A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

Stephen Bathori was succeeded in 1586 by a pupil of the Jesuits, Sigismund III., and their power became greater than ever, and provoked a strong reaction. Their conduct in Transylvania, where most of the nobles were still Protestant, caused them to be expelled from that province by the Diet, and many nobles of the Polish Diet endeavoured to have them expelled from the whole kingdom. They were bitterly accused of intriguing to get possession of the property of Protestants, and even of rival religious orders. At Dantzic they were compelled to return the property of a community of nuns. The nobles chiefly resented their interference in politics and control of education, and penned some fiery indictments of what they called their "machinations." An edict of the Diet for the year 1607 is not flattering to them.

In the same period they overran the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, Bohemia, Baden, and most of the south-German States. Throughout the whole Germanic world their procedure was of much the same character. A few worthy and powerful men like Canisius would secure the opening of the doors to the Society, and a host of less religious fathers would then intrigue for funds to build colleges and educate the young, and organise the Catholic laity in enthusiastic confraternities or sodalities. Partly by these methods, but very largely by their great skill in securing the ear of princes, they not only greatly strengthened the surviving Catholic populations, but they undoubtedly regained much territory from the Reformers. They opposed a positive and unvarying creed to the conflicting doctrines of the Protestants, and the religious life they themselves exhibited had none of the grossness which had done so much to provoke the Reformation. Here and there, however, they clearly resorted to unworthy means to secure property or influence, and were heatedly assailed. A very curious series of outbreaks against them occurred in 1584. They boasted of the share their Father Clavius had had in the reform of the calendar; but, when it came to the time of Carnival and Lent, and later of Christmas, the distracted citizens were sometimes defrauded of their traditional pleasures by the alteration of the calendar, and took their revenge on the windows of the Jesuits.

The only notable experience of the Society in Italy was the expulsion of the fathers from Venice. A feeling of irritation against them had lingered in the Republic since their inauspicious entry under Ignatius, and of late years the French and Spanish strictures on them had found very ominous echoes in Venice. In the early years of the seventeenth century this feeling was inflamed by the attitude of the Jesuits in siding with the Pope against the civic authorities. The secular authorities had been so indignant at the discovery of certain brutal crimes committed by some of the clergy that, in spite of ecclesiastical privileges, they proceeded against the criminals. The quarrel with Rome which followed ended in the Pope placing Venice under an interdict, and the great body of the clergy of Venice patriotically ignored the interdict and continued to minister to the citizens. The Jesuits were in a painful dilemma. They made a futile attempt to evade it by closing their public churches, but keeping their houses open, and the Council banished them from the city. A crowd of citizens assembled on the banks of the canal when the gondolas, bearing the condemned fathers, left the city, and they do not attempt to represent it as a crowd weeping for their departure. "Ande in mal' hora" was the scornful reply made to one of their number who appealed to the people. Their very valuable property was confiscated, and they would not re-enter Venice for half a century.

We might admire the Jesuits at least for their courageous adherence to their own principles in these experiences of the year 1606, and we cannot regard it as other than natural that they should attempt to drag the rest of the clergy into sharing their attitude. But the indictment of them which the Venetian Senate made after their departure goes further than this. They were accused of grave intrigue in the quarrel between Rome and the Republic, and it was said that they abused their position as confessors to the noble ladies of Venice to learn the secrets of the Senate and frustrate its aims. Venice, it will be remembered, took a particular pride in the secrecy of its political life, and it especially distrusted so notoriously pro-Spanish a body as the Jesuits. These charges we cannot, of course, control, but they are consonant with the ordinary action of the Society. It was decreed that they be banished for ever; that if ever the question of recalling them were raised, this indictment must be read again in the Council of Ten, and that any citizen who held communication with the Jesuits should be sent to the galleys. The question of recalling them was, of course, raised at once. Henry IV. was induced to plead their cause at Venice, while Spain used all its power to prevent a reconciliation of the Papacy and the Republic except on condition that the Society be restored. So convinced were the Venetians of the anti-patriotic action of the Jesuits that they peremptorily refused to yield, and Acquaviva had to resign himself to defeat.

At Rome a more prolonged and more academic quarrel had nourished the feeling against the Society. The subject-matter of this controversy is of interest only to theologians, and the whole struggle must be dismissed in a few words. In brief, a Jesuit theologian of Portugal, named Molina, had in 1588 published a work (Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis concordia), in which he had made novel efforts to illumine the mystery of the consistency of human freedom with the action of grace, and the way in which God may have a foreknowledge of events which may or may not take place. When Crétineau-Joly observes that Molina "talked as if he had been admitted to the counsels of the Most High," we can understand the indignation of rival theologians of the time. A Dominican theologian, named Bañez, had a different theory of these abstruse matters, and there was soon a fierce quarrel between the two orders. When the Spanish Inquisition refused to condemn Molina, the Dominicans carried the quarrel to Rome, where it enlivened and heated the chambers of the Vatican and the religious houses for more than twenty years. A commission appointed by the Pope condemned the teaching of Molina as "a dangerous novelty," the Jesuits induced the Pope to suspend sentence, and even profane ambassadors were drawn into the sacred arena. Spain threw its influence against Molina: France, naturally, supported him. It was not until 1607 that Paul V. judiciously decided that either opinion might be held with a safe conscience; and when it proved profoundly unsatisfactory to both parties to find that their rivals were permitted to live, the Pope had, in 1611, to impose silence on the disputants. The struggle still lingers in the remote and innocuous volumes of dogmatic theology which the rival orders occasionally publish.

