The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Candid History of the Jesuits, by Joseph McCabe.

It is the historic custom of the Church of Rome to enlist in its service monastic or quasi-monastic bodies in addition to the ordinary clergy. In its hour of greatest need, at the very outbreak of the Reformation, the Society of Jesus was formed as one of these auxiliary regiments, and in the war which the Church of Rome has waged since that date the Jesuits have rendered the most spirited and conspicuous service. Yet the procedure of this Society has differed in many important respects from that of the other regiments of the Church, and a vast and unceasing controversy has gathered about it. It is probable that a thousand times, or several thousand times, more books and pamphlets and articles have been written about the Jesuits than about even the oldest and most powerful or learned of the monastic bodies. Not a work of history can be opened, in any language, but it will contain more references to the Jesuits than to all the other religious orders collectively. But opinions differ as much to-day as they did a hundred or two hundred years ago about the character of the Jesuits, and the warmest eulogies are chilled by the most bitter and withering indictments.

What is a Jesuit? The question is asked still in every civilised land, and the answer is a confusing mass of contradictions. The most learned historians read the facts of their career so differently, that one comes to a verdict expressing deep and criminal guilt, and another acquits them with honour. Since the foundation of the Society these drastically opposed views of its action have been taken, and the praise and homage of admirers have been balanced by the intense hatred of an equal number of Catholic opponents. It would seem that some impenetrable veil lies over the history and present life of the Society, yet on both sides its judges refuse to recognise obscurity. Catholic monarchs and peoples have, time after time, driven the Jesuits ignominiously over their frontiers; Popes have sternly condemned them. But they are as active, and nearly as numerous, in the twentieth century as in the last days of the old political world.

No marshalling of historical facts will change the feeling of the pronounced admirers and opponents of the Jesuits, and it would be idle to suppose that, because the present writer is neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant, he will be awarded the virtue of impartiality. There seems, however, some need for an historical study of the Jesuits which will aim at impartiality and candour. On one side we have large and important works like Crétineau-Joly's Histoire religieuse, politique, et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jésus, and a number of smaller works, written by Catholics of England or America, from the material, and in the spirit, of the French historian's work. Such works as these cannot for a moment be regarded as serious history. They are panegyrics or apologies: pleasant reading for the man or woman who wishes to admire, but mere untruth to the man or woman who wishes to know. Indeed, the work of M. Crétineau-Joly, written in conjunction with the Jesuits, which is at times recommended as the classical authority on the Society, has worse defects than the genial omission of unedifying episodes. He makes the most inflated general statements on the scantiest of material, is seriously and frequently inaccurate, makes a very generous use of the "mental reserve" which his friends advocate, and sometimes embodies notoriously forged documents without even intimating that they are questioned.

Such works naturally provoke an antagonistic class of volumes, in which the unflattering truths only are presented and a false picture is produced to the prejudice of the Jesuits. An entirely neutral volume on the Jesuits does not exist, and probably never will exist. The historian who surveys the whole of the facts of their remarkable and romantic career cannot remain neutral. Nor is it merely a question of whether the writer is a Roman Catholic or no. The work of M. Crétineau-Joly was followed in France by one written by a zealous priest, the Abbé Guettée, which tore its predecessor to shreds, and represented the Society of Jesus as fitly condemned by Pope and kings.

It will be found, at least, that the present work contains an impartial account both of the virtue and heroism that are found in the chronicles of the Jesuits, and the scandals and misdeeds that may justly be attributed to them. It is no less based on the original Jesuit documents, as far as they have been published, and the work of Crétineau-Joly, than on the antagonistic literature, as the reader will perceive. Whether or no it seems to some an indictment, it is a patient endeavour to give all the facts, within the compass of the volume, and enable the reader to form a balanced judgment on the Society. It is an attempt to understand the Jesuits: to understand the enthusiasm and fiery attachment of one half of the Catholic world no less than the disdain or detestation of the other, to employ the white and the black, not blended into a monotonous grey but in their respective places and shades, so as to afford a truthful picture of the dramatic fortunes of the Society during nearly four centuries, and some insight into the character of the men who won for it such ardent devotion and such intense hostility.

In the early summer of the year 1521, some months after Martin Luther had burned the Pope's bull at Wittenberg and lit the fire of the Reformation, a young Basque soldier lay abed in his father's castle at the foot of the Pyrenees, contemplating the wreck of his ambition. Iñigo of Loyola was the youngest son in a large family of ancient lineage and little wealth. He had lost his mother at an early date, and had been placed by a wealthy aunt at court, where he learned to love the flash of swords, the smile of princes, the softness of silk and of women's eyes, and all the hard deeds and rich rewards of the knight's career. From the court he had gone to the camp, and had set himself sternly to the task of cutting an honourable path back to court. Fearless in war, skilful in sport and in martial exercises, refined in person, cheerful in temper, and ardent in love, the young noble had seen before him a long avenue of knightly adventure and gracious recompense. He was, in 1521, in his thirtieth year of age, or near it—his birth-year is variously given as 1491 or 1493; a clean-built, sinewy little man, with dark lustrous eyes flashing in his olive-tinted face, and thick black hair crowning his lofty forehead. And a French ball at the siege of Pampeluna had, at one stroke, broken his leg and [Pg 2] shattered his ambition.

It took some time to realise the ruin of his ambition. The chivalrous conquerors at Pampeluna had treated their brave opponent with distinction, and had, after dressing his wounds, sent him to the Loyola castle in the Basque provinces, where his elder brother had brought the surgeons to make him fit for the field once more. The bone, they found, had been badly set; it must be broken again and re-set. He bore their operations without a moan, and then lay for weeks in pain and fever. He still trusted to return to the camp and win the favour of a certain great lady—probably the daughter of the Dowager-Queen of Naples—whose memory he secretly cherished. Indeed, on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, he spoke of it with confidence; he told his brother that the elder apostle had entered the dark chamber and healed him on the eve of the festival. Unhappily he found, when the fever had gone, that the second setting of his leg had been so ill done that a piece of bone projected below the knee, and the right leg was shorter than the left. Again he summoned the mediæval surgeons and their appalling armoury, and they sawed off the protruding piece of bone and stretched his leg on a rack they used for such purposes; and not a cry or curse came from the tense lips. But the right leg still refused to meet its fellow, and shades gathered about Iñigo's glorious prospect of life. A young man who limps can hardly hope to reach a place of honour in the camp, or the gardens of the palace, or the hearts of women. Talleyrand, later, would set out on his career with a limp; and Talleyrand would become a diplomatist.

Iñigo lay in the stout square castle of rugged stone, which is now reverently enclosed, like a jewel, in a vast home of the Jesuits. It [Pg 3] then stood alone in a beautiful valley, just at the foot of the last southern slopes of the Pyrenees, about a mile from the little town of Azpeitia. The mind of the young Basque heaved with confused and feverish dreams as he lay there, in the summer heat, beside the wreck of his ambition. He called for books of knight-errantry, to while away the dreary days, but there were none in the Loyola castle, and someone—a pious sister, perhaps—brought him a Life of Christ and a Flowers of the Saints. For lack of anything better he read them: at first fingering the leaves with the nearest approach to disdain that a Christian soldier dare admit, then starting with interest, at length flushing with enthusiasm. What was this but another form of chivalry? Nay, when you reflected, it was the only chivalry worth so fierce a devotion as his. Here was a way of winning a fair lady, the Queen of Heaven, whose glances were worth more than the caresses of all the dames in Castile: here was a monarch to serve, whose court outshone the courts of France and Spain as the sun outshines the stars: here were adventures that called for a higher spirit than the bravado of the soldier.

The young Basque began to look upon a new world from the narrow windows of the old castle. Down the valley was Azpeitia, and even there one could find monsters and evil knights to slay in the cause of Mary. Southward were the broad provinces of Spain, full of half-converted Moors and Jews and ever-flourishing vices. Across the hills and the seas were other kingdoms, calling just as loudly for a new champion of God and Mary. One field, far away at the edge of the world, summoned him with peremptory voice; after all the Crusades the sites in the Holy Land were still trodden by the feet of blaspheming Turks. The blood began to course once more in the veins of the soldier.

During the winter that followed his friends noticed that he was making a wonderful chronicle of the lives of Christ and His saints. He was skilled in all courtly accomplishments—they did not include learning—and could write, and illuminate very prettily, sonnets to the secret lady of his inner shrine. Now he used his art to make a pious chronicle, with the words and deeds of Christ in vermilion and gold, the life of Mary in blue, and the stories of the saints in the less royal colours of the rainbow, and his dark pale face was lit by a strange light. There were times when this new light flickered or faded, and the fleshly queen of his heart seemed to place white arms about him, and the sunny earth fought with the faint vision of a far-off heaven. Then he prayed, and scourged himself, and vowed that he would be the knight of Christ and Mary; and—so he told his followers long afterwards—the heavy stone castle shook and rumbled with the angry passing of the demon. He told them also that he had at the time a notion of burying himself in the Carthusian monastery at Seville, and sent one to inquire concerning its way of life; but such a design is so little in accord with his knight-errant mood that we cannot think he seriously entertained it.

By the spring the struggle had ended and Ignatius—he exchanged his worldly name for that of a saint-model—set out in quest of spiritual adventure. The "sudden revolution," as Crétineau-Joly calls his conversion, had occupied about nine months. Indeed, friends and foes of the Jesuits have conspired to obscure the development of his feelings: the friends in order that they may recognise a miracle in the conversion, the foes in order that they may make it out to have been no conversion at all, but a transfer of selfish ambition from the camp to the Church. Whatever be the truth about Iñigo's earlier morals, he had certainly received a careful religious education in boyhood, [Pg 5] and he would just as certainly not learn scepticism at the court set up by Ferdinand and Isabella. His belief that he had a vision of St. Peter, a few weeks after receiving his wound and before he read the pious books, shows that he had kept a vivid religious faith in the camp. Some looseness of conduct would not be inconsistent with this, especially in Spain, but the darker descriptions of his adolescent ways which some writers give are not justified. "He was prone to quarrels and amatory folly," is all that the most candid of his biographers says. Let us grant the hot Basque blood a quick sense of honour and a few love-affairs. On the whole, Iñigo seems to have been an officer of the stricter sort, and a thorough Catholic. Hence we can understand that, as earth grows dark and cheerless for him, and the casual reading brings before him in vivid colouring the vision of faith, his fervent imagination is gradually won, and he sincerely devotes his arms to the service of Christ and Mary.

Piously deceiving his brother as to his destination, he set out on a mule in the month of March. He would go to the shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat, to ask a blessing on his enterprise, and then cross the sea to convert the Mohammedans in Palestine. His temper is seen in an adventure by the way. He fell in with one of the Moors who had put on a thin mantle of Christian profession in order that they might be allowed to remain in Spain, and talked to him of Our Lady of Montserrat. Being far from the town and the ears of Inquisitors, the Moor spoke lightly of the Mother of Christ, and, when the convert showed heat, fled at a gallop. Ignatius wondered, with his hand on his sword, whether or no his new ideal demanded that he should follow and slay the man. He left the point to God, or to his mule, and was taken on the road to Montserrat.

At last he came to the steep mountain, with saw-like peaks, which rises out of the plain some twenty miles to the north-west of Barcelona, with the famous shrine of the Virgin on its flank. In the little town of Iguelada, at the foot of the mountain, he bought the rough outfit of a pilgrim—a tunic of sackcloth, a rope-girdle, a pair of rough sandals, a staff, and a gourd—and made his way up the wild slopes, among the sober cypresses, to the Benedictine monastery which guarded the shrine. For three days he knelt at the feet of one of the holiest of the monks, telling, with many tears, the story of his worldly life. Then he went again to the town, took aside a poor-clad beggar, as Francis of Assisi had done in his chronicle, and exchanged garments with him, putting the sackcloth tunic over his rags. It was the eve of the great festival of Mary, the Annunciation (March 25th), and he spent the night kneeling before the altar, as he had read of good knights doing before they took the field. In the morning he hung his sword in the shrine and set forth. From that moment we shall do well to forget that Ignatius had been a soldier, and seek some other clue to his conduct.

The next step in his journey toward Rome is described at great length in lives of the saint, yet it is not wholly intelligible. Instead of going to Barcelona, where one took ship, he went to Manresa, and his pilgrimage was postponed for nearly a year. He did not take the high road to Barcelona, says his biographer, lest he should meet the people coming to the shrine: a theory which would not only require another theory to explain it, but which gives no explanation of the year's delay. Others think that he heard there was plague in the port; though the plague would not last a year, and one may question if Ignatius would flee it. The truth seems to be that the idea of spending his [Pg 7] life in the East was already yielding in his mind to another design: the plan of forming a Society was dimly breaking on him. He had studied the monastic life in the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat, and had brought away with him a book, written by one of their abbots, over which he would brood to some purpose. He had a vague feeling that the appointed field of adventure might be Europe.

However that may be, he took a road that led away from Barcelona, and as he limped and suffered, for he had discarded the mule and would make his pilgrimage afoot, he asked where he could find a hospital (in those days a mixture of hostel and hospital). He was taken to Manresa, a picturesque little town in one of the valleys of the district, where he lodged in the hospital for a few days, and then, instead of going to Barcelona, found an apartment and became a local celebrity. The beggar to whom he had given his clothes had, naturally, been arrested, and Ignatius was forced to tell his strange story, in order to clear the man and himself. The story grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, and it was presently understood that the dirty, barefoot, ill-clad beggar, who asked a little coarse bread at the doors, and retired to pray and scourge himself, was one of the richest grandees of the eastern provinces. Children followed "Father Sackcloth" about the streets; men sneered at his uncut nails and his long, wild black locks and thin face; women wept, and asked his prayers.

After a few months he found a cavern outside the town, at the foot of the hills, and entered upon the period of endless prayer and wild austerity in which he wrote his book, the Spiritual Exercises. He scourged himself, until the blood came, three times a day: he ate so little, and lived so intense a life, that he was sometimes found [Pg 8] unconscious on the floor of the cave, and had to be removed and nursed; his deep black eyes seemed to gleam from the face of a corpse. Thus he lived for six months, and wrote his famous book. I need not analyse that passionate guide to the spiritual life, or consider the legend of its miraculous origin. We know from Benedictine writers that Ignatius had received at Montserrat a copy of the Exercitatorium of their abbot Cisneros, and anyone familiar with Catholic life will know that similar series of "meditations" are, and always have been, very common. There is an original plan in Ignatius's book, and the period during which the mind must successively brood over sin and hell, virtue and heaven, Christ and the devil, is boldly extended to four weeks. These are technicalities; [1] the deeply original thing in the work is its intensity, and for the source of this we need only regard those six months of fierce inner life in the cave near Manresa.

In later years Ignatius claimed that the general design of his Society, and even the chief features of its constitution, were revealed to him in that cavern. "I saw it thus at Manresa," he used to say when he was asked why such or such a feature was included. In this he is clearly wrong. His Society was, in essence and details, a regiment enlisted to fight Protestantism, and Ignatius certainly knew nothing of Protestantism as a formidable menace to the Pope's rule in 1522; one may doubt if he was yet aware of the existence of Luther. We may conclude again that he had in mind a vague alternative to his mission to the Mohammedans. Those who are disposed to believe that the Society of[Pg 9] Jesus was in any definite sense projected by him at Manresa will find it hard to explain why for five years afterwards he still insisted that his mission was to the Turks.

In January 1523 he set out for Barcelona, trimming his nails, combing and clipping his hair, and exchanging his sack for clothes of coarse grey stuff. He did not wish to attract too much attention, he said. He was detained a few weeks at Barcelona, and begged his bread, and served the poor and the sick, in the way which was to become characteristic of the early Jesuits. On Palm Sunday he entered Rome, lost in a crowd of other pilgrims and beggars, and from there he walked on foot to Venice, whence he sailed in July. Within six months he was back in Venice. The Franciscan monks who controlled the Christian colony at Jerusalem had sent him home very quickly, fearing that his indiscreet fervour would lead to trouble with the Turks. The whole expedition was Quixotic, if it was really meant to be more than a pilgrimage, as Ignatius knew not a word of any language but Basque and Castilian. He returned to Venice in a thin ragged coat, his legs showing flagrantly through his tattered trousers, and in this guise he crossed on foot to Genoa, in hard wintry weather. By the end of February he was again in Barcelona.

For several years yet Ignatius will continue to speak of the conversion of the Turks as his chief mission, but his actions suggest that the alternative in his mind was growing larger. The year's experience had taught him that the knight of the Lord needed education, and he sat among the boys at Barcelona learning the Latin grammar and startling them by rising into literal ecstasies over the conjugation of the verb "to love." He now dressed in neat plain clothes, but begged his [Pg 10] bread on the way to school and took every occasion to preach the gospel. Once, when he had converted a loose community of nuns, the fast young men of Barcelona, who were angry at this interference with their pleasures, sent their servants to waylay him. They nearly killed him with their staves. Many jeered at him as a hypocrite or a fanatic: many revered him, and a few youths became his first disciples. With three of these he went, after two years' study in Barcelona, to the University of Alcalà, and began his higher studies. But he was so eager to make an end of this intellectual preparation, and so busy with saving souls and gaining proselytes, that he tried to take simultaneously the successive parts of the stately mediæval curriculum, and learned very little.

His first attempt to found a Society also ended in disastrous failure. Opinion in Alcalà was divided about "the sackcloth men." Some picturesque figures were known in the religious life of Spain, but no one had yet seen such a thing as this little band of youths, led by a pale and worn man of thirty-two, who went barefoot from house to house, begging their bread, and passed from the schools in the evening to the hospitals or the homes of the poor, or stood boldly in the public squares and told sinners to repent. It was an outrage on the dignity of ecclesiastical life, and so they were denounced to the Inquisition, and two learned priests were sent from Seville to examine them. Mystics were hardly less obnoxious to the Inquisition than secret Jews and Moors, and then there was this new device of Satan which was said to be spreading in Germany. Ignatius and his grey-coated young preachers were arrested and brought before the terrible tribunal. Their doctrine was found to be sound, but they were forbidden to wear a uniform dress and were ordered to put shoes on [Pg 11] their feet. They dyed their coats different colours, and returned to their work; as Jesuits have often done since.

Four months afterwards, the officers of the Inquisition fell on them again and put them in prison. Among the women who sought the spiritual guidance of Ignatius were some ladies of wealth, who wished to follow his example. It is said that he did not consent, and they set out, against his will, to beg their bread and tend the sick. This was too much for respectable folk in Alcalà, and Ignatius was closely examined to see whether he was not a secret Jew, since Christians did not do these things. The inquiry ended in the companions being ordered to dress as other students did, and to forbear preaching for four years. It is important to notice how from the first Ignatius, relying on his inner visions, will not bend to any authority if he can help it. He and his youths walked to Salamanca, and resumed their ways, but the eye of the Inquisition was on them, and they were imprisoned again. The authorities now fastened on them a restriction which may puzzle a layman: they were forbidden to attempt to distinguish between mortal and venial sin until their theological studies were completed. It meant, in practice, that they must not disturb the gay sinners of Spain with threats of hell, and for the time it entirely destroyed the design of Ignatius. His disciples fell away, and Ignatius fled to a land where there were no Inquisitors. He crossed the Pyrenees and went the whole length of France on foot.

The seven years which he spent at Paris were of the greatest importance in the life of Ignatius. Of his studies little need be said. He now took the university courses in proper succession, and won his degree in 1534. But these studies were only a means to an end, and he never became a scholar. He discarded books, wrote a very poor Latin, and took long to master[Pg 12] Italian. For secular knowledge he had a pious disdain. His followers were to be learned just in so far as it was needed to capture and retain the control of youth and promote the authority of the Pope. The chief interest of the long stay in Paris is that he there founded his Society, and the manner of its foundation is of great importance.

He had not been long at the University before his strange ways set up the usual conflict of opinion. Was he a hypocrite, or a fool, or a saint? From the youths who took the more complimentary view of his ways he picked out a few to form the little band of disciples he was always eager to have, and put them through the Spiritual Exercises. They came out of this fiery ordeal in heroic temper, sold their little possessions, and began to beg their bread; to the extreme indignation of their friends in the Spanish colony. In order to save time for study, Ignatius used to go to the Low Countries in the holidays and beg funds for his "poor students" among the Spanish merchants. One year—the year before Henry VIII. set up the Church of England—he went to London, but we know only that the city was very generous to him. On these alms Ignatius and his disciples maintained their life of prayer, austerity, and philanthropy, living in one of the colleges among the other students and angling prudently for souls. The irritation against Ignatius among the Spaniards became so great that the Rector was persuaded to inflict on him a public flogging, the last disgrace of an unpopular student. He was not flogged, however; nor is there anything really miraculous, as some think, in the Rector's change of mind. Ignatius feared the effect on his disciples and had a private talk with the Rector before the appointed hour. He had a marvellous power of persuasion and penetration.

These earlier followers seem in time to have fallen away, or never been admitted to his secret designs, and it was not until 1530 that he began to gather about him the men whose names have been inscribed in the history of Europe. In 1530 Ignatius shared his room with a gentle and deeply religious youth from Savoy, Peter Favre, a peasant's son who had already won the doctor's cap and priestly orders, as pious as he was clever. He had made a vow of chastity in his thirteenth year, and was now, in his twenty-fifth year, as eager to keep a clean conscience as to advance in learning. He acted as philosophical coach to Ignatius. From Aristotle and Aquinas they passed, in their nightly talk, to other matters, and Favre presently made the Exercises.

Francis Xavier, a Navarrese youth of high birth, was a friend of Favre, and, like him, a brilliant student and keen hungerer for knowledge. He was a young man of great refinement, and his large soft blue eyes looked with disdain on the eccentricities of Ignatius; he was not a little vain of his learning, his handsome person, and his skill in running. Who but Ignatius could have seen the Francis Xavier of a later day, wearing out his life in the conversion of savages, in this elegant and self-conscious scholar? Francis Thompson speaks with admiration of the "holy wiles" by which Ignatius secured this gifted and elusive pupil. He laid hold of him by his vanity. Xavier taught philosophy and was ambitious to have his lecture-room full. Ignatius sat at his feet, brought others to the lectures, and gave them generous praise. After a time Xavier made the Exercises, and, in a secret conversation with Ignatius, was won to the plan of devoting his life to the conversion of the Mohammedans—or to some other religious campaign.

One by one the early Jesuits were captured by the [Pg 14] skilful fisher of men. To the first two were soon added Diego Lainez, a Castilian youth of great ability and quiet strength of character, a future General of the Society; Alfonso Salmeron, a fiery and eloquent youth from Toledo, then in his twentieth year, who would become one of the most learned opponents of the Protestants; Nicholas Alfonso, from Valladolid, commonly known, from his native village, as Bobadilla, a fearless and impetuous fighter; and Simon Rodriguez, a handsome Spanish youth of noble birth, who would prove an admirable courtier when kings were to be won. Many others whom Ignatius sought refused to accept his stern ideal, and many were kept in the outer courts of his temple, as it were, and not admitted to share his secret design. The features of the coming Society were singularly foreshadowed. Only these six out of all the friends and companions of Ignatius knew anything of the great plan which filled his mind, and not one of the six knew which of the others were admitted, like himself, to the inner counsels of the master. Each was initiated in the strictest confidence, and forbidden to speak of it to his most intimate friend. It was wholly unlike the foundation of any other religious body.

At last, in July 1534, the six youths were permitted to know each other as comrades in arms. It was time to discuss what form their crusade should take, and Ignatius proposed that, after a week or two of increased austerity and prayer, they should make the vow of self-dedication and decide upon their future. There is the characteristic impress of Ignatius on every feature of the enterprise. The ceremony was not to be in one of the churches of Paris, but away across the meadows in the quiet little chapel of St. Denis on Montmartre; in fact, in the crypt underneath the chapel. And on August 15th they went out from the city gates in the early [Pg 15] morning for what proved to be the historic foundation of the Society of Jesus. Paris was still, at that time, a comparatively narrow strip of town on either bank of the Seine centring upon the island which bore the cathedral and the palace. A mile or two of meadows and vineyards lay between it and the green hill of Montmartre, on the slope of which was the old chapel of St. Denis. Underneath the choir was a small vault-like chapel, and in this, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the little band of fervent southerners gathered to hear Peter Favre, the only priest amongst them, say the Mass of the Virgin. At its close they knelt in turns before the altar, and each vowed that he would live in poverty and chastity, and either go out to convert the Turks or go wherever the Pope should direct. No rumbling of angry devils was heard on this occasion: the life of Paris flowed on its sparkling way; yet there was born in that dim vault on that August morning one of the most singular and formidable forces in the religious life of Europe.

The Society of Jesus was thus formed, though the seven men did not know it, or adopt any corporate name. They broke their fast and spent the day on the slope of the hill, elated with the joy of brotherhood and the promise of mighty enterprise, talking of the adventurous future. What should be the next step? Again we find the stamp of the peculiar genius of Ignatius on their decision: the features which would degenerate into what is called Jesuitry in the hearts and minds of less sincerely religious men. They were to return to their studies, their philanthropy, and their secrecy, for two years, and they would meet at Venice at the beginning of 1537. Ignatius never hurried. He lived as if he intended to quit the world very speedily; he acted as if he were assured of long life. He was [Pg 16] founding a body whose supreme and distinctive aim should be to serve the Pope, yet he concealed his work from the Pope's representatives as carefully as if he were really forming an auxiliary troop for Martin Luther. Let it be carefully noted, too, that they vowed either to go to Palestine or to serve the Pope in some other way appointed by him. It seems clear that, if Ignatius had not already abandoned the idea of a mission to the Turks, he held it lightly. In Paris he had learned that the spirit of the Reformation was spreading over Europe as fire spreads over a parched prairie. Men talked much of Luther and Calvin, little of Mohammed.

They returned to their colleges and their hospitals for two years, and were known to their companions only as monks who were too ascetic to enter a monastery. Ignatius practised fearful austerities, and his followers fasted and scourged themselves. Xavier looked back with such contrition on his former fame as a runner that he tied cords round his legs until they bit into the flesh and caused a dangerous malady. Probably the long delay was proposed by Ignatius in the hope that he might add to the number of his followers, but he found no more at Paris worthy or willing to be initiated; though three—Le Jay, Paschase Brouet, and Codure—were added after his departure. He had gone to Spain in the spring of 1535. Those of the youths who had property to sacrifice had talked of going to Spain to arrange their affairs, but Ignatius took the work on himself. His health was poor, he said, and he would try his native air; he was also eager to keep them from their native air and disapproving families. In March he walked afoot from Paris to Loyola, begging his bread by the way.

The report of his life had reached the quiet valley at [Pg 17] the foot of the Pyrenees, and he found his brother and many admirers waiting in the last stage of his journey. He remained three months in Azpeitia, and, as no one could now interfere with his fiery preaching, he urged his townsmen to repent and startled the province. His sanctity was now beyond question, because a woman had recovered the use of a withered arm by washing his linen. Then he arranged the affairs of his disciples and went to Venice. Here Hozes and the Eguia brothers were added to the secret fraternity, and a year was spent in tending the sick and other work of edification. The year 1537 broke at last, and in its first week the six disciples, worn and ragged from the long journey, joined their master. Walking in demure pairs, a staff in one hand and a chaplet in the other, begging their bread and exhorting all they met to virtue and repentance, the six learned students of the Paris University had covered afoot, in the depth of winter, the hundreds of miles that lay between Paris and Venice; flying before the advances of bold women, beaming under the abuse of the new heretics, facing the Alps more bravely than a Hannibal or a Napoleon. Strong efforts had been made to keep them at Paris. Why abandon their precious work at the University for an unknown world? They had a secret vow, they said; though they probably had little more idea than Ignatius of going to Palestine. None of them learned Arabic or Turkish, or studied the Koran: what they did learn was the Catholic doctrine assailed by the followers of Luther.

For a month or two the strange missionaries mystified and edified Venice. It was known that some of them were nobles, and all brilliant scholars, yet they performed the most repulsive offices for the sick, and at times put their mouths to festering wounds. Cardinal Caraffa, a stern Neapolitan reformer, asked Ignatius to join the [Pg 18] new Theatine order which he had just founded, and Ignatius replied that they had vowed to go to Palestine. They would remember their refusal when Caraffa became Pope. At last, in the middle of Lent, Ignatius sent his followers to Rome to ask the Pope's blessing on their mission. He would not go himself, as he feared the enmity of Caraffa and of the Spanish envoy Ortiz, who had opposed them at Paris. There was, in fact, little danger of Ignatius going without the Pope's blessing, as a new war with the Turk had broken out, and it would not be unjust to conclude that the real object of Ignatius was to bring his little troop to the notice of Paul III. Ortiz himself procured them an audience, and they received the papal blessing to accompany them to Palestine—if they could get there, the Pope lightly said. It is singular that Ignatius, after waiting so long, should choose a time for their departure when the seas were closed against them.

They were ordained priests at Venice, and then they scattered over Northern Italy, to allow a year's grace to the Palestinian mission and let other cities see their ways. Bologna, Ferrara, Siena, and Padua—all university towns—now witnessed the strange labours of the nameless knights of Christ. The years were not far distant when men would start with suspicion at the coming of a "Jesuit" and wonder what dark intrigue brought him amongst them, but in those early days they seemed the plainest and most guileless of ministers. Two soberly dressed, barefooted youths, their pale faces warmed by the smile which the master bade them wear under the eyes of men, would enter the gate one evening, covered with the dust of long roads, and mount some stone in the busy street or square; and, when men and women gathered round to see the tricks of these foreign jugglers or tumblers, they would be startled to hear such [Pg 19] fiery preaching as had not been heard in Italy since the fresh spring-time of the followers of Francis and Dominic. Then the preachers would beg a crust of bread and a cup of water, and ask for the hospital, where they might serve the sick. They had no name, the inquirer learned, and belonged to no monastic body; they were simple knights-errant in the cause of Christ and the poor. The one feature by which they might, to some close observer, have given an inkling of the future was that they hung about the universities and impressed youths with their learning; or that, while they served the poor, they were pleased to direct the consciences of noble and wealthy women. Yet who would suppose that within twenty years these men would be intriguing for the control of the universities and shaping the counsels of kings?

Ignatius, Favre, and Lainez went to Vicenza, and found a lodging in a ruined monastery near the town. From this they went out daily to beg, and tend the sick, and startle townsfolk and villagers with explosive exhortations, in broken Italian, to lay aside their sins. Again the Inquisition summoned them, and dismissed them. At last, when it was clear that the road to the East was indefinitely closed, Ignatius called his followers from their several towns, and a council was held in the old convent. The events of these early days are known to us only from Jesuit writers of the next generation, and, discarding only the miracles with which they unnecessarily adorn the ways of their founders, we may follow them with little reserve. These men were, beyond question, in deadly earnest, though we shall see that some of them sheltered little human frailties under their hair-shirts. But it is quite plain that, however high and pure their aim was, they formed and carried their plans with a diplomacy, almost an astuteness, of [Pg 20] which you will not find a trace in the founding of any other monastic body. One monastic virtue is conspicuously absent from the aureole of St. Ignatius—holy simplicity.

It was decided that Ignatius, Favre, and Lainez should go to Rome, and the others should return to work in their university cities until they were called to Rome. Before they parted, however, they gave themselves a name, since people demanded one. We are, said Ignatius, the "Compañia de Jesu," the "Company of Jesus"; although the prose of a later generation has translated it the "Society of Jesus." Then Xavier and Bobadilla went to Bologna, Rodriguez and Le Jay to Ferrara, Salmeron and Brouet to Siena, Codure and Hozes to Padua, to tend the sick, and instruct the children, and angle for recruits; and Ignatius and his companions went on foot, in the depth of winter, to Rome.

Paul III. occupied the papal throne in the year 1537, and looked with troubled eyes to the lands beyond the Alps, where the Reformation was now in full blast. He was by temperament a Pope of the Renaissance, a man of genial culture and artistic feeling, a man who owed his elevation to his sister's intimacy with a predecessor, and who might, if the age had not turned so sour, have carried even into the papal apartments the graceful vices of his youth. But there was now no mistaking the roll of the distant thunder; Rome was sobered and disposed to put its house in order. Paul, knowing that the appalling corruption of the Vatican, the clergy, and the monks must cease, or else the Vatican and clergy and monks would cease, had appointed a commission of the sterner cardinals to examine Luther's indictment of his Church, and one of the clearest points of agreement was that the unquestioned degradation of the monks through [Pg 21]out Christendom must be severely punished. The general feeling was that most, if not all, of the monastic orders should be suppressed. It was therefore a peculiarly inopportune time to propose the establishment of a new order. Was Ignatius more holy than Benedict, or Bruno, or Francis, or Dominic? And had not every order that had yet been founded fallen into evil ways within fifty years?

Ignatius was not more holy than Dominic and Francis, but he was shrewder and more alert to the circumstances. He did not propose to rush into the presence of Paul III. He and his companions settled at the Spanish hospital, and began to tend the sick and instruct the children. They began also to have influential admirers. "Let us," Ignatius had said, as they entered Rome, "avoid all relations with women, except those of the highest rank." In later years he said of their early work at Rome: "We sought in this way to gain men of learning and of position to our side—or, to speak more correctly, to God's side." This identification of "our" side and God's is the clue to early Jesuitism. Men who were convinced of it might be intensely earnest and unworldly, yet act as if they were ambitious. In fact, they were ambitious to win the wealthy and powerful—Ignatius says it repeatedly—"for the greater glory of God." And the work went forward with great speed. They received a poor little house in a vineyard at the foot of the Pincian Hill, and went out daily to minister and to edify. One of their first friends was Codacio, a wealthy and important official of the papal court. The better disposition of Ortiz, the Spanish envoy, was also encouraged. Ignatius put him through the Exercises in the old Monte Cassino Abbey, and, when the strain nearly drove him mad, entertained him by performing some of the old Basque dances: a[Pg 22] subject for a painter, if ever there was. After a time the Pope received Ignatius very affably, encouraged him to preach, and found academic chairs for Favre and Lainez. Within a month or two Ignatius had made so much progress that Roman gossip marked him as an intriguer for the red hat, which he was not wealthy enough to buy.

Within four months, or at Easter 1538, Ignatius summoned the whole of his followers to Rome. The poor little house in a vineyard was now too small, and Codacio gave them a large house in the Piazza Margana. From this they went out daily to beg and teach and preach, and to visit "ladies of the highest rank." These eleven eloquent and learned preachers, these nobles who begged their bread and washed verminous invalids, soon divided the Roman world into ardent admirers and ardent critics. An Augustinian friar, in particular, opened fire on them from his pulpit. Ignatius was "a wolf in sheep's clothing," he insisted; let people inquire at Alcalà, and Salamanca, and Paris, and Venice, and see whether he was not wanted by the Inquisition here and there. Friends at the Vatican were reminded that this sort of thing interfered with their good work, and the Pope was induced to inquire into the charges; but even the Pope's acquittal of them did not silence their critics, and for a time they bore much poverty and anxiety. Half of Rome, if not half of Catholicism, hated the Jesuits from their first year; and it would be absurd to think that this was due to their fervour in denouncing sin. It was due in a very large measure to the diplomatic character of the work of Ignatius, which we perceive so clearly even in the discreet narratives of the early Jesuit historians.

The infant Society was delivered from its perils by returning from the cultivation of the rich and powerful to [Pg 23] the service of the weak and powerless. We shall constantly find the fortunes of the early Jesuits vacillating according as they practise one or other of these incongruous activities, and we can quite understand that their critics came to see an element of calculation even in their philanthropy. By their brave ministration to the poor they win the favour of the rich: by the favour of the rich they rise to political and educational work, and the poor are almost forgotten until some epidemic of criticism threatens their very existence. It is quite useless to deny that there was calculation in their humbler ministration when we find Ignatius admitting it from the outset; yet it would be equally untrue to deny that they served the poor with a sincere and often heroic humanity, and that the favour and power they trusted to obtain by doing so were not sought for their personal profit, but for the better discharge of what they conceived to be a high mission.

So it was in the winter which closed the year 1538, in which their project ran some risk of being buried under the stones of their critics. The terrible cold of that winter led to a famine in Rome, and the followers of Ignatius spent day and night in relieving the sufferers and begging alms for them. Their house in the Piazza Margana was converted into a hospital, and no less than four hundred destitute men found a home in it. The sympathy of the pious slowly returned to them. "So happy a diversion had to be put to account," says Crétineau-Joly, and Ignatius began to draw up the rules of his Society for presentation to the Pope. Night by night the eleven priests sat in council to determine the broad features of their association: to say, especially, if they would add a vow of obedience to their vows of poverty and chastity and thus become a monastic body. In April they decided that they would have a Superior [Pg 24] and vow obedience to him; in May they resolved to adopt that masterpiece of the "holy wiles" of Ignatius, the most distinctive and most serviceable feature of the Society—the vow to put themselves at the direct disposal of the Pope. Naturally there was, and is, no religious body in the Catholic Church whose members would not leap with alacrity to obey any order of the Pope, and think it an honour to be selected for such a distinction; indeed, we shall see that no other religious ever ventured to defy or evade the commands of Popes as Jesuits have done. But we must observe how happily this parade of obedience fitted the circumstances. The Pope had entered upon a war against half of Christendom. Heresy was, like an appalling tide, invading even his southern dominions, and it was inevitable that he should be attracted by the proposal to put at his service a body of men of high culture and heroic purpose, who would be ready, at a word, to fly to a threatened point, to penetrate in disguise into the lands of the heretics, to whisper in the ears and fathom the counsels of kings, or to bear the gospel to the new countries beyond the seas.

This was the beginning of the famous Jesuit Constitutions, which were not completed and printed until 1558. A short summary of their proposals was handed by Ignatius, in September, to Cardinal Contarini, who would present it to the Pope. It was read and approved by one of the Pope's monk-advisers, and Contarini then read it himself to Paul III. "The finger of God is here," the Pope is reported to have said, and he appointed three cardinals to examine the document with care. Unfortunately for Ignatius, one of the three, Cardinal Guiddiccioni, was so disgusted with the state of the monastic orders that he would not even read the document. It seemed to him preposterous to add to[Pg 25] their number at a time when their corruption was ruining the Church. In that sense he and his colleagues reported to the Pope, and Ignatius betook himself, by prayer and good works, to a strenuous assault upon the heavens, that some miracle might open the eyes of the cardinal. And about a year later, the Jesuit historians say, the hostility of Guiddiccioni was miraculously removed. He read the document, and was enchanted with it; and on 27th September 1540 the bull "Regimini militantis Ecclesiae" placed the Society of Jesus at the service of the Counter-Reformation.

It need hardly be added that the "miracle" is susceptible of a natural explanation. There is a curt statement in Orlandini, one of the first historians of the Society, that during the year 1540 letters came to Rome from all the towns where the followers of Ignatius had already worked, telling the marvellous results of their preaching. Ignatius had done much more than pray. Many a time in the course of the next few chapters we shall find a shower of testimonial-letters falling upon a town where there is opposition to the admittance of the Jesuits, and they were not "unsolicited testimonials." Contarini, too, would not lightly resign himself to defeat by his brother-cardinal. Codacio, Ortiz, and many another, would help the work, under the discreet guidance of Ignatius. Long before the Society was authorised, the Pope was induced to employ the Jesuits for important missions. He had chosen Rodriguez and Xavier, at the pressing request of the King of Portugal, to carry the gospel to the Indies; he had sent Lainez and Favre, at the prayer of a distinguished cardinal, to fight the growth of Protestantism in Parma. Other members of the little group had gone to discharge special missions, and glowing reports of their success came to Rome. The Pope was won, and, when the [Pg 26] Pope willed, it would hardly need a miracle to induce Cardinal Guiddiccioni to read a document which it was his office to read. Indeed, the statement that he refused for twelve months to read a paper which the Pope enjoined him to read is incredible; it was a good pretext for a change of mind, and for a miracle. The Society of Jesus was founded on diplomacy.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A good study of the controversy as to the indebtedness of Ignatius to the Benedictines, and even the Mohammedans, from the point of view of an outsider, will be found in H. Müller's Les origines de la Compagnie de Jésus (1898).

From this account of the influences which shaped the character of the Society of Jesus before and during its birth we may derive our first clue to the singular history of the Jesuits. They might not implausibly make a proud boast of the fact that they have always borne the intense hostility of heretics and unbelievers, but the very reason they assign for this—their effective service to the Church—prevents them from explaining why they have, from their foundation, incurred an almost equal enmity on the part of a very large proportion of the monks, priests, and laymen of their own Church. "Jealousy," they whisper; but since no other body in the Church, however learned or active, has experienced this peculiar critical concentration of its neighbours, we are bound to seek a deeper explanation. There are distinctive features of the Jesuit Society which irritate alike the pious and the impious, the Catholic and the non-Catholic.

We begin to perceive these features at the very birth of the Society. Its founder has the temper of a monk, but the times will not permit the establishment of a monastic order of the old type; a new regiment of soldiers of the Church must engage in active foreign service, not degenerate into fatness in domestic barracks. The success of Ignatius was due to the fact that he had other qualities than those of the monk, and he met the[Pg 28] new conditions with remarkable shrewdness. It seems to me a mistake to conceive him as a soldier above all things. He was pre-eminently a diplomatist. He infused into the Society the energy and fearlessness of the soldier, but he also equipped it with the weapons of the diplomatist, or, one might say, of the secret-service man. He was a most sincerely and unselfishly religious man, but he used, and taught others to use, devices which the profoundly religious man commonly disdains. The Jesuits were Jesuits from the start. It is a truism, a fulfilment of the known command of Ignatius, that they sought the favour of the rich and powerful; it is a fact lying on the very surface of their history, as written by themselves, that they accommodated their ideals to circumstances as no other religious order had ever done in the first decades of its life; it is the boast of their admirers that they used "holy wiles" in the attainment of their ends. This stamp was impressed on them by inheritance from their sire and the pressure of their surroundings. These things were consecrated by the undoubted sincerity of the early Jesuit ideal; they wanted power only for the service of Christ and the salvation of men. What happened later was that the inner fire, the glow of which sanctified these worldly manœuvres in the mind of the first Jesuits, grew dim and languid, and the traditional policy was developed until even crime and vice and hypocrisy were held to be lawful if they contributed to the power of the Jesuits.

An examination of the rules and the activity of the early Jesuits will make this clear. The Constitutions of the Society were not completed by Ignatius until several years after the establishment, and they were afterwards modified and augmented by Lainez, a less religious man than Ignatius, but it will be useful to consider at once their distinctive and most important[Pg 29] features. In the main they follow the usual lines of monastic regulations, and many points which are ascribed to the soldier Ignatius and usually held to be distinctive of his Society are ancient doctrines of the monastic world; such are, the duties of blind obedience, of detachment from family and country, and of surrendering one's personality. The famous maxim, that a Jesuit must have no more will than a corpse, is familiar in every monastic body, and is even found in the rules of Mohammedan brotherhoods. Some writers have conjectured that Ignatius borrowed much from the Moorish fraternities, but it is difficult to see how he could have any knowledge of them, and the parallels are not important. In any case, the story of the Society will very quickly show us that this grim theory of blind obedience and self-suppression was not carried out in practice; even the earliest Jesuits were by no means will-less corpses and men who sacrificed their affections and individuality.

Omitting points of small technical interest, I should say that the most significant features of the Jesuit Constitutions are: the establishment of a large body of priests (Spiritual Coadjutors) between the novices and the professed members, the extraordinary provisions by which a superior gets an intimate knowledge of his subjects, the stress on the duty of teaching, the distinction between a "house" and a "college," the deliberate recommendation to prefer youths of wealthy or distinguished families (cæteris paribus) to poor youths, the despotic power and lifelong appointment of the General, the fallacious and imposing vow of direct obedience to the Pope, and the absence of "choir." These primitive and fundamental features of the Society, taken in conjunction with the special privileges which the Society gradually wheedled from the Popes, go far [Pg 30] toward explaining its great material success and its moral deterioration. Some of these points need no explanation, or have already been explained, and a few words will suffice to show the effect of the others.

First as to the Spiritual Coadjutors. One who aspires to enter the Society passes two years of trial as a "novice," then takes "simple" (or dissolvable) vows and becomes a "scholastic" (student). In the other monastic bodies, which now have simple vows, the aspirant takes his "solemn" (or indissoluble) vows three years afterwards, before he becomes a priest. The peculiarity of the Jesuits is that they defer the taking of the "solemn" vows for a considerable number of years, and they thus have a large body of priests who are not rigidly bound to the Society and cannot hold important office in it. This gives the General, who has a despotic power of dismissing these Spiritual Coadjutors, a very lengthy period for learning the intimate character of men before they are admitted to the secrets of the Society.

Then there is the remarkable scheme of spying, tale-bearing, and registering by which this knowledge of men is secured. The aspirant must make a general confession of his life to the superior, or some priest appointed by him, when he enters the Society. He is from that day closely observed and subjected to extraordinary tests, and a strict obligation is laid on each to tell the faults and most private remarks of his neighbour. The local superiors then send periodical full reports on each man to the headquarters at Rome, where there must be a bureau not unlike the criminal intelligence department of a great police-centre: except that the good and the mediocre are as fully registered as the suspects.

The important place assigned to teaching in the [Pg 31] programme of the Society also leads to serious modifications of the monastic ideal. Every order has some device or other by which it escapes the practical inconveniences of its vow of poverty, but the Jesuits have gone beyond all others. They have drawn a casuistic distinction between a "college" and a "house of the professed," and have declared that the ownership of the former is not inconsistent with their vow of poverty. The result is that they may heap up indefinite wealth in the shape of colleges and their revenues, yet boast of their vow of poverty. The various devices of the monastic bodies to, at the same time, retain and disclaim the ownership of their property are many and curious. This is the one instance of a monastic body boldly saying that its vow is consistent with the ownership of great wealth. Hence the mercantile spirit which will at once spread in the Society.

The deliberate counsel to prefer rich or noble youths to poor, when their other qualifications are equal, is a further obvious source of material strength and moral weakness; we shall soon find them making wealth, or social standing, or talent, the first qualification. The exemption from "choir" (or chanting the psalms in choir for several hours a day) falls in the same category. When we add to these elements of their Constitutions the extraordinary privileges they secured from the Popes in the course of a decade or two, we have the preliminary clues to the story of the rise and fall of the Society. They were allowed to grant degrees in their colleges (and so ruin and displace universities); they were declared exempt from the jurisdiction of the local authorities, spiritual or secular; they might encroach on the sphere of any existing monastery; and they received many other powers which enabled them to pose as unique representatives of the Papacy.

The tendency which we thus detect in the legislation of the Society is equally visible in much of the personal conduct of its founder, and soon shows its dangers in the lives of his less fervent followers. We have seen how the sanction of the Society was secured, and we must note that Ignatius was not more ingenuous in obtaining control of it. The conventional account of his appointment to the office of General is edifying. About Easter 1541 he summoned to Rome, for the purpose of electing a General, the nine fathers who had taken the solemn vows. Four were unable to come, but they sent, or had left at Rome, written votes, and Ignatius was unanimously elected. He protested, however, that he was unworthy to hold the office, and compelled them to hold a second ballot. At this ballot he received two-thirds of the votes, three being cast for Favre. He then consulted his confessor, and was told to accept the office; and for several days afterwards he washed the dishes and discharged the humblest offices.

Orlandini naively confesses, however, that at the election Ignatius gave a blank vote, and we can hardly suppose that he was so far lost in contemplation as to be unaware that a blank vote was a vote for himself. Further, the result of the second ballot plainly suggests that, if Ignatius had again refused to accept the office, Favre would have been appointed. It is difficult to doubt that he intended from the first to hold the office of General, and indeed it would have been ludicrous for them to appoint any other. But Ignatius knew his young followers, and he seems to have acted in this way in order that they might place the authority in his hands in the most emphatic manner. They are described in the chronicles as little less than angelic, but we shall presently find that some of them were very human, especially in the matter of obedience, and that at the [Pg 33] death of Ignatius they quarrel like petty princes for the succession. Ignatius was piously diplomatic. He would use his power unreservedly in the cause of Christ and the Pope, but it is important to note how from the start the founder of the Society employs casuistry or diplomacy in getting power.

During the next fifteen years Ignatius remained at Rome, making only three short and relatively unimportant missions into Italy. They had moved from the house in the Piazza Margana to the foot of the Capitoline Hill, where the famous church of the Gesù now is. The old church of Sta Maria della Strada had been given to them, and Codacio (who had joined the Society and given his wealth to it) had built a house beside it for them. When Sta Maria proved too small, they proposed to build a larger church, and nearly secured the services of Michael Angelo; but the actual Gesù was begun in 1568 by Cardinal Alexander Farnese.

From their house beside the old church the keen eyes of the General followed the travels of his subjects to the ends of the earth and kept watch on Rome. He was now approaching his fiftieth year: a bald, worn man, with piercing black eyes in his sallow face, concealing an immense energy and power of intrigue under his humble appearance. Under his eye the novices were trained, and it was characteristic that he used to protest, when others urged him to expel an unruly brother, that—to put it in modern phrase—he liked a little "devil" in his novices. One of the first was young Ribadeneira, a cardinal's page, a noble by birth. He had come to their house one day when he was playing truant, and had been caught by the romance of the life. He was only fourteen years old, yet Ignatius received him and bore his fits of temper and rebellion [Pg 34] until he became a useful and obedient member. Between the fiery Spanish boy and the aged and simple Codacio, the former papal official, there was every shade of character to be studied and humoured. The younger novices—they went down to the age of eleven—were encouraged to laugh and play, and come to the General's room to have fruit peeled for them; perhaps on the very day on which he was stirring the Pope to set up an Inquisition on the Spanish model at Rome or in Portugal. He loved the flowers of their garden, and tender ladies had no more sympathetic confidant. Great austerities, of the Manresa type, he rigorously forbade. The Jesuit was to be neat, clean, cheerful, strong, industrious, guarded in speech—and obedient. When it was necessary to strike, he struck at once. One night, when the prefect of the house came to make his report, it appeared that one of the novices (a young nobleman) had ridiculed the excessive zeal of another. Brother Zapata was at once summoned from bed and put out of doors.

His personal life was simple, to the eye. A Bible, a breviary, and an Imitation of Christ were the only books in his poor chamber, which is still shown to the visitor; and of these the breviary was not used, as he wept so much in reading the office that he endangered his sight, and the Pope excused him from reading it. He spent the first four hours of his early day in meditation and the saying of Mass, then worked until noon, when all dined together, in silence, and afterwards spent an hour in conversation under his observant eye. Then he returned to his desk, or took his stick and his sombrero, and limped to the hospital, or to the houses of the very poor or the rich, or to the chambers of cardinals or papal officials. Many a jeer and curse followed him as he walked, in neat black cloak, with downcast eyes and [Pg 35] grave smile, courteous to every beggar or noble who addressed him. Rome was rich with monuments of his philanthropy—schools, orphanages, rescue-homes, etc.; but the fierce hostility never died, and at times it rose to the pitch of a gale. After his round of visits he limped back, grave and humble, to the house for the silent evening meal. When the novices were abed, the prefect came to give him a minute account of the day's life in the house, and, when the prefect was abed, the large eyes still flashed in the worn, olive-tinted face. He slept only four hours a night.

But all these pages of the written biography of Ignatius are of less interest than the unwritten. To understand his real life during those fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays you have to study the adventures of his colleagues far away: to mark how the hostility of bishops and doctors and princes is disarmed by a papal privilege or a papal recommendation, how the Protestant plague cannot break out anywhere but a Jesuit appears, how the most nicely fitted man is sent for each special mission, how the man disappears when there is, rightly or wrongly, a cry of scandal, how the long white arms of Ignatius Loyola seem to stretch over the planet from Sta Maria della Strada, near the Pope's palace. This vast and obscure activity of the General will be best gathered from a short survey of the fortunes of the Jesuits during his reign.

The first mission of interest to us, though not quite the first in point of time, was the sending of two Jesuits to the British Isles. It seemed that England was lost, and all that could be done was to resist Henry's attempt to stamp out the old faith in Ireland and persuade James V. to follow his profitable example in Scotland. The mission was perilous, for, on the word of these Jesuits of the time, nearly every chief in Ireland had gone over to [Pg 36] Protestantism, and in Scotland the nobles and officials were looking with moist lips at the fat revenues of the monasteries. The Archbishop of Armagh, who had fled to Rome, asked the Pope to send two Jesuits to his country, and Codure and Salmeron were appointed. Codure died, however, during the negotiations, and Paschase Brouet was named in his place. As usual, Ignatius chose his men with shrewdness. Brouet, the "angel of the Society," was the counterpart of Salmeron's vigour and learning. They were granted the privileges of Nuncii by the Pope, though Ignatius directed them to mention these privileges only when the success of the mission required. In fact, he gave them a written paper of instructions as to their personal behaviour when, on 10th September 1541, they left for Paris and Edinburgh. They were to travel as poor Jesuits—but the wealthy young noble Zapata was permitted to accompany and care for them.

What the precise aim of this mission was we do not know, but it was from every point of view a complete failure. It is, of course, represented as a success, and its purpose is said to have been merely to hearten the suffering Irish people in their resistance and convey to them indulgences and absolutions. But from the circumstances of the time and the duration of the mission we may be sure that the two Jesuits learned very little English, and less or no Gaelic, so that the idea seems absurd. In Scotland, certainly, their mission was political. They saw James at Stirling Castle, and easily got from him an assurance that he would resist the allurements of Henry VIII. What they trusted to do in Ireland we are not informed, and it seems most reasonable to suppose that they were to see the chiefs and stiffen them in their opposition to England. This they wholly failed to do, for the leading men would[Pg 37] have nothing to do with them. The customary Catholic version of the enterprise is that they happily accomplished their mission, traversed "the whole of Ireland" (as even Francis Thompson says), consoling and absolving, and went home to report success. One fears that this account may be typical of these early Jesuit reports of missions. To learn Gaelic and traverse the whole of Ireland, or any large part of it, in thirty-four days (Orlandini), in the sixteenth century, and in circumstances which compelled them to travel with the greatest prudence, would assuredly be a miracle, especially when we are told that for some time even the common folk shrank from them, and it is hinted that the scattered Irish priests were unfriendly.

Apparently they travelled a little in disguise, or hid in the farms here and there, for a few weeks, granting indulgences and dispensations, probably through some Gaelic interpreter, until the English officials heard of their presence and put a price on their heads. The Jesuit narrative credits them with the bold idea of going to London and bearding the wicked Henry in his palace. Their behaviour was singularly prudent for men with such exalted ideas. Leaving Ireland, possibly at the entreaty of the Irish, as soon as the search for them grew hot, they returned to Scotland, and finding that country also aflame, they went on at once to Paris. There they received orders to return to Scotland and discharge a secret mission similar to that they had had in Ireland. They "hesitated and informed the Pope of the state of things in Scotland," says the Jesuit historian; in fact, they remained in Paris until the Pope allowed them to return to Rome. If any be disposed to criticise their conduct, he may be reminded that Brouet and Salmeron had spent several weeks in Ireland at the risk of their lives. However, it is plain that we [Pg 38] have to look closely into these early Jesuit accounts of missions which covered the infant Society with glory. A prudent examination of them discovers features which have been carefully eliminated from later Jesuit, or pro-Jesuit, works on the subject.

As Henry VIII. died in 1547, and Edward VI. in 1553, it may seem singular that Ignatius did not, when the Catholic Mary acceded to the throne, at once dispatch a band of his priests to help in restoring the old faith. Neither Orlandini nor his discreet follower, Crétineau-Joly, throws any light on the mystery, but a few important hints may be gathered from the more candid early Jesuit historian Polanco, a close associate of Ignatius, and the full solution is indicated in Burnet's History of the Reformation (ii. 526, in the Oxford edition). This rare discovery of an independent document suggests that the early story might read somewhat differently in many particulars if we were not forced to rely almost entirely on Jesuit authorities.

From the brief statements scattered over the various volumes of Polanco's Historia Societatis it appears that from 1553 until his death Ignatius made the most strenuous efforts to secure admission into England. Cardinal Pole, it seems, asked the prayers of Ignatius for his success when he was summoned to England, and, when Ignatius died and Lainez again approached Pole, the cardinal pointedly replied that the only way in which the Jesuits could aid him was by their prayers. In the meantime (1554) Ignatius pressed Father Araoz, who was in great favour at the Spanish court, to urge Philip, and induce ladies of the court to urge him, to take Jesuits to England. In 1556 he sent Father Ribadeneira, a courtly priest, to join Philip in Belgium and press the request, but the reply was always that Pole was opposed to admitting the Jesuits. Polanco makes it quite clear [Pg 39] that Pole resisted all the efforts of Ignatius from 1554 to 1556.

Burnet supplies the solution of the mystery. A friend of his discovered a manuscript at Venice, from which it appears that Ignatius had overreached himself and aroused the hostility of the cardinal. He had written to Pole that, as Queen Mary was restoring such monastic property as had fallen to the throne, it would be advisable to entrust this to the Jesuits, since the monks were in such bad odour in England; and he added that the Jesuits would soon find a way to make other possessors of monastic property disgorge. Pole refused their co-operation and left the Jesuits angry and disappointed. The historian cannot regard an anonymous manuscript as in itself deserving of credence, but the statement very plausibly illumines the situation. I may add that in 1558 Father Ribadeneira was actually smuggled into England in the suite of Count Gomez de Figueroa, who had gone to console the ailing Queen. [2] The count was a warm patron of the Jesuits, but Queen Mary died soon after his arrival, and the last hope of the Jesuits was extinguished.

We cannot examine with equal freedom all the chronicles of early Jesuit activity, and must be content to cull from the pages of the Historia Societatis Jesu, the first section of which is written by Father Orlandini, such facts as may enable us to form a balanced judgment of the Society under Ignatius. Italy was, naturally, the first and chief theatre of their labours, and in the course of a few years they spread from the turbulent cities of Sicily to the foot of the Alps. I have already described the work of Ignatius at Rome, and need add only that,[Pg 40] as Orlandini tells us, he was one of the most urgent in pressing the reluctant Pope to "reform" the Roman Inquisition, or to equip it with the dread powers of the Spanish tribunal. At the very time when he was devising pleas for toleration in Protestant and pagan lands, he was urging that in Italy and Portugal there should be set up the most inhuman instrument of intolerance that civilisation has ever known. The psychology of his attitude is simple; he was convinced that he was asking tolerance for truth and intolerance for untruth. The liberal-minded Romans were not persuaded of the justice of his distinction, and the opposition to the Society increased. The hostility, which at times went the length of breaking Jesuit windows, is ascribed by his biographers chiefly to his zeal for the conversion of prostitutes. He founded a large home for these women, and would often follow them to their haunts in the piazze and lead them himself to St. Martha's House. On the whole, his great philanthropic services and personal austerity secured respect for his Society at Rome, and it prospered there until his later years.

In the south of Italy the Society met little opposition in the early years. Bobadilla had done some good work in troubled Calabria before the Society was founded, and within the next ten years colleges were opened at Messina (1548), Palermo (1549), and Naples (1551). The poet Tasso was one of the first students of the Naples college. It was in the north that the more arduous work had to be done. The seeds of the Reformation were wafted over the Alps and found a fertile soil in the cities of the Renaissance. Hardly anywhere else were monks and clergy so corrupt and ignorant, and nowhere was there so much familiarity with the immorality of the Vatican system. Rome itself lived on this corruption and regarded it with indulgence, but [Pg 41] in the university towns of the north educated men, and even women, who almost remembered the lives of Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X., were but provoked to smile when they were exhorted to cling to the "Vicar of Christ."

To tear these prosperous seedlings of heresy out of the soil of northern Italy was the congenial task of the early Jesuits, and Lainez, Brouet, and Salmeron, with some of the new recruits, went from city to city, challenging the Protestants to debate, strengthening the Catholics to resist, and founding colleges for the sound education of youth. Their procedure, and the resentment it constantly excited, may be illustrated by their experience at Venice. Lainez was sent by the Pope to Venice in 1542, at the request of the Doge. An honourable apartment awaited him in the Doge's Palace, but he humbly declined and went to live among the sick at the squalid hospital, varying his learned campaign against the Lutherans with the lowliest services to the poor and ailing. Many were edified, especially one Andrea Lippomani, an elderly and wealthy noble. Presently there came an instruction from Ignatius that Lainez must accept the hospitality offered him by Lippomani; and a little later the noble's heirs were infuriated to learn that he had assigned a rich benefice of his at Padua to the Jesuits. They appealed to the Venetian Council, and lost, for Lainez and Salmeron were ordered by the General to defend the donation. So the first college of the Society was founded, at Padua, and Lippomani afterwards enabled them to found one at Venice. Whatever view one takes of it, this was the normal procedure: tend the sick and beg your bread until "men of wealth and position" open their purses, then throw all your energy into the founding of colleges and the securing of novices. It was unquestionably a most effective method of [Pg 42] serving the Church; it also had an aspect which attracted critics.

In the Catholic atmosphere of Spain and Portugal the Society might be expected to grow luxuriantly, as it eventually did, but its fortunes in the Peninsula are rather due to the General's policy of securing influential patrons than to any popular welcome. As early as 1540 Ignatius had sent his nephew Araoz into Spain, and one reads—between the lines—that he had little success. At last a college was founded at Alcalà, to the anger of many of the University professors. One professor maintained his opposition so long and so violently that Father Villanueva, the Jesuit rector, fraternally informed him that the Inquisition proposed to put him a few questions, and the professor sullenly withdrew. Then a learned ex-rector of the university itself was won by Ignatius, during a visit to Rome, and was sent back, a Jesuit, to found a college at Salamanca. It was, as usual, founded in poverty; the fathers had not even a crucifix to put over their altar, and one of their number had to draw the figure on a sheet of paper. From the general laws of these phenomena one might deduce that the story brought a shower of crucifixes. However, the favour of the King of Portugal and the influence of Rome smoothed their paths, and little colonies were soon planted at Valladolid, Toledo, Saragossa, and other towns.

It was in Spain that the Society encountered the most virulent of its early Catholic antagonists, Melchior Cano. He was a very learned and sober Dominican monk, and a professor at the university: an enemy of mysticism and eccentricity. He knew of the early penances and "visions" of Ignatius, and had seen him at work in Rome. When the pale, black-robed, mysterious youths walked demurely into learned Salamanca and set[Pg 43] up a college for the instruction of youth, the monk erupted. They were hybrids—neither the flesh of the secular clergy nor the fish of the regular clergy: they were leeches, fastening on wealthy saints and sinners; and so on. Miguel de Torres, the rector, called upon the irate friar, and told him of the great privileges the Pope had bestowed on the Society and the high missions he had entrusted to its members. This inflamed him still more, and he flung at them Paul's fiery warnings against the hypocrites who would come after him. He exaggerated heavily, especially in regard to the personal character of the Jesuits, but he saw very clearly those dangerous features and practices of the early Society which I have indicated. The struggle came to a diplomatic close. Melchior Cano was appointed Bishop of the Canaries, and the Jesuits invite us to admire the way in which Ignatius returned good for evil. It may be added that Cano afterwards recognised the ruse, laid down his mitre, and returned to plague his benefactors.

In the midst of this conflict the Jesuits made a most important convert, and their future in Spain was assured. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, one of the leading nobles of the kingdom, met and was enchanted by Favre in 1544, when the King of Portugal brought that gentle and persuasive Jesuit on a visit to the Spanish court. He was conducted through the Exercises by Favre, one of the most lovable and sincere of the early fathers. When Favre died two years afterwards, prematurely worn by his labours, Borgia wrote to ask Ignatius to admit him to the order. Observe the procedure once more. He was secretly initiated, not even the Pope knowing his name: which enabled him to remain in the eyes of men the Duke of Gandia, and shower his wealth and his patronage on the Society. It really matters little what lofty purposes are alleged for such[Pg 44] sinuous procedure; it was a new policy in the history of religious founders. When, a few years later, the Pope offered a cardinal's hat to the Duke of Gandia, and the King of Spain insisted that he should accept it, the truth had to come out. Ignatius had sternly enjoined that no dignity should ever be accepted by any member of his Society, yet, to avoid giving offence to the king, he said that he left the decision to Borgia.

Under Borgia's patronage the net of the Society spread over Spain, many blessing and some cursing. At Saragossa, where they had built a chapel, the Augustinian friars complained that it encroached on their sphere. To prevent unedifying conduct on the part of rival friars, the Church had decreed that no order should establish itself within five hundred feet of a house belonging to a different order. When the Jesuits who had broken this law, refused to yield, they were excommunicated by the Vicar-General, and a pleasant procession was arranged by the townsfolk, in which effigies of damned Jesuits were propelled toward their destination by little devils. The Augustinians were popular. But the long arm of Ignatius was extended once more, and the Papal Nuncio intervened in favour of the Jesuits. Before many years the Jesuits won from the Pope a declaration that the law did not apply to them, and they might build where they pleased. They prospered, and were hated.

An incident of the same significance occurred at Alcalà. The college obtained many pupils, though little wealth, and the Jesuit fathers began to be very active. In 1551 they were surprised to hear that the Archbishop of Toledo had suspended the whole of them from priestly functions for daring to hear confessions without his authorisation. The Jesuits produced their privileges, and persuaded the Governor of Toledo, and even the[Pg 45] Royal Council, to explain to the prelate that the Pope had exempted them from the jurisdiction of bishops. He refused to recognise such extraordinary privileges, and maintained the suspension. Ignatius then laid the matter before the Pope, and the Archbishop was directed from Rome to withdraw his opposition.

When we turn to Portugal we find an interesting illustration of the early effect of great prosperity on the Society. On the throne at the time was John III. from whose reign all historians date the downfall of what had become one of the most brilliant and wealthy Powers in Europe. Blind to the gross administrative corruption in his kingdom, and to the decay of the stirring patriotism which had borne the Portuguese flag over the globe, John was concerned only about the religious needs of his country and his new colonies. He had invited Xavier and Rodriguez in 1540, intending to send them to the Indies, but he was so charmed with them that he wished to keep them in Portugal. Ignatius allowed Rodriguez to remain, and Xavier set out on his historic mission to the far east. In this Ignatius showed his usual discernment: Rodriguez proved as supple and graceful a courtier as Xavier proved a fiery missionary. John then wished to entrust the tutorship of his son to Rodriguez, and Ignatius consented. His own followers were puzzled at times to know which were the dignities that they were forbidden to accept. When John asked for a Jesuit confessor, Rodriguez refused, but Ignatius overruled him. The next step was to set up the Inquisition, through the mediation of Ignatius, and Orlandini admits that when, in 1555, the king wished to make Father Merin, his confessor, head of the Inquisition, Ignatius seriously considered the proposal. He did not refuse, as is sometimes said; the negotiations broke down.

In this genial atmosphere the Society flourished. Its chief college was at Coimbra, the great university centre, where the Jesuits rapidly ran their course. At first they shocked staid Catholics with the excesses of their zeal. A youth in the college confessed to temptations of the flesh, and was ordered to walk the streets at mid-day without a hat or a cloak, holding a skull in his hand. Another student went forth almost naked in a cold wind, begging from door to door; and, finding a crowd of folk dancing and singing in a church, he mounted the pulpit to admonish them, and was dragged out and severely chastised. At nights Father Simon would send out a procession of youths to cry in the ears of indignant sinners or quiet wine-bibbers some such doggerel as: "Hell, hell, hell, for those in grave sin"; or long processions of children with masks and lanterns paraded the streets and squares. We gather that the boys of Coimbra had a pleasant time during these exhibitions. But the college flourished; there were in a few years a hundred and fifty pupils in it, and it supplied large numbers of missionaries.

In 1546 Favre visited Coimbra, and reported to Ignatius that prosperity had flushed the veins of his brothers. Nicolini and other anti-Jesuit writers speak of the college as having become a place of "debauch," but this is not stated in the chronicles. Frivolity and good-living are the only vices charged, whatever we may suspect. The students stooped to writing sonnets, and the King's money provided plenty of good cheer. Ignatius felt that Father Simon had lost his fervour at the court, deposed him from office—he was Provincial (or head of the province)—and ordered him to go either to Brazil or Aragon. The piety of Rodriguez had evidently deteriorated, and he made a struggle to hold his place. He was a handsome and comfortable man, [Pg 47] much liked for his liberality. He went to Coimbra, where Ignatius had appointed a new rector, and the liberals tried to induce the court to protect them. The King was alarmed, however, and Father Simon had to submit, and the college to mend its ways. Numbers of students left or were expelled, and for the rest, when the new rector piously walked the streets of Coimbra, laying the bloody lash on his own bare shoulders, they fell to tears and went out in a body scourging themselves under the eyes of the townsfolk. The story ends in Orlandini with Simon Rodriguez submitting in holy joy and kissing the rebuking letters of his General. But when we turn to Sacchini, the Jesuit writes of the next section of the "Historia Societatis Jesu," who does not always carefully notice what his predecessor has said, we learn that Rodriguez smarted for years under the humiliation, and awaited an opportunity to undo it. However, the province returned to piety, and before the death of Ignatius we find the Jesuits capturing, after a long siege, the famous University of Coimbra.

In France the Society wholly failed under Ignatius. He placed students, supported by wealthy patrons, at the University of Paris, and sent fathers after a time to gather their neophytes under one roof. Then the outbreak of war with Spain drove most of them abroad, and even when the war was over the colony made slow progress, amid poverty and hostility. In 1549 Ignatius won the favour of Cardinal Guise de Lorraine and, through him, of the French court. The King issued letters authorising the Jesuits to live and teach at Paris, and Brouet was sent to conciliate the Parisians. Then began a long and famous struggle between the Parlement and University of Paris and the court and Jesuits. Parlement bluntly refused to register the King's letters, [Pg 48] and they were of no effect until this powerful legal body had accepted them. Henry ordered his Privy Council to examine the Jesuit Constitutions and approve them; Parlement retorted by inviting the Archbishop, who was very hostile, and the theological faculty of the university to advise it, and the issue was a violent condemnation of the Jesuits in the vein of Melchior Cano. It was said that they admitted all sorts of aspirants to their ranks, and that the extraordinary privileges they professed to have were insulting to the spiritual and temporal authorities and opposed to the interests of the other orders and the university.

In the main, it was undoubtedly the privileges of the Jesuits which made the greater part of Paris and of France hostile to them. Bishops were not to look at them, civic authorities were not to tax them, universities were to be opposed by free classes, and were to respect degrees granted by Jesuits to any whom they thought fit. The hostility was quite natural, and it was fed by indiscretions on the part of the Jesuits. They received a nephew of the Archbishop, against the uncle's will, and they first turned the brain (with their Exercises) of, and then put out of doors, a very learned ornament of the university named Postel. The Archbishop bade them leave Paris, and they remained helpless outside the city, at St. Germain aux Prés, until after the death of Ignatius. He pressed the case at Rome, and doctors of the Sorbonne went there to exchange arguments with Jesuit doctors, but nothing was done until years afterwards.

During the war the Spanish Jesuits had gone from Paris to Louvain and began to teach there. Here again the university scorned and opposed them, and for many years (until they secured the interest of the Archduchess) they made no progress. Ribadeneira, [Pg 49] who was in charge, used to break down and retire from the room to weep. In Germany they had a different and more spirited struggle, but they seem to have had little influence in the various conferences and diets at which attempts were still made to reconcile the parties. Favre was at the Diet of Worms in 1540, then at the Ratisbon Conference, where Bobadilla and Le Jay succeeded him. They were restricted to an effort to reform the Catholics themselves, and found it difficult. The letters of these early Jesuits make it quite impossible for any historian to question the appalling corruption of priests, monks, and people in every part of Europe at the time of the Reformation. From Worms Favre wrote to Ignatius that there were not three priests in the city who were not stained by concubinage or crime. At Ratisbon the Catholics threatened to throw Le Jay into the river. "What does it matter to me whether I enter heaven by water or land?" he said. They knew very little German, generally preaching in Latin, and had slight influence for some years.

In time, as they learned German, and confined themselves to the Catholic provinces, their work was more successful. They fastened especially on Cologne, and assailed the Archbishop, a very worldly prelate of the old type, who was annoyed to find these Jesuit wasps buzzing about him, and their house was closed for a time by the authorities. But they had the favour of the Emperor, and the Archbishop was deposed. In 1545 the Council of Trent opened, and Lainez and Salmeron appeared there as the Pope's theologians, together with Peter Canisius (an able German student whom Favre had attracted to the Society) as theologian of the new Archbishop of Cologne. It need only be said of the earlier sittings of the famous Council [Pg 50] (in 1545 and 1551) that the Jesuits had little influence, and this they used to oppose any concession to the Protestants and magnify the authority of the Pope. This will be plainer in connection with the later sittings.

The work in Germany was afterwards thwarted by the zeal of the fiery Bobadilla. It had at last come to war with the Protestants, to the satisfaction of the Jesuits, and Bobadilla marched with the troops and was severely wounded at Mühlberg. In 1548, however, Charles published his Interim, or provisional concession of certain Protestant claims (such as the marriage of the clergy) until the Council of the Church should decide the points at issue. It may be recalled that the general Council of Trent was first intended as a common meeting of Protestant and Catholic divines, and the hope of reconciliation was not yet dead. Reconciliation, however, could mean only concession, and the Jesuits were resolutely against concession. Whatever influence they had in Germany, apart from their effort to reform the morality of the Catholics, was reactionary and mischievous in the highest degree. Bobadilla overflowed with wrath at the Interim, and denounced it fiercely by pen and tongue. Charles angrily ordered him to leave the Empire, and he returned to Rome; and it is recorded that Ignatius so warmly resented his "indiscretion" that he refused at first to admit him to the house. Thus did the saint vindicate the majesty of kings, says M. Crétineau-Joly. The outbreak did unquestionably hamper the progress of the Jesuits for a time, but before the death of Ignatius they were firmly established in Vienna, Prague, Cologne, and a few other cities. At Vienna the court demanded that Canisius should accept the office of archbishop, and Ignatius compromised by allowing him to administer the[Pg 51] see and refuse its revenue. In the same year a Jesuit was made "Patriarch of Abyssinia." It was just seven years since Ignatius had induced the Pope to decree that no Jesuit should ever accept an ecclesiastical dignity.

Of the foreign missions it is impossible to speak here at any length. In 1540 Francis Xavier had come for his leader's blessing as he started for the Indies. His cassock was worn and patched, and Ignatius took off his own flannel vest and put it on the young priest before dismissing him with the usual: "Go and set the world on fire." It was a different Xavier from the one he had seen, a vain and brilliant teacher, at the University of Paris, and it is well known how he did set the world on fire. He was a handsome, blue-eyed man of thirty-six, and no Portuguese sailor ever fronted the unknown with more courage and heroism than Xavier displayed in his famous travels from India to Japan. After a year's work at Goa, where his first need was to convert the Christians and the Portuguese priests, he went on to Malabar, to the Moluccas, to Malacca, and on to Japan, ending his life, in 1552, in an attempt to reach China. What the result of his mission was it is difficult to estimate soberly. The Jesuit chronicler forgets the confusion of tongues, and makes Xavier leap from land to land, preaching to and converting thousands everywhere, as if they all spoke Portuguese. In Japan he clearly failed, although the Portuguese merchants were greatly anxious for success, and the Japanese, of their own high character and out of respect for the great king (of Portugal), his friend, were extremely polite.

The other foreign missions of the early Jesuits were less irradiated with miracle, or with heroism. Lainez went in the wake of the Spanish troops to Tunis, said [Pg 52] mass there, and left no trace behind. Nuñez, the "Patriarch of Abyssinia," went out with two others to take over his diocese, but found a "Patriarch" there already, who made a lively opposition, and the Jesuits had to retire to Goa. Four Jesuits were sent to the Congo. Two died at once, and the other two became so interested in commerce that the king was alarmed. Ignatius recalled and replaced them, but the king expelled the newcomers. In Brazil they made more progress, penetrating the forests and winning the favour of the natives by their medical and other material aid. They tried to save the intended dinners of the cannibals, and, when they failed, sprinkled the poor men with holy water; but the cannibals found that it made them less succulent and forbade the practice. They did useful work in Brazil, and laid the foundation of a great mission.

Such were the labours of the first Jesuits during the generalship of Ignatius, and it remains only to close the career of their able leader. The varied story of success and failure, the showers of glowing testimonials and bitter diatribes, the heroism of some and the frailty of others, kept him alternately elated or depressed to the end. He must have seen that the first fervour could not be maintained, and that opposition became more serious as the Society grew. It had now nearly a thousand members scattered over the world, and a hundred houses and colleges. The figures are misleading, however, as there were only thirty-five professed fathers and only two professed houses; many of the so-called colleges had no pupils and were little more than names. Ignatius had twice attempted to resign his office in the last few years; and there was much to distress him. He had hardly composed the trouble in Portugal, in 1552, when Lainez gave him [Pg 53] anxiety. Lainez, who was made Provincial of Italy when Brouet was sent to Paris, complained that the general was robbing his colleges of their best teachers for the sake of Rome. Ignatius dictated to his secretary an angry letter. "He bids me tell you," says the scribe, "to attend to your own charge ... and you need not give him advice about this until he asks it."

In the next year (1553) he had a grave quarrel with Cardinal Caraffa. The Jesuits of Sicily had admitted a youth against his parents' wishes, and Caraffa, to whom the mother appealed, ordered Ignatius to give up the youth. He appealed to the Pope, and got Caraffa's verdict cancelled. When, two years afterwards, Caraffa became Pope Paul IV., Ignatius remembered his momentary triumph with concern, and there were grave faces in the Jesuit house. Paul III. had died in 1549. His successor Julius III. had been, as the previous record shows, very generous to the Jesuits, though funds had fallen very low in Rome, owing to the Reformation, and Ignatius had great work to keep alive the German college he had founded. Julius died in 1555, and it is said by the Jesuit writers that five cardinals voted for Ignatius himself at the next conclave. Marcellus, the next Pope, lived less than a month, and then Caraffa occupied the see. To Caraffa the Spaniards were "barbarians," and the Jesuits were Spaniards. But he postponed the struggle which he was to have with the Society, and received Ignatius courteously.

Work, austerity, and anxiety had at length seriously impaired the strong frame of Ignatius, and he began to prepare for the end. It is marvellous how he lived to see his sixty-fifth year, and continued to control the mighty struggle of his Society against its various [Pg 54] enemies. With the opening of 1556, however, he retired to a great extent from the labours of his office, and spent his days chiefly in prayer. He died in the early morning of 31st July 1556, and the struggle for the succession began.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Ribadeneira's Historia Ecclesiastica del Scisma del Reyno de Inglaterra (1588), L. ii. ch. xxii.

For the events of the next ten years, which will be narrated in this chapter, we still rely almost entirely on Jesuit writers. The statement may sound like an insinuation of dishonesty, but it is merely a reminder that our authorities are panegyrists rather than historians. Their purpose was wholly different from that of the modern historian, and their selection and treatment of documents correspondingly differed. It would be ingenuous to imagine that they loaded the scales of good and evil, success and failure, with impartial hand. Here and there, however, some scandal was so widely known in their day, and so eagerly pressed by their opponents, that it were wiser to put a bold gloss upon it than to ignore it, and thus we of the later date can just discern the human form under the thick veil of panegyric. It becomes more and more apparent after the death of Ignatius. Father Sacchini, who takes up the pen laid down by Orlandini, is just as loyal to his order, but it becomes more frequently necessary to excuse and explain, and at times he candidly censures. The Society is shaken by "very fierce storms," and one of these breaks upon it in his earliest pages.

The Constitutions provided that at the death of a General there should be a Vicar-General appointed, and he should proceed to summon the leading fathers of every province for the election. Now, Ignatius had [Pg 56] appointed a Vicar to assist him in his last years, and it was generally felt that this Father Natalis would be Vicar-General and control the election. Natalis was in Spain, however, and Lainez, although very ill, was in Rome. We remember Lainez as the learned and masterful Castilian who had once provoked Ignatius to use very plain speech. There were only five fathers at Rome, including Lainez, who were entitled to vote for the Vicar-General, and Lainez helped to simplify the issue by casting a blank vote, like Ignatius, or "leaving the matter to God." He was appointed, and he fixed the more important election for November. For this he had to summon the Provincials, Assistants, and two Prefects from each of the twelve provinces of the Society. One imagines a large and varied body, but in point of fact there were only about twenty voters; those in Brazil and the Indies could not be expected, while the "province of Ethiopia" (or Abyssinia) existed only on paper. It happened, moreover, that as the Pope was at war with Spain, the Spanish fathers could not come, and Lainez dare not proceed without them. They were of opinion that Natalis ought to have been recognised as Vicar-General.

Thus the election had to be postponed for two years, and Lainez continued, on the strength of four votes, to act as General. The remarkable events of those two years are of great importance in studying the character of the early Society. Two very serious conflicts arose, one between the Jesuits themselves, and one with the Pope, and it is in such conflicts that the real character appears. Crétineau-Joly suppresses the one altogether and grossly mis-states the other; he is not only less candid, but far less truthful, even than the original Jesuit authorities. If we wish to form a just estimate of the early Jesuits, not merely to admire the many [Pg 57] virtues they possessed, we must consider these conflicts with care, as they are recorded by Sacchini in the "Historia Societatis."

Lainez at once presented himself, as temporary head of the Society, to the Pope, and prepared for a struggle. Ranke's fine picture of Caraffa, who had now become Paul IV., will be remembered. A dark and stormy Neapolitan, an ardent Italian patriot, he would, as he sat over his fiery southern wine, express the fiercest disdain of the Spaniards, and trust to see them swept out of the Italian peninsula. He had disliked Ignatius and, Sacchini says, spoken slightingly of him after his death. On the other hand, he was a deeply religious man and sincere reformer, and he recognised that there was precious stuff, from the Church's point of view, in this new Society. Should he fuse it with the Theatines, or merely clip its outrageous privileges, and bring it nearer the common level of the religious orders? He was known to hesitate between the two policies, and Lainez was determined to resist both, implacably, and teach the papacy the real value of the famous fourth vow. And Lainez was a cold, resolute, clear-headed man of forty-five: Caraffa a nervous and impetuous old man of eighty. The conflict was postponed, however, until the Society had a properly constituted authority. Paul was content to warn Lainez that the Jesuits must be careful of their ways, and to remind him that what a Pope had given a Pope might take away.

