VI. RECTORS, SUPERIORS, AND ADMINISTRATORS.
The Rectors are intrusted with the superintendence of the colleges. The General chooses them from the class of the Spiritual Coadjutors, but appoints them for no determinate period, which leaves him at liberty to dismiss them whenever he pleases.
The Superiors, elected from the same class and by the same authority, have the oversight of the Houses of the First and Second Probation. Each of these officials, Superior, Rector, and Provincial, has in his respective sphere as absolute a power over his subordinates as the General has over any member of the Society.
The Administrators are chosen by the General from the Temporal Coadjutors under his control. They have the entire management of the temporal concerns both of houses and colleges.
The Rectors and Superiors are forbidden to have anything to do with any temporal matter whatever; because it forms a conspicuous part of the admirable Jesuitical system, to have prescribed for every class of Jesuits its particular duties, from which it is not to be diverted by any occupation whatever. This has largely contributed to the aggrandisement and success of the Society, as long as the rules were observed.
All these functionaries have subaltern officers, who assist them in the discharge of their duties. Provincials, Rectors, Superiors, and some of the Professed, compose the Provincial Congregations, where the affairs of the district are discussed, and whence the delegates which are to be sent to the General Congregation are chosen.
Having thus given a general outline of the origin and constitutions of the Society, and the limits of this work forbidding me to enlarge to any great extent upon this part of my subject, I shall now proceed to examine its progress.
CHAPTER IV.
1541-48.
THE PROGRESS OF THE ORDER, AND ITS FIRST GENERAL.
Ignatius had no sooner obtained a bull from the Pope approving of the Society, than he thought it expedient to give it a chief, or, to speak more correctly, to be himself formally elected as such, being de facto its master already. In order, therefore, to proceed to the election of the General, he summoned to Rome his companions, who were scattered through different parts of Europe. Six came. Bobadilla, Xavier, and Rodriguez sent their votes written. Both absent and present were unanimous in their choice, which (as one may well imagine) fell upon Ignatius. He, however, had the modesty (so we are told) to refuse the honour, and insisted that they should proceed to a new election. The second trial had the same result, but Ignatius still declined to accept of the office. At last, however, on being much importuned to do so, he exclaimed—“Since you persist in choosing me, who know well my infirmities, I cannot in conscience subscribe to your judgment. It only remains, then, that we refer the contested point to my confessor, whom, as you know, I consider the interpreter of the Divine will.”[52] The good fathers consented to this arrangement the more willingly, as they had no doubt whatever (I should think not) that Father Theodose would approve of their selection. Nor were they deceived.[53]
On Easter-day, therefore, in the year 1541, he assumed the government of the Society, and on the following Friday he and his disciples, in the magnificent Basilica of St Paul’s at Rome, renewed the four vows to which they had bound themselves, with extraordinary pomp and ceremony.
We candidly admit, however, that Ignatius, after reaching the height of his ambition, relaxed nothing in the strictness of his conduct, nor allowed that zeal which he had manifested in order to attain it, to cool down. On the contrary, he seemed to redouble his energy, and gain additional strength in his new dignity. The days in which he lived were days of battle, and Ignatius, not forgetting his first vocation, was impatient to enter the melée. Protestantism, a giant in its infancy, standing in a menacing attitude, with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, bid defiance to the impugners of the Sacred Volume. Catholicism, old in the debauch of power, discredited by the vices of its ministers, could only oppose his formidable antagonist with a scattered and undisciplined army of monks and priests, rendered effete by a life of effeminacy and debauchery. At this critical moment, Ignatius rushed to the rescue with an army, small indeed in number, but composed of brave and resolute souls, learned, eloquent, passionate, trained to fight, fully persuaded, as almost every soldier is, that theirs was the just cause, and that to them the victory ought to belong. The disciples of Ignatius took the field high in spirits, and prepared, if need be, to sacrifice their liberty, their blood, their lives, their all, for the cause they had embraced, which was in their eyes the cause of God. They dispersed to every part of Europe. Lefevre, from the Congress of Worms, proceeded to Spain; Lainez and Lejay succeeded him in Germany. Bobadilla went to Naples, Brouet and Salmeron to Ireland, Rodriguez and Xavier to Portugal. Everywhere these rigid and fanatic monks were, on the one hand, engaged in theological discussion, while, on the other, they preached repentance to the people and reform to the clergy, and paid no regard to the hatred evinced towards them both by Protestants and Catholics. It seems as if they courted persecution, and wished to wear the martyr’s crown. When the infuriated populace of Vienna threatened to throw Lejay into the Danube, he smiled scornfully, and calmly answered—“What do I care whether I enter heaven by water or land!”
From Rome, Ignatius, as an able general, directed the movements of all those soldiers of Christ, as they styled themselves. He praised one, admonished another, inspired all with his zeal and fanaticism. Nor was this enough for his ardent and indefatigable spirit. He turned his attention to less unquestionable acts of religion and charity. Many of the hospitals erected in the middle of Rome, were the fruits of his zealous exertions. The Convent of Santa Martha was opened for abandoned women, who wished to repent, and pass an upright and easy life. In that of Santa Catherine, poor and honest young girls found an asylum against temptation and seduction; fatherless children of both sexes were received, and carefully educated, in two hospitals which yet exist in Rome; and the inmates of which, on the 31st of July of every year, go in procession to the Church of Gesù, to pray to the shrine of the saint, and to give thanks to their benefactor.
However, the gratitude which we owe to Loyola for those charitable institutions cannot restrain our indignation and abhorrence towards the man who had so great a share in reviving the infamous tribunal of the Inquisition. The Jesuits reckon it among the glories of their order, that Loyola supported, by a special memorial to the Pope, a petition for the reorganising of that cruel and abhorred tribunal.
In the 13th century, the Inquisition had been diabolically active. 25,000 Albigenses perished for bearing testimony to the Word of God. Dominique, that wholesale butcher of these unfortunate Christians, by his barbarous inhumanities, struck horror throughout Europe, and gained for himself a place among the Roman saints. But, as is always the case, its very excess prepared a reaction. The tribunal, as if satiated with human suffering, gradually relented, and, in the epoch of which we are speaking, had almost fallen into decay. Besides, the inquisitors, chosen from among the monastic orders, were little inclined to enforce strict and severe laws against practices or opinions with which they themselves were in many cases chargeable.[54] Above all, the See of Rome, under the Alexanders, the Juliuses, the Leos, plunged in political affairs, and, extremely lax in matters of religion and morality, had little or no inclination to enforce the almost forgotten edicts of the Inquisition. But the new doctrines spread in Germany with amazing rapidity; and the outcry raised against the morals of the Catholic clergy produced two immediate effects—the partial reform of the more flagrant abuses of which the clergy were guilty, and the revival of a tribunal, which should destroy by fire and sword whoever dared to impugn the doctrines of the Popes, and the canonical laws. Caraffa, whom we have already mentioned, was the principal author of this dreadful tribunal. Through his exertions, and those of Loyola, an edict appeared on the 21st of July 1542, appointing six cardinals commissioners of the Holy See and general inquisitors, with power to delegate their authority to any person they pleased. All ranks of citizens, without exception, were subjected to these inquisitors. Suspected persons were immediately imprisoned, the guilty punished with death, and their property confiscated. No book could be printed or sold (and such is still the case through nearly the whole of Italy) without the authority of the inquisitor. Hence a catalogue of prohibited books, the first issue of which, containing seventy works, appeared at Venice.
In order that the tribunal might be made more efficient, Caraffa drew up, himself, the following stringent rules:—
First, When faith is in question, there must be no delay; but, on the slightest suspicion, rigorous measures must be resorted to with all speed.
“Secondly, No consideration is to be shewn to either prince or prelate, however high his station.
“Thirdly, Extreme severity is to be exercised against all those who attempt to shield themselves under the protection of any potentate; and those only are to be treated with gentleness and fatherly compassion, who make a full and frank confession of the charges laid against them.
“Fourthly, No man must debase himself by shewing toleration towards heretics of any kind, and above all to Calvinists.”[55]
This terrible tribunal, in the hands of the relentless and unforgiving Caraffa, spread desolation and dismay throughout Italy, from its very commencement. Thousands were arraigned before it, whose only crime consisted in becoming the unhappy victims of such as were actuated by the fell rage of revenge, or the thirst for power or wealth—in a word, by any or all of those foul passions which degrade and brutalise humanity. As sacerdotal ferocity then called to its aid the might of the secular arm, and thus became all-powerful, death assumed a new and more terrible aspect. And he who should invent new instruments of torture to dislocate the limbs of the victims with the most exquisite and excruciating pains possible would be rewarded!!! Throughout Italy, and in various parts of Europe, you might have seen, whilst the infernal flames of the pile were ascending, the sinister and diabolical smile of the Jesuits, who were aiming at the increase of their order, under the shade of this all-mastering power!
But we must resume our history. The first college of the order was founded in Coimbra, in 1542, by John III. of Portugal. The same year twenty-five of his subjects were admitted into it under the superintendence of Rodriguez.
Lainez, aided by the Lipomana family, erected another at the same time in Venice. A third was built in Padua. After that Italy became studded with them. Those youth whom Loyola, in the beginning of 1540, had sent to Paris to study, and receive a degree in its university, being expelled from France, went to Louvain, and there, under the direction of Lefevre, became the inmates of a college afterwards famous. The Jesuits had already many colleges established in Germany, one of which was nursing in its bosom Peter Canisius, who became most notorious for his cruelties. In Spain, also, the new order met with prodigious success. Besides being the birthplace of Ignatius and six of the founders of the order, it succeeded, at its very commencement, in making a conquest of no less a person than Francis Borgia, Duke of Candia, and vice-king of Barcelona. The authority of his name, his exertions, and the eloquence of Father Araoz, soon covered Spain with houses and colleges. Since the year 1543, the order already counting nine houses, and more than eighty Professed members, Paul III., who at first had limited the number of the Jesuits to sixty, being highly satisfied with these new champions of the Roman See, issued another bull on the 15th of March 1543, by which he empowered the order to receive an unlimited number of members.
In speaking of the different countries into which the Jesuits had intruded themselves, we have purposely passed over England; and that for two reasons:—First, Because, writing in England, and for English readers, we consider it but fair to expatiate all the more on what particularly concerns their own country. Secondly, Because the two first Jesuits who entered England were intrusted with a special political mission—the first one of the kind, and which we are going to relate:—
The severe and somewhat capricious edicts of Henry VIII., even after Moore and Fisher had perished by the hands of the executioner, while but partially obeyed in England, were totally disregarded in Ireland. True it is, that a great part of the aristocracy, for fear of proscription and confiscation, had yielded to Henry’s orders, and even supported him in his despotic policy; but the bulk of the nation, more perhaps out of hatred to their oppressors than from real attachment to their religion, refused to subscribe to a creed violently enforced by a hated and despotic power. Not content with opposing Henry in his religious ordinances, they, under the very pretence of religion, caused partial insurrections, with the view of shaking off the yoke of their masters. But the power of Henry bore down all opposition; and, as Dr Lingard says, “the English domination over Ireland never appeared to be more firmly established.” In such a state of things, the Archbishop of Armagh, a Scotchman by birth, abandoning the flock confided to his care, fled to Rome to implore the assistance of his master the Pope. Paul had already evinced great anger against Henry for his apostacy. His anger was increased by the fact, that not only was he unable to prevail on either Francis I. or Charles V. to invade England, but, that these monarchs had, in the face of his express commands, made, successively, a treaty with the excommunicated king. Accordingly his resentment knew no bounds. However, the means which Paul had at command to contend with Henry were inadequate to gratify the hate which rankled in his bosom towards him. Determined, nevertheless, not to remain inactive, he thought of despatching some emissaries into Ireland, in order that, by working upon the ignorant and bigoted minds of its fanatic inhabitants, he might excite them to a civil war. With this pious end in view, he turned his eyes to this newly established society, and asked from the General two of its members, to be sent thither. From that day, down to the recent mission of Cardinal Wiseman, the Court of Rome has striven, more or less openly, more or less eagerly, to exasperate the Irish Catholics against the English Protestants, and has made Ireland a sore thorn to the sister island. Many a time did Pius V. exclaim, that he would willingly shed his blood in a war against England; and Gregory XIII. was seriously meditating to march in person, and head the insurrection which broke out in Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth!
The two Jesuits whom Ignatius gave to the Pope for this mission were Salmeron and Brouet, who received secret instructions from the Pope, and were honoured with the name of Papal Nuncios. “They accepted with joy the perils of the embassy, but were in no way ambitious of the lustre and honour which the title conferred.”[56] So modest they were, according to Mr Crétineau.
The fact is, that they could not and would not have dared to assume in public the title of the Pope’s Legates, or Nuncios, and were obliged to content themselves to be simple and secret emissaries. Ignatius also gave them private instructions, and we may thank Orlandini for having sent down this document, which, if well examined, clearly shews that the crafty and mysterious policy for which the Society has earned such merited notoriety and execration, is as old as the order. Here is the precious document, which, however, shews a remarkable knowledge of human nature:—
“I recommend you to be, in your intercourse with all the world in general—but particularly with your equals and inferiors—modest and circumspect in your words, always disposed and patient to listen, lending an attentive ear till the persons who speak to you have unveiled the depth of their sentiments. Then you will give them a clear and brief answer which may anticipate all discussion.
“In order to conciliate to yourselves the goodwill of men in the desire of extending the kingdom of God, you will make yourselves all things to all men, after the example of the apostle, in order to gain them to Jesus Christ. Nothing, in effect, is more adapted than the resemblance of tastes and habits to conciliate affection, to gain hearts.
“Thus, after having studied the character and manners of each person, you will endeavour to conform yourselves to them as much as duty will permit,—so that, if you have to do with an excitable and ardent character, you should shake off all tedious prolixity.
“You must, on the contrary, become somewhat slow and measuring in speech, if the person to whom you speak is more circumspect and deliberate in his speech.
“For the rest, if he who has to do with a man of irascible temperament has himself that defect, and if they do not agree thoroughly in their opinion, it is greatly to be feared lest they permit themselves to be hurried into passion. Therefore, he who recognises in himself that propensity ought to watch himself with the most vigilant care, and fortify his heart with a supply of strength, in order that anger should not surprise him; but rather that he may endure with equanimity all that he shall suffer from the other, even should the latter be his inferior. Discussions and quarrels are much less to be apprehended from quiet and slow tempers than from the excitable and ardent.
“In order to attract men to virtue, and fight the enemy of salvation, you shall employ the arms he uses to destroy them—such is the advice of St Basil.
“When the devil attacks a just man, he does not let him see his snares; on the contrary, he hides them, and attacks him only indirectly, without resisting his pious inclinations, feigning even to conform to them;—but by degrees he entices him, and surprises him in his snares. Thus it is proper to follow a similar track to extricate men from sin.
“Begin with praising what is good in them, without at first attacking their vices; when you shall have gained their confidence, apply the remedy proper for their cure.
“With regard to melancholy or unsettled persons, exhibit whilst addressing them, as much as you can, a gay and serene countenance—give the greatest sweetness to your words, in order to restore them to a state of mental tranquillity—combating one extreme by another extreme.
“Not only in your sermons, but also in your private conversation, particularly when you reconcile people at variance, do not lose sight of the fact that all your words may be published—what you say in darkness may be manifested in the light of day.
“In affairs anticipate the time, rather than defer or adjourn it; if you promise anything for to-morrow, do it to-day. As to money, do not touch even that which shall be fixed for the expenses which you shall pay. Let it be distributed to the poor by other hands, or employ it in good works, in order that you may be able, in case of need, to affirm on oath that in the course of your legation you have not received a penny. When you have to speak to the great, let Pasquier Bruet have the charge. Deliberate with yourselves in all the points touching which your sentiments might be at variance. Do what two persons out of three would have approved, if called upon to decide.
“Write often to Rome during your journey—as soon as you shall have reached Scotland, and also when you shall have got over to Ireland. Then give an account of your legation monthly.”[57]
Now, examine well these instructions, and you will find that the true Jesuit must be crafty, insinuating, deceitful, even whilst pretending to be a most sincere Christian, and as if raised by God to defend his holy religion. Their sacrilegious maxim, “that no means can be bad when the end is good,” sanctifies in their eyes the most atrocious crimes.
At first sight, these precepts which Ignatius gave to the two emissaries of Paul, although not very honest, appear in themselves prudent instructions for proceeding in what they considered a most holy cause—the maintenance of the Catholic religion. But apply them to political purposes—and Ignatius knew that this was the case—and you will at once perceive the extent of the Jesuit immorality, and the artful way in which, in the name of the most sacred of all things—religion, they accomplish the most heinous offences.
