A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. Of the 540 Jesuits in Spain 230 are lay-brothers: a circumstance that must be borne in mind when we read that there are so many thousand members of the Society. The lay-brother is merely a servant of the priests, and the enormous proportion of these lay-brothers in Spain means that the fathers own large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets (as we learn from the decrees of the Society), and live cheerfully on the income. Mariana does not speak openly of vice—a sufficient proof that the book was not written, even in part, by an anti-Jesuit—but he says that the "enjoyments" of his colleagues are "excessive and scandalous." They further add materially to their incomes by managing the affairs of their penitents; in Valladolid alone there are twelve of these steward chaplains. They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded with debt, yet at Mariana's own house at Toledo the expenditure per head is about £50 a year: a very comfortable sum for the time and place, for a community pledged to poverty. Discipline is thwarted by favouritism and flattery, and the constant spying and reporting cause bitter quarrels in the houses.

This grave account of the Spanish province—sober and convincing, yet grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession—is written solely for the purpose of showing that a distant authority cannot maintain discipline, and the Spanish Jesuits must have local autonomy and less despotic rulers—home-rule and democracy, in a word. This is the note of the remarkable struggle which now opens between the Spaniards and the Italians. Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much as possible away from their native countries; but he made the mistake of removing old and long-settled fathers and substituting for them young men who shared his own ideas, and, in spite of his ideal, he favoured the Italians.

In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quit the Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent—a crime from which only the Inquisition could absolve—yet the Provincial Marcenius had absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society.

Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio at Madrid to intervene, and Acquaviva sent a Jesuit to win Philip II. Philip, however, was quite willing to see the Society reformed, and the Inquisitors went on to arrest other Jesuits and demand further documents. The insurgent Spaniards were now openly demanding that they should have a local commissary, independent of Acquaviva, and the General was, as quickly as possible, removing fathers from Spain and filling their places with foreigners. The Inquisition decreed that no Jesuit was to leave Spain. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy of Sixtus V. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if the whole case were not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!" Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard; "Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?" [10] He at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices. Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified—and would die at the death of Sixtus V.

Meanwhile the struggle was renewed in Spain. One of the French Jesuits whom Acquaviva had put in place of a rebel proved worse than his predecessor. He asked the opinion of the Inquisition on a letter written by Ignatius himself on obedience, and it was promptly condemned. Acquaviva again had the case transferred and re-tried at Rome, and, although Sixtus spoke some plain unofficial language about the letter, the Roman Inquisition absolved it, and the audacious Father Vincent ended in a papal prison for going on to question the Pope's authority. At the same time an imprudent step on the part of the Society's critics united the Spanish Jesuits with their General and put an end for a time to the struggle. The King appointed a bishop to inquire into the state of all the religious orders in Spain and deal with their irregularities. Neither the local Jesuits nor the General wanted a "royal visitator" peeping into their wine-cellars, and Acquaviva again appealed to the Pope: not forgetting to remind Sixtus, who supremely abhorred clerical "bastards," that this Bishop of Carthagena fell into that category. At the same time he sent to Madrid the English Jesuit, Father Parsons, who was then, as we shall see, helping Philip to annex England to the Spanish crown. He was allowed to choose his own "visitator," and the Spanish fathers were sufficiently absorbed in this new infliction for the next year or two.

Sixtus had meantime brooded over the singular mass of Jesuit documents submitted to him, and in 1590 he intimated that he was going to make a drastic and comprehensive reform. The name of the Society must be changed; the date of taking the vows and the classification of the members of the Society must be altered; the regulations in regard to "fraternal correction" (the euphemism in the Jesuit rules for spying and tale-bearing) and obedience must be modified; and the directions which virtually compelled novices to leave their property to the Society, while nominally advising them to leave it to the poor, must be abolished. Acquaviva entered upon this desperate struggle—there never was the slightest question of Jesuits yielding to Popes on any point—with that cold and dogged resolution which alone could thwart the fiery energy of Sixtus V. At first he tried long and respectful argument with the Pope, and induced the Emperor, the King of Poland, and the Duke of Bavaria to pray that there should be no alteration in the character of the Society. Sixtus smiled grimly, and ordered Cardinal Caraffa to proceed with the revision of their Constitutions. They then fastened on the cardinal, and Sixtus was infuriated to find that Caraffa made no progress. He knew that they were hoping to see him die before he could formulate his reforms, and he entrusted the work to four theologians, whose sentiments he knew. They drew up a formidable indictment of the Constitutions, but it had to pass the Sacred College—and Acquaviva took care that it did not pass.

