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

by G. B. Nicolini

Distressful consequences for the people followed the league. The Roman states were first made to feel the rage of the allies. Louis Napoleon, who, in 1831, had fought along with us to overturn the Papal throne, now sent an army in support of the Pope. He thought (I expressed this opinion in my History of the Pontificate, written two years ago) that priests and peasants would assist him to grasp the imperial sceptre, and that he could not better ingratiate himself with them, than by replacing the Pope on the throne; an act which would also be very acceptable to the other despots. In consequence, he hastened to send his troops to crush the new republic. The French army landed at Civita Vecchia. The general chosen to command it was worthy of the end proposed. Oudinot is the type of Jesuitism: and Louis Napoleon himself has, more recently, given him his desert. Hardly had he landed on our shores, when many of the fathers (we here relate facts of which we ourselves were witnesses)—as an envenomed brood, sprung by magic from the soil—put themselves in communication with him. The very proclamation by which he announced the landing of the army was a masterpiece of Jesuitical craft. According to its tenor, every party might have considered the French expedition as coming to its own support. Oudinot informed the first deputation sent by the republican government to inquire about the motives of this unwelcome visit, that the French came as its friends; but, some hours after, when pressed by a second deputation to be more explicit, he at last confessed that they came to replace the Pope on the throne.[444] It would be to our glory, but not to the purpose, to describe the prodigies of valour performed by our inexperienced volunteers, in contending for three months with forty-five thousand of the best troops of Europe. We fought as only citizens combat for home and liberty. Men and women were in the mêlée. Neither wife nor mother attempted by tears and entreaties to stay her husband or son, but with a blessing and a kiss sent him forth against the enemy. O Rome! O my noble country! when I remember thy noble deeds, the readiness with which thou didst sacrifice the noblest of thy children to achieve thy liberty, hope lends me patience to endure the longing and miseries of my exile! Thou canst not be long under the yoke of the priests!

But our valour availed us nothing. Left alone, we could stand no longer. Four nations were leagued against us, and not a friendly hand was stretched forth to succour us. England must reproach herself for having left us to contend, unaided and alone, against four Catholic powers, combined together to re-establish the Pope, who is as much her enemy as ours. She must now feel the consequences of her culpable indifference. The result was—and this is of great importance for England—that at last, masters of our destinies, the Austrians have established a military port at Leghorn, the French one at Civita Vecchia. Englishmen are cut down in broad day in the streets of Florence,[445] condemned to death by an Inquisitorial tribunal at Rome,[446] imprisoned at Verona,[447] and insulted and ill-treated throughout all Italy. An English ambassador sues in vain for the friendly interference of the Pope in English affairs; he is not listened to, and the newspapers of the peninsula, and of the powers adverse to England, laugh at his discomfiture. But there is in the looming a still darker and more serious prospect, threatening to punish England for having abandoned the cause of civil and religious freedom. Eighteen millions of Englishmen live, we will not say in perpetual fear—they are too brave for that—but not without apprehension of seeing their shores invaded by the same army which conquered Rome, and which would carry with it the blessing and the good wishes of Pius IX.—God forbid that it should also have the support of the most fanatical and ignorant portion of the Irish Papists, led by priests and Jesuits. We hope that this will not be the case; yet we must remind our readers, that every time the French speak of a war with England, they count on the Irish as their natural allies.