But listen to the ingenious Mr Crétineau:—“In these instructions,” says he, “Loyola takes care to be silent about those which the Pope had given them; he keeps aloof from politics. Salmeron and Brouet are the Pope’s legates, and have his confidence. Ignatius endeavours to make them worthy of it, but he does not go beyond.”[58] Good! You confess, then, that Paul—Christ’s vicegerent—is plotting revenge under the garb of religion, and that he has sent the Jesuits on a political mission. Ignatius, confident in Paul’s abilities, confined himself to the prescribing of rules calculated to insure success in their undertaking; you prize him for that, and boast that he keeps aloof from politics? Good!
Salmeron and Brouet set out on their mission, and, as they were ordered, visited Holyrood on their way to Ireland. James V. was then on the throne of Scotland, who, “there is reason to believe,” says the author of the Tales of a Grandfather, “was somewhat inclined to the Reformed doctrines—at least he encouraged the poet Lindsay to compose bitter satires against the corruptions of the Roman Catholic clergy.” His uncle, Henry VIII., encouraged him in this disposition, strongly advised him to take possession of the immense wealth of the religious orders; and desired an interview with him at York in the beginning of the year 1542. Henry went there, and waited six days for his nephew, but he never made his appearance. There can be little doubt that the Jesuits, who had arrived in Scotland some time before with the Pope’s letter for the king, to whom they were introduced by Beaton, of cruel and tragic memory, who had known Loyola at Rome, used their utmost influence to prevent this meeting. Nor do I think it presumption to assert that the two Jesuits, and the letter which they brought from Paul, who exhorted the king to remain faithful to the religion of his fathers, were the chief cause that detained him at home. The war which followed soon after, with disastrous consequences to both nations, and especially to Scotland, as well as the torrents of blood shed during a long course of religious struggles, would, in all likelihood, have been avoided had James resisted the influence of the Jesuits.
Meanwhile Paul’s two emissaries arrived in Ireland about the month of February 1542. There, according to Jesuitical historians, they wrought prodigies, reforming and stirring up the people, and confirming them in the tenets of the true religion; celebrating masses, hearing confessions, and especially granting many indulgences;[59] exacting from the people a very moderate tax, which, according to the instructions of Ignatius, was not gathered by themselves, but by a stranger.[60] The people flocked around them, and poured out benedictions upon their head. Their adversaries, on the other hand, assert that they plotted to stir up one class of citizens against another, and drained the pockets of the credulous Irishmen so forcibly, that at last they became so odious in the eyes of the people, that they threatened to deliver them into the hands of Henry’s officers.[61] We ourselves believe that both of these versions are in part true. No doubt they, to keep up appearance, said masses, heard many confessions, granted millions of indulgences, but there is as little doubt that they excited the people against their excommunicated sovereign, whom, to be faithful to their religion, they must execrate, and use all their efforts to dethrone. That they collected money from the people, either party confess; but whether that money was employed for the repairing of the churches and the supporting of widows and orphans, as the one pretends, or as an aliment to foment civil war, as the other asserts, is not sufficiently ascertained. We leave our readers to judge for themselves. Certain it is, however, they only continued in Ireland for thirty-four days, and during that time they wandered about from place to place in disguise, never sleeping two successive nights under the same roof, afraid every moment of being seized. Upon leaving, they formed the noble complot (says Mr Crétineau, illustrating Orlandini) of going to London, and finding means of being admitted into Henry’s presence, when, by their eloquence and tenderness, they would disarm the anger of the king, in pleading the cause of the Catholic religion at the tribunal of his conscience.[62] It was as well for Henry, and England too, that their plan was found to be “impracticable.” We must not forget that they were the emissaries of that Paul who thought the sword and the stake, for the conversion of heretics, to be the most effectual and conclusive arguments. Neither must we forget, that some years after, James Clement and Ravaillac adopted a more expeditious way than eloquence for the converting of Henrys III. and IV. Salmeron and Brouet thought it advisable, in the circumstances, to retire into France, and being ordered by Paul to return again into Scotland, they refused to obey, and went direct to Rome.
Thus ended the first mission into England. Would to God it had been the last!
CHAPTER V.
1547-1631.
THE FEMALE JESUITS.
Before proceeding further, we think it proper to make a few observations on the Female Jesuitical Institution which was established at this period, especially as the order still exists, though under a different name.
When Ignatius was living at Barcelona, he received many kindnesses and favours at the hand of a lady called Rosello. But after he had left this place, his mind was so absorbed in devising so many and lofty projects, that he entirely forgot her. She did not, however, forget Ignatius. Hearing of his increasing sanctity, of his having become the founder and general of a new order, and “being then a widow, she resolved to abandon the world, and live in accordance with his evangelical councils, and under the authority of the Society. With this pious resolution, and being joined in her holy enterprise by two virtuous and noble Roman ladies, she asked and received from Paul permission to embrace this kind of life.”[63] Ignatius had the perception to see that these ladies would be an incumbrance to him and his order, “yet the gratitude which he owed to his kind benefactress weighed so much upon his heart, that he consented to receive them under his protection.” But he soon had reason to repent of this act of condescension; the annoyance was so great, that he confessed himself that they gave him more trouble than the whole community, because he could never get done with them. At every moment he was obliged to resolve their strange questions, to allay their scruples, to hear their complaints, or settle their differences;[64] and as, notwithstanding all his sagacity, Ignatius did not foresee of what advantage women could one day be to the order, he applied to the Pope to be relieved of this charge, writing, at the same time, the following letter to Rosello:—
“Venerable Dame Isabella Rosello—my Mother and my Sister in Jesus Christ,—In truth I would wish, for the greater glory of God, to satisfy your good desires, and procure your spiritual progress by keeping you under my obedience, as you have been for some time past; but the continual ailments to which I am subject, and all my occupations which concern the service of our Lord, or his vicar on earth, permit me to do so no longer. Moreover, being persuaded, according to the light of my conscience, that this little Society ought not to take upon itself, in particular, the direction of any woman who may be engaged to us by vows of obedience, as I have fully declared to our Holy Father the Pope, it has seemed to me for the greater glory of God, that I ought no longer to look upon you as my spiritual daughter, and only as my godmother, as you have been for many years, to the greater glory of God. Consequently, for the greater service, and the greater honour of the everlasting Goodness, I give you as much as I can into the hands of the sovereign Pontiff, in order that, taking his judgment and will as a rule, you may find rest and consolation for the greater glory of the Divine Majesty.—At Rome, the first of October 1549.”
The Pope complied with the request, and exempted the order from the superintendence of women; and Ignatius enacted in the Constitutions, “that no member of the Society should undertake the care of souls, nor of Religious, or of any other women whatever” [Loyola’s disciples thought proper to differ from him], “so as frequently to hear their confessions, or give them directions, although there is no objection to their receiving the confession of a monastery once, and for a special reason.”[65]
Dame Rosello and her two companions, being deprived of their spiritual father, not wishing to change him for another—so faithful were they—desisted at once from their pious undertaking, and for a time nothing more was heard of female Jesuits; but, about the year 1622, some females, more meddling than devoted, took upon themselves the task of reviving the institution, although they were not authorised to do so. Nevertheless, they united into different communities, established houses for noviciates and colleges, chose a general under the name of Proposta, and made vows into her hands of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience. Not being restrained by any law of seclusion, they went from place to place, bustling with gossip, and causing confusion and scandal throughout the Catholic camp. The community soon spread over a great part of lower Germany, France, Spain, and was especially numerous in Italy, where it originated.
Urban VIII., after vainly endeavouring to impose upon them some rules of discipline, by a brief of the 21st May 1631, suppressed them.[66]
Thus ended the Society of Female Jesuits under this name and form. But another afterwards sprung up in its place, under the appellation of Religieuse du Sacre Cœur, having special rules very like those of the Jesuits, under whose absolute directions they now are.
In Catholic countries—above all, in France, and, we are sorry to say, in Piedmont also—very many of the highest rank in society send their daughters to be educated in these monasteries. Had Ignatius known what powerful auxiliaries these worthy nuns were likely to prove to his order, he would, in all likelihood, have borne with those petty annoyances caused to him by good Dame Rosello. Ladies educated by these nuns bring into their homes all those dissensions and cause all those evils which are so ably described by the French professor, Michelet, who lost his chair the other day for daring to attack these all-powerful auxiliaries of Napoleon—the Jesuits.
CHAPTER VI.
1548-56.
THE FIRST OPPOSITION TO THE ORDER, AND DEATH OF LOYOLA.
The order of Jesuits, which had hitherto progressed so favourably, was now surrounded with difficulties and enemies. While the rapid increase of the Society, the influence it had acquired, and the wealth which it had already accumulated, combined to render the Jesuits less cautious and more authoritative, they caused also a great deal of envy, especially among those classes menaced by the company in some of their privileges. At the first opportunity an attempt was made to crush the order in the bud.
This opportunity was offered by the emperor, Charles V., who had at no time been very favourable to the institution, and who, no matter how bigoted a Catholic he may have become in his latter days, was then just as much Catholic as was necessary to extend his dominions and to consolidate his despotic power.
In 1548, Charles, indignant at the cunning policy of Paul III., who set the emperor to war with the Reformers, and who deserted him when he feared that, being master of the Protestant league, he would also become his dictator—Charles, we say, when the Pope recalled his troops, not wishing to drive the Protestant princes to extremities, published the famous Interim, a sort of compromise between the two creeds, and a tacit acquiescence in the more commonly received doctrines of the Reformers, leaving, besides, in their hands, the confiscated ecclesiastical properties. Paul became furious at the audacity of a layman mingling in matters of faith, and loudly exclaimed against the prince. Cardinal Farnese, the Pope’s legate and nephew, told the emperor that his book contained at least ten propositions which were heretical, and for which he might be called to account. Besides his legate, the Pope had in Germany a staunch and faithful partisan in the person of Bobadilla. Bobadilla was a bold and thorough Jesuit. He went to the war, and attached himself as a sort of commissary to the troops which the Pope’s grandson had led into Germany. At the battle of Mulberg he received a wound, but this gave him little concern. Some days afterwards, he was to be seen at Passau, a Protestant town, preaching the Catholic tenets, and announcing a day of thanksgiving for the victory that the Catholics had gained over the Protestants.
You may well believe that such a man would not hesitate to attack the Interim. In fact, by writing, by preaching publicly and privately, Bobadilla boldly denounced the book, and that even in the presence of the emperor himself, as a sacrilegious composition. The emperor, frustrating the Jesuit’s desire to gain renown by means of persecution, simply expelled him from all his estates.
Bobadilla hastened to Rome to receive, he hoped, the deserved ovation. But, alas! how bitterly was he deceived! Ignatius, “fearing that Bobadilla in impugning the Interim may have gone beyond due bounds, thought it better at first not to receive him into the house.”[67] So Orlandini. Our Mr Crétineau, who generally transcribes literally, here, with more zeal than prudence, thus reports the passage of the Jesuit writer:—“Loyola seized hold of this circumstance to revenge the majesty of kings, which, even in the height of the dispute, one ought never to attain.”[68] We understand you well, Mr Crétineau! you have lost much of your influence over the people, too well educated to repose much faith, either in your sanctity or your miracles, and you intend to preserve some of your domineering influence, by clinging to these same kings against whom, when they were adverse to you, you directed the poniard of the assassin!
Bobadilla’s expulsion seemed to have been the signal for the outburst of a violent war against the order, especially in Spain. The fight began at Salamanca. Three Jesuits, Sanci, Capella, and Turrian, arrived there in 1548, for the purpose of establishing their Society. They entered the town in the most pitiable condition, and were so poor, that, “having no image to adorn the altar of their private chapel with, they in its stead put a piece of paper, upon which was delineated, I do not know what figure—‘Impressam nescio,’ says Orlandini, ‘quam in papyro figuram, pro scite picta tabula collocarent.’”[69] And Crétineau thus translates it:—“In consequence” (of having no picture), “one of them simply sketched on a piece of paper an image of the Virgin, and this paper, stuck on the wall, was the only ornament of the high altar.”[70]
I must say I feel surprised at their candour! You confess, then, that you worship a dirty scrap of paper, upon which you do not know what sort of figure was represented, or you scratch four lines and make it the object of your cultus—the indispensable ornament of your altar, upon which you are going to renew the sacrifice of the Cross! Ah! we already knew that your religion only consisted in externalities—in blind and absurd superstitions. Yet we register this other example to prove your own idolatry, and your constant practice, to represent Christ the Lord in the background, while adoring images and statues which you have made according to your hearts’ wishes, as our great poet says, of gold and silver—
“Fatto v’avete Dio d’oro e, d’argento.”—Dante, Inferno, cant. xix.
However, there lived at that time at Salamanca a Dominican friar, famous for his eloquence, his learning, and particularly for his uprightness of purpose—Melchior Cano. He had known Loyola, and formed a bad opinion of him, because he never ceased speaking of his revelations, his visions, his virtues, his undeserved persecutions.
After his disciples came to Salamanca, equipped only with their bigoted fanaticism, and of doubtful morality, he resolved to oppose them, and poured forth against them, from his chair and pulpit, torrents of eloquent invectives. He represented them as crafty, insinuating; living in palaces, deceiving the kings and the great; declaring them to be soiled by every species of crime; capable of all kinds of excesses; and dangerous both to religion and society.
We may perhaps say that the picture which he, in his passionate eloquence, drew of the members of the order, which he also called the pioneers of Antichrist, was then somewhat exaggerated. The Jesuits at that time were not so perverse as he represented them to be, for they had as yet only existed for a few years. But it would seem that Cano had spoken in the spirit of prophecy, of the character which it assumed in after generations, the germ of which he may have seen beginning to develop itself.
If the letter which we are about to transcribe, written by him in 1560, two days before his death, is not to be numbered among the prophecies, it is nevertheless an extraordinary prediction, which came to be fulfilled in every point. Here is this remarkable letter:—“God grant that it may not happen to me as is fabled of Cassandra, whose predictions were not believed till Troy was captured and burned. If the members of the Society continue as they have begun, God grant that the time may not come when kings will wish to resist them, but will not have the means of doing so.”[71]
But we have anticipated.—The hideous colours in which he pourtrayed the disciples of Loyola made such an impression in Salamanca, that the Jesuits were not allowed to establish themselves in it. In vain did the Pope, taking up the cause of the Jesuits, by a bull reprove the conduct of Cano. In vain did the General of the Dominicans issue a circular to all his subordinates, in which, after a long eulogium on the Society, he says that “it ought to be praised and imitated, and not assailed with calumnies.”[72] Cano, disregarding both the Papal brief and his general’s circular, and being supported, at least secretly, by the civil authorities, boldly held out against the order. What could his adversaries do? Persecution and revenge were impossible against a subject of the emperor, who was then at war with the Pope, and yet Cano must be got rid of. Well, one fine morning he was strangely and agreeably surprised with the news, that that same Pope who had threatened and censured him had now conferred upon him the bishopric of the Canaries. Dazzled and flattered, the friar yielded at first to the temptation, and left Salamanca for his bishopric. But soon, very soon, he perceived why he had been sent so far away. Resolved, therefore, to baffle his enemies’ cunning, he resigned the Episcopal dignity, and returned to Salamanca, the undoubted and indefatigable adversary of the order. He died Provincial of his order, and much respected.
About the same epoch, 1548, the University of Alcala also declared against the order. The contest lasted for a considerable time; and even after many of the doctors were, by the usual mysterious arts, gained over to the cause of the company, Dr Scala persisted in his opposition, and did not refrain from attacking them till he was called before the Inquisition, and threatened with an auto-da-fé.[73]
The opposition which the Jesuits encountered in Toledo, where they had already established themselves, was a more serious affair. They had found here the population docile, and easy to be imposed upon. They had introduced sundry abuses, and many superstitious practices. Nay, their devotees—horrid to say!—went to the communion table twice a day! In the year 1550, these scandalous enormities forced themselves upon the attention of the authorities. Don Siliceo, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, once tutor to Philip of Spain, wishing to repress them, published an ordinance, reproving and condemning them, and in which, after bitterly reproaching the Jesuits for their many usurpations, he forbids the people, under pain of excommunication, to confess to any Jesuit, and empowers all curates to exclude them from the administration of all sacraments; furthermore, laying an interdict upon the Jesuit College of Alcala.
