§ 150.1. Missions to the Heathen: East Indies and China.—The Portuguese founded the first bishopric in the East Indies, at Goa on the Malabar Coast, in A.D. 1534. Soon thereafter a tribunal of the Inquisition was established alongside of it. The bishop confined his attention to the European immigrants, and the inquisitors applied themselves mainly to secure the destruction of the Thomas-Christians settled there. Neither of them had the remotest idea of doing any properly speaking mission work among the native races. But it was quite different when, in A.D. 1542, Loyola’s companion Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indians, made his appearance as papal nuncio in this wide field along with two other Jesuits. Working with glowing zeal and unparalleled self-denial, he baptized in a short time a hundred thousand, mostly of the low, despised caste of pariahs, going forward certainly with a haste which never allowed him time to make sure that the spiritual fruits should bear any proportion to the outward successes. His unmeasured missionary fervour, to which characteristic expression was given in his saying, Amplius! amplius! impelled him constantly to go on seeking for new fields of labour. From the East Indies he moved on to Japan, and only his death, which occurred in A.D. 1552, hindered him from pushing his way into China.Numerous successors from Loyola’s order undertook the carrying on of his work, and so soon as A.D. 1565 the converts of the East Indies numbered 300,000.[441]—Commerce opened the way for missions into China, where all traces of earlier Christianity (§§ [72, 1]; [93, 15]) had already completely vanished, and proud contempt of everything stood in the way of the introduction of any western customs or forms of worship. But the Jesuits, with Matthew Ricci of Ancona at their head, by making use of their knowledge of mathematical, mechanical, and physical science, secured for themselves access even to the court. Ricci at first completely nationalized himself, and then began his missionary enterprise by introducing Christian instructions into his mathematical and astronomical lectures. In order to render the Chinese favourable to the adoption of Christianity, he represented it to be a renewal and restoration of the old doctrine of Confucius. The confession of faith which the new converts before baptism were required to make was confined to an acknowledgment of one God and recognition of the obligation of the ten commandments. And even in worship he tolerated many heathen practices and customs. The mathematical and astronomical writings composed by him in the Chinese language are said to have extended to 150 volumes. The Chinese artillery also stood under his immediate supervision.When he died, in A.D. 1610, the Jesuits had even then formed a network of hundreds of churches spread over a great part of the land.[442]—Continuation, § [156, 11], [12].
§ 150.2. Japan.—Xavier had here, chiefly on account of his defective acquaintance with the language, relatively speaking only a very small measure of success. But other Jesuits followed in his footsteps, and enjoyed the most brilliant success; so that in A.D. 1581 there were already more than two hundred churches and about 150,000 Christians in the land, of whom many belonged to the old feudal nobility, the daimios, while some were even imperial princes. This distinguished success was greatly owing, on the one hand, to the favour of the then military commander-in-chief Nobunaga, who greeted the advance of Christianity as a welcome means for undermining the influence of the Buddhist bonzes, which had become supreme, and, on the other hand, to the abundance of money put by Portugal and Spain at the disposal of the Jesuits, which they used as well in the adorning of the Catholic services as in the bestowing of liberal gifts upon the converts. It was, however, chiefly owing to the close and essential relationship between the Romish ritual and constitution and those of Buddhism, which rendered the transition from the one to the other by no means very difficult. Then everything that had gone to secure for Buddhism in Japan a superiority over the simple old national Sintuism or ancestor-worship, as well as everything that the Japanese Buddhists had been wont to regard as indispensable requisites of worship, the elegance of the temples, altars glittering with bright colours blending together, theatrical display in the vestments for their priests, grand solemn processions and masses, incense, images, statues and rosaries, a hierarchical system, the tonsure, celibacy, cloisters for monks and nuns, worship of saints and images, pilgrimages, etc., was given them in even an exaggerated degree in Jesuit Christianity. The zealous neophytes from among the daimios effectually backed up the preaching of the Jesuit fathers by fire and sword. They compelled the subjects of their provinces to go over to the Christian religion, banished or put to death those who proved refractory, and overthrew the Buddhist temples and cloisters. In A.D. 1582 they sent an embassy of four young noblemen to Europe to pay homage to the pope. After they had received the most flattering reception in Madrid from Philip II., and in Rome from Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V., they returned to their own home in A.D. 1590, accompanied by seventeen Jesuit priests, who were soon followed by whole crowds of mendicant friars. By the close of the century the number of native Christians had increased to 600,000. But meanwhile the axe was already being laid at the root of the tree that had thriven so wondrously. Nobunaga’s successor Hidejoshi found