FOOTNOTES:
[ [29] This taly is described by the other missionaries as a gross image representing a Hindu divinity equivalent to the Latin Priapus. It was certainly mythological, and was suspended on a cord of very clear mythological import. The Jesuits first declared that it was a "civil custom," and then said that a "direction of intention" on the part of the convert made it harmless. When Rome brought pressure to bear on them, they invented a taly with the cross on one side and the emblem of Pillear on the other.
[ [30] It is difficult to estimate the value of the Paraguay reductions. Robertson, in his Letters on Paraguay, calculates that the average Indian earned at least a hundred dollars yearly, and that his food, hut, and clothing did not cost fifty. He estimates the total value of a hundred thousand such workers and the property as about £5,641,200.
[ [31] In the English translation of Hoensbroech's Fourteen Years a Jesuit the figure is wrongly given as 30,000.
IN THE GERMANIC LANDS
When we come to record the culmination of the earlier history of the Jesuits in a solemn and reasoned condemnation of the Society by the Papacy, we shall note a singular circumstance of the reception of the news in Europe. The Catholic monarchs of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples applaud the act, and there is little serious demur to it among the millions of southern Catholics under their control. The Catholic Emperor assents very willingly to the destruction of the Society, and the Jesuits and their friends cannot succeed in inspiring any wide revolt in Austria and the neighbouring principalities. But the Protestant King of Prussia and the Greek Catholic Empress of Russia open the doors of their dominions to the fugitives from Roman lands, and protest that the Jesuits have been ill-used. For two hundred years the Jesuits have strained every nerve, and every canon of controversial decency, in an attack on heresy and schism, yet they secretly ask Frederick of Prussia to declare himself the "protector of the Society," and they shelter from Catholic hostility in the court of Catherine of Russia!
On this singular circumstance much explanatory light will be thrown at the proper moment, but I anticipate the fact itself because it suggests a general point of view. Clearly, the behaviour of the Jesuits differed in Catholic and in Protestant countries, and we have seen from the start that Jesuit conduct in German Protestant lands often contrasted very favourably with Jesuit conduct in Catholic countries. They do indeed betray their unedifying jealousy of all other workers in the papal army, they seek opportunities for intrigue and for acquiring wealth, but the presence of large bodies of Protestant observers has its effect on their moral and cultural standard. They adapt themselves to the environment as we have found them do in China or India. However, the group of countries which we are compelled to associate in this chapter are very varied in creed, and we will glance at the outstanding Jesuit experiences in each down to the time of the suppression of the Society.
Commencing with Scandinavia, we have first to consider the romantic episode of the conversion of Queen Christina. The daughter of Gustavus Adolphus succeeded to the throne in her sixth year, in 1632, and was carefully trained for the task of ruling. Her native disposition, no less than the masculine work which lay before her, made her resent every tendency toward the softness of her sex, and she became a hard rider, an assiduous student of art and letters, a companion of great scholars, and a resolute spinster. For many years the Swedes were proud of their Amazon Queen, as she loved to represent herself, and even admired her command of southern culture and tongues (Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). She slept only five or six hours, discussed philosophy with scholars like Descartes (who was a month or two in Sweden) at five in the morning, conversed with the ambassadors in their own tongues, and might then hunt for ten hours in her amazon costume. Altogether a romantic person, and the Jesuits approached her.
We remember Professor Nicolai and Ambassador Possevin and other Jesuits who had tried to convert Sweden. The new missionary, Father Macedo of Portugal, was disguised as the secretary of the Portuguese ambassador, Pereira. It may be that Macedo went merely to act as confessor to Pereira, but he soon took an independent line. He found the way to the Queen's study, impressed her with his learning, and confided to her that he was a disguised Jesuit. Christina, in turn, confided that she had doubts about Lutheranism, and would discuss with learned fathers of the Society. Macedo discovered that the climate was too rigorous for him, and, as the ambassador refused to give him leave of absence, fled to Rome; and two very learned Jesuits, also in disguise, sailed in a very roundabout way for Stockholm. Christina was soon converted by the two "merchants," and, after some rather shady manœuvres to secure her art-collections and her revenues, she fled in the disguise of a man to Brussels, where a brilliant gathering of Catholics welcomed her into the Church (1655).
