A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

First it was reported from the Valtellina that the fathers had been expelled, and forbidden the whole territory of the Grisons, on the ground that they had shown an undue eagerness in securing an old man's money. Next there was trouble in Montepulciano. The good fathers had, Sacchini says, induced so large a proportion of the women of Montepulciano to lead proper lives that the men were infuriated. They bribed a loose woman to attempt to seduce one of the Jesuits, and they engaged a man to dress as a Jesuit and let himself be seen coming from a disorderly house. The Montepulciano version of the matter is, of course, that one Jesuit accosted a woman and another was seen leaving an unbecoming house. To make matters worse, a woman accused the Jesuit rector, Father Gambar, of intimacy with her sister. It was an act of jealousy, as the two sisters had competed for the rector's smiles; it is, however, admitted that Father Gambar had been "indiscreet" in his letters to the lady, which were made public. The civic authorities took the darker view, and requested the removal of Gambar. When Lainez refused, the townsfolk threatened to talk to the rector themselves, and he fled. Lainez held that he was innocent, but expelled him from the Society for running away without permission. He sent some of the older Jesuits to restore order in Montepulciano, but it was no use. The citizens withdrew the pension they had hitherto given the Jesuits, for teaching, and refused to give them alms or house. Lainez fought, with his ablest men and subsidies from Rome, for a year or two, but he was beaten and forced to dissolve the college.

Then Venice reported difficulties. The new Archbishop, Trevisani, detested the Jesuits, and assured his friends that the chiappini ("humbugs," to translate it politely) would not remain long in Venice under his rule. Incidents multiplied, and in 1561 the Senate fell to discussing the fathers and did not spare them. The gist of the charge was that they were foreigners meddling with the affairs of Venice; they confessed all the noble ladies of Venice, called on them in their homes, and through them learned the official secrets. The debate ended with words, though the Doge summoned Father Palmio and warned him to be prudent; and the men of Venice, quoting Montepulciano, used a little domestic authority to keep their wives away from Jesuit confessionals.

From Naples, in the same year, came news of hostility and obloquy. Salmeron had been recalled from Naples to Rome, and offensive observers began to form theories of the recall. When the legend had grown to its full proportions, it ran that Father Salmeron had extorted four thousand pounds from a dying woman, before he would absolve her, and had, when the Pope heard and asked an explanation, fled to Geneva and turned Protestant. The boys sang ballads in the street about Father Salmeron and his four thousand pounds, and the college had troubled experiences. Why Salmeron was not sent down to refute the legend, and whether there really was some little difficulty about a sum of money, we cannot say. But the incident shows that Catholic Naples was largely hostile to the Jesuits. The Pope had to intervene and use the authority of the Viceroy.

A few years later a more serious storm broke out in the north. In all these cases of charges against the early Jesuits it is extremely difficult to ascertain the truth; the case is always stated for us by the defence. It happens that in the case of the trouble at Milan in 1563 we have one independent document, and I state the facts a little more fully. It matters little whether the various Jesuits were guilty or not in these local disturbances, and most people will conclude, roughly, that they were probably not all immaculate and impeccable. But it is worth while ascertaining if all this violent hostility to the Jesuits, among Catholic peoples, is really founded on disappointed vice or idle calumny, and we may take the Milan affair as a type.

The famous Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan, Carolo Borromeo, was a nephew of the Pope. He received his position in 1560, at the early age of twenty-two, and was soon under the influence of the Jesuits. It was reported to the Pope that Charles was giving large sums of money to the Jesuits, and seemed to have an idea of joining the Society. Then the young archbishop's Jesuit confessor, Father Ribera, was accused of unnatural vice with a page in the establishment of Donna Virginia, Charles's sister-in-law. Sacchini says that Charles investigated the charge and found it false, and that a bishop who insisted on it (and accused other Jesuits besides Ribera) was brought before Cardinal Savelli at Rome, produced his witnesses—a number of discharged or former students at the Jesuit college—and was himself punished for libel. It is added that Charles continued to entrust his seminary to the Jesuits, and would not have done so if they were guilty. Ribera, it is acknowledged, was sent to the Indies by Lainez, but only because the Pope disliked his influence on Charles.

The Jesuit case is, as usual, plausible, but does not satisfy a close inquirer. To send a distinguished and fashionable Jesuit to the Indies because he is making his penitent more pious than the Pope likes, especially at a time when he is charged with vice, is hardly the kind of action we should expect in so prudent a man as Lainez. It was a very drastic measure to put five thousand miles between Ribera and his saintly penitent. As to Cardinal Savelli's inquiry, we can quite believe that the Pope would be willing to draw a veil over a scandal, which might ruin the Society in Italy, once Lainez had sent the chief culprit on the foreign missions; Cardinal Savelli was, moreover, the patron and protector of the Jesuits, and he seems to have dismissed the witnesses unheard on the ground that they were expelled or seceding students of the Society. We can further understand that Charles might remain friendly with the Jesuits if he believed that one man only was guilty, and that man was punished; but we shall see in the next chapter that the relations of Charles and the Jesuits were disturbed, and that in 1578 they made an extraordinarily insolent attack on the cardinal in his own city.

