A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In the case of Spain we need note only that the Pope's interference in the election was bitterly resented, and a feeling spread among the fathers which we shall find breaking into the most singular expression under the rule of Acquaviva. In spite of the stern design of Ignatius and the emphatic rule of the Society that the Jesuit was to benumb every patriotic fibre in his heart, and know himself only as a citizen of the city of God, the Spaniards cherished their national pride in an alarming degree. Under the ambitious and masterful Philip II., who dreamed of world-empire and was willing to include the Jesuits in his diplomatic corps, they prospered and were the most important body in the Society. They were annoyed that the generalship passed out of their hands, and they began to meditate secession from the Roman authorities. When the papal Nuncio died at Madrid in 1577 a memoir written in this sense was found amongst his papers. We shall see later how the feeling developed, and how the war with Rome brought into notice the degenerate character of the Spanish province.

Italian affairs in that decade are chiefly remarkable for a violent quarrel with St. Charles Borromeo at Milan. He had continued for some years to patronise and employ them. Father Adorno remained his confessor; and in 1572 he gave them the Abbey of Braida for a college, and in 1573 entrusted to them the College of Nobles at Milan. They were already in charge of the seminary of the diocese, and the trouble seems to have begun with the transfer of this institution to the Oblates (a religious body founded by Charles) in 1577. Crétineau-Joly explains that the Jesuits were now controlling so many institutions in Milan that they were overworked, and they begged to be relieved of the seminary. He appeals to Giussano, the saint's biographer; but Giussano merely says that Charles "gave the seminary to the Oblates, with the consent of the Jesuits," which is a polite way of saying that they were dismissed. We shall see, in fact, that Charles was convinced that the Jesuits were in a lax and degenerate condition.

In the following year, 1578, the cardinal quarrelled with the Governor of Milan, and the Jesuits divided in allegiance. Adorno and a few others were faithful to Charles, but a courtly and fashionable Jesuit preacher, who was appointed to preach the Lent, attacked and ridiculed the cardinal-archbishop from one of the chief pulpits of his own city, before a crowded audience of wealthy Milanese. This preacher, Mazzarino, uncle of the famous minister, was the confessor and friend of the governor. Charles protested against the unseemly attack, but the Jesuit provincial appointed Mazzarino again to preach the Lent in 1579, and he attacked Charles more virulently than ever. All the less austere ladies of Milan, for whom he made smooth the paths of rectitude, flocked to his chapel, and listened with pleasure to his ridicule of the ascetic prescriptions of their saintly archbishop. Charles drew the attention of the Provincial to the fact that Mazzarino was preaching moral principles of scandalous laxity, and his attacks on the chief clerical authority were very injurious. The Provincial would not chide Mazzarino, and Charles appealed to the General. The only reply of the General was, at the request of a certain countess, to direct Mazzarino to preach all the year round. Charles threatened to suspend the preacher, and he was defied from the pulpit; he threatened to bring his principles to the notice of the Inquisition, and the Jesuits sent a courier to Rome to defend their preacher. Then Charles instructed his Roman agent, Spetiano, to lay the case before the papal court, and Mazzarino was recalled by his General and suspended from preaching for two years by an ecclesiastical tribunal.

This quarrel is of interest for two reasons. In the first place, it illustrates the value of Crétineau-Joly's history of the Jesuits. The French writer ignores the attack in 1577, and says that, as soon as Mazzarino began to misbehave, "the Milan fathers hastened to disapprove of the imprudent orator," and the General recalled him. It is, of course, true that Charles's confessor, Adorno, "disapproved" of his brother Jesuit, but the Mazzarino faction retorted that he was jealous, because Mazzarino had larger audiences for his sermons; and Crétineau-Joly suppresses the fact that the Provincial, and for a time the General, defiantly supported Mazzarino. We know this from Borromeo's letters to his agent. [7] The further interest of the quarrel, which is entirely suppressed by the French historian, is that in these letters Charles passes very severe strictures on the Jesuits as a body. Instead of finding fault with one man only, Mazzarino, he found fault with all except one, his confessor, to whom he remained attached. "I confess," he writes to Spetiano, "that for some time I have felt the Society to be in grave danger of decadence unless a prompt remedy be applied." The Jesuits, he explains, admit clever youths without regard to their character, and they grant extravagant liberties to their literary colleagues. They are inflated by the favour of the nobility and the crowds of wealthy women who flock to lax moralists like Mazzarino. We may also recall here the grave statement of Charles's nephew and successor, Archbishop Frederic Borromeo, who was educated by the Jesuits: a statement repeated, in the most solemn terms, by a writer to whom he made it.

