FOOTNOTES:
[ [38] See a full account in Döllinger and Reusch's Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche (1889), i. 120-273.
[ [39] Two works will give the reader ample material for forming an idea on the subject. From the Jesuit side there is Crétineau-Joly's work, Clément XIV. et les Jésuites (1847), though the work is little more than a reproduction of the fifth volume of the same writer's Histoire ... de la Compagnie de Jésus, and is quite unprincipled in many of its statements. The other work (Histoire du pontificat de Clément XIV., 1852) is a reply to the preceding, written by the learned and conscientious Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, Father Theiner. Both contain copious extracts from contemporary documents, especially the correspondence of the ambassadors. The work of St. Priest, Histoire de la chute des Jesuites, is interesting and lively, but gossipy and unreliable.
[ [40] The retreat is a period, generally a fortnight, in which priests and nuns devote themselves entirely to prayer and contemplation. It is usual to do so annually; to go into retreat twice in six weeks would be regarded as extraordinary and, in the circumstances, very significant.
THE RESTORATION
In the brief of suppression Clement XIV. had enumerated a series of religious congregations which the papacy had abolished on account of their decay. Most of these had faded from the memory even of ecclesiastics. Their members had bowed to the papal command, and either directed their steps to some other religious body or quietly enjoyed the pensions allotted them out of their property. But there can have been little expectation that the members of the Society of Jesus, who were especially pledged to obey the Pope, would submit to the sentence passed on them. They would, in some form, await the toll of the bells over the remains of Clement XIV., and, if necessary, over the remains of the Catholic monarchs. The form which their resistance actually took, however, was more audacious than their keenest critic could have anticipated. They persuaded two non-Catholic rulers to prevent the publication of the brief in their dominions, persuaded themselves that by this device they escaped the heavy spiritual penalties laid on rebels by the brief, and flouted every command of the Pope and his representatives to change at least their name and costume.
So much has been written on the conduct of Frederick the Great and Catherine in patronising the Jesuits that we do not share the astonishment of contemporaries. In his correspondence with the free-thinker D'Alembert at Paris, Frederick lightly advances one reason after another for his action. He scouted D'Alembert's warnings. The Pope had "pared the claws" of the dangerous animals; he had "cut off the tails of the foxes," and they could not again carry torches into the cornfields of the Philistines. On the other hand, they were excellent teachers, and it was immaterial to Frederick what orders the Pope gave about their costume and domestic arrangements. Pressed more seriously, he pleaded that when he annexed Silesia he had solemnly pledged himself to respect the religious status quo, and he was bound in honour to leave the Jesuits there, since they were part of the situation he had sworn to respect. Even this ostensibly serious argument was too ridiculous to satisfy his friends. A Protestant ruler swearing to respect the Catholic arrangements naturally supposes that he is to do so only as long as the head of the Church desires. The truth is that, in the first place, the Jesuits provided his State with a comparatively good scheme of education without cost to his treasury; and, since they could have taught just as effectively whether or no they continued to call themselves Jesuits, it is further clear that Frederick deliberately protected and encouraged their rebellion in order to secure a larger service from them than merely teaching arithmetic. They were, as they had so often done for Catholic monarchs in outlying dominions, to teach loyalty to Prussia and disarm rebels. Add the fact that the Inquisition had put his writings on the Index, and the Vatican had obstinately refused to recognise his royal title, so that he was not indisposed to annoy Rome, and we have a sufficient explanation of his conduct.
Until the year 1740 Prussia had remained almost entirely Protestant, so that it now almost makes its first appearance in the chronicle of the Jesuits. A small Catholic community existed here and there, but there was little proselytism, and there was not even a Catholic bishop. In 1742 Frederick won Silesia from Austria, and thus included in his dominions a large and disaffected Catholic population. As D'Alembert reminded Frederick, the Jesuits had done all in their power to hinder his occupation of Silesia, and they long continued to foster the Catholic wish to return to Austria. They were, he said in his Testament Politique (1751), "the most dangerous of all monks," and "fanatically attached to Austria." But they were a mighty power in Silesia. The Breslau University and nearly all the schools were under their control, and a large proportion of the population, having passed through their schools or enjoyed their ministration, were vehemently attached to them. Frederick decided that they must remain, and be watched carefully. In 1746 he examined their system of education and advised them to send for a number of French Jesuits, who would raise their standard. We can quite believe that their schools needed improvement, but Frederick had another advantage in view. A leaven of French Jesuits would help to counteract the Austrian bias.
Silesia was still in this condition when, in the year 1772, the Jesuits found themselves fighting for the life of their Society. Frederick had privately written that it "ought to be rooted out of the whole world," and ten years before he had seriously considered a proposal to expel the Jesuits from his dominions. It now, apparently, occurred to him that he had a splendid opportunity of conciliating Catholic Silesia and destroying the pro-Austrian sentiment. Joseph II. had abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies; Frederick of Prussia would espouse their cause, and not allow his subjects to be robbed of their ministers. We saw that the Jesuit General was well informed as to his attitude, and asked him to pose openly as protector of the Society. He probably answered that, while a Protestant dare not interfere in the discussions at Rome, he would keep the doors of Prussia open to them. When the brief of suppression appeared, he forbade the bishops to publish it in Silesia, and he offered General Ricci and his colleagues the hospitality of his dominions.
From that moment Frederick smiled at the anger of Rome and of the Catholic nations. The cynical humour of his attitude does not concern us, but the behaviour of the Jesuits themselves is a grave chapter in their history. At first, with their wonted casuistry, they declared that the brief was not binding, as it had not been addressed personally. When this supposed canonical irregularity was ridiculed, they, as I have said, pleaded that Frederick conscientiously believed himself bound to maintain the status quo, that he therefore refused to allow them to change their name, and that the interest of religion forbade them to ignore the commands of a powerful secular monarch. They were warned by their own colleagues in Italy that this hypocritically veiled rebellion was of itself a strong justification of Clement's indictment of the Society; they were reminded by the papal Nuncio at Warsaw that they had in fact incurred the penalties specified in the brief. Of all these warnings they took not the least notice, and the Catholic world had the singular spectacle of a band of priests who were understood to be the Pope's body-guard sheltering from his anathemas behind the shield of a free-thinker. Indeed, they went further, and, cynically ignoring their plea that they must obey their monarch, they sought to use Prussia for maintaining or restoring the full organisation of the Society. The Prussian representative at London helped them to communicate with the ex-Jesuits of England, and they proposed that a Congregation should be held at Breslau and a Vicar-General of the Society elected, as Ricci was still in S. Angelo. The English ex-Jesuits were, however, too scattered and helpless to join with them.
The Nuncio had reported to Clement that it would be unsafe to take drastic action, as Frederick would be inspired to retaliate. It was therefore directed that the bishops should refuse to ordain their growing members or give the usual spiritual powers, and the Jesuits felt that a serious situation would arise. With their Catholic flocks they had little difficulty. Clement XIV. was represented as a corrupt pontiff who had purchased the tiara by a simoniacal promise to destroy the Society, and who now wandered, almost insane, about the galleries of the Vatican moaning and crying: "I did it under compulsion." But they could not live long without the co-operation of the bishops, and an envoy was sent to Rome, in the name of Frederick, to arrange a compromise. They were to change their name and dress, modify their domestic arrangements as little as could be helped, and continue in their houses and colleges.
At this juncture, on 22nd September 1774, Clement XIV. died. He was in his seventieth year and had a chronic ailment (piles). The strain of the last four years and an acute disappointment in regard to the return of Avignon, Benevento, and Ponte Corvo had deeply affected his health. In April, moreover, he had been caught in a shower of rain, and, although he seemed to recover in the early summer, his condition became grave in July. By the end of August the succession to the papal throne was openly discussed. He sank slowly and continuously during the month of September, and died on the 22nd. It does not seem necessary to examine minutely the rumour that he was poisoned. His illness cannot be regarded as other than natural, and the repulsive details about the corpse which are given in St. Priest seem to be an echo of Roman gossip. If we decline to accept popular stories concerning Clement's mental condition—his administration is to the end marked by great sobriety and prudence—we must also decline to consider these rumours of poison. The two physicians declared that the death and the condition of the corpse were, in a sultry September, natural. It would hardly require much extension of Jesuit principles to sanction the poisoning of Clement XIV.; historically, however, we have not very serious ground to charge them with the crime.
On 15th February 1775 Pius VI. ascended the papal throne. The power and attitude of the Catholic monarchs was still such that there could be little chance of restoring the Society, and it seemed safe to admit a pope who was well disposed toward the ex-Jesuits. It was to Pius VI. that the Prussian envoy made his proposals, and they were gladly admitted. Directions were issued that the bishops of Silesia might grant powers to former members of "the extinct Society," and they entered upon a new phase of their rebellion. Instead of welcoming this regularisation of their position, they complained that Frederick had "gone over to their enemies" (the bishops), as he really had. In the course of the year 1776 the Silesian Jesuits were practically secularised. They were forced to abandon their costume, depose their superiors, and hand over their property to the State in exchange for a salary. They still lived in communities and enjoyed a certain immunity from episcopal control, but they were now "Priests of the Royal Scholastic Institute."
Frederick invited other ex-Jesuits to join his Institute, and a salary of 700 florins a year was assigned to each. In this condition the hundred ex-Jesuits continued to control education in Silesia, and quarrel with the secular clergy, until Frederick died in 1786. When the bishops objected to the fathers living in community, Frederick genially replied that at Rome one hundred and twenty of these ex-Jesuits were living in community, and he might be permitted to imitate the indulgence of the Pope. He remained to the end proud of his economical system of education and his triumph over the Papacy. His successor modified the Institute in some respects, but the changes were slight until the year 1800, when it was converted into the "Royal Prussian Catholic School Direction" and lay teachers were admitted to it. That was the end of one of the most famous and curious rebellions against the Papacy.
Some of the discontented ex-Jesuits passed in 1800 from Silesia to Russia, and we must now retrace our steps to consider the equally remarkable rebellion of the Jesuits in that country. Catherine II. had, like Frederick, sound political reason to patronise the Jesuits. In August 1772 Prussia, Russia, and Austria took the fragments of Poland which they had long coveted, and Catherine entered Polish Livonia and Lithuania with her troops. The ancient kingdom had decayed, as we saw, in proportion to the prosperity of the Jesuits, and it suffered the dismemberment with the impotent anger of an aged man. When the schismatical Catherine came to claim their allegiance, the Catholic clergy generally stood aloof in patriotic sullenness until the Jesuits took the lead. The admirable excuse is made for them that they were indifferent to politics and terrestrial arrangements of government, and recognised only a duty to obey the sovereign who actually held power. In point of fact, they knew that Poland had not the faintest hope of evading its hard destiny, and they hastened to greet the new ruler.
