Pope Paul III approves St. Ignatius's order, but caps it at sixty men

ROME, Papal States, September 27, 1540 AD — Pope Paul III today issued the bull that makes Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his companions a religious order of the Church, under the name of the Society of Jesus. It took a year to get past a cardinal who wanted no new orders at all, and thousands of Masses offered until he changed his mind. His change of mind came with a condition, and the bull carries it: the Society may number no more than sixty men.

St. Ignatius is forty-nine, a former soldier whose leg was broken by a French cannon ball at Pamplona in 1521 AD. His nine companions are priests who, like him, took their master’s degrees at Paris. They wanted the Church to accept them as a new order, bound by vow to go wherever the Pope sent them.

Six years earlier, in August 1534 AD, St. Ignatius and six of the companions made a vow at Montmartre in Paris. They promised to go to Jerusalem, and if they could not sail within a year, to put themselves at the Pope’s disposal instead. In 1537 AD the war with the Turks closed the sea, and no ship sailed east. In November 1538 AD they offered themselves to Pope Paul III in Rome. The next September, at Tivoli, Cardinal Gasparo Contarini read the Pope the five chapters of their rule. The Pope gave it his spoken approval there and then and ordered a bull drawn up.

The drafting stalled at once. The first cardinal given the text resisted it and proposed corrections, and in December the examination passed to Cardinal Bartolomeo Guidiccioni. Guidiccioni threw the rule aside and could not bear to look at it. He said that whatever it was, he would make sure the Church never approved it, “for that all religious orders became relaxed in the course of time and did more harm to the Church in their old age than they had ever done good in their youth.” By January 26, 1540 AD his refusal was known among the companions working at Parma.

The companions answered the cardinal with Masses. St. Ignatius ordered thousands of them said for the approval and divided them among the companions, each saying his share wherever he was working.

In March, with no bull yet signed, the companions were already being sent away from Rome. On March 4 they agreed that those staying in Italy would decide questions about the rule without waiting for the votes of those going far away. That same day Simon Rodrigues sailed from Civitavecchia for Portugal and the Indies. Twelve days later Saint Francis Xavier set out overland after him, taking nothing but his breviary. The King of Portugal had asked for six of the ten. St. Ignatius, who stayed in Rome, told the Portuguese ambassador: “Jesus, my Lord ambassador, if six out of ten go to India, what is there left for all the rest of the world?”

After some time, and without warning, Guidiccioni changed his mind. He asked to see the rule. He read it and thought it so good that, while he still held that the Church should admit no new orders, he would make this one the exception. He then won over the two other cardinals examining it. After that he went to the Pope and pleaded for it. The terms were his own. The Society would be approved as a religious order, but it could take in no more than sixty men, until experience showed what would be good for the Church. About September 4, on the advice of Cardinals Guidiccioni, Contarini and Carpi, the Pope ordered the bull issued with that limit.

The bull, Regimini militantis Ecclesiae (For the governing of the Church militant), carries the rule St. Ignatius and the companions wrote, in their own voice. Their rule opens: “Whoever wishes to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our Society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and his vicar on earth.” It commits them to spread the faith by preaching, by spiritual exercises and by works of charity, “and specifically by the education of children and unlettered persons in Christianity.” Every member makes a special vow to obey the Pope at once, wherever he sends them. Of that vow the companions wrote: “We pledge to do this whether he sends us among the Turks or to other infidels, even to the land they call India, or to any heretics or schismatics, or to any of the faithful.”

St. Ignatius had promised those Masses in return for the approval, and as soon as the bull was issued he and the companions started saying them. A year later they were still being said. Sending Paschase Broët and Alfonso Salmerón to Ireland as the Pope’s envoys, St. Ignatius wrote into their instructions: “Be careful about the Masses for Cardinal Guidiccioni, and let me know when you write how many you have said.”

The limit of sixty stood for more than two years, until Pope Paul III lifted it with a second bull, Iniunctum Nobis (Laid upon us).