As Christina had little to do with the Jesuits after her conversion, and the Swedes promptly closed the gates against further Catholic invasions, we might leave the story, but it is of some interest to consider whether the "conversion" was genuine. There is good reason to believe that Christina was tired of the bleak north, and decided to secure her revenue, change her creed, and spend the rest of her years in the sunny and artistic south. The Jesuits were to be the guarantors of her orthodoxy to the Pope, on whom she must rely if the angry Swedes cut off supplies (as eventually happened). She had no deep religious feeling. When a Belgian Jesuit remarked that they might yet see her among the saints, she answered that she would prefer to be put among the sages; and it is said—though with less authority—that when she was told that there was to be a comedy on the day of her public reception into the Church at Innspruck, she observed that it was very proper "after this morning's farce." She is, at all events, described by some who knew her as "almost libertine in speaking of religion and morals," and the amorous attentions of Roman cardinals did not improve her piety. After a few years' enjoyment of her liberty, her passionate nature brought serious difficulties upon her, and her life proved a lamentable failure and waste of ability.
In the kingdom of Poland the Jesuits found the most congenial home that they ever discovered apart from the southern Latin countries to which most of them belonged. Nor is this the only or the most serious parallel; Poland, like Portugal, Spain, and France (after 1700), decayed rapidly after the Jesuits attained the height of their power in the country. Catholic writers in the latter part of the seventeenth century used to contrast the prosperity of the States which had adhered to the Vatican with the failure or stagnation of States which accepted the Reformation. France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria were the great world-Powers, and, under Sobieski, Poland promised to attain an important position. England, on the other hand, was still a small empire; Holland was falling from its momentary greatness; Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were regarded as half-barbaric; the Swiss cantons were a small pastoral folk; the German Protestant States were exhausted and distracted. The argument has recoiled on the Romanist with terrible force. The Catholic States have increasingly decayed, or defied the authority of the Pope; the Protestant States are the great world-Powers. The Protestant colonies in America have become a great civilisation; the Catholic colonies rise to prestige only in proportion as (like Argentina) they abandon their creed.
It has, therefore, been quite natural for writers on the Jesuits to emphasise the fact that the countries in which they obtained the greatest control have been the most conspicuous Powers to decay, and the imagination instinctively recalls the picture of some giant of a tropical forest gradually embraced and killed by a parasitic growth. This picture should not be admitted too easily. Art, for instance, has often prospered most luxuriantly when a civilisation was beginning to decay, yet it was assuredly not a parasitic growth accelerating the decay. It is possible that the Jesuits flourished because the nation was decaying, not that the nation decayed because they prospered. The problem requires careful analysis and exact proof. We have seen, however, in the case of Spain and Portugal that, in point of fact, the prosperity of the Society was both economically and politically injurious to those States—that the Jesuits really diverted into their own organisation the wealth and power which should have contributed to the well-being of the State—and we shall find the same situation in Poland and Austria.
In Poland, as in Austria, a Jesuit of the time would have contended that the Society justified its wealth and power by its educational work. We saw how the Society overran the country and, by intrigue and violence, captured the function of higher education during the reign of Batori. From that date Poland decayed, with a partial revival under Sobieski. In the long and disastrous reign of Sigismund (1590-1632) the decay was continuous, and the power of the Jesuits sustained. One point is clear; there was a grave lack of virile and unselfish patriotism, and Jesuit teachers were certainly not the men to inspire it. The aim of Jesuit education was to promote the interests of the Church rather than the State, and to their influence most particularly were due the religious quarrels and the coercion of Protestant minorities which distracted the kingdom, brought on it the hostility of Protestant neighbours, and fostered selfish intrigue for power. The reign of Wladislas (1632-48) had the same features, and they were more marked than ever when a Jesuit, the late King's brother, John Casimir, ascended the throne. There was now hardly a wealthy house, a school, or a camp that did not contain its Jesuit. The cause of religion was intensely promoted, but the cause of the country fell lower and lower, and its disastrous and distracted condition compelled the Jesuit monarch to abdicate after four years.
