FOOTNOTES:
[ [32] Jacobi's Das Thorner Blutgericht, and other documents.
[ [33] The Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher zunge, which the German Jesuits are publishing, has not advanced beyond the first period.
[ [34] Published by the Benedictine monk Dudik in the Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, vol. liv. p. 234.
[ [35] See, especially, the sordid details in Dr. von Lang's Jacobi Morelli, S.J., amores, 1815.
[ [36] Archiv für œsterreichische Geschichte, Bd. 79, pp. 277-354; and Bd. 80, pp. 356-458.
[ [37] Mémoires des R.R.P.P. Jésuites du Collège de Colmar.
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SOCIETY
The blows which were inflicted on the Jesuits by the Catholic monarchs of Portugal, Spain, and France during the eighteenth century are historically insignificant in comparison with the suppression of the Society by the papacy. It is easy to suggest for the conduct of the rulers reasons which conceal the misdeeds of the Jesuits. Was not Louis XV. an immoral and unscrupulous ruler, and had not liberalism pervaded every stratum of higher French society? Was not Joseph I. of Portugal an unprincipled voluptuary, an irresolute pupil of a minister who could stoop to forgery? Was not Charles of Spain deluded by a sceptical minister in collusion with Pombal and Choiseul? Did they not force the King of Naples to follow their example, and win the Austrian Emperor with the prospect of appropriating the vast wealth of the Society? So the excuses run; and it is added that these combined monarchs at length brought such pressure to bear upon a Pope, whose election they had secured, that, solely for the sake of peace, without blaming the Jesuits, he reluctantly penned the famous brief of abolition.
We have seen that this version of the destruction of the Society, as far as the Catholic monarchs are concerned, may have some ingenuity in the pages of an apologist, but could not without absurdity be put forward as history. Definite, grave, and irremediable grievances were proved against the Jesuits in each country in which they were suppressed. We have now to see that the last part of the apologetic version is equally untrue. It is not true that the Powers secured the election of Clement XIV.; it is not true that he was pledged to destroy the Society; and it is not true that he destroyed it for the sake of peace, without pronouncing on the merit of the charges against it. We shall find rather that the action of Clement XIV. was the natural culmination of the attitude of the best Popes toward the Society, that it was represented by him as such, and that, in condemning the Society, he collected all the grave charges which were urged against it, and endorsed them with the papal authority.
The general fortunes of the Society in Italy until the middle of the eighteenth century do not merit detailed examination. One undistinguished General succeeded another in the nominal autocracy of the supreme office, but the policy of the Society was, at least after the time of Acquaviva, dictated by the assistants and abler men at Rome. The Society of Jesus is an aristocracy, not an autocracy. The charge of despotism is not unjust, if we do not forget how frequently this despotism has been checked by rebellious "subjects," but it is the despotism of a few, whose decisions are published by the General. An incident that occurred toward the close of the seventeenth century will illustrate this.
By that time, as we saw, Pascal's Letters had drawn the disdainful eyes of Europe to the teaching of Jesuit casuists. It makes little difference that the laxer of these moralists were but a few among the countless theologians of the Society, because nearly the whole of the Jesuits taught that, in case of a moral dilemma, a man might act on the opinion of a single casuist against the opinion of the remainder. It is true that they added that the one theologian must have a "grave authority," but, in view of the censorship and approval of the Society in each case, any Jesuit theologian would be regarded by admirers of the Society as a grave authority. This famous principle of Probabilism—the theory that one might follow a "probable" opinion in matters of moral guilt against "more probable" opinions—which had been adopted and almost appropriated by the Jesuits, gave great scandal, in view of the laxity of some of their prominent casuists, and at length a number of fathers assailed it and tried to remove the stigma from the Society.
The most notable of these reformers was Father Thyrsus Gonzalez de Santalla, an able professor at Salamanca University. About the year 1670 he composed a Latin treatise on "The right use of probable opinions," and sent it to Rome for examination and approval. The authorities refused to sanction publication, but in 1676 Innocent XI., who frowned on the laxity of the Jesuit casuists, heard of the rejected manuscript and sent for it. Through the Inquisition the Pope then (in 1680) urged Gonzalez to publish the book, and communicated to General Oliva a decree to the effect that no father was to be prevented from teaching Probabiliorism, and that, on the contrary, none was to be allowed to defend Probabilism. General Oliva drew up a circular embodying the Pope's commands, which he was ordered to convey to his subjects, respectfully submitted it to the cardinals of the Inquisition, and then—suppressed it. Oliva died in 1681, his successor, Father de Noyelle, died in 1686, and Gonzalez himself was sent to Rome to take part in the election of 1687. The Pope welcomed him and intimated that he ought to be raised to the generalship, to save the Society from the "abyss" into which it was plunging. In spite of the fierce opposition of the Probabilists, he was elected by a narrow majority, and in 1691 he sent to the press his Latin treatise.
