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

by G. B. Nicolini

The Order of the Jesuits, above all, fixed the attention of every one, and admission into it was sought with passionate eagerness, as the surest way to fortune and consideration. Many younger brothers of good families entered the novitiate of St Andrea, which had the rare honour to see as a postulant for admission into the brotherhood, a once crowned head. Charles Emanuel of Savoy, who had already renounced the crown of Sardinia in favour of his brother Vittorio, entered the novitiate, fulfilled with unfeigned humility all the duties of a novice, and died some three or four years after, asking, as a last favour, to be buried in his garb of a Jesuit.

Another fortuitous circumstance soon came to relieve the Jesuits from great difficulties. In 1820, the death of General Barzozowski, whom Alexander would never permit to leave Russia, and without whom nothing definitive could be done, put an end to this anomalous state of things. The new election restored the chief of the Company to the metropolis of Christendom; and from the Gesù, where Loyola and Ricci had sat, Fortis, the elected General, now watched over the interests and the prosperity of the Society, which he hoped to see again in all its former glory.

In our peninsula their progress was rapid.

——Come di gramigna,

Vivace terra,[426]

so Italy was soon covered with the noxious weed. Most of their former establishments were given back to them, others they bought; and, in perfect concord with the Court of Rome, as each stood in need of the other, they set to work to reduce the unfortunate country to the lowest possible degree of ignorance and degradation, to extinguish every noble aspiration, to suppress every generous sentiment, and to force us into that mould in which idle, debauched, and corrupt monks are cast. But their united efforts, thank Heaven! proved ineffectual. The genius of ancient Rome, though clad in sable, watched over us from the ruins of the Coliseum, and from the summit of the Capitol, and pointed out to us written on every stone of our cities, a page of glory, an inscription of noble and heroic deeds! Yes! in the very names of our monuments, even when they are not present to our eyes, there is something magical, some mysterious power, which thrills all the fibres of the heart, and makes one long to restore the glories of the past. And in this, we believe, more than in anything else, is to be found the explanation of that historical fact, that while in the middle ages the Popes were almost supreme umpires of the different kingdoms of Europe, they could never obtain a stable footing in Rome, but were often driven from it, often besieged in their castles or made prisoners, while their court and government were generally held in the greatest contempt. So now, though the Jesuits were supported by all the petty Italian despots, and by their master the Emperor of Austria, and though they almost had at their disposal the thunderbolts of the Vatican and the dungeons of the Inquisition, they could only persuade old women, and feeble and bigoted men, but none of the thinking and active population of Italy. The revolution of 1848 proved once more how deeply rooted was the hatred of the Italians against the brotherhood of Loyola, the only religious order among such an immense number which was forcibly expelled from the whole peninsula.

However, the Jesuits, the moment they were re-established, lost no time in invading other countries where they thought they could retrieve their fallen fortunes. Immediately after the restoration, they re-entered Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and many countries in the New World. We shall endeavour, in the little space left to us, to sketch the history of the fathers in those different countries.

The Jesuits, to the number of about one hundred, mostly members of the Society who had been expelled in 1767, re-entered Spain, and were associated with Ferdinand VII. in all the acts of revenge which that cruel and stupidly ferocious prince exercised upon the unfortunate Spaniards. They increased so rapidly, that as early as 1820, they numbered already 397 members.[427] But at that time the Castilians revolted against the cruelty of the despotic king. Successful in their revolution, they established the Constitution of 1812; and one of the first acts of the Cortes was to enact a law which expelled the Jesuits from all the Spanish dominions. But it was not long before they re-entered in the rear of the French army, conducted by the Duke of Angouleme, to replace Ferdinand on the throne, and became the most efficient instruments of his bigoted and cowardly policy. In 1825, a general military college was established at Segovia, and, strange to say, the Jesuits were made the preceptors of those future officers in all that was not strictly military. In 1827, another college for the nobility and children of courtiers and chamberlains was established, and also delivered to the Jesuits’ direction. But their prosperity was put a stop to by the death of Ferdinand. The right of Isabella, the infant daughter of the late king, was contested by her uncle Don Carlos, and long and murderous civil war was the consequence of this contest. The Jesuits took the part of the Carlists secretly at first, and acting only as informers when they were able. In an émeute in 1834, the people of Madrid murdered some of them, and in 1835 they were legally abolished by a decree of the legislature, sanctioned by the sovereign. But they did not on that account quit Spain. They recovered their standing in those provinces in which the armies of Don Carlos were predominant, and were chosen as tutors to the pretender’s sons. They built a novitiate in Quipuzoa, and seemed to set at defiance the government of the country. After the convention of Vergara, Espartero caused them to be expelled from their new colleges, and ordered them to leave the Spanish territories; but although, since this epoch, they have no legal existence in the land of Loyola and Xavier, according to the best information, in 1845, about 250 Jesuits were to be found there, apparently as single individuals, but in reality forming part of the order, and being attached either to the province of Belgium or to that of South America.

Their history in Portugal may be more summarily narrated. In 1829, some French Jesuits, invited by the usurper Don Miguel, arrived in Portugal, and were honourably received, as they pretend, by the grand-daughter of Pombal, who offered to intrust to them four of her children to be educated.[428] The authorities also contrived to get up a sort of manifestation, given by the other monks on the Jesuits’ entrance into Coimbra, where they stayed two or three years. But hardly was Don Pedro master of Portugal, than, by a decree in 1834, he expelled the fathers from all the dominions of his daughter Dona Maria. We are not aware that there are many Jesuits now in Portugal.

In Germany, the fathers were far from regaining the position they had formerly held. Austria itself refused to re-admit them. Metternich, brought up in the school of Joseph II. and Kaunitz, was not disposed to let the bad seed take root again in the German soil. However, when, in 1820, the Jesuits, expelled from Russia, passed through Vienna, they found means to obtain permission to settle in Galicia, where they soon opened schools and colleges, the principal of which were in Tournow and Lemberg, and where they met with such success, that the latter college, in 1823, counted 400 pupils. The number of Jesuits in the province went on increasing, and their influence, especially over the rural population, who are almost all Papists, is now all-powerful and irresistible. Now, our readers, who remember the atrocious and inhuman acts which desolated the unfortunate country in 1846, may form an estimate of the good which their system of education has produced.