A few months later the domestic conflict opened. The spirited Bobadilla protested that Diego Lainez had usurped authority over the Society; the proper thing to do in these unforeseen circumstances was to divide the leadership between the five survivors of the ten original Jesuits. Rodriguez, who still smarted under [Pg 58] his humiliation, Sacchini says, was persuaded to take this view; Cogordan a "stiff-necked" brother whom Lainez had ventured to correct, joined them; and even the meek and gentle Brouet was drawn into the revolt. For many months the austere silence of the Roman house was enlivened with the singular quarrel. The rebels wrote lengthy indictments of Lainez and secretly circulated them among the brethren; and somehow, says the historian, copies of their libelli always reached the hands of Lainez, while he himself wrote nothing. Then Cogordan told two cardinals, who were to tell the Pope, that Lainez proposed to hold the election in Spain, so that they might pass their Constitutions without the Pope's interference. The idea was certainly entertained, and we can easily believe that Lainez favoured it. Paul angrily ordered that no Jesuit was to quit Rome, and closed his door against Lainez. A union of this powerful and casuistic body with the King of Spain was one of the last things Paul wished to see; and he looked forward to the passing of their Constitutions as his opportunity to clip their wings. At last Lainez severed Rodriguez and Brouet from the rebels, and Bobadilla made a direct application to the Pope for his share in the administration of the Society. To the scandal or the entertainment of Rome, Cardinal Carpi was appointed to arbitrate on the domestic quarrels of the children of St. Ignatius. His decision—that Lainez should remain Vicar-General, but consult the older fathers—did not put an end to the unseemly quarrelling, and Lainez in turn appealed to the Pope, secured the appointment of another cardinal, and silenced the rebels. We can imagine the feelings of Paul IV. When a cardinal told him that Lainez had charged Bobadilla with an honourable mission at Foligno, and had sentenced the wicked Cogordan to[Pg 59] say one Pater and Ave, he crossed himself: as a Neapolitan does when the spirit of evil is about. He was astonished at the obstinacy of the rebels, says Sacchini; but there are those who fancy that what really impressed him was the astuteness of Lainez. He was to have more painful experience of it anon.

While the leaders quarrelled for the mantle of the master at Rome, there was grave trouble in the provinces. In that year (1557) John III. died in Portugal, many valuable workers were lost, and the judgment of the University of Paris and the scalding indictments of Melchior Cano were translated into every tongue in Europe. There was no possibility under Paul IV. of countering these things by conversation at the Vatican. It was imperative to hold the election as soon as possible and return to the field. The end of the war came in 1558, and by May the twenty voters were assembled in the Roman house. They were to elect a general and endorse the Constitutions, now completed by Lainez.

There was friction at first because Lainez issued to the fathers certain orders which aimed at preventing canvassing, but in July they proceeded to the election. To their dismay Cardinal Pacheco entered the room, on the election day, and said that the Pope had sent him to preside. He genially assured them, however, that he would not interfere, and they cast their votes. Lainez was elected by thirteen votes out of twenty. They then held a number of sittings on the Constitutions, and prepared for a struggle with the Pope. This struggle is not without some humour when we reflect that the Society of Jesus was, so to say, the Pope's private regiment, the one order that made a special vow of obedience to him, the most exaggerated champion in Christendom of his authority. It was the first [Pg 60] occasion on which the Vatican was to realise that it might count on the abject obedience of the Jesuits as long as the Jesuits dictated its decrees. Lainez and his colleagues were determined by every means in their power to thwart the will of Paul IV. and suffer no interference with their own will. They quietly endorsed their Constitutions, and prepared to go to their provinces. It is impossible to find what precise order the Pope had given them to alter their Constitutions, but he had certainly done so in some form, and his anger broke out stormily. He sent a cardinal to say that they must reconsider the question of chanting in choir, as other religious bodies did, and of appointing a general only for a term of three years.

The Jesuits were "surprised," but obedient. They "reconsidered" the points, and drew up a report to the effect that they were unanimously opposed to change. Lainez and Salmeron were directed to wait on the Pope and present this report, and some brave language—such language as a Pope rarely heard, and must have been amazed to hear from a Jesuit, if it were really spoken—is put into the mouth of Lainez at the audience by Sacchini. The historian admits, however, that they did not present the report. Paul sternly told them that they were "contumacious," indeed not far removed from heresy (which was true), and he cut short their defence with a peremptory command to do as they were bidden. With an eye on the gray hairs of the octogenarian Pope they retired to mend their rules and order the chanting of the office. It now appeared that of their hundred establishments only two were "houses," and they contented themselves with ordering that vespers should be chanted in these houses—until Paul IV. died. They had secretly asked the opinion of a learned cardinal on the value of the Pope's command.[Pg 61] Cardinal Puteo was not merely an expert on such matters; he was Dean of the Rota, and in a position to dissolve the Pope's order, as he eventually did. He told them that it was a "simple command," and that, as the decree of his predecessor, excusing them from choir, was not expressly abrogated, it would come into force again at the death of Paul IV. With this assurance they meekly submitted to the Pope, and scattered to their respective missions.

I have narrated this curious story at some length, relying entirely on the Jesuit Sacchini, because it is of extreme significance for one who would judge the character and history of the Society. Catholic historians, who suppress it entirely or give a very misleading version of it, are clearly of opinion that the mere record of the facts will disturb their readers, while anti-Catholic writers enlarge on it with pleasure. Those who desire to have an intelligent and just estimate of the Jesuits can neither ignore nor misinterpret such facts. That Lainez was personally ambitious, that his eagerness for power had not entirely the unselfish character of such ambition as we may recognise in Ignatius, can hardly be doubted. But Brouet and Salmeron shared and supported his conduct, and in those two, at least, one is disposed to see the first spirit of the Regiment of Jesus in its original purity. The clue to the seeming inconsistency or hypocrisy of such men defying or evading the Pope's commands I have already indicated. The Society of Jesus had consecrated diplomacy to the service of God. If a Pope would strip their order of those distinctions and privileges which, in their conviction, peculiarly fitted it to carry on the holy war, he was not acting as the Vicar of Christ, and his commands must be evaded. It did not occur to them that this was, in the end, the Protestant principle of private judgment, against which they [Pg 62] thundered the doctrine of papal authority. They were the children of Ignatius, who had always felt that his private judgment was the judgment of God. So Jesuitism moved slowly toward its inevitable goal.

One other incident at Rome may be recorded before we distribute the events of the next seven years in their national departments. A little more than a year after the election, on 18th August 1559, Paul IV. died. How the Romans, stung by the misery they had suffered during his war with Spain and the brutalities of his Inquisition, burst into the streets with wild rejoicing, and attacked the palace of the Inquisitors, and how the new Pope surrendered the criminal nephews of his predecessor, including a cardinal of the Church, to the scaffold, must be read in general history. The fact that the Jesuits were called to sustain Cardinal Caraffa in his last hours is of no significance. It is more pertinent to tell that Lainez returned to the learned Cardinal Puteo, and the odious command of Paul IV. was declared to have died with him.

It is said that Lainez himself was proposed for the papacy after the death of Paul IV. The conclave of cardinals on such an occasion is, as is known, as isolated as a jury-room, but a cardinal might summon his confessor, and it is not only stated by Sacchini, but confirmed by Cardinal Otho years afterwards, that Lainez was called in by Otho and told that his name would be proposed. We have no just ground to doubt this statement, but we have very good reason to refuse to regard it as a serious proposal. The papal election of 1559 lasted three months, and was marked by a bitter struggle of France, Spain, and Italy. It engrossed the attention of Europe, yet not a single Roman ambassador or prelate of the time mentions the name of Lainez. Even the[Pg 63] words used by Cardinal Otho years afterwards are known to us only in a Jesuit version.

Cardinal Medici, who now became Pius IV., proved to be one of the most generous patrons of the Society. Although he was a Pope of the cultured and liberal type, and would have little personal inclination to favour them, he seems to have concluded that the Jesuits were the most formidable champions of his authority, and he gave them many privileges. It was he who, in 1561, gave them permission to build within the sphere of other orders, and to grant academic degrees in their colleges, and he directed his local representatives everywhere to protect and aid them. With such an auxiliary the vigorous and gifted general was enabled to conduct the affairs of his Society with a success which will appear as we review its life in the various provinces. Only one further personal detail need be added in regard to Lainez. Although the orders of Caraffa had been declared void, he professed a scruple when he had held the generalship for three years, and proposed to resign. In view of his behaviour at the election one is not disposed to look for sincerity in this scruple, nor does the issue suggest it. His confessor told him that he must consult his councillors (or assistants). They resisted his proposal, but he still affected qualms, and sent a circular letter to all the professed fathers, in which he purported to place before them, for their guidance, all the pros and cons of his design. The letter is, however, a transparent plea for power. The electors unanimously insisted that he should retain office, and he returned to his task with firmer authority.

The British Isles still remained a dark and almost inaccessible territory on the Jesuit map, but Englishmen, flying from the penal laws of Elizabeth, began to enter the Society on the continent, and one or two secret[Pg 64] missions were sent out. Thomas King was sent from Louvain to England, but he died in the following year (1565), and is merely stated to have made a few converts. Another refugee in Belgium, an Irishman named David Woulfe, had been sent in 1560 to his native land with the position of Nuncio. He was so effectively disguised that in France he was arrested as a Lutheran. His early reports represent him as an austere spectator of the general corruption of the Irish clergy, monks, and people. He speaks of giving absolution, in one year, to a thousand penitents who had contracted "incestuous marriages," and describes the people coming to his retreat in their shirts and bare feet. Father Woulfe seems to have caught the taint, however, as he was some years later ignominiously expelled from the Society. William Good, a Somersetshire man, and "Edmund the Irishman," joined him in 1564, distributing to the peasantry the dispensations and indulgences which England proscribed, to the grave inconvenience of the papal treasury.

The mission to Scotland was not less adventurous. It was the year 1562, when Mary Queen of Scots had returned from France, full of sad foreboding, to the land of John Knox. Nicholas Gouda was sent from Louvain, in the secret character of Nuncio, to console and assist her, and two Scottish students, Hay and Crichton, accompanied him. They were dressed as gentlemen of quality, who would see the world. Unfortunately, Crichton betrayed the secret to an acquaintance at Leith, and the fiery cross passed from pulpit to pulpit in the city of Edinburgh. Gouda sent Crichton back to Louvain and went on himself to Edinburgh. After many fruitless attempts to see Mary, he was at last admitted one night, by a postern gate, to the presence of the beautiful and distracted young queen, but there [Pg 65] was nothing to be done. He asked that the bishops might be assembled somewhere to meet him, and it appeared that there was only one bishop, on one of the islands, who would venture to receive him, if he were well disguised. It seems that the least remarkable dress to don on visiting his lordship was that of a money-lender, and Father Nicholas, so habited, traversed wild and stern Caledonia. The rumour of his presence got about, and the Covenanters kept watch at Edinburgh for his return. A French merchant coming in from Aberdeen was sorely beaten by them before he could prove his identity. But two of the faithful met Gouda outside Edinburgh, and they sailed, with a small band of Scottish aspirants, for Belgium.

In Italy the story is one of much progress and bitter hostility. By 1561 there were two hundred and sixty Jesuits (in the broadest sense of the word) in Rome, of whom a hundred and ninety were students in the Roman college. They were prospering in the sunshine of the Pope's favour. Elsewhere in Italy, however, they received hard blows. No less than four serious storms broke on the Society in various parts of Italy in the year 1561.

First it was reported from the Valtellina that the fathers had been expelled, and forbidden the whole territory of the Grisons, on the ground that they had shown an undue eagerness in securing an old man's money. Next there was trouble in Montepulciano. The good fathers had, Sacchini says, induced so large a proportion of the women of Montepulciano to lead proper lives that the men were infuriated. They bribed a loose woman to attempt to seduce one of the Jesuits, and they engaged a man to dress as a Jesuit and let himself be seen coming from a disorderly house. The Montepulciano version of the matter is, of course, that[Pg 66] one Jesuit accosted a woman and another was seen leaving an unbecoming house. To make matters worse, a woman accused the Jesuit rector, Father Gambar, of intimacy with her sister. It was an act of jealousy, as the two sisters had competed for the rector's smiles; it is, however, admitted that Father Gambar had been "indiscreet" in his letters to the lady, which were made public. The civic authorities took the darker view, and requested the removal of Gambar. When Lainez refused, the townsfolk threatened to talk to the rector themselves, and he fled. Lainez held that he was innocent, but expelled him from the Society for running away without permission. He sent some of the older Jesuits to restore order in Montepulciano, but it was no use. The citizens withdrew the pension they had hitherto given the Jesuits, for teaching, and refused to give them alms or house. Lainez fought, with his ablest men and subsidies from Rome, for a year or two, but he was beaten and forced to dissolve the college.

Then Venice reported difficulties. The new Archbishop, Trevisani, detested the Jesuits, and assured his friends that the chiappini ("humbugs," to translate it politely) would not remain long in Venice under his rule. Incidents multiplied, and in 1561 the Senate fell to discussing the fathers and did not spare them. The gist of the charge was that they were foreigners meddling with the affairs of Venice; they confessed all the noble ladies of Venice, called on them in their homes, and through them learned the official secrets. The debate ended with words, though the Doge summoned Father Palmio and warned him to be prudent; and the men of Venice, quoting Montepulciano, used a little domestic authority to keep their wives away from Jesuit confessionals.

From Naples, in the same year, came news of [Pg 67] hostility and obloquy. Salmeron had been recalled from Naples to Rome, and offensive observers began to form theories of the recall. When the legend had grown to its full proportions, it ran that Father Salmeron had extorted four thousand pounds from a dying woman, before he would absolve her, and had, when the Pope heard and asked an explanation, fled to Geneva and turned Protestant. The boys sang ballads in the street about Father Salmeron and his four thousand pounds, and the college had troubled experiences. Why Salmeron was not sent down to refute the legend, and whether there really was some little difficulty about a sum of money, we cannot say. But the incident shows that Catholic Naples was largely hostile to the Jesuits. The Pope had to intervene and use the authority of the Viceroy.

A few years later a more serious storm broke out in the north. In all these cases of charges against the early Jesuits it is extremely difficult to ascertain the truth; the case is always stated for us by the defence. It happens that in the case of the trouble at Milan in 1563 we have one independent document, and I state the facts a little more fully. It matters little whether the various Jesuits were guilty or not in these local disturbances, and most people will conclude, roughly, that they were probably not all immaculate and impeccable. But it is worth while ascertaining if all this violent hostility to the Jesuits, among Catholic peoples, is really founded on disappointed vice or idle calumny, and we may take the Milan affair as a type.

The famous Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan, Carolo Borromeo, was a nephew of the Pope. He received his position in 1560, at the early age of twenty-two, and was soon under the influence of the Jesuits. It was reported to the Pope that Charles was giving large sums [Pg 68] of money to the Jesuits, and seemed to have an idea of joining the Society. Then the young archbishop's Jesuit confessor, Father Ribera, was accused of unnatural vice with a page in the establishment of Donna Virginia, Charles's sister-in-law. Sacchini says that Charles investigated the charge and found it false, and that a bishop who insisted on it (and accused other Jesuits besides Ribera) was brought before Cardinal Savelli at Rome, produced his witnesses—a number of discharged or former students at the Jesuit college—and was himself punished for libel. It is added that Charles continued to entrust his seminary to the Jesuits, and would not have done so if they were guilty. Ribera, it is acknowledged, was sent to the Indies by Lainez, but only because the Pope disliked his influence on Charles.

The Jesuit case is, as usual, plausible, but does not satisfy a close inquirer. To send a distinguished and fashionable Jesuit to the Indies because he is making his penitent more pious than the Pope likes, especially at a time when he is charged with vice, is hardly the kind of action we should expect in so prudent a man as Lainez. It was a very drastic measure to put five thousand miles between Ribera and his saintly penitent. As to Cardinal Savelli's inquiry, we can quite believe that the Pope would be willing to draw a veil over a scandal, which might ruin the Society in Italy, once Lainez had sent the chief culprit on the foreign missions; Cardinal Savelli was, moreover, the patron and protector of the Jesuits, and he seems to have dismissed the witnesses unheard on the ground that they were expelled or seceding students of the Society. We can further understand that Charles might remain friendly with the Jesuits if he believed that one man only was guilty, and that man was punished; but we [Pg 69] shall see in the next chapter that the relations of Charles and the Jesuits were disturbed, and that in 1578 they made an extraordinarily insolent attack on the cardinal in his own city.

But the chief point is that an almost contemporary writer, Caspar Schoppe, maintains on the highest authority that the Jesuit schools at Milan were deeply tainted with vice. Schoppe is an ardent anti-Jesuit, and must be read with discretion when his authority is remote. In this case he calls God to witness that Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, the nephew and successor of Charles, said in his (Schoppe's) presence that he had himself found the Jesuit college at Braida so corrupt that he would not suffer any Jesuit to come near him, would not allow any student of his seminary to approach a Jesuit teacher, and would, if he had the power, forbid any Jesuit to teach. [3] Crétineau-Joly replies that Schoppe is evidently lying, since the known date of his birth makes it impossible that he should ever have conversed with Charles Borromeo. This confusion of Frederic and Charles is originally due to Quesnel, who makes that mistake in quoting Schoppe, but it is very singular that the French apologist for the Jesuits should not know that Schoppe spoke of Frederic Borromeo, not Charles, as is pointed out in later editions of Quesnel. It is still more singular that Crétineau-Joly assures his readers (who are not likely to make an arduous search for Schoppe's ancient work) that the statement is made "sous forme dubitative," when he must know that it is the most solemn and emphatic statement in Schoppe's book. The impartial student must conclude that there is grave evidence against the Milan Jesuits, and that hostility to the Jesuits had at [Pg 70] times a more respectable ground than they are willing to admit.

The Pope did not stint his patronage of the Society on account of these accusations. When the Cardinal-Protector of the Society died in 1564, Pius IV. undertook that office himself, as if to intimidate its critics; though the critics were not in the least intimidated. Shortly afterwards he appointed a commission of cardinals and prelates to consider the establishment of a seminary at Rome, and they recommended that the Jesuits should have charge of it. The proposal inflamed the Roman critics of the Society, and Montepulciano and Milan and all the other scandals were fiercely discussed. The Pope held firm, however, and the struggle had not ended when Lainez died.

In Spain and Portugal the Society continued to make material progress and, in the same proportion, morally to deteriorate. Favoured by the genial clime of the Peninsula, the Society ran quickly through its normal course of development and bore precocious fruit. The college at Coimbra had, as we have seen, needed purification even under Ignatius. It now prospered again, and maintained about a hundred and fifty novices and priests. But the most notable feature of the Portuguese province was the early interference of the Jesuits in politics. The primitive design of avoiding politics and forbidding Jesuits to frequent the courts of princes had first been set aside by Ignatius himself, and was quite inconsistent with the general idea of obtaining the favour of the rich and powerful. In Portugal the court was now dominated by Jesuits; Father Miguel de Torres was confessor of the Queen-Regent Catherine, Father Gonzales da Camara confessor of the young King Sebastian, and Father Leo Henriquez confessor of Cardinal Dom Henry, the King's grand-uncle. It may [Pg 71] be read in any history of Portugal how the Cardinal began, at the instigation and with the assistance of the Jesuits, to intrigue for the Regency, and in 1562 forced Catherine to abdicate. In a letter, dated 8th June 1571, which Catherine afterwards wrote to General Borgia, we are plainly informed of the intrigues of the confessors. "Everyone knows," says the Queen, "that the evils which afflict this kingdom are caused by some of your fathers, who are so misguided as to advise the King, my grandson, to displace me and expel me from my State." She had dismissed her confessor Torres, who advised her to submit to the intrigues of her brother and Father Gonzales, but after a five years' struggle she was forced to retire from Spain. Father Gonzales then became the most powerful man in Portugal, and made his brother Prime Minister, until, as we shall see, Sebastian became old enough to put an end to their intrigues.

In Spain the Society was less prosperous. The historic struggle at Alcalà had ended in the capture of the university by the Jesuits, but at Seville, Valladolid, and other towns there was persistent opposition, and at Grenada a dangerous agitation arose because a Jesuit confessor compelled a penitent to name her accomplice in vice. Borgia himself had many enemies at court, and the opposition to him culminated at length in an attack which compelled him to fly to Portugal. Two works of piety which he had written in earlier years were denounced to the Inquisition and condemned. It is said by the Jesuits that the suspected passages in his books were interpolated by the man who published them, and the point is of little interest. Borgia did not remain to face the questions of the Inquisitors, and the King became so angry with him that, when he was invited by Lainez to the metropolitan house at Rome, the Spanish fathers [Pg 72] warned Lainez that if any dignity were conferred on Borgia it would be deeply resented at the court.

This trouble had hardly ended in the disgrace and flight of Borgia when a very grave domestic quarrel arose in the Castilian province. Lainez had sent Father Natalis from Rome to inspect the province, and the Castilian Provincial, Father Araoz (nephew of Ignatius), discovered that Natalis had secret instructions to destroy his position at court. Araoz, the oldest Jesuit in Spain, and a favourite at court, had won a position of comfort and power which was certainly not consistent with the personal ideal of the Society. When, however, they endeavoured to dislodge him, he took a drastic revenge on the Roman authorities. Natalis was collecting and sending to Rome a good deal of money, when an instruction was suddenly issued from the court pointing out that it was against the laws of the kingdom to send money abroad or send men to study in other countries. This order was openly attributed by the Jesuits to the influence of Father Araoz. An angry quarrel ensued, and one of the friends of Araoz produced the secret instructions which Lainez had given to Natalis and some father had stolen. We need not enlarge on this quarrel. It is more interesting to note that the Jesuits urged that their action in sending money to Rome did not come under the royal order since the Church has no frontiers. For some years the affairs of the Society in Spain remained in a very troubled condition, in spite of their great prosperity.

In France we naturally find the sternest struggle of the decade, as the large Protestant population was supported by the majority of the Catholics in opposition to the Jesuits. The early effort to woo Paris by austerity of life and humble care of the sick had wholly failed. The Archbishop, the university, and the lawyers of the Parlement had observed that these[Pg 73] humble ministers had the most formidable privileges in their reserved baggage, and they had put the Jesuits out of the gates. They remained in the meadows of St. Germain for five or six years, and then, in 1560, Lainez ordered a fresh campaign. His representative at Paris was the astute intriguer, Father Cogordan, who had given Lainez painful proof of his ability at Rome. France was on the eve of a terrible struggle of Catholics and Huguenots, and Cogordan had little difficulty in persuading the Queen that the Jesuits were the appointed force for checking Protestantism. The Parlement was ordered to register the letters of Henry II., authorising the Jesuits. The courageous lawyers refused once more, and the whole of the faculties of the university joined in an emphatic condemnation of the Jesuits and their privileges.

The next move of the Jesuits is noteworthy. Cogordan was instructed to reply that the Jesuits would sacrifice, in France, any privileges which were opposed to the laws of the country or the rights of the French Church. Their opponents were quite aware that the sacrifice was insincere and temporary, but the manœuvre greatly weakened the position of the Archbishop. As a last resource he stipulated that they should also abandon the name "Society of Jesus," which many Catholics considered offensively arrogant, and again Cogordan assented. The Parlement, however, still refused to register the royal letters, and threw the decision upon a Council which was to be held at Poissy, where Catholics and Huguenots were to meet in a dialectical tourney.

Francis II. had died at the close of 1560, and Catherine de Medici, the virtual ruler, was entirely won to the Jesuit view. But the Huguenots, led by the Prince de Condé and Admiral de Coligny, were so powerful that sober Catholic opinion favoured concession [Pg 74] to them in the interest of peace: a policy which the Jesuits ruthlessly opposed wherever the Catholics were still in the majority. The Colloquy at Poissy was, therefore, doubly interesting to the Jesuits, and Lainez went in person, in the train of the Pope's legate, Cardinal d'Este, to secure their aims; he was to obtain the recognition of the Society and to prevent the reconciliation of Catholics and Huguenots. Unhappily he succeeded in both designs. The Colloquy opened in July, when a small group of the abler Huguenot divines confronted six cardinals and forty bishops and archbishops, under the eyes of the King and Queen. When, after a few sittings, it was seen that concessions must be made to the heretics, Lainez delivered a fiery and eloquent discourse against this proposed sacrilege. Catherine de Medici trembled, and would attend no more sittings. The Colloquy ended in a futile wrangle of Lainez and the Huguenots, and France, thanks very largely to Lainez, went on her way toward St. Bartholomew.

The sincerity of Lainez in this fanatical gospel of intolerance cannot be doubted, but it is in piquant contrast to the second part of his mission, in which he equally succeeded. He brought with him testimonials to the work done by his Society in a hundred places, confirmed the promise that they would lay aside their privileges and their very name (until it was safe to resume them), and thus secured the right of entry into Paris for this nameless body of priests. This was done, of course, by quiet activity among the prelates, without any public discussion. Lainez remained several months in France, strengthening the new foundation and—at the very time when he was urging Condé, in a friendly correspondence, to induce the Protestants to join in the Council of Trent—using the whole of his great[Pg 75] influence over the Queen and court to prevent any concession of churches or other normal rights to the Huguenots. As a result of his success, the Jesuits moved into Paris and took possession of the hotel which the Bishop of Clermont had bequeathed them some years before. We can hardly suppose that they were following the advice of the sagacious Lainez when they inscribed over the door the words "College of the Society of the Name of Jesus." This flippant evasion of their promise to abandon their name did not tend to conciliate Parisians. When they succeeded in a short time, with their free classes and ablest teachers, in drawing some hundreds of youths from the university, they became bolder and announced that the "Clermont College" was incorporated with the university. The rector, Marchand, indignantly challenged their claim, and they produced letters of incorporation which they had secretly obtained from his predecessor two years before. They could not insist on the validity of this irregular diploma, and the close of the generalship of Lainez saw them once more in a position of grave insecurity and unpopularity.

A somewhat similar struggle was taking place in Belgium. The university and civic authorities at Louvain resisted them, and their college remained so poor that we find its rector complaining to Rome of the burden of supporting Father Ribadeneira, who, as we have previously seen, had been sent to further Jesuit interests at the court of Philip in Belgium. Even when Margaret of Austria, whom they easily secured, bade the States of Brabant admit the Jesuits, they refused, and they yielded only to the direct intervention of Philip in 1564.

On the other hand, the able and devoted Jesuit Canisius was laying the foundation of his Society very [Pg 76] firmly in the Catholic provinces of Germany. Canisius is the greatest figure in the second decade of the Society's life, and seems to have been a more deeply religious and conscientious man than Lainez. He maintained to the end the more austere standard of life, travelling afoot from city to city, from Rhineland to Poland and Austria, and inaugurating everywhere the effective system of education which Ranke has declared superior to that of the Reformers. The University of Dillingen was entrusted to the Jesuits, the frontiers of the Society were extended to Poland in 1554, and the laity were identified with its interests in the Catholic cities by being drafted into the numerous sodalities or confraternities which the Jesuits controlled. The historian can dwell with more sympathy on their generally enlightened struggle with Protestantism and with Catholic corruption in Germany, where heresy provided them with a bracing atmosphere and a healthy incentive to work. Even here, however, we find them at times stooping to tactics which we cannot admire, and the next chapter will introduce them to us in some singular adventures. Their conduct in Bavaria, especially, does not invite close scrutiny. Albert V. was heavily burdened with debt, and it is something more than a coincidence that, the moment he admitted the Jesuits, the Vatican made him a large grant out of ecclesiastical funds; it is even clearer that the Jesuits were chiefly responsible for the persecution of Protestants which followed their settlement in Bavaria.

Lainez had made a tour of these provinces after establishing his Society in France. From Paris he had passed to Belgium, where the Duchess of Parma was ruling in the name of her brother. Margaret had heard Lainez preach at Rome, and he easily secured her interest for his struggling brethren in Flanders. He [Pg 77] then went on to Trent, where, in 1562, the Council resumed its sittings. There was no longer the least hope of persuading the Reformers to attend, and it now remained for the Church to decide what modifications it would adopt in order to meet the Protestant indictment. The northern monarchs, confronted with the task of reconciling large Catholic and Protestant populations, were disposed to make concessions, and their clergy were at least eager to check the arrogant claims and moderate the extravagance of the papal court. This policy was opposed by Italy, Spain, and the Papacy, and the Jesuits were the most violent partisans of the ultramontane attitude. It would, perhaps, be an error to ascribe to Lainez a preponderant rôle in the unhappy councils that were adopted at Trent, but whatever influence his learning and eloquence gave him was used for the purpose of magnifying the papal authority. Even the wealth and luxury of the Roman court, which had been so largely responsible for the schism, found in him an eloquent defender. He was able to return to Rome with an assurance that the Catholic States made no concession, while the northern prelates had to retire to their seats with grave foreboding of bloody struggle.

Of the Jesuit missions beyond the seas during this decade little need be said. In India alone some material progress was made, and it was largely due to tactics which promised no permanent result. Writers like Crétineau-Joly deliberately omit the most significant details in regard to these early missions, and give a most misleading impression that tens of thousands of natives were gathered into the fold by the spiritual teaching; and exalted labours of the missionaries. The early Jesuits themselves are more candid. They tell, for instance, how in 1559 they made a descent, with an [Pg 78] accompanying troop of soldiers, on an island whose inhabitants had long resisted baptism. The natives were held up by the troops, and their leaders were put in irons and told that they were to be deported. In the circumstances they professed themselves eager to be baptized, and the sacred rite and a good dinner were at once bestowed on five hundred "converts." The Portuguese authority was the chief agency on which the missionaries relied. The most tempting privileges were granted to converts; the administrative offices which the Hindoo clergy had exercised for ages were transferred to the Jesuits; and in 1557 even the tribunal of the Inquisition was set up by them in India.

In other lands the missionary record was singularly barren during the decade. In Brazil the fathers still wandered in the forests, slowly winning the confidence and allegiance of the natives by medical and other humane services. Abyssinia was once more invaded, and some of the fathers entered the Congo, but both missions were destroyed after a few years. In Egypt an attempt was made to induce the Copts to recognise the authority of the Pope. Rich presents were made to the Patriarch, and the Papacy was flattered for a time by reports of success; but the adventure ended in the painful and ignominious flight of the missionaries from the country. The Japanese missions also were almost destroyed in the course of the decade, and two ingenious attempts to enter China proved unsuccessful. In 1556 Father Melchior Nuñez was permitted to reach Canton, but his very diplomatic account of his object did not convince the mandarins and he was politely expelled. In 1563 a further attempt was made. The mandarins were informed that an embassy had arrived from Europe with valuable presents for the Emperor. The cautious mandarins asked to see its credentials, [Pg 79] and, when they were told that these had been accidentally destroyed on the voyage, they again amiably conducted their visitors to the frontier. There were three Jesuits, in disguise, among the "envoys," and it is clear that the whole expedition was a fraudulent attempt of the merchants and missionaries from Goa to break the reserve of the Chinese.

Such were the fortunes of the Society of Jesus during the decade which closed with the death of Lainez in 1565. The hundred establishments which Ignatius had bequeathed to him in 1556 had now increased to a hundred and fifty; the thousand subjects had become three thousand. From Portugal to Poland the Jesuits were the most ardent soldiers in the war against the advancing heretics, and there was hardly a Catholic court in Europe that did not welcome the children of Ignatius and bow in secret to their advice. Yet a keen observer like Lainez must have perceived that this prosperity was less solid than it appeared, and his last years were saddened by announcements of hostility and defeat. In France and Belgium the gain was wholly disproportionate to the exacting struggle they had maintained; in Portugal the material success and political action were lowering the ideal of the Society; in Spain the Catholic monarch, the Inquisition, and the higher clergy were hostile; and England kept its doors sternly closed against the Jesuits. The future was still uncertain, and another Caraffa might at any time accede to the papal chair. With a last glance at the ex-Duke of Gandia, as if to intimate that Borgia was the fittest to take up the burden he laid down, the second General of the Society, able, energetic, and high-minded to the last, sank wearily to his rest.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Relatio ad Reges, by Alphonsus de Vargas (Caspar Schoppe), 1636, p. 40.

The election which followed the death of Lainez was not marred by any of the painful incidents which we frequently find on such occasions in the Jesuit chronicles. When the leading fathers of the Society reached Rome in the early summer, to compare their stories of warfare in every clime of Europe and consult about the future of their great organisation, there was one amongst them who had so natural a pre-eminence that his election was assured. This was Francis Borgia, ex-Duke of Gandia and Viceroy of Catalonia. There were in the distinguished gathering many of far greater ability and service—indeed, there was probably none of less ability than Borgia—but his high birth, his friendship with half the kings of Europe, his venerable person and austere life marked him clearly for the supreme command. Philip of Spain had outgrown his hostility, and, at the death of Lainez, Borgia was appointed Vicar-General. So plain was the intention of the electors that he sincerely begged them not to impose on him so heavy a responsibility. They disregarded his protest, and on 2nd July he became General of the Society.

He was then a feeble and venerable man of sixty-five, worn with austerity, profoundly sincere and religious. In his person he singularly illustrated the change that had come over Catholicism. The name of Borgia at once suggests the groves of pleasure or the chambers of[Pg 81] crime out of which the Papacy had been startled by the voice of Luther: his father had been a son of Pope Alexander VI., his mother an illegitimate daughter of the Archbishop of Saragossa, who in turn had been a natural son of Ferdinand V. But with his hair-shirts, his bloody scourges, and his long fasts, Francis belonged to the new age, and seemed to have taken on himself the expiation of the scarlet sins of the Borgias. He had been Viceroy of Catalonia from 1539 to 1543, and had then suffered for some years a mild and obscure disgrace. During this enforced retirement to his duchy he had met, and fallen under the charm of, Peter Favre, and he was, as we saw, secretly admitted to the Society. Although he had been driven from Spain only a few years before, the Pope had restored his prestige, and his election was acclaimed throughout the Society and the Church.

We may, perhaps, see a reflection of his religious spirit, as well as an indication that grave abuses had crept into the Society, in the long series of decrees which the Congregation proceeded to pass. No Jesuit was henceforward to live at a royal court—at least, "not for more than two or three months": Jesuit communities were not to own and manage large farms, and sell their produce in the public markets; lawsuits on behalf of legacies were to be avoided; salaries for teaching were to be abandoned when a teacher joined the Society. These and other commands give us an authoritative assurance that there was much disorder. Even in the Congregation the liberals or casuists were represented. When, in the discussion of the impropriety of going to law to secure legacies, one of the sterner brethren quoted the Sermon on the Mount, another plausibly argued that it was wrong to yield to worldlings funds which might be used in the service of God. The Puritans won, and their [Pg 82] decrees went forth; but the farms were not abandoned, as we shall see, nor the lawyers impoverished.

In view of the despotic power which a General had, it may seem strange that the electors should venture to entrust the office to a man of such mediocre ability as Borgia. We must remember that the General had a council of four able assistants, and it could safely be trusted that the humility of Borgia would leave the power in their hands. Nor was it long before their statesmanship was put to a severe test. Their princely benefactor, Pius IV., died before the end of 1565, and a Dominican monk, Pius V., occupied the chair. He was a personal friend of Borgia, but he belonged to a rival order, and Rome was greatly agitated by the hope that he would strip the Society of its excessive privileges. To the relief and delight of the Jesuits, Pius V. took the earliest opportunity to show his friendliness. As he drove in solemn procession past their church, he summoned the General to his carriage, and talked affectionately with him for a quarter of an hour under the eyes of his officers. When he went on to nominate Jesuits for certain important offices, it seemed that they had found another protector.

In 1567, however, they were dismayed to receive an amiable, but firm, suggestion from Pius to chant in choir, as other religious bodies did, and abandon the "simple" or temporary vows which enabled them to keep priests in the Society for years without being solemnly pledged to it. [4] A commission of cardinals was at the time engaged in discussing the reform of the monastic world, and the Jesuits submitted to it a lengthy[Pg 83] and skilful memoir in defence of their institutions. Ought not a regiment of light horse, ready to fly at a moment's notice to any part of the Pope's dominions, to have special characters? Would those hundreds of men who had joined the Society in its actual form not have ground to complain if it were made more onerous? Would the benefactors who had built their homes and chapels be indifferent to the changes? Nay, what would the heretics say when the decisions of a whole series of Popes, to say nothing of the revelations made to Ignatius, were ruled improper? These ingenious considerations were then orally impressed on the Pope by Borgia and Polanco, and they flattered themselves that they had once more evaded the commands which it was their chief business to see respected by the rest of Christendom. The Pope had agreed to postpone the question of choir until his new edition of the Breviary was published, and he did not seem to insist on the reform of the vows. A few months later, however, they heard that the Pope was about to decree that in future no member of a religious body should be admitted to the priesthood until he had taken his final vows.

The details of the struggle need not be repeated here, but we must assuredly see a significance in these repeated conflicts with the Pope. In the whole history of the monastic orders of the Catholic Church there is no example of persistent opposition to, or determined evasion of, the commands of the Pope to compare for a moment with this behaviour of the men who took a special vow to obey him. Moreover, the Jesuit writers of the time frankly confess that they resisted the Pope's wish in their own interest. If the solemn vows were to be taken in a youth's early twenties, they would have to examine much more closely the characters of aspirants to the Society, and their numbers would shrink. It was[Pg 84] one of the most constant charges against them in every country, that in the admission of novices they sacrificed spiritual quality to quantity or social distinction; and certainly the number of priests who abandoned, or were expelled from, the Society was large. Pius V. knew this, and, to their great mortification, insisted on the reform of their system. They sullenly abandoned one of the most characteristic of their institutions—until Pius V. should go the way of his predecessors. There was much rejoicing in Rome, and it was rumoured that this was only the beginning of reform; but Pius hastened to reassure Borgia and his colleagues.

In 1571, Borgia was requested by the Pope to undertake an important mission. The steady advance of the Turks upon a divided Christendom alarmed the Pope, and he wished to unite the Catholic monarchs for the purpose of defence. His nephew, Cardinal Alessandrini, was to visit the courts of Spain, Portugal, and France, and Borgia was invited to accompany him. He was now advanced in years and tormented with gout, but he accepted the mission, and we may make our survey of the provinces of the Society by following his travels.

Spain endeavoured by an honourable reception to atone for the disgrace it had formerly put upon him. The King promised his aid against the Turk: the Inquisition permitted the publication of Borgia's books: the Jesuits everywhere took courage at sight of their venerable leader and the honour paid him. The Spanish province had continued, since the death of Lainez, to have a very chequered record. The father of the province, Araoz, had resisted every effort of the Roman authorities to dislodge him from his comfortable nest at the court, and his conduct had alienated many from the Society. On the other hand, the devoted exertions of the Jesuits during the epidemics of 1565, 1568, and 1571,[Pg 85] had won back much of the early respect for them, and many new missions had been established. Most of the countries of Europe were repeatedly ravaged by pestilence during that decade, and the Jesuits distinguished themselves everywhere by the bravery with which they exposed, and frequently lost, their lives in the service of the sick. Yet there was a persistent feeling in Spain that they were over-eager to secure legacies, and nearly every year witnessed a violent outbreak of hostility to them.

A typical instance is found in the Jesuit chronicles in the earlier part of the year of Borgia's visit. The Jesuits of Alcalà had received into their ranks a youth named Francesco d'España, the son of a wealthy and distinguished lady of Madrid, who strongly opposed his entrance into the Society. He had the disposal of a large fortune, of which he was heir. The mother appealed to the Royal Council, at the head of which was Cardinal Spinosa, and the Jesuits were ordered to restore the youth. In the meantime, they had secretly sent the youth to their house at Madrid,—to be prepared to give evidence, Crétineau-Joly audaciously says,—and when the Vicar of the Archbishop of Toledo came to their house at Alcalà to enforce the order, they would tell him only that d'España was not there. A very lively dispute followed. The angry prelate roundly abused the Jesuits, who flourished their privileges in his face; and some zealous brother rang the bell of the college to summon the students to the defence of their rector. When at length the Vicar threatened to have the Jesuit Provincial dragged to prison, and the students drew their knives to protect him, the rector promised to produce d'España within twenty-four hours. He was summoned, and his mother tried to persuade him to return, or at least to leave his fortune to his family instead of leaving it to the [Pg 86] Jesuits. He refused, until the Provincial, foreseeing a great outburst of indignation, advised him to relinquish his fortune. The feeling engendered by such incidents was not removed by the visit of Borgia. In the following year, 1572, the civic authorities of Madrid appealed to the Royal Council to close the Jesuit school, on the ground that the lessons were merely "bait" for young men of wealthy families.

In Portugal, Borgia found the remarkable spectacle of one of his subjects virtually ruling the kingdom. Portugal had fallen lamentably from its earlier greatness. The vast frame of its Empire was undiminished, but the spirit necessary to sustain it had died, and it was doomed to decay. No serious historian questions that the Jesuits had, at least by setting up the Inquisition and pursuing the Jews and Moors, greatly accelerated its fall, and under the rule of Father Gonzales da Camara and his brother, in the name of the young King, the temporal interests of Portugal steadily declined. A stern French critic of the Jesuits, Pasquier, says that he was told by the Marquis de Pisani, the French ambassador at the Spanish court, that the Jesuits were bent on obtaining control of the kingdom of Portugal. Their apologists invite us to be amused at this incredible fiction of the anti-Jesuit, yet it is hardly more than a strong expression of the historical facts. Pasquier expressly says that the Jesuits meant to rule, not without a king, but through a king of their own choice, and they had done this for ten years when Borgia came to visit them. They had, as we saw, helped to replace Catherine by Cardinal Henry, and they had in 1568 displaced the Cardinal by declaring Sebastian of age (in his sixteenth year).

That they promoted the interests of the Society in Portugal and its colonies need hardly be said, but there is ample evidence that they had a larger influence. The [Pg 87] King's mother wished him to marry the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, but papal policy preferred a marriage with the sister of the French King; and we have a letter from Borgia to Gonzales, as confessor of Sebastian, enjoining him to promote the French marriage. Even Borgia could overlook the decrees of his Society at times, or convert temporal matters into spiritual. We may, however, regard it as a strained and fanciful conjecture of certain critics that the Portuguese fathers tried to deter Sebastian from marriage, and pressed him to undertake his fatal mission to Africa, in order that the crown might fall into their hands. But this belongs to a later date. Father Gonzales was still the virtual head of the State when Borgia visited Portugal, and the Society flourished there and in the Indies. Although Borgia had lately received an angry protest from Catherine against the interference of the fathers in political matters, he left Gonzales at the court.

Alessandrini and Borgia next went to France; and when we reflect that the historic massacre of the Huguenots occurred a few months afterwards, we feel that it is important to study the visit and the position of the Jesuits with some care. Let us first see how the Society had fared in its ceaseless struggle with its opponents at Paris.

In 1565 a fresh attack had been made on the Jesuit college, and a fruitless appeal against it was made to the Royal Senate. The Jesuits then arraigned the University, which refused to recognise their college, before the Parliament, and a fresh opportunity was offered to the Parisian lawyers to draw up their scathing indictments of the Society. In the meantime, Father Possevin, rector of the college they had recently opened at Lyons, was sent to see the young King and Catherine de Medici at Bayonne, and induce them to throw their power and[Pg 88] command into the legal scale. The conference at Bayonne, at which Possevin assisted in some measure, is of grave importance in the history of Europe. On the pretext of making Charles acquainted with his kingdom, Catherine was bringing him into the neighbourhood of other Catholic princes and conferring with them. At Bayonne she met the wife of Philip of Spain, and in the Queen's suite was the grim Duke of Alva. We can only conjecture what was discussed at this conference, but no one doubts that the chief subject was the growth of Protestantism in Catholic lands. Protestant historians frequently suggest that the St. Bartholomew massacre was actually projected at Bayonne, but we are hardly justified in thinking that there was anything more than a general discussion of the brutal policy which was afterwards adopted by Alva in the Netherlands and Catherine in France. In any case, it is most unlikely that Possevin had any share in these secret counsels. He was a new man, hardly known to the court in 1565. He discussed the affairs of his Society with the Spanish Queen, and revealed to her the smuggling of Protestant books into her country; and he returned to Paris with letters, commending the suit of the Paris college, from Catherine, Charles, and the Cardinal de Bourbon.

When the President of the Parlement found these weighty and irregular documents thrown into the scale, he temporised. The suit was suspended; the Jesuits were provisionally allowed to teach. In the following year, however, the University appealed to the Constable of France, complaining that the professors were unable to keep discipline, as a pupil went to the Jesuits the moment he was reprimanded. Then two singular discoveries were made by the Jesuits, and they had the effect of disarming many of their patriotic opponents. In 1567, Father Oliver Manares, the Provincial, in [Pg 89]formed the court and the civic authorities of Paris that the Huguenots had concerted a plot to sack and burn the city; he had learned it from a Polish noble, who was visiting Paris and had been warned to leave in time. [5] Paris flew to arms and scared the supposed plotters; it was also grateful to Father Manares, and incensed against the Huguenots. In the same year, Father Auger was fortunate enough to discover a similar plot at Lyons. There is evidence of a conspiracy at Lyons, but the historian must regard the "discovery" of Manares with grave suspicion. The effect of the discoveries was that the grateful King at once ordered that all opposition to the Jesuits must cease, and all legacies to the Society must be valid in law; and that the Catholics were soon ranged against the Huguenots in open field. The ablest of the Jesuits, Auger and Possevin, ardently stimulated the Catholics, accompanied the troops, and were even seen in the thick of the battles.

A peace was arranged in 1570, to the disappointment of the Jesuits; and the country still enjoyed this precarious peace when Alessandrini and Borgia reached the court, at Blois, in the first month of 1572. In regard to the discussions which took place we know only that France declared itself unable to join in the crusade against the Turk, and Charles's sister, Mary of Valois, was promised to Henri de Béarn instead of to Sebastian of Spain, as the Pope wished. Alessandrini and Borgia went back to Rome, to announce their failure to the dying Pope. And on 24th August of that year took place the horrible massacre which lays an eternal stain on the memory of Catherine de Medici. We have, fortunately, neither to linger over the revolting details [Pg 90] of that outrage, nor to enter the larger controversy as to the responsibility for it. [6] The general feeling of historians is that the massacre was deliberately planned by Catherine; and, since the Jesuits had influence with Catherine, we have to consider whether they may have been implicated in the barbaric slaughter.

Since General Borgia conferred with her at Blois some months before the massacre, it has been thought by many that he was initiated. A careful consideration of the character of Borgia disposes one to acquit him confidently of this suspicion; it seems incredible that he should approve, or that Catherine should expect him to approve, so inhuman a measure. It is a common mistake to suppose that there was a fixed type of Jesuit, and that almost any member of the Society may be regarded as a man who would sanction criminal means for the attainment of a good end. Our narrative has already shown us that Jesuits differed considerably in character, and that individual features were not, as is sometimes thought, obliterated by the impression of a corporate stamp. Borgia was cruel only to himself, and he does not seem to have been much of a casuist.

The real question is how far such men as Auger, Possevin, and Manares were responsible for that general mood and temper of Catherine which culminated in the Bartholomew massacre. It does not seem probable that any of them were actually initiated to the plot. They were not the keepers of the royal conscience in France at that time, and were not at all constantly consulted by Catherine. But since the days when, at and after[Pg 91] the colloquy at Poissy, Lainez had sternly forbidden her to grant an elementary freedom of worship to the Huguenots, they had impelled her toward that harsh and intolerant policy which at length took this criminal form in her diseased mind. Their intellectual campaign against the Huguenots was a failure. They made few converts from it, and they urged coercion to prevent it from spreading. Then, when the Huguenots stirred under this unjust treatment, they were very zealous in warning the court of "plots." It seems to me a grave circumstance that in 1567, Father Manares "discovered" on the part of the Huguenots of Paris a design not unlike that which the Catholics afterwards perpetrated against them; it is probable that this was the germ of Catherine's bloody enterprise. Whether she ever discussed her plan with any of the leading Jesuits we have no evidence whatever to determine. At a later date, when their house is raided and their preachers are bolder, we shall find the Jesuits of Paris expressly advocating crime in the interest of religion. At this stage we can only say that they pressed a policy of violence and injustice, and Catherine's crime, in which they acquiesced, was an extreme deduction from it.

Simultaneously with the trouble in France, Alva was engaged in "pacifying" the Netherlands. Here the Jesuits had miscalculated the strength of the Catholics, and, in encouraging the policy of violent repression, led to their own undoing. Only the favour of princes had secured some shelter for them in Belgium, and their houses now disappeared in the flames of the civil war. Their college at Douai had been interdicted by the university authorities in 1567, but relieved by papal authority. As the Spaniards proceeded, however, in the drastic and bloody policy which the Jesuits were known to favour, the crowds stormed their residences, and by [Pg 92] 1570 they were almost driven from the country. They returned in the wake of Alva, but there was bitter hostility to them, and they were generally accused of rebuilding their house at Antwerp out of the loot of Flemish towns. Father Sacchini is moved to lament the perversity of men who could entertain such a suspicion, though, as their sardonic critic Steinmetz observes, "it would have been better to supply the place of this moral maxim by stating whence the funds were obtained for building or beautifying the house at Antwerp."

When we pass to Germany we naturally find that the Jesuits are apostles of toleration, charity, and calm intellectual discussion of differences of creed in the north, fanatical intolerantists in the south, and advocates of every conceivable compromise between the two extremes in the intervening or mixed States. Canisius still maintained his great work and his austere standard. Appointed Legate of the Pope in 1565 he traversed the whole of Germany on foot, and strengthened the loyalty of the Catholic rulers to the Council of Trent. In the following year we find him, at the Diet of Augsburg, helping to unite Protestants and Catholics against the Turk. Many new colleges were founded by him, including three in Poland, before the death of Borgia. On the other hand, grave reports had to be sent to Rome from the more Catholic and prosperous centres. The University of Dillingen, which the Jesuits controlled, was found in 1567 to be permeated with heresy, and a rigorous scrutiny ended in some of the Jesuits (including an English refugee, Edward Thorn) going over to the Protestants. In 1570 the Jesuit rector of Prague College became a Protestant and married. In Bavaria the cry was raised that they mutilated boys in their colleges. A most extraordinary trial resulted in their acquittal, [Pg 93] but there was a deep and widespread prejudice against them. In the same year, 1565, they were fiercely assailed in Austria. Their college at Vienna was raided by an angry mob; and the nobles, who had been convoked by Maximilian, refused to give their aid in the campaign against the Turk unless the Emperor expelled the Jesuits.

In Italy the chronicles of the Society tell of slow advance chequered by fits of hostility. By the year 1567 the Roman college had more than a thousand pupils, but the provinces were beginning to murmur at the burden of supporting this establishment, and the next congregation would restrict its growth. In Genoa, Siena, and other cities, the fathers struggled with poverty; in one place a college had to abandon the struggle and die. In most parts, however, the Society flourished and adapted its work to the circumstances. At Palermo we hear, in 1567, of a weird pageant, known as "The Triumph of Death," arranged by the Jesuits. Sack-clothed men bearing candles, a huge figure of Christ in a coffin, and two hundred flagellants, stimulated to their ghastly exercise by a troop of choristers dressed as hermits, went before a car containing a monstrous skeleton, higher than the roofs of the houses, with a mighty scythe in its hand. In the north the appeal was to princes. Borromeo still favoured the Society at Milan, while at Ferrara and Florence the Jesuits directed the consciences of princesses. The daughters of the Emperor who had married the Duke of Ferrara and Francis de Medici insisted on retaining their Jesuit confessors; and, when Borgia would refuse permission, the confessors themselves pleaded that the fair ladies could not possibly be abandoned to strange influences. Borgia reluctantly consented. He saw, and regretted, that one of the[Pg 94] sternest rules of the Society was being sacrificed to expediency, but his counsellors seemed to have overruled him. Ignatius had sanctioned the first royal confessor: now there were four.

From his survey of the provinces, in which he saw much to distress his austere feelings, Borgia returned, exhausted, to Rome. He died a few weeks afterwards (1st October 1572), and Polanco, one of the ablest administrators at the Roman centre, was appointed Vicar-General. He fixed the election for April, and in the early spring the most famous officers of the army began to come in from their remote battlefields. Auger was occupied in so congenial a task in France that he would not come to Rome; he was with the Catholic troops besieging the Huguenots in La Rochelle. But there was an impressive gathering of the veterans of the Society. Salmeron and Bobadilla were still there to tell the story of their humble beginning on the flanks of Montmartre thirty years before; Ribadeneira, Miguel de Torres, Canisius, Possevin, Manares, Leo Henriquez, Miron, Polanco, and other fathers, before whom kings would bow, came in from the frontiers to the eternal city, as the commanders of legions had done before them. And of this brilliant group one of the lowest in ability and distinction, Father Everard Mercurian, was chosen to be General.

The new Pope, Gregory XIII., had intervened. "How many Spanish Generals have you had?" he asked, when the older Jesuits came to greet him. All three had been Spaniards. "How many votes have the Spaniards amongst you?" he then asked. Quite enough to elect a Spaniard once more, as they were bent on doing; and the man on whom they had fixed their thoughts was the gifted and energetic Polanco. But Polanco was descended from converted Jews, a [Pg 95] class disliked by high-born Spaniards, and Kings Philip and Sebastian had written to ask the Pope to prevent him from being elected. The fathers respectfully protested that the Pope, who was Protector of their Society, ought not to coerce their decisions. "Are there no able men amongst you except Spaniards?" he went on; and he suggested Everard Mercurian. Gregory knew that the blind obedience of the Jesuits to the Pope was not of the kind which hastens to carry out the slightest wish of the ruler, and on the morning of the election he sent a cardinal to tell them that they must not elect a Spaniard. They still expostulated; but Gregory insisted, and Mercurian, a mild and mediocre old man, was made General. Being a Belgian, he was at least a subject of Spain; and he was sixty-eight years old.

Then the conscript fathers assembled, day after day, to discuss the mass of secret reports from every centre, and pass those instructive decrees—forty-eight were issued on this occasion—which tell us so plainly the decay of the original spirit. Ignatius had taught them to seek power and wealth for God: it had proved a dangerous lesson. The Congregation dispersed in June, and Mercurian entered upon his seven years' generalship. The real control was openly entrusted to Father Palmio, the Italian assistant, until Father Manares ousted him, and secured the chief place and the hope of succession. There was, at this, some unedifying language; we shall see presently that Manares, at least, undoubtedly sought the generalship. But the various provinces were now under the command of such able men that the progress of the Society was not retarded. Let us glance at the more significant happenings in the provinces, and then sum up the work of the Society in its first four decades.

In the case of Spain we need note only that the Pope's interference in the election was bitterly resented, and a feeling spread among the fathers which we shall find breaking into the most singular expression under the rule of Acquaviva. In spite of the stern design of Ignatius and the emphatic rule of the Society that the Jesuit was to benumb every patriotic fibre in his heart, and know himself only as a citizen of the city of God, the Spaniards cherished their national pride in an alarming degree. Under the ambitious and masterful Philip II., who dreamed of world-empire and was willing to include the Jesuits in his diplomatic corps, they prospered and were the most important body in the Society. They were annoyed that the generalship passed out of their hands, and they began to meditate secession from the Roman authorities. When the papal Nuncio died at Madrid in 1577 a memoir written in this sense was found amongst his papers. We shall see later how the feeling developed, and how the war with Rome brought into notice the degenerate character of the Spanish province.

Italian affairs in that decade are chiefly remarkable for a violent quarrel with St. Charles Borromeo at Milan. He had continued for some years to patronise and employ them. Father Adorno remained his confessor; and in 1572 he gave them the Abbey of Braida for a college, and in 1573 entrusted to them the College of Nobles at Milan. They were already in charge of the seminary of the diocese, and the trouble seems to have begun with the transfer of this institution to the Oblates (a religious body founded by Charles) in 1577. Crétineau-Joly explains that the Jesuits were now controlling so many institutions in Milan that they were overworked, and they begged to be relieved of the seminary. He appeals to Giussano, the saint's bio [Pg 97]grapher; but Giussano merely says that Charles "gave the seminary to the Oblates, with the consent of the Jesuits," which is a polite way of saying that they were dismissed. We shall see, in fact, that Charles was convinced that the Jesuits were in a lax and degenerate condition.

In the following year, 1578, the cardinal quarrelled with the Governor of Milan, and the Jesuits divided in allegiance. Adorno and a few others were faithful to Charles, but a courtly and fashionable Jesuit preacher, who was appointed to preach the Lent, attacked and ridiculed the cardinal-archbishop from one of the chief pulpits of his own city, before a crowded audience of wealthy Milanese. This preacher, Mazzarino, uncle of the famous minister, was the confessor and friend of the governor. Charles protested against the unseemly attack, but the Jesuit provincial appointed Mazzarino again to preach the Lent in 1579, and he attacked Charles more virulently than ever. All the less austere ladies of Milan, for whom he made smooth the paths of rectitude, flocked to his chapel, and listened with pleasure to his ridicule of the ascetic prescriptions of their saintly archbishop. Charles drew the attention of the Provincial to the fact that Mazzarino was preaching moral principles of scandalous laxity, and his attacks on the chief clerical authority were very injurious. The Provincial would not chide Mazzarino, and Charles appealed to the General. The only reply of the General was, at the request of a certain countess, to direct Mazzarino to preach all the year round. Charles threatened to suspend the preacher, and he was defied from the pulpit; he threatened to bring his principles to the notice of the Inquisition, and the Jesuits sent a courier to Rome to defend their preacher. Then Charles instructed his Roman agent, Spetiano, to lay [Pg 98] the case before the papal court, and Mazzarino was recalled by his General and suspended from preaching for two years by an ecclesiastical tribunal.

This quarrel is of interest for two reasons. In the first place, it illustrates the value of Crétineau-Joly's history of the Jesuits. The French writer ignores the attack in 1577, and says that, as soon as Mazzarino began to misbehave, "the Milan fathers hastened to disapprove of the imprudent orator," and the General recalled him. It is, of course, true that Charles's confessor, Adorno, "disapproved" of his brother Jesuit, but the Mazzarino faction retorted that he was jealous, because Mazzarino had larger audiences for his sermons; and Crétineau-Joly suppresses the fact that the Provincial, and for a time the General, defiantly supported Mazzarino. We know this from Borromeo's letters to his agent. [7] The further interest of the quarrel, which is entirely suppressed by the French historian, is that in these letters Charles passes very severe strictures on the Jesuits as a body. Instead of finding fault with one man only, Mazzarino, he found fault with all except one, his confessor, to whom he remained attached. "I confess," he writes to Spetiano, "that for some time I have felt the Society to be in grave danger of decadence unless a prompt remedy be applied." The Jesuits, he explains, admit clever youths without regard to their character, and they grant extravagant liberties to their literary colleagues. They are inflated by the favour of the nobility and the crowds of wealthy women who flock to lax moralists like Mazzarino. We may also recall here the grave statement of Charles's nephew and successor, Archbishop Frederic Borromeo, who was educated by the Jesuits: a statement repeated, [Pg 99] in the most solemn terms, by a writer to whom he made it.

I have enlarged on this quarrel because we have here the rare advantage of an impartial and unimpeachable witness, and we see how serious a ground there is at times, when independent evidence can be found, for reading Jesuit and pro-Jesuit writers with caution. We must not, however, pass to the opposite extreme and conclude that the Italian Jesuits generally were the favourites of ladies who appreciated indulgence in their confessors and preachers. This is the only serious scandal of the Italian province under Mercurian.

In France, as in Spain, the story is one of preparation for the stirring events of the next chapter. The hostile Archbishop of Paris died, and Pierre de Gondi, who succeeded him, was an Italian of the Medici suite, and favourable to the Jesuits. Charles IX. gave place to Henry II., and the new king chose Auger for his confessor, and gave the Jesuits everything they cared to ask. There was now no question of suppressing their name and privileges in France. A third powerful patron was the Cardinal de Bourbon, who obtained for them a "house of the professed" at Paris, and tried to force the university to incorporate their college. The Parlement and University still made every effort to check their triumphant advance, but they now began to send pupils of their own to graduate in the university and weaken its opposition. Their college in Lorraine was erected into a university, and royal pupils sat at their feet. When the famous Catholic League was formed they flung themselves into its work with great ardour, and we shall see the terrible issue in the next chapter.

Two incidents in the permanent quarrel with the Paris University should be noticed. One of the Jesuits, [Pg 100] Maldonat, shocked the professors of the Sorbonne by teaching that the immaculate conception of Mary was a matter of free opinion, [8] and Rome upheld the Jesuit. More interesting is a memoir which the doctors of the Sorbonne submitted to the papal court when, in 1575, Cardinal de Bourbon was trying to secure the incorporation of the Jesuit college. Amongst heavy charges of avarice and of seizing the property of other religious bodies, we find the quaint accusation that the Jesuits taught that souls were delivered from purgatory after ten years of suffering. The point seems academic to the layman, and very consoling to the faithful. What it really meant, in practice, was that the Jesuits claimed that they might, after ten years, divert to other purposes the large funds bequeathed to them to say masses for the dead.

In Belgium the record was still one of trouble and vicissitude. They had, when Alva had "pacified" the province, opened a number of houses, which the townsfolk (as at Antwerp and Liège) threatened to burn. Then, when Don John, Philip's half-brother, was defeated in 1578, the Jesuits refused to take the oath imposed by the States and were expelled from Antwerp and other centres. They began to recover to some extent under the Duke of Parma, but had to witness the secession of the northern provinces and the formation of a new Protestant power, Holland, which was destined to give them trouble. At Louvain they maintained a struggle with the university similar to that at Paris. They at last tripped up the celebrated Michel de Bay (Baius), rector of the university, and sent their brilliant young theologian, Bellarmine, who was then only thirty years old, to enter into a prolonged duel with him. When, at last, they induced Rome to take a serious [Pg 101] view of the errors of Baius, and Father Toledo was sent by the Pope to secure his submission, they began to rise from the lowly position in which the university had kept them.

The Catholics of Austria and Southern Germany continued to oppose and intimidate them in spite of the devoted exertions of Canisius. They were fiercely assailed at Gratz, Prague, Innsprück, and Vienna. The Emperor Maximilian was even induced to forbid their Vienna college to grant degrees or compete in lectures with the university, though the Jesuits soon got the restriction removed. It appears that they announced lectures on the same subjects and at the same hours as those of the university, and, as always, charged no fees. This was one of the chief grievances of the universities, especially as the Jesuits palpably trusted to obtain control of the universities themselves. Another grievance, which we have noticed in the Parisian indictment, is that they somehow acquired the property of older religious orders. One of many instances of this occurs in the present period. They opened a college at Freiburg, and were invited to work in the Swiss cantons. For the beginning of their mission the Pope assigned them the revenues of the abbey of Marsens, and Canisius soon had a centre for attacking Calvinism in Switzerland. The Polish colleges continued to flourish, as we shall presently realise, under King Stephen Bathori.

The most interesting adventure under the rule of Mercurian is the attempt to penetrate Sweden. The principles of the Reformation had been cordially received in Sweden, and it seemed to King John III. that peace could be secured only by some kind of compromise between the old faith and the new. John was, however, married to the sister of the Queen of Poland, and the [Pg 102] Jesuits, who were sternly forbidden to enter the kingdom, saw in this a means of outwitting the vigilant Protestants. The combination of women and Jesuits was the supreme agency in checking the progress of the Reformation in Europe.

In 1574 an envoy came to Stockholm to convey the compliments of Anne of Poland to her sister Catherine. One could not close the gates against an envoy, though it was known that the fine clothes of the ambassador were a thin disguise of the Polish Jesuit Father Warsevicz, and the secret instructions of the envoy were to correct the liberalism of John and offer him an alliance with Spain. John knew theology and wrangled with the envoy for a week in the palace. The mission was fruitless, and in 1576 John was persuaded to countenance an even more romantic adventure. A young Norwegian presented himself to the Protestant clergy of Stockholm, and said that, having spent some years at southern universities, he would like a place as professor in the new college they were forming. He begged that they would recommend him to the king, and they did, so that he secured the appointment. It was the Jesuit Father Nicolai, who had, as John knew, been sent from Rome with instructions to perpetrate this amazing fraud. Nicolai must certainly have lied to the Protestant authorities about his beliefs, in order to obtain a place as teacher of theology in a Protestant college. When we reflect that he acted on instructions from Rome, and that no Jesuit or pro-Jesuit writer seems to see anything reprehensible in his conduct, we feel that Jesuit diplomacy had already reached a stage which it would be impolite to characterise in plain English.

Nicolai seems to have held his chair of Lutheran theology for a considerable time. There were those who scented heresy in his lectures, but they were[Pg 103] promptly expelled, and Nicolai even became rector of the college. One would give much to have to-day a copy of the Lutheran-Jesuit's lectures. The masterful Possevin was next dispatched, in the quality of Legate, with the Irish Jesuit, William Good, for companion. He was to prevent a union of Sweden and Holland, and to correct the king's errors. Possevin went first to Prague, where he induced the widow of Maximilian to name him her ambassador to Sweden, and then, dressed for the part, with a sword dangling at his side, he boldly entered Stockholm, where Professor Nicolai was still teaching Lutheran theology in his subtle way. The counter-Reformation had different methods from those of Luther. John was willing to return to the faith and enter the Spanish alliance, if Rome would grant the marriage of priests, the mass in Swedish, and other claims of the Reformers. Possevin hastened to Rome, leaving his sword by the way, and stormily pressed the commission of cardinals to grant these concessions. It is (apart from certain remarkable indulgences later on the foreign missions) the only occasion on which a Jesuit pleaded for compromise, but Possevin was ambitious. Failing to obtain the concessions, Possevin hurried to the Duke of Bavaria, the Emperor, and the King of Poland, in order that he might at least be able to offer to John the material alliances he had promised him, if he would break with England and Holland. But he had little to offer, and the Protestants were now alarmed; and Possevin, Good, Warsevicz, and Professor Nicolai were politely ushered from the country.

Of the foreign missions which will enrage us more fully when the Jesuits are firmly established, a few words must suffice. In India the use of the civil power to support their preaching continued to augment the number, and restrain the quality, of the converts. The [Pg 104] Japanese mission made slow progress, and was extinguished in some of the large towns. The gates of China were politely opened to admit a Portuguese legation (containing disguised Jesuits), but, after an interview at Canton, politely closed again by the wary mandarins. The settlement in Brazil was deeply injured by the diseases which European Christians brought to South America, terrifying the natives; and a serious loss was sustained in 1570, when a ship conveying forty Jesuits to Brazil was captured by "Huguenot pirates." They were all slain. Florida, Mexico, and Peru were visited for the first time in this decade, and a few fathers laid the foundations of new missions. On the whole, the missionary record under Borgia and Mercurian does not fulfil the earlier promise.

Mercurian died in the summer of 1580, just forty years after the establishment of the Society. Assuredly a remarkable advance had been made in those four decades. The ten Jesuits had become a formidable army of 5000 socii (including novices and lay-brothers), fighting heresy in the boudoirs of queens and the market-places of Germany, educating hundreds of thousands of youths, all over Europe, in a fanatical zeal for the papacy, extending its influence through the laity by means of sodalities and confraternities, pouring out a vast literature, from the blistering pamphlet to the ponderous folio volume, relating to the great religious controversy, wearing the garb of the beggar or the silk of the noble as occasion needed, speaking a hundred tongues, and sending scores of men yearly to lands whence they would never return and where fever or the axe awaited them. They were the backbone of the counter-Reformation, formidable alike by the simple and austere devotion of some, the brilliance and learning of others, and the unscrupulousness of yet others in the service of the Church. [Pg 105] And every man, and every movement of every man, was registered in that central bureau at Rome, where four sagacious heads directed the strategy and tactics of this planet-scattered regiment.

Our survey of the growth and evolutions of this spiritual army warns us to avoid generalisations. It is not true that from the start the Jesuits were avaricious, ambitious, and unscrupulous: it is not true that they maintained their spirit untainted for half a century, and then degenerated. No epithet will apply to them as a body, except that they differed, corporately, from all other religious bodies in the diplomatic nature of their action. Every variety of man was found in their ranks: the austere flagellant and the genial courtier, the man who served the poor because they were poor, and the man who served them in order to edify the rich; the man who flung himself with a smile into the arms of death, and the man who loved disguises and the adventurous evasion of death, the saint and the sinner, the peasant, the noble, and the scholar. No uniform stamp effaced their individual characters. The weak or sensual or casuistic degenerated in the first decade: the strong maintained their idealism to the last. But that original tendency to consecrate worldly devices to a high end, to regard the effectiveness rather than the intrinsic propriety of means, to seek wealth and power because they procured speedier success, was running its inevitable course, and from the recommendation of lying in the cause of Christ we shall soon see some of them go on to the condonation of vice and the counsel of crime.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] I have previously explained the distinction between simple and solemn vows, and the advantage which the Jesuits had in confining the latter to a chosen few of their body. See p. 30. These "simple" vows are now admitted in other orders, but they were for centuries peculiar to the Jesuits, and were very distasteful to the older orders.

[5] It will appear later that Manares was a man of robust conscience, and later incurred the censure of his brethren for improper conduct.

[6] I may draw attention to a curious illustration of the difficulty of reaching a verdict on the St. Bartholomew massacre. In the same volume of the Cambridge Modern History we are told (p. 20) that "Gregory XIII. is said to have expressed dismay," and (p. 285) that he heard the news with "triumphant acclamation." There is surely no serious doubt that the second statement is correct.

[7] See a selection in the Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites (1764), vol. i. pp. 132-159.

[8] It did not become a dogma of the Church until 1854.

The older of the fathers who obeyed the summons to a new election, and converged upon the Eternal City, must have wondered whether it would pass without a fresh exhibition of the very human passions which the occasion so frequently revealed amongst them. Father Oliver Manares had been appointed Vicar-General, and had announced the election for the spring of 1581. We remember Manares as the fortunate discoverer of Huguenot plots at Paris, and then as successfully ousting Father Palmio from the position of chief assistant to Mercurian. He had made his way to the steps of the throne, and the more religious brethren were now startled to find him shamelessly canvassing for votes, in spite of the stern prohibition in their Constitutions. Four of the older fathers were at once appointed to investigate the charge against him. Bobadilla, impetuous and masterful still in his old age, was one of the four, but he expressed his resentment of the charge against his friend so strongly before the inquiry opened that they had, with great difficulty, to remove him from the commission; and, when the commissioners found Manares guilty, he made very sore trouble in the house. In the end Manares was persuaded to forego his right of nomination, and Father Acquaviva was elected.

Claude Acquaviva was one of the youngest of the electors. Though strenuous work had already begun [Pg 107] to whiten his dark southern hair, he was only thirty-seven years old; but he was distinguished for his high birth, his great ability, his integrity, and a happy combination of resolution and cold equanimity that recalled Lainez. He was a son of the Neapolitan Duke of Atri, and was destined to rule the Society during thirty-four years of that dangerous period when its desire for wealth and power, in the service of God, led it into the dark ways of political intrigue and the accumulation of earthly treasure. We shall now find the seeds of decay spreading over larger areas and germinating rapidly. We shall witness a singular eruption of the worldly spirit in the Spanish peninsula, and the development of the political Jesuit as he is known in the history of England, which I reserve for a special chapter, and of France.

The first few years of the generalship of Acquaviva were peaceful. A friendly Pope, Gregory XIII., occupied the Roman see, and the Society increased in numbers and prestige. The Gesù, the famous metropolitan church of the Jesuits, was opened by the Pope in 1583; the Gregorian calendar was very largely framed by one of their members, the learned Clavius of Bavaria. But Gregory died in 1585, and Acquaviva prepared for a struggle with the papacy. The stern, despotic Sixtus V. had now received the tiara, and all Rome expected him to clip the wings of the soaring Society. Acquaviva thought it would be prudent to disarm the Pope and disavow the thirst for power. He offered to resign control of the Roman seminary. Sixtus refused the offer, and awaited his opportunity; and in the following year, 1586, the flash and roar of the gathering clouds in Spain led him to intervene.

The Spanish fathers had, as I said, looked upon the generalship almost as an hereditary right, and had resented the election of Mercurian and Acquaviva. But [Pg 108] this feeling is so wholly opposed to the religious ideal of the Society that we at once suspect a serious decay of the character of the Spanish Jesuits, and we find some remarkable evidence of it. The official history of the Society in Spain does not attempt to conceal that under Borgia and Mercurian there had been widespread decadence, [9] and I have shown how this was due to material prosperity and the lack of serious work and heretical neighbours. We have, however, a more singular and ample account of this decadence. One of the most brilliant of the Spanish Jesuits, Mariana, the famous advocate of regicide, was moved to discredit the Roman authorities by showing the corruption into which they had allowed his own province to fall, and his Tratado del Govierno de la Compañia de Jesus gives us a very candid picture of the Spanish houses. The work was, naturally, not published by Mariana. Like so many documents in the Society, it was intended for private circulation in manuscript, but it was found amongst his papers by a bishop whom the king appointed to examine them, and the only ground for the claim of certain Jesuits that it is partly spurious is that they dislike its revelations. The decrees of the Society itself confirm the substance of its charges, and the temper and spirit of the book are quite in keeping with its Jesuit authorship.

It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. Of the 540 Jesuits in Spain 230 are lay-brothers: a circumstance that must be borne in mind when we read that there are so many thousand members of the Society. The lay-brother is merely a servant of the priests, and the enormous proportion of these lay-brothers in Spain [Pg 109] means that the fathers own large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets (as we learn from the decrees of the Society), and live cheerfully on the income. Mariana does not speak openly of vice—a sufficient proof that the book was not written, even in part, by an anti-Jesuit—but he says that the "enjoyments" of his colleagues are "excessive and scandalous." They further add materially to their incomes by managing the affairs of their penitents; in Valladolid alone there are twelve of these steward chaplains. They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded with debt, yet at Mariana's own house at Toledo the expenditure per head is about £50 a year: a very comfortable sum for the time and place, for a community pledged to poverty. Discipline is thwarted by favouritism and flattery, and the constant spying and reporting cause bitter quarrels in the houses.

This grave account of the Spanish province—sober and convincing, yet grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession—is written solely for the purpose of showing that a distant authority cannot maintain discipline, and the Spanish Jesuits must have local autonomy and less despotic rulers—home-rule and democracy, in a word. This is the note of the remarkable struggle which now opens between the Spaniards and the Italians. Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much as possible away from their native countries; but he made the mistake of removing old and long-settled fathers and substituting for them young men who shared his own ideas, and, in spite of his ideal, he favoured the Italians.

In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quit [Pg 110] the Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent—a crime from which only the Inquisition could absolve—yet the Provincial Marcenius had absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society.

Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio at Madrid to intervene, and Acquaviva sent a Jesuit to win Philip II. Philip, however, was quite willing to see the Society reformed, and the Inquisitors went on to arrest other Jesuits and demand further documents. The insurgent Spaniards were now openly demanding that they should have a local commissary, independent of Acquaviva, and the General was, as quickly as possible, removing fathers from Spain and filling their places with foreigners. The Inquisition decreed that no Jesuit was to leave Spain. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy of Sixtus V. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if the whole case[Pg 111] were not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!" Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard; "Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?" [10] He at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices. Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified—and would die at the death of Sixtus V.

Meanwhile the struggle was renewed in Spain. One of the French Jesuits whom Acquaviva had put in place of a rebel proved worse than his predecessor. He asked the opinion of the Inquisition on a letter written by Ignatius himself on obedience, and it was promptly condemned. Acquaviva again had the case transferred and re-tried at Rome, and, although Sixtus spoke some plain unofficial language about the letter, the Roman Inquisition absolved it, and the audacious Father Vincent ended in a papal prison for going on to question the Pope's authority. At the same time an imprudent step on the part of the Society's critics united the Spanish Jesuits with their General and put an end for a time to the struggle. The King appointed a bishop to inquire into the state of all the religious [Pg 112] orders in Spain and deal with their irregularities. Neither the local Jesuits nor the General wanted a "royal visitator" peeping into their wine-cellars, and Acquaviva again appealed to the Pope: not forgetting to remind Sixtus, who supremely abhorred clerical "bastards," that this Bishop of Carthagena fell into that category. At the same time he sent to Madrid the English Jesuit, Father Parsons, who was then, as we shall see, helping Philip to annex England to the Spanish crown. He was allowed to choose his own "visitator," and the Spanish fathers were sufficiently absorbed in this new infliction for the next year or two.

Sixtus had meantime brooded over the singular mass of Jesuit documents submitted to him, and in 1590 he intimated that he was going to make a drastic and comprehensive reform. The name of the Society must be changed; the date of taking the vows and the classification of the members of the Society must be altered; the regulations in regard to "fraternal correction" (the euphemism in the Jesuit rules for spying and tale-bearing) and obedience must be modified; and the directions which virtually compelled novices to leave their property to the Society, while nominally advising them to leave it to the poor, must be abolished. Acquaviva entered upon this desperate struggle—there never was the slightest question of Jesuits yielding to Popes on any point—with that cold and dogged resolution which alone could thwart the fiery energy of Sixtus V. At first he tried long and respectful argument with the Pope, and induced the Emperor, the King of Poland, and the Duke of Bavaria to pray that there should be no alteration in the character of the Society. Sixtus smiled grimly, and ordered Cardinal Caraffa to proceed with the revision of their Constitu[Pg 113] tions. They then fastened on the cardinal, and Sixtus was infuriated to find that Caraffa made no progress. He knew that they were hoping to see him die before he could formulate his reforms, and he entrusted the work to four theologians, whose sentiments he knew. They drew up a formidable indictment of the Constitutions, but it had to pass the Sacred College—and Acquaviva took care that it did not pass.

We need not enter into all the details of this fourth attempt in half a century to evade the most positive and sincere commands of the Pope. It was a race with death, and the most determined and unscrupulous efforts were made by the Jesuits to prevent the Pope from reaching his goal before death overtook him. Sixtus had to punish one Jesuit for making a very pointed eulogy of Cardinal Cajetan, his rival and enemy, and to arrest another for regretting in public that they had not a Gregory on the throne in such troubled times. The dying despot fiercely concentrated his sinking energy on his last task. When Bellarmine's new book De Summi Pontificis Potestate appeared, he put it on the Index, although he liked Bellarmine, and the book really magnified the papal power so much that it was afterwards condemned as seditious at Paris. As the cardinals still thwarted him, he sent a stern personal order to Acquaviva to change the name of his Society. He was not far from death, but the General was told that there could be no more shiftiness; he might, however, ask for the change instead of having it imposed on him. He signed the petition and the Pope drew up his decree. He died before he could publish it.

There is no serious ground for the faint rumour that the Jesuits poisoned Sixtus V. His death was foreseen by everybody, and the Jesuits knew from experience that his decree would die with him. But Roman gossip [Pg 114] found the coincidence too romantic to let it pass. Acquaviva had ordered a novena (nine days of prayer) to be said for Sixtus in the Jesuit houses when his illness was announced. The bell was ringing for Vespers on the ninth day when the aged Pope passed away; and for many a year afterwards it was a grim, half-serious joke of the Romans to wonder, when they heard the Jesuit Vesper-bell, whether it rang out the life of another Pope.

After the two-week rule of Urban VII., Gregory XIV. came to the throne and restored the tranquillity of Acquaviva and his colleagues. The title of their Society was solemnly confirmed, and the subsidies of their colleges were again granted. But Gregory had a brief reign, his successor passed even more quickly from the papal throne, and at the beginning of 1592 Clement VIII. succeeded to the tiara. It was generally believed that Clement disliked Acquaviva, and the rebels in Spain returned to the attack upon him. Spain and Portugal, which were still united under the Spanish crown, were equally united in the opposition to the Roman authorities. During the years of friction with Sixtus V. the Spanish fathers Acosta and Carillo and the Portuguese fathers Goelho and Carvalho had maintained and led the agitation against Acquaviva, and it was known that they had the support of abler men like Mariana and the sympathy of the most distinguished and powerful Jesuit at Rome, Toledo, who was made a cardinal by Clement. Acquaviva had not relaxed in his measures against this powerful coalition. He won at least the silence of Toledo; he flattered and tried to disarm Acosta, who was too great a favourite of Philip to be punished; he expelled some of the less influential leaders from the Society, and brought others to Rome. Now, at the last moment, the accession of Clement seemed to have [Pg 115] wrested the victory from his hands, and the Spaniards took courage.

Acosta rejected the General's blandishments and persuaded Philip to send him to Rome with a request that the new Pope would summon a General Congregation of the Society and remove Acquaviva from Rome during its sittings. There was at the time a quarrel between the Dukes of Parma and Mantua, and Clement gracefully deputed Acquaviva to go to the north and reconcile them. He dare not refuse the insidious appointment, but he left behind him a trusted secretary, and it was not long before he learned that Clement was about to summon a General Congregation, to which Acquaviva was strongly opposed. He reported that his mission was futile and hopeless; Clement, still gracefully, advised him to be patient, and the strong man had to remain inactive in the north while the Spaniards carried their point. He returned to find Acosta at Rome and a General Congregation—"for the purpose of strengthening the Society and reducing certain provinces to tranquillity"—announced for November. In other words, it was to be a trial of strength between Acosta and Acquaviva, between Spain and Italy, and each party prepared strenuously for the tug of war; while Rome frivolously applauded the rival children of Ignatius and the Pope smilingly blessed the arena.

Just at that time Toledo received the red hat, and the Spaniards begged the Pope to name "a cardinal" (Toledo) to preside at the Congregation. He refused; but Acquaviva was defeated in turn when he tried to expel Acosta from the professed house and have him excluded from the forthcoming Congregation. Not only Rome, but the Jesuits scattered over Europe, now joined in the feverish struggle. Memorials praying for the reform of the Society and the restriction of the [Pg 116] General's power began to reach the Pope from provincial Jesuits; counter-memorials followed from the partisans of Acquaviva. In fine, Acquaviva triumphed, with certain concessions. The privileges of the Society which offended the Spanish Inquisition were to be abandoned in the Peninsula; and Acquaviva was to change his Assistants, and hold a Congregation, every six years (a command which, of course, "died with the Pope"). There was the customary review of the state of the Society and passing of admirable decrees, and the fathers returned to their provinces. Acquaviva then made a final and drastic clearance of the rebels, and many were expelled. They were still powerful enough to induce the Pope to nominate Acquaviva archbishop of his native city, but he eluded even this plot. They then persuaded the Pope that it was expedient for Acquaviva to visit Spain and see the province with his own eyes. The General clearly believed, and it is probable enough, that something like incarceration awaited him in Spain, and he made a desperate struggle to evade the Pope's order. He was saved by the death of the Pope, in 1605, and for several years afterwards we still find him struggling with the rebellious Spaniards.