occasion, in A.D. 1587, to issue a decree banishing from the country all foreign missionaries. The Jesuits were wise enough to cease at once all public preaching, but the begging monks treated the decree with contempt and open defiance.In consequence of this six Franciscans and seventeen Japanese converts of theirs, and along with them also three Jesuits, were arrested at Nagasaki and there crucified (§ [156, 11]). Soon afterwards Hidejoshi died. One of his generals, Ijejasu, to whom he had assigned the regency during the minority of his six year old son, assumed the sovereign power to himself. A civil war was the result, and in A.D. 1600 his opponents, among whom were certain Christian daimios, were conquered in a bloody battle. Ijejasu persuaded the mikado to give him the hereditary rank of shiogun, i.e. field-marshal of the empire; and his successors down to the revolution of A.D. 1867 (§ [182, 5]), as military vice-emperors alongside of the really powerless mikado, had all the power of government in their own hands.Thus were corrupting elements introduced which led to the complete overthrow of the Japanese church.[443]
§ 150.3. America.—The desire to spread Christ’s kingdom was not by any means the smallest among the impulses that contributed to Christopher Columbus’ enthusiasm for the discovery of new countries; but the greediness, cruelty, and animosity of the Spanish conquerors, who had less interest in converting the natives into Christians than in reducing them to slavery, was a terrible hindrance to the Christianizing of the New World. The Christian missionaries indeed most emphatically, but with only a small measure of success, defended the human rights of the ill-used Indians. The noble Mexican bishop, Bartholomew de las Casas, in particular wrought unweariedly, devoting his whole life, A.D. 1474 to A.D. 1566, to the sacred task, not only of instructing the Indians, but also of saving them from the hands of his greedy and bloodthirsty fellow countrymen. Six times he journeyed to Spain in order to use personal influence in high quarters for ameliorating the lot of his protégés, and he was obliged to undertake a seventh journey in order to justify himself and repel the violent accusations of his enemies. Even in A.D. 1517 Charles V. had, at the bishop’s entreaty, granted personal liberty to the Indians, but at the same time gave permission to the Spanish colonists to introduce African negro slaves for the laborious work in the mines and on the plantations. The enslaving of the natives, however, was still continued, and only in A.D. 1547 were vigorous measures taken to secure the suppression of the practice, after many millions of Indians had been already sacrificed. So far as the Spanish dominion extended Christianity also spread, and was established by means of the Inquisition.—In South America the Portuguese held sway in the rich and as yet little known empire of Brazil. In A.D. 1549 King John III. sent thither a Jesuit mission, with Emanuel Nobreya at its head.Amid unspeakable hardships they won over the native cannibals to Christianity and civilization.[444]
§ 150.4. The newly awakened missionary zeal of the church made an attempt also upon the schismatical Churches of the East. The enterprise, however, was even moderately successful only in reference to a portion of the Persian and East Indian Nestorians (§ [72, 1]), who in Persia were called Syrian or Chaldæan Christians, because of the language which they used in their liturgy, and in India Thomas-Christians, because they professed to have had the Apostle Thomas as their founder. They had their origin really, in A.D. 1551, in Mesopotamia, in consequence of a double episcopal election there. The one party chose a priest Sulakas, whom Pope Julius III. had consecrated priest under the name of John, but the other party refused to acknowledge him. The Archbishop Alexius Menezius also became involved in these controversies, and succeeded in getting the former party to recognise the Roman primacy and accept the Catholic doctrine; while, on the other hand, Rome permitted the retention of its ancient ritual and form of constitution. These united Nestorians were now called by way of eminence Chaldæan Christians. Their chief, chosen by themselves and approved by the pope, was called Bishop of Babylon, but had his residence at Mosul in Mesopotamia. The Thomas-Christians of India, however, proved much more troublesome. But even they were obliged, after a long, protracted struggle, at a synod at Diampur in A.D. 1599, to abjure the Nestorian heresy. All Syrian books were burnt, and a new Malabar liturgy in accordance with the Romish type was introduced.—The existence of an independent Jacobite Christian church in Abyssinia (§ [64, 1]) first became known in Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth century through Portuguese commercial and diplomatic missions. The Abyssinian sultan, David, in A.D. 1514, upon promise of Portuguese help, of which he stood in need because of the aggressions of the neighbouring Mohammadan [Mohammedan] states, agreed to receive the physician Bermudez as Catholic patriarch. But the next sultan, Claudius, expelled him from his land. In A.D. 1562 Jesuit missionaries began to settle in the country; but Claudius denounced them as Arians, and wished the people to have nothing to do with them. As the result of a friendly communication from the Coptic patriarch, Paul V., in the beginning of the 17th century, sent the Jesuit Rodriguez into Egypt. The patriarch accepted the rich presents which the Jesuit brought with him, and then made him return home without having gained the object of his mission.
