History of the Jesuits: Their origin, progress, doctrines, and designs

by G. B. Nicolini

As in Portugal, up to that moment, to the nuncio alone belonged the right of pronouncing judgment upon ecclesiastics, Pombal, although he had already resolved to transfer that right to a commission named by the sovereign, thought proper to solicit the Pope for a nominal authorisation; and as Clement’s answer did not come quick enough for the minister’s impatience, he, on 1st of September 1759, issued a decree for the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the states of his most faithful majesty. All the bishops of Portugal received a command to take the office of instruction out of the hands of the Jesuits, and supersede them instantly in the universities of Coimbra and elsewhere; and immediately after, all the Jesuits residing in Portugal were put on board royal and merchant vessels, and shipped over into Italy;[336] similar orders were given to the governors of all the Portuguese colonies, and immediately executed.

This was the first blow dealt to the Society of Jesus; and, as if it had been a signal, it was followed by a succession, till Ganganelli dealt it the last and mortal one. It seemed as if before no one had dared to attack such a powerful colossus: but when once the people saw with what facility it could be attacked, and even conquered, every one wished to break a spear upon it. France, as was to be expected, struck the second blow. When the minds of men were once bent upon it, any pretext would have been sufficient to expel the Jesuits; and it requires no great insight to perceive that the apparent causes which led to this step were only secondary. It is true that Madame de Pompadour, the king’s mistress, had resolved upon their destruction; but, although it is well known that she harassed the king to obtain it, it is by no means certain that Louis yielded to her influence alone, and we doubt much that she would have been able to effect it at all, had she lived a hundred years before. It seems that the Jesuit confessors of the marchioness and the king refused, we do not know for what reasons, to absolve them, unless the lady should quit the court. She herself has transmitted to us a long recital of her negotiations with the confessor;[337] and when she could not bring him to her wishes, she vowed a mortal hatred against the Society, which, however, remained for some years without result.

But in 1761 a more decisive occasion was offered to the enemies of the order to ask for their expulsion. Father Lavallette, the Superior General of Martinique—a bold and unscrupulous speculator, a priest who, by their own confession, began to operate not only on the produce of the goods belonging to the house, but who purchased large properties, and bought two thousand slaves to work them—was the means of creating this occasion.[338] He entered into vast and complicated speculations with different maritime towns of Europe; and as some of these speculations failed, he stopped payment—a measure which caused the ruin of several houses, among which were one of Lyons and another of Marseilles.

The house of Marseilles, Leoncy, held the Society responsible for the debt of its member, and applied to the General for payment. Ricci, the then chief of the order,[339] committed the irreparable error of refusing to recognise the debt. The Widow Grou & Son, of Nantez, then commenced a process before the consular tribunal of Paris. Leoncy followed the example. The Jesuits having been condemned, were blind enough to bring the cause before the parliament. This supreme court of judicature, the better to estimate the merit of the cause, ordered that the Constitutions of the Society should be brought before the tribunal. The Jesuits consented, and this decided their ruin. After prolonged examination, the parliament gave its judgment, by which the Society was condemned to pay all the engagements incurred by Lavallette, for which, according to the tenor of their Constitution, the whole order was answerable.[340]

Many authors, speaking of this affair, have expressed their astonishment that the Jesuits, who were accounted so cunning, could have committed such blunders. We have nothing to answer to this, except that they may be compared to those generals who, having lost their presence of mind in a difficult and critical moment, have suffered defeat by committing errors that a simple non-commissioned officer would never have been guilty of; or they may be compared perhaps to those consummate criminals who, having long eluded the vigilance of the police with extraordinary dexterity, at last commit such blunders, that one could almost swear they conspired for their own capture. Or it would be more correct to say that God had numbered their days, and their hour was come. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat.

From the moment when the Constitutions of this mysterious and dread Society were brought to light, Constitutions which had been kept jealously secret, all minor questions disappeared. Father Lavallette, the bankrupt, the bankers (who were never paid), all were forgotten in the great question affecting the Society itself. “Dogmatic disputes, which had so long been forgotten, now resumed all the force of present interest, and all the attraction of novelty. There was a universal eagerness to discover and apply those mysterious Constitutions. Women, and even children, were animated with the ardour of old practised lawyers. Pascal became the idol of the day, and La Chalatois its hero.”[341] Innumerable writings were daily printed and read with the greatest avidity by all classes of persons; and for a while nothing else was spoken of but the Society of Jesuits.