Catherine's searching eye at once realised the situation. These two hundred Polish Jesuits had an immense influence over her million and a half new subjects, and their advances must be met generously. Peter the Great had excluded Jesuits from Russia for ever; Catherine at once decreed that this prohibition was repealed as far as her Polish dominion was concerned, and she expressed a flattering admiration of their colleges. Her feeling was, obviously, that they would prove excellent teachers of loyalty to the Poles, but within a few months the Society was abolished by Clement and a new situation arose. Playing one of those little comedies which adorn their annals, the Polish Jesuits addressed to their new sovereign a most respectful entreaty that she would permit them to obey the command of the Pope. There is no doubt that this letter, which is reproduced with admiration in complimentary histories of the Jesuits, is genuine; it is, however, not explained how the Jesuits would lessen their usefulness to Catherine by changing their name and costume, and why they needed this imperial permission to make a change which did not concern her.
Catherine and the Jesuits had enough in common to understand each other. They wished her to forbid them to obey the Pope, and they would prove grateful. Catherine at once refused to allow them to change their names and their coats, and they reported to Rome that the secular power forbade them to comply with the brief, and, in the interest of religion, they must obey her. The situation was so scandalous, since the Papal Nuncio insisted on the dissolution of the province, that some of the more scrupulous of the fathers were abandoning their houses and seeking secularisation. To meet these secessions a letter from Clement to the Bishop of Warmie (an ex-Jesuit) was published, and in this letter Clement was represented as approving the existence of the Society in Russia. Although this letter is reproduced seriously by the French historian of the Society, it is a flagrant forgery. Clement and his Nuncio protested to the end against the position of the Polish Jesuits, and the course of the story will show that they themselves took no serious notice of this supposed authorisation. It is not the only untruth we shall have to trace to them.
When Pius VI. was elected, they at once applied to him for counsel in their difficult situation, but the representatives of France and Spain were closely watching the new Pope, and he did not venture or deign to reply. Their uncanonical position was now causing the Jesuits the same concern about the future as it had given their colleagues in Prussia, and Catherine made a direct application to Rome for a remedy of their inconvenience. The Pope thought that he might escape the importunities of the ambassadors by conferring on the Bishop of Mohilow full power to deal with the fathers. This friendly prelate had, no doubt, been suggested by them, as he at once granted them the desired permission to establish a house for novices. To complete the comedy, the Pope, through his Secretary of State, protested that he had not contemplated this step when the representatives of France and Spain complained. The Jesuits paid no heed to his diplomatic protest, opened the novitiate, and entertained Catherine herself at their new foundation.
The powers of the Bishop of Mohilow had now served their purpose, and the Jesuits asked Catherine to curtail them and permit them to elect a General as their constitutions directed. Catherine (in 1782) issued a ukase in accordance with their wish, but the bishop was alienated by their duplicity, and he appealed to the Senate and secured an order that the Jesuits were to obey him. Strong in the favour of the Empress and of Prince Potemkin, the Jesuits ignored the decree of the Senate, and went on to elect a Vicar-General and Assistants. In order to obtain papal indulgence of this conduct they induced Catherine to send the ex-Jesuit Bishop Benislawski to Rome. Pius VI. dare not issue a written authorisation of their position—another proof that the letter of Clement was a forgery—but Benislawski reported that the Pope had said emphatically to him: "I approve the Society in White Russia. I approve it." Again the French historian reproduces this statement unreservedly as fact. But the mendacious bishop was so indiscreet as to make his statement before he left Rome and have it published at Florence, and the Pope indignantly denied it. The bishop was ordered to leave Rome, and, as Theiner shows, Pius VI. issued two briefs denying that he had approved the Society (29th January and 20th February). M. Crétineau-Joly seems to prefer to think that it was the Pope who lied.
To the remote wilds of Lithuania the Roman quarrel had little chance of penetrating, and Bishop Benislawski presently returned with the happy assurance that the Pope approved their position; the monarchs prevented him from issuing a brief, but he sent this oral message to justify the fathers in their consciences. The lie was propagated among the ex-Jesuits of Europe, and many of them abandoned their pensions or positions and made their way to Russia. It seems that there were other features of the Society retained besides the art of mental reservation. Crétineau-Joly generously observes that after 1785 the Russian fathers "construct cloth-factories, a printing press, and all that is necessary for such exploitations": a complete business-system, in other words. It is remarkable that even in these circumstances, when they were pressing for a restoration of their Society, the Jesuits would not abandon their improper practices.
The death of Catherine in 1796 did not affect the position of the fathers. She had entrusted the education of her son to Father Gruber, one of the ablest members of the Society in Russia, and when Paul came to the throne he declared that he would maintain the patronage which his mother had given to the Society. It is true that Paul gave them some concern from the beginning. The Vatican had now so far reconciled itself to the anomalous situation as to take advantage itself of the influence of the Jesuits and send a Nuncio to St. Petersburg. The Russian laws strictly forbade proselytism, as it is important to realise. Paul, like Catherine, tolerated the Jesuits only on condition that they ministered to their co-religionists, educated youth, and made no effort to disturb the faith of members of the Greek Church. Under these conditions he regarded them as a useful aid in carrying out the national reforms which had been initiated by Peter the Great. But Paul was tempted to interfere in the spiritual government of his Catholic subjects, and, when the Nuncio politely protested, the autocrat bade him leave Russia. Gruber tactfully mediated between the two, and the Nuncio was allowed to return. One is almost tempted to think that Gruber, an exceedingly astute Jesuit, arranged the quarrel for the purpose of mediating, as we find him afterwards speaking of the "debt" of the Holy See to him and his colleagues, and a very remarkable understanding between the zelanti cardinals and the irregular Jesuits can be traced at this time.
Pius VI. died in 1799, refusing with his last breath to disturb the Church in Europe by sanctioning the Jesuits, even in Russia. After his death the Venetian senator Rezzonico was sent by the ultramontane party to St. Petersburg to ask the protection of Paul for the forthcoming conclave; and the only meaning we can attach to this embassy is that the schismatical Tsar was to counteract the intimidation of the Catholic monarchs and enable the cardinals to elect a pope who would restore the Society. By this time the French Revolution had run its tragic course, and the ex-Jesuits were loudly proclaiming everywhere that it was the natural development of the forces which had demanded the suppression of the Society; that, if these wild and devastating forces were not to wreck civilisation in Europe, they must be recalled to put a check on them. There was a growing disposition to listen to their plausible sermon, or at least to perceive that if the Jesuits were restored on condition that they checked the new spirit, they might prove a powerful auxiliary to the legitimate monarchs. The Bourbons had been swept from France; Charles III. had gone the way of his fathers and D'Aranda was powerless; Naples was beginning to desire a fence of Jesuits to protect itself from the northern pestilence.
The Tsar was greatly flattered by the proposal that he should assert his power in the metropolis of Christendom, but it is difficult to find that he had any material influence. Portugal and Austria alone still resisted the design of restoring the Society, and Austria was fully occupied in meeting the troops of Napoleon. Hence the cardinals had little difficulty in securing the election of Chiaramonti, who, as Bishop of Tivoli, had openly expressed his reluctance to carry out the brief of suppression. Pius VII. was now a feeble and retiring old man, a former member of the Benedictine Order: a strange figure to place upon a throne which was presently to be exposed to such violent storms. But Napoleon was not yet Emperor, and the Papacy was still a quiet and puzzled spectator of the extraordinary developments in Europe. Within six months of his election Pius VII. received from the Tsar a pressing request for the approval of the Society, and on 7th March 1801 he solemnly recognised its existence in Russia. We shall see presently that the Russian fathers had already, with the connivance of Pius VI., sent a colony into Parma, at the request of the duke, and that various groups of thinly disguised Jesuits had appeared in different parts of Europe. The Jesuits had now a substantial hope of recovering their power.
We have already seen that the Jesuits were not in the least chastened by their severe punishment, and the position of Gruber at the Russian court is an interesting illustration of this. He had much the same relation to Paul I. as La Chaise to Louis XIV. or Lamormaini to the Emperor. Matters of pure Russian politics were submitted to him, and he was hated and flattered by the Russian courtiers. Indeed, about 1800 we find him engaged in just such an intrigue as the older Jesuits loved. Napoleon wished to detach the Tsar from his English alliance, and was rapidly developing the idea of his middle career—the proposal to divide Europe between the thrones of France and of Russia. He wrote confidentially to Gruber, artfully suggesting that a co-operation with his plan would be to the advantage of the Society, and Gruber, who could see the future of Napoleon, entered zealously into his part. One wonders whether the history of Europe might not have run differently if Napoleon had followed up this idea, and restored the Society of Jesus as the chief element of his "spiritual gendarmery." On the other hand, Paul instructed his representatives in the Near East to obtain access for the Jesuits, and the first step was taken in the restoration of the foreign missions.
Paul died in the spring of 1801, and the warier Alexander came to the throne. He quietly assured the fulsome Jesuits that he approved and would maintain the Russian patronage of the Society, but it is clear that he kept a more critical eye on their conduct than his predecessors had done. And the fathers now embarked on enterprises which it was certainly expedient to watch. Paul had assigned to the Jesuits the Roman Catholic church at St. Petersburg, and to this church was attached the privilege of opening a school. In the course of 1801 and 1802 some of the ablest fathers were sent there from the chief centre at Polotzk, and a school for the sons of the nobles was opened and obtained large numbers of pupils, Russian and Catholic. There also appeared at St. Petersburg, as Sardinian envoy, the famous French writer, Joseph de Maistre, who was at that time in his first fervent admiration of the Society which he knew so little. Whether or no the Jesuits had secured this appointment, he proved a valuable auxiliary. There was as yet, under the able leadership of Gruber, no cause for dissatisfaction. In the new provinces which Alexander was developing the Jesuits worked devotedly and usefully among the colonists; the great Tsar had no more zealous and effective apostles of loyalty. In the schools, also, their teaching was irreproachable. Provision was made even for the training of the youths in the doctrines of the Greek Church.
The work of the restoration of the Society proceeded smoothly. In October 1801 the older fathers had met in Congregation and elected Gruber General of the Society. From this month we may plausibly date the restoration of the Society, since its former members were free, and were invited, to come from all parts of Europe and place themselves under the authority of Gruber. In the summer of 1803 Gruber sent a father to Rome, "to watch the interests" of the Society. Being a member of an authorised body, he retained his costume, flaunted it in the eyes of the astonished Romans, and visited the Vatican in it. Men felt that the ghost would soon be followed by a resurrection. In the following summer Gruber received from the Pope a genial notification that Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies desired to have a number of fathers for the education of youth in his kingdom, and Pius was willing to oblige him. On 6th August 1804 the Society was restored in the Two Sicilies. In the meantime other Societies which were more or less secretly Jesuit, and various communities of ex-Jesuits in different parts of Europe, were returning to the obedience of the General, but we will dismiss the Russian episode before dealing with these.
