians were inferior to Europeans. The Church that the first Jesuits sought to introduce in India was to be a replica of the European Church. Xavier did not consider in India the strategy of accommodation that their successors would pursue in China.

Writing to Ignatius from Cochin in 1549, Xavier wrote that the Indians “are very barbarous and do not wish to know of anything that does not conform to their pagan customs. They have no inclination to understand anything of God or of their own salvation, and their natural strength has been ruined for every kind of virtue.”
In 1549 the Portuguese crown placed the Jesuits in charge of the seminary in Goa and ordered them to educate only non-European boys. Among the first Jesuits to teach in the seminary was Nicolò Lancilotto, whose early writings—dating from before the seminary was entrusted to the Society—reflected his confidence in the talents of his students. In a 1545 letter he noted that among the 60 boys in the seminary “there are eight who compose in Latin . . . but they have no teacher who instructs them well, and who pushes them to speak Latin and memorize some texts.” The following year, Lancilotto wrote that his students were reading Terence, Virgil, Ovid, Cato, Jerome, and Erasmus, and he professed that “they have great talent.”

Five years later, however, Lancilotto voiced his despair about the character of the Indians and about the poor quality of the conversions that had been performed in India, including many that had been performed by Lancilotto himself during his first years in the mission. Writing to Ignatius, he lamented that “among [the Indians] there were many who were not only uncivilized but wild and incapable of all learning and virtue . . . and [they] could in no way be trained unto virtue and good manners, because they did not know our language and spoke only like parrots.”

In comparison with other religious orders working in Portuguese India, the Society’s refusal to admit native clergy was striking. Between Xavier’s arrival in 1542 and the suppression of the Society in India in 1773, only one Indian—Pero Luís Bramane—rose to the priesthood in the Society. Bramane, who was ordained in 1560, was an effective pastor who pleaded with his superiors to admit more Indians, but his requests were not heeded, and he himself was never permitted to take his fourth vow.

It was in China that the Society conducted its most sustained and successful effort to ordain native clergy. Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was preoccupied with the problem of native clergy from the beginning of his missionary career. While in Goa en route to the China mission where he spent the rest of his life, Ricci strongly criticized his Portuguese colleagues for their refusal to ordain Indian priests and for the humiliation to which Europeans had subjected Indians, both Christian and non-Christian.

Ricci laid the foundation for Jesuit missionary strategy in China, which worked to accommodate Chinese culture, focused mission work on the Chinese elite, and used Western science as a means of stimulating interest in Christianity.

It was not until after Ricci’s death, however, that the Jesuits began the long process that would lead to the ordination of Chinese priests. In 1613 Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) traveled from China to Rome to obtain support for the China mission and to persuade the general, Claudio Aquaviva (1580–1615), to remove the China mission from the jurisdiction of the Portuguese Jesuits. The Portuguese opposed the Italians’ efforts to train native clergy and were reluctant to divert resources to China from the more successful missions in Japan.

Aquaviva, citing the newness of the China mission, had ordered in 1606 that no Chinese priests be ordained, but he appears to have changed his mind during the intervening years, for he granted Trigault’s request to establish a new province. With the help of the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a former teacher of Ricci, Trigault obtained permission from the Holy Office to ordain Chinese priests and to introduce a Chinese liturgy. Trigault also obtained a dispensation from Pope Alexander VII that provided for the ordination of men who were not proficient in Latin. This dispensation was one of the key elements of the Jesuits’ proposal to ordain mature members of the literati class in China.

These promising concessions did not, however, produce the concrete results for which Trigault and the China Jesuits hoped. Aquaviva died before the new China province had been formally established, and the Chinese liturgy was never introduced, although the decree that approved it was promulgated in China. By the time Trigault returned to China, Christians were being persecuted, the survival of the mission was in doubt, and the Jesuits’ collaboration with Chinese within the Society remained limited to work with laymen.

The setbacks suffered by the Society in Asia and the need to train native clergy—especially in areas not subject to Spanish or Portuguese rule—were an increasingly important concern of the papacy, as may be seen in the instruction reportedly sent by Pope Innocent XI in 1681 to an Asia-bound missionary: “We would rather learn,” the pope wrote, “that you have ordained one native priest than that you have baptized 50,000 pagans. The Jesuits have baptized many such, but subsequently their work has vanished in smoke because they did not ordain native priests.”

Only after the suppression of the Society (1773–1814) did the national origins of members of the Society come to reflect the international character of its pastoral ideals and practices.

The Society has made a concerted effort, especially since 1945, to recruit men from a wide range of national, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. This effort is consistent with the effort of the Church after the Second Vatican Council to promote the indigenous character of the Church throughout the world. Cardinal J. Paracattil underscored this effort—to which the changing composition of the clergy is contributing—in his address to the 1970 Synod in New Delhi. “The Catholic Church,” he said, “is neither Latin nor Greek nor Slav, but universal. Unless the Church can show herself Indian in India and Chinese in China and Japanese in Japan, she will never reveal her authentically Catholic character.”

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, for the first time in the Society’s history, its largest assistancy, or group of provinces—the South Asia Assistancy—is to be found outside the United States or Europe. 

Thomas M. Cohen, associate professor of history at the Catholic University of America, is curator of the Oliveira Lima Library there. He adapted this article from his essay on the topic in The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits (Cambridge University Press, 2008).




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