Lachaise became now a most important personage of the court of Louis. The king had built for this monk—who, though he made a vow of poverty, never travelled but in a coach and six—a magnificent house surrounded by a garden,[258] where the humble disciple of Loyola received his courtiers and flatterers, and where he freely distributed lettres de cachet.[259] He was the arbiter between Fenelon and Bossuet, between Montespan and Maintenon, between the sovereign and his clergy. It was Lachaise who united by a secret marriage the great king and the governess of his illegitimate children; but Madame de Maintenon never forgave him that he had not obliged his royal penitent to acknowledge her publicly as his wedded queen. But all the influence he exercised was nothing compared to the exorbitant and almost royal power which he possessed as king’s confessor. La feuille des bénéfices, that is, the right of disposing of all the livings of all the bishoprics in the kingdom, was attached to the office.[260] One may well imagine that Lachaise, who, as St Simon says, was fort Jesuite, was not very sparing in conferring rich benefices upon his own order. But a still greater advantage resulted to the Society from the subjection in which they held the French clergy, who, depending exclusively on a Jesuit for favours and advancement, renounced the opposition they had formerly shewn to the Company, and became the most humble and flattering adherents of the fathers. Even the Sorbonne, that fiery opponent, became the supporter of the Society.
To the pleasing and polite Lachaise, in 1709, succeeded as confessor the gloomy Letellier. He was cruel, ardent, and inflexible in his enmities, reserved, mysterious, and cunning in his dark projects,[261] concealing always the violence of his passions under a cold and impassive exterior. His predecessor had left him little to do in the way of wholesale persecution and massacre. The Huguenots had been murdered by thousands, and three hundred thousand Calvinist families had fled from their unrelenting enemies. The Jansenists had been in part disbanded, and death had removed from the contest the Pascals, the Nicoles, the De Lacys, and the whole of the Arnauld family. Only a few nuns, who could no more receive novices or pupils, and with whom, therefore, their order must necessarily be extinguished, remained in the monastery of Port-Royal for the ferocious Letellier. He sent thither a troop of rough and licentious soldiers, who dragged those delicate and feeble women from their abode, and conducted them prisoners as obstinate heretics, to be confined in different monasteries. Yet the dwelling which those sainted nuns had occupied, the church where they had worshipped the Lord, the tombs where many of them lay, and which they had sought in the hope to be delivered from their persecutors, and there to rest their wearied bodies in peace, still remained untouched. Letellier, to glut his revenge, turned his rage against their glorious monuments, had the monastery and church pulled down; and, violating with Vandalic ferocity the asylum of the dead, he caused the bodies to be exhumed and thrown together in a heap, to be devoured by the dogs, and had the plough driven over the sacred edifice.[262]
After such examples as these, it is unnecessary to add more to shew the influence the Jesuits possessed in France, and the abominable use they made of it. We have gone beyond the epoch we have prefixed to this chapter, the facts we have last reported having occurred in 1709, 1711, and 1713. And we have done so, because these events mark the time from which the power of the Jesuits began in France to decline from its ascendancy.
Let us now see what was the conduct and the influence of the Jesuits in other countries.
In Spain, the affairs of the Order were in the most flourishing condition. Their revenues amounted to a very considerable sum. The authority they possessed was almost unlimited. Philip III., who had loaded them with benefices, expired on the arm of a Jesuit; and hardly had Philip IV. taken the government into his own hands than he showered down upon the Society still greater favours than his predecessor.[263] He encouraged his subjects to build colleges for them; and many bishops and noblemen, to please the sovereign, vied with each other in endowing the Society with richly provided establishments, and in investing them with all power and influence. But it seems that when the haughty and imperious Olivarez possessed himself of the supreme power, he ruled with such a despotic hand both king and kingdom, that very little share of authority or influence was left to the reverend fathers. Inde iræ. The affront must be resented, and, although it was rather difficult to attack openly in Spain either the premier or the monarch, surrounded as he was by the devotion and the love of his subjects, yet the Jesuits were not the men to suffer patiently what they considered an injury. They then thought of snatching from the hands of Philip that same sceptre of Portugal which they had placed in the hands of his grandfather. They accordingly set themselves to work, and formed a conspiracy to transfer the crown to the head of the Duke of Braganza. The pulpit, the confessional, the congregations, were all made to subserve their designs; and the minds of the people being sufficiently prepared, they caused the duke to repair to Evora. He took up his abode in the Jesuit college; and when he descended into the church, thronged with people, Corea, a Jesuit father, addressing the duke from the pulpit, exclaimed, “I shall yet see upon your head the crown——of glory, to which may the Lord call us all!”[264] The church rung with plaudits at this well-managed réticence; and the mysterious prediction passed from the church to the street, and from thence throughout Portugal, to strengthen the hopes and inflame the courage of the Portuguese, already impatient to shake off the Spanish yoke. From that moment the conspiracy made rapid progress. The fathers publicly preached the revolt, without, however, altogether forgetting their Jesuitical duplicity. The provincial forbade all his subordinates to mix in political matters, and even imprisoned one of them for having from the pulpit too openly exhorted the citizens to rebel. But the greatest part of the fathers disregarded the order of their superior, who, nevertheless, except in the instance just mentioned, left them unpunished, and in the evening sat down with them at the same table as friendly as ever—a policy which, we must observe, was adopted by the fathers in all doubtful emergencies, in order that, on whichever side the scales declined, there might be a portion of the Jesuits claiming the merit of fidelity, and screening the others from the conqueror’s resentment.
Crétineau confesses frankly that the Jesuits had been the soul of the revolution, and says, “The Duchess of Braganza hoped to make her duke king, even against his own will; but it was necessary to obtain the co-operation, or at least the neutrality, of the Jesuits.”[265] The efforts of the Jesuits were crowned with success. In 1640 a revolution broke out at Lisbon, and was successful. “The house of Braganza did not forget what it owed to the Jesuits for the past and the present; and wishing, through them, to make sure of the future, it awarded to them unlimited influence. The Jesuits were the first ambassadors of John IV.”[266] After those very explicit words, let the Jesuits assert that they are a religious community, detached entirely from worldly interest, and merely occupied in the salvation of souls. It has been asserted that the Jesuits, besides being animated by hatred to Olivarez, were induced to co-operate in the revolution by the instigation and perhaps by the liberal promises of Richelieu, who, as everybody knows, was anxious by every possible means to harass and enfeeble the rival house of Austria. However this was, the Jesuits became the almost absolute masters of Portugal. Nothing was done without their consent. No minister would take any important step without first consulting the Jesuits and obtaining their permission. Lisbon became the seat of their extensive commercial operations, and the centre of their trade between Europe and the Indies; and Ranke says that the Portuguese ambassadors were empowered to draw upon the Jesuits of Portugal for considerable sums. And, strange to say, they at the same time enjoyed some influence in Spain under Philip IV.; and this appears to have increased to such an extent under Charles II., that the testament by which this monarch named a grandson of Louis XIV. to the throne of Spain, was dictated, it is asserted, by the Jesuits.
Here we are led to make a remark which will serve to illustrate the true spirit of Jesuitism. In the fifth general congregation was passed a decree forbidding all Jesuits to mix in any way in political or secular matters; and by the eighty-fourth decree of the sixth general congregation, all operations which have any appearance of being commercial are strictly forbidden to the members of the Society. Notwithstanding these decrees, the Jesuits dispose of the destinies of kingdoms almost at their pleasure, and are the earliest bankers in Europe. The General, who is armed by the Constitution with almost unlimited powers to punish the infraction of his orders, and who can dismiss the delinquent at any time he chooses, not only remains silent when such transgressions are committed, but connives at, and even encourages them, by raising those members who are the most skilful in political affairs to the most important offices in the Society, and by himself using and disposing of that money which has been acquired by a manifest breach of the Constitution.
For what purpose, then, those decrees, if they are not to be observed? What was the purpose contemplated by their framers, we cannot say, but the use the Society makes of them is a very simple one. When they are accused of mixing in political matters or commercial speculations, they answer: “This cannot be; the Constitutions or the decrees expressly forbid such things.” Thus, for example, Crétineau, after mentioning the decree which forbids any sort of operation of a commercial nature, adds, “This is the answer to the partial criticisms and interested injustice of those who will endeavour to attribute to the great work of the missions a sordid cupidity of lucre.”[267] We admire the boldness, not to say the impudence, of this panegyrist of the Order.
All throughout Germany the Jesuits spread desolation and misery whenever the cause of truth and freedom was overcome by the superior material force of despotism and bigotry. “They were the most able auxiliaries of Ferdinand in destroying the Protestants; they were in the imperial cabinet, in his armies, among the defeated sectarians, and they even dared to penetrate into the camp of the Lutherans”[268] (as spies, no doubt). The Jesuits had formed Tilly, Wallenstein, and Piccolomini, the three champions of the Catholic cause in the Thirty Years’ War.
“They (the Jesuits) accompanied the armies in their march, they followed them to the battle-field; and after the victory, they disputed with the Croats the fate of the prisoners of the day.”[269] Such is the version of their historian. How far from the truth! It is unquestionable that they had formed the three champions, and worthy of their masters did they prove by their spirit of revenge and persecution. But it is an impudent falsehood that the Jesuits interposed (as their calling made it their duty) betwixt the executioner and the victim, betwixt the sacred laws of humanity and the barbarous laws of war. No. On the contrary, they preached the extermination of the Protestants, and gave out that no work was so meritorious in the eyes of God as to kill those accursed heretics. They did not calm, but rather excited, the ferocious passions of their pupils the generals, and, above all, of Tilly, over whom they possessed a very great influence. Once, after the battle of Strato, in Munster, I believe the voice of the Jesuits was added to that of the citizens in imploring mercy for some hundreds of unfortunate prisoners on the point of being mercilessly put to the sword; and this single and exceptional instance, whether the act of some human and compassionate persons, or of cunning rogues eager to win for the Order an unmerited reputation for clemency, is reported by the Jesuits as a general practice: while the many acts of brutal Vandalism and revenge perpetrated under their very eyes, and at their instigation, when they cannot be denied, are laid to the account of others. This is a historical truth.