In the year 1805 Gruber lost his life in a fire, and the Russian Society fell under a less astute leader. Father Bzrozowski was elected General, and for a few years he was content with a quiet development of the policy of his predecessor. In 1811, however, he requested the Tsar to raise their chief college at Polotzk to the rank of a university, and allow it to control all the schools maintained by the Society. This would remove them from the control of the Minister of Cults, and make them an integral part of the system of education under the Minister of Public Instruction; it would also emancipate their schools from the control of the St. Petersburg or the Vilna University. Alexander seemed to be impressed by their specious argument that a healthy rivalry would raise the standard of education, and their promise that their education would be both cheaper and sounder (less liberal and cosmopolitan) than the purely Russian. But the proposal raised the first great storm against the Jesuits in Russia. For some time there had been a growing resentment against them. Russian nobles and officials and priests angrily recalled the power which a Jesuit priest had had at the court, and lamented the growth of Roman Catholicism. The Jesuits retorted that they had not received a single one of their pupils into the Roman Church; it will appear that they had discreetly sent to other priests the pupils in whose minds they had sown the seeds of conversion.
Then Joseph de Maistre took up his eloquent pen in their behalf and the battle was won. In 1812 the Polotzk college was raised to the rank of a university, and began to educate the sons of noble or wealthy Russians. In the course of time there were as many as two hundred noble youths, of the Greek faith, sitting on its benches, and, as usual, the interest of the fathers in their pupils led to a respectful concern about their mothers and sisters. It was noticed that many were received into the Roman Church: though never by Jesuits. European politics had for some years distracted the attention of the Tsar, but the critics of the Society had in 1812 received a powerful reinforcement in the shape of agents of the English Bible Society. Alexander was at war with Napoleon and in close alliance with England, and the Bible Society took advantage of the political situation to enter St. Petersburg. They brought a rich supply of information about the Jesuits and stimulated the vigilance of the Russians. The mysterious growth of secessions to Rome since the opening of the Jesuit college for nobles in the capital led to fiery discussions.
At last, in 1814, the young Prince Galitzin, nephew of the Minister of Instruction of that name, joined the Church of Rome. He was in his sixteenth year, and had been attending the Jesuit classes for two years. His uncle, a stern critic of the Jesuits, now entered upon a violent campaign against the Society, and the city rang with denunciation of their secret machinations. It was discovered that the real number of conversions to Rome had been concealed, as the converts had been instructed to practise their new religion only in secret. There was an intense agitation, and the Jesuits thought it prudent to close their schools to all but the sons of Roman Catholics. It was too late. Priests and professors maintained the stormy agitation and nervously endeavoured to unveil the secret Catholics.
In the midst of this agitation Alexander returned from France, after the final defeat of Napoleon, and both parties appealed to him. His answer was a ukase, issued in December, sternly ordering the Jesuits to close their schools and quit St. Petersburg. In cold and measured language he recalled that they had been admitted on the strict understanding that they were not to proselytise, and he denounced their "breach of confidence." They were expelled for ever from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in the Catholic Provinces they were to return to the subject condition they had had up to the year 1800. On the night of 20th-21st December the police entered their colleges and read the Tsar's order. On the following day they were compelled to abandon the noble ladies of St. Petersburg, and, in the depth of winter, set out on the long sledge-ride to Polotzk. Alexander kindly provided them with furs and directed that they should be treated with consideration, but he was convinced of their guilt. In a later letter, indeed, the General admits that some of the fathers had been making converts among the ladies of the capital; and the Jesuit maxims in regard to truthfulness are such that we may question whether this was done without his knowledge, as he says, and may be pardoned if we entirely ignore the assurance of the Jesuits that they had nothing to do with the numerous conversions of their pupils. Not only the general law of Russia, but a special imperial decree of the year 1803 forbade proselytism, and this decree had been forced on the attention of the Jesuits. "For the greater glory of God" they had once more trampled upon a strict and honourable human engagement.
Bzrozowski died five years afterwards, and they appealed for permission to elect another General. By this time, as we shall see, the Society had been restored, and the Italians were impatiently awaiting the death of the Russian General, but Alexander spared them the evil of a schism in the Society. It was reported to him that the Jesuits continued to break their engagement. Prince Galitzin drew up a long memoir in which he showed that they had been busy proselytising, sometimes with violence, since 1801; the local authorities had had to restrain them in some of the outlying provinces. They had, he alleged, told their converts in the capital to continue externally to observe the Greek religion, as the Pope had given permission for them to do so. They had continued to proselytise among their pupils and among the soldiers in Lithuania and in the other provinces, and they managed their estates so unskilfully or so unjustly that swarms of their peasants wandered as mendicants over the roads of Russia. We cannot control these statements. The memoir was printed and published by the imperial authorities, and the Jesuits were ordered to evacuate Russian territory. From their estates and princely colleges in Lithuania and Livonia, as well as from the poor colonies in the Caucusus and Siberia, where many of them had worked in the finer spirit of the Society, they sadly turned their faces toward the west from which they had been driven.
The third element in the restoration of the Society takes us back to the year 1794, when a few young priests, refugees from revolutionary France, attempt in Belgium to set up a purified Jesuitism under another name. The most prominent was the Abbé Count de Broglie (son of the famous marshal). He and a few others discussed a plan of covertly embodying the principles of Ignatius in a new society, and consulted some of the ex-Jesuits. Father Pey, of Louvain, became their director, and in February 1794 they took possession of a country house given them by a Louvain banker and entitled themselves the "Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus." Two nobles from the "emigrant" regiment joined them, but the six recluses were presently swept out of Belgium by the army of the French Republic, and they made their way on foot—the Society was to be restored on its purest models—to Augsburg. A few more were added to their number, and simple vows were taken. Ex-Jesuits watched them with interest, and they sought to be admitted to the Russian Society. Then they were minded to go to Rome, as Ignatius and his companions had done, and offer their services to the Pope, but the French blocked the way and soon forced them to fly to Vienna.
They were now seventeen in number, and they induced a score of refugee bishops to appeal to the Pope for his approval of the Congregation. Meantime they founded a novitiate at Prague and a house at Hagenbrunn, near Vienna. The whole structure of the late Society of Jesus was copied, and the studies were re-established. At last, in 1798, the Vienna Nuncio brought them to the notice of the Pope. They had not forgotten the counsel of Ignatius to cultivate wealthy ladies, and the Emperor's sister, the Archduchess Marianne, was an ardent supporter. Pius VI. was, however, as we saw, not bold enough to restore the Society, or the times were not yet ripe. He expressed a warm interest in the community and suggested that they should enter into relations with a similar body, the "Society of the Faith," which had been founded in Italy.
The ex-Jesuit Caravita at Rome had amongst his followers an enterprising young man named Paccanari, the ambitious son of a Tyrolese tailor. Paccanari was the leader of a group of young men who, under the inspiration of Caravita, went out to visit the sick and instruct the ignorant, as the early Jesuits had done. They presently formed a "Society of the Faith of Jesus," and, to make their meaning plainer, adopted the costume and constitutions of the ex-Jesuits. The Roman authorities demanded a slight change in their costume, but otherwise connived at their growth. It was 1798: Louis and Charles III. were dead, and the aristocratic world was sighing for a Jesuit bridle on revolution. At the end of that year they opened a novitiate at Spoleto, took the three vows, and added a fourth vow to obey the Pope. The Pope needed a special regiment just as much as he had done in the days of Luther. The new pestilence from the north had descended upon Italy, and Pius VI. was in exile at Florence. Paccanari visited him, with the connivance of the Pope's ex-Jesuit secretary, and told him of the "Fathers of the Faith" who had enlisted in his special service. Pius approved, and told Paccanari that a similar body already existed in Austria.
In the early months of 1799 Paccanari set out for Vienna, to explore the rival community and see if it could be brought under his authority. His voyage through the Austrian dominions taught him how ripe the time was for such an enterprise, as prelates and ex-Jesuits received him with gladness. At Padua the Count San Bonifacio (an ex-Jesuit) provided a house for ten of his companions; at Venice the higher clergy caressed him. The only feature that restrained the enthusiasm of the old Jesuits was that Paccanari hinted that the Society had become corrupt and it was necessary to build again on the primitive foundation. In their view Europe was again prepared for political Jesuitry, and there was no need to go through the laborious preliminary stages of nursing the sick and travelling afoot. At Vienna the new Emperor, Francis II., received him graciously, and the Archduchess Marianne contracted a lasting regard for him.
The energy and ability of Paccanari soon removed the hesitations of the Sacred Heartists; they abandoned their name, fused with the Society of the Faith, and repeated their vows to Paccanari as their superior. A regular Province was now constituted, with Father Sineo as Provincial, and Paccanari went on to visit Prague, where the Archduchess and the novitiate were. Here the ambitious youth made the first mistake of his singular career. Ignatius had strictly enjoined that the Jesuit order should never have a feminine branch, as so many of the religious orders had, but the Archduchess and other noble dames were so devoted to the new enterprise that Paccanari permitted or persuaded them to take vows and promise obedience to the General of the Society of the Faith. Many of the ex-Jesuits now regarded him as an innovator and began to watch his career with distrust. He found many wealthy patrons, however, and little colonies were sent to England (to which I will refer later), France, and Holland. There were in a few years several hundred members of the new Society, and, as the Russian Jesuits had now been recognised by Pius VII., Paccanari was urged to combine with them.
He refused, or procrastinated, and from that time the members of his Society began to abandon their obedience to him and seek incorporation in the genuine order. The Archduchess clung to Paccanari for many years, and the prestige of her association won respect for him. At Rome, where she and her companions had turned her palace into a convent, she bought a house and church for her esteemed director, and he set up a community of thirty fathers under the eyes of the papal authorities. He was now at open war with the ex-Jesuits, who swarmed at Rome, and, when they slighted his title of General, he retorted that the brief approving the Society in Russia had been extorted from Pius VII. He might now have accepted the idea of fusion, but the Russian General, to secure his authority, insisted that he would only admit the Paccanarists—as they were popularly called—singly, and would not entertain the idea of a corporate union. Paccanari fought resolutely for his fading authority. In 1803 the London Fathers of the Faith deserted him and transferred their obedience to Gruber. In 1804 the more numerous French fathers renounced his authority and joined the Russians; in the same year the Society was restored at Naples, and many of the Paccanarists joined it. The Pope remained indulgent to the falling "General," in consideration of his archiducal friend, and his Society lingered in Italy, Austria, and, especially, Holland. At last definite charges were formulated against Paccanari, probably by the older Jesuits, and the would-be reformer was committed to the papal prison for a luxury of manners that was inconsistent with his professions. He was released by the French troops when they invaded Rome, but his prestige had gone, and, flying to the hills from his Jesuit persecutors, the second Ignatius perished ignobly at the hands of brigands. The Society of Jesus was formally restored soon afterwards, and the Paccanarists threw off their thin disguise and joined it.
