It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. Of the 540 Jesuits in Spain 230 are lay-brothers: a circumstance that must be borne in mind when we read that there are so many thousand members of the Society. The lay-brother is merely a servant of the priests, and the enormous proportion of these lay-brothers in Spain means that the fathers own large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets (as we learn from the decrees of the Society), and live cheerfully on the income. Mariana does not speak openly of vice--a sufficient proof that the book was not written, even in part, by an anti-Jesuit--but he says that the "enjoyments" of his colleagues are "excessive and scandalous." They further add materially to their incomes by managing the affairs of their penitents; in Valladolid alone there are twelve of these steward chaplains. They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded with debt, yet at Mariana's own house at Toledo the expenditure per head is about £50 a year: a very comfortable sum for the time and place, for a community pledged to poverty. Discipline is thwarted by favouritism and flattery, and the constant spying and reporting cause bitter quarrels in the houses.
This grave account of the Spanish province--sober and convincing, yet grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession--is written solely for the purpose of showing that a distant authority cannot maintain discipline, and the Spanish Jesuits must have local autonomy and less despotic rulers--home-rule and democracy, in a word. This is the note of the remarkable struggle which now opens between the Spaniards and the Italians. Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much as possible away from their native countries; but he made the mistake of removing old and long-settled fathers and substituting for them young men who shared his own ideas, and, in spite of his ideal, he favoured the Italians.
In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quit the Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent--a crime from which only the Inquisition could absolve--yet the Provincial Marcenius had absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society.