This remarkable conflict, within the Society and with the Pope, which I take chiefly from the Jesuit Jouvency, the continuer of the official "Historia Societatis," well illustrates how dim the apostolic fire had become in one of the largest provinces of the Society; how its flame was choked and corrupted by material prosperity. When we turn to France and to England we have an equally valuable illustration of the way in which the command to seek power, for the glory of God, evolves what is known as the political Jesuit. There is no intrinsic reason that I can see why a priest should not seek political influence on behalf of religious interests. [Pg 117] Assuredly in the sixteenth century there was no clean division of the religious and political spheres. But the complaint against the Jesuits is that their authorities ostentatiously forbid political action, yet permit and encourage their subjects secretly to pursue it, and even in ways that are unworthy of religious ideals; that, in short, the Jesuit approaches the field under the white flag of political neutrality, employs weapons which are condemned in civilised warfare, and then denies that he interfered. In reviewing forty years of their life in France we have an excellent opportunity of examining this charge.

When we last turned away from France, the Catholic League was just beginning to arouse passion in the country and the Jesuits were taking an active part in its work. The historical situation may be recalled in a few words. The children of that abominable type of feminine politician, Catherine de Medici, were perishing ingloriously. Henry III. still feebly occupied the throne, but it was a question how long he would, under the guidance of his Jesuit confessor Auger, continue to entertain Paris with his alternating fits of debauch and melodramatic penitence; and the legitimate heir to the throne was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholics were naturally alarmed and formed the League to "protect their interests"; its specific aim was, as every man in France knew, to secure the throne for the Catholic Henry of Guise.

Here was a situation entirely to the taste of the more ardent and adventurous of the Jesuits, and (apart from the inevitable few who favoured Philip of Spain) they marched valiantly under the banners of the League, and fluttered about the Catholic courts of Europe in the interest of Guise. The Provincial, Claude Matthieu, earned the name of the "Courier of the League" from [Pg 118] his many journeys in support of it. Father Henri Sammier traversed Italy and Spain, and penetrated Germany and England, to further its aim. He had a large wardrobe of disguises, which he wore with the grace of an actor, and he is said by the contemporary lawyer Pasquier to have been as familiar with dice and cards as with his breviary. Edmund Hay, the Scottish Jesuit and tender champion of Mary Stuart, lent his fervent aid to the cause. Father Auger, however, was not an ardent Leaguer, and he made an effort to silence his younger colleagues. He had persuaded Henry III. to join the League, lest the League should not be inclined to wait for the young king's natural death, but he rightly distrusted Guise. It must not be supposed that he cherished a more austere standard of Jesuit duty than the others, since his royal penitent was notorious for his licentious conduct, his morbid love of jewels and of feminine clothes, and the utter degradation of his real gifts. The fact is that he saw political rivals in Matthieu and Sammier, with their zeal for Guise, and Parsons and others, with their attachment to Philip of Spain. He complained to Acquaviva, and the General, feeling that such political work should not be done openly but through laymen controlled by the Jesuits, supported him. After a prolonged struggle Acquaviva deposed Matthieu and removed him to Italy, transferred the gifted Sammier and his wardrobe to Belgium, and then turned on Auger himself. After another severe struggle he dislodged Auger from the court. Jesuits are sometimes very lively "corpses" when their superiors wish to move them.

This, however, was in the main a personal quarrel. Odon Pigenat, the new Provincial, and a score of other fathers were ardent Leaguers. The Jesuit house at Paris was still used for the secret meetings of the [Pg 119] League, and the "Committee of Catholic Safety" was inspired by Pigenat. The French apologist does not question their enthusiastic share in the League's work, and no one questions that the aim of the League was to prevent the accession of the legitimate heir to the throne. Indeed, at the next dramatic turn of French affairs all this was made plain to everybody.

In 1588 Guise was invited to Paris and acclaimed there with such wild rejoicing that Henry III. fled to Blois, and shortly afterwards Guise and his cardinal-brother were invited to Blois and foully murdered there by Henry. The League now shook its banners in the breeze, and Henry was execrated from a hundred pulpits. When he went on to defy the Pope and form an alliance with Henry of Navarre, who advanced rapidly on Paris, Catholic feeling rose to a fanatical pitch, and Henry III. in turn was assassinated by the Dominican monk Jacques Clément. The Jesuits were assuredly not the only preachers to applaud this murder, but they were amongst the first to perceive, and the loudest to declare, that if a king may be dispatched by private hand for a crime, he may certainly be removed when he meditates the far graver misdeed of plunging a nation into heresy. Father Commolet, the superior of the Jesuit house at Paris and a distinguished preacher, called from his pulpit for "a second Ehud" to remove Henry of Navarre. Father Mariana, who shortly afterwards wrote his famous De Rege, hailed the assassin as "the eternal glory of France" and spoke of this "memorable spectacle, calculated to teach princes that godless enterprises do not go unpunished."

It has been said on behalf of the Jesuits that even their old enemy the Sorbonne joined in the general rejoicing over the assassination of Henry III., but those who make the point forget or ignore that for several [Pg 120] years past the Jesuits had been sending pupils to the university in order gradually to permeate its faculties. It was no longer the distinct anti-Jesuit body which we have met in earlier years. Nor is there any need to discuss the abstract question whether the Jesuits taught tyrannicide. Crétineau-Joly himself quotes fourteen Jesuit theologians of the time who permitted the assassination of kings, to say nothing of more or less obscure writers, and we may be sure that the politicians of the Society were not more scrupulous than their theologians on the point. The well-known work of Mariana to which I have referred, De Rege et Regis Institutione (1599), was authorised for publication by the Jesuit authorities, and it was not until the assassination of Henry IV. in 1610 that Acquaviva, anxious to save the French Jesuits from expulsion, forbade his subjects to teach the dangerous doctrine. Even then he wrote at first to the French Jesuits alone, and it was only when the cry of indignation was echoed in other countries that he made the order general. In fine, his general order was so ambiguous that even a less supple politician than a Jesuit could find his way through it. It condemned the doctrine that "any person, on any pretext whatever, may kill kings and princes"; which leaves it open to the casuist to conclude that certain persons may do it for certain reasons. [11]

Henry of Navarre invested Paris, and it is not questioned that the Jesuits were amongst the most ardent advocates of resistance to him. In the later trial before Parlement, which we shall consider, they admitted that the crown-jewels were deposited in their house during the siege, and that the chiefs of the League met there. A curious incident of the siege is worth quoting. Food became painfully scarce, and half-famished citizens [Pg 121] struggled over the possession of cats and rats, but the inmates of the religious houses remained sleek and comfortable. The civic authorities ordered an inspection of their houses, and it is admitted by their apologist that the Jesuits tried to obtain exemption from this search. When the authorities insisted, a rich store of food was found in their house. Their fervour in the popular cause, however, was enough to outweigh this unpleasant discovery, and they continued to thunder against the heretic. The Duke of Mayenne was now the Catholic candidate for the throne, though a considerable number of the Jesuits now looked to Philip of Spain. He was to be, as in England, the "protector of the faith"—until it was safe for him to annex the country to his swollen dominions. Sixtus V., however, by no means shared this Jesuit and Spanish ideal of making Philip the head of a vast world-power, and he began to negotiate with Henry, whose forces were gaining ground. Then Sixtus died, and the accession of a pro-Spanish Pope gave fresh energy to the League. But Paris was weary of the siege, and, when Henry prudently announced that he was about to make a serious study of the evidences for the Catholic faith, the opposition collapsed. The Jesuits were amongst the last in Paris to fan the dying embers of the League, and when at length, in March 1594, Henry entered Paris and received the crown, they (with the Capuchins and Carthusians) refused to submit until the Pope had absolved him.

But they very soon parted company with the less nimble-witted Capuchins and the cloistered Carthusians, and the next page of their story in France is not without humour. Henry's politic scrutiny of the Catholic creed had, of course, led to his "conversion," but the Pope had a sufficient decency of feeling to distrust so [Pg 122] opportune and profitable a change of creed, and he coldly rebuffed the genial monarch. When Henry sent the Duke de Nevers to Rome to plead his cause with the Pope, Clement ordered the Jesuit Possevin to intercept him in Italy and say that the Pope refused to see him. We remember Possevin as the ingenious and accommodating Legate to the Swedes, and we shall see other proofs of his diplomatic ability. With an audacity which must almost be without parallel in the chronicle of papal diplomacy he did the exact opposite of what the Pope had commanded; he encouraged de Nevers to see the Pope, and then fled before the stormy anger of Clement and the Spaniards. It was the first service rendered to Henry by a Jesuit, and was quickly followed by other useful services. They had perceived the strength of Henry and reversed their policy. The Jesuit-Cardinal Toledo, although a Spaniard, intervened in Henry's favour, and the head of the Jesuit house at Paris, Commolet—the preacher who had urged the assassination of Henry—came to Rome to say that he and his colleagues were now convinced of the King's sincerity and begged the Pope to yield.

This change of front was opportune. Although the hostility of the university to the Jesuits had been enfeebled by the penetration of Jesuit pupils into the theological faculty, it still, as a body, hated the Society, and its leaders felt that they might take some advantage of the stubborn resistance to Henry. In April the university begged the Parlement to expel the Jesuits from the kingdom. Another great debate, in which the anti-Jesuit lawyers of Paris battered the Society and flung at it all the charges that could be found in Europe, entertained the sympathetic citizens. Arnauld, who was now in the field, estimated the total yearly income of the Jesuits at more than two million livres; he said [Pg 123] that in France alone they had, in a few years, secured an income of two hundred thousand livres a year, and he eloquently denounced their interference in politics. The Jesuits made the remarkable defence that they had only mingled in the League in order to moderate its ardour, that they had no unpatriotic attachment to Spain, and that they would scrupulously avoid politics for the future. Henry permitted them to remain. A short time before (August 1593) Barrière had attempted to assassinate him, and, as Barrière had had a Jesuit confessor, it was suggested that the Jesuits had inspired him. Henry said that, on the contrary, it was the Jesuits who had warned him of the plot. A fuller knowledge of this warning would be extremely interesting, but we have no evidence of it beyond Henry's blunt declaration at a later date. The Jesuits were to remain, to avoid politics, and, as Henry had previously decreed, to destroy all literature concerning the League and the past turbulence.

On 27th December of that year, 1594, Jean Chastel attempted to assassinate Henry, and a furious storm burst upon the Jesuits. Two undisputed facts stand out clearly from the prolonged controversy that followed this attempt; Chastel had been educated at the Jesuit college before going to the university (he was nineteen years old), and he had conferred with his former professor, Father Guéret, a few days before the attempt. This is by no means satisfactory evidence of the complicity of the Jesuits, but another piece of evidence, of a very inflammatory nature, was put before the court. The authorities had raided the Jesuit college and found in the rector's room a quantity of the League literature which Henry had rigorously commanded to be destroyed. In particular, there were papers in the writing of the rector, Father Guignard, which cast the most violent abuse on Henry and demanded his death. They had [Pg 124] been written five years before, but the retention of them was considered a very serious sign of the hidden feeling of the Jesuits. We may admit that the court still went beyond the evidence in condemning the Jesuits. Guignard was executed, Guéret tortured, and all members of the Society were ordered to quit France within three days. On 8th January thirty-seven Jesuits set out sadly for Lorraine, and from the proceeds of their confiscated property a large stone pyramid, bearing the sentence against the "pernicious sect," was erected at Paris.

This sudden fall from their proud position was the price of political action, but Henry was not in a position, and indeed not of a character, to sustain the sentence, and the Jesuits at once began to struggle for recall. Within ten years the hated pyramid was demolished, and the Jesuits had regained their prestige. They had never entirely quitted France. Some put off their cassocks and became, in appearance, "lay" teachers of the young; some were sheltered by the local Parlements. The formal reconciliation of Henry with the Papacy followed, and the Pope urged him to recall the Jesuits. He pleaded again when he had negotiated for Henry a peace with Philip of Spain, but the Parlement stoutly maintained its decree, and Henry advised them to wait. Then the Pope obliged Henry by annulling his marriage, and the watchful Acquaviva stood again in the shadow of the papal throne. Father Maggio was sent, in the suite of the Archbishop of Arles, to win the King. They knew Henry, and shrewdly chose an envoy who could adopt the broad wit which Henry loved as easily as Possevin or Parsons could wear a sword, or Ricci a pigtail. "Sire," said Maggio to the bluff King, when the affair dragged, "you are slower than women, for they bear their fruit only nine months." "Quite true, [Pg 125] Father Maggio," said Henry, "but kings are not delivered as easily as women." It was the way to win Henry IV., and he was won, but public feeling was still too hostile to the Jesuits. In 1603 their opportunity came. The Huguenots had been so imprudent as to abuse the Pope, and the Jesuits must be restored for the Pope's consolation; also, there was a new queen, Marie de Medici, and an amiable Father Coton winning influence over her. And at the beginning of 1604 the Parlement sullenly registered the decree for the readmission of the Jesuits, and the fathers all swore a sonorous oath of loyalty to the King "without mental reservation," as the decree ran; no other body of men ever needed to be insulted with such a clause.

The remaining years, down to the assassination of Henry in 1610, mark the rapid recovery of the Society. Father Coton was royal preacher and confessor, and obtained such influence that, when the King was deaf to their prayers or protests, men said that Henry "had cotton in his ears"; and the fusillade of pamphlets and counter-pamphlets—witty, fierce, and gross on both sides—again enlivened Paris. They raised more houses than they had ever had before, and got admission into Protestant Béarn and the Canadian mission. There was hardly a more generous benefactor to the Society in Europe than Henry, though we may take the word of Richelieu that he distrusted them, as a body, and acted from policy. At length Henry betrayed the real shallowness of their influence on him, and began to prepare for war with Spain; and on 14th May 1610 he fell by the hand of a Catholic fanatic.

The question whether the Jesuits were implicated in the crime of Ravaillac is one of the hundred almost insoluble problems of their history. On this occasion, indeed, it is exceptionally difficult to reach a confident [Pg 126] verdict, because an entirely pro-Spanish and pro-Jesuit régime was set up by the death of Henry, and inconvenient testimony could easily be suppressed. It seems to me that a consideration of great importance is generally overlooked in the discussion of these problems. When the evidence is scanty or obscure, we give the Jesuits "the benefit of the doubt," as if we were arraigning them for something they regarded as a crime. This is a false attitude, of which they take full advantage. Crétineau-Joly quotes a dozen distinguished theologians of the time who taught that it was just and proper to remove a monarch whose rule was gravely injurious, and hardly a single eminent theologian who taught the contrary. We have merely to suppose that the Jesuit fathers were divided in anything like the same proportion, and we see at once that there must have been—and we know that there were—numbers of Jesuits in every province who would regard the assassination of a king who threatened the faith in his country as a quite moral and meritorious deed. Mariana's claim that Jacques Clément, the murderer of Henry III., was "the eternal glory of France" was echoed by thousands of his colleagues. It seems to me very material to bear this in mind in all these cases of assassination. The attitude of their apologists is singular: they admit that the Jesuits as a body regarded the assassination of kings who menaced the faith as a just and proper action, yet are remarkably eager to prove that the Jesuits never acted on their belief. On Jesuit principles the murder of Henry IV. was not a crime.

We must, on the other hand, say that the evidence of Jesuit complicity with Ravaillac is unsatisfactory, in spite of Michelet's spirited reliance on it. A certain Mme d'Escoman asserted that she overheard the Duke d'Épernon telling the plot to Henry's former lover, the [Pg 127] Marquise de Verneuil, and that she revealed it to the Jesuit superior in good time to warn Henry; a soldier named Dujardin then told that he had seen Ravaillac in the service of Épernon at Naples, and that the Jesuits of that city had urged him (Dujardin) to enter the plot. Both these witnesses were of low moral character, and had a prospect of gaining by their revelations; we must therefore refrain from basing a verdict on their evidence. A recent French student of the subject [12] has concluded that Épernon and others were really plotting to take the life of Henry, but that Ravaillac committed the crime on his own initiative, and that the Jesuits were not in either plot, though it may be true that Mme d'Escoman warned them of Épernon's plot. This ingenious, but not wholly convincing, suggestion explains how Ravaillac could, with his dying breath and under threat of damnation, swear that he had no accomplices, but it really leaves open the question of the guilt of the Jesuits. The witnesses are of too low a character for us to decide whether they tell the truth or no. It is suspicious that Father Coton visited Ravaillac in jail and warned him "not to bring trouble on good people" by his statements, as we know on the high authority of d'Estoile.

These witnesses only came forward with their stories at a later date, but Paris had already turned with fierce indignation upon the Society. Although the doctrine of tyrannicide may have been taught before the Society was established, it was chiefly through the more explicit and general teaching of the Jesuits that it became a popular conviction among the general body of the faithful and began to inflame the brains of fanatics. Mariana's book was burned by order of the Parlement, in spite of the effort of the Jesuits to save it; they did succeed in getting a reference to the Jesuit character of the author [Pg 128] suppressed in the indictment, and in preventing the works of Bellarmine, Becanus, and others of their theologians from being condemned. They had the zealous protection of Marie de Medici, and the hostility to them had to expend itself in a shower of witty and virulent pamphlets. Father Coton, especially, was violently assailed. The indulgence with which he had regarded the notorious amours of his royal penitent was said to be quite natural in a man who had tender relations of his own. The Jesuits continued to advance in spite of this hostility. Father de Suffren guided the conscience of Mary herself; Father Coton and Father Marguestana directed her son (Louis XIII.) and her daughter in the ways of virtue and political ignorance. There we may leave the Jesuits of France until Richelieu comes to disturb their mischievous pro-Spanish policy.

When we pass to the Netherlands we have again to consider a grave accusation of complicity in a design to assassinate. The Netherlands were now formally divided into Catholic Belgium and Protestant Holland, and the Dutch were eager to prevent the hated Jesuits from entering the country. A few succeeded in crossing the frontier and ministering, in disguise, to the remaining Catholics. The kind of activity they pursued will be understood when we have followed the similar labours of the Jesuits in England. In 1598, however, a Belgian was arrested at Leyden for a design on the life of Maurice of Nassau, and there is the customary controversy in regard to the complicity of the Jesuits.

Peter Panne was a cooper of Ypres, a restless and, apparently, a rather disreputable character. His method of seeking the life of the Dutch prince was singularly futile, and he made a lengthy and circumstantial "confession," in [Pg 129] which he accused the Jesuits of Douai of egging him to commit the murder. The assassin of William of Orange in 1568 had accused a Jesuit confessor, and it was natural that the Dutch should again expect to hear of Jesuit complicity. His story was therefore implicitly believed in Holland, and wherever the Jesuits were detested; and the laws against them were made more stringent. In the following year, however, Father Coster undertook the defence of his colleagues, and their apologists maintain that he has completely demolished the charge. [13] To the impartial student the case is one of mere affirmation and denial, without very safe ground for judgment. Coster relies upon a number of reports issued by small legal and civic authorities in Belgium, who, at the request of the Jesuits, examined many witnesses, including Panne's wife and others named by him. These witnesses flatly denied the story told by Panne of his and their movements, and the unofficial judges then drew up statements to the effect that the Jesuits were innocent. At first sight it would seem that we ought at once to prefer the testimony of these numerous witnesses to that of Panne; but when we reflect on the Jesuit doctrine of mental reservation, we must admit that the word of these witnesses, provided by the Jesuits, is not to be taken at its superficial value. According to the Jesuit theologians, witnesses might give absolutely false answers, and confirm them by the most sacred oaths, to judges or others, if they felt that the inquirer had no right to learn the truth from them. In the case of Panne's wife, for instance, the Jesuit would most certainly decide that she would be justified in denying, on oath, that she had ever spoken to her husband about the projected murder, even if it [Pg 130] were true that, as Panne said, she urged him to do it. In the next chapter we shall find the English Father Gerard acting on this well-known Jesuit principle. We cannot, therefore, attach any importance to these denials. And when Father Coster goes on to prove, or assert, that Panne was a doubtful Catholic and an unscrupulous fellow, he seems to overreach himself. Why should such a man seek to do the work of a Catholic fanatic at the risk of his life? Clearly, only because some one offered him payment. Either the gravest legal tribunal in Holland paid him to lie, or else his story gives the only plausible explanation of his conduct. It is more natural to suppose that the Jesuits acted on their known principles of regicide and mental reservation than that the Dutch acted in the most flagrant violation of their principles; and the mere fact of an indifferent Catholic risking his life to kill an heretical prince suggests this view.

In Belgium the Jesuits recovered all the ground they had lost in the religious wars, and at length secured an unassailable legal existence. At this period we are at every step observing the collusion of the Jesuits with Philip II. of Spain, and we have still to see how they helped him in his effort to annex England. He was not ungrateful, and he definitely overrode the prejudice of the Flemings and legally established the Jesuits in Belgium (1584). They at once became so bold that we find the Governor of Luxemburg levying taxes on the citizens for the erection of Jesuit houses: a project which caused such an outbreak of anger that they had to retreat from the province. The University of Louvain continued to disdain and assail them, but their great victory in securing the condemnation of the Chancellor of the University, Michel de Bay, had given them much prestige. Baius endeavoured to recover by [Pg 131] denouncing to Rome their theologian Lessius; but his attempt failed, and the Jesuits renewed their effort to capture or displace the university. [14]

The record of the Germanic provinces is chiefly remarkable for the extension into Poland and an attempt to penetrate Russia. The Jesuits had entered Poland under Stephen Bathori, and made such progress in twenty years that men spoke bitterly of their "fortified palaces," and saw with regret that nearly the whole education of the nobility was in their hands. In one college (Pultusk) they boasted that they had four hundred youths of noble birth. In 1581 the Poles were bringing to a victorious close their long war with Russia, and the Tsar appealed for the mediation of the Pope. It was an auspicious opportunity for re-opening the question of the union of the Latin and Greek Churches, and the adventurous Father Possevin (the former Legate to Sweden) was sent as Legate. He learned on the way from Bathori that the Poles would drive a hard bargain, and felt that this strengthened his position with regard to Russia. He was received with great honour in Russia, and the Tsar gave many privileges to Catholics, but the war concluded at length without a word of union. It is clear that he then used his influence to induce the Russians to yield, so that his Society might at least have the gratitude of the Poles. He remained for a long time at Moscow, but made no progress, and the Pope recalled him to crush heresy in Transylvania. He was afterwards mediator between Germany and Poland. Possevin had considerable diplomatic ability, though he was apt to love melodramatic situations, like so many of the political Jesuits. Acquaviva at last resented his [Pg 132] flagrant political activity, and compelled him to settle as a teacher at Padua.

Stephen Bathori was succeeded in 1586 by a pupil of the Jesuits, Sigismund III., and their power became greater than ever, and provoked a strong reaction. Their conduct in Transylvania, where most of the nobles were still Protestant, caused them to be expelled from that province by the Diet, and many nobles of the Polish Diet endeavoured to have them expelled from the whole kingdom. They were bitterly accused of intriguing to get possession of the property of Protestants, and even of rival religious orders. At Dantzic they were compelled to return the property of a community of nuns. The nobles chiefly resented their interference in politics and control of education, and penned some fiery indictments of what they called their "machinations." An edict of the Diet for the year 1607 is not flattering to them.

In the same period they overran the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, Bohemia, Baden, and most of the south-German States. Throughout the whole Germanic world their procedure was of much the same character. A few worthy and powerful men like Canisius would secure the opening of the doors to the Society, and a host of less religious fathers would then intrigue for funds to build colleges and educate the young, and organise the Catholic laity in enthusiastic confraternities or sodalities. Partly by these methods, but very largely by their great skill in securing the ear of princes, they not only greatly strengthened the surviving Catholic populations, but they undoubtedly regained much territory from the Reformers. They opposed a positive and unvarying creed to the conflicting doctrines of the Protestants, and the religious life they themselves exhibited had none of the grossness which had done so much to provoke the [Pg 133] Reformation. Here and there, however, they clearly resorted to unworthy means to secure property or influence, and were heatedly assailed. A very curious series of outbreaks against them occurred in 1584. They boasted of the share their Father Clavius had had in the reform of the calendar; but, when it came to the time of Carnival and Lent, and later of Christmas, the distracted citizens were sometimes defrauded of their traditional pleasures by the alteration of the calendar, and took their revenge on the windows of the Jesuits.

The only notable experience of the Society in Italy was the expulsion of the fathers from Venice. A feeling of irritation against them had lingered in the Republic since their inauspicious entry under Ignatius, and of late years the French and Spanish strictures on them had found very ominous echoes in Venice. In the early years of the seventeenth century this feeling was inflamed by the attitude of the Jesuits in siding with the Pope against the civic authorities. The secular authorities had been so indignant at the discovery of certain brutal crimes committed by some of the clergy that, in spite of ecclesiastical privileges, they proceeded against the criminals. The quarrel with Rome which followed ended in the Pope placing Venice under an interdict, and the great body of the clergy of Venice patriotically ignored the interdict and continued to minister to the citizens. The Jesuits were in a painful dilemma. They made a futile attempt to evade it by closing their public churches, but keeping their houses open, and the Council banished them from the city. A crowd of citizens assembled on the banks of the canal when the gondolas, bearing the condemned fathers, left the city, and they do not attempt to represent it as a crowd weeping for their departure. "Ande [Pg 134] in mal' hora" was the scornful reply made to one of their number who appealed to the people. Their very valuable property was confiscated, and they would not re-enter Venice for half a century.

We might admire the Jesuits at least for their courageous adherence to their own principles in these experiences of the year 1606, and we cannot regard it as other than natural that they should attempt to drag the rest of the clergy into sharing their attitude. But the indictment of them which the Venetian Senate made after their departure goes further than this. They were accused of grave intrigue in the quarrel between Rome and the Republic, and it was said that they abused their position as confessors to the noble ladies of Venice to learn the secrets of the Senate and frustrate its aims. Venice, it will be remembered, took a particular pride in the secrecy of its political life, and it especially distrusted so notoriously pro-Spanish a body as the Jesuits. These charges we cannot, of course, control, but they are consonant with the ordinary action of the Society. It was decreed that they be banished for ever; that if ever the question of recalling them were raised, this indictment must be read again in the Council of Ten, and that any citizen who held communication with the Jesuits should be sent to the galleys. The question of recalling them was, of course, raised at once. Henry IV. was induced to plead their cause at Venice, while Spain used all its power to prevent a reconciliation of the Papacy and the Republic except on condition that the Society be restored. So convinced were the Venetians of the anti-patriotic action of the Jesuits that they peremptorily refused to yield, and Acquaviva had to resign himself to defeat.

At Rome a more prolonged and more academic quarrel had nourished the feeling against the Society. [Pg 135] The subject-matter of this controversy is of interest only to theologians, and the whole struggle must be dismissed in a few words. In brief, a Jesuit theologian of Portugal, named Molina, had in 1588 published a work (Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis concordia), in which he had made novel efforts to illumine the mystery of the consistency of human freedom with the action of grace, and the way in which God may have a foreknowledge of events which may or may not take place. When Crétineau-Joly observes that Molina "talked as if he had been admitted to the counsels of the Most High," we can understand the indignation of rival theologians of the time. A Dominican theologian, named Bañez, had a different theory of these abstruse matters, and there was soon a fierce quarrel between the two orders. When the Spanish Inquisition refused to condemn Molina, the Dominicans carried the quarrel to Rome, where it enlivened and heated the chambers of the Vatican and the religious houses for more than twenty years. A commission appointed by the Pope condemned the teaching of Molina as "a dangerous novelty," the Jesuits induced the Pope to suspend sentence, and even profane ambassadors were drawn into the sacred arena. Spain threw its influence against Molina: France, naturally, supported him. It was not until 1607 that Paul V. judiciously decided that either opinion might be held with a safe conscience; and when it proved profoundly unsatisfactory to both parties to find that their rivals were permitted to live, the Pope had, in 1611, to impose silence on the disputants. The struggle still lingers in the remote and innocuous volumes of dogmatic theology which the rival orders occasionally publish.

In fine, we must glance at the progress of the foreign missions under Acquaviva. The Japanese mission now reached its highest prosperity and entered upon the days [Pg 136] of persecution. In 1565 there were ten Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade in Japan, until a few years before his death, in the interest of the Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives.

Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without realising that the success of this early Christian mission was singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year 1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and death for their faith must convince every candid student that the early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an [Pg 137] "apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.

Two years later the clouds began, as if in punishment, to overcast their prosperity. Taicosama had usurped the chief throne of Japan in 1583, and, as the Catholic generals in the army had made no defence of their legitimate monarch, he continued for some years to favour the Church. The displacement of the native faith, however, led him to reflect that it might entail political displacements, and he is said to have seized the opportunity, when certain Christian girls refused the honour of being added to the lengthy list of his concubines, to suppress the mission. The Jesuits were to leave his kingdom within twenty days, or die; and he burned nearly a third of their 240 chapels. The Provincial Valignani returned from Italy to find his mission on the brink of destruction. He had taken a few noble Japanese youths to Europe, and was bringing them back to tell their fellows of the grandeur of Rome and Spain. As a Jesuit he was forbidden to enter the kingdom. With remarkable ease he transformed himself into an ambassador of the Viceroy of India, and was borne in a superb litter to the presence of Taicosama, on whom he showered presents and compliments. The Jesuits were allowed to remain in the country, though still forbidden to practise their religion, and the hundred priests had for some time to be content with stealthy and nocturnal ministration to their converts.

At length Taicosama turned upon them with fury, [Pg 138] and the great persecution began. Kaempfer says that the Jesuits excited the anger of the nobles by an insolent refusal to pay them the customary respect; but a more substantial grievance came to the ears of the monarch. In 1596 a Japanese was examining a map of the earth on which the vast possessions of Spain were shown. He asked a Spanish pilot how his master had obtained this enormous territory, and the man imprudently replied that Philip first sent missionaries into a country to prepare it for subjection, then armies. The remark was reported to the Emperor, and he fell upon the missionaries with a just charge that they had violated his prohibition of the practice of the Christian cult. A number of Jesuits and Franciscans were crucified, and thousands—the Jesuits say 20,000—of the native Christians testified to the sincerity of their belief by embracing martyrdom. The death of Taicosama in the following year, 1598, put a stop to the persecution, and it is claimed that 70,000 converts were made in the next two or three years. The Protestant Dutch traders were, however, now displacing the Portuguese and Spanish, and repeating to the Japanese those dark opinions of the political intrigues of the Jesuits which were current in their own land. Once more the decree of extermination went forth, and by the year of the death of Acquaviva the mission was nearly extinct. Its second recovery and final destruction will occupy us later.

The rule of Acquaviva was also memorable for the beginning of the Chinese mission. The repeated failures to gain admission drove the Jesuits to fresh expedients, and a few of their more learned members applied themselves to a thorough study of Chinese culture and religion. The first and most distinguished of these was Father Ricci, whom we find living in Chao Hing, and astonishing the local mandarins with his learning, in[Pg 139] 1583. We are not accurately informed how Ricci obtained admission, but we have seen, and shall see, that a Jesuit was prepared to make any profession whatever in order to enter a forbidden land. He seems to have concealed his religion, and posed as a lay scholar, until he was sufficiently advanced in the confidence of a few to entrust his ideas to them. He dressed as a Chinese scholar, and had (after 1587) two disguised lay-brothers in his house, which was transferred to Chao Chu. The mob, discovering his aims, attacked the house; but Ricci's able command of Western learning and appliances had greatly impressed Chinese scholars, and he made steady, if slow, progress. In the year 1600 he was invited to visit the Emperor at Peking, and shrewdly took with him a collection of telescopes, clocks, and other wonders of the West. He was allowed to live at Peking and enjoy the favour of the Emperor, and other priests quietly entered China and helped to found the mission. At one time its promise was nearly destroyed by a quarrel of the rival missionaries,—Jesuit, Franciscan, and secular,—but Ricci tactfully averted the persecution which their mutual charges brought on them. He died in 1610, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral at Peking. Numerically, there were as yet few converts. Ricci was not the kind of man to rush into the street with a crucifix and proclaim that the deities of China were false gods. It is only at a later date that we shall find a large and important mission in China.

The rest of the missionary field reported almost uniform progress under the vigorous rule of Acquaviva. Canada was opened by the French troops, and several Jesuits began to work among the Indians. Mexico proved, they reported, an easy ground; they claimed that half the population was Christian by 1608. The Brazilian mission now had a hundred and fifty priests [Pg 140] extending its flourishing work, and the first excursions were made into Paraguay (1586) and Chili (1593). In 1604, fifty-six fathers were sent into Peru. In the East, the Hindu mission continued to spread on the lines we have already described, and Abyssinia at last consented to admit the Jesuits. It will be convenient to defer until the next chapter a closer consideration of these missions.

This survey of the fortunes of the Society under the thirty-five years' rule of Acquaviva is a sufficient testimony to the ability of that gifted leader. When he died, on 31st January 1615, the 5000 members of the Society who had greeted his election had become 13,000, and 550 Jesuit establishments were scattered over the globe, from Peking to the slopes of the Andes. In view of the methods of the Society—the direct and at times indelicate seeking of money and the favour of the powerful—this growth cannot be regarded as singular. The Society had adopted new and very effective devices to increase their influence and membership; it is not as if other religious bodies had used the same means, and been less successful. And it is now clear that the distinctive general principles of the Society were rapidly assuming a complexion which the impatient feeling of its critics has expressed in the maxim that "the end justifies the means." This will be even more apparent when we consider, in more detail, the activity of the Jesuits in England.

I have as yet made no mention of the "Regulation of Studies" (Ratio Studiorum), which some regard as one of Acquaviva's most significant services to the Society. I am unable to see this significance in the treatise which (with later modifications) Acquaviva presented for the acceptance of the General Congregation in 1599. It is rather a disciplinary measure than an [Pg 141] educational code, and no improvement of Jesuit culture followed its promulgation. It attempted to impose a uniform course of two years in rhetoric and humanities (with fragmentary or expurgated editions of the classics), three years in philosophy (including mathematics), and four years in theology, on all the students of the Society. It also imposed the use of Latin in conversation except during the hour of recreation and on holidays. This scheme never was, and is not now, rigidly followed, and where it is followed the gain is disciplinary rather than cultural. We shall see better, when we come to examine Jesuit scholarship, the grave defects of the Jesuit education from a general pedagogical point of view. Its aim was narrow and specific,—the production of sound theologians,—and it would be a mistake to judge it at all from the wider educational point of view, were it not for the light and superficial praise it sometimes receives.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See Father Astrain's Historia de la Compañia de Jesus en España, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.

[10] It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.

[11] See Count Hoensbroech's Fourteen Years a Jesuit (1911), ii. 334.

[12] Jules Loiseleur, Ravaillac et ses complices, 1873.

[13] I have consulted the Latin translation, by another Jesuit, of Coster's work, Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ... intentata (1599).

[14] When I studied at Louvain University in 1893, I found the struggle just as it had been three hundred years before. The Jesuits still sought in vain to capture the university, and were detested as cordially as ever.

The first attempts of the Jesuits to carry their war against Protestantism into the British Isles have been noticed, at their various dates, in previous chapters. We remember the brave and futile journey of Brouet and Salmeron in 1541; the labours of David Woulfe, of unhappy memory, in Ireland in 1560; the fruitless adventures of Gouda among the Scottish Calvinists in 1562; and the obscure apostolate of Father King in England in 1564. Three years after the last date, Father Edmund Hay had made an equally unprofitable expedition to Scotland. He and Thomas Darbyshire, a nephew of Bishop Bonner, had been directed to accompany a Nuncio on a fresh attempt to advise and confirm Queen Mary. The Nuncio had prudently remained in Paris, and sent Father Hay, an adventurous young Scot who loved disguises and the inspiring chances of politics, to explore the kingdom. He spent two months in hiding at Edinburgh in the early part of 1567, and returned to say that there was no hope of success. At last, in 1580, a very able and remarkable English Jesuit, Father Robert Parsons, opened that stirring chapter of Jesuit history which closes with the Gunpowder Plot.

Since the beginning of the Reformation in England a number of Catholic students had gone abroad, and many of them had entered the Jesuit novitiate in[Pg 143] Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Father More has preserved in his Historia missionis Anglicanæ (1660) the names of about thirty Englishmen who figure in the chronicles of one or other province down to the year 1580. Of these the most important were Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, who opened the mission of 1580. Parson, a Somersetshire man of the yeoman class, had been a fellow of Balliol, where he had attracted some attention by his ability, his religious vacillations, and his disagreeable temper. He was compelled to resign and go abroad in 1573. Some (Camden and others) say that he was expelled for dishonest conduct, others that he was a martyr to religious conviction; but Father Taunton concludes, in his excellent study of Parsons, that he left "on account of perpetual disagreements with his fellows." [15] At Louvain he met Father William Good, who induced him to go through the exercises, and he entered the Society at Rome in 1575. He was ordained priest, and made English confessor at St. Peter's in 1578. Edmund Campion, who was the son of a London bookseller and a brilliant Fellow of St. John's (Oxford), had meantime joined the Society and was at Prague. He had known Parsons at Oxford, and they corresponded when they both became Jesuits.

The peculiar circumstances which led to their [Pg 144] mission, and had a most important bearing on its history, must next be told. A wealthy English priest, Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, had founded a college at Douai for supplying England with clergy to support the old faith. It was transferred to Rheims in 1578; and, as the free lodging and education which it offered to young refugees soon caused it to be overcrowded, a second college was opened at Rome and generously supported by the Pope. The Jesuit fathers lectured at this college. The rector, Dr. Clenock, was an injudicious Welshman, and the national prejudices of the English and Welsh students, who were a very turbulent lot, led to prolonged and most violent quarrels, which ended in the whole body of the young apostles marching out of the college. They demanded that the management of the college should be given to the Jesuits, and it is quite clear that the Jesuits encouraged their revolt. After a few months they found that the Jesuits also were unsuitable masters, and the trouble broke out afresh. It was then that Robert Parsons began his famous diplomatic career. He suggested that the Jesuits should co-operate with the secular priests on the English mission. General Mercurian and his counsellors demurred at first; there was no bishop in England to control the clergy, and they foresaw quarrels. The difficulty was removed by making the aged Bishop of St. Asaph ordinary for the whole of England, and inducing him to join the mission; and in April 1580, Parsons and Campion (who was summoned from Prague) set out on foot, with nine secular priests and a Jesuit lay-brother, Ralph Emerson, for Rheims.

It is disputed at what precise stage Parsons began to be a politician, but he was little known to the Papacy in 1580, and was certainly not admitted to its secret [Pg 145] counsels. He learned at Rheims, however, that a mission of by no means a pacific character had at the same time been sent to Ireland, and we know that a third mission, also of a political nature, was sent to Scotland, to prepare the way for a French invasion. The English authorities would naturally conclude that the mission to England was a part of this political conspiracy against Elizabeth. They had spies all over Europe, and long before the apostles reached Rheims a pen-portrait of each of them was being studied and distributed to the pursuivants at Westminster. There had as yet been little enforcement of the penal laws, in spite of the Pope's unhappy interference with the loyalty of English Catholics. It was well known that mass was said in more than one house in London, and that many a quiet manor-house sheltered nuns and priests, but there was little disposition to persecute on account of belief, and as yet little inclination of the Catholics to active disloyalty. To admit Jesuits was a different matter. What did even the Catholics of France and Spain say of them? And when this coming of the Jesuits coincided with a political activity of Guise and the Papacy against the English throne, it was inevitable that the authorities should decide to be vigilant and stringent. The missionaries were not deterred; they left their aged bishop behind, and made their way, in separate parties, to the coast. At St. Omer's Parsons and Campion learned that their names and descriptions were known in London, and officers were on the watch for them, but the spirit of romance and devotion urged them on, and they planned their campaign.

It is an amusing and characteristic picture which Parsons draws of his journey to London. He was a big, burly man of thirty-four, and wore the uniform of[Pg 146] an officer returning from the wars in the Low Countries. The befeathered hat and gold-laced coat and military swagger fitted him so nicely that the officers not only passed him, but got a horse for "the captain" and promised to pay every attention to his friend the jewel-merchant (Campion), who was to follow him in a few days. By the end of June they were together in the house that had been taken for them in Chancery Lane. At Rome, Parsons had met an enthusiastic and wealthy young Englishman named George Gilbert, and, instead of making a Jesuit of him, had sent him on in advance to prepare the way for them. He had boldly taken rooms for them under the nose of the chief official charged to arrest them—who was probably searching for them in the warrens by the river or the villages beyond the gates—and had formed a secret association of Catholics throughout the country to help them in their travels. The news soon spread through the Catholic world that two Jesuits were in England, and the secular priests, whom they met and endeavoured to conciliate, urged them to return to the Continent. It is difficult to look back and not see that they would best have served the cause of Catholicism in England by quitting it at once; the few thousand converts they made, or waverers whom they strengthened, were a small service in comparison with the fierce hostility they brought on the faithful, the political conspiracies in which they involved them, and the bitter dissensions they caused amongst the clergy. But for the coming of the Jesuits and the plots of foreign Catholics, Catholicism might have lived on in England as a considerable sect, overlooked by the authorities, until the Pope's blunder was forgotten and the penal spirit abandoned.

Yet we must respect the two Jesuits—to omit the humbler services of Emerson—for refusing to save their [Pg 147] lives by an immediate flight, and no historian, whatever his religious views, can read that first chapter of their story in England without sympathy and admiration. Each was provided by Gilbert with two horses and two suits and a servant, and they bade farewell to each other and set out to make their way, separately, through the legions of spies and officers. When they entered a county, the secret members of the association would send warning to the scattered Catholics along the route, and it would be given out that an acquaintance was expected. Toward evening the Jesuit, in some strange disguise, would ride into the courtyard and receive, under the eyes of the servants, the common civilities which one owed to a passing acquaintance; but when the inner chamber was reached, and the door closed, master and mistress would fall on their knees and kiss the hand of the traveller, and the broad-brimmed hat would be removed to disclose the face of the priest invoking a blessing on the persecuted faithful. Then Catholic neighbours might come, and confessions be heard, and the evening would be spent in sober discussion of the awful catastrophe that had befallen their Church. In the early morning a chalice and an altar-stone and vestments would be found among the luggage of the supposed soldier or merchant, and the little group would gather in a guarded chamber for mass. Possibly in the midst of the ceremony the sentinel would whisper that the pursuivants were upon them, and some stolid Catholic servant would hold the men at the door until priests and vestments were safely lodged in the pit which had been dug beneath the floor or the secret chamber cut out of the solid wall. When mass was over, the disguised Jesuit would, as a rule, give a last blessing and take to the road again, dining at inns where he[Pg 148] might see on the wall a description of himself and an intimation that the Government wanted to hang, draw, and quarter him. Parsons carried his bluff so far as to tear down one of these bills, and ask the landlord what he meant by confronting an honest traveller with reminders of that villainous Jesuit.

The two met again at Uxbridge in October, when Elizabeth had issued a third proclamation against them, and the search was being pressed vigorously. Campion returned to the provinces, and Parsons decided to remain in or near London. He had a bold design of setting up a press and stealthily issuing Catholic books, but it is reasonable to believe that he was now becoming convinced that only a large political action could save the faith in England. He saw much of the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, even living in the embassy as a servant for a time; and from his conversations with Mendoza we may confidently date that idea of a Spanish invasion of England which was to dominate the remainder of his unfortunate life and cause incalculable mischief. Not only the general rule of his Society, but a most explicit command laid on him by Mercurian when he left Rome, forbade him to meddle with politics, yet he gradually became wholly absorbed in a political and treacherous project, and we may safely date its birth about this time.

Somewhere out of London—at East Ham, Simpson conjectures—he set up his press, and infuriated the Council by disseminating books which their advisers pronounced to have been printed in England. Hundreds of arrests were made, the rack was busy at the Tower, and the laws were made more drastic; yet the "howling wolf" (Parsons) and the "wandering vagrant" (Campion), as they were described in a [Pg 149] debate in Parliament, continued to evade the zealous officers. Two other Jesuits, Cottam and Bosgrave, who attempted to join them, were arrested at once and put in the Tower; while the Irish Jesuit, O'Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Cork.

In the early part of 1581 Fathers Holt and Heywood penetrated the Protestant defences and joined Parsons. He sent Holt on to Scotland, to further the political scheme he now cherished, and later had Father Crichton sent on direct to Edinburgh from Rouen. A genial page of Mr. Andrew Lang's History of Scotland (ii. 282) tells how these Jesuits "let the pigs run through the job" in Scotland. The romance of hiding in Holyrood and assisting the great enterprise of the invasion of England seems to have exalted them, and they gave Mary, whom they would rescue, a very poor opinion of their qualities as diplomatists. They made airy promises of armies, to be provided by some foreign power, until at last even Mendoza begged them to confine themselves to the saving of souls and leave State affairs to statesmen. Father Hay, another Scottish Jesuit who joined them, advocated the assassination of the leading Protestant nobles. These Jesuits returned in the course of time to the Continent; Father Ogilvie, in 1615, was the only Catholic who was executed on the ground of religion in Scotland after a formal trial.

To return to England, Parsons found in the early spring of 1581 that his lodging in East Ham was suspected, and he moved the press to Dame Stonor's park near Henley, where Campion came to control the printing of his Ten Reasons: a Latin work, not hampered by modesty, which greatly stirred the Protestant divines of the time. Gilbert, who was [Pg 150] now under surveillance and had lost most of his property in the cause, was sent to Rome to report that 20,000 Catholics had been added to the list of the faithful in a year—a quite incredible number, as only 50,000 recusants were known to the Council in the whole of England. On 11th July the two comrades parted, for the last time; Campion was caught at Lyford in Berkshire about a week afterwards. He had imprudently returned to a house at which he had ministered, and the officers closed round it. For a day and a night Campion lay hidden in the "priest's hole," but the officers at last discovered him, and sent him to London, conspicuously labelled "Campion the seditious Jesuit." We will not linger over the racking, the thrusting of spikes between his fingers and nails, and the other horrible devices by which the Council sought to extract a betrayal of others; though we might remind those who, like Crétineau-Joly, speak of these things as the hideous inventions of Protestant hatred, that these appalling instruments were, on the contrary, already stained with Protestant blood. Campion's great courage wavered under the long and terrible strain, and he supplied a few names of Catholic houses, to the great scandal of the faithful at the time; but he expiated his momentary weakness, on 1st December, by meeting with great bravery the ghastly death of a "traitor" at Tyburn. One of the two secular priests who were condemned to die with him, Father Briant, was admitted by him to the Society the night before the execution, and died a Jesuit. Father Cottam was executed in the following May (1582).

Parsons left Henley, where his press was discovered a month later, and went into Sussex. The secular clergy were now so eager to get the Jesuits out of [Pg 151] England that some of them threatened to betray him, and he went to France in March. Probably the feeling that he could promote his political scheme more effectively on the Continent had more to do with his flight than the fear of death or the pressure of the secular clergy. He remained at Rouen, smuggling English books from there into England and doing all that he could to press the Scottish enterprise. It was from Rouen that he sent Crichton into Scotland, and he was in constant correspondence with Mendoza and the Duke of Guise, who would help in the enterprise. Crichton presently returned to tell of the large and imprudent offers of help he had made to Lennox in Scotland, and they decided to make an effort to get armies for the rescue of Mary Stuart. Crichton was sent to Rome, and Parsons went to Madrid.

The chief interest of the work of the English Jesuits remains with the indefatigable Parsons on the Continent during the next five years, and a few words will suffice to tell the story of his colleagues in England. Besides two secular priests, Metham and Pound, who were admitted to the Society in prison, and Emerson, who was in prison (and remained there for twenty years), Heywood was now the only Jesuit in England; Holt had been captured in Scotland, and sent back to the Continent. Heywood caused a great deal of irritation by his masterful ways, and the secular priests indignantly describe him as driving in a luxurious coach, like a baron, and living so comfortably that he contracted gout. He was recalled to the Continent, but was captured and kept in the Clink until 1585, when he was banished. His place as Vice-Prefect of the mission—Parsons was Prefect—was taken by Father Weston, a new arrival, whose powers in expelling demons were so singular and spectacular that he used to take possessed [Pg 152] persons about with him in his stealthy visits to the Catholic gentry, and give most amazing displays—until it was discovered that the "mediums" were frauds. It had paid them, apparently, to swallow nauseous drugs and allow themselves to be mauled by Father Weston. He was captured and lodged in Wisbeach Castle in 1587, but Fathers Garnet and Southwell had then arrived, as we shall see presently. We must follow the feverish political activity of Parsons, which culminates in the sending of the Armada.

From Paris Parsons had made a swift journey, on horseback, to Madrid, where he greatly impressed Philip II. By this time, at least, Parsons deliberately advocated the transfer of the English crown to Philip, and was therefore a traitor to his country and to the rules of his Society. He obtained from Philip a large sum of money for James of Scotland, a pension for the seminary at Rheims, and a promise that Spanish influence would support his claim of a red hat for Allen: he was anxious to remove Allen from the colleges he had founded, so that the Jesuits could control the supply of priests to England. A severe illness kept him for some months in Spain, but he was back at Paris in May 1583. During the summer he was in close correspondence with Guise and d'Alencon, who were now advocating and plotting the assassination of Elizabeth as the simplest solution of the situation. In August Parsons went to Rome, to excuse his activity, which scandalised the Parisian Jesuits, and to induce the Pope to subsidise the Scottish expedition and remove Allen to a loftier sphere. He returned in the autumn, having secured a bishopric for Allen and another pension for the college at Rheims. In spite of the protests of the French Jesuits he continued to pursue his plots. The French dukes withdrew from the enterprise, and the Spanish [Pg 153] King was now quite willing to move, if the Pope would be generous with funds. Gregory died in the spring of 1585, and Parsons and Allen went to Rome to win the new Pope, Sixtus V.

There is at this date, and during the next few years, no room for doubt about the aim of Parsons. We have it repeatedly in his own words that he worked to seat Philip on the throne of England, and he shrewdly advised Philip to conceal his intention, from the English Catholics, Scotland, France, and the Papacy, until his expedition was successful. The death of Mary Stuart did not disturb him, and he gradually discarded the idea of attacking through Scotland. Philip was to make a direct attack, and the English Catholics were to be instructed to look to Philip, not as a future king, but as restorer of the faith. All the world knows the result. The great Armada (with several Jesuits on board) sank to the bottom of the Channel, and Parsons had the mortification of learning that even Catholics had loyally taken arms to repel the Spaniard. There ended the second phase of his remarkable career, and we may return to England.

In July 1586 Henry Garnet and R. Southwell landed on the Norfolk coast, as Dr. Jessopp so finely tells, and resumed the work which I have previously described. Garnet was, if somewhat less boisterous and masterful, the new Parsons; Southwell, a retiring and amiable man, the new Campion. As Weston was arrested in 1587, Garnet became Vice-Prefect. In the following year John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne joined them, and the story of adventurous ministration went on. On one occasion the four Jesuits were nearly caught in a batch, saying mass in a Catholic house; and in 1594 Garnet was caught and imprisoned for three years. He escaped from the Tower, with outside [Pg 154] assistance, in 1597, and returned to work. Southwell was betrayed by a Catholic lady in 1592, and, after three years in the Tower, was executed at Tyburn in 1595. In the same year Henry Walpole was arrested on arrival, and executed at York. Father Greenway was the only other Jesuit to enter the country before 1600, and we must leave these fathers pursuing their adventurous work and consider the growing quarrel of the Jesuits and the secular clergy.

That long and interesting story must be told very briefly here. Wisbeach Castle had been chosen as a prison for captured priests, and when Weston arrived there in 1587, he very plainly tried to assume a leadership. As his various suggestions were rejected, he made a party among the priest-prisoners, got himself appointed director of it, and initiated a bitter and prolonged feud which spread far beyond the walls of Wisbeach. To the secular priests' charges of arrogance and ambition, the Jesuit writers retort that even in jail the English priests were so prone to drunkenness, gambling, and immorality that Father Weston was forced to live apart with the more virtuous. A profane historian must not attempt to judge between them. It is enough that, especially in the years 1595-1597, reports of violent quarrels reached Rome; and these coincided with complaints from Belgium of the behaviour of Father Holt (who had been sent as agent of Philip II. to Brussels and was denounced to the authorities for his violent political partisanship), and another rebellion of the students of the Roman college. Not only did these complain of their Jesuit masters, but they occasionally fell into the hands of the papal police in wine-shops and other improper places, and were found to be a very poor and undisciplined body of youths. Mr. Law insists that the Jesuits kept the [Pg 155] English priests at a low level of culture in order to control or overshadow them the more easily.

Parsons was now recalled from Spain and political intrigue to deal with this new menace. He had spent several years in Spain, founding new English colleges (at Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid) under his own control and working out his learned theory that the crown of England belonged of strict right to Spain. He failed to induce Philip to send a second Armada, and now devoted himself to proving that the Infanta was the heir to the crown of England. That is the idea of the book, A Conference on the Succession, which he published, anonymously, in 1594: a year after the fifth General Congregation of his Society had once more sternly decreed that no Jesuit must meddle with politics.

In 1597 he reached Rome and quickly pacified the students of the college. Some of them, it seems, thought that he ought to be made a cardinal for his great services, and he hastened, with tearful eyes, to ask the Pope to spare him that dignity; and we will trust that he was relieved when the Pope coldly observed that he had not had the least idea of imposing it on him. They then turned to the great question of Wisbeach, and the settlement of it doubly interests us; partly because a Jesuit supremacy in Wisbeach might be a good precedent for the time when a Catholic monarch succeeded Elizabeth, and partly because it throws a very singular light on Jesuit procedure.

The Jesuits submitted that the clerical prisoners in England desired some kind of canonical leader. Clement VIII., who had, like his great predecessor Sixtus V., had some alarming experience of the state of the Jesuits (as we shall see later), required proof of this. They brought before him certain English priests, friendly to themselves, who assured the Pope that there was no discord in their [Pg 156] ranks in England; the largeness of their "mental reservation" may be judged from the fact that a later inquiry showed that 343 out of the 400 priests in England were against the Jesuit proposal. The Pope was deceived, and he yielded to Parsons's suggestion to make George Blackwell, a former student under the Jesuits, "Archpriest" of the English clergy. Blackwell went to England to exercise this newly invented authority, and Parsons returned to his plots. He had then several secretaries to conduct his enormous correspondence, and he was so sure of a Catholic succession to the throne that he marked out various houses in London for use as Jesuit colleges.

After a time there came to Rome some of the English clergy, saying that they had received the Archpriest with amazement, and begging the Pope to withdraw him. The Pope was not in Rome, and Parsons took care that they should not reach him. He induced the papal authorities to arrest them, as rebels, and lodge them in the college controlled by the Jesuits; and when they persisted in appealing to a Roman tribunal, he secured the dismissal of the appeal. Later, a fresh batch of appellants came to Rome, and Parsons knew that their evidence would be very damning. Not only had the Jesuits, who controlled the moneys gathered for the support of the imprisoned priests, attempted to use this power to subdue them, but when the Pope had ordered that no more pamphlets should be written on the subject, Blackwell had refrained from publishing the decree until Parsons had time to issue one; and this one mendaciously purported to have been written by some "priests united in due subordination to the Archpriest." The secular priests had appealed to Elizabeth, and she had actually heard and set four of them at liberty, in order that they might plead their cause at [Pg 157] Rome. They now had the support of the French embassy, and, in spite of all the libels which Parsons circulated concerning them and the English clergy generally, they won a partial victory. Blackwell was to remain Archpriest, but he was not to consult the Jesuits.

From this domestic but instructive feud we return to the action of the Jesuits in England. Under ten different names Garnet had continued, amid a hundred adventures, to elude his pursuers, and his colleagues were only a little less active. We cannot, however, do more here than attempt to trace their share in the political scheming which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuits in England carried out the suggestion of Parsons that, instead of putting their faith in the eventual accession and conversion of James of Scotland, they should teach the Catholics to look to Philip. In December 1601 we find Garnet meeting Catesby, Tresham, and Winter in the house of Anne Vaux at Enfield Chase, and discussing the question of a mission to Spain. The issue of it was that Winter and Father Greenway went to Madrid, and obtained a large sum of money from Philip III. It was intended for the relief of the poor Catholics, Garnet afterwards said: in which case we do not very well understand why he "misliked" the expedition, as he says.

Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and James Stuart peacefully acceded to the throne. We need not stop to consider the shifts by which Parsons now sought the favour of James; he had, he boldly and untruthfully said, abandoned the idea of a Spanish succession at the death of Philip II. in 1598. James was not to be deceived, and, in his negotiations with Rome, made a point of having the Jesuits excluded. The conflicting counsels in regard to the Catholics ended, as is known, in a [Pg 158] decision to tolerate lay Catholics, but not priests, and the bitter agitation began which led up to the famous plot. Catesby and Winter conceived the horrible idea of blowing up the Parliament House when the King, the Royal Family, and the Lords and Commons were assembled in it for the opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and J. Wright were admitted to the secret, and in March 1604 they met and swore to accomplish the plot. In an adjoining room a priest said mass for them, and Fawkes and Winter afterwards said that this priest was Father Gerard; Gerard, however, denied this, and the point is not important, since it is not at all probable that Gerard was ever admitted to the secret, and no priest knew of the plot until long afterwards. Gerard's idea was that toleration could be bought, but he failed even to find the money. For more than a year and a half the conspirators brooded over their ghastly scheme, and made preparations for carrying it out; and on 5th November 1605 Fawkes was arrested in the cellar beneath the House beside a mass of powder.

It is agreed that no Jesuit inspired this plot; the point we have to determine is whether the Jesuits were aware of the plot and acquiesced in it by their silence. The whole subject has been fully and repeatedly discussed, and I propose to rely almost entirely on the "Declarations" which Father Garnet addressed to the authorities during his trial and imprisonment. [16] The living Jesuit, Father Gerard, may express an ingenuous doubt whether there ever was a Gunpowder Plot at all; his predecessor of the seventeenth century, who ought to know, was concerned only to extricate himself, by a series of confessions, evasions, and untruths to which no parallel can be found in the history of[Pg 159] martyrs, from the very grave moral and legal charge of having known that this horrible slaughter was contemplated and made no effort to disclose or prevent it.

Garnet confesses that on 9th June 1605 Catesby came to his lodging, at a costermonger's house in Thames Street, and, "finding me alone," asked if, "in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, it were necessary to regard the innocents who were present." The Jesuit replied that the killing of innocent people in a lawful attack upon others was not immoral; he pointed out that soldiers had often, in besieging a town, to slay the civilian with the soldier. He professes in his declaration that he had no idea that Catesby had in mind an actual plot to be carried out in England. He had written to Parsons a few weeks before that many of the Catholic laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" on the ground that they "hindered forcible enterprises"; and he would have us believe that when one of these laymen, whose character he knew well, finding him alone, puts to him a singularly abstract question of this nature, it does not even occur to him that he has a "forcible enterprise" in mind. When Catesby was leaving, however, he assured Garnet that he would under no circumstances betray that he had consulted the Jesuit. Even then the innocent Jesuit failed to understand, and it was only on reflection, he says, that he thought it possible that Catesby was plotting. He therefore felt it to be his duty to "admonish" Catesby, the next time he met him, that he "must first look to the lawfulness of the act itself, and then he must not have so little regard of innocence that he spare not friends and necessary persons for a Commonwealth, and told him what charge we had of all quietness, and to procure the like in others."

Even if we suppose that this "admonition" was really given to Catesby as he describes it—one hesitates, because Garnet's conduct throughout is a classical example of casuistic perversion of truth—we can readily believe that Catesby took it very lightly, as Garnet says. Even if we could bring ourselves to admit that Garnet at the secret interview saw only an innocent and abstract moral issue, such as might be discussed in an open drawing-room, in Catesby's question, and therefore unwittingly sanctioned a bloody massacre, it is certain that he perceived on reflection that some such massacre was contemplated; yet he can only warn him to have regard for "friends and necessary persons," and feebly remind him of their duty of "quietness." Indeed in July, he confesses, he received "a very earnest letter" from General Acquaviva, who said, on behalf of the Pope, that they were vaguely conscious that something was contemplated by the English Catholics, and that the Pope and Acquaviva himself rigorously forbade any recourse to violence, as it would do more harm than good. He showed this letter to Catesby, because, he says, "I doubted he had some device in his head." Catesby admitted that he had, and offered to tell it to him. He refused to hear it, and merely stipulated that a layman should be sent to the Continent to learn if it were true that the Pope would not disapprove: a mission which, as Garnet knew, had no issue.

This last interview with Catesby occurred in the latter half of July, more than two months before the proposed opening of Parliament (3rd October). By that time, therefore, Garnet was quite aware, without the least reference to the seal of confession, that the Catholic laity contemplated some deed which directly aimed at taking life on so large a scale that the innocent would suffer with the guilty, and it would[Pg 161] need very little reflection to foresee that this deed was directed at the court or the Parliament, or both. Further, in order not to be obliged formally to condemn it, he refused, contrary to his plainest duty, to learn the details of it. The clue to his frame of mind seems to be given in his letter to Parsons in May. The laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" because they would not consent to "forcible enterprises"; he would therefore not interfere with their plot. He could, without violation of any sacramental confidence, because Catesby's admission to Father Greenway comes later, have prevented the plot from going any further, but he allowed this vague horror to proceed, and defied the emphatic command of the Pope and his General, in order that the Jesuits might not lose favour with the leading Catholic laymen. It is probable that he also trusted that the outrage would be justified by the result. Whatever his motives, his conduct was shifty, cowardly, and treacherous, and he fitly died the death of a traitor. He admits later in his "Declaration" that he "might have hindered all" by speaking to Catesby. He claims that he pressed the Roman authorities, through Parsons, to send a stronger condemnation of plots; but we have a letter of his to Parsons, dated 4th September, in which he assures Rome that the English Catholics are now quiet and submissive.

It is therefore unnecessary to decide whether he afterwards learned all the details of the plot under the seal of confession, and whether it was morally impossible for him to disclose such a communication. The guilt of Henry Garnet is clear enough, however we decide the further issue. Yet it is of interest, and the further development may be briefly recounted.

A few days after he had seen Catesby, in the [Pg 162] latter half of July, Father Greenway came to consult him. He was troubled about a "devise" that Catesby had submitted to him, and he proposed to submit it to his superior "by way of confession." Garnet then learned the details of the plot; he had forbidden Catesby to tell him, but was willing to learn them without Catesby's knowledge. He pronounced the plot "horrible," and said that Greenway must return to Catesby and condemn it. The Pope, he said, would send him to the galleys if such a plot came off. He urged Greenway to dissuade Catesby, and adds: "so we parted, yet with this compact, that if ever I should be called in question for being accessory unto such a horrible action, either by the Pope, or by my superiors beyond, or by the State here, I would have liberty to utter all that passed in this conference." He expected to see Catesby in October—he could undoubtedly have seen him before then—and says: "I assuredly had [if they met] entered into the matter with Mr. Catesby, and perhaps might have hindered all." He undoubtedly could have "hindered all" at any moment by an explicit declaration that the plot was a mortal sin, and by a threat of the Pope's penalties.

An attempt has been made to relieve Garnet of the heavy responsibility which this declaration lays on him by pleading that the Church binds a priest, under the gravest moral obligation, not to communicate anything learned "by way of confession." In the first place, Garnet does not say that Greenway learned the plot in confession. He says that he asked Greenway this, and he does not give his reply. It is, in fact, quite certain from Garnet's own words and conduct, that the communication was not made under the seal of confession at all. If it were, Garnet had no power[Pg 163] whatever to speak to Catesby about it, as he says he intended to do: Greenway had no power whatever to permit Garnet to "utter all that passed in this conference" if he were brought to task: and Garnet committed a mortal sin and cowardly sacrilege in eventually revealing that he had heard of the plot from Greenway. There are obscure points about the theological doctrine of the "seal," but these things are not obscure or disputed. Catesby told Greenway in ordinary confidence, as he offered to tell Garnet. Even if it had been otherwise, Garnet's plain duty was to see that his colleague approached Catesby and made it a matter of conscience to abstain from such a design.

It is, in the next place, even clearer that the communication made by Greenway to Garnet did not come under the seal of confession. Garnet plainly intimates that there was no confession at all, and merely hints that it might be regarded as forming part of some future confession. The teaching of moral theologians is clear that a consultation for the sake of direction does not, unless it be intended as "a preparation for confession," come under the seal. [17] Greenway was not a penitent at all, and even a sinner cannot put a confessor under the seal when he chooses; he must confess his sins. In any case, the above considerations apply here also. Garnet would have no right whatever to approach Catesby if he learned the plot in confession; Greenway had no right whatever to name Catesby in a confession; Garnet would have no right to say, in confession, whether he would or would not listen to this "penitent"; and Garnet would most decidedly have no right to claim permission to break the seal if his [Pg 164] neck were endangered. To introduce "the seal of confession" is to make Garnet's conduct worse than ever.

It is plain that Garnet and Greenway feared to offend the laity by thwarting them, and it is probable that they thought the slaughter might help their cause. They locked the secret in their hearts, and nervously went about their work. In August Garnet went to the north, and in December, when the conspirators were slain and Greenway and Gerard had fled to the Continent, he sought refuge at Hinlip Castle, near Worcester, with Father Oldcorne. They were betrayed by a Catholic and discovered, after a full week's search of the castle. An astute jailer then tricked Garnet into a conversation with his colleague, and learned that there was one man who could connect him with the plot. In the presence of the rack he then declared that he was permitted to speak in such an emergency, and he related the "conference" with Greenway. He remained shifty and mendacious to the end, using the doctrine of mental reservation with an appalling flippancy. When charged with writing a letter to Greenway, he swore "on his priesthood," and without reservation, that he had not written it; and the Council then showed him the letter, which they had intercepted. He was justly, if barbarously, executed on 3rd May, on the ground of the general knowledge he had of the plot from Catesby himself. Equivocal to the end, he declared to the authorities that he had sinned against God and the king in not revealing the plot; while to the Catholic Anne Vaux he pleaded that "it was not his part to disclose it." He did not represent it as matter heard in confession.

As the innocent and estimable Oldcorne had been executed on 7th April, the Jesuit mission was over for a [Pg 165] time, and the hopes of Catholicism blasted. Crétineau-Joly gives an inaccurate list of seven Jesuits who "perished" under Elizabeth, and airily adds "a hundred others." The truth is that from 1580 to 1606 there had only been a score of Jesuits in England, even including the secular priests who were permitted to take the vows in prison in order that their martyrdoms might illumine the chronicle of the Society; that only seven of these, including the seculars I have mentioned, were put to death; and that of the five regularly admitted Jesuits who were put to death, two obtained a remission of punishment by giving information. Yet their story is, on the whole, a story of heroism thwarted by political intrigue.

Two other Jesuits, Hunt and Worthington, had arrived before the plot, and in 1607 others began again to penetrate the defences of the country. The houses of wealthy Catholics were no longer available as they had been, and the life of the missionary was harder than ever; but the colleges on the Continent continued to send their ardent apostles into the field, and by 1615, when Acquaviva died, there are said to have been sixty-eight Jesuits in England. The prestige of Parsons had fallen low, but he remained, intriguing, on the Continent. For some years students had been passing from the Jesuits to the Benedictines, and in 1602, in spite of the opposition of Parsons, the Benedictines obtained from the Pope the right to work in England. Clement VIII. had received so many complaints that he threatened to expel Parsons from Rome, and Parsons, at a hint given him by Acquaviva, went to Naples for the advantage of his health, and remained there until the death of Clement. He returned with the accession of Paul V. in 1605, and continued to fight the secular clergy in regard to the archpriest. The extraordinary course of deception and [Pg 166] intrigue which he maintained until his death in 1610 must be read in the spirited narrative of Father Taunton. His death closes the chief interest of the English mission under Acquaviva, and we will return to the struggling apostles at a later stage.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] E.L. Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England (1901): an admirable critical study of Parsons and of the quarrels of the Jesuits with the secular clergy, though not quite a balanced and comprehensive history. R. Simpson's Edmund Campion (1867) is a very fine biography of that high-minded Jesuit; and T. Law has written a learned and exact Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between the Jesuits and Secular Priests (1889). More sympathetic and detailed accounts of the religious work of the English Jesuits are given in Dr. Jessopp's One Generation of a Norfolk House (1879), and Father Morris's Life of Father Gerard (1881). A complete and impartial history of the Jesuits in England, telling with equal candour their heroism and their defects, is desirable. The writings of recent Jesuits are not "history," but very Jesuitical polemic.

[16] They were published in the English Historical Review, July 1888.

[17] So the chief Jesuit manual now in use, Lehmkuhl's Theologia Moralis, i. 330; from which I was taught casuistry.

As the long reign of General Acquaviva was followed by the almost equally long reign of General Vitelleschi, it will be convenient once more to take his tenure of office as a stage in the history of the Society, and consider the action of the fathers in their various provinces. The death of Vitelleschi, in 1645, will then complete the first century from the establishment of the Society, and we may pause to deduce from the enormous mass of detail a few general truths in regard to Jesuit character. From that point onward I propose to follow the fortunes of the Society continuously in each province down to the year of its suppression in the eighteenth century.

The election of Father Mutio Vitelleschi did not pass without incident. The Spanish electors determined to make an effort to recover the supreme office from the Italians, and their tactics were not edifying. When they reached Rome, at an early date, they learned that Vitelleschi was the favoured candidate, and they proceeded to describe him to the various voters, as they arrived, in most uncomplimentary language. He seems to have been a mild and inoffensive old man, of little ability and no distinction, a Roman by birth. There is, doubtless, a good deal of exaggeration in the rancorous charge of the Spaniards, that he was worldly and ambitious and had hitherto been chiefly occupied with the cultivation of wealthy ladies. When [Pg 168] these statements did not seem to affect his prospect of election, the Spanish fathers appealed to the Spanish and French ambassadors; and, when the ambassadors declined to assist them, they sought the Pope and confided to him the vices of Father Vitelleschi. Paul V. genially dismissed them with an assurance that, if he were such as they described him, he could have no hope of securing the votes of forty of the shrewdest and most religious members of the Society. In point of fact, he received thirty-nine votes, and he wisely dissuaded the Congregation from inflicting on the Spaniards the punishment which his admirers demanded. I may add that it now took more than a hundred decrees of the Congregation to regulate the disorderly life of the Society; though we shall still find it singularly unaffected by this mass of stern legislation.

The long generalship of Mutio Vitelleschi (1615-1645) is, says Crétineau-Joly, "a monotonous stretch of felicity." When, however, we turn to the official Jesuit historian, Cordara, who continues the Historia Sociatatis, we find that the year which immediately followed the election was marked by serious disturbances or scandals at Castellone, Genoa, Artois, Paris, Lyons, Freiburg, and Worms, and in Sicily, Béarn, Castile, Poland, and Hesse-Cassel. We shall further see that the monotony of the thirty years is relieved by a scandalous bankruptcy of the fathers at Seville, a temporary expulsion from Malta, Bohemia, and Hungary, a combined attack upon the Society by the leading universities of Europe, the publication of the Secret Instructions, the complete extinction of the great Japanese mission and the new mission in Abyssinia, and a quite normal succession of scandals and tribulations in France and Catholic Germany. The serious historian cannot therefore dismiss the generalship of [Pg 169] Vitelleschi with a short assurance that it was a period of virtue, heroism, and prosperity. We must, as before, carefully consider the life of the Society in each of its provinces.

The record of the Society in Italy is an uninteresting chronicle of small scandals and unobtrusive work. The former class may be briefly illustrated by the adventures of the Neapolitan Jesuit, Father Onufrio de Vermi, in the year 1623. The historian tells us that the honours awarded him by his illustrious penitent the Count d'Elda so inflated his spirit that he rebelled against his authorities. Passing over to Spain, he contrived to secure a bishopric from the queen, and was expelled from the Society on the charge of ambition. It is needless to quote such trifles as these from the chronicles. The outstanding event at Rome under the rule of Vitelleschi was the canonisation of Ignatius and Xavier in 1622. Their place in the distinguished gallery it would be invidious to question, but the curious student of such matters would find it interesting to trace the appearance of the miracles which were needed to secure canonisation for them. In the case of Xavier, whose life was spent in the Far East, it would be easy to adduce evidence of miracles, and difficult to examine it. The miracles of Ignatius are more interesting. When Ribadeneira, who knew him, first wrote his life, he seemed not to have heard of any miracles; when, however, forty years later, the question of canonisation was mooted, Father Ribadeneira corrected his defect by publishing a shorter life which shone with miracles. As time went on, the monarchs of Europe—wherever the Jesuits had influence—began to press the Pope to canonise Ignatius and Xavier, and in 1622 the Jesuits obtained that supreme assurance of the sanctity of their founders. It need hardly be said that they illuminated [Pg 170] Europe with their festivities, and made considerable profit by the honour, which they represented as unsought by themselves.

The island of Malta was the scene of one of the storms which broke upon the Society in this half-century. The fathers had established a college at Lavaletta in 1592, and prospered there until 1632, when a sudden and mysterious tempest swept them, for a time, out of the island. The Jesuit version of the adventure is that the Grand Master Lascaris had attempted to curb the well-known licence of the knights and had, at their protest, thrown the responsibility of the reform on the Jesuits. When the carnival arrived, and the knights were hampered in their amusements, some of them took the revenge of masquerading as Jesuits in the gay throng; and when the Master imprisoned them, at the entreaty of the Jesuits, they forced the doors of the jail and compelled Lascaris to exile the Jesuits. This story is not implausable, but we are equally bound to notice the different version put forward by their opponents. They say that the Jesuits had incurred general contempt by hiding great stores of food in their house during a famine (as we have seen them do in Paris) and by their indulgence in vice. One is disposed to think that the former charge cannot be entirely devoid of foundation. It is singular that, when the French king, at the request of the French Jesuits, forced the knights to readmit the fathers, the two leading Jesuits were not suffered to return to the island.

The most serious event of the half-century was, however, the bankruptcy of one of the Jesuit houses at Seville, and in this case we have serious independent evidence. The condition of the Spanish province evidently remained unchanged in spite of "visitations" [Pg 171] from Rome and decrees of the Congregation. Their generous patron Philip III., whose dominion they had so materially helped to enlarge, died in 1621, but his successor Philip IV. was even more generous to them. They prospered, and continued to deteriorate. We may not be disposed to admit implicitly all the sordid stories about them which we find in the Teatro Jesuitico, one of the fiercest anti-Jesuit works of the period, [18] but we have independent evidence of such episodes as the murder of a Spanish Jesuit by an injured husband. Instead, however, of wasting time on these isolated disorders, it will be enough to examine the story of the famous bankruptcy.

One of the seven residences which the fathers had at Seville failed in 1644, and acknowledged a debt of two and a quarter million francs. The Jesuit system, it may be recalled, was to place the administration of the house in the hands of a "Lay Coadjutor" (or lay-brother, who had not made a vow of poverty), and their defence in this singular case is that Brother Villar, who held this charge at Seville, borrowed large sums of money and invested them in shipping and other concerns, without the knowledge of the fathers. His speculations proved disastrous, and the fathers found themselves bankrupt. Crétineau-Joly genially closes the episode with an assurance that the fathers found the money and expelled the offending brother from the fraternity.

That the brother was expelled is quite certain, but I can find no trace that the Jesuits, in spite of their great collective wealth in Spain, ever paid more than a [Pg 172] partial dividend, and the whole of the circumstances merit consideration. That we should be asked to believe that a community of Spanish Jesuits, the keenest business-men in the whole Society, suffered a lay brother to conduct vast operations, and to borrow large sums from their own followers in Seville, without their having the least knowledge how he conducted their affairs, is little short of impertinence. We have, however, positive knowledge that the Jesuit version is most untruthful. Not only does Bishop Palafox, one of their most conscientious adversaries, give a different version in his second letter to Pope Innocent X., but a paper written by one of the creditors and submitted to the King of Spain (who favoured the Jesuits) has survived, and must command our confidence. From this memoir or petition, which is reproduced in the Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites (iii. 976), I propose to take the facts of the scandal.

From communities of nuns and the pious laity of the town, both rich and poor, Villar had borrowed sums amounting in all to 450,000 ducats, and invested them in unwise speculations. Villar protested throughout that he had acted under the directions of the fathers, and it would be quite impossible for him to borrow so extensively among their admirers without their knowing it; even if we could suppose that, contrary to all custom, they left their affairs blindly in the hands of a lay-brother. In 1644 the fathers summoned their creditors, declared themselves bankrupt, and proposed a settlement. Some of the creditors endeavoured to secure a payment in full by representing that the Jesuits would suffer severely in credit if they did not draw on the immense resources of their Society to discharge the debt. "The loss of our credit does not trouble me," said the rector; "as the proverb says, the[Pg 173] raven cannot be blacker than its wings." The creditors, however, refused to yield, and a receiver was appointed. The petition to the king affirms that this official found among their papers certain letters which plainly showed that they had directed Villar, and secret instructions for the dishonest diversion of legacies they had received on condition of paying out certain monies.

The next step of the Jesuits was to secure the appointment of a judge who would favour themselves. Though there was grave distress among the poorer creditors, this official declared that three-fourths of the Jesuit assets were sacred funds, and that little remained for division. The creditors appealed to the Royal Council, the judge was dismissed for corrupt procedure, and the whole of the property was declared to be "lay" for the purpose of the case. Indeed, the higher court declared that the action of the Jesuits was "infamous," and would, on the part of a private individual, merit a capital sentence. Yet in 1647 we find this petitioner still appealing for a discharge of the debt, and complaining that the Jesuits are trying to induce the more pious of their creditors to agree to a composition.

The significance of this ugly episode does not consist in its illustration of the conduct of a single community of Jesuits. As such it would not be entitled to lengthy consideration in serious history. The more unpleasant feature is that it involves the whole of the Jesuits of Castile, and, in spite of the fact that—the petitioner says—they owed a collective debt of two million ducats, they formed one of the most numerous and wealthy provinces of the Society and dwelt in most imposing establishments. They clearly trusted that their colleagues would evade the discharge of a legitimate debt, and they incurred a storm of anger and disdain. The Roman house itself had taken vast sums[Pg 174] from Spain, yet it permitted the local Jesuits to resist their obligations for several years, relying on a purely legal and worldly view of the local responsibility.

The Jesuits of Portugal, which was still under the dominion of Spain, exhibit the same prosperity and worldly temper, and their behaviour in connection with the revolution of 1640 was sinuous and unattractive. In 1635, when the agitation began for the restoration of the Portuguese throne, they punished some of their number who sided with the revolutionaries. As time went on, however, and the movement gathered strength, they wavered and temporised in the most amusing fashion; and so shrewdly did they follow the national movement that the successful completion of the revolution in 1640 found them entirely on the side of the Portuguese people.

When we survey the thirty years' life of the Society in France under the rule of Vitelleschi, we get much the same impression of poor character, or character warped by casuistry. Under so Catholic a monarch as Louis XIII. and so powerful a statesman as Richelieu we do not expect to find any of the large political intrigue in which they had indulged in earlier years. We find no grave scandal, no exalted virtue, no religious heroism. Their life is a chronicle of assiduous teaching and ministration, punctuated by unworthy manœuvres here and there to obtain power or repress rivals, and never rising above mediocrity. A few words on their relations to the court and Richelieu, to the bishops and universities, and to new reformers like Cardinal de Bérulle and St. Vincent de Paul, will suffice for our purpose.

The petty intrigues and successive dismissals of the Jesuit confessors to the court are not of sufficient consequence for us to linger over them. In 1624 [Pg 175] Richelieu became first minister of France and put an end to their political pretensions. In that year they had again incurred the anger of the university. Henri de Bourbon, illegitimate son of Henry IV., had been appointed bishop of Metz. He had been educated by the Jesuits, and was induced to make his "act of theology" in their college, instead of at the Sorbonne, as was customary, and the whole court had been attracted to and entertained in the college. Richelieu had, however, no idea of espousing the quarrel of the university; he would quickly enough come into conflict with the Jesuits, as he was determined to reverse at the first opportunity the pro-Spanish policy of Marie de Medici and her clerical advisers. His first act was to drive the Pope's troops out of the Valtelline and defy Spain, and the Jesuits contented themselves with contributing anonymously to the shower of violent ultramontane pamphlets which now fell on the minister. Two of them especially, written (it seems) by Father Keller, the Jesuit confessor of Maximilian of Bavaria, and entitled Mysteria Politica and Admonitio ad Regem Christianissimum, gave him great annoyance. They were condemned and burned, together with Father Santarelli's De Hæresi (1626), but Richelieu was almost exhausted by the violence of the first storm his policy brought upon him, and he did not take the extreme measure against the Jesuits which he was said to contemplate. It is clear that they realised his power and resolved to be discreet. After a fruitless appeal to the young king against him, they signed a series of propositions drawn up by the Sorbonne, and resigned themselves to the patriotic policy of the great minister.

The position of the Jesuits during the next two decades was one of great prosperity but acute dissatisfaction, on account of their political impotence. They [Pg 176] had (in 1627) 13,195 pupils in their schools in the Paris province alone, and more than that number in the remaining French provinces. Their opponents were, however, numerous and active, and Richelieu was not unwilling to see this check on their ambition. We find Father Suffren, the king's confessor, complaining in 1626 of the number and violence of their enemies, and adding: "Few of our friends have the courage openly to undertake to defend us." What we shall see presently of their relations to the bishops and universities will throw some light on this. There can be little doubt that Richelieu despised the Jesuits, but preferred to have them under his eye, engaged in the teaching of the young, rather than as open opponents. He punished them ruthlessly when they interfered in politics. He had Father Monod, confessor to Christiane of Savoy, imprisoned for his political intrigues, and when Father Caussin, who was appointed confessor to Louis in 1637, was discovered by Richelieu's spies to be making a secret and insidious attempt to turn the king against Richelieu, he was promptly exiled. Louis had shown Caussin a list, supplied by Richelieu, of Jesuit theologians, who approved the policy of the minister. "Ah, sire," said the Jesuit, piqued at this astute move, "they had a church to build."