We have already seen the various steps by which the restoration of the Society was prepared in Italy. In 1793, Ferdinand of Parma had boldly invited the Russians to send him some Jesuits for the education of youth in the Duchy, and Pius VI. had genially closed his eyes when they set up five colleges and began to attract old members of the Society. Then came the French campaign in Italy and a more bitter resentment than ever of the new spirit which was invading Europe and shaking the legitimate thrones. In 1804, when it was realised that Napoleon had destroyed the pestilential Republic only to set up an even more dangerous power, Ferdinand of Sicily applied to General Gruber for a band of Jesuits to instil "sound" ideas into the minds of his subjects. Then came Austerlitz, and a French army was set free to put Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of the Two Sicilies. Once more the Jesuits had to fly from Naples with their protecting King (and, especially, their protecting Queen), but the presence of the English fleet confined the French to the mainland and the Jesuits of Sicily were unassailable. In a few years they attained enormous wealth and power, and it would not be unjust to connect the long somnolence of that beautiful island with the profound influence the Jesuits had on it in the first half of the nineteenth century.
In 1809 it was the Pope's turn to quail before this terrible incarnation of the new spirit. The Papal States were annexed, and Pius VII. set out for four years of bitter exile. He returned in 1813, and saw the allies closing round the falling monarch. In the spring of the following year Napoleon abdicated, and the restored monarchs set about the task of deleting the past twenty years from the history of Europe, and stamping out the last sparks of the liberalism which was understood to have led to the French Revolution. It was the moment for restoring the Society of Jesus. The monarchs who had pressed for its abolition were dead, the new generation had never realised its power and irregularities, and the Jesuits themselves had for twenty years confidently proclaimed that the terrors Europe had experienced were the direct result of taking from them the education of the young and the spiritual guidance of the adult. This fallacy was promptly answered, and need not detain us. The Revolution was due to the maintenance of mediæval injustices in a more enlightened age, and the Jesuits, with all their power over kings, had never uttered a syllable of condemnation of those old abuses. We shall see that they lent all their recovered influence to the task of maintaining them even in the nineteenth century.
The truth is that the restoration of the Jesuits was an act of the Papacy for which there was no justification in Catholic opinion. In the bull Sollicitudo, which contrasts so poorly with the reasoned and virile brief of Clement XIV., Pius VII. ventured to say that he was complying with "the unanimous demand of the Catholic world." This was, as the Pope knew, wholly untrue. Spain alone, of the great Powers—if we might still call her great—was interested in the restoration. Austria and France had no wish to see the Jesuits restored, and would not suffer them to return to power when the Pope willed it; Portugal protested vehemently against the restoration. Pius VII. acted on his own feeling and that of petty monarchs like the Kings of Sardinia and Naples. He believed that the Jesuits would be the most effective agency for rooting out what remained of liberalism and revolution. He initiated that close alliance between the Society and reaction which has been the disastrous blunder of the Jesuits for the last hundred years. But it was the price of their restoration.
The bull was issued on 7th August 1714, and read in the Gesù the same day. In presence of a distinguished gathering of ecclesiastics and nobles, the Pope said mass and then had the bull read. Some fifty members of the suppressed Society had been convoked for the occasion, and we can imagine that it was a touching spectacle to see these aged survivors of the mighty catastrophe—one was in his hundred and twenty-seventh year—return in honour to their metropolitan house. The Gesù and the house attached to it had been maintained in proper condition. The solid silver statue and the more costly ornaments of the church had been sold, to meet the demands of France on the papal exchequer, and the library of the house had disappeared. But the community of secular priests who had been in charge during the years of suppression were mostly ex-Jesuits, and they had reverently maintained the home until their scattered brothers could return. The novitiate also was restored; the old fathers were summoned from their vicarages and colleges and myriad professions; a Provincial and Vicar-General were elected; and the Jesuits spread rapidly over the Papal States. The cloud of Napoleon's return chilled their enthusiasm for a month or two, but they presently heard of Waterloo and settled down to the task for which they had been restored to life.
The response of the Catholic world was, as I said, a painful commentary on the Pope's words. The flamboyant bull, permitting and urging Catholic monarchs to re-establish the Society of Jesus, made its way over Europe in the course of the next few weeks. Parma and Naples already had their Jesuits. The Duke of Modena at once admitted the Society, and Victor Emmanuel, whose brother had surrendered the crown to him in order to enter the Society, naturally opened his kingdom to them. Ferdinand VII. of Spain, the most brutal and unscrupulous of the restored monarchs, abrogated the decree of expulsion, and warmly welcomed the Jesuits to co-operate with him in the sanguinary work which we will consider in the next chapter. John VI. of Portugal refused to admit "the pernicious sect" into his kingdom. Louis XVIII., even when urged by Talleyrand, refused to sanction the presence of the Jesuits in France. Austria refused to recognise them in its Empire, which still included Venice. Bavaria excluded them. And it took the Jesuits years of intrigue to penetrate the Catholic cantons of Switzerland.
This was the reply of Catholic Europe to Pius VII. In spite of the strident offer to combat liberalism which they made in tracing the Revolution to their absence, they were still excluded from three-fourths of the Catholic world. The indictment of them by Clement XIV. had not been answered by Pius VII., nor had their conduct in Russia and Prussia won esteem for them. They offered no serious guarantee of better behaviour. How they overcame this resistance and, in the course of a century, almost returned to their earlier number, and whether adversity had purified their character, are the two questions that remain for consideration.
THE NEW JESUITS
For a few years after the restoration the Italian Jesuits were fully occupied with the reorganisation of their body, the recovery of their property, and the absorption of the lingering Paccanarists and survivors of the older Society. It is clear that, had it not been for the partial restoration in Parma and Naples, the Society would long have remained feeble. How many still lived of the 22,589 followers of Ignatius who had been expelled from their homes forty years before we do not know, but there was by no means a rush to the colours when the regiment was reformed. It was difficult also to recover their property. In spite of the generosity of the rulers of Piedmont, Naples, and the Papal States the work proceeded slowly. It is in the year 1820 that we catch a first interesting glimpse of the reconstituted body.
At the beginning of that year General Bzrozowski died at Polotzk, a few months before the Jesuits were expelled from Russia, and the Italians hastened to hold an election. Before he died the General had appointed Father Petrucci Vicar-General, and this official came to Rome and, in conjunction with his fellow-Italians, fixed the election for 4th September. We are not, of course, permitted to know the whole truth in regard to this election, but such facts as we know clearly show that the Italians were determined to regain control of the Society. There seems, however, to have been a deeper quarrel. Some of the younger men and the ex-Paccanarists wished to reform the constitutions, and they had the support of Cardinal della Ganga, the Pope's Vicar (and later Leo XII.); the older men opposed reform. But what the precise position of Petrucci was it is impossible to decide. Crétineau-Joly, who alone has had access to the archives and has used his privilege in such a way as to make the quarrel unintelligible, offers the ridiculous suggestion that Petrucci and the cardinal wished to destroy the Society.
However that may be, Petrucci tried to have the election held before the Poles arrived, but there was a spirited Breton member of the Russian Province, Father Rozaven, in Rome at the time, and he appealed to the cardinal. Petrucci then wrote to the Poles to say that they must postpone their voyage to Rome, but Rozaven exposed the trick to them and they reached Rome early in September. There must have been a most unedifying turmoil in the Jesuit house, as, instead of an election on 4th September, we find Cardinal della Ganga intervening on the 6th to say that a commission, with him and Cardinal Galeffi at its head, had been appointed by the Pope to adjudicate on their quarrels. A week later the commission found that Petrucci was to have the powers of a general, but the two cardinals were to preside at the election. The account given us by the French historian is bewildering in its confusion, and is evidently intended to screen an angry conflict of personal and national ambitions and of reformers and anti-reformers.
The party opposed to Petrucci (and, presumably, to reform) now appealed to Cardinal Consalvi and denounced their Vicar-General. Consalvi had little interest in the Jesuits, but, as they knew, he was not disinclined to thwart della Ganga. He secured the calling of the Congregation in October. It seems to have been the most lively and impassioned election that the old house had ever witnessed. Petrucci ruled that the voters from England and France and part of Italy had no canonical right to vote; the Congregation overruled him, and, when he protested, deposed him and excluded him and his chief supporter, Pietroboni, from the Congregation. Della Ganga appealed to the Pope, Consalvi defeated his appeal, and on 18th October Father Fortis was elected. The triumphant section then held a trial of the conduct of the minority. Petrucci and Pietroboni were pardoned on account of their age, but a number of younger men were expelled from the Society.
It must be admitted that this Congregation shows a decided continuity of the irregular features of the Society. Fortis, Rozaven, Petrucci, and the leaders of the conflicting parties were old members; Fortis, at least, an elderly Italian in his eighth decade of life, had belonged to the suppressed Society, and the conduct of him and his followers suggests that forty years of life without the restraint of discipline had not tended to improve their character. In the pacified Europe of 1820 they saw an easy field for the triumph of their order, and the Italians were ambitious to control it. The struggle against the proposal to reform the Society is equally unattractive; and the facility with which both parties appealed to rival cardinals, when the Jesuit tradition was fiercely to resent any outside interference with their Congregations, completes an unpleasant picture. The anti-reformers won, and the voters scattered to their respective provinces and missions.
Three years later Pius VII. died, and the triumphant clique at the Gesù had a momentary anxiety when Cardinal della Ganga mounted the papal throne under the name of Leo XII. Rozaven expresses their concern in a letter to a colleague, and predicts that he at least will be compelled to leave Rome. But Leo XII. was convinced that the Society had become one of the most useful auxiliaries of the Papacy, and he hastened to assure them that their intrigue against his authority was forgotten. He had, in fact, hardly been a year at the Vatican when he gratified them by restoring the Roman College to their charge, and they gathered their best teachers from all parts of the world to win back its earlier prestige. Other of their old colleges in the Papal States were secured for them by Leo XII. and the Italian Provinces quickly recovered their power.
