Something must be said about Loyola's interpretation of the vow of poverty. During his lifetime the Company acquired considerable wealth; and after his death it became a large owner of estates in Europe. How was this consistent with the observance of that vow, so strictly inculcated by the founder on his first disciples, and so pompously proclaimed in their constitutions? The professed and all their houses, as well as their churches, were bound to subsist on alms; they preached, administered the sacraments of the Church, and educated gratis. They could inherit nothing, and were not allowed to receive money for their journeys. But here appeared the wisdom of restricting the numbers of the professed to a small percentage of the whole Society. The same rigid prohibition with regard to property was not imposed upon the houses of novices, colleges, and other educational establishments of the Jesuits; while the secular coadjutors were specially appointed for the administration of wealth which the professed might use but could not own.[168] In like manner, as they lived on alms, there was no objection to a priest of the order receiving valuable gifts in cash or kind from grateful recipients of his spiritual bounty. A separate article of the constitutions furthermore reserved for the General the right of accepting any donation whatsoever, made in favor of the whole Company, and of assigning capital or revenue as he judged wisest. [Footnote 168: Quinet calculates that at the close of the sixteenth century there were twenty-one houses of the professed (incapable of owning property) to 293 colleges (free from this inability).] Scholastics, even after they had taken the vow of poverty, were not obliged to relinquish their private possessions. Sooner or later, it was hoped that these would become the property of the order. In a word, the principle of this solemn obligation was so manipulated as to facilitate the acquisition and accumulation of wealth by the Jesuit like any other corporation. Only no individual Jesuit owned anything. He was rich or poor, he wore the clothes of princes or the rags of a mendicant, he lived sumptuously or begged in the street, he traveled with a following of servants or he walked on foot, according as it seemed good to his superiors. The vow of poverty, thus interpreted in practice, meant a total disengagement from temporalities on the part of every member, an absolute dependence of each subordinate upon his superior in the hierarchy.