In these circumstances, fifty-one French bishops, under the presidency of the Cardinal of Luynes, assembled, and, after a prolonged examination of the Constitutions, declared that the unlimited obedience that the General residing in Rome was empowered to exact from every member, was incompatible with the laws of the kingdom, and with the general duties of the subject to his sovereign. Now the opponents of the Jesuits, and Madame do Pompadour at their head, pressed upon the king to take a decisive measure. Louis XV. was an indolent profligate, whose chief characteristic was the love and veneration of himself. Provided royalty did not perish in his own person, he cared little what should become of it after his death. He had no liking for any person but those who could amuse him—a thing in his old age by no means easy. He cared nothing for the Jesuits, but he feared them. He was persuaded that they had been accomplices in the assassination of Henry III. and Henry IV.; he had always before his eyes the poniard of Damiens, and attributed to the fathers both the will and the power to murder him. For this all-important reason, he resisted long all solicitations to expel them from France, but he consented to address a request to the Pope to grant a reform, but to grant it immediately, and without hesitation or subterfuge. Choiseul himself prepared a plan of reform, which, it may be said, centred in this principal point, namely, to propose to the General the appointment of a vicar-general for France, who was to fix his residence in that country, and pledge himself to render obedience to its laws—a measure which was in conformity with the statutes, since these authorised the General, in case of a great emergency, to name a vicar-general.[342] The fact of this most reasonable demand having been made, would of itself be a sufficient answer to the Jesuits and their partisans, who pretend that the destruction of the order was not the consequence of any of these misdemeanours, but that it had been planned long before between the Encyclopædists Choiseul and Pombal. Yet we shall adduce some further proofs to shew how unfounded their assertions are.

Pombal, although he was executing some of the reforms called for by the Encyclopædists, was no way connected with them, and he is perhaps the only man of mark of this epoch whom Voltaire has not favoured with a word of his inexhaustible correspondence. On the contrary, the Patriarch of Ferney often blames the marquis for his affected deference to the Pope and respect for religion, as well as for his cruelty, so displeasing to the naturally humane heart of Voltaire. Choiseul was indeed for a time the friend of Pombal, and acted in concert with him in affairs of general policy. But Pombal was too haughty, he had too exaggerated an opinion of his own capacity, to act under or by the direction of any man whatever. Besides, the well-known character of Choiseul renders it altogether incredible that he could have been long and deeply engaged in a plot to expel the Jesuits from Europe. The duke was the type of the French gentilhommes of the eighteenth century. He possessed the incredulity, the grace, the vanity, the courage, and that levity which would have sacrificed the dearest interests to the pleasure of an epigram, and which was so characteristic of the French noblesse in the former part of Louis XV.’s reign. He was too frivolous to be capable of nourishing in his heart for years a deep scheme of malice; nor did he honour or value the Jesuits enough to make them the object of a mortal enmity. On the contrary, with the Count of Kaunitz, the Austrian minister, he ridiculed the sort of passion with which the Marquis of Pombal persecuted the sons of Loyola. “Ce, Monsieur,” they would say, “a donc toujours un Jesuite a cheval sur le nez.”[343]

However, it is evident that Choiseul could not be the man to protect the Jesuits: it is evident that, to please Madame de Pompadour, and to court public opinion, he must have shewn himself unfavourable to the fathers, and must have pursued them with his sarcasms. It is also certain that afterwards he became their enemy, not out of hatred, but rather to comply with Charles III.’s wishes, and in order to get rid of them, and that he used all his influence to have them expelled from France, and ultimately abolished. The duke renders our assertions incontestable, when, in a memorial addressed to the king, after having reminded him that he had not been the man who had commenced the great measure of the expulsion of the Jesuits, he adds, “Your Majesty knows well that, although it has been said that I have laboured at the expulsion of the Jesuits, ... I have in no way, either at a distance or on the spot, either in public or in private, taken any step with this intent.” And he finishes by saying, that only at a later period, after he had known them, he had become their enemy. When, then, the duke made application to Rome to obtain the nomination of a vicar-general who should reside in France, with authority independent of the General, he was personally indifferent in the question.

It is well known what answer the General, Ricci, made to this application—“Sint ut sunt aut non sint,” Let them be as they are, or be no longer.