JESUIT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Jesuit

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dʒˈɛʒuɪt/ Listen

noun

Jesuit n.

(R. C. Ch.) One of a religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola, and approved in 1540, under the title of The Society of Jesus. Note: The order consists of Scholastics, the Professed, the Spiritual Coadjutors, and the Temporal Coadjutors or Lay Brothers. The Jesuit novice after two years becomes a Scholastic, and takes his first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience simply. Some years after, at the close of a second novitiate, he takes his second vows and is ranked among the Coadjutors or Professed. The Professed are bound by a fourth vow, from which only the pope can dispense, requiring them to go wherever the pope may send them for missionary duty. The Coadjutors teach in the schools, and are employed in general missionary labors. The Society is governed by a General who holds office for life. He has associated with him "Assistants" (five at the present time), representing different provinces. The Society was first established in the United States in 1807. The Jesuits have displayed in their enterprises a high degree of zeal, learning, and skill, but, by their enemies, have been generally reputed to use art and intrigue in promoting or accomplishing their purposes, whence the words Jesuit, Jesuitical, and the like, have acquired an opprobrious sense.

Fig.: A crafty person; an intriguer.

Jesuits' bark, Peruvian bark, or the bark of certain species of Cinchona; so called because its medicinal properties were first made known in Europe by Jesuit missionaries to South America.

Jesuits' drops. See Friar's balsam, under Friar.

Jesuits' nut, the European water chestnut.

Jesuits' powder, powdered cinchona bark.

Jesuits' tea, a Chilian leguminous shrub, used as a tea and medicinally.

See images of 'Jesuit'

Etymology of 'Jesuit'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Jesuit" Quotes from Famous Books

... exasperated, "I was deceived, I find, in terming you a pedagogue. The tone you assume, and the style which is peculiarly your own, is that of a Jesuit, and not of a gentleman. Discontinue, I beg, whenever I am present, this style I complain of, and the tone also. I hate M. d'Artagnan, because he was guilty of a ...

— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... August of that year we find him busy in Gillingham Forest, and he gives Sir Robert Cecil a roan gelding in exchange for a rare Indian falcon. In the autumn he is engaged on the south coast in arranging quarrels between English and French fishermen. In April 1594 he captures a live Jesuit, 'a notable stout villain,' with all 'his copes and bulls,' in Lady Stourton's house, which was a very warren of dangerous recusants. But he soon gets tired of these small activities. The sea at Weymouth and at Plymouth put out its arms ...

— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... Catholic, but, strange to say, even in Protestant Christendom, which in other respects abhorred everything belonging to Catholicism. Indeed, the Protestants far outdid the Catholics in cruelty, until, among the latter, the nobleminded Jesuit, J. Spee, and among the former, but not until seventy years later, the excellent Thomasius, by degrees put a ...

— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... the Jesuits, to whose intrigues he was incessantly exposed."[496] In reality precisely the opposite was the case, for, as we shall see, it was Weishaupt who perpetually intrigued against the Jesuits. That Weishaupt did, however, draw to a certain extent on Jesuit methods of training is recognized even by Barruel, himself a Jesuit, who, quoting Mirabeau, says that Weishaupt "admired above all those laws, that regime of the Jesuits, which, under one head, made men dispersed over the universe tend ...

— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... candor, I am frank (as you know already) to the utmost verge of imprudence. When exceptional circumstances compel me to take an opposite course, there isn't a slyer fox alive than I am. If, at your express request, I take off my honest English coat here and put on a Jesuit's gown—if, purely out of sympathy for your awkward position, I consent to keep your secret for you from Mrs. Lecount—I must have no unseasonable scruples to contend with on your part. If it is neck or ...

— No Name • Wilkie Collins

More quotes...