A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In the Catholic atmosphere of Spain and Portugal the Society might be expected to grow luxuriantly, as it eventually did, but its fortunes in the Peninsula are rather due to the General's policy of securing influential patrons than to any popular welcome. As early as 1540 Ignatius had sent his nephew Araoz into Spain, and one reads—between the lines—that he had little success. At last a college was founded at Alcalà, to the anger of many of the University professors. One professor maintained his opposition so long and so violently that Father Villanueva, the Jesuit rector, fraternally informed him that the Inquisition proposed to put him a few questions, and the professor sullenly withdrew. Then a learned ex-rector of the university itself was won by Ignatius, during a visit to Rome, and was sent back, a Jesuit, to found a college at Salamanca. It was, as usual, founded in poverty; the fathers had not even a crucifix to put over their altar, and one of their number had to draw the figure on a sheet of paper. From the general laws of these phenomena one might deduce that the story brought a shower of crucifixes. However, the favour of the King of Portugal and the influence of Rome smoothed their paths, and little colonies were soon planted at Valladolid, Toledo, Saragossa, and other towns.

It was in Spain that the Society encountered the most virulent of its early Catholic antagonists, Melchior Cano. He was a very learned and sober Dominican monk, and a professor at the university: an enemy of mysticism and eccentricity. He knew of the early penances and "visions" of Ignatius, and had seen him at work in Rome. When the pale, black-robed, mysterious youths walked demurely into learned Salamanca and set up a college for the instruction of youth, the monk erupted. They were hybrids—neither the flesh of the secular clergy nor the fish of the regular clergy: they were leeches, fastening on wealthy saints and sinners; and so on. Miguel de Torres, the rector, called upon the irate friar, and told him of the great privileges the Pope had bestowed on the Society and the high missions he had entrusted to its members. This inflamed him still more, and he flung at them Paul's fiery warnings against the hypocrites who would come after him. He exaggerated heavily, especially in regard to the personal character of the Jesuits, but he saw very clearly those dangerous features and practices of the early Society which I have indicated. The struggle came to a diplomatic close. Melchior Cano was appointed Bishop of the Canaries, and the Jesuits invite us to admire the way in which Ignatius returned good for evil. It may be added that Cano afterwards recognised the ruse, laid down his mitre, and returned to plague his benefactors.

In the midst of this conflict the Jesuits made a most important convert, and their future in Spain was assured. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, one of the leading nobles of the kingdom, met and was enchanted by Favre in 1544, when the King of Portugal brought that gentle and persuasive Jesuit on a visit to the Spanish court. He was conducted through the Exercises by Favre, one of the most lovable and sincere of the early fathers. When Favre died two years afterwards, prematurely worn by his labours, Borgia wrote to ask Ignatius to admit him to the order. Observe the procedure once more. He was secretly initiated, not even the Pope knowing his name: which enabled him to remain in the eyes of men the Duke of Gandia, and shower his wealth and his patronage on the Society. It really matters little what lofty purposes are alleged for such sinuous procedure; it was a new policy in the history of religious founders. When, a few years later, the Pope offered a cardinal's hat to the Duke of Gandia, and the King of Spain insisted that he should accept it, the truth had to come out. Ignatius had sternly enjoined that no dignity should ever be accepted by any member of his Society, yet, to avoid giving offence to the king, he said that he left the decision to Borgia.

Under Borgia's patronage the net of the Society spread over Spain, many blessing and some cursing. At Saragossa, where they had built a chapel, the Augustinian friars complained that it encroached on their sphere. To prevent unedifying conduct on the part of rival friars, the Church had decreed that no order should establish itself within five hundred feet of a house belonging to a different order. When the Jesuits who had broken this law, refused to yield, they were excommunicated by the Vicar-General, and a pleasant procession was arranged by the townsfolk, in which effigies of damned Jesuits were propelled toward their destination by little devils. The Augustinians were popular. But the long arm of Ignatius was extended once more, and the Papal Nuncio intervened in favour of the Jesuits. Before many years the Jesuits won from the Pope a declaration that the law did not apply to them, and they might build where they pleased. They prospered, and were hated.

An incident of the same significance occurred at Alcalà. The college obtained many pupils, though little wealth, and the Jesuit fathers began to be very active. In 1551 they were surprised to hear that the Archbishop of Toledo had suspended the whole of them from priestly functions for daring to hear confessions without his authorisation. The Jesuits produced their privileges, and persuaded the Governor of Toledo, and even the Royal Council, to explain to the prelate that the Pope had exempted them from the jurisdiction of bishops. He refused to recognise such extraordinary privileges, and maintained the suspension. Ignatius then laid the matter before the Pope, and the Archbishop was directed from Rome to withdraw his opposition.