The Assistants or Councillors of the General now asserted their power. They threatened their General that, if he did not withdraw the work, they would warn the heads of all the Provinces of the Society of the danger he would bring on them. Father Gonzalez offered to omit his name from the title-page and cut out a particularly obnoxious section of the work, but they sternly refused the compromise. He published, and they denounced their General to the Pope for issuing a theological work without papal authorisation. There was now so fierce a controversy in the Society that the Pope suspended the sale of the book, and remitted the affair to the triennial Congregation of Jesuit Procurators in 1693. A feverish intrigue and a number of heated pamphlets from experienced Jesuit pens prepared the way for the Congregation, and, when it assembled, it voted for the calling of an extraordinary General Congregation. Numbers of them were threatening to have Gonzalez deposed. The Pope, however, declared their vote invalid, and the book was published; but his "subjects"—whom so many regard as corpses in the hands of a despotic General—persecuted and assailed Gonzalez until his death. [38]
The interest of the Italian Jesuits is almost confined to Rome during this period. They were now so wealthy and powerful throughout Italy that they held in check the opposing elements, and we find few of those interesting episodes which saved their earlier career from monotony. In 1656 they secured permission to return to Venice, the last stronghold of their enemies. The dwindling commerce of Venice was now gravely menaced by the Turks, and the Jesuits did not scruple to fan the zeal of the Turks. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Venice was hard pressed, and compelled to look for assistance. It is said that the Jesuits paid a handsome sum to the impoverished Republic; it is at least true, and is the same thing in principle, that the Pope promised assistance on condition that the doors were opened to the Jesuits. The dire oaths never to readmit them were reluctantly erased, and the fathers soon restored their old prosperity. Although wholesome jets of criticism were constantly directed against them, especially at Rome, they flourished throughout Italy much as they did in Spain and Portugal. Hardly a year elapsed without some dying noble bequeathing them a palace or a country house, or some small town being induced to invite them to found a college; and when plague or earthquake or famine desolated the land, and they recovered their heroic mood, a shower of blessings and benefactions fell upon them.
Only one serious calamity overtook them during the period we are surveying. Toward the close of the seventeenth century there was a violent quarrel between the King of the Two Sicilies and the Pope; always one of the most painful dilemmas for the Society. The King claimed a high spiritual authority, and the bishops, supported by the Papacy, placed an interdict on large areas of Sicily. The civil power retorted with a decree of banishment against the clergy who obeyed the Pope, and part of the Jesuits incurred the sentence. Later, when Victor Amadeo received the island and promised conciliatory conduct, the Jesuits reopened their churches; but they were directed from Rome to close them, and were again exiled. Spain then resumed control of Sicily, and reinstated them.
In the year 1705, Gonzalez died, and the learned Tamburini succeeded him. At that time the scandal of the Jesuit concessions in India and China was added, in the literature of their opponents, to the scandals of the American missions, and the Papacy was being forced to act. In 1710 and 1715, Clement XI. sternly condemned their practices, and the Roman Jesuits could do no more than represent, inaccurately, that their missionaries had submitted. The next Pope, Innocent XIII., found that this was untrue, and again severely condemned them; but he was followed by several complaisant Pontiffs, and the Society continued its irregular ways in all parts of the globe. Edifying utterances on the part of the Roman authorities were not wanting. Tamburini died in 1730, and at the Congregation which followed one of the decrees severely enacted that the fathers of the Society must, in every part of the world, avoid "even the appearance of commerce," and refrain from violence in attacking their opponents. No one knew better than these rulers of the Society the industrial and commercial system which was then followed everywhere by the fathers, and the devices by which they silenced their critics; yet no effort whatever was made to enforce the decree.
Benedict XIV. came to the papal throne in 1740, and put an end to the intrigues of the Society in the Roman courts for a time. His bulls of 1742 and 1744, sternly condemning their contumacious conduct in India and China, struck a heavy blow at two of their most profitable missions; but their American missions were veiled by the optimist assurances of France, Spain, and Portugal; and, when Lawrence Ricci became General of the Society in 1758, there was little ground for serious anxiety. Indeed, Benedict XIV. died in that year, and a friendly Pope, Clement XIII., an Italian noble of conciliatory temper, received the tiara. By that time (according to a list published in 1750) the Society had 22,589 members, of whom 11,293 were priests. These were distributed in 669 colleges and 945 residences of less importance; it is singular, and characteristic of the Society, that there were only 24 "houses of the professed" to 22,000 members, and that one half these members were not priests.
One cloud rested on the horizon when Lawrence Ricci became General; but even the most timid and despondent observer could not have ventured to suggest that he was destined to be the last successor of Ignatius. It had been proved to the satisfaction of the Spanish and Portuguese courts that the Jesuits had inspired the revolt in Paraguay, and Pombal had begun his campaign against the Society. The accession of Clement XIII. in July reassured the Jesuits, but in September of that year the news came of the attempt to assassinate the King of Portugal, and a few months later a number of the leading Portuguese Jesuits were in jail. From that moment the doom of the fathers was sealed in Portugal, and their efforts were chiefly directed to restricting the contagious area. Clement was encouraged to resist the Portuguese, and the Spanish court was induced to regard Pombal as a slanderer. In France, however, the famous Lavalette case had recently occurred, and a very ominous wave of indignation against the Jesuits was rising. Choiseul was now known to be leagued with Pombal in hostility to the Society.
Ricci, a Florentine noble by birth, a man of quiet and cultivated taste, was not an ideal ruler for such a period, but as the clouds gathered thicker he threw all his energy into the combat. Before the end of the year 1759 he had to make provision for the thousands of Portuguese Jesuits whom Pombal cynically flung upon the shores of Italy. In the following year the French courts began to condemn the Society to pay the debts of Lavalette, and in 1761 the Parlement of Paris condemned the Society and began the work of repression. In the fiery controversy which now filled all the Catholic countries of Europe every questionable episode in the history of the Society, and probably much that had been added to the historical facts, was discussed and advertised. Myriads of pamphlets fed the sensations of the people, and for the first time since the early years of Ignatius the Jesuits cowered before the storm of obloquy. In 1764, Louis XV. signed the decree for the abolition of the Society in France, and by 1767 the Italian provinces were once more swamped with crowds of fugitives.
