Regimini militantis Ecclesiae
The bull by which Pope Paul III approved the Society of Jesus. It names Ignatius of Loyola and his nine companions and incorporates the Formula of the Institute, their own short statement of the Society’s purpose and way of life.
Read the text at archive.org ↗English translation of the Formula of the Institute contained in the bull (Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College) ↗
The bull has three parts. It first names the ten men, all masters of arts of the University of Paris, and describes what they had been doing: preaching, exhorting people in private, serving in hospitals, teaching children and the unlettered. It then recites the Formula of the Institute that they had submitted, and finally approves it, limiting the Society for the time being to sixty members.
The Formula is the founders’ own text and the rule of the Jesuits as first approved. It speaks in the first person plural and sets out the purpose of the Society, the special vow of obedience to the pope concerning missions, the authority of the superior, poverty, and the colleges for students. A revised Formula was approved by Julius III in 1550 in the bull Exposcit debitum. The editors of the English translation give the date of the bull as 27 September 1540; Kidd’s text omits the dating clause.
Cited in
- 27 September 1540, firm date