But the chief point is that an almost contemporary writer, Caspar Schoppe, maintains on the highest authority that the Jesuit schools at Milan were deeply tainted with vice. Schoppe is an ardent anti-Jesuit, and must be read with discretion when his authority is remote. In this case he calls God to witness that Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, the nephew and successor of Charles, said in his (Schoppe's) presence that he had himself found the Jesuit college at Braida so corrupt that he would not suffer any Jesuit to come near him, would not allow any student of his seminary to approach a Jesuit teacher, and would, if he had the power, forbid any Jesuit to teach.[3] Crétineau-Joly replies that Schoppe is evidently lying, since the known date of his birth makes it impossible that he should ever have conversed with Charles Borromeo. This confusion of Frederic and Charles is originally due to Quesnel, who makes that mistake in quoting Schoppe, but it is very singular that the French apologist for the Jesuits should not know that Schoppe spoke of Frederic Borromeo, not Charles, as is pointed out in later editions of Quesnel. It is still more singular that Crétineau-Joly assures his readers (who are not likely to make an arduous search for Schoppe's ancient work) that the statement is made "sous forme dubitative," when he must know that it is the most solemn and emphatic statement in Schoppe's book. The impartial student must conclude that there is grave evidence against the Milan Jesuits, and that hostility to the Jesuits had at times a more respectable ground than they are willing to admit.

The Pope did not stint his patronage of the Society on account of these accusations. When the Cardinal-Protector of the Society died in 1564, Pius IV. undertook that office himself, as if to intimidate its critics; though the critics were not in the least intimidated. Shortly afterwards he appointed a commission of cardinals and prelates to consider the establishment of a seminary at Rome, and they recommended that the Jesuits should have charge of it. The proposal inflamed the Roman critics of the Society, and Montepulciano and Milan and all the other scandals were fiercely discussed. The Pope held firm, however, and the struggle had not ended when Lainez died.

In Spain and Portugal the Society continued to make material progress and, in the same proportion, morally to deteriorate. Favoured by the genial clime of the Peninsula, the Society ran quickly through its normal course of development and bore precocious fruit. The college at Coimbra had, as we have seen, needed purification even under Ignatius. It now prospered again, and maintained about a hundred and fifty novices and priests. But the most notable feature of the Portuguese province was the early interference of the Jesuits in politics. The primitive design of avoiding politics and forbidding Jesuits to frequent the courts of princes had first been set aside by Ignatius himself, and was quite inconsistent with the general idea of obtaining the favour of the rich and powerful. In Portugal the court was now dominated by Jesuits; Father Miguel de Torres was confessor of the Queen-Regent Catherine, Father Gonzales da Camara confessor of the young King Sebastian, and Father Leo Henriquez confessor of Cardinal Dom Henry, the King's grand-uncle. It may be read in any history of Portugal how the Cardinal began, at the instigation and with the assistance of the Jesuits, to intrigue for the Regency, and in 1562 forced Catherine to abdicate. In a letter, dated 8th June 1571, which Catherine afterwards wrote to General Borgia, we are plainly informed of the intrigues of the confessors. "Everyone knows," says the Queen, "that the evils which afflict this kingdom are caused by some of your fathers, who are so misguided as to advise the King, my grandson, to displace me and expel me from my State." She had dismissed her confessor Torres, who advised her to submit to the intrigues of her brother and Father Gonzales, but after a five years' struggle she was forced to retire from Spain. Father Gonzales then became the most powerful man in Portugal, and made his brother Prime Minister, until, as we shall see, Sebastian became old enough to put an end to their intrigues.

In Spain the Society was less prosperous. The historic struggle at Alcalà had ended in the capture of the university by the Jesuits, but at Seville, Valladolid, and other towns there was persistent opposition, and at Grenada a dangerous agitation arose because a Jesuit confessor compelled a penitent to name her accomplice in vice. Borgia himself had many enemies at court, and the opposition to him culminated at length in an attack which compelled him to fly to Portugal. Two works of piety which he had written in earlier years were denounced to the Inquisition and condemned. It is said by the Jesuits that the suspected passages in his books were interpolated by the man who published them, and the point is of little interest. Borgia did not remain to face the questions of the Inquisitors, and the King became so angry with him that, when he was invited by Lainez to the metropolitan house at Rome, the Spanish fathers warned Lainez that if any dignity were conferred on Borgia it would be deeply resented at the court.