priest's robes, who soon attained a prominent position in the Catholic
reformation. Their especial task was to educate the clergy.

The order of the Capuchins [Sidenote: c. 1526] was an offshoot of the
Franciscans. It restored the relaxed discipline of the early friars and
its members went about teaching the poor. Notwithstanding the blow to it
when its third vicar Bernardino Ochino became a Calvinist, it flourished
and turned its energies especially against the heretics.

Of the other orders founded at this time, the Barnabites (1530), the
Somascians (1532), the Brothers of Mercy (1540), the Ursulines (1537),
only the common characteristics can be pointed out. It is notable that
they were all animated by a social ideal; not only the salvation of the
individual soul but also the {398} amelioration of humanity was now their
purpose. Some of the orders devoted themselves to the education of
children, some to home missions or foreign missions, some to nursing the
sick, some to the rescue of fallen women. The evolution of monasticism
had already pointed the way to these tasks; its apogee was reached with
the organization of the Company of Jesus.

[Sidenote: Typical Jesuit]

The Jesuit has become one of those typical figures, like the Puritan and
the buccaneer. Though less exploited in fiction than he was in the days
of Dumas, Eugene Sue and Zola, the mention of his name calls to the
imagination the picture of a tall, spare man, handsome, courteous,
obliging, but subtle, deceitful, dangerous, capable of nursing the
blackest thoughts and of sanctioning the worst actions for the
advancement of his cause. The _Lettres Provinciales_ of Pascal first
stamped on public opinion the idea that the Jesuit was necessarily
immoral and venomous; the implacable hatred of Michelet and Symonds has
brought them as criminals before the bar of history. On the other hand
they have had their apologists and friends even outside their own order.
Let us neither praise nor blame, but seek to understand them.

[Sidenote: Loyola, c. 1493-1556]

In that memorable hour when Luther said his ever-lasting nay at Worms one
of his auditors was--or might have been for she was undoubtedly present
in the city--Germaine de Foix, the wife of the Margrave John of
Brandenburg. The beautiful and frivolous young woman had been by a
former marriage the second wife of Ferdinand the Catholic and at his
court she had been known and worshipped by a young p