A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In view of the despotic power which a General had, it may seem strange that the electors should venture to entrust the office to a man of such mediocre ability as Borgia. We must remember that the General had a council of four able assistants, and it could safely be trusted that the humility of Borgia would leave the power in their hands. Nor was it long before their statesmanship was put to a severe test. Their princely benefactor, Pius IV., died before the end of 1565, and a Dominican monk, Pius V., occupied the chair. He was a personal friend of Borgia, but he belonged to a rival order, and Rome was greatly agitated by the hope that he would strip the Society of its excessive privileges. To the relief and delight of the Jesuits, Pius V. took the earliest opportunity to show his friendliness. As he drove in solemn procession past their church, he summoned the General to his carriage, and talked affectionately with him for a quarter of an hour under the eyes of his officers. When he went on to nominate Jesuits for certain important offices, it seemed that they had found another protector.

In 1567, however, they were dismayed to receive an amiable, but firm, suggestion from Pius to chant in choir, as other religious bodies did, and abandon the "simple" or temporary vows which enabled them to keep priests in the Society for years without being solemnly pledged to it.[ [4] A commission of cardinals was at the time engaged in discussing the reform of the monastic world, and the Jesuits submitted to it a lengthy and skilful memoir in defence of their institutions. Ought not a regiment of light horse, ready to fly at a moment's notice to any part of the Pope's dominions, to have special characters? Would those hundreds of men who had joined the Society in its actual form not have ground to complain if it were made more onerous? Would the benefactors who had built their homes and chapels be indifferent to the changes? Nay, what would the heretics say when the decisions of a whole series of Popes, to say nothing of the revelations made to Ignatius, were ruled improper? These ingenious considerations were then orally impressed on the Pope by Borgia and Polanco, and they flattered themselves that they had once more evaded the commands which it was their chief business to see respected by the rest of Christendom. The Pope had agreed to postpone the question of choir until his new edition of the Breviary was published, and he did not seem to insist on the reform of the vows. A few months later, however, they heard that the Pope was about to decree that in future no member of a religious body should be admitted to the priesthood until he had taken his final vows.

The details of the struggle need not be repeated here, but we must assuredly see a significance in these repeated conflicts with the Pope. In the whole history of the monastic orders of the Catholic Church there is no example of persistent opposition to, or determined evasion of, the commands of the Pope to compare for a moment with this behaviour of the men who took a special vow to obey him. Moreover, the Jesuit writers of the time frankly confess that they resisted the Pope's wish in their own interest. If the solemn vows were to be taken in a youth's early twenties, they would have to examine much more closely the characters of aspirants to the Society, and their numbers would shrink. It was one of the most constant charges against them in every country, that in the admission of novices they sacrificed spiritual quality to quantity or social distinction; and certainly the number of priests who abandoned, or were expelled from, the Society was large. Pius V. knew this, and, to their great mortification, insisted on the reform of their system. They sullenly abandoned one of the most characteristic of their institutions—until Pius V. should go the way of his predecessors. There was much rejoicing in Rome, and it was rumoured that this was only the beginning of reform; but Pius hastened to reassure Borgia and his colleagues.

In 1571, Borgia was requested by the Pope to undertake an important mission. The steady advance of the Turks upon a divided Christendom alarmed the Pope, and he wished to unite the Catholic monarchs for the purpose of defence. His nephew, Cardinal Alessandrini, was to visit the courts of Spain, Portugal, and France, and Borgia was invited to accompany him. He was now advanced in years and tormented with gout, but he accepted the mission, and we may make our survey of the provinces of the Society by following his travels.

Spain endeavoured by an honourable reception to atone for the disgrace it had formerly put upon him. The King promised his aid against the Turk: the Inquisition permitted the publication of Borgia's books: the Jesuits everywhere took courage at sight of their venerable leader and the honour paid him. The Spanish province had continued, since the death of Lainez, to have a very chequered record. The father of the province, Araoz, had resisted every effort of the Roman authorities to dislodge him from his comfortable nest at the court, and his conduct had alienated many from the Society. On the other hand, the devoted exertions of the Jesuits during the epidemics of 1565, 1568, and 1571, had won back much of the early respect for them, and many new missions had been established. Most of the countries of Europe were repeatedly ravaged by pestilence during that decade, and the Jesuits distinguished themselves everywhere by the bravery with which they exposed, and frequently lost, their lives in the service of the sick. Yet there was a persistent feeling in Spain that they were over-eager to secure legacies, and nearly every year witnessed a violent outbreak of hostility to them.

A typical instance is found in the Jesuit chronicles in the earlier part of the year of Borgia's visit. The Jesuits of Alcalà had received into their ranks a youth named Francesco d'España, the son of a wealthy and distinguished lady of Madrid, who strongly opposed his entrance into the Society. He had the disposal of a large fortune, of which he was heir. The mother appealed to the Royal Council, at the head of which was Cardinal Spinosa, and the Jesuits were ordered to restore the youth. In the meantime, they had secretly sent the youth to their house at Madrid,—to be prepared to give evidence, Crétineau-Joly audaciously says,—and when the Vicar of the Archbishop of Toledo came to their house at Alcalà to enforce the order, they would tell him only that d'España was not there. A very lively dispute followed. The angry prelate roundly abused the Jesuits, who flourished their privileges in his face; and some zealous brother rang the bell of the college to summon the students to the defence of their rector. When at length the Vicar threatened to have the Jesuit Provincial dragged to prison, and the students drew their knives to protect him, the rector promised to produce d'España within twenty-four hours. He was summoned, and his mother tried to persuade him to return, or at least to leave his fortune to his family instead of leaving it to the Jesuits. He refused, until the Provincial, foreseeing a great outburst of indignation, advised him to relinquish his fortune. The feeling engendered by such incidents was not removed by the visit of Borgia. In the following year, 1572, the civic authorities of Madrid appealed to the Royal Council to close the Jesuit school, on the ground that the lessons were merely "bait" for young men of wealthy families.

In Portugal, Borgia found the remarkable spectacle of one of his subjects virtually ruling the kingdom. Portugal had fallen lamentably from its earlier greatness. The vast frame of its Empire was undiminished, but the spirit necessary to sustain it had died, and it was doomed to decay. No serious historian questions that the Jesuits had, at least by setting up the Inquisition and pursuing the Jews and Moors, greatly accelerated its fall, and under the rule of Father Gonzales da Camara and his brother, in the name of the young King, the temporal interests of Portugal steadily declined. A stern French critic of the Jesuits, Pasquier, says that he was told by the Marquis de Pisani, the French ambassador at the Spanish court, that the Jesuits were bent on obtaining control of the kingdom of Portugal. Their apologists invite us to be amused at this incredible fiction of the anti-Jesuit, yet it is hardly more than a strong expression of the historical facts. Pasquier expressly says that the Jesuits meant to rule, not without a king, but through a king of their own choice, and they had done this for ten years when Borgia came to visit them. They had, as we saw, helped to replace Catherine by Cardinal Henry, and they had in 1568 displaced the Cardinal by declaring Sebastian of age (in his sixteenth year).

That they promoted the interests of the Society in Portugal and its colonies need hardly be said, but there is ample evidence that they had a larger influence. The King's mother wished him to marry the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, but papal policy preferred a marriage with the sister of the French King; and we have a letter from Borgia to Gonzales, as confessor of Sebastian, enjoining him to promote the French marriage. Even Borgia could overlook the decrees of his Society at times, or convert temporal matters into spiritual. We may, however, regard it as a strained and fanciful conjecture of certain critics that the Portuguese fathers tried to deter Sebastian from marriage, and pressed him to undertake his fatal mission to Africa, in order that the crown might fall into their hands. But this belongs to a later date. Father Gonzales was still the virtual head of the State when Borgia visited Portugal, and the Society flourished there and in the Indies. Although Borgia had lately received an angry protest from Catherine against the interference of the fathers in political matters, he left Gonzales at the court.

Alessandrini and Borgia next went to France; and when we reflect that the historic massacre of the Huguenots occurred a few months afterwards, we feel that it is important to study the visit and the position of the Jesuits with some care. Let us first see how the Society had fared in its ceaseless struggle with its opponents at Paris.

In 1565 a fresh attack had been made on the Jesuit college, and a fruitless appeal against it was made to the Royal Senate. The Jesuits then arraigned the University, which refused to recognise their college, before the Parliament, and a fresh opportunity was offered to the Parisian lawyers to draw up their scathing indictments of the Society. In the meantime, Father Possevin, rector of the college they had recently opened at Lyons, was sent to see the young King and Catherine de Medici at Bayonne, and induce them to throw their power and command into the legal scale. The conference at Bayonne, at which Possevin assisted in some measure, is of grave importance in the history of Europe. On the pretext of making Charles acquainted with his kingdom, Catherine was bringing him into the neighbourhood of other Catholic princes and conferring with them. At Bayonne she met the wife of Philip of Spain, and in the Queen's suite was the grim Duke of Alva. We can only conjecture what was discussed at this conference, but no one doubts that the chief subject was the growth of Protestantism in Catholic lands. Protestant historians frequently suggest that the St. Bartholomew massacre was actually projected at Bayonne, but we are hardly justified in thinking that there was anything more than a general discussion of the brutal policy which was afterwards adopted by Alva in the Netherlands and Catherine in France. In any case, it is most unlikely that Possevin had any share in these secret counsels. He was a new man, hardly known to the court in 1565. He discussed the affairs of his Society with the Spanish Queen, and revealed to her the smuggling of Protestant books into her country; and he returned to Paris with letters, commending the suit of the Paris college, from Catherine, Charles, and the Cardinal de Bourbon.