A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

This trouble had hardly ended in the disgrace and flight of Borgia when a very grave domestic quarrel arose in the Castilian province. Lainez had sent Father Natalis from Rome to inspect the province, and the Castilian Provincial, Father Araoz (nephew of Ignatius), discovered that Natalis had secret instructions to destroy his position at court. Araoz, the oldest Jesuit in Spain, and a favourite at court, had won a position of comfort and power which was certainly not consistent with the personal ideal of the Society. When, however, they endeavoured to dislodge him, he took a drastic revenge on the Roman authorities. Natalis was collecting and sending to Rome a good deal of money, when an instruction was suddenly issued from the court pointing out that it was against the laws of the kingdom to send money abroad or send men to study in other countries. This order was openly attributed by the Jesuits to the influence of Father Araoz. An angry quarrel ensued, and one of the friends of Araoz produced the secret instructions which Lainez had given to Natalis and some father had stolen. We need not enlarge on this quarrel. It is more interesting to note that the Jesuits urged that their action in sending money to Rome did not come under the royal order since the Church has no frontiers. For some years the affairs of the Society in Spain remained in a very troubled condition, in spite of their great prosperity.

In France we naturally find the sternest struggle of the decade, as the large Protestant population was supported by the majority of the Catholics in opposition to the Jesuits. The early effort to woo Paris by austerity of life and humble care of the sick had wholly failed. The Archbishop, the university, and the lawyers of the Parlement had observed that these humble ministers had the most formidable privileges in their reserved baggage, and they had put the Jesuits out of the gates. They remained in the meadows of St. Germain for five or six years, and then, in 1560, Lainez ordered a fresh campaign. His representative at Paris was the astute intriguer, Father Cogordan, who had given Lainez painful proof of his ability at Rome. France was on the eve of a terrible struggle of Catholics and Huguenots, and Cogordan had little difficulty in persuading the Queen that the Jesuits were the appointed force for checking Protestantism. The Parlement was ordered to register the letters of Henry II., authorising the Jesuits. The courageous lawyers refused once more, and the whole of the faculties of the university joined in an emphatic condemnation of the Jesuits and their privileges.

The next move of the Jesuits is noteworthy. Cogordan was instructed to reply that the Jesuits would sacrifice, in France, any privileges which were opposed to the laws of the country or the rights of the French Church. Their opponents were quite aware that the sacrifice was insincere and temporary, but the manœuvre greatly weakened the position of the Archbishop. As a last resource he stipulated that they should also abandon the name "Society of Jesus," which many Catholics considered offensively arrogant, and again Cogordan assented. The Parlement, however, still refused to register the royal letters, and threw the decision upon a Council which was to be held at Poissy, where Catholics and Huguenots were to meet in a dialectical tourney.

Francis II. had died at the close of 1560, and Catherine de Medici, the virtual ruler, was entirely won to the Jesuit view. But the Huguenots, led by the Prince de Condé and Admiral de Coligny, were so powerful that sober Catholic opinion favoured concession to them in the interest of peace: a policy which the Jesuits ruthlessly opposed wherever the Catholics were still in the majority. The Colloquy at Poissy was, therefore, doubly interesting to the Jesuits, and Lainez went in person, in the train of the Pope's legate, Cardinal d'Este, to secure their aims; he was to obtain the recognition of the Society and to prevent the reconciliation of Catholics and Huguenots. Unhappily he succeeded in both designs. The Colloquy opened in July, when a small group of the abler Huguenot divines confronted six cardinals and forty bishops and archbishops, under the eyes of the King and Queen. When, after a few sittings, it was seen that concessions must be made to the heretics, Lainez delivered a fiery and eloquent discourse against this proposed sacrilege. Catherine de Medici trembled, and would attend no more sittings. The Colloquy ended in a futile wrangle of Lainez and the Huguenots, and France, thanks very largely to Lainez, went on her way toward St. Bartholomew.

The sincerity of Lainez in this fanatical gospel of intolerance cannot be doubted, but it is in piquant contrast to the second part of his mission, in which he equally succeeded. He brought with him testimonials to the work done by his Society in a hundred places, confirmed the promise that they would lay aside their privileges and their very name (until it was safe to resume them), and thus secured the right of entry into Paris for this nameless body of priests. This was done, of course, by quiet activity among the prelates, without any public discussion. Lainez remained several months in France, strengthening the new foundation and—at the very time when he was urging Condé, in a friendly correspondence, to induce the Protestants to join in the Council of Trent—using the whole of his great influence over the Queen and court to prevent any concession of churches or other normal rights to the Huguenots. As a result of his success, the Jesuits moved into Paris and took possession of the hotel which the Bishop of Clermont had bequeathed them some years before. We can hardly suppose that they were following the advice of the sagacious Lainez when they inscribed over the door the words "College of the Society of the Name of Jesus." This flippant evasion of their promise to abandon their name did not tend to conciliate Parisians. When they succeeded in a short time, with their free classes and ablest teachers, in drawing some hundreds of youths from the university, they became bolder and announced that the "Clermont College" was incorporated with the university. The rector, Marchand, indignantly challenged their claim, and they produced letters of incorporation which they had secretly obtained from his predecessor two years before. They could not insist on the validity of this irregular diploma, and the close of the generalship of Lainez saw them once more in a position of grave insecurity and unpopularity.