This ordinance produced a great excitement among the Jesuits and their partisans, and nothing was left untried to make the archbishop relent. But neither the influence that the Society already possessed, nor the intercession of the Papal nuncio, and of the Archbishop of Burgos, nor even the Pope’s own authority, could vanquish the archbishop’s hostility. Then the bold Loyola had the impudence to institute a process against the archbishop, before the Royal Council of Spain. Paul III. was dead, and was succeeded by Julius III., who, as Ignatius well knew, was on the best terms with Charles. The Royal Council condemned the prelate, who thereupon recalled the interdict[74]—not that his opinions were changed, but to avoid, perhaps, the fate which encountered his successor, the learned but unfortunate Carranza—twelve years of torture in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
A still fiercer tempest was gathering over the heads of the Jesuits at Saragossa. Instructive is the cause of the quarrel. The town of Saragossa was so full of convents and monasteries, that, to observe the rule which forbade any religious house to be built within a certain distance of another, it was impossible for the Jesuits to find a spot unforbidden. However, after thoroughly surveying the town, they imagined they had found a spot at the requisite distance. They there erect a house and a chapel, which is to be consecrated on Easter Tuesday 1555. Great preparations are made to make the pageant pompous and attractive, when, alas! Lopez Marcos, Vicar-general of Saragossa, on the complaint of the Augustine Friars, who pretend that the chapel was built on their grounds, intimated to Father Brama, the superior of the house, that the ceremony might be deferred. Brama refused to obey. Lopez, at the very moment the Jesuits were performing the solemn ceremony, issued a proclamation forbidding the chapel to be entered under pain of excommunication. Anathemas were poured upon the fathers, and the clergy, accompanied by a great crowd of people, march through the town, singing the 109th Psalm, the people repeating—“As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones;” and, to unite the ludicrous with the terrible, they carry along images with hideous faces, representing the Jesuits dragged to hell by a legion of demons still more hideous. A funeral procession, with the image of Christ covered with a black veil, singing lugubrious songs, march towards the house of the Jesuits. From time to time, the cry, “Mercy! Mercy!” burst from the crowd, as they wished to avert the curse of God from an interdicted city. The poor Jesuits, shut up in their own house, patiently wait for a fortnight, until the tempest should pass away. But this ignoble goblin representation, worthy only of Jesuits and of their opponents, not yet ending, Loyola’s disciples, as usual, gave way, feeling assured that, if actual force would be of no avail in making good their claim, intrigues and cunning would in the end win the day. Nor were they deceived.[75]
In Portugal, dangers of another kind menaced the Society. It seemed as if Portugal were to be the theatre where the Jesuits were to perform the principal act of their ignoble drama.
The protection of John III., united with the zeal of Rodriguez, had made this country one of the most flourishing provinces of the Society. But its very prosperity nearly caused its ruin. Having possessed themselves of immense wealth, the Jesuits, yielding to the common law, relaxed in the strictness of their conduct, pursued a life of pleasure and debauchery; above all, their principal college (Coimbra) resembled more a garden of academics than a cloister.[76] Scandal became so great, that the court began to frown upon them, and the people were losing that respect and veneration with which they had before regarded them. Ignatius, of course, was soon informed of the state of things, and took at once the most energetic measures for repressing the evil (in 1552). Rodriguez was recalled and sent to Spain, and a new provincial and rector were sent to Coimbra.
Miron, the provincial, attempted a reform, but the Jesuits—spoiled children—refused to submit to it. Some he dismissed from the college—a greater number abandoned it. Insubordination and disorder were at their height. Fortunately, Ignatius had in the rector Godin a man according to his heart. Godin proved a worthy disciple of the author of the Spiritual Exercises. Stripping his shoulders of their garments, arming himself with a scourge, he rushed, demoniac-like, out into the streets of Coimbra, and flagellated himself, crying for mercy. Breathless, covered with dust and blood, running and screaming, he returned to the college church, where the brethren were assembled, and here he again lashed himself. Strange and uncommon examples fire the imagination and prejudices of imitators. The Jesuits were at first surprised; then, all on a sudden, they beg to be allowed to undergo the same public penance. Godin feigns to refuse; he speaks of the scandal given—he paints in strong colours the enormities of their sins, and dwells at length upon the sufferings and passion of Christ. When he had wrought their feelings to the highest pitch, he granted them the permission solicited, and, like a crowd of Bacchanti, when their deity rages within them, they all rush out of the church, and with lamentable cries run through the streets, scourging themselves in a most merciless manner. When they reached the Church of the Misericordia, they knelt down, whilst the rector begged pardon of the multitude for the scandal they had given them. Some of the people are moved—others laugh loudly—but the intent of the rector is obtained. The disciples become more tractable; the college submits to the necessary reform, and the Jesuits regain their influence.[77]
The Society met with a more serious and durable opposition in France. After their first banishment they had returned to Paris, but there they had no house of their own, neither could they find any. They therefore took up their abode in the College des Lombards, till Du Prat, Bishop of Clermond, offered them his own hotel, to which they immediately repaired. As yet, however, this establishment was neither a house for professed members, since there were none of them, nor a noviciate, since the rules for the noviciate were not established till six or seven years afterwards. The members who repaired to Clermond hotel were only students, or priests aspiring to become members of the Society; but we are told that they were so conspicuous for their learning and piety, that three of them were chosen by Ignatius to establish a new college in Sicily, while Viole, the chief of those aspirants, was named by the university, Procurator of the College des Lombards. This nomination, however, appeared to Ignatius to be of a rather doubtful character, since it proceeded from the university, which had been adverse to the order from the first. It seems as if he feared that these students, seduced by the allurements of honour and emoluments, would renounce their pious determination to become Jesuits; he therefore ordered Viole to give up the appointment, and to take the vows of the order before Du Prat, enjoining at the same time, that all students who may receive any pension from the College des Lombards should instantly renounce it. Although these orders were absolute, they were promptly obeyed. The great secret of Loyola’s influence and power lay in the inflexibility of his character, and in his military education, which rendered him absolute and imperative, and excluded the possibility of others disputing his orders.
Meanwhile the Society in France—we should say in Paris—the only place where it had tried to establish itself, lived in a most precarious state, until the year 1550, when Henry II., stimulated by the too famous cardinal of Guise, thought of establishing the Jesuits in his kingdom, and issued patent letters authorising them to do so.
The ordinances of the French king were not at this time considered binding, until they were registered by the parliament.[78] When those concerning the Jesuits were brought before them, the parliament, after hearing the conclusions of their Advocate-General, refused to register them, on the ground “that the new institute would be prejudicial to the monarchy, the state, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”
The contest lasted for two years, when the king, in 1552, sent an order to the parliament to register the patent letters of 1550, authorising the establishment of the Jesuits. The order was formal and imperative, yet the parliament refused to comply with it, although, out of deference to the sovereign will, they advised that further inquiries be made concerning the Society.
After other two years of serious consideration and strict inquiry, the parliament, in 1554, enacted that “the bull establishing the Society, and the king’s patent letters, shall be communicated both to the Archbishop of Paris, and to the Faculty of Theology there, in order that, their opinion heard, the court may come to a sentence.” The archbishop and the faculty were thus called to decide upon a question of their exclusive competence, since the one was the ecclesiastical superior, and the other the natural judge in matters of faith. Both took the case in hand, and after due consideration, they respectively decided against the establishment of the Society. The archbishop, Eustache de Bellay, belonging to one of the most illustrious parliamentary families of France, after mature deliberation, gave out all the reasons why he thought it his duty to oppose the introduction of the order, and concluded in this remarkable and logical way:—“Since the order pretends to be established for the purpose of preaching to the Turks and infidels, to bring them to the knowledge of God; they ought to establish their houses and societies in places near the said infidels, as in the times of old had been done by the Knights of Rhodes, who were placed on the frontiers of Christendom, not in the midst thereof.” But the severe and bitter censure of the Doctors of the Sorbonne was a more explicit condemnation of the order. Here is the document of their famous “conclusion:”—
“As all the faithful, and principally the theologians, ought to be ready to render an account to those who demand the same, respecting matters of faith, morals, and the edification of the Church; the faculty has thought, that it ought to satisfy the desire, the demand, and the intention of the court.
“Wherefore, having perused, and many times re-perused, and well comprehended all the articles of the two bulls, and after having discussed and gone to the depths of them, during several months, at different times and hours, according to custom, due regard being had to the subject, the Faculty has, with unanimous consent, given this judgment, which it has submitted with all manner of respect to that of the Holy See.
“This new Society, which arrogates to itself in particular the unusual title of the name of Jesus—which receives with so much freedom, and without any choice, all sorts of persons, however criminal, lawless, and infamous they may be—which differs in nowise from the secular priests in outward dress, in the tonsure, in the manner of saying the canonical hours in private, or in chaunting in public, in the engagement to remain in the cloister and observe silence, in the choice of food and days, in fasting, and the variety of rules, laws, and ceremonies which serve to distinguish the different institutes of monks;—this Society, to which have been granted and given so many privileges and licences, chiefly in what concerns the administration of the sacraments of penance and the eucharist, and this without any regard or distinction being had of places or persons; as also in the function of preaching, reading, and teaching, to the prejudice of the ordinaries and the hierarchical order, as well as of the other religious orders, and even to the prejudices of princes and lords temporal, against the privileges of the universities,—in fine, to the great cost of the people;—this Society seems to blemish the honour of the monastic state; it weakens entirely the painful, pious, and very necessary exercises of the virtues of abstinences, ceremonies, and austerity. It even gives occasion very freely to desert the religious orders; it withdraws from the obedience and submission due to the ordinaries; it unjustly deprives lords, both temporal and ecclesiastical, of their rights, carries trouble into the government of both, causes many subjects of complaint amongst the people, many lawsuits, strifes, contentions, jealousies, and divers schisms and divisions.
“Wherefore, after having examined all these matters, and several others, with much attention and care, this Society appears dangerous as to matters of faith, capable of disturbing the peace of the Church, overturning the monastic order, and more adapted to break down than to build up.”[79]
Here, as in the denunciations of Cano, the faculty seem to have got a glimpse of the future history of the Jesuits, since, at that epoch at least, the accusation of receiving into the Society indiscriminately was not well founded.
The apologists of the Jesuits have said—and we are partly inclined to admit the truth of their assertion—that as the Jesuits were then in possession of the education of youth in many parts of Europe, the university, jealous of its privileges, condemned the order of the Jesuits, not as an infamous and sacrilegious community, but as a dangerous rival. They have also affirmed, that the expulsion of the famous Postel[80] had irritated the Sorbonne, of which he was a doctor. But this we believe to be a gratuitous supposition.
However, the decisions of the parliament, archbishop, and university, were hailed throughout France with a shout of jubilee. The Jesuits were obliged to leave Paris, and as all the parliaments of France had echoed the resolution of that of the capital, they would be nowhere received, and, as a last and momentary refuge, they went and hid themselves in the Abbey of St Germain des Près.
The more warlike and inconsiderate members of the order would have replied to the terrible sentence of the Sorbonne, but Ignatius was too consummate a politician to yield to their imprudent desires. For open wars, the Jesuits had no predilection. When their opponents were too strong for them, their practice was, and still is, to give way, as if in submission; but then they begin a hidden and mysterious war of intrigues and machinations, that in the end they are always the victors. So acted Ignatius in this affair in France. The Jesuits contented themselves with living for some time in obscurity and complete seclusion from all society, and preparing the way for future triumph. Nor had they long to wait. Soon were they called into France to help and cheer that atrocious and cruel hecatomb, that bloody debauch of priests and kings—the Saint Bartholomew.
But what is worthy of more serious reflection, is the fact, that in Rome—the centre of their power and glory—the Jesuits were also publicly accused as a set of heretics, dangerous and immoral persons; and the famous book of The Spiritual Exercises was submitted to the Inquisition. It is indeed true that this little manual got a certificate for orthodoxy, and that the priest who had traduced them before the tribunal, having to struggle alone against the Society, was condemned (we don’t wonder at it) as a calumniator; but how can you, you subtle sons of Ignatius, explain this concurrence; this accumulation of accusations and hostilities? How is it that nations, separated from one another by diversities of interest, custom, opinion—that citizens of different classes, characters, principles, interests—that all men and nations, widely separated in every thing else, united only by a common tie—the Catholic religion—should exactly agree in this one thing—hatred to and abhorrence of the avowed champion of Catholicism? And remember we don’t speak of Protestant countries, or Protestant opponents. All your adversaries were bigoted Catholics. There is but one way to explain this strange coincidence. We fear that from the very beginning, the Jesuits, notwithstanding all their prudence, could not conceal from the eye of the observer those subtle arts, that duplicity of character, that skill in accomplishing dark and mysterious exploits, for which they were in later times opposed, and at length abolished.
What is still more remarkable, is the fact that the greatest part of those persons who were foremost in opposing the Jesuits, knew Loyola, and, if not as intimately as Caraffa and Cano, at least well enough to be able to appreciate him. We shall adduce as the last, though not the least fact, militating against the order—that Caraffa, a man of the most rigid Catholicism, nay, bigotry—who had nothing so near his heart as the furtherance of the Roman religion—the former friend of Loyola, both as cardinal and as Pope, was constantly and firmly adverse to the order. I should like if some of the reverend fathers would explain this almost inexplicable fact.
However, all these oppositions were sooner or later got rid of by Jesuitical craft; and the Society, in 1556, only sixteen years after its commencement, counted as many as twelve provinces, a hundred houses, and upwards of a thousand members, dispersed over the whole known world. Their two most conspicuous and important establishments were the Collegio Romano and the German College. They already were in possession of many chairs, and soon monopolised the right of teaching, which gave them a most overwhelming influence. We shall speak of the colleges, and of their method of study, after it had received from Acquaviva, the fifth General, a farther development, and nearly the same form in which it is at the present day. The Jesuits also derived great importance from their missions, to the consideration of which we shall devote the next chapter. The reason of the immense success of the Jesuits is the fact, that their order was established in direct opposition to the rising Protestantism, and that both the court of Rome, and those princes whose interest it was to maintain the Catholic religion, and oppose that of the Reformed, were very eager to introduce and uphold the Society of Jesuits into their states. Yet even with this preponderant favourable circumstance, the Society would have either succumbed under the many obstacles it encountered in its beginning, or at least would not have progressed so rapidly, had it not been for Ignatius Loyola. This extraordinary man seems to have united in his own person all the qualities indispensable for succeeding in any undertaking;—unbounded ambition—inflexibility of character—unwearied activity, and a thorough and profound knowledge of the human heart. With such qualities, he could hardly fail to succeed in the accomplishment of any project. Almost every writer of Loyola’s life (I do not speak either of the miracle-tellers or of the pamphleteers) has represented him as most sincere, fervidly devout, and pious. On this point, however, we must observe, that all the historians, not excluding even the Protestant, copied from his two first biographers, Maffei and Rybadaneira.
We also beg to be permitted to give the humble opinion which we have formed of him, after having carefully perused what has been said regarding him—and much more, after a dispassionate examination of the facts connected with his life. Without doubt, Ignatius, during his illness, felt disposed to change his dissipated course of life, and, as happens in every sudden reaction, he, from being a profligate freethinking officer, went to the other extreme, and became a rigid and bigoted anchorite. No penances were too severe to expiate his numerous sins, and no devotion was too fervent to atone for his past irreligion. So he thought at the moment, and, we think, conscientiously. But after the first burst of his devotion—after the deep contemplation into which he was plunged had given place to the felt necessity of acting in one way or another, we are led to believe, and have already expressed that belief, that his natural ambition rose, and that all his thoughts were turned upon the surest method of accomplishing some great and uncommon exploit, by which he might render himself famous. As devotion was the principal requisite for success in the path which he had chosen, Ignatius was a fervent devotee, first by calculation, and then by habit—but not the less zealous for all that. Had his whole thoughts been absorbed with that one object—the salvation of his soul—his devotion would have been less ostentatious, and, without wavering between one project and another, he would have been contented with an humble and retired life, or would have spent it in unquestionable works of charity—in ministering to the sick, as he had begun in the Hospital of the Theatines. It cannot be denied, however, that Ignatius, after his conversion, was very humane, compassionate, and charitable, and that his private conduct, in the later part of his life, was moral and unimpeached. He treated his disciples with much kindness, and never denied them what he could grant without inconvenience. On the other hand, he was imperious to the last degree, and could not endure the slightest contradiction. An old Jesuit priest, who had been once guilty of disobedience, was scourged in his own presence. One instance will perhaps serve to depict Loyola more effectively than words can. He had sent Lainez as provincial to Padua. Lainez, who had had an immense success at the Council of Trent, and who was in fact superior to any one then belonging to the Society, at first refused this secondary post, but at last obeyed. Hardly had he, however, entered upon his functions, before Ignatius drained his province of all the best professors, whom he summoned to Rome. The provincial remonstrated. It was the Lainez, Ignatius’ bosom friend—his right hand—the glory of the company—the man who had been chosen to be a cardinal. But Ignatius disregarded all these considerations, and without even entering into any discussion, simply wrote to him, thus: “Reflect on your proceedings; tell me if you are persuaded of having erred, and if so, indicate to me what punishment you are ready to undergo for the expiation of your fault.”[81] This letter pourtrays the man!
