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One of the apostolic fields in which the Society of Jesus was involved since its foundation in 1540 was the missiones ad gentes [missions among non-Christians], which produced a constant flow of European missionaries to other continents. Specifically, the Jesuit provinces of Spain sent many missionaries beyond their borders, creating administrative units that were initially dependent on the metropolis and later became autonomous Jesuit territories. There are many partial studies of many of the realities related to the Jesuit missions; We now intend to take a brief historical overview to illustrate this centrifugal trend in Spain within the Jesuit sphere, both in the old Society (before its suppression by Pope Clement XIV in 1773) and in the contemporary one (since its restoration by Pope Pius VII in 1814). To this end, we will briefly review demographic and geographical data, which provide overall figures and territorial configurations throughout the history of the Society of Jesus.

The Society of Jesus is a clerical religious order, but it has incorporated non-sacred members, in different degrees of membership, although not from the beginning. The priests professed members constitute the nucleus of the Society of Jesus, and in concentric circles are the formed coadjutors (spiritual coadjutors, the priests, and temporal coadjutors or brothers, the non-priests), the approved scholastics and the novices. In this article, we present the historical juridical framework of the temporal coadjutors, since they have been and are an important part of the history and life of the Society of Jesus, although they are not sufficiently well known because they are less visible. We study the origin of this grade among the Jesuits, its incorporation and legislation, as well as its subsequent evolution. We have gone through the founding and regulatory documents of the Society of Jesus and the rather scarce bibliography. There has been a great evolution in the profile of the temporal coadjutor since the 20th century in practice, that we briefly describe, but not so much in the legal profile. This publication is a preview of a larger research project on the Jesuit brothers, which is still in progress.