§ 151. Attempted Regeneration of Roman Catholicism.
Paul III. had in A.D. 1542 erected a new tribunal of the Inquisition for the suppression of Protestantism, which Paul IV. (§ [149, 2]) brought up to the highest point of its development. And scarcely had the Catholic church secured for itself a stable position throughout its own domains by the happy conclusion of the Tridentine Council, than it directed all its powers with the utmost energy to reconquer as far as then possible the ground that had been lost. The means used for this end were mainly of two sorts: the territorial system, legitimated by a law of the empire (§ [137, 5]), which, devised originally in order to save Protestantism (§ [126, 6]), was now employed for its overthrow; and the Jesuits, who, sometimes openly and sometimes with carefully concealed plans, sometimes in conjunction with the civil power, sometimes intriguing against it, spread like swarms over all the countries of Europe where Protestantism had already struck its roots. The craftiness of the members of this order, their diplomatic acts, their machinations, their practice in controversy, succeeded in some cases in fanning the scarcely glimmering embers of Catholicism into a bright flame, in other cases in blighting Protestant churches that had been in a flourishing condition. They hoped thus to be able to destroy these churches root and branch, or to reduce Protestantism within the narrow limits of a barely tolerated sect. But above all they were careful to get into their hands the control of the higher and lower schools, in order to be able to implant in the hearts of the young and rising generation a bitter hatred of Protestantism.
§ 151.1. Attempts at Regeneration in Germany.—From the time of the Passau Compact the political convulsions and the weariness of controversy shown by the princes proved strongly in favour of Protestantism. In Catholic states, too, the Protestant religion had made rapid advances. The deputies of provinces, and especially the nobles, gave unmistakable expression to their sympathies, and for every grant of territory demanded a religious concession from the prince. Many prelates or spiritual princes had more Protestant than Catholic councillors. The Protestant nobles frequented their courts without constraint. Their residences were often Protestant cities, and their revenues not unfrequently in the hands of evangelical superiors. But for the Jesuits, in spite of territorial influence and prelatical restrictions (§ [137, 5]), in a few decades all Germany would have fallen into the hands of the evangelical church. In A.D. 1558 a Venetian observer of the country and the people could bring back the report that in Germany only a tenth of the population remained true to the old church; that of the other nine parts seven had gone over to the Lutherans, and two were distributed among the various anti-Catholic denominations. Of all the German cities Ingolstadt was the first, in A.D. 1549, to be favoured with a visit of the Jesuits, who were brought there by William IV. of Bavaria as teachers of theology. Next in order comes Vienna, where, in A.D. 1551, thirteen Jesuits, under the name of Spanish priests, were introduced by Ferdinand. Some years later they settled in Prague, as also in Cologne. From those four capitals they spread out within a few years over the whole territorially Catholic Germany, and throughout the Austrian states. In A.D. 1552 Loyola founded at Rome the Collegium Germanicum, which was subsequently extended under the name of the Collegium Germ.-Ungaricum, for the training of German youths for the conversion of Protestants in their native land. The first Jesuit provincial for Germany was the Dutchman Peter Canisius, who, first of all from Vienna, and afterwards, when Maximilian II. (§ [137, 8]) put the Jesuits in Austria under intolerable restrictions, from Friesburg, had so successfully carried the regeneration into Switzerland, until his death in A.D. 1598, that while the Protestants designated him Canis Austriacus because of his ruthless persecution, the members of his order honoured him as the second Apostle of the Germans, and Pius IX., in recognition of his services, beatified him in A.D. 1864.