The activity of the Jesuits is very well seen in the election of the next king. The Poles were too democratic to admit the hereditary principle; they elected their monarch, and each election was now the occasion for a gathering of candidates from various parts of Europe and a mass of bribery and intrigue. Reusch has published in his Beiträge (p. 231) a private letter of a Jesuit, Father Bodler, which shows the Jesuits over half of Europe intriguing to secure at the election of 1669 a man who will suit their interests. Father Bodler, confessor to one of the candidates, the Duke of Neuburg, writes of the secret campaign to Father Veihelin of Munich. An English member of the Society has been confidentially entrusted by the duke with the task of deciphering a difficult private letter. As this letter (from Prince Auersperg) caustically observes that the Jesuits divide their forces at an election, so that some of them are sure to be on the winning side (as we have seen so often), it is at once communicated by the English Jesuit to his German colleagues and even translated into Latin for the general. The general, it seems, has to be kept informed of all these manœuvres—while he edifies Europe with decrees against indulgence in politics or commerce—and Father Bodler feels that he will be blamed "if the matter turns out less favourably for the Society." Such documents as this, generally discovered in Jesuit houses after the suppression of the Society, differ very materially from the published writings of the Jesuits.
On this occasion neither the Duke of Lorraine nor the Duke of Neuburg, for whom the Jesuits were working in apparent contradiction to each other but with secret understanding, was elected. The Pole, Michael Wisniowiecki, ascended the throne, and the Polish Jesuits held their power amid the decaying nation. He was followed by the great Sobieski, under whom the Society had more political influence than ever. Whether in camp or court Sobieski was surrounded by Jesuits, and some of the most important and disastrous points of his policy were inspired by them. It was his confessor, Father Vota, who prompted him to reject France's offer of alliance and accept that of Austria; and we know the shameful ingratitude of Austria when Sobieski saved Vienna in 1683, and how greedily it took its share of Poland when the country became weak enough to be dismembered. The Poles tired of Sobieski's costly glory and despotic rule and mischievous orthodoxy, and his later years were embittered by a feeling of failure.
Frederick Augustus of Saxony succeeded Sobieski. He had qualified for the throne by corrupting half the Diet and abjuring the Protestant faith, and, although he was naturally of a tolerant disposition, he was compelled to allow the Jesuits and other clergy to continue to weaken the country by religious persecution. Father Vota was entrusted with the charge of his accommodating conscience, and concluded that the opportunity was excellent for transplanting Catholic intolerance into Saxony, to which Frederick Augustus was for a time forced to retire. The apologist for the Jesuits relates that it was Frederick Augustus himself who desired to coerce the Protestants, and that Vota prudently restrained him. That would be a remarkable situation—a loose and unprincipled monarch, who had embraced the Catholic faith only as the price of a crown, restrained by the confessor of Sobieski from persecuting his Protestant subjects—but we know that, in point of fact, it was the Saxon ministers who had to restrain the Jesuit. Augustus III., an orthodox voluptuary and worthless monarch, followed upon the throne of Poland; the Jesuits continued to prosper and the country to decay. We shall see how, when its helpless frame is torn by its covetous neighbours, the Jesuits are still in full possession of their wealth and power, and are the first to bow to and win the favour of the Russian invader. There is, however, one incident of Polish life in the eighteenth century on which it is necessary to dwell more fully. We have an ample account of this repulsive event [32] and it throws an unpleasant light on the activity of the Jesuits in Poland.
