The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola had wanted obedience to be the Society's hallmark. Its Constitutions likened the individual Jesuit to "a lifeless body". Delrio's time in Leuven, however, was almost as turbulent as his time in Bordeaux, when he refused to return to the Low Countries. In letters to the Jesuit General in Rome, Claudio Acquaviva, he denounced first the rector of the college and later the provincial hierarchy.