Charles III. of Spain had so far firmly resisted the arguments of Pombal, but in the spring of 1766 the Jesuits of Madrid had drawn on themselves the suspicion of having inspired a revolt against the royal authority, and it would be reported to Ricci that the monarch was sombre and inaccessible. As the year proceeded (and, as we now know, Aranda completed his case against the order), increasingly gloomy messages would come from the Spanish court, and in the early days of April 1767 the news came from the coast that 6000 Spanish Jesuits were tossing homeless on the waters. Taking the colonies into account, the Society had now been destroyed in by far the greater part of the Christian world, and a stupendous amount of its property had been confiscated. Moreover, it was now known that the French, Spanish, and Portuguese were pressing the Pope to abolish the Society; and, at least from the middle of 1767, the prospect of that terrible contingency was discussed throughout the clerical world at Rome.
Before the end of 1767 the work began on Italian soil. Charles III. had passed from Naples to the throne of Spain, and he had left that kingdom in the charge of a liberal minister, Tanucci, under the rule of his son Ferdinand IV. Little pressure was needed by the Neapolitans. On the 3rd of November 1767 the Jesuit houses were surrounded, the papers seized, and the fathers banished from Southern Italy. A few months later it was the turn of Parma, and in April the fathers were driven from Malta, as the Grand Master was a feudatory of the King of Naples. Whether the idea came from the Jesuits or no we cannot say, but the Pope concluded that, in the case of Parma, he might retaliate. He revived an old pontifical claim to the duchy, annulled the sentence against the Jesuits, and excommunicated those who had banished them. The allies promptly replied; France seized Avignon, and Naples occupied Benevento and Ponte Corvo, of the Papal States.
It was at this juncture that, on the 2nd of February 1769, Clement XIII. found relief in death, and the historic struggle over the succession to the papal throne began. On the result of that election the fate of the Society would depend, and Jesuits and anti-Jesuits hurried to the arena and used every means in their power to influence the issue. But the Jesuits and their friends have, not unnaturally, published as fact every faint echo of gossip in connection with the election, in order to weaken the significance of their suppression by the Pope elected; and it must be examined with great care. [39]
Clement XIII. died on 2nd February, and the Italian cardinals, especially those of the Papal States, tried to elect a new Pope before the distant and anti-Jesuit Powers could send their cardinals and assert their influence. They opened the conclave on 15th February, and nearly succeeded in electing Cardinal Chigi. It is natural to suspect, and is emphatically affirmed, that the Jesuits induced them to take this irregular step, and we know that General Ricci was at the time hastening feverishly from one prelate to another. We may be quite sure that the Jesuits used what influence they had to secure a premature election, but there is another element to be considered. The cardinals were, in the phrase of the hour, divided into zelanti and antizelanti: cardinals who resented the interference of lay Powers in the affairs of Rome, and cardinals who thought it politic to consult the wishes of the Catholic monarchs. Besides these two schools, however, there were many cardinals who did not adopt a decisive attitude, and were disposed to be guided by the course of events, or at least indisposed to meet the violent anger of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples.
When, therefore, the Marquis d'Aubeterre, the French ambassador, and Mgr. Azpuru, the representative of Spain—the Portuguese ambassador did not arrive until a later date—protested in the names of their sovereigns, and demanded that the conclave should be postponed until the French and Spanish cardinals arrived, the majority of the cardinals were intimidated, and the zelanti were forced sullenly to quit their cells in the Vatican. Cardinal Rezzonico, a nephew of the late Pope, was one of the leaders of the zelanti. In the course of March, Cardinal Luynes and Cardinal Bernis arrived from France. The former was a mere voter, but Bernis—a suave, conceited, ambitious prelate, who sought the place of French ambassador at Rome—had been flattered by the French authorities into the belief that the issue of the election and the fate of the Jesuits depended mainly on him, and he applied his small powers to the intrigue with great zeal. Before the end of April the Portuguese ambassador, Mendoza, and the two Spanish cardinals arrived, and Rome throbbed with discussion and intrigue. The anti-Jesuits had a nucleus of six Neapolitan, two Spanish, and two French cardinals, and the problem was to secure a majority for their cause among the forty voters.
It is sometimes said that they won the indifferent cardinals, partly by bribery and partly by intimidation; but Father Theiner denies both charges. We have, in fact, the private assurance of Bernis to his government, which seems to have contemplated bribery, that the cardinals of that particular conclave were all religious men and incorruptible. At the most, we may be disposed to admit that the fact that some of the cardinals had property in the Provinces seized by France and Naples inclined them to gratify the Powers. As to intimidation, it seems clear that the ambassadors urged upon individual voters the grave danger of opposing the wishes of the Catholic monarchs; but Father Theiner denies that such arguments were used in the conclave itself. One would imagine that they were superfluous. Every cardinal knew that the four Catholic kings sternly insisted on the relief of Parma and the suppression of the Society, and could not but reflect on the possible consequences of electing a pro-Jesuit Pope.