When we turn to Portugal we find an interesting illustration of the early effect of great prosperity on the Society. On the throne at the time was John III. from whose reign all historians date the downfall of what had become one of the most brilliant and wealthy Powers in Europe. Blind to the gross administrative corruption in his kingdom, and to the decay of the stirring patriotism which had borne the Portuguese flag over the globe, John was concerned only about the religious needs of his country and his new colonies. He had invited Xavier and Rodriguez in 1540, intending to send them to the Indies, but he was so charmed with them that he wished to keep them in Portugal. Ignatius allowed Rodriguez to remain, and Xavier set out on his historic mission to the far east. In this Ignatius showed his usual discernment: Rodriguez proved as supple and graceful a courtier as Xavier proved a fiery missionary. John then wished to entrust the tutorship of his son to Rodriguez, and Ignatius consented. His own followers were puzzled at times to know which were the dignities that they were forbidden to accept. When John asked for a Jesuit confessor, Rodriguez refused, but Ignatius overruled him. The next step was to set up the Inquisition, through the mediation of Ignatius, and Orlandini admits that when, in 1555, the king wished to make Father Merin, his confessor, head of the Inquisition, Ignatius seriously considered the proposal. He did not refuse, as is sometimes said; the negotiations broke down.

In this genial atmosphere the Society flourished. Its chief college was at Coimbra, the great university centre, where the Jesuits rapidly ran their course. At first they shocked staid Catholics with the excesses of their zeal. A youth in the college confessed to temptations of the flesh, and was ordered to walk the streets at mid-day without a hat or a cloak, holding a skull in his hand. Another student went forth almost naked in a cold wind, begging from door to door; and, finding a crowd of folk dancing and singing in a church, he mounted the pulpit to admonish them, and was dragged out and severely chastised. At nights Father Simon would send out a procession of youths to cry in the ears of indignant sinners or quiet wine-bibbers some such doggerel as: "Hell, hell, hell, for those in grave sin"; or long processions of children with masks and lanterns paraded the streets and squares. We gather that the boys of Coimbra had a pleasant time during these exhibitions. But the college flourished; there were in a few years a hundred and fifty pupils in it, and it supplied large numbers of missionaries.

In 1546 Favre visited Coimbra, and reported to Ignatius that prosperity had flushed the veins of his brothers. Nicolini and other anti-Jesuit writers speak of the college as having become a place of "debauch," but this is not stated in the chronicles. Frivolity and good-living are the only vices charged, whatever we may suspect. The students stooped to writing sonnets, and the King's money provided plenty of good cheer. Ignatius felt that Father Simon had lost his fervour at the court, deposed him from office—he was Provincial (or head of the province)—and ordered him to go either to Brazil or Aragon. The piety of Rodriguez had evidently deteriorated, and he made a struggle to hold his place. He was a handsome and comfortable man, much liked for his liberality. He went to Coimbra, where Ignatius had appointed a new rector, and the liberals tried to induce the court to protect them. The King was alarmed, however, and Father Simon had to submit, and the college to mend its ways. Numbers of students left or were expelled, and for the rest, when the new rector piously walked the streets of Coimbra, laying the bloody lash on his own bare shoulders, they fell to tears and went out in a body scourging themselves under the eyes of the townsfolk. The story ends in Orlandini with Simon Rodriguez submitting in holy joy and kissing the rebuking letters of his General. But when we turn to Sacchini, the Jesuit writes of the next section of the "Historia Societatis Jesu," who does not always carefully notice what his predecessor has said, we learn that Rodriguez smarted for years under the humiliation, and awaited an opportunity to undo it. However, the province returned to piety, and before the death of Ignatius we find the Jesuits capturing, after a long siege, the famous University of Coimbra.

In France the Society wholly failed under Ignatius. He placed students, supported by wealthy patrons, at the University of Paris, and sent fathers after a time to gather their neophytes under one roof. Then the outbreak of war with Spain drove most of them abroad, and even when the war was over the colony made slow progress, amid poverty and hostility. In 1549 Ignatius won the favour of Cardinal Guise de Lorraine and, through him, of the French court. The King issued letters authorising the Jesuits to live and teach at Paris, and Brouet was sent to conciliate the Parisians. Then began a long and famous struggle between the Parlement and University of Paris and the court and Jesuits. Parlement bluntly refused to register the King's letters, and they were of no effect until this powerful legal body had accepted them. Henry ordered his Privy Council to examine the Jesuit Constitutions and approve them; Parlement retorted by inviting the Archbishop, who was very hostile, and the theological faculty of the university to advise it, and the issue was a violent condemnation of the Jesuits in the vein of Melchior Cano. It was said that they admitted all sorts of aspirants to their ranks, and that the extraordinary privileges they professed to have were insulting to the spiritual and temporal authorities and opposed to the interests of the other orders and the university.