In a word, the Jesuits were politically powerless under Richelieu, and gave him little serious anxiety. It seems rather that he induced many of them, however insincerely, to support him in his policy—a policy which was angrily repudiated by Rome and the Catholic powers. In 1638 he threatened to cast off the yoke of the papacy, and, by making some of the gravest concessions demanded by the Reformers, unite the Huguenots and Catholics of France in an independent Gallican Church. If we may believe a story given in [Pg 177] Bayle's Dictionary (article "Amyrant"), which was written shortly afterwards, he actually used the Jesuit Amyrant to negotiate with a leading Huguenot divine, and promise to surrender such Catholic doctrines as purgatory and the invocation of the saints. [19]Two years later we find a Jesuit enlisted in the regiment of pamphleteers who defended Richelieu's singular policy. It is perhaps, in view of their constant policy toward the Reformation, one of the most curious instances of their power of adaptation to circumstances.

I have said that Richelieu despised the Jesuits, and his correspondence with Father (later Cardinal) de Bérulle suggests this. De Bérulle, a man of exalted character and piety, was the founder of the Oratorian priests, and a valued friend of the minister. We have a letter that he wrote to Richelieu in 1623, which contains, in the mild and charitable language of a saint, a very painful indictment of the French Jesuits. Their jealousy of the new congregation and determination to prevent its growth led to some extremely unworthy conduct. In town after town, as de Bérulle describes in detail, the Oratorians removed the prejudice against the Jesuits, and even surrendered property to them, and the Jesuits then repaid their benefactors with slander and intrigue. At Dieppe the governor refused to allow the Jesuits to found a college, but gladly admitted the Oratorians. A Jesuit then asked the hospitality of the Oratorians, and used the opportunity to intrigue against them, in favour of the Society, among the citizens. A letter in which he informed his colleagues of his hope of winning the college from the Oratorians was intercepted and sent to de Bérulle. At Paris the King offered the Oratorians a hotel, but the Jesuits intervened and prevented the gift. They [Pg 178] told "strange and atrocious calumnies" of de Bérulle at the court, and at Bordeaux they proposed to indite him for heresy. The intrigue covers the whole of France during more than ten years, and betrays a very general lack of moral sensitiveness among the French Jesuits. In a similar, though less vigorous, way they attempted to hinder the growth of the new congregation of priests founded by St. Vincent de Paul. [20]

A more general view of the conduct of the French Jesuits from 1615 to 1645 does little to alter this unfavourable impression. Even in the pages of their French apologist their record of service is singularly mediocre; they taught tens of thousands of pupils and preached to hundreds of congregations, is all that one can say. On the other hand, when we turn to the numerous facts which the French apologist has discreetly omitted, we find them making unedifying efforts to extend their work and influence. In 1620 the Jesuits of Poitiers defy the bishop, who lays an interdict on their church; the bishop has decreed that his people must attend their parish churches once in three weeks at least, and the Jesuits reply from the pulpit that it is enough if the people attend their church. At Angoulême, in 1622, they secure, through Father Coton and by a secret contract with the mayor, the monopoly of teaching and the control of the university. They continue for four years to defy the bishop and stir the people against him, although they are condemned by Cardinal de Sourdis and their contract is declared void by the Parlement, until the bishop is compelled to excommunicate them. In 1623 they have similar trouble, due to their determination to found petty [Pg 179] universities at Toulouse, Pontoise, and Tournon, and all the universities of France combine in what the French apologist calls a "ferocious war" against them. A few years later they obtain from the King letters permitting them to found a house at Troyes, "at the request of the inhabitants." The inhabitants were so little minded to invite them, and so angry at the fraud, that they kept them out of Troyes, in spite of all their efforts, for a hundred years. Their record in France is full of such details. Toward the end of the period it begins to tell of the famous struggle with the Jansenists; but we will consider this story in full in a later chapter.

An incident that occurred in the province of Lorraine, which was annexed by Richelieu in 1633, deserves special consideration. The impetuous and sensuous young Duke, Charles IV., chose the Jesuit Cheminot as his confessor in 1637, and a week later, although his first wife still lived, he married the Princess Béatrix de Cusance. Instead of retiring from the court, which was at once assailed from all parts of France for the bigamy, Cheminot wrote a casuistic memoir to prove that the marriage was valid, and clung to the duke for six years. The misconduct of an individual Jesuit is, as I have said, not matter for serious history, and, if it were true that Cheminot defied his own superiors, there would be no occasion to dwell on it. But the correspondence published by Crétineau-Joly shows plainly that the Jesuit authorities acquiesced in Cheminot's position for many years. We find Charles writing to General Vitelleschi in 1639, in friendly terms, to complain that some of the other Jesuits are hostile to his accommodating confessor. Three years later we find Charles declaring to Cheminot that he will not grant him permission to retire, as his General[Pg 180] "presses" him to do; as if a Jesuit needed such permission. It was only in 1643, when the scandal was known to all Europe, that the Roman authorities excommunicated Cheminot. They had waited five years in the hope that they would not be compelled to sacrifice a place in a ducal court.

Their fortunes in Belgium and Holland also were less romantic than they had been in earlier years. The settlement of Belgium as a Catholic province enabled them to spread over it with easy prosperity, and obtain a very large share in the education of the young. The Flemish fathers made a singular contribution to the literature of the Society, which has given its more sober admirers much embarrassment. In the year 1636, which they chose to regard as the centenary of the Society, they published a work, the Imago Primi Sæculi, in which they gave, by pen and pencil, a marvellous account of the first hundred years of the Society's life. Its progress and virtues were put on the highest scale of miraculous heroism; the Jesuits were represented as a troop of angels transferred to the planet earth in the crisis of its religious development. As, however, the modern apologist for the Jesuits represents the work as a "touching fiction" and "pious dithyramb," we need not give it serious attention. Undoubtedly it was imposed on Belgium and other countries at the time as veracious history.

M. Crétineau-Joly is not so candid when he turns to Holland. He marks how, in spite of the heretical atmosphere, the Jesuits have planted colonies at Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Leyden, Harlem, Delft, Rotterdam, Gouda, Hoorn, Alkmaer, Harlingen, Groningen, Bolsward, Zutphen, Nimegues, and Vianen; how they mingle with the Spanish troops and board their vessels [Pg 181] in the war; how they press on to Denmark, and are seen everywhere as the fearless "standard-bearers of the Church." It was, perhaps, natural that he should be indisposed to mar this picture with an account of the relations of the Jesuits to the secular clergy; but, since our purpose is to attain a just and complete view of the Jesuit character, we are compelled to consider it. During forty years they maintained a struggle similar to that they had conducted in England in the days of Elizabeth.

The secular clergy of Holland pressed for the appointment of a bishop, and the Jesuits used all their resources to prevent such an appointment, since it threatened their ascendancy. When a priest named Sasbold was named for the office, they made a scandalous attack on his character; and when, in 1602, he was appointed Archbishop of Utrecht, they had his name changed to Archbishop of Philippi. Until his death in 1614 they conducted an unceasing intrigue against Sasbold, and they first endeavoured to prevent the appointment of a successor, and then transferred their rancorous hostility to him. They had been banished from Holland in 1612, but they again secured toleration, and by 1628 there were seventy Jesuits in the country. The struggle against the archbishop continued all through the period, in spite of several papal injunctions that they were to obey him; but it is unnecessary to enter into all the details. We need not question the bravery of the Jesuits as standard-bearers of the Church, but it is impossible to admire their efforts to prevent the employment of other standard-bearers. Their work was, in point of fact, less effective than that of the secular clergy, because the Dutch Protestants hated and distrusted them. They were found in 1638 to be implicated in a [Pg 182] political plot to introduce the Spaniards, and two of them were tortured and executed.

Since the period we are considering coincides with the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), we naturally find that the record of the Jesuits in Germany is full of life and adventure. Their share in bringing about that disastrous and paralysing struggle cannot be measured by the historian. Now that the world realises the baneful effect of that war and of the Catholic policy of intolerance which led to it, in retarding the development of European civilisation, the Jesuit authorities are not likely ever to publish such documents in their archives as would reveal their activity. We must be guided by two chief considerations. In the first place, the general historian can trace the movements which led to the outbreak of war without any reference to the Jesuits, and is therefore not disposed to think that their intrigues were an essential element in the incitement of it; on the other hand, however, the Jesuits were the most earnest and insistent advocates of the harsh Catholic policy which occasioned the war, and they had considerable influence over the Catholic leaders. Ferdinand II., Maximilian of Bavaria, and Wallenstein had been trained in Jesuit schools; Tilly had actually entered the Society, but withdrawn before he had taken the vows. Jesuits swarmed in the Catholic camp, especially about the tent of Tilly, fired the soldiers to their work, and advanced in the rear of the army to occupy whatever towns fell to their arms.

The war began, it will be remembered, in Bohemia, and here the Jesuits were very clearly interested. When the Protestants cast off the yoke of the Emperor in 1618, they swept the Jesuits from their country and burned some of their colleges. We can very well imagine the plaints of the Jesuits at the courts of [Pg 183] Ferdinand and Maximilian, and are not surprised to learn that eighteen Jesuits accompanied Tilly's troops when they came to subdue Bohemia. It was the beginning of the war. Similarly, when Bethlen Gabor took Hungary in 1622, one of his first measures was to expel the Jesuits; and the victorious Swedes had expelled them from Livonia in the preceding year. It is, however, unnecessary here to follow them through the long course of the Thirty Years' War. They retreated and advanced with the soldiers of the Catholic League, died of plague in the camp or fell under the sabres of the heretics, and maintained the struggle to the end with all the energy which non-combatants could exert. There were even occasions, as at the siege of Prague, when they took arms and fought desperately in the van of the Catholic troops. The alliance of France with the Protestants was a bitter disappointment to them, and they were among the few in Europe who profoundly deplored the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which at last gave a just liberty to Protestantism in Germany. The war, as conceived by them, was a costly and lamentable failure.

I have said that they fiercely resented the attitude of Richelieu; yet, it is curious to note, they took a singular advantage of it in their own interest. One of the articles of the treaty which Richelieu made with the northern heretics provided that after their victories they should respect Jesuit settlements. Crétineau-Joly reproduces a letter in which Louis XIII. reminds his Protestant allies of this provision. The French apologist would have us believe that the agreement was distasteful to the Jesuits themselves,—on this point he quotes no documents,—but we should find it hard to conceive Richelieu making so exacting a demand of the Protestants if the Jesuits were even indifferent to [Pg 184] it. It accords only too well with their sinuous and accommodating policy.

Their work of education proceeded in the provinces which were not ravaged by the troops; but even here they met much hostility and had some disastrous experiences. It was during this period, in 1612, that the famous Secret Counsels ("Monita Privata") came to light and drew a large amount of odium upon them. It is the general belief that this book was written by a Polish priest and ex-Jesuit, Jerome Zahorowski, whose bishop proceeded against him on that ground. Since, however, manuscript copies of the work were afterwards discovered in the Jesuit colleges at Prague, Paris, Roermond, Munich, and Paderborn, their critics submit that it was a secret code of instructions issued by the Roman authorities to their professed members, and that Zahorowski merely published what the Society had already circulated in private. This question must still remain open. The occurrence of so many manuscript copies in Jesuit colleges is singular, but it is impossible to prove that any of these were earlier than the printed edition of 1612.

If we regard the contents of the work, we find that it is, in almost every paragraph, a summary of principles and tactics on which the Jesuits actually proceeded in their pursuit of wealth and power; but there is a callousness, at times a cynicism, in this deliberate codification which makes one hesitate to think that it was written by high Jesuit officials. It seems to me that Zahorowski at least recast such instructions as were genuine, and intended to write a satire on Jesuit procedure. It is incredible that the Roman authorities should enjoin the fathers always to settle in wealthy towns, "because the aim of our Society is to imitate Christ, our Saviour, who dwelt mainly at Jerusalem,"[Pg 185] and it is difficult to believe that they expressly laid it down that "everybody must be brought into a condition of dependence on us," and that wealthy widows must "be allowed to have secret recreation with those who please them." Nearly a fourth of the book is occupied with instructions on the way to conciliate wealthy widows: notoriously, one of the chief sections of Jesuit practice. Much of the remainder is devoted to the conciliation of princes, and the drastic procedure to be taken against apostates. There are few lines which do not describe the well-known procedure of the Jesuits; but, in its actual form, at least, the work seems to be a deliberate and just satire.

A second incident which brought much odium on the Jesuits in the period occurred at Cracow. Here, as at so many places, the University, conscious that the Jesuits wished to win the control of higher education, kept a jealous eye on their school. In 1622 the fathers endeavoured to evade the restrictions placed on them by including in their celebration of the canonisation of St. Ignatius a public discussion of certain theses. The university professors and students prevented them from doing so, and a long and angry quarrel followed. In 1626 a decree of the States-General of Poland (reproduced in the Mercure Jésuite, ii. 312) closed the Jesuit school, and the University sent a formal report to Louvain and other universities, begging them to unite against the intrigues of the Jesuits. This letter, dated 29th July 1627, contains very grave charges against the Society, and considerably strengthened the opposition to them in the university towns of Europe. It complains that the Jesuits sent their pupils in arms against the university students, and, when a riot occurred, induced the King to send troops against the students. As grave trouble occurred about the same time at [Pg 186] Louvain, Douai, Liège, Salamanca, and other universities, there was a general concentration of the professors throughout Europe in hostility to the Society. However much we may suspect partiality or exaggeration in their severe charges, it is clear that the Jesuits made unscrupulous efforts to capture the universities.

And this feeling against them was strongly reinforced by their efforts to secure the property of other monastic bodies. We saw how Ignatius himself had set an example by endeavouring to get the estates of the Benedictines in England, and how constantly this charge is made against the Society. In 1629, Ferdinand II. ordered the Protestants of his dominions to restore ecclesiastical property; and we learn from the decree of Pope Urban VIII. that the Jesuits were "the chief authors of the imperial edict." The Benedictines, Cistercians, and Premonstratensians at once began to claim their property, and were not a little agitated when the "chief authors" of the edict succeeded in getting from the Pope an order that they were to share in the division. The Emperor's confessor was, of course, a Jesuit (Lamormaini), and it is admitted by their apologist that they secured the "best part" of the restored property. To cover their lack of moral or legal title to this property, the Jesuits freely reproached the older orders with corruption and decadence, and a war of pamphlets was maintained for many years. From these publications we learn some remarkable stories of Jesuit procedure.

At Voltigerode in Saxony some Bernardine nuns had, in 1631, obtained one of the restored houses. The Jesuit fathers persuaded them that the building was unsafe, and, when the nuns retired, claimed it as "abandoned property." The nuns returned, however, and a very lively scene was witnessed. The Jesuits [Pg 187] brought the police, and the nuns, who clung valiantly to the seats of the chapel, were physically dragged out of the building. The Cistercian monks afterwards took up the case and secured the expulsion of the Jesuits. At Prague the Jesuits coveted a handsome Cistercian abbey, and persuaded the Emperor that only a half-dozen degenerate monks occupied the vast establishment. An imperial commissary was sent, and found that there were sixty-one monks and thirteen novices in the abbey. The angry Jesuits, who accompanied the commissary, protested that the abbot had put the monastic dress on his farm-labourers; but the Cistercians held their ground and obtained the protection of the Emperor. The Vicar-General of the Order of Cluny reported a large number of these fraudulent attempts of the Jesuits to obtain the property of his monks; and we have civic and ecclesiastical documents relating to great numbers of similar cases in France, Germany, and Switzerland in the early part of the seventeenth century. [21]

When we turn to the missionary field of the Society during this period, we find a remarkable activity which would in itself merit a volume. The casuistic methods of the Jesuits are applied in a singular way to overcome the obstacles to their success, and devices are adopted from which the modern missionary, of any denomination, would shrink with astonishment. The simple fervour of a Xavier had, as we saw, early given way to more calculating methods and political intrigue, but the extent to which this diplomatic procedure was carried in the seventeenth century brought a storm of criticism [Pg 188] upon the Jesuits. Here we have only to notice the beginning of the more unusual tactics, and we will in a later chapter consider the missions in the height of their prosperity and irregularity.

An amusing instance of this readiness to adopt questionable, and even downright dishonest, practices in the service of religion is furnished by the mission to the Hindoos. It appears that after all the hundred years of activity in India, with a free and not very delicate use of the Portuguese authority, the results were regarded as meagre and unsatisfactory. Hitherto we have heard nothing but most optimistic accounts of the work of the missionaries in India; but when the hour comes, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for justifying a new and strange policy, the Jesuits tell us that the effect of the older policy had been slight, and that the high-caste Hindoos smiled with disdain on the crowds of ignorant natives who had, on one pretext or other, accepted baptism. In 1605 the Jesuit Robert de Nobili, an Italian of noble birth and a nephew of Bellarmine, joined the Indian mission and initiated the new policy.

Isolating himself from his colleagues before he became known in India, he made a very close study of the customs and sacred writings of the higher caste Hindoos, learned Tamil and Sanscrit, and after a few years appeared before the people of India as a member of the penitential (or highest) caste of the Saniassi. He lived apart, in a turf hut, and abstained rigorously from flesh and fish. His head was shaved, save for a single tuft of hair, and he had the yellow mark of the caste on his forehead. Dressed in a flame-coloured robe and tiger-skin, with the peculiar wooden sandals of the caste on his feet, he posed in all things as one of the devout Saniassi, and attracted the veneration of [Pg 189] the natives. The Brahmans naturally suspected this mysterious addition to their brotherhood, and came to interrogate him. He took oath that he was of high caste,—a quite innocent thing, the Jesuit apologists say, since he was a noble by birth,—and produced a document certifying that he was the Tatuva Podagar Swami whom he pretended to be. This document was itself a gross imposture, and we may be further quite sure that the Brahmans would not pass him, as they did, until he had made very plain professions of belief in the Vedas and the Hindoo gods, and practised the idolatrous rites of his adopted caste.

For a time he lived apart, and was content to edify by the austerity of his life. Then, like his forerunner, the Swedish Jesuit Nicolai, he began to attract a few impressible Brahmans, and cautiously to initiate them to the Christian faith. Other missionaries were now aware of this action, and he was summoned to appear before the archbishop at Goa. From Goa he was, in 1618, sent to justify his conduct before the Inquisition at Rome; and many of his own brethren, including his learned uncle, were scandalised at his flame-coloured robe and painted brow. He maintained that there was no superstition whatever in the practices of the saniassi, and he actually obtained permission from the Pope to return and continue his work on the understanding that the peculiarities of his dress and the rites of his caste had no more than a civic and sanitary significance! Other members of the Society now followed his example, and the imposture continued throughout the seventeenth century. At his death in 1656 it was claimed that Robert had made 100,000 high-caste converts, and that one of his colleagues had made 30,000. In a more precise document, however, we read, at a later date, that one of the most insidious of [Pg 190] these Jesuit saniassis baptized nine Brahmans in eight months, and that this was more than his colleagues had done in ten years. The whole questionable episode was little more than an indulgence in the romantic adventure to which his diplomatic principles always disposed the Jesuit. He instinctively loved disguise and palliated deceit. The work in India continued on the old lines. Thousands of children were stealthily baptized, to swell the lists published in Europe; the favour and wealth of the Portuguese were assiduously used; and, as we gather from the letters sent to Europe, a great deal of trickery was employed in order to make the ignorant natives believe that the Jesuits could work miracles and control devils. Coloured lights were cunningly placed at times so as to shine on their statues and altars and create a belief in miracles.

Missionaries from India penetrated Ceylon and Thibet, but they were expelled after a few years. The Chinese mission continued to prosper, and by 1620 claimed to have made a hundred thousand converts. One of the missionaries, Adam Schall, an expert in mathematics and mechanics, was employed by the Emperor to correct the Chinese calendar, make guns for his army, and construct fortifications. He received in return permission for his colleagues to preach throughout the Empire, and hundreds of churches were built. Presently, however, the rival Dominican missionaries reported to Rome that the Jesuits owed their success to a scandalous compromise with the native religion. There is no doubt that the Christianity they set before the Chinese was a very different creed from that which Xavier had intended to bring. They did not obtrude the crucifix on the notice of their converts, and they looked leniently on the worship of ancestors and the veneration for Kung-fu-tse. When the Dominicans [Pg 191] and Franciscans insisted on the drastic purity of the faith, and characterised the pagan moralist with all the vigour of mediæval intolerance, the Jesuits persuaded the Chinese to expel them, and a spirited struggle, which will engage us at a later stage, took place in regard to their "Chinese rites."

The Japanese mission, on the other hand, was totally extinguished under the generalship of Vitelleschi. For a time after 1616 the new Emperor Xogun was indifferent to the labours of the Jesuits, who entered the country in disguise, and the converts were once more gathered into the Church. It is said that they numbered 400,000, and the record of the persecutions which followed shows that at least a large proportion of them were fervent and convinced Christians. In 1617, however, Xogun ordered all missionaries to leave the country, and a long and bloody persecution set in. The English and Dutch merchants had now supplanted the Portuguese, and they fed the animosity of the Emperor. Large numbers of the Jesuits and their followers were brutally tortured and executed; yet with signal heroism they continued to enter the land and lay down their lives for their work. But the fierce persecution was sustained by Xogun II. and his son, and by the time of the death of Vitelleschi, Christianity was extinct in Japan.

The next most interesting field of missionary activity was South America, where the Jesuits came to set up the remarkable commonwealths of which their admirers still speak with unstinted admiration. We must defer until a later stage the full consideration of these communities, and can only tell here the story of their origin and early fortunes. The natives of Paraguay had been so brutally treated by the Spaniards that when, in 1586, the Jesuits entered the country, they found it [Pg 192] exceedingly difficult to disarm their apprehensions. They scattered over the country, winning thousands of the natives by their kindly and humane aid, but usually leaving them, after baptism, to their original ways. The mission was better organised in 1602, and definite Christian settlements began to appear. As a natural result of their sympathy with the natives they soon quarrelled with the Spaniards. While the Spaniards expected the missionaries to make the natives more pliant and submissive to their authority, the Jesuits reported that the natives would have nothing to do with the European colonists, whom they denounced for their cruelty and rapacity. The Spaniards retorted that the Jesuits sought to keep the trade in native products and industries for their own profit, and a bitter controversy was provoked. In 1610 the Jesuits obtained from Philip III. permission to colonise, and founded the first of their "reductions," or industrial settlements.

For many years the work proved extremely difficult. The natives appreciated the protection of the Jesuits, who obtained a royal order that none of their converts could be enslaved, but were little attracted to their creed. At the least pressure they would return to the forests, and could only be recovered with great labour. More workers came from Europe, however,—by 1616 there were a hundred and fifty Jesuits in Paraguay,—and more settlements were founded. By the year 1632 there were twenty "reductions," each containing about a thousand families. Not only was the ground assiduously tilled, but Jesuit lay-brothers taught the arts and crafts of civilisation, and even formed an armed and trained militia for defence. The children were taught and decently clothed, and the evenings and days of rest were brightened by song and dance. The hours of prayer, work, and sleep were appointed by the two [Pg 193] Jesuit fathers who controlled each reduction; idleness was severely punished and industry rewarded with presents of knives, or mirrors, or trinkets; the products of their industry were distributed each week; and a very close observation was kept on the morals of all the members.

We will consider these "ideal republics" more closely when we find them reorganised and more extended at a later date. For the moment it is enough to notice a curious inconsistency which appears even in apologetic accounts of them. To the Spaniards the Jesuits declared that the natives were so suspicious that no European could be allowed to visit the reductions, and the intercourse of the fathers with other Europeans had to be concealed; yet they refused to teach Spanish to the natives on the ground that intercourse with the Spaniards would corrupt their morals. Their critics naturally inferred that they kept the races apart so that their monopoly of the trade might not be disturbed, and drew unfriendly comparisons between the comfortable houses of the missionaries and the rough unfurnished huts of their converts. We will return to the point when the great controversy about the reductions begins after 1645. Before that date they had a series of disasters to face and were partially destroyed. The hostile tribe of the Mamelus descended on them and drove most of them out of Paraguay. Of a hundred thousand subjects in the province of Guayra the Jesuits only retained and transferred twelve thousand.

The remaining Jesuit missions of the period may be dismissed briefly. They extended their operations to New Granada, but were expelled by the Archbishop of Santa Fe, at the complaint of the Spanish merchants, for mingling commerce with their preaching of the Gospel. In Canada they made little progress until the [Pg 194] English abandoned that region in 1632, and even afterwards they found great difficulty in forming settlements among the Indians. Another attempt was made to enter Abyssinia, and this also ended in disaster. For services rendered by the Portuguese to the Emperor they were allowed to preach their faith and made many converts. A Jesuit at last became "Patriarch of Abyssinia," and he involved the Emperor in a sanguinary repression of the native Christian Church. On the accession of a new Emperor, however, they were denounced to him for a conspiracy to win the country for Portugal, and were expelled once more. Letters of theirs which were intercepted show that the charge was not groundless. In the same period, finally, they obtained, through France, permission to enter the Turkish Empire, and they began the work of organising the surviving Christians, and assailing the Nestorians, in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Armenia and Chaldæa.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] This rare and curious work, which was often condemned and burned in subsequent years, was published in 1654, and affords a particularly unpleasant picture of the Spanish Jesuits. It was attributed to a distinguished Dominican monk. He denied the authorship, but many believe that the denial was merely a matter of policy.

[19] See the author's Iron Cardinal (1909), p. 341.

[20] Crétineau-Joly suppresses the whole of these facts, and describes Père de Bérulle as "intimately united with the Jesuits"! De Bérulle's letter to Richelieu is published in the Annales, ii. 738.

[21] Many of the documents are collected in the Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites. The most familiar procedure of the Jesuits was to accuse the monks of corruption and rely on their influence at court to prevent too close an inquiry. The French Conseil d'État forced them, as late as 4th August 1654, to restore three abbeys to their lawful owners.

With the exception of the English mission, which I have reserved for continuous treatment in this chapter, we have now surveyed the whole life of the Society of Jesus during the first century of its history. The most important conclusion that one can draw from this extensive and varied body of experiences is that every attempt to impose a uniform character on the early Jesuits must fail. The uniformity in virtue and heroism which is ascribed to the Society in the florid pages of the Imago Primi Sæculi is as far removed from the truth as the uniformly dark features which are imposed on the Jesuits by some writers of the opposing school. The candid historian must follow the example of Macaulay, and give contrasted pictures of the light and the darkness, the heroic devotion and the demoralising casuistry, which one equally discovers in that first century of Jesuit history; and his effort to do justice will miscarry, as that of Macaulay did, because Catholic writers will ingenuously detach the earlier and more flattering half of his verdict and represent it as his full conclusion.

This extreme variety of types is in itself an indication that the discipline of the Society had failed. Ignatius had laid stress on two rules: the novices were to be chosen with a care which the older orders had ceased to maintain, and the men were to be controlled [Pg 196] by a system of surveillance and abject submission to authority which should have secured a large measure of uniformity. We have seen that these rules were very largely disregarded. The complaint is constant and well founded that the Jesuits looked less to character and devotion than to ability and social position in examining the candidates for admission. It is, perhaps, singular that this did not at least give the Society a more imposing intellectual status. Crétineau-Joly has industriously collected the names of the chief writers and scholars who adorned the annals of the Society during the first two centuries. One need only say that, apart from theologians, there are very few names in the list that will be found in any impartial calendar of those who contributed to the development of modern culture. This vast society of leisured and comfortable bachelors offers us a singularly meagre statement of results. Its prominent names are generally the names of politicians and pamphleteers. This comparative poverty, apart from theology, is not surprising when we reflect that the purpose of the Society was to combat heresy; it is merely necessary to note the fact because the contrary is so frequently stated. In proportion to their numbers, their resources, and their exceptional opportunities (through their schools) of attracting eligible youths, the Jesuits are not, and never were, a learned body.

This general mediocrity of intellect is accompanied by a general mediocrity of character. Just as their vaunted system of education is singularly unsuccessful in developing higher ability, so their equally lauded spiritual exercises leave the great body at a very common level of character. When we have justly admired the apostles who here and there exhibit heroic self-sacrifice on the foreign missions, the communities[Pg 197] which here and there brave the horrors and dangers of a plague-stricken town, the few whose integrity of life wins the respect of people unattached to the Society, we find ourselves confronting a general body of men of no moral or spiritual distinction. During generation after generation the largest provinces of the Society persist in comfortable idleness, and the efforts of superiors to assert the despotic power they are supposed to possess are met with resentment and intrigue, and are nearly always foiled. The theoretical corpse-like passivity of the Jesuit is a sheer mockery of the facts of their history.

They stand out from the other religious congregations of the Roman world only in the attainment of greater power and wealth, and the means by which they attain them. Here alone is there a distinctive strand in the story of the Jesuits, perceptible from the foundation of the Society. Unquestionably they did far more for their Church in the first century after the Reformation than any other religious body; and they did this specifically by seeking wealth and power. They strained every nerve to secure the ear of popes, princes, and wealthy people. That was the plain direction of their founder. But we may be confident that Ignatius would not have sanctioned the fraud, hypocrisy, slander, intrigue, and approval of violence which this eagerness for power brought into the Society. In India and China, in England and Sweden, they assumed a right to lie in the service of God; and in the same high cause they counselled or connived at murder, slandered their fellow-priests, violated their sacred obligations, fostered wars, and accommodated the Christian ethic to the passions of wealthy or influential sinners. It was never necessary for a Jesuit theologian to declare that "the end justifies the [Pg 198] means." [22] If the phrase is regarded, not as a citation from a written book of rules, but as an interpretation of the conduct of the Jesuits, it expresses the most distinctive feature of the character of the Society during its first hundred years.

We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.

We left the Jesuits struggling in disguise and penury in England at the death of General Acquaviva (1615). After the wave of anger which the Gunpowder Plot had raised had partly subsided, dozens of Jesuits stole bravely into their native land and ministered stealthily to the persecuted Catholics. There were sixty-eight of them in England in 1615; by 1619 the number had increased to nearly two hundred, and the Roman officials raised the mission to the status of a vice-province; in 1623, when there were 284 members, they were formed into a Province of the Society, with Father Blount as Provincial. The indisposition of James I. to persecute emboldened them to act with greater vigour. The fantastic picture of their activity [Pg 199] in Crétineau-Joly is, of course, wholly inaccurate. We read of a Father Arrowsmith "issuing from his retreat" to challenge and defeat the Bishop of Chester in a debate, and expose himself to the prelate's vindictiveness. It was not in 1628, but some years before, that Edmund Arrowsmith argued with the Bishop of Chester; he was then not a Jesuit at all, and he did not issue from any retreat to challenge the prelate or suffer any vindictive punishment. He was arrested as a priest, happened to find the bishop eating meat on a Friday and argued the point in passing, and was released. [23]

The truth is that from 1607 to 1618 there were only sixteen persons executed on the ground of religion in England, and none of them was a Jesuit. The prisons, indeed, contained several hundred priests, and several thousand Catholic laymen, but James was disinclined to take extreme measures, and the priests had much liberty even in jail. Father Percy, a Durham man, converted 150 men and women of rank, including the Countess of Buckingham, mother of the famous minister, during his three years in the New Prison on the Thames. James himself condescended to debate with him, and Father Percy ended a long and adventurous career in bed. In 1622, in fact, when James began to negotiate with Spain for a Catholic princess for his son, four thousand Catholics were released from jail, and the execution of the penal laws was greatly relaxed. Catholics generally looked forward with eagerness to the marriage, but the Jesuits opposed it at the Vatican. It is [Pg 200] suggested that they dreaded the coming of a bishop in the train of the princess, but it is not improbable that they preferred an alliance with France. When the Spanish negotiations failed—and they would have failed without any assistance from the Jesuits—the laws were enforced once more with some rigour. Still it was only accident or imprudence that brought punishment on the Jesuits. In 1623 one of them, Father Drury, was preaching on a Sunday afternoon to some two or three hundred Catholics in the house of the French Ambassador at Blackfriars, when the floor gave way, and the preacher and a hundred others were killed. The common folk of London made ghastly merriment over "the doleful even-song." Five years later several Jesuits were caught in a house belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury at Clerkenwell. We find that they had there a regular novitiate and the residence of their Provincial. An imposing ceremony was to take place, and the large intake of provisions aroused the suspicion of the priest-hunters. Only one Jesuit was executed. In 1622 forty of the fathers had attended a provincial congregation of their Society in London, and they had decided to found colleges in Wales and Staffordshire.

There is, however, another aspect of the activity of the Jesuits in England which the French historian discreetly ignores. We saw in an earlier chapter how Father Parsons had intrigued to get control of the continental colleges and to prevent the sending of a bishop to England. His successors continued to exasperate the secular clergy by pursuing this selfish policy. Of the twenty-seven French and Flemish seminaries which supplied the large body of priests in England, the Jesuits controlled five, besides their colleges in Spain, and they made every effort to obtain [Pg 201] an ascendency over the priests. When the Archpriest died in 1621, the secular clergy again appealed to the Pope for a bishop, and the Jesuits again opposed the appeal. When, after a long struggle, the Pope inclined to make the appointment, the Jesuits induced Tobie Matthews (a Catholic son of the Archbishop of York) to have James informed. The King sent word to the Pope, through Spain, that he would not suffer the appointment, but he was later convinced that he had been misled and the secular priests obtained a "Bishop of Chalcedon." He died in the following year, and his successor seems to have been imprudent, as the Benedictine monks joined the Jesuits against him. The inner history of this domestic squabble is told us by Panzani, who was the Vatican agent in England a few years afterwards. He tells us that the Jesuits made an improper charge to the King against the Bishop, and he was driven to the Continent.

Since one of the chief problems of Jesuit history is to account for the bitter hostility to them of priests who were no less devoted than they in the service of Catholicism, it is necessary to notice this unpleasant wrangling and intrigue in the very heart of an heretical land. I may, however, refer to Father Taunton's History of the Jesuits in England for a longer account of this domestic struggle and return to the larger historical question.

The early years of the reign of Charles I. were not marred by any enforcement of the more drastic penal laws. The fining of lay Catholics—of whom about eleven thousand were known—still provided the King with a handsome addition to the privy purse, and indeed it was necessary to disarm the sullen suspicion with which the more zealous Protestants watched the foreign [Pg 202] queen and her spiritual court. No serious effort was made, however, to enforce the laws against the Jesuits, and they increased in numbers and resources. In 1628 they opened a second novitiate in London. In 1634 one of the secular clergy estimated that there were 360 Jesuits in England, and that they had 550 students in their colleges. This is evidently an exaggeration, as the Annual Letters report a total of 335 members of the Province in the year 1645, and disclose the interesting fact that they had a collective income of 17,405 scudi (about £35,000 in the value of modern money). It is stated by their clerical opponents that part of their income was derived from commerce. A certain soap was genially known in London as "the papist soap," and it is said that the Jesuits had, through their lay friends, shares in the factory which produced it. They were in a strong and comfortable position, and, had they been disposed to lay aside their corporate selfishness and co-operate generously with the other clergy, the story of religion in England might have entered upon a singular development.

In the reign of Charles what we now know as the "High Church" held a strong position, under Archbishop Laud, in the Church of England, and there were indications of a disposition to return to the allegiance of Rome. The head of the English Benedictine monks, Dom Jones, was sent by the Vatican in 1634 to examine and direct the situation, and he and his successor, Panzani, did much to reconcile the secular and the regular clergy. The Jesuits, however, would not be reconciled, and Panzani's reports to the Vatican are full of bitter charges against them. In the Catholic England which they foresaw they were determined to have a dominant position. It was said that they induced wealthy and influential penitents to make a special vow [Pg 203] of obedience to themselves, and they were even charged by the clergy with impeding the general restoration of Catholicism lest the new authorities should expel them from the kingdom. They retorted with a bitter attack on the papal agent. Virulent pamphlets were discharged from camp to camp, and the Jesuits represented Panzani as a secret agent of Richelieu, seeking to unite England and France in opposition to Spain. In spite of this intestine discord the Church of Rome continued to make progress until the shadow of the Civil War fell upon the land and the success of the Puritans once more stifled the hopes of the Catholics.

The relation of the Jesuits to the Puritans has never been fully elucidated—perhaps can never be fully elucidated—but there is sufficient evidence that they again proved their remarkable power of adaptation to varying circumstances. We will not suppose that they themselves offered the rebels the use of their theological doctrine of the right to depose and execute kings, or put into their hands Father Parsons's convenient Book of the Succession, part of which was published by the Parliament. But there is evidence that, under the Commonwealth, they were in indirect relations with Cromwell, and used their international connections to provide him with information about France. In Ireland they opposed the papal Nuncio, Pinuccini (as he bitterly complains), and were on good terms with Cromwell. A piquant picture is offered us of the Irish Jesuit, Father Netterville, dining and playing chess with the great leader of the Puritans. These manœuvres are lightly covered by their apologists with the pretext that Jesuits knew no politics.

There is, however, another side to the story of the Jesuits during the Civil War and under the Commonwealth. While Father Taunton seems to see nothing [Pg 204] but their intrigues with Cromwell, their French apologist sees nothing but a long series of bloody executions at the hands of the Puritans. Certainly, whatever the personal inclination of Cromwell was, and whatever use he may have made of the Jesuits, they suffered heavily in the Puritan reaction. Father Netterville himself, as well as Father Boyton, Father Corbie, and other Irish Jesuits, were executed. Father Holland had been executed in 1642, Father Corbie suffered the horrible death of a traitor at Tyburn in 1644, and Father Morse followed him in 1645. Morse was permitted to spend the night before his execution in prayer with the Portuguese ambassador, and representatives of the French, Spanish, and German ambassadors, and the French and Portuguese ambassadors accompanied him devoutly to the scaffold. Father Harrison was executed at Lancaster in 1650, and several other Jesuits perished in consequence of their rigorous treatment in prison. It will be noticed that these executions took place in the early fury of the Puritans, and it must be remembered that the Catholic laity were, in proportion to their numbers, the most generous and ardent supporters of the King. It is a fact that the executions cease when Cromwell becomes Protector (1653), and it is not impossible that, as we are told, he used the Jesuits to give a secret assurance to the Vatican in regard to religious persecution.

The less savage penal laws were, however, severely enforced, as one would expect in that Puritan atmosphere, and the records of the Jesuits become meagre and uninteresting. We know that in Ireland they were reduced to eighteen fathers, who, living in the marshes or on the bleak hillsides, ministered in great danger and privation to the oppressed people. In England they were confined to an obscure and dis [Pg 205]creet attempt to hold together the persecuted Catholics. The domestic quarrel was silenced by the fresh catastrophe that had fallen on them.

In 1660 Charles II. entered upon his reign, and Catholics came out into the sunlight once more. It is fairly established that during the first twelve years of his reign Charles was disposed to see the country return to its old faith. His personal inclination to Catholicism was so little profound that he could lightly abandon it the moment political events made it expedient to do so, but he was not insensible to the great advantage which was enjoyed by the Catholic autocrats of France and Spain. He therefore lent an indulgent ear when, at the beginning of his reign, the Catholics petitioned for relief. The body of the nation was still strenuously Protestant, and the cry was raised that at least the Jesuits must be exempted from any measure of toleration. Many of the Catholics pressed the Jesuits to sacrifice their province to the general good of the Church, but we can hardly be surprised to learn that they emphatically refused, and a long wrangle ensued. When it was urged that their teaching that the Pope could depose kings unfitted them to remain in the country, they promptly repudiated that doctrine. They remained and prospered. After a few years, in fact, they were brought into friendly relations with Charles in a singular and secret way.

Their constitutions as well as stringent papal decrees forbade them to receive men of irregular birth into the Society, but we have often found them doing this, when the sin of the parent was redeemed by the distinction of his position, and we can imagine their joy when one of the illegitimate children of Charles II. presented himself at their Roman novitiate in 1668. James de la Cloche, as the youth called himself, was known by [Pg 206] them to be in reality James Stuart, and it was not unknown that Charles was attached to him and thought his accession to the throne a not impossible dream. Genial letters passed, in secret, between the English monarch and the General of the Jesuits; money was sent to General Oliva from London, and after a time the young Jesuit was stealthily conveyed to London and permitted to enjoy the embrace of his father.

It is not surprising that the Society prospered. In 1669 there were 266 members of the English province. In the same year their Provincial, Father Emmanuel Lobb, converted the Duke of York to the Roman faith, and, although the secret was carefully guarded from Protestants for a time, the news gave great joy and hope to the Catholics. A little later Charles himself told some of the leading Catholic nobles that he wished to embrace their creed, and would openly declare it if he could be assured of defence against Protestant anger. In the following year a secret treaty was signed at Dover with Louis XIV. Charles was to declare his adoption of the Roman faith, and Louis was, in case of need, to supply French troops for the subjection of the English Protestants and, in any case, to provide large sums of money for the unscrupulous King of England. Whether Charles and the Catholic nobles really believed that Louis XIV. would consider the conversion of England a sufficient reward of his generosity, it would be difficult to say. The design was treasonable for all concerned.

The Jesuits were now at the summit of a wave of hope. The King was a secret Catholic, and was married to a Catholic, Catherine of Braganza, who was under their control. The marriage seemed to be sterile, but the Duke of York, the next heir to the throne, was more devoted to them than any other [Pg 207] prince in Europe. The alliance with France was controlled by them, as Louis XIV. was at that time entirely docile to his famous Jesuit confessor. To the increasing horror of the Protestants, Jesuit fathers now began to appear confidently in public. Two of them ministered to the Queen; two guarded the conscience of the Duke of York. At the same time war was declared with Holland, and Charles issued his Declaration of Indulgence. It seemed that at last the clouds were being swept from the heavens, and, whatever the political development was, the Jesuits were on the way to attain power over the throne. With English laws (or royal declarations) and French troops they would soon make an end of Protestantism in England, and, with the combined forces of England and France, return to the attack on the northern Protestants.

Then there occurred the "Popish Plot," or the imaginary plot of Titus Oates, and a furious storm whistled about their ears. Charles had soon realised the futility of the French alliance, made peace with the Dutch, and appeased his Protestant subjects by revoking the Declaration of Indulgence. On the whole, it paid him better to remain a Protestant. The natural and proper attitude for the Catholics was now to await in silence the accession of the Duke of York, as Catherine remained childless, but the Protestants were already looking to William of Orange and not obscurely hinting that the Catholic Duke of York was unfit to ascend the throne. Dutch agents distributed money among nobles and parliamentarians; French and Catholic agents distributed louis d'or in the interest of York and Catholicism. Whatever we may say of the Dutch, a secret and treasonable correspondence was maintained by the Catholics with France. This correspondence was [Pg 208] maintained on the English side by a zealous secretary of the Duke of York, named Coleman, a pupil and friend of the Jesuits. We shall see that Coleman was afterwards arrested, and his papers seized, so that there is no dispute about the fact that from 1675 to 1678 Coleman was in treasonable correspondence with the French. French money and, in emergency, French troops were to be employed for the destruction of the Established Church. The letters were generally in cipher, and at times the secret message was written in lemon-juice (which would become legible if held before the fire) between the lines.

We are now asked to believe that this plot originated in the exalted imagination of Coleman, and that the Jesuits were not privy to his correspondence with Versailles. Jesuits in London were on such a footing at St. James's Palace that they were allowed to hold their secret meetings in its chambers, and on the French side the whole correspondence was conducted by the famous Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV., Père la Chaise; and the apologists would have us believe that this correspondence, of such profound import to the future of the Jesuit body in England, was carried on for several years without their knowledge and connivance. We should have to believe, in fact, that even the Duke of York was ignorant of it, since he concealed nothing from the Jesuits, and that Père la Chaise did not give the least inkling of it to his colleagues. One would need an extraordinary measure of credulity to imagine the Jesuits frequenting St. James's Palace week after week for years and being entirely ignorant that their friend Coleman was receiving important messages all the time from their French colleague.

Hence Mr. Pollock concludes, in his recent and able [Pg 209] study of the "Popish Plot," [24] that we may adopt, or adapt, the familiar verdict of Dryden on the plot:—

"Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed with lies." It is now universally admitted that Titus Oates and his chief witnesses were little more than reckless liars, playing upon the inflamed Protestant feeling of the time, but it would be generally admitted that a plot, such as I have described, was really afoot. Since, however, Mr. Pollock also concludes that the Jesuits probably instigated and procured the murder of the London magistrate, it is necessary to reopen the question.

Titus Oates, a little full-bodied man with large purple face and a complete lack of moral feeling, had joined the Catholic Church and been admitted by the Jesuits to their college at Valladolid. He was expelled, but it seems likely that he had gleaned some information about their hopes and designs in England, and, when he returned to London, he entered into communication with a fanatical anti-Papist named Dr. Tonge, though he continued to move amongst the Catholics. It says little for the discrimination of the Jesuits that they then admitted the man to the college at St. Omer's, from which he was once more expelled. Tonge and he then brewed the Popish Plot, and had the King informed that the Jesuits sought his life. Charles smiled, and, in September, the conspirators went before a well-known magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey—a Protestant, but a personal friend of Coleman and well disposed toward the Catholics—and laid information of a ghastly project of the Catholics to destroy the Protestants of London. The situation—a Catholic heir to the throne [Pg 210] awaiting the death of a Protestant king, with a Dutch pretender gaining ground in London—seemed so ripe for a plot that London was seized with a dramatic terror, and the Privy Council was compelled to listen seriously to a story which was palpably false in many details and ridiculous in others. Father Whitbread, the Jesuit Provincial, and two of his colleagues were arrested; and, when the letters of Coleman were seized and found to have references to "the mighty work on our hands," the story seemed to be confirmed. Then Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found dead in a ditch at the foot of Primrose Hill, and the city was shaken with frenzy. For months the trained bands were kept under arms at nights, and citizens slept nervously with arms beside them, ready to spring up at a cry that the firing of houses and massacre of Protestants had begun.

In that period of rage and panic the character of the witnesses who came forward to claim the offered reward was not examined, their inconsistencies were ignored, and several men of low character became passing rich by swearing away the lives of others. Three men, who were probably innocent, were hanged for murdering Godfrey in Somerset House (then the Queen's Palace), and three Jesuits—Father Le Fevre (the Queen's confessor), Father Walsh, and Father Pritchard—were accused of having hired the assassins. In the end seven Jesuit priests and a lay-brother were executed, a large number of Jesuits, secular priests, and laymen were imprisoned, and a reign of terror fell upon the Catholic population. It seemed as if the great dream of the conversion of England was once more ruthlessly dissipated.

The witness Bedloe, who accused the Jesuits, was so mean a character, and so well rewarded for making a charge which people wanted, that we must ignore [Pg 211] his evidence. If we attach any importance to the declarations of the Catholic witness Prance, as Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen and others have done, it would seem that Bedloe had really learned something about the murder, and it may or may not be true that the Jesuits were involved in it. We certainly cannot admit this on the evidence of Bedloe. On the other hand, few, except Roman Catholics, who read the evidence will doubt that Godfrey had been murdered and his body had been conveyed to the spot where it was found. There was hardly any trace of blood at the spot, and Godfrey's sword had been driven through his body in a way which precludes the idea of suicide. It was still clearer that he had not been murdered for the purpose of robbery. The circumstances point to a political assassination, and, as there is ample evidence that Godfrey expected an attack on his life, it is natural to suppose that he was removed lest he should betray some secret of which he had become possessed.

The hypothesis of Mr. Pollock is that Coleman had told Godfrey of the meeting of the Jesuits in St. James's Palace. Oates had declared that the Jesuits met to concert their plot, at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand, on the 24th April 1678. James II. admitted some years afterwards that the Jesuits met on that date, but at St. James's Palace, and the Jesuit Father Warner has left it on record that they did hold their Provincial Congregation on that date in St. James's Palace. If it were known at that time that forty Jesuits had held a secret council in the Duke's Palace the consequences might have been very serious, and there is therefore some plausibility in the statement of a later witness, Dugdale, that the Protestant magistrate was removed because he learned this fact from Coleman. We know that Godfrey secretly consulted [Pg 212] Coleman after he had received the depositions of Oates and Tonge; we have good reason to believe that he laid those depositions before Coleman; and it is not improbable that Coleman refuted the testimony of Oates by disclosing that the Jesuit meeting took place in James's Palace, not in the White Horse. It would assuredly be a grave matter for the Jesuits if this were known, and it would almost be enough to prevent the succession of James II.

This must remain a mere hypothesis. I may recall that, according to the teaching of many Jesuit theologians, the assassination of a man in order to prevent grave harm to the Church was not a crime, but a laudable act. But many others, besides the Jesuits, would be interested in taking drastic measures to ensure the position of the Duke of York, nor is it more than a conjecture that Godfrey learned of the meeting. It is possible that this meeting was by no means an innocent "congregation" of Jesuits to discuss their affairs; and it is just as possible that the real cause of the murder has never yet occurred to us. It remains one of the numerous unsolved problems in the story of the Jesuits.

The remaining years of the reign of Charles II. were years of suffering for the Jesuits. They continued to enter the country in disguise and minister to the fiercely persecuted Catholics. We learn that in 1682 the Province counted 295 members, and that in 1685 they had no less than 102 priests working in England. In those harsh times they endured the worst rigours of an apostolic life. Whether or no they were innocent of murder, many Catholics felt that their presence in England was inflammatory and their conduct indiscreet, and familiar houses were closed against them. Several of them died from the privations which they had to [Pg 213] suffer. But an ardent and steady hope fired them to meet their perils and sufferings, and in the first week of February 1685 the news rang through the stricken and scattered ranks that Charles was dead and a devoted Catholic about to ascend the throne of England.

The historian who realises that this was to be the last chance which the fates would offer to the Catholic Church of obtaining power and majority in England reads the story of those three years of triumph and ineptitude with strange reflections. Never was a great opportunity more tragically wasted. The overwhelming majority of the nation, the officials, and the Parliament were not merely Protestant, but feverishly vigilant and intensely suspicious of the Jesuits. It was a time for infinite patience and restrained diplomacy, and, so far as we can ascertain, the Vatican itself, and Cardinal Howard who advised the Papacy at Rome, fully realised the need. But the Jesuits were in command, and they gave the most flagrant exhibition in their annals of the unwisdom and mischief of their distinctive methods. Although a Protestant prince grimly smiled on their blunders in Holland, and his agents in England eagerly magnified every indiscretion, they proceeded with the most imprudent defiance of Protestant feeling. Within two years they were spreading schools and churches over London, talking of the speedy capture of the universities and the magistracy, and placing one of their own number among the Privy Councillors. And in less than four years James II. was flying ignominiously for France, with the Jesuits in his train.

This romantic episode has inspired one of the finest chapters of Macaulay's History of England, and, whatever blame be laid on the shoulders of[Pg 214] Sunderland, there is no question but that the Jesuits were very largely responsible for the unhappy counsels of James II. One of his first acts was to lodge Father Edward Petre in the princely chambers of St. James's Palace, and put the Chapel Royal under his charge; and in a short time he made Petre Clerk of the Closet. The prisons were opened, the recusants now emerged boldly from their secluded homes, and the Jesuits summoned their continental colleagues to come and share the work of harvesting. New chapels were opened in London; and in more than one case, when other priests proposed to open chapels, royal influence cut short their design and secured the buildings for the Jesuits. Free "undenominational" schools were opened, and hundreds of Protestant, as well as Catholic, boys were attracted to these insidious nurseries of the faith by the unwonted absence of fees.

In all this we may see only undue haste and indiscretion, but the policy developed rapidly. When Parliament refused to carry out the wishes of the monarch and his advisers, he proceeded by "dispensing power," and tampered with the judges in order to have his power ratified. Four Catholics were introduced into the Privy Council, and the nobles and officials gradually realised that baptism was the first qualification for higher office. When the Bishop of London refused to suspend a priest for attacking Romanism, an ecclesiastical commission was created to suspend the bishop and stifle the voices of the Protestant clergy. On his own authority James suspended the penal measures, issued a Declaration of Indulgence, interfered with the rights of Protestants in Ireland, solemnly received a papal Nuncio at Windsor, and sent the Earl of Castlemaine as ambassador to the Papacy. The civil and military offices were rapidly [Pg 215] transferred to Catholics, and before the end of 1686 Oxford and Cambridge began to feel the illegal pressure of the royal authority in favour of the Catholic creed.

As these things coincided with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecution of the Protestants in France (from which James, like his brother, received royal alms) the Protestants saw before them a prospect of violence and persecution. Yet James multiplied his indiscreet and, in many cases, illegal acts with blind fanaticism. When the inevitable catastrophe came, the Jesuits deplored the injudiciousness of their patron and cast all the blame on Sunderland. While, however, Sunderland remained a Protestant until a few months before the fall of James, the monarch was throughout the three years surrounded by Jesuits and abjectly devoted to them. A letter written by the Jesuits of Liège to the Jesuits of Freiburg, and intercepted by the Dutch, informs us of the influence they had on James II. [25] He is a devoted son of the Society; he is determined to convert England by its means; he refuses to allow any Jesuit to kiss his hand. And the public action corresponds to the secret letter. Father Warner, the Provincial of the Society, is the King's confessor; Father Petre, a vain and pompous mediocrity, is so much esteemed by him that he besieges the Vatican with a demand of a red hat for Petre. Already courtiers pleasantly address the conceited Jesuit as "Your Eminence." But Innocent XI. is stern and will not countenance the blunders of the English monarch. Castlemaine vainly seeks to impress the Pope with his ambassadorial splendour, and is forced to return with a curt reminder that Jesuits cannot receive dignities. So James makes the Jesuit a Privy Councillor, and [Pg 216] Father Petre takes the Oath of Allegiance (with its supposed heresy) and sits in clerical garb in the supreme council of the land. His Roman superiors have not a word to say, either when Petre acquiesces in the demand for a red hat or when he becomes a Privy Councillor. M. Crétineau-Joly is shocked; Father Taunton opines that the whole policy is directed by the Jesuit authorities at Rome.

In later years, when the Jesuits and courtiers gathered about the fallen monarch in his pleasant exile, the entire blame for the folly was naturally laid upon the wicked Earl of Sunderland, and historians have, perhaps, paid unnecessarily serious attention to this charge. We need not stay to analyse the possible motives of Sunderland, who assuredly had no sincere wish to see England return to its old creed. Like Louis XIV., Pedro I., and Charles II., who then ruled in France, Portugal, and Spain, James II. was surrounded by a junta of Jesuits, and he was even more docile than his fellow-monarchs to their suggestions. Those who find it possible may believe that these Jesuits were so reluctant to interfere in politics that they silently permitted an unscrupulous minister to blast the prospects of their Society and Church. We have, on the contrary, sufficient documentary evidence that they applauded, if they did not inspire, every rash step taken by the King, and we recognise their familiar maxims in his whole policy. They were, no doubt, well acquainted with the political principles advocated by their colleague, Adam Contzen, a Jesuit professor at Munich. In a work which he published in 1620 (Politicorum libri decem), Father Contzen, incidentally, proposed some effective devices by which a Catholic monarch might lead his heretical country back to the faith. After very properly condemning "the impious doctrine of Machiavelli," Father[Pg 217] Contzen enumerates a number of measures that should be taken, and he expressly mentions England as a field of experiment. Violence is recommended as an obvious course; the leaders of the heretics must be expelled, and they must be forbidden to hold either public or private meetings. But the distinctive suggestions of the learned Jesuit are, that the prince must cover his initial efforts with a profession of toleration, he must first choose for attack those heresiarchs who are unpopular, he must ingeniously set the rival sects to rend each other and "take care that they often dispute together," he must enact that no marriage shall take place unless it be preceded by a profession of the true faith, and he must transfer all the offices and dignities of the State to Catholics.

On these principles, or maxims, James II. was proceeding in his zealous attempt to destroy the Church of England in five years. All the Lord Lieutenants and most of the judges were already Catholic, the Jesuits boasted, and in a short time all the magistrates in England would be Catholic. Trinity College, Dublin, was already promised to the Jesuits, and Oxford was not showing a very stern resistance to their advance. Soon all education and civil and military government would be in Catholic hands. The Queen had as yet given no heir to the throne, it was true, but they had ground to believe that, if he died childless, James would leave the English crown at the disposal of Louis XIV.

Then James, besides sending Judge Jeffreys to deal with insurgents in the provinces, made a bolder attack upon the Church. He ordered the bishops to direct the clergy to read from their pulpits his declaration of liberty of conscience. It is well known how seven of the bishops refused, were committed to the Tower, and acquitted by the jury, to the frenzied delight of [Pg 218] the city. Just at this time the Queen was delivered of a son, and the announcement was greeted with derision. Another trick of the Jesuits, people said; but, genuine or not genuine, the child meant a continuance of the tyranny of the Catholic minority, and the Prince of Orange was invited to come and seize the crown. He set sail in four months; and before Christmas, William entered London, and James and his Jesuits were in exile. Six of them shared his luxurious retreat at St. Germains, and discussed with him the naughtiness of Sunderland and the appalling wreck of their hasty enterprise.

The English Province of the Society continued to exist, and had a large number of members, until the suppression. Although the penal laws were again enforced, and it was decreed that any Jesuit who was found in the kingdom after 25th March 1700 would be imprisoned for life, the fathers still exhibited the courage and devotion which do so much to redeem their errors. In 1701 there were 340 members of the Province, though most of these were in Belgium or with the Catholic colonists in Maryland. In 1708 we find 158 members of the Society in England, generally living in the houses of the Catholic nobility and gentry. Their work was now almost confined to a ministration to the depressed Catholics. They reported only 3000 conversions to the faith between 1700 and 1708, and many of these were soldiers quartered in Belgium. In 1711 they had 12,000 Catholics under their spiritual charge. But even in this restricted sphere they maintained the struggle against the secular clergy, and published many pamphlets against them. "Jansenism" was the latest heresy they had discovered, and they denounced the secular clergy to Rome as tainted with it. At last, as the eighteenth century[Pg 219] wore on, they realised that all these old conflicts were yielding to a mighty struggle. The Society is fighting for its life against Catholic opponents. In 1759 it is suppressed, with great ignominy, in Portugal; in 1762 it is suppressed in France; in 1767 even Spain ruthlessly expels the body to which it had given birth.

The English Jesuits had already begun to suffer from this terrible campaign. When Louis XV. ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from his kingdom, the Paris Parlement saw to the closing of their college at St. Omer. A long procession of waggons, containing the teachers and pupils, trailed drearily across the country, and deposited them, in great misery and dejection, at Bruges. There, ten years later, they suffer the supreme punishment of suppression by the Papacy, and the Privy Council of Brussels carries out the sentence with the harshness which in every country teaches them how deeply they are hated. The 90 members of the English Province who are found in Belgium, and the 184 fathers who are at work in England, sadly divest themselves of the familiar costume and face the bleak future. This is the tragic culmination of two centuries of heroic struggle and sacrifice; it is the price of the blunders and crimes of their politicians and the casuistic excesses of their theologians.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] It may be well to state that no theologian ever said, in so many words: "The end justifies the means." The nearest approach is, perhaps, the saying of the Jesuit Busenbaum—

"To him to whom the end is lawful, the means also is lawful."

[23] He joined the Society afterwards, in 1624, and was arrested (on a Catholic denunciation) and executed in 1628. This section of the French historian's work is particularly inaccurate and fantastic. See Father Foley's Records, ii. p. 32, for Arrowsmith.

[24] J. Pollock, The Popish Plot, 1903. For a desperate defence of the Catholic position, in opposition to Mr. Pollock, see A. Marks, Who Killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey? 1905.

[25] As the letter is inconvenient, Crétineau-Joly suggests that it was forged. But it is admitted by the Jesuit Father Foley, without demur, in his Records.

The story of the Jesuits in France from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century is rich in material for the interpretation of their character. We find every conceivable type of Jesuit rising to prominence at some period in the long chronicle. While a Father François Régis or a Julien Manvir sustains the finest traditions of the Society by a splendid expenditure of a noble character in the service of the squalid peasantry, his colleagues smile indulgently upon the perfumed vices of nobles and princes, enter into the most unscrupulous intrigues for the destruction of their theological opponents, and encourage Louis XIV. in the belief that he may do penance for his sins on the backs of the Jansenists and Protestants. While, during a whole generation, they direct the fingers of the Pope in virtue of their supreme and peculiar zeal for his authority, they, in the next generation, secure the praise of the Parlement and the gratitude of the court by a most extraordinary intrigue against the Papacy. In the new-built palace of Versailles they obtain a paramount influence over the greatest autocrat of modern history; they fill the Gallican Church with prelates who will obey their commands; they crush Protestantism in France; and they seem to have almost attained the great ideal of their Society—the control of the courts[Pg 221] which control the earth. And within another generation their varied enemies unite and drive them ignominiously from the country.

This singular history centres, for the greater part of the time, on the struggle between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the origin of which may be briefly recalled. I have in earlier chapters referred to the theological victory of the Jesuits over Michel de Bay at Louvain, and to the fierce and protracted struggle they had with the Dominican theologians in Spain and Italy. It may be remembered that this furious struggle as to the real relations of divine grace and the human will had to be suppressed by the Papacy, and all further controversy on the subject was forbidden. When therefore, in the thirties of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits heard that a certain brilliant and virtuous abbé at Paris and a learned theologian of Belgium were plotting to introduce a new work on the subject, they watched them with care.

Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, or the abbé de St. Cyran, was an energetic Basque who had finished his theological studies at Louvain University. There he had become intimate with a Belgian student named Jansen, who had views, opposed to those of the Jesuits, on the action of grace. St. Cyran, returning to France, became a secret apostle of these views, and hinted that a learned defence of them was being written. It happened that at that time a Puritan movement was arising within the French Church, as a protest against the extreme laxity of the age; and, as the Jesuits were regarded by the Puritans as encouraging this laxity by their remarkable works on casuistry (as we shall see later), there was a predisposition to accept anti-Jesuit views. Further, there was already a tradition of hostility to the Jesuits[Pg 222] among the Puritans. The chief centre of the ascetic movement was the famous abbey of Port Royal, and the abbess of Port Royal, Angélique Arnauld, was a daughter of the great lawyer who had more than once formulated the grievances of the Parlement against the Society. Several members of his large and brilliant family were drawn into the movement.

Angélique Arnauld had been committed to the abbey at a very early age by her parents; and, although it shared the general laxity of convents at that time, she chafed for years against her fate. The abbey was in a wild, marshy, unhealthy valley, about eighteen miles from Paris. In the course of time Angélique was converted, and she became abbess of the convent, and devoted all her energy and talent to the purification of its life. It became a famous garden of conventual virtues, and, when the unhealthiness of the valley compelled the nuns to transfer their establishment to Paris in 1626, every pietist in the city was attracted to the abbey of Port Royal de Paris. St. Cyran fell into correspondence with Angélique, defended a book of hers which the Jesuits denounced, and in 1633 became the spiritual director of the community. The convent now had pretensions to be a school of fine taste in letters as well as of virtue, and numbers of the more sincerely religious writers and ladies of Paris looked to it as a kind of club. The Jesuits regarded this independent school of virtue and theology with some apprehension, and, when Jansen died in 1638, and whispers of a posthumous publication of his great work were intercepted, St. Cyran was imprisoned in Vincennes by order of Richelieu. We need not press the suspicion that the cardinal was instigated by the Jesuits. Jansen had satirically assailed the policy of Richelieu in a political [Pg 223] work, and the cardinal may have thought it advisable to seize the papers of St. Cyran in order to find some clue to the mysterious work of Jansen which his admirers were secretly promising to the world. St. Cyran also had declined to oblige the cardinal, and he assailed doctrines which Richelieu had espoused in his early theological works. It is, however, to be noted that, when St. Cyran was released, at the death of Richelieu (1642), and his papers restored, it was found that the Jesuits had appropriated some of his letters.

St. Cyran continued to direct the movement from Vincennes, and it entered upon a singular and momentous development. Angélique inspired her nephew, the brilliant young lawyer Le Maistre, her brother Antoine, and other able and serious young men, with her sentiments, and they determined to live a communal and ascetic life. In 1637 they took possession of the deserted buildings of Port Royal aux Champs, and were soon known to all Paris as the virtuous "Solitaries" of the bleak and remote valley. The joy of the good clergy and the amusement of the frivolous were equalled by the exasperation of the Jesuits. The Solitaries passed stern censure on the leniency of Jesuit confessors; and their spirit spread like a ferment through the city, and had the singular effect of inducing penitents to abandon their Jesuit confessors because they had been converted to virtue. At the same time the rumour spread that Jansen's great work was about to see the light. He had died in 1638, leaving his manuscript in the charge of his friends at Louvain. The local Jesuits watched their movements with the assiduity of detectives, and discovered that the work was in the press. It is acknowledged that they bribed the printers, who were sworn[Pg 224] to secrecy, to give them sheets of the book, and they complained to the Nuncio that the Louvain professors were about to issue a work on the forbidden topic of grace and free will. Intrigue was met by counter-intrigue,—a piquant situation in view of the sacred theme of the book,—and it was published in 1640, and immediately afterwards published also at Paris.

This small, innocent, and academic treatise, the Augustinus of Jansen, was destined to set Europe aflame for decades. The historic controversy of St. Augustine and the Welsh priest Pelagius, which it recalled, was far surpassed by this modern effort to conciliate the freedom of the human will with the compelling power of grace. Pulpits and schools rang with mutual anathemas; pamphlets of ponderous learning and biting irony mingled with the latest chronique scandaleuse on the book-stalls. But the Jesuit was never content with that free arena of controversy in which he claimed to excel. Rome must condemn his opponents, and the familiar intrigues were set afoot at Rome. The Inquisition denounced the book on the ground that the subject was prohibited. That did not suffice for the Jesuits, nor did it check the flow of argument and invective; and on 6th March 1642, Urban VIII. solemnly condemned the book. The Jansenists had now, however, friends among the prelates, and the bull was not published in France with the customary solemnity. The controversy still raged sullenly, only restrained by Richelieu's spies; and when he died and St. Cyran was released (in the same year), it broke out again into flagrant publicity.

Meantime, a new champion had entered the field, and the attack on the Jesuits assumed a more personal form. Anne de Rohan, Princess of Guémenée and mistress of Archbishop Paul de Gondi (later Cardinal [Pg 225] de Retz), fell under the influence of Arnauld d'Andilly and St. Cyran, and their oratory and her advancing years persuaded her that the hour had come to turn to virtue. She had had a Jesuit confessor, like so many of the noble dames and bejewelled prelates who did not deign even to conceal their amours, and he was naturally piqued to find that, as the princess advanced in virtue, she discarded him in favour of St. Cyran. There is no doubt whatever of Anne de Rohan's sincerity, and it is little short of infamous for Crétineau-Joly to say that she "placed her elegant coquetries under the safeguard of the aged Arnauld d'Andilly," and that she was at the same time "the guest of Port Royal and the mistress of Paul de Gondi." The discarded Jesuit submitted to her a manuscript attack on the more rigorous principles she had embraced; Anne de Rohan showed this indignantly to St. Cyran; and the brilliant young brother of Angélique Arnauld was requested to reply. His book De la fréquente Communion (1641) led to a controversy as acrid and noisy as that over the Augustinus.

Arnauld had foreseen the attack; he had submitted the manuscript to theologians, and, when it was denounced by the angry Jesuits, he was able to secure the support of four archbishops, twelve bishops, and a number of doctors of divinity. This alliance of a powerful minority of the higher French clergy with the Jansenists was destined to give the Jesuits serious trouble. One cannot quite endorse the statement that all the virtuous men in the French episcopacy were opposed to the Jesuits, and all the vicious prelates in favour of them. But it was an age so flagrantly immoral that the greater part of the higher clergy had their mistresses, their hounds and hawks, and their boxes at the opera, while on the fringe of the Church were crowds of abbés (often not priests) who led very dissolute lives. The Jesuits [Pg 226] had for some time, in virtue of their influence at court, had a voice in the appointment of prelates—we shall find them entirely controlling it in a few years—and there is no doubt that they nominated men of little character who were willing to support them; just as they accepted for the English mission priests of little culture or character, because they could be the more easily dominated. On the other hand, the Jansenists represented, above all things, a rigorous standard of Christian character. The name which the Jesuits have fastened on them implies that they were wedded to certain academic, if not heretical, theories of Bishop Jansen. This is untrue. They were mostly laymen, indifferent to speculative theology, pleading only that the Christian faith demanded a stricter standard of conduct than French Christians generally exhibited. The correct name for them is the Puritans.

Hence it is largely, not entirely, true that the best of the prelates were opposed to the Jesuits. It is now known that even Bossuet, who sternly opposed the Jesuits, had his secret amours, and there were, on the other hand, men of ascetic life, if not very clear intelligence (like Vincent de Paul), on the side of the Jesuits. However, the open declaration of so large and powerful a body of the clergy exasperated the Jesuits, and the war of sermons and pamphlets reached a stage of incandescence. Father Nouet denounced Arnauld as "fantastic, melancholic, lunatic, blind, malicious, furious," and showered upon him such concrete epithets as serpent, scorpion, wolf, and monster. Arnauld had ventured to say that sinful ladies must keep away from the Holy Sacrament. But Father Nouet went on to assail the sixteen prelates who had approved Arnauld's book, and this led to his undoing. To their great mortification the Jesuit superiors were forced to disavow [Pg 227] and reprimand their preacher, and the Jansenists triumphed. The Jesuits retorted, however, by intrigue at the court, and induced Mazarin and the Queen-Regent to order Arnauld to go and defend his book at Rome. This was a violation of the rights of the Gallican Church, and the university, the Parlement, and the clergy protested so violently that the project had to be abandoned.

St. Cyran had died in the meantime (in 1643) and Arnauld was leader of the growing and powerful body of Puritans. As the next move of the Jesuits at court would be to secure a lettre de cachet, and lodge him in the Bastille or Vincennes, he returned to the provinces and the struggle was transferred to Rome. The prelates who had approved Arnauld's book appealed to the Pope in its favour, and a learned theologian was sent to Rome to defeat the manœuvres of the Jesuits. As a result, after two years of violent discussion, the book was declared free of heresy. The Jesuits, who had declared that thirty propositions in the book were unsound, now concentrated upon an innocent parenthetic phrase in the preface. Arnauld had referred to Peter and Paul as "two chiefs who were really one," and it was claimed that this was an attack on the papacy. After another year of wrangling and intrigue the innocuous sentence was condemned, and the Jesuits proclaimed throughout Europe that they had triumphed.

The next step was to enforce in France the bull of Urban VIII. condemning the Augustinus of Jansen. The Sorbonne (the theological school of the university) received a papal brief directing them to accept the bull, and, in spite of court-pressure, the theologians justly replied that they were not concerned with the opinions of a Belgian theologian. Again the pulpits of Paris—the artillery of the spiritual army—opened fire, and the [Pg 228] pamphleteers were busy. Then the syndic of the Sorbonne, Cornet, a friend of the Jesuits, submitted seven propositions to the judgment of that body. He named no author, and expressly (and mendaciously) stated that they did not refer to Jansen, but it was well known that the sentences were supposed to have been extracted from the work of Jansen, and an intense struggle followed. The cause was won, as usual, by intrigue. There was some dispute at the time how far the monastic theologians could vote at the Sorbonne, but they were brought up in force, against the view of the lawyers, and five propositions were condemned and reported to Rome. It was now openly stated that the five propositions were taken from Jansen's book.

The Papacy still hesitated, in view of the disputable nature of the Sorbonne vote, and intimated that the French prelates should be induced to ask for a condemnation. According to M. Crétineau-Joly, the reply was prompt and spontaneous. "The General Assembly of the clergy opens at Paris, and eighty-eight bishops denounce the five propositions to Pope Innocent"; the Jesuits, he says, stood aside and let the prelates speak. But the French historian must have been aware that the question was not submitted to the General Assembly at all. The signatures were obtained privately, and the whole procedure was so insidious that we are not sure to-day whether seventy, or eighty, or ninety bishops demanded a condemnation. It is necessary to note these details, if we are to understand the Catholic sentiment which later swept the Jesuits out of France. About eighty bishops apparently were induced privately to request the Pope to condemn the propositions; other prelates wrote to beg the Pope to abstain. However, the Vatican was now officially invited to pronounce, and the war of theologians was resumed at Rome.

In the meantime the Jesuits of Paris sustained a painful check in their attack on the Jansenists. One of their number, Father Brisacier, published a pamphlet, Le Jansenisme confondu (1651), in which, not only were the familiar invectives showered upon the Solitaries, but the moral character of the nuns of Port Royal was attacked. These were the nuns whom a hostile archbishop afterwards declared to be "as pure as angels and as proud as devils." The purity of their lives was notorious, and intense indignation was felt. The Archbishop of Paris formally condemned the pamphlet as "containing many lies and impostures," and Father Brisacier was removed—promoted to the rectorship of the college at Rouen—by his superiors. No Jesuit, of course, wrote without authorisation, and the many abominable pamphlets they issued at this time against the Puritans implicate the whole Parisian Province.

We need not follow the course of the trial at Rome. After a two years' struggle Innocent X. issued his famous bull in which the five propositions were declared to be heretical, and to be contained in the work of Jansen. The Jesuits emitted a pyrotechnic discharge of oratory and pamphlets—one broadside of the time represented Bishop Jansen as a devil flying to the Protestants—but they had overreached themselves. No Jansenist (not even Jansen) had ever taught the five propositions, and there was not a man in France who wished to defend them. But the Jesuits had insisted on the pronouncement that the propositions were contained in Jansen, and this gave rise to a formidable controversy in which the prelates were at liberty to join. It may seem to the modern reader an appalling waste of energy and perversion of character that so powerful a body should spend their resources for twenty years in a war on such abstruse propositions, [Pg 230] but from this point the struggle becomes frankly ridiculous. For nearly eighty years we shall find the Jesuits straining every device of craft and learning to ensure that every man in France shall agree that the Pope (who had never read Jansen's book) was right in declaring the five propositions to be contained in the Augustinus; and the controversy they sustain will draw on themselves the appalling scourge of Pascal's Provincial Letters and on the papacy the defiant declaration of the Gallican Church. We are compelled to recognise a lamentable corporate ambition and perversion of character in their conduct.

The Puritans coolly replied that they were not interested in the five propositions which the Pope had condemned, but that, as a matter of plain truth, they must protest against the ascription of these views to Bishop Jansen. So the war proceeded. It was at this time, in 1654, that the Jesuits made a ludicrous attempt to discredit their opponents by revealing the famous "Plot of Bourg Fontaine": a plot as rich in imagination and crude in fictitious detail as the Titus Oates plot. They had discovered, they gravely reported, that St. Cyran, Arnauld, and four other Jansenists had, twenty-three years before, met secretly in an obscure village to concert a plot for the destruction of Christianity in France. Arnauld was nine years old at the time given as the year of the conspiracy. Arnauld, from his solitude, issued a letter against the Jesuits, and (again packing the jury with monk-voters) they got it condemned by the Sorbonne. When we find the King writing to press the Sorbonne, we may clearly recognise the hand of the court-Jesuits. They triumphed, but their triumph now drew on them the heaviest and most enduring punishment they have ever suffered.

In 1648 the nuns had been compelled to return from Paris to their inhospitable valley, and the Solitaries had retreated from the abbey to a manor-house on the hill overlooking the valley. There, without any special costume or vows, a number of the most brilliant young men of Paris led a life of great austerity and devotion. Some lived in Paris, and spent an occasional period at Les Granges, and amongst these was a young man, with thin, pale face and large brilliant eyes under his lofty forehead, named Blaise Pascal. He had already won European fame as a mathematician. When Arnauld, somewhat jaded, produced a weak reply to his opponents, his friends suggested that Pascal should be asked to undertake the attack. Arnauld agreed, and on 23rd January 1656, appeared the first Letter to a Provincial. It was a subtle and irresistible satire of the theological shibboleths of the Jesuits. In order to enable the conflicting schools of monastic theology to agree in condemning the Jansenists, certain terms (such as "proximate grace" and "sufficient grace") had been introduced as vague common measures of orthodoxy, and Pascal expended his immortal wit on the weakness. It is admitted by all that the earlier Provincial Letters are masterpieces of satire. The letter was received with delight in Paris, and a week later, while the debate continued at the Sorbonne, a second letter was issued. The third appeared ten days later, after the censure of Arnauld.

It is quite needless here to discuss the literary qualities of Pascal's letters, but in the fourth letter Pascal began his direct and fearful indictment of the Jesuits. The next six letters contain the exposure of Jesuitical moral teaching which is the most serious point in his work, and the remaining letters—from the [Pg 232] tenth to the eighteenth, which are addressed to the Jesuits—are mainly concerned with substantiating his indictment. Although one may trust that the majority of readers are familiar with Pascal's famous work, a short analysis of the six letters (the fifth to the tenth) must be premised.

The chief quarrel between the Solitaries and the Jesuits was, as I said, a question of moral, not speculative, theology. They accused the Jesuits of accommodating the principles of Christian morality to an immoral generation. St. Cyran and Arnauld had already quoted many passages of Jesuit works in proof of this, and Pascal and his friends now searched the whole field of Jesuit casuistry for further proofs. In the fifth letter, for instance, Pascal shows how the Jesuits attenuate the obligation of fasting. A man may, on a fast-day, drink any quantity of wine, hippocras, or honey and water. If a man cannot sleep without supper, he is not bound to fast; in a sense that is a just decision, but Father Escobar goes on to say that he need not meet his obligation by deferring to the evening the "collation" which is permitted on fast-days, as no man is bound to alter the order of his meals. Again, a man who has exhausted himself by vice is not bound to fast; and Pascal might have added that the Jesuits excused a wife from fasting if her husband thought it interfered with her attractiveness (Tamburini), a husband if it weakened his sexual faculty (Filliutius), and a maiden if it lessened the charms on which she relied to secure a husband (Tamburini).

After this satirical essay on fasting made easy, Pascal passes, in the sixth letter, to the obligation of almsgiving and cognate matters. Wealthy Christians were bound by the letter of the Gospel to give to the poor out of their superfluous goods, and Pascal quoted [Pg 233] the great Jesuit theologian Vasquez learnedly proving that "you will scarcely find such a thing as superfluous goods among seculars, even in the case of kings." That was a comfortable doctrine for the rich, but the Jesuits had a word for the poor. Could a valet who considered himself underpaid help himself to his masters goods to the extent of the deficiency? Yes, said Father Bauny. And since Jesuit confessors had many curious cases submitted to them by valets at that time, their theologians worked out the servant's position with great nicety. If it were very inconvenient to change his master, the valet might even hold the ladder by which his master climbed to an illicit adventure; though in this extreme case, the master must scold much before the valet is justified.

The seventh letter shows how the Jesuits accommodated the fifth commandment to an age of brawling and duelling. It is quite lawful to fight a duel if a man would otherwise incur dishonour (Escobar); it is lawful to pray to God to kill a menacing enemy (Hurtado); it is lawful to kill a culumniator and his false witnesses (Molina); it is lawful to pursue and kill a man who has dealt you a blow—provided you have merely a technical regard for your honour, and do not feel vindictive (Escobar); it is lawful to kill a contumelious man, if that is the only way to arrest the injury (Lessius); it is lawful, if necessary, to kill an intending thief even if he attempt to take only a single gold coin (Molina); and—a very significant doctrine—it is lawful for a monk to kill a man who defames his monastery or his order, if there is no other way to arrest the defamation (Amico). These were fine doctrines for the age of Louis XIV.

The eighth letter quotes distinguished theologians who permit a judge to accept secret and illegal presents, [Pg 234] provided they are given out of gratitude, or merely to encourage him in giving honest verdicts (Molina); and others who teach that, while usury (which then meant any interest in money) is forbidden, the lender of money may exact a certain additional sum in the name of gratitude (Escobar, etc.); that a bankrupt may keep back sufficient property to enable himself and his family to live "decently" (Escobar); that money earned by crime or vice has not to be restored (Lessius, etc.); and that "a prostitute, virgin, married woman, or nun" is strictly entitled to the money promised her for vice (Filliutius). The ninth letter shows how gluttony is condoned, and scourges the familiar casuistic doctrine of mental reservation. In the tenth letter we learn that a frail woman may receive into her house her partner in sin if she "cannot decently refuse."

The apologist for the Jesuits attempts to enfeeble this terrible indictment by saying that the devout Chateaubriand called Pascal's work "an immortal lie." The French historian does not add, though he doubtless knew, that Chateaubriand withdrew this expression in more mature years, saying: "I am now forced to acknowledge that he [Pascal] has not exaggerated in the least." Voltaire also is quoted, expressing indignation that Pascal should accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. Voltaire, living under the shadow of the Bastille in early years, had his moments of insincerity; in this case it is enough to say that, in the fifth letter, Pascal expressly says that he does not accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. The only serious criticism one finds among the innumerable replies to Pascal is that his quotations are not always accurate. One must remember that they are not given as verbal quotations, and that Pascal had to rely on the aid of his colleagues. That he [Pg 235] deliberately misquoted any theologian can only be suggested by those who are entirely ignorant of his character. It is, however, quite true that qualifying phrases have at times been improperly omitted, a few phrases have been wrongly translated, and the condensing of long passages into short sentences has in a few instances the effect of an injustice. These cases are relatively few and unimportant. The indictment of Jesuit casuistry, as I have summarised it, is perfectly sound, and later research has merely extended the long list of unedifying passages. [26]

Ste. Beuve observed that, owing to Pascal's indictment, the Jesuits "lost the helm of the world." They have assuredly never entirely recovered from the "terrible blow" (as their historian calls it) which Blaise Pascal dealt them. It is not historically true that they were "crushed" and silent under the reiterated lashes. In the course of his letters Pascal refers to their numerous replies, their fierce invectives, their threats of physical persecution. Unfortunately, one of their fathers made matters worse by penning a bold defence of the casuists. His book was condemned by the Sorbonne and the Roman Inquisition, and had to be disavowed. Large numbers of the clergy and monks joined with the Jansenists in denouncing their doctrines, and in the end—if we may anticipate a little, in order to finish this [Pg 236] episode—they were officially condemned by the French Church. For a time Louis XIV. prevented their opponents from submitting the matter to the General Assembly of the Clergy, but, when Mme de Montespan succeeded Mlle de la Vallière in his affections, Bossuet and the Archbishop of Paris used her influence to secure the king's consent, and in 1700 their doctrines (and those of other lax theologians) were severely condemned. The only mitigation which the Jesuits could secure was that their theologians were not named.