Crétineau-Joly represents that the Society and the cardinals in favour of it had the support of Maria Theresa, and that she sent Count Kaunitz to Rome to express his support. He maintains that it was only after the other Catholic monarchs had tempted Joseph II., her son and Emperor, to covet the property of the Society, that she reluctantly yielded. This is so demonstrably false as to incur the suspicion of untruth. Cardinal Bernis wrote to his court on 28th March 1769, long before the conclave, that Maria Theresa refused to support the demand for the suppression of the Jesuits, but "could not oppose, and would even be glad to see it"; so the Emperor Joseph II. stated. In September of the same year the Nuncio at Vienna gave the same report. Joseph II. himself came to Rome in March (1769), and the Jesuits clearly learned his attitude. When he visited their famous church, the Gesù, General Ricci hastened to greet him, and was jocularly asked "when he was going to change his coat." Later, when they stood before the solid silver statue of Ignatius, and Ricci explained that it was due to gifts of friends of the Society, Joseph observed: "Say, rather, to the profits on your Indian missions." And the Jesuits would further learn that, when the Emperor visited the Vatican, he urged the cardinals to elect another Benedict XIV. On the other hand, the visit of Count Kaunitz was in the following year, long after the attitude of Maria Theresa was known. She never wavered in her position, as she expressed it to Clement XIV. after the suppression; she had no idea of opposing or disapproving what the Pope thought necessary. Austria was lost to the Jesuits. Only a few small and unimportant rulers could be induced to plead for them.
The more difficult problem of the opponents of the Jesuits was to discover a cardinal who might be trusted to destroy the Society, yet would have some chance of election. The Spanish ambassador proposed that a cardinal should be induced to engage himself to abolish the Society if he were elected. For a time the French ambassador favoured the idea, but Cardinal Bernis strongly opposed it; and there is ample proof that it was abandoned before the end of April. There is, therefore, no serious ground whatever for the charge that Cardinal Ganganelli promised to destroy the Society if he were elected, as the French historian is compelled to admit. The only question is whether Ganganelli gave a written assurance to the Spaniards that in his opinion a Pope had the power to destroy the Society. General Ricci had issued a pamphlet in which he contended that the Pope had no power to abolish the Society, and it would assuredly not be a serious matter for a cardinal to express his opinion on that point. But it seems that Ganganelli made no statement to the Spaniards. Some jealousy had arisen between the representatives of Spain and France, and the Spaniards vaguely boasted to Bernis of having had some communication with Ganganelli. Bernis reported that they had some written assurance from him, but in later letters (ignored by the French historian) he retracts. On 19th July he wrote that he may have been mistaken: on 30th November he acknowledged that he was wholly mistaken, and there had been no "arrangement" between the Spaniards and Ganganelli. The results of the voting, which are given by Theiner, confirm this. The supposed arrangement or assurance would have to be dated 15th or 16th May, yet Ganganelli received just the same number of votes (10) on 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th May.
The truth is that no one knew what Ganganelli would do if he became Pope. Formerly a Franciscan monk, he was a man of sincere piety and unquestioned integrity. It is said that he was ambitious, and attempted to secure the votes of both parties by remarking to one group that it was dangerous to offend the Catholic monarchs, and to the other that it was impossible to sacrifice the Society. This is mere gossip. He was an elderly man—in his sixty-fifth year—of high character and great ability. The Jesuit Cordara tells us that Ricci had urged Clement XIII. to give him the purple, and he had always been on friendly terms with the Jesuits. There is not the least serious ground for charging him with acting improperly, and we know that, on 19th May, he was elected by a unanimous vote.
Both parties now assailed the Vatican, and engaged officials in its service to report to them the movements of their opponents and the moods of the Pope. It is difficult to conceive an elderly friar as having sought with deliberate ambition the position in which the new Pope would find himself. The ambassadors of the Powers at once renewed their demand for the abolition of the Society, while the Jesuits and their friends and spies maintained a sombre vigilance. Whichever way the Pope acted he would incur a fierce and dangerous resentment. Clement XIV. was not the man to sell his conscience for the restoration of Avignon, Benevento, and Ponte Corvo; but the retention of these places would not be the only, or the most serious, consequence of disappointing the Powers. On the other hand, he knew the history and principles of the Jesuits. It is said that he put his kitchen in the charge of a friar of the Franciscan order. Whether or no it is true that he feared poison, he would know that the Jesuits would not meekly submit to a sentence of death, and the last years of his life would be full of trouble.
To the representatives of the Powers the Pope replied that he would take no step, and would give no encouragement to either side, until he had made a thorough inquiry into the matter. The Jesuits, however, soon perceived, or imagined, that Clement favoured the Powers. Twice in the two months after the election, General Ricci presented himself at the Vatican, as it was customary for the heads of religious orders to do on the chief festivals of the order, and twice had he to depart without seeing the Pope. He increased his vigilance and activity, and the ambassadors had to adopt various ruses to conceal their intercourse with the Pope; Bernis had now become ambassador, and was eager to justify his appointment. In July the spirits of the Jesuits revived, and it was the turn of the courts to fret and fume. Clement had issued a brief giving certain sacerdotal powers for seven years to the Jesuit missionaries who were just starting for the foreign missions. The Jesuits printed the brief and triumphantly scattered copies over Europe; the ambassadors angrily protested that this was to flout the wishes of their monarchs. In point of fact, there was not the least reason to attach importance to the brief. It was merely the observance of a form that was customary at the departure of missionaries, and to have omitted it on this occasion would have been a very grave and premature indication of an intention to abolish the Society.