In the summer of 1724 a Protestant of Thorn refused to lift his hat when a Catholic procession passed, and he was assaulted by a pupil of the Jesuit college. The Protestant authorities arrested the Catholic for assault, and a riot occurred, in the course of which the Jesuit college was stormed and destroyed. The royal authority was now invoked, and the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and nine other citizens of Thorn were arraigned before the High Court at Warsaw for failing to prevent the destruction of the college. A Jesuit was permitted, in the presence of the judges, to deliver a violently inflammatory sermon on the outrage, and the unfortunate men were condemned to death. A singular clause was added to the sentence: it must not be carried out until a Jesuit and six members of the Polish nobility swore to the guilt of the accused. We know from their own words that the judges trusted in this way to save the accused from the vengeance of the Jesuits. They persuaded the Papal Nuncio to press the Jesuit superior not to send one of his subjects to take the oath, and, when a Jesuit appeared nevertheless at the appointed time, to swear away the lives of the innocent men, they pointed out that a priest could not canonically take any action which would lead to an execution. The Jesuits placidly replied that they had sent a "lay coadjutor," instead of a priest, to take the oath. It is true that, once they had sealed the fate of the men, they entered a plea for mercy, but we are familiar with this hypocritical phrase in the annals of the Inquisition. They tried moreover, at a later date, to lessen the guilt of their conduct by mendaciously stating that the Nuncio's letter arrived too late for consideration: an audacious untruth, since we have the Jesuits' reply to the Nuncio, and we know that the judges reminded them of the Nuncio's intervention before the oath was taken.
To the end of this miserable business their conduct was repulsive. The municipality of Thorn was, of course, condemned to compensate the Society for the destruction of the college, and they secured a preposterous award of 36,400 florins. The citizens warmly protested against this scandalous and onerous award, and it was eventually, in spite of the protests of the Jesuits, reduced to 22,000 florins. The Jesuits, we are assured whenever they plead bankruptcy, are too spiritual to be good men of business, but their attitude in regard to the loss of their property at Thorn was not weakened by spirituality. They demanded (and, no doubt, needed) 8000 florins in cash. The municipal authorities had not so large a sum to pay them, and it was advanced by a merchant on the security of the plate of the executed Mayor of the town. For the remainder of the debt the Jesuits took the municipal estates of Lonzyn and Wengorzyn. They retained these profitable estates for six years, and only yielded them when the civic authorities paid them the full capital of the debt with 6 per cent. interest for the intervening years.
The situation of the Jesuits in Holland was, we saw, in many respects similar to their situation in England, but the fact that several provinces remained Roman Catholic gave them an advantage and kept the country open to them. Utrecht, for instance, had only joined the other provinces on condition that full liberty was given to Catholics and Jesuits. From these Catholic districts the fathers advanced with great zeal upon the neighbouring Protestant population. In spite of Jesuit hatred of the Dutch, whom they represent throughout the seventeenth century as the arch-enemy, they were treated with indulgence until their own actions brought punishment on them. We saw that there was at least evidence enough to convince the Dutch that the Jesuits had been implicated in two attempts to assassinate their rulers, and when, in 1638, a Catholic plot to admit the Spaniards was discovered, another storm against the Jesuits arose. Their apologist admits that there was a plot, and that they were aware of it; but he finds no evidence that they were parties to the plot. The evidence on which the Dutch relied was supplied by a soldier, and is not in itself very impressive; but several of the fathers were tortured and executed. The feeling seems to have been that any plot to introduce the Spaniards would very probably be of Jesuit origin, and the evidence was sufficient in the circumstances. Few will seriously feel that there was a miscarriage of justice.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which sent numbers of persecuted Huguenots to England and Holland, greatly embittered the Dutch and led to a fresh outburst against the Jesuits. They had at that time forty-five residences and seventy-four priests in Holland, but their prosperous mission was almost destroyed by the wave of anger which rolled over the country. Severe disabilities were laid on them, the Protestant crowds threatened their property, and it was rumoured that the States-General was about to banish them. It is interesting to-day to compare the eloquent pleas for toleration which they laid before the Dutch with the private letters in which they apprised their French colleagues that their intolerance had brought the affliction on them.