It was known to all that the liberal feeling engendered by the revolutionary movement was still intensely alive. The secret Society of the Carbonari spread its net over Italy, and the cultivated middle class was very largely liberal and anti-clerical. At Naples, in 1820, the Carbonari had seemed for a moment about to triumph; but the rebellion was defeated, and the Jesuits returned to the task of educating the middle class in pro-papal sentiments. They had a college for the sons of nobles at Naples, and four other colleges in the Neapolitan district; while they had no less than fifteen colleges and residences in the island of Sicily. In northern Piedmont, from which few at that time expected the greatest menace to the Papacy to come, they retained great power for decades. Victor Emmanuel gave place to Charles Felix, and the Liberals took the occasion to make a violent assault on the fathers. Charles Felix replied by choosing a Jesuit confessor, Father Grassi. Charles Albert patronised them even more generously than his predecessors. He secured the return of their old house at Turin, and, when he found it impossible to get for them their old house at Genoa, which had been converted into a university, he granted them one of his palaces for a residence.
In the Papal States they entered upon their golden age with the accession of Gregory XVI., in 1831. Both Leo XII. and General Fortis died in 1829. A young Dutch Jesuit, Father Roothaan (aged forty-four), succeeded Fortis, and Pius VIII. ascended the papal throne. He died in November 1830, and Gregory XVI. assumed the tiara in the very heat of the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1831. The "White Terror" had failed to conquer what it called the revolutionary element; its thousands of executions and its appalling jails and repulsive spies had merely fed the flame of insurrection, and the international movement for reform gathered strength. The middle class in every country—in Italy, especially, the revolutionary movements were essentially middle class—suffered with burning indignation the brutalities of Austria, the Papacy, Naples, Spain, and France, and young men of the type of Mazzini devoted their lives to reform. In 1831 the Italian rebels, fired by the success of the July Revolution in France, raised their tricolour standard and soon saw it floating over Modena, Parma, and a number of the Papal States. One of the first movements of the insurgents in every place was to assail the Jesuit residences. At Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forli, and Ferrara, the Jesuits were driven from their homes and colleges and hunted over the frontiers of the revolutionary provinces. But Naples and Piedmont were unshaken by the disturbance, and the Austrian troops from Venice quickly trampled out the revolutionary spirit. It was on the eve of this insurrection—a work almost entirely of the educated class—that Gregory became Pope, and his policy after the pacification was one of savage repression.
It is needless here to recall the brutal régime which the Austrians in Venice (to which the Jesuits were formally admitted in 1836), the Pope in central Italy, and the Neapolitan ruler in the south, spread over the land. It is enough for us that in the three States, as in Spain and Portugal, the Jesuits were the most ardent auxiliaries of the reactionary and sanguinary monarchs. Gregory XVI., the most repulsive Pope of modern times, was the most generous patron that the Jesuits had had for more than a hundred years. He went so far as to entrust to them the Urban College, the institution in which the Propaganda itself trained its missionaries. Education was the root of the revolutionary evil, and it was the place of the Jesuits to see that such education as was imparted in Italy—which sank to an appalling degree of illiteracy, and is still illiterate to the extent of 70 per cent. in the southern provinces, where the Jesuits ruled longest—was not tainted with modern culture. It is true that after 1830 the General appointed five learned fathers to revise the Ratio Studiorum of the Society; but one cannot regard it as other than a somewhat humorous comment on the Jesuit system that the teachers were no longer to be bound to teach the physics of Aristotle or to slight, in favour of Latin and Greek, the tongue of the pupils whom they trained. We have, in fact, a very curious illustration of the level of culture of Gregory and his teaching Jesuits. In the year 1837 the cholera threatened Rome. The science of meeting such epidemics was, of course, still in its infancy, but the conduct of Rome was exactly what it would have been five hundred years earlier. A solemn procession was enjoined, and, amidst the masses of terrified people, a statue of the Virgin was borne across Rome to the Church of the Jesuits. Gregory and his cardinals were in the procession, and for a time the Gesù was the centre or fount of the hope of Rome. Within a few months 5419 Romans succumbed to the cholera.
Gregory died in the year 1846, and Italy sighed with relief. The misery of the working classes, the brutal treatment to which the educated classes had been exposed, and the control of education and of a very large proportion of appointments in the Papal States by the Jesuits, had engendered a hatred of him in every part of his dominion. When Mastai Ferretti ascended the throne, and took the name of Pius IX., he was greeted with wild enthusiasm. He was sufficiently known to inspire a hope that the reign of terror and the reign of the Jesuits were over, and his first acts confirmed this hope. An amnesty was granted, and the more brutal of his predecessor's coercive measures were repealed. Rossi, who, as we shall see presently, had been sent to Rome a few years before to negotiate the banishment of the Jesuits from France, was recalled and made leading minister to the Vatican; and Father Theiner was directed to vindicate the memory of Clement XIV. against the Jesuits and Crétineau-Joly, who had just published his history. The Jesuits were so notoriously discontented with the change, and with the young Pope's concessions to liberalism, that, as he passed through the streets he heard the warning cry from his people: "Beware of the Jesuits."
What part the Jesuits had in the termination of the new Pope's pose as a Liberal it would be difficult to say. The usual statement, that he was shaken by the assassination of Count Rossi and the revolution of 1848, is superficial and misleading. He had incurred the resentment of the Liberals because he had rapidly fallen from his first ideal. Some of the chief grievances of his educated subjects, such as the monopoly of all remunerative offices in the State by clerics, remained untouched, and it was soon perceived that he was drifting backward toward reaction. His confessor was replaced by a friend of the Jesuits, and, when the popular and somewhat insurgent priest Gioberti published a fiery and just attack on the Jesuits, Pius IX. harshly condemned him. At the same time the returned exiles and the refugees who flocked to Rome from the countries which clung to oppression assuredly had ideals which it was quite impossible for any Pope to realise in that age. Pius was alienated more and more, and a violent conflict approached. How the third revolutionary wave in 1848 spread to Rome, and the Pope fled to Gaeta, and the Jesuits returned to power in the inevitable reaction, must be reserved for the next chapter.
When we turn to consider the fortunes of the Jesuits in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, we find a very different and more interesting chronicle. They had been banished from France, it will be recalled, in 1761, and the great majority of them had actually quitted the kingdom. Many had been secularised, and remained as teachers, tutors, confessors, or curés. During the period of suppression a large number of them found employment in France; the learned Father Boscovitch, for instance, was made director of the optical department of the Navy under Louis XVI. As in Italy and Austria, some of them sought to incorporate the spirit of their condemned Society in Congregations with other names, and a curious assortment of fraternities appeared. The "Fathers of the Faith," or Paccanarists, whose origin we have seen, found a genial atmosphere in France, and the little colony they sent from Austria was soon swelled with ex-Jesuits. Another body was significantly known as the "Victims of the Love of God." The feminine branch of the "Sacred Heart" Society also spread to France, and grew into a formidable body of nuns (under the direction of ex-Jesuits) with the particular function of giving a "sound" education to the daughters of wealthy people; it remains to this day, in effect, the feminine branch of the Society, though the connection is not official. There was a "Congregation of the Holy Family" for training teachers of the poor, and a "Congregation of Our Lady" for banding together members of the middle class.
But of all these associations which sprang up mysteriously in the soil of revolutionary France, and throve under the shelter of Napoleon, the most important was a certain "Congregation of the Holy Virgin," founded in the year 1801. It was controlled by an ex-Jesuit, and had at first some resemblance to the association of young men organised at Rome by the ex-Jesuit Caravita. The young men, very largely university students, were to visit the sick and poor—to be practical Christians, in a word. But, whereas the Italian young men had become priests and Paccanarists, the members of the Congregation of the Virgin generally remained in the world, retaining throughout life their membership of the Society and their link with its directors. A register of their names and occupations was kept, and it meant, in effect, that the Jesuits had friends and ardent secret workers in every school and profession, in the army and navy, in journalism and politics.
Louis XVIII. came to the throne and was urged by Talleyrand to restore the Society. He refused, and the Jesuits were forced to rely still on their secret organisation. Already, in 1814, the Fathers of the Faith had a house in Paris, and six other houses in the country. Their title was now a deliberate deception, as they had in 1804 secretly renounced Paccanarism, in the hands of the Papal Nuncio, and entered the Society of Jesus, as authorised in Russia. They dressed and acted externally as secular priests, and were much employed by bishops in teaching and preaching. From the Congregation of the Virgin they not only had accurate information of what was being said and done in every department of French life, but they obtained many novices; other youths joined the secular clergy, and would in time watch the interests of the Society within that body. Orders were now given that the Jesuits must work in perfect harmony with the secular clergy and in most respectful submission to the bishops.
They grew rapidly in the course of the next few years, and about 1818 they began to stand out prominently in the religious life of France. They were especially employed in what are known in English church-life as "revival services." Eloquent preachers, particularly when they were denouncing liberalism and the "bad" tendencies of the times, they passed from town to town lashing up the fervour of the Catholics. Large crucifixes were planted on the wayside as memorials of their oratory; enthusiastic processions marched through the streets; in places the churches were so crowded that one had to spend the night at the door to secure a place near the pulpit. They were the Pères de la Foi, Catholics said (with a smile); but critics maintained that they were Jesuits, and there were towns where the missionaries were assaulted and expelled. A very serious controversy raged in the French press as to whether there were really any Jesuits in France; even when, in 1822, a Liberal journal obtained and published a letter of General Fortis to one of his French subjects, it was difficult to convict them.
At this period, in the early twenties, the famous Abbé de Lamennais was seeking to form a democratic Christian body, and he made an effort to secure the support of the Jesuits. Louis XVIII. was one of the more moderate of the restored monarchs; but the democratic feeling was still strong in France and, as the clergy were generally reactionary, democracy, of which Lamennais foresaw the triumph, was allied with Voltaireanism. Lamennais was convinced that the hour of feudal monarchs was over, and the Church could be saved only by allying itself with the people. The development of French history has shown the truth of his view. Democracy has triumphed, and the Church has shrunk to—M. Sabatier tells me—less than one-sixth of the population. Seeing the apparent power of the Jesuit missionaries, Lamennais, who was very friendly with them, earnestly begged them to incorporate his policy in their preaching.
The attitude of the Jesuits toward Lamennais is interesting. They hesitated for years, broke into sections, and eventually had to forbid all public discussion of the issue. In 1821 some of their members were censured for attacking Lamennais, in the next year others were censured for supporting him; and Rozaven, the French Assistant at Rome, directed that "prudence" forbade them to take either side in public. Later, as they still wavered and contradicted each other, General Fortis sternly prohibited public expression on the subject. Fortis died in 1829, and Lamennais made a fresh appeal to the Jesuits to "turn from monarchs to the people"; but Roothaan maintained the attitude of his predecessor. When Lamennais was eventually condemned, the Jesuits eagerly pointed out that they had declined to support him.