We are also assured, that the general was so humble, that you might have seen him carrying wood on his shoulders—lighting the common fire—or going to the well with a pitcher in his hand. We should be inclined to call such humility ostentation, or, if you prefer it, good policy. Ignatius was, above all, anxious to curb the spirit of his disciples. In his eyes, they could not be humble and submissive enough. The Jesuit ought to value himself, individually, as nothing—the Society as everything. Now, which of his disciples would have dared refuse any undertaking, however humble, after he had seen his general engaged in the meanest services?
But while Ignatius affected these acts of humility, he was seriously giving his attention to the state affairs of different nations. He was holding correspondence with John III. of Portugal, the cardinal his son, Albert of Bavaria, Ferdinand of Austria, Philip of Spain, Ercole of Est, and many other princes. He was the spiritual director of Margaret of Austria. He went to Tivoli, purposely to allay the quarrels of two neighbouring towns, and to Naples to make peace between an angry husband and his wife of rather doubtful morals. All these things tend to prove what we have said regarding his devotion, viz. that it was of a rather meddlesome and ambitious character.
But his career was now drawing to an end. These different occupations—the direction of both the spiritual and temporal matters of the order, which was already widely spread—the anxiety caused by the many conflicts in which the Society was engaged—the fear of defeat—the joy arising from success—his unrelenting activity—his uneasiness at seeing the pontifical chair occupied by Caraffa, always adverse to the order—all these things contributed to shorten his days. His constitution, which had been impaired in his youth, and in the cavern of Manreze, now gradually gave way; and although no symptom of his approaching end was yet visible, “no paleness of countenance, not a sign in all his body,”[82] nevertheless he felt the vital principle fading away within him, and that his last hour was rapidly drawing near. He tried the country air, and for this purpose went to a villa lately given by some friends for the use of the Roman college,[83] but he found no relief. His strength was fast failing him; an unconquerable lassitude crept over his whole frame, and his intellect only remained clear and unchanged. He spoke of his illness, nay, of his approaching end, to nobody. He returned to Rome, and threw himself upon a bed. A doctor was sent for by the alarmed fathers, but he bade them be of good cheer, “for there was nothing the matter with the general.” Ignatius smiled; and when the physician was gone, he gave orders to his secretary, Polancus, to proceed to the holy father straightway to recommend the Society to his care, and to obtain a blessing for himself (Ignatius), and indulgences for his sins.[84] Perhaps he made this last attempt to disarm, by his humility, the inflexible Paul IV. (Caraffa), and so render him favourable to the Society. He was mistaken. Paul sent the requested benison, but he did not change his mind toward the Society. However, Polancus, reassured by the doctor, and not seeing any danger himself, disregarded the order, postponing the fulfilment of his mission till next day. Meanwhile, after Ignatius had attended till very late to some affairs concerning the Roman college, he was left alone to rest. But what was the surprise and consternation of the fathers, on entering his room next morning, to find him breathing his last! The noise and confusion caused by such an unexpected event were great. Cordials, doctor, confessor, were immediately sent for; but, before any of them came—before Polancus, who only now ran to the Pope, returned—Loyola had expired. His demise took place at five o’clock on the morning of the 31st of July 1556, in his sixty-fifth year. So ended a man who is extolled by the one party as a saint, execrated by the other as a monster. He was neither. Most assuredly, in the Protestant point of view, and by all those who advocate the cause of freedom of conscience, and of a return to the purity of the primitive religion of Christ, Ignatius ought to be detested above any other individual. To him and to his order belongs the mournful glory of having checked the progress of the Reformation, and of having kept a great part of Europe under the yoke of superstition and tyranny.
And here we are led to mention a fact which we think has hitherto been unnoticed—the indulgence, we should say the partiality, evinced by Protestant writers for these last ten years towards the Jesuits, and especially the founders of the order. The fact must be explained. The Jesuits, from 1830 to the end of ’48, seemed to have lost all public favour, all influence and authority. Persecuted and hooted in France, Switzerland, Russia, hated in their own dominion, Italy, they were considered as a vanquished enemy, deserving rather commiseration than hatred. A reaction ensued in their favour among their most decided opponents. Generous souls rose up to defend these persecuted men, and stretched out a friendly hand to them, thus trodden upon by all. Carried away with such chivalrous sentiments, they have embellished, with the colours of their fervid imaginations and the graces of their copious style, whatever the Jesuit writers have related of their chiefs, and have represented Loyola and his companions as heroes of romance rather than real historical characters. We leave these writers to reflect whether the Jesuits are a vanquished enemy, or whether they are not still redoubtable and menacing foes. But, with deference to such distinguished writers as Macaulay, Taylor, Stephen, and others, we dare to assert that in writing about the Jesuits they were led astray by the above romantic sentiments; and we should moreover warn them that their words are quoted by the Jesuit writers, Crétineau, Pellico, &c., as irrefragable testimony of the sanctity of their members.
CHAPTER VII.
1541-1774.
MISSIONS.
Before we proceed any further, we feel obliged to say a few words regarding the missions which were undertaken by the Jesuits soon after the establishment of their order. To write a complete history would be almost interminable. To analyse Orlandini, Sacchini, Bartoli, Jouvency, the Litteræ Annuæ, and Les Lettres Edifiantes, not to speak of a hundred others, would take up a great many volumes.[85] We think we may fill our pages with more instructive matter.
We shall now confine ourselves to a short chapter on the missions of India. We shall next speak of those of America, and finally, in what condition the missions are at the present day. In speaking of the missions of India, we fear we shall incur the reproach we have addressed to others, because we frankly confess that we are partial to Francis Xavier; but our Protestant readers, to be impartial, must not judge those missions by too rigid a standard, or by too constant a reference to the doctrinal errors of those who undertook them, furthermore, by the consideration of what those missions subsequently became. All human institutions emanating from imperfect beginnings, are necessarily imperfect, and the further they recede from their origin, the more they lose of their primitive character, and the less are they calculated to answer the end for which they were established. The idle and immoral monk—this gangrene of Catholic countries—was at one time the most industrious of men; and Europe owes much to the monastic orders, not only for the preservation of the greatest part of the works of genius of our forefathers, but also for the tillage of its barren wastes. If the monks and priests now bring disorder, confusion, and often civil war into the countries where they are sent under pretence of missions, such was not the case at the discovery of the Western World, and at the conquest of India by the Portuguese. The first zealous and devoted missionaries attempted to civilise and Christianise savage and barbarous populations. And if you object that in their missions they preached the Popish creed, and destroyed one idolatry by introducing another, at least you ought to give them credit for their good intentions. Nor are you to suppose that they undertook the task of civilising these nations in order to acquire dominion over them. No. Such, indeed, has been the case in later times, but in the beginning they were actuated by worthier and more disinterested motives. In going thither they had before their eyes martyrdom rather than worldly establishments. They carried with them no theological books. Having no antagonist to dispute with, they had left behind the acrimony and hatred inherent in almost all theological controversies. They brought with them the essence of the Christian religion—the most consoling and sublime part of it—gratitude to the Creator, with charity and love to their fellow-creatures. Undoubtedly, when we speak of their missions, we must not blindly believe all that the Jesuitical historians, who are often the only chroniclers of these events, relate to us. We shall not give them credit for the prodigies and miracles said to be performed by their missionaries, even though that missionary be Xavier himself. We shall not believe that he raised from the tomb another Lazarus, or that at his bidding the salt waves of the ocean were changed into sweet and palatable water. Yet there are irrefragable proofs of the good done by their exertions, and of their success in introducing Christianity, or at least civilisation, into India and America. The man who first engaged in that glorious work was Francis Xavier—Xavier, whom, if Rome had not dishonoured the name by conferring it upon assassins and hypocrites, we would gladly call a saint.
Francis Xavier
Hinchliff.
He was the offspring of an ancient and illustrious Spanish family, and was born in 1506, at his father’s castle in the Pyrenees. He was about the middle size, had a lofty forehead, large, blue, soft eyes, with an exquisitely fine complexion, and with the manners and demeanour of a prince. He was gay, satirical, of an ardent spirit, and, above all, ambitious of literary renown. All his faculties, all his thoughts, were directed to this noble pursuit, and so efficiently, that at the age of twenty-two he was elected a professor of philosophy in the capital of France. There he lived on terms of intimacy with Peter Lefevre, a young Savoyard, of very humble extraction, of a modest and simple character, but of uncommon intelligence and industry. It was with Lefevre that Xavier first met Ignatius. Francis was shocked at his appearance, his affected humility, his loathsome dress; and when he spake of spiritual exercises, Xavier looked at his own fair, white arms, shuddered at the idea of lacerating them with the scourge—this principal ingredient of the spiritual exercises—and laughed outright in his face. But Ignatius, having cast his eyes upon such a noble being, was not to be discouraged by a first or second repulse in his endeavours to become intimate with him. He spared no exertions to ingratiate himself with Xavier; and at last, as Bartoli says, “he resolved to gain him over by firing his ambition, just as Judith did with feigned love to Holofernes, that she might triumph over him at the last.”[86] As we have already stated, Xavier was ambitious, and eager for literary renown. Ignatius made himself the eulogist of his countryman. He gathered around his chair a benevolent and an attentive audience, and gratified the young professor in his most ardent wishes. The generous heart of Xavier was touched by this act of kindness, and he began to look upon this loathsome man with other eyes. Ignatius redoubled his efforts. The improvident Xavier was often surrounded with pecuniary difficulties. Ignatius went begging, to replenish his purse. It was not wonderful that Xavier, having fallen under the influence of such a persevering assailant, who was admonitor at once and friend—who flattered and exhorted, rebuked and assisted, with such matchless tact—should gradually have yielded to the fascination. He went through the Spiritual Exercises, and from that moment became a mere tool in the hands of Loyola. This was the first missionary sent to India.
The order had not yet been approved by the Pope, when John III. of Portugal, by means of his ambassador D. Pedro de Mascaregnas, asked of him six missionaries to be sent to the East Indies. The Pope, who was undecided whether he should consent to the establishment of this new order or not, thought this a plausible pretext to get rid of them altogether, and asked Loyola for six of his companions. But Ignatius was not the man to consent to the suicide of the intended Society, and offered the Pope only two members for the undertaking. The choice fell upon Rodriguez and Bobadilla. The first set out immediately, but Bobadilla falling ill, Ignatius called Xavier, and said to him, “Xavier, I had named Bobadilla for India, but Heaven this day names you, and I announce it to you in the name of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Receive the appointment which his Holiness lays upon you by my mouth, just as if Jesus Christ presented it himself. Go, brother, whither the voice of God calls you, and inflame all with the divine fire within you—Id y accendedlo todo y embrasadlo en fuego divino.” Ignatius often used these words, and in his mouth they were a talisman which fanned the flame of enthusiasm. It is impossible to describe the exultation of Xavier at the thought of the boundless regions which would open before him there, to exercise his unbounded charity and love of mankind. Xavier went to receive the Pope’s blessing, and the very next morning he left Rome—alone—penniless—clothed in a ragged cloak, but with a light heart and joyful countenance. He crossed the Pyrenees without even visiting his father’s castle, and hastened to Lisbon, where he joined his companion Rodriguez. Portugal at this epoch was experiencing the influence of the wealth brought from the recently conquered provinces of India. Eagerness for pleasure, effeminacy of manners, relaxation from every duty, had completely changed the aspect of the nation. These two Jesuits, by exhortation and preaching, endeavoured to stem the onward march of that fast spreading corruption. Their panegyrists assure us that they succeeded in their efforts, but the subsequent history of Portugal gives them the lie. To no man is given the power to stop the propensities or the vices of a nation, when they are in the ascendancy. Xavier may perhaps have made the Portuguese nobility for a moment ashamed of their luxurious and profligate life; but if so, a more complete abandonment to a life of idleness and pleasure succeeded a fugitive shame.
However, the King of Portugal, changing his mind, wished to retain in the capital the two Jesuits whom he had intended for India, but he could only prevail on Rodriguez to remain. Xavier was impatient to be sent on his mission. At length, on the 7th of April 1541, the fleet, having on board a thousand men to reinforce the garrison of Goa, left the Tagus, and spread her sails to the wind. It was under the command of Don Alphonso of Sousa, the vice-king of India. As the fleet sailed on, the eyes of the soldiers were bedimmed with tears; even the bravest of the host could not see without emotion and dismay the shores of their native land receding from their view. Xavier alone was serene, and his countenance beamed with delight. On sailed the fleet, and after five long and weary months, they reached the coast of Mozambique. Under a burning African sun, they found little relief from the fatigues of their tedious voyage, and an epidemic fever spread consternation and death among these European adventurers. Xavier was indefatigable among them, nursing the sick, consoling the dying, and cheering all with his joyful and placid countenance.
After six months’ stay, they left this inhospitable land, and arrived at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese dominions in India, thirteen months after their departure from Lisbon.
There Xavier was horror-struck at the indescribable degradation in which he found, not the Indian idolaters, but the Portuguese Catholics, their own priests foremost in the path of vice. The contempt that these proud conquerors had for a feeble and despised race, the charm of the East, the wealth they found, the climate inspiring voluptuousness—all combined to banish from their breasts every sentiment of justice, shame, and honesty. The history of their debauches and immoralities is really revolting. Thirst for gold and voluptuousness were their two predominant passions; and the gold, acquired by infamous and cruel means, was dissipated in revolting and degrading deeds. Bartoli gives us a fearful picture of the demoralised condition of the Portuguese in India.[87] But, without trusting implicitly to all this historian represents regarding their corruptions and licentiousness, we know by other sources that the corruption was extreme, and that it was their dissolute life that induced the Indians who had been converted to our religion, feeling ashamed of the name of Christian, to return to their idols. Xavier thought it would be useless to attempt converting the idolater before he had reformed the morals of the Christian; but he considered it neither prudent nor useful to attack so great an evil directly and openly. He rightly judged that the children would be most easily worked upon, and he resolved to reach this by exciting their love of novelties and unwonted sights. He arms himself with a hand-bell, which he swings with a powerful hand, throws away his hat, and calls in a loud and impressive tone on the fathers to send their children to be catechised. The novelty of the fact, the noble and dignified countenance of a man dressed in rags, could not fail to excite curiosity at least. Men, women, and children rush out to see this strange man, who draws along with him a crowd to the church, and there, with passionate and impressive eloquence, endeavours to inspire them with shame for their conduct, and lectures to them on the most essential rules of morality. Then he begins to teach the children the rudiments of the Christian religion, and these innocent creatures love to listen to a man who shews himself the kindest and gentlest companion, joyfully mixing in all their pastimes. A number of children soon became his constant auditors, and to say he did not work any good among them would be an untruth. Nor did he confine his apostolic ministry to the instruction of children. He was, on the contrary, indefatigable in his exertions to be of use to every one. He took up his abode in the hospital, visited the prisoner, assisted the dying. With a flexibility characteristic of the system, and often employed for the worst ends, he mixed with all classes, and spoke and acted in the most suitable manner to please them all. Often might you have seen him at the same table with the gamester—often did he by his gay humour rejoice the banquet table—often might he have been seen in the haunts of debauchees; and in all those places exquisite good taste, combined with jest or bitter sarcasm, à-propos to time and place, rendered the vice either ridiculous or loathsome. Many, to enjoy Xavier’s friendship, renounced their profligate habits, and fell back to the paths of virtue. But it is a gratuitous assertion, and contradicted by Xavier himself, that the aspect of the town was changed by his predications and catechisings. We repeat it again—no man has the power to work such miracles. After Xavier had spent twelve months in Goa, he heard that the pearl fishermen on the coast of Malabar were poor and oppressed. Thither Xavier went without delay. He took with him two Malabarese whom he had converted, as his interpreters. But finding this mode of communication slow and ineffectual, he committed to memory the creed, the decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer in the Malabar language, and repeated them to the natives with passionate and eloquent eagerness. By degrees he began to be able to communicate with them; and here, as elsewhere, Xavier not only acted the indefatigable apostle, but also shewed himself the best friend, the kindest consoler of these poor people, and shared in their fatigues and privations. Many were the favours which he obtained for them from the vice-king, and these grateful fishermen willingly embraced the religion preached by their benefactor. He lived among them for thirteen months, and we are assured that at his departure he had planted no less than forty-five churches on the coast. From Cape Comorin he passed to Travancore, thence to Meliapore, to the Moluccas, to Malacca; and, in short, he visited a great part of India, always vigilant, zealous, and indefatigable in his endeavours to make these idolaters partake of the benefits of the Christian religion.
