It stamped the body with impersonality from the outset, and indicated the belligerent attitude it was destined to assume.

There was nothing exactly similar to its dominant conception in any of the previous religious orders.

These had usually received their title from the founder, had aimed at a life retired from the world, had studied the sanctification of their individual members, and had only contemplated an indirect operation upon society.

Ignatius, on the contrary, placed his community under the protection of Christ, and defined it at the outset as a militant and movable legion of auxiliaries, dedicated, not to retirement or to the pursuit of salvation, but to freely avowed and active combat in defense of their Master's vicegerent upon earth.

It was as though he had divined the deficiencies of Catholicism at that epoch, and had determined to supplement them by the creation of a novel and a special weapon of attack.