In fine, we must glance at the progress of the foreign missions under Acquaviva. The Japanese mission now reached its highest prosperity and entered upon the days of persecution. In 1565 there were ten Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade in Japan, until a few years before his death, in the interest of the Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives.

Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without realising that the success of this early Christian mission was singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year 1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and death for their faith must convince every candid student that the early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an "apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.

Two years later the clouds began, as if in punishment, to overcast their prosperity. Taicosama had usurped the chief throne of Japan in 1583, and, as the Catholic generals in the army had made no defence of their legitimate monarch, he continued for some years to favour the Church. The displacement of the native faith, however, led him to reflect that it might entail political displacements, and he is said to have seized the opportunity, when certain Christian girls refused the honour of being added to the lengthy list of his concubines, to suppress the mission. The Jesuits were to leave his kingdom within twenty days, or die; and he burned nearly a third of their 240 chapels. The Provincial Valignani returned from Italy to find his mission on the brink of destruction. He had taken a few noble Japanese youths to Europe, and was bringing them back to tell their fellows of the grandeur of Rome and Spain. As a Jesuit he was forbidden to enter the kingdom. With remarkable ease he transformed himself into an ambassador of the Viceroy of India, and was borne in a superb litter to the presence of Taicosama, on whom he showered presents and compliments. The Jesuits were allowed to remain in the country, though still forbidden to practise their religion, and the hundred priests had for some time to be content with stealthy and nocturnal ministration to their converts.

At length Taicosama turned upon them with fury, and the great persecution began. Kaempfer says that the Jesuits excited the anger of the nobles by an insolent refusal to pay them the customary respect; but a more substantial grievance came to the ears of the monarch. In 1596 a Japanese was examining a map of the earth on which the vast possessions of Spain were shown. He asked a Spanish pilot how his master had obtained this enormous territory, and the man imprudently replied that Philip first sent missionaries into a country to prepare it for subjection, then armies. The remark was reported to the Emperor, and he fell upon the missionaries with a just charge that they had violated his prohibition of the practice of the Christian cult. A number of Jesuits and Franciscans were crucified, and thousands—the Jesuits say 20,000—of the native Christians testified to the sincerity of their belief by embracing martyrdom. The death of Taicosama in the following year, 1598, put a stop to the persecution, and it is claimed that 70,000 converts were made in the next two or three years. The Protestant Dutch traders were, however, now displacing the Portuguese and Spanish, and repeating to the Japanese those dark opinions of the political intrigues of the Jesuits which were current in their own land. Once more the decree of extermination went forth, and by the year of the death of Acquaviva the mission was nearly extinct. Its second recovery and final destruction will occupy us later.

The rule of Acquaviva was also memorable for the beginning of the Chinese mission. The repeated failures to gain admission drove the Jesuits to fresh expedients, and a few of their more learned members applied themselves to a thorough study of Chinese culture and religion. The first and most distinguished of these was Father Ricci, whom we find living in Chao Hing, and astonishing the local mandarins with his learning, in 1583. We are not accurately informed how Ricci obtained admission, but we have seen, and shall see, that a Jesuit was prepared to make any profession whatever in order to enter a forbidden land. He seems to have concealed his religion, and posed as a lay scholar, until he was sufficiently advanced in the confidence of a few to entrust his ideas to them. He dressed as a Chinese scholar, and had (after 1587) two disguised lay-brothers in his house, which was transferred to Chao Chu. The mob, discovering his aims, attacked the house; but Ricci's able command of Western learning and appliances had greatly impressed Chinese scholars, and he made steady, if slow, progress. In the year 1600 he was invited to visit the Emperor at Peking, and shrewdly took with him a collection of telescopes, clocks, and other wonders of the West. He was allowed to live at Peking and enjoy the favour of the Emperor, and other priests quietly entered China and helped to found the mission. At one time its promise was nearly destroyed by a quarrel of the rival missionaries,—Jesuit, Franciscan, and secular,—but Ricci tactfully averted the persecution which their mutual charges brought on them. He died in 1610, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral at Peking. Numerically, there were as yet few converts. Ricci was not the kind of man to rush into the street with a crucifix and proclaim that the deities of China were false gods. It is only at a later date that we shall find a large and important mission in China.