"Take the same of the Society"

A bookshop is closing down near where I live. The other day I popped in and found an excellent book on Early Modern Catholicism, which is mainly a study of primary sources from the time of the Reformation. Amongst the many letters in the book there were a few by the British nun, and founder of a religious institute, Mary Ward. Just after reading about her, and reading some of her fascinating writings, it was brought to my attention that this great woman is about to be declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI. This means that she is now firmly on the way to be fully canonised – and she will join the ranks of that other great English Servant of God, the Venerable John Henry Newman!

Mary Ward was born in Yorkshire in the year 1585 - one year before the martyrdom of St Margaret Clitherow in York. It was a time of persecution for Catholics in England, who were viewed with immense suspicion by Queen Elizabeth I and her government. It was also a time of massive social upheaval. Not only did the country have a strong female monarch, but ordinary women were beginning to make their mark in various other walks of life, too. Mary, who was raised by courageous Catholic women, of whom her grandmother Ursula Wright was foremost, would herself become a pioneering woman of the age. Ursula has spent several years, fourteen to be exact, in prison for her faith and instilled in her granddaughter a fierce sense of loyalty to the truth and to what she discerned to be God’s will according to her own conscience.

By the year 1606 Mary was determined to try her vocation as a religious sister or contemplative nun, and joined a convent of Poor Clares in France. She discovered, though, that God was not calling her to a life of contemplation and silence, but rather to one of religious activity. She, therefore, decided to found a religious society for women who felt the call to live according to religious vows, but who would also work in an apostolic way. When she was in her mid-twenties, in 1609, Mary had formed, with the aid of a small band of followers, a religious house in Saint-Omer – near to the Poor Clare convent where she first began her life in religion. She mentions an important event that occurred about this time in a letter to a Monsignor Albergati (dated 1620). In this missive Mary said that:

“In the year 1611, I fell sick in great extremity, being somewhat recovered by a vow to send myself in pilgrimage to Our Blessed Lady of Sichem, being alone in some extraordinary repose of mind, I heard distinctly not by sound of voice but intellectually understood, these words, ‘Take the same of the Society’, so understood as that we were to take the same both in matter and manner, that only excepted God by diversity of sex hath prohibited. These few words gave so great measure of light in that particular Institute, comfort and strength, and changed the whole of the soul, as that impossible for me to doubt but that they came from him, whose words are works.”*

This internal call, to “Take the same of the Society”, was interpreted by Mary Ward and her followers as a sign that they should form a Society of Jesus for women. Needless to say there was great opposition to this from the Jesuits themselves, as well as the Church and society at large. Nowadays it is common to see religious sisters working out in the world, but in the 17th Century this was unheard of. It was the preserve of men to live an active life, whilst female religious were expected to shut themselves away in the cloister. Like so many saints and innovators of the religious life her fiercest opposition came from the Church that she loved so dearly. Mary’s desire to create a religious community for women who wouldn’t be bound by the cloister, the habit, and choir was so radical at the time that it led to her imprisonment and to charges of heresy. She was freed after three months, but her new Order (sometimes unfairly referred to as the ‘Jesuitesses’) was finally suppressed in 1630. Importantly, though, Mary had some powerful supporters, amongst whom were Popes Paul V, Gregory XV and Urban VIII. She received some support from the Jesuits, too, and especially so towards the end of her life. In fact the General of the Society of Jesus, Father Mutio Vitelleschi, was particularly fond of Mary and very appreciative of her good work. Ultimately, though, the new community was too radical for the Church and could not have conformed to the expectations of the time, or to the rule imposed by Pope Pius V that all female religious had to be enclosed in community. In 1639, though, Mary was invited to Rome, to live under the protection of the Holy See, and was allowed to reform her religious institute under the supervision of the then pope, Urban VIII. By the 1640s she had ventured back home to England and had established a house in London and then another in Yorkshire. She died there, of natural causes, in 1645.

Although suppressed for a while, like many other religious orders, Mary’s institute survived the ordeal and was re-established and gained, by the early 18th Century, the necessary papal and ecclesiastical support to ensure its place in the life of the Church. For many centuries the religious institute had two main branches, known as the Sisters of Loreto and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary – both of which now have very close links to the Jesuits. This latter branch, known also as the Roman branch, was renamed in 2004 as he Congregation of Jesus – thus, at last, bringing about Mary Ward’s vision that her sisters should “take the same of the Society”!

Mary Ward, Servant of God, pray for us, and for your sisters.

*Early Modern Catholicism; An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Milola, Robert S., (Oxford University Press, 2007) – page 163.

[Picture note: Mary Ward; source: Wikipedia, public domain]