The Pope Approves the Society of Jesus

On 27 September 1540, Pope Paul III issued the papal bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, officially confirming the Society of Jesus as a religious order of clerics regular. The group had originated six years earlier when Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque nobleman who turned to a religious life following a wound sustained at the Battle of Pamplona, gathered six fellow students from the University of Paris. Meeting on 15 August 1534 in a crypt at Montmartre, Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Peter Faber, Simão Rodrigues, Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmeron, and Nicolás Bobadilla took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Calling themselves the Companía de Jesús, they initially planned to travel to Jerusalem, but warfare made that journey impossible and prompted them to seek papal authorization in Rome.

The official charter, or Formula of the Institute, was incorporated directly into Paul III's founding decree. It framed the members as soldiers under the banner of the Cross dedicated to the defense and propagation of the Christian faith, the teaching of children and the unlettered, and the spiritual consolation of the faithful. In addition to traditional monastic vows, Jesuits made a special promise of obedience to the pope concerning foreign missions. Unlike earlier medieval communities, which were usually named for their founders, the group adopted the name of Jesus, a choice that caused resentment among rival religious orders who considered the title presumptuous. Paul III initially restricted the order's membership to sixty, a limitation he lifted a few years later.