A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

While the leaders quarrelled for the mantle of the master at Rome, there was grave trouble in the provinces. In that year (1557) John III. died in Portugal, many valuable workers were lost, and the judgment of the University of Paris and the scalding indictments of Melchior Cano were translated into every tongue in Europe. There was no possibility under Paul IV. of countering these things by conversation at the Vatican. It was imperative to hold the election as soon as possible and return to the field. The end of the war came in 1558, and by May the twenty voters were assembled in the Roman house. They were to elect a general and endorse the Constitutions, now completed by Lainez.

There was friction at first because Lainez issued to the fathers certain orders which aimed at preventing canvassing, but in July they proceeded to the election. To their dismay Cardinal Pacheco entered the room, on the election day, and said that the Pope had sent him to preside. He genially assured them, however, that he would not interfere, and they cast their votes. Lainez was elected by thirteen votes out of twenty. They then held a number of sittings on the Constitutions, and prepared for a struggle with the Pope. This struggle is not without some humour when we reflect that the Society of Jesus was, so to say, the Pope's private regiment, the one order that made a special vow of obedience to him, the most exaggerated champion in Christendom of his authority. It was the first occasion on which the Vatican was to realise that it might count on the abject obedience of the Jesuits as long as the Jesuits dictated its decrees. Lainez and his colleagues were determined by every means in their power to thwart the will of Paul IV. and suffer no interference with their own will. They quietly endorsed their Constitutions, and prepared to go to their provinces. It is impossible to find what precise order the Pope had given them to alter their Constitutions, but he had certainly done so in some form, and his anger broke out stormily. He sent a cardinal to say that they must reconsider the question of chanting in choir, as other religious bodies did, and of appointing a general only for a term of three years.

The Jesuits were "surprised," but obedient. They "reconsidered" the points, and drew up a report to the effect that they were unanimously opposed to change. Lainez and Salmeron were directed to wait on the Pope and present this report, and some brave language—such language as a Pope rarely heard, and must have been amazed to hear from a Jesuit, if it were really spoken—is put into the mouth of Lainez at the audience by Sacchini. The historian admits, however, that they did not present the report. Paul sternly told them that they were "contumacious," indeed not far removed from heresy (which was true), and he cut short their defence with a peremptory command to do as they were bidden. With an eye on the gray hairs of the octogenarian Pope they retired to mend their rules and order the chanting of the office. It now appeared that of their hundred establishments only two were "houses," and they contented themselves with ordering that vespers should be chanted in these houses—until Paul IV. died. They had secretly asked the opinion of a learned cardinal on the value of the Pope's command. Cardinal Puteo was not merely an expert on such matters; he was Dean of the Rota, and in a position to dissolve the Pope's order, as he eventually did. He told them that it was a "simple command," and that, as the decree of his predecessor, excusing them from choir, was not expressly abrogated, it would come into force again at the death of Paul IV. With this assurance they meekly submitted to the Pope, and scattered to their respective missions.

I have narrated this curious story at some length, relying entirely on the Jesuit Sacchini, because it is of extreme significance for one who would judge the character and history of the Society. Catholic historians, who suppress it entirely or give a very misleading version of it, are clearly of opinion that the mere record of the facts will disturb their readers, while anti-Catholic writers enlarge on it with pleasure. Those who desire to have an intelligent and just estimate of the Jesuits can neither ignore nor misinterpret such facts. That Lainez was personally ambitious, that his eagerness for power had not entirely the unselfish character of such ambition as we may recognise in Ignatius, can hardly be doubted. But Brouet and Salmeron shared and supported his conduct, and in those two, at least, one is disposed to see the first spirit of the Regiment of Jesus in its original purity. The clue to the seeming inconsistency or hypocrisy of such men defying or evading the Pope's commands I have already indicated. The Society of Jesus had consecrated diplomacy to the service of God. If a Pope would strip their order of those distinctions and privileges which, in their conviction, peculiarly fitted it to carry on the holy war, he was not acting as the Vicar of Christ, and his commands must be evaded. It did not occur to them that this was, in the end, the Protestant principle of private judgment, against which they thundered the doctrine of papal authority. They were the children of Ignatius, who had always felt that his private judgment was the judgment of God. So Jesuitism moved slowly toward its inevitable goal.

One other incident at Rome may be recorded before we distribute the events of the next seven years in their national departments. A little more than a year after the election, on 18th August 1559, Paul IV. died. How the Romans, stung by the misery they had suffered during his war with Spain and the brutalities of his Inquisition, burst into the streets with wild rejoicing, and attacked the palace of the Inquisitors, and how the new Pope surrendered the criminal nephews of his predecessor, including a cardinal of the Church, to the scaffold, must be read in general history. The fact that the Jesuits were called to sustain Cardinal Caraffa in his last hours is of no significance. It is more pertinent to tell that Lainez returned to the learned Cardinal Puteo, and the odious command of Paul IV. was declared to have died with him.