This situation is interesting, because it exhibits the Jesuits shrinking nervously from the greatest social issue of their time. They retort that it was a political issue, and their traditions forbade them to discuss politics. It is in a sense true that the Jesuits had always abstained from political theorising, and bowed to the actual ruling power; except in cases where the ruling power incommoded them, when they might become the most violent of revolutionaries. But, apart from the question whether the issue was not moral in the finest sense of the word, it is ludicrous to affirm that the "political" nature of Lamennais's gospel prevented them from considering it when, in every country where a reactionary monarch called them to his aid, they were violent partisans of the aristocratic gospel. For twenty years they had maintained that the political storms which swept the old monarchs from their thrones at the end of the eighteenth century were directly due to the removal of their control of the schools and universities. They had been restored to life for the express purpose of reconciling Europe to the old order, and destroying the aspiration for democratic reform, and it was only in the cantons of Switzerland that they were found to hold a different theory of the social order; though, as we shall see, the Swiss cantons were then rather aristocratic than democratic. It is plain that in France they hesitated only because the future was uncertain. Their real aim was to restore the age of Louis XIV., but this new democratic movement looked formidable. They would wait and be guided by the issue.
The Catholic democrats turned angrily on the Jesuits for their attitude on this great issue, and accused them of gross ignorance of, and indifference to, social conditions: an entirely just censure. But their power was growing in every decade. New Congregations appeared,—societies for persuading lovers to marry in church, for preserving students from liberalism, and so on,—and the Congregation of our Lady now included half the nobility and higher clergy, and numbers of writers, lawyers, politicians, and officials. Their French apologist, who was himself a member of the Congregation and lived in Paris at this time, admits that the secret influence of the Congregation was such that many made a profession of religion and joined it in order to promote their material interests. Charles X., who succeeded Louis in 1824, renewed their confidence. He opened his career with Liberal measures; but he was more reactionary at heart than Louis XVIII., and less prudent, and the Jesuits silently organised their forces for a restoration of the Society.
The educated Frenchman now commonly united the scepticism of Voltaire with the moderate democracy of Lafayette, and an angry storm broke out in the Liberal press. The open activity of the "Paccanarists" was an affront to the Constitution, and the secret manœuvres of the Congregation, notoriously led by Father Ronsin, alarmed them. The authorities discreetly removed Father Ronsin from Paris, but the work of the Congregation proceeded. Charles X. was suspected of favouring the Jesuits. In 1828 the Nuncio openly proposed that the Society should be restored. We may take the word of Crétineau-Joly that the ground had been so well prepared that a measure could have been passed safely through the two Houses. But Villèle, the French historian says, was so misguided as to appeal to the country first, and he lost. The question of the Jesuits was not the least of the issues at stake. Showers of pamphlets fell upon the public, and the popular feeling was such that when the King was one day reviewing the National Guard, the cry, "Down with the Jesuits," rang out from the ranks, and the review was abandoned.
The more moderate ministry of Martignac had now to be formed, and, as it needed the co-operation of the Liberals, the plan to restore the Jesuits was abandoned. The Liberals were now encouraged, and they made a fiery assault. The "little seminaries," as the French called the preparatory colleges for the clergy, had been left under the control of the bishops, and several of them were notoriously controlled by the thinly disguised Jesuits. A commission of bishops, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head, was appointed to examine the charge, and it was determined that eight of the seminaries were really Jesuit colleges, and must be closed; it was further enacted that the seminaries were to be taken from the bishops and put under the control of the universities, that the number of pupils was to be restricted, and that no priest should henceforth be allowed to teach in them who did not take oath that he did not belong to a non-authorised Congregation. The bishops, many of whom had won their seats by Jesuit influence, protested in vain against this violation of their rights. Their protest made matters worse, since they stipulated that it should remain secret; but the Liberal press secured the text and published it.
This was a very severe blow to the French Jesuits, who had used the seminaries for training lay pupils in their spirit as well as teaching the secular priests to rely on them. While the French press was discussing the question whether they existed in the country, they had grown to the number of 436, and had two novitiates and several residences, besides the seminaries. They now determined to take bolder measures against the enemy. As I said, the question of the Jesuits was by no means the only serious issue under discussion; Martignac received only a moderate and uncertain support from his Liberal allies because his measures were not sufficiently advanced. It is, however, clear that the Jesuits, through the Nuncio, had their share in inducing the King to replace the moderate Martignac with the thoroughly conservative Polignac. This was in July 1829. The reply of the people, when the ministry returned to the old coercive measures, was the July Revolution of 1830. The chief Jesuit houses, at Montrouge and St. Acheul, were sacked by the mob, and the fathers scattered in every direction. Once more they had suffered a heavy defeat on what they believed to be the eve of victory.
The revolutionary wave spread, with devastating force, to Italy, as we saw; and there also the fathers were for a time driven contemptuously from their colleges. Their recovery in France was naturally slower than in Italy. They moved in fear of their lives for the first year or two of the reign of Louis Philippe, and generally concealed themselves in devoted Catholic houses. In 1832 the cholera swept France, and they recollected how frequently heroic conduct in such epidemics had disarmed their critics. But France was not so easily reconciled in the nineteenth century, and the few who ventured to appear during the following years were arrested. In the course of time, however, the resentment was confined to the more ardent Liberals, and they resumed the semi-public existence of the previous decade. Catholicism made great progress in the thirties, chiefly through the agency of a brilliant group of laymen, and some of the Jesuits took an open part in the revival. Father de Ravignan, their finest orator, occupied the pulpit of Nôtre Dame for several seasons, and they were assiduous in giving retreats to the clergy.
As they no longer ventured to teach,—though it was known that they had opened a college for French pupils just over the Belgian frontier,—and betrayed their character in no external action, they were legally unassailable; but it was not long before they again drew on themselves the ire of the Liberals. From 1840 onwards the clergy made a vehement attack on the professors of the university. Since these included philosophers like Cousin and Jouffroy, historians like Michelet, and men of letters like Jules Simon, we can easily believe that their lectures were at times inconsistent with orthodox ideas; but the attack was gross and exaggerated, and the professors felt that the Jesuits secretly guided it; Father de Ravignan, in fact, joined in the spirited conflict of pens. The chief result was to draw on the Jesuits the sardonic humour of Michelet, the weighty censures of Cousin, the poisonous raillery of Simon, and the unrestrained diatribes of the popular Liberal press. It was during this agitation that Eugène Sue lashed them with his Juif Errant, and George Sand wrote Consuelo. Against this fierce and brilliant onslaught the publication of Crétineau-Joly's Histoire was a feeble defence; it could carry no conviction except to the already convinced and uncritical Catholic. Indeed, its treatment of Clement XIV. scandalised many Catholics, and, as we saw, Pius IX. directed the Vatican Archivist to refute it.[41]
Louis Philippe was at length compelled to take action. Catholic writers treated it as an amusing scare that there were Jesuits in France, and were not a little mortified when the fathers betrayed their existence in a way which entertained the Liberal pamphleteers. In 1845 one of their treasurers embezzled the funds entrusted to him, and they imprudently prosecuted. In the controversy which followed it was made plain that there were two hundred members of the forbidden Society in France, and their expulsion was stormily demanded. The King knew that if he suppressed the "Fathers of the Faith" they would do no more than change their name, and he adopted a shrewder policy. He sent Rossi to Rome to submit to the Pope that the relations of France and the Vatican would be much improved if the Jesuits were removed by ecclesiastical authority. The dignity of the Holy See was saved by a pleasant little comedy. The Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs reported that the request could not be granted, and the Pope firmly replied to the French envoy in that sense. But a private intimation was made to General Roothaan that it was desirable to meet the wishes of the King, and Rossi was instructed to see him. Whatever the precise nature of the intimation was, Roothaan submitted to his French subjects that it was expedient to dissolve their chief communities,—at Paris, St. Acheul, Lyons, and Avignon,—and they once more retreated sullenly from the field. We shall see later how they found a fitting patron in Napoleon III., and how the third Republic put a definitive close to their activity in France.
Their fortunes in Spain during the nineteenth century have been more chequered than their present prosperity would suggest. On 15th May 1815, Ferdinand VII. repealed the drastic sentence of his great predecessor, and ordered that their former property should be restored to the Jesuits. A hundred and fifty of the old members of the Society returned to their native land; colleges and novitiates were opened by means of the restored property and the royal bounty; and, we are told, town after town demanded, and enthusiastically welcomed, its former teachers. We can well believe that the mobs which saluted the perjured Ferdinand with the cry, "Down with Liberty," would welcome the Jesuits. In the recoil due to their hatred of the French, and of the new ideas which the French had brought into Spain, the densely ignorant mass of the people fell at the feet of a brutal monarch and a corrupt clergy. The educated middle class, however, remained substantially Liberal. They had admitted Ferdinand only on condition that he promised to maintain their Liberal Constitution, and, as soon as he had attained the crown, he tore his promise and the Constitution to shreds and fell with terrible cruelty on the Liberals. Known Liberals were at once executed, imprisoned for life, or banished; the Inquisition was restored; and a network of spies spread over the kingdom. Men, women, and children were savagely punished, and a "Society of the Exterminating Angel" arose to strengthen and direct the bloody hands of the King and the Inquisitors.
Those five years of Spanish history constitute one of the most repulsive chapters in the chronicle of modern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine what part the restored Jesuits had in this reign of terror. All the clergy and monks of Spain were allied with their monarch in prosecuting what they regarded as a holy war. It is enough that the Jesuits did not dissent from the barbaric proceedings of Ferdinand, and that they flourished and were more than doubled in number within five years. The year 1820 found them increased to 397, with several novitiates and a large number of colleges.
And the year 1820 gives us some measure of their guilt in connection with the preceding years. The middle class was still strong enough, or humane enough, to put an end to the disgraceful horrors, and reaffirm the liberal constitution of 1810. The Cortes was summoned, and, although its members were still predominantly Catholic, it was determined, with only one dissentient, to expel the Jesuits. The terrified King yielded to the deputies, and in August the four hundred Jesuits were pensioned and ordered to quit the country. Unfortunately, the French King espoused the cause of his "cousin," and his troops restored the savage autocracy of Ferdinand and the power of the Jesuits. The reign of terror returned, and even the other Catholic monarchs of Europe were shocked by the outrages committed and permitted by Ferdinand. Again it is impossible to disentangle the share of the Jesuits in this comprehensive guilt. Their chief task was to educate the young in "better" sentiments. The College of Nobles and a large military college at Segura were entrusted to them, and they reoccupied their former colleges. But neither priests nor ruler put confidence in educational methods. It is enough to note that a conservative authority on Spain, Major Hume, says of the renewed reign of terror: "Modern civilisation has seen no such instance of brutal, blind ferocity."