The storm passed without very serious consequences, but it was not long before the conduct of the Jesuits again endangered their mission. We have already seen that from the time when the Vatican appointed a bishop to control the missionary priests in Holland the Jesuits conducted an extremely selfish crusade against him. They maintained this opposition throughout the period with which we are dealing. Neercassel, the Archbishop of Utrecht and Vicar Apostolic, complained to Rome of their behaviour in 1669, and they retorted with the familiar charge of Jansenism. Neercassel was summoned to Rome, but Innocent XI. was on the papal throne and the Jesuits lost. They did not relax their opposition, and when Peter Codde succeeded Neercassel in 1686 (the Jesuits having failed, after strenuous efforts, to get a friend of the Society appointed), the feud became more and more unedifying. In 1702 they induced the Vatican to depose him and substitute a more congenial prelate named Cock. Codde had been friendly with Arnauld, who had taken refuge in the Netherlands, and an unscrupulous use of their influence at Rome under Clement XI. secured his deposition. They could not, however, induce the papal authorities to detain Codde, who belonged to a good Dutch family, in the prisons of the Inquisition, and, when he returned to his country, the Government took up his case against the Jesuits.
The situation they had brought about in the Church in Holland was deplorable. The chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem refused to recognise Cock as archbishop, and the faithful were in a state of confusion. For years the Jesuits had jeered at the divisions amongst the Protestants. These divisions were at least based on considerations of belief, and the Protestants could heavily retort that their clergy, of any one denomination, had never been rent into bitterly hostile factions on a mere question of corporate interest. Codde resumed his ministry, and the Jesuits, aided by the friendly Nuncio at Brussels, supported Cock against him. In similar circumstances Queen Elizabeth had assisted the English secular clergy against the Jesuits, and the Dutch Government decided to do the same. Cock was expelled, and four of the leading Jesuits were summoned before the States-General (1705) and ordered to use their influence at Rome for the rehabitation of Codde or else leave the country. The Dutch smiled when the Jesuits protested that their slender influence would not sway the Vatican, and, when a negative answer came from Rome, they were proscribed. They evaded the sentence, but in 1708 they were expelled from the whole of Holland except the privileged Province of Utrecht. When the resentment of the Dutch cooled, however, they crept back into the country and ministered stealthily to their followers. Even after so drastic an experience they continued to lessen the merit of their strenuous and dangerous labours by persistent hostility to, and abuse of, the rival clergy.
In Belgium, which was now predominantly Catholic and had only passed from the control of Catholic Spain to that of Catholic Austria, the Jesuits prospered down to the time of the suppression of the Society. The last remnants of Protestantism had been crushed under the heel of the Spanish soldiers or driven to Holland, and the province was an excellent field for tranquil work. The only notable episode is that, in their eagerness to rise above the other clergy, the Jesuits pressed Rome to apply to Belgium the famous test of belief which had been devised for the "Jansenists" of France. Arnauld had many admirers in Belgium, and the University of Louvain, especially, strongly resented the prospect of being forced to say that there were in the obscure work of Bishop Jansen five propositions which were not there. The Archbishop of Malines and the Nuncio were won by the Jesuits, but Innocent XII. hesitated to extend that miserable struggle to the peaceful Belgian Church. The Nuncio deliberately withheld the Pope's brief until the Jesuits made another attempt to win their demand, but in 1694 the Pope insisted that only priests who were found to hold the five propositions in question should be molested. As usual, the Jesuits failed to find any one who held the famous propositions and the matter was abandoned.