However, the impolitic rejoicing of the Jesuits compelled the Pope to make some concession to their opponents. It was customary to republish every year the bull In Cœna Domini which a friendly predecessor had issued in favour of the Society. Clement declined to sanction its republication in 1769, and another ripple of excitement ran over Europe. In some places the Jesuits printed and published the bull themselves, and added another indiscretion to the account against them. A third and more serious error was committed by them. The ambassadors pressed more eagerly, and, as Bernis reports to his court, the Pope replied with dignity that he must consult his honour and his conscience, and make a prolonged inquiry before deciding. Choiseul threatened that the ambassadors would be withdrawn if the Pope did not give them a written assurance within two months, and Clement again sternly refused. France offered to restore Avignon if he would give the assurance, and only excited his indignation. This is the Pope whom the Jesuits and their apologists represent as morally and intellectually perverse; yet they themselves betrayed, and betray, a considerable degree of unscrupulousness in the matter. Crétineau-Joly, ignoring its inconsistency with his whole narrative, quotes a letter in which Clement is supposed to tell Louis XV. that he will not abolish a Society that has had the blessing of nineteen of his predecessors. This letter was forged and published by the Jesuits who lingered in disguise in France, and the apologist must have been quite aware that the Pope himself indignantly disavowed it in a letter to the Nuncio at Paris; indeed, Crétineau-Joly at once goes on to show, from Choiseul's correspondence, that the French could make nothing of the Pope's attitude.
These Jesuit outrages, however, seem to have stimulated the Pope, and on 25th September (1769) he gave Bernis a written assurance for Louis XV. that he intended to suppress the Society. A little later Charles III. of Spain received the same secret assurance. Thirty-four of the bishops of Spain, led by their cardinals and the Archbishop of Seville, had written to demand the suppression, and prove that it was not merely liberal politicians who opposed the Society. In the following February the seminary at Frascati was taken from the Jesuits and put under the control of secular priests. The spring and summer passed without giving fresh hope to the Jesuits. They reported Clement gloomy and inaccessible, and it is not impossible that they learned that a search was now being made in the Vatican Archives, and a report being drawn up on the history of the Society since its establishment. From that time, in fact, Clement secretly gathered the historical material with which he was to frame his crushing indictment of the Society. In June, it is true, Count Kaunitz visited Rome; but, as we know the attitude of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II., we must accept Theiner's statement that he urged the Pope to suppress the Society, rather than the French historian's light assertion that he pleaded for the Jesuits. The Society seemed to be doomed.
Then, in the month of December, Choiseul fell from power in France, and the news fired a train of rejoicing throughout the Provinces of the Society. D'Aiguillon, believed to be a friend of the Society, had (with the aid of Mme. du Barry) displaced their great opponent, and the policy of France would, no doubt, now be reversed. The Jesuits, and the noble ladies who worked for them at Paris, affected at least to believe that they would be recalled to France, and that the Pope would no longer be exposed to the unanimous pressure of the Catholic Powers. But in his first dispatch to Cardinal Bernis, D'Aiguillon maintained the policy of his predecessor in regard to the Society. Spain also replaced its ambassador with a more vigorous representative, Count Florida Blanca, and the Pope was assailed more vehemently than ever. A piquant picture is offered to us of the robust Spanish count bullying the aged Pontiff, who plaintively bares his skin to show Florida Blanca the eruption which proves that he is ill and cannot be pressed. Bernis's letters are more reliable; the French ambassador candidly admires the noble resistance of the Pope to the intriguers on both sides, and his determination to have his inquiry justly and patiently completed before he condemns the Society.
In the course of 1771 and 1772 the Jesuits were convicted of further indiscretions which strengthened the case against them. In June 1771 the secretary of the Portuguese embassy was convicted of collusion with the Jesuits, and banished from Rome; he had communicated to the Jesuits the dispatches which were received from his government, even letters to the Vatican, concerning the Society. In 1772 the cause of the canonisation of Bishop Palafox was before the Congregation, and, in spite of their extreme peril, the Jesuits made a violent and unscrupulous opposition. The scurrilous pamphlets in which the character of the saintly bishop was maligned, and the person of the Spanish monarch represented as abandoned to the devils, were, of course, anonymous; but the Jesuits alone had an interest, or thought they had an interest, in preventing the canonisation of Palafox. Charles III. redoubled his pressure on the Vatican, and in September the Roman seminary was taken from them on the just ground of improper administration. In the same month, Catherine the Great invaded Poland, and Rome and the other Catholic countries learned with indignation that the Jesuits had taken the lead in greeting and demanding submission to the schismatical usurper. They were, as we shall see, currying favour with Catherine and preparing a retreat from Catholic Europe. Rome had hardly ceased to discuss this remarkable news when an even more remarkable incident was reported from Paris. Frederick the Great cynically informed D'Alembert (in December) that General Ricci had sent a secret representative to ask him to declare himself "Protector of the Society of Jesus." A little later, again, Maria Theresa discovered that her Jesuit confessor Campmüller had, as such confessors were secretly bound to do, betrayed her confidence to the authorities of the Society at Rome.