This appalling condition lasted, almost continuously, until the death of Ferdinand in 1833. Then the country entered upon the long Carlist war, and the Jesuits were soon expelled for the third time. While Queen Christina allied herself with the Liberals, Don Carlos rallied to his standard the absolutists and Ultramontanes, and the great majority of the clergy supported him. It is usually and confidently said that the Jesuits, like the rest of the clergy, supported Don Carlos; but when we recollect their maxim of not taking sides openly in an ambiguous conflict, or taking both sides, we shall not expect to find any proof of this in the early stages. Not only the Liberals but the mass of the people in Madrid were persuaded that they were on the side of Don Carlos, and they saw hatred gathering on every side of them. In 1834 the cholera descended on the capital. Such occasions had generally served the Jesuits, but this fresh affliction only further irritated the people against them. The cry was raised that the Jesuits and the Carlists had poisoned the water-supply, and it seems that, by some strange accident or plot, children were found on the street with small quantities of arsenic. In the afternoon of 17th July the citizens flung themselves upon the houses of the Jesuits and other religious, and a fierce riot ensued. Fourteen Jesuits, forty-four Franciscans, and fifteen Dominicans and others were slain in the struggle. Some of their provincial houses also were sacked or closed, and the inmates had to fly for their lives.
In the following year, 1835, the Society was again proscribed, by the Regent Christina, and the Jesuits were scattered. They now sided openly with Don Carlos. Alleging, as usual, that they were indifferent to politics and must discharge the spiritual services demanded of them under any banner, they followed in the rear of the advancing Carlists and opened colleges in the districts conquered by them. One Jesuit guarded the conscience of Don Carlos, another was tutor to his children, and others ministered in his camps. At length an abler Christinist General, Espartero, cleared the Carlists from the Basque Provinces and closed the Jesuit houses. By the time of the revolution of 1848 there were none but a few disguised and timid survivors of the Society in Spain.
From Portugal the Jesuits were rigorously excluded during fifteen years after the restoration of the Society. John VI., a constitutional and sober monarch, refused to irritate his subjects by admitting them, and had no need of their stifling influence on education in Portugal. He resisted all the pressure of Rome in their interest, and observed the Liberal Constitution which he had accepted. His granddaughter Maria succeeded to his throne and policy in 1826, under the regency of her uncle, Dom Miguel. Here again the Jesuits were admitted in virtue of an act of treachery and throve in an atmosphere of savagery. Dom Miguel intrigued for the throne, and, when he took an oath to respect the Liberal Constitution, was permitted to occupy it. "His Jesuit training," says the Cambridge Modern History (x. 321), "would make it easy for him to rest content with the absolution of the Church for a breach of faith committed on behalf of the good cause." He at once violated his oath and turned with ferocity upon the Liberals. It is estimated by some of the Portuguese writers that more than 60,000 were executed, deported, or imprisoned in the next four years.
Such was the second of the leading Catholic monarchs to seek the aid of the Jesuits. None of the members of the old Portuguese Province could be discovered, or induced to resume work in a bitterly hostile world, and eight Jesuits had to be sent from France, in 1829, to begin the work of restoration. They make little pretence of an enthusiastic reception in this case. None of their former property was restored, and for a time they had to take refuge in the houses of rival orders. They had, however, their usual good fortune to attract the sympathy of noble ladies, and were enabled to secure their old house at Lisbon in the following year. When the King saw that no violent upheaval followed their arrival, he began to patronise them, and secured for them their famous college at Coimbra. In the same year they had the satisfaction of establishing a house at Pombal, where their old antagonist had died, and their superior describes, in an edifying letter, how he at once "ran to say a prayer over the tomb of the Marquis"; he was deeply pained, it seems, to find that the remains of Pombal had not even yet been interred, while the children of Ignatius were received with honour in his name-place.
But the ferocity of Miguel had already deeply stirred the population, and in the following year the defrauded young Queen's father, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, crossed the ocean to secure her rights and the Constitution. The Jesuits were painfully perplexed. Don Pedro seems to have felt that he could not hope for a lasting triumph without the aid of the Jesuits, and he made a secret offer to them, in an autograph letter (in March), of his protection and favour if they would desert Miguel. The issue was uncertain, and, when Don Pedro entered Lisbon in July, the Jesuits assured him that his letter had reached their hands too late for them to consider his offer. They had remained ideally neutral in the war, and had nursed the cholera victims in both camps with religious impartiality.
The people of Lisbon saved Don Pedro from the dilemma which this excellent or prudent conduct imposed on him. On 29th July a mixed throng of soldiers and citizens assaulted and sacked the Jesuit residence. It would have gone very hard with the fathers themselves had not certain English naval officers chivalrously saved them. In the following May (1834) Don Pedro renewed the sentence of suppression. From their handsome college at Coimbra they were conveyed to Lisbon, to face the hoots and taunts of a rejoicing mob, and then to be deposited in prison. The French afterwards secured their release from prison, but they have never since had a legal existence in the land of Pombal.
We turn next to England, to study the fortunes of the followers of Ignatius up to the middle of the nineteenth century. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Jesuits had availed themselves of the more tolerant spirit of the age of the Georges, and again increased to a considerable body. Their colleges in Spain, France, and Belgium received numbers of young Catholic aspirants, and we find that at the time of the suppression of the Society the English Province boasted 274 members, of whom 143 were actually in England. The suppression in Spain and France reduced their colleges; the two colleges at Bruges were violently closed by the authorities in 1773; there remained only a house at Liège and the English missions at Liverpool, Preston, Bristol, and a few other towns.
They continued to live in community in these residences after the abolition of the Society, and minister as secular priests. In 1794 their situation was again altered by the French invasion of Belgium, when the English fathers were expelled from their last continental seat, at Liège. The disaster proved, however, to be the starting-point of their more prosperous modern development in England. One of their old pupils, Thomas Weld, offered them a house and estate at Stonyhurst, near Preston, and on 29th August the refugees reached what was destined to be one of their most important centres. They opened a school—to be directed by certain "gentlemen from Liège"—and quietly awaited the future.
In the meantime the ex-Jesuits who had remained in England bore their disgrace very impatiently. One of their number, Father Thorpe, wrote in 1785 so scurrilous a Sketch of the Life and Government of Pope Clement XIV. that his colleagues had to withdraw it from publication at the demand of their own admirers. In the following year the English ex-Jesuits opened a correspondence with their rebellious colleagues in Russia, and, although they could devise no pretext whatever for disobeying the Pope in England, they offered to unite with the Russians. Their proposal was declined or postponed, and they waited until the Pope officially recognised the Russian Society in 1801. By that time the Abbé de Broglie had led his little colony of Fathers of the Faith from Austria to London and opened a college at Kensington. Some of the ex-Jesuits and many emigrant French priests were attracted to this authorised Congregation, but Paccanari was now an object of suspicion to most of them, and, on the other hand, there was increasing hope of a restoration of the Society.
The proposal to enlist under the Russian General was now revived, and both ex-Jesuits and Fathers of the Faith made their way, secretly and individually, to Russia and renewed their vows. By the year 1804 there were between eighty and ninety Jesuits in England. The general and violent hatred of the French had led to much sympathy with the clerical victims of the Revolution, but England was not yet prepared for this substantial resurrection of the Jesuits. Stonyhurst was growing into a large and busy colony, owing to the continued bounty of Weld and the return of surviving members of the old province, and in 1804, and more peremptorily in 1807, the Government ordered the dissolution of their communities.
Such an order was a feeble check on their growth, and they took advantage of the successive movements which aided the restoration of Catholicism. The stream of French emigrants, the Act of Toleration of 1791, the beginning of Irish immigration, and the advocacy of Catholic Emancipation by Pitt enabled the Catholics to enter the nineteenth century in increased numbers. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 so inflated them that they then estimated their numbers in London alone as 146,000, or nearly a tenth of the population; to-day they number about one-fiftieth of the population of London. The Jesuits shared the growth with the rest of the clergy. Between 1826 and 1835 they built eleven new churches, and in 1830 the Roman authorities made a formal province of the English group. The Irish fathers had been detached from the English in 1829, and formed a vice-province. Ten years later began the Catholic movement within the Church of England, to the considerable profit of Rome.
The early history of the Jesuits in the United States is one of the most interesting chapters in their modern story. When the Society was abolished and its members momentarily discouraged, John Carroll, a member of the suppressed English Province, led a small group of fathers to the North American Colony. He became friendly with Washington and other leaders of the insurrection, and is said to have had some influence in shaping the Liberal clauses of the new Constitution. In 1789 he became Bishop of Baltimore, and another ex-Jesuit, Father Neale, was afterwards made his coadjutor. This transferred the American mission from the control of the English Vicar Apostolic, and made Carroll head of the Church in the United States. In 1803 we find Carroll writing to General Gruber that there are a dozen aged ex-Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with sufficient property (of the older Maryland mission) to support thirty; they wish to join Gruber's authorised Society and receive an accession of strength. The Russian Jesuits had justified their rebellion on the ground that the secular monarch had forbidden them to lay aside their habits; the Americans said it was enough that there was in America no secular monarch to forbid them to wear it. The Papacy counted for little with any of them.
Gruber complied, and the foundations were laid of the prosperity of the Jesuits in the United States. In the early years little progress was made. The newcomers were young foreigners, and the population was scattered and generally hostile. One of the German fathers was actually arrested and tried for not betraying the confession of a thief, but the controversy which followed rather promoted their interest. They shrewdly established their chief college and centre at Georgetown, near Washington, and gradually won the regard of American statesmen, who visited and granted privileges to the college. By the year 1818 there were 86 Jesuits in the United States, and recruits were arriving from Europe. A novitiate had been opened at White Marsh in 1815, but few novices could be secured in America. In fact, as they followed their usual custom of making no charge for education, they had a severe struggle with poverty everywhere. In 1822 the authorities at Rome ordered them to close the school at Washington, as it could no longer maintain itself without charging. The rector, Father Kelly, defied his superiors for a time, and maintained the school on the fees of pupils; but Americanism was not yet sufficiently developed to sustain this, and Father Kelly was expelled from the Society.
Memories of the "black robes" lingered among the Indians, and it was suggested, time after time, that the fathers should return to their work among them, and amongst the blacks of the south and the islands. Their historian makes a lengthy and very earnest apology for their refusal, during ten or twenty years, to listen to this suggestion. They remembered how their work amongst the Indians had been "misinterpreted"; they were too few in number to spare men for distant fields; in time, they foresaw the greatness of the United States and "preferred the certain to the uncertain." The truth seems to be that commerce in blankets and beaver-skins was not possible in the nineteenth century. After 1840, however, they sent missionaries among the Indians, and won a great affection among them. By that time the Missouri Province alone had 148 Jesuits, and the Maryland Province 103.
