Free Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World by Amir Alexander Page A

eighty engravings to a Jesuit hagiography, The Life of Ignatius . Four years later, when Ignatius was beatified, placing him one short step from canonization, Rubens was commissioned by the Society to produce several large portraits of the future saint for the Gesù, the Jesuits’ home church in Rome, and for the Antwerp Cathedral. In the imposing Miracles of St. Ignatius , he accomplished what was probably his greatest masterwork for the order.
    The painting brings us to a scene of high drama taking place within a large hall, most likely a church, which is depicted from its vaulted ceiling to its stony floor. At the top, near a brightly lit cupola, floats a band of playful angels and cherubs, who seem to pay no heed to the human chaos beneath them. Indeed, the floor of the church is a scene of pain, fear, and confusion, where a large group of men, women, and several children are caught up in an agonizing frenzy. One man flails about on his back as if in a seizure, while another man, with bloody streaks on his back, tends to him. A disheveled woman, her fists clenched, her face twisted wildly, and her eyes glazed, struggles to get away as two men try to support her. A gray-haired man, only his head visible, gazes up in desperation, his face twisted in a mask of horror. The rest, those who have not been overcome themselves, look upward in a tortured mixture of supplication and hope: can they be saved from that which torments them?
    The figure that is the object of their gaze is Ignatius himself, standing upright, resplendent in his priestly robes. On his dais, Ignatius is only a few steps above the floor, but he inhabits a completely different realm. Calm and commanding, his right hand raised in benediction, he is performing an exorcism, expelling the evil spirits from the people, bringing peace and order to those afflicted with torment and chaos. Evil demons, on the left side of the painting, have emerged from the people and are fleeing before Ignatius’s holiness as one of the angels in heaven bids them an ironic good-bye. Ignatius, though the unchallenged focus of the painting, is not alone: behind him on the raised platform are his followers, a long line of black-robed Jesuits stretching into the distance. Like him, they are calm and somber, surveying the suffering before them. They are Ignatius’s army, there to learn from their master, follow his directions, and ultimately take over his mission of turning chaos into order and bringing peace to the afflicted.
    For that was indeed the “miracle” of St. Ignatius and his followers. Like no one else, they managed to restore peace and order in a land torn apart by the challenge of the Reformation. In place of heresy and confusion they brought unity and orthodoxy; where the rule of the holy Church was subverted and priests and bishops disowned, they rebuilt that grand old edifice and reestablished the sway of its hierarchy; where confusion reigned, they restored an unyielding certainty in the truth and rightness of the Roman Church. Their success in doing all this was indeed nothing less than miraculous. The keys to this miracle, as the Jesuits saw it, were simple: truth, hierarchy, and order.
    The Jesuits did not believe in plurality of opinion: the truth was absolute. They did not believe in pluralism of power and authority: once the truth is known, all power must flow from those who know and recognize it, and be imposed upon those who do not yet accept it. And they certainly did not believe in democracy, which allows the expression of different and opposing views and thrives on lively debate and competition for power. The truth has no room for such dissent or challenges. Only absolute authority of God’s emissaries and the divine truth they carry, they believed, would allow for peace and harmony to prevail. Such was the worldview of the Jesuits, and they worked hard to implement it within their order, within the Church as a whole, and in the world at large. Structured