Meantime, the war of the five propositions dragged its interminable length. The Port Royal nuns, the Solitaries, and many of the clergy and laity refused to sign what they regarded as a plain untruth—the statement that the five propositions were found in Jansen's work—and the Jesuits relentlessly persecuted them. Under court-pressure the Assembly of the Clergy decreed that all teachers and religious were to submit to the Pope's bull, and a kind of inquisition was established for the first time in France. A formulary was devised, and a royal decree enacted that it must be signed. The "grand Turc très Chrétien" was at that time easily led by his confessor and other Jesuits in religious matters, and his light-hearted court, under the presidency of Mlle de la Vallière, was not at all unwilling to see the dour Jansenists beaten by their indulgent confessors. The nuns of Port Royal made an heroic stand against the official untruth. Angélique Arnauld was now dead, but her sister Agnes induced the nuns to resist alike the honeyed persuasion of Bossuet and the angry menaces of the Archbishop of Paris. In 1664 the archbishop returned with the more formidable argument of a band of two hundred archers, and the nuns were scattered over France. The Solitaries also were scattered, though a few of the more distinguished of them found shelter in [Pg 237] the hotel of the Duchess de Longueville. So importunate were the Jesuits that the Pope had to remind them that his duty was to keep the Puritans in the Church, not drive them out of it.

Four bishops still favoured the Puritans, and for several years the futile wrangle went on between the French court, the Vatican, and the rebels. One of the four was the Archbishop of Sens, a prelate of the finer type and a stern critic of the Jesuits. In 1653 the Jesuits went to such extremes in their attack on him that he placed all the Jesuits in his archdiocese under an interdict for contumacy, and the sentence was so just that they did not succeed in getting it removed until the death of the prelate in 1675. The Bishop of Pamiers imposed the same heavy punishment on the Jesuits of his diocese. Both king and clergy were now wearying of the endless war, and the accession of a new Pope, Clement IX., in 1667 seemed to the moderate clergy an occasion for compromise. The Archbishop of Sens, the Princess de Conti, the Duchess de Longueville, and other distinguished intermediaries persuaded the papacy to exclude the Jesuits from the negotiations, and Arnauld promised to submit if that were done. The correspondence was, therefore, conducted with great secrecy, and at the beginning of 1669 Louis XIV. struck and issued a gold medal in commemoration of "peace" and "restored concord." The Jesuits were so angry at the wording, since it did not express the extinction of a heresy, that, when the medal became scarce, they denied that it had been issued with the knowledge of the King.

The nuns were now permitted gradually to return to their valley, and the Solitaries renewed the attack upon the morality of the Jesuits. On this side the Jesuits could securely rely upon the sympathy of Louis XIV., and the second brilliant criticism which the Jansenists [Pg 238] published, the Practical Morality of the Jesuits, was condemned by Parlement, at the intervention of the royal procurator, to be publicly burned. Jesuit succeeded Jesuit in the care of the King's conscience, in spite of his notorious and continuous immorality during nearly twenty years. Their French apologist ventures to tell us that they "declared war on the King's heart," and quotes Bayle as saying, in regard to the liaison with Mlle de la Vallière, that "Father Annat teased the prince daily about it and gave him no rest." It is one of the most flagrant pieces of "Jesuitry" in M. Crétineau-Joly's work. Bayle (in a note to the article Annat) merely quotes these words from a pamphleteer whom he describes as utterly unworthy of credence; and I may add that the purpose of the pamphleteer is merely to prove that the later confessor, Père la Chaise, was worse than Père Annat. The truth is that Annat remained in his charge during the whole of the eight years when Louis clung to Mlle de la Vallière, and, when the brilliant and unscrupulous Marquise de Montespan succeeded in securing the position of royal mistress in 1670, and Père Annat retired on the ground of age, his colleague Père Ferrier took his place. For four years he remained in charge of the King's remarkable conscience, and it is not irrelevant to observe that he was rewarded with a power that no royal confessor had hitherto had in France. He and his colleagues now had the sole right to nominate bishops, and the character of the French episcopacy in the later years of Louis XIV. is largely attributable to them. Ferrier died in 1674, and the famous Père la Chaise, a man of moderate ability but courtly manners, was appointed royal confessor. He remained at his post during the remaining five years of the liaison with Mme de Montespan, and it was Mme de Maintenon (and advance in years), rather than his [Pg 239] confessor, who led the royal sinner into the paths of virtue.

The eventual refusal of the sacraments does not atone for this prolonged adhesion to Louis XIV., even if we ignore other circumstances which detract from the merit of this tardy act of sternness. The Jesuits compromised with the vice, in order that they might share the power, of the greatest monarch of the age. In the last chapter we saw how they made use, or trusted to make use, of their influence at the French court in the conquest of England; for the moment we find them attaining a position of great power in France by their indulgent behaviour; and in later chapters we shall find them deriving advantage from their privileged position for the promotion of their influence in Spain and Italy. They looked to Louis XIV., as they had once looked to Philip III. of Spain, as the rising sun of the monarchical world, and they suppressed their scruples in their determination to use his power for the furtherance of the aims of their Society. This is singularly illustrated, in a very different way, by their conduct in the next phase of French ecclesiastical affairs.

There was in most parts of France an old custom which gave the King the right to promote to benefices as long as the episcopal see was vacant. This profitable "Regale," as it was called, had never been recognised in the southern provinces, but in 1673 Louis XIV. decreed that in future all dioceses (except a few with special privileges) would have to recognise the royal right. The King's own words indicate that the Jesuits had inspired this improper invasion of the spiritual world, and the fact was not disguised that it was chiefly aimed against Bishop Pavillon of Aleth and Bishop Caulet of Pamiers, who had withstood the court and the [Pg 240] Jesuits in regard to the papal bull against the Jansenists. The bishops appealed to Rome, and in 1676 a man ascended the throne of Peter who was in no mood to bow to earthly monarchs or permit Jesuit intrigue. Innocent XI. sternly insisted on the rights of the Church and condemned the action of Louis. The Parlement and the French hierarchy generally sided with the King, and the papal briefs remained unpublished. The Jesuits of the southern dioceses affected to regard the briefs as spurious, and they maintained the campaign of intrigue and calumny which they had conducted for some time against the Bishop of Pamiers. Pavilion had died in the course of the struggle. Pope Innocent then devised a plan by which he expected to defeat the insincere manœuvres of the Jesuits. He handed his briefs to the General of the Society and bade him communicate them to the French Jesuits, through their Provincials. To their great embarrassment the Jesuits of Paris and Toulouse now found themselves in the dilemma of having to disobey the commands either of the Pope or the King, but they extricated themselves with their usual adroitness.

The Parlements of Paris and Toulouse were secretly informed that the Jesuit fathers had received copies of the papal briefs and were instructed to publish them. The secrets of the Society were not so easily penetrated as to avert the suspicion that the Jesuits had themselves given this information, and the proceedings of the Parlements show that they did so. Even their resolute apologist here confesses that "perhaps" the Jesuits had this information conveyed to the lawyers in defiance of the Pope's stern command. The scene that followed is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Society. The Parlement of Paris, which we have found for more than a century in bitter opposition to the Society, now [Pg 241] (1681) publicly lauded the patriotism of the Jesuits in frustrating this attempt "to surprise their wisdom and corrupt their fidelity." The men of the fourth vow, the men who professed to be the incorruptible champions of the Papacy, now cast their Ultramontanism to the winds, and gave material assistance to the Gallicans at a time when a very grave conflict with the Vatican was in progress. It was, once more, the price of the favour of Louis XIV. Innocent replied by excommunicating Louis, and he entrusted the brief to the charge of a French Jesuit who was then in Rome. It was, of course, never published. The Jesuit authorities at Paris kept it in their hands until the wrath of the Pope had cooled and he recognised the impolicy of enforcing it.

From every point of view the conduct of the Jesuits in this crisis is unattractive. They discovered that in such conflicts it is the duty of the Society to be neutral, and they retained the favour of the contestants by making such compromises as the successive phases of the struggle imposed on them. The clergy of the French Church met in Assembly in 1681, and, under the leadership of Bossuet, formulated the famous four articles which define the rights of the Gallican Church and limit the pretensions of the Vatican. All professors and religious in France were directed to sign these articles; but the Jesuits, through their junta at court, obtained exemption, and were able to report to the Vatican that they alone had not accepted this defiant "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy": half a century later, however, when France is more dangerous to them than the Papacy, we shall find them setting aside their scruples and signing the articles. Even at the time, the Papacy was not appeased by their sinuous conduct. Innocent XI. threatened to destroy the Society, and [Pg 242] remained bitterly opposed to it until his death in 1689.

By this time Louis XIV. had entered on his later phase of decaying power and sincere interest in religious matters. Mme de Maintenon had consolidated her influence over him by a secret marriage in 1684, and given a religious direction to his thoughts. One terrible consequence of this tardy and ill-balanced zeal was, as history tells, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and a horrible oppression of the Protestants. It would be a mistake to cast the whole blame of this lamentable cruelty and its evil effects for the country upon the Jesuits. The higher French clergy generally still entertained the persecuting spirit, and had for years pressed for violent measures against the sectarians, who refused to yield to their arguments. Père la Chaise was only one of many narrow-minded priests who impelled Louis XIV. to crown a series of unjust measures against the Protestants with this cruel and impolitic act. It was, however, the consummation of the violent policy which the Jesuits had urged from the beginning, and one may justly doubt whether Louis XIV. would, even in his last phase, have adopted such a measure if the court-Jesuits had not pressed for it.

In the sobered court the Jesuits continued for some time to enjoy a great influence, though it was increasingly checked by Mme de Maintenon and the prelates she favoured. In 1688, Louis determined to make the French Jesuits independent of the Roman authorities; but they contrived to dissuade him. They continued to fight the Regalists and the Jansenists with the poisoned weapons of calumny, abuse, and intrigue. The most unedifying scenes were witnessed in the southern dioceses, and Jansenist leaders, like Arnauld, were [Pg 243] pursued even beyond the frontiers. One illustration of this prolonged and misguided campaign must suffice. In the year 1690 the theologians of Douai received a number of letters bearing the signature of Arnauld; and, in what they understood to be a private correspondence with the Jansenist leader, they committed themselves to phrases which no other occasion would have extracted from them. This correspondence was then published by the Jesuits, and the professors of the Douai University were expelled and replaced by members of the Society. The fraud, however, proved one more detail in the long account which France would presently settle with the Jesuits. Arnauld, who was living in the Netherlands, at once denounced the letters as forgeries, and held up the Jesuits to public contempt as the direct or indirect authors.

The nuns of Port Royal were the next victims of their relentless campaign. A more friendly Pope, Clement XI., succeeded Innocent, and in 1705 he was induced to issue a fresh bull (Vineam Domini) for the suppression of Jansenism. It was pressed for the acceptance of the nuns by the Archbishop of Paris; but it seemed to them still to consecrate the familiar untruth, and they declared that they would subscribe to it only with a qualifying clause. We have no documentary proof that the Jesuits inspired the events which followed this reserve, but the blame was openly cast upon them at the time, and the circumstances suggest it. The King—still under the guidance of Père la Chaise—wrote to the Vatican for permission to destroy the community, and in the early spring of 1708 the nuns were definitely scattered. Père la Chaise died at the beginning of the following year, and Père Letellier, a grim and resolute supporter of the ambitions of the Society, succeeded to the office. [Pg 244] Under his influence the last insurgent movements of the brave nuns were rigorously suppressed, and in January 1710 their ancient and beloved abbey, the strictest centre of conventual virtue in France, was rased to the ground.

Letellier, a sombre, indefatigable man, whose flashing eyes scorned the comfort of the court—he was a peasant's son—and sought nothing in this world but the ascendancy of the Society of Jesus, now found the influence of the Jesuits threatened by that of Louis's wife and her favourite prelate Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. In 1711 a letter was intercepted which revealed the intrigues of Letellier and the Jesuits, and Noailles angrily suspended all the members of the Society in his diocese. The chief Jansenist writer was now Quesnel, who had just published his Moral Reflections. The Jesuits detected much heresy in the innocent work, and at once used their influence to secure a condemnation. The Archbishop had, however, expressed admiration of it, and the task of the Jesuits was more than usually difficult. At length, in July 1711, a letter was intercepted from which it was clear that Letellier was intriguing against the Archbishop, and there was much indignation among the new party at court. Noailles not only suspended the fathers, but condemned about a score of their writers and preachers for lax principles. The intrigue continued, however, and in the autumn of 1713, Clement XI. condemned Quesnel's book in the bull Unigenitus. Saint Simon, who was in the French court at the time and on good terms with the Jesuits, tells us that the bull was due to Letellier and two other Jesuits "as fine and false as he," and that in the bull "everything was brilliant except truth." Saint Simon was no theologian. We may accept his word that the securing of the bull was "a dark business"; and we know [Pg 245] that, in its later stages, it was pressed at Rome with irregular and improper haste. It is, however, true that many of Quesnel's phrases were questionable, though they did little more than repeat and enforce the words of the gospel: "Without me ye can do nothing" (John vi. 66). But the words of Scripture were condemned as well as the words of Quesnel, and the Jesuits were able to congratulate each other that "Jouvency was avenged." [27]

The bull Unigenitus was, says a French bishop of the time, as badly received at Paris as it would have been at Geneva, and the Jesuits prepared for the last phase of their long struggle with the Puritans. Saint Simon has left us a singular and unpleasant picture of Father Letellier discussing with him their devices for enforcing acceptance of the bull. The passion displayed by the royal confessor amazed the duke, and he was not less disgusted at the ruses by which Letellier proposed to crush his opponents. The Archbishop now condemned Quesnel, but rejected the bull, and fourteen bishops followed his example. Once more there was a violent controversy, and a letter of Letellier's was intercepted from which Noailles learned that the royal confessor was pressing Louis to send him to Rome, to be degraded by the Papacy. The ecclesiastical world seethed with passion, while France slowly fell from the proud position to which its great generals had raised it.

In the midst of this conflict, Louis XIV. died (1715); and for a time it seemed as if the reign of the Jesuits was ended. The grim Letellier was exiled from Paris, and Noailles replaced the Jesuits in the control of [Pg 246] ecclesiastical affairs. Their enemies gathered about the Regent and pressed him to destroy the power of the Society. Philip of Orleans was, however, not the kind of man to sacrifice liberal casuists to the Puritans, and graceful preachers to stern parlementarians. A man of brilliant parts and frivolous tendencies—he had been educated in vice by the Abbé Dubois—he saw no more than a temporary political expedient in checking the Jesuits for the satisfaction of his supporters. He soon relapsed into ways of indolence and vice; and the Jesuits, gaining the ear of his unscrupulous favourites, crept back to power. Dubois desired a high ecclesiastical dignity, and the course of events very strongly confirms the suspicion that the Jesuits put at his disposal their influence in Rome. He induced Philip to compel Parlement to register the bull Unigenitus; and he shortly afterwards became, in spite of his notorious character, Archbishop of Cambrai and Cardinal of the Church. Other unworthy clerics were similarly promoted, and the power of Cardinal Noailles was checked. Dubois, in 1722, secured the office of confessor to the young King for a Jesuit. Noailles, who had opposed the appointment, refused canonical powers to the confessor, and a fresh intrigue ran on until Noailles died and a pro-Jesuit Archbishop was elected.

The Jesuits now returned to power, though not to their full power, at the court, and the remnant of the Jansenists was pitilessly persecuted. For nearly twenty years the opponents of the Jesuits attempted to evade the enforcement of the papal decisions, and it is said that more than a hundred priests were banished and a large number imprisoned. One of the bishops was deposed and degraded for resistance, and a fierce struggle shook the peaceful atmosphere of the innumerable monasteries. Fifty monks of one province [Pg 247] of the Cistercian order were, in 1723, excommunicated and imprisoned by the authorities. The papal condemnation included propositions which were obviously sound and others which were no more than quotations of Scripture, so hastily had the vindictive sentence been promulgated. The Jesuits triumphed, however, and the reign of Louis XV. saw them fully reinstated at Versailles.

France was no longer the world-power she had been in the golden age of Louis XIV., and her selfish and dissipated monarch was blindly leading her toward revolution. The Jesuits, as before, clung to the prestige of the position of royal confessor, in spite of the flagrant immorality of the King, but the forces which would presently dislodge them were insensibly gathering power. The Puritans were silenced, rather than annihilated, and the Parlement, imputing to the Society much of the blame of its exile in 1753, revived its bitter hostility. The first stroke fell on them in that year. Father Pérusseau, the King's confessor, died, and a successful intrigue put in his place a priest who was not a Jesuit. Both Pérusseau and his successor refused absolution to a King whose libertinism was so cynically exhibited. In view of the persistent attack on their laxity during a hundred years, it would have been difficult for a Jesuit to do less. When, however, the Jesuits lost the principal position, there seemed for a moment some chance of their returning to favour in an indirect way. Mme de Pompadour also desired absolution, in order to find a convenient place in the Queen's suite; and, making a profession of penitence, she put herself under the spiritual guidance of the Jesuit Father Sacy. For a time he affected to believe in her sincerity; but the laughter of Paris disconcerted him, and the stern refusal of the Pope to interfere [Pg 248] forced him to retire. From that time Mme de Pompadour and her courtiers were opposed to the Jesuits.

A few years later, in 1757, the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis led to another outcry against the Society. It is the general and probable verdict that the Jesuits had no share in the outrage, though the fact that Damiens had a Jesuit confessor, and had previously been in the service of the Jesuits, still seems to many writers to justify a grave suspicion. The evidence is inconclusive, but the outrage led to a fresh discussion of the regicidal doctrines of the Society, and the secrecy and sinuousness of its procedure. By that time, as we shall see, the Marquis de Pombal was meditating the destruction of the Jesuits in Portugal, and was in correspondence with their enemies in France. These enemies were now reinforced by the brilliant and powerful body of deistic and atheistic writers who were known as "the philosophers," and a formidable mine was being prepared under the feet of the arrogant and unsuspecting Jesuits.

The spark that fired this mine was a particularly disreputable action on the part of the Society. In 1753 the Superior-General of the Jesuits in the Antilles, Father Lavalette, was summoned to Paris to answer the charge of having engaged in commerce on a large scale. Lavalette was one of those men of commercial instinct whom the Society did not scruple to use in augmenting its wealth as long as they were successful. Although he had, in the name of the Society, vast estates in the West Indies and thousands of negro slaves (bought by himself, in disguise, in the public slave-market), and it was known that he had agents in Paris for the sale of his sugar and coffee, he came to Paris with a number of sworn testimonies from local French officers to the effect that the Jesuits had not [Pg 249] engaged in "foreign commerce," and was acquitted. He returned to conduct his flourishing business on a larger scale than ever. He had spacious warehouses, and made a profit of about 280,000 francs a year; and he now—though acquitted on the understanding that he was not to engage in commerce—borrowed large sums of money, and increased the profit by a shrewd, and somewhat sharp, deal on the money-market. He overreached himself in these practices, and, as other disasters simultaneously overtook his business, some of his French creditors pressed for their money.

The French Jesuits were divided in opinion on the issue. The shrewder fathers at Marseilles were disposed to borrow money and meet the obligations, but the Parisian authorities believed that they were still strong enough to win a conflict, and they insisted that Lavalette must plead bankruptcy. It was the last and most fatal of the long series of blunders they had perpetrated; to say nothing of the moral aspect of their procedure. The law was set in motion; in March 1761 the lawyers of the Paris Parlement were set the task of judging their traditional enemy, and the long trial, amidst intense excitement, ended in the Jesuits, as a collective body, being condemned to pay the whole of Lavalette's debts—about five million francs. In order to determine the responsibility, the lawyers had compelled the Jesuits to produce their Constitutions and other documents which they were eager to keep from the laity, and this exposure led to a broader and more determined attack on the Society. Their action in refusing to meet the obligations of the West Indian business, by which they had profited so much, was, and always will be, regarded as morally dishonourable. It is pleaded on their behalf that the Jesuits are a "simple-minded" and spiritual body of men, with no inclination [Pg 250] or aptitude for commerce, and that Lavalette had concealed his operations—as they compelled him to state—from his superiors. Such statements merely increase the cynicism of their procedure. We have found them repeatedly engaging in commerce, and we know that the Jesuit system made it absolutely impossible for an inferior, even if he wished to do so, to conceal large commercial operations from his superiors. The Jesuit documents made this plain to the whole of Paris, and their adversaries advanced to the last attack.

The Parlement declared that the Jesuit Constitutions were unfit for a body of French priests, and demanded that they should be altered; it forbade the Society to form congregations among the laity, to teach the young, or to receive novices. The Jesuits at court induced the King to summon a meeting of the higher clergy and elicit a counter-declaration in favour of the Society; but a fearful storm was now raging in their ears. In their extreme apprehension they disavowed the most characteristic Jesuit principles. They proclaimed that they accepted the four articles of the Gallican Declaration of 1682, and that they would be loyal to the Gallican Church even if their General commanded them to do something contrary to its principles. They were fighting for life; but men in France knew from their previous history in the country that such declarations as this were merely diplomatic, and were set aside the moment they returned to power.

The struggle continued through the winter, and in the spring (1762) the King annulled the measures taken against them, but bade them modify their Constitutions. They were in future to have a Vicar-General in France, independent of the Roman General, and to be subject to the bishops. Louis had secretly consulted the Roman authorities, and urged them that this compromise was [Pg 251] absolutely necessary to save the French Province; and, although General Ricci bitterly replied: "Sint ut sunt, aut non sint" ("Let them be as they are, or not be at all"), the proposal was openly made in France. But Parlement refused to register the King's decree, and went on to close eighty-four Jesuit colleges. All through the spring and summer the fusillade of pamphlets and the fiery debates of Parlements were sustained, the Jesuits straining every resource to avert the blow, and on 6th August 1762 the Paris Parlement decreed that the Society must cease to exist in France. The Jesuits were expelled from their residences, and a small pension was allotted them out of the confiscated property. Their entire property in France was valued at nearly 60,000,000 francs, and they had, as it proved, forfeited this rather than pay the just debts of Lavalette. At the same time the Paris Parlement condemned one hundred and sixty-four works written by Jesuits between 1600 and 1762.

Louis XV. signed the decree of suppression in December 1764, and from school and palace, from humble residences among the poor and the mansions of princes, the Jesuits sadly made their way toward the frontiers of the land in which they had so long enjoyed and abused a remarkable power. In vain was the Pope induced to protest against the action of Louis XV. Some of the chief provincial Parlements condemned the Pope's bull to be burned in the public square, and the Parlement of Paris disdainfully rejected it. The vast majority of the nation applauded the suppression; and, once their power was gone, the Jesuits were overwhelmed by the flood of hatred that now rose freely against them. It was useless to plead that a few sceptical lawyers or statesmen had wrought their ruin. In a few localities they were still protected by the Provincial authorities; but the country at large, by the [Pg 252] mouths of its officials and the great body of its clergy, rejoiced in their fall. They sought at first to parry the blow with customary manœuvres. Large numbers of them laid aside their dress and name, and remained to intrigue against their opponents; and in 1767 the Paris Parlement decreed that they must all leave the country. Except for a few who still remained as private teachers of the young, having ostensibly quitted the Society, and a few who were sheltered in ultramontane localities, the Jesuits were now ignominiously expelled from the land of St. Louis. And few will read the long story of their work in France and not acknowledge that it was a just conclusion of their intrigues, shiftiness, selfishness, thirst for power, unscrupulous persecution of rivals or opponents, and condescension to vice and crime.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] I have consulted Molinier's admirable edition of the Letters (1891). The editor gives the original Latin passages from the Jesuit theologians, and it is after comparison of these with Pascal's quotations or paraphrases that I reach the conclusion given in the text. It is necessary to add that some of these doctrines were not confined to the Jesuits. The point is that the Jesuits, as a body, were characteristically lax. Probabilism, for instance (the pernicious doctrine that a man may commit an action which is probably lawful, though more probably sinful) was not invented by the Jesuits, but they made it a basic element of their casuistry. They taught that a man was free to follow one single lax theologian, if he were a "grave authority," against the adverse opinion of all the others.

[27] I have in earlier chapters quoted Father Jouvency's volume of the Historia Societatis. This volume, recalling and praising the action of the French Jesuits in the time of Henry III. and Henry IV., was published in 1713, and gave such offence that the Parlement suppressed it.

In the Iberian Peninsula we have the same romantic story of the Jesuits being cast down from a splendid prosperity and expelled with every token of ignominy from countries in which they had almost attained a spiritual dictatorship. Here again, moreover, our chronicle will deal almost exclusively with the actions of a junta of court-Jesuits who bring the calamity upon their Society. It would not be unnatural to suspect that in this there is some partiality; that I ignore the saintly or learned or philanthropic achievements of the majority and bring into prominence only the court-intrigues and abuses of power of a few. But a glance at the works of apologetic writers will show that the candid historian has no alternative. Considering the number and resources of the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their record is singularly barren of great and good deeds. A few examples of shining devotion, which we will notice as we proceed, and a few small scandals, which we will generally ignore, do little to vary the undistinguished monotony of the general life. The majority of the Portuguese and Spanish Jesuits merely continue the work of teaching, preaching, and writing works of theology, in comfortable and unascetic homes, which we have previously described. Our story, like the general history of Spain and Portugal at the time, is mainly concerned with courtiers and politicians.

We begin with Portugal, where the first destructive blow fell on the Society. A Portuguese Jesuit, Father Franco, has left us an admiring chronicle of the doings of his colleagues down to the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. His work (Synopsis Annalium Societatis Jesu in Lusitania, 1726) entirely confirms the feeling that the life of the vast majority of the Portuguese Jesuits is not material for history; it is little more than a record of the deaths of undistinguished (but always very saintly) Jesuits, with a few discreet references to those events at court which are of real interest. It is true that Father Franco appends a list of thousands of Jesuits who have gone to spend or lose their lives in Brazil or India, but we shall see that in the period with which we are dealing these missionary fields provided much comfort and little danger. The heroic age was over; it was the age when royal confessors enabled their brethren to sun themselves indolently in the warmth of royal favour.

The close of the reign of John IV. in 1656 saw the power and wealth of the Jesuits greater than they had ever been before. We saw that at the revolution of 1640, when Portugal won its independence from Spain, the Jesuits had so nicely distributed their forces that some were sure to be on the winning side; and John IV. was not the man to inquire too closely into their conduct. His court soon filled with Jesuits. Father Nuñez, a man of great piety and austerity, who had an excellent moral influence on the noble dames of the court, guarded the consciences of Queen Luisa and her children. Father Fernandez, a very different type of Jesuit, was confessor to the King, and had great political influence. He was a member of the State-Council and Bishop of Japan, and he bore his dignities with a consciousness which greatly irritated the nobles. [Pg 255] When his humbler colleague, Nuñez, died, he became confessor to the Queen also, and attained a great ascendancy over the King. When the Viceroy of India, remarking that Jesuits were forbidden to engage in commerce, took from the Jesuits in that country property worth twenty thousand crowns a year, which they had acquired by commerce, Fernandez induced the King to overrule him and order the restoration of the property. In addition, John IV. gave large annual sums to the foreign missions, and a comfortable sum as "viaticum" to each priest who left Portugal for the missions; and he made them presents of palaces, and showered other benefits on them.

When John died, and Luisa became Regent for her young son, the angry nobles made a vigorous effort to dislodge the Jesuits. John's elder son, who had had a Jesuit tutor, had refused to marry, and had wished to join the Society. Men recalled the earlier King Sebastian, and said that the Jesuits were attempting to seize the crown. The Jesuit-tutor was even accused of betraying the military secrets of the country; and one of his colleagues, Father Vieira, was so badly compromised by a letter of his which was intercepted that John had been compelled to make a foreign ambassador of him; another Jesuit was the diplomatic representative of Portugal at Rome. The nobles resented this situation; but Fernandez was in too strong a position, and the rule of the Jesuits continued under the Regency. Fernandez died, however, in 1660, and it is a second Jesuit of that name (as is sometimes forgotten) who took a leading part in the extraordinary events of the year 1668.

The elder prince, Theodose, had died prematurely, and Alphonso succeeded to the throne. Whether there was some incurably morbid strain in the youth, or [Pg 256] whether the Jesuit tuition had made him incapable of serious political life, we cannot say; but, as he grew to manhood, Alphonso VI. entered upon ways of violence and licence which recall the youth of Nero. His court was filled with the wild companions of his orgies, and he paraded his vices on the streets and in the taverns of his capital. He exchanged his Jesuit confessor for a Benedictine monk, snatched the reins from the hands of his mother, and threatened to drag the country very speedily into the abyss which awaited it. Sober nobles and statesmen looked on with alarm, and it was inevitable that a conspiracy to dethrone him should shortly arise. But the details of the revolution, in which the Jesuits were very active, reflect little honour on its actors.

Alphonso had married Marie Isabelle de Savoie-Nemours, whose Jesuit confessor, Father de Ville, listened sympathetically to the story of the outrages she endured. Father de Ville and his colleagues were not less sympathetic when Marie Isabelle transferred her affection to the King's handsome young brother, Dom Pedro, and they entered into a plot to replace Alphonso by Pedro. The chief plotter seems to have been Father Vieira, whom the French historian regards as the glory of the Portuguese Province at that time. Vieira was not without ability, but he was a turbulent and meddlesome politician, and so eccentric in his religious ideas that he fell into the prison of the Inquisition. The Jesuits secretly engaged the nobles in a plan to dethrone and divorce Alphonso and replace him by his brother. Divorce is, of course, unknown to the Catholic Church, but it has never failed to discover a flaw in a marriage which it was expedient to undo, and, with something very like levity or cynicism, the Jesuits and the Queen determined to accuse the King of im [Pg 257]potence and get the marriage annulled: a king who was notorious for his amours and had had a child by one of his mistresses. Pedro was then informed of the Queen's amiable disposition and the support of the nobles, and the conspiracy began.

The King was recalled from his licentious pleasures by an announcement that the Queen had retired to a convent and demanded the restitution of her dowry. He flew to the convent, but found his brother there with an armed force to protect the Queen, and, after a fruitless struggle, he was compelled to abdicate and to testify to the virginity of the Queen. We have the word of the English ambassador that Father de Ville and his colleagues were the chief authors of this audacious plot, or "comedy," as the Jesuit apologist calls it. The marriage was dissolved in March (1668), and it was arranged that a deputation of the Cortes should wait upon Marie Isabelle, and entreat her to marry Pedro, as Portugal was too poor to return her dowry. The marriage was celebrated a few weeks later, Alphonso was sent into a comfortable exile, and the Jesuits returned to power at the court. Sincerely as we may applaud the purification of the sordid palace and the relief of the young Queen, we must recognise that the procedure betrays a considerable lack of moral delicacy.

The gratitude of Pedro to his Jesuit confessor, Fernandez, and his colleagues could not be other than princely. He even made Fernandez a deputy of the Cortes (where he needed supporters), and we gather from the stern letter (given in Franco) in which General Oliva denounced this action to the authorities of the Portuguese Province that Fernandez was very reluctant to resign the honour. Under threat of punishment he yielded, but he maintained an absolute [Pg 258] authority over King Pedro and placed his Society in a stronger position than ever. In the Jesuit documents of the time we find constant reference to "the Fathers of the Palace" and the immense benefits they procure for their colleagues. Through the King they secured a modification of the Spanish Inquisition—which had lately imprisoned one of their ablest men—and in many of the colonies they obtained a monopoly of the trade with the natives and acquired a wealth similar to that of the Spanish fathers in Paraguay. Pedro's second wife was no less generous to the Society than Luisa had been, and the ex-Queen of England, who returned to Portugal in 1693, joined in the enrichment of the Jesuits. When Pedro died in 1706, his son John V. continued to patronise the Society and enfeeble the kingdom. There were now more than a dozen Jesuits at the Portuguese court, and for many years it was hardly possible to approach the King without their permission.

During the long reign of the incompetent and superstitious John V. Portugal sank rapidly into the decline that awaited her. Not only did Jesuits undertake commerce in the colonies and absorb vast sums of money in donations and annuities, but the Church at large is calculated to have received about five hundred million francs, wrung mainly from the decaying colonies, from the priest-ridden monarch. The Jesuits are by no means wholly responsible for the scandalous expenditure and economic folly of John V., or for the revival of the burning of heretics and the erection of palatial monasteries. In his later years the King transferred his favour to Oratorian and Franciscan priests, and it seemed as if the long reign of the Jesuits was seriously threatened. But this appalling clerical parasitism and disregard of national economy, which [Pg 259] were fast sapping the strength of Portugal, were only the culmination of the sentiments which the Jesuits had cultivated in the Portuguese court for a century.

The King died in 1750, and the Jesuits returned to power under his son Joseph. Father Moreira was the King's confessor, and Father Oliveira the tutor of his children; Father Costa was the spiritual guide of his brother Pedro, Father Campo of his uncle Antonio, and Father Aranjues of his uncle Emmanuel. The junta was completely restored, and the government was again virtually in the hands of the Jesuits. There had, however, now come into the political life of Portugal a man who was destined to shake the European power of the Jesuits and, within the short space of ten years, to drive them from the Empire in poverty and disgrace.

Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho, Count of Oeyras and Marquis of Pombal, had been a member of one of the Jesuit Congregations for laymen and had obtained office, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with their cordial agreement. There is nothing either mysterious or discreditable in his hostility to the Jesuits. Even if it be true that he at times fought them with their own improper weapons, the ground of the conflict is plain. He perceived, as every non-Catholic historian perceives to-day, that their rule was as mischievous to the State as it was profitable to their own Society, and, as Foreign Minister and lay man of business, he recognised that their commercial activity in the colonies was injurious to the laity and inconsistent with their professions. To say that he was influenced by the works of the French philosophers is absurd—he had no sympathy with their ideas—nor is it less unjust to say that he wished to protestantise the Portuguese Church. It was precisely as a Catholic and a patriot that he set out to reform the swollen and degenerate Church [Pg 260] and invigorate the national economy. We need not imagine vices in Pombal when the defects of the Jesuits are so flagrant.

The strong man was fortunate in having a weak, timid, and indolent monarch, and hardly less fortunate in the fact that the King had a stronger and more attractive brother on whose associates suspicion could easily be cast. It is difficult to-day to ascertain what truth there is in the charge that Dom Pedro aspired to the throne and had the secret support of the Jesuits. King Joseph was not indisposed to believe such a charge, and events soon occurred which gave it plausibility. In 1752 the Portuguese proposed to cede Sacramento to Spain in return for a part of Paraguay in which the Jesuits had seven of their profitable "reductions," and, when the troops went to enforce the change of frontiers, the pupils of the Jesuits made a sanguinary resistance. It is possible to quote letters in which the Jesuits advised submission, but a secret letter from one of the leading Spanish Jesuits to the American fathers was intercepted and was found to advise resistance. Further troops were sent, the Jesuits and their pupils were expelled, and Pombal drew up and circulated a memoir on the action of the Jesuits and the virtual slavery which they maintained in the reductions. Their monopoly of trade with the natives was abrogated, and Pombal was interested in a company which sought to secure the trade. The Jesuits fiercely attacked this change, and two members of the Society were exiled.

For a time the campaign of Pombal was then arrested by the appalling earthquake which devastated Lisbon in the year 1755. The timid and superstitious King was undecided as to the nature of the omen. At first, when it was found that Pombal's house had been [Pg 261] spared while seven Jesuit houses had been wrecked, he was disposed to see in the catastrophe a punishment of the sins of the Jesuits; but those artful casuists easily persuaded the country that the only new event in the life of Portugal to account for this outpour of divine wrath was the persecution of the Society, and their zeal in succouring the homeless earned for them a great deal of sympathy. The exiled Jesuits were recalled, and they seemed to recover all the ground they had lost in the preceding ten years.

With a maladroitness which we recognise so often in the annals of the Society, the Jesuits then went on to attack Pombal, and their churches rang with denunciation of the great reformer. With all his faults Joseph I. had wisdom enough to choose between the Jesuits and his able minister. Pombal had effected more real reform in Portugal than Jesuit politicians had done in their two centuries of influence; he had abolished autos da fe, curbed the power of the Inquisition, clipped the parasitic growth of monks, set bounds to the pretensions of the nobles, and made great reforms in every branch of the administration. He was a hard and ruthless man, sharing, to some extent, the Jesuit feeling that the end justified the means, but he was a sincere and enlightened patriot. He retained his influence over the King and took the next step in his campaign against the Society.

It was not until 1756 that the resistance of the natives in the Jesuit reductions was finally overcome, and the proofs (which we will see later) of secret Jesuit provocation deeply impressed the King. There was at that time on the papal throne a Pope who had repeatedly condemned the Jesuits. We shall see later that their behaviour on the Chinese and Indian missions was, in a different way, as irregular as their behaviour [Pg 262] in South America, and Benedict XIV. severely condemned them. His chief minister, Cardinal Passionei, was also opposed to the Jesuits. King Joseph now submitted to the Vatican an account of the conduct of the Jesuits in South America and asked that they should be reformed. Meantime, in the autumn of 1757, Pombal persuaded the King that the Jesuits were fomenting disorder in Portugal itself, and an order was signed for the expulsion of all Jesuit confessors from the court. In the night of 19th-20th September the servants and soldiers entered the palace, and Fathers Moreira, Costa, and Oliviera awoke to find themselves sentenced to removal from their comfortable offices. Pombal then ordered that no Jesuit should be allowed to approach the court, sent a very forcible justification of the King's conduct to the other European courts, and pressed the demand for reform at Rome.

On 1st April 1758 the Pope signed the decree for an inquiry into the behaviour of the Jesuits, and Cardinal Saldanha was sent to South America to conduct the inquiry. The proceedings at Rome had been kept secret from the Jesuits until the decree was signed, and Pombal's agents had secured the appointment of a cardinal who was no friend of the Society. But both the Pope and the General died in the spring of that year, and, when Cardinal Saldanha justly reported that the Jesuits of South America had been wrongly engaged in commerce, the new General, Ricci, appealed to the new Pope, Clement XIII., who was known to be favourable to the Society. Clement appointed a commission of inquiry which, being composed of friends of the Society and making no investigation on the spot, declared the Jesuits innocent.

The declaration was absurd and insincere, as we shall appreciate when we come to examine the conduct [Pg 263] of the Jesuits on the missions, and Pombal saw that he must deal with the fathers in Portugal. In June (1758) the cardinal-patriarch had laid an interdict on all the Jesuits in the diocese of Lisbon, and public opinion seemed to be prepared for a drastic step. An event that occurred in the night of 3rd-4th September of that year gave Pombal his opportunity. As the King returned from the house of his mistress, the Marchioness Tavora, several shots were fired at him, and a large number of members of the Tavora family were arrested and put to the torture. One of the prisoners, the Duke d'Aveiro, said, under torture, that the Jesuits were privy to the conspiracy, and eight of the leading fathers were arrested and tortured. The duke afterwards retracted, and it must be said that, beyond this worthless declaration, there is no positive evidence to connect the Jesuits with the outrage, though they had been in close correspondence with the Tavoras. They were, however, not punished on that ground with the other prisoners. Only one of the Jesuits was executed, but for heresy, not treason; the others were kept in prison, while all the Tavoras were executed.

Instead of attempting to proceed against the Jesuits on such discreditable evidence Pombal took the more effective ground that their moral principles, especially in regard to assassination, were the ultimate source of such outrages, and a very fierce controversy ensued. It seemed to become gradually plain to all that the long conflict of the Jesuits and their opponents was about to enter on its last stage. There were bishops who supported Pombal, and bishops who appealed to the Pope to check his progress. What Pombal mostly feared was the stirring of the ignorant and superstitious masses, and he proceeded with great caution. Before his project was realised in Portugal, the Jesuits of the [Pg 264] colonies were on their way, under guard, to the mother-country, and, when they arrived, the Jesuit houses were surrounded by soldiers, the more active fathers were transferred to prison, and the rest were prevented from communicating with the laity. By the month of April 1759 about 1500 Jesuits were in jail or under guard. The King then informed the Pope that he was about to expel the fathers from his dominions. When Clement protested, stronger evidence of their intrigues was produced, and it is the general feeling of impartial contemporaries (like the English historian Coxe) and later authorities that some of these documents were forged. Clement still refused to sanction the expulsion, and a ruthless and indefensible step was taken by Pombal. On the feast of St. Ignatius (31st July) six Jesuits were condemned to be broken on the wheel, as if some value were now attributed to the evidence of a tortured witness.

This unjust sentence was not carried out, probably from a fear that the Pope would seriously question the jurisdiction of the civic authorities, but the plight of the Jesuits was lamentable. It was in Portugal that they had first attained power and wealth, and they had enjoyed an almost uninterrupted dominion for two centuries; now they lay on straw in the common jails, or tremblingly discussed the dark future in their overcrowded residences. On the first day of September the sentence of expulsion was enforced. The younger Jesuits were offered a dispensation from their vows by Cardinal Saldanha, but few accepted it, and the majority of them were put on ship and conveyed to the Pope's dominions. Pombal was cruel and unjust to the end in the realisation of his design; it is possible that he feared their later activity on foreign soil. There may be some exaggeration in the stories of their hardships, and indeed [Pg 265] such a sentence could not be carried out without hardship, but one cannot defend his action in keeping 221 of the Jesuits in the jails of Portugal. One of them, Father Malagrida, an old man of seventy-two, seems to have been a little deranged by his imprisonment, and certain works which he wrote in prison were submitted to the Inquisition. He was condemned to be burned alive by the very tribunal which the Jesuits had been instrumental in establishing in Portugal. Of the 200 Jesuits, 88 died in jail, and the rest lingered in their humiliating captivity until the death of Joseph I. and dismissal of Pombal in 1777. By that time their Society had ceased to exist.

Such was the tragic issue of Jesuit history in the land which they had been accustomed to regard as the safest and most generous country in which they had taken root. However severely we may censure the detailed procedure of the Marquis de Pombal, his action was in substance just and patriotic. Portugal, which, in the sixteenth century, had promised to become one of the greatest powers in the world, had sunk to a humiliating depth, and its decay had proceeded apace with the power of political Jesuits. They were incapable of a patriotic conception of the task of governing, and they took advantage of and encouraged the economic folly of living on overburdened colonies. If they were unwilling to discharge the proper duties of priests and refrain from intrigue for political power, they must depart.

We have already seen how this bold stroke echoed in France and encouraged the enemies of the Society. We must now turn to Spain and see how "the most Catholic majesties" of that country came to follow the terrible example of Pombal. The general outline of the story is somewhat similar to that of the story of Portugal. A series of weak and incompetent rulers [Pg 266] occupy the throne; they are dominated (generally) by a group of court-Jesuits, who teach them that the main duty of a king is to be chaste, zealous for the faith, and generous to the Church; the broad empire of Spain is repeatedly shorn, as its increasing weakness is exposed; and at length a strong man realises the evil of Jesuit domination and induces the King to send the fathers back to the Pope's dominions from which they came. In one respect the story is even more unpleasant than that which we have just concluded. Chaste as the Spanish monarchs generally are in this period, they are so weak and purblind that the court is filled with the most sordid intrigues for power, and the Jesuits are deeply involved in these intrigues.

We left the Society in Spain enjoying a splendid prosperity in the early years of the reign of Philip IV. Readers of Major Hume's brilliant Court of Philip IV. (1907) will not need to be reminded that this was "the gayest and wickedest court since the days of Heliogabalus," and that Madrid was in a repellent condition of vice and decadence. The King's confessor was not a Jesuit, but a worthless Dominican, and there were spirited struggles between the rival orders. However, the Jesuits still guided the consciences of most of the nobles and wealthy people, and were generously patronised by the King. They prospered richly in the decaying kingdom, were indifferent to the periodical national disasters, and claim only that they produced such brilliant casuists as Escobar. At the end of this long and dreary reign the chronicle of the Society becomes more interesting.

An infant of four years, Charles II., inherited the throne, and this gave the Jesuits an opportunity under the Regency of Maria Anna, daughter of Ferdinand III. Queen Anna had brought with her from her German [Pg 267] home a very learned Jesuit, Father Nidhard, who was her confessor. It was quite natural that this father should attain predominant power at the death of the King, and we may regard it as a piece of particularly frivolous Castilian gossip that the sixty-year-old priest had a more tender relation to the Queen than that of political adviser. We may further grant that Nidhard's power was used unselfishly, and he was true to the ascetic ideal of his Society. But he was flagrantly false to other and more important rules of the Society in occupying the position he did, and he added a heavy contribution to the accumulating hatred of the Society. He was not only royal confessor, but a Councillor of State—in fact, the first minister—and Grand Inquisitor. He had pleaded his rule when the Queen pressed these dignities on him. She obtained a "dispensation" from the Pope, and Nidhard then posed as a Jesuit Ximenes and ruled Spain. The papal document gives him no moral justification. Had he and his superiors willed, he could at once have been transferred to Germany. They acquiesced in his political position on account of the power it gave them.

The Spanish nobles chafed under the rule of a priest and a woman and were irritated to see the decay of the nation continue. In 1668 they lost much of the Low Countries in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the independence of Portugal was recognised. Don Juan, a natural son of the late King, seized the opportunity and attacked the Jesuits. They appointed the prince governor of the Low Countries, and he refused to go. They forbade him to approach the capital, and he boldly advanced to Madrid and demanded the dismissal of Nidhard. The troops and people supported him, and, shedding bitter tears, the Queen was obliged to "permit Nidhard to retire from office." The crowd [Pg 268] threatened to end his career at once, but he escaped to Rome, where he became Spanish ambassador, and afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Edessa. He had greatly strengthened the hostility to the Jesuits in Spain.

The long and disastrous reign of Philip was followed by the long and disastrous reign of his weak-minded son, and Spain decayed with frightful rapidity. Piety flourished—on one occasion fifty heretics were put to death for the entertainment of the young Queen—and the misshapen King set an admirable example of chastity. Few were sensible of the greater obligation of arresting the decay of the land, and the Jesuits were content to float on the sluggish stream. It is probable that their wealth reached its highest point during the reign of Charles II.—"one of the most disastrous reigns on record," a distinguished historian calls it. But there would be little interest in chronicling the princely gifts and legacies they received and the handsome houses they erected. Charles died of old age in his fortieth year (1700), and was persuaded to leave the throne to the Duke of Anjou and thus ensure the protection of Louis XIV. for the unfortunate country. From this point the story of the Spanish Jesuits assumes a livelier complexion.

Philip V., a youth of seventeen, was entrusted by Louis XIV. to the care of the French Jesuit Daubenton. Father Letellier was at that time the spiritual guide of the grand monarch, and he had recommended his friend and colleague Daubenton for the important post of ruling the Spanish King's conscience. Daubenton was a stout little man who concealed an immense aptitude and eagerness for intrigue under an air of severe detachment from worldly affairs. On the other hand, a brilliant Frenchwoman, the Princess Orsini, was sent to[Pg 269] sustain the interests of France in the Queen's circle, and she succeeded in obtaining so strong an influence that we find her at times writing, without much exaggeration, of "my administration." She was camerara mayor to the young Maria Luisa—a mere girl—and her great power drew on her the hatred of the Spaniards and of some of the French. By the year 1703 the court was seething with intrigue. The memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, the work of the contemporary English historian Coxe, and the letters which passed between the Spanish and French courts indicate that Daubenton was the most active and insidious agent in the cabal against the Princess Orsini. A very sordid intrigue ran through the whole of the year 1703, and it ended in the recall of the princess to France. The Queen was, however, so angry that the plot was exposed to Louis XIV. —it is authoritatively narrated in the correspondence of Louis and Philip—and Daubenton was dismissed from the court in disgrace and the Princess Orsini permitted to return.

Another French Jesuit, Father Robinet, succeeded Daubenton, and the fate of his predecessor did not intimidate him from taking an interest in politics, though he at first made the same pretence of aloofness from secular matters. The next ten years, however, passed without notable incident, and the Spanish Jesuits continued to accumulate wealth. Saint Simon tells us that on one occasion a ship from South America discharged at the quays of Cadiz several boxes addressed to "The Procurator-General of the Society of Jesus." The contents were said to be chocolate, but the weight was extraordinary and the officials decided to open one of the boxes. It was, apparently, full of bars of chocolate, but the weight of each was so mysterious that they were more closely examined. They were bars of solid gold, [Pg 270] thickly coated with chocolate. This incident probably gave support to the rumour in Spain that the Jesuits had hidden gold mines in their carefully guarded reductions, but we may more probably recognise the direction taken by the great profit on the reductions and the reason for the determined efforts of the Jesuit authorities to support their fathers in this uncanonical industry.

Queen Luisa died in the year 1714, and it was believed at the court, and is not improbable, that Princess Orsini aspired to succeed her. She was then more than sixty years old, but she still had great charm and ability and seemed to be making a tender impression on the chaste and pious and weak-minded young King. Robinet put an end to her ambition with a bold retort. When Philip asked him one day what the latest news was from Paris, he said that it was rumoured that the King was about to marry Mme Orsini. Philip angrily denied it, and the princess very shortly passed out of the political life of Spain. There were, however, many others interested in the exile of Princess Orsini, and the share of Father Robinet must not be exaggerated. Spain had continued to decay. At the peace of 1713 her empire was shorn of Sicily, Milan, Naples, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, and Minorca. Philip consulted his Jesuit advisers several times a day, but neither they nor his other counsellors could do more than intrigue for power in the shrinking kingdom. The Abbé (later Cardinal) Alberoni was now rising to power, and was associated with Robinet in the ruin of Princess Orsini. Alberoni persuaded Philip that Elizabeth Farnese was just the quiet and modest young princess he desired for his second wife, and Philip yielded. But Elizabeth, a haughty and passionate maiden, was instructed beforehand in her duty, and at their first meeting she brutally dismissed the princess. Then Alberoni and [Pg 271] Robinet quarrelled about the appointment of a new Archbishop of Toledo. Robinet secured the dignity for a friend of the Society (1715), and he in turn incurred the anger of the Queen and Alberoni and was exiled to Germany.

Before he left, Robinet persuaded Philip to recall Daubenton to his side, and from that moment the court intrigue turned against Alberoni. In this Daubenton played a subordinate, but important, part. The English and French courts, as well as many of the Spaniards, were eager for the dismissal of the Italian favourite, and Daubenton, who confessed Philip twice a day and had other consultations with him, was employed by them to poison the King against his minister. Philip was persuaded that the great plans of Alberoni contained a danger to the country and he dismissed him. In this case the Jesuit confessor allowed himself to become the tool of the enemies of Spain and intrigued against its ablest statesman.

In the year 1724 Philip handed the crown to his son Louis, and retired to consecrate his useless life to religious devotions. There is no serious evidence that the Jesuits pressed Philip to resign, though they certainly tried to dissuade him from resuming the crown, and they had taken part in marrying Louis to the daughter of the Duke of Orleans. However that may be, Louis died a few months later and Philip returned to the throne.

Daubenton had died in 1723, and his place had been taken by the Jesuit Bermudez, who sustained the tradition of intrigue. The successor of Alberoni was a Spaniard from the Low Countries, Ripperdá, who was obnoxious to the Jesuits on many grounds. In Holland he had consulted his ambition by turning Protestant, and on his return to Spain, where he found favour with the [Pg 272] King, he promptly recovered his belief in the older creed. The Queen's confessor, a Jesuit who rejoiced in the title and robes of Archbishop of Amida, intrigued against this singular adventurer and overthrew him. Here again the Jesuit merely used his opportunities to voice the resentment of many others, nor do historians regard the downfall of Ripperdá with any sympathy, but the intrigues of the spiritual guides of the court were now so flagrant and so much discussed in Europe that Philip was angry. When, shortly afterwards, Father Bermudez offended the Queen by stealthily communicating to the King letters from France, to be concealed from her, and was found to be intriguing like his predecessors, he was dismissed from office. It was related in the court that Bermudez offered to swear on the crucifix that he was innocent, and that Philip answered: "I have too much respect for the image of Christ to suffer you to perjure yourself thus." Bermudez was dismissed, and an Irish Jesuit, Father Clarke, was made royal confessor for the remainder of the melancholy reign of Philip V.

The accession of his son, Ferdinand VI., in 1746 brought little relief to the country and no change in the power of the Jesuits. Ferdinand, a weak and virtuous monarch, of the type which proved so congenial to the Jesuits, was devoted to the Society. His confessor, Father Rabago, was his chief adviser, and courtiers gathered thickly about the Jesuit in the hope of winning his influence. His position and power, and the feebleness of the monarch, made him bolder, and a few years later he ventured upon an action which was to have disastrous consequences for his Society. In spite of all the efforts of the Jesuits Spain agreed to cede a part of Paraguay containing seven of the Jesuit reductions to Portugal, in exchange for Sacramento, I have already [Pg 273] mentioned this incident in speaking of Portugal, and will narrate in a later chapter what happened in Paraguay. Briefly, an army of 15,000 Indians from the reductions—not merely the seven reductions in question, which would not afford more than a few hundred soldiers, but evidently the full force of the Jesuit troops drafted from the whole of their scattered reductions—drew up in the path of the Spanish and Portuguese troops, and it was only after many battles, and at the end of three years, that the agreement between the two governments could be carried out.

The Marquis de Pombal, who was then in power at Lisbon, at once claimed that the Jesuits had inspired this treasonable resistance. It would be difficult for any impartial person to imagine that this army had been mobilised from the whole area of Jesuit influence and maintained for so long a period against the will of the Jesuit fathers, who so completely dominated the Indians and were accustomed to lead them to battle. Ferdinand hesitated, but at last Pombal intercepted a secret letter from Father Rabago to the Spanish fathers, in which he urged them to resist. The English ambassador, Sir Benjamin Keene (quoted by Coxe in his Memoirs of the Kings of Spain), tells us that this letter and other proofs were put before Ferdinand, and the King expressed great indignation with the Jesuits in his presence. Coxe himself, who is often quoted by the Jesuits as an impartial authority, says that the letter was "undoubtedly" genuine. Rabago was, he says, ignorant at first of foreign affairs, and ruled by a junta of his colleagues in his direction of the King, but he became ambitious and intrigued against the power of the leading statesmen Carvajal and Enseñada. The letters intercepted in 1754 opened the King's eyes, and when, in the following year, the confessor was detected in his [Pg 274] intrigues against Enseñada, he was peremptorily dismissed from office.

Ferdinand continued to trust the other Jesuits and resist the pressure of Pombal, but he died in 1759, and an abler ruler, Charles III., came to the throne. Charles was a devout Catholic and was devoted to the Society. He was, like his predecessor, deaf to the warnings and entreaties of Pombal, and the ruthless expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal (in 1759) only increased his benevolence toward them in Spain. All their errors were forgotten, and Pombal's charges against their conduct in the colonies were warmly rejected. Few could have anticipated that, under such a ruler, in less than ten years from his accession, the gorgeous structure of Jesuit prosperity in Spain would be thrown to the ground and the fathers ignominiously expelled.

The first action of the Jesuits to modify the feeling of the King toward them was their opposition to the canonisation of Bishop Palafox. Charles keenly desired that the highest honours of the Church should be paid to this saintly Spanish bishop of the previous century, but, as we shall see later, Palafox had submitted to Pope Innocent X. a very grave indictment of the conduct of the Jesuits and, if he had been canonised, his letters "would have brought disgrace on the Society," as the Jesuit historian Cordara says. Cordara admits that the means they adopted to prevent canonisation were not approvable; they were, in fact, chiefly bribery and an unscrupulous vilification of the bishop. The process did not get beyond the stage of declaring the bishop "Venerable," and Charles was displeased with the Jesuits.

In 1766 a less clear, but much more serious, grievance arose. An attempt to shorten the long cloaks [Pg 275] and broad-brimmed sombreros of the Spanish people, which favoured assassins, led in the spring of 1766 to a revolt at Madrid. Charles was a stern maintainer of royal authority, and the outbreak greatly angered him. His chief minister Aranda, a scholar and politician of the liberal school, who was in sympathy with Choiseul and Pombal and opposed to the Jesuits, now succeeded in persuading the King that the Jesuits had inspired the revolt. According to the official "historian" of the Society, the only ground for this was that the Jesuits had flung themselves bravely upon the angry mob and disarmed it; which aroused an improper suspicion of their power. The historian is careful not to relate that in the autumn of the year a lawyer named Navarro was arrested for bringing a false charge against certain monks (whom the Jesuits disliked) in connection with the riot, and that, when the case turned against him, he declared that the Jesuits had prompted him to do this in order to avert suspicion from their own conduct. Charles was convinced that they were the authors of the riot, and he was now prepared to listen to the charges of Pombal and Choiseul.

It was then submitted to the King that the Jesuits were conspiring to replace him on the throne by his brother Louis. One of our best authorities, Coxe, declares that a forged letter in this sense, purporting to come from General Ricci to the heads of the Spanish Jesuits, was used amongst the evidence. However that may be, the King was convinced, a searching inquiry was made into the condition and activity of the Society, and the King entrusted to the willing hands of Aranda the task of destroying it. Aranda realised that secrecy was essential to success, and he and a few confidential colleagues stealthily drew up the indictment of the Society. Such precautions had to be taken to outwit [Pg 276] the Jesuit spies that the minister would take pen and ink in his pocket, in order that it should not be known that the King was signing a document. By the beginning of 1767 it was decided to banish the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions, and Aranda set to work to arrange the expulsion without giving the Jesuits an opportunity to provoke a rising in their favour. Sealed orders were sent to the local officials all over the empire, and it was strictly enjoined under pain of death that they were not to be opened until the evening of 2nd April. [28]

By the end of March the Jesuits must have been aware that some grave step against them was meditated, but the secret was well kept and the plan carried out to the letter. Some time after midnight on 2nd April the troops silently gathered round the six Jesuit colleges at Madrid and all the other houses and residences of the Society. The sentence was carried out simultaneously, with perfect order. The astounded Jesuits awoke to find a soldier and official in every cell, and they were ordered to dress and proceed to the refectory. There the royal decree of banishment was read to the assembled community, and they were promptly conducted by the troops, with such small personal possessions as their breviaries and their tobacco, to the appointed port. They were put in separate carriages, and carefully secluded from each other and the people until they were aboard ship. It seems that Aranda's precautions were excessive. The Jesuits complain rather of the harshness of the soldiers than attempt to discover any sympathy to which they might appeal. Sympathy and anger there were, of course, as well as delirious rejoicing, when the fall of the Society became [Pg 277] known. But before the country had fully realised that the proud Society had been doomed to exile by a Spanish king, the 6000 Jesuits of Spain and its colonies were mournfully crossing the Mediterranean, in overcrowded vessels, toward the coast of the papal states. A pension was allotted to each out of their confiscated property, but they were informed that the pensions of all would cease if one of their number ventured to assail Spain and defend the Society; this was not an unjust measure in view of the fact that no Jesuit could publish without authority.

Another very painful experience awaited the fathers at the Italian shore. Charles sent word to the Pope that he had found it necessary to banish the Jesuits, and he was committing them to the Pope's "wise and holy direction." The letter is not as disrespectful as this may suggest, but Clement XIII. was so angry that he took an unpardonable step. It will be remembered that Pombal had previously unloaded his ships on the papal shores, and the suppression in France had driven large numbers to Italy. We may assume that the aim of Pombal, Choiseul, and Aranda was to dispose the Pope to receive their demand for the abolition of the Society. Clement was so angry that he refused to receive the wretched exiles. The case is not, as is sometimes said, that he forgot to send, or refrained from sending, orders to receive the Jesuits. When the first vessel, bearing 600 dejected priests, made for the port of Civitá Vecchia, it was warned off by the roar of papal cannon, and for some weeks the miserable men tossed on the waves of the Mediterranean in sight of the inhospitable papal states. In the end they were dispatched to Corsica, to enjoy their slender pensions. Some apostatised, and some crept back in disguise to their native land, and were hunted as traitors; but in six years their last [Pg 278] hopes were extinguished by the papal abolition of the Society.

The verdict of the historian on this romantic fall of the Society of Jesus in the two countries which seemed especially adapted for its operations must always be coloured by his creed. Protestant historians have at times commented on the harsh execution of the sentence and the character of some of the evidence on which it was obtained, but none questions the justice of the expulsion. On the other hand, although the Catholic Church was, to say the least, equally divided on the matter at the time, no modern Catholic historian would admit the justice of the sentence. I do not propose to consider this in detail until we come to the abolition of the Society by the Pope. Indeed, we cannot quite appreciate the whole case of the Spaniards and Portuguese Catholics against the Jesuits until we have examined their conduct in the colonies. When we have covered the whole ground we shall be in a position to weigh the stern and lengthy indictment which Clement XIV.—who is wilfully misrepresented by Catholic writers—passes on the Society in pronouncing the solemn sentence of death. For the moment I need only say that, apart from their great irregularities in the colonies, the Jesuits were hated in Spain and Portugal on the ground that, in spite of their high professions, they sought and accumulated wealth, indulged in commerce, lent themselves to political intrigue, wronged other spiritual bodies, were lax in moral principles, and drained the resources of the decaying country without rendering it any proportionate service. This record of their deeds must suffice to enable the reader to say if the indictment and sentence were just.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Coxe puts the expulsion on the morning of 1st April, and the signing of the decree on 2nd April. This seems to be an error.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the conflict of evidence so sharp in regard to the Jesuits as when we turn to consider their activity outside of Europe. On the one hand we have the Edifying Letters which the missionaries themselves sent to their Roman authorities for publication in Europe. From these letters the apologetic writers construct a picture of the most charming devotion and spiritual success; we are invited to see thousands of Jesuits breaking every home-tie in order to carry the gospel of Christ across seas infested with Dutch and English enemies, to lands whence only one in a hundred will return, and where the tooth of the serpent, the poison of the tropics, or the knife of the savage awaits them; we are told how they advance unarmed into the forests, and fierce tribes surrender to the feeble symbol of the crucifix, how they charm the jealous monarchs of the east with their vast learning and open to other missionaries doors which had been closed against them for centuries, how from the rawest savage material they make ideal republics such as Plato had despaired of making out of the enlightened Athenians.

From the other side we learn that these Edifying Letters, which so plainly announce their purpose, are "pious lies"; that they wilfully exaggerate conversions and martyrdoms, and convey a wholly false picture of[Pg 280] Jesuit activity; that the Jesuits are engaged in a vast commercial activity all over the globe, are utterly unscrupulous in protecting their monopolies and in accumulating wealth, and make the most scandalous concessions to paganism in order to obtain numbers and influence. These things, moreover, are said by Catholic priests and prelates, not by jealous merchants and free-thinking politicians. Prelates of indisputable sanctity send to Europe the sternest and gravest charges against the Jesuits, and declare that they have been subjected by the Society to the most virulent and unprincipled persecution. We have therefore to make our way here with extreme prudence. Fortunately, many of the charges against the Jesuits receive serious consideration at Rome, and from the evidence which is submitted to, and generally endorsed by, the Roman tribunals, the historian is at times enabled to reach a confident verdict. Let us begin our survey with the action of the Jesuits in the far east.

At the beginning of the period we are considering Japan is closed against the Christian missionaries, and all the blood that has been shed on its soil proves sterile. We saw that the emperors had at length determined to extirpate the new religion, and a final revolt of the surviving Christians in 1638 led to the completing of the work of destruction. One or two Jesuits afterwards penetrated the country, in the disguise of merchants, but they were arrested or forced to leave. The artful Japanese devised a test of faith which should have defeated the zeal of the missionary; every European immigrant had to spit or trample on the crucifix before landing. It is said by a serious authority, one of the General Commandants of the French East India Company (Martin, of Pondicherry), that the Jesuits found a casuistic way out of this difficulty and insulted [Pg 281] the crucifix; they were, they said, merely regarding it as a piece of wood and metal. However that may be, the last Jesuit—an apostate who repented—was executed there in 1652, and the fathers of the "Japanese Province" were scattered over the other eastern missions.

China had, in the meantime, become a most attractive field of labour. It will be remembered that the Jesuit Ricci had at last found a way to penetrate the Chinese defences; he had concealed his religion, dressed as a Chinese scholar, and won great prestige as a mathematician and astronomer. He had obtained great influence at the court, and other Jesuits had followed his example. Their services to the court were rewarded with permission to preach their doctrines in the provinces, but this work was often checked by local persecution, and the Jesuits directed their chief efforts to the court and the educated class. The tradition started by Ricci was maintained and developed, and a very strange group of missionaries gathered about the emperor. Chief amongst them was Father Adam Schall, a very able mathematician and intimate friend of the emperor. He could cast horoscopes, found cannon, admire the works of Kung-fu-tse, and behave in every way as a Chinese gentleman. He found a substantial agreement between educated Chinese religion and Christianity—especially by keeping the crucifix out of sight—and genially sanctioned the worship of "Heaven," the veneration of Kung-fu-tse, and the cult of ancestors. The educated Chinaman is, as we know to-day, an Agnostic, and he concluded that the Jesuit was an almost equally liberal interpreter of popular superstitions. He therefore welcomed these western gentlemen who could read the stars, make fancy clocks, found cannon, direct armies, and paint pictures better than the native scholar.

The Jesuits had previously helped the Chinese to repel the Tartars, but a more formidable invasion occurred in 1636, and, to be quite safe, they divided their forces. Schall joined the Tartars at Peking and read in the stars that they would conquer; some of his colleagues remained with the threatened dynasty, declared that the stars were in their favour, and induced some members of the royal family to accept baptism. The Tartars won, the opposing Jesuits were recalled, and Schall passed into the confidence of the new emperor. He became a mandarin of the first class and president of the tribunal of imperial mathematics. He dressed in gorgeous silks, and his palanquin, borne by twelve servants, was attended by a strong body-guard with the usual Chinese symbols; also—if we believe the missionary Sala, as seems reasonable—his beautiful palace contained two charming Chinese ladies and, in the course of time, two children. But the emperor died ten years later, a persecution was initiated, and Father Schall died lamentably in prison in 1666. All the Jesuits—nineteen in number—were imprisoned, and their 151 churches were closed or destroyed.

In 1669 the young Emperor Kang Hi, son of the Tartar conqueror, attained his majority and released the Jesuits. Father Verbiest took the place of Father Schall, and as his military services enabled the emperor to quell an insurrection, he obtained permission to summon fresh "mathematicians" from the west. France was now the great expanding Power in Europe, and the new field, with its prospect of a monopoly of commerce, was secured for Louis XIV. Six learned French Jesuits arrived in 1688, and from that time until the end of the century they grew in power and wealth. As artists, astrologers, or mechanicians the priests made themselves indispensable [Pg 283] at court, and the lay-brothers brought western skill in medicine and surgery. One of them received 200,000 francs' worth of gold for curing the emperor. They also imported clocks, wine, and other western products, and, from merely approving, they passed on to an active share in the great Chinese industry of lending money at a profit, which was then sternly condemned by their Church. The rival Catholic missionaries reported that the three Jesuit houses at Peking made 80,000 francs a year by usury; though the Jesuits protested that they did not charge more than twenty-four per cent. Father Gerbillon was now head of the mathematical tribunal and diplomatic agent on Russian affairs. Father Martini was the military expert, and, as a mandarin of the first order, exhibited a dragon on his fine silk robe.

There was one very serious thorn in the side of these prosperous Jesuits. Dominican, Franciscan, and other missionaries had followed them into the country, and were expressing the most cordial abhorrence of their procedure. Their arrogance, their unpriestly occupations, and their commerce and usury were bad enough, but they were not even preaching the Gospel. They suppressed the doctrine of the Redemption, did not anoint dying women (out of concession to Chinese delicacy), and permitted their converts to join in the rites of the old Chinese religion. The Dominicans and Franciscans disturbed their profitable policy by thrusting the crucifix before the eyes of the amazed Chinese, and there were fierce wrangles. The friars appealed to Rome, and in 1645 the Propaganda condemned the Jesuit concessions. The Jesuits ignored the condemnation, on the ground that it was issued on false information, and sent Mandarin Martini to Rome. Martini unblushingly asserted that the rites they permitted were [Pg 284] purely civil in character, and he was able to return with an authorisation of their practices. But the Dominicans sent a fresh envoy to Rome, and, in the meantime, the terrible Jansenist Arnauld had learned the facts and was holding up the Jesuits to the ridicule of Europe.

All the machinery of intrigue at Rome was now in motion, and in 1684 three bishops who belonged to the rival French Congregation of Foreign Missions were sent out to make an investigation. When the Jesuits found it impossible to persuade these commissioners that the early Chinese had received a knowledge of the true God from the children of Noah, that the cult of ancestors was equivalent to the services in honour of the souls in purgatory, and so on, they used their court-influence ruthlessly against them and the missionaries. In the course of time, however, an adverse report reached Rome, and a serious inquiry opened. The ten Jesuits at the Chinese court wrote to say that the emperor himself endorsed their interpretation of the Chinese doctrines and rites, but, although the new Pope, Clement XI., was favourable to the Society, and Père la Chaise threw the influence of France into the scale, the testimony of the other missionaries was too plain to be ignored. An experienced missionary and able young prelate, Mgr. (later Cardinal) de Tournon, was sent out in 1703 to examine the Jesuit practices in India and China.

The adventurous voyage of Mgr. de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, would fill an interesting volume. We shall see presently what the practices of the Jesuits were in India, and will not be surprised that he promptly condemned them. From that moment until he died heart-broken, six years afterwards, in a Christian jail, he was thwarted and tormented by the intrigues of the Jesuits. He reached Canton in the spring of 1705, and [Pg 285] was informed that the emperor refused to see him. The position of the Jesuits at court was such that not even a child could fail to recognise their direction in this decision, and a great scandal was caused. It was twelve months before the legate was permitted to pay the Pope's respects to the emperor, and, as he politely insisted that the Jesuits were falsely representing the Church, he was driven from the country and committed to the care of the Portuguese authorities, who were controlled by the Jesuits. When he reached Macao, this papal legate found that the Viceroy of India, the Archbishop of Goa, and the Bishop of Macao forbade him to exercise his powers in any country under the Portuguese flag. When he justly replied by excommunicating the Bishop and Captain-General of Macao—and the Pope recognised the integrity of his conduct by making him cardinal in that year (1707)—the Portuguese authorities imprisoned him. He died in prison three years afterwards, at the early age of forty-two. The only priests in the east whom he had felt compelled to censure were the Jesuits, and the letters of de Tournon himself and of the priests of his suite (one of whom was imprisoned in a Jesuit house) emphatically attribute all the outrages they suffered to the Jesuits, who intercepted their correspondence in order to conceal the facts from the Papacy. It is even stated by some of these priests that the stubborn cardinal was eventually removed by poison.

Since we know that the Jesuits had paramount influence at Peking, Macao, and Goa, and could easily have secured a proper treatment of the Pope's representative, we are compelled to believe these witnesses. Crétineau-Joly's statement, that "they did not dare to intervene between the emperor and the legate," is little less than frivolous. They directed the whole [Pg 286] proceedings—as usual, through others. De Tournon's assurance that, when a priest was tortured to give evidence against him at Peking, there were two Jesuits listening behind a curtain, is quite in harmony with their ways; about the same time in Paraguay, when a bishop was violently assaulted by the armed pupils of the Society, there were two Jesuits concealed in the trees directing them. We shall see that every prelate, in any part of the world, who sets out to expose the misdeeds of the Jesuits, experiences the same outrages as did the unfortunate Cardinal de Tournon.

The Jesuits both of India and China ignored the commands of the Pope's solemn representative, and clung to their lucrative missions. In 1706 they persuaded the emperor to forbid any missionary to attack Chinese rites, and, as the fierce controversy continued and the banishment of the more active prelates proved fruitless, they obtained an edict expelling all missionaries who followed the instructions of the late legate. The scandal was, however, now known throughout Christendom, and on 25th September 1710 Clement XI. solemnly condemned their practices. Again they quibbled, observing that some of their practices were not specifically condemned, and a new papal bull (Ex illa die) was issued on 19th March 1715, enacting that all missionaries must take oath to abandon the forbidden practices. The emperor denounced the bull, and imprisoned the prelate who communicated it to the Jesuits, and a third representative was sent to China by the Vatican. In spite of certain concessions (afterwards condemned by the Papacy), Mgr. Mezzabarba had little more success than his predecessors, and the Jesuits continued to maintain their compromises and tempt the Papacy with glowing promises of success. There were, they said, nine members of the royal family [Pg 287] and hundreds of influential Chinamen ready to embrace Christianity as they expounded it. Innocent XIII., now fully informed by Mezzabarba, severely condemned them (1723), and we know from a private letter of the Jesuit historian Cordara that he was preparing an "atrocious decree" against the Society when he died in 1724.

As the immediate successors of Innocent XIII. were open to Jesuit influence, they were enabled to maintain their position and practices on the Asiatic missions until the middle of the eighteenth century. In other words, these religious who were especially bound to obey the Pope, defied the Papacy for nearly one hundred years (since the first condemnation), and committed every outrage against its representatives. In the meantime their great patron Kang Hi died (1722), and the exasperated Chinese began to destroy the conflicting missions. There were then, it is said, several hundred thousand Christians in China, though the sequel will show that these were almost entirely of the poorer classes, won by material services and ready to return to Taoism at the slightest pressure. The new emperor proscribed Christianity, and banished all the missionaries except the more learned of the Jesuits. A letter written by one of these Jesuits gives an account of their situation. As engineers, astronomers, and diplomatists they were still sheltered and rewarded by the Chinese court—he adds that they remained partly in the interest of French (and their own) commerce—but the educated Chinese disdained their religion, and they were reduced to a furtive ministration to the rapidly shrinking body of poor converts.

This situation lasted until 1743, when Benedict XIV. at last vindicated the dignity of the Papacy and issued his famous bull Ex quo singulari. A second and more [Pg 288] drastic bull, sternly condemning their contumacy, appeared in 1744, and they were now forced to submit without reserve. From that time the Chinese mission melted away. As far as the Jesuits were concerned, it had never had any religious solidity. A few Jesuits who attempted to sustain the converts in the provinces were put to death, and the court Jesuits were restricted to their hydraulic engineering, surgery, philology, and astrology. They lingered for a generation at Peking, the strangest figures in the whole clerical universe, but the Chinese showed no sign of relenting, and they died, one by one, in their singular employments. Their death closed the stirring but sterile episode of the first attempt to Christianise China.

Before we turn to India, the next important centre of Christianity in the far east, we must glance at their fortunes in subsidiary missions. Their letters tell how they entered the Philippine Islands in 1665, and had a miraculous success among the very lowly, but generally peaceful, natives; one Jesuit is said to have baptized 50,000 of them (mostly children, apparently) in four years, and founded eight churches and three colleges. One priest to eight churches, and eight churches to 50,000 converts, give us the true measure of their success. They were generally content to pour the baptismal water over the heads of all who could be induced to accept it, by material benefits or a confused belief in its magical properties, and send the inflated statistics to Europe. In spite, however, of wars amongst the natives and occasional persecution they built up a prosperous mission. Its story is tainted by commercial activity and unprincipled behaviour towards the rest of the clergy. We shall see later that they had vast estates in California and Mexico, and from these they conducted a large and regular traffic, in their [Pg 289] own ships, with Manila. Archbishop Pardo, of Manila, condemned this traffic, and ordered them to distribute the value of their property among the poor. He suffered the customary fate of prelates who interfered with the operations of the Society. Whether the governor of the Philippines was bribed, or merely persuaded by the fathers, we need not attempt to determine; but his officers seized the Archbishop during the night and deported him to a neighbouring island. Thirty years previously Pardo's predecessor, Archbishop Guerrero, had been treated with the same outrages.

In Cochin China, Tong King, and Siam the story of the Jesuits is much the same as in China, and need not be told in detail. A Father de Rhodes, a missionary of the early and ardent type, penetrates Cochin China in 1640, and in spite of resistance and persecution, makes 40,000 "converts" and builds seventy "churches" in a few years. Modern missionary experience in Asia enables us to test these absurd claims. Father de Rhodes was caught and expelled, and the next group of missionaries adopted the Chinese policy. They induced the King to regard them as great mathematicians and skilful engineers, and propagated a mild form of Christianity, as in China. This led to a similar, but even more virulent, conflict with the non-Jesuit missionaries. When the papal bull Ex illa die, condemning their practices, arrived, they airily remarked that it came from Amsterdam, not Rome, and ignored it. Very violent quarrels occurred with the French non-Jesuit priests, whom they denounced as "Jansenists"; and these priests accused them of the most sordid vice and outrage. We shall see that the charge of loose living must be admitted; but whether they poisoned hostile priests, and had refractory native women stripped to the waist and flogged, are questions which must remain [Pg 290] open. The profane historian is naturally embarrassed when two groups of priests flatly accuse each other of lying, and one group certainly is lying.

At length the Vatican sent a bishop to investigate the situation in Cochin China, and we are, perhaps, justified in following the report of this impartial Papal Legate. He found great moral as well as theological laxity among the Jesuits. One father, in high authority, had had a concubine for twenty years, and took her with him when he visited the sick; and there was much drunkenness and violence against their opponents. The papal agents were bribed to support them, and the pagan officials were easily induced to admire and sustain the more genial ways of the Jesuits. The Legate officially forbade them to practise usury, to sell worthless drugs at exorbitant prices to the natives, to dress in gay purple and bind their flowing locks with coloured ribands, and so on. His decree is a flash of light on Jesuit practices among natives. One curious incident in his reports is worth noting. A Franciscan monk, a feeble old man of sixty, had, to please the Jesuits, established a church in face of that of the French missionaries. The Legate ordered him to remove, and the monk presently came to say that he was unable to remove as the Captain of the Guardians of the Royal Dogs (a young Jesuit "mathematician") had appointed him a Guardian and sent him several dogs, because the air of his district was good for dogs. In a word, the Jesuits used their full influence at court to thwart and persecute the Legate, and he died in distress shortly afterwards.

Siam had received two Jesuits in 1630. They came as envoys of the governor of the Philippines, and so charmed the King that they were invited to stay. When Spanish vessels followed them, the Siamese were indignant; but the quarrel was adjusted, and in 1685 six learned [Pg 291] "mathematicians" of the great King Louis XIV. came, with gorgeous parade and an imposing military escort, to the Siamese court. The Jesuits were now everywhere diplomatic agents for the expansion of French commerce, if not French territory, and the work in Siam was facilitated by a French adventurer, named Phaulcon, who had won the King's confidence. The King asked for more "mathematicians," and fourteen Jesuits eagerly responded. But with them (in 1687) came a French squadron and several regiments, who proceeded to occupy and fortify positions in Bangkok and Merguy. The King soon detected that the learned mathematicians and the minister Phaulcon and the French regiments had a close and secret understanding, and this remarkable attempt to spread the gospel came to a premature close. Phaulcon lost his head, and the mathematicians were banished.

We have seen in a previous chapter how the Jesuits had applied their elastic principles to the conversion of India, the original and central field of the Asiatic missions. After sending most imposing figures of baptisms to Europe during a century, they announced, we saw, that the work had been profoundly unsatisfactory, and some new plan of reaching the educated Hindus must be adopted. So Father de Nobili had dressed as a Hindu priest of the most sacred caste, had adopted all the emblems and practices of the caste, and had behaved throughout life in such a way that the other members of the Saniassi sect were unable to discover that he was a Christian. Father Britto, Father Beschi, and other Jesuits succeeded him in this fantastic rôle. Rome was solemnly assured, as it was from China, that the rites and emblems of the Saniassi (which are saturated with Hindu mythology) were "purely civil" in their nature;[Pg 292] local prelates (who were frequently ex-Jesuits) and Vatican officials were bribed or persuaded to sanction this fiction; and for more than a century the Jesuits permitted a number of members of the Society to don the sacred clothes and practise the rites of the Saniassi.

The melodramatic temper which the Jesuit spirit fostered in members of the Society counted for a good deal in this singular development of their missionary enterprise. Regarded from the point of view of the purpose which they held to justify it, one must pronounce it a failure. Very few high-caste Hindus were converted, and even these few only accepted a quite emasculated version of Christianity, as a rule. Some of the Jesuit-Saniassi did succeed in obtaining considerable prestige. They rode about on fine horses, and were borne in palanquins while natives cooled them with peacock-feather fans, and greatly impressed the ignorant natives. One of them, Beschi, so captivated a local prince that he became his first minister, and rode about with an escort of thirty horsemen and a native band. These successes among the educated Hindus were, however, only won by a concealment of the distinctive elements of the Christian faith and an insinuation that the enlightened priests at Rome itself (as distinct from the common missionaries) held the same liberal view of the creed.

It was still mainly among the poorer classes and the pariahs, whose poverty made them more susceptible to missionary influence, that the converts were found. We may regard with suspicion the enormous figures of conversions effected by them which individual Jesuits sent to Europe,—one of the Apostolic Vicars for India bluntly describes them as "lies,"—but hundreds of thousands of the natives were in some measure gathered into the Christian fold. We are sometimes asked to admire the levelling of caste-barriers which this inclusion in [Pg 293] a common fold would entail, but the Jesuits fully respected the caste-barriers. Some of their number are entitled to high praise for becoming pariahs among the pariahs,—dressing in their ragged clothes and eating their vile food,—but the high-caste Jesuit would not glance even at his pariah-colleague if he met him on the road. He would not enter a pariah's hut; the dying pariah had to be carried out under a tree to receive his ministration, and, if he were too ill to be removed, he died without the sacraments. The pariahs were not allowed in the church; they were herded in an enclosure by the side of it to hear the Mass, and the sacraments were often administered to them through a window.

These were not the only grievances which the other missionaries, who could not report their tens of thousands of conversions, had against the Jesuits. It was equally proved that they laid little stress on the doctrine of redemption, as in China, and made very material concessions to paganism. They omitted parts of the ceremony of baptism which the Hindus disliked (the use of saliva and the breathing on the convert): they did not give saint-names to the converts, and advised them not to call themselves Christians, but (in a familiar Hindu phrase) "followers of the true God": they married mere children, long before the time of puberty, and they allowed the married girl to wear the taly according to the pagan custom: [29] they blessed and distributed the ashes of cow-dung which the natives esteemed: they permitted their converts to wear, and [Pg 294] sometimes wore themselves, emblems of Vishnu. It seems that in some places they placed no cross over the altar.

These extraordinary concessions—they are commonly known as "the Malabar rites," as the Jesuits were chiefly established in Malabar—were fiercely assailed by the other missionaries and reported to Rome. In 1703, as we saw, Mgr. de Tournon was sent to inquire into the quarrel, and he condemned the more flagrant of the Jesuit practices. When the Legate passed on to China, the Jesuits and the local prelates (either Jesuits or friends of the Jesuits) entirely ignored his commands, and the feud continued. It must be borne in mind that the Jesuits had now supreme influence at the Portuguese as well as the French court, and officials naturally bowed to their wealth and power. For a considerable time they had received from the Kings of Portugal immense subsidies for their missionary work, and their commerce and intentness on gifts and legacies had added to this wealth. The manager of the French East India Company at Pondicherry tells us that the Jesuits in India surpassed the English and Portuguese merchants, and only fell short of the Dutch, in trading activity. In his time there was a debt of 450,000 livres on the books of his company in the name of a Jesuit (Father Tachard). Their wealth was very great, and they did not scruple to use it in the maintenance of their position as well as in attracting converts.