It is hardly probable that these incidents affected the main policy of Clement XIV., whose summary of the historical irregularities of the Society was being slowly compiled, but they enabled him to make a beginning of open action against the Jesuits. Their administration of other seminaries and colleges was questioned, and several (including the Irish College at Rome) were taken from them. In February (1773) it was announced that the bishops were to receive the powers of "apostolic visitators," to inspect all the Jesuit residences in their dioceses, and suppress them where they deemed it necessary. It is suggested that Clement thought he had discovered a way of demolishing the Society without issuing a formal decree of abolition, but it is more likely that he was merely preparing the Catholic mind for a drastic measure. He appointed only one of these "visitators," Cardinal Malvezzi, Archbishop of Bologna, and the brief of suppression must have been drafted before Malvezzi had concluded his work. In point of fact, Malvezzi had reported to the Vatican that the Jesuits of Bologna were already disposing of their property, and it was at once necessary to prevent them from carrying out so irregular a scheme as this. Malvezzi himself, in his letters to Clement, speaks of the measure as a preliminary to carrying out the "long-prepared sentence" against the Society. The Jesuits met the cardinal, who was notoriously hostile to them, with great insolence, and only added to the feeling against themselves.
As the spring of 1773 advanced the conflicting elements at Rome were thrown into a state of intense excitement. The Pope was proceeding with the greatest secrecy, but the secrecy itself plainly shrouded a sentence of death. On 28th May the Pope went into retreat for a fortnight, and thus escaped the importunities of both parties. In the few weeks following the retreat he still gave no indication of his intention, and on 27th June he again went into retreat, [40] and refused to admit visitors.
The air of Rome was now tense with expectation, but the secrecy was maintained with singular success. We now know that the famous brief (Dominus ac Redemptor Noster) for the abolition of the Society was signed by Clement on 21st July, and that the papal press printed sufficient copies of it for transmission to each country without a single breach of confidence. The representatives of the Powers were privately informed in August that the work was done, but the Jesuits could not obtain the least information. Clement XIV. accomplished his task with consummate ability. The Jesuit legends which depict him signing the fatal decree at a window of the palace by night, swooning, lying unconscious during the night, and awakening only to enter into a delirious fit of terror and remorse, are not worth consideration. They are fables retailed years afterwards by Jesuit writers (especially Bolgeni), and have not even the artistic merit of consistency. Crétineau-Joly seems to give them weighty confirmation by asserting that he had heard his version from the lips of Gregory XVI. But he singularly fails to tell us what was the precise story he heard from the later Pope, and Father Theiner bluntly questions if he knew sufficient Italian to understand Gregory (who never spoke French on such occasions). In any case, this reproduction, at a remote date, of pro-Jesuit gossip of which we find no trace at the time, is historically worthless. According to all the contemporary witnesses Clement was in excellent spirits after the suppression, and carried out the difficult work with entire prudence, tranquillity, and good feeling.
But the best defence of Clement and the decisive answer to his detractors is the brief itself which he signed on 21st July, and at the composition of which he had worked assiduously during his two "retreats." It is an exceedingly able and convincing document. Jesuit writers constantly say that Clement XIV. abolished the Society only on the ground that the peace of Christendom demanded that step, and that he passed no judgment on the Society itself. Even the recent American Catholic Encyclopædia, which affects candour and accuracy, states, in the article on Clement XIV. that "no blame is laid by the Pope on the rules of the Order, or the present condition of its members, or the orthodoxy of their teaching." This is a disingenuous and most misleading description of the brief. Clement gives a masterly summary of the irregularities which had been charged against the Society during the two hundred years of its activity. While, however, he is frequently content to speak of these past matters as "charges," he is careful to add that, time after time, they were endorsed by his predecessors, who were condemned to take drastic action against the Society; and, when he comes to deal with the existing Society, which properly concerns him, he plainly observes that it "can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the considerable advantages for which it was created," and he therefore abolishes it for ever.
It is impossible to insert here the whole text of the lengthy brief, but an analysis and some extracts will suffice to show this. The brief opens, after a few introductory remarks of a general nature, with a long list of religious congregations which had been dissolved by the papacy. These bodies had been suppressed for their deterioration or irregularities, and the list is therefore a fitting introduction to the main work of the brief. The Pope then tells that he has made a thorough study of the foundation of the Society and the early papal documents issued in regard to it. He adds: "The very tenor and terms of these apostolic constitutions [the letters of his predecessors] teach us that the Society, almost from the beginning, produced within it the germs of discord and jealousy, and that these not only rent the Society itself, but impelled its members to rise against the other religious orders, the secular clergy, the academies, the universities, the colleges, the public schools, and even against the monarchs who had received them into their States." Here we have, in categorical form, an endorsement of all the charges that were made against the Jesuits in the first century of their existence.
On account of these disorders, he says, "a thousand complaints against these religious were made," and the papacy was entreated to reform them. He recalls the efforts of earlier Popes to reform the Society, and adds that, as we have seen, they were defeated. "The most lively controversy arises everywhere about the doctrine of this Order, which many charged with being wholly opposed to sound faith and good morals. The bosom of the Society is torn by internal and external dissensions; amongst other things it is reproached with seeking worldly goods too eagerly." Here again the categorical note of censure is found, and, after telling the next efforts of Popes to reform the Society, he says:
"We have observed with the bitterest grief that these remedies, and others applied afterwards, had neither efficacy nor strength enough to put an end to the troubles, the charges, and the complaints formed against the Society, and that our predecessors, Urban VII., Clement IX. X. XI. and XII., Alexander VII. and VIII., Innocent X. XI. XII. and XIII., and Benedict XIV. vainly endeavoured to restore to the Church the desired tranquillity by means of various enactments, either relating to secular affairs with which the Society ought not to concern itself, on missions or elsewhere: or relating to grave dissensions and quarrels harshly provoked by its members, not without a risk of the loss of souls, and to the great scandal of the nations, against the bishops, the religious orders, places consecrated to piety, and all kinds of communities in Europe, Asia, and America: or relating to the interpretation and practice of certain pagan ceremonies tolerated and admitted in various places, apart from those which are approved by the universal Church: or relating to the use and interpretation of those maxims which the Holy See has justly proscribed as scandalous and evidently injurious to good morals: or relating to other matters of great importance and absolutely necessary to preserve the purity and integrity of the dogmas of the Christian religion."
