But he resigned his benefices, and, in conjunction with Cajetan, founded the order of the Theatines (1524) with the object of promoting personal piety and of combating heresy by preaching.
Here he waited for a year until his companions could join him, and meanwhile he occupied himself in his usual good works, gaining several more companions and meeting Giovanni Piero Caraffa, afterwards Paul IV., who had lately founded the Theatines.
Adjacent is the church of the Theatines, an imposing though somewhat over-ornamented example of the Italian Rococo style; it contains the royal burial vault.
The order of the Theatines, founded in 1524, takes its name from the city.
Not only so, but, when greater strictness of rule and of enclosure seemed the most needful reforms in communities that had become too secular in tone, the proposal of Ignatius, to make it a first principle that the members of his institute should mix freely in the world and be as little marked off as possible externally from secular clerical life and usages, ran counter to all tradition and prejudice, save that Cara.ffa's then recent order of Theatines, which had some analogy with the proposed Society, had taken some steps in the same direction.