Within a few decades the Society of Jesus will observe the five hundredth anniversary of its founding in 1540. During the course of almost five centuries, it has had a rich, complex,
and often tumultuous history. Much admired and much reviled, it has from the beginning eluded facile categorization. On the most basic level, the Society is simply a Roman Catholic religious order,
whose members pronounce the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Like the members of other orders, the Jesuits engage in the traditional ministries of preaching and administering
the sacraments. Like the members of many orders, Jesuits travel as missionaries to distant lands and peoples. ‘‘The world is our house,’’ as Jero´nimo Nadal, an early and extremely influential
Jesuit, put it. About a decade after their founding, however, the Jesuits began to operate schools for lay students, something no religious order had ever done before in a systemic way. At that point they
began to assume a profile that was altogether distinctive.