But the Malabar rites, and Chinese rites, and Jesuit-Brahmans were now, as we saw, a scourge in the hands of the Society's critics in Europe, and the Papacy was forced to suppress them. As we have so often realised, the Jesuit repute for broad sagacity and statesmanship, as distinct from astuteness and capacity for intrigue, is without foundation. The Roman Jesuit authorities [Pg 295] could have destroyed the system in a year, yet they sustained it for a hundred years, and, with blind stubbornness, allowed an indelible stain to be fixed on the Society, and were responsible for the sudden collapse of their missions. When Benedict XIV. fearlessly and peremptorily condemned them, there was a formidable reaction among their converts, and the hundreds of congregations rapidly disappeared. Their apologist would have us believe that they submitted in 1741 (the year before Benedict's first bull), but that "distance and the difficulty of communication retarded the arrival of their letters at Rome." Ignoring the foolish remark about the difficulty of communication, we may observe that the year 1741 was seventeen years after their official condemnation by the Pope's representative; that Clement XII. had condemned them in 1734 and 1739, and they had ignored his decrees; and that, so far from having submitted in 1741, Benedict XIV. found them contumacious to his bull of 1742, and had to issue another in 1744. They submitted in 1745, and the structure they had raised by two hundred years of devotion and dissimulation rapidly decayed.

The missions in other parts of Asia had little success. Ceylon was invaded by two fathers in 1616, but when these were executed in 1627 and 1628 the mission seems to have been abandoned. It is interesting to find that they even entered the almost impregnable capital of Thibet. Two of their more devoted and austere missionaries crossed the vale of Cachmire and the bleak mountains on foot, and reached Lhasa. The expedition had no result, and was not repeated. In nearer Asia also the work was only moderately successful. Armed with diplomatic papers from the French court, instead of the crucifix of which they sometimes boast as their only weapon, they entered [Pg 296] the dominion of the Turk, and wrangled with Greeks, Nestorians, Armenians, and other Christians over the infallibility of the Pope. They founded residences at Thessalonica, Smyrna, Trebezon, Damascus, etc., and pushed on to the banks of the Euphrates. In 1682, two Jesuits, magnificently equipped and loaded with presents, approached the Shah of Persia as envoys of Louis XIV., and received permission to preach the Christian gospel. Within a quarter of a century they had, they said, baptized 200,000 of the natives. Then the Persian ruler turned a hostile eye on the growing body, and it melted more rapidly than it had grown. The age of Louis XIV. was over, the French dream of expansion laid aside, and the flow of French money interrupted.

A fresh attempt was made in 1677 to induce the Copts of Egypt to recognise the authority of the Pope. The now familiar device was adopted of impressing the monarch with a show of learning and art, and trusting to sow the Christian seed insidiously in his dominions. In twenty years of assiduous labour the scholar-missionaries added much to the slender geographical and archæological lore of Europe, but their secret religious mission failed. Abyssinia also still resisted their efforts. They converted an Emperor, and he was slain in civil war for endeavouring to force the new creed on his people; they secured the favour of his successor, and a Jesuit at last obtained the real dignity of Patriarch of Abyssinia. A threat of civil war moved the Emperor to restrict them, and, when they were found to be inspiring their converts with seditious sentiments, they were once more expelled and—save for an occasional invasion in disguise—their work was wholly destroyed. It may be added that some of the more heroic of the Jesuits penetrated the Congo, and endeavoured to reach the blacks at Tetuan, Angola, and the Guinea coast. Others followed [Pg 297] the negro to America; and the noble and self-sacrificing labours of a Father Peter Claver for forty years (1615-1654) must be put in the scale against their general demoralisation.

We turn now to the famous missions of South America, and must endeavour to attain an impartial estimate of their work, especially among the natives of Paraguay. I have previously described the model villages, or "reductions," which form the central interest of the Jesuit missions in America. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the fathers decided that they would not co-operate with the Spaniards of the South American towns. For this there was an admirable motive, and we saw that the spirit which animated the early missionaries in that region was excellent. They went out in couples or singly, unarmed, into the vast forests and along the great rivers in search of converts. The natives at first fled before them. A Spaniard was, to them, a man with superior weapons who sought only to enslave the natives and make wealth by their toil. It was at first for the purpose of removing this natural prejudice that the Jesuits dissevered themselves from the colonists and obtained from the King a declaration that the natives who had been baptized should never be enslaved. Later they obtained for them exemption from military or other service, and from any kind of local taxation. These things at once angered the great body of the Spanish colonists, and attracted the less savage natives to the missions. They therefore next secured permission to colonise independently of the laity, and, in 1610, founded the first reduction. They sent trained natives back into the forests, with axes, knives, mirrors, and other enticing presents, and the fathers themselves boldly penetrated time after time, so that by 1630 they [Pg 298] had about 100,000 natives in their reductions. For some years their colonies were then devastated by a hostile tribe; but the Jesuits obtained from the Spanish King permission to arm their pupils, formed an army of several thousand drilled and well-equipped troops, and more than recovered their ground. In the course of time they came to have 300,000 natives in their reductions.

No payment was made to the workers in these reductions. After labouring to show that they were not very productive, the apologist for the Jesuits is driven to plead that the fathers "did not think it proper to give ideas of cupidity to Christians": an admirable sentiment, if the Society had not itself appropriated the superfluous wealth of the communities. Nor is it more convincing to be reminded of the natural indolence of the natives. They were not indolent in the reductions. Public and harsh penances were inflicted for laziness, and the hours of work, sleep, play, and prayer were rigorously fixed. Rough huts, light clothing, and sufficient cheap food were distributed weekly; festivals were frequent, and were enlivened by the flute, the song, or the dance; morality was so strictly controlled that the natives were watched even during the night. It does not seem just to compare them with slaves, or suggest that, as long as they behaved well, they were hardly treated. That they were not nearly so civilised as the roseate letters of the Jesuits describe will appear presently, but it was much that 300,000 natives were induced to lead regular and disciplined lives. It is absurd to speak of "ideal republics" when the workers dwelt in wretched huts, had no corporate property or power, worked all day for masters who rendered no account to them or any other, and could, when they were on the march, at once revert to savagery. But [Pg 299] they were in a far superior position to that of the enslaved, brutalised, wine-sodden natives who fell into the hands of the lay colonists.

The antagonism to the reductions was in principle economic. The Spanish traders felt that they were prevented from exploiting the natives, a grievance with which we may or may not sympathise, and bitterly reproached the Jesuits with indulging in commerce. When "Edifying Letters" were published which described the Jesuits marching out once more from their pleasant reductions, facing the untamed savages or the beasts and serpents of new regions with the crucifix in their hands, people scoffingly observed that new reductions would increase the income of the Society. The Jesuits retorted that contact with Spaniards would mean disease and vice among their pupils, and they would rather manage the villages—they did not, of course, admit that they indulged in commerce—than admit European laymen. That they made a large profit out of 300,000 meagrely rewarded workers it is impossible to doubt, but how are we to judge the sincerity of their statement that they retained control solely from religious and moral motives?

Possibly the facts of their relations with the bishops of Paraguay will enable us to decide, if their action on other foreign missions be not regarded as sufficient. These facts are, of course, challenged by Jesuit writers, but the authority is too serious for us to set them aside on that account. Dom Bernardine de Cardenas, a Franciscan monk who became Bishop of Paraguay, sent Friar Villalon to the Spanish court and the Vatican to complain of the Jesuits. I state the facts as they are given in Villalon's memorial to Philip of Spain; and those who think that they are discredited because the Jesuits denied the more flagrant charges and the [Pg 300] Spanish court, ruled by Jesuits, rejected them, are free to impute the mendacity to the bishop rather than to the Jesuits.

The two predecessors of Cardenas had had much trouble with the Jesuits, but for a year or two after his consecration he was on very friendly terms with them. They did not from the first affect to regard his consecration as invalid, as their apologist says; that idea (afterwards refuted by the Papacy) occurred to them in the course of the quarrel. In 1644, Cardenas announced that he was about to visit the reductions, which formed part of his diocese, and the Jesuits offered him 20,000 crowns to omit that part of his visitation. He refused, and they discovered a scruple about the validity of his consecration. As Cardenas insisted, they spread the report in the reductions that Spanish priests were coming who would interfere with the women, raised a troop of eight hundred Indians, and advanced toward the episcopal town of Assumption. The governor, a brutal man, had previously quarrelled with the bishop, and one would imagine that it hardly needed a bribe of 30,000 crowns to secure his co-operation. It is at least quite certain that, as he travelled, the bishop was seized by the governor at the head of the Jesuit soldiers, brutally treated, and sent into exile 200 miles away.

Cardenas made his way with great difficulty to La Plata, placed his case before the higher tribunal of the Royal Audience, and was awarded his see. Near the city he was, however, again arrested by the Jesuit troops, and sent back to his wretched exile. In 1647 there was a change of governor, and he returned, to the great joy of the town. The Jesuits, however, intrigued with his clergy, allowed two of his canons to set up a rival chapter in their residence, and turned the [Pg 301] new governor against him. He was besieged in his cathedral for fourteen days; but a compromise was accepted, and, when the governor died two years afterwards, the citizens nominated Cardenas himself governor, in accordance with their legal right. The Jesuits then set up a rival for the governorship, secured, by intrigue and bribery, his recognition by the authorities at La Plata, and put 4000 of their armed Indians, under Jesuit leaders, at his disposal. Leaving behind them a trail of outrage which does not harmonise with the Jesuit description of their pupils, these troops flung themselves upon the armed and angry citizens. In the battle that followed 385 Indians and a Jesuit were slain, but the citizens were overpowered.

Meantime the Jesuits made use of an extraordinary privilege which they professed to have received from Pius V. and Gregory XIII. They said that, in case of a dispute between themselves and the bishop, they had the right to nominate a judge (or conservator), chosen by themselves, to arbitrate. We have seen them use this privilege in the remote Philippines, and shall meet it again. It was a gross and ludicrous claim, as the Jesuits always took care to choose a judge who would declare in their favour; indeed, Pope Innocent X. afterwards declared (as we shall see) that they had no such right. They chose a friend, a corrupt member of one of the laxer religious congregations, and he excommunicated the bishop. The Jesuit troops then seized the prelate and transported him some 200 leagues from the city. From his exile he sent Father Villanon to Spain, and, though the friar was waylaid and rifled by the Jesuit troops, he succeeded in reaching Madrid and informing the King. It happened that the King had only a few years before received authentic information of a similar outrage in Mexico, and had sent a stern [Pg 302] reprimand to the Jesuits, in spite of the group of court-fathers. There seemed, however, no prospect of peace, and Cardenas was transferred to another diocese.

From 1650 to 1750 the province of Paraguay enjoyed its prosperity with little interruption. The troops, which were trained and equipped at the various reductions, amounted in time to an army of 15,000 finely armed men, with the fighting instincts of the savage and the best weapons that Europe could supply, so that neither the unconverted tribes nor the Spaniards could assail them. Heroic efforts were made, though with very moderate success, to extend the area of the missions. The Society never lacked men of the most intrepid and self-sacrificing character, and numbers of them left their bones to bleach in the infested forests or on the scorching plains. One must be lamentably prejudiced to refuse to see the heroism of these brave apostles; but it would be an equal evidence of prejudice to fail to recognise that, whether they realised it or no, they were the apostles or pioneers of the vast and profitable industrial system in which the Jesuits were improperly engaged. Time after time royal or ecclesiastical inquisitors were sent—no voluntary and serious inquisitor was ever admitted—to examine the reductions and draw up a flattering report for the Spanish or the Roman court. I have said that the reductions were admirable in comparison with the miserable condition of the other natives who fell into the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese; but that the Jesuits were engaged in commerce, that they exploited their natives for the benefit of the Society, and that they were prepared to adopt the most unprincipled measures to protect their monopoly, is an historical platitude.

In 1750, Ferdinand VI., as a reward for the military services which their troops (always led by Jesuits) [Pg 303] rendered so frequently to his officers, exempted them from the little taxation—a fee to the crown—to which they were subject, and an era of greater prosperity than ever seemed to open. In that very year, however, as we saw, Spain and Portugal came to an agreement which was fateful for the Society. Portugal ceded Sacramento, a place of great strategical importance, to Spain in exchange for a part of Paraguay which contained seven of the reductions. The court-Jesuits tried in vain to defeat this arrangement, and troops were sent to take over the territory ceded to Portugal. They were confronted by a force of 15,000 troops, gathered from the whole of the Jesuit reductions, and a bloody battle ensued. It was, in fact, only after a prolonged struggle, and by bringing superior troops, that the joint Spanish and Portuguese army conquered the insurrection. From sheer cupidity the Jesuits had dealt a fatal blow at their own prosperity.

Their apologist would have us believe that the fathers used all the influence they possessed to restrain the natives and secure their submission. On the face of it, such an assertion is a piece of mere effrontery. The natives, especially the native troops, never moved without Jesuit directions, and these troops were evidently drafted by the controllers of the province from all the various reductions. The correspondence of the Spanish and Portuguese commanders fully inculpates the Jesuits; and, as we saw, the Portuguese authorities intercepted letters in which Father Rabago directed the local Jesuits to organise a resistance. Even the pious Spanish King was convinced that they were responsible for the insurrection. They could combat King or Pope when the fortune or power of the Society was threatened. And for their reluctance to sacrifice seven out of their fifty reductions their fate was sealed. Within [Pg 304] ten years the order came from Spain to remove all the Jesuits from their homes and ship them to Europe. The government acted on this occasion with craft and secrecy, and left no room for insurrection; the dejected missionaries arrived at the mother-country only to learn that the Society was ignominiously proscribed throughout the King's dominions, and that half of Catholic Europe was clamouring for their annihilation. [30]

The Portuguese fathers in Brazil were less enterprising than their Spanish colleagues. In the course of the sixteenth century they spread along the banks of the Amazon and converted a large number of the natives. When the Dutch took the town of Maragnon in 1641, and threatened their work, the Jesuits were very active in inspiring the successful rising against them, and they were rewarded by the King with privileges for their protégées. In 1653, Father Vieira, whom we have met in the chapter on Portugal, came out to Brazil, and the work proceeded more rapidly. The apologetic writers ask us to admire the noble conduct of this gifted father in abandoning the comfort of the court for the steaming forests and rough natives of Brazil; but we have seen that Father Vieira's countrymen had more to do with his departure than any lofty sentiment he may have possessed. He applied his impetuous temper and great ability to the work of the mission, and it rapidly advanced in organisation and profitableness, until the American-Portuguese in turn sent Vieira upon another stage of his stormy career. The reductions or colonies of Brazil were not organised and controlled as firmly as those of Paraguay. The luxuriance of the [Pg 305] soil dispensed the natives from assiduous labour, but the colonies were not without profit, and, when the Jesuits obtained from the King a declaration that all the natives in his American dominion must pass under their control, the planters and merchants entered into bitter hostility. Twice they expelled the Jesuits, and twice the priest-ridden court secured their return. At last Pombal came to power in Portugal, and, as we saw, the Jesuits were withdrawn and cast upon the shores of the Papal States.

Instead of minutely examining the slender colonies which had meantime been founded in Chile, Peru, and other parts of South America, we will pass at once to the north and conclude with a short account of the missions in Mexico, California, and Canada. Here the famous case of Bishop Palafox at once claims our attention, and I feel justified in relying implicitly on the two letters in which this saintly and learned prelate stated his grievances to Pope Innocent X. When these letters were published, ten years after they were written, the Jesuits exclaimed that they were forged, and Crétineau-Joly very dishonestly insinuates that there is ground to suspect this. Not only are these letters expressly mentioned in a decree of the Congregation of Rites (16th December 1660), and not only did Pope Innocent issue three briefs against the Jesuits in virtue of them, but Arnauld showed, at the time of the original controversy, that Palafox himself, foreseeing the manœuvres of the Jesuits, had left with the general of the Carmelite monks a written attestation of his authorship of the second (and more deadly) letter. We have, further, a reference to this letter, prohibiting its circulation for peace' sake, in a decree of the Spanish Inquisition of 5th February 1661. To doubt the genuineness of the letters is frivolous, [Pg 306] and the character of the writer is above dispute. His virtues won for him the official title of "Venerable" from the Vatican, and might have won a higher title but for the intrigues of the Jesuits.

Palafox was Bishop of Angelopolis, and in that capacity he attempted to make the Jesuits pay his see the just tithes on the property they inherited. They replied with abuse, and he then inquired by what authority they preached and heard confessions in his diocese. They arrogantly boasted of their special privileges, and refused to show the documents, as they had a further privilege excusing them from doing so; a claim which the Pope afterwards declared to be false. Palafox informed the faithful that they had no powers for the ministry. At this the Jesuits produced another of their remarkable privileges—the power to appoint judges of the difference—and paid 4000 crowns each to two Dominican monks of Mexico city to come and arbitrate. The viceroy also was bribed, and the two monks were led into Angelopolis with a great parade of trumpeters and guards. A notice was soon posted at the street corners to the effect that the Bishop of Angelopolis was deposed and excommunicated for his improper conduct, and, in June 1647, Palafox fled to the hills from the growing violence. On 31st July, the feast of St. Ignatius, a carnival-procession, starting from the Jesuit house, bore round the town the most ribald, and even obscene, caricatures of the bishop's office. Numbers of his supporters were banished, and bands of soldiers and Jesuit spies wandered about the hills in search of the wretched hut where Palafox was hidden.

All these details are submitted to the Pope in the bishop's letters, and, in order to make them intelligible, a remarkable account is given of the worldly prosperity of the fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of [Pg 307] the wealth of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep, [31] besides cattle and other property. They own six large sugar-refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own only three small refineries. They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops and butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually intrigue for legacies—a woman has recently left them 70,000 crowns—and they refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this authoritative description that the Jesuit congregations at Rome were still periodically forbidding the fathers to indulge in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely maintain that the Society never engaged in commerce. It should also be added that the missionaries were still heavily subsidised by the King of Spain, that there were (the bishop says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their establishments, and that they conducted only ten colleges.

From his refuge Palafox had sent messengers both to Rome and Madrid, and replies severely condemning the Jesuits were at once sent both by the Pope and the King. Pope Innocent appointed a commission of cardinals and bishops to examine the appeal of Palafox and counter-appeal of the Roman Jesuits. They declared in favour of the bishop on almost every point, and the Pope issued his first brief in that sense (14th May 1648). On 25th June the King severely condemned them for appointing a judge and defying the bishop. The Jesuits affected to regard the papal brief as not binding because it had not been endorsed by the Royal Council; a strange departure from ultramontane [Pg 308] principles. In a word, the King had to repeat his warning, and the Pope had twice to repeat his orders, before they abandoned their intrigues in Mexico, Madrid, and Rome. Palafox was, however, invited to Spain—the King's letters treat him always with the greatest respect—and it was concluded that, in the interest of peace, he should remain in the motherland. Even in the grave the Jesuits persecuted the saintly bishop, bitterly opposing his canonisation, but his letters remain a terrible indictment of their behaviour on the missions.

There were other Jesuit estates and villages in California (or the eastern part of North America), from which a profitable trade was conducted with Manila by means of a fine frigate belonging to the Society. In the Antilles they boasted an official monopoly of the "spiritual administration" of the French islands. It is true that this gave them a new opportunity for commerce, and that they did much political service for the French government in return for the privilege; but it is proper to add that many of the fathers distinguished themselves by self-sacrificing labour among the negro slaves. Their mission in Maryland was destroyed by the growth of Protestantism, and it remains only to say a word about their fortunes in Canada.

The nomadic habits of the Indians and the ever-recurring warfare prevented them from achieving a great success in Canada. In the softer districts by the St. Lawrence and the lakes they succeeded in establishing a few of their agricultural colonies, but their work was arduous, dangerous, and not generally profitable, and even the prestige of the French government, for which they acted as political agents, did not enable them to convert a very large proportion of the Indians. Moreover, much as we may admire the devotion and [Pg 309] endurance many of them displayed in seeking to win the fierce and roving tribes, commercial eagerness taints their work indelibly. When they first received permission to enter Canada from Henry IV., they were long detained in France because they refused to come to an agreement about trade with the lay colonists, and their first missionaries were captured by the English in an endeavour to cross the seas without this understanding. Eighty years later, when peace was made with the formidable Iroquois, who had so often blighted their work, the Indian spokesman insisted that they would not admit the Jesuits, as the fathers sought only their beavers and their women. On the other hand, no one questions the great political service they rendered to their government in disposing the Indians to receive French authority and embittering them against the English. Their story, until England took Canada in 1759, and France itself disowned them a few years later, was one of individual devotion overshadowed by a corporate occupation with commerce and politics.

We have now surveyed the vast field of Jesuit missionary activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and can appreciate the effect when, in a few years time, the voice of the Pope will summon them to lay aside for ever their black robes and their proud name. It would be hypocritical to say that we cannot sum up in few words the impressions gathered from this survey. Let us recognise in the first place that thousands of the fathers displayed heroic zeal in discharging the work which the Society laid on them. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, often of noble birth and brilliant parts, faced the perils of a mediæval voyage, wandered afoot over leagues of desolate mountain or deadly forest, and laid down their lives courageously under the plague or the sword. Yet there is another [Pg 310] aspect which we perceive just as clearly: another quality which we find in the silken courts of China or Siam or Persia, the blaze of Indian or Brazilian villages, on the plains of Paraguay or Mexico, and amid the snows of Canada. It is everywhere, it is identical, and it is palpable. These men have fallen from their ideals. In virtue of a vast and hypocritical system of commerce they amass wealth and power, defend it with mean intrigue and violent assault, blunt their moral sense in pursuit of more, relax into sensuality and are lifted to arrogance. It is time that they have a severe lesson.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] This taly is described by the other missionaries as a gross image representing a Hindu divinity equivalent to the Latin Priapus. It was certainly mythological, and was suspended on a cord of very clear mythological import. The Jesuits first declared that it was a "civil custom," and then said that a "direction of intention" on the part of the convert made it harmless. When Rome brought pressure to bear on them, they invented a taly with the cross on one side and the emblem of Pillear on the other.

[30] It is difficult to estimate the value of the Paraguay reductions. Robertson, in his Letters on Paraguay, calculates that the average Indian earned at least a hundred dollars yearly, and that his food, hut, and clothing did not cost fifty. He estimates the total value of a hundred thousand such workers and the property as about £5,641,200.

[31] In the English translation of Hoensbroech's Fourteen Years a Jesuit the figure is wrongly given as 30,000.

When we come to record the culmination of the earlier history of the Jesuits in a solemn and reasoned condemnation of the Society by the Papacy, we shall note a singular circumstance of the reception of the news in Europe. The Catholic monarchs of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples applaud the act, and there is little serious demur to it among the millions of southern Catholics under their control. The Catholic Emperor assents very willingly to the destruction of the Society, and the Jesuits and their friends cannot succeed in inspiring any wide revolt in Austria and the neighbouring principalities. But the Protestant King of Prussia and the Greek Catholic Empress of Russia open the doors of their dominions to the fugitives from Roman lands, and protest that the Jesuits have been ill-used. For two hundred years the Jesuits have strained every nerve, and every canon of controversial decency, in an attack on heresy and schism, yet they secretly ask Frederick of Prussia to declare himself the "protector of the Society," and they shelter from Catholic hostility in the court of Catherine of Russia!

On this singular circumstance much explanatory light will be thrown at the proper moment, but I anticipate the fact itself because it suggests a general point of view. Clearly, the behaviour of the Jesuits differed in Catholic and in Protestant countries, and we have seen from the [Pg 312] start that Jesuit conduct in German Protestant lands often contrasted very favourably with Jesuit conduct in Catholic countries. They do indeed betray their unedifying jealousy of all other workers in the papal army, they seek opportunities for intrigue and for acquiring wealth, but the presence of large bodies of Protestant observers has its effect on their moral and cultural standard. They adapt themselves to the environment as we have found them do in China or India. However, the group of countries which we are compelled to associate in this chapter are very varied in creed, and we will glance at the outstanding Jesuit experiences in each down to the time of the suppression of the Society.

Commencing with Scandinavia, we have first to consider the romantic episode of the conversion of Queen Christina. The daughter of Gustavus Adolphus succeeded to the throne in her sixth year, in 1632, and was carefully trained for the task of ruling. Her native disposition, no less than the masculine work which lay before her, made her resent every tendency toward the softness of her sex, and she became a hard rider, an assiduous student of art and letters, a companion of great scholars, and a resolute spinster. For many years the Swedes were proud of their Amazon Queen, as she loved to represent herself, and even admired her command of southern culture and tongues (Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). She slept only five or six hours, discussed philosophy with scholars like Descartes (who was a month or two in Sweden) at five in the morning, conversed with the ambassadors in their own tongues, and might then hunt for ten hours in her amazon costume. Altogether a romantic person, and the Jesuits approached her.

We remember Professor Nicolai and Ambassador Possevin and other Jesuits who had tried to convert [Pg 313] Sweden. The new missionary, Father Macedo of Portugal, was disguised as the secretary of the Portuguese ambassador, Pereira. It may be that Macedo went merely to act as confessor to Pereira, but he soon took an independent line. He found the way to the Queen's study, impressed her with his learning, and confided to her that he was a disguised Jesuit. Christina, in turn, confided that she had doubts about Lutheranism, and would discuss with learned fathers of the Society. Macedo discovered that the climate was too rigorous for him, and, as the ambassador refused to give him leave of absence, fled to Rome; and two very learned Jesuits, also in disguise, sailed in a very roundabout way for Stockholm. Christina was soon converted by the two "merchants," and, after some rather shady manœuvres to secure her art-collections and her revenues, she fled in the disguise of a man to Brussels, where a brilliant gathering of Catholics welcomed her into the Church (1655).

As Christina had little to do with the Jesuits after her conversion, and the Swedes promptly closed the gates against further Catholic invasions, we might leave the story, but it is of some interest to consider whether the "conversion" was genuine. There is good reason to believe that Christina was tired of the bleak north, and decided to secure her revenue, change her creed, and spend the rest of her years in the sunny and artistic south. The Jesuits were to be the guarantors of her orthodoxy to the Pope, on whom she must rely if the angry Swedes cut off supplies (as eventually happened). She had no deep religious feeling. When a Belgian Jesuit remarked that they might yet see her among the saints, she answered that she would prefer to be put among the sages; and it is said—though with less authority—that when she was told that there was to be a comedy on [Pg 314] the day of her public reception into the Church at Innspruck, she observed that it was very proper "after this morning's farce." She is, at all events, described by some who knew her as "almost libertine in speaking of religion and morals," and the amorous attentions of Roman cardinals did not improve her piety. After a few years' enjoyment of her liberty, her passionate nature brought serious difficulties upon her, and her life proved a lamentable failure and waste of ability.

In the kingdom of Poland the Jesuits found the most congenial home that they ever discovered apart from the southern Latin countries to which most of them belonged. Nor is this the only or the most serious parallel; Poland, like Portugal, Spain, and France (after 1700), decayed rapidly after the Jesuits attained the height of their power in the country. Catholic writers in the latter part of the seventeenth century used to contrast the prosperity of the States which had adhered to the Vatican with the failure or stagnation of States which accepted the Reformation. France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria were the great world-Powers, and, under Sobieski, Poland promised to attain an important position. England, on the other hand, was still a small empire; Holland was falling from its momentary greatness; Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were regarded as half-barbaric; the Swiss cantons were a small pastoral folk; the German Protestant States were exhausted and distracted. The argument has recoiled on the Romanist with terrible force. The Catholic States have increasingly decayed, or defied the authority of the Pope; the Protestant States are the great world-Powers. The Protestant colonies in America have become a great civilisation; the Catholic colonies rise to prestige only in proportion as (like Argentina) they abandon their creed.

It has, therefore, been quite natural for writers on the Jesuits to emphasise the fact that the countries in which they obtained the greatest control have been the most conspicuous Powers to decay, and the imagination instinctively recalls the picture of some giant of a tropical forest gradually embraced and killed by a parasitic growth. This picture should not be admitted too easily. Art, for instance, has often prospered most luxuriantly when a civilisation was beginning to decay, yet it was assuredly not a parasitic growth accelerating the decay. It is possible that the Jesuits flourished because the nation was decaying, not that the nation decayed because they prospered. The problem requires careful analysis and exact proof. We have seen, however, in the case of Spain and Portugal that, in point of fact, the prosperity of the Society was both economically and politically injurious to those States—that the Jesuits really diverted into their own organisation the wealth and power which should have contributed to the well-being of the State—and we shall find the same situation in Poland and Austria.

In Poland, as in Austria, a Jesuit of the time would have contended that the Society justified its wealth and power by its educational work. We saw how the Society overran the country and, by intrigue and violence, captured the function of higher education during the reign of Batori. From that date Poland decayed, with a partial revival under Sobieski. In the long and disastrous reign of Sigismund (1590-1632) the decay was continuous, and the power of the Jesuits sustained. One point is clear; there was a grave lack of virile and unselfish patriotism, and Jesuit teachers were certainly not the men to inspire it. The aim of Jesuit education was to promote the interests of the Church rather than the State, and to their influence most particularly were[Pg 316] due the religious quarrels and the coercion of Protestant minorities which distracted the kingdom, brought on it the hostility of Protestant neighbours, and fostered selfish intrigue for power. The reign of Wladislas (1632-48) had the same features, and they were more marked than ever when a Jesuit, the late King's brother, John Casimir, ascended the throne. There was now hardly a wealthy house, a school, or a camp that did not contain its Jesuit. The cause of religion was intensely promoted, but the cause of the country fell lower and lower, and its disastrous and distracted condition compelled the Jesuit monarch to abdicate after four years.

The activity of the Jesuits is very well seen in the election of the next king. The Poles were too democratic to admit the hereditary principle; they elected their monarch, and each election was now the occasion for a gathering of candidates from various parts of Europe and a mass of bribery and intrigue. Reusch has published in his Beiträge (p. 231) a private letter of a Jesuit, Father Bodler, which shows the Jesuits over half of Europe intriguing to secure at the election of 1669 a man who will suit their interests. Father Bodler, confessor to one of the candidates, the Duke of Neuburg, writes of the secret campaign to Father Veihelin of Munich. An English member of the Society has been confidentially entrusted by the duke with the task of deciphering a difficult private letter. As this letter (from Prince Auersperg) caustically observes that the Jesuits divide their forces at an election, so that some of them are sure to be on the winning side (as we have seen so often), it is at once communicated by the English Jesuit to his German colleagues and even translated into Latin for the general. The general, it seems, has to be kept informed of all these manœuvres—while he edifies Europe with decrees against indulgence in politics or [Pg 317] commerce—and Father Bodler feels that he will be blamed "if the matter turns out less favourably for the Society." Such documents as this, generally discovered in Jesuit houses after the suppression of the Society, differ very materially from the published writings of the Jesuits.

On this occasion neither the Duke of Lorraine nor the Duke of Neuburg, for whom the Jesuits were working in apparent contradiction to each other but with secret understanding, was elected. The Pole, Michael Wisniowiecki, ascended the throne, and the Polish Jesuits held their power amid the decaying nation. He was followed by the great Sobieski, under whom the Society had more political influence than ever. Whether in camp or court Sobieski was surrounded by Jesuits, and some of the most important and disastrous points of his policy were inspired by them. It was his confessor, Father Vota, who prompted him to reject France's offer of alliance and accept that of Austria; and we know the shameful ingratitude of Austria when Sobieski saved Vienna in 1683, and how greedily it took its share of Poland when the country became weak enough to be dismembered. The Poles tired of Sobieski's costly glory and despotic rule and mischievous orthodoxy, and his later years were embittered by a feeling of failure.

Frederick Augustus of Saxony succeeded Sobieski. He had qualified for the throne by corrupting half the Diet and abjuring the Protestant faith, and, although he was naturally of a tolerant disposition, he was compelled to allow the Jesuits and other clergy to continue to weaken the country by religious persecution. Father Vota was entrusted with the charge of his accommodating conscience, and concluded that the opportunity was excellent for transplanting Catholic intolerance into[Pg 318] Saxony, to which Frederick Augustus was for a time forced to retire. The apologist for the Jesuits relates that it was Frederick Augustus himself who desired to coerce the Protestants, and that Vota prudently restrained him. That would be a remarkable situation—a loose and unprincipled monarch, who had embraced the Catholic faith only as the price of a crown, restrained by the confessor of Sobieski from persecuting his Protestant subjects—but we know that, in point of fact, it was the Saxon ministers who had to restrain the Jesuit. Augustus III., an orthodox voluptuary and worthless monarch, followed upon the throne of Poland; the Jesuits continued to prosper and the country to decay. We shall see how, when its helpless frame is torn by its covetous neighbours, the Jesuits are still in full possession of their wealth and power, and are the first to bow to and win the favour of the Russian invader. There is, however, one incident of Polish life in the eighteenth century on which it is necessary to dwell more fully. We have an ample account of this repulsive event [32] and it throws an unpleasant light on the activity of the Jesuits in Poland.

In the summer of 1724 a Protestant of Thorn refused to lift his hat when a Catholic procession passed, and he was assaulted by a pupil of the Jesuit college. The Protestant authorities arrested the Catholic for assault, and a riot occurred, in the course of which the Jesuit college was stormed and destroyed. The royal authority was now invoked, and the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and nine other citizens of Thorn were arraigned before the High Court at Warsaw for failing to prevent the destruction of the college. A Jesuit was permitted, in the presence of the judges, to deliver a violently inflammatory sermon on the outrage, and the unfortunate men were condemned [Pg 319] to death. A singular clause was added to the sentence: it must not be carried out until a Jesuit and six members of the Polish nobility swore to the guilt of the accused. We know from their own words that the judges trusted in this way to save the accused from the vengeance of the Jesuits. They persuaded the Papal Nuncio to press the Jesuit superior not to send one of his subjects to take the oath, and, when a Jesuit appeared nevertheless at the appointed time, to swear away the lives of the innocent men, they pointed out that a priest could not canonically take any action which would lead to an execution. The Jesuits placidly replied that they had sent a "lay coadjutor," instead of a priest, to take the oath. It is true that, once they had sealed the fate of the men, they entered a plea for mercy, but we are familiar with this hypocritical phrase in the annals of the Inquisition. They tried moreover, at a later date, to lessen the guilt of their conduct by mendaciously stating that the Nuncio's letter arrived too late for consideration: an audacious untruth, since we have the Jesuits' reply to the Nuncio, and we know that the judges reminded them of the Nuncio's intervention before the oath was taken.

To the end of this miserable business their conduct was repulsive. The municipality of Thorn was, of course, condemned to compensate the Society for the destruction of the college, and they secured a preposterous award of 36,400 florins. The citizens warmly protested against this scandalous and onerous award, and it was eventually, in spite of the protests of the Jesuits, reduced to 22,000 florins. The Jesuits, we are assured whenever they plead bankruptcy, are too spiritual to be good men of business, but their attitude in regard to the loss of their property at Thorn was not weakened by spirituality. They demanded (and, no doubt, needed) 8000 florins in [Pg 320] cash. The municipal authorities had not so large a sum to pay them, and it was advanced by a merchant on the security of the plate of the executed Mayor of the town. For the remainder of the debt the Jesuits took the municipal estates of Lonzyn and Wengorzyn. They retained these profitable estates for six years, and only yielded them when the civic authorities paid them the full capital of the debt with 6 per cent. interest for the intervening years.

The situation of the Jesuits in Holland was, we saw, in many respects similar to their situation in England, but the fact that several provinces remained Roman Catholic gave them an advantage and kept the country open to them. Utrecht, for instance, had only joined the other provinces on condition that full liberty was given to Catholics and Jesuits. From these Catholic districts the fathers advanced with great zeal upon the neighbouring Protestant population. In spite of Jesuit hatred of the Dutch, whom they represent throughout the seventeenth century as the arch-enemy, they were treated with indulgence until their own actions brought punishment on them. We saw that there was at least evidence enough to convince the Dutch that the Jesuits had been implicated in two attempts to assassinate their rulers, and when, in 1638, a Catholic plot to admit the Spaniards was discovered, another storm against the Jesuits arose. Their apologist admits that there was a plot, and that they were aware of it; but he finds no evidence that they were parties to the plot. The evidence on which the Dutch relied was supplied by a soldier, and is not in itself very impressive; but several of the fathers were tortured and executed. The feeling seems to have been that any plot to introduce the Spaniards would very probably be of Jesuit origin, and the evidence was sufficient in the [Pg 321] circumstances. Few will seriously feel that there was a miscarriage of justice.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which sent numbers of persecuted Huguenots to England and Holland, greatly embittered the Dutch and led to a fresh outburst against the Jesuits. They had at that time forty-five residences and seventy-four priests in Holland, but their prosperous mission was almost destroyed by the wave of anger which rolled over the country. Severe disabilities were laid on them, the Protestant crowds threatened their property, and it was rumoured that the States-General was about to banish them. It is interesting to-day to compare the eloquent pleas for toleration which they laid before the Dutch with the private letters in which they apprised their French colleagues that their intolerance had brought the affliction on them.

The storm passed without very serious consequences, but it was not long before the conduct of the Jesuits again endangered their mission. We have already seen that from the time when the Vatican appointed a bishop to control the missionary priests in Holland the Jesuits conducted an extremely selfish crusade against him. They maintained this opposition throughout the period with which we are dealing. Neercassel, the Archbishop of Utrecht and Vicar Apostolic, complained to Rome of their behaviour in 1669, and they retorted with the familiar charge of Jansenism. Neercassel was summoned to Rome, but Innocent XI. was on the papal throne and the Jesuits lost. They did not relax their opposition, and when Peter Codde succeeded Neercassel in 1686 (the Jesuits having failed, after strenuous efforts, to get a friend of the Society appointed), the feud became more and more unedifying. In 1702 they induced the Vatican to depose him and substitute a more[ Pg 322] congenial prelate named Cock. Codde had been friendly with Arnauld, who had taken refuge in the Netherlands, and an unscrupulous use of their influence at Rome under Clement XI. secured his deposition. They could not, however, induce the papal authorities to detain Codde, who belonged to a good Dutch family, in the prisons of the Inquisition, and, when he returned to his country, the Government took up his case against the Jesuits.

The situation they had brought about in the Church in Holland was deplorable. The chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem refused to recognise Cock as archbishop, and the faithful were in a state of confusion. For years the Jesuits had jeered at the divisions amongst the Protestants. These divisions were at least based on considerations of belief, and the Protestants could heavily retort that their clergy, of any one denomination, had never been rent into bitterly hostile factions on a mere question of corporate interest. Codde resumed his ministry, and the Jesuits, aided by the friendly Nuncio at Brussels, supported Cock against him. In similar circumstances Queen Elizabeth had assisted the English secular clergy against the Jesuits, and the Dutch Government decided to do the same. Cock was expelled, and four of the leading Jesuits were summoned before the States-General (1705) and ordered to use their influence at Rome for the rehabitation of Codde or else leave the country. The Dutch smiled when the Jesuits protested that their slender influence would not sway the Vatican, and, when a negative answer came from Rome, they were proscribed. They evaded the sentence, but in 1708 they were expelled from the whole of Holland except the privileged Province of Utrecht. When the resentment of the Dutch cooled, however, they crept back into the [Pg 323] country and ministered stealthily to their followers. Even after so drastic an experience they continued to lessen the merit of their strenuous and dangerous labours by persistent hostility to, and abuse of, the rival clergy.

In Belgium, which was now predominantly Catholic and had only passed from the control of Catholic Spain to that of Catholic Austria, the Jesuits prospered down to the time of the suppression of the Society. The last remnants of Protestantism had been crushed under the heel of the Spanish soldiers or driven to Holland, and the province was an excellent field for tranquil work. The only notable episode is that, in their eagerness to rise above the other clergy, the Jesuits pressed Rome to apply to Belgium the famous test of belief which had been devised for the "Jansenists" of France. Arnauld had many admirers in Belgium, and the University of Louvain, especially, strongly resented the prospect of being forced to say that there were in the obscure work of Bishop Jansen five propositions which were not there. The Archbishop of Malines and the Nuncio were won by the Jesuits, but Innocent XII. hesitated to extend that miserable struggle to the peaceful Belgian Church. The Nuncio deliberately withheld the Pope's brief until the Jesuits made another attempt to win their demand, but in 1694 the Pope insisted that only priests who were found to hold the five propositions in question should be molested. As usual, the Jesuits failed to find any one who held the famous propositions and the matter was abandoned.

The story of the Jesuits in the States which now form the German Empire and in Austria has not yet been systematically written, and the material is a large and undigested mass of laudatory episodes and drastic[Pg 324] charges. [33] In Austria, or the Holy Roman Empire, as it was then called, we might follow the fortunes of the Society with some continuity, but it would add little, in regard to Jesuit character, to what we have gathered from the records of France, Spain, and Portugal. The central and most important fact is the continued influence of the Jesuit confessors at the court. Amongst the interesting manuscripts which were seized at the time of the suppression of the Society was a document, dating from the time of General Acquaviva, giving royal confessors secret instructions as to their duty; [34] openly, of course, the Jesuit rule was to refuse such offices as far as possible, and to confine themselves to purely spiritual matters if the office was accepted. These instructions make the confessor a spy not only on the monarch, but upon his ministers and civic officials, and direct that he shall obtain information even about the private lives of his principal subjects. We know from other confiscated manuscripts which have been published (especially by Döllinger and Reusch) that this information was regularly sent to Rome, and that at every important juncture the confessor, who used to ask the monarch for time to consult God and his conscience, sent a secret messenger to Rome (or consulted other Jesuits) and acted on the policy of the Society.

In this sense the Jesuits controlled the policy of Austria to a great extent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Father Lamormaini, confessor to Ferdinand II., inspired the decree for the restoration of church-property in 1629, as we saw, and afterwards secured the best portion of it for the Jesuits; to whom [Pg 325] nothing could be "restored," as they had not owned any of the property. In the following year Lamormaini practically decided the dismissal of Wallenstein. There was no question of importance on which the Emperor did not consult him, and the published documents show that there were times when the Jesuit, acting on instructions from Rome, advised a policy which would profit France rather than Austria; in 1635, for instance, he endeavoured (in vain) to induce the Emperor to cede Alsace to France. We have a large number of the Emperor's letters to Lamormaini, and they show that the Jesuit was practically first minister, in secular as well as spiritual matters. Other Jesuits were attached to the princes and nobles, and the natural result was a great increase of the power and wealth of the Society. Once more the suppression of the order and confiscation of its documents have provided a confirmation of the suspicions of historians. J. Friedrich (Beiträge) has published some of the confiscated documents, including a statement drawn up in 1729 by the Procurator of the Province of Upper Germany, Father Bissel. From this it appears that the German Province of the Society advanced (at a high rate of interest) 262,208 guldens to the Catholic Power for the purposes of the Thirty Years' War, and the Jesuit college at Liège 200,000 guldens. The Jesuit treasurer appends the remark that these loans must be kept strictly secret, as a disclosure "might bring ruin on our establishments."

The death of Ferdinand II. in 1637 made no difference in the position of the Jesuits. Ferdinand III. had been carefully trained by them, and he was ever ready to endanger the welfare of his Empire and disturb the peace of his subjects by furthering the designs of the Jesuits in the Protestant Provinces, as we shall see presently. Leopold I., who succeeded in 1657, was an [Pg 326] even more fervent pupil of the Jesuits, and had been destined for the priesthood. We may say, in a word, that the Jesuits retained their wealth and power until, to their great anger and disappointment, the Emperor Joseph II. light-heartedly joined the other Catholic monarchs in the campaign for the suppression of the Society, and even Maria Theresa refused to plead for them with the Papacy. At that time their property alone was worth more than £2,000,000, but the Government discovered that they had anticipated the dissolution by investing large sums abroad. It is therefore impossible to estimate their real wealth, but when we add to the income from their vast estates the salaries of royal and noble confessors, the fees of masses and spiritual exercises, the emoluments of university and other teachers, and the very generous and constant inflow of gifts and legacies, we realise that the Austrian Jesuits cannot have been much less wealthy than those of France and Spain.

It may be suggested that we should regard this wealth with indulgence, in spite of the Jesuit vow of poverty, because of the immense educational services which the Society rendered to the Empire. Their school-system has, however, been heavily criticised by Austrian writers, and even in the height of their power it was boldly and successfully assailed by Austrian statesmen. A memorial addressed to the Empress Maria Theresa in 1757 insisted that all the universities had deteriorated since they had been captured by the Jesuits. Two years later (September 1759) the Empress compelled them to surrender to other teachers the chairs of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and history, and several chairs of theology, which they held at the Vienna University. The historian of the university, Kink, fully confirms this statement that it deteriorated under the [Pg 327] control of the Jesuits. Indeed, the learned Oratorian priest Father Theiner, the Prefect of the Vatican Archives, shows in his Histoire du Pontificat de Clément XIV. that in other ways the Jesuits had done grave harm to culture in Catholic Germany. Their selfish determination to monopolise teaching and letters had destroyed the intellectual life of the non-Jesuit clergy, and there were few to succeed them when the Society was abolished. We shall see later that when Frederick the Great annexed Silesia, where the German Jesuits controlled education, he disdainfully advised them to send to France for some abler teachers.

It is also necessary to observe that a large number of scandals occurred among the Austrian and German Jesuits, especially the teachers. The subject is unpleasant, but pro-Jesuit writers are so insistent on the cleanness of their record that it cannot be entirely overlooked. A former director of the Bavarian State Archives, Dr. Karl Heinrich von Lang, examined the Jesuit documents under his care at Munich, and found, in the letters of the Provincial of the Upper German Province to the General, an alarming number of charges of unnatural or other vice. There was clearly an extraordinary amount of sexual corruption in the province in the period he reviews (1650-1723), and, if we find this to be the case where it happens that the secret documents of the Society have come into our hands, we must regard with grave suspicion the claims of Jesuit writers in regard to provinces of which we have not similar information. [35]

Dr. von Lang has also written a sketch of the history of the Jesuits in Bavaria (Geschichte der Jesuiten in Baiern, 1819), and we have a picture of degeneration [Pg 328] and prosperity as in so many other countries. We saw, in an early chapter, the unattractive story of their settlement in Bavaria and coercion of the Protestants. Before and during the Thirty Years' War they were the most ardent instigators of Maximilian, and, when the terror of the Swedes had passed away, they entered upon a period of great prosperity in the impoverished country. When Maximilian died, however, in 1651, some attempt was made to check their progress by the statesmen who knew how deeply they were responsible for the desolation of Bavaria. Members of a rival religious order, the Theatines, were patronised by the Duchess Maria, and the Jesuits conducted an unedifying campaign against the Theatines, who made a spirited resistance. Each body accused the other of forging miracles in honour of its saints. Von Lang estimates that a little after the middle of the seventeenth century the 585 members of the Bavarian branch of the Society enjoyed a permanent income of 185,950 florins. To this, however, we must add fees, salaries, gifts, and legacies. Dr. von Lang shows that between 1620 and 1700 large donations amounting to 800,000 florins were made to the Society, often at the suggestion of its members.

The later wealth of the Jesuits in Bavaria cannot be estimated as the larger contributions to their funds were only stated in strictly secret documents which have never seen the light. We know that the Society prospered more than ever in the eighteenth century. In 1727 there were 875 Jesuits in Bavaria and the Tyrol, and the papers confiscated at the suppression proved that their wealth was enormous. Their college at Ingolstadt alone owned hundreds of farms, or a series of estates worth about 3,000,000 florins. A dozen other colleges were also richly endowed with landed property. As the eighteenth century wore on, however, the [Pg 329] hostility to the Jesuits increased. Protestants were never without some serious ground for complaint of Jesuit controversy, and in Bavaria we find them accusing the Jesuits (quite justly) of recommending the sons of Protestant parents to steal the "bad books" of their fathers and bring them to the college. Catholics, on the other hand, complained that the Jesuits rendered no material service in proportion to their great wealth, and, as the successive messages of suppression came from Portugal, France, and Spain, their opponents became bolder. The Jesuits so little expected to be disturbed that in 1770 they created a separate Bavarian province, with more than 500 members. Three years later they were secularised and dispersed on account of the suppression of the Society.

In Protestant Saxony the Jesuits had a different task. We have already seen how they instigated Frederick Augustus, after he had purchased the Polish crown by a change of faith, to adopt the principle of religious intolerance in Saxony. The heir to the throne was, however, a Protestant, and was under the control of Protestants, and the Jesuits had to ensure that the dynasty should be Catholic. This was not in the interest of Saxony, which, as a Protestant State, might have taken a leading position in Germany, whereas, in becoming Catholic, it would be overshadowed by Austria and Bavaria. The king put Jesuits about the person of the prince, and he was, when his conversion proved difficult, sent to travel in Italy in the company of two Jesuits. He was a mere boy of sixteen. His father was, however, assured that he might not only appropriate a large amount of the ecclesiastical property taken by the Protestants at the Reformation, but papal troops would be put at his disposal in case of need to silence the protests of his Protestant subjects. In [Pg 330] November 1712 the boy was "converted." Father Salerno, the most active of the Jesuits engaged in this important business, was then sent to Vienna to arrange a marriage with an Austrian Archduchess, and, as all children of the marriage were to be Catholic, the succession was secured. As the present condition of Saxony shows, however, the Jesuits did not in this case succeed in imposing their creed by royal authority. Father Salerno was rewarded with—in Jesuit language, "forced" to accept, against his inclination—a cardinal's hat. He was the thirteenth Jesuit whose modesty had been violated by the papacy in this way since 1593, to say nothing of nuncii, bishops, and other prelates.

The resistance of Hungary to Jesuit permeation was protracted and heroic. Protestantism made great progress in Hungary after the Reformation, and the emperors looked to the Jesuits to extirpate it in that part of the country which was under their control. Ferdinand II. trusted especially to their educational influence, but Ferdinand III. and Leopold supported the Jesuits in active persecution of the heretics. Dr. Krones [36] has minutely studied from the manuscript Annual Letters of the Society, the intrigues by which the Jesuits sought to regain power after the Peace of Westphalia. The population was half Protestant, and the emperors were unwilling to inflame the restless Hungarians by too open a use of imperial authority. The most assiduous and secret manœuvres were made by the Jesuits to influence the elections and secure a legal footing in the country. An abortive conspiracy in 1666 served their purpose better. In the general vindictiveness of the Austrian triumph the most drastic measures were taken against the Protestant clergy. A [Pg 331] more successful rising in 1675-1679 once more won toleration for the Protestants and checked the Jesuits, and they seem to have maintained this varying campaign of intrigue and coercion and failure until the abolition of the Society.

In the Catholic cantons of Switzerland we have, naturally, the same story as in the Catholic States: a control of education, a determination to cast into the shade the remainder of the Catholic clergy, and a scandalous and enervating material prosperity. Here again we have obtained a very interesting glimpse of the real condition of the Society by the publication of secret documents which were confiscated at the suppression. The chronicle of the Jesuit college at Colmar from 1698 to 1750 was fortunately discovered among their papers and published in 1872. [37] It is a most remarkable ledger or diary of business transactions, displaying on every page that keen instinct for commerce and high profit which the Jesuits are always so anxious to disavow. Vineyards and estates pass steadily into the possession of the college, indignant and disinherited relatives are fought in the law-courts or met by compromise, and the liveliest satisfaction is expressed when some good bargain has been made with the property or the vines have proved fertile. A Lutheran in 1727 has been, in the words of the secret Jesuit chronicler, "simple enough" to pay a substantial rent for a disused cellar belonging to the college; in the same year a pious lady's executors are not in a position to pay a legacy to the Jesuits in cash and they take saleable goods; in 1730 three fields of small value are let on terms which suggest that some simple Catholic tenant was duped. The whole story tells of keenness in securing legacies, astuteness in the profitable handling of the property they [Pg 332] inherit or buy, and a somewhat hypocritical readiness to appeal to public bodies for the free grants which they make to poor individuals or communities. The college of Colmar was a business concern of the sharpest character.

These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power, commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes and prelates; and, the moment these [Pg 333] princes became sensible of their defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash, to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Jacobi's Das Thorner Blutgericht, and other documents.

[33] The Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher zunge, which the German Jesuits are publishing, has not advanced beyond the first period.

[34] Published by the Benedictine monk Dudik in the Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, vol. liv. p. 234.

[35] See, especially, the sordid details in Dr. von Lang's Jacobi Morelli, S.J., amores, 1815.

[36] Archiv für œsterreichische Geschichte, Bd. 79, pp. 277-354; and Bd. 80, pp. 356-458.

[37] Mémoires des R.R.P.P. Jésuites du Collège de Colmar.

The blows which were inflicted on the Jesuits by the Catholic monarchs of Portugal, Spain, and France during the eighteenth century are historically insignificant in comparison with the suppression of the Society by the papacy. It is easy to suggest for the conduct of the rulers reasons which conceal the misdeeds of the Jesuits. Was not Louis XV. an immoral and unscrupulous ruler, and had not liberalism pervaded every stratum of higher French society? Was not Joseph I. of Portugal an unprincipled voluptuary, an irresolute pupil of a minister who could stoop to forgery? Was not Charles of Spain deluded by a sceptical minister in collusion with Pombal and Choiseul? Did they not force the King of Naples to follow their example, and win the Austrian Emperor with the prospect of appropriating the vast wealth of the Society? So the excuses run; and it is added that these combined monarchs at length brought such pressure to bear upon a Pope, whose election they had secured, that, solely for the sake of peace, without blaming the Jesuits, he reluctantly penned the famous brief of abolition.

We have seen that this version of the destruction of the Society, as far as the Catholic monarchs are concerned, may have some ingenuity in the pages of an apologist, but could not without absurdity be put forward as history. Definite, grave, and irremediable [Pg 335] grievances were proved against the Jesuits in each country in which they were suppressed. We have now to see that the last part of the apologetic version is equally untrue. It is not true that the Powers secured the election of Clement XIV.; it is not true that he was pledged to destroy the Society; and it is not true that he destroyed it for the sake of peace, without pronouncing on the merit of the charges against it. We shall find rather that the action of Clement XIV. was the natural culmination of the attitude of the best Popes toward the Society, that it was represented by him as such, and that, in condemning the Society, he collected all the grave charges which were urged against it, and endorsed them with the papal authority.

The general fortunes of the Society in Italy until the middle of the eighteenth century do not merit detailed examination. One undistinguished General succeeded another in the nominal autocracy of the supreme office, but the policy of the Society was, at least after the time of Acquaviva, dictated by the assistants and abler men at Rome. The Society of Jesus is an aristocracy, not an autocracy. The charge of despotism is not unjust, if we do not forget how frequently this despotism has been checked by rebellious "subjects," but it is the despotism of a few, whose decisions are published by the General. An incident that occurred toward the close of the seventeenth century will illustrate this.

By that time, as we saw, Pascal's Letters had drawn the disdainful eyes of Europe to the teaching of Jesuit casuists. It makes little difference that the laxer of these moralists were but a few among the countless theologians of the Society, because nearly the whole of the Jesuits taught that, in case of a moral dilemma, a man might act on the opinion of a single casuist against the opinion of the remainder. It is true that they added [Pg 336] that the one theologian must have a "grave authority," but, in view of the censorship and approval of the Society in each case, any Jesuit theologian would be regarded by admirers of the Society as a grave authority. This famous principle of Probabilism—the theory that one might follow a "probable" opinion in matters of moral guilt against "more probable" opinions—which had been adopted and almost appropriated by the Jesuits, gave great scandal, in view of the laxity of some of their prominent casuists, and at length a number of fathers assailed it and tried to remove the stigma from the Society.

The most notable of these reformers was Father Thyrsus Gonzalez de Santalla, an able professor at Salamanca University. About the year 1670 he composed a Latin treatise on "The right use of probable opinions," and sent it to Rome for examination and approval. The authorities refused to sanction publication, but in 1676 Innocent XI., who frowned on the laxity of the Jesuit casuists, heard of the rejected manuscript and sent for it. Through the Inquisition the Pope then (in 1680) urged Gonzalez to publish the book, and communicated to General Oliva a decree to the effect that no father was to be prevented from teaching Probabiliorism, and that, on the contrary, none was to be allowed to defend Probabilism. General Oliva drew up a circular embodying the Pope's commands, which he was ordered to convey to his subjects, respectfully submitted it to the cardinals of the Inquisition, and then—suppressed it. Oliva died in 1681, his successor, Father de Noyelle, died in 1686, and Gonzalez himself was sent to Rome to take part in the election of 1687. The Pope welcomed him and intimated that he ought to be raised to the generalship, to save the Society from the "abyss" into which it was plunging. In spite of the[Pg 337] fierce opposition of the Probabilists, he was elected by a narrow majority, and in 1691 he sent to the press his Latin treatise.

The Assistants or Councillors of the General now asserted their power. They threatened their General that, if he did not withdraw the work, they would warn the heads of all the Provinces of the Society of the danger he would bring on them. Father Gonzalez offered to omit his name from the title-page and cut out a particularly obnoxious section of the work, but they sternly refused the compromise. He published, and they denounced their General to the Pope for issuing a theological work without papal authorisation. There was now so fierce a controversy in the Society that the Pope suspended the sale of the book, and remitted the affair to the triennial Congregation of Jesuit Procurators in 1693. A feverish intrigue and a number of heated pamphlets from experienced Jesuit pens prepared the way for the Congregation, and, when it assembled, it voted for the calling of an extraordinary General Congregation. Numbers of them were threatening to have Gonzalez deposed. The Pope, however, declared their vote invalid, and the book was published; but his "subjects"—whom so many regard as corpses in the hands of a despotic General—persecuted and assailed Gonzalez until his death. [38]

The interest of the Italian Jesuits is almost confined to Rome during this period. They were now so wealthy and powerful throughout Italy that they held in check the opposing elements, and we find few of those interesting episodes which saved their earlier career from monotony. In 1656 they secured permission to return to Venice, the last stronghold of their enemies. The [Pg 338] dwindling commerce of Venice was now gravely menaced by the Turks, and the Jesuits did not scruple to fan the zeal of the Turks. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Venice was hard pressed, and compelled to look for assistance. It is said that the Jesuits paid a handsome sum to the impoverished Republic; it is at least true, and is the same thing in principle, that the Pope promised assistance on condition that the doors were opened to the Jesuits. The dire oaths never to readmit them were reluctantly erased, and the fathers soon restored their old prosperity. Although wholesome jets of criticism were constantly directed against them, especially at Rome, they flourished throughout Italy much as they did in Spain and Portugal. Hardly a year elapsed without some dying noble bequeathing them a palace or a country house, or some small town being induced to invite them to found a college; and when plague or earthquake or famine desolated the land, and they recovered their heroic mood, a shower of blessings and benefactions fell upon them.

Only one serious calamity overtook them during the period we are surveying. Toward the close of the seventeenth century there was a violent quarrel between the King of the Two Sicilies and the Pope; always one of the most painful dilemmas for the Society. The King claimed a high spiritual authority, and the bishops, supported by the Papacy, placed an interdict on large areas of Sicily. The civil power retorted with a decree of banishment against the clergy who obeyed the Pope, and part of the Jesuits incurred the sentence. Later, when Victor Amadeo received the island and promised conciliatory conduct, the Jesuits reopened their churches; but they were directed from Rome to close them, and were again exiled. Spain then resumed control of Sicily, and reinstated them.

In the year 1705, Gonzalez died, and the learned Tamburini succeeded him. At that time the scandal of the Jesuit concessions in India and China was added, in the literature of their opponents, to the scandals of the American missions, and the Papacy was being forced to act. In 1710 and 1715, Clement XI. sternly condemned their practices, and the Roman Jesuits could do no more than represent, inaccurately, that their missionaries had submitted. The next Pope, Innocent XIII., found that this was untrue, and again severely condemned them; but he was followed by several complaisant Pontiffs, and the Society continued its irregular ways in all parts of the globe. Edifying utterances on the part of the Roman authorities were not wanting. Tamburini died in 1730, and at the Congregation which followed one of the decrees severely enacted that the fathers of the Society must, in every part of the world, avoid "even the appearance of commerce," and refrain from violence in attacking their opponents. No one knew better than these rulers of the Society the industrial and commercial system which was then followed everywhere by the fathers, and the devices by which they silenced their critics; yet no effort whatever was made to enforce the decree.

Benedict XIV. came to the papal throne in 1740, and put an end to the intrigues of the Society in the Roman courts for a time. His bulls of 1742 and 1744, sternly condemning their contumacious conduct in India and China, struck a heavy blow at two of their most profitable missions; but their American missions were veiled by the optimist assurances of France, Spain, and Portugal; and, when Lawrence Ricci became General of the Society in 1758, there was little ground for serious anxiety. Indeed, Benedict XIV. died in that year, and a friendly Pope, Clement XIII., an Italian noble of conciliatory[Pg 340] temper, received the tiara. By that time (according to a list published in 1750) the Society had 22,589 members, of whom 11,293 were priests. These were distributed in 669 colleges and 945 residences of less importance; it is singular, and characteristic of the Society, that there were only 24 "houses of the professed" to 22,000 members, and that one half these members were not priests.

One cloud rested on the horizon when Lawrence Ricci became General; but even the most timid and despondent observer could not have ventured to suggest that he was destined to be the last successor of Ignatius. It had been proved to the satisfaction of the Spanish and Portuguese courts that the Jesuits had inspired the revolt in Paraguay, and Pombal had begun his campaign against the Society. The accession of Clement XIII. in July reassured the Jesuits, but in September of that year the news came of the attempt to assassinate the King of Portugal, and a few months later a number of the leading Portuguese Jesuits were in jail. From that moment the doom of the fathers was sealed in Portugal, and their efforts were chiefly directed to restricting the contagious area. Clement was encouraged to resist the Portuguese, and the Spanish court was induced to regard Pombal as a slanderer. In France, however, the famous Lavalette case had recently occurred, and a very ominous wave of indignation against the Jesuits was rising. Choiseul was now known to be leagued with Pombal in hostility to the Society.

Ricci, a Florentine noble by birth, a man of quiet and cultivated taste, was not an ideal ruler for such a period, but as the clouds gathered thicker he threw all his energy into the combat. Before the end of the year 1759 he had to make provision for the thousands of Portuguese Jesuits whom Pombal cynically flung upon the shores of Italy. In the following year the French courts began [Pg 341] to condemn the Society to pay the debts of Lavalette, and in 1761 the Parlement of Paris condemned the Society and began the work of repression. In the fiery controversy which now filled all the Catholic countries of Europe every questionable episode in the history of the Society, and probably much that had been added to the historical facts, was discussed and advertised. Myriads of pamphlets fed the sensations of the people, and for the first time since the early years of Ignatius the Jesuits cowered before the storm of obloquy. In 1764, Louis XV. signed the decree for the abolition of the Society in France, and by 1767 the Italian provinces were once more swamped with crowds of fugitives.

Charles III. of Spain had so far firmly resisted the arguments of Pombal, but in the spring of 1766 the Jesuits of Madrid had drawn on themselves the suspicion of having inspired a revolt against the royal authority, and it would be reported to Ricci that the monarch was sombre and inaccessible. As the year proceeded (and, as we now know, Aranda completed his case against the order), increasingly gloomy messages would come from the Spanish court, and in the early days of April 1767 the news came from the coast that 6000 Spanish Jesuits were tossing homeless on the waters. Taking the colonies into account, the Society had now been destroyed in by far the greater part of the Christian world, and a stupendous amount of its property had been confiscated. Moreover, it was now known that the French, Spanish, and Portuguese were pressing the Pope to abolish the Society; and, at least from the middle of 1767, the prospect of that terrible contingency was discussed throughout the clerical world at Rome.

Before the end of 1767 the work began on Italian soil. Charles III. had passed from Naples to the throne of Spain, and he had left that kingdom in the charge of [Pg 342] a liberal minister, Tanucci, under the rule of his son Ferdinand IV. Little pressure was needed by the Neapolitans. On the 3rd of November 1767 the Jesuit houses were surrounded, the papers seized, and the fathers banished from Southern Italy. A few months later it was the turn of Parma, and in April the fathers were driven from Malta, as the Grand Master was a feudatory of the King of Naples. Whether the idea came from the Jesuits or no we cannot say, but the Pope concluded that, in the case of Parma, he might retaliate. He revived an old pontifical claim to the duchy, annulled the sentence against the Jesuits, and excommunicated those who had banished them. The allies promptly replied; France seized Avignon, and Naples occupied Benevento and Ponte Corvo, of the Papal States.

It was at this juncture that, on the 2nd of February 1769, Clement XIII. found relief in death, and the historic struggle over the succession to the papal throne began. On the result of that election the fate of the Society would depend, and Jesuits and anti-Jesuits hurried to the arena and used every means in their power to influence the issue. But the Jesuits and their friends have, not unnaturally, published as fact every faint echo of gossip in connection with the election, in order to weaken the significance of their suppression by the Pope elected; and it must be examined with great care.[Pg 343] [39]

Clement XIII. died on 2nd February, and the Italian cardinals, especially those of the Papal States, tried to elect a new Pope before the distant and anti-Jesuit Powers could send their cardinals and assert their influence. They opened the conclave on 15th February, and nearly succeeded in electing Cardinal Chigi. It is natural to suspect, and is emphatically affirmed, that the Jesuits induced them to take this irregular step, and we know that General Ricci was at the time hastening feverishly from one prelate to another. We may be quite sure that the Jesuits used what influence they had to secure a premature election, but there is another element to be considered. The cardinals were, in the phrase of the hour, divided into zelanti and antizelanti: cardinals who resented the interference of lay Powers in the affairs of Rome, and cardinals who thought it politic to consult the wishes of the Catholic monarchs. Besides these two schools, however, there were many cardinals who did not adopt a decisive attitude, and were disposed to be guided by the course of events, or at least indisposed to meet the violent anger of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples.

When, therefore, the Marquis d'Aubeterre, the French ambassador, and Mgr. Azpuru, the representative of Spain—the Portuguese ambassador did not arrive until a later date—protested in the names of their sovereigns, and demanded that the conclave should be postponed until the French and Spanish cardinals arrived, the majority of the cardinals were intimidated, and the zelanti were forced sullenly to quit their cells in the Vatican. Cardinal Rezzonico, a nephew of the late Pope, was one of the leaders of the zelanti. In the course of March, Cardinal Luynes and Cardinal Bernis arrived from France. The former was a mere voter, but Bernis—a suave, conceited, ambitious prelate, who[Pg 344] sought the place of French ambassador at Rome—had been flattered by the French authorities into the belief that the issue of the election and the fate of the Jesuits depended mainly on him, and he applied his small powers to the intrigue with great zeal. Before the end of April the Portuguese ambassador, Mendoza, and the two Spanish cardinals arrived, and Rome throbbed with discussion and intrigue. The anti-Jesuits had a nucleus of six Neapolitan, two Spanish, and two French cardinals, and the problem was to secure a majority for their cause among the forty voters.

It is sometimes said that they won the indifferent cardinals, partly by bribery and partly by intimidation; but Father Theiner denies both charges. We have, in fact, the private assurance of Bernis to his government, which seems to have contemplated bribery, that the cardinals of that particular conclave were all religious men and incorruptible. At the most, we may be disposed to admit that the fact that some of the cardinals had property in the Provinces seized by France and Naples inclined them to gratify the Powers. As to intimidation, it seems clear that the ambassadors urged upon individual voters the grave danger of opposing the wishes of the Catholic monarchs; but Father Theiner denies that such arguments were used in the conclave itself. One would imagine that they were superfluous. Every cardinal knew that the four Catholic kings sternly insisted on the relief of Parma and the suppression of the Society, and could not but reflect on the possible consequences of electing a pro-Jesuit Pope.

Crétineau-Joly represents that the Society and the cardinals in favour of it had the support of Maria Theresa, and that she sent Count Kaunitz to Rome to express his support. He maintains that it was only after the other Catholic monarchs had tempted Joseph [Pg 345] II., her son and Emperor, to covet the property of the Society, that she reluctantly yielded. This is so demonstrably false as to incur the suspicion of untruth. Cardinal Bernis wrote to his court on 28th March 1769, long before the conclave, that Maria Theresa refused to support the demand for the suppression of the Jesuits, but "could not oppose, and would even be glad to see it"; so the Emperor Joseph II. stated. In September of the same year the Nuncio at Vienna gave the same report. Joseph II. himself came to Rome in March (1769), and the Jesuits clearly learned his attitude. When he visited their famous church, the Gesù, General Ricci hastened to greet him, and was jocularly asked "when he was going to change his coat." Later, when they stood before the solid silver statue of Ignatius, and Ricci explained that it was due to gifts of friends of the Society, Joseph observed: "Say, rather, to the profits on your Indian missions." And the Jesuits would further learn that, when the Emperor visited the Vatican, he urged the cardinals to elect another Benedict XIV. On the other hand, the visit of Count Kaunitz was in the following year, long after the attitude of Maria Theresa was known. She never wavered in her position, as she expressed it to Clement XIV. after the suppression; she had no idea of opposing or disapproving what the Pope thought necessary. Austria was lost to the Jesuits. Only a few small and unimportant rulers could be induced to plead for them.

The more difficult problem of the opponents of the Jesuits was to discover a cardinal who might be trusted to destroy the Society, yet would have some chance of election. The Spanish ambassador proposed that a cardinal should be induced to engage himself to abolish the Society if he were elected. For a time the French ambassador favoured the idea, but Cardinal Bernis [Pg 346] strongly opposed it; and there is ample proof that it was abandoned before the end of April. There is, therefore, no serious ground whatever for the charge that Cardinal Ganganelli promised to destroy the Society if he were elected, as the French historian is compelled to admit. The only question is whether Ganganelli gave a written assurance to the Spaniards that in his opinion a Pope had the power to destroy the Society. General Ricci had issued a pamphlet in which he contended that the Pope had no power to abolish the Society, and it would assuredly not be a serious matter for a cardinal to express his opinion on that point. But it seems that Ganganelli made no statement to the Spaniards. Some jealousy had arisen between the representatives of Spain and France, and the Spaniards vaguely boasted to Bernis of having had some communication with Ganganelli. Bernis reported that they had some written assurance from him, but in later letters (ignored by the French historian) he retracts. On 19th July he wrote that he may have been mistaken: on 30th November he acknowledged that he was wholly mistaken, and there had been no "arrangement" between the Spaniards and Ganganelli. The results of the voting, which are given by Theiner, confirm this. The supposed arrangement or assurance would have to be dated 15th or 16th May, yet Ganganelli received just the same number of votes (10) on 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th May.

The truth is that no one knew what Ganganelli would do if he became Pope. Formerly a Franciscan monk, he was a man of sincere piety and unquestioned integrity. It is said that he was ambitious, and attempted to secure the votes of both parties by remarking to one group that it was dangerous to offend the Catholic monarchs, and to the other that it was impossible to sacrifice the Society. This is mere gossip. He was an[Pg 347] elderly man—in his sixty-fifth year—of high character and great ability. The Jesuit Cordara tells us that Ricci had urged Clement XIII. to give him the purple, and he had always been on friendly terms with the Jesuits. There is not the least serious ground for charging him with acting improperly, and we know that, on 19th May, he was elected by a unanimous vote.

Both parties now assailed the Vatican, and engaged officials in its service to report to them the movements of their opponents and the moods of the Pope. It is difficult to conceive an elderly friar as having sought with deliberate ambition the position in which the new Pope would find himself. The ambassadors of the Powers at once renewed their demand for the abolition of the Society, while the Jesuits and their friends and spies maintained a sombre vigilance. Whichever way the Pope acted he would incur a fierce and dangerous resentment. Clement XIV. was not the man to sell his conscience for the restoration of Avignon, Benevento, and Ponte Corvo; but the retention of these places would not be the only, or the most serious, consequence of disappointing the Powers. On the other hand, he knew the history and principles of the Jesuits. It is said that he put his kitchen in the charge of a friar of the Franciscan order. Whether or no it is true that he feared poison, he would know that the Jesuits would not meekly submit to a sentence of death, and the last years of his life would be full of trouble.

To the representatives of the Powers the Pope replied that he would take no step, and would give no encouragement to either side, until he had made a thorough inquiry into the matter. The Jesuits, however, soon perceived, or imagined, that Clement favoured the Powers. Twice in the two months after the election, General Ricci presented himself at the Vatican, as it was customary [Pg 348] for the heads of religious orders to do on the chief festivals of the order, and twice had he to depart without seeing the Pope. He increased his vigilance and activity, and the ambassadors had to adopt various ruses to conceal their intercourse with the Pope; Bernis had now become ambassador, and was eager to justify his appointment. In July the spirits of the Jesuits revived, and it was the turn of the courts to fret and fume. Clement had issued a brief giving certain sacerdotal powers for seven years to the Jesuit missionaries who were just starting for the foreign missions. The Jesuits printed the brief and triumphantly scattered copies over Europe; the ambassadors angrily protested that this was to flout the wishes of their monarchs. In point of fact, there was not the least reason to attach importance to the brief. It was merely the observance of a form that was customary at the departure of missionaries, and to have omitted it on this occasion would have been a very grave and premature indication of an intention to abolish the Society.

However, the impolitic rejoicing of the Jesuits compelled the Pope to make some concession to their opponents. It was customary to republish every year the bull In Cœna Domini which a friendly predecessor had issued in favour of the Society. Clement declined to sanction its republication in 1769, and another ripple of excitement ran over Europe. In some places the Jesuits printed and published the bull themselves, and added another indiscretion to the account against them. A third and more serious error was committed by them. The ambassadors pressed more eagerly, and, as Bernis reports to his court, the Pope replied with dignity that he must consult his honour and his conscience, and make a prolonged inquiry before deciding. Choiseul threatened that the ambassadors would be withdrawn if [Pg 349] the Pope did not give them a written assurance within two months, and Clement again sternly refused. France offered to restore Avignon if he would give the assurance, and only excited his indignation. This is the Pope whom the Jesuits and their apologists represent as morally and intellectually perverse; yet they themselves betrayed, and betray, a considerable degree of unscrupulousness in the matter. Crétineau-Joly, ignoring its inconsistency with his whole narrative, quotes a letter in which Clement is supposed to tell Louis XV. that he will not abolish a Society that has had the blessing of nineteen of his predecessors. This letter was forged and published by the Jesuits who lingered in disguise in France, and the apologist must have been quite aware that the Pope himself indignantly disavowed it in a letter to the Nuncio at Paris; indeed, Crétineau-Joly at once goes on to show, from Choiseul's correspondence, that the French could make nothing of the Pope's attitude.

These Jesuit outrages, however, seem to have stimulated the Pope, and on 25th September (1769) he gave Bernis a written assurance for Louis XV. that he intended to suppress the Society. A little later Charles III. of Spain received the same secret assurance. Thirty-four of the bishops of Spain, led by their cardinals and the Archbishop of Seville, had written to demand the suppression, and prove that it was not merely liberal politicians who opposed the Society. In the following February the seminary at Frascati was taken from the Jesuits and put under the control of secular priests. The spring and summer passed without giving fresh hope to the Jesuits. They reported Clement gloomy and inaccessible, and it is not impossible that they learned that a search was now being made in the Vatican Archives, and a report being drawn up on the [Pg 350] history of the Society since its establishment. From that time, in fact, Clement secretly gathered the historical material with which he was to frame his crushing indictment of the Society. In June, it is true, Count Kaunitz visited Rome; but, as we know the attitude of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II., we must accept Theiner's statement that he urged the Pope to suppress the Society, rather than the French historian's light assertion that he pleaded for the Jesuits. The Society seemed to be doomed.

Then, in the month of December, Choiseul fell from power in France, and the news fired a train of rejoicing throughout the Provinces of the Society. D'Aiguillon, believed to be a friend of the Society, had (with the aid of Mme. du Barry) displaced their great opponent, and the policy of France would, no doubt, now be reversed. The Jesuits, and the noble ladies who worked for them at Paris, affected at least to believe that they would be recalled to France, and that the Pope would no longer be exposed to the unanimous pressure of the Catholic Powers. But in his first dispatch to Cardinal Bernis, D'Aiguillon maintained the policy of his predecessor in regard to the Society. Spain also replaced its ambassador with a more vigorous representative, Count Florida Blanca, and the Pope was assailed more vehemently than ever. A piquant picture is offered to us of the robust Spanish count bullying the aged Pontiff, who plaintively bares his skin to show Florida Blanca the eruption which proves that he is ill and cannot be pressed. Bernis's letters are more reliable; the French ambassador candidly admires the noble resistance of the Pope to the intriguers on both sides, and his determination to have his inquiry justly and patiently completed before he condemns the Society.

In the course of 1771 and 1772 the Jesuits were [Pg 351] convicted of further indiscretions which strengthened the case against them. In June 1771 the secretary of the Portuguese embassy was convicted of collusion with the Jesuits, and banished from Rome; he had communicated to the Jesuits the dispatches which were received from his government, even letters to the Vatican, concerning the Society. In 1772 the cause of the canonisation of Bishop Palafox was before the Congregation, and, in spite of their extreme peril, the Jesuits made a violent and unscrupulous opposition. The scurrilous pamphlets in which the character of the saintly bishop was maligned, and the person of the Spanish monarch represented as abandoned to the devils, were, of course, anonymous; but the Jesuits alone had an interest, or thought they had an interest, in preventing the canonisation of Palafox. Charles III. redoubled his pressure on the Vatican, and in September the Roman seminary was taken from them on the just ground of improper administration. In the same month, Catherine the Great invaded Poland, and Rome and the other Catholic countries learned with indignation that the Jesuits had taken the lead in greeting and demanding submission to the schismatical usurper. They were, as we shall see, currying favour with Catherine and preparing a retreat from Catholic Europe. Rome had hardly ceased to discuss this remarkable news when an even more remarkable incident was reported from Paris. Frederick the Great cynically informed D'Alembert (in December) that General Ricci had sent a secret representative to ask him to declare himself "Protector of the Society of Jesus." A little later, again, Maria Theresa discovered that her Jesuit confessor Campmüller had, as such confessors were secretly bound to do, betrayed her confidence to the authorities of the Society at Rome.

It is hardly probable that these incidents affected [Pg 352] the main policy of Clement XIV., whose summary of the historical irregularities of the Society was being slowly compiled, but they enabled him to make a beginning of open action against the Jesuits. Their administration of other seminaries and colleges was questioned, and several (including the Irish College at Rome) were taken from them. In February (1773) it was announced that the bishops were to receive the powers of "apostolic visitators," to inspect all the Jesuit residences in their dioceses, and suppress them where they deemed it necessary. It is suggested that Clement thought he had discovered a way of demolishing the Society without issuing a formal decree of abolition, but it is more likely that he was merely preparing the Catholic mind for a drastic measure. He appointed only one of these "visitators," Cardinal Malvezzi, Archbishop of Bologna, and the brief of suppression must have been drafted before Malvezzi had concluded his work. In point of fact, Malvezzi had reported to the Vatican that the Jesuits of Bologna were already disposing of their property, and it was at once necessary to prevent them from carrying out so irregular a scheme as this. Malvezzi himself, in his letters to Clement, speaks of the measure as a preliminary to carrying out the "long-prepared sentence" against the Society. The Jesuits met the cardinal, who was notoriously hostile to them, with great insolence, and only added to the feeling against themselves.

As the spring of 1773 advanced the conflicting elements at Rome were thrown into a state of intense excitement. The Pope was proceeding with the greatest secrecy, but the secrecy itself plainly shrouded a sentence of death. On 28th May the Pope went into retreat for a fortnight, and thus escaped the importunities of both parties. In the few weeks following the retreat he still [Pg 353] gave no indication of his intention, and on 27th June he again went into retreat, [40] and refused to admit visitors.

The air of Rome was now tense with expectation, but the secrecy was maintained with singular success. We now know that the famous brief (Dominus ac Redemptor Noster) for the abolition of the Society was signed by Clement on 21st July, and that the papal press printed sufficient copies of it for transmission to each country without a single breach of confidence. The representatives of the Powers were privately informed in August that the work was done, but the Jesuits could not obtain the least information. Clement XIV. accomplished his task with consummate ability. The Jesuit legends which depict him signing the fatal decree at a window of the palace by night, swooning, lying unconscious during the night, and awakening only to enter into a delirious fit of terror and remorse, are not worth consideration. They are fables retailed years afterwards by Jesuit writers (especially Bolgeni), and have not even the artistic merit of consistency. Crétineau-Joly seems to give them weighty confirmation by asserting that he had heard his version from the lips of Gregory XVI. But he singularly fails to tell us what was the precise story he heard from the later Pope, and Father Theiner bluntly questions if he knew sufficient Italian to understand Gregory (who never spoke French on such occasions). In any case, this reproduction, at a remote date, of pro-Jesuit gossip of which we find no trace at the time, is historically worthless. According to all the contemporary witnesses Clement was in excellent spirits after the suppression, and carried out the difficult [Pg 354] work with entire prudence, tranquillity, and good feeling.

But the best defence of Clement and the decisive answer to his detractors is the brief itself which he signed on 21st July, and at the composition of which he had worked assiduously during his two "retreats." It is an exceedingly able and convincing document. Jesuit writers constantly say that Clement XIV. abolished the Society only on the ground that the peace of Christendom demanded that step, and that he passed no judgment on the Society itself. Even the recent American Catholic Encyclopædia, which affects candour and accuracy, states, in the article on Clement XIV. that "no blame is laid by the Pope on the rules of the Order, or the present condition of its members, or the orthodoxy of their teaching." This is a disingenuous and most misleading description of the brief. Clement gives a masterly summary of the irregularities which had been charged against the Society during the two hundred years of its activity. While, however, he is frequently content to speak of these past matters as "charges," he is careful to add that, time after time, they were endorsed by his predecessors, who were condemned to take drastic action against the Society; and, when he comes to deal with the existing Society, which properly concerns him, he plainly observes that it "can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the considerable advantages for which it was created," and he therefore abolishes it for ever.

