Japan and the Japanese

SOCIETY OF JESUS. 43
impregnated with the current ideas of romantic chivalry, he was
already turning in his mind the formation of a new monastic order,
which should carry into religion the spirit of the romances. Xa
vier, with whom he lived at Paris on intimate terras, they slept,
indeed, in the same bed, was one of Loyola's first disciples ; and on
the day of the Assumption, August 16, 1534, they two, with five
others, of whom three or four were still students, in a subterranean
chapel of the church of the abbey of Montmartre, united at a celebration
of mass by Le Fevre, who was already a priest, and in the
consecration of themselves by a solemn vow to religious duties.
This rudimentary order included, along with Loyola and Xavier,
three other Spaniards, Lainez, Salmaron, and Boabdilla, Rodriguez,
a Portuguese, and Le Fevre, a -Savoyard, all afterwards distin-
guished. A mission to Jerusalem, which Loyola had already visited,
was at that time their leading idea.
Loyola then returned home, the others remaining at Paris;
but with an agreement to meet at Venice before the close of
the year 1536, at which meeting three more were added to their
number. A scheme of the order was subsequently drawn up,
which, besides the vows of chastity and poverty, and of absolute
bedience, as to God, to a general of the order, to be elected for
life, included, instead of the mission to Jerusalem, which the war
with the Turks made impracticable, a vow to go wherever the Pope
might send them for the salvation of souls. To procure the sanction
of the Pope, Loyola, with Lainez and Le Fevre, spent several
years at Rome. His scheme, having been referred to a commission,
was approved by Paul III., by a bull, bearing date September
27th, 1640, in which the name of " Clerks of the Society of Jesus "
was bestowed upon the order, which was limited, however, to sixty
members. Loyola was elected, early in 1541, the first general ; and
by a subsequent bull of Julian III., dated March 15, 1543, the so-
ciety was allowed to increase its members indefinitely. Its object
was the maintenance of the absolute authority of the church
as personified in the Pope, not only by resisting the rebellion
against it, then lately set on foot by Luther in Germany, but
by extending the domination of the Pope into all parts of the world.
To guard against the corruptions of preceding orders, the members
were not to accept of any church preferment, except by the positive