—The Catholic regeneration began in Bavaria in A.D. 1564. Duke Albert V., converted into a zealous Catholic by the opposition of his Protestant members of parliament, excluded the Protestant nobles from the Bavarian diet, banished the evangelical pastors, compelled his Protestant subjects who refused to abandon their faith to emigrate, and obliged all professors and officials to subscribe the Tridentine Professio fidei. The Jesuits praised him as a second Josiah and Theodosius, called Munich a second Rome, and the pope invested him with the ecclesiastico-political privileges of a summus episcopus throughout his own dominions. When by inheritance he became Count of the Hague, and also Baden-Baden came under his rule as regent, Protestantism was there thoroughly rooted out. Bavaria’s example was followed, though in a more temperate manner, by the electors of Treves (Jac. von Eltz) and Mainz (Daniel Brendel). The latter restored Catholicism in A.D. 1574 into the hitherto thoroughly Protestant city Eichsfelde. In A.D. 1575 the Abbot of Fulda also, Balth. von Dernbach, who in all his territory was almost the only Catholic, acted in a similar manner. In making this attempt Balthasar [Balthazar] came into collision with his chapter, and was by it and his knights expelled. The Bishop of Würzburg, Jul. Echter of Mispelbrunn, who had been aiding them in the revolution, in A.D. 1576 undertook the administration of the diocese. But in the beginning of the following year the abbot was restored by an imperial order, and thus the last vestige of Protestantism was rooted out. Julius of Würzburg, seriously compromised, would probably have followed the example of Gebhard of Cologne (§ [137, 7]), though that prelate’s proceedings were dictated by altogether different considerations; but by A.D. 1584 he worked himself into power again by completely rooting out Protestantism from his own territory, which had been almost completely Protestant. The bishops of Bamberg, Salzburg, Hildesheim, Münster, Paderborn, etc., pursued a similar policy. At all points Jesuits were at the front and Jesuits were in the rear. In the newly constituted nuncio court, at Vienna, in A.D. 1581, at Cologne, in A.D. 1582, they had the grand centres of their conspiracies and machinations. Ferdinand II. of Styria, emperor from A.D. 1619, and Maximilian I. of Bavaria, were both educated by the Jesuits at Ingolstadt. When in A.D. 1596 Ferdinand celebrated Easter at Grätz, he was the only one there who communicated according to the Roman Catholic rite. Two years later he successfully carried out the counter-reformation, and his cousin, the Emperor Rudolph II., followed his example.—Continuation, § [153, 2].
§ 151.2. But the regeneration was not confined to Germany. It spread out over all Europe. The Jesuits pressed into every country, and were successful in compassing their ends even in places where there had been very little prospect of success. The Cardinal Charles Borromeo (§ [149, 17]) laboured with peculiar energy to establish Catholicism, and spread it yet more widely in the Catholic and mixed cantons of Switzerland. He himself undertook a journey thither in A.D. 1570; contrived in A.D. 1574 to get the Jesuits introduced into Lucerne, in A.D. 1586 into Freiburg; founded at Milan a Collegium Helveticum for the training of Catholic priests for Switzerland, and secured the appointment of a permanent nuncio, who had his residence at Lucerne. In the province of Chablais on Lake Geneva, under Piedmontese rule, St. Francis de Sales, by the forcible conversion of 80,000 heretics in A.D. 1596, completely rooted out Protestantism (§ [156, 1]).—In France the bloody civil wars began in A.D. 1562. The Duke of Alva appeared in the Netherlands in A.D. 1567. In Poland the Jesuits secured an entrance first in A.D. 1569, and from thence made their way over into Livonia. In A.D. 1578 the crafty Jesuit Ant. Possevin gained access to Sweden, and there converted the king (§ [139, 1]). Even in England, where Elizabeth in A.D. 1582 had threatened every Jesuit with capital punishment, crowds of them wrought away in secret, and in hope of better times tended the flickering spark of Catholicism smouldering under the ashes (§ [153, 6]).
§ 151.3. Russia and the United Greeks.—The attempts, renewed from time to time since the meeting of the Florentine Council (§ [73, 6]), to win over the Russian church, had always failed of the end in view. In A.D. 1581, when the war so disastrous for Russia between Ivan IV. Wassiljewitch and Stephen Bathori of Poland afforded to the pope the desired excuse for putting in an appearance as a peacemaker, Gregory XIII. sent the clever Jesuit Possevin for this purpose to Poland and Russia. The tsar gave him a most flattering reception, allowed him to hold a religious conference, but was not prepared either to attach himself to Rome or to banish the Lutherans. On the other hand, Rome scored a victory, inasmuch as in the West Russian province detached and given to Poland the union was consummated, partly by force, partly by manœuvre, and obtained ecclesiastical sanction at the Council of Brest, in A.D. 1596. These “United Greeks” were obliged to acknowledge the Roman supremacy and the Romish doctrines, but were allowed to retain their own ancient ritual.—Continuation, § [203, 2].