It is impossible to insert here the whole text of the lengthy brief, but an analysis and some extracts will suffice to show this. The brief opens, after a few introductory remarks of a general nature, with a long list of religious congregations which had been dissolved by the papacy. These bodies had been suppressed for [Pg 355] their deterioration or irregularities, and the list is therefore a fitting introduction to the main work of the brief. The Pope then tells that he has made a thorough study of the foundation of the Society and the early papal documents issued in regard to it. He adds: "The very tenor and terms of these apostolic constitutions [the letters of his predecessors] teach us that the Society, almost from the beginning, produced within it the germs of discord and jealousy, and that these not only rent the Society itself, but impelled its members to rise against the other religious orders, the secular clergy, the academies, the universities, the colleges, the public schools, and even against the monarchs who had received them into their States." Here we have, in categorical form, an endorsement of all the charges that were made against the Jesuits in the first century of their existence.

On account of these disorders, he says, "a thousand complaints against these religious were made," and the papacy was entreated to reform them. He recalls the efforts of earlier Popes to reform the Society, and adds that, as we have seen, they were defeated. "The most lively controversy arises everywhere about the doctrine of this Order, which many charged with being wholly opposed to sound faith and good morals. The bosom of the Society is torn by internal and external dissensions; amongst other things it is reproached with seeking worldly goods too eagerly." Here again the categorical note of censure is found, and, after telling the next efforts of Popes to reform the Society, he says:

It is absurd to regard this formidable indictment of a religious body as a mere list of charges into the justice of which the Pope will not inquire. It is a list of the charges proved to the satisfaction of his predecessors, and embodied in the decrees of the Popes whom he names; and the sternest critic of the Society could hardly frame a weightier indictment in a few lines. The Pope adds that the measures of his predecessors for the reform of the Society were fruitless, and under Clement XIII. "the storms became worse than ever." The Catholic monarchs, he says, have been compelled by "seditions" and "scandals" to expel the Jesuits from their dominions and demand the abolition of the Society. To this demand he has given conscientious attention, and, "recognising that the Society of Jesus can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the [Pg 357] considerable advantages for which it was created," he "suppresses and abolishes the Society for ever." The brief closes with directions for the disposal of Jesuit property, and a singularly lengthy and subtle development of his sentence to prevent the casuistic genius of the Jesuits from evading it.

The brief is, therefore, much more than a declaration that the Jesuits must be sacrificed in the interest of peace, and the hatred with which they have pursued the memory of its author has solid ground. It is a plain and learned demonstration that the step taken by Clement XIV. is the just culmination of the history of the Society; it says nothing of leaving open the question of the truth of the charges against the Jesuits, and the deliberate addition of the solemn words "for ever" to the sentence of dissolution shows clearly that it contemplates no temporary situation. The only serious objection urged by the Jesuits and their friends is that they were not summoned to answer the charges against them. Clement might have replied that the charges had been examined, and their defence heard, a dozen times in the history of the papacy; but his chief reason for rejecting this futile idea of a trial was probably that he knew well how the Jesuits intrigued on such occasions. Like Sixtus V. he would certainly have passed away, leaving the Church in the throes of the struggle, before a verdict was given.

This brief was, as I said, concealed from all but the five cardinals who were to carry out the sentence until 17th August. On that day the Catholic Powers were officially informed of the signing of the brief. At nine o'clock that evening a band of officials and guards entered the metropolitan house attached to the Gesù, and ordered Ricci to summon all his subjects to the refectory. They knew—some of them had witnessed [Pg 358] the same scene in Spain and Portugal—that their hour had come, but they must have been deeply pained at the wording of the brief, which was read to them. Their proud Society added to that list of degenerate congregations which the Vatican had been compelled to abolish! They were forbidden to leave the house until secular costumes were provided for them, and the notaries put the papal seal on their documents. The same evening, or on the next day, the brief was read in the other Italian houses, and, as the couriers sped to the north, the disastrous tidings slowly spread gloom and despair throughout the Jesuit world as far as Holland and Poland.

The grief of the Jesuits was not less intense than the rejoicing of their opponents. A laughing crowd stormed the chancellory for copies of the brief, but few copies had been printed, and its drastic clauses only gradually became known. Then came the long and stirring period when the news of the response of the Jesuits came in from every quarter. The Roman Jesuits quietly left their homes, day by day, as secular clothes were provided for them. The Pope provided, not only for them, but for the Portuguese ex-Jesuits, as Portugal refused to fulfil its promise, and had every effort made to find situations for them in the service of the Vatican, the secular clergy, or the educational world. Many merely changed their garments, and continued to be the confessors of noble ladies or the tutors of their sons. Large numbers of them lived in community, on their joint pensions, awaiting the death of Clement XIV. and the restoration of the Society. The chief trouble in Italy was that offensive anonymous pamphlets were printed in vast quantities and circulated, and were in some instances traced to the Jesuits; and that Ricci and his assistants, who remained in the[Pg 359] central house, were detected in a treacherous correspondence with the insurgents in distant regions, and imprisoned in the fortress of S. Angelo, where the unhappy Ricci died two years afterwards. Rome was not indisposed to laugh at anti-Jesuits as well as Jesuits. No doubt the gossips of the city told each other the fables which Jesuits reproduced in later years, and their apologist gives as "history"—for instance, that the diamonds which had adorned the statue of the Madonna in the Gesù were publicly worn afterwards by the mistress of one of the prelates charged with the execution of the sentence—but the pro-Jesuit faction at Rome was completely silenced.

In the Italian provinces, where the Jesuits commanded the allegiance of peasants and nobles who were unacquainted with their history, the anonymous pamphlets circulated briskly, and some more overt attempts were made to weaken the condemnation. For some time before the suppression a holy nun of Viterbo had earned repute as an inspired oracle, and her fame was great among the followers of the Jesuits. After the suppression her inspiration became richer and more precise, and the Vatican presently learned that thousands were cherishing her predictions that the Pope was to die at once, the kings to perish miserably, Frederick the Great to be converted, and the Society of Jesus to be quickly restored. A second lady entered the field, with predictions of a like nature. The Pope ordered that both should be arrested and an inquiry held by the Bishop of Orvieto. In the rooms of the ex-Jesuits he found an enormous mass of literature relating to the prophetesses, and locks of their hair ("and other things which decency forbids me to mention," says Father Theiner) for sale or distribution as riches. A judicial inquiry was held, and two of the Jesuits were [Pg 360] condemned to imprisonment in S. Angelo as the chief agents in the fraud.

In Naples, Spain, and Portugal the news was received with great rejoicing. In France, according to Crétineau-Joly, it was received with indignation, and the Archbishop of Paris, speaking in the name of "the Gallican Church," boldly rejected the Pope's brief, and addressed a very remarkable letter to His Holiness. There were still bishops in the French Church who owed their sees to the Jesuits, and Archbishop de Beaumont had earned their gratitude by defending their casuists. But M. Crétineau-Joly is here guilty of one of the gravest of the many grave ruses in this part of his work. The supposed letter, in connection with which he does not give a word of warning, is a flagrant Jesuit forgery. It is dated 24th April 1774, yet it is well known that a few weeks before that date the archbishop had suspended an ex-Jesuit preacher, M. de la Vrillière, for presuming on his noble connections and fashionable repute to make a few remarks, in a sermon, on the Pope's action. The fact is that this forged letter, and one forged in the name of the Archbishop of Arles, first saw the light in a Jesuit pamphlet eighteen years afterwards. The French received the news with indifference or joy.

Austria also at once secularised its Jesuits. In spite of earlier assurances the Pope had some misgiving about the attitude of Maria Theresa, and with a copy of the brief he sent her a letter from his own hand. She replied, as she had said for four years, that what the Pope thought it proper to do was agreeable to her. Apart from Prussia and Russia, which we will consider in the next chapter, it was chiefly in small countries like the Swiss cantons, or on the foreign missions, that the Jesuits tried to resist. At Lucerne the Jesuits induced [Pg 361] the senate to take the bold step of suspending the execution of the brief and writing to the Vatican for explanations. They were disdainfully ignored until they decided to carry out the sentence against the Society. At Freiburg—this is told as a touching and creditable incident by the Jesuits themselves—the superior gathered a vast congregation in their chapel ("to say farewell"), made a most eloquent discourse on the virtues and services of the Society, and implored their followers to respect the Pope's orders. Naturally, the effect was the reverse of pacifying the people, and it took some time to get rid of the Jesuits in Freiburg. At Soleure and other towns there was similar trouble. At Cologne the ex-Jesuit Fuller edited the Gazette, and its columns erupted fiery attacks on the Pope, and reproduced all the unfavourable gossip of Rome about him and his commissioners. They were to appeal to a General Council against this infamous pontiff. It was only in June of the following year, after the Nuncio had threatened to lay an interdict on the town and the authority of the emperor was invoked, that the Jesuits and their friends were silenced; and then they merely changed their coats and continued, in their various positions, to await better days. In Poland the bishops at once began to execute the brief, but the Jesuits inspired the idea that it was invalid on a technical ground, and the senate talked of sending an ambassador to Rome. The struggle ended in the Polish Jesuits taking shelter, as we shall see, under the authority of Catherine.

We do not, in a word, find that admirable and meek submission which is claimed by pro-Jesuit writers, who seem to think that the cases of vituperative pamphlets which were smuggled from country to country, and the bold stand made by local authorities here and there, [Pg 362] were quite painful to the condemned fathers. We find, on the contrary, that from General Ricci downward the Jesuits intrigue or rebel wherever they have large local support and are not subject to a powerful Catholic monarch. On the distant missions the sequel was worse than in Europe. The removal of the Spanish and Portuguese fathers had demolished most of the missionary provinces, and the condemnation of their rites had greatly reduced the missions of the French and German Jesuits. But a few of them still lingered at the court of the Chinese Emperor or worked secretly in the provinces, and there were more in Tong-King and India. They resisted the papal brief for three years, at least in China. From every mission they held they were reported to the propaganda for insurrection, and the letters which are sometimes quoted to show how meekly they accepted the sentence were written by exceptional individuals. A small minority of them were for submission. Most of them made a hypocritical plea that the emperor (who no longer recognised their existence as priests, it will be remembered) would not suffer them to obey.

When, in 1776, they were forced to yield, they fell into three parties and entered upon a long and scandalous quarrel about the division of their property. As late as 1785 one of the ex-Jesuits dragged the former superior of the Peking mission into the Chinese civil court and exposed the quarrel. Bourgeois had the disposal of their property, goods, shops, etc., which were valued at half a million francs, and he rewarded the members of his own party with a thousand taels each, and left his opponents in great privation. In 1786 the propaganda forced them to hand over their missions, which they still controlled, in secular dress, to others, but they continued for several years to quarrel with each other and with the other missionaries. The last chapter of [Pg 363] their Asiatic missions is little less than sordid, and it is sheer deceit to conceal these facts and offer us only one or two edifying letters written by the better fathers.

At the time of its abolition the Society numbered 22,589 members (of whom 11,293 were priests), and owned 669 colleges and 869 other residences (of which only 24 were "houses of the professed"). It is needless to add any reflections on the suppression. The papal brief is the supreme judgment on the Jesuits in the first phase of their existence. However many devoted and austere members there were among the twenty thousand, the Society was incurably corrupt. There was no serious ground to think, after earlier experience, that reform would succeed; they would not reform themselves—the decrees of their Congregations were waste paper—and they resisted every papal effort to reform them. The Society, as a body, was committed to the pursuit of wealth and power, and in this pursuit it acted invariably as if the end justified the means. The germs planted in it by Ignatius had ripened. His followers had sought the wealthy and the powerful, had veiled their actions in secrecy, and had trampled on their own rules and the rules of the Church when the end required it.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] See a full account in Döllinger and Reusch's Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche (1889), i. 120-273.

[39] Two works will give the reader ample material for forming an idea on the subject. From the Jesuit side there is Crétineau-Joly's work, Clément XIV. et les Jésuites (1847), though the work is little more than a reproduction of the fifth volume of the same writer's Histoire ... de la Compagnie de Jésus, and is quite unprincipled in many of its statements. The other work (Histoire du pontificat de Clément XIV., 1852) is a reply to the preceding, written by the learned and conscientious Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, Father Theiner. Both contain copious extracts from contemporary documents, especially the correspondence of the ambassadors. The work of St. Priest, Histoire de la chute des Jesuites, is interesting and lively, but gossipy and unreliable.

[40] The retreat is a period, generally a fortnight, in which priests and nuns devote themselves entirely to prayer and contemplation. It is usual to do so annually; to go into retreat twice in six weeks would be regarded as extraordinary and, in the circumstances, very significant.

In the brief of suppression Clement XIV. had enumerated a series of religious congregations which the papacy had abolished on account of their decay. Most of these had faded from the memory even of ecclesiastics. Their members had bowed to the papal command, and either directed their steps to some other religious body or quietly enjoyed the pensions allotted them out of their property. But there can have been little expectation that the members of the Society of Jesus, who were especially pledged to obey the Pope, would submit to the sentence passed on them. They would, in some form, await the toll of the bells over the remains of Clement XIV., and, if necessary, over the remains of the Catholic monarchs. The form which their resistance actually took, however, was more audacious than their keenest critic could have anticipated. They persuaded two non-Catholic rulers to prevent the publication of the brief in their dominions, persuaded themselves that by this device they escaped the heavy spiritual penalties laid on rebels by the brief, and flouted every command of the Pope and his representatives to change at least their name and costume.

So much has been written on the conduct of Frederick the Great and Catherine in patronising the Jesuits that we do not share the astonishment of contemporaries. In his correspondence with the [Pg 365] free-thinker D'Alembert at Paris, Frederick lightly advances one reason after another for his action. He scouted D'Alembert's warnings. The Pope had "pared the claws" of the dangerous animals; he had "cut off the tails of the foxes," and they could not again carry torches into the cornfields of the Philistines. On the other hand, they were excellent teachers, and it was immaterial to Frederick what orders the Pope gave about their costume and domestic arrangements. Pressed more seriously, he pleaded that when he annexed Silesia he had solemnly pledged himself to respect the religious status quo, and he was bound in honour to leave the Jesuits there, since they were part of the situation he had sworn to respect. Even this ostensibly serious argument was too ridiculous to satisfy his friends. A Protestant ruler swearing to respect the Catholic arrangements naturally supposes that he is to do so only as long as the head of the Church desires. The truth is that, in the first place, the Jesuits provided his State with a comparatively good scheme of education without cost to his treasury; and, since they could have taught just as effectively whether or no they continued to call themselves Jesuits, it is further clear that Frederick deliberately protected and encouraged their rebellion in order to secure a larger service from them than merely teaching arithmetic. They were, as they had so often done for Catholic monarchs in outlying dominions, to teach loyalty to Prussia and disarm rebels. Add the fact that the Inquisition had put his writings on the Index, and the Vatican had obstinately refused to recognise his royal title, so that he was not indisposed to annoy Rome, and we have a sufficient explanation of his conduct.

Until the year 1740 Prussia had remained almost entirely Protestant, so that it now almost makes its first [Pg 366] appearance in the chronicle of the Jesuits. A small Catholic community existed here and there, but there was little proselytism, and there was not even a Catholic bishop. In 1742 Frederick won Silesia from Austria, and thus included in his dominions a large and disaffected Catholic population. As D'Alembert reminded Frederick, the Jesuits had done all in their power to hinder his occupation of Silesia, and they long continued to foster the Catholic wish to return to Austria. They were, he said in his Testament Politique (1751), "the most dangerous of all monks," and "fanatically attached to Austria." But they were a mighty power in Silesia. The Breslau University and nearly all the schools were under their control, and a large proportion of the population, having passed through their schools or enjoyed their ministration, were vehemently attached to them. Frederick decided that they must remain, and be watched carefully. In 1746 he examined their system of education and advised them to send for a number of French Jesuits, who would raise their standard. We can quite believe that their schools needed improvement, but Frederick had another advantage in view. A leaven of French Jesuits would help to counteract the Austrian bias.

Silesia was still in this condition when, in the year 1772, the Jesuits found themselves fighting for the life of their Society. Frederick had privately written that it "ought to be rooted out of the whole world," and ten years before he had seriously considered a proposal to expel the Jesuits from his dominions. It now, apparently, occurred to him that he had a splendid opportunity of conciliating Catholic Silesia and destroying the pro-Austrian sentiment. Joseph II. had abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies; Frederick of Prussia would espouse their cause, and not allow his subjects to be robbed of [Pg 367] their ministers. We saw that the Jesuit General was well informed as to his attitude, and asked him to pose openly as protector of the Society. He probably answered that, while a Protestant dare not interfere in the discussions at Rome, he would keep the doors of Prussia open to them. When the brief of suppression appeared, he forbade the bishops to publish it in Silesia, and he offered General Ricci and his colleagues the hospitality of his dominions.

From that moment Frederick smiled at the anger of Rome and of the Catholic nations. The cynical humour of his attitude does not concern us, but the behaviour of the Jesuits themselves is a grave chapter in their history. At first, with their wonted casuistry, they declared that the brief was not binding, as it had not been addressed personally. When this supposed canonical irregularity was ridiculed, they, as I have said, pleaded that Frederick conscientiously believed himself bound to maintain the status quo, that he therefore refused to allow them to change their name, and that the interest of religion forbade them to ignore the commands of a powerful secular monarch. They were warned by their own colleagues in Italy that this hypocritically veiled rebellion was of itself a strong justification of Clement's indictment of the Society; they were reminded by the papal Nuncio at Warsaw that they had in fact incurred the penalties specified in the brief. Of all these warnings they took not the least notice, and the Catholic world had the singular spectacle of a band of priests who were understood to be the Pope's body-guard sheltering from his anathemas behind the shield of a free-thinker. Indeed, they went further, and, cynically ignoring their plea that they must obey their monarch, they sought to use Prussia for maintaining or restoring the full organisation of the Society. The [Pg 368] Prussian representative at London helped them to communicate with the ex-Jesuits of England, and they proposed that a Congregation should be held at Breslau and a Vicar-General of the Society elected, as Ricci was still in S. Angelo. The English ex-Jesuits were, however, too scattered and helpless to join with them.

The Nuncio had reported to Clement that it would be unsafe to take drastic action, as Frederick would be inspired to retaliate. It was therefore directed that the bishops should refuse to ordain their growing members or give the usual spiritual powers, and the Jesuits felt that a serious situation would arise. With their Catholic flocks they had little difficulty. Clement XIV. was represented as a corrupt pontiff who had purchased the tiara by a simoniacal promise to destroy the Society, and who now wandered, almost insane, about the galleries of the Vatican moaning and crying: "I did it under compulsion." But they could not live long without the co-operation of the bishops, and an envoy was sent to Rome, in the name of Frederick, to arrange a compromise. They were to change their name and dress, modify their domestic arrangements as little as could be helped, and continue in their houses and colleges.

At this juncture, on 22nd September 1774, Clement XIV. died. He was in his seventieth year and had a chronic ailment (piles). The strain of the last four years and an acute disappointment in regard to the return of Avignon, Benevento, and Ponte Corvo had deeply affected his health. In April, moreover, he had been caught in a shower of rain, and, although he seemed to recover in the early summer, his condition became grave in July. By the end of August the succession to the papal throne was openly discussed. He sank slowly and continuously during the month of September, and died on the 22nd. It does not seem [Pg 369] necessary to examine minutely the rumour that he was poisoned. His illness cannot be regarded as other than natural, and the repulsive details about the corpse which are given in St. Priest seem to be an echo of Roman gossip. If we decline to accept popular stories concerning Clement's mental condition—his administration is to the end marked by great sobriety and prudence—we must also decline to consider these rumours of poison. The two physicians declared that the death and the condition of the corpse were, in a sultry September, natural. It would hardly require much extension of Jesuit principles to sanction the poisoning of Clement XIV.; historically, however, we have not very serious ground to charge them with the crime.

On 15th February 1775 Pius VI. ascended the papal throne. The power and attitude of the Catholic monarchs was still such that there could be little chance of restoring the Society, and it seemed safe to admit a pope who was well disposed toward the ex-Jesuits. It was to Pius VI. that the Prussian envoy made his proposals, and they were gladly admitted. Directions were issued that the bishops of Silesia might grant powers to former members of "the extinct Society," and they entered upon a new phase of their rebellion. Instead of welcoming this regularisation of their position, they complained that Frederick had "gone over to their enemies" (the bishops), as he really had. In the course of the year 1776 the Silesian Jesuits were practically secularised. They were forced to abandon their costume, depose their superiors, and hand over their property to the State in exchange for a salary. They still lived in communities and enjoyed a certain immunity from episcopal control, but they were now "Priests of the Royal Scholastic Institute."

Frederick invited other ex-Jesuits to join his [Pg 370] Institute, and a salary of 700 florins a year was assigned to each. In this condition the hundred ex-Jesuits continued to control education in Silesia, and quarrel with the secular clergy, until Frederick died in 1786. When the bishops objected to the fathers living in community, Frederick genially replied that at Rome one hundred and twenty of these ex-Jesuits were living in community, and he might be permitted to imitate the indulgence of the Pope. He remained to the end proud of his economical system of education and his triumph over the Papacy. His successor modified the Institute in some respects, but the changes were slight until the year 1800, when it was converted into the "Royal Prussian Catholic School Direction" and lay teachers were admitted to it. That was the end of one of the most famous and curious rebellions against the Papacy.

Some of the discontented ex-Jesuits passed in 1800 from Silesia to Russia, and we must now retrace our steps to consider the equally remarkable rebellion of the Jesuits in that country. Catherine II. had, like Frederick, sound political reason to patronise the Jesuits. In August 1772 Prussia, Russia, and Austria took the fragments of Poland which they had long coveted, and Catherine entered Polish Livonia and Lithuania with her troops. The ancient kingdom had decayed, as we saw, in proportion to the prosperity of the Jesuits, and it suffered the dismemberment with the impotent anger of an aged man. When the schismatical Catherine came to claim their allegiance, the Catholic clergy generally stood aloof in patriotic sullenness until the Jesuits took the lead. The admirable excuse is made for them that they were indifferent to politics and terrestrial arrangements of government, and recognised only a duty to obey the sovereign who actually held power. In point of fact, they knew that Poland had not the faintest hope [Pg 371] of evading its hard destiny, and they hastened to greet the new ruler.

Catherine's searching eye at once realised the situation. These two hundred Polish Jesuits had an immense influence over her million and a half new subjects, and their advances must be met generously. Peter the Great had excluded Jesuits from Russia for ever; Catherine at once decreed that this prohibition was repealed as far as her Polish dominion was concerned, and she expressed a flattering admiration of their colleges. Her feeling was, obviously, that they would prove excellent teachers of loyalty to the Poles, but within a few months the Society was abolished by Clement and a new situation arose. Playing one of those little comedies which adorn their annals, the Polish Jesuits addressed to their new sovereign a most respectful entreaty that she would permit them to obey the command of the Pope. There is no doubt that this letter, which is reproduced with admiration in complimentary histories of the Jesuits, is genuine; it is, however, not explained how the Jesuits would lessen their usefulness to Catherine by changing their name and costume, and why they needed this imperial permission to make a change which did not concern her.

Catherine and the Jesuits had enough in common to understand each other. They wished her to forbid them to obey the Pope, and they would prove grateful. Catherine at once refused to allow them to change their names and their coats, and they reported to Rome that the secular power forbade them to comply with the brief, and, in the interest of religion, they must obey her. The situation was so scandalous, since the Papal Nuncio insisted on the dissolution of the province, that some of the more scrupulous of the fathers were abandoning their houses and seeking secularisation. To meet these [Pg 372] secessions a letter from Clement to the Bishop of Warmie (an ex-Jesuit) was published, and in this letter Clement was represented as approving the existence of the Society in Russia. Although this letter is reproduced seriously by the French historian of the Society, it is a flagrant forgery. Clement and his Nuncio protested to the end against the position of the Polish Jesuits, and the course of the story will show that they themselves took no serious notice of this supposed authorisation. It is not the only untruth we shall have to trace to them.

When Pius VI. was elected, they at once applied to him for counsel in their difficult situation, but the representatives of France and Spain were closely watching the new Pope, and he did not venture or deign to reply. Their uncanonical position was now causing the Jesuits the same concern about the future as it had given their colleagues in Prussia, and Catherine made a direct application to Rome for a remedy of their inconvenience. The Pope thought that he might escape the importunities of the ambassadors by conferring on the Bishop of Mohilow full power to deal with the fathers. This friendly prelate had, no doubt, been suggested by them, as he at once granted them the desired permission to establish a house for novices. To complete the comedy, the Pope, through his Secretary of State, protested that he had not contemplated this step when the representatives of France and Spain complained. The Jesuits paid no heed to his diplomatic protest, opened the novitiate, and entertained Catherine herself at their new foundation.

The powers of the Bishop of Mohilow had now served their purpose, and the Jesuits asked Catherine to curtail them and permit them to elect a General as their constitutions directed. Catherine (in 1782) issued a ukase in accordance with their wish, but the bishop was [Pg 373] alienated by their duplicity, and he appealed to the Senate and secured an order that the Jesuits were to obey him. Strong in the favour of the Empress and of Prince Potemkin, the Jesuits ignored the decree of the Senate, and went on to elect a Vicar-General and Assistants. In order to obtain papal indulgence of this conduct they induced Catherine to send the ex-Jesuit Bishop Benislawski to Rome. Pius VI. dare not issue a written authorisation of their position—another proof that the letter of Clement was a forgery—but Benislawski reported that the Pope had said emphatically to him: "I approve the Society in White Russia. I approve it." Again the French historian reproduces this statement unreservedly as fact. But the mendacious bishop was so indiscreet as to make his statement before he left Rome and have it published at Florence, and the Pope indignantly denied it. The bishop was ordered to leave Rome, and, as Theiner shows, Pius VI. issued two briefs denying that he had approved the Society (29th January and 20th February). M. Crétineau-Joly seems to prefer to think that it was the Pope who lied.

To the remote wilds of Lithuania the Roman quarrel had little chance of penetrating, and Bishop Benislawski presently returned with the happy assurance that the Pope approved their position; the monarchs prevented him from issuing a brief, but he sent this oral message to justify the fathers in their consciences. The lie was propagated among the ex-Jesuits of Europe, and many of them abandoned their pensions or positions and made their way to Russia. It seems that there were other features of the Society retained besides the art of mental reservation. Crétineau-Joly generously observes that after 1785 the Russian fathers "construct cloth-factories, a printing press, and all that is necessary for such exploitations": a complete business-system, in other words. [Pg 374] It is remarkable that even in these circumstances, when they were pressing for a restoration of their Society, the Jesuits would not abandon their improper practices.

The death of Catherine in 1796 did not affect the position of the fathers. She had entrusted the education of her son to Father Gruber, one of the ablest members of the Society in Russia, and when Paul came to the throne he declared that he would maintain the patronage which his mother had given to the Society. It is true that Paul gave them some concern from the beginning. The Vatican had now so far reconciled itself to the anomalous situation as to take advantage itself of the influence of the Jesuits and send a Nuncio to St. Petersburg. The Russian laws strictly forbade proselytism, as it is important to realise. Paul, like Catherine, tolerated the Jesuits only on condition that they ministered to their co-religionists, educated youth, and made no effort to disturb the faith of members of the Greek Church. Under these conditions he regarded them as a useful aid in carrying out the national reforms which had been initiated by Peter the Great. But Paul was tempted to interfere in the spiritual government of his Catholic subjects, and, when the Nuncio politely protested, the autocrat bade him leave Russia. Gruber tactfully mediated between the two, and the Nuncio was allowed to return. One is almost tempted to think that Gruber, an exceedingly astute Jesuit, arranged the quarrel for the purpose of mediating, as we find him afterwards speaking of the "debt" of the Holy See to him and his colleagues, and a very remarkable understanding between the zelanti cardinals and the irregular Jesuits can be traced at this time.

Pius VI. died in 1799, refusing with his last breath to disturb the Church in Europe by sanctioning the Jesuits, even in Russia. After his death the Venetian senator [Pg 375] Rezzonico was sent by the ultramontane party to St. Petersburg to ask the protection of Paul for the forthcoming conclave; and the only meaning we can attach to this embassy is that the schismatical Tsar was to counteract the intimidation of the Catholic monarchs and enable the cardinals to elect a pope who would restore the Society. By this time the French Revolution had run its tragic course, and the ex-Jesuits were loudly proclaiming everywhere that it was the natural development of the forces which had demanded the suppression of the Society; that, if these wild and devastating forces were not to wreck civilisation in Europe, they must be recalled to put a check on them. There was a growing disposition to listen to their plausible sermon, or at least to perceive that if the Jesuits were restored on condition that they checked the new spirit, they might prove a powerful auxiliary to the legitimate monarchs. The Bourbons had been swept from France; Charles III. had gone the way of his fathers and D'Aranda was powerless; Naples was beginning to desire a fence of Jesuits to protect itself from the northern pestilence.

The Tsar was greatly flattered by the proposal that he should assert his power in the metropolis of Christendom, but it is difficult to find that he had any material influence. Portugal and Austria alone still resisted the design of restoring the Society, and Austria was fully occupied in meeting the troops of Napoleon. Hence the cardinals had little difficulty in securing the election of Chiaramonti, who, as Bishop of Tivoli, had openly expressed his reluctance to carry out the brief of suppression. Pius VII. was now a feeble and retiring old man, a former member of the Benedictine Order: a strange figure to place upon a throne which was presently to be exposed to such violent storms. But Napoleon was not yet Emperor, and the Papacy was still a quiet [Pg 376] and puzzled spectator of the extraordinary developments in Europe. Within six months of his election Pius VII. received from the Tsar a pressing request for the approval of the Society, and on 7th March 1801 he solemnly recognised its existence in Russia. We shall see presently that the Russian fathers had already, with the connivance of Pius VI., sent a colony into Parma, at the request of the duke, and that various groups of thinly disguised Jesuits had appeared in different parts of Europe. The Jesuits had now a substantial hope of recovering their power.

We have already seen that the Jesuits were not in the least chastened by their severe punishment, and the position of Gruber at the Russian court is an interesting illustration of this. He had much the same relation to Paul I. as La Chaise to Louis XIV. or Lamormaini to the Emperor. Matters of pure Russian politics were submitted to him, and he was hated and flattered by the Russian courtiers. Indeed, about 1800 we find him engaged in just such an intrigue as the older Jesuits loved. Napoleon wished to detach the Tsar from his English alliance, and was rapidly developing the idea of his middle career—the proposal to divide Europe between the thrones of France and of Russia. He wrote confidentially to Gruber, artfully suggesting that a co-operation with his plan would be to the advantage of the Society, and Gruber, who could see the future of Napoleon, entered zealously into his part. One wonders whether the history of Europe might not have run differently if Napoleon had followed up this idea, and restored the Society of Jesus as the chief element of his "spiritual gendarmery." On the other hand, Paul instructed his representatives in the Near East to obtain access for the Jesuits, and the first step was taken in the restoration of the foreign missions.

Paul died in the spring of 1801, and the warier Alexander came to the throne. He quietly assured the fulsome Jesuits that he approved and would maintain the Russian patronage of the Society, but it is clear that he kept a more critical eye on their conduct than his predecessors had done. And the fathers now embarked on enterprises which it was certainly expedient to watch. Paul had assigned to the Jesuits the Roman Catholic church at St. Petersburg, and to this church was attached the privilege of opening a school. In the course of 1801 and 1802 some of the ablest fathers were sent there from the chief centre at Polotzk, and a school for the sons of the nobles was opened and obtained large numbers of pupils, Russian and Catholic. There also appeared at St. Petersburg, as Sardinian envoy, the famous French writer, Joseph de Maistre, who was at that time in his first fervent admiration of the Society which he knew so little. Whether or no the Jesuits had secured this appointment, he proved a valuable auxiliary. There was as yet, under the able leadership of Gruber, no cause for dissatisfaction. In the new provinces which Alexander was developing the Jesuits worked devotedly and usefully among the colonists; the great Tsar had no more zealous and effective apostles of loyalty. In the schools, also, their teaching was irreproachable. Provision was made even for the training of the youths in the doctrines of the Greek Church.

The work of the restoration of the Society proceeded smoothly. In October 1801 the older fathers had met in Congregation and elected Gruber General of the Society. From this month we may plausibly date the restoration of the Society, since its former members were free, and were invited, to come from all parts of Europe and place themselves under the authority of Gruber. In the summer of 1803 Gruber sent a father to Rome, "to [Pg 378] watch the interests" of the Society. Being a member of an authorised body, he retained his costume, flaunted it in the eyes of the astonished Romans, and visited the Vatican in it. Men felt that the ghost would soon be followed by a resurrection. In the following summer Gruber received from the Pope a genial notification that Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies desired to have a number of fathers for the education of youth in his kingdom, and Pius was willing to oblige him. On 6th August 1804 the Society was restored in the Two Sicilies. In the meantime other Societies which were more or less secretly Jesuit, and various communities of ex-Jesuits in different parts of Europe, were returning to the obedience of the General, but we will dismiss the Russian episode before dealing with these.

In the year 1805 Gruber lost his life in a fire, and the Russian Society fell under a less astute leader. Father Bzrozowski was elected General, and for a few years he was content with a quiet development of the policy of his predecessor. In 1811, however, he requested the Tsar to raise their chief college at Polotzk to the rank of a university, and allow it to control all the schools maintained by the Society. This would remove them from the control of the Minister of Cults, and make them an integral part of the system of education under the Minister of Public Instruction; it would also emancipate their schools from the control of the St. Petersburg or the Vilna University. Alexander seemed to be impressed by their specious argument that a healthy rivalry would raise the standard of education, and their promise that their education would be both cheaper and sounder (less liberal and cosmopolitan) than the purely Russian. But the proposal raised the first great storm against the Jesuits in Russia. For some time there had been a growing resentment against them. Russian nobles and [Pg 379] officials and priests angrily recalled the power which a Jesuit priest had had at the court, and lamented the growth of Roman Catholicism. The Jesuits retorted that they had not received a single one of their pupils into the Roman Church; it will appear that they had discreetly sent to other priests the pupils in whose minds they had sown the seeds of conversion.

Then Joseph de Maistre took up his eloquent pen in their behalf and the battle was won. In 1812 the Polotzk college was raised to the rank of a university, and began to educate the sons of noble or wealthy Russians. In the course of time there were as many as two hundred noble youths, of the Greek faith, sitting on its benches, and, as usual, the interest of the fathers in their pupils led to a respectful concern about their mothers and sisters. It was noticed that many were received into the Roman Church: though never by Jesuits. European politics had for some years distracted the attention of the Tsar, but the critics of the Society had in 1812 received a powerful reinforcement in the shape of agents of the English Bible Society. Alexander was at war with Napoleon and in close alliance with England, and the Bible Society took advantage of the political situation to enter St. Petersburg. They brought a rich supply of information about the Jesuits and stimulated the vigilance of the Russians. The mysterious growth of secessions to Rome since the opening of the Jesuit college for nobles in the capital led to fiery discussions.

At last, in 1814, the young Prince Galitzin, nephew of the Minister of Instruction of that name, joined the Church of Rome. He was in his sixteenth year, and had been attending the Jesuit classes for two years. His uncle, a stern critic of the Jesuits, now entered upon a violent campaign against the Society, and the city rang [Pg 380] with denunciation of their secret machinations. It was discovered that the real number of conversions to Rome had been concealed, as the converts had been instructed to practise their new religion only in secret. There was an intense agitation, and the Jesuits thought it prudent to close their schools to all but the sons of Roman Catholics. It was too late. Priests and professors maintained the stormy agitation and nervously endeavoured to unveil the secret Catholics.

In the midst of this agitation Alexander returned from France, after the final defeat of Napoleon, and both parties appealed to him. His answer was a ukase, issued in December, sternly ordering the Jesuits to close their schools and quit St. Petersburg. In cold and measured language he recalled that they had been admitted on the strict understanding that they were not to proselytise, and he denounced their "breach of confidence." They were expelled for ever from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in the Catholic Provinces they were to return to the subject condition they had had up to the year 1800. On the night of 20th-21st December the police entered their colleges and read the Tsar's order. On the following day they were compelled to abandon the noble ladies of St. Petersburg, and, in the depth of winter, set out on the long sledge-ride to Polotzk. Alexander kindly provided them with furs and directed that they should be treated with consideration, but he was convinced of their guilt. In a later letter, indeed, the General admits that some of the fathers had been making converts among the ladies of the capital; and the Jesuit maxims in regard to truthfulness are such that we may question whether this was done without his knowledge, as he says, and may be pardoned if we entirely ignore the assurance of the Jesuits that they had nothing to do with the numerous conversions of their [Pg 381] pupils. Not only the general law of Russia, but a special imperial decree of the year 1803 forbade proselytism, and this decree had been forced on the attention of the Jesuits. "For the greater glory of God" they had once more trampled upon a strict and honourable human engagement.

Bzrozowski died five years afterwards, and they appealed for permission to elect another General. By this time, as we shall see, the Society had been restored, and the Italians were impatiently awaiting the death of the Russian General, but Alexander spared them the evil of a schism in the Society. It was reported to him that the Jesuits continued to break their engagement. Prince Galitzin drew up a long memoir in which he showed that they had been busy proselytising, sometimes with violence, since 1801; the local authorities had had to restrain them in some of the outlying provinces. They had, he alleged, told their converts in the capital to continue externally to observe the Greek religion, as the Pope had given permission for them to do so. They had continued to proselytise among their pupils and among the soldiers in Lithuania and in the other provinces, and they managed their estates so unskilfully or so unjustly that swarms of their peasants wandered as mendicants over the roads of Russia. We cannot control these statements. The memoir was printed and published by the imperial authorities, and the Jesuits were ordered to evacuate Russian territory. From their estates and princely colleges in Lithuania and Livonia, as well as from the poor colonies in the Caucusus and Siberia, where many of them had worked in the finer spirit of the Society, they sadly turned their faces toward the west from which they had been driven.

The third element in the restoration of the Society takes us back to the year 1794, when a few young [Pg 382] priests, refugees from revolutionary France, attempt in Belgium to set up a purified Jesuitism under another name. The most prominent was the Abbé Count de Broglie (son of the famous marshal). He and a few others discussed a plan of covertly embodying the principles of Ignatius in a new society, and consulted some of the ex-Jesuits. Father Pey, of Louvain, became their director, and in February 1794 they took possession of a country house given them by a Louvain banker and entitled themselves the "Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus." Two nobles from the "emigrant" regiment joined them, but the six recluses were presently swept out of Belgium by the army of the French Republic, and they made their way on foot—the Society was to be restored on its purest models—to Augsburg. A few more were added to their number, and simple vows were taken. Ex-Jesuits watched them with interest, and they sought to be admitted to the Russian Society. Then they were minded to go to Rome, as Ignatius and his companions had done, and offer their services to the Pope, but the French blocked the way and soon forced them to fly to Vienna.

They were now seventeen in number, and they induced a score of refugee bishops to appeal to the Pope for his approval of the Congregation. Meantime they founded a novitiate at Prague and a house at Hagenbrunn, near Vienna. The whole structure of the late Society of Jesus was copied, and the studies were re-established. At last, in 1798, the Vienna Nuncio brought them to the notice of the Pope. They had not forgotten the counsel of Ignatius to cultivate wealthy ladies, and the Emperor's sister, the Archduchess Marianne, was an ardent supporter. Pius VI. was, however, as we saw, not bold enough to restore the Society, or the times were not yet ripe. He expressed a warm [Pg 383] interest in the community and suggested that they should enter into relations with a similar body, the "Society of the Faith," which had been founded in Italy.

The ex-Jesuit Caravita at Rome had amongst his followers an enterprising young man named Paccanari, the ambitious son of a Tyrolese tailor. Paccanari was the leader of a group of young men who, under the inspiration of Caravita, went out to visit the sick and instruct the ignorant, as the early Jesuits had done. They presently formed a "Society of the Faith of Jesus," and, to make their meaning plainer, adopted the costume and constitutions of the ex-Jesuits. The Roman authorities demanded a slight change in their costume, but otherwise connived at their growth. It was 1798: Louis and Charles III. were dead, and the aristocratic world was sighing for a Jesuit bridle on revolution. At the end of that year they opened a novitiate at Spoleto, took the three vows, and added a fourth vow to obey the Pope. The Pope needed a special regiment just as much as he had done in the days of Luther. The new pestilence from the north had descended upon Italy, and Pius VI. was in exile at Florence. Paccanari visited him, with the connivance of the Pope's ex-Jesuit secretary, and told him of the "Fathers of the Faith" who had enlisted in his special service. Pius approved, and told Paccanari that a similar body already existed in Austria.

In the early months of 1799 Paccanari set out for Vienna, to explore the rival community and see if it could be brought under his authority. His voyage through the Austrian dominions taught him how ripe the time was for such an enterprise, as prelates and ex-Jesuits received him with gladness. At Padua the Count San Bonifacio (an ex-Jesuit) provided a house for ten of his companions; at Venice the higher clergy[Pg 384] caressed him. The only feature that restrained the enthusiasm of the old Jesuits was that Paccanari hinted that the Society had become corrupt and it was necessary to build again on the primitive foundation. In their view Europe was again prepared for political Jesuitry, and there was no need to go through the laborious preliminary stages of nursing the sick and travelling afoot. At Vienna the new Emperor, Francis II., received him graciously, and the Archduchess Marianne contracted a lasting regard for him.

The energy and ability of Paccanari soon removed the hesitations of the Sacred Heartists; they abandoned their name, fused with the Society of the Faith, and repeated their vows to Paccanari as their superior. A regular Province was now constituted, with Father Sineo as Provincial, and Paccanari went on to visit Prague, where the Archduchess and the novitiate were. Here the ambitious youth made the first mistake of his singular career. Ignatius had strictly enjoined that the Jesuit order should never have a feminine branch, as so many of the religious orders had, but the Archduchess and other noble dames were so devoted to the new enterprise that Paccanari permitted or persuaded them to take vows and promise obedience to the General of the Society of the Faith. Many of the ex-Jesuits now regarded him as an innovator and began to watch his career with distrust. He found many wealthy patrons, however, and little colonies were sent to England (to which I will refer later), France, and Holland. There were in a few years several hundred members of the new Society, and, as the Russian Jesuits had now been recognised by Pius VII., Paccanari was urged to combine with them.

He refused, or procrastinated, and from that time the members of his Society began to abandon their [Pg 385] obedience to him and seek incorporation in the genuine order. The Archduchess clung to Paccanari for many years, and the prestige of her association won respect for him. At Rome, where she and her companions had turned her palace into a convent, she bought a house and church for her esteemed director, and he set up a community of thirty fathers under the eyes of the papal authorities. He was now at open war with the ex-Jesuits, who swarmed at Rome, and, when they slighted his title of General, he retorted that the brief approving the Society in Russia had been extorted from Pius VII. He might now have accepted the idea of fusion, but the Russian General, to secure his authority, insisted that he would only admit the Paccanarists—as they were popularly called—singly, and would not entertain the idea of a corporate union. Paccanari fought resolutely for his fading authority. In 1803 the London Fathers of the Faith deserted him and transferred their obedience to Gruber. In 1804 the more numerous French fathers renounced his authority and joined the Russians; in the same year the Society was restored at Naples, and many of the Paccanarists joined it. The Pope remained indulgent to the falling "General," in consideration of his archiducal friend, and his Society lingered in Italy, Austria, and, especially, Holland. At last definite charges were formulated against Paccanari, probably by the older Jesuits, and the would-be reformer was committed to the papal prison for a luxury of manners that was inconsistent with his professions. He was released by the French troops when they invaded Rome, but his prestige had gone, and, flying to the hills from his Jesuit persecutors, the second Ignatius perished ignobly at the hands of brigands. The Society of Jesus was formally restored soon afterwards, and the Paccanarists threw off their thin disguise and joined it.

We have already seen the various steps by which the restoration of the Society was prepared in Italy. In 1793, Ferdinand of Parma had boldly invited the Russians to send him some Jesuits for the education of youth in the Duchy, and Pius VI. had genially closed his eyes when they set up five colleges and began to attract old members of the Society. Then came the French campaign in Italy and a more bitter resentment than ever of the new spirit which was invading Europe and shaking the legitimate thrones. In 1804, when it was realised that Napoleon had destroyed the pestilential Republic only to set up an even more dangerous power, Ferdinand of Sicily applied to General Gruber for a band of Jesuits to instil "sound" ideas into the minds of his subjects. Then came Austerlitz, and a French army was set free to put Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of the Two Sicilies. Once more the Jesuits had to fly from Naples with their protecting King (and, especially, their protecting Queen), but the presence of the English fleet confined the French to the mainland and the Jesuits of Sicily were unassailable. In a few years they attained enormous wealth and power, and it would not be unjust to connect the long somnolence of that beautiful island with the profound influence the Jesuits had on it in the first half of the nineteenth century.

In 1809 it was the Pope's turn to quail before this terrible incarnation of the new spirit. The Papal States were annexed, and Pius VII. set out for four years of bitter exile. He returned in 1813, and saw the allies closing round the falling monarch. In the spring of the following year Napoleon abdicated, and the restored monarchs set about the task of deleting the past twenty years from the history of Europe, and stamping out the last sparks of the liberalism which was understood to [Pg 387] have led to the French Revolution. It was the moment for restoring the Society of Jesus. The monarchs who had pressed for its abolition were dead, the new generation had never realised its power and irregularities, and the Jesuits themselves had for twenty years confidently proclaimed that the terrors Europe had experienced were the direct result of taking from them the education of the young and the spiritual guidance of the adult. This fallacy was promptly answered, and need not detain us. The Revolution was due to the maintenance of mediæval injustices in a more enlightened age, and the Jesuits, with all their power over kings, had never uttered a syllable of condemnation of those old abuses. We shall see that they lent all their recovered influence to the task of maintaining them even in the nineteenth century.

The truth is that the restoration of the Jesuits was an act of the Papacy for which there was no justification in Catholic opinion. In the bull Sollicitudo, which contrasts so poorly with the reasoned and virile brief of Clement XIV., Pius VII. ventured to say that he was complying with "the unanimous demand of the Catholic world." This was, as the Pope knew, wholly untrue. Spain alone, of the great Powers—if we might still call her great—was interested in the restoration. Austria and France had no wish to see the Jesuits restored, and would not suffer them to return to power when the Pope willed it; Portugal protested vehemently against the restoration. Pius VII. acted on his own feeling and that of petty monarchs like the Kings of Sardinia and Naples. He believed that the Jesuits would be the most effective agency for rooting out what remained of liberalism and revolution. He initiated that close alliance between the Society and reaction which has been the disastrous blunder of the Jesuits for the last hundred years. But it was the price of their restoration.

The bull was issued on 7th August 1714, and read in the Gesù the same day. In presence of a distinguished gathering of ecclesiastics and nobles, the Pope said mass and then had the bull read. Some fifty members of the suppressed Society had been convoked for the occasion, and we can imagine that it was a touching spectacle to see these aged survivors of the mighty catastrophe—one was in his hundred and twenty-seventh year—return in honour to their metropolitan house. The Gesù and the house attached to it had been maintained in proper condition. The solid silver statue and the more costly ornaments of the church had been sold, to meet the demands of France on the papal exchequer, and the library of the house had disappeared. But the community of secular priests who had been in charge during the years of suppression were mostly ex-Jesuits, and they had reverently maintained the home until their scattered brothers could return. The novitiate also was restored; the old fathers were summoned from their vicarages and colleges and myriad professions; a Provincial and Vicar-General were elected; and the Jesuits spread rapidly over the Papal States. The cloud of Napoleon's return chilled their enthusiasm for a month or two, but they presently heard of Waterloo and settled down to the task for which they had been restored to life.

The response of the Catholic world was, as I said, a painful commentary on the Pope's words. The flamboyant bull, permitting and urging Catholic monarchs to re-establish the Society of Jesus, made its way over Europe in the course of the next few weeks. Parma and Naples already had their Jesuits. The Duke of Modena at once admitted the Society, and Victor Emmanuel, whose brother had surrendered the crown to him in order to enter the Society, naturally opened [Pg 389] his kingdom to them. Ferdinand VII. of Spain, the most brutal and unscrupulous of the restored monarchs, abrogated the decree of expulsion, and warmly welcomed the Jesuits to co-operate with him in the sanguinary work which we will consider in the next chapter. John VI. of Portugal refused to admit "the pernicious sect" into his kingdom. Louis XVIII., even when urged by Talleyrand, refused to sanction the presence of the Jesuits in France. Austria refused to recognise them in its Empire, which still included Venice. Bavaria excluded them. And it took the Jesuits years of intrigue to penetrate the Catholic cantons of Switzerland.

This was the reply of Catholic Europe to Pius VII. In spite of the strident offer to combat liberalism which they made in tracing the Revolution to their absence, they were still excluded from three-fourths of the Catholic world. The indictment of them by Clement XIV. had not been answered by Pius VII., nor had their conduct in Russia and Prussia won esteem for them. They offered no serious guarantee of better behaviour. How they overcame this resistance and, in the course of a century, almost returned to their earlier number, and whether adversity had purified their character, are the two questions that remain for consideration.

For a few years after the restoration the Italian Jesuits were fully occupied with the reorganisation of their body, the recovery of their property, and the absorption of the lingering Paccanarists and survivors of the older Society. It is clear that, had it not been for the partial restoration in Parma and Naples, the Society would long have remained feeble. How many still lived of the 22,589 followers of Ignatius who had been expelled from their homes forty years before we do not know, but there was by no means a rush to the colours when the regiment was reformed. It was difficult also to recover their property. In spite of the generosity of the rulers of Piedmont, Naples, and the Papal States the work proceeded slowly. It is in the year 1820 that we catch a first interesting glimpse of the reconstituted body.

At the beginning of that year General Bzrozowski died at Polotzk, a few months before the Jesuits were expelled from Russia, and the Italians hastened to hold an election. Before he died the General had appointed Father Petrucci Vicar-General, and this official came to Rome and, in conjunction with his fellow-Italians, fixed the election for 4th September. We are not, of course, permitted to know the whole truth in regard to this election, but such facts as we know clearly show that the Italians were determined to regain control of the Society. There seems, however, to have been a deeper quarrel. [Pg 391] Some of the younger men and the ex-Paccanarists wished to reform the constitutions, and they had the support of Cardinal della Ganga, the Pope's Vicar (and later Leo XII.); the older men opposed reform. But what the precise position of Petrucci was it is impossible to decide. Crétineau-Joly, who alone has had access to the archives and has used his privilege in such a way as to make the quarrel unintelligible, offers the ridiculous suggestion that Petrucci and the cardinal wished to destroy the Society.

However that may be, Petrucci tried to have the election held before the Poles arrived, but there was a spirited Breton member of the Russian Province, Father Rozaven, in Rome at the time, and he appealed to the cardinal. Petrucci then wrote to the Poles to say that they must postpone their voyage to Rome, but Rozaven exposed the trick to them and they reached Rome early in September. There must have been a most unedifying turmoil in the Jesuit house, as, instead of an election on 4th September, we find Cardinal della Ganga intervening on the 6th to say that a commission, with him and Cardinal Galeffi at its head, had been appointed by the Pope to adjudicate on their quarrels. A week later the commission found that Petrucci was to have the powers of a general, but the two cardinals were to preside at the election. The account given us by the French historian is bewildering in its confusion, and is evidently intended to screen an angry conflict of personal and national ambitions and of reformers and anti-reformers.

The party opposed to Petrucci (and, presumably, to reform) now appealed to Cardinal Consalvi and denounced their Vicar-General. Consalvi had little interest in the Jesuits, but, as they knew, he was not disinclined to thwart della Ganga. He secured the calling of the Congregation in October. It seems to [Pg 392] have been the most lively and impassioned election that the old house had ever witnessed. Petrucci ruled that the voters from England and France and part of Italy had no canonical right to vote; the Congregation overruled him, and, when he protested, deposed him and excluded him and his chief supporter, Pietroboni, from the Congregation. Della Ganga appealed to the Pope, Consalvi defeated his appeal, and on 18th October Father Fortis was elected. The triumphant section then held a trial of the conduct of the minority. Petrucci and Pietroboni were pardoned on account of their age, but a number of younger men were expelled from the Society.

It must be admitted that this Congregation shows a decided continuity of the irregular features of the Society. Fortis, Rozaven, Petrucci, and the leaders of the conflicting parties were old members; Fortis, at least, an elderly Italian in his eighth decade of life, had belonged to the suppressed Society, and the conduct of him and his followers suggests that forty years of life without the restraint of discipline had not tended to improve their character. In the pacified Europe of 1820 they saw an easy field for the triumph of their order, and the Italians were ambitious to control it. The struggle against the proposal to reform the Society is equally unattractive; and the facility with which both parties appealed to rival cardinals, when the Jesuit tradition was fiercely to resent any outside interference with their Congregations, completes an unpleasant picture. The anti-reformers won, and the voters scattered to their respective provinces and missions.

Three years later Pius VII. died, and the triumphant clique at the Gesù had a momentary anxiety when Cardinal della Ganga mounted the papal throne under the name of Leo XII. Rozaven expresses their concern [Pg 393] in a letter to a colleague, and predicts that he at least will be compelled to leave Rome. But Leo XII. was convinced that the Society had become one of the most useful auxiliaries of the Papacy, and he hastened to assure them that their intrigue against his authority was forgotten. He had, in fact, hardly been a year at the Vatican when he gratified them by restoring the Roman College to their charge, and they gathered their best teachers from all parts of the world to win back its earlier prestige. Other of their old colleges in the Papal States were secured for them by Leo XII. and the Italian Provinces quickly recovered their power.

It was known to all that the liberal feeling engendered by the revolutionary movement was still intensely alive. The secret Society of the Carbonari spread its net over Italy, and the cultivated middle class was very largely liberal and anti-clerical. At Naples, in 1820, the Carbonari had seemed for a moment about to triumph; but the rebellion was defeated, and the Jesuits returned to the task of educating the middle class in pro-papal sentiments. They had a college for the sons of nobles at Naples, and four other colleges in the Neapolitan district; while they had no less than fifteen colleges and residences in the island of Sicily. In northern Piedmont, from which few at that time expected the greatest menace to the Papacy to come, they retained great power for decades. Victor Emmanuel gave place to Charles Felix, and the Liberals took the occasion to make a violent assault on the fathers. Charles Felix replied by choosing a Jesuit confessor, Father Grassi. Charles Albert patronised them even more generously than his predecessors. He secured the return of their old house at Turin, and, when he found it impossible to get for them their old house at Genoa, which had been converted into a [Pg 394] university, he granted them one of his palaces for a residence.

In the Papal States they entered upon their golden age with the accession of Gregory XVI., in 1831. Both Leo XII. and General Fortis died in 1829. A young Dutch Jesuit, Father Roothaan (aged forty-four), succeeded Fortis, and Pius VIII. ascended the papal throne. He died in November 1830, and Gregory XVI. assumed the tiara in the very heat of the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1831. The "White Terror" had failed to conquer what it called the revolutionary element; its thousands of executions and its appalling jails and repulsive spies had merely fed the flame of insurrection, and the international movement for reform gathered strength. The middle class in every country—in Italy, especially, the revolutionary movements were essentially middle class—suffered with burning indignation the brutalities of Austria, the Papacy, Naples, Spain, and France, and young men of the type of Mazzini devoted their lives to reform. In 1831 the Italian rebels, fired by the success of the July Revolution in France, raised their tricolour standard and soon saw it floating over Modena, Parma, and a number of the Papal States. One of the first movements of the insurgents in every place was to assail the Jesuit residences. At Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forli, and Ferrara, the Jesuits were driven from their homes and colleges and hunted over the frontiers of the revolutionary provinces. But Naples and Piedmont were unshaken by the disturbance, and the Austrian troops from Venice quickly trampled out the revolutionary spirit. It was on the eve of this insurrection—a work almost entirely of the educated class—that Gregory became Pope, and his policy after the pacification was one of savage repression.

It is needless here to recall the brutal régime which [Pg 395] the Austrians in Venice (to which the Jesuits were formally admitted in 1836), the Pope in central Italy, and the Neapolitan ruler in the south, spread over the land. It is enough for us that in the three States, as in Spain and Portugal, the Jesuits were the most ardent auxiliaries of the reactionary and sanguinary monarchs. Gregory XVI., the most repulsive Pope of modern times, was the most generous patron that the Jesuits had had for more than a hundred years. He went so far as to entrust to them the Urban College, the institution in which the Propaganda itself trained its missionaries. Education was the root of the revolutionary evil, and it was the place of the Jesuits to see that such education as was imparted in Italy—which sank to an appalling degree of illiteracy, and is still illiterate to the extent of 70 per cent. in the southern provinces, where the Jesuits ruled longest—was not tainted with modern culture. It is true that after 1830 the General appointed five learned fathers to revise the Ratio Studiorum of the Society; but one cannot regard it as other than a somewhat humorous comment on the Jesuit system that the teachers were no longer to be bound to teach the physics of Aristotle or to slight, in favour of Latin and Greek, the tongue of the pupils whom they trained. We have, in fact, a very curious illustration of the level of culture of Gregory and his teaching Jesuits. In the year 1837 the cholera threatened Rome. The science of meeting such epidemics was, of course, still in its infancy, but the conduct of Rome was exactly what it would have been five hundred years earlier. A solemn procession was enjoined, and, amidst the masses of terrified people, a statue of the Virgin was borne across Rome to the Church of the Jesuits. Gregory and his cardinals were in the procession, and for a time the Gesù was the centre or fount of the hope of Rome. [Pg 396] Within a few months 5419 Romans succumbed to the cholera.

Gregory died in the year 1846, and Italy sighed with relief. The misery of the working classes, the brutal treatment to which the educated classes had been exposed, and the control of education and of a very large proportion of appointments in the Papal States by the Jesuits, had engendered a hatred of him in every part of his dominion. When Mastai Ferretti ascended the throne, and took the name of Pius IX., he was greeted with wild enthusiasm. He was sufficiently known to inspire a hope that the reign of terror and the reign of the Jesuits were over, and his first acts confirmed this hope. An amnesty was granted, and the more brutal of his predecessor's coercive measures were repealed. Rossi, who, as we shall see presently, had been sent to Rome a few years before to negotiate the banishment of the Jesuits from France, was recalled and made leading minister to the Vatican; and Father Theiner was directed to vindicate the memory of Clement XIV. against the Jesuits and Crétineau-Joly, who had just published his history. The Jesuits were so notoriously discontented with the change, and with the young Pope's concessions to liberalism, that, as he passed through the streets he heard the warning cry from his people: "Beware of the Jesuits."

What part the Jesuits had in the termination of the new Pope's pose as a Liberal it would be difficult to say. The usual statement, that he was shaken by the assassination of Count Rossi and the revolution of 1848, is superficial and misleading. He had incurred the resentment of the Liberals because he had rapidly fallen from his first ideal. Some of the chief grievances of his educated subjects, such as the monopoly of all remunerative offices in the State by clerics, remained [Pg 397] untouched, and it was soon perceived that he was drifting backward toward reaction. His confessor was replaced by a friend of the Jesuits, and, when the popular and somewhat insurgent priest Gioberti published a fiery and just attack on the Jesuits, Pius IX. harshly condemned him. At the same time the returned exiles and the refugees who flocked to Rome from the countries which clung to oppression assuredly had ideals which it was quite impossible for any Pope to realise in that age. Pius was alienated more and more, and a violent conflict approached. How the third revolutionary wave in 1848 spread to Rome, and the Pope fled to Gaeta, and the Jesuits returned to power in the inevitable reaction, must be reserved for the next chapter.

When we turn to consider the fortunes of the Jesuits in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, we find a very different and more interesting chronicle. They had been banished from France, it will be recalled, in 1761, and the great majority of them had actually quitted the kingdom. Many had been secularised, and remained as teachers, tutors, confessors, or curés. During the period of suppression a large number of them found employment in France; the learned Father Boscovitch, for instance, was made director of the optical department of the Navy under Louis XVI. As in Italy and Austria, some of them sought to incorporate the spirit of their condemned Society in Congregations with other names, and a curious assortment of fraternities appeared. The "Fathers of the Faith," or Paccanarists, whose origin we have seen, found a genial atmosphere in France, and the little colony they sent from Austria was soon swelled with ex-Jesuits. Another body was significantly known as the "Victims of the Love of God." The feminine branch of the "Sacred [Pg 398] Heart" Society also spread to France, and grew into a formidable body of nuns (under the direction of ex-Jesuits) with the particular function of giving a "sound" education to the daughters of wealthy people; it remains to this day, in effect, the feminine branch of the Society, though the connection is not official. There was a "Congregation of the Holy Family" for training teachers of the poor, and a "Congregation of Our Lady" for banding together members of the middle class.

But of all these associations which sprang up mysteriously in the soil of revolutionary France, and throve under the shelter of Napoleon, the most important was a certain "Congregation of the Holy Virgin," founded in the year 1801. It was controlled by an ex-Jesuit, and had at first some resemblance to the association of young men organised at Rome by the ex-Jesuit Caravita. The young men, very largely university students, were to visit the sick and poor—to be practical Christians, in a word. But, whereas the Italian young men had become priests and Paccanarists, the members of the Congregation of the Virgin generally remained in the world, retaining throughout life their membership of the Society and their link with its directors. A register of their names and occupations was kept, and it meant, in effect, that the Jesuits had friends and ardent secret workers in every school and profession, in the army and navy, in journalism and politics.

Louis XVIII. came to the throne and was urged by Talleyrand to restore the Society. He refused, and the Jesuits were forced to rely still on their secret organisation. Already, in 1814, the Fathers of the Faith had a house in Paris, and six other houses in the country. Their title was now a deliberate deception, as they had in 1804 secretly renounced Paccanarism, [Pg 399] in the hands of the Papal Nuncio, and entered the Society of Jesus, as authorised in Russia. They dressed and acted externally as secular priests, and were much employed by bishops in teaching and preaching. From the Congregation of the Virgin they not only had accurate information of what was being said and done in every department of French life, but they obtained many novices; other youths joined the secular clergy, and would in time watch the interests of the Society within that body. Orders were now given that the Jesuits must work in perfect harmony with the secular clergy and in most respectful submission to the bishops.

They grew rapidly in the course of the next few years, and about 1818 they began to stand out prominently in the religious life of France. They were especially employed in what are known in English church-life as "revival services." Eloquent preachers, particularly when they were denouncing liberalism and the "bad" tendencies of the times, they passed from town to town lashing up the fervour of the Catholics. Large crucifixes were planted on the wayside as memorials of their oratory; enthusiastic processions marched through the streets; in places the churches were so crowded that one had to spend the night at the door to secure a place near the pulpit. They were the Pères de la Foi, Catholics said (with a smile); but critics maintained that they were Jesuits, and there were towns where the missionaries were assaulted and expelled. A very serious controversy raged in the French press as to whether there were really any Jesuits in France; even when, in 1822, a Liberal journal obtained and published a letter of General Fortis to one of his French subjects, it was difficult to convict them.

At this period, in the early twenties, the famous [Pg 400] Abbé de Lamennais was seeking to form a democratic Christian body, and he made an effort to secure the support of the Jesuits. Louis XVIII. was one of the more moderate of the restored monarchs; but the democratic feeling was still strong in France and, as the clergy were generally reactionary, democracy, of which Lamennais foresaw the triumph, was allied with Voltaireanism. Lamennais was convinced that the hour of feudal monarchs was over, and the Church could be saved only by allying itself with the people. The development of French history has shown the truth of his view. Democracy has triumphed, and the Church has shrunk to—M. Sabatier tells me—less than one-sixth of the population. Seeing the apparent power of the Jesuit missionaries, Lamennais, who was very friendly with them, earnestly begged them to incorporate his policy in their preaching.

The attitude of the Jesuits toward Lamennais is interesting. They hesitated for years, broke into sections, and eventually had to forbid all public discussion of the issue. In 1821 some of their members were censured for attacking Lamennais, in the next year others were censured for supporting him; and Rozaven, the French Assistant at Rome, directed that "prudence" forbade them to take either side in public. Later, as they still wavered and contradicted each other, General Fortis sternly prohibited public expression on the subject. Fortis died in 1829, and Lamennais made a fresh appeal to the Jesuits to "turn from monarchs to the people"; but Roothaan maintained the attitude of his predecessor. When Lamennais was eventually condemned, the Jesuits eagerly pointed out that they had declined to support him.

This situation is interesting, because it exhibits the Jesuits shrinking nervously from the greatest social issue [Pg 401] of their time. They retort that it was a political issue, and their traditions forbade them to discuss politics. It is in a sense true that the Jesuits had always abstained from political theorising, and bowed to the actual ruling power; except in cases where the ruling power incommoded them, when they might become the most violent of revolutionaries. But, apart from the question whether the issue was not moral in the finest sense of the word, it is ludicrous to affirm that the "political" nature of Lamennais's gospel prevented them from considering it when, in every country where a reactionary monarch called them to his aid, they were violent partisans of the aristocratic gospel. For twenty years they had maintained that the political storms which swept the old monarchs from their thrones at the end of the eighteenth century were directly due to the removal of their control of the schools and universities. They had been restored to life for the express purpose of reconciling Europe to the old order, and destroying the aspiration for democratic reform, and it was only in the cantons of Switzerland that they were found to hold a different theory of the social order; though, as we shall see, the Swiss cantons were then rather aristocratic than democratic. It is plain that in France they hesitated only because the future was uncertain. Their real aim was to restore the age of Louis XIV., but this new democratic movement looked formidable. They would wait and be guided by the issue.

The Catholic democrats turned angrily on the Jesuits for their attitude on this great issue, and accused them of gross ignorance of, and indifference to, social conditions: an entirely just censure. But their power was growing in every decade. New Congregations appeared,—societies for persuading lovers to marry in church, for preserving students from liberalism, and [Pg 402] so on,—and the Congregation of our Lady now included half the nobility and higher clergy, and numbers of writers, lawyers, politicians, and officials. Their French apologist, who was himself a member of the Congregation and lived in Paris at this time, admits that the secret influence of the Congregation was such that many made a profession of religion and joined it in order to promote their material interests. Charles X., who succeeded Louis in 1824, renewed their confidence. He opened his career with Liberal measures; but he was more reactionary at heart than Louis XVIII., and less prudent, and the Jesuits silently organised their forces for a restoration of the Society.

The educated Frenchman now commonly united the scepticism of Voltaire with the moderate democracy of Lafayette, and an angry storm broke out in the Liberal press. The open activity of the "Paccanarists" was an affront to the Constitution, and the secret manœuvres of the Congregation, notoriously led by Father Ronsin, alarmed them. The authorities discreetly removed Father Ronsin from Paris, but the work of the Congregation proceeded. Charles X. was suspected of favouring the Jesuits. In 1828 the Nuncio openly proposed that the Society should be restored. We may take the word of Crétineau-Joly that the ground had been so well prepared that a measure could have been passed safely through the two Houses. But Villèle, the French historian says, was so misguided as to appeal to the country first, and he lost. The question of the Jesuits was not the least of the issues at stake. Showers of pamphlets fell upon the public, and the popular feeling was such that when the King was one day reviewing the National Guard, the cry, "Down with the Jesuits," rang out from the ranks, and the review was abandoned.

The more moderate ministry of Martignac had now [Pg 403] to be formed, and, as it needed the co-operation of the Liberals, the plan to restore the Jesuits was abandoned. The Liberals were now encouraged, and they made a fiery assault. The "little seminaries," as the French called the preparatory colleges for the clergy, had been left under the control of the bishops, and several of them were notoriously controlled by the thinly disguised Jesuits. A commission of bishops, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head, was appointed to examine the charge, and it was determined that eight of the seminaries were really Jesuit colleges, and must be closed; it was further enacted that the seminaries were to be taken from the bishops and put under the control of the universities, that the number of pupils was to be restricted, and that no priest should henceforth be allowed to teach in them who did not take oath that he did not belong to a non-authorised Congregation. The bishops, many of whom had won their seats by Jesuit influence, protested in vain against this violation of their rights. Their protest made matters worse, since they stipulated that it should remain secret; but the Liberal press secured the text and published it.

This was a very severe blow to the French Jesuits, who had used the seminaries for training lay pupils in their spirit as well as teaching the secular priests to rely on them. While the French press was discussing the question whether they existed in the country, they had grown to the number of 436, and had two novitiates and several residences, besides the seminaries. They now determined to take bolder measures against the enemy. As I said, the question of the Jesuits was by no means the only serious issue under discussion; Martignac received only a moderate and uncertain support from his Liberal allies because his measures were not sufficiently advanced. It is, however, clear that the Jesuits, [Pg 404] through the Nuncio, had their share in inducing the King to replace the moderate Martignac with the thoroughly conservative Polignac. This was in July 1829. The reply of the people, when the ministry returned to the old coercive measures, was the July Revolution of 1830. The chief Jesuit houses, at Montrouge and St. Acheul, were sacked by the mob, and the fathers scattered in every direction. Once more they had suffered a heavy defeat on what they believed to be the eve of victory.

The revolutionary wave spread, with devastating force, to Italy, as we saw; and there also the fathers were for a time driven contemptuously from their colleges. Their recovery in France was naturally slower than in Italy. They moved in fear of their lives for the first year or two of the reign of Louis Philippe, and generally concealed themselves in devoted Catholic houses. In 1832 the cholera swept France, and they recollected how frequently heroic conduct in such epidemics had disarmed their critics. But France was not so easily reconciled in the nineteenth century, and the few who ventured to appear during the following years were arrested. In the course of time, however, the resentment was confined to the more ardent Liberals, and they resumed the semi-public existence of the previous decade. Catholicism made great progress in the thirties, chiefly through the agency of a brilliant group of laymen, and some of the Jesuits took an open part in the revival. Father de Ravignan, their finest orator, occupied the pulpit of Nôtre Dame for several seasons, and they were assiduous in giving retreats to the clergy.

As they no longer ventured to teach,—though it was known that they had opened a college for French pupils just over the Belgian frontier,—and betrayed their [Pg 405] character in no external action, they were legally unassailable; but it was not long before they again drew on themselves the ire of the Liberals. From 1840 onwards the clergy made a vehement attack on the professors of the university. Since these included philosophers like Cousin and Jouffroy, historians like Michelet, and men of letters like Jules Simon, we can easily believe that their lectures were at times inconsistent with orthodox ideas; but the attack was gross and exaggerated, and the professors felt that the Jesuits secretly guided it; Father de Ravignan, in fact, joined in the spirited conflict of pens. The chief result was to draw on the Jesuits the sardonic humour of Michelet, the weighty censures of Cousin, the poisonous raillery of Simon, and the unrestrained diatribes of the popular Liberal press. It was during this agitation that Eugène Sue lashed them with his Juif Errant, and George Sand wrote Consuelo. Against this fierce and brilliant onslaught the publication of Crétineau-Joly's Histoire was a feeble defence; it could carry no conviction except to the already convinced and uncritical Catholic. Indeed, its treatment of Clement XIV. scandalised many Catholics, and, as we saw, Pius IX. directed the Vatican Archivist to refute it.[41]

Louis Philippe was at length compelled to take action. Catholic writers treated it as an amusing scare that there were Jesuits in France, and were not a little mortified when the fathers betrayed their existence in a[Pg 406] way which entertained the Liberal pamphleteers. In 1845 one of their treasurers embezzled the funds entrusted to him, and they imprudently prosecuted. In the controversy which followed it was made plain that there were two hundred members of the forbidden Society in France, and their expulsion was stormily demanded. The King knew that if he suppressed the "Fathers of the Faith" they would do no more than change their name, and he adopted a shrewder policy. He sent Rossi to Rome to submit to the Pope that the relations of France and the Vatican would be much improved if the Jesuits were removed by ecclesiastical authority. The dignity of the Holy See was saved by a pleasant little comedy. The Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs reported that the request could not be granted, and the Pope firmly replied to the French envoy in that sense. But a private intimation was made to General Roothaan that it was desirable to meet the wishes of the King, and Rossi was instructed to see him. Whatever the precise nature of the intimation was, Roothaan submitted to his French subjects that it was expedient to dissolve their chief communities,—at Paris, St. Acheul, Lyons, and Avignon,—and they once more retreated sullenly from the field. We shall see later how they found a fitting patron in Napoleon III., and how the third Republic put a definitive close to their activity in France.

Their fortunes in Spain during the nineteenth century have been more chequered than their present prosperity would suggest. On 15th May 1815, Ferdinand VII. repealed the drastic sentence of his great predecessor, and ordered that their former property should be restored to the Jesuits. A hundred and fifty of the old members of the Society returned to their native land; colleges and novitiates were opened by means of the restored [Pg 407] property and the royal bounty; and, we are told, town after town demanded, and enthusiastically welcomed, its former teachers. We can well believe that the mobs which saluted the perjured Ferdinand with the cry, "Down with Liberty," would welcome the Jesuits. In the recoil due to their hatred of the French, and of the new ideas which the French had brought into Spain, the densely ignorant mass of the people fell at the feet of a brutal monarch and a corrupt clergy. The educated middle class, however, remained substantially Liberal. They had admitted Ferdinand only on condition that he promised to maintain their Liberal Constitution, and, as soon as he had attained the crown, he tore his promise and the Constitution to shreds and fell with terrible cruelty on the Liberals. Known Liberals were at once executed, imprisoned for life, or banished; the Inquisition was restored; and a network of spies spread over the kingdom. Men, women, and children were savagely punished, and a "Society of the Exterminating Angel" arose to strengthen and direct the bloody hands of the King and the Inquisitors.

Those five years of Spanish history constitute one of the most repulsive chapters in the chronicle of modern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine what part the restored Jesuits had in this reign of terror. All the clergy and monks of Spain were allied with their monarch in prosecuting what they regarded as a holy war. It is enough that the Jesuits did not dissent from the barbaric proceedings of Ferdinand, and that they flourished and were more than doubled in number within five years. The year 1820 found them increased to 397, with several novitiates and a large number of colleges.

And the year 1820 gives us some measure of their guilt in connection with the preceding years. The middle class was still strong enough, or humane enough, to put [Pg 408] an end to the disgraceful horrors, and reaffirm the liberal constitution of 1810. The Cortes was summoned, and, although its members were still predominantly Catholic, it was determined, with only one dissentient, to expel the Jesuits. The terrified King yielded to the deputies, and in August the four hundred Jesuits were pensioned and ordered to quit the country. Unfortunately, the French King espoused the cause of his "cousin," and his troops restored the savage autocracy of Ferdinand and the power of the Jesuits. The reign of terror returned, and even the other Catholic monarchs of Europe were shocked by the outrages committed and permitted by Ferdinand. Again it is impossible to disentangle the share of the Jesuits in this comprehensive guilt. Their chief task was to educate the young in "better" sentiments. The College of Nobles and a large military college at Segura were entrusted to them, and they reoccupied their former colleges. But neither priests nor ruler put confidence in educational methods. It is enough to note that a conservative authority on Spain, Major Hume, says of the renewed reign of terror: "Modern civilisation has seen no such instance of brutal, blind ferocity."

This appalling condition lasted, almost continuously, until the death of Ferdinand in 1833. Then the country entered upon the long Carlist war, and the Jesuits were soon expelled for the third time. While Queen Christina allied herself with the Liberals, Don Carlos rallied to his standard the absolutists and Ultramontanes, and the great majority of the clergy supported him. It is usually and confidently said that the Jesuits, like the rest of the clergy, supported Don Carlos; but when we recollect their maxim of not taking sides openly in an ambiguous conflict, or taking both sides, we shall not expect to find any proof of this in the early stages. Not only the [Pg 409] Liberals but the mass of the people in Madrid were persuaded that they were on the side of Don Carlos, and they saw hatred gathering on every side of them. In 1834 the cholera descended on the capital. Such occasions had generally served the Jesuits, but this fresh affliction only further irritated the people against them. The cry was raised that the Jesuits and the Carlists had poisoned the water-supply, and it seems that, by some strange accident or plot, children were found on the street with small quantities of arsenic. In the afternoon of 17th July the citizens flung themselves upon the houses of the Jesuits and other religious, and a fierce riot ensued. Fourteen Jesuits, forty-four Franciscans, and fifteen Dominicans and others were slain in the struggle. Some of their provincial houses also were sacked or closed, and the inmates had to fly for their lives.

In the following year, 1835, the Society was again proscribed, by the Regent Christina, and the Jesuits were scattered. They now sided openly with Don Carlos. Alleging, as usual, that they were indifferent to politics and must discharge the spiritual services demanded of them under any banner, they followed in the rear of the advancing Carlists and opened colleges in the districts conquered by them. One Jesuit guarded the conscience of Don Carlos, another was tutor to his children, and others ministered in his camps. At length an abler Christinist General, Espartero, cleared the Carlists from the Basque Provinces and closed the Jesuit houses. By the time of the revolution of 1848 there were none but a few disguised and timid survivors of the Society in Spain.

From Portugal the Jesuits were rigorously excluded during fifteen years after the restoration of the Society. John VI., a constitutional and sober monarch, refused to [Pg 410] irritate his subjects by admitting them, and had no need of their stifling influence on education in Portugal. He resisted all the pressure of Rome in their interest, and observed the Liberal Constitution which he had accepted. His granddaughter Maria succeeded to his throne and policy in 1826, under the regency of her uncle, Dom Miguel. Here again the Jesuits were admitted in virtue of an act of treachery and throve in an atmosphere of savagery. Dom Miguel intrigued for the throne, and, when he took an oath to respect the Liberal Constitution, was permitted to occupy it. "His Jesuit training," says the Cambridge Modern History (x. 321), "would make it easy for him to rest content with the absolution of the Church for a breach of faith committed on behalf of the good cause." He at once violated his oath and turned with ferocity upon the Liberals. It is estimated by some of the Portuguese writers that more than 60,000 were executed, deported, or imprisoned in the next four years.

Such was the second of the leading Catholic monarchs to seek the aid of the Jesuits. None of the members of the old Portuguese Province could be discovered, or induced to resume work in a bitterly hostile world, and eight Jesuits had to be sent from France, in 1829, to begin the work of restoration. They make little pretence of an enthusiastic reception in this case. None of their former property was restored, and for a time they had to take refuge in the houses of rival orders. They had, however, their usual good fortune to attract the sympathy of noble ladies, and were enabled to secure their old house at Lisbon in the following year. When the King saw that no violent upheaval followed their arrival, he began to patronise them, and secured for them their famous college at Coimbra. In the same year they had the satisfaction of establishing [Pg 411] a house at Pombal, where their old antagonist had died, and their superior describes, in an edifying letter, how he at once "ran to say a prayer over the tomb of the Marquis"; he was deeply pained, it seems, to find that the remains of Pombal had not even yet been interred, while the children of Ignatius were received with honour in his name-place.

But the ferocity of Miguel had already deeply stirred the population, and in the following year the defrauded young Queen's father, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, crossed the ocean to secure her rights and the Constitution. The Jesuits were painfully perplexed. Don Pedro seems to have felt that he could not hope for a lasting triumph without the aid of the Jesuits, and he made a secret offer to them, in an autograph letter (in March), of his protection and favour if they would desert Miguel. The issue was uncertain, and, when Don Pedro entered Lisbon in July, the Jesuits assured him that his letter had reached their hands too late for them to consider his offer. They had remained ideally neutral in the war, and had nursed the cholera victims in both camps with religious impartiality.

The people of Lisbon saved Don Pedro from the dilemma which this excellent or prudent conduct imposed on him. On 29th July a mixed throng of soldiers and citizens assaulted and sacked the Jesuit residence. It would have gone very hard with the fathers themselves had not certain English naval officers chivalrously saved them. In the following May (1834) Don Pedro renewed the sentence of suppression. From their handsome college at Coimbra they were conveyed to Lisbon, to face the hoots and taunts of a rejoicing mob, and then to be deposited in prison. The French afterwards secured their release from prison, but they have never since had a legal existence in the land of Pombal.

We turn next to England, to study the fortunes of the followers of Ignatius up to the middle of the nineteenth century. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Jesuits had availed themselves of the more tolerant spirit of the age of the Georges, and again increased to a considerable body. Their colleges in Spain, France, and Belgium received numbers of young Catholic aspirants, and we find that at the time of the suppression of the Society the English Province boasted 274 members, of whom 143 were actually in England. The suppression in Spain and France reduced their colleges; the two colleges at Bruges were violently closed by the authorities in 1773; there remained only a house at Liège and the English missions at Liverpool, Preston, Bristol, and a few other towns.

They continued to live in community in these residences after the abolition of the Society, and minister as secular priests. In 1794 their situation was again altered by the French invasion of Belgium, when the English fathers were expelled from their last continental seat, at Liège. The disaster proved, however, to be the starting-point of their more prosperous modern development in England. One of their old pupils, Thomas Weld, offered them a house and estate at Stonyhurst, near Preston, and on 29th August the refugees reached what was destined to be one of their most important centres. They opened a school—to be directed by certain "gentlemen from Liège"—and quietly awaited the future.

In the meantime the ex-Jesuits who had remained in England bore their disgrace very impatiently. One of their number, Father Thorpe, wrote in 1785 so scurrilous a Sketch of the Life and Government of Pope Clement XIV. that his colleagues had to withdraw it from publication at the demand of their own admirers. [Pg 413] In the following year the English ex-Jesuits opened a correspondence with their rebellious colleagues in Russia, and, although they could devise no pretext whatever for disobeying the Pope in England, they offered to unite with the Russians. Their proposal was declined or postponed, and they waited until the Pope officially recognised the Russian Society in 1801. By that time the Abbé de Broglie had led his little colony of Fathers of the Faith from Austria to London and opened a college at Kensington. Some of the ex-Jesuits and many emigrant French priests were attracted to this authorised Congregation, but Paccanari was now an object of suspicion to most of them, and, on the other hand, there was increasing hope of a restoration of the Society.

The proposal to enlist under the Russian General was now revived, and both ex-Jesuits and Fathers of the Faith made their way, secretly and individually, to Russia and renewed their vows. By the year 1804 there were between eighty and ninety Jesuits in England. The general and violent hatred of the French had led to much sympathy with the clerical victims of the Revolution, but England was not yet prepared for this substantial resurrection of the Jesuits. Stonyhurst was growing into a large and busy colony, owing to the continued bounty of Weld and the return of surviving members of the old province, and in 1804, and more peremptorily in 1807, the Government ordered the dissolution of their communities.