In 1547 he returned to Goa. Ignatius had sent him in the year 1545 three Jesuits. Xavier had directed two of them to go to Cape Comorin, and named the third, Lancillotti, Professor of the College of Saint Foi. Soon after, nine other Jesuits were sent to assist him. Xavier assigned a place and an occupation to each of them, and he himself returned to Malacca. Here he learned something about Japan. He was informed that the Japanese were moral, industrious, and very eager to acquire knowledge of every kind. Xavier at once determined that neither the distance nor the difficulties of the way should deter him from visiting Japan. Listening to no remonstrance which would have dissuaded him from this undertaking, he named the Jesuit, Paul of Camarino, Superior in his place, and with two companions set out for Japan.
Before leaving Malacca he wrote to Ignatius thus:—“I want words to express to you with what joy I undertake this long voyage, full of the greatest dangers. Although these dangers are greater than all I have yet encountered, I am far from giving up my undertaking, our Lord telling me internally that the cross once planted here will yield an abundant harvest.”
We shall not relate the various extraordinary incidents or miracles which we are told he performed whilst on the way, and we shall conduct him at once to that cluster of islands, with mountains barren of fruits and grain, but rich in mines of all sorts, which we call Japan, where he arrived in the summer of 1549. The Japanese of those days were partly atheists, partly idolaters. Xavier endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the Bonzes, those crafty priests of Japan. He succeeded in converting some of them, and by their influence a great many more of the idolaters, and prepared the ground which should afterwards have produced an abundant harvest, if this father’s successors had possessed a little more of his uprightness and charity.
But Xavier’s vivid imagination and restless activity made him soon desert Japan for a more ample and splendid theatre. He formed the project of penetrating into the Celestial Empire. Leaving his two companions in Japan, he returned to Goa to settle the affairs of the Society, which had increased in numbers, influence, and authority; and this duty performed, he returned to Malacca, to embark from thence for China.
Better to succeed in his undertaking, he had obtained for a Portuguese merchant, Pereyra, the title of ambassador to the emperor. Pereyra, according to custom, had purchased many presents, in order to obtain a more cordial reception for himself and his friend Xavier. The vessel in which the two friends were to take a passage was on the point of sailing, when Don Alvarez, Captain-General of Malacca, opposed their departure, and, effectually to prevent it, laid an embargo on the Saint Croix, the only vessel which was bent thither. Xavier remonstrated in vain. The captain persisted in opposing the embassy of Pereyra. Xavier shewed him the commission of John III., which conferred upon him great and almost unlimited power, and also his commission as the Pope’s legate. Alvarez still refused to consent to their departure, and Xavier fulminated against him the anathemas, but without any effect.
Pereyra was thus obliged to remain, and Xavier, after having lost much time, took a passage in this same vessel, which was now ordered for the island of Sancian. There they at length landed, to the inexpressible joy of Xavier, who saw himself within a few leagues of this promised land of his own. But, alas! his hopes were frustrated. It was ordained that his praiseworthy ambition should not be gratified, and that he should not see the vast empire he aspired to conquer to Christianity, but at a distance. Others might attempt this difficult mission; Xavier, a victim to fatigue and fever, lay powerless on the inhospitable shore of Sancian. In a very few days his illness made fearful progress, and on the 2d of December 1552, Xavier, in the forty-sixth year of his age, breathed his last. Thus ended the adventurous life of this noble and extraordinary man, which we have merely sketched.
We pass over the absurd and miraculous facts which the panegyrists of the saint have coupled with his name. We think they have injudiciously smothered, in ridiculous and supernatural legends, the many noble exploits and the great qualities of Xavier. In respect for his memory, we shall therefore make no mention of his miracles. Besides, Xavier’s miracles are as nearly as possible the same as those performed by other saints. We really believe that the biographers of any saint might do like that gentleman who, after having written a long letter without either comma, colon, period, or point of interrogation, put down a great quantity of these at the close of the epistle, and enjoined his correspondent to insert them in their requisite places. Our biographers should, in like manner, place at the end of their panegyrics some hundreds of miracles performed on the sick, or the blind, or those possessed with devils, and let the judicious reader insert them in those parts of the narrative they may think proper.[88]
No one, however, will deny to Xavier uprightness of purpose, sincerity of conviction, mildness and intrepidity of character, self-denial, and a fervid zeal for the propagation of the Christian religion. But while we gladly give him praise for his excellent qualities, we cannot overlook some of his defects. Thus, for example, we cannot approve of his continual wandering, and we think, that in undertaking his voyages, he was actuated, perhaps, as much by the love of novelty as by the desire of propagating Christianity. His way of making Christians was also in the highest degree inconsiderate and hasty; for, most assuredly, the 10,000 idolaters whom he christened in a single month, had no more of the Christian than the baptism.
But we must impute to him a still greater fault, and one which seems to be inherent in the character of the Romish priests—the absolute authority which they claim over all men, and their unscrupulous proceedings against any one who is bold enough to resist their orders—nay, their very wishes. Observe. Don Alphonso de Sonza, vice-king of India, although an exemplary Roman Catholic, because he does not yield to all Xavier’s wishes, the Jesuit writes to the king and procures his recall! Alvarez opposes the embassy of Pereyra, which Xavier had contemplated, and for this the Jesuit priest excommunicates him! These two acts are characteristic of the Romish priests, and we quote them to shew that even the mildest does not hesitate at anything, in order to carry his point.
However, in the time of Xavier, and for some fifty years afterwards, the missions, if they were far from what they ought to have been, as instrumental for propagating the gospel, were nevertheless conducted in a manner not altogether unpraiseworthy. The missionaries were laborious, energetic, indefatigable. They submitted to every kind of privation, persecution, even death itself, with a courageous and sometimes joyful and willing heart. Had they simply preached the gospel, and not mingled with it the diffusion of the superstitious practices of the Church of Rome, no praise would be adequate to their deserts. But, alas! the noble qualities which they brought to work were soon perverted, and directed to interested and impure motives, so that we fear the good which they did at first can hardly compensate for the evil which they at length produced.
The man who after Xavier had the greatest success in India, but who also perverted the character of the mission, and introduced the most abominable idolatry, was Father Francis Nobili. He arrived at Madura in 1606, and was surprised that Christianity had made so little progress in so long a time, which he attributed to the strong aversion which the Indian had for the European, and to the fact, that the Jesuits, having addressed themselves more especially to the Pariahs, had caused Christ to be considered as the Pariahs’ God.[89] He therefore resolved to play the part of a Hindoo and a Brahmin. After having learned with wonderful facility their rites, their manners, and their language,[90] he gave himself out as a Saniassi, a Brahmin of the fourth and most perfect class; and, with imperturbable impudence, he asserted that he had come to restore to them the fourth road to truth, which was supposed to have been lost many thousands of years before. He submitted to their penances and observances, which were very painful; abstained from everything that had life, such as fish, flesh, eggs;[91] respected their prejudices, and, above all, the maintenance of the distinction of classes. It was forbidden the catechumen Pariah to enter the same church with the Sudra or Brahmin converts. All this was the beginning of those heathen ceremonies and superstitions with which the Christian religion was contaminated.
Great care was taken by these Roman Saniassi that they might not be taken for Feringees,[92] and still greater care not to hurt the prejudices of the Hindoos. We might multiply quotations ad infinitum to prove our assertions, but we shall content ourselves with two. “Our whole attention,” writes Father de Bourges, “is taken up in our endeavour to conceal from the people that we are what they call Feringees; the slightest suspicion of this would prove an insurmountable obstacle to our success.”[93] And Father Mauduit writes,—“The catechist of a low caste can never be employed to teach Hindoos of a caste more elevated. The Brahmins and the Sudras, who form the principal and most numerous castes, have a far greater contempt for the Pariahs, who are beneath them, than princes in Europe can feel for the scum of the people. They would be dishonoured in their own country, and deprived of the privileges of their caste, if they ever listened to the instructions of one whom they look upon as infamous. We must, therefore, have Pariah Catechists for the Pariahs, and Brahminical catechists for the Brahmins, which causes us a great deal of difficulty.” “Some time ago, a catechist from the Madura mission begged me to go to Pouleour, there to baptize some Pariah catechumens, and to confess certain neophytes of that caste. The fear that the Brahmins and Sudras might come to learn the step I had taken, and thence look upon me as infamous and unworthy ever of holding any intercourse with them, hindered me from going! The words of the holy apostle Paul, which I had read that morning at mass, determined me to take this resolution,—‘Giving no offence to any one, that your ministry might not be blamed’ (2 Cor. vi. 3). I therefore made these poor people go to a retired place, about three leagues from here, where I myself joined them during the night, and with the most careful precautions, and there I baptized nine!”[94]
We appeal to every impartial man, if these were apostles and teachers of the gospel. But it seems by all their proceedings, that they considered the conversion of these idolaters to consist in the mere fact of their being baptized. To administer baptism to a man volens nolens, was the Jesuits’ utmost ambition, and this ambition they satisfied per fas et nefas. Let them relate the facts themselves:—
“When these children,” says Father de Bourges, “are in danger of death, our practice is to baptize them without asking the permission of their parents, which would certainly be refused. The catechists and the private Christians are well acquainted with the formula of baptism, and they confer it on these dying children, under the pretext of giving them medicines.”[95]
Women were also found very useful in the case of newly born infants, when none other could obtain access. Father Bouchet mentions one woman in particular, “whose knowledge of the pulse and of the symptoms of approaching death was so unerring, that of more than ten thousand children whom she had herself baptized, not more than two escaped death.”[96] In like manner, during a famine in the Carnatic, about A.D. 1737, Father Trembloy writes, that according to the report of the catechists and missionaries, the number of deserted and dying children baptized during the two years of death, amounted to upwards of twelve thousand. He adds, that, as every convert knew the formula of baptism, it was rare, in any place where there were neophytes, for a single heathen child to die unbaptized.[97]
The logical consequence of this mode of making Christians was, that at the first opportunity these converts repudiated the name of Christian with as much facility as they assumed it. This was seen on many occasions, and more particularly, perhaps, in 1784:—
“When Tippoo ordered all the native Christians in Mysore to be seized, and gathered together in Seringapatam, that he might convert them to Mahometanism, amidst that vast multitude, amounting to more than 60,000 souls,” says the Abbé Dubois, “not one—not a single individual among so many thousands—had courage to confess his faith under this trying circumstance, and become a martyr to his religion. The whole apostatised en masse, and without resistance or protestation.”[98]
But even when these converts retained the name of Christian, we are much at a loss to distinguish them from the pagans, either in their manner of worship, or in their moral conduct. And what is still more disheartening, is to see that the Jesuits, who nourished them in those idolatrous and diabolical superstitions make light of them—nay, even seem to approve of them.
Listen to M. Crétineau:—
“The Malabar rites consist in omitting some ceremonies in the administration of baptism, respecting, however, the essence of the sacrament; in disguising the name of the Cross, and of the objects of the Catholic religion, under a more common and vernacular appellation; to give them heathen names; to marry children before the age of puberty, seven years; to allow the women to wear the Taly (bijou),[99] which they receive the day of their nuptials, and upon which is engraved an idol, the Greek god Priapus; to avoid assisting the Pariahs in their illness, and to refuse them certain spiritual succours—the sacraments of confession and communion.”[100] He might have added that these rites consisted also in the use of burned cows’ dung applied to the body,[101] in a joyous feast, at an occasion which decency forbids us to name, in dancing and playing instruments of different kinds, in idol processions, in ablutions according to the Brahminical rites, and in sundry other pagan superstitions. Now, listen to what Crétineau and the Jesuits think about these abominable acts of idolatry:—
“The Jesuits of Madura, Mysore, and the Carnatic found themselves surrounded by so many superstitious practices, that they thought best to tolerate those who in their eyes did not cause any prejudice to the Christian religion.”[102] Now, these practices which in their eyes “did not cause any prejudice to the Christian religion,” were exactly those which we have named; which the Jesuits pertinaciously maintained even after they were condemned by three successive Popes, and which they still considered “innocent ones.” Really, we don’t know whether we ought most to execrate their wickedness, or to lament their blindness. We could almost regret that they do not deny these facts. A lie more or less would not matter much in the sum total, and would, at least, shew that they are still alive to some sense of shame. Mycio, seeing Eschinus blush at his remonstrances, looks complacently aside, and says, “Erubuit, salva res est!” Terentius was right. Eschinus was capable of feeling shame, and amended; but the Jesuits blush not. Either they have lost all shame, and you would not find—
“Chi di mal far si vergogni”—
“any one blush at doing wrong,” or they consider as innocent the most abominable profanation of our holy religion. In both cases, I fear, we must renounce all idea of seeing them change till their impenitent heads be visited by the wrath of God. May their conversion avert it!
Complaints of these scandalous profanations were sent to Rome, even in the lifetime of Nobili. Paul V. delegated the Archbishop of Goa to inquire into the nature of these practices, which the prelate utterly condemned. The Jesuits stirred themselves up in their own defence, and represented to Gregory XIII., Paul’s successor, that those rites were merely civic ceremonies, and not at all religious ones. Gregory, either little scrupulous or persuaded by their misrepresentations, by a brief, dated 1623, approved conditionally of some of those practices, such as absolution, painting with sandal-wood, and some others, which, as we said, were represented by the Jesuits to be merely civic ceremonies. This success confirmed the Jesuits in pursuing the same line of policy; and as they were also at that time at war with other monks to acquire, each for his order, paramount influence over the Indians, they thought that nothing could be more efficient to accomplish their ends than to flatter the prejudices of their neophytes, to be liberal in their concessions, and, in fact, to tolerate almost all the pagan usages. They acted in India, in all respects, as they did in Europe, where, to be the confessors of kings and of the powerful, they invented the doctrines of probableism, of mental reservation, and others of a character as immoral, which we shall examine by and by. For eighty years, therefore, they went from one abomination to another, till the scandal became so great and so universal, that the Roman See was again moved to interfere. Accordingly, Clement XI. delegated Charles Maillard de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, with unlimited authority to investigate into and settle the matter. The patriarch is described by Clement XI. as “a man whose well-known integrity, prudence, charity, learning, piety, and zeal for the Catholic religion made him worthy of the highest trust;” and, according to Crétineau, “a man who possessed the highest virtues and best intentions, which, however, should have been directed by a less intemperate zeal.”[103]
He landed at Pondicherry on November 6, 1703, and immediately commenced a thorough and minute investigation of the whole affair. After eight months, he, on June 23, 1704, published the famous decree condemning and prohibiting all these idolatrous practices; although the noble prelate, a good Roman Catholic as he was, is not altogether free from superstition, as may be seen in the decree itself. Here are some extracts from it:—
“Charles Thomas Maillard de Tournon, by the grace of God ... Legate a latere, &c.... having maturely examined all things, ... having heard the above mentioned fathers (the Jesuits), having by public prayers implored divine aid; we, ... in our capacity of Legate a latere, have enacted the present decree:—
“And to begin by the administration of the sacrament. We expressly forbid that, in administering baptism, any of the Christian rites are to be omitted.... We command, moreover, that a name of the Roman martyrology be given to the catechumen, and not an idolatrous one.... We order that no one, under any pretext whatever, shall change the signification of the names of the cross, of the saints, or of any other sacred thing....
“Further, as it is the custom of this country that children, six or seven years old, and sometimes even younger, contract, with the consent of their parents, an indissoluble marriage, by the hanging of the Taly, or golden nuptial emblem, on the neck of the bride, we command the missionaries never to permit such invalid marriages among Christians.
“And since, according to the best informed adherents of that impious superstition, the Taly bears the image, though unshapely, of Pullear, or Pillear, the idol supposed to preside over nuptial ceremonies; and since it is a disgrace for Christian women to wear such an image round their necks, as a mark that they are married, we henceforth strictly prohibit them from daring to have the Taly with this image suspended from their necks. But, lest wives should seem not to be married, they may use another Taly, with the image of the holy cross, or of our Lord Jesus Christ, or of the most blessed Virgin, marked on it!
“The nuptial ceremonies also, according to the custom of the country, are so many, and defiled by so much superstition, that no safer remedy could be devised than to interdict them altogether; for they overflow with the pollutions of heathenism, and it would be extremely difficult to expurge them from that which is superstitious....
“In like manner, we cannot suffer that these offices of charity which Gentile physicians, even of a noble race or caste, do not consider unworthy (for the health of the body) to be given to those poor people, the Pariahs, although in the most abject and lowest condition, be denied, for the sake of souls, by spiritual physicians. Wherefore, we strictly enjoin the missionaries, as far as they can, to see that no opportunity for confession be awanting to any sick Christian, although he be a Pariah, or even of a more despised race, if there were. And lest they should be compelled to consult for their eternal welfare, when the disease is increasing, and their temporal life is in evident danger, we charge the missionaries not to wait till those in this weak condition are brought to church, but, as far as they are able, to seek for them at home, to visit them, and to comfort them with pious discourses and prayers, and with sacramental bread; and, in short, to administer extreme unction to them, if they are about to die, without making any distinction in persons or sexes, expressly condemning every practice contrary to the duty of Christian piety....