We are not of those who, possessed by the fixed idea that impending dangers threaten the Protestant religion, believe and affirm that Louis Napoleon will be ready, at the bidding of the Jesuits, to send an expedition against heretic England. On the contrary, we think that, having once possessed himself of the imperial diadem, and having firmly established himself on the throne, through the instrumentality of the priests, and by the magic power which he seems to possess, of making the electoral urn yield exactly the amount of votes asked from it, he will soon put a stop to the insolence of the clergy, which, we are sure, will increase in the direct ratio of the services they are rendering to the usurper, and of the favours he has lavished upon them. But at the same time, we firmly believe that, should Napoleon, in order to give employment to his troops, and to gratify the national animosity, attempt to invade Great Britain, or should he succeed in landing his adventurous battalions on the British shore, then, though England may not have to lament the treachery of the fanatic Papists of Ireland, she must expect to find in her bosom as many spies and allies of her enemy as she has Jesuits on her soil. All this is the result of the indifference shewn by England to the affairs of the peninsula. Had she interfered when the Romans were bravely struggling for their liberties, the Pope and Louis Napoleon would not have cemented with our blood their anomalous alliance, and the before-mentioned disastrous results would have been averted with less difficulties and sacrifices than are now required to check the insolence of that monstrous coalition. And let no one affirm that England could not have justly interfered with the internal policy of other nations. What! shall then intervention only be lawful and commendable when employed to oppress a nation awakened to a sense of its rights, and to extinguish every spark of freedom and patriotism? Shall it only be permitted to outrage humanity, and never to benefit it? And to apply the rule to the case now in question, we ask, shall the ferocious bands of Croats, and the degraded soldiers of Louis Napoleon, trample upon our unfortunate country, and dispose of its destinies at their pleasure, and England remain an indifferent spectatress of their atrocious proceedings? These are considerations which we beg leave to submit to the meditation not only of the statesmen of Great Britain, but also of every free and enlightened English citizen.

To return to our narrative: the French entered Rome (3d July 1849), and with them priests and Jesuits, who had concealed themselves, or assumed different disguises (not unfrequently that of patriots), re-appeared, to enjoy their triumph, and the groans of the unfortunate country. Oudinot, covered with the blood of the brave Romans, hastened to Gaeta to receive the Pope’s blessing and acknowledgment, and was hailed there as an angel of deliverance. The vindictive priests rejoiced at the recital of the slaughter of the flock committed to their paternal care, and made the General repeat the names and the numbers of the victims. Then, when the hero of St Pancrace[448] returned to Rome, the priests, to enjoy a barbarous pleasure, ordered a solemn Te Deum to be sung in all the churches of the state; and those of the unfortunate Italians whose sustenance and liberty were in the power of their relentless enemy, were obliged to assist at the ceremony, and with their lips, at least, thank the Almighty for the slaughter of their best friends and nearest relations.[449] Blasphemous profanation! Then began that ceaseless persecution which is still continued; and the priests gratified their thirst for revenge by crowding the dungeons with victims, and by driving thousands into exile in foreign lands.

I will not prolong the painful history of our miseries. I will not speak of ruined families—of forlorn and wandering children. I will not dwell upon the fate of the ten thousand captives taken by Papal sbirri and French gens-d’armes, and who fill the prisons of the state. I will not implore the reader’s compassion for the many victims who have been again immured in the dungeons of the Inquisition, some of whom, for the last three years, have never seen a friendly face or heard a compassionate word. I will not point out the inhuman and hypocritical conduct of the so-called Vicar of Jesus Christ, who, while speaking with devout emotion of his clemency, his paternal heart, and the mercies of the Christian religion, has not granted a single pardon, dried a single tear, shortened for a single day the torments to which he has condemned thousands of his subjects. I shall only give an account of the wholesale execution which, in the last month, took place at Sinigallia and Ancona, and which has filled Italy and Europe with horror and amazement. As the Jesuits are notoriously the soul and spirit of Popery, and are at the present moment the recognised advisers and ministers of the Court at Rome, this short narrative will not, we hope, be considered extraneous to our subject.

Those who, in times of calm and tranquillity, judge of events that occur in epochs of commotion and revolution, when the passions of men are excited to the highest paroxysm, and the voice of reason imposes a feebler restraint upon their actions, leaving them little liberty to judge of the character of their actions, are apt to commit serious injustice; for they are too prone to brand as criminal, and deserving the highest reprobation, deeds which, although culpable in themselves, were yet committed under the impulse of heroism and devotedness. We do not intend by this to approve or countenance crime, no matter under what pretext it may have been committed. But assuredly there are circumstances that ought to be taken into account which might render it, if not excusable, at least less heinous and worthy of reprobation; and whoever would form a just judgment in such cases, will never lose sight of these considerations.