We need not enter into all the details of this fourth attempt in half a century to evade the most positive and sincere commands of the Pope. It was a race with death, and the most determined and unscrupulous efforts were made by the Jesuits to prevent the Pope from reaching his goal before death overtook him. Sixtus had to punish one Jesuit for making a very pointed eulogy of Cardinal Cajetan, his rival and enemy, and to arrest another for regretting in public that they had not a Gregory on the throne in such troubled times. The dying despot fiercely concentrated his sinking energy on his last task. When Bellarmine's new book De Summi Pontificis Potestate appeared, he put it on the Index, although he liked Bellarmine, and the book really magnified the papal power so much that it was afterwards condemned as seditious at Paris. As the cardinals still thwarted him, he sent a stern personal order to Acquaviva to change the name of his Society. He was not far from death, but the General was told that there could be no more shiftiness; he might, however, ask for the change instead of having it imposed on him. He signed the petition and the Pope drew up his decree. He died before he could publish it.

There is no serious ground for the faint rumour that the Jesuits poisoned Sixtus V. His death was foreseen by everybody, and the Jesuits knew from experience that his decree would die with him. But Roman gossip found the coincidence too romantic to let it pass. Acquaviva had ordered a novena (nine days of prayer) to be said for Sixtus in the Jesuit houses when his illness was announced. The bell was ringing for Vespers on the ninth day when the aged Pope passed away; and for many a year afterwards it was a grim, half-serious joke of the Romans to wonder, when they heard the Jesuit Vesper-bell, whether it rang out the life of another Pope.

After the two-week rule of Urban VII., Gregory XIV. came to the throne and restored the tranquillity of Acquaviva and his colleagues. The title of their Society was solemnly confirmed, and the subsidies of their colleges were again granted. But Gregory had a brief reign, his successor passed even more quickly from the papal throne, and at the beginning of 1592 Clement VIII. succeeded to the tiara. It was generally believed that Clement disliked Acquaviva, and the rebels in Spain returned to the attack upon him. Spain and Portugal, which were still united under the Spanish crown, were equally united in the opposition to the Roman authorities. During the years of friction with Sixtus V. the Spanish fathers Acosta and Carillo and the Portuguese fathers Goelho and Carvalho had maintained and led the agitation against Acquaviva, and it was known that they had the support of abler men like Mariana and the sympathy of the most distinguished and powerful Jesuit at Rome, Toledo, who was made a cardinal by Clement. Acquaviva had not relaxed in his measures against this powerful coalition. He won at least the silence of Toledo; he flattered and tried to disarm Acosta, who was too great a favourite of Philip to be punished; he expelled some of the less influential leaders from the Society, and brought others to Rome. Now, at the last moment, the accession of Clement seemed to have wrested the victory from his hands, and the Spaniards took courage.

Acosta rejected the General's blandishments and persuaded Philip to send him to Rome with a request that the new Pope would summon a General Congregation of the Society and remove Acquaviva from Rome during its sittings. There was at the time a quarrel between the Dukes of Parma and Mantua, and Clement gracefully deputed Acquaviva to go to the north and reconcile them. He dare not refuse the insidious appointment, but he left behind him a trusted secretary, and it was not long before he learned that Clement was about to summon a General Congregation, to which Acquaviva was strongly opposed. He reported that his mission was futile and hopeless; Clement, still gracefully, advised him to be patient, and the strong man had to remain inactive in the north while the Spaniards carried their point. He returned to find Acosta at Rome and a General Congregation—"for the purpose of strengthening the Society and reducing certain provinces to tranquillity"—announced for November. In other words, it was to be a trial of strength between Acosta and Acquaviva, between Spain and Italy, and each party prepared strenuously for the tug of war; while Rome frivolously applauded the rival children of Ignatius and the Pope smilingly blessed the arena.