“We have learned with the greatest sorrow, also, that Christians who can beat the drum, or play on a flute, or other musical instruments, are invited to perform during the festivals and sacrifices in honour of idols, and sometimes even compelled to attend, on account of some species of obligation supposed to be contracted towards the public by the exercise of such a profession, and that it is by no means easy for the missionaries to turn them from this detestable abuse; wherefore, considering how heavy an account we should have to render to God did we not strive, with all our power, to recall such Christians as these from the honouring and worshipping of devils, we forbid them,” &c.
“The missionaries also shall be held bound, not only to acquaint them with the aforesaid prohibition, but also to insist on its entire execution, and to expel from the Church all who disobey, until they repent from the heart, and by public marks of penitence expiate the scandal they have caused.”
In like manner, the legate expressly prohibits the heathen ablutions and superstitious bathings, at set times, and with certain ceremonies, to all, and more especially to the preachers of the gospel, whatever pretence they allege, were it even to pass themselves off as Saniassi, who were distinguished by their manifold and multiplied washings—‘ut existementur Sanias seu Brachmanes, præ ceteris dediti hujusmodi ablutionibus.’
“We, in like manner, prohibit that the ashes of cow-dung, a false and impious heathen penance instituted by Rudren, should be blessed and applied to the foreheads of those who have received the sacred unction of Chrism; we also proscribe all the signs of a red and white colour, of which the Indians are very superstitious, from being used for painting their face, breast, and other parts of the body. We command that the sacred practice of the Church, and the pious usage of blessing the ashes, and of putting them upon the head of the faithful, with the sign of the cross, in order to recall their own unworthiness, be religiously observed, at the time and after the manner prescribed by the Church, on Ash-Wednesday, and at no other time.
“And, lest from those things which have been expressly prohibited in this decree, any one may infer or believe that we tacitly approve of or permit other usages which were wont to be practised in these missions, we absolutely reject this false interpretation, and we explicitly declare the contrary to be our intention. We will, also, for just causes known to us, that the present decree should have full force, and should be considered as published, after it has been delivered up by our Chancellor to Father Guy Tachard, Vice-provincial of the French Fathers of the Society of Jesus in India; and we command him, by virtue of holy obedience, to transmit four similar copies to the Father-provincial of the province of Malabar, to the Superiors of the Mission at Madura and Mysore, and of the Carnatic, who after two months, and all the other missionaries after three months, from the day in which this decree shall be notified to Father Tachard, shall be bound to consider it as having been made public, and notified to every one.
“Given at Pondicherry, this day, 23d June 1704.”
Nothing can more effectually prove the culpability of the Jesuits, and their sacrilegious crime, in encouraging such abominable idolatry, than this decree, emanating from so high a Roman Catholic authority, and from a man who reproaches himself for being too lenient towards the fathers. This document is a terrible and overwhelming proof against the order’s orthodoxy, and M. Crétineau himself can find no fault with it. His only complaint is, that the different historians who have quoted the prelate’s decree, have omitted to speak of the preamble, in which the patriarch declares that he had been assisted in the investigation by two of the Jesuits, from which fact he (M. Crétineau) seems anxious that we should infer that the Jesuits themselves have condemned these practices. This, besides being contradictory to what M. Crétineau has just said, is by no means true in the sense in which he wishes us to receive it. According to Father Norbert’s version,[104] it seems that the patriarch arrived at the truth of the whole matter by making use of a little Jesuitical cunning. He called two of the fathers to a private conference, received them with great kindness and urbanity, praised their zeal, pitied them in their difficult position, and so overcame them, that they frankly confessed every thing to him. Now, their confession was written down by two secretaries, who were concealed in a closet for the purpose. The superior, to whom the Jesuits related what had taken place, was indignant and alarmed at their wonderful ingenuousness, and sent them back to the prelate to retract what they had said.[105] But it was too late. The legate, to give more weight to the decree, begins somewhat maliciously by saying, that he had been helped in his investigation by Fathers Venant Bouchet and Charles Bartolde, “learned and zealous men, who had resided long in the country, were perfectly acquainted with its manners, language, and religion, and that from their lips he had got a right understanding regarding the real state of matters, which rendered the vine and branches feeble and barren, from adhering, as they did, rather to the vanities of the heathen than to the real vine, Christ Jesus.”
What makes us believe in the veracity of Father Norbert in this case is, that the Jesuits never submitted to the decree, that they still continued to persist in their old practices, and that neither Father Bouchet nor Bartolde was punished or dismissed, one or other of which would most certainly have taken place had they deliberately and openly denounced these diabolical practices. On the contrary, Father Bouchet was one of the two Jesuits who were sent to Rome to get the decree abrogated.
The Jesuits, however, did their utmost to parry the blow. Faithful to an essential rule of Jesuitical cunning, they at first feigned to submit, only entreating the patriarch to suspend for a time the censures attached to the non-execution of the decree, which the good prelate granted for three years, hoping that they would obey, and abolish these abominations gradually. But they were far from intending to do such a thing. On the contrary, they, as we have already said, immediately despatched two Jesuits to Rome, for the purpose of getting the patriarch’s decree abrogated by the Holy See. Father Tachard, the vice-provincial of the India missions, thought that it would perhaps make a great impression in Rome if, to the opinion of the legate De Tournon they could oppose the opinion, not only of all the Jesuits residing in India, but also of the other priests along the Malabar coast. With this end in view, he sent many emissaries round with a sort of circular containing a number of questions, to which he solicited answers, and these, as might be imagined, were all found to be according to his wishes. This strange circular is to be found in the eighth and tenth pages of the third volume of the Mémoires Historiques. Did not subsequent facts and the whole conduct of the Jesuits render it credible, we should have hesitated to insert it as an historical truth, so strange does the document appear to us. Here it is:—
“I. Is the frequent use of ashes (burnt cow’s dung) necessary for the Christians of these missions? They answered in the affirmative.
“II. As the Pariahs are looked upon in a civil light as so despicable that it is almost impossible to describe how far the prejudice is carried against them, ought they to assemble in the same place, or in the same church, with other Christians of a higher caste? They answered in the negative.
“III. Are the missionaries obliged to enter into the houses of the Pariahs to give them spiritual succour, while there are other means of arriving at the same end, as is remarked elsewhere? They answered in the negative.
“IV. Ought we, in the said missions, to employ spittle in conferring the sacrament of baptism? They answered in the negative.
“V. Ought we to forbid the Christians to celebrate those brilliant and joyous fêtes which are given by parents when their young daughters ‘ont pour la première fois la maladie des mois?’ They answered in the negative.
“VI. Ought we to forbid the custom observed at marriages of breaking the cocoa-nut? They answered in the negative.
“VII. Ought the wives of the Christians to be obliged to change their Taly or nuptial cord? They answered in the negative.”
And he, Father Tachard, was not content with the mere signature; he wanted, also, a solemn oath—
“I, John Venant Bouchet, priest of the Society of Jesus, and Superior of the Carnatic Mission, do testify and swear, on my faith as priest, that the observance of the rites, as set forth in the preceding answers, is of the greatest necessity to these missions, as well for their preservation as for the conversion of the heathen. Further, it appears to me, that the introduction of any other usage contrary to these, WOULD BE ATTENDED WITH EVIDENT DANGER TO THE SALVATION OF THE SOULS OF THE NEOPHYTES. Thus I answer the reverend father superior general, who orders me to send him my opinion as to these rites, and to confirm it by an oath, for assurance and faith of which I here sign my name. Signed, Nov. 3, 1704, in the Mission of the Carnatic. Jean Venant Bouchet.”
Fathers Peter Mauduit, Philip de la Fontaine, Peter de la Lane, and Gilbert le Petit took the same oath, and attested it by their signatures, and after like fashion swore all the Portuguese Jesuits in Madura and Mysore.
Whilst two Jesuits were dispatched to Rome with this document, F. Tachard set another battery at work. The Bishops of Goa and of St Thomas were creatures of the Jesuits, and altogether devoted to their interest. At the instigation of the fathers, they, respectively, published an ordinance, by which, on their own authority, they annulled the decree of the legate, under the specious pretext that they were not satisfied that this prelate’s power and authority were sufficient to enact it. The Bishop of Goa, to whom the Pope had sent De Tournon as his representative, to whom he had granted full and unlimited power, went still further, and had the impudence to write to the Pope, telling him that he, the bishop, had annulled the decree of the patriarch, not knowing that he had power to publish it.
The Pope was highly incensed, both against the bishops and Jesuits, and on the 4th January 1707 he fulminated a brief against the bishop’s declaration regarding De Tournon’s decree, giving his full sanction to the legate’s decision in all its parts. At the same time he wrote a terrible letter of admonition to the Bishop of Goa, reproaching him for his impudence, and threatening to depose him.
One would now, perhaps, imagine that the Jesuits are going to acquiesce in these ordinances, which, in fact, are merely directed to abolish Pagan superstition, too abominable even in the eyes of a Popish prelate. Doubtless, these champions of Rome, these devout servants of the Holy See, to which they are bound by a special vow, are going to yield implicit obedience to the supreme head of their Church. Far from it. On the contrary, the Jesuits added perjury to disobedience, and uttered falsehoods so bold and so barefaced, as Jesuits alone are capable of. Fathers Bouchet and Lainez were unsuccessful in their mission to Rome. Before they had even reached the capital, the decree of the legate had been confirmed by a decree from the General Inquisition, dated 6th January 1706. The Pope received them very coldly; and while they were in Rome, he published his brief against the Bishops of Goa and St Thomas, and confirmed the ordinances of the patriarch. Well! can it be believed—would it be credited, that there could be found two men, even among these Jesuits, so lost to all sentiments of probity and honour, as to declare on their return that the Pope had received them with the greatest kindness, and that the decree of the legate De Tournon had been abrogated! Great was the astonishment of the missionaries of the other orders, and of some few Christians who viewed with abhorrence so much idolatry as was introduced into the religion of Christ. But after the first moment of surprise was over, they began to doubt the veracity of the Jesuits’ report, and sent a memorial to Rome to ascertain the whole truth. The Jesuits attempted to intercept this; but the messenger with great difficulty escaped an ambush that had been laid for him near Milan, and at length arrived at Rome. We shall say nothing regarding the indignation of Pope Clement XI. on hearing this. We shall only report part of his brief, which removes all doubt regarding the guilt of the Jesuits:—
“To the Bishop of St Thomas of Meliapar, Pope Clement XI. wisheth health, &c.
“We have learned with the greatest sorrow, that it has been divulged in your country (India) that we have nullified and abrogated the ordinances contained in a decree of our venerable brother, Cardinal de Tournon, dated 23d June 1704, Pondicherry, whither he had gone on his way to China; and that we have, moreover, permitted and approved of those rites and ceremonies which in the aforesaid decree are declared to be infected with superstition. Ardently wishing, that in a matter of such importance, not only you, but by your care all the other bishops and missionaries, should know the truth, we have thought proper to send to you the joint documents,[106] authenticated by an apostolical notary, and by the seal of the General Inquisition; and we beg of the princes of the apostles, &c.
“Rome, Sept. 17, 1712.”
Before we proceed further in our narrative, we must go back some few years, and resume the history of the Patriarch de Tournon, who, after having published his decree at Pondicherry, proceeded to China, where he arrived in 1705. The Jesuits were already there. Before attempting to penetrate into this vast empire, they had carefully studied the habits of that (comparatively) scientific and learned people; and, to succeed in their enterprise, they resolved upon flattering the national prejudices, as well as instructing the natives in the sciences and arts. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Father Ricci made his first entrance into China, and received a very friendly welcome, because he was an able mathematician, and could repeat from memory the most important passages of Confucius. The emperor esteemed him much for a clock which struck the hours, and which had been made purposely for him by the Jesuit; and still more for a map, far superior to anything the Chinese had attempted in that department of knowledge.[107] But from their too great desire to please the Chinese, the Jesuits did here as they had already done in Madura—they allowed the Christian religion to be contaminated with idolatrous practices, and adapted themselves to all the manners of the Chinese. Ranke says that Ricci died in 1610, not by excess of labour merely, but more especially by the many visits, the long fastings, and all the other duties of Chinese society and etiquette.[108]
The first step of the Patriarch de Tournon, on entering the Chinese Empire, was to summon all the missionaries and priests he was able, to Canton, and to declare to them that he was determined to tolerate no idolatrous superstition whatever. In consequence, he commanded them to remove all idolatrous emblems from their churches. The Chinese Jesuits seem to have shewn more of the hypocrite than those of Madura had done. They manifested no opposition whatever to the commands of the patriarch, and obtained for him a very kind reception from the Emperor Thang-hi. But he enjoyed the imperial favour for a very short time indeed. The Jesuits secretly stirred up the emperor against him, by representing to him that the legate despised the Chinese, their sovereign, and their religion, and that he was the instigator and adviser of the Bishop of Conon, who was apostolic-vicar in the province of Foukin, and who had prohibited some of the heathen superstitions, in compliance with the patriarch’s desire. The emperor, indignant at this, by a decree in August 1706, banished the legate from his dominions, and by a subsequent one, the Bishop of Conon.[109] The Jesuits, these diabolical sons of hypocrisy, exulting in their hearts at the defeat of their enemies, had the impudence—we should say, the cruelty—to insult their grief by a letter full of false condolences and tears, which they sent to De Tournon, while still in Nankin. However, it does not seem that the prelate was the dupe of their arts, as may be perceived from the following noble and pathetic answer to the fathers of the Society residing at Pekin:—
“We have received, reverend fathers, in a letter of your reverences, full of grief, the decree of the 16th December 1706, against the most illustrious Bishop of Conon and others.... You say that this event causes you grief and affliction. Would to God that your affliction would lead you to repentance! I should rejoice at it, because it would be acceptable to God, and might be the means of your salvation.
“Night and day I shed tears before God, not less for the distressed state of the mission, than on account of those who are the causes of its affliction; for, if I knew not the cause of the evil, and the authors of it, I might endure all more cheerfully. The Holy See has condemned your practices; but much more to be detested is that unrestrained licence with which you try to bury your shame under the ruins of the mission. You have not lent your ears to salutary counsel; and now you betake yourselves to means that cause horror (modo ad horrenda confugitis).
“What shall I say? Wo is me! The cause has been determined, but the error continues; the mission will be destroyed sooner than it can be reformed.
“However, your reverences are not in earnest, but merely jesting (ludunt non dolent reverentiæ vestræ), when you represent the emperor as being angry with you—the emperor who does not act but according to your wishes. He would assuredly be angry if he knew (God forbid!) what injuries you have caused to his glory.... What faith can I place upon those who in all their intercourse with me have used nothing but insidious devices?... I pray of Him who has reserved revenge for Himself, not to give you the recompence you deserve, nor to measure to you with the same measure ye have meted to your neighbour.... If you knew the emperor so well as to make you think he deserves the name of Herod, why had you recourse to him?... Why have you malignantly excited his hatred against an apostolic legate?... Would to God that you would repent from your hearts!—Yours, &c.
“Nankin, 17th January 1708.”
But if the prelate was well acquainted with all the Jesuitical cunning, he did not know the extent of their wickedness. Soon after De Tournon had sent this letter, he was arrested by order of the emperor (we may well suppose at whose instigation), sent to Macao, and delivered up to the Portuguese. The Bishop of Macao, who was another creature of the Jesuits, loaded him with chains, and threw him into prison. It is highly instructive to read the bull of excommunication which Pope Clement XI. fulminated against the Bishop of Macao for this deed. He complained that a Papal legate had been arrested, “not by pagans, but by Christian magistrates and officers, who, forgetful of his sacred character, of his dignity, &c., had dared to lay their hands upon him, and to make him endure such indignities and tortures that the heathen themselves were horror-struck—ipsis exhorrescentibus ethnicis.”
