[172] See Sarpi's Letters, vol. i. p. 352, for Protestant pupils of Jesuits. Sarpi's Memorial to the Signory of Venice on the Collegio de'Greci in Rome exposes the fallacy of their being reputed the best teachers of youth, by pointing out how their aim is to withdraw their pupils' allegiance from the nation, the government, and the family, to themselves.
[173] Storia del Granducato di Toscana, vol. iv. p. 275.
[174] Having mentioned the names of these illustrious Frenchmen, I feel bound to point out how accurately their criticism of the Jesuits was anticipated by Paolo Sarpi. His correspondence between the years 1608 and 1622 demonstrates that this body of social corrupters had been early recognized by him in their true light. Sarpi calls them 'sottilissimi maestri in mal fare,' 'donde esce ogni falsità et bestemmia,' 'il vero morbo Gallico,' 'peste pubblica,' 'peste del mondo' (Letters, vol. i. pp. 142, 183, 245, ii. 82, 109). He says that they 'hanno messo l'ultima mano a stabilire una corruzione universale' (ib. vol. i. p. 304). By their equivocations and mental reservations 'fanno essi prova di gabbare Iddio' (ib. vol. ii. p. 82). 'La menzogna non iscusano soltanto ma lodano' (ib. vol. ii. p. 106). So far, the utterances which I have quoted might pass for the rhetoric of mere spite. But the portrait gradually becomes more definite in details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (ib. vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, of this life's indulgences' (ib. vol. i. p. 313). 'The Jesuit fathers used to confer Paradise; they now have become dispensers of fame in this world' (ibid. p. 363). 'When they seek entrance into any place, they do not hesitate to make what promises may be demanded of them, possessing as they do the art of escape by lying with equivocations and mental reservations' (ib. vol. ii. p. 147). 'The Jesuit is a man of every color; he repeats the marvel of the chameleon' (ibid. p. 105). 'When they play a losing game, they yet rise winners from the table. For it is their habit to insinuate themselves upon any condition demanded, having arts enough whereby to make themselves masters of those who bind them by prescribed rules. They are glad to enter in the guise of galley-slaves with irons on their ankles; since, when they have got in, they will find no difficulty in loosing their own bonds and binding others' (ibid. p. 134). 'They command two arts: the one of escaping from the bonds and obligations of any vow or promise they shall have made, by means of equivocation, tacit reservation, and mental restriction; the other of insinuating, like the hedgehog, into the narrowest recesses, being well aware that when they unfold their piercing bristles, they will obtain the full possession of the dwelling and exclude its master' (ibid. p. 144). 'Everybody in Italy is well aware how they have wrought confession into an art. They never receive confidences under that seal without disclosing all particulars in the conferences of their Society; and that with the view of using confession to the advantage of their order and the Church. At the same time they preach the doctrine that the seal of the confessional precludes a penitent from disclosing what the confessor may have said to him, albeit his utterances have had no reference to sins or to the safety of the soul' (ib. vol. ii. p. 108). 'Should the Jesuits in France get hold of education, they will dominate the university, and eradicate sound letters. Yet why do I speak of healthy literature? I ought to have said good and wholesome doctrine, the which is verily mortal to that Company' (ibid. p. 162). 'Every species of vice finds its patronage in them. The avaricious trust their maxims, for trafficking in spiritual commodities; the superstitious, for substituting kisses upon images for the exercise of Christian virtues; the base fry of ambitious upstarts, for cloaking every act of scoundreldom with a veil of holiness. The indifferent find in them a palliative for their spiritual deadness; and whoso fears no God, has a visible God ready made for him, whom he may worship with merit to his soul. In fine, there is nor perjury, nor sacrilege, nor parricide, nor incest, nor rapine, nor fraud, nor treason, which cannot be masked as meritorious beneath the mantle of their dispensation' (ibid. p. 330). 'I apprehend the difficulty of attacking their teachings; seeing that they merge their own interests with those of the Papacy; and that not only in the article of Pontifical authority, but in all points. At present they stand for themselves upon the ground of equivocations. But believe me, they will adjust this also, and that speedily; forasmuch as they are omnipotent in the Roman Court, and the Pope himself fears them' (ibid. p. 333). 'Had S. Peter known the creed of the Jesuits, he could have found a way to deny our Lord without sinning' (ibid. p. 353). 'The Roman Court will never condemn Jesuit doctrine; for this is the secret of its empire—a secret of the highest and most capital importance, whereby those who openly refuse to worship it are excommunicated, and those who would do so if they dared, are held in check' (ibid. p. 105). The object of this lengthy note is to vindicate for Sarpi a prominent and early place among those candid analysts of Jesuitry who now are lost in the great light of Pascal's genius. Sarpi's Familiar Letters have for my mind even more weight than the famous Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. They were written with no polemical or literary bias, at a period when Jesuitry was in its prime; and their force as evidence is strengthened by their obvious spontaneity. A book of some utility was published in 1703 at Salzburg (?), under the title of Artes Jesuiticae Christianus Aletophilus. This contains a compendium of those passages in casuistical writings on which Pascal based his brilliant satires. Paul Bert's modern work, La Morale des Jésuites (Paris: Charpentier, 1881), is intended to prove that recent casuistical treatises of the school repeat those ancient perversions of sound morals.
[175] See Mariana, De Rege, lib. i. cap. 6. This book, be it remembered, was written for the instruction of the heir apparent, afterwards Philip III.
[176] Henri IV. let them return to France, in mere dread of their machinations against him. See Sully, vol. v. p. 113.
[177] Sarpi, who was living at the time of Henri's murder, and who saw his best hopes for Italy and the Church of God extinguished by that crime, at first credited the Jesuits with the deliberate instigation Ravaillac. He gradually came to the conclusion that, though they were not directly responsible, their doctrine of regicide had inflamed the fanatic's imagination. See, in succession, Letters, vol. ii. pp. 78, 79, 81, 83, 86, 91, 105, 121, 170, 181, 192.
[178] Expelled from Venice in 1606, from Bohemia in 1618, from Naples and the Netherlands in 1622, from Russia in 1676, from Portugal in 1759, from Spain in 1767, from France in 1764. Suppressed by the Bull of Clement XIV. in 1773. Restored in 1814, as an instrument against the Revolution.
[179] The last section of Loyola's Exercitia is an epitome of post-Tridentine Catholicism, though penned before the opening of the Council. In its last paragraph it inculcates the fear of God: 'neque porro is timor solum, quem filialem appellamus, qui pius est ac sanctus maxime; verum etiam alter, servilis dictus' (Inst. Soc. Jesu, vol. iv. p. 173).
[180] An interesting survey of this wider kind has been attempted by U.A. Canello for the whole sixteenth century in his Storia della Lett. It. nel Secolo XVI. (Milano: Vallardi, 1880). He tries to demonstrate that, in the sphere of private life, Italian society gradually refined the brutal lusts of the Middle Ages, and passed through fornication to a true conception of woman as man's companion in the family. The theme is bold; and the author seems to have based it upon too slight acquaintance with the real conditions of the Middle Ages.
[181] Galluzzi, in his Storia del Granducato di Toscana, vol. iv. p. 34, estimates the murders committed in Florence alone during the eighteen months which followed the death of Cosimo I., at 186.