A somewhat similar struggle was taking place in Belgium. The university and civic authorities at Louvain resisted them, and their college remained so poor that we find its rector complaining to Rome of the burden of supporting Father Ribadeneira, who, as we have previously seen, had been sent to further Jesuit interests at the court of Philip in Belgium. Even when Margaret of Austria, whom they easily secured, bade the States of Brabant admit the Jesuits, they refused, and they yielded only to the direct intervention of Philip in 1564.

On the other hand, the able and devoted Jesuit Canisius was laying the foundation of his Society very firmly in the Catholic provinces of Germany. Canisius is the greatest figure in the second decade of the Society's life, and seems to have been a more deeply religious and conscientious man than Lainez. He maintained to the end the more austere standard of life, travelling afoot from city to city, from Rhineland to Poland and Austria, and inaugurating everywhere the effective system of education which Ranke has declared superior to that of the Reformers. The University of Dillingen was entrusted to the Jesuits, the frontiers of the Society were extended to Poland in 1554, and the laity were identified with its interests in the Catholic cities by being drafted into the numerous sodalities or confraternities which the Jesuits controlled. The historian can dwell with more sympathy on their generally enlightened struggle with Protestantism and with Catholic corruption in Germany, where heresy provided them with a bracing atmosphere and a healthy incentive to work. Even here, however, we find them at times stooping to tactics which we cannot admire, and the next chapter will introduce them to us in some singular adventures. Their conduct in Bavaria, especially, does not invite close scrutiny. Albert V. was heavily burdened with debt, and it is something more than a coincidence that, the moment he admitted the Jesuits, the Vatican made him a large grant out of ecclesiastical funds; it is even clearer that the Jesuits were chiefly responsible for the persecution of Protestants which followed their settlement in Bavaria.

Lainez had made a tour of these provinces after establishing his Society in France. From Paris he had passed to Belgium, where the Duchess of Parma was ruling in the name of her brother. Margaret had heard Lainez preach at Rome, and he easily secured her interest for his struggling brethren in Flanders. He then went on to Trent, where, in 1562, the Council resumed its sittings. There was no longer the least hope of persuading the Reformers to attend, and it now remained for the Church to decide what modifications it would adopt in order to meet the Protestant indictment. The northern monarchs, confronted with the task of reconciling large Catholic and Protestant populations, were disposed to make concessions, and their clergy were at least eager to check the arrogant claims and moderate the extravagance of the papal court. This policy was opposed by Italy, Spain, and the Papacy, and the Jesuits were the most violent partisans of the ultramontane attitude. It would, perhaps, be an error to ascribe to Lainez a preponderant rôle in the unhappy councils that were adopted at Trent, but whatever influence his learning and eloquence gave him was used for the purpose of magnifying the papal authority. Even the wealth and luxury of the Roman court, which had been so largely responsible for the schism, found in him an eloquent defender. He was able to return to Rome with an assurance that the Catholic States made no concession, while the northern prelates had to retire to their seats with grave foreboding of bloody struggle.

Of the Jesuit missions beyond the seas during this decade little need be said. In India alone some material progress was made, and it was largely due to tactics which promised no permanent result. Writers like Crétineau-Joly deliberately omit the most significant details in regard to these early missions, and give a most misleading impression that tens of thousands of natives were gathered into the fold by the spiritual teaching; and exalted labours of the missionaries. The early Jesuits themselves are more candid. They tell, for instance, how in 1559 they made a descent, with an accompanying troop of soldiers, on an island whose inhabitants had long resisted baptism. The natives were held up by the troops, and their leaders were put in irons and told that they were to be deported. In the circumstances they professed themselves eager to be baptized, and the sacred rite and a good dinner were at once bestowed on five hundred "converts." The Portuguese authority was the chief agency on which the missionaries relied. The most tempting privileges were granted to converts; the administrative offices which the Hindoo clergy had exercised for ages were transferred to the Jesuits; and in 1557 even the tribunal of the Inquisition was set up by them in India.

In other lands the missionary record was singularly barren during the decade. In Brazil the fathers still wandered in the forests, slowly winning the confidence and allegiance of the natives by medical and other humane services. Abyssinia was once more invaded, and some of the fathers entered the Congo, but both missions were destroyed after a few years. In Egypt an attempt was made to induce the Copts to recognise the authority of the Pope. Rich presents were made to the Patriarch, and the Papacy was flattered for a time by reports of success; but the adventure ended in the painful and ignominious flight of the missionaries from the country. The Japanese missions also were almost destroyed in the course of the decade, and two ingenious attempts to enter China proved unsuccessful. In 1556 Father Melchior Nuñez was permitted to reach Canton, but his very diplomatic account of his object did not convince the mandarins and he was politely expelled. In 1563 a further attempt was made. The mandarins were informed that an embassy had arrived from Europe with valuable presents for the Emperor. The cautious mandarins asked to see its credentials, and, when they were told that these had been accidentally destroyed on the voyage, they again amiably conducted their visitors to the frontier. There were three Jesuits, in disguise, among the "envoys," and it is clear that the whole expedition was a fraudulent attempt of the merchants and missionaries from Goa to break the reserve of the Chinese.