In the same bull the Pope lets us know that De Tournon, for certain causes, had been subjected to the ecclesiastical censures of the Church, the College, and Seminary of the Jesuits, which leaves no doubt as to the authors of the capture and ill treatment of the prelate, who was used like the worst of criminals, all to gratify the revenge of the Jesuits. To console De Tournon for all these hardships, Clemens bestowed upon him the cardinal’s hat; but, alas! the prisoner did not rejoice long in this high honour. His life was near a close. The ill treatment, and, as many say, the fastings, which he endured, brought his troubles to an end. He died in 1710, at the age of forty-two. Oh! one is almost tempted to implore the vengeance of God upon such sacrilegious men, who, calling themselves Christians—nay, most perfect Christians—condemned to exquisite tortures, and to a most miserable and protracted death, this noble-hearted man, for attempting to purify the religion of Christ from pagan superstition. So perished De Tournon, a man certainly one of the best prelates of the Romish Church. Clement XI. eulogised him in a public consistory, and, as we have said, excommunicated the Bishop of Macao. We shall not add a word of observation; the facts speak clearly for themselves.
We shall now resume our narrative about the Malabar rites, and endeavour to bring it to a speedy conclusion; the facts which we have already reported being more than sufficient to give a very clear idea of the religious teaching of the Jesuits in India, and of their deportment there. Clement XI., in 1719; Benedict XIII., in 1727; Clement XII., in 1734 and 1739, published briefs upon briefs to oblige the Jesuits to submit to the decree of Cardinal de Tournon, but in vain. The Jesuits either refused or eluded obedience to them. And when Clement XII., in 1739, forced them to take a very stringent oath[110] to obey the decree, every Jesuit took it, but no one observed it; finding a specious excuse for not doing so in that doctrine of theirs, then in full force, which declares that “the man who makes an oath with his mouth, without the consent of his mind, is not obliged to keep the oath, because he had not sworn, but only jested.”
At last Benedict XIV. resolved to put an end to the contest, by publishing, in 1741, a terrible bull, in which he calls the Jesuits disobedient, contumacious, crafty, and reprobate men (inobedientes, contumaces, captiosi, et perditi homines), and in which he made such stringent and undoubted provisions, that it was a difficult matter to evade obeying it; and especially after the Pope, by another brief in the following year, commanded that the brief of 1741 be read every Sabbath-day in all the houses, churches, and colleges of the Society.
The influence of the Jesuits in India now began to decline rapidly. Their Saniassi were discovered to be impostors. The war that began shortly after between France and England caused still greater damage; and when their order was abolished in 1773, the Jesuits had little or no influence in India.—These are the principal features of the missions in India, properly so called. In Japan, that turbulent and warlike country, the Jesuits adopted a different and more appropriate method to acquire influence among the people. Throwing away somewhat of their cunning and pretended sanctity, they espoused the cause of one or other of the various parties who were disputing for power, were cherished, respected, and permitted to preach their religion, if the party they sided with were triumphant; persecuted, exiled, and put to death if it were vanquished. The hundreds of Jesuits who are represented to us as having perished martyrs for their faith were oftener executed as unsuccessful conspirators. The Japanese were not so bigoted a race as the Indians, and the Bonzes, their priests, were not all-powerful like the Brahmins. The persecutions they exercised against their dangerous rivals, the Jesuits, could not be successful but when the people and the sovereign were offended against them, not as missionaries, but as defeated malcontents and conspirators. The Jesuits maintained their ground in Japan with various vicissitudes, till they were suppressed. In China, also, they maintained their ground by the same means which opened it for their reception—they conformed themselves to the manners and customs of the people as far as they could, and it appears that they partly succeeded in conquering some of their national prejudices; they were at least supported by the higher classes, who held them in much esteem for their learning, and so much respected that some were made mandarins; and even when the Christians were persecuted as dangerous conspirators, the Jesuits were left unmolested. However, we possess few documents, excepting those of the Jesuit historians relating their own deeds, whereby to ascertain the real truth regarding their condition in that country.
The Jesuits assure us that millions of idolaters were converted by them in all these countries, but their fabulous narrations are contradicted by facts. For, when a statistical account was made in 1760, of all the Christians residing in India and Japan, the number was found to be less than a half of what Xavier alone is said to have converted, and more than one hundred times less than had been accomplished by the united labours of all the Jesuit missionaries. This reminds us of the computation made by a witty person of all the Arabians killed by the French bulletins from 1831 to 1841, which three or four times outnumbered the whole Arabian population.
In all these countries the Jesuits derived from their converts great contributions; but of their traffic more anon.
We have thus given an outline of these celebrated missions, and we are sorry that we cannot extend the recital of them any further. A characteristic fact ascertained from an accurate study of their missions is, that the Jesuit missionaries, with the view of domineering over these countries, altogether regardless of the interests of the Christian religion, slandered and persecuted all other missionaries, even although they were Roman Catholics. And so they do still.
We must further observe, that the Jesuits, these so-called fervent and unexceptionable Roman Catholics, lived for more than fifty years in open rebellion against the chief of their Church—God on earth—the infallible vicegerent of Christ—and committed during that same period as many sacrileges as were the sacerdotal functions they performed; for, since by the non-observance of the Cardinal de Tournon’s decree, they incurred a suspension a divinis, which means, suspension from the exercise of their ministry—whatever sacerdotal act they performed, they committed a sacrilege.
But methinks I hear some one say, do you believe that the court of Rome persisted in such a contest because she abhorred such idolatrous practices? By no means. The Popes fought for their authority, for the infallibility of their oracles, and not to uphold the purity of the Christian religion. Superstition—idolatry—they like, they encourage, they live by it. Under their eyes such acts of idolatrous abominations are daily committed, that those of India become insignificant when compared with them. I beg permission to relate only one, which, if the fact could not be ascertained by any one every year in many of the Italian towns, I fear would not be credited, so very sacrilegious is it. In the little town of San Lorenzo in Campo,[111] forty miles distant from Ancona, the following procession takes place on the Good Friday of every year. The line of procession extends from the town, through an almost open country, for about a mile and a half, the whole way having been previously prepared for the purpose. On platforms, erected at certain distances, the different stages of our Saviour’s passion are represented. On one of them you see the judgment-seat, and Pilate condemning Christ to death; on another, Christ crowned with thorns; on a third, Christ falling under the load of the cross on his way to Calvary, and so on. Next comes the crucifixion, represented in four different acts. The first exhibits Christ with one of his hands nailed to the cross; the second, with both his hands nailed; the third, with both hands and feet; and in the fourth, our holy Redeemer is exhibited as expiring, and with his breast pierced by a spear. At the foot of the cross may be seen the three Maries. All these personages chosen to represent our Lord’s passion, are picked out from the very dregs of the people, and are paid more or less, according to the uneasiness of the posture which they are made to assume. He who personates our Saviour receives the greatest pay, a crown; while the respective representatives of Pilate and Mary obtain the smallest named, eighteenpence. All these sacrilegious pantomimers are at their post half an hour before the procession begins, and dressed suitably to the character impersonated by each. The miscreant who hangs upon the cross (we shudder to relate such abominations) has only a belt around his middle, the cross being so constructed as to lessen the difficulty of his posture. About an hour and a half after sunset, the priests, in their pontifical robes, issue from the church, accompanied by all the civil authorities, and by a great concourse of citizens dressed in mourning, and carrying lighted torches in their hands. On their way they kneel down before every platform, offer up a prayer, and sing a part of some sacred hymn! This impious ceremony is performed with becoming gravity so soon as the priests and the bulk of the procession draw nigh to the respective platforms; but before their arrival, and after their departure, the scene presents a most revolting and disgusting spectacle. Many of the lazzaroni go round, laughing and shouting, and address those who impersonate our Saviour and the Virgin, in the most insulting and profane language. You may hear many saying, “Ha, ha! thou art here, Theresa! Thou art the Virgin, art thou not? Ah, ah! you”—(modesty forbids us to repeat the remainder of the sentence). “Ah! Frances, thou art the Magdalen! By my troth, it is not long since thou repentedst”—or, “Oh, Paul! Paul! there is some mistake. Thou oughtest to represent the impenitent robber, and not the Christ, thou arrant thief!” But we must draw a veil over the rest of that infernal scene.
So abhorrent is idolatry to the Court of Rome!
Jacques Lainès.
Hinchliff.
CHAPTER VIII.
1556-1581.
THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH GENERALS OF THE ORDER.
Many were the trials the Jesuits had to encounter after the death of Loyola. The moment he expired, the professed members who were at Rome appointed Lainez Vicar-General, although he was at the time dangerously ill, fixing, at the same time, the month of November for the election of the new General. No objection could be raised against the nomination of Lainez, he being without contradiction the most prominent living member of the Society. The difficulties only began when the Vicar-General adjourned the General Congregation sine die. Lainez was constrained to take this step because Philip II. of Spain had forbidden any of his subjects to leave his dominions, as he was then at war with the Pope.
Since that fatal epoch in which Clement VII., for the benefit of his family (the Medici), had betrayed the glory and destinies of Italy into the hands of the house of Austria, the unfortunate peninsula (if we except Venice) became an imperial fief, and the subsequent popes the Emperor’s chief vassals. Paul IV., although worn out with years, conceived the bold idea of freeing Italy from the Austrian yoke. “He would sit,” says Ranke, quoting Navagero, “for long hours over the black, thick, fiery wine of Naples, his usual drink, and pour forth torrents of stormy eloquence against these schismatics and heretics—accursed of God—that evil generation of Jew and Moor—that scum of the world, and other titles equally complimentary, which he bestowed with unsparing liberality on everything Spanish.”[112] And so intense was his hatred against the house of Austria, that he made a strict alliance with the Protestant leader, Albert of Brandenburg, and formed his regiments almost entirely of Protestants, to fight against a Roman Catholic king. And, as if this were not enough, the Pope, the so-called chief of Christianity, made proposals to Soliman I., the great enemy of the Christian name, to enter into an alliance with him, in order to destroy the ultra-Roman Catholic and bigoted Philip II.
The Spanish Jesuits thus prevented from going to Rome, the General Congregation, as we have said, was postponed. This began the strife. Private ambition broke forth, and threw the community into great confusion. The revolt was headed by the violent Bobadilla. He prevailed upon Rodriguez, Brouet, and two or three others, to join him in reproaching the tyranny and despotism of Lainez. They pretended that he had no right to possess, alone, the supreme authority, which ought to reside in all the surviving founders of the order till a General was elected. Pamphlets were addressed to the Pope, accusing the Vicar-General of entertaining the design to repair to Spain for the purpose of holding the Congregation, and of establishing the seat of the order in that country. The Pope, upon this announcement, became furious; he thundered imprecations against the Society; and when Lainez presented himself to have an audience, he refused to see him, and ordered him to give up, within three days, all the constitutions and ordinances of the Society, with the name of every professed member resident at Rome, and forbade any one of the latter to leave the capital. The storm, it is evident, was gaining strength, but Lainez was an expert and skilful pilot. Inferior to Loyola in natural gifts, in firmness of character, in boldness and energy, he was his superior in cunning, in reflection, in patience. Ignatius, the imperious ex-officer, in the same circumstances, would have scourged Bobadilla, dismissed some rioters from the Society, and obliged the others to fall at his feet and ask forgiveness. The politician Lainez avoided combat in an open field, hoping to gain the battle by stratagem. He quietly and stealthily got possession of all Bobadilla’s writings on the subject,[113] learned from them what were his enemies’ projects, prepared his means of defence accordingly, detached Rodriguez and Brouet from Bobadilla’s interest by caresses and promises, sent the latter to reform a convent of Franciscan friars at Foligno, and condemned Gorgodanuz, the most pertinacious of the rebels, to say one pater noster and one ave Maria! When a cardinal related this fact to the Pope, Paul crossed himself as at something strange and prodigious.[114] Sacchini pretends that the Pope made the sign of the cross, being filled with wonder at the blindness of the rebels; but assuredly Paul was struck at the supremely cunning policy of the Vicar-General.[115]
The revolt was, however, subdued, the Pope appeased, and soon after the war was also brought to an end. The Duke of Alva, that sanguinary and ferocious butcher of the Belgians, conqueror of the Papal troops and of the allied armies, entered vanquished Rome, craved for an audience of the Pontiff, threw himself at his feet, and implored his forgiveness for having dared to fight against him. What a strange piece of contradiction is man!
The peace established between King Philip and the Pope made a free passage between Italy and Spain. The fathers arrived in Rome, and the General Congregation met on the 19th of June 1558.
On the 2d of July, while the fathers were on the point of proceeding to the election of the General, Cardinal Pacheco presented himself to the conclave in the Pope’s name, and after some trifling compliments, said he was ready to act as secretary and teller of the ballot. We cannot imagine the reason Paul had for taking such a precaution, unless he was afraid lest Borgia should be elected General—Borgia, the companion, the friend of Charles V. and of his son. The Cardinal, however, took his place among the fathers, and prepared to act as secretary. The schedules, which had been put into an urn by each elector, having been withdrawn and examined, the Cardinal announced that Lainez was elected by a majority of 13 to 7. He was in consequence proclaimed General, and the Jesuits went in one after another to pay him homage, and to kiss his hands on their bended knees.
The Congregation then proceeded to dispose of other business. There was first of all a discussion as to whether or not the Constitutions should be modified. This was answered in the negative. It must be observed, however, that Lainez, in the margin of the 16th chapter of the fourth part of the Constitutions, where it is prescribed that in the School of Theology the scholastic doctrine of St Thomas shall be explained, had inserted a declaration, “that if any book of theology could be found more adapted to the times, it shall be taught.” An historian very judiciously remarks, that Lainez appears already to have formed the project of establishing a new doctrine, which was propounded by Molina soon after. The original manuscripts, which were written by Ignatius in Spanish, were next confronted with the Latin version by Polancus. The latter was approved of, and ordered to be printed by the press of the Roman College, and this was immediately executed—the first edition of the Constitutions bearing the date of 1558.
But whilst in the middle of their legislative labours, they were startled by the arrival of Cardinal Trani, who announced to them that it was the Pope’s pleasure that they should perform the choral office, like all the other monastic orders, and that the office of General should only last for three years. The Jesuits remonstrated, and spoke of their Constitutions, and of the papal bull that had been issued in their favour. The cardinal answered that the commands of his holiness must be obeyed. The Jesuits got up a memorial, and Lainez and Salmeron went to present it to the Pope. Paul received them freezingly; and at the first observation of Lainez, exclaimed, “You are contumacious persons. In this matter you act like heretics, and I fear lest some sectarian should be seen issuing from your company. But we are firmly resolved to tolerate such disorders no longer.”[116] This was the second time that Lainez had been abruptly and arrogantly apostrophised by Paul. When he visited him after he had been chosen Vicar-General, he received the volleys of insult which the Pope poured upon him with the greatest submission. But it seems that his patience at this time gave way, and he boldly answered, that he had not sought of his own accord to be made General, that he was ready to give up the office at that very moment, but that his holiness knew well that the fathers, in proceeding to the election, had intended to name a General for life, according to the rules of their Constitutions; for the remainder, “we teach,” added he, “we preach against the heretics; on that account they hate us, and call us Papists. Wherefore your holiness ought to give us your protection, and evince toward us the yearnings of a father, rather than find fault with us.”[117] This was the substance of Lainez’s answer, shaped by the Jesuit historians into a more humble and respectful form. But the irascible and obstinate Paul was unmoved by his appeal. He told Lainez that he would not accept of his resignation, that his orders must be executed, and then dismissed him and his brother envoy. Paul was fierce and vindictive, and not to be trifled with. He had accused his own nephews in a full consistory, and banished them and their families from Rome. His greatest desire was to see the Inquisition at work. Ranke says that he seldom interfered in other matters, but was never so much as once absent from presiding every Thursday over the Congregation of the Inquisition. Having such a man to deal with, the Jesuits were forced to submit to perform the choral office, consoling themselves with the hope that the next Pope would be more lenient toward them; nor were they disappointed. Medici, the successor of Paul, who took the name of Pius IV., shewed himself more favourable to the Company of Jesus; not for love of them, but out of hatred to his predecessor, who had been his enemy.[118] Although he was of a mild and cheerful disposition, he made a fearful example of the nephews of the deceased pontiff. Their crimes assuredly deserved punishment; but as it was not in the disposition of Pius to be cruel or revengeful, he was doubtless instigated to act in this case with unwonted rigour. But who his instigators were, or whence he derived the malignant and retributory inspiration on which he acted, it would be difficult to determine. We only know that the Jesuits had been persecuted by the Caraffas from the beginning, and that “Pius IV.,” as Crétineau affirms, “shewed himself from first to last to be more favourable to the Jesuits than even Paul III. had been.”[119] The Jesuits, it is certain, had then great influence at the Court of Rome. Cardinal Caraffa and the Duke of Palliano, nephews to the late Pope, along with two of their relatives, were condemned to death. They were denied their own confessors, and Jesuits were called in as their spiritual comforters. Crétineau says, that the Duke of Palliano asked Lainez to send him a Jesuit confessor, while the detractors of the order think that they intruded themselves, to witness the agony and death of their enemies. We let our readers judge for themselves. The unfortunate culprits were executed during the night of the 6th and 7th August 1561. The cardinal never for a moment suspected that they would execute the sentence upon him. He tried to delay his execution by lingering with his confessor. “Make an end, my lord, we have other business on hand,” exclaimed an officer of police. A few minutes longer, and the cardinal was a corpse.
