Christianity gave impetus to the founding of many monastic orders. Johnites, Franciscans - there is not enough space to list them all. The Jesuit Order stands apart, whose organization still exists today.
brief information
The Jesuit Order was founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola. Today it includes 17676 people. The motto of the order is "To the greater glory of God." The head of the order is Adolfo Nicholas.
Movement features
The building of the order includes certain principles, the main ones of which are: strict discipline and complete obedience of the younger to the elders, strict centralization, as well as the unquestioning and absolute authority of the head of the order. The latter is elected for a life term and bears the name of the general ("black pope"). The only one to whom the "black pope" obeys is the Pope.
Jesuit morality is adaptive, if necessary, the law of God is interpreted based on the circumstances.
To achieve the greatest success in its activities, the order allowed many Jesuits to keep their belonging to the order in secret and to lead a normal secular life. Such Jesuits received many privileges from the papacy (exemption from certain religious rites and precepts, etc.). Thanks to this, this organization quickly became flexible and stable and expanded its activities to numerous countries. Also, a similar state of affairs instilled in the word "Jesuit" a figurative meaning. So, a Jesuit is called a person who does not betray his true intentions and plans, who acts imperceptibly and subtly, penetrating into the soul of a person.
Takeoff and crash
The Jesuit Order reached the heights of power at the end of the 16th century, when the number of followers grew to more than 10,000 people, which is a huge figure for that time - the approximate population of a very large city. The Jesuits penetrated into the most distant parts of the world, carrying their teachings. For example, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci received the right to preach in China from the emperor himself. South America and Africa have seen the "Sweetest Jesus" soldiers on their territory.
In 1614, over a million Japanese were Christians (before Christianity in that country was persecuted). But in 1773 there was a collapse, caused by the nature of the Jesuit movement. Church affairs interested them just as much as they helped in gaining political and financial influence. There is an opinion that the order preached non-acquisitiveness, but this is not the case.
By 1750, it had 22,787 members, the order had 381 residences, 669 colleges, 176 seminaries and 223 missions. The leaders of the order entered into open debate with the monarchs, implanted their vision of power. The result was terrible for the order - it was disbanded, the leader Lorenzo Ricci was imprisoned, and all property was secularized in favor of the states where the branches of the order were located. In 1814, the order was restored again, but did not receive its previous influence. Its members were more engaged in science and history research. Today the order is going through hard times, and we are not even talking about the past influence.