A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

The position of the Jesuits during the next two decades was one of great prosperity but acute dissatisfaction, on account of their political impotence. They had (in 1627) 13,195 pupils in their schools in the Paris province alone, and more than that number in the remaining French provinces. Their opponents were, however, numerous and active, and Richelieu was not unwilling to see this check on their ambition. We find Father Suffren, the king's confessor, complaining in 1626 of the number and violence of their enemies, and adding: "Few of our friends have the courage openly to undertake to defend us." What we shall see presently of their relations to the bishops and universities will throw some light on this. There can be little doubt that Richelieu despised the Jesuits, but preferred to have them under his eye, engaged in the teaching of the young, rather than as open opponents. He punished them ruthlessly when they interfered in politics. He had Father Monod, confessor to Christiane of Savoy, imprisoned for his political intrigues, and when Father Caussin, who was appointed confessor to Louis in 1637, was discovered by Richelieu's spies to be making a secret and insidious attempt to turn the king against Richelieu, he was promptly exiled. Louis had shown Caussin a list, supplied by Richelieu, of Jesuit theologians, who approved the policy of the minister. "Ah, sire," said the Jesuit, piqued at this astute move, "they had a church to build."

In a word, the Jesuits were politically powerless under Richelieu, and gave him little serious anxiety. It seems rather that he induced many of them, however insincerely, to support him in his policy—a policy which was angrily repudiated by Rome and the Catholic powers. In 1638 he threatened to cast off the yoke of the papacy, and, by making some of the gravest concessions demanded by the Reformers, unite the Huguenots and Catholics of France in an independent Gallican Church. If we may believe a story given in Bayle's Dictionary (article "Amyrant"), which was written shortly afterwards, he actually used the Jesuit Amyrant to negotiate with a leading Huguenot divine, and promise to surrender such Catholic doctrines as purgatory and the invocation of the saints. [19]Two years later we find a Jesuit enlisted in the regiment of pamphleteers who defended Richelieu's singular policy. It is perhaps, in view of their constant policy toward the Reformation, one of the most curious instances of their power of adaptation to circumstances.

I have said that Richelieu despised the Jesuits, and his correspondence with Father (later Cardinal) de Bérulle suggests this. De Bérulle, a man of exalted character and piety, was the founder of the Oratorian priests, and a valued friend of the minister. We have a letter that he wrote to Richelieu in 1623, which contains, in the mild and charitable language of a saint, a very painful indictment of the French Jesuits. Their jealousy of the new congregation and determination to prevent its growth led to some extremely unworthy conduct. In town after town, as de Bérulle describes in detail, the Oratorians removed the prejudice against the Jesuits, and even surrendered property to them, and the Jesuits then repaid their benefactors with slander and intrigue. At Dieppe the governor refused to allow the Jesuits to found a college, but gladly admitted the Oratorians. A Jesuit then asked the hospitality of the Oratorians, and used the opportunity to intrigue against them, in favour of the Society, among the citizens. A letter in which he informed his colleagues of his hope of winning the college from the Oratorians was intercepted and sent to de Bérulle. At Paris the King offered the Oratorians a hotel, but the Jesuits intervened and prevented the gift. They told "strange and atrocious calumnies" of de Bérulle at the court, and at Bordeaux they proposed to indite him for heresy. The intrigue covers the whole of France during more than ten years, and betrays a very general lack of moral sensitiveness among the French Jesuits. In a similar, though less vigorous, way they attempted to hinder the growth of the new congregation of priests founded by St. Vincent de Paul. [20]

A more general view of the conduct of the French Jesuits from 1615 to 1645 does little to alter this unfavourable impression. Even in the pages of their French apologist their record of service is singularly mediocre; they taught tens of thousands of pupils and preached to hundreds of congregations, is all that one can say. On the other hand, when we turn to the numerous facts which the French apologist has discreetly omitted, we find them making unedifying efforts to extend their work and influence. In 1620 the Jesuits of Poitiers defy the bishop, who lays an interdict on their church; the bishop has decreed that his people must attend their parish churches once in three weeks at least, and the Jesuits reply from the pulpit that it is enough if the people attend their church. At Angoulême, in 1622, they secure, through Father Coton and by a secret contract with the mayor, the monopoly of teaching and the control of the university. They continue for four years to defy the bishop and stir the people against him, although they are condemned by Cardinal de Sourdis and their contract is declared void by the Parlement, until the bishop is compelled to excommunicate them. In 1623 they have similar trouble, due to their determination to found petty universities at Toulouse, Pontoise, and Tournon, and all the universities of France combine in what the French apologist calls a "ferocious war" against them. A few years later they obtain from the King letters permitting them to found a house at Troyes, "at the request of the inhabitants." The inhabitants were so little minded to invite them, and so angry at the fraud, that they kept them out of Troyes, in spite of all their efforts, for a hundred years. Their record in France is full of such details. Toward the end of the period it begins to tell of the famous struggle with the Jansenists; but we will consider this story in full in a later chapter.

An incident that occurred in the province of Lorraine, which was annexed by Richelieu in 1633, deserves special consideration. The impetuous and sensuous young Duke, Charles IV., chose the Jesuit Cheminot as his confessor in 1637, and a week later, although his first wife still lived, he married the Princess Béatrix de Cusance. Instead of retiring from the court, which was at once assailed from all parts of France for the bigamy, Cheminot wrote a casuistic memoir to prove that the marriage was valid, and clung to the duke for six years. The misconduct of an individual Jesuit is, as I have said, not matter for serious history, and, if it were true that Cheminot defied his own superiors, there would be no occasion to dwell on it. But the correspondence published by Crétineau-Joly shows plainly that the Jesuit authorities acquiesced in Cheminot's position for many years. We find Charles writing to General Vitelleschi in 1639, in friendly terms, to complain that some of the other Jesuits are hostile to his accommodating confessor. Three years later we find Charles declaring to Cheminot that he will not grant him permission to retire, as his General "presses" him to do; as if a Jesuit needed such permission. It was only in 1643, when the scandal was known to all Europe, that the Roman authorities excommunicated Cheminot. They had waited five years in the hope that they would not be compelled to sacrifice a place in a ducal court.

Their fortunes in Belgium and Holland also were less romantic than they had been in earlier years. The settlement of Belgium as a Catholic province enabled them to spread over it with easy prosperity, and obtain a very large share in the education of the young. The Flemish fathers made a singular contribution to the literature of the Society, which has given its more sober admirers much embarrassment. In the year 1636, which they chose to regard as the centenary of the Society, they published a work, the Imago Primi Sæculi, in which they gave, by pen and pencil, a marvellous account of the first hundred years of the Society's life. Its progress and virtues were put on the highest scale of miraculous heroism; the Jesuits were represented as a troop of angels transferred to the planet earth in the crisis of its religious development. As, however, the modern apologist for the Jesuits represents the work as a "touching fiction" and "pious dithyramb," we need not give it serious attention. Undoubtedly it was imposed on Belgium and other countries at the time as veracious history.

M. Crétineau-Joly is not so candid when he turns to Holland. He marks how, in spite of the heretical atmosphere, the Jesuits have planted colonies at Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Leyden, Harlem, Delft, Rotterdam, Gouda, Hoorn, Alkmaer, Harlingen, Groningen, Bolsward, Zutphen, Nimegues, and Vianen; how they mingle with the Spanish troops and board their vessels in the war; how they press on to Denmark, and are seen everywhere as the fearless "standard-bearers of the Church." It was, perhaps, natural that he should be indisposed to mar this picture with an account of the relations of the Jesuits to the secular clergy; but, since our purpose is to attain a just and complete view of the Jesuit character, we are compelled to consider it. During forty years they maintained a struggle similar to that they had conducted in England in the days of Elizabeth.

The secular clergy of Holland pressed for the appointment of a bishop, and the Jesuits used all their resources to prevent such an appointment, since it threatened their ascendancy. When a priest named Sasbold was named for the office, they made a scandalous attack on his character; and when, in 1602, he was appointed Archbishop of Utrecht, they had his name changed to Archbishop of Philippi. Until his death in 1614 they conducted an unceasing intrigue against Sasbold, and they first endeavoured to prevent the appointment of a successor, and then transferred their rancorous hostility to him. They had been banished from Holland in 1612, but they again secured toleration, and by 1628 there were seventy Jesuits in the country. The struggle against the archbishop continued all through the period, in spite of several papal injunctions that they were to obey him; but it is unnecessary to enter into all the details. We need not question the bravery of the Jesuits as standard-bearers of the Church, but it is impossible to admire their efforts to prevent the employment of other standard-bearers. Their work was, in point of fact, less effective than that of the secular clergy, because the Dutch Protestants hated and distrusted them. They were found in 1638 to be implicated in a political plot to introduce the Spaniards, and two of them were tortured and executed.

Since the period we are considering coincides with the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), we naturally find that the record of the Jesuits in Germany is full of life and adventure. Their share in bringing about that disastrous and paralysing struggle cannot be measured by the historian. Now that the world realises the baneful effect of that war and of the Catholic policy of intolerance which led to it, in retarding the development of European civilisation, the Jesuit authorities are not likely ever to publish such documents in their archives as would reveal their activity. We must be guided by two chief considerations. In the first place, the general historian can trace the movements which led to the outbreak of war without any reference to the Jesuits, and is therefore not disposed to think that their intrigues were an essential element in the incitement of it; on the other hand, however, the Jesuits were the most earnest and insistent advocates of the harsh Catholic policy which occasioned the war, and they had considerable influence over the Catholic leaders. Ferdinand II., Maximilian of Bavaria, and Wallenstein had been trained in Jesuit schools; Tilly had actually entered the Society, but withdrawn before he had taken the vows. Jesuits swarmed in the Catholic camp, especially about the tent of Tilly, fired the soldiers to their work, and advanced in the rear of the army to occupy whatever towns fell to their arms.

The war began, it will be remembered, in Bohemia, and here the Jesuits were very clearly interested. When the Protestants cast off the yoke of the Emperor in 1618, they swept the Jesuits from their country and burned some of their colleges. We can very well imagine the plaints of the Jesuits at the courts of Ferdinand and Maximilian, and are not surprised to learn that eighteen Jesuits accompanied Tilly's troops when they came to subdue Bohemia. It was the beginning of the war. Similarly, when Bethlen Gabor took Hungary in 1622, one of his first measures was to expel the Jesuits; and the victorious Swedes had expelled them from Livonia in the preceding year. It is, however, unnecessary here to follow them through the long course of the Thirty Years' War. They retreated and advanced with the soldiers of the Catholic League, died of plague in the camp or fell under the sabres of the heretics, and maintained the struggle to the end with all the energy which non-combatants could exert. There were even occasions, as at the siege of Prague, when they took arms and fought desperately in the van of the Catholic troops. The alliance of France with the Protestants was a bitter disappointment to them, and they were among the few in Europe who profoundly deplored the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which at last gave a just liberty to Protestantism in Germany. The war, as conceived by them, was a costly and lamentable failure.