The story of the Jesuits in the States which now form the German Empire and in Austria has not yet been systematically written, and the material is a large and undigested mass of laudatory episodes and drastic charges. [33] In Austria, or the Holy Roman Empire, as it was then called, we might follow the fortunes of the Society with some continuity, but it would add little, in regard to Jesuit character, to what we have gathered from the records of France, Spain, and Portugal. The central and most important fact is the continued influence of the Jesuit confessors at the court. Amongst the interesting manuscripts which were seized at the time of the suppression of the Society was a document, dating from the time of General Acquaviva, giving royal confessors secret instructions as to their duty; [ [34] openly, of course, the Jesuit rule was to refuse such offices as far as possible, and to confine themselves to purely spiritual matters if the office was accepted. These instructions make the confessor a spy not only on the monarch, but upon his ministers and civic officials, and direct that he shall obtain information even about the private lives of his principal subjects. We know from other confiscated manuscripts which have been published (especially by Döllinger and Reusch) that this information was regularly sent to Rome, and that at every important juncture the confessor, who used to ask the monarch for time to consult God and his conscience, sent a secret messenger to Rome (or consulted other Jesuits) and acted on the policy of the Society.
In this sense the Jesuits controlled the policy of Austria to a great extent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Father Lamormaini, confessor to Ferdinand II., inspired the decree for the restoration of church-property in 1629, as we saw, and afterwards secured the best portion of it for the Jesuits; to whom nothing could be "restored," as they had not owned any of the property. In the following year Lamormaini practically decided the dismissal of Wallenstein. There was no question of importance on which the Emperor did not consult him, and the published documents show that there were times when the Jesuit, acting on instructions from Rome, advised a policy which would profit France rather than Austria; in 1635, for instance, he endeavoured (in vain) to induce the Emperor to cede Alsace to France. We have a large number of the Emperor's letters to Lamormaini, and they show that the Jesuit was practically first minister, in secular as well as spiritual matters. Other Jesuits were attached to the princes and nobles, and the natural result was a great increase of the power and wealth of the Society. Once more the suppression of the order and confiscation of its documents have provided a confirmation of the suspicions of historians. J. Friedrich (Beiträge) has published some of the confiscated documents, including a statement drawn up in 1729 by the Procurator of the Province of Upper Germany, Father Bissel. From this it appears that the German Province of the Society advanced (at a high rate of interest) 262,208 guldens to the Catholic Power for the purposes of the Thirty Years' War, and the Jesuit college at Liège 200,000 guldens. The Jesuit treasurer appends the remark that these loans must be kept strictly secret, as a disclosure "might bring ruin on our establishments."
The death of Ferdinand II. in 1637 made no difference in the position of the Jesuits. Ferdinand III. had been carefully trained by them, and he was ever ready to endanger the welfare of his Empire and disturb the peace of his subjects by furthering the designs of the Jesuits in the Protestant Provinces, as we shall see presently. Leopold I., who succeeded in 1657, was an even more fervent pupil of the Jesuits, and had been destined for the priesthood. We may say, in a word, that the Jesuits retained their wealth and power until, to their great anger and disappointment, the Emperor Joseph II. light-heartedly joined the other Catholic monarchs in the campaign for the suppression of the Society, and even Maria Theresa refused to plead for them with the Papacy. At that time their property alone was worth more than £2,000,000, but the Government discovered that they had anticipated the dissolution by investing large sums abroad. It is therefore impossible to estimate their real wealth, but when we add to the income from their vast estates the salaries of royal and noble confessors, the fees of masses and spiritual exercises, the emoluments of university and other teachers, and the very generous and constant inflow of gifts and legacies, we realise that the Austrian Jesuits cannot have been much less wealthy than those of France and Spain.