It is absurd to regard this formidable indictment of a religious body as a mere list of charges into the justice of which the Pope will not inquire. It is a list of the charges proved to the satisfaction of his predecessors, and embodied in the decrees of the Popes whom he names; and the sternest critic of the Society could hardly frame a weightier indictment in a few lines. The Pope adds that the measures of his predecessors for the reform of the Society were fruitless, and under Clement XIII. "the storms became worse than ever." The Catholic monarchs, he says, have been compelled by "seditions" and "scandals" to expel the Jesuits from their dominions and demand the abolition of the Society. To this demand he has given conscientious attention, and, "recognising that the Society of Jesus can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the considerable advantages for which it was created," he "suppresses and abolishes the Society for ever." The brief closes with directions for the disposal of Jesuit property, and a singularly lengthy and subtle development of his sentence to prevent the casuistic genius of the Jesuits from evading it.
The brief is, therefore, much more than a declaration that the Jesuits must be sacrificed in the interest of peace, and the hatred with which they have pursued the memory of its author has solid ground. It is a plain and learned demonstration that the step taken by Clement XIV. is the just culmination of the history of the Society; it says nothing of leaving open the question of the truth of the charges against the Jesuits, and the deliberate addition of the solemn words "for ever" to the sentence of dissolution shows clearly that it contemplates no temporary situation. The only serious objection urged by the Jesuits and their friends is that they were not summoned to answer the charges against them. Clement might have replied that the charges had been examined, and their defence heard, a dozen times in the history of the papacy; but his chief reason for rejecting this futile idea of a trial was probably that he knew well how the Jesuits intrigued on such occasions. Like Sixtus V. he would certainly have passed away, leaving the Church in the throes of the struggle, before a verdict was given.
This brief was, as I said, concealed from all but the five cardinals who were to carry out the sentence until 17th August. On that day the Catholic Powers were officially informed of the signing of the brief. At nine o'clock that evening a band of officials and guards entered the metropolitan house attached to the Gesù, and ordered Ricci to summon all his subjects to the refectory. They knew—some of them had witnessed the same scene in Spain and Portugal—that their hour had come, but they must have been deeply pained at the wording of the brief, which was read to them. Their proud Society added to that list of degenerate congregations which the Vatican had been compelled to abolish! They were forbidden to leave the house until secular costumes were provided for them, and the notaries put the papal seal on their documents. The same evening, or on the next day, the brief was read in the other Italian houses, and, as the couriers sped to the north, the disastrous tidings slowly spread gloom and despair throughout the Jesuit world as far as Holland and Poland.
The grief of the Jesuits was not less intense than the rejoicing of their opponents. A laughing crowd stormed the chancellory for copies of the brief, but few copies had been printed, and its drastic clauses only gradually became known. Then came the long and stirring period when the news of the response of the Jesuits came in from every quarter. The Roman Jesuits quietly left their homes, day by day, as secular clothes were provided for them. The Pope provided, not only for them, but for the Portuguese ex-Jesuits, as Portugal refused to fulfil its promise, and had every effort made to find situations for them in the service of the Vatican, the secular clergy, or the educational world. Many merely changed their garments, and continued to be the confessors of noble ladies or the tutors of their sons. Large numbers of them lived in community, on their joint pensions, awaiting the death of Clement XIV. and the restoration of the Society. The chief trouble in Italy was that offensive anonymous pamphlets were printed in vast quantities and circulated, and were in some instances traced to the Jesuits; and that Ricci and his assistants, who remained in the central house, were detected in a treacherous correspondence with the insurgents in distant regions, and imprisoned in the fortress of S. Angelo, where the unhappy Ricci died two years afterwards. Rome was not indisposed to laugh at anti-Jesuits as well as Jesuits. No doubt the gossips of the city told each other the fables which Jesuits reproduced in later years, and their apologist gives as "history"—for instance, that the diamonds which had adorned the statue of the Madonna in the Gesù were publicly worn afterwards by the mistress of one of the prelates charged with the execution of the sentence—but the pro-Jesuit faction at Rome was completely silenced.
In the Italian provinces, where the Jesuits commanded the allegiance of peasants and nobles who were unacquainted with their history, the anonymous pamphlets circulated briskly, and some more overt attempts were made to weaken the condemnation. For some time before the suppression a holy nun of Viterbo had earned repute as an inspired oracle, and her fame was great among the followers of the Jesuits. After the suppression her inspiration became richer and more precise, and the Vatican presently learned that thousands were cherishing her predictions that the Pope was to die at once, the kings to perish miserably, Frederick the Great to be converted, and the Society of Jesus to be quickly restored. A second lady entered the field, with predictions of a like nature. The Pope ordered that both should be arrested and an inquiry held by the Bishop of Orvieto. In the rooms of the ex-Jesuits he found an enormous mass of literature relating to the prophetesses, and locks of their hair ("and other things which decency forbids me to mention," says Father Theiner) for sale or distribution as riches. A judicial inquiry was held, and two of the Jesuits were condemned to imprisonment in S. Angelo as the chief agents in the fraud.