Such an order was a feeble check on their growth, and they took advantage of the successive movements which aided the restoration of Catholicism. The stream of French emigrants, the Act of Toleration of 1791, the beginning of Irish immigration, and the advocacy of Catholic Emancipation by Pitt enabled the Catholics to [Pg 414] enter the nineteenth century in increased numbers. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 so inflated them that they then estimated their numbers in London alone as 146,000, or nearly a tenth of the population; to-day they number about one-fiftieth of the population of London. The Jesuits shared the growth with the rest of the clergy. Between 1826 and 1835 they built eleven new churches, and in 1830 the Roman authorities made a formal province of the English group. The Irish fathers had been detached from the English in 1829, and formed a vice-province. Ten years later began the Catholic movement within the Church of England, to the considerable profit of Rome.

The early history of the Jesuits in the United States is one of the most interesting chapters in their modern story. When the Society was abolished and its members momentarily discouraged, John Carroll, a member of the suppressed English Province, led a small group of fathers to the North American Colony. He became friendly with Washington and other leaders of the insurrection, and is said to have had some influence in shaping the Liberal clauses of the new Constitution. In 1789 he became Bishop of Baltimore, and another ex-Jesuit, Father Neale, was afterwards made his coadjutor. This transferred the American mission from the control of the English Vicar Apostolic, and made Carroll head of the Church in the United States. In 1803 we find Carroll writing to General Gruber that there are a dozen aged ex-Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with sufficient property (of the older Maryland mission) to support thirty; they wish to join Gruber's authorised Society and receive an accession of strength. The Russian Jesuits had justified their rebellion on the ground that the secular monarch had forbidden them to lay aside their habits; the Americans[Pg 415] said it was enough that there was in America no secular monarch to forbid them to wear it. The Papacy counted for little with any of them.

Gruber complied, and the foundations were laid of the prosperity of the Jesuits in the United States. In the early years little progress was made. The newcomers were young foreigners, and the population was scattered and generally hostile. One of the German fathers was actually arrested and tried for not betraying the confession of a thief, but the controversy which followed rather promoted their interest. They shrewdly established their chief college and centre at Georgetown, near Washington, and gradually won the regard of American statesmen, who visited and granted privileges to the college. By the year 1818 there were 86 Jesuits in the United States, and recruits were arriving from Europe. A novitiate had been opened at White Marsh in 1815, but few novices could be secured in America. In fact, as they followed their usual custom of making no charge for education, they had a severe struggle with poverty everywhere. In 1822 the authorities at Rome ordered them to close the school at Washington, as it could no longer maintain itself without charging. The rector, Father Kelly, defied his superiors for a time, and maintained the school on the fees of pupils; but Americanism was not yet sufficiently developed to sustain this, and Father Kelly was expelled from the Society.

Memories of the "black robes" lingered among the Indians, and it was suggested, time after time, that the fathers should return to their work among them, and amongst the blacks of the south and the islands. Their historian makes a lengthy and very earnest apology for their refusal, during ten or twenty years, to listen to this suggestion. They remembered how their work amongst [Pg 416] the Indians had been "misinterpreted"; they were too few in number to spare men for distant fields; in time, they foresaw the greatness of the United States and "preferred the certain to the uncertain." The truth seems to be that commerce in blankets and beaver-skins was not possible in the nineteenth century. After 1840, however, they sent missionaries among the Indians, and won a great affection among them. By that time the Missouri Province alone had 148 Jesuits, and the Maryland Province 103.

It is clear that the early Jesuits laboured devotedly to arrest the enormous lapse from the Church of Rome in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. We need pay little attention to their boasts of conversions. Catholic immigrants were now arriving in millions, and were passing out into the lonely districts and small towns, where their faith was quickly forgotten. In 1636 the Bishop of Charlestown estimated the loss at nearly four millions in his diocese alone. Many of the Jesuits went out among the struggling pioneers and led lives of great self-sacrifice. Their energies were, however, mainly concentrated on the aggrandisement of their schools and conciliation of politicians in cities like Washington. They made sure of power in the great Republic they foresaw. It may be added that the Society was at the same time spreading in Mexico. Restored under Ferdinand, they undertook, as in Spain, to check or destroy the Liberal principles which had taken root in Mexico. For this they were banished in 1821, when the news came of the Liberal triumph in Spain, and did not return to open activity until 1843.

In the Germanic lands, except Belgium, the restored Jesuits had a severe struggle throughout the nineteenth century. Austria and Bavaria refused to publish the [Pg 417] bull of restoration or comply with it, to the great mortification of the Jesuits. Metternich, at least, retained the spirit of Joseph II., and Ferdinand II. was not yet disposed to tempt his subjects by readmitting them. Prussia was, of course, still closed against the Jesuits as Jesuits. The first serious attempt to gain a footing in Germany was made in 1820, when the fathers who had been driven from Russia appeared on the Austrian frontier and humbly asked permission to cross the Emperor's territory. They might "cross," he drily answered; and when they secured the customary intervention of noble dames, he permitted them to go and teach loyalty among his poor subjects in Galicia and his restless subjects in Hungary. He granted funds for this purpose, and they soon had a flourishing Province in Galicia, and a general control of education. Even here they were subject to the bishops, and the imperial decrees intimate that there was much suspicion and hostility. In 1829, Styria and other provinces were opened to them, though the opposition was so violent that at Gratz we find them complaining of having to lodge in some kind of inn, with an actress for neighbour.

Ferdinand II. died in 1836, but his successor could do little for them in face of the prevailing hostility. Father Beckx, the future General, was in Vienna at the time. A Jesuit had at last brought a ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Köthen, and Father Beckx was confessor to the Duchess at Vienna—and secret agent of the Society. He writes in 1837 that their enemies are very powerful, and Josephite principles triumphant; the Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden to teach. Ferdinand, however, was not indisposed to enlist their aid in fighting Liberalism, and they quietly spread in the outlying provinces. The Tyrol was opened [Pg 418] to them in 1838, and from their old college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools. We shall see presently how the revolutionary storm of 1848 drove them from their new acquisitions.

In Switzerland the fortunes of the Jesuits were more romantic. During the suppression they continued to live in communities, and carefully concealed the offensive title from the eyes of Protestant citizens. After 1814 they began to induce their lay followers to petition the authorities to sanction their return to life, and the long and bitter struggle over the Society began. The canton of Solothurn was then more than eighty per cent. Catholic, and in 1816 the Grand Council was urged to restore the Society. It refused, and they then made cautious efforts in Valais and Freiburg. I am aware that in all these cases the Jesuits do not appear in connection with the petition; a few influential Catholics appeal for the return, and the Jesuits are depicted as serenely aloof from the negotiations. We are accustomed to pretences of this character. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also was nearly ninety per cent. Catholic) decided by sixty-nine votes to forty-two to readmit the Jesuits and entrust its schools to them. At the same time they recovered their old house at Brigue, and began to spread in Catholic Valais.

From the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century the Radicals began their attacks on the growing Jesuits. In 1823 the fathers secured their old college at Freiburg, which they had long coveted. Since their settlement in Freiburg this college had been in the hands of the Franciscan monks, who had adopted the ideas of Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educationist, and were doing admirable work. The bishop complained to the authorities of the friars' innovations, and they were replaced by the Jesuits. The Radicals of the [Pg 419] town were malicious enough to suggest that the Jesuits had intrigued to bring about this result,—of which, of course, there is no proof,—and on the night of 9-10th March they attacked the college, and were with difficulty prevented from burning it. In the following year the Jesuits were expelled from the Netherlands (which formed one Province with Switzerland and Saxony) and came to swell the number of their colleagues in Valais and Freiburg.

In 1836, however, when the second revolutionary wave was passing over Europe, the Radicals won power in the majority of the cantons (including Lucerne, Freiburg, and Solothurn). They were not yet in a position to dislodge the Jesuits, but there was constant friction, and a serious struggle for the federal authority began. The aim of the Radicals was to capture and strengthen the federal government, and expel the Jesuits (and other religions) from the whole of Switzerland. They and the "young Swiss" were part of the international Liberal movement, which was everywhere anti-clerical. [42] In 1844 the struggle became more violent. The Jesuits of Valais refusing to admit government control of their schools, a band of armed Radicals marched upon Sion and had to be defeated by the armed inhabitants. In the same year the Jesuits entered Lucerne for the first time. A wealthy Catholic farmer named Leu threw all his energy into their cause, and the Jesuits aided by sending a preacher occasionally to show, by suave and conciliatory sermons, that the suspicion of them was wholly unfounded. In face of a storm of Protestant [Pg 420] and Radical threats the Council decided to admit the Jesuits.

There now spread through the country a struggle of passion which was soon to culminate in a deadly civil war. Leu was murdered, and Catholics and Radicals faced each other with intense hatred. Opinions may differ as to the conduct of the Jesuits in pressing their ministry, since it is clear that the purely political differences would not have stained the hills and valleys of Switzerland with blood. The war that followed was a religious war, and mainly a war over the Jesuits. In the spring of 1845 it was announced that an army of 11,000 Radicals was marching on Lucerne. The Catholic Confederation sent round the fiery cross, and gathered an army sufficiently strong to defeat and scatter the Radicals. It was over the corpses of these opponents that the Jesuits entered Lucerne and began to teach, with passion still seething on every side. A graver struggle impended, and both sides hastily organised. The seven Catholic cantons (to whose enterprise the French Jesuits contributed 98,000 francs) formed a Sonderbund [Separate Alliance], and aimed at setting up a Catholic Republic. The Federal Diet at Berne ordered them to dissolve, and when they refused, pitted the federal army against the Catholic troops. A bloody and disastrous war ended in a victory for the federal troops in 1847, the Sonderbund was destroyed, and the Jesuits (with the other religious orders) were excluded from Switzerland by the Constitution of 1848. The Jesuits had not waited for the troops to enter Freiburg and Lucerne; they had fled to the Tyrol and Austria.

In the Netherlands the story of the Jesuits during the nineteenth century has been one of great prosperity, checked only by a few early reverses. No sooner had [Pg 421] the Pope issued the bull of restoration, and the French rule been destroyed, than the ex-Jesuits who lingered in the country as secular priests and the Fathers of the Faith (who had at last entered the Society) proceeded to organise their body. A novitiate was opened at Rumbeke and another at Destelbergen, in Belgium. The Congress of Vienna, however, placed the united Netherlands under the control of William of Nassau, and he watched the progress of the Jesuits with uneasiness. The former father of the Faith, the Count de Broglie, was now bishop of Ghent, and he and other prelates and nobles sedulously assisted the Jesuits. The controversies which were bound to arise after the union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium under one crown soon raged furiously, and William, in the summer of 1816, ordered the Jesuits to close their novitiate at Destelbergen. They were forced to retire, but de Broglie encouraged them to resist the King, and lent them his palace for the maintenance of their community. De Broglie himself was afterwards banished for assailing the Constitution, and the fathers were put out of the palace at the point of the bayonet in 1818. As William threatened to expel them from the country, they removed the novitiate to Switzerland, and assumed an appearance of submission. As, however, they continued to stir the Catholics, William ordered the bishops in 1824 to forbid them to give retreats to the clergy, and in the following year he closed two of their residences.

This succinct account will suffice to introduce the Catholic revolution of 1830, in which Belgium won its independence. We are again asked to regard the Jesuits as idle spectators of the fierce Catholic agitation which ended in the rebellion; but, in view of their experience under William, it seems wiser to accept the [Pg 422] Dutch assurance that they played a large, if secret, part in it. The revolution was just, however, and there were other grounds than religion in the dissatisfaction of the Belgians. [43] From that date Belgium has been a golden land for the Jesuits, and Protestant Holland has suffered them to prosper in peace. After 1830 they literally overran Belgium; they numbered 117 in 1834, and 454 in 1845. After that date came the great revolutionary storm of 1848, and Belgium was almost the one land in which the hunted Jesuits could find refuge. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was too prudent a Protestant to interfere with them, and from the Belgian frontier they maintained the strength of their struggling colleagues in France. In Holland they were treated with leniency by the successor of William; and, when the storm broke upon their German colleagues in 1872, they were able to receive the refugees and maintain houses on the frontier for the invasion of Germany, as they do to-day.

It is needless to show, in fine, how the restored Jesuits spread again over the foreign missions. After 1830 especially, when their number had increased, they began to regain their lost Provinces. In 1834 six fathers landed at Calcutta to restore the Indian Province, and when the Portuguese missionaries and authorities tried to expel them, they succeeded in getting the protection of the English authorities. Madaura, the richest of their old fields, was restored to them in 1837. Here again the existing missionaries protested so violently that for many years the few Jesuits led a hard and almost fruitless existence. In 1842 some of the [Pg 423] Jesuit missionaries secured the charge of a native college in Bengal, but the prince was compelled to evict them after a few years. There was an angry feeling and great outcry against them in India well into the middle of the century. In 1854 they received charge of the vicariate of Bombay, in 1858 of Poonah, and in 1859 of Bengal.

China was re-entered, very modestly, in 1841, and the various Republics of South America admitted them whenever the Catholics alternated in power with the Liberals. They entered Argentina in 1836, but were banished again in 1843; they were permitted to settle in Guatemala in 1853, and expelled when the Liberals came to power in 1871. But it would be little more than a calendar of dates to record their appearances and disappearances in the South American States, and on the foreign missions generally. In 1845, of 5000 Jesuits, 518 were missionaries: in 1855 there were 1110 on the missions: in 1884 they counted 2575 on the missions. They no longer presented to the historian the interesting features of their early years; Jesuits no longer flaunted the silk robes of a mandarin or the mythological vesture of a Saniassi, no vast estates or commerce sent gold to their European brethren, no troops of soldiers marched at their command, no quaint rites or rebellions against bishops engaged the Roman Congregations. They had entered the age of prose.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] It seems to have been on account of this slanderous attack on the Pope, as well as to give it an air of impartiality, that General Roothaan publicly denied that the Jesuits had assisted the author. The learned Abbé Guettée, in the Histoire des Jésuites, which he published soon afterwards, tells us that, not yet knowing his hostility to them, some of the Jesuits of Paris freely acknowledged to him their share in the work. In any case, the Jesuits were obviously in close co-operation with the writer, since he speaks constantly of having before his eyes unpublished documents which belonged to the Society.

[42] There were, of course, more important issues at stake in the Swiss struggle. The franchise was narrow, and the government aristocratic in the cantons, and the central or federal power was weak. The Radicals mainly aimed at reforming these features, but they were hardly less inflamed at the privileges given to the Jesuits. In Valais the fathers travelled free on the public services.

[43] Historians usually include among the causes the enforcement of a system of secular education only in the schools. But—as Sir Robert Stout kindly pointed out to me—the Catholic prelates in their letter to the French Minister of the Interior, dated 30th May 1806, had previously "willingly" accepted this arrangement. They agreed that it was enough to teach religion in the churches.

If we attempt to sum up in few words the story of the Jesuits during the first few decades after their suppression, we must say that there was little change in their spirit, and that they were wholly bent on returning to their former position. In actual conduct there is a material change. The industrial and commercial system, which had formed one of the most irregular roots of their power in the earlier centuries, has disappeared; they no longer haunt the courts of kings as they had done; they, as a rule, show less arrogance to the non-Jesuit clergy and the bishops; they are less lax in their casuistry; they shrink from regicide. Much of this change is, however, plainly attributable to their new situation. There is, for instance, hardly a single country where they enjoy an unbroken prosperity for even thirty years during the first half of the nineteenth century, so that we could hardly look for large estates or traffic; and their foreign missions are only slowly and laboriously constructed. As to regicide, the new age has a more humane way of dealing with superfluous kings. If they do not counsel kings, it is clearly not from lack of desire to do so. On the whole, let us say that the dreadful age, as they conceive it, into which they are reborn has improved their conduct in spite of themselves.

We have now to see how, as the age increases in wickedness, to use their phrase, the Jesuits continue to [Pg 425] improve: how they retain their worst features only in lands which they pronounce godly and just, and are so innocent as to cast suspicion on the dark legends about them where heresy and unbelief abound. This last phase of Jesuit activity is very important, yet too close to us for proper historical study. Enough can be said, however, to show that what may be called the intermediate view of Jesuit degeneration is disputable. There are those (i.e. all Jesuits and their admirers) who hold that the Jesuits were never open to grave censure as a body; and there are those who maintain that the Jesuit of the nineteenth or twentieth century is as bad as the Jesuit of the seventeenth, and would poison a pope or forge a cheque complacently in the interest of the Society. A third view is that their heavy and repeated chastisements have made their evil features a thing of history. During the first half of the nineteenth century, however, we have seen that they had no idea of burying their past; they were to co-operate with kings in restoring the old order, and we have not the least ground to think that, had they restored it, they would have used their power otherwise than they did in the seventeenth century. It remains to see if they become wiser in the next half-century.

We left them on the eve of the revolution of 1848. Except in Switzerland, where their obstinacy in asserting their rights had been one of the chief causes of a civil war and made their prospects worse than ever, they still dreamed of erasing the revolution from the chronicle of Europe and beginning again at 1750. Hence the fearful storm of 1848 broke on them almost unexpectedly. They had only recently been forced to retire from France, so that the outbreak in that country affected them little. But the storm passed on to Austria and Italy, even Rome, and drove the Jesuits before it. [Pg 426] A Jesuit writer observes sadly that "the first attack of the revolutionaries everywhere was on the Jesuits." Naturally; there were no more vehement opponents in Europe of the new age which the revolutionary movement represented. They had themselves traced the revolutionary spirit to their temporary absence from the schools of Europe, and the revolutionaries [44] concluded that the reign of terror had had their support. So from Rhineland, Austria, Galicia, Venice, Turin, Rome, Naples, and Sicily—the only Provinces of the Society which seemed secure—the Jesuits were driven by armed and angry crowds, and a vast colony of bewildered refugees shuddered in Belgium.

The Emperor of Austria was forced on 7th May to sign their expulsion from the whole of his empire, but it was in Italy that they suffered most. Since 1840 the authorities of the Society had received a succession of painful shocks. The Carlists had lost and the fathers had been driven from Spain: in 1845 they had been forced to dissolve the communities in France: in 1847 the Swiss Catholics had lost, and the Jesuit houses had been wrecked. They had attached themselves everywhere to losing causes. Manning was in Rome in the winter 1847-48, and his diary records the coming of the revolution to Rome, and flight of the Jesuits. Pius IX. had exhausted his Liberalism, and the Romans were uneasy and suspicious. Then, in January and February 1848, news came that the revolutionaries had triumphed in Sicily and Naples, and the Jesuits were flying north. By March the Jesuits at Rome were ready to fly at a moment's notice, as Manning found when he visited them. On 29th March they were expelled; and in the [Pg 427] same month the Viennese conquered their Emperor, the Venetians rebelled and drove out the Jesuits, and the Piedmontese won a Liberal Constitution from Charles Albert. Manning speculates on the causes of the intense hostility to the Jesuits, and traces it to their alliance with ultramontanism and political reaction.

As the historian tells, the revolution of 1848 had in most countries only a temporary triumph, and in the course of 1849 and 1850 the Jesuits returned to their provinces. In very many places they returned to find their comfortable home a heap of ruins, but the storm had had one consoling effect. It had proved that the Jesuits were the chief enemies of Liberalism, and to the Jesuits must be entrusted the task of extinguishing such sparks as remained of the revolutionary fire. Pius IX. had been driven to Gaeta, while the Romans set up their short-lived Triumvirate and declared papal rule at an end. He returned to Rome in the spring of 1850, when French troops had cleared out his opponents, and from that moment he became the closest ally of the Jesuits. His first act was to canonise several members of the Society. He took a Jesuit confessor, and, with the aid of Cardinal Antonelli and the Society, set up the selfish and repressive system which the English ambassador described as "the opprobrium of Europe."

At last, it seemed, the spectre of revolution was definitively laid, and a prospect of real restoration lay before the Society. At Rome the Jesuits had enormous power. Their influence is seen in the declaration of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the appalling Encyclical against modern culture and aspirations of 1864. To them in 1866 the Pope entrusted his chief organ, the Civiltà Cattolica, and they had a large part in agitating for, and ultimately passing, the declaration that the Pope is infallible in 1870. During all this [Pg 428] period they controlled Catholic culture, if not the Papacy. Their power was at the same time restored in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, so that Italy (except Piedmont) was covered with their colleges and residences. In Austria the Emperor, embittered by his hour of humiliation, now opened the whole of his dominions to them, and they collected fathers from all parts of the world to come and restore the prosperity of the Austrian Province. In Belgium they prospered luxuriantly; and they made quiet and stealthy progress in Holland, Bavaria, Switzerland, Saxony, and Prussia, where they were not authorised. In France Napoleon III. cancelled the decrees against them, and cherished them as one of the supports of his throne. In England they found a friend in Wiseman and made rapid progress; in the United States they were growing with the phenomenal growth of the population. The age of trouble was over. The sage old fathers at the Gesù and the Roman College saw chaos returning to order.

In 1853, at the beginning of this happier turn of their fortunes, Roothaan died, and Beckx, the son of a Belgian shoemaker, was elected General. The one cloud on the horizon was Piedmont, where the earlier affection for the Jesuits had died, but it had been proved, apparently, that France and Austria would check the ambition of that State. But France was drawn to Sardinia, and in 1859 Victor Emmanuel began to extend his rule over Italy. From that time until 1870 the Society heard of nothing but disaster. In 1860 Victor Emmanuel annexed Tuscany, Emilia, and Romagna, and the Jesuits were driven from their homes into the Papal States. In the same year Garibaldi landed in Sicily, put an end to the brutal rule of the Catholic King, and ejected the 300 Jesuits from their palatial college at Palermo and other residences. In[Pg 429] the autumn he entered Naples, and swept further hundreds of the Jesuits before him. We learn from a letter of protest which Father Beckx addressed to Victor Emmanuel, that in the two years the Society had lost 3 institutions in Lombardy, 6 in Modena, 11 in the Papal States, 19 in Naples, and 15 in Sicily. Of 308 Jesuits in their most prosperous Province of Sicily only 8 aged and ailing fathers were allowed to remain on the island. Of 5500 members of the Society no less than 1500 were homeless, and were not even allowed to find shelter in Catholic houses in their native Provinces. In 1866 the Austrians were ejected from Venice, and further scores of Jesuits were driven from their homes. In 1868, it may be added, the Jesuits were again banished from Spain, to which they had returned under Isabella II.

There was a great concentration of Jesuits in Rome and the remaining Papal States, and desperate efforts were made to secure that at least this remnant of earthly principality should remain loyal to the Pope. To the great joy of the Jesuits an Œcumenical Council gathered at the Vatican, and the design of declaring the Pope personally infallible in matters of faith or morals was eagerly pressed. In the long and heated conflict of affirming bishops and denying bishops, and bishops who thought a declaration inexpedient, the Jesuits were very active, scorning the idea that it could be imprudent to enhance the power of the Pope. Then came the Franco-German War, the withdrawal of the one Catholic force which could save Rome from Victor Emmanuel, and the clouds gathered more thickly than ever. The Jesuits had declared their opinion of the "usurper" too freely to have any illusion as to the issue.

When the Piedmontese troops entered by the breach at the Porta Pia on 20th September, the Jesuits knew [Pg 430] that they were doomed. A detachment of soldiers at once proceeded to the house attached to the Gesù and took up quarters there. Whatever the reason was, the new Italian Government proceeded very slowly in the work of expelling the Jesuits. For some weeks soldiers and fathers lived together at the Gesù—the fathers afterwards said that the soldiers chose the General's room for practising the drum and trumpet—and the various residences were confiscated "in the public interest" at wide intervals. In October the novitiate at St. Andreas, with its large estates, was taken and the novices forced to enlist. In January 1772 one of their smaller churches was handed over to the secular clergy; in January 1873 a second church and the Roman College (which was used by the Ministry of War) were annexed.

At last, in June 1873, a law was published enacting that the monks and religious of all orders must quit Italy. One house was to be reserved at Rome for each order, so that they might communicate with the Vatican, but this privilege was refused to the Jesuits. They were hated by the great majority of the educated Italians, who recalled with anger their support of the bloody reigns of Ferdinand of Naples, Ferdinand VII. of Spain, Miguel of Portugal, and Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. They had sided with reaction and lost. There was no general sympathy when, in October, Father Beckx, now a feeble old man of seventy-eight, went sorrowfully to his exile in Florence, and the remaining Italian Jesuits were pensioned and scattered. The novitiate at Sant Andreas was rented by the American Seminary (and Father Beckx was allowed to die there some years later). The Gesù was entrusted to other priests, and the sacred rooms of Ignatius and the other saints of the Society were respectfully preserved. The Roman College became a State school: I remember seeing a vast Congress [Pg 431] of Freethinkers hold their fiery meetings in its dark chambers and airy quadrangle thirty years afterwards, at the invitation of the civic authorities of Rome.

It was just one hundred years since the Roman Jesuits had been scattered by Clement XIV. But the catastrophe in Italy was not the only affliction to mark that dark centenary. They had in the previous year, when they were awaiting the sentence of Victor Emmanuel, heard that their fathers were expelled from the new German Empire. For some years they had made quiet, but considerable, progress in Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, as well as Austria. They had opened a number of colleges at Cologne and in the Rhine Province, always a rich field for their work, and had institutions at Posen, Münster, Metz, Mayence, Bonn, Strassburg, Essen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Marienthal, Ratisbon, and many other places. From the Rhine Province and Bavaria and Baden they sent so many recruits to the German College at Rome, who would return to work in Germany and further the influence of the Jesuits in seminaries and bishoprics and universities, that Frederick William III. was compelled to forbid any of his subjects to go to the German College or any other Jesuit institution. Frederick William IV. genially overlooked their progress, and they spread over the States which were presently to form the German Empire.

But the birth of the German Empire coincided with the declaration of papal infallibility, and a strong agitation for the expulsion of the Jesuits arose. The prolonged check on Jesuit activity in Germany had permitted the growth of a more virile and honest culture among the secular clergy, and many of the best Catholic scholars were amazed at the papal claim. Politicians and Protestants generally were concerned about this victory of ultramontanism, and attributed it largely to [Pg 432] the intrigues of the Jesuits. Even before 1870 the Catholic statesmen of Bavaria were in conflict with the Church over its extreme pretensions. When, in 1870, two more Catholic Provinces were added to Germany, bringing its Catholic population up to fifteen millions, Bismarck watched attentively every step in the growth of ultramontanism. The dissenters at the Vatican Council had very serious ground indeed for their plea of inexpediency, as far as Germany was concerned. Even Austria threatened to break its Concordat with the Papacy when the news of the declaration of infallibility arrived. Over Protestant Germany a feeling of intense hostility spread, and the Old Catholics joined in the outcry.

Petitions for the expulsion of the Jesuits began to reach the Reichstag, and the Government proceeded to act. A measure was debated in the Reichstag in June 1872, and on the 4th of July it was signed and promulgated. Six months were allowed for the settlement of their affairs, and in the course of that time the whole of their communities were dissolved. As communities they retired upon Switzerland, Austria, Holland, and Belgium, but the law permitted them to enter the Empire as individual citizens, and Bismarck knew that it availed little to expel Jesuits with a fork. Dr. Falk, a strenuous Liberal, was made Minister of Public Instruction, and he framed a series of measures (the "May Laws") for the complete control of education by the State and for determining the qualifications of teachers in such a way that no disguised Jesuit could return to his desk. The control of schools had hitherto been left generally to the bishops, on whose indulgence or zeal, as far as the Catholic schools were concerned, the Jesuits could generally rely.

A stormy controversy ended in the passing of the [Pg 433] Laws, and Germany entered upon that long and bitter struggle of the Catholics against the Government which is known as the Kulturkampf. To this day the Jesuits have been unable, in spite of the most industrious intrigue, to secure readmission into the German Empire. They still hover about the frontiers, in Holland, Austria, and Belgium, and maintain large colleges in which hundreds of the sons of the wealthier Catholics are educated in orthodox principles. Individually, they live frequently in Berlin and control the incessant demand of the Centre Party for their rehabilitation. "Exile" has no effect on their growth and prosperity, for the 755 expelled Jesuits of 1872 now number 1186. It is not impossible that they will secure return by some such bargain as that which contributed to the ending of the Kulturkampf. Bismarck saw a "red terror" growing more rapidly and threateningly than the "black terror," and he made peace with the Catholic clergy and Rome on the understanding that they would combat Socialism in Germany. Socialism continues to grow, and it would not be surprising if the Emperor at length enlists the sons of Ignatius in his desperate struggle against it. If he does, the Society will find a luxuriant field for growth among the 22,000,000 Catholics of the Empire, until the last deadly struggle with Social Democracy sets in.

For the inner spirit and character of the modern German Jesuits I must refer the reader to Count von Hoensbroech's invaluable Fourteen Years a Jesuit (2 vols., Engl. transl., 1911). The whole story from beginning to end is a sober but pitiful indictment of the Jesuits, and shows how little change there is below their accommodating expressions. We find the Jesuits hovering about the houses of the wealthy, using their [Pg 434] influence with the women, extorting money by the most questionable means, practising and teaching mental reservation at every turn, and intriguing for political power through the Catholic laity, as they had done through three centuries. When Father Anderledy (a future General of the Society) was convicted, in the 'forties, of maintaining studies in the Cologne residence, contrary to Prussian law, he flatly denied the charge, making the mental reservation that from that moment the school should cease to exist. The Jesuit historian who records the fact says: "What presence of mind!" When Hoensbroech, intending to enter the German service, asked the learned Jesuit Franzelin whether he might take an oath to observe the laws (which then included the May Laws), he was told that he might, with the mental reserve that he did not respect any laws denounced by the Church. Numbers of instances of deliberate lying (with mental reserve) are given, and the work exhibits the character, the training, and the educational activity of the Jesuits in an extremely unattractive light. It is an indispensable document for the study of modern Jesuit character.

The German Jesuits were, as I said, expelled in 1872; the Italian Jesuits followed in 1873. At that time the Jesuits of France were enjoying the reaction of public opinion which followed the attempts of the Communists. Under Napoleon III. they had quickly recovered, and as early as 1855 there had once more been appeals for their expulsion. They returned to their schools and colleges after the disturbances of 1871, and the Conservative Government permitted them to prosper. A reaction set in in the later 'seventies, when Gambetta vigorously led the anti-clerical forces and began to denounce the Society. The Catholics had almost succeeded in overthrowing the Republic [Pg 435] and enthroning the Duc de Chambord. When (in 1877) they went on to demand the employment of French troops for the re-establishment of the Pope in his temporal power, they lost the cause of their Church. From that year Catholicism has decreased in France, shrinking from 30,000,000 to about 5,000,000 followers in thirty years.

Within two years there was an enormous growth of the anti-clerical feeling, especially against the Jesuits. They, and the great majority of the religious orders, had no legal right to existence in France. Only three or four Congregations, of a philanthropic character, were authorised by French law. Yet these useful bodies made no progress, while the unauthorised Congregations held property of the value of 400,000,000 francs. Jules Ferry now became Minister of Education, and framed a law to prevent any member of an unauthorised Society from teaching. When the Catholic Senate rejected it, the unauthorised Congregations were dissolved by decree (1880). Once more the Jesuits were banished from France, and 2904 members of the Society were added to the number of exiles. In 1880 more than half the Jesuits—or 7400 Jesuits—were excluded from their respective countries.

As France was still overwhelmingly Catholic, the successive Governments were unable to enforce the law, and the Jesuits quietly returned to their work. It is enough to say that during the next twenty years, until France had become predominantly non-Catholic and disposed to insist on their exclusion, the 2900 Jesuits actually increased their number; the property of the unauthorised Congregations rose in value from 400,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 francs; the higher education was controlled to a great extent by the Jesuits, whose pupils passed largely into the army and navy. It is hardly [Pg 436] necessary to recall the successive blunders by which the Jesuits (and other religious) brought on themselves the sentence of expulsion in 1901. In 1886 Boulanger became Minister of War and popular idol. His Radical friends soon distrusted him, and the Monarchists and Catholics fanned the popular agitation to have him made Dictator. In this case we have positive and sufficient information of the complicity of the Jesuits. Count von Hoensbroech, then a young Jesuit, heard from the lips of Father du Lac, the most prominent of the French Jesuits, that he had collected large sums of money for the "Deliverer of France" and the overthrow of the "dirty and impious Republic." [45] We can hardly doubt that they had been equally zealous for the Duc de Chambord, and were later as zealous for the cause of the Duc d'Orleans.

Boulanger fled, to escape arrest, in 1889, and the Republicans added to the reckoning against the Jesuits. In 1897-99 occurred the famous agitation for the retrial of Dreyfus, and once more the Jesuits ranged themselves on the losing side of tyranny and prejudice. By the end of the century France had become overwhelmingly non-Catholic, and was not disposed to tolerate further the intrigues and wealth of bodies which had no legal existence in the country. The Jesuits, in particular, were a menace to the Republic. The new century opened therefore with an anti-clerical campaign which is still fresh in our memories. Waldeck-Rousseau passed his Associations' Bill in 1901, and the Jesuits now were once more expelled. Combes and Rouvier completed the work in subsequent years. There is, however, no very drastic action taken against invading religious, and the Jesuits frequent Paris as they do Berlin. The number of members of the French Provinces of the Society has risen to 3071 (many of whom are on the foreign missions), [Pg 437] and from comfortable homes in England (where we have 226) and other countries, with their funds safely invested, they await the day of recall. But the general collapse of the Church in France makes it certain that they will never be readmitted.

Apart from the Latin-American Republics, in connection with which it would be tedious to enumerate the various expulsions and recalls of the Jesuits, and Portugal the Society has made great progress in other countries. Of Portugal little need be said; the situation is similar to that in France. The Jesuits had no authorised existence in the country, and, when Portugal was at length enabled to assert its will (after the revolution of 1910), it sharply dismissed them. Here again the country is predominantly non-Catholic, if we confine our attention to voters, and the Jesuits are never likely to return.

Spain has become the refuge, and almost the last hope in the Latin world, of the expatriated Jesuits. In the corrupt and worthless reign of Isabella II. they had been suffered to return to their posts and prosper. Properly speaking, they have had no legal right to exist in Spain since they were abolished by Christina in 1835. The Concordat of 1852 stipulates for the admission of the Oratorians and Vincentians and "one other" Congregation; but casuistic skill has interpreted this to mean "one for each diocese," and all have been admitted. The abominable rule of their patroness Isabella ended in revolution in 1868; the frivolous Queen was deposed, and the Jesuits shared the fate of her other strange favourites. With the accession of Alfonso XII., however, they returned to Spain, and obtained the wealth and power which they enjoy to-day.

The secrecy of the Society emboldens its apologists to make the most audacious denials of these constant [Pg 438] charges of wealth, power, and intrigue, but it constantly happens that some confiscated document or disaffected admirer betrays them. Such an instance may be quoted in connection with the Spanish Jesuits. In 1896 a devout Catholic, a former pupil and employee of the Jesuits, Señor Ceballos y Cruzada, quarrelled with and turned against them. In the little work in which he expounds his grievances (El Imperio del Jesuitismo) he tells us some interesting facts about their wealth and activity. There is in Spain a vast Catholic Society known as the Association of Fathers of Families, which is quite as much concerned with sound politics as sound morals. Señor Ceballos shows how the Jesuits secretly use and direct it for their political aims, and for thwarting rival ecclesiastical bodies. As to their wealth, he says that they have 11 colleges worth from 1,000,000 to 12,000,000 reales each, while their chief house at Loyola has property of incalculable value. At his own college, at Deusto, there were about 300 pupils paying 1500 pesetas a year each; in none of them is education gratuitous. The schooling is very poor and antiquated, and few of their scholars later rise to any distinction. It is curious to know that these wealthy Jesuit institutions have the British flag ready to be hoisted in case of revolution (which they yearly expect).

There is, however, little need for proof of the wealth and political influence of the Jesuits in Spain. In the struggle which is proceeding between the reformers, of all parties, and the supporters of the deeply corrupt political system, the Jesuits use their whole strength as educators, and intrigue far beyond their schools, in the interest of corruption; and, true to their maxim of educating and capturing the sons of the wealthier classes, they have permitted the mass of the people to remain at an appalling level of illiteracy. The great [Pg 439] majority of the men of Spain, in the large towns, hate them intensely, and await with impatience the day when, like their Portuguese neighbours, they will expel their insidious enemies. A few years ago a drama entitled Paternidad was put upon the stage of one of the chief theatres at Barcelona, and received with the wildest enthusiasm. It was written by a Catholic priest, Segismondo Pey-Ordeix, and represented the Jesuits of modern Spain as practising the most corrupt devices known in the history of the Society. The sternly critical works of the great Spanish writer, Perez Galdos, are just as enthusiastically received at Madrid and in all the cities. Spaniards watch with indignation the concentration of exiled Jesuits on their territory. To the exiled French communities of 1880 were added the 147 Jesuits of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, and these are now reinforced by the Portuguese. They now number 3859. In 1901, 1906, and recently, the Liberals have attempted or threatened to deal with them; but there is too much collusion in the Cortes between the opposing parties, and the Jesuits have too strong an influence at the Palace: I am informed that the present Queen has surrendered entirely to the pressure of the Queen-mother and the Jesuits. Unless the King has the courage to lighten the labouring vessel of royalty by sacrificing the Jesuits, which would give him immense popularity, Spain will, within ten years, follow the example of Portugal.

Several of the South American Republics, and Mexico, have already reached a state of permanent triumph of the Liberal elements, and expelled the Jesuits for ever. As this work proceeds with the growth of education, it is natural to presume that they will all in time exclude the Jesuits. Italy also will return to its strict law, when the Government discovers [Pg 440] that the shrinking influence of the Papacy is no longer a valuable ally against advanced schools. At present the law is not enforced, and there are large numbers of Jesuits in the country; the Italian Province numbers more than a thousand members. At Rome they control the Gregorian University, the German and Latin-American Colleges, the Biblical Institute, and other papal establishments. Restrained in some measure by Leo XIII., they have recovered all their influence at the Vatican under the present mediæval Pontiff, and they are amongst the most ardent supporters of the reactionary policy with which he is paralysing higher culture in the Church of Rome. The higher secular clergy are little less anxious than the Socialists and Freemasons to see them suppressed. The same forces are at work against them in Belgium, where they number 1200 (including foreign missionaries), and Austria. A coalition of Liberals and Socialists in Belgium would at any time put an end to the Catholic power, as the anti-clerical voters are in the majority, and the Jesuits would not long survive the change.

Yet one of the most singular features of the whole singular story of the Jesuits is that they have increased enormously during this half-century of afflictions. The growth of the Society during the last hundred years is seen in the following table:—

Of the present members, 3531 are on the foreign missions; and the re-opening of these fields, under less [Pg 441] adventurous conditions, accounts for much of the growth of the Society. The advance of the United States and the British Colonies, with their large percentage of Irish and Italian immigrants, accounts for a good deal of the remainder. The Jesuits of the United States now number 2300; and there are 373 in Canada and 100 in Australasia. It is most probable that the future of the Jesuits lies in the Protestant countries. Probably the Jesuits will, in twenty years' time, be excluded from every "Catholic" kingdom, yet number more than 20,000.

Their progress and activity in England may be more closely described in illustration of this tendency. We saw how the survivors of the old English mission joined with the Fathers of the Faith in 1814 and 1815 to re-establish the Society. They then numbered 73, and had several chapels, besides the estate and house at Stonyhurst. They advanced with the general body of the Roman Catholics, especially when the stronger current of immigration from Ireland began in the forties. The secular clergy were still very much opposed to them, however, and Dr. Griffiths, the Vicar Apostolic of the London district, refused to allow them to set up a community in the metropolis. After years of pressure at Rome they secured the interest of Dr. (later Cardinal) Wiseman, and were admitted to settle in Farm St., among the wealthiest Catholics. When Wiseman succeeded Griffiths in 1847 (and the hierarchy was established in 1850) they were cordially patronised and made greater progress. They then numbered 554. With the accession of Manning the patronage ceased and their work was restricted. They were eager to found schools for middle-class boys; but Manning sternly refused, in defiance of the favour of Pius IX., and they were compelled to establish their schools at such places as Beau [Pg 442]mont and Wimbledon, outside his jurisdiction. When they pressed for a school of higher studies, a kind of Catholic university, Manning hastily founded his ill-fated school at Kensington and refused their co-operation, with the natural result that the wealthier Catholics, under the influence of the Jesuits, would not support it. Bishop Vaughan of Salford was not much more indulgent to them.

The secret of Manning's opposition is said by his biographer to have been his wish to raise the dignity of the secular priesthood, which Catholics are too apt to think lower than the monastic state. This was, however, not merely a mystic theory on the part of the Cardinal. He despised the comparative indolence and petty hypocrisies of the religious orders generally, and had a particular dislike of the intrigue, the secrecy, the insubordination, and the pursuit of wealthy people, of the Jesuits. [47] Manning refused sacerdotal faculties to his nephew, Father Anderdon, and forced the Jesuits to surrender a site in West London for which they had paid more than £30,000. Cardinal Vaughan, however, relaxed his coercive policy when he was transferred to Westminster.

The English Province has now (1912) 729 members, and about fifty churches; though the Catholic Directory gives only 285 English Jesuit priests, and 226 French refugees, in this country. The feeling against them amongst the secular clergy and the other religious Congregations is almost as strong as ever. Their obvious preference for the wealthier quarters of cities is sneer [Pg 443]ingly discussed in clerical circles, and it is said that they intrigue incessantly to draw the more comfortable Catholics from other parishes. The poverty of their literary and scholastic output,—mainly, a number of slight and superficial controversial works, more intent on making small points than on substantial and accurate erudition,—and their remarkable failure to produce men of distinction, are regarded as a grave reflection on their body, in view of their wealth, numbers, and leisure. It is not, however, believed that they indulge any other intrigue than an amiable zeal among the Catholic laity to add to their own comfort and prestige. [48]

Returning, in conclusion, to the question at the beginning of this chapter, we find it impossible to give a general answer and embrace all the existing Jesuits in a formula. The Jesuits of Spain, with their political machinations, their sordid legacy-hunting, and their eagerness to support the Spanish Government in the judicial murder of their enemies, are a very different body from the Jesuits of England or Germany or the United States. The Jesuits of Cuba and the Philippines were, until 1898, little different from the more parasitical Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The modern age has affected the Jesuits much as some ancient revolution in the climate of the earth modified its living inhabitants. Where the old tropical conditions more or less linger (say, in Chile or Peru) the Jesuits are hardly changed; and we find the alteration in exact proportion to the environment. There is no change in the inner principles and ideals. "All for the Glory of the Society," as Mgr. Talbot sardonically translated their Latin motto, is still the ruling principle; the [Pg 444] Society remains the Esau of the Roman clerical world. It still chiefly seeks the wealthy and powerful; it is the arch-enemy of progress and liberalism in Catholic theology; its scholarship is singularly undistinguished in proportion to its resources; [49] it embarks on political intrigue, even for the destruction of State-forms, whenever its interest seems to require; it is hated by a very large proportion of the Catholic clergy and laity in every country. Let a liberal Pope again come to power and Modernism prevail, and it is not impossible that Catholicism itself will again angrily suppress the perverse and irregular construction of the Spanish soldier-diplomatist, and insist that religious ideals shall be pursued only by scrupulously clean and unselfish exertions.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] I use the phrase of historians, but may observe that this was, in the main, a middle-class movement to secure liberty of opinion and other elementary political rights.

[45] Fourteen Years, ii. 164.

[46] It must be borne in mind always that "members" does not necessarily mean priests. Rather less than half are priests: the remainder are scholastics or lay coadjutors.

[47] I am speaking here on what I heard, in clerical days, from men who were intimate with Manning. Purcell's Life is misleading. The author intended to be candid, but the Jesuits and others made such threats, when it became known what disclosures the book would contain, that he was compelled to omit much. The suppression of truth has greatly injured its historical value.

[48] There are in Count von Hoensbroech's book some scathing reflections on the character and culture of the English Jesuits. The Count underwent part of his Jesuit training in England.

[49] Let me recall that I do not personally expect the Society to produce anything but theologians, and of these it has produced many in the nineteenth century. In controversial theology, however, the work of the Jesuits is grossly unscholarly and casuistic; truth seems to be a secondary consideration. But it is so often claimed that the Jesuits are a learned body in the more general sense, that it is necessary to invite reflection on their record. Of the fifteen thousand living Jesuits, and their predecessors for a century, who has won even secondary rank in letters, history, or philosophy? In science there are only Father Secchi, the single distinguished product of their science-schools, and Father Wasmann, whose philosophy (apart from his observations) is the laughing-stock of biology.

Abyssinia, the Jesuits in, 52, 78, 140, 296.

Acosta, Father, 114, 115.

Acquaviva, General, 106-140.

Adorno, Father, 96.

Aiguillon, the Duc d', 350.

Alberoni, Cardinal, 270, 271.

Alcalà, the Jesuits at, 10, 42, 44, 85.

Alessandrini, Cardinal, 84, 87.

Alexander I., 377, 378, 380, 381.

Allen, Cardinal, 144, 152.

Almeida, Father, 136.

Alphonso VI., 256-7.

" XII., 437.

Alva, Duke of, 88, 91.

Anderledy, General, 434.

Anna, Queen, 266, 297.

Annat, Father, 238.

Antonelli, Cardinal, 427.

Aranda, 275, 276, 277.

Araoz, Father, 38, 42, 72, 84.

Armada, the, 152, 153.

Arnauld, Angélique, 222, 223, 236.

" Antoine, 223, 225, 227, 231, 237, 243.

Arrowsmith, Father E., 199.

Aubeterre, Marquis d', 343.

Auger, Father, 89, 90, 99, 117, 118.

Augustinus, the, 224, 230.

Austria, the Jesuits in, 92, 93, 101, 132, 324-7, 360, 417, 426, 428.

Azpeitia, 3, 17.

Azpuru, Mgr., 343.

Bañez, 135.

Barrière, 123.

Barry, Mme du, 350.

Bathori, Stephen, 101, 131.

Bavaria, the Jesuits in, 327, 328.

Bay, Michel de, 100, 130.

Bayle, 176, 238.

Bayonne, the Conference of, 88.

Beaumont, Archbishop de, 360.

Beckx, General, 417, 428, 429.

Bedloe, 210, 211.

Belgium, the Jesuits in, 48-9, 75, 91-2, 100, 128, 130, 180, 421-2.

Bellarmine, Cardinal, 100, 113.

Benedict XIV., 262, 287, 295, 339.

Benislawski, Bishop, 373.

Bermudez, Father, 271, 272.

Bernis, Cardinal, 343, 344, 346, 350.

Bérulle, Cardinal de, 177, 178.

Bismarck, 432, 433.

Blackwell, G., 158, 159.

Bobadilla, 14, 20, 40, 49, 50, 56-8, 94, 106.

Bodler, Father, 316.

Borgia, Francis, 43, 71-2, 80-94.

Borromeo, Charles, 67, 68, 69, 96-9.

" Frederic, 69.

Bosgrave, Father, 149.

Bossuet, 236, 241.

Boulanger, General, and the Jesuits, 436.

Bourbon, Cardinal de, 88, 99.

Bourg Fontaine, the Plot of, 230.

Brazil, the Jesuits in, 52, 78, 104, 139, 304.

Briant, Father, 151.

Britto, Father, 291.

Broglie, Abbé Count de, 382, 413.

Brouet, Paschase, 16, 20, 36, 41, 47, 58.

Buckingham, Countess of, 199.

Burnet, 38, 39.

Bzrozowski, General, 378, 381.

California, the Jesuits in, 308.

Camara, Gonzales da, 70, 71, 86.

Campion, Father E., 143, 144-9, 150.

Campmüller, Father, 351.

Canada, the Jesuits in, 193, 308-9.

Canisius, Peter, 49, 50, 75, 92.

Cano, Melchior, 42, 43.

Caraffa, Cardinal, 17, 53.

Caravita, Father, 383.

Cardenas, Bishop, 299-302.

Carlists, the, and the Jesuits, 408, 409, 426.

Carroll, John, 414.

Catesby, 157, 159, 160, 161-4.

Catherine de Medici, 73, 74, 88-91.

Catherine of Portugal, 71, 86.

Catherine the Great and the Jesuits, 370-4.

Catholic League, the, 117, 118, 119.

Caussin, Father, 176.

Chambord, the Duc de, 435.

Charles I., 201, 202.

" II., 205, 206, 209, 212, 268.

" III., 274-7, 349, 351.

" IV., of Lorraine, 179.

" X., 402-4.

Charles Albert, 393.

" Felix, 393.

Chastel, Jean, 123.

Chateaubriand, 234.

Cheminot, Father, 179, 180.

China, the Jesuits in, 78, 104, 138-40, 190-1, 281-8, 423.

"Chinese Rites," the, 281-8.

Choir, 29, 31.

Choiseul, 348, 349, 350.

Christina of Spain, 408, 409.

Christina of Sweden, 312-4.

Cisneros, 8.

Cistercians, the, and the Jesuits, 187.

Civiltà Cattolica, the, 427.

Clarke, Father, 272.

Claver, Father, 297.

Clavius, Father, 107, 133.

Clement VIII., 114, 115, 155.

" XI., 284, 286, 339.

" XII., 295.

" XIII., 262, 264, 277, 339, 340, 342.

" XIV., 345, 346, 347, 348, 350, 352-7, 358, 368.

Clément, Jacques, 119, 126.

Clenock, Dr., 144.

Clermont College, the, 75.

Cochin China, the Jesuits in, 289-90.

Cock, Archbishop, 322.

Codacio, 21, 25.

Codde, Archbishop, 321-2.

Codure, 16, 20, 36.

Cogardan, 58, 73.

Coimbra, the Jesuits at, 46, 70.

Coleman, 208, 209, 211.

Colleges, 31.

Colmar, the Jesuit college at, 331.

Cologne, the Jesuits at, 49, 361.

Condé, 73, 74.

Congo, the Jesuits in the, 52, 78, 296.

Congregation of the Holy Virgin, 398, 402.

Congregation of the Sacred Heart, 382, 384.

Consalvi, Cardinal, 391, 392.

Constitutions, the Jesuit, 24, 28-31, 59.

Contarini, Cardinal, 24, 25.

Contzen, Adam, 216.

Copts, Mission to the, 296.

Cordara, Father, 168, 274, 347.

Coster, Father, 129.

Coton, Father, 125, 127, 128, 178.

Cottam, Father, 149, 150.

Coxe, 269, 273, 275.

Cracow, the Jesuits at, 185.

Crétineau-Joly, vi, 4, 23, 38, 50, 56, 69, 77, 85, 96, 98, 120, 165, 168, 171, 178, 183, 215, 225, 228, 238, 285, 305,
344, 349, 353, 360, 373, 391, 402, 405.

Crichton, Father, 64, 149, 151.

Cromwell and the Jesuits, 203, 204.

D'Alembert, 351, 365, 366.

Damiens, 248.

D'Andilly, Arnauld, 225.

Darbyshire, Thomas, 142.

Daubenton, Father, 268, 269, 271.

Declaration of the Gallican Clergy, 241, 250.

Democracy, the Jesuits and, 400, 401.

Despotism of the Jesuit general, 335.

Destelbergen, 421.

Dillingen, the University of, 76, 92.

"Doleful even-song," the, 200.

Dominus ac Redemptor Noster, the bull, 353-8.

Douai fraud, the, 243.

Drury, Father, 200.

Dubois, Cardinal, 246.

Edict of Nantes, Revocation of the, 242, 321.

"Edifying Letters," the, 279, 299.

Eguia, 17.

Elizabeth, Queen, 145, 148, 152.

Emerson, Ralph, 144, 151.

England, the Jesuits in, 38-9, 64, 142-66, 198-219, 412-4, 441-3.

Épernon, the Duc d', 127.

Espartero, 409.

Falk, Dr., 432.

Farnese, Cardinal A., 33.

Farnese, Elizabeth, 270, 271.

Fathers of the Faith, 383-5, 397, 399, 406.

Favre, Peter, 13, 20, 22, 25, 32, 43, 46.

Fawkes, Guy, 158.

Ferdinand II., 182, 186, 324, 325, 417.

" IV., (Naples), 342, 378.

" VI., 272-4, 302.

" VII., 389, 406-8.

Fernandez, Father, 254-6.

Ferry, Jules, 435.

Figueroa, Gomez de, 39.

Florida Blanca, Count, 350.

Fortis, General, 392, 394, 400.

Fourth vow, the, 24, 29.

France, the Jesuits in, 47-8, 72-5, 87-91, 99, 117-28, 174-9, 220-252, 397-407, 434-7.

Franco, Father, 254.

Frederic Augustus I., 317, 318.

Frederick the Great and the Jesuits, 351, 364-70.

Freiburg, the Jesuits at, 361, 418, 420.

Franzelin, Father, 434.

Gaeta, flight of the Pope to, 427.

Galitzin, Prince, 379, 380, 381.

Galicia, the Jesuits in, 417.

Gambar, Father, 66.

Gambetta, 434.

Ganga, Cardinal della, 391, 392, 393.

Garibaldi, 428.

Garnet, Father H., 152, 153, 157, 158, 159-64.

General, authority of the Jesuit, 30.

Gerard, Father J., 153, 158.

Gerbillon, Father, 283.

Germany, the Jesuits in, 49, 50, 75-6, 92, 101, 130-3, 184-7, 364-70, 416-7, 431-4.

Gesù, the, 33, 107.

Gilbert, George, 146, 147.

Gioberti, 397.

Giussano, 96, 97.

Godfrey, Sir E. Berry, 209-12.

Gonzalez, General, 335-6, 339.

Good, William, 64, 103, 143.

Gouda, Nicholas, 64, 65.

Greenway, Father, 154, 157, 162-4.

Gregorian Calendar, the, 107, 133.

Gregory XIII., 94, 95, 107.

" XVI., 353, 394, 395, 396.

Griffiths, Dr., 441.

Gruber, Father, 374, 376, 377, 378.

Guéret, Father, 123, 124.

Guerrero, Archbishop, 289.

Guiddiccioni, Cardinal, 24, 25, 26.

Guignard, Father, 124.

Guise, the Duc de, 117, 118.

Gunpowder Plot, the, 158-64.

Hagenbrunn, 382, 384.

Hay, Father Edmund, 64, 118, 142.

Henriquez, Leo, 70.

Henry III., 117-9.

" IV., 117, 119, 121, 122-5.

Hernandez, Father, 109.

Heywood, Father, 149, 151.

Hoensbroech, Count von, 120, 433, 436, 443.

Holland, the Jesuits in, 128-30, 180-1, 320-3, 422.

Holt, Father, 149, 151, 154.

Hozes, 17, 20.

Hume, Major, 266, 408.

Hungary, the Jesuits in, 330-1, 417.

Ignatius, St., birth of, 1.

" at Barcelona, 9.

" canonisation of, 169.

" and Cardinal Pole, 38, 39.

" character of, 5, 27, 28, 33, 34, 53.

" conversion of, 4, 6.

" daily life of, 34, 35.

" death of, 54.

" diplomacy of, 28, 45.

" early disciples of, 9, 10, 11, 14.

" early morals of, 5.

" election of, 32.

" founds his Society, 15.

" and the Inquisition, 10, 11, 22, 40.

" at London, 12.

" at Manresa, 7, 8.

" in Palestine, 9.

" at Paris, 11-16.

" at Rome, 9, 20-35.

" secrecy of, 14, 16, 28, 43.

" at Venice, 9, 17.

" at Vicenza, 19.

" and women, 21.

" wounding of, 2.

Imago Primi Sæculi, the, 180.

Immaculate Conception, the, 100.

In Cœna Domini, the bull, 348.

India, the Jesuits in, 51, 77-8, 103-4, 188-90, 291-5, 422-3.

Infallibility, papal, and the Jesuits, 429.

Innocent X., 305, 307, 308.

" XI., 240, 241, 336.

" XIII., 287.

Inquisition, Jesuits and the, 10, 11, 22, 40, 45, 110, 258.

Interim, the, 50.

Ireland, the Jesuits in, 35-7, 64, 149.

Italy, the Jesuits in, 40-2, 65-76, 93-4, 96-9, 169-70, 334-60, 383-9, 390-7, 426-31.

James I., 157, 198, 199.

" II., 206, 211, 213-8.

" V., 35, 36.

Jansen, Bishop, 221, 222, 223, 224, 229.

Jansenists, character of the, 225-6.

Japan, the Jesuits in, 51, 78, 136-8, 191, 280.

Jessopp, Dr., 143, 153.

Jesuits, the, and the Papacy, 24, 35, 50, 57, 60, 61, 82-4, 95, 110-4, 240, 277, 285, 286-8, 289, 295, 307, 339,
353-63, 367, 371-3, 412.

" casuistry of the, 43, 61, 75,81, 100, 119, 129, 136, 179, 183, 205, 232-4, 280, 281, 284-95,
316, 319, 335-7, 411.

" and the Catholic clergy, 39, 44, 85, 97, 110, 154, 177, 178, 181, 201, 202, 237, 244, 283, 285, 289, 290,
299-302, 305-8, 321-2, 323, 442, 443.

" and church-dignities, 44, 45, 93, 215, 254, 267, 272, 330.

" commerce of the, 52, 81, 137, 172, 192-3, 202, 248-9, 255, 269, 283, 288, 290, 294, 298-9,
307, 308, 309, 319, 328, 331, 339, 373.

" learning of the, 140-1, 196, 281, 326-7, 366, 395.

" morality of the, 46, 65, 66, 68, 69, 109, 110, 171, 177, 226, 238, 246, 272, 274, 280, 282, 285, 289, 290,
300-2, 306, 327, 329, 351, 359, 362.

" and national decay, 314-5.

" obedience of the, 58, 72, 110, 169, 336-7.

" political activity of the, 70, 71, 86-7, 89, 103, 117-21, 134, 149, 153-7, 176, 182, 203, 215, 256-7,
267-72, 316, 317, 325, 328, 330, 376, 436, 438.

Jesuits, quarrels of the, 58-9, 72, 106, 107, 110, 114-7, 167, 336-7, 362, 391-2.

" untruthfulness of the, 75, 102, 153-4, 157, 161, 164, 171, 179, 180, 186-7, 188-9, 229, 230, 240, 243, 260, 272,
273, 291, 292, 305, 316, 339, 349, 353-4, 360, 368, 372, 373, 380, 434.

" wealth of the, 41, 81, 85, 86, 92, 109, 122, 132, 136, 186, 269, 283, 290, 294, 298, 304, 307, 325, 326, 328,
331, 362, 436, 438.

John III., 45, 59.

" IV., 254, 255.

" VI., 389, 409.

John Casimir, 316.

Jones, Dom, 202.

Joseph II. (Austria), 345, 350.

Joseph of Portugal, 259, 260, 261-5.

Jouvency, Father, 116, 245.

Julius III., 53.

July Revolution, the, 394, 404.

Kaempfer, 138.

Kang Hi, 282, 287.

Kaunitz, Count, 344, 350.

Keene, Sir B., 273.

Kelly, Father, 415.

King, Thomas, 64.

Kulturkampf, the, 433.

La Chaise, Father, 208, 238, 243.

Lainez, Diego, 14, 20, 22, 25, 41, 49, 53, 56-65, 72, 76-9.

Lamennais, Abbé de, 400, 401.

Lamormaini, Father, 186, 324, 325.

Lang, K. von, 325.

Lavalette, bankruptcy of, 248-9, 251.

Law, T., 143, 154.

Le Jay, 16, 20, 49.

Leo XII., 393.

Letellier, Father, 243, 244, 245.

Leu, 419, 420.

Lippomani, 41.

Lisbon, the earthquake at, 261.

Louis XIII., 174, 176, 183.

" XIV., 206, 207, 208, 236, 238, 239, 242, 245.

Louis XV., 247, 248, 251.

" XVIII., 389, 398.

Louis Philippe, 402, 403, 404.

Louvain, the Jesuits at, 48, 75, 100, 130.

Loyola, the house at, 1, 2, 3, 16.

Lucerne, the Jesuits at, 360, 419-20.

Luisa, Queen, 254, 255, 270.

Luynes, Cardinal, 343.

Macedo, Father, 313.

Maggio, Father, 124.

Maintenon, Mme de, 242.

Maistre, Joseph de, 377, 379.

Malabar Rites, the, 293-4.

Malagrida, Father, 265.

Maldonat, Father, 100.

Malta, Jesuits expelled from, 170, 342.

Malvezzi, Cardinal, 352.

Manares, Oliver, 88, 89, 91, 95, 106.

Manning, Cardinal, 426, 441, 442.

Manresa, 7, 8.

Marcenius, Father, 110.

Margaret of Parma, 76.

Maria Theresa, 326, 344, 350, 351, 360.

Mariana, Father, 108, 114, 119, 120, 126.

Marianne, Archduchess, 382, 384, 385.

Marie Isabelle, Queen, 256, 257.

Marie de Medici, 125, 128, 175.

Mary Queen of Scots and the Jesuits, 64, 142, 151, 153.

Maryland, the Jesuits in, 218, 308.

Martignac, 402, 403.

Martin, Commandant, 280, 294.

Martini, the Jesuit Mandarin, 283.

Matthieu, Father Claude, 117.

Maurice of Nassau, 128.

May Laws, the, 432, 434.

Mayenne, the Duc de, 121.

Mazzarino, Father, 97.

Mendoza, 148, 149, 151, 344.

Mental reservation (see Untruthfulness of the Jesuits), 164.

Mercurian, General, 94-104.

Metternich, 417.

Mexico, the Jesuits in, 139, 305-8, 416.

Mezzabarba, Mgr., 286, 287.

Michael Angelo, 33.

Michelet, 405.

Miguel, King, 410, 411.

Milan, the Jesuits at, 67-70, 96-9.

Missions, the Jesuit, 51-2, 77, 103-4, 135-40, 187-94, 279-310, 422-3.

Molinism, 135.

Monita Privata, the, 184.

Monod, Father, 176.

Montepulciano, the Jesuits expelled from, 65.

Montespan, Mme de, 236, 238.

Montmartre, the vows on, 15.

Montserrat, 6.

Morality, Catholic, in the seventeenth century, 49.

More, Father, 143.

Müller, H., 8.

Naples, the Jesuits at, 66.

" Jesuits expelled from, 342.

Napoleon and the Jesuits, 376.

Natalis, Father, 56, 72.

Navarro, 275.

Neale, Bishop, 414.

Neercassel, Archbishop, 321.

Netterville, Father, 203, 204.

Nicolai, Father, 102, 103.

Nicolini, 46.

Nidhard, Father, 267, 268.

Noailles, Cardinal, 244, 245, 246.

Nobili, Robert de, 188-90.

Nouet, Father, 226.

Oates, Titus, 207, 209, 211.

Obedience, Jesuit [see Jesuits], 29, 34.

Ogilvie, Father, 149.

Oldcorne, Father E., 153, 164.

Oliva, General, 257, 336.

Oratorians, the, 177-8.

Orlandini, 25, 37, 38.

Orsini, Princess, 268, 269, 270.

Ortiz, 18, 21, 25.

Otho, Cardinal, 62.

Paccanari, 383-5.

Paccanarists, the, 383-5, 397, 398, 402.

Pacheco, Cardinal, 59.

Palafox, Bishop, 172, 274, 305-8, 351.

Palermo, the Jesuits at, 93.

Palmio, Father, 95.

Pamiers, Bishop of, 237, 240.

Panne, Peter, 128, 129.

Panzani, 201, 202, 203.

Paraguay, the Jesuits in, 140, 191-3, 260, 273, 297-304.

Pardo, Archbishop, 289.

Pariahs, Jesuit, 293.

Parsons, Father Robert, 112, 143-53, 155-7, 165.

Pascal, Blaise, 231-5.

Pasquier, 86.

Paul I., 374, 376.

" III., 18, 20, 23, 24, 53.

" IV., 53, 57, 58, 60, 62.

Pedro I., 256, 257.

" II., 411.

Percy, Father, 199.

Persia, Jesuits penetrate, 296.

Petre, Father E., 214, 215, 216.

Petrucci, Father, 390, 391, 392.

Phaulcon, 291.

Philip II., 96, 110, 121, 152, 153.

" IV., 266.

" V., 268, 270, 271.

Philippines, the Jesuits in the, 288-9.

Piazza Margana, house in the, 22, 23, 33.

Piedmont, the Jesuits in, 388, 393.

Pigenat, Fr. Odon, 118.

Pius IV., 63, 70, 82.

" V., 82, 83, 84.

" VI., 369, 372, 373, 374, 382, 383.

" VII., 375, 376, 386, 387, 392.

" IX., 396, 397, 426, 427.

Poissy, colloquy at, 74.

Polanco, 38, 94, 95.

Poland, the Jesuits in, 101, 131, 185, 314-20, 361, 370-1.

Pole, Cardinal, 38, 39.

Polignac, 404.

Pollock, J., 208, 209, 211.

Polotzk, College at, 377, 378, 380.

Pombal, Marquis de, 259-65.

Pompadour, Mme de, 247.

Popish Plot, the, 207, 208, 209-12.

Port Royal, 222-4, 229, 231, 236, 237, 243.

Portugal, the Jesuits in, 45-7, 70-1, 86-7, 174, 254-65, 409-11, 437.

Possevin, Father, 87, 88, 90, 103, 122, 131, 132.

Postel, 48.

Privileges of the Jesuits, 31, 48, 63.

Probabilism, 235 (note), 336-7.

Professed houses, 31.

Provincial Letters, the, 231-5.

Prussia, the Jesuits in, 364-70.

Purgatory, Jesuit view of, 100.

Puritans, the, and the Jesuits, 203.

Puteo, Cardinal, 61.

Quesnel, 244, 245.

Rabago, Father, 272, 273, 303.

Ratio Studiorum, the, 140, 395.

Ravaillac, 125, 126.

Ravignan, Father de, 404, 405.

Reductions, the, 192, 193, 297-9.

Reformation, the, 1, 16, 20.

Regale controversy, the, 239-42.

Regicide, Jesuit doctrine of, 120, 126.

Rhodes, Father de, 289.

Ribadeneira, Father, 33, 38, 39, 48, 75, 169.

Ribera, Father, 68.

Ricci, Father, 138, 139.

Ricci, General, 251, 262, 275, 339, 340, 341, 343, 345, 357, 359.

Richelieu, 174, 175, 176, 177, 183, 224.

Ripperdá, 271, 272.

Robinet, Father, 269, 270, 271.

Rodriguez, Simon, 14, 20, 25, 45, 46, 57.

Rohan, Anne de, 224, 225.

Rome, Jesuits expelled from, 430, 440.

Roothaan, General, 294, 400, 405, 406.

Rossi, Count, 396, 406.

Royal confessor, instructions to, 324.

Rozaven, Father, 391, 392.

Russia, the Jesuits in, 370-81.

Sacchini, Father, 47, 55, 57, 59, 61, 65.

Saint Simon, 244, 245, 269.

Salamanca, the Jesuits at, 11, 42.

Saldanha, Cardinal, 262, 264.

Salerno, Father, 330.

Salmeron, Alfonso, 14, 20, 36, 37, 41, 49, 67, 94.

Sammier, Fr. Henri, 118.

Saniassi, the Jesuit, 188-90, 291-2.

Saragossa, the Jesuits at, 44.

Sasbold, Archbishop, 181.

Savelli, Cardinal, 68.

Saxony, the Jesuits in, 329.

Schall, Adam, 190, 281-2.

Schoppe, Caspar, 69.

Scotland, the Jesuits in, 35-7, 64, 65, 142, 149.

Sebastian I., 87.

Secular education, the Dutch clergy and, 422.

Sens, the Archbishop of, 237.

Seville, Jesuit bankruptcy at, 171-4.

Siam, the Jesuits in, 290-1.

Sicily, the Jesuits in, 333, 342, 378, 386, 395, 428.

Sigismund III., 132.

Simpson, R., 143, 148.

Sixtus V., 107, 110-3, 121.

Sobieski, 317.

Socialism and the Jesuits, 433.

Society of the Faith of Jesus, 383-5.

Society of Jesus, establishment of the, 15, 22, 25.

Society of Jesus, origin of the name, 20.

Sollicitudo, the bull, 387.

Sonderbund, the, 420.

Southwell, Father R., 152, 153.

Spain, the Jesuits in, 42-5, 71-2, 84-6, 96, 107-12, 170-4, 265-78, 389, 406-9, 437-9.

Spiritual Coadjutors, 29, 30.

"Spiritual Exercises," the, 7.

Spying in Jesuit houses, 30.

Sta. Maria della Strada, 33.

St. Bartholomew Massacre, the, 89-91.

St. Cyran, the Abbé de, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227.

St. Omer, the college of, 145, 209, 219.

St. Petersburg, the Jesuits at, 377-9.

Steinmetz, 92.

Stonyhurst, 412, 413.

Sunderland, the Earl of, 215, 216.

Suppression of the Society, 353-63.

Sweden, the Jesuits in, 101-3, 312-4.

Switzerland, the Jesuits in, 321-2, 360-1, 418-20.

Taicosama, 137, 138.

Talbot, Mgr., 443.

Talleyrand, 398.

Taly, the, 293.

Tamburini, General, 339.

Taunton, E.L., 143, 201, 203.

Tavora plot, the, 263.

Teatro Jesuitico, the, 171.

Theatine order, the, 18.

Theiner, Father, 327, 342, 344, 353, 396.

Thibet, Jesuits penetrate, 295.

Thirty Years' War, the, 182-3, 325.

Thompson, Francis, 13, 37.

Thorn, Edward, 92.

Thorn, the massacre of, 318-20.

Thorpe, Father, 412.

Tilly, the Jesuits and, 182, 183.

Toledo, Cardinal, 101, 115, 122.

Tonge, Dr., 209.

Torres, Miguel de, 70, 71.

Tournon, Cardinal de, 284, 285, 294.

Transylvania, the Jesuits in, 131, 132.

Trent, the Council of, 49, 50, 77.

Trevisani, Archbishop, 66.

Turks, Ignatius and the, 4, 7, 9, 15, 18.

Unigenitus, the bull, 244, 245, 246.

United States, the Jesuits in the, 414-6, 441.

Urban VIII., 224, 227.

Valais, the Jesuits in, 418, 419.

Valignani, Father, 137.

Vallière, Mlle de la, 236, 238.

Valtellina, the Jesuits expelled from the, 65.

Vatican Council, the, 429.

Venice, the Jesuits at, 18, 41-2, 66, 133-4, 337-8.

Verbiest, Father, 282.

Vermi, Onufrio de, 169.

Victor Emmanuel I., 388.

" " II., 428, 429.

Vieira, Father, 255, 256, 304.

Villalon, Friar, 299, 300.

Villanueva, Father, 42.

Villèle, 402.

Vincent de Paul, St., 178, 226.

Vitelleschi, Mutio, 167, 168, 179.

Viterbo, the prophetess of, 359.

Vota, Father, 317, 318.

Vows, the Jesuit, 24, 30, 82.

Vrillière, Father de la, 360.

Waldeck-Rousseau, 436.

Walpole, Father H., 154.

Warner, Father, 211, 215.

Warsevicz, Father, 102, 103.

Weld, Thomas, 412, 413.

Weston, Father, 151, 152, 153, 154.

Whitbread, Fattier, 210.

William of Orange, 129.

Wisbeach, the quarrels at, 154-6.

Wiseman, Cardinal, 441.

Woulfe, David, 64.

Xavier, Francis, 13, 16, 20, 25, 45, 51.

Zahorowski, Jerome, 184.

Zapata, 34, 36.

MR. EVELEIGH NASH has acquired the world-rights of a sensational autobiography written by a relative of one of the reigning monarchs of Europe.

The memoirs, which are now in active preparation, will be published under the above title during the London season, but, owing to the terms of his agreement with the personage in question, Mr. Nash is unable to give particulars at present. The identity of the author and full details regarding the book will be announced in April.

ADVENTURES BEYOND THE ZAMBESI
Of the O'Flaherty, the Insular Miss, the Soldier-Man, and the Rebel Woman.
By MRS. FRED MATURIN
(Edith Cecil-Porch)

Four widely diverse, yet up-to-date people agreed to seek together the risks, excitements, discomforts and delights of sport, adventure and companionship beyond the Zambesi. One of these was Mrs. Fred Maturin (Mrs. Cecil-Porch) whose previous book "Petticoat Pilgrims on Trek" showed that she possesses a rare power of vivid and amusing narrative. Wanderers and stay-at-homes will revel in her lively description of the six months' trip of this delightful quartette in quest of big game and sport in the African wilds. Her buoyant optimism and her rich sense of humour found full play in the many adventures that befel them, and it is just this humorous, friendly and intrepid outlook of hers that lends such charm to her written record. The book is illustrated with some remarkably good photographs.

SPORTING RECOLLECTIONS OF AN OLD 'UN
By FRANK N. STREATFIELD, C.M.G.
(Author of "Reminiscences of an Old 'Un.")

A book after the heart of all good sportsmen, brimming over with cheerfulness and good fellowship. The author, who has been a universally popular figure in sporting circles for over a quarter of a century, relates many amusing anecdotes on shooting of every description, fishing, falconry and cricket, and has packed his book with incidents of interest to all who use the rod and gun.

A full and picturesque narrative of the rise of the House of Rothschild. The characteristics and early vicissitudes of the famous Five Frankfurters who laid the foundations of the House are shown, and many amusing anecdotes are related of them in Mr. Balla's book.

"The author takes us, in a sense, behind the scenes, gives us a hundred details of the Rothschilds' methods, and shows us, step by step, how the accumulation of these enormous sums was made possible."—The Globe.

In this volume Mrs. Jerrold carries a stage further her interesting study of Queen Victoria's life. She endeavours to tell the real truth regarding the Queen's married life and her relations with the Prince Consort, and in doing so relies on their own recorded actions and words rather than upon the highly coloured and in many cases exaggerated pictures presented by the "lives" of Prince Albert which were authorised by the Queen.

The result is a human and fascinating story. The relations of the Queen and Prince with those around them, with their children and with their ministers—especially their hatred and fear of Palmerston—their love for Louis-Philippe, for the German confederation, and their complacency towards Russia are all dealt with and throw a strong new light upon the English Court during the years in which Prince Albert was virtually King.

THE SAILOR WHOM ENGLAND FEARED
Being the Story of Paul Jones, Scotch Naval Adventurer and Admiral in the American and Russian Fleets.
By M. MACDERMOT CRAWFORD.
Author of "The Wife of Lafayette."

John Paul Jones was unquestionably one of the most striking characters of the eighteenth century. Born in 1747, the son of a gardener in Kirkcudbrightshire, he was, at the age of seventeen, third mate on a slaver, at twenty a merchant captain; at twenty-eight lieutenant in the United States Revolutionary Navy; at twenty-nine a captain; at thirty-two commodore, "the ocean hero of the Old World and the New," spoiled, adulated, petted by great and small. A vice-admiral in the Russian Navy at forty-three—at forty-five he was dead!

A traitor who terrorised his countrymen, known alternately as "rebel," "corsair," and "pirate," Paul Jones was none the less a man of rare distinction and ability—a brilliant seaman endowed with courage and determination; and the record of his deeds is a story of unflagging interest.

A CANDID HISTORY OF THE JESUITS
By JOSEPH McCABE.
Author of "The Decay of the Church of Rome," "Twelve Years in a Monastery," &c.

It is curious, in view of the endless discussion of the Jesuits, that no English writer has ever attempted a systematic history of that body. Probably no religious body ever had so romantic a history as the Jesuits, or inspired such deadly hatred. On the other hand, histories of the famous society are almost always too prejudiced, either for or against, to be reliable. Mr. McCabe, whose striking book "The Decay of the Church of Rome" attracted such widespread and well-merited attention, has attempted, in his new book, to give the facts impartially, and to enable the inquirer to form an intelligent idea of the history and character of the Jesuits from their foundation by Loyola to the present day. Every phase of their remarkable story—including the activity of political Jesuits and their singular behaviour on the foreign missions—is carefully studied, and the record of the Jesuits in England is very fully examined.

A KEEPER OF ROYAL SECRETS
Being the Private and Political Life of Madame de Genlis.
By JEAN HARMAND

The career of Madame de Genlis is one of the baffling enigmas of history. For the greater part of her life she played an important role in the social and political life of France.

By virtue of her intimate association with Philip Egalité, Duc d'Orleans, and her high position as the Governor of Louis Philippe and the other Orleans children, the influence she wielded practically amounted to royal power.

She cast her spell over a wide circle, winning admiration even from her enemies, and yet her life has been the subject of a storm of scandalous reports and speculations.

What was her exact relationship to the Duke? was she the mother of the famous "Pamela" whom Lord Edward Fitzgerald married? what was her share in the astounding affair of "Maria Stella"? what part did she play in the Revolution?—these are some of the mysteries surrounding her on which M. Harmand, with the help of many unpublished letters and documents, throws much new light.

The whole truth will probably never be known, but M. Harmand in his elaborate biography gives us an immensely fascinating and vivid story, and unearths many new details regarding her curious and romantic life.

This book is the outcome of twelve years' careful study of the conditions of women in this country and abroad. Believing that the time has now arrived when women must speak out, fearlessly, the truth about their own sex, the author has endeavoured to review the situation as it appears to her after her lengthy study of the subject. Her book is divided into three parts—the biological consideration of the question—the historical consideration, and the present day aspects of the woman problem. It is a book of much plain speaking and closely reasoned argument and, whether or not one agrees with its conclusions and directness, it is a work which undoubtedly merits the attention of every responsible person, male and female.

Every enthusiast over rare and unique things which have passed the century-old mark will want this delightful book by Virginia Robie. It contains a wealth of sound advice upon the quest of the quaint, and much reliable information is given upon the collecting of such things as china, furniture, pewter, copper, brass, samplers, and sundials.

PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS
Essays on Engravers and Etchers Old and Modern
Edited by FITZROY CARRINGTON

A volume exquisite in every detail of the planning and making. The chapters—contributed by notable authorities—discuss various phases of etching and engraving from the time of Raphael and Durer to the close of the nineteenth century. The plates for the illustrations (200) have all been made with unusual care from original engravings and etchings, and together form a valuable collection.

VEILED WOMEN
By MARMADUKE PICKTHALL
Author of "Saïd the Fisherman," "Children of the Nile," etc.

A fine novel of the East telling the life story of an English girl who marries an Egyptian noble and lives the harem life. The gradual mental and physical effect of the secluded life of the harem upon a healthy western woman is shown with great effect, while the story of her ineffectual appeal to the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of Occupation to take her back, of her escape from the harem and flight into the desert, of her return and eventual relapse into a state of resigned contentment with her lot, will appeal strongly to every woman. The wonderful world of the Cairene women, their comings and goings, their intrigues, their pleasures and pastimes, the gorgeous colouring and the subtle perfume of their surroundings, the mystery, the charm and the insidious influence of the harem life are depicted with the brilliance of characterisation and richness of detail that one has come to expect from the author of "Saïd the Fisherman."

A charming story centreing round the romantic attachment of two delightful people—Ysmyn Veltry, the daughter of a wealthy French perfume manufacturer and Vivian Darsay, a great-grandson of an old Crimean veteran, Colonel Darsay—whom, years before the story opens, chance had brought together and made playmates of among the perfumed fields of roses, jasmine and all the other fragrant flowers which surrounded Veltry's world-renowned distillery at Grasse.

At the instigation of an ambitious sister-in-law, Veltry has come to London to inaugurate, on lines which shall outvie in magnificence any similar establishment, a shop in which to sell his perfumes. Ysmyn and Vivian meet again under dramatic and greatly changed conditions to find their path to happiness beset with difficulties, and it is not until the "Maison Merveille," which has quickly become the talk of fashionable London and developed into a veritable "palace of beauty culture" is, in the height of its success, overtaken by disaster, that the "Lady of the Night"—so called after jasmine, her father's favourite flower—becomes the wife of her erstwhile playmate.

"The Emperor's Spy," which deals with the struggle between Napoleon Bonaparte's secret police, headed by a beautiful woman spy—Elvire—and a gang of daring Royalist conspirators led by Georges Cadoudal and the Chevalier Lahaye Saint Hilare, is one of the most exciting, vivid and elaborate historical novels since Dumas's "Three Musketeers."

Famous historical characters, from Napoleon downwards, crowd its pages. Incident follows incident in quick succession, and plot is met by counter-plot, until, at last, under the shadow of the wild cliffs of Brittany the Emperor's Spy, having achieved the crowning triumph of her life, meets with a swift and tragic death at the hands of the last of the Royalists. The book is 576 pages long and there is not one page of this tremendous story which does not glow with living, human interest.

GLOOMY FANNY AND OTHER STORIES
By MORLEY ROBERTS
Author of "Thorpe's Way," "David Bran," etc.

Readers of Mr. Morley Roberts's novel "Thorpe's Way" will remember that "Gloomy Fanny," otherwise the Hon. Edwin Fanshawe, was one of the most amusing characters in that very amusing story.

I'D VENTURE ALL FOR THEE
By J.S. FLETCHER
Author of "The Town of Crooked Ways," "The Fine Air of Morning," etc.

THE LOST MILLION
by WILLIAM LE QUEUX
Author of "The Mystery of Nine," "Without Trace," etc., etc.

CARNACKI
THE GHOST-FINDER
By WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
Author of "The Night Land," "The Boats of Glen Carig," etc.

A very lifelike picture of the Young Turk Revolution is contained in this novel. A double love story, full of thrilling incidents, is woven into the web of public events, the two heroines, one a lovely Turkish girl, the other a beautiful Armenian, having each been prisoners in the Palace of Yildiz. The personality of Abdul Hamid is vividly realised, and the cruel oppression to which he subjected the inmates of his harem is graphically described.

POISON
By ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW
Authors of "The Shulamite," "The Woman Deborah," etc.

ROADS OF DESTINY
By O. HENRY
Author of "Cabbages and Kings," "Heart of the West," etc.

1838		3,067 members.
1844		4,133 "
1853		5,209 "
1861		7,144 "
1884		11,840 members.
1906		15,661 "
1912		16,545 [46] "

CHAP.		PAGE
I.	The Origin of the Society	1
II.	The First Jesuits	27
III.	Early Storms	55
IV.	General Francis Borgia	80
V.	Progress and Decay under Acquaviva	106
VI.	The Early Jesuits in England	142
VII.	The First Century of Jesuitism	167
VIII.	Under the Stuarts	195
IX.	The Struggle with the Jansenists	220
X.	The Expulsion from Portugal and Spain	253
XI.	The Foreign Missions	279
XII.	In the Germanic Lands	311
XIII.	The Suppression of the Society	334
XIV.	The Restoration	364
XV.	The New Jesuits	390
XVI.	The Last Phase	424
	Index	445