The first two years of Pius IX.’s pontificate are remarkably characteristic of the nobleness and generosity of the liberal party. Though the liberals had been, for the thirty years previous, so cruelly and mercilessly treated, and though they were now the dominant party in the state, they cannot be reproached with having offered an insult to their late oppressors, nor with a single act of revenge. But it is, unfortunately, true that, latterly, when the Pope had fled to Gaeta for the very purpose of exciting civil war, when the priests were plotting against the republic, calling in strangers to their aid, and menacing us with foreign invasion, many political assassinations were committed in Ancona and Sinigallia. This cannot be denied or palliated; only it is to be remarked, that the crimes were confined to these two towns—the latter the Pope’s birthplace; and both places being the residence of his family, relations, and friends, a suspicion naturally arose in the minds of many that these crimes were committed by persons misled by the advice of some hidden Jesuits and partisans of the Pope, whose endeavour it was to bring matters to the worst. The suspicion acquired strength from the circumstance, that nobody belonging to the Mastai family was injured. Although, as we have already reported, we were witness of the fact that those who, during the late commotion in Rome, proposed the most energetic and revolutionary measures, were, in the end, discovered to be the agents or the tools of the Jesuits, nevertheless we would not like to affirm that the political murders committed at Sinigallia were due to the perfidious instigation of the priests. We do not like to believe in the reality of such hellish perfidy; yet why had Sinigallia and Ancona the sad preference of seeing their streets stained with fraternal blood? Were there not exasperated minds also in other places? Had no other populations of the state good grounds for calling to a strict and severe account the agents and supporters of the past tyrannical government? Why, we repeat, was the sad pre-eminence in guilt assigned to the native town of the Pope?

However it were, after the Papal restoration, about 150 individuals were thrown into prison, accused of being the accomplices or the abettors of these crimes. Some of the accused, perhaps the guilty, were never taken, having fled from the country. About eighty were condemned to the galleys for life, the remainder to death.[450] Forty of the unfortunates have already been executed, and the rest will meet the same fate when the Pope shall find executioners as clement and humane as himself;—the garrison of Ancona having to a man refused to be any longer the accomplices of the Papal revenge.

What is of more importance than all this, is to place before the eyes of our readers and civilised Europe the manner in which political trials are conducted in the Roman states, in order that they may be aware of the justice, charity, and humanity which characterise the acts of him who blasphemously calls himself a god upon earth, the representative of Christ.

Whoever has the misfortune to incur the displeasure or the hatred of his Holiness, his ministers, a policeman, a sbirro, the bishop, the curate, a monk, or any other of such rabble, which form an integral part of the biform Papal government, is thrown into a dungeon, helpless, comfortless, alone, and during several months hears and sees nothing else than the grating sound of the rusty bolts, and the inauspicious face of his guardian, who comes to bring his miserable pittance of food, and to ascertain that the victim cannot make his escape. After a longer or shorter space of time, but never shorter than three or four months, according to the hatred or fear the prisoner has inspired, or the interest possessed by his friends without, he is brought before a cancelliere o giudice processante, a sort of scribe, by whom he is interrogated.[451] In that examination all the care of the man of police—we cannot call him a magistrate—is directed to elicit from the victim a confession of his crime, or the name of his accomplices, if he is supposed to have had any. Promises of liberty, favour, and recompence, are held out to him as an inducement to dishonour or perjure himself. These examinations are repeated every three or four months; and when at last the man of the law has, after some years, obtained what he wished, or despairs of obtaining it, the process is announced to be closed, and the judgment is going to be delivered. Then, and not till then, the accused may confer with a legal adviser, generally assigned to him, ex officio, by the tribunal; and some little space of time is granted to him to prepare his defence. But how can he defend himself? He knows neither the names of his accusers nor of the witnesses who have made the accusation good. He is not allowed to confront and cross-examine them. Even his answers to the different questions put to him by the cancelliere are noted down, not as actually given by him, but as it was desired that they should be given, in order that he may appear a criminal, the only result which the judges wish to obtain. When the advocate has delivered his defence, the secret tribunal pass judgment without even seeing the face of the prisoner; and this judgment is without appeal. Such is the general practice observed in political trials. Robbers are a little better treated. In the peculiar case which we are considering, we have to add, that, as far as has transpired, all the witnesses who were called to give evidence against the accused belonged to the adverse party—the party of the Jesuits, thirsting for revenge, and eager to shew their devotion to the sect. It may be easily understood that those witnesses were not very scrupulous as to the charges they brought against the accused, being assured, as they were, that their names would never be made public, and that they would not be confronted with the prisoner, nor be cross-examined by anybody.