Constitution and Polity of the Order

The Institutum, which contains the governing laws of the society, is a complex document consisting of papal bulls and decrees, a list of the privileges which have been granted to the order, ten chapters of rules, decrees of the general congregations, the plan of studies (ratio studiorum), and three ascetic writings, of which the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius constitute the chief part.

The society is distributed into six grades: novices, scholastics, temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows.

The professed form only a small percentage of the entire body, and constitute a sort of religious aristocracy, from which the officers of the society are selected. Only the professed of the fourth vow, who add to the three vows a pledge of unconditional obedience to the pope, possess the full rights of membership. This final grade cannot be reached until the age of forty-five, so that if the candidate enters the order at the earliest age permissible, fourteen, he has been on probation thirty-one years when he reaches the final grade.

The society is ruled by a general, to whom unconditional obedience is required. The provinces, into which the order is divided, are governed by provincials, who must report monthly to the general. The heads of all houses and colleges must report weekly to their provincials. An elaborate system of checks and espionage is employed to ensure the perfect working of this complex ecclesiastical machinery. Fraud or evasion is carefully guarded against, and every possible means is employed to enable the general to keep himself fully informed concerning the minutest details of the society's affairs.