In Naples, Spain, and Portugal the news was received with great rejoicing. In France, according to Crétineau-Joly, it was received with indignation, and the Archbishop of Paris, speaking in the name of "the Gallican Church," boldly rejected the Pope's brief, and addressed a very remarkable letter to His Holiness. There were still bishops in the French Church who owed their sees to the Jesuits, and Archbishop de Beaumont had earned their gratitude by defending their casuists. But M. Crétineau-Joly is here guilty of one of the gravest of the many grave ruses in this part of his work. The supposed letter, in connection with which he does not give a word of warning, is a flagrant Jesuit forgery. It is dated 24th April 1774, yet it is well known that a few weeks before that date the archbishop had suspended an ex-Jesuit preacher, M. de la Vrillière, for presuming on his noble connections and fashionable repute to make a few remarks, in a sermon, on the Pope's action. The fact is that this forged letter, and one forged in the name of the Archbishop of Arles, first saw the light in a Jesuit pamphlet eighteen years afterwards. The French received the news with indifference or joy.
Austria also at once secularised its Jesuits. In spite of earlier assurances the Pope had some misgiving about the attitude of Maria Theresa, and with a copy of the brief he sent her a letter from his own hand. She replied, as she had said for four years, that what the Pope thought it proper to do was agreeable to her. Apart from Prussia and Russia, which we will consider in the next chapter, it was chiefly in small countries like the Swiss cantons, or on the foreign missions, that the Jesuits tried to resist. At Lucerne the Jesuits induced the senate to take the bold step of suspending the execution of the brief and writing to the Vatican for explanations. They were disdainfully ignored until they decided to carry out the sentence against the Society. At Freiburg—this is told as a touching and creditable incident by the Jesuits themselves—the superior gathered a vast congregation in their chapel ("to say farewell"), made a most eloquent discourse on the virtues and services of the Society, and implored their followers to respect the Pope's orders. Naturally, the effect was the reverse of pacifying the people, and it took some time to get rid of the Jesuits in Freiburg. At Soleure and other towns there was similar trouble. At Cologne the ex-Jesuit Fuller edited the Gazette, and its columns erupted fiery attacks on the Pope, and reproduced all the unfavourable gossip of Rome about him and his commissioners. They were to appeal to a General Council against this infamous pontiff. It was only in June of the following year, after the Nuncio had threatened to lay an interdict on the town and the authority of the emperor was invoked, that the Jesuits and their friends were silenced; and then they merely changed their coats and continued, in their various positions, to await better days. In Poland the bishops at once began to execute the brief, but the Jesuits inspired the idea that it was invalid on a technical ground, and the senate talked of sending an ambassador to Rome. The struggle ended in the Polish Jesuits taking shelter, as we shall see, under the authority of Catherine.
We do not, in a word, find that admirable and meek submission which is claimed by pro-Jesuit writers, who seem to think that the cases of vituperative pamphlets which were smuggled from country to country, and the bold stand made by local authorities here and there, were quite painful to the condemned fathers. We find, on the contrary, that from General Ricci downward the Jesuits intrigue or rebel wherever they have large local support and are not subject to a powerful Catholic monarch. On the distant missions the sequel was worse than in Europe. The removal of the Spanish and Portuguese fathers had demolished most of the missionary provinces, and the condemnation of their rites had greatly reduced the missions of the French and German Jesuits. But a few of them still lingered at the court of the Chinese Emperor or worked secretly in the provinces, and there were more in Tong-King and India. They resisted the papal brief for three years, at least in China. From every mission they held they were reported to the propaganda for insurrection, and the letters which are sometimes quoted to show how meekly they accepted the sentence were written by exceptional individuals. A small minority of them were for submission. Most of them made a hypocritical plea that the emperor (who no longer recognised their existence as priests, it will be remembered) would not suffer them to obey.
When, in 1776, they were forced to yield, they fell into three parties and entered upon a long and scandalous quarrel about the division of their property. As late as 1785 one of the ex-Jesuits dragged the former superior of the Peking mission into the Chinese civil court and exposed the quarrel. Bourgeois had the disposal of their property, goods, shops, etc., which were valued at half a million francs, and he rewarded the members of his own party with a thousand taels each, and left his opponents in great privation. In 1786 the propaganda forced them to hand over their missions, which they still controlled, in secular dress, to others, but they continued for several years to quarrel with each other and with the other missionaries. The last chapter of their Asiatic missions is little less than sordid, and it is sheer deceit to conceal these facts and offer us only one or two edifying letters written by the better fathers.
At the time of its abolition the Society numbered 22,589 members (of whom 11,293 were priests), and owned 669 colleges and 869 other residences (of which only 24 were "houses of the professed"). It is needless to add any reflections on the suppression. The papal brief is the supreme judgment on the Jesuits in the first phase of their existence. However many devoted and austere members there were among the twenty thousand, the Society was incurably corrupt. There was no serious ground to think, after earlier experience, that reform would succeed; they would not reform themselves—the decrees of their Congregations were waste paper—and they resisted every papal effort to reform them. The Society, as a body, was committed to the pursuit of wealth and power, and in this pursuit it acted invariably as if the end justified the means. The germs planted in it by Ignatius had ripened. His followers had sought the wealthy and the powerful, had veiled their actions in secrecy, and had trampled on their own rules and the rules of the Church when the end required it.