It is said that Lainez himself was proposed for the papacy after the death of Paul IV. The conclave of cardinals on such an occasion is, as is known, as isolated as a jury-room, but a cardinal might summon his confessor, and it is not only stated by Sacchini, but confirmed by Cardinal Otho years afterwards, that Lainez was called in by Otho and told that his name would be proposed. We have no just ground to doubt this statement, but we have very good reason to refuse to regard it as a serious proposal. The papal election of 1559 lasted three months, and was marked by a bitter struggle of France, Spain, and Italy. It engrossed the attention of Europe, yet not a single Roman ambassador or prelate of the time mentions the name of Lainez. Even the words used by Cardinal Otho years afterwards are known to us only in a Jesuit version.

Cardinal Medici, who now became Pius IV., proved to be one of the most generous patrons of the Society. Although he was a Pope of the cultured and liberal type, and would have little personal inclination to favour them, he seems to have concluded that the Jesuits were the most formidable champions of his authority, and he gave them many privileges. It was he who, in 1561, gave them permission to build within the sphere of other orders, and to grant academic degrees in their colleges, and he directed his local representatives everywhere to protect and aid them. With such an auxiliary the vigorous and gifted general was enabled to conduct the affairs of his Society with a success which will appear as we review its life in the various provinces. Only one further personal detail need be added in regard to Lainez. Although the orders of Caraffa had been declared void, he professed a scruple when he had held the generalship for three years, and proposed to resign. In view of his behaviour at the election one is not disposed to look for sincerity in this scruple, nor does the issue suggest it. His confessor told him that he must consult his councillors (or assistants). They resisted his proposal, but he still affected qualms, and sent a circular letter to all the professed fathers, in which he purported to place before them, for their guidance, all the pros and cons of his design. The letter is, however, a transparent plea for power. The electors unanimously insisted that he should retain office, and he returned to his task with firmer authority.

The British Isles still remained a dark and almost inaccessible territory on the Jesuit map, but Englishmen, flying from the penal laws of Elizabeth, began to enter the Society on the continent, and one or two secret missions were sent out. Thomas King was sent from Louvain to England, but he died in the following year (1565), and is merely stated to have made a few converts. Another refugee in Belgium, an Irishman named David Woulfe, had been sent in 1560 to his native land with the position of Nuncio. He was so effectively disguised that in France he was arrested as a Lutheran. His early reports represent him as an austere spectator of the general corruption of the Irish clergy, monks, and people. He speaks of giving absolution, in one year, to a thousand penitents who had contracted "incestuous marriages," and describes the people coming to his retreat in their shirts and bare feet. Father Woulfe seems to have caught the taint, however, as he was some years later ignominiously expelled from the Society. William Good, a Somersetshire man, and "Edmund the Irishman," joined him in 1564, distributing to the peasantry the dispensations and indulgences which England proscribed, to the grave inconvenience of the papal treasury.

The mission to Scotland was not less adventurous. It was the year 1562, when Mary Queen of Scots had returned from France, full of sad foreboding, to the land of John Knox. Nicholas Gouda was sent from Louvain, in the secret character of Nuncio, to console and assist her, and two Scottish students, Hay and Crichton, accompanied him. They were dressed as gentlemen of quality, who would see the world. Unfortunately, Crichton betrayed the secret to an acquaintance at Leith, and the fiery cross passed from pulpit to pulpit in the city of Edinburgh. Gouda sent Crichton back to Louvain and went on himself to Edinburgh. After many fruitless attempts to see Mary, he was at last admitted one night, by a postern gate, to the presence of the beautiful and distracted young queen, but there was nothing to be done. He asked that the bishops might be assembled somewhere to meet him, and it appeared that there was only one bishop, on one of the islands, who would venture to receive him, if he were well disguised. It seems that the least remarkable dress to don on visiting his lordship was that of a money-lender, and Father Nicholas, so habited, traversed wild and stern Caledonia. The rumour of his presence got about, and the Covenanters kept watch at Edinburgh for his return. A French merchant coming in from Aberdeen was sorely beaten by them before he could prove his identity. But two of the faithful met Gouda outside Edinburgh, and they sailed, with a small band of Scottish aspirants, for Belgium.

In Italy the story is one of much progress and bitter hostility. By 1561 there were two hundred and sixty Jesuits (in the broadest sense of the word) in Rome, of whom a hundred and ninety were students in the Roman college. They were prospering in the sunshine of the Pope's favour. Elsewhere in Italy, however, they received hard blows. No less than four serious storms broke on the Society in various parts of Italy in the year 1561.