It is clear that the early Jesuits laboured devotedly to arrest the enormous lapse from the Church of Rome in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. We need pay little attention to their boasts of conversions. Catholic immigrants were now arriving in millions, and were passing out into the lonely districts and small towns, where their faith was quickly forgotten. In 1636 the Bishop of Charlestown estimated the loss at nearly four millions in his diocese alone. Many of the Jesuits went out among the struggling pioneers and led lives of great self-sacrifice. Their energies were, however, mainly concentrated on the aggrandisement of their schools and conciliation of politicians in cities like Washington. They made sure of power in the great Republic they foresaw. It may be added that the Society was at the same time spreading in Mexico. Restored under Ferdinand, they undertook, as in Spain, to check or destroy the Liberal principles which had taken root in Mexico. For this they were banished in 1821, when the news came of the Liberal triumph in Spain, and did not return to open activity until 1843.
In the Germanic lands, except Belgium, the restored Jesuits had a severe struggle throughout the nineteenth century. Austria and Bavaria refused to publish the bull of restoration or comply with it, to the great mortification of the Jesuits. Metternich, at least, retained the spirit of Joseph II., and Ferdinand II. was not yet disposed to tempt his subjects by readmitting them. Prussia was, of course, still closed against the Jesuits as Jesuits. The first serious attempt to gain a footing in Germany was made in 1820, when the fathers who had been driven from Russia appeared on the Austrian frontier and humbly asked permission to cross the Emperor's territory. They might "cross," he drily answered; and when they secured the customary intervention of noble dames, he permitted them to go and teach loyalty among his poor subjects in Galicia and his restless subjects in Hungary. He granted funds for this purpose, and they soon had a flourishing Province in Galicia, and a general control of education. Even here they were subject to the bishops, and the imperial decrees intimate that there was much suspicion and hostility. In 1829, Styria and other provinces were opened to them, though the opposition was so violent that at Gratz we find them complaining of having to lodge in some kind of inn, with an actress for neighbour.
Ferdinand II. died in 1836, but his successor could do little for them in face of the prevailing hostility. Father Beckx, the future General, was in Vienna at the time. A Jesuit had at last brought a ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Köthen, and Father Beckx was confessor to the Duchess at Vienna—and secret agent of the Society. He writes in 1837 that their enemies are very powerful, and Josephite principles triumphant; the Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden to teach. Ferdinand, however, was not indisposed to enlist their aid in fighting Liberalism, and they quietly spread in the outlying provinces. The Tyrol was opened to them in 1838, and from their old college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools. We shall see presently how the revolutionary storm of 1848 drove them from their new acquisitions.
In Switzerland the fortunes of the Jesuits were more romantic. During the suppression they continued to live in communities, and carefully concealed the offensive title from the eyes of Protestant citizens. After 1814 they began to induce their lay followers to petition the authorities to sanction their return to life, and the long and bitter struggle over the Society began. The canton of Solothurn was then more than eighty per cent. Catholic, and in 1816 the Grand Council was urged to restore the Society. It refused, and they then made cautious efforts in Valais and Freiburg. I am aware that in all these cases the Jesuits do not appear in connection with the petition; a few influential Catholics appeal for the return, and the Jesuits are depicted as serenely aloof from the negotiations. We are accustomed to pretences of this character. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also was nearly ninety per cent. Catholic) decided by sixty-nine votes to forty-two to readmit the Jesuits and entrust its schools to them. At the same time they recovered their old house at Brigue, and began to spread in Catholic Valais.
From the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century the Radicals began their attacks on the growing Jesuits. In 1823 the fathers secured their old college at Freiburg, which they had long coveted. Since their settlement in Freiburg this college had been in the hands of the Franciscan monks, who had adopted the ideas of Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educationist, and were doing admirable work. The bishop complained to the authorities of the friars' innovations, and they were replaced by the Jesuits. The Radicals of the town were malicious enough to suggest that the Jesuits had intrigued to bring about this result,—of which, of course, there is no proof,—and on the night of 9-10th March they attacked the college, and were with difficulty prevented from burning it. In the following year the Jesuits were expelled from the Netherlands (which formed one Province with Switzerland and Saxony) and came to swell the number of their colleagues in Valais and Freiburg.
In 1836, however, when the second revolutionary wave was passing over Europe, the Radicals won power in the majority of the cantons (including Lucerne, Freiburg, and Solothurn). They were not yet in a position to dislodge the Jesuits, but there was constant friction, and a serious struggle for the federal authority began. The aim of the Radicals was to capture and strengthen the federal government, and expel the Jesuits (and other religions) from the whole of Switzerland. They and the "young Swiss" were part of the international Liberal movement, which was everywhere anti-clerical. [42] In 1844 the struggle became more violent. The Jesuits of Valais refusing to admit government control of their schools, a band of armed Radicals marched upon Sion and had to be defeated by the armed inhabitants. In the same year the Jesuits entered Lucerne for the first time. A wealthy Catholic farmer named Leu threw all his energy into their cause, and the Jesuits aided by sending a preacher occasionally to show, by suave and conciliatory sermons, that the suspicion of them was wholly unfounded. In face of a storm of Protestant and Radical threats the Council decided to admit the Jesuits.
There now spread through the country a struggle of passion which was soon to culminate in a deadly civil war. Leu was murdered, and Catholics and Radicals faced each other with intense hatred. Opinions may differ as to the conduct of the Jesuits in pressing their ministry, since it is clear that the purely political differences would not have stained the hills and valleys of Switzerland with blood. The war that followed was a religious war, and mainly a war over the Jesuits. In the spring of 1845 it was announced that an army of 11,000 Radicals was marching on Lucerne. The Catholic Confederation sent round the fiery cross, and gathered an army sufficiently strong to defeat and scatter the Radicals. It was over the corpses of these opponents that the Jesuits entered Lucerne and began to teach, with passion still seething on every side. A graver struggle impended, and both sides hastily organised. The seven Catholic cantons (to whose enterprise the French Jesuits contributed 98,000 francs) formed a Sonderbund [Separate Alliance], and aimed at setting up a Catholic Republic. The Federal Diet at Berne ordered them to dissolve, and when they refused, pitted the federal army against the Catholic troops. A bloody and disastrous war ended in a victory for the federal troops in 1847, the Sonderbund was destroyed, and the Jesuits (with the other religious orders) were excluded from Switzerland by the Constitution of 1848. The Jesuits had not waited for the troops to enter Freiburg and Lucerne; they had fled to the Tyrol and Austria.
In the Netherlands the story of the Jesuits during the nineteenth century has been one of great prosperity, checked only by a few early reverses. No sooner had the Pope issued the bull of restoration, and the French rule been destroyed, than the ex-Jesuits who lingered in the country as secular priests and the Fathers of the Faith (who had at last entered the Society) proceeded to organise their body. A novitiate was opened at Rumbeke and another at Destelbergen, in Belgium. The Congress of Vienna, however, placed the united Netherlands under the control of William of Nassau, and he watched the progress of the Jesuits with uneasiness. The former father of the Faith, the Count de Broglie, was now bishop of Ghent, and he and other prelates and nobles sedulously assisted the Jesuits. The controversies which were bound to arise after the union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium under one crown soon raged furiously, and William, in the summer of 1816, ordered the Jesuits to close their novitiate at Destelbergen. They were forced to retire, but de Broglie encouraged them to resist the King, and lent them his palace for the maintenance of their community. De Broglie himself was afterwards banished for assailing the Constitution, and the fathers were put out of the palace at the point of the bayonet in 1818. As William threatened to expel them from the country, they removed the novitiate to Switzerland, and assumed an appearance of submission. As, however, they continued to stir the Catholics, William ordered the bishops in 1824 to forbid them to give retreats to the clergy, and in the following year he closed two of their residences.
This succinct account will suffice to introduce the Catholic revolution of 1830, in which Belgium won its independence. We are again asked to regard the Jesuits as idle spectators of the fierce Catholic agitation which ended in the rebellion; but, in view of their experience under William, it seems wiser to accept the Dutch assurance that they played a large, if secret, part in it. The revolution was just, however, and there were other grounds than religion in the dissatisfaction of the Belgians. [43] From that date Belgium has been a golden land for the Jesuits, and Protestant Holland has suffered them to prosper in peace. After 1830 they literally overran Belgium; they numbered 117 in 1834, and 454 in 1845. After that date came the great revolutionary storm of 1848, and Belgium was almost the one land in which the hunted Jesuits could find refuge. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was too prudent a Protestant to interfere with them, and from the Belgian frontier they maintained the strength of their struggling colleagues in France. In Holland they were treated with leniency by the successor of William; and, when the storm broke upon their German colleagues in 1872, they were able to receive the refugees and maintain houses on the frontier for the invasion of Germany, as they do to-day.
It is needless to show, in fine, how the restored Jesuits spread again over the foreign missions. After 1830 especially, when their number had increased, they began to regain their lost Provinces. In 1834 six fathers landed at Calcutta to restore the Indian Province, and when the Portuguese missionaries and authorities tried to expel them, they succeeded in getting the protection of the English authorities. Madaura, the richest of their old fields, was restored to them in 1837. Here again the existing missionaries protested so violently that for many years the few Jesuits led a hard and almost fruitless existence. In 1842 some of the Jesuit missionaries secured the charge of a native college in Bengal, but the prince was compelled to evict them after a few years. There was an angry feeling and great outcry against them in India well into the middle of the century. In 1854 they received charge of the vicariate of Bombay, in 1858 of Poonah, and in 1859 of Bengal.
China was re-entered, very modestly, in 1841, and the various Republics of South America admitted them whenever the Catholics alternated in power with the Liberals. They entered Argentina in 1836, but were banished again in 1843; they were permitted to settle in Guatemala in 1853, and expelled when the Liberals came to power in 1871. But it would be little more than a calendar of dates to record their appearances and disappearances in the South American States, and on the foreign missions generally. In 1845, of 5000 Jesuits, 518 were missionaries: in 1855 there were 1110 on the missions: in 1884 they counted 2575 on the missions. They no longer presented to the historian the interesting features of their early years; Jesuits no longer flaunted the silk robes of a mandarin or the mythological vesture of a Saniassi, no vast estates or commerce sent gold to their European brethren, no troops of soldiers marched at their command, no quaint rites or rebellions against bishops engaged the Roman Congregations. They had entered the age of prose.