The Society now seemed upon the whole to be in a prosperous condition, and increased rapidly. Lainez did not exercise his authority with an iron hand, like Loyola, but he had great tact, and knew how to govern a community by cunning policy. Some mishaps, however, befel the Society. In Grenada, a Jesuit confessor refused to give absolution to a woman till she had revealed the name of her accomplice in the sin which she had confessed. This made a great noise. But the Jesuits, supported by the archbishop and the Inquisition, braved the opinion of the public so far, that one of them, John Raminius, declared from the pulpit, as an established doctrine, “that although in general no sin of the most holy confession ought to be revealed, there may, nevertheless, be circumstances in which the confessor may oblige the penitent to discover the accomplice of the sin, or to give up the names of the persons infected with heresy, permitting him (the confessor) to denounce the person or persons to the competent tribunal.”[120]
This of itself shews clearly enough the inviolability of the secret of confession, yet we must say that these gentlemen have made great progress since, for now, without asking the penitent’s permission, they betake themselves at once to the officers of police.[121] However, it is only the sins committed against religion or politics which never fail to be disclosed; the ruffian and assassin need not apprehend that their crimes will be brought to light.
The next disaster the order encountered was the displeasure evinced by Philip II. against Francis Borgia, the ex-Duke of Candia, one of his father’s testamentary executors, and who had a very great influence over the other sons of Charles V.[122] The Inquisition, that faithful satellite of the Spanish crown, to please the king, condemned two ascetic books by that same Borgia, who, a few years afterwards, was numbered among the saints who were worshipped; he himself narrowly escaped being captured as a heretic. Borgia bore all this with true Christian humility, as well as some opposition shewn him by his own subordinates, and was consoled by the Pope, who called him to Rome, and received him with the utmost kindness.
Again, in Montepulciano, a town fifteen miles distant from Sienna, the Jesuits were accused of immorality. One was charged with having pressed a woman to go home with him; another, of having issued from a brothel; a third, of having offered violence to a female; and Father Gombar, the Superior himself, of having illicit intercourse with several ladies, and particularly with one whose love-letters were found in his possession. All these were incontestible facts, proved by sworn witnesses. Now listen to the imperturbable impudence of the historian Sacchini upon this matter. The reason he assigns for all these calumnies is, that “the Jesuits confessed almost all the women in Montepulciano; that they induced many young ladies to consecrate themselves to God in monasteries, and married females to be chaste and faithful wives. Hence arose the grief and fury (dolor et furor) of those whose passions could no longer find aliment. They, therefore, plotted the expulsion of the fathers.” What a set of monsters were these citizens of Montepulciano!
But let us proceed. “The man accused of having solicited a woman to go with him, was a simpleton, who, meeting a female on the road, was asked where he was going, and had the imprudence to answer. It was an enemy of the order, dressed as a Jesuit, who was seen to leave the brothel. Gombar, the Rector, did indeed entertain himself rather long in the confessional, but then he was engaged in spiritual conversation with the ladies. Among other penitents, he had two sisters belonging to a very high family; and the father, not being able to undertake the charge of both, was forced to abandon one of them. The one that was dismissed, out of spite and jealousy, accused the other to her brother, who forbade her to confess any longer to Gombar. The letters were falsified, and every other accusation was mere calumny.”[123] After such justifications as these, few will doubt that the Jesuits were guilty. Gombar, at any rate, frightened by the public rumour, fled, and Lainez dismissed him from the Society, in spite of all his entreaties. The town-council stopped paying the Jesuit teacher the allowed salary. The College was deserted—no alms!—no friends! Poor Jesuits! they were starving. And Lainez, after trying in vain to regain for the College its former good name, by sending thither some of the best and most conspicuous of the Jesuits, suppressed it altogether in 1563. Let them after this proclaim their innocence!
Accusations of a like nature were brought against the Jesuits in Venice, and were corroborated by the Patriarch. Some of the senators proposed to expel the Jesuits from the states of the republic, or to make them submit to the Patriarch’s authority; but the authority and interference of the Pope brought matters again to an accommodation.
Further, all the Jesuits in the College of Milan were accused of unnatural crimes. Here, also, the facts were pretty well established. Crétineau himself is forced to admit the occurrence of individual crimes; but, although a certain bishop brought forth many young men as witnesses against the Jesuits, yet the cardinal, chosen by the Pope to examine into the case, absolved them.
Meanwhile, at the end of three years, Lainez thought it would be politic on his part to appear anxious to resign the office. Having consulted his brethren on the subject, they declared that the office should be perpetual. We shall here give Bobadilla’s answer, on account of its originality. The formerly fierce opponent of Lainez writes to him thus from Ragusa:—“My opinion is that the office of General should be perpetual, according to the letter of our Constitutions. Let, then, your reverence keep a firm hold of it for a hundred years, and if after your death you should return to life, my advice is that the office be again conferred upon you, that you may keep it to the day of judgment. And I beg of you, for the love of Christ, to keep it, and be of good cheer,” &c.
Lainez being now assured of the perpetuity of his office, leaving Salmeron to manage the affairs of Italy, set out for France, in order that he might take part in the famous colloquy or conferences of Poissy, of which more hereafter. From France he passed into Belgium, visited the Rhenish provinces, a part of Germany, and crossed the Tyrol on his way to Trent.
In all these places Lainez made good use of both his name and authority, endeavoured to acquire new protectors for his order, to increase its revenues, to establish new houses, never forgetting, either in his sermons or controversies, to throw out slanders, and vehemently to attack the Protestant cause. He at last arrived in Trent for the re-opening of the Council. This famous assembly, which so solemnly consecrated some of the greatest errors that had ever been given to the world—which interposed an impassable barrier between Christian and Christian, but which, nevertheless, the Court of Rome calls most holy, re-opened on the 18th January 1562. This last Council had been called for by Luther, by the Protestants, and all those princes who were desirous to check the despotism of the Court of Rome, and to give peace to the Church by mutual concessions between the opposing parties. Different successive Popes refused this as long as possible, dreading the total ruin of their authority. Yet this assembly, as Fra Paolo, its historian, judiciously remarks, had a result quite opposite from that which was expected. The Protestants took no part in the Council’s proceedings, the authority of the Popes was further extended and more firmly established than ever, and the hope of healing the schism in the Church was altogether blasted.
The Council commenced its sittings in Trent on the 13th December 1545, was thence transferred to Bologna in March 1547, against the will of the German and Spanish prelates, who continued at Trent, was interrupted on the 2d of June of the same year, re-opened in May 1551, was again suspended in April 1552, re-opened in Trent, as we have said, in January 1562, and finally closed on the 3d of December 1563. The Jesuits boast of having had the greatest share in drawing up the decrees and fixing the dogmas as they now stand. Salmeron, Brouet, and especially Lainez, exercised great influence; and, if there were any glory in upholding erroneous doctrines and the tyrannical authority of the Pope, it most undoubtedly belonged to them, nor are we disposed to envy them the distinction they thus gained.[124]
Lainez left Trent for Rome, and his whole journey through Italy was one continued triumph. But, alas! poor Lainez had not long to taste the sweetness of adulation. His health, which had always been delicate, became worse and worse. He fell seriously ill, lingered in his bed for two or three months, and breathed his last on the 19th of January 1565, at the age of 53.
Lainez was under the middle size, had a fair complexion and cheerful countenance, with large bright eyes, but his appearance was very unprepossessing. He was gifted with a great facility of elocution, and a prodigious memory. He left many manuscripts behind him; some were unfinished, and almost all are unintelligible, as his handwriting was execrable.
Francois de Borgia.
Hinchliff.
The day after Lainez expired, the Jesuits in Rome named Francis Borgia Vicar-General, until a new election should take place. Borgia is one of the saints and glories of the order, and his history is really a most extraordinary one. He was descended from that Alexander VI. who united in his person all the crimes of past and future Popes, and was a stain to humanity itself. Our Borgia was, however, a man of the strictest honesty, and of unblemished honour. He was handsome, brave, the companion in arms and friend of Charles V., was Duke of Candia and Vice-king of Barcelona. In 1546, when he was only 36 years of age, his duchess died. The sight of her beautiful face, altered and disfigured by death, made such a powerful impression upon his mind, that he from that moment resolved to give up all worldly thoughts, and consecrate himself (as the phrase goes) to God. He chose the Society of the Jesuits as the safest retreat, and wrote to Loyola for the purpose. Ignatius’ answer begins thus:—“The resolution you have taken, most illustrious lord, gives me much joy. Let the angels and saints in heaven give thanks to God, for we on this earth cannot be sufficiently grateful to God for the great honour He bestows upon His little Society in calling you to join it.”[125]
This man had nine children, some in infancy, and all under age, whom he left in the wide world unprotected, to enter the Society. And the angels and saints ought to praise God for this! Alas for the moral blindness of perverted human nature! Loyola again wrote to him, saying that he accepted him as his brother, but that, before he could be admitted into the noviciate, he must settle all his temporal affairs, and have nothing more to do with the world; meanwhile, until he was ready to enter the Society, to keep his intention a secret. Borgia was admitted into the house of probation in 1548, and from that moment he became a bigoted fanatic, whose greatest happiness consisted in lacerating his body. Macaulay says, in an article in the Edinburgh Review, “that it is making penitence with him to listen to the recital of his flagellations and his self-inflicted punishments of all kinds.” He had so destroyed his constitution by this absurd way of trying to please God, that he never had a single day of good health, and was even once threatened with a gangrene over his whole body. Such was the man appointed Vicar-General, and afterwards chief of the order. He had no wish for the honour, considered the office a burden, and we believe he was sincere in his humility. The first battle he had to fight was against the Holy See itself. Almost contemporaneously with his nomination, a Dominican friar ascended the Papal throne, under the name of Pius V. A more bigoted, fanatical, cruel, and sanguinary man never existed. Brought up under the wing of the Inquisition, he contracted a sort of blind passion for that bloody tribunal, and never felt so happy as when he heard of some barbarous cruelties inflicted upon the heretics, or when some hecatombs of these accursed enemies of Popery were sacrificed at the altar of his revenge, or when some new instrument of torture was invented against them. Suffice it to say, that when he sent his general, Santafiore, to fight against the French Protestants, he commanded him in the most peremptory manner to take no Huguenot prisoner, but to put them one and all to the sword; and because Santafiore had not rigorously executed his commands, he reproached him in the most bitter manner. And when that monster of cruelty, the Duke of Alva, had spread death and desolation over the entire of the Netherlands, 18,000 of the inhabitants of which he boasted of having delivered up into the hands of the executioners, so pleased was Pius with his deeds, that he sent him the consecrated hat and sword, as marks of his approval.[126] Can this, then, be the religion of Christ? Is it for a moment possible that this should be the true religion, this which erects upon its altars the statues of such monsters of iniquity, and impiously calls them saints, to be worshipped in place of God the Lord? And among the greatest of these modern saintships stands forth the name of Pius V.! This Pope, a most rigorous observer of all the monastic and superstitious ceremonies, gave the Jesuits to understand that they should undertake the choral hours as prescribed by Pius IV., and that no Jesuit should be ordained a priest before he had pronounced the four vows. We shall not repeat the conversation which took place between the Holy Father and the saint Borgia, as given by Sacchini and other historians; we shall only give some extracts of the bold and eloquent memorials which the Jesuits presented to the Pope on this occasion.
After reminding his holiness, in a gentle yet admonitory manner, that their Constitutions had been approved of by three popes, and that they could not be altered without good reasons for so doing, they proceed to state, “that their Society had been established to repel the impious efforts of the heretics, to oppose the infernal tricks which had been had recourse to to extinguish the light of the Catholic truth, and to resist the barbarous enemies of Christ, who were besieging the holy edifice of the Church, undermining it insensibly; that, in order that they might be able to resist this invasion effectually, their holy father Ignatius thought that it would be better for them to leave singing to others.... And did not the same causes still exist, they inquired, for the exercise of their activity, as the signs of the times unmistakably demonstrated? They submitted that a vast conflagration was devouring France; that Germany was in a great measure consumed; that England was one heap of ashes; that Belgium was falling into ruins; that Poland smoked in every quarter; that the flames were already blazing around the confines of Italy.... And they should lose their time in undertaking the choral hours.”[127] On this point the Pope yielded; but, on the other, he was inflexible, saying, that it was requisite that at least as much learning and virtue should be in a priest as in a Jesuit, even of the class of the Professed. This Sacchini denies, affirming that it is more difficult to make one good Jesuit than a thousand priests. The Jesuits, who stood in need of priests, but would not enlarge the aristocratic class of the Professed members, who alone take the four vows, obtained as usual their end by exercising a little cunning. They presented themselves for ordination, not as Jesuits, but as secular ecclesiastics.
We pass over a number of interesting incidents which happened under the generalship of Borgia down to the year 1571, when we find the General, though in very ill health, leaving Rome for Spain and France, for the purpose of soliciting assistance from the respective monarchs of these countries to aid the Venetians in a war against the Turks, who were then threatening to pour their savage hordes over Europe. Philip II. joined the league, and his vessels gained some of the laurels which were won at that ever memorable battle fought at Lepanto on the 7th October 1571, when the descendants of the Prophet suffered a defeat from which they have never recovered. Before Borgia entered Spain, the Inquisition, aware that Philip was on the best terms both with him and the Pope, published, with the highest eulogium, those same works which she had proscribed nine years before when the king frowned upon Father Borgia—a most striking example of the servility of the Spanish Inquisition to the crown. From Spain, Borgia proceeded to Portugal, thence to France, at the very time when Catherine and Charles were plunged in continual feasts and pleasures, the forerunner of what they expected to enjoy on Saint Bartholomew’s eve. But we have no reason to believe that he was at all privy to the plot. It is not at all likely that the cunning and circumspect Catherine of Medicis would be so foolish as to confide so important a secret to such a weak-brained man. Borgia witnessed the massacre in the southern provinces of France, when on his return to Rome, where he arrived on the 28th of September 1572, and where he expired three days after. So ended this extraordinary man, whom the Church of Rome has enrolled among the saints. Would to God that none of them were worse than he!
At the opening of the fourth General Congregation the Pope inquired of the Jesuit deputies, who had gone up according to custom to ask his benison, “How many votes each nation had?” The answer was that “Spain had more votes than all the rest put together.” “And from what nation or nations has the General been hitherto chosen?” “From Spain,” was the reply. “Well,” resumed Gregory XIII., “it would be but just, then, that you should, for this once, elect one from some other nation.” The deputies remonstrated; “but,” said the Pope, “Father Mercurianus is a very good man,” and dismissed them. To another deputation, sent purposely to assert their independence in the choice of their own General, the Pope answered, that he did not impugn their right, that he only requested of them to inform him if their choice should fall upon a Spaniard, before he was officially proclaimed. The reason of all this was national jealousy, united to the aversion evinced by Spain and Portugal to all Christianised Jews and Moors. This aversion was shared in by the Court of Rome, and was now aroused by the fear of seeing Polancus, a Christianised Jew, on the point of being elected General of the order, “and it was not thought desirable that the supreme authority in a body so powerful and so monarchically constituted should be confided to such hands.”[128]
Father Mercurianus was chosen. He was a simple and weak old man, a native of Belgium. He delivered up the government of the Society first to Father Palmio, then to Father Manara. This produced internal troubles and the formation of two parties, which caused great commotion in the days of his successor. Mercurianus exercised very little influence on the destinies of the order, and was the first General whose authority was held in little account. He died on the 1st of August 1580, at which time the Society numbered 5750 members, 110 houses, and 21 provinces. The wealth they had acquired was immense; it did not matter how it was got, as the end with them sanctified the means. For example, when the troops of the ferocious Alva sacked Malines, Father Trigosus freighted a vessel with victuals and sailed to Malines to buy a great part of the booty, under the pretext of giving it back to the proprietors. Doubtless, to deceive the fools, he restored some of it to the proper owners, but then this was only to a trifling amount; the remainder and most valuable portion was employed to adorn the College of Antwerp with regal magnificence. In France the Jesuits were left heirs to the immense fortune of the Bishop of Clermont. In Spain they allured into their Society the representatives of two of the wealthiest families in that country, for which they were brought before the tribunal and condemned. Moreover, Gregory XIII. presented them with enormous sums, and founded no fewer than thirteen of their colleges, every one of which was richly endowed; while in Portugal they were almost masters of the entire kingdom. We shall by and by examine the causes of this unparalleled prosperity.