[ [21] Many of the documents are collected in the Annales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites. The most familiar procedure of the Jesuits was to accuse the monks of corruption and rely on their influence at court to prevent too close an inquiry. The French Conseil d'État forced them, as late as 4th August 1654, to restore three abbeys to their lawful owners.
UNDER THE STUARTS
With the exception of the English mission, which I have reserved for continuous treatment in this chapter, we have now surveyed the whole life of the Society of Jesus during the first century of its history. The most important conclusion that one can draw from this extensive and varied body of experiences is that every attempt to impose a uniform character on the early Jesuits must fail. The uniformity in virtue and heroism which is ascribed to the Society in the florid pages of the Imago Primi Sæculi is as far removed from the truth as the uniformly dark features which are imposed on the Jesuits by some writers of the opposing school. The candid historian must follow the example of Macaulay, and give contrasted pictures of the light and the darkness, the heroic devotion and the demoralising casuistry, which one equally discovers in that first century of Jesuit history; and his effort to do justice will miscarry, as that of Macaulay did, because Catholic writers will ingenuously detach the earlier and more flattering half of his verdict and represent it as his full conclusion.
This extreme variety of types is in itself an indication that the discipline of the Society had failed. Ignatius had laid stress on two rules: the novices were to be chosen with a care which the older orders had ceased to maintain, and the men were to be controlled by a system of surveillance and abject submission to authority which should have secured a large measure of uniformity. We have seen that these rules were very largely disregarded. The complaint is constant and well founded that the Jesuits looked less to character and devotion than to ability and social position in examining the candidates for admission. It is, perhaps, singular that this did not at least give the Society a more imposing intellectual status. Crétineau-Joly has industriously collected the names of the chief writers and scholars who adorned the annals of the Society during the first two centuries. One need only say that, apart from theologians, there are very few names in the list that will be found in any impartial calendar of those who contributed to the development of modern culture. This vast society of leisured and comfortable bachelors offers us a singularly meagre statement of results. Its prominent names are generally the names of politicians and pamphleteers. This comparative poverty, apart from theology, is not surprising when we reflect that the purpose of the Society was to combat heresy; it is merely necessary to note the fact because the contrary is so frequently stated. In proportion to their numbers, their resources, and their exceptional opportunities (through their schools) of attracting eligible youths, the Jesuits are not, and never were, a learned body.
This general mediocrity of intellect is accompanied by a general mediocrity of character. Just as their vaunted system of education is singularly unsuccessful in developing higher ability, so their equally lauded spiritual exercises leave the great body at a very common level of character. When we have justly admired the apostles who here and there exhibit heroic self-sacrifice on the foreign missions, the communities which here and there brave the horrors and dangers of a plague-stricken town, the few whose integrity of life wins the respect of people unattached to the Society, we find ourselves confronting a general body of men of no moral or spiritual distinction. During generation after generation the largest provinces of the Society persist in comfortable idleness, and the efforts of superiors to assert the despotic power they are supposed to possess are met with resentment and intrigue, and are nearly always foiled. The theoretical corpse-like passivity of the Jesuit is a sheer mockery of the facts of their history.
They stand out from the other religious congregations of the Roman world only in the attainment of greater power and wealth, and the means by which they attain them. Here alone is there a distinctive strand in the story of the Jesuits, perceptible from the foundation of the Society. Unquestionably they did far more for their Church in the first century after the Reformation than any other religious body; and they did this specifically by seeking wealth and power. They strained every nerve to secure the ear of popes, princes, and wealthy people. That was the plain direction of their founder. But we may be confident that Ignatius would not have sanctioned the fraud, hypocrisy, slander, intrigue, and approval of violence which this eagerness for power brought into the Society. In India and China, in England and Sweden, they assumed a right to lie in the service of God; and in the same high cause they counselled or connived at murder, slandered their fellow-priests, violated their sacred obligations, fostered wars, and accommodated the Christian ethic to the passions of wealthy or influential sinners. It was never necessary for a Jesuit theologian to declare that "the end justifies the means." [22] If the phrase is regarded, not as a citation from a written book of rules, but as an interpretation of the conduct of the Jesuits, it expresses the most distinctive feature of the character of the Society during its first hundred years.
We have now to see how this characteristic will be maintained during a second century, and will at length bring a terrible catastrophe upon the Society. For half a century the Jesuits will continue to enjoy and augment their wealth and power, but the hatred which they have provoked in the minds of their co-religionists gathers thicker and darker about their splendid prosperity and at length extinguishes it. They die by the hand of Catholics, suffering the just penalty of their grave abuse of power. It will now be more convenient to follow their history continuously in each province, and we may begin with England.