It may be suggested that we should regard this wealth with indulgence, in spite of the Jesuit vow of poverty, because of the immense educational services which the Society rendered to the Empire. Their school-system has, however, been heavily criticised by Austrian writers, and even in the height of their power it was boldly and successfully assailed by Austrian statesmen. A memorial addressed to the Empress Maria Theresa in 1757 insisted that all the universities had deteriorated since they had been captured by the Jesuits. Two years later (September 1759) the Empress compelled them to surrender to other teachers the chairs of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and history, and several chairs of theology, which they held at the Vienna University. The historian of the university, Kink, fully confirms this statement that it deteriorated under the control of the Jesuits. Indeed, the learned Oratorian priest Father Theiner, the Prefect of the Vatican Archives, shows in his Histoire du Pontificat de Clément XIV. that in other ways the Jesuits had done grave harm to culture in Catholic Germany. Their selfish determination to monopolise teaching and letters had destroyed the intellectual life of the non-Jesuit clergy, and there were few to succeed them when the Society was abolished. We shall see later that when Frederick the Great annexed Silesia, where the German Jesuits controlled education, he disdainfully advised them to send to France for some abler teachers.
It is also necessary to observe that a large number of scandals occurred among the Austrian and German Jesuits, especially the teachers. The subject is unpleasant, but pro-Jesuit writers are so insistent on the cleanness of their record that it cannot be entirely overlooked. A former director of the Bavarian State Archives, Dr. Karl Heinrich von Lang, examined the Jesuit documents under his care at Munich, and found, in the letters of the Provincial of the Upper German Province to the General, an alarming number of charges of unnatural or other vice. There was clearly an extraordinary amount of sexual corruption in the province in the period he reviews (1650-1723), and, if we find this to be the case where it happens that the secret documents of the Society have come into our hands, we must regard with grave suspicion the claims of Jesuit writers in regard to provinces of which we have not similar information. [ [35]
Dr. von Lang has also written a sketch of the history of the Jesuits in Bavaria (Geschichte der Jesuiten in Baiern, 1819), and we have a picture of degeneration and prosperity as in so many other countries. We saw, in an early chapter, the unattractive story of their settlement in Bavaria and coercion of the Protestants. Before and during the Thirty Years' War they were the most ardent instigators of Maximilian, and, when the terror of the Swedes had passed away, they entered upon a period of great prosperity in the impoverished country. When Maximilian died, however, in 1651, some attempt was made to check their progress by the statesmen who knew how deeply they were responsible for the desolation of Bavaria. Members of a rival religious order, the Theatines, were patronised by the Duchess Maria, and the Jesuits conducted an unedifying campaign against the Theatines, who made a spirited resistance. Each body accused the other of forging miracles in honour of its saints. Von Lang estimates that a little after the middle of the seventeenth century the 585 members of the Bavarian branch of the Society enjoyed a permanent income of 185,950 florins. To this, however, we must add fees, salaries, gifts, and legacies. Dr. von Lang shows that between 1620 and 1700 large donations amounting to 800,000 florins were made to the Society, often at the suggestion of its members.
The later wealth of the Jesuits in Bavaria cannot be estimated as the larger contributions to their funds were only stated in strictly secret documents which have never seen the light. We know that the Society prospered more than ever in the eighteenth century. In 1727 there were 875 Jesuits in Bavaria and the Tyrol, and the papers confiscated at the suppression proved that their wealth was enormous. Their college at Ingolstadt alone owned hundreds of farms, or a series of estates worth about 3,000,000 florins. A dozen other colleges were also richly endowed with landed property. As the eighteenth century wore on, however, the hostility to the Jesuits increased. Protestants were never without some serious ground for complaint of Jesuit controversy, and in Bavaria we find them accusing the Jesuits (quite justly) of recommending the sons of Protestant parents to steal the "bad books" of their fathers and bring them to the college. Catholics, on the other hand, complained that the Jesuits rendered no material service in proportion to their great wealth, and, as the successive messages of suppression came from Portugal, France, and Spain, their opponents became bolder. The Jesuits so little expected to be disturbed that in 1770 they created a separate Bavarian province, with more than 500 members. Three years later they were secularised and dispersed on account of the suppression of the Society.
In Protestant Saxony the Jesuits had a different task. We have already seen how they instigated Frederick Augustus, after he had purchased the Polish crown by a change of faith, to adopt the principle of religious intolerance in Saxony. The heir to the throne was, however, a Protestant, and was under the control of Protestants, and the Jesuits had to ensure that the dynasty should be Catholic. This was not in the interest of Saxony, which, as a Protestant State, might have taken a leading position in Germany, whereas, in becoming Catholic, it would be overshadowed by Austria and Bavaria. The king put Jesuits about the person of the prince, and he was, when his conversion proved difficult, sent to travel in Italy in the company of two Jesuits. He was a mere boy of sixteen. His father was, however, assured that he might not only appropriate a large amount of the ecclesiastical property taken by the Protestants at the Reformation, but papal troops would be put at his disposal in case of need to silence the protests of his Protestant subjects. In November 1712 the boy was "converted." Father Salerno, the most active of the Jesuits engaged in this important business, was then sent to Vienna to arrange a marriage with an Austrian Archduchess, and, as all children of the marriage were to be Catholic, the succession was secured. As the present condition of Saxony shows, however, the Jesuits did not in this case succeed in imposing their creed by royal authority. Father Salerno was rewarded with—in Jesuit language, "forced" to accept, against his inclination—a cardinal's hat. He was the thirteenth Jesuit whose modesty had been violated by the papacy in this way since 1593, to say nothing of nuncii, bishops, and other prelates.
The resistance of Hungary to Jesuit permeation was protracted and heroic. Protestantism made great progress in Hungary after the Reformation, and the emperors looked to the Jesuits to extirpate it in that part of the country which was under their control. Ferdinand II. trusted especially to their educational influence, but Ferdinand III. and Leopold supported the Jesuits in active persecution of the heretics. Dr. Krones [ [36] has minutely studied from the manuscript Annual Letters of the Society, the intrigues by which the Jesuits sought to regain power after the Peace of Westphalia. The population was half Protestant, and the emperors were unwilling to inflame the restless Hungarians by too open a use of imperial authority. The most assiduous and secret manœuvres were made by the Jesuits to influence the elections and secure a legal footing in the country. An abortive conspiracy in 1666 served their purpose better. In the general vindictiveness of the Austrian triumph the most drastic measures were taken against the Protestant clergy. A more successful rising in 1675-1679 once more won toleration for the Protestants and checked the Jesuits, and they seem to have maintained this varying campaign of intrigue and coercion and failure until the abolition of the Society.
In the Catholic cantons of Switzerland we have, naturally, the same story as in the Catholic States: a control of education, a determination to cast into the shade the remainder of the Catholic clergy, and a scandalous and enervating material prosperity. Here again we have obtained a very interesting glimpse of the real condition of the Society by the publication of secret documents which were confiscated at the suppression. The chronicle of the Jesuit college at Colmar from 1698 to 1750 was fortunately discovered among their papers and published in 1872. [37] It is a most remarkable ledger or diary of business transactions, displaying on every page that keen instinct for commerce and high profit which the Jesuits are always so anxious to disavow. Vineyards and estates pass steadily into the possession of the college, indignant and disinherited relatives are fought in the law-courts or met by compromise, and the liveliest satisfaction is expressed when some good bargain has been made with the property or the vines have proved fertile. A Lutheran in 1727 has been, in the words of the secret Jesuit chronicler, "simple enough" to pay a substantial rent for a disused cellar belonging to the college; in the same year a pious lady's executors are not in a position to pay a legacy to the Jesuits in cash and they take saleable goods; in 1730 three fields of small value are let on terms which suggest that some simple Catholic tenant was duped. The whole story tells of keenness in securing legacies, astuteness in the profitable handling of the property they inherit or buy, and a somewhat hypocritical readiness to appeal to public bodies for the free grants which they make to poor individuals or communities. The college of Colmar was a business concern of the sharpest character.
These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power, commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes and prelates; and, the moment these princes became sensible of their defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash, to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever."