A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

The island of Malta was the scene of one of the storms which broke upon the Society in this half-century. The fathers had established a college at Lavaletta in 1592, and prospered there until 1632, when a sudden and mysterious tempest swept them, for a time, out of the island. The Jesuit version of the adventure is that the Grand Master Lascaris had attempted to curb the well-known licence of the knights and had, at their protest, thrown the responsibility of the reform on the Jesuits. When the carnival arrived, and the knights were hampered in their amusements, some of them took the revenge of masquerading as Jesuits in the gay throng; and when the Master imprisoned them, at the entreaty of the Jesuits, they forced the doors of the jail and compelled Lascaris to exile the Jesuits. This story is not implausable, but we are equally bound to notice the different version put forward by their opponents. They say that the Jesuits had incurred general contempt by hiding great stores of food in their house during a famine (as we have seen them do in Paris) and by their indulgence in vice. One is disposed to think that the former charge cannot be entirely devoid of foundation. It is singular that, when the French king, at the request of the French Jesuits, forced the knights to readmit the fathers, the two leading Jesuits were not suffered to return to the island.

The most serious event of the half-century was, however, the bankruptcy of one of the Jesuit houses at Seville, and in this case we have serious independent evidence. The condition of the Spanish province evidently remained unchanged in spite of "visitations" from Rome and decrees of the Congregation. Their generous patron Philip III., whose dominion they had so materially helped to enlarge, died in 1621, but his successor Philip IV. was even more generous to them. They prospered, and continued to deteriorate. We may not be disposed to admit implicitly all the sordid stories about them which we find in the Teatro Jesuitico, one of the fiercest anti-Jesuit works of the period, [18] but we have independent evidence of such episodes as the murder of a Spanish Jesuit by an injured husband. Instead, however, of wasting time on these isolated disorders, it will be enough to examine the story of the famous bankruptcy.

One of the seven residences which the fathers had at Seville failed in 1644, and acknowledged a debt of two and a quarter million francs. The Jesuit system, it may be recalled, was to place the administration of the house in the hands of a "Lay Coadjutor" (or lay-brother, who had not made a vow of poverty), and their defence in this singular case is that Brother Villar, who held this charge at Seville, borrowed large sums of money and invested them in shipping and other concerns, without the knowledge of the fathers. His speculations proved disastrous, and the fathers found themselves bankrupt. Crétineau-Joly genially closes the episode with an assurance that the fathers found the money and expelled the offending brother from the fraternity.

That the brother was expelled is quite certain, but I can find no trace that the Jesuits, in spite of their great collective wealth in Spain, ever paid more than a partial dividend, and the whole of the circumstances merit consideration. That we should be asked to believe that a community of Spanish Jesuits, the keenest business-men in the whole Society, suffered a lay brother to conduct vast operations, and to borrow large sums from their own followers in Seville, without their having the least knowledge how he conducted their affairs, is little short of impertinence. We have, however, positive knowledge that the Jesuit version is most untruthful. Not only does Bishop Palafox, one of their most conscientious adversaries, give a different version in his second letter to Pope Innocent X., but a paper written by one of the creditors and submitted to the King of Spain (who favoured the Jesuits) has survived, and must command our confidence. From this memoir or petition, which is reproduced in the Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites (iii. 976), I propose to take the facts of the scandal.

From communities of nuns and the pious laity of the town, both rich and poor, Villar had borrowed sums amounting in all to 450,000 ducats, and invested them in unwise speculations. Villar protested throughout that he had acted under the directions of the fathers, and it would be quite impossible for him to borrow so extensively among their admirers without their knowing it; even if we could suppose that, contrary to all custom, they left their affairs blindly in the hands of a lay-brother. In 1644 the fathers summoned their creditors, declared themselves bankrupt, and proposed a settlement. Some of the creditors endeavoured to secure a payment in full by representing that the Jesuits would suffer severely in credit if they did not draw on the immense resources of their Society to discharge the debt. "The loss of our credit does not trouble me," said the rector; "as the proverb says, the raven cannot be blacker than its wings." The creditors, however, refused to yield, and a receiver was appointed. The petition to the king affirms that this official found among their papers certain letters which plainly showed that they had directed Villar, and secret instructions for the dishonest diversion of legacies they had received on condition of paying out certain monies.

The next step of the Jesuits was to secure the appointment of a judge who would favour themselves. Though there was grave distress among the poorer creditors, this official declared that three-fourths of the Jesuit assets were sacred funds, and that little remained for division. The creditors appealed to the Royal Council, the judge was dismissed for corrupt procedure, and the whole of the property was declared to be "lay" for the purpose of the case. Indeed, the higher court declared that the action of the Jesuits was "infamous," and would, on the part of a private individual, merit a capital sentence. Yet in 1647 we find this petitioner still appealing for a discharge of the debt, and complaining that the Jesuits are trying to induce the more pious of their creditors to agree to a composition.

The significance of this ugly episode does not consist in its illustration of the conduct of a single community of Jesuits. As such it would not be entitled to lengthy consideration in serious history. The more unpleasant feature is that it involves the whole of the Jesuits of Castile, and, in spite of the fact that—the petitioner says—they owed a collective debt of two million ducats, they formed one of the most numerous and wealthy provinces of the Society and dwelt in most imposing establishments. They clearly trusted that their colleagues would evade the discharge of a legitimate debt, and they incurred a storm of anger and disdain. The Roman house itself had taken vast sums from Spain, yet it permitted the local Jesuits to resist their obligations for several years, relying on a purely legal and worldly view of the local responsibility.

The Jesuits of Portugal, which was still under the dominion of Spain, exhibit the same prosperity and worldly temper, and their behaviour in connection with the revolution of 1640 was sinuous and unattractive. In 1635, when the agitation began for the restoration of the Portuguese throne, they punished some of their number who sided with the revolutionaries. As time went on, however, and the movement gathered strength, they wavered and temporised in the most amusing fashion; and so shrewdly did they follow the national movement that the successful completion of the revolution in 1640 found them entirely on the side of the Portuguese people.

When we survey the thirty years' life of the Society in France under the rule of Vitelleschi, we get much the same impression of poor character, or character warped by casuistry. Under so Catholic a monarch as Louis XIII. and so powerful a statesman as Richelieu we do not expect to find any of the large political intrigue in which they had indulged in earlier years. We find no grave scandal, no exalted virtue, no religious heroism. Their life is a chronicle of assiduous teaching and ministration, punctuated by unworthy manœuvres here and there to obtain power or repress rivals, and never rising above mediocrity. A few words on their relations to the court and Richelieu, to the bishops and universities, and to new reformers like Cardinal de Bérulle and St. Vincent de Paul, will suffice for our purpose.

The petty intrigues and successive dismissals of the Jesuit confessors to the court are not of sufficient consequence for us to linger over them. In 1624 Richelieu became first minister of France and put an end to their political pretensions. In that year they had again incurred the anger of the university. Henri de Bourbon, illegitimate son of Henry IV., had been appointed bishop of Metz. He had been educated by the Jesuits, and was induced to make his "act of theology" in their college, instead of at the Sorbonne, as was customary, and the whole court had been attracted to and entertained in the college. Richelieu had, however, no idea of espousing the quarrel of the university; he would quickly enough come into conflict with the Jesuits, as he was determined to reverse at the first opportunity the pro-Spanish policy of Marie de Medici and her clerical advisers. His first act was to drive the Pope's troops out of the Valtelline and defy Spain, and the Jesuits contented themselves with contributing anonymously to the shower of violent ultramontane pamphlets which now fell on the minister. Two of them especially, written (it seems) by Father Keller, the Jesuit confessor of Maximilian of Bavaria, and entitled Mysteria Politica and Admonitio ad Regem Christianissimum, gave him great annoyance. They were condemned and burned, together with Father Santarelli's De Hæresi (1626), but Richelieu was almost exhausted by the violence of the first storm his policy brought upon him, and he did not take the extreme measure against the Jesuits which he was said to contemplate. It is clear that they realised his power and resolved to be discreet. After a fruitless appeal to the young king against him, they signed a series of propositions drawn up by the Sorbonne, and resigned themselves to the patriotic policy of the great minister.