FLYING SQUADRON

At the siege of Pampeluna in 1521, a French cannon ball whizzed between the legs of a Basque knight named Inigo de Onez y Loyola, breaking his right shin and tearing his left calf. For the Roman Catholic Church, beleaguered by the Protestant Reformation, that shot was providential. Inigo, laid up in his castle (and ever after afflicted with a limp), began thinking pious thoughts which led him, in 1534, to form a "flying squadron," the Society of Jesus, in the front ranks of the Church's Counter Reformation against Protestantism.

By that time, the Basque was known by the Latinized name of Ignatius. Of this austere, astute, self-styled "captain" in Christ's army, many pious biographies have been written. Published this week is Soldier of the Church,* first attempt to bring Ignatius Loyola to life for ordinary readers. Its author, Ludwig Marcuse, is a German-Jewish exile, biographer of Heine and Strindberg. His viewpoint: a middle course between Catholic orthodoxy and non-Catholic skepticism.

Catholics looked on the Society of Jesus with much suspicion before Pope Paul III formally approved it in 1540. In Spain, where Ignatius and his handful of followers begged and taught, he was twice jailed, often investigated, once haled before the Inquisition. In Paris, Ignatius cut an odd figure as a University student of 37. Author Marcuse places greater emphasis on Jesuit Loyola's physical activities than on the early turmoil of soul which produced the Spiritual Exercises, the extraordinary manual by which Jesuits are formed and live. But he does not slight the other distinctive aspect of Jesuitism: its military discipline as the first Catholic order vowed specifically to the defense of the papacy.

Loyola, elected General of the Society after thrice declining, perfected such methods of discipline as encouraging Jesuits (with the highest motives) to inform on one another; to travel always in pairs; to drink beer with beer drinkers. He forbade Jesuits to accept ecclesiastical honors--a rule broken only when the Pope commands one to accept a Cardinal's hat as an honor to the Society itself, or appoints one to a difficult bishopric or archbishopric. Ignatius dismissed a father who dared praise him publicly and forbade those living with him to look him straight in the face./- Of women he said: "Conduct religious conversations only with aristocratic women and never with the door shut!"

*Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

/- Ex-Jesuit Edward Boyd Barrett, in The Jesuit Enigma, declared that Jesuits are urged to look people straight in the nose, presumably to disconcert them. Good Jesuits consider this romancing--a distortion of the truth that sight, like other senses, may cause sinning.

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