I have enlarged on this quarrel because we have here the rare advantage of an impartial and unimpeachable witness, and we see how serious a ground there is at times, when independent evidence can be found, for reading Jesuit and pro-Jesuit writers with caution. We must not, however, pass to the opposite extreme and conclude that the Italian Jesuits generally were the favourites of ladies who appreciated indulgence in their confessors and preachers. This is the only serious scandal of the Italian province under Mercurian.

In France, as in Spain, the story is one of preparation for the stirring events of the next chapter. The hostile Archbishop of Paris died, and Pierre de Gondi, who succeeded him, was an Italian of the Medici suite, and favourable to the Jesuits. Charles IX. gave place to Henry II., and the new king chose Auger for his confessor, and gave the Jesuits everything they cared to ask. There was now no question of suppressing their name and privileges in France. A third powerful patron was the Cardinal de Bourbon, who obtained for them a "house of the professed" at Paris, and tried to force the university to incorporate their college. The Parlement and University still made every effort to check their triumphant advance, but they now began to send pupils of their own to graduate in the university and weaken its opposition. Their college in Lorraine was erected into a university, and royal pupils sat at their feet. When the famous Catholic League was formed they flung themselves into its work with great ardour, and we shall see the terrible issue in the next chapter.

Two incidents in the permanent quarrel with the Paris University should be noticed. One of the Jesuits, Maldonat, shocked the professors of the Sorbonne by teaching that the immaculate conception of Mary was a matter of free opinion, [8] and Rome upheld the Jesuit. More interesting is a memoir which the doctors of the Sorbonne submitted to the papal court when, in 1575, Cardinal de Bourbon was trying to secure the incorporation of the Jesuit college. Amongst heavy charges of avarice and of seizing the property of other religious bodies, we find the quaint accusation that the Jesuits taught that souls were delivered from purgatory after ten years of suffering. The point seems academic to the layman, and very consoling to the faithful. What it really meant, in practice, was that the Jesuits claimed that they might, after ten years, divert to other purposes the large funds bequeathed to them to say masses for the dead.

In Belgium the record was still one of trouble and vicissitude. They had, when Alva had "pacified" the province, opened a number of houses, which the townsfolk (as at Antwerp and Liège) threatened to burn. Then, when Don John, Philip's half-brother, was defeated in 1578, the Jesuits refused to take the oath imposed by the States and were expelled from Antwerp and other centres. They began to recover to some extent under the Duke of Parma, but had to witness the secession of the northern provinces and the formation of a new Protestant power, Holland, which was destined to give them trouble. At Louvain they maintained a struggle with the university similar to that at Paris. They at last tripped up the celebrated Michel de Bay (Baius), rector of the university, and sent their brilliant young theologian, Bellarmine, who was then only thirty years old, to enter into a prolonged duel with him. When, at last, they induced Rome to take a serious view of the errors of Baius, and Father Toledo was sent by the Pope to secure his submission, they began to rise from the lowly position in which the university had kept them.

The Catholics of Austria and Southern Germany continued to oppose and intimidate them in spite of the devoted exertions of Canisius. They were fiercely assailed at Gratz, Prague, Innsprück, and Vienna. The Emperor Maximilian was even induced to forbid their Vienna college to grant degrees or compete in lectures with the university, though the Jesuits soon got the restriction removed. It appears that they announced lectures on the same subjects and at the same hours as those of the university, and, as always, charged no fees. This was one of the chief grievances of the universities, especially as the Jesuits palpably trusted to obtain control of the universities themselves. Another grievance, which we have noticed in the Parisian indictment, is that they somehow acquired the property of older religious orders. One of many instances of this occurs in the present period. They opened a college at Freiburg, and were invited to work in the Swiss cantons. For the beginning of their mission the Pope assigned them the revenues of the abbey of Marsens, and Canisius soon had a centre for attacking Calvinism in Switzerland. The Polish colleges continued to flourish, as we shall presently realise, under King Stephen Bathori.