“The undersigned protest and promise, on the faith of priests and true religious in the name of our Company, sufficiently authorised for that effect, that our Company, takes Master Hippolite Braem, LL.D., under its protection, and promises to defend him against all infernal powers which may make attempts upon his person, his soul, his goods, or his means; that we conjure and shall conjure for this effect (to prevent attempts upon his person, &c.), the most serene Prince our Founder, making use in this case of his authority and his credit, in order that the above-named Braem may be presented by him to the blessed chief of Apostles with much fidelity and carefulness, since our Company is infinitely obliged to him. In faith of which we have signed the present, and authenticated it with the seal of the Society. Given at Ghent, March 29, 1650, and signed by the Rector, Seclin, and two Jesuit priests.”[318]
It seems that in India the Jesuits made a great traffic of such passports. In those distant regions, the impudence of the fathers must have been still greater than it was in Europe. The Father Marcello Mastrilli, when in Japan, boasted that many times a-day he sent his guardian angel to pay reverence and deliver messages to St Francis in heaven, and that he received answers.[319] We are not surprised at the ridiculous and barefaced impudence of Mastrilli, who is celebrated for his ridiculous impostures; but we are surprised that Bartoli, such an accomplished writer, and not altogether despicable historian, should relate with imperturbable gravity such puerile absurdities.
In 1681, Noyelle, “who had not the same brilliant qualities as his predecessors,”[320] succeeded Oliva, and was himself succeeded, in 1687, by Gonzales, a harsh theologian, who died in 1705, and had for his successor Father Tambourini. Nothing remarkable happened during the rule of these generals; at least nothing that presents us with any new feature in the history we are writing. The Company followed the course it had entered upon, and marched with steady step towards its proper ruin. Not that there was any apparent sign of decay. The Society was, on the contrary, more powerful, more courted than ever. But its power did not lie any longer in its intrinsic merits, or its adaptation to the wants of humanity; and the interest and respect by which it seemed to be surrounded was ephemeral, and in some degree compulsory. With a few sincere devotees there was a crowd of courtiers who flattered for their own interest. The Company resembled an all-powerful minister, hated for his personal qualities, but worshipped and extolled to the skies by the crowd of those who fear his power or await his favour, impatient till the sovereign frown upon him, that they may manifest their real sentiments. Such was the state of the Society of Jesus during the seventeenth century.
CHAPTER XV.
1700-1772.
DOWNFALL OF THE JESUITS.
We have brought down our history to the beginning of the eighteenth century, an epoch in which the power and greatness of the Society of Jesus had, by a gradual march, ascended to a point from which, following the law inherent in all human things, it could not but decline; for institutions, empires, and nations, have, as well as man himself, their successive periods of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and decrepitude; and if institutions, doctrines, or nations, revive after their moral death, they never regain the same degree of force and vitality which they possessed when rising to the maturity of their power. According to this constant rule, it was evident to any profound observer that the Jesuits had attained that height from which they must inevitably descend; but, as always happens, they never dreamed of their impending fate, and scorned the sinister forebodings of some of their number who foresaw and predicted it. Then, when these predictions proved true, they laid the blame of their fall upon every one but its real authors—themselves; for it is to them that must be attributed the ruin of their institution. To the causes of decay which we have stated, we must add that which was perhaps the principal one—namely, that the Jesuits, once in possession of power, remitted their prodigious activity, for which they had been so remarkable at the commencement of their institution, and even disregarded those arts by which they had obtained that power. Even the Instruction, that all-powerful engine which had so admirably served their purposes, was neglected, and had lost its original character. It was no longer either gratuitous or universal; children of families known to be adverse to the Order, were, on one pretence or another, refused admittance, or sorely annoyed if admitted. Twice a year, at Christmas, and on their patron saint’s (Loyola’s) day, the pupils were obliged to bring presents to the masters; and rewards and marks of distinction were given in preference to the children of wealthy families, or to those who brought the richest present. This naturally produced in these young persons a consciousness of independence, so that they would no longer endure the severity of the ancient discipline.[321] Some of them even went so far as to stab their masters, and the revolts of the pupils of the Collegio Romano became proverbial. Besides, the zeal which the fathers had shewn at first to promote study, had not only cooled away, but was directed to oppose any sort of progress.
To those primary and internal causes which accelerated the downfall of the order, must be added also many external ones, all militating against them.
In those countries in which the Jesuits had had the greatest influence, as Spain, Portugal, and Poland, although they preserved, as yet, the favour of the court, they had lost that of all the other classes of society, who, at least in secret, accused them of being the cause of the abasement and the ruin of their respective countries. On the other hand, those sovereigns of Germany who had sought the Jesuits’ help to oppose their Protestant subjects, after the peace of Westphalia, wishing to calm rather than inflame religious quarrels, though they did not withdraw from the Jesuits that protection they had granted them, at least refused to give them that almost unlimited authority they had formerly enjoyed. But the surest, perhaps, of all the symptoms of their approaching ruin was, that the Court of Rome itself began to frown upon them, and to shew a determination to lower their pride, and to bring them to some sense of their duty. We have already seen (pp. 127, 128) many bulls condemnatory of their conduct in China and India, and that Benedict XIV. had applied to them the very harsh and offensive appellations of “disobedient, contumacious, crafty, and reprobate men.” The same Pope, at this period also accepted the dedication of Father Norbert’s Mémoires Historiques, of which we have already spoken; and encouraged the publication of many other books, all adverse to the Society. All this was ominous to the Jesuits.
It was, however, in France, the former seat of their power and glory during the seventeenth century, that the ruin of the order was most effectually prepared. The overthrow of Port-Royal, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the massacre of the Huguenots, and all the persecutions exercised in that country in the name of religion, were justly attributed to the Jesuits. Nor was this all; the exclusion from every office, civil or ecclesiastical, of every person who was not entirely devoted to the Order, had made